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JohnJ

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  1. From today's IHT NEW YORK There are more lights now, shining on the liquor bottles behind the bar at Smalls. It is no longer dark enough to pretend the musicians are playing only for you. The bar has replaced the cushioned banquette that used to frame the room, allowing Mitch Borden, the former owner, to cram in many more than the 50 people he was allowed. Smalls, the basement jazz club in New York's Greenwich Village, was never supposed to be like this. When it closed two years ago, Borden said he'd rather die than make changes. He never wanted anyone to have to pay for anything, and most of the people enjoying jazz until the bacon-and-eggs hour of the morning rarely did. Borden collected the $10 cover charge only sporadically, and customers could bring their own drinks. But he eventually went bankrupt, and the line that stretched outside the club from West Tenth Street down Seventh Avenue disappeared. This past spring, the familiar stream of jazz fans and college students lined up again. Smalls was back, and Borden, a slight man with a neatly trimmed gray beard and a perpetual newsboy cap, was presiding over it as usual. On a stool in front of the club, he played violin and twisted his cap around as he explained that he didn't care that he had gone from owner to doorman. (The club's actual owner is José Farias de Couto.) Borden would rather be at Smalls than in Times Square, where he played the violin for spare change after he closed the club. ''I got good,'' he said. But he does get wistful when he thinks about Smalls's pre-liquor-license days: in his opinion, the new bar takes up too much room. Much to his chagrin, though, a place can't survive in the city these days without the extra money a bar brings in. The worn, overstuffed chairs that looked as if Borden had pulled them from someone's garbage are gone too, replaced with stiff seats ill-suited for burrowing into blue notes. But the stage is there, front and center, impossible to look away from. The young musicians on it one recent Tuesday night were relaxed, and only the sax player wore a suit. From upstairs, you could hear the sound of Borden's newly improved violin. The evening used to end around 8 in the morning, when Borden and the musicians decided they were ready to see the sun. Now, Tony the cleaning guy brings the night to a close when he arrives at 4. ''He turns on all the lights and moves real fast,'' Borden said. ''If he wasn't there, we'd probably stay.''
  2. Hey, Lon, apart from an "old disestablismentarianismist", you´re a freakin´ collector of Ellingtonia. Will I ever find a single Ellington-related disc that you don´t own? ← Perhaps FRANCIS A. AND EDWARD K.? ← Doesn´t Lon like Sinatra? ← You might say 'Old Blue Eyes' is not Lon's favourite. Love him myself and 'Francis A. and Edward K.' is a mighty fine album.
  3. Currently taking advance bookings for 2hrs from London with direct rail-link. ← 30 minutes from London with direct rail link (not Tokyo). Seriously though, now is the chance for darts and snooker to take their rightful place among Olympic sports.
  4. Not even close -- I would choose Shakira over Celine Dion any day of the week. ← You mean to listen to?
  5. To be honest I have only glanced at the jazz volumes as reading anything but fairly basic Kanji takes me forever and I don't have the patience. Murakami is very popular in many countries and all of his novels are quickly translated into English and other languages, the most recent, 'Kafka on the Shore' was on the bestseller lists all over Europe. I read recently that he may already be the biggest ever selling Japanese author in the west. I like all of his work, but my favourite may be 'A Wild Sheep Chase' for Murakami at his magic realist best. Murakami is a big Raymond Chandler fan and this novel is sometimes referred to as 'The Big Sheep'.
  6. It is well known that Murakami is a big jazz fan. He has written two books, Portraits in Jazz Vol. 1 and 2, but unlike his wonderful novels, I don't believe these have been translated into English. Basically these are, as the titles suggest, brief portraits of a number of his favourite artists. A CD with the same title was released also. I read somewhere that he has an enormous jazz record/CD collection.
  7. Tell me about it, apparently yesterday was the hottest June day on record in Tokyo. Probably not the best day to cycle to Disk Union in Ochanomizu all the way from Shinbashi at lunchtime.
  8. Mr Mingus, you might try the CD reviews at AAJ.
  9. Naos, welcome. Which Tokyo suburb do you reside in? I live in Nerima-ku myself.
  10. Thanks for that Brownie, somehow I missed the article. 1 million copies, pretty impressive. I know that 'Cool Struttin' is very popular here, I remember my boss talking about it even though he has very few jazz recordings.
