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Mosaic plans Beehive box


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Wow: http://www.dothemath.typepad.com/

I think Larry, Mark Stryker, and a few others here know him and have his ear at times, so...

Nothing personal, dude, any of it, just some basics. But thanks for noticing, and thanks for hearing.

Ha, wow. I never thought of myself as a 'cat,' don't know about the rest of y'all.

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I like that Unloveables cut. Hollerado, not so much. My wife is allergic to cats. I love 'em and was originally somewhat consternated by that, but dogs have proven more than satisfactory in their absence.

That Reece side is damn good imo. Weird recording is a fact of life for most all jazz from that time (and others), so...adjust, I guess?

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Wow: http://www.dothemath.typepad.com/

I think Larry, Mark Stryker, and a few others here know him and have his ear at times, so...

Nothing personal, dude, any of it, just some basics. But thanks for noticing, and thanks for hearing.

Ha, wow. I never thought of myself as a 'cat,' don't know about the rest of y'all.

Having not posted anything for the past few weeks (and visiting only sporadically)--and then only learning about this thread via Do the Math--I feel like I just read a newspaper article about my apartment complex going up in flames.

In terms of the Bee HIve stuff, I'm reminded of something I heard recently... paraphrasing, of course, but Herbie Hancock was saying that the classic Blue Note stuff presented a misleading picture of the music of that time period--that it was "perfect," when it was more ragged and exploratory on the bandstand. Something I love about the rise of independent record labels in the late 60's onward is that a lot more "wart-y" music seemed to get immortalized on wax. I'm sure a lot of this had to do with factors beyond my knowledge or awareness (in addition to obvious stuff like the rise of bass amplification, the prevalence of rock kits, the electric guitar, hazarding the post-Coltrane-era, etc.), but whatever the case may be, it's produced some of my favorite music.

I spent the morning perusing the music discussed in this thread, and (incidentally) I've also been listening to a ton of Rahsaan and Strata-East-vintage pseudo-mainstream stuff. Dogma aside, stuff like Charles Davis's Ingia or the Charles Tolliver Slugs stuff just sounds so much closer to my experiences with tonal jazz in a pragmatic context than a lot of those (wonderful, immaculate) Blue Note dates. In a postmodern sense, that probably says more about my predilections and playing circles than it does about "the music," but I imagine there must be some sort of common reality to all this.

All the talk about the Brignola album is right on--parts of "Donna Lee" are indeed fucked up and "wrong," but it's also feverishly exploratory and honest in a way that I think a lot of practicing musicians could probably identify with. I'm also reminded of that furor over this thing:

Apparently JG loses the form for a little bit--exactly how and to what extent was in a ton of contention for a minute. IIRC, the two strains of thought were: (1) JG fucked up "All the Things You Are," which makes this a subpar document, and (2) who gives a shit?

For my (very late to the party) part, this is a really roundabout way of trying to consider what these recordings are "as they are," rather than what they are not. I recognize the slippery critical slope of failing to evaluate music by quantifiable standards, and I think that our contemporary preoccupation with technical perfection has positives as well as negatives. At the same time--and in a muso-jerkoff-y sense--is there not some value in listening to 1978 Dave Holland (post-Braxton, still playing with Sam Rivers, early ECM) play with cats like Haynes and Brignola? Would this have been a "better" session with Sam Jones or Ron Carter or (even more chaotic, but definitely "in the idiom" and among that group of players) Richard Davis? After a while, it begins to feel a lot more like fantasy football than listening as an earnest endeavor, which is where I put my laptop on sleep and start running left hand exercises again.

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I like that Unloveables cut. Hollerado, not so much. My wife is allergic to cats. I love 'em and was originally somewhat consternated by that, but dogs have proven more than satisfactory in their absence.

That Reece side is damn good imo. Weird recording is a fact of life for most all jazz from that time (and others), so...adjust, I guess?

Have a shelter cat, my second, who's now about 10 -- love him, he kind of saved my life or at least nudged me toward sanity at one point -- added a terrific youngish shelter dog a year ago last August at my wife and stepson's urging. Was concerned about how Baby the cat and Scout the dog (see below) would get along, but everything's cool. 

