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Face of the Bass

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  1. Also, I would agree that Andrew Hill is currently overrated. My reasons for this belief are that his music gets touted on every jazz message board, his albums from the 1960s have been getting reissued at an almost insane pace, and yet I'm almost always disappointed by the results. And it's not because I'm too "conservative." If anything, I read people talking about Hill as this incredible musical innovator and then I get excited until I listen to the product and find that it doesn't measure up to the hype. If anything, Hill wasn't radical enough. To equate him to Monk or Mingus is insane.

    Also, FWIW, I always get the feeling that Hill's compositions were more akin to some incredibly dry science experiment than any genuine artistic statement. You read the liner notes to his albums and it's all about how he wanted to write a tune with x number of bars in different scales or whatever. Yawn. My opinion is that the guy just didn't have that much to say. His best albums are good because of the playing of the other people, not because of his allegedly "out" playing, which actually sounds quite tame when put next to the best innovators on the piano from the time period. I listen to Monk and I hear humor and sadness. I listen to Cecil Taylor and I hear incredible energy and propulsive drive. I listen to Hill and I hear a guy searching for an identity and never quite getting there.

  2. My main problem with the deification of the Blue Note catalog during this time period is that the label was basically churning out a lot of albums, admittedly, of high quality, that sounded just like each other. Similar lineups, similar tunes, similar musical approaches. They broke out of this mold somewhat in the mid-60s with some of the albums by McLean, Shorter, Hancock, Dolphy, and Hill, but the great weakness of BN for me is that, at the end of the day, most of their stuff sounds the same, or at least, very similar.

    i understand what you're saying, but can't the same be said of riverside, prestige, et al? most labels during the time frame being discussed had a stable of players that comprised their dates which resulted in certain consistencies... the sides from some labels are simply more diverse than others due to variety in material and groupings. i don't see it as a blue note thing, although they certainly had their sound.

    ?,

    -e-

    Well, yes, but compare Blue Note to Impulse. Which had the more diverse sound? For me it's Impulse, hand's down.

  3. My main problem with the deification of the Blue Note catalog during this time period is that the label was basically churning out a lot of albums, admittedly, of high quality, that sounded just like each other. Similar lineups, similar tunes, similar musical approaches. They broke out of this mold somewhat in the mid-60s with some of the albums by McLean, Shorter, Hancock, Dolphy, and Hill, but the great weakness of BN for me is that, at the end of the day, most of their stuff sounds the same, or at least, very similar.

  4. Overrated: It doesn't necessarily mean I don't like these, but I don't think they are as essential/mind-blowing as people often make them out to be:

    Art Blakey - Mosaic

    Dexter Gordon - Gettin' Around

    Grant Green - Complete Quartets with Sonny Clark

    Herbie Hancock - Empyrean Isles

    Andrew Hill - Black Fire

    Andrew Hill - Point of Departure

    Lee Morgan - The Sidewinder

    Sam Rivers - Fuchsia Swing Song

    Wayne Shorter - Speak No Evil

    Jimmy Smith - Groovin' at Smalls Paradise

    Larry Young - Unity

  5. Personally, I always demand that Mosaic authenticate each set I buy with a piece of DNA from the artist in question, which is taped (or in some cases, splattered) over the inside cover. That way if I ever want confirmation that my Stan Kenton is the real deal, I can just order an exhumation of his remains to cross-compare with the DNA sample in my booklet.

    Pretty simple, really.

  6. Speaking of RVGs: is it just my local Borders locations that have stopped stocking the new ones, or is it everywhere? The clerk I spoke to said the ordering is done centrally somewhere, and the last two batches never appeared at any of my 3 area Borders. That's got to bite into sales for BN.

    There are three Borders near here, and I don't think any of them stocked all of the RVGs, though one stocked a few and another stocked a few. The Borders around here has definitely been slimming down the jazz selection, although one of the three seems to have become a dumping ground for discs ordered long ago that were never sold, which is nice because when I browse through there I sometimes find interesting stuff.

  7. Thought I could restart this thread because I'm planning to put in another Mosaic order in about a week or two and I'm currently flip-flopping between getting the Gillespie or getting the Hodges. I don't really have much in my collection of either, and the sound clips for both seem pretty good to me (as do the lineups.) I guess right now I'm leaning a bit more toward the Hodges, I don't know.

