ombudsman

This is more of a big picture thing (whether anyone agrees or not) but I don't think anybody really has any idea what other people are feeling, other than obvious, kind of superficial, situational observations, like the person in the sun sweating with their mouth open is hot, or the person with the red face and the tensed up face is angry. I get surprised by my own emotions fairly often. I think I'm having one and then in a moment it turns out to be another. How are other people supposed to read my mind when I've been me for half a century and I can't do it ? Priming, expectations, and biases, now those can explain things.

I use the term to mean traditional music (from outside USA/Europe), so I probably would not put Ibeyi in that category, but with the others mentioned that I was not familiar with it does become a better stocked category than I realized before, which does make me feel a bit better about it.

I'm very disappointed for the second year running. Lots of reruns (a certain amount of this was usual, and welcome to me since I couldn't see everything I wanted each year), rock is up, free jazz/improv is down, minimalism is down, and world music is non existent unless I am missing something. I don't know why this is happening. Ashley sold AC Entertainment to Live Nation in 2020, but Big Ears is a nonprofit, so (while sources online are not entirely clear) I think it's separate from AC Entertainment now. On the other hand, some of the more mainstream acts look suspiciously like cross bookings with the other fesivals. He must have gotten a nice sum for the company, and I know he is a long time fan of free jazz and minimalism, and still heavily involved with Big Ears.

It's that certain kind of dumb that serves as a fictional pretense to avoid cutting a check. It's not like the authors of "Pennies from Heaven" or "Anthropology" are difficult to identify.

Some background here on Steve Fassett's recording activity. http://woodberrypoetryroom.com/?p=3044

I think it's the market speaking, on that one. Classical listeners historically have been less accepting of compression. And after all, it is a technical advantage of CDs that they have more dynamic range than LPs.

I'm very disappointed with this lineup. Big Ears has pretty much been the highlight of my year since 2015, with many bucket list shows achieved, but unless they add some heavy hitters (which may happen) I am probably going to skip it. Seems crazy, but here we are. Not that there aren't some artists I like on the list, but when it comes to those I haven't already seen and might motivate me to do a road trip and drop $1500 on one weekend, it's really just Annette Peacock, and I wouldn't mind seeing Zorn. That's a big departure from previous years when they were always about 20-25 artists that were represented in my record collection in the lineup, who I had never seen live.

I don't have a lot of experience with big festivals but this was my 3rd year at Big Ears and I plan to keep going as long as possible. I went to at least 20 shows this time, including Carla Bley twice, Gavin Bryars twice, M.E.V., Hans Joachim Roedelius, etc. Would have put a few more on my list before the drive home (Rangda, Henry Threadgill, and a Norweigian fiddle player whose name escapes me) but by the middle of day 4 it takes a real toll on the legs.

A little late but I saw Kahil El' Zabar and Ethnic Heritage Ensemble at the Loft Society, Cincinnati last weekend. It was fantastic; not just great music as it was, but with a vintage rant by Al before each set, and some engaging and grounded statements from Kahil in the second set about current events.

I only know the first 3 above, but I'll be there again this year. MEV are bucket list for me, they alone would have been enough.

An older friend of mine who is not much for the internet recently told me about seeing Ayler a couple of times. The second time was at Slug's later in the 60s, so, nothing really new to report there. But the first time was a cute story. He was about 16 or 17 (I think he said it was in '64) living outside of Cleveland and had just gotten access to a car for the first time. What to do ? So he and his friend decided they should go to a strip club. They found one one Euclid Avenue and went in, where they were the only white people inside. There was an organ trio doing soul jazz type tunes to go along with the strippers, but with this saxophonist who was playing in a way he had never heard. On a break the saxophonist came up and spoke to them at the bar for a minute. Jess didn't recall if he mentioned his name but remembered him being in a suit, being short, and having this white patch in his beard. He also saw Peter Brotzmann in Cleveland in '69, which was earlier than I realized he had played in the US. He and Peter were reminiscing about that at a show here in Cincinnati a few months ago.

I've spoken to Mats at shows. His tastes are pretty broad. As record collections go, I've seen many large ones and many that focus on free jazz but I would rank his as among the most interesting. He has many titles that you just don't see, they're on a whole different scale of scarcity than what makes up a typical good jazz record collection. One thing I love about visiting another collector is once in a while when they pull out something that is completely out of the blue that has a good story behind it and is in a style that I appreciate or even specialize in, but I just wasn't aware of. In a good collection you might expect to find just a few of those, but even just one is something to be savored and remembered. For example, to a fan of free jazz or experimental music, I used to have about 6 of those, but now due to some unlikely reissues it's down to maybe 3 or 4. I love those so much more than a shelf of original Blue Notes or modern 45rpm pressings. My tastes being what they are, I can tell it would take considerable time to go through all the ones just of that type that Mats has.

