Have I done something wrong? Clicked on "Continue Reading" and arrived here at the "Post A Comment" page - where's the article?

you want to click on the word "confab" above, Dan.

Sorry for the confusion; I wish bolded text showed up darker than a soft gray on the homepage. Tom's debut interview is also accessible by clicking on the "Gerry Hemingway - 2003" link directly under the Interviews header to the right.

Aha, now I see the light -- thanks kids
Interesting to see this ended up at Bags; Tom sent me a mail offering me some of these fine little morsels too.. Nice to see this one at least's found a good home.
Meanwhile, for all you interview hounds, though
you've probably had enough of him already haha next up for PT in January is Tomas "Busy Bee" (quote Frans de Waard unquote) Korber (by Jesse Goin)
Followed shortly after by Mats Gustafsson, all being well (Muscle Mary bites back!)
Yep, it's definitely the festive season y'all, time to get your old soundtrack album to Dennis Hopper's COLORS out and blast 7A3's "That's How We're Livin'" through the roof while drinking a toast to (delete where appropriate) Schwarzy or Tookie
What's this I hear that you're only listening to HIP HOP these days, Jon? DJ Ottavi and MC Dion? Yo!

yeah, for the last month or so, I've been seriously obsessed with DJ Screw and his legacy in the Houston hip-hop scene. an amazing producer, supposedly 500 full-lengths of material in the 8 or 9 years before he died in November 2000 "from what some say was an overdose of codeine, some say was from his fifth heart attack and some say was from straight exhaustion", according to Matt Sonzala's very good one page overview of Houston hip-hop of Screw and his legacy in the current YRB (that would stand for 'Yellow Rat Bastard', a magazine I picked up by the door at a hip-hop store here the other day).

Sonzala has been a one-man support crew for this scene for some time, with his blog (http://houstonsoreal.blogspot.com/) and his radio show ('Damage Control', he usually posts them on the blog for free DL) most notably.

I've also been doing some more general hip-hop exploration to fill in the gaps since the last time I paid serious attention, but mostly Houston stuff is what's really connecting with me, and mostly DJ Screw. I have around 150-200 of his CDs (a lot of them double discs) right now, all in MP3 form so far, not that I've heard even close to all of them yet.

I'd say a case could be made for Screw's work of the nineties being analogous to King Tubby or Lee "Scratch" Perry in the seventies, with "sizzurp" (prescription cough syrup) replacing ganja. a lot of people have followed in Screw's footsteps, but I have yet to hear anyone I like nearly as much (the most generally cited frontrunners are OG Ron C and Michael Watts). Screw singlehandedly built the Houston scene (aside from the Geto Boys, who seemed to always much more be their own entity), and five years after his death is still constantly paid tribute to as this scene blows up nationwide, finally.

the other, and related, very exciting discovery I made recently is the mid-nineties run of releases by UGK on Jive, Super Tight, Ridin' Dirty, and Dirty Money. UGK are also from Houston, the duo of Bun B and Pimp C. it's like Snoop/Dre G-Funk filtered through the deepest Southern funk. Leo Nocentelli plays on parts of all three of the above discs, and they sample maybe my favorite Funkadelic song, What Is Soul?, on another. these may be OOP, but are still pretty easy to find.

the Jazz Corner thread I started in tribute to the 5th anniversary of Screw's death is here, complete with a bunch of links:

http://www.jazzcornertalk.com/speakeasy/showthread.php?t=13016

"I'd say a case could be made for Screw's work of the nineties being analogous to King Tubby or Lee "Scratch" Perry in the seventies, with "sizzurp" (prescription cough syrup) replacing ganja."

Okay, Jon, you've hooked me. Howzabout recommending a couple of readily available titles by DJ Screw to get me (and maybe one or two others hereabouts) off to a flying start. Cheers.

well, there's not much "readily available" legally, and I'm far from an expert, having only heard maybe 5 percent of his output at this point, if that. but the ones I've heard so far that I think are topnotch are:

Hard Times
As The World Turns Slow
Endonesia
June 27th (particularly the 37 minute freestyle by Big Moe)
Weed And Hennessy
Southside Riders

