#compared to what

[records-of-records]

Les McCann & Eddie Harris “Swiss Movement” 1969

“Compared to What” is an all-time great jam but the rest of the album is great too.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Song of the Day - “Compared To What”

Today marks the 55th anniversary of the recording of this fantastic track.

On June 21st, 1969, Les McCann and Eddie Harris laid down their superlative version of this standard tune, in concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. ...

Written by Gene McDaniels, “Compared To What” had been covered by some 270 artists…

But THIS is the version…

With Les McCann on piano and vocal, and Harris on tenor sax, backed by Leroy Vinegar on bass, Benny Bailey on trumpet, and Donald Dean on drums, they tweaked the lyrics a bit to reflect the current angst with the Vietnam War. … see the lyrics below in comments…

A great track… best played pretty loud…

Resonates profoundly today…

(Mary Elaine LeBey)

I love the lie and lie the love A-Hangin' on, with push and shove Possession is the motivation that is hangin' up the God-damn nation Looks like we always end up in a rut (everybody now!) Tryin' to make it real, compared to what? C'mon baby!

Slaughterhouse is killin' hogs Twisted children killin' frogs Poor dumb rednecks rollin' logs Tired old lady kissin' dogs I hate the human love of that stinking mutt (I can't use it!) Try to make it real, compared to what? C'mon baby now!

The President, he's got his war Folks don't know just what it's for Nobody gives us rhyme or reason Have one doubt, they call it treason We're chicken-feathers, all without one nut. God damn it! Tryin' to make it real, compared to what? (Sock it to me)

Church on Sunday, sleep and nod Tryin' to duck the wrath of God Preacher's fillin' us with fright They all tryin' to teach us what they think is right They really got to be some kind of nut (I can't use it!) Tryin' to make it real, compared to what?

Where's that bee and where's that honey? Where's my God and where's my money? Unreal values, crass distortion Unwed mothers need abortion Kind of brings to mind ol' young King Tut (He did it now) Tried to make it real, compared to what?!

Tryin' to make it real, compared to what?

Donald Dean, Leroy Vinnegar, Benny Bailey, Eddie Harris

[ogradyfilm]

Random Thought Before Bed: The Top Five Songs That I've Been Listening to on Repeat for the Past Few Months

I'm not a Spotify user, so in lieu of a Spotify Wrapped, I thought I'd share a list of the songs that I've been listening to on repeat for the past few months:

"Helpless" - Crosby, Still, Nash & Young

"Compared to What" - Eddie Harris and Les McCann

"Let the Good Times Roll" Shirley & Lee

"Unchained Melody" - Harry Belafonte

"Martha" - Tom Waits

[ausetkmt]

Les McCann was already an established solo artist — a blues-forward jazz pianist in his 30s, with more than two dozen albums to his name — when he had a career-defining moment at the 1969 Montreux Jazz Festival. There, during an impromptu jam with the saxophonist Eddie Harris, he dug into a new song by his friend Gene McDaniels, which struck a cultural nerve.

The song was "Compared to What," an anguished yawp of disillusionment that Roberta Flack had recorded several months earlier for her debut album, First Take. McCann begins his version with a rollicking vamp, which he takes through a handful of escalating key modulations before a startling entry on vocals, two minutes in. With a soulful holler, he brings plainspoken fire to lyrics that skewer rampant greed, religious hypocrisy and the quagmire in Vietnam: "The president, he's got his war," McCann sings in the third verse. "Folks don't know just what it's for."

The song's temperament, outraged and despairing, captured something crucial about the era; so too did its rhythmic drive and righteous, consuming fervor. When Atlantic Records released "Compared to What" as a single, it spent four weeks on the Billboard Hot 100; Swiss Movement, the live album on which it appears, held a spot on the Billboard 200 for 38 weeks. The song remained a calling card for McCann for the rest of his musical career, which yielded many more successful albums — including a sequel with Harris, Second Movement, in 1971 — as well as samples by hip-hop artists like Massive Attack, Mobb Deep and The Notorious B.I.G.

