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BYG Actuel Series


Vincent, Paris

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  • 2 months later...

Hoo boy, you guys are barking up the wrong tree asking me audiophile type questions! :lol:

First of all, this is my first exposure to this music, so I couldn't say how it compares to earlier releases. According to the tray insert, New Africa clocks in at 47:10, and One Morning at 28:46. On the other hand, I didn't time them or anything.

I am assuming it's done from tape, as if it's from LP it's not apparent to me. On the other hand, keep in mind that my so-called "system" is only one step up from a boom box...

All I can say for sure is that it is an absolute crime against nature that Moncur didn't get to lead more sessions.

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Some additional BYG's have also been turning up on CD overseas as well, usually in digipak form. Sonny Sharrock's MONKEY-POCKIE-BOO is one (its been in stock @ Dusty Groove in the past)... I think the Alan Silva CELESTRIAL COMMUNCIATIONS ORCHESTRA is another one...

Sure would be nice to have those Jacques Coursil dates on CD.

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I picked up the Taylor "Student Studies" CD last week - and it is great! Soundwise not, however. I'm no audiophile, but I would like to hear Alan Silva if he's already listed on the cover... Liners by... Scott Yanow (lol - he does not much more than four short bios of the musicians).

In stores here I saw three different series of BYG reissues:

- one on some strange italian label - not sure it's get back, ugly mini-LP-gatefold covers, cheap looking, much overprized (something like 25$ at least). Original LPs, so you pay 50$ to get the two Cherry "Mu"s which could fit on one CD, I think. Crazy.

- Charly reissues, rather cheap, coupling LPs together when possible (I saw the Moncur in this incarnation recently)

- Fuel2000 - covers not bad, sound not great, judging from the Taylor disc.

Anyone understands why there is not ONE label doing DECENT and WELL REMASTERED and annotated reissues of this material??

ubu

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No wonder this Byg label business looks complicated. BYG has been a mess from start to finish. The label was founded by three independents: Jacques Bisceglia, Jean-Luc Young, and Jean Georgakarakos whose initials made the name of the label. Georgakarakos was the money man in the operation. He had made a small fortune producting pop music. He also became notorious by being involved in a number of shady deals inside the music business.

Georgakarakos also started a magazine called Actuel around 1967. The BYG label was launched shortly after. At first they reissued material from the Savoy catalogue. By 1969, BYG was producing the ACTUEL series which released some 60 records, mostly avant-garde jazz. The label went broke after the infamous 1969 Amougies Actuel festival which was supposed to have been held in Paris, then had to be moved outside of France because the post-1968 government did not want a major Woodstock-type festival to be held in Paris or its vicinity. The festival was exiled to Amougies, Belgium, a few kilometers away from the French border. And almost everything went wrong there, except that some pretty adventurous music was produced. There was a separate thread on that festival on that Board a while ago.

After the festival financial disaster, the partnership was broken up. Young went on and created the Charly label, Bisceglia remained independent and Georgakarakos changed his name to Jean Karakos and launched the Celluloid label in New York among other ventures.

I was present at some of those ACTUEL sessions. The Archie Shepp, Grachan Moncur, Alan Silva, Dave Burrell ones among others.

The sessions I attended were held at the Studio Davout in eastern Paris. There were great and usually relaxed gathering of musicians who had come to the French capital in that glorious summer. But one of the problem I remember is that the regular engineer left (this was in August 1969) while more sessions were to be recorded. He was replaced by another (but less good) engineer.

What would be interesting would be if somebody could work from the original tapes. I have not checked on the sound of reissues but am familiar with some rather negative comments on the audio quality of most of them. I have no idea who actually owns those tapes by now.

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Thanks a lot Brownie for those insights :tup

Here's a BYG discography: http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Labels/byg.htm

An Archie Shepp "Live In Antibes" 2CD release from Fuel2000 is available for only $10 from deepdiscountcd.com. I don't know if it is in stock.

I have the Sun Ra "Solar-Myth Approach" 2CD set from Charly records which is great musically but not technically. I have the impression that the recording itself is flawed, although this suits this music rather well :)

Another good album is Don Cherry MU Parts 1 & 2 which I downloaded from emusic.com some time ago. The recording is not good enough to make me upgrade the MP3s to CD.

Edited by Claude
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No wonder this Byg label business looks complicated. BYG has been a mess from start to finish. The label was founded by three independents: Jacques Bisceglia, Jean-Luc Young, and Jean Georgakarakos whose initials made the name of the label. Georgakarakos was the money man in the operation. He had made a small fortune producting pop music. He also became notorious by being involved in a number of shady deals inside the music business.

Georgakarakos also started a magazine called Actuel around 1967. The BYG label was launched shortly after. At first they reissued material from the Savoy catalogue. By 1969, BYG was producing the ACTUEL series which released some 60 records, mostly avant-garde jazz. The label went broke after the infamous 1969 Amougies Actuel festival which was supposed to have been held in Paris, then had to be moved outside of France because the post-1968 government did not want a major Woodstock-type festival to be held in Paris or its vicinity. The festival was exiled to Amougies, Belgium, a few kilometers away from the French border. And almost everything went wrong there, except that some pretty adventurous music was produced. There was a separate thread on that festival on that Board a while ago.

After the festival financial disaster, the partnership was broken up. Young went on and created the Charly label, Bisceglia remained independent and Georgakarakos changed his name to Jean Karakos and launched the Celluloid label in New York among other ventures.

I was present at some of those ACTUEL sessions. The Archie Shepp, Grachan Moncur, Alan Silva, Dave Burrell ones among others.

The sessions I attended were held at the Studio Davout in eastern Paris. There were great and usually relaxed gathering of musicians who had come to the French capital in that glorious summer. But one of the problem I remember is that the regular engineer left (this was in August 1969) while more sessions were to be recorded. He was replaced by another (but less good) engineer.

What would be interesting would be if somebody could work from the original tapes. I have not checked on the sound of reissues but am familiar with some rather negative comments on the audio quality of most of them. I have no idea who actually owns those tapes by now.

Thanks a lot for these comments, brownie! Really appreciated. I did not know the origin of the Charly label. And neither did I know about the BYG label.

I'll look for that thread on the festival. Missed that one.

ubu

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  • 10 months later...

Does anybody know if the Sunny Murray album "Hard Cores" on Philly Jazz has ever been re-issued? And does anybody have info on the Philly Jazz label in general?

AFAIK, the only Philly Jazz lp to be officially re-issued is the Sun Ra Lanquidity cd.

http://www.dpo.uab.edu/~moudry/discog/philjazz.htm

The late Bill Lewis should be credited as the artist for PJ1002.

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Any thoughts on Sonny Sharrock's Monkey Pockie Boo? I like Sharrock's work, but have never heard Linda Sharrock.

That one is a wild Byg/Actuel! Really far out but you get a good chance to hear the little know French bass player Beb Guerin!

Never really managed to enjoy that LP!

I much prefer the Sonny Sharrock Vortex album 'Black Woman' with Linda too. And accompaniament by Dave Burrell, Norris Jones and Milford Graves!

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