IMG_6513.jpg

IMG_8900.jpg

Edited by Larry Kart
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Wow: http://www.dothemath.typepad.com/

I think Larry, Mark Stryker, and a few others here know him and have his ear at times, so...

Nothing personal, dude, any of it, just some basics. But thanks for noticing, and thanks for hearing.

Ha, wow. I never thought of myself as a 'cat,' don't know about the rest of y'all.

Having not posted anything for the past few weeks (and visiting only sporadically)--and then only learning about this thread via Do the Math--I feel like I just read a newspaper article about my apartment complex going up in flames.

In terms of the Bee HIve stuff, I'm reminded of something I heard recently... paraphrasing, of course, but Herbie Hancock was saying that the classic Blue Note stuff presented a misleading picture of the music of that time period--that it was "perfect," when it was more ragged and exploratory on the bandstand. Something I love about the rise of independent record labels in the late 60's onward is that a lot more "wart-y" music seemed to get immortalized on wax. I'm sure a lot of this had to do with factors beyond my knowledge or awareness (in addition to obvious stuff like the rise of bass amplification, the prevalence of rock kits, the electric guitar, hazarding the post-Coltrane-era, etc.), but whatever the case may be, it's produced some of my favorite music.

I spent the morning perusing the music discussed in this thread, and (incidentally) I've also been listening to a ton of Rahsaan and Strata-East-vintage pseudo-mainstream stuff. Dogma aside, stuff like Charles Davis's Ingia or the Charles Tolliver Slugs stuff just sounds so much closer to my experiences with tonal jazz in a pragmatic context than a lot of those (wonderful, immaculate) Blue Note dates. In a postmodern sense, that probably says more about my predilections and playing circles than it does about "the music," but I imagine there must be some sort of common reality to all this.

All the talk about the Brignola album is right on--parts of "Donna Lee" are indeed fucked up and "wrong," but it's also feverishly exploratory and honest in a way that I think a lot of practicing musicians could probably identify with. I'm also reminded of that furor over this thing:

Apparently JG loses the form for a little bit--exactly how and to what extent was in a ton of contention for a minute. IIRC, the two strains of thought were: (1) JG fucked up "All the Things You Are," which makes this a subpar document, and (2) who gives a shit?

For my (very late to the party) part, this is a really roundabout way of trying to consider what these recordings are "as they are," rather than what they are not. I recognize the slippery critical slope of failing to evaluate music by quantifiable standards, and I think that our contemporary preoccupation with technical perfection has positives as well as negatives. At the same time--and in a muso-jerkoff-y sense--is there not some value in listening to 1978 Dave Holland (post-Braxton, still playing with Sam Rivers, early ECM) play with cats like Haynes and Brignola? Would this have been a "better" session with Sam Jones or Ron Carter or (even more chaotic, but definitely "in the idiom" and among that group of players) Richard Davis? After a while, it begins to feel a lot more like fantasy football than listening as an earnest endeavor, which is where I put my laptop on sleep and start running left hand exercises again.

Dude, if you've not yet had the chance, check out The Hub Of Hubbard on MPS, there that Richard Davis guy is, and that is one of the gloriest-most damnded slopfests ever committed to record. And probably my favorite Hubbard record that was released in its time.

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Dude, if you've not yet had the chance, check out The Hub Of Hubbard on MPS, there that Richard Davis guy is, and that is one of the gloriest-most damnded slopfests ever committed to record. And probably my favorite Hubbard record that was released in its time.