McCann died on Dec. 29, 2023, at a hospital in Los Angeles, at 88, of pneumonia. Alan Abrahams, a veteran producer and record executive who served as his manager, confirmed his death, noting that McCann had lived at a nursing facility for the last four years.

With a ringing, percussive piano style and a rousing command of the beat, McCann always amounted to more than one breakout hit could encapsulate. The grit and grease in his playing, informed by his early experience in the gospel church, helped establish the subgenre known as soul jazz. That sound is already fully present on an album he recorded live in 1961, Les McCann Ltd. Plays the Shampoo at The Village Gate. (Along with "The Shampoo," an early hit, it includes McCann originals titled "Someone Stole My Chitlins" and "Filet of Soul.")

The urge to move his audiences extended to a new sonic palette when McCann embraced electric pianos and synthesizers — notably on the 1972 album Invitation to Openness, which features Yusef Lateef on assorted reeds and flutes, and Cornell Dupree on electric guitar. His subsequent albums with Atlantic, often incorporating synths and clavinet, formed the basis for his popularity as a sample source for hip-hop producers.

Leslie Coleman McCann was born on Sept. 23, 1935, in Lexington, Ky. His father, James, worked at the Lexington Water Company; his mother, Anna, was a homemaker who took occasional housekeeping jobs. He was one of six children, with four brothers and a sister. "​​Everybody was in a position of doing the best they could with whatever," he recalled in a 2015 interview with Red Bull Music Academy. "We never thought of ourselves as being poor."

Still, McCann grew up with limited resources, and was almost entirely self-taught as a pianist. He played sousaphone and drums in his high school marching band, and enlisted in the U.S. Navy at age 17. He often told a story about hearing Erroll Garner's recording of "Lullaby of Birdland" during his service, and having the sudden realization that the piano was his calling. But while stationed in the San Francisco Bay Area, he won a talent contest as a vocalist — an accolade that landed him an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956.

After his discharge, he formed a piano trio, which found work backing Gene McDaniels at the Purple Onion jazz club in San Francisco. McDaniels took the trio on tour, after which McCann moved to Los Angeles, working at clubs like the Hillcrest and signing to the Pacific Jazz label. The band that he called Les McCann Ltd. recorded a string of surefooted albums, and also played on the debut album by the jazz-R&B singer Lou Rawls, in 1962.

McCann eventually left the Pacific Jazz roster for Limelight, a Mercury subsidiary overseen by Quincy Jones, before landing at Atlantic Records. There his partnership with the producer Joel Dorn yielded a number of successes, starting with the 1969 album Much Les. Featuring McCann's electric piano against a complement of strings, the album also spotlighted his vocals, notably on a ballad called "With These Hands," which became a hit.

Here and throughout his career, McCann faced enduring critiques of his piano playing, which lacked the outward sophistication and technical precision of some of his peers, especially those who'd mastered the lingua franca of bebop. "I think what Les did musically, for most of his career, was really brave," attests Joe Alterman, a pianist who regarded McCann as a mentor, and released an album in tribute last year. "He wasn't a bebop player. He appreciated it, but he really loved these joyful piano players. So I think Les was kind of going against the grain."

McCann's most recent release, just out on Resonance Records, bolsters the point. Titled Never a Dull Moment! Live From Coast to Coast 1966-67, it features a few effervescent trio dates from the same era, at the Penthouse in Seattle (1966) and the Village Vanguard in New York (1967). There are, in fact, some bebop tunes, like Dizzy Gillespie's "Blue 'n' Boogie," in the set list. But the spirit of the playing has little room for bebop's idiomatic concerns. It adheres instead to a characterization of McCann from Bob Porter's 2016 book Soul Jazz: Jazz in the Black Community, 1945-1975, as "a pianist of enormously contagious enthusiasm."

