Wednesday, January 9
Thursday, November 8
Thursday, April 5
Occupy Movement - Gets ready to PlayJazz
Historically, Mayday is a day of festive protest that represents freedom, workers solidarity, and the ongoing struggle against systematic centralised control and order. [ a bit like jazz ]
Mayday celebrates the vitality of noise, colour and chaos and the importance of equality and justice over authority, establishment and fixed power structures. [... again like jazz]
It has always been a spring tradition of celebration in northen cultures since ancient times, Now replaced by Easter Chocfest and whatever the hell the Jews do. Passover?
Mayday is really big in places like Cuba and Berlin, (... like.... Jazz)
Jazz is also reallly big in Chicago, did you know? [not so much Mayday, tho']
Where am I going with this?
Follow me, - as I improvise a little.... first off:
MAYDAY is the DAY. Always has been.
All that red-menace hysteria is long gone now - yet still people are led to deduce that Mayday is a fiendish godless plot to convert us to Communism/Socialism/Nazi-Obama-Careism/GayWeddings.
Ha hahaha Ha ha...F##k that.
Even Chuck Norris would find that bullsh#t hard to swallow.
We all know that the 'imminent threat' of terrorism is just a scary fable we get chastised with, told to keep us in line and always fearing, those people of which we are kept as ignorant and misinformed as possible. [Mostly Muslims/Arabs/Persians - but pretty much any brown skinned people not wearing a tie and sweater-vest combo.]
N.A.T.O. is out of control.
They straight up murdered Saddam and Osama in cold blood, before they could be brought to trial, to stand before a court that represents all humanity, - to answer for the alleged crimes for which they were pursued,- at a great cost to many. A price is still being paid by nearly all people on Earth. This is particularly true of the communities inhabiting Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorized for a decade now, by the largest, most destructive systematic war machine that has ever existed. Alll of it paid for, in the blood and sweat of the world's workers.
Those who were murdered in the original NYC attack, seem to be dishonored the most by the lies and deciet carried out in their names.
[um, yeah - F@*K the damn pentagon, we all cheered for that]
Now, - in the absense of dirty bombs and anthrax attacks, I think we can safely say that:
The largest international terrorist threat facing humanity is infact N.A.T.O.
It's up to us, we the people in the developed world, to put an end this bullshit.
After all, isn't that what we have all these freedoms for? The free speech? The right to assemble?
We are so lucky to have Dee-moc-raa-cY!!!! Srsly Gys.
In the USA you are supposed to keep and bear arms for the purpose of rising up against precisely this kind of tyranny.
NOT KONY2012. [Guns for Africa? - gimme a break douchebags]
We can't leave this fight up to the rest of the world.
This is First World business.
We all saw this monster being born, we saw it export slaughter to the world, as industrialists and warmongers made deals using public money, and got richer behind closed doors.
These NATO f&ck#rs are making us ALL look bad.
</rant>
So how the hell do we decipher the latest #OCCUPY / AdBusters Tactical Update:
I was compelled to put down some immediate thoughts on the concept of #playjazz
For the eyes of the 99%
Lets improvise a better future.
Jazz/Fun
First reclaim the peoples best-loved hooks - well-known trad's of the past and present.
Main-streetism not Elitism.
Get loose - be ready to step in any direction.
Find new scales. Change the key. Jump tempo.
Remember when you strike out to the new spaces - leave room for the 99% to find their own groove.
Act, don't even try to react, daddy-O.
Stop!
Hold it......
Everybody swap instruments.
Cats need to keep cool, to stay quicker than the Dogs.
Claim all popular plastic motifs and sugared catchy memes as our cultural heratige, favourite it, +1, like it - then quickly subvert it, pervert it.
Mix familiarity with surprise and chaos, initiate direct actions that force people to have fun.
Politicize everything, till its trite - and then claim both the right and the left positions for the 99.
Share everything except your dumb doctrine.
Do not chant what you heard.
Scat about what you have dreamed.
No turgid dogma, please - no sheet music.
Lifestyle politics need to take a back seat, so [with love and respect], commited single-agenda minorities feel free to take a day off - we need everyone of the potential 99% to feel they are down, and included.
We all belong.
Dig?
Jam on what connects us, ditch the tired old...
'We' are always right, 'They' are always stupid.
Everyone will get a solo centerstage, but only if they tap feet - and listen to the joint first.
Dance don't march.
Don't run, skip.
No more boring revolutions, dig?