As a sometimes upright bass player I find it very understandable how a guy who has been playing a lot of gigs could get very tired of the constant logistical challenges involved in transporting and amplifying an upright. Even more so years ago when bass pickups and amps and PA systems were less developed. I've had gigs in recent years that were little or no fun because the combination of a hollow stage, high stage or monitor volume, and a less than optimal sound guy made me struggle with feedback all night. Sonny even being a big name artist must have had his share where the upright was either not audible to him on stage, or where it was feeding back. Swapping it out for an electric is a very effective solution. Being able to hear the bass while playing is surely the more critical issue than the tone of the bass. If you look at other tradeoffs like this in music gear - tube amps vs solid state (or more recently, no amp at all, just pedals or modeling software), real organs or electric pianos vs sampled/modeled, "real" acoustic guitars vs guitars that look the part but are really designed to be played amplified and are braced so heavily that they can't make much sound on their own - lots of players have made the pragmatic choice. It's also comparable to the choice of vinyl vs digital, or a serious home system with good speakers to an Ipod or whatever. I don't care for the electric bass in jazz with a capital J, but I understand. When the choice is being able to focus on playing vs worrying about problems, it's pretty hard to remain a purist.

Sato is indeed the pianist on S'posin, I was going off topic on the tangent of Gary Peacock recordings from when he lived in Japan. Thanks, Matrix sounds like one I should pick up as the reissue lp.

Homefromtheforest, are you familiar with "Matrix" ? I have not heard that one, and wonder how it fits stylistically. Jay - Silver World and especially Voices are albums of mystical power to me. Poesy and Eastward are good too but Voices is very special IMO. And if those work for you I then suggest Paysages by Sadao Watanabe and S'posin by Helen Merrill.

Can't say I recall what Praskin looks like but it's certainly Rudd

My late friend Jud Yalkut worked with her on a number of projects; through that and a local gallery that represented Paik for many years among others, I've seen lots of films and videos that are not widely circulated. The most impressive one was a color film of her playing the TV Cello where some really psychedelic video processing comes in right as she starts playing, and the audio is better than the other examples too. I wish I could remember the name of it. There are a couple of videos on youtube that include the TV Cello but they aren't that good. Generally you're better off looking through Paik related videos rather than looking for things under her name. This is some pretty good documentation of the NY Avant Garde Festival which she worked on for years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci6eCRQB30Q

It's Coltrane, no doubt. When I first heard these sides years ago I was not tipped, but knew it was him right away. Not really hard if one knows his early work with Dizzy and Hodges (check his solo in Castle Rock with Hodges ' band, live 1954). The Coltrane Reference (DeVito et al.) lists the Coatesville Harris sides as Trane's only (known) recordings from 1953 ("date unknown, but most likely 1953") and comments: "Coltrane is identified by aural evidence only, but we consider the evidence overwhelming". I understand your viewpoint but that is not enough to remove doubt for me.

The only one I have is "In Pursuit of Magic" but I think it's great.

It's a great solo, and based on the sound it seems plausible that it could be Coltrane, but it's really not enough evidence at this point. Priming is a strong effect; we might not all have thought it sounded like Coltrane if we hadn't been tipped that way before hearing it. Also we can only evaluate the positive side of the assessment; there is no way to temper that with a measure of how many other players it could have been that we are not aware of. I've seen things a few times over the years where pretty much unknown local players delivered great performances that could have been quite misleading to other people if they were heard as unidentified recordings with no context. Nobody ever says "that sounds like someone I've never heard of" - we pick the closest candidate. Also as a bit of a recording engineer I've seen people misidentify performances by themselves or their bandmates, confuse upright with electric bass, vocals with organ, and effected saxophone with bassoon. Another thing that comes to mind is conventional wisdom among guitarists about "On the Corner" by Miles - I've heard/seen McLaughlin credited (sometimes in condescending terms !) as the only player on that record many times based on the sounds - despite more of the tracks having David Creamer on guitar, who was correctly identified in some of the press when it came out. And they do have fairly similar sounds on that record; which goes to show that players with very distinctive styles can sometimes be confused with others. I haven't heard it in a long time and can't recall which one it is, but there is a Can live recording that has a passage played by Irmin Schmidt on some sort of keyboard with effects where he gets a sound that is dead nuts on Miles' trumpet sound circa '73 with the wah and amp. A snippet of that section, faded in and out, could IIRC absolutely fool people into believing there is a newly unearthed Miles concert tape or guest appearance, and it's not even a trumpet.

