http://blog.columbiarecords.com/thebadplus/gigs.html

What is Columbia Records doing with blogs? What's the grand scheme? Beyond hosting the very un-blog-like TBP Gigs page. Here's what Google says. Looks like John Mayer (or buddy "Scotty") is doing something more blog-like with his Road Journal page. Oh...and here's a somewhat related but not all so musical RSS Feed for these Columbia blog efforts. Let's subscribe and see what's there. [Later...oops] And then let's write someone and find out (if anyone reads the Contact page email).

How's this for a scheme:

Can you imagine what it would be like to be involved in a blogging effort / evangelism at a record company like Columbia?! That would be something of a dream job to talk to artists and their support folks about how an artist / band blog, which can easily be updated by the artist / band themselves, would be such a killer addition to any artists existing web site. That's the beauty of a blog: it would be the most updated page on a site, but can totally and easily be intergrated into a site the band already has. Replace all those infrequently updated 'Journal' pages on artist sites with Blogs.

And the evangelist would most definitely have his own blog, aggregating what the labels artists are blogging about on their sites and helping the process along. Hootie Hoo!!

[Later...] Radio UserLand's News Aggregator can't read their RSS Feed. It's saying "Can't evaluate the expression because the name "title" hasn't been defined." Drag and bummer. Maybe an RSS expert can help fix this?
11:43:53 AM    comment []  Google It!  

Hear it (MP3, 1.6MB) as it was Jazz Blogged on TNJT Live, April 24, 2003.

"The Bad Plus is just as rhythmically centered as MMW [Medesky, Martin, and Wood] are but the music as represented on These Are The Vistas steers back toward traditional jazz elements. If anything, the Bad Plus make better use of their heavy rhythm-section orientation - as a band of three rhythm-section instruments should - because, rather than relying on constantly propelling forward, the group will break down for solos to further develop the melodic elements of their pieces."

I thought the tune I picked for the show (and to go with Tom's blogage), "1972 Bronze Medalist", illustrated the 'heavy rhythm-section orientation' that Tom mentioned and also the broken down and reworked solo style of the band. BTW, "These Are The Vistas" has gotten lots of play on Jazz 88 (including last night's play on TNJT Live previewed in the above 'Hear It' link which inspired another play a couple hours later on Creative Music with Miff Mole.

The Bad Plus website has lots of linkage to audio ways to get a fix on these boys. And they've got samples from "TATV" in various formats on their Releases page. And it says on their Gigs page that they are going to be on the West Coast, as close as LA, at the end of May. It would be so cool to get them a venue in San Diego to play on that swing (if they have time)...maybe Dizzy's or some other not-already-booked venue?

BTW, on the web tip, TBP should lose the whole framed navigation of their site because you don't know what page you are on when you start navigating from the home page. And it makes it hard for everyday users to send their friends a link to that page. And it makes me have to do a right-click on the Releases link to get the actual page URL, which is how I linked to it in the paragraph above. Try going to their home page and click the Releases link near the top...your Location box will still say that you are at the Home Page. It's a small nit, especially for dudes who have much more important musical Things to be exploring!
11:21:10 AM    comment []  Google It!  

We talked about the different styles of Latin Jazz, which is the main theme of The Salsa Never Ends, her new disc. We also got into her early influences in classical (dad), to mainstream Jazz, and the on to Latin. I learned that Salsa music came from Big Band Jazz...I always thought Salsa was an older musical form. We also got to have her talk about a couple of tunes from the new disc that we played during the interview (but I've left out the tunes from the interview for fear of copyright or some other chilling enfringement...would be nice to leave in).

Susie will be kicking off the first Community Event springing from the 25th Annual Playboy Jazz Festival next Saturday, May 4, 2003 with a Free concert at the Beverly Hills Civic Center (Susie's got good details). We talked about the show, what folks can expect to hear (lots of stuff from the great new disc), and other things that Susie's got coming up (like her next disc and summer evening concerts by the pool at the Whittier Hilton...with 400-500 partyers a night to boot). She was great!