McCann was certainly that, and more besides. He had a good ear for talent: He was the one who brought Roberta Flack to Atlantic, and he is credited with discovering the soul-jazz organist Richard "Groove" Holmes. And he was a gifted photographer whose portraits were anthologized in the acclaimed 2015 collection Invitation To Openness: The Jazz & Soul Photography Of Les McCann 1960-1980.

At the same time, McCann held a steadfast devotion to certain core principles, in music as in life. "The blues is definitely one of my major religions," he affirmed in a 1986 interview with Ben Sidran. "I mean, I like to think of whatever we do as something that's uplifting and giving to the world so that it's on the positive side, that is saying that we are here for a purpose. We are a part of this. We do count."

[ravenkings]

while being depressing, this is also sort of fascinating to me bc there’s something so…inauthentic here. what i mean is that if you saw something like this back in say 2001 (which you probably wouldn’t, at least for carl’s jr. but i digress) it would seem tacky but in a “sex sells” sort of way.

seeing this in 2025, it’s clearly purely a political statement and you can tell partially bc the image itself is so oddly sexless. it’s like there’s more titillation in the prospect of “owning the libs” than in the image of the scantily clad blonde white woman itself.

[flufflecat]

thinking about ford "human blood tastes better" pines

ford "i have been desiring blood more than usual" pines

stanford "was bitten by a fruit bat but still wrote the sentence 'i have been desiring blood more than usual'" pines

[bearloonz]

I think we as a society should bring back brotps. I think we should be weirder about characters being friends the same way people are weird about ships. Make those two characters who interacted once or twice besties. Make it difficult for them to get rid of each other even if they want to. Go nuts

[valefiles]

‪a few chapters into sunrise on the reaping and the conclusion I’m coming to is that while katniss keeps *a lot* to herself, 16 year-old haymitch was a chronic oversharer. he dropped in ONE chapter more of the entire district’s lore than she did in 3 books

[pengychan]

"Oh the media being biased/silent on Gaza is a conspiracy theory"

I am a literal journalist and this is what happened when I pitched an article to a magazine I write for:

We covered conflict before. We denounced PMs' positions as wrong before. But this is where the editor balks - anything that makes it look even vaguely like we might, possibly, support Gaza. Even if the article itself would not have been an opinion piece, but a news feature about events on the ground.

We have free press, baby! But avoid the matter entirely if you can. It's delicate and depressing, why would you talk about it? Don't rock the boat. Be quiet. You don't need to go there.

Self-censorship is alive and well.

[bezuss]

when will they learn that it never works

[robotpussy]

the white western world believes the famine and death of black and brown people is integral and natural to our existence and that is why there is such little care and disregard, ignorance and eagerness to portray palestine and sudan as anything but genocide

[chimerafeathers]

i really love how intensely Mirabelle reacts to act 5 Siffrin botched friendquest.

Isabeau is mostly operating out of concern and, eventually, hurt. he already knows something’s up before Siffrin gets to him. he knows something truly awful must be wrong for Siffrin to be lashing out like they are, and as soon as he can’t handle the situation anymore, he leaves and asks (with strained cheer) for time apart to cool off.

most of Bonnie’s anger comes from being upset and afraid that Siffrin would willingly put themself in danger for no reason, when that’s exactly why they’ve been so unsettled since the eye incident. they hate that Siffrin values their own life so little, they hate that they’re the cause of any pain or loss for him, and here he is, putting himself in that situation AGAIN. on purpose. it’s loud and explosive, but it’s familiar, too, being “hated” by Bonnie for this reason.

