Hey, Jimmy! Good to see you amongst the orphans.

Hearing any good big band, and that sure include Schneider's, is, for me, a physical experience. Since I've been around for a few years, I've had the joy of hearing almost all the great big bands in person. Until Jones/Lewis, Woody Herman's great bands always blew off my shorts (not a nice sight to ...

So here I am, grooving on my Buddy Bolden cylinders.

I have thousands of recordings small group stuff, which I love, but the power of a big band gets my motor running.

W have In N'Out so Macstein gets wide birth.

The new series on Showtime, "Ray Donovan," looks like a real winner, dark, ambiguous, existential and all those good things. The cast is very strong with Liev Schreiber and Jon Voigt and a large cast of mostly unknowns. If the series holds up, it will be big.

The West Coast version of the Biggish band will be in L.A. on Thursday, the 11th. Edison Lounge, downtown.

Clint, I can't believe you didn't mention JC's band...... :shock: JC's band is "biggish" about 11-12 pieces. So I guess it doesn't fit into the "big" category. But they are damned good, especially when Claire Daly, Julian Pressley, Liberty Elman and Warren Smith are on the stand.

I've done some categorizing of my collection and I've stuck "mainstream" on the post-swing/pre-bop stuff. As I've said ad nauseum, jazz reached its apotheosis with hard bop.

Skipping the basics, melody, harmony and rhythm leads to anarchistic noise.

Big jazz bands have always been favorites. Having been lucky enough to see Ellington, Basie, Herman, Kenton erlier and seeing more recent bands like Toshiko, Mingus (memorial band?), Jones/Lewis and others has only made my fondness for this form grow. Nothing can match the sound of 14-16 players in ...