On with the interview. It's in two parts and you can listen to it either via MP3 streaming or MP3 download. If you're going to listen to it on your Inet connected computer, try out the Low FI MP3 Stream. The quality is good and using it allows more folks to listen to the interviews with the available bandwidth. But please, if you so desire, use the Hi Fi MP3 stream for best streaming quality. If you're going mobile, then take the MP3 Downloads with you to the far edges of your digital world!

2003.04.24 - Susie Hansen Interview - Part 1

Did they previously have a problem doing it both Day and Night? Are there some technical issues with doing it Day? or Night? Who cares?! Just some fun questions to ask while we contemplate cruising the rockin-with-killer-music Hollywood Bowl on Saturday, June 14, 2003 (memories). Ah ha...let's see if Nina can get us the folks that are doing the big screens at th fest...that would be an interesting interview! Hey, if it makes this killer festival happen with something New, we want to know about it.

That's kind of my thought behind having Darlene Chan (scroll down to the cool article on Darlene) on the show to see how she (with George Wein) puts together the musical talent for the PBJF. Nina's working that too. And she's working on her own interview with me, too (right Nina?). What does PR for PBJF do? What are the goals for a show like this one? To just get me to interview everyone? To sell more tickets (how many are left?)?

AND, my main girl Nina is working on Boz Scaggs for a chat on TNJT Live. It would be totally cool to talk Jazz with Boz and play tunes from the new Jazz standards disc, "But Beautiful". I took it as a measure of Boz's committment to the music and the tunes that his Home Page is THE page for the New disc. I also liked this quote from the new site,

"I thought it might be interesting to rework some of my songs with a more progressive treatment. Things opened up so nicely in rehearsal, I suggested we do a standard. We did the show, we liked it, the audience liked it, and that’s where it all began."

So an interesting angle on things would be if Boz had something audio-wise of those 'so nicely' opened up Things (we are TNJT, BTW) to share with us. Does he mean 'my songs' like 'Lido' or 'Lowdown'? Wouldn't it be too cool to hear those old Boz favorites done up in a New, Jazzy style?! And hear them in the context of the new stuff on "But Beautiful"? We play them, talk about how those things led to the New Things, and play those New Things.

I'd also like to how this feels to him? Does it feel different to be doing these standards in front of folks instead of his glory-day-tunes? Ya know, it's gotta be strange doing songs like "What's New" at exposing tempos and volume as opposed to his well-known groovers. I'm interested to know how he sees the new disc fit in with the rest of career. Is he just trying this on, or has these kind of tunes and treatments been in his closet for awhile, just waiting to be brought out.

And so we'll dedicate a few audio thingees to Boz to show our own committment. The New Home Page is cool, except you have to click on each of the samples to hear them. Not now: the Boz Scaggs But Beautiful Audio Sample Playlist (.m3u playing .wma, works in WinAmp, WinMediaPlayer). Listen in uninterupted sampleness (question: where's an alternate take or something else complete, Boz?). And to go back to 2001 for some current context, here's the Boz Scaggs Dig Audio Sample Playlist (.m3u playing .asx, only WinMediaPlayer can play .asx, I guess)...all of the samples from his last one, Dig (beware of auto-starting-looping-page-sample, ugh). And we'll go to VO's Boz roots with the very era-appropropriate Slow Dancer/Silk Degrees/Down Two Then Left box set, with it's own 'play sample clips' link (to more WinMedia stuff). Kind of nice to have some links to click on and hear a little more than just a taste of tuneage...like 5 or 10 tastes...at least). Hope you enjoy! I am right at this very moment and the New stuff sounds great.

And by the looks...I mean sound...of it, we'd like to have an in-studio chat with Daniela Mercury.

I'm also working on having Lizz Wright, James Moody (with Poncho, please), and others from the line-up on the show in the weeks leading up to the main event. OK, some real business to do.

Just a hopin' and a prayin'...VO
1:45:47 AM    comment []  Google It!