Odile pushes, and keeps pushing, until her concern overwhelms Siffrin and they strike where they know she’s most vulnerable. she gets physical, just for a moment, grabbing his collar before controlling herself and letting go. her fury shuts down into cold detachment, and she walks away.

but Mirabelle—dear, sweet, gentle, loving Mirabelle, “the most wonderful being on earth,” with her secret “ruthless side” that largely involves lightly badmouthing people behind their backs and then apologizing—slaps them. immediately.

and then COMPLETELY RENOUNCES THEIR FRIENDSHIP.

not just “we’re not friends anymore,” but “we were never friends in the first place.”

that’s!!! pretty extreme!!!!

of course, she ALSO starts by asking what’s wrong. something must have happened for him to act like this. but as soon as Siffrin brushes her off, she jumps past that line of questioning and dives headfirst into re-evaluating everything she thought she knew about them as a a person.

if he could say something like that to her and not see anything wrong with it, then she was wrong to treat him as a friend, wrong to read camaraderie into his teasing, wrong to think they must care about them all under their aloof demeanor.

that’s how Mirabelle phrases it—“I was wrong about you”—but i think that there’s a hidden layer of I was right about you, too.

she talks about the way they tease her like she had to convince herself that he was doing it in a friendly way. she says they talk like they “know better than her” like that’s a thought she’s had for a LONG time.

“Always soooo mysterious, Siffrin, always talking as if you're better than me! As if you know me!!! But you don't, Siffrin!!! You're just as lost and useless as I am!!! So stop!!! Talking!!! As if you know me!!!!!!”

none of this comes across as a new, sudden way to view Siffrin for her. it doesn’t shock or confuse her. it makes her angry, defensive, almost like she was waiting for something like this to happen at some point. the feeling of resentment, frustration, jealousy, being patronized and condescended to—this is something she’s been actively pushing down and rejecting this entire time, but they’ve given her ample reason for it all to boil to the surface. violently.

Mirabelle’s kindness is not inherent or easy. it’s a choice she’s making. she treats Siffrin warmly because she gives him the benefit of the doubt—refusing to act based on anxiety-fueled, cynical speculation, and reassuring herself that his actions are driven by care and friendship even if she can’t quite see it.

“I was wrong about you” doesn’t mean she always and without question believed them to be a fundamentally kind, caring person from the beginning—it’s that her first, colder instincts were right, and she was wrong to convince herself otherwise.

never mind that she asked what was wrong at first. she barely gives them time to speak in their own defense, to explain what they really meant by what they said. all of her suppressed doubts and frustrations are getting aired out now, now that all the trust she’d so deliberately placed in him has been betrayed. her pain feels bigger than this singular moment, so when she hurts him back, she makes sure it extends back through the entirety of their relationship for him, too.

“You're awful. You're not my friend, not my ally, not anything. You never were.”

like the others, she goes back to the clocktower and tells Siffrin not to come back until later. but there’s a finality to the way she ends this confrontation that isn’t quite there with the others. Isabeau and Odile reach their breaking point and remove themselves from the situation, asking for space to cool off but still somewhat leaving the door open for Siffrin to tell them what’s really going on at some point. Mirabelle is the only one who tries to fully cut ties—after everything else she says, her “I don’t want to see you until tonight” reads to me somewhat as “I don’t want to see you anymore unless I have to.”

I can’t wait to never see you again.

even back at the clocktower, Mirabelle doesn’t really defend Siffrin’s place in the party when Odile suggests leaving them behind out of concern for their trustworthiness on the most important day of the journey. Isabeau and Bonnie protest out of sentimentality and faith in Siffrin’s abilities and connection to them, and Mirabelle agrees, but…

“I agree, but... B-But would he even agree to come with us, still? Maybe they won't even come back tonight...”

she doesn’t say much outside of that. maybe the stutter and hesitation here are signs of regret about how things happened, but she lacks Isabeau and Bonnie’s confidence that Siffrin even wants to come back to them in the first place. she doesn’t trust that their bond was real anymore. maybe it never was in the first place, or maybe she broke whatever was there herself.