Never ever refer to the notation - or accept direction, Unless you decide you want to.
Try and befriend a stubborn old square.., or hug an investment banker, or even seduce a police-person.
Try and get 99% of the world thoroughly involved - or at least thoroughly confused.
Keep the 1% informed of their options, - they can get down and join in the #jazzfun jam at anytime.
Some advice for the 1%
It's time to get up off the fat cakes that you piled up,
Quickly, hurry up - share the wealth.
Share what you don't need, with the most needy of the 99%.
Do it directly, close to where you live. No 3rd world guided slum-tours, no charities.
DIY. Do NOT outsource this!
Learn names. Faces. Hear stories.
Meet the folk who struggle to survive in the so-called first world, those who get thrown down and out on the scrapheap.
The angry abused and evicted, the crazed homeless, the bitter freaks who need closure on the whole victim of injustice thing. People who's first tongue is violence.
99% of society is sure to include some seriously damaged goods and suggestible reactionaries.
Rough trade, if you please.
Wild cards - shuffled like razor blades amongst all those passive, heart-felt, hipster-activists, [card-like with their static fixed values and each coded by their predictable suit].
Oh my.
You'd better believe they want to cut loose, get freaky - really, just go wild and crazy, rioting through nights of delicious terror, the modern sacking of Rome. Party with the classy untouchable, uptown crowd.
You dig?
Mr and Mrs Von Moneybags?
We poor people don't need paid off cops or private prisons to protect us from our own mistreated freak-siblings and alienated neighbourhood nihilists,
We just need to sing a tune, pick up a horn or some sticks, listen to each other and jam new from old... transform with creativity.
Improvisation celebrates our story, each and every human flavour, our own rich uniqueness - and so, we can each grow and evolve as a real, appreciated person - of true worth to those who know them, more than an amount of money could ever express.
Q. How do the lifelong rich, or those who wield power and privelige, ever know if people really like them for their personal qualities or true character - or is it just the money and power they are atracted to?
A. They just don't know - best bet is to assume everyone nice is lying to some degree. Even the haters are probably just jealous, right?
Yeah whatever....
Look.
Money is like a powerful solvent. Useful but toxic.
It dissolves the messy relative values that differrent people offer to the communities that they grow in, and help create. As more emphasis is placed on an individuals measurable monetary value, [as a way to define our relative worth as social units], so we strip away the special, us-ness, and the unmeasurable unique values are melted into something we no longer recognise as real self-worth.
The harsh solvent of cash reduces us into standard transferrable units of exchange, stripped of any non-marketable assets, and donning the garments that befit our calculated strata of a society that doesn't even need to know much more than our name.
Price tag exposed, for all to see.
Ah society.
Dig it?
Check out the flip-side, Jack.
Seems you are nothing but a big fat wallet now, and your only worth, is the paper in it..
Until the bubble bursts, then you will stuck trying to find out, how you can make yourself valuable to the people around you.
Stop the lies.
Ditch your wealth.
Money has no real intrinsic value.
Its was only ever a symbol for what you were willing to sell off or rent out to the highest bidder.
But, you can find a purpose, and you can know a meaning beyond the wealth you possess..
People willl stop lying to you. They will stop being jealous of what you owned.
You will know, finally, what people really value about you, you will have found your purpose.
You belong somewhere.
Meet your new family....
All 99% of them.
Words: Al. M.
6. 4. 2012.
Friday, March 30
Miles Davis - (1959)
Miles Davis (flh, tp) Emmett Berry, Johnny Coles, Louis Mucci, Clyde Reasinger, Ernie Royal (tp) Jimmy Cleveland, Bill Elton, Frank Rehak (tb) Rod Levitt (vtb) Bob Northern, Julius Watkins (frh) Bill Barber (tu) Eddie Caine, Romeo Penque (fl) Danny Bank (bcl) John Coltrane (ts, as) Wynton Kelly (p) Paul Chambers (b) Jimmy Cobb (d) Gil Evans (arr, cond) Robert Herridge (ann)
The Golden Age Of Jazz - Jazz Legends Live - Pt 1
Whether its the barrelhouse, ragtime, syncopation, scat, swing, bebop, hard-bop, re-bop, boogie-woogie or jive, it is still Jazz. Compiled from master recordings that lie forgotten in the vaults of Hollywood studios, The Golden Age of Jazz captures the motion pictures of some of greatest artists in the history of Jazz including Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Louis Prima, The Mills Brothers, Gene Krupa, and many more.
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