I'm sharing all of these on SLSK if you can get your boy Pinnell to grab and rip for you, otherwise you can take a look at the Screwed Up store:

http://www.screweduprecords.com/

I see at least a few of these there, June 27 is more widely available, I think, although I'm not totally positive it's the same one I've got. I've heard mixed reviews about the customer service from these guys, haven't tried them yet myself.

again, my whole collection is MP3s so far, and I'm slowly working through it myself, I have probably around 200 hours of Screw at this point. here's a thread that might be worth looking at also:

http://www.screweduprecords.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=349&KW=june

this BBC show from this week is worth listening to also, at least the part I heard before the site went down earlier tonight:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/tx/documentaries/chopped_n_screwed.shtml

and apologies for my part in taking this thread way off topic, I think ongoing discussion should probably move to the Jazz Corner thread I linked above...

Since when did Bags threads stay ON topic?!! Thanks for the links, chief, will look into them pronto

Was the BBC narrator the model for Ali G's voice? I love the way he says "Whooston."

Yeah, thanks for the links and the recommendations, Jon.

Derek - thanks for the warm welcome...on the other hand, I do look somewhat like Crazy Narvel, if I choose not to shave for any more than three or four days in a row.

Jon - in reference to Gerry's record with Thomas Lehn "Tom and Jerry" - were there any plans to repeat this highly enjoyable exercise?

Dan - not too worry - the promised Gino piece is still coming your way - maybe as early as next month.

The Tom and Gerry duo also has a disc on Umbrella besides the Erst double... But this is probably old news to everyone reading this... In my opinion that duo is very inconsistent, with a tendency to bring out the weaknesses of both players, and I say that as a RABID admirer of both musicians who's chewed over their duo recordings plenty of times and went to see them play this past year and had very mixed feelings... I for one probably wouldn't even buy it if they did a repeat of Tom and Gerry--as much as I love chunks of those discs I don't see a need for any more--but gimme some more of that Hemingway/Butcher duo--hot damn!!! Likewise for Konk Pak!!! I'll take every morsel of those projects!!!

While I'm already here robbing bandwidth and attention, it's a great chance to say how much I was dazzled by that amazing photo and backstory up there Derek! I seriously don't know whether to take it as truth or fiction. Incredible! You are the king of inspired images!

And here I can insert my content-impoverished thanks to Tom for the swell interview--great to see that quintet music broached and acknowledged... Them there be some all-time jazz classics...

Tom: the two of them still play together, I saw them here not too long ago. but their duo's not my thing anymore, although I do find it far preferable to one of the projects Michael mentions, Konk Pack, who I'd be quite happy to see disbanded.

Jon - I guessed the Tom & Jerry duo is not your thing - if it were, you'd be putting out improv or jazz records...I'm indifferent to Konk Pack too.

Michael - Gerry's quintet [and quartet] records are some of the greatest lost [read: out of print] audio materials from the real of jazz out there. There was some talk of hathut perhaps reissuing these as a box set, but I guess that fell through, which is a shame. To think that future generations will have to rely on expensive second-hand copies [or auction houses] to hear this stuff is rather sad.

Tom, then again, the way things are now (pretty good in balance) **if** the socio-economic infrastructure for recordings (e.g. labels, etc) fail the musicians and audience, the music will thrive via free internet sharing (or even commercial download sites), and at least half the battle will be won. When push comes to shove, the vendors should take the hit, not the art. Case in point: it's almost an ethical obligation to spread around the Braxton stuff on Arista dishonored by corporate crassness. I still have cassettes of that stuff I made ten years ago from the vinyl at a music library! They continue to serve me even today (literally), but it's getting about time to upgrade to someone's high-bitrate computer file! And the money that could be spent on $$$ vinyl can go to new releases on struggling tiny labels instead.

Michael - I have mixed feelings on that last point. I mean, just because I have Gil Scott Heron's Arista output on vinyl, doesn't meen I'm spreading it out all over the internet. Who knows, maybe someday it will find an outlet on a label? Just the same, I'm not too sure that Gil Scott Heron [or Braxton, for that matter] would "appreciate" their stuff floating freely around the net? Or maybe they would???
I mean, I feel sad that this music would be "lost" in a void for the time being and this is a case that should be fixed ASAP.

Konk Pack live was pretty impressive, although I was a bit put off by the distracting hyperactivity of Roger Turner. Thomas Lehn was absolutely phenomenal to both watch and hear.