and she’s still mad when they finally catch up to Siffrin at the King! and she makes sure Siffrin knows that—after saving them, assuring him that he no longer needs to fight, that they’re all there for him. she still cares, of course she still cares—she’s still hurt, too, but they can figure that part out once there’s less world-ending stuff going on.

she’s the first to say that they all reserve the right to still be angry at Siffrin later—and that they’ve already forgiven him.

she’s also the first to say we want to stay with you, too. it’s not just you.

she was wrong! she thought they didn’t care but they care so much, it’s overwhelming, it’s world-ending.

i think she’s gonna be wallowing in guilt post-canon the moment she remembers what she said and did TO SIFFRIN and not just what Siffrin said to her. especially now that she knows Siffrin’s exact hangups, and especially especially if she figures out what Siffrin was trying to say.

they put themself through hell out of loneliness and fear that none of the others cared about him the way he cared about them, he was going insane from repetition and exhaustion and hunger and trying to keep them all safe and together, and all they did in the midst of all that was say something kind of mean to her one time (that turned out to not even be MEANT to be mean it was supposed to be HELPFUL they just SAID IT ALL WRONG) and she SLAPPED THEM? and told him that they WEREN’T FRIENDS AT ALL??? how could she!!! she should have known better!! what they said hurt a lot but still!!!

so when they eventually manage to try to talk about it, they end up almost in, like, a guilt competition.

Mirabelle apologizing for how she reacted, that she shouldn’t have yelled or hit him, that she doesn’t want to be the kind of person who acts that way out of anger and she’s sorry that she made Siffrin expect that reaction from her, she should have known better and believed in him more and they only messed up like that because they were losing their mind in a time loop but what’s HER excuse—

and Siffrin going nononono stop I deserved it—(HUH DON’T SAY THAT NO YOU DIDN’T)—and that he should never have said such awful things to her, ever, and she was under so much pressure already with the weight of the country and everyone’s lives and futures and her religion and their whole party counting on her to do this impossible task because she’s the only one who can, all this unbearable expectation and hope crushing her, and they KNEW that but they thought they could skip to the ending as though her feelings didn’t matter at all, like helping her wasn’t as important as saving a little time—

until they’re just. in tears together, apologizing for all the horrible things they did in between complimenting each other’s strength and kindness and resilience and how much they admire each other and saying that no, everything you did was completely understandable, actually, the only one who sucks here is me. which neither of them will accept coming from the other!!

they’re so similar, in ways they couldn’t really understand, before.

warm, affectionate, perfect Mirabelle, the resolute hero, a beacon of compassion and hope for all those around her, who wears her heart on her sleeve, her fear making her courage shine all the brighter—nothing like the insignificant, forgettable Siffrin, too terrified to be known, too fragile to touch, too selfish and disgusting to bear letting go.

cool, mysterious, unflappable Siffrin, the worldly traveler, as charming and silly as they are confident and skilled, who brushed off losing an eye like it was nothing, accepting the risks of this journey with barely more than a shrug—nothing like the anxious, stagnant, undeserving Mirabelle, a fraud and a nobody crumbling under the weight of a mission too important to be entrusted to someone like her, doubting herself, doubting her friends, doubting her mentor, doubting her faith, too weak and brittle to bend and change the way the world needs her to without breaking.

not worth bothering others with their problems. they should be able to handle this alone. stay positive, stay calm. breathe in, and out.

they’ll struggle with it, still—the hiding, the minimizing—but now, they understand each other a little better. they can hold each other accountable for what they leave unsaid.

it’ll get easier, eventually. they have plenty of time.

[cosmicwhoreo]

sigh... we don't get enough if any Margalong... I suppose I'll have to do my thing and carry.

[chloesimaginationthings]

These clown animatronics in FNAF wild as hell..

[mothfaults]

My idea on Awakened Hollyberry as some sort of harvest goddess, cause a lot of mad brain rotting but where ever she walks she grows plants and the like I made her look like a pie, cause she is a cutie pie

[negrolicity]

Della Reese - Compared to what