My most painful casualty was about 15 years ago. A package coming from France with 3 records arrived in sort of a "U" shape with the outside dirty. My best guess is that it was on the ground over some sort of channel or on a curb and it was run over by a tire of a small forklift or something, and someone picked it up, looked at it, shrugged their shoulders, and threw it back in the outgoing mail. I lost a copy of "Violostries" by Bernard Parmegiani (musique concrete) in that package, which is still yet to be replaced. I had a laughable overgrading incident recently with Yorklyn Records. A record listed as NM/VG++ had water damage on the cover with some missing art and disc so obviously trashed I wouldn't even risk my needle with it. And then the guy claims that he specifically, carefully checked it before putting it in the mail. I had some leverage since it was paid for by cc, eventually getting my money back minus 8 bucks of overpriced shipping for no rational reason. I've been having pretty good luck with discogs. On ebay I tend to be wary of newer sellers; a lot of younger clueless people have gotten into the game in the last few years.

I'm guessing the jazz equivalent of that figure is around $5000-10,000. Probably often less, for out there material. Myself, I've never lost less than $1000 on a release. I don't think it's grey market that we're talking about. Certainly not if the material has never been legitimately released; not even nations with the most loose copyright laws allow for that. I feel there is an entitlement mentality to some of that kind of thinking, and it can become a circular argument. Bootleggers and file "sharers" say they are justified by the lack of an official release... the person that owns the rights can't be sure they can break even on an official release because the stuff is on youtube and blogs and it's hard to compete with free, while getting quality audio work and packaging and press costs real up front money and work. No matter how common it may be for them to be screwed out of it, it remains the artists (or estates) right to choose when and on what terms to place their work on the market. I understand the counter arguments, but when you get down to the actual person themselves (rather than a faceless imaginary corporate stand in for their interests), I think it should be pretty easy to understand why a person who spent decades practicing getting to the point they are musically might want to either do something the right way, or if that can't happen, just not do it at all. Personally I think that, counter to the idea that any exposure is good exposure and that the market can take any amount of any quality information and still want more, first impressions (and priming and associative memory) are absolutely critical things to the prospect of any artists career. When we take away their ability to control that, and their choice to limit the supply of their recordings that are on the market to just the best ones, we kill careers and sometimes force people out of playing music except as their private hobby.

Except as a basic violation of privacy, perhaps? Of course, what constitutes "privacy" these days, right? It's not just about privacy; it's about property rights, dignity, standards of quality, context, and terms. The rights of the estate are not constrained by other people's disrespect and desire to exploit Steve's music for their own gain.

Yes, they are. Radio pays far more than streaming (albeit in the US, only to those with songwriting credit). Back in the day when you (and many, many millions of others) were listening to the radio, so many records were being sold partly as a result of that radio exposure (and MTV, for those of a certain age) that there was a viable revenue stream relative to the real cost of creating music - which relates to whole careers of musicians and other professionals and very substantial marketing, not just recording costs. Lots of people made their living from that revenue stream, and it supported many middle class jobs of one kind or another as well as labels big and small and musicians big and small... not that it was perfect by any means. Now, consumer purchase of music is the exception rather than the rule, and a laughably small fraction of the revenue for listening without purchasing a copy makes it back to the people that made and invested up front in the music compared to before. Albums (the only format really relevant to jazz) have been hit particularly hard, currently making up about 1/3 the sales compared to the high in the 90s. That's across all formats including legit digital downloads. If this was all due to decreased consumption, I would have no fairness/ethics -based complaint. But consumption is as high as ever, it's just become a pirate economy where most of the income generated from the work of a few people goes to others who are positioned to sell data access and ads on the sidelines of the huge flow of pirated information. One major flaw here. "Pirated information". It's not pirated, it is licensed by the record labels to the streaming services. The record labels take 70% of the revenue from streaming. Want artists to receive more? Convince the labels to share some of that 3/4 of the pie they are walking off with. By pirated information I was referring to pirated information - illegally downloaded or copied with no licensing whatsoever. Streaming through Spotify, Pandora and such is legal, of course. It's also blatantly exploitative, but that is a different subject.

Thanks gentlemen. Looks like time for an upgrade. I have a P vine Japan pressing of Scorpio but it seems the America version is the best option for the Coursil.