  8. Thanks. That 12/23 session with Heywood on piano is the one I want. I heard it on vinyl at a friend's house last week and was stunned by his bass solo on Crazy Rhythm with that breathing. You can really see how he played the bass like it was a wind instrument, and also hear his influence on guys like Paul Chambers, etc.

    I will check out the Classic Tenors disc.

  9. Well Valerie Wilmer's book has this to say:

    For about a year, [the Arkestra] worked at the Playhouse, a room in Greenwich Village owned by Gene Harris, formerly the pianist with a group called the Three Sounds. Pharoah Sanders, newly arrived in New York, heard them there and took a non-musical job in the club in order to follow their nightly activity. When John Gilmore took a leave of absence to make a European and Japanese tour with Art Blakey, Sanders took his place.

    That's not really an answer to the question, though.

  10. Is IS a really good question. I wouldn't mind knowing the answer.

    I'm having a hard time with this one. Szwed's Ra biography just says that Sanders worked his way into the band. A couple newspaper articles online state that Sanders was working as a waiter and selling his blood for cash at this time. Then he moved into the Arkestra's house, but I'm not sure what he was doing other than getting lectures from Ra.

  11. Hooked onto this thread, way too late, but here's my offering based on the artists I have multiple albums of in my collection:

    AMM - Newfoundland

    Art Ensemble of Chicago - Les Stances A Sophie

    Albert Ayler - Slug's Saloon

    Derek Bailey - Improvisation

    Billy Bang - Commandment

    Art Blakey - Free For All

    Anthony Braxton - For Alto

    Sonny Clark - Cool Struttin'

    Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz To Come

    John Coltrane - A Love Supreme

    Miles Davis - Miles Smiles

    Eric Dolphy - Out To Lunch

    Jimmy Giuffre - 1961

    Dexter Gordon - Our Man in Paris

    Grant Green - Idle Moments

    Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage

    Andrew Hill - Judgment!!!

    Freddie Hubbard - Night of the Cookers

    Bobby Hutcherson - Oblique

    Booker Little - Out Front

    Jackie McLean - Let Freedom Ring

    Charles Mingus - Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus

    Hank Mobley - Soul Station

    Thelonious Monk - Monk's Music

    Lee Morgan - Search for the New Land

    Sachiko M - Good Morning Good Night

    Toshimaru Nakamura - Side Guitar

    Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus

    Keith Rowe - Duos for Doris

    Wayne Shorter - The All Seeing Eye

    Taku Sugimoto - Live in Australia

    Sun Ra - When Angels Speak of Love

    Cecil Taylor - Indent

  12. I prefer to get the box sets because, unlike the individual cds, you can bludgeon people to death with them. This one guy came in to my house once and I surprised him by beating him repeatedly over the head with the Coltrane Prestige box, and then switching to one of the Miles' metal spine boxes. He was gone inside of 10 minutes. But then once I tried the same thing with this OTHER guy, but instead had to use a Japanese mini-LP, and was less impressed with the results. The guy just said "Can you quit doing that, please?"

  13. Last year I was having a REALLY bad day and in order to cheer myself up I just went to Borders and unloaded full price for this set. It made me feel good at the time and I'm still glad I did it, even though now I could buy it from Concord for about 25 percent of what I paid last year.

    Also, this set is a fucking monster. It will eat your children for breakfast and crap them out before lunch time.

  14. Sorry for interrupting the partee, but while you all are grabbing all the good stuff, Concord & Tower have organised a nice little contest... :rolleyes:

    Well, I suppose second prize would be of mild interest, though first and third have no appeal.

    Seriously, that's a pretty lame contest. What they should do instead is make it like that game show for kids in the 80s where they had to run around a toy store frantically throwing as many toys as they could into their shopping cart. Same deal, except cds. Aisle after Aisle of common, uncommon, hard-to-find, and OOP cds from the Concord vaults. You get a shopping cart and five minutes. Go.

  15. Well, I've been posting at JC for almost three years. It's like a strange addiction. I've been trying to move over here for jazz-related discussion, as there is little to be found there, but it's hard to do.

    I used to post at JC as crawjo, now I go both there and here as Face of the Bass. JC does have a lot of nice people there, and it is a great place to talk about sports and the like.

    Hi Chris. :)

  16. Hmmm...good point. I should be more specific: I wish they would reissue more titles that I'm actually interested in. Every Blue Note batch, there's usually at two or three that grab me.

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