I haven't heard any of their discs. Really didn't care for the Tom & Gerry disc I bought (and quickly returned).

I reviewed the Erst Tom & Gerry set a long time ago. I now think I was a little too kind to it. Maybe I wanted Jon to like me. I don't know. Anyhow, my sense today is that Jon realized even back then that the release wasn't as good as I said it was, and he hasn't respected my opinion ever since.

The thing is, I could somehow never learn to be as aggressively honest a reviewer as one has an obligation to be. Obviously, that was one of my greatest weaknesses (certainly not the only one, but doubtless the most obvious) back when I was in the game. I think others besides Jon saw that, and I admit the possibility that many other musicians or label owners wanted me silenced for my over-generosity, printwise.

not sure if that last is serious or sarcastic, but I'm going to treat it like it's serious.

Walt, I respect your opinions about records when you take some time to form them. what I don't understand is your seeming need to have other people agree with you, like that whole Son of a Preacher Man silliness on JC yesterday.

as for Tom and Gerry, I was quite happy with it and proud of it at the time. I knew virtually no musicians when I started Erstwhile, and doing a record by Thomas Lehn (one of his very first discs) was very key in that it got other musicians like Kevin Drumm and Burkhard Stangl very excited about working with me. I think it's reasonable to say that I didn't start to really get where I wanted with Erstwhile until 005, but those first four were all building blocks in different ways. I think for the area of music it's in, it's a very strong set, it's just not an area I personally have much interest in anymore.

those Hemingway Hat Arts really should be reissued. I always thought they were a bit overrated, I was more of a Clusone Trio fan, but it is ridiculous that they've been OOP for so long, you'd think a complete box set of them, an edition of maybe 500 copies, would be a very good moneymaker for Mr. Uehlinger.

(Tom, don't take the "hard" style of these sentences in the wrong way; it's purely for rhetorical effect, and having just had the pleasure of e-meeting you I don't want to get off to a bad start!)

Tom, I don't see that your comments add any substance to the issue. Your last sentence is utterly vacuous. History is what's in the hearts and minds of a community. The specific medium by which musical information is distributed is an arbitrary side-effect of a given socio-technological condition. In their medium-dependency and in other socio-economic ways, the personal financial relationship to art objects is also arbitrary. Some future cash is way way way too high a price to pay for a chunk of history that can be measured in years and decades.

Michael - no offence taken and your sentences aren't "hard" in any fashion at all.
If I read you correctly, are you actually saying that it's ok for Braxton's and Gil-Scott Heron's Arista records to go the way of the 8-track?
Is it right that a certain record label was doing some "re-arranging" and in the process much of this music is now "lost" to the present [and possibly] future generations? Are you saying that you're a proponent of all music being readily accessible to all who have interest in hearing it? If that's the case, then I'm with you 100% of the way! I believe all music should be accessed with as little ease as possible, no matter what medium it may be on.

Jon - I've no idea why Hemingway's HatArt output is OOP. Reality is, too arge chunk of the red-spine, hat-embraced releases have gone that way, which is very unfortunate, but given the climate of a small label, understandable. Personally, I think it sad that Cecil's most fully realized solo records "Garden" [parts 1 & 2] will probably not see the light of day for years to come.

Walt - can you please define the term "aggressively honest reviewer".

Walt - can you please define the term "aggressively honest reviewer".

I'm ashamed to admit that, pushover philanthropist that I've been justly called, I am the wrong person to attempt such a definition. Would be like the cat calling the kettle hard.

At a Tom & Gerry gig last winter, the latter told me a box was in the works, let's hope. And totally agreed on both volumes of "Garden".

Michael - while I was doing my radio show, "Steppin' on Stars" [from "Garden, Part 2"] was a favourite of mine. I always respected Cecil for the "fuck-you" attitude that he threw around. I mean, here's a man that washed dishes for a living in the 60's, and yet, he can churn out such [dare I say] lovely stuff. Whenever I hear that track, I simply cry. OK, enough....I'd better stop, before the flood of gin & tonic gets the better of me.

I spent $50 USD in banquet serving tips on "Garden" a few years ago and even though like seemingly everyone else, his verse does little for me, that gatefold packaging with the long poem in the tiniest of fonts is a great plus.