  11. Nice review in todays Guardian, Fordham gives 4 stars. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terence Blanchard, Flow (Blue Note) John Fordham Friday June 24, 2005 The Guardian If Herbie Hancock thinks something is worth doing, plenty of other musicians soon follow suit. When Hancock was in Britain recently with the quartet that included West African singer and guitarist Lionel Loueke, the result - electronics-assisted world music meets flat-out jazz improv - came as a big surprise to many who had been expecting something closer to the African- American tradition. Now here's another very American virtuoso, the one-time Jazz Messengers' trumpeter Terence Blanchard, who boasts Hancock as his producer and occasional pianist on this eclectic set, while Lionel Loueke is enlisted as composer. The upshot is a multi-layered composite of post-bop, Joe Zawinul, abstract worldbeat and Miles Davis circa the In a Silent Way era. Blanchard has made some fine albums over the past decade - from tributes to Billie Holiday to improvisations on movie themes, via standards sets that marked him out as one of the great interpreters of slow ballads of his generation. He is also a more sensitive user of synths than many of his peers, who carelessly throw such devices into the mix; and he is a trumpeter with the elegance and tone of the late Clifford Brown. On first listen Flow sounds very familiar, beginning as it does with a repetitive trumpet theme over minimal percussion. Loueke's liquid guitar is close behind. It's the kind of self-sufficient trumpet exposition, full of slurred valve sounds, effortless register leaps, billowing long notes and rhythmic manipulations, that Blanchard's fellow New Orleans citizen Wynton Marsalis has marked out as his own. Then come three Loueke pieces, all spacious chanting and ambient flute-like sounds, over which a romantic horn melody turns into a wistful soprano sax solo from Brice Winston. The Miles Davis of the ESP/Sorcerer era is recalled by Blanchard's sparkling playing on Wandering Wonder, while Loueke's balancing of untreated guitar and electronics is the highlight of the second part of the title track. Kendrick Scott's The Source is a swaying but insubstantial tune, enlivened by Winston's hollow tenor sax and Hancock's sporadically provocative piano. Meanwhile the vocals on the haunting, gospelly ballad Over There function as an atmospheric prelude to Blanchard's exquisitely measured trumpet solo. While Flow is maybe a little glossy and over-produced for some, it is none the less exceptionally elegant contemporary music.
  12. I haven't noticed any shrinkage here in Tokyo. Both Tower and HMV have very extensive jazz sections, although I only buy from them during their sales. Moreover, we have wonderful used stores such as Disc Union were I spend far too much of my time browsing.
  13. If I remember correctly, the Penguin Guide suggests that the single disc contains the best versions of many of the songs on the box. I have the single disc and like it a lot.
  14. Makes my $65 purchase at Disk Union look pretty good.
  15. Nine titles says it all. Of course.
  16. From today's IHT: Biography covers range of a vocalist By Mike Zwerin Bloomberg News WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15, 2005 PARIS 'With Billie," Julia Blackburn's new book about Billie Holiday's oft-told, many-leveled, all-American, usually sensationalized story of racism, poverty, drugs, sex and jazz, repeatedly provokes the reader to reflect: "Sounds about right; that's the way it probably was." When Blackburn first heard a Holiday recording at 14, it seemed to her that "just singing filled her with such a wild joy that she was aware of nothing else for as long as the song lasted." She noticed that the singer "didn't seem to care about the beat woven around her by the other musicians. She kept pulling it and stretching it until I thought she had lost it entirely. But just when it seemed too late, she was back again." Blackburn never loses that nutshell of delighted discovery. In the 1970s, a writer named Linda Kuehl recorded interviews with more than 150 people who knew Holiday - family, friends, business associates and musicians, as well as miscellaneous felons and freeloaders who crossed her path. Kuehl had trouble with the writing, though, and there were problems with publishers. She committed suicide in 1979 by jumping out of a hotel room in Washington, where she had gone to hear Count Basie, a sadly apt coda to the story she was trying to tell. Blackburn gained access to Kuehl's archive in the 1990s. There were shoeboxes full of tapes and a long paper trail, including police files, transcripts of court cases, royalty statements, shopping lists, hospital records, private letters, muddled transcripts and fragments of unfinished chapters. Blackburn decided to let the interviewees tell their own stories so that "it would not matter if the stories overlapped or didn't fit together, or even if sometimes they seem to be talking about a completely different woman." Despite some overzealous footnoting, her refreshingly non-judgmental book is as much a valuable social study as a well-written