Guy Berger

A lot of the received wisdom on post-1970 Miles is still really shallow, especially in mainstream jazz discourse

I’m grateful to have these. The press releases aren’t interesting but it’s good to know when stuff comes out

It’s a real shame that there was such a short overlap between “Miles at peak chops” and “Miles playing wah wah trumpet” because the combination on recordings like Live Evil was really, really good.

Never got around to responding to this thread but it’s a great set - substantially better than the slightly earlier Ronnie Scott’s recording because the lineup is much stronger.

I’m listening to Joe Farrell’s first album on CTI… imho this period of John McLaughlin is my favorite. I like a lot of the Mahavishnu stuff, love some of it, but imho he was really good on freeish postbop music from this period. This album, Lifetime, Miroslav Vitous’s Infinite Search, the various Miles recordings… it was a special moment in time.

It’s funny because 1969 Wayne was more radical and skronky than 1964 Rivers. Miles’s tastes clearly evolved over the intervening 5 years. Miles’s playing is certainly challenged by physical ailments in the Dec 1965 Plugged Nickel recordings, but was quite strong, often spectacular, from Miles Smiles through Live Evil. 1969-70 was his technical zenith as a trumpeter. (OK, JSngry said it before me but it’s worth repeating…)

If we’re talking post-Coltrane, pre-Shorter saxophonists in Miles’s bands for which we have recordings - Imho George is much better fit than either Hank Mobley or Sonny Stitt.

So I’m prompting a series of humorous stories about my kids being students at a magical academy, with all sorts of zany adventures. A recent one is a LotR parody, they go on a quest to destroy a powerful magic ringpop. None of them are good children’s literature but they entertain my kids. excerpt: ” “I need more!” Sauron declared. “The One Ring Pop must not be lonely! I must surround it with Nine Grape Rings for the mortal kids, Seven Blue Raspberry for the sugar elves, and Three Watermelon Blasts for the camp counselors doomed to night duty!” He stood up and declaimed: 🧁 “Three Rings for the Counselors, soggy and tired, Seven for Elven teens with TikTok inspired, Nine for Campers doomed to sticky-fingered fate, One for the Dark Lord on his candy crate, In the Land of Wizzlewand where the Snack Flames lie, One Ring Pop to rule them all, and in the sugar bind them, One to lure the children in and Ring Pop-ly remind them… That cherry is superior. Fight me.” 🧁”

I use it for: 1/ coding (my R skills are pretty basic) when analyzing big datasets 2/ writing bedtime stories for my kids In my experience it’s super useful, with significant limitations. On the bedtime story side, the stories it writes if given free rein are quite lame. But it can produce stuff of value (for bedtime), if you give it a promising/creative prompt. As far as coding goes - I am guessing the code quality is terrible but it’s functional for my needs. However, it often gets fairly basic things about the data sets wrong and has to be steered. IMHO the best characterization I’ve seen is “infinite interns”. That gives a flavor of it’s value and also its limitations. Fwiw, that NYT piece was unsettling and a useful indicator of how proper usage is important. It’s an impressive probabilistic language generator that does a great job mimicking humans, but humans are easily fooled

What’s Rudolph’s backstory? He keeps convening all these great musicians together…

Side note, this is a great album, as is the same trio’s Time Will Tell.

I am extremely excited about this - it would be my first Mosaic since the Mingus 1964-65 Jazz Workshop box.

Aw man. RIP.

I think I was at that same concert, it was great!

Finally got around to listening to this. Worth hearing though not life changing.