>>>Actually I am. My music collection is 70-80% 80s music and therefore there's "some" new wave in there. I prefer that to some of the insipid stuff we have nowadays on the radio (over there may be rap but down here is reggaeton). I remember the disco era fondly, perhaps because I was just a kid back then so the damage it made to my music taste wasn't so bad.
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>>>>I'm certainly not a new wave fan, but I can't recall any sort of music that I thought was as bland, boring, and predictably monotonous as disco. I dislike rap intensly, but even rap has at least some originality from time to time, and whatever else it may be, it's hard to call it 'boring'.
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>>>>>...and along came New Wave!
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>>Most of my music collection is some form of jazz. I agree that there is a lot of very insipid music around these days. I grew up through the 60s, and while there was good music back then, there was also much bad music. People look back on it now with rose coloured glasses and think it was all wonderful. It wasn't. Interestingly enough, some of my favourite music is from well before my time. I love music from the 20s and 30s - especially the jazz from back then.
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>Okay, we were seperated at birth (albeit down the road you turned Left <g> )
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>Gershwin, Ellington, the big bands, the renegade outlaw small groups ( Beiderbecke, Bob Crosby and the Bobcats ) and the club groups in Chicago and New Orleans and Harlem and Kansas City ... and the Hot Club in Paris.

And let us never forget some of the most important music of that age - the Hot Fives and Sevens. Blanche Calloway, Andy Kirk, The Bozzies, Lee Wylie with any of the Condon people - especially Jess Stacey who she married and Bunny Berigan (the finest trumpet player ever).
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>When I need a jump start in the morning I kick on the extended version of Sing Sing Sing where Krupa must have eaten half the benzedrine supply of New York and then get my mind right with the whole Kind of Blue album.

Interestingly, Jess Stacey was the pianist in that bunch, with his strange and mysterious solo. Krupa is truly unbelievable on that track. I have no idea how he could do that for 20 minutes.

>By that time I'm ready to sit down at the piano and think of how much I'd trade to be Bill Evans.

>No fusion, no funk, no electricity needed - just chord changes that surprise you and make you smile and imply magic and running off lead sheets to hit that moment when you know you're not the train but the track.

Agreed. There will never be another Bill Evans. A sound truly all his own. And what touch! I have to admit, I don't necessarily hate fusion. It depends on what's being fused. I can't get enough of "Bitches Brew". You can keep the electro-skronk crap though. Squeaking and squawking is not for these precious eardrums.

I talked Kevin into checking out Tom Harrell, but while he thought he was good, it's not his type of jazz. However, if you like Bill Evans and Kind of Blue, and you aren't familiar with Harrell, you might want to try him. One of the great trumpet players. Beautiful sound. He played with Phil Woods' band for a while, and Phil don't hire no slouches.