biography. Holiday's experiences as a prostitute and a drug addict are neither hidden nor exploited. They are part of the raw material that produced one of the most expressive voices of the 20th century. (She was born in 1915.) Listening to her recordings over and over, they only get better. Her interpretations of such songs as "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues," "Good Morning Heartache," "My Man," "God Bless the Child," "Trav'lin' All Alone" and "Gloomy Sunday" add deeper emotional resonance to them. Through a kind of existential alchemy, when she sings about how she'll never smile again, that she's going to lock her heart and throw away the key ("I'm tired of all those tricks you played on me"), it becomes one big tearful laugh at life. So in this case more than usual, knowing about the life is essential to an appreciation of the genius. Among the characters in her life are Freddie Green the guitar player, Freddie Green the pimp, John Levy the bass player, and John Levy the pimp - four different men. There are a lot of pimps, drug dealers and slimy managers; Holiday married some of them. She had a strong streak of masochism. Her fellow musicians adored her, weaknesses and all. The Mozartian saxophonist Lester Young was her best friend and musical alter ego. She and the actress Tallulah Bankhead were friends, and maybe lovers. She was friendly with the writer Elizabeth Hardwick, who described her as "glittering, somber and solitary, although of course never alone, never. Stately, sinister and absolutely determined." Holiday's peers considered her an instrumentalist, one of the cats as it were, and their accompaniment became part of her sound. From 1935 to her death in 1959, her rosters featured musicians such as Teddy Wilson, Coleman Hawkins, Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, Johnny Hodges, Ben Webster, Claude Thornhill, Phil Woods and J.J. Johnson. She was not the only singer to invent an instrument with her voice - Frank Sinatra also comes to mind - though she is arguably the archetype. In 1939, Abel Meeropol, a young Jewish schoolteacher who later changed his name to Lewis Allen, brought her his protest song "Strange Fruit." Reading the line, "Pastoral scene of the gallant South," she asked him: "What does 'pastoral' mean?" She came to suspect that having a hit with a song containing such lines as "Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze" was one reason why she was so relentlessly hounded by federal law enforcement bureaus. She was busted one last time for trying to get high on her hospital deathbed. Holiday's friend and assistant Alice Vrbsky says that she learned a lot about honesty from her: "She'd be friendly with someone if she liked them, no matter who they were, and she wouldn't be friendly with someone just because he was a big shot." According to her ex-pianist Carl Drinkard, Holiday was "like a little girl needing guidance. She had a morbid fear of going to jail, and she could not stand pain."
  17. Issan is the area of North Eastern Thailand that borders Laos and is culturally very similar to Laos. Incidentally, Issan has always been one of the poorest regions of Thailand and traditionally most of the bar girls of Bangkok come from this region. You thus get to hear a fair but of Issan music in the bars as the girls love to dance to it.
  18. Wish I had picked this up at the Disk Union in Shinjuku for around $45 last year when I had the chance. Not surprisingly it had already been sold when I went back a few days later.
  19. Exactly. Frankly, I'm confused by this thread. All of the changes that AMG went through took place nearly a year ago. I wasn't fond of them then, and they're still annoying now, but it doesn't bother me much to use the site. If you're not a "member," then sign up and cookie yourself in. All access and no hassle re: passwords and stuff. Still one of the best (free) music resources on the net. ← The complaints confuse me too, I signed up for free once they introduced that option and find the site as quick and useful as ever. Then again, I am perfectly happy with a PC and IE. I guess I am easy to please.
  20. Speaking of Louisiana, when I was in New Orleans I found it quite difficult to place the accent. Laid back for sure, but definitely didn't sound like a typical Southern accent. Not surprising I guess as everything else about the place seemed different too.
  21. Keith Jarrett: Mysteries, The Impulse Years 1975-1977 Saw this used at a pretty good price of around $30 and picked it up partly based on Guy's recommendation.
  22. Agree that 'Live 1969' is great. Regarding Lou's more recent stuff, I thought that both 'New York' and 'Magic and Loss' marked a return to form and I like 'Ecstacy' quite a bit too. My favourite of his later output though is the tribute to Andy Warhol, with John Cale, 'Songs for Drella'.
  23. It makes me feel relatively normal.
  24. 1ngram, there are two copies for sale on eBay at the moment and several more offered in eBay stores.
  25. Not essential perhaps, but a recent favourite is: Jessica Williams : All Alone (Max Jazz)
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