Hi Community and the Honorable @unk-p, our Venerable founder.
I hereby open Rooftop Revolving Lounge Three.
Please help us build it with decorations, amenities, anything you want.
What kind of food can we get here?
Are we up in a tree this time? Yes, it's a huge Oak Tree that is over 200 years old, the very one that one of our community asked us to pray for a few weeks ago in the prayers needed thread. This tree will live forever now and we will give it so much love when we pop up here at night.
If you come up here, you will also see birds stopping by and there is a sign "PLEASE FEED THE BIRDS" Feed them whatever they want. I have also hired a top tree specialist to give this old Oak whatever it needs.
Just wanted to share something. I've started going to concerts again - only outdoor venues and I mask up.
This past weekend we got to see WILCO.
This tour may be winding down, but if you have the chance I can't recommend it highly enough. They do a great long set of old and new material. We've been fans for 20+ years, and love that they continue to evolve in interesting ways, but without dissing their fan base.
If you're not familiar with their oeuvre, you can find them on YouTube. Their music is an eclectic mix of rock and americana influenced by Beatles, Dylan, bluegrass, new wave. Favorite songs of mine are: I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, Impossible Germany, Many Worlds.
If you are also a fan - gotta say Nels Cline was rocking his two modes: Spastic Frankenstein vs. Laid Back Guitar Dude.
ETA: Their opening act, Kamikaze Palms was weird and delightful.
Pharaoh Sanders
rest in power
Oct 13, 1940- Sept 24, 2022
excerpts from the New Yorker:
Jazz musicians have always placed a premium on “saying something.” Technique, training, and theory will only get you so far, and may even lead you in the wrong direction; what matters is the ability to hit on an emotion or an idea that feels at once familiar and revelatory—to speak a common language in a decidedly uncommon way.
From this standpoint, few musicians have said more than the saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, the son of a school-cafeteria cook and a city employee, Sanders moved to New York in 1962, at the height of jazz’s postwar avant-garde—also known as “free jazz” or “the new thing”—which was spawned by the late-fifties experiments of the saxophonist Ornette Coleman and the pianist Cecil Taylor. Sanders’s début album, recorded in 1964 for the ESP label, garnered little attention, but his playing caught the ear of John Coltrane. Coltrane invited Sanders to join his band in 1965. The following year, Impulse!, the label that had been exhaustively documenting Coltrane’s evolution, gave Sanders another chance to record as a leader. The result was the surging and expansive “Tauhid,” an album that positioned Sanders as both Coltrane’s foremost disciple and an artist with ideas of his own.
Coltrane died in 1967, and Sanders recorded some with his widow, Alice Coltrane, a multi-instrumentalist and composer, before returning to the studio for Impulse! two years later, with his own group. The resulting album, “Karma,” set the template for a remarkable five-year run. While remaining as fiery as ever, Sanders had developed an interest in soaring, magisterial melodies, and the rhythms of his recordings, while dense and multi-layered, often hewed toward a steady groove. He also incorporated unexpected elements: non-Western instruments, yodelling by the sui generis vocalist Leon Thomas. As the title of “Karma” suggests, Sanders, like Coltrane, felt that music had a spiritual dimension. “The whole musical persona of Pharoah Sanders is of a consciousness in conscious search of a higher consciousness,” Amiri Baraka later wrote.
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What are you trying to accomplish artistically at this point? Right now, I don’t even know myself! I just play whatever I feel like playing. I started playing drums first. Then I wanted to play clarinet. Well, in high school I was always trying to figure out what I wanted to do as a career. What I really wanted to do was play the saxophone— I never owned a saxophone until I finished high school and went to Oakland, California. I had a clarinet, and so I traded that for a new silver tenor saxophone, and that got me started playing the tenor. The minute I bought it, I wanted an older horn, so I traded my new horn for an older model. I was painting all the time, pictures. I got into music very late. I used to do all that kind of work. I had to get it all together. I didn’t know enough about lots of things—basic things. I didn’t have nowhere to stay. Everybody was talking about, “You should go to New York.” They said, “That’s the place to go!” So that’s the reason I went to New York. I hitchhiked a ride to New York. I didn’t know what was going on. I was trying to survive some kind of way. I used to work a few jobs here and there, earn five dollars, buy some food, buy some pizza. I had no money at all. I used to give blood and make fifteen dollars or ten dollars or whatever. I had to keep eating something.
I always wanted to work with my own band, so I got some guys together and started working down in New York, in Greenwich Village. I could pick up a few little weekend jobs. You had to do something to survive. You started working with the Arkestra in 1964, and then, in September, 1965, you joined Coltrane’s band.6 That was a lot of people’s first exposure to you. Do you know why he chose you? I don’t even know the reason myself. I don’t feel like he needed me or another horn. I think he just felt like he was going to do something different. He always had some kind of a way of looking to the future, like a kaleidoscope. He saw himself playing something different. And it seemed like he wanted to get to that level of playing—I don’t know if it was a dream that came to him, but that’s what he wanted to do. I couldn’t figure out why he wanted me to play with him, because I didn’t feel like, at the time, that I was ready to play with John Coltrane. Being around him was almost, like, “Well, what do you want me to do? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” He always told me, “Play.” That’s what I did.
Prince of Peace by Pharaoh Sanders
After John passed away, you continued recording with Alice Coltrane.8 You know, her playing was amazing. I loved what she was doing. But I always felt like what I was doing wasn’t good enough. Maybe I was playing a little bit more dominant than what she wanted—she seemed more intellectual than I was. But I tried to play something close to the concept that she was doing. At one point, I had told her, “I don’t know if you like the way I’m playing or not. I don’t know whether this fits, or what.” She said, “You’re doing O.K. Just keep on playing. Keep on blowing.” Around this time you also start leading your own bands, and you start recording for Impulse! as a leader. Did you feel like you knew what you were doing then? No, I don’t think I was really ready. But I had to go on anyway, and study while I was trying to get it all together. I knew I had to be better than what I was. I had to keep moving. On those Impulse! records, you’re experimenting a lot with non-Western instruments, finding ways to use vocals in a freer context, and getting into more groove-oriented rhythms. Were you thinking through things in advance or just figuring them out in the studio? We just worked it out while we was there. That kind of spontaneous move. I was looking for musicians who played with lots of energy. I wanted to be able to play that way myself. In order to do that, I had to find musicians to work with who had that kind of energy. You were making incredibly intense music during this period, on albums like “Jewels of Thought” and “Thembi.” Was that just where your head was at that time—constantly in a kind of heightened state? I don’t know. I was still trying to reach for something, I didn’t know what. Today people call this music “spiritual jazz.” But it wasn’t like anyone sat down at a table and said, “Let’s invent this whole new kind of music.” It just happened. That’s the way I look at it. It just happened. I was never satisfied with my playing, for a long, long time. Still sort of have problems like that. If you’re in the song, keep on playing. I listen to things that maybe some guys don’t. I listen to the waves of the water. Train coming down. Or I listen to an airplane taking off. I’ve always been like that, especially when I was small. I used to love hearing old car doors squeaking… Sometimes, when I’m playing, I want to do something, but I feel like, if I did, it wouldn’t sound right. So I’m always trying to make something that might sound bad sound beautiful in some way. I’m a person who just starts playing anything I want to play, and make it turn out to be maybe some beautiful music. When you were first in the public eye, with Coltrane, people didn’t get that. I don’t know if I got it myself. Then I stop playing and catch myself and say, “Let me try something else.” It’s almost like I play one idea and then I just try to look at it, like, “O.K., I’m going to try to see if I can play it backward.” A lot of time I don’t know what I want to play. So I just start playing, and try to make it right, and make it join to some other kind of feeling in the music. Like, I play one note, maybe that one note might mean love. And then another note might mean something else. Keep on going like that until it develops into—maybe something beautiful.
Love
Love is a sacred word
Love is the name of god
The entire universe is created with Love by Love and in Love
Love is the beginning
Love is the continuation
And Love is the end
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti OM
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Play on and maybe make something beautiful...what a great life philosophy. This was super interesting.
@unk-p Music is the Universal language that is spoken by and understood by all who hear it. We have been gifted with so many wonderful music genres. I used to love to listen to Jazz Flavors on weekend nights played by the local radio station back in my 20's 30's.
My grandfather was a champion bluegrass fiddler with a business on the side that fed his family but music was his first love. He also made violins and cellos!
I have been on a John Prine kick this past weekend. So sad we lost him to covid! Check out "When I get to Heaven" and "Some Humans Ain't Human" on you tube. Read those genius lyrics set to catchy tunes.
He and Bonnie Raitt sing "Angel From Montgomery" like no else in the world can.Look up the Austin City limits version on YouTube for a real treat.
May all of our Truth bearers of music rest in Glory as their music plays on. Love is all there is.
@unk-p yaaaasssss Lawd! Still gives me chills n shivers and a unshed tear or two. ❤️
Two very special Truth Bearers... wow... just.. wow... those two!!!
Love how you are honoring the tree that needed prayers @Jeanne-mayell. I will just park myself here for a bit and feel the iron my skin and smell the fragrant earthy smells drifting up to the tree top.
Thanks @Unk-p for the post on Sanders.
@lovendures I am glad you like it. I can see it. We have some lights during the day but at night, we don't want to bother the tree with lights so we have dark sky lights, maybe they are dark blue, and so you have to get up close to people to see who they are. I think @unk-p is coming because I can hear him humming something.
The music hear is live. Oh, there's a machine that allows us to hear the tree singing. Did you know that trees sing?
Hey, is anyone up here tonight? Have you seen this Chevron commercial?
https://twitter.com/ghostpanther/status/1575538762825637888?s=42&t=oDGsmijrVok1GJ-F5pKzCw
@jeanne-mayell Yes...I saw in yesterday I think....pretty much to the point!
just thinking that the next time a hurricane is headed to FL, we should name it something like Hurricane LesBiGayTransQueerAndOrQuestioningPius(+)? Make Mr. DeSranwrap say it
I think @unk-p is coming because I can hear him humming something.
Hmming Both Sides Now. In Cambodian, of course!.Here is
Dengue Fever:
@ana I grew up with a lovely girl named Gay Swift. would be an appropriate hurricane name if they used her whole name. Hurricanes are now rapidly escalating at the last minute due to warmer water.
She’s an artist now.
Speaking of governor death sentence, noticed an older prediction someone made a while back that his home would be deluged by a hurricane. Does anyone know if that happened? Would love love love to know.
@jeanne-mayell I looked up info on ds' residences.. Apparently at this time he does not own any homes and resides only in the governor's mansion. (see https://www.news4jax.com/news/florida/2021/11/05/governors-former-house-included-in-booming-housing-market/)
He grew up in Dunedin (near Clearwater on the west coast) and for a time lived in Ponte Vedra and Palm Coast, both of which are located on the northeast Atlantic coast. Any of those former residences could have been impacted by Ian, but to what extent, I don't know.
@ana Thank you for all that info on DeSantis' homeownership. You satisfied my detective self. Do I believe that the man's net worth is that low? Unless someone here knows otherwise, my thought is that he's too ambitious and too much of a fossil fuel, profit-industry sycophant not to be profiting. He has got some big GOP money supporting him, protecting his information, because that is how they protect their investment.
Hey, is anyone up here tonight? Have you seen this Chevron commercial?
https://twitter.com/ghostpanther/status/1575538762825637888?s=42&t=oDGsmijrVok1GJ-F5pKzCw
It really makes you go "wow" doesn't it?
I LOVE it!!
@jeanne-mayell yes, that, um, "commercial " was killer!
Oh, btw, Barbara Kingsolver has a new book coming out this month:
http://barbarakingsolver.net/books/demon-copperhead/
So since it is fall, for those chilling in the lounge, how many are having a pumpkin flavored drink? I just bought an almond pumpkin creamer for my daughter who doesn't drink dairy products. They also had an almond/coconut milk pumpkin creamer and an almond milk pumpkin egg nog.
Is there anyone who is "middle of the road" on pumpkin drinks or are we all on one extreme or the other? I like pumpkin things, even make my own pumpkin pie, but I don't eagerly anticipate pumpkin items. I might order an occasional pumpkin drink. Well, I do LOVE a local restaurant that makes a to die for autumn pumpkin soup. It is incredible.
@lovendures i want pumpkin curry, extra spicy. Next time i make it, it will have habanero peppers- the orange ones that look like mini pumpkins, while listening to punk! rock!