YES. Incidentally (and in a circular fashion), I think I first heard about that album via Do the Math--Iverson pretty aptly described Richard Davis as a "rogue bassist." That record is in a lot of ways the epitome of what I'm talking about--it's sincere and direct "inside" music played with a daring sense of rhythmic logic. Or, rather, it's "total effect" music--there's plenty of elision of time, harmony, etc., but the band sounds like it is in dialogue with its own chaos, if that makes sense. I'm reminded a bit of this session:

...which is, like, "Maximum Richard Davis." There's this sludgy groove to his playing on the sharper, more classic stuff (the bands with Jaki Byard come to mind, as does his Blue Note work with Andrew Hill in particular) that verges on unhinged in 70's (also: Hill's Nefertiti). The best way I can think to describe it is that it's more about the existence of the bottom end rather than the definitive "clarity" of it. (As an aside, I know that Richard Davis was on Coltrane's short list of possible bassists, and I wonder if this attribute--i.e., the ability to play complex inside material with both dizzying liberty and absolute heaviness--was a big part of it.)

I'm sometimes on the fence about "changes" music that either intentionally confounds or subsumes commitment to form, and I think that the debate over music of this sort is a weird sort of final frontier for jazz criticism. I definitely think that this stuff is more of a rhetorical trap for post-academic jazz than, say, Ornette or Ayler, where (in the latter case) you're dealing with fully-realized worldviews that don't even need to reference someone else's rules. It's like contemporary blues music; I think the tension for guys of a younger mold (myself included) is that we're so far removed from the historical circumstances of the music that we're now dealing with questions of legitimacy, validation, and valuation. In other words, if the OG cats aren't around to yell at you on the bandstand, who will be your overlord? (One) short answer is that we create our own overlords, which is akin to fabricating our own personal hell(s).

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What you already know - just play your own music the way you know it needs to go, get it out there to the extent that you want/need to get it out there, and then go watch some TV or something. Anything past that is giving away more power than you need to give away these days.

Just my opinion, of course, but having considered the options (i.e. - having already done the math)...you gonna be who you are, so look for the shortest distance between those two points.

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That Reece side is damn good imo. Weird recording is a fact of life for most all jazz from that time (and others), so...adjust, I guess?

Not all recordings of that era are a weird fact of life.

I know this and all the other Bee Hives well and hope the remixes can correct some of the '70s artifacts.

I have had personal interaction with, most of the folks involved - Jim and Susan, Michael, Ethan and many of the musicians for years. I have enjoyed the discussion but have chosen to remain silent. And so it goes.

Everyone is right and everyone is wrong. When you know some of the innards, there is no escape.

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  • 2 months later...

I am in the process of ripping this box set to my hard drive so I can spin this music while browsing the web and I find myself having to change a majority of the leader's names. Who is screwing with them?? A Sal Salvador date suddenly becomes an Eddie Burt date. Ronnie Mathews morphs into Frank Foster. Roland Hanna's date gets changed to Frank Wess. Dick Katz's date gets changed to Jimmy Knepper. Junior Mance got a fat head - Davis "Fathead" Newman now leads his date. Even Arnett Cobb can't keep his whole date. Joe Newman gets two tunes. :)

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41 minutes ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I am in the process of ripping this box set to my hard drive so I can spin this music while browsing the web and I find myself having to change a majority of the leader's names. Who is screwing with them?? A Sal Salvador date suddenly becomes an Eddie Burt date. Ronnie Mathews morphs into Frank Foster. Roland Hanna's date gets changed to Frank Wess. Dick Katz's date gets changed to Jimmy Knepper. Junior Mance got a fat head - Davis "Fathead" Newman now leads his date. Even Arnett Cobb can't keep his whole date. Joe Newman gets two tunes. :)

I love how the artist on so many of the dates is "Be-Hive."  Just minor annoyances stemming from whoever entered this data into Gracenote.  I've often wondered whether we can submit corrected data to them.  I just don't know the procedure, or whether it's allowed.

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8 hours ago, mjzee said:

I love how the artist on so many of the dates is "Be-Hive."  Just minor annoyances stemming from whoever entered this data into Gracenote.  I've often wondered whether we can submit corrected data to them.  I just don't know the procedure, or whether it's allowed.

I noticed the "Be-Hive" when i ripped the set to ITunes last week - even pointed it to my partner - I couldn't stop laughing

BTW anyone having problems removing the discs from their cases, especially Disc 2 - had to break one of the tabs to finally release it (I'm overcareful these days as I have split a disc in the past trying to remove it - one of the Ellington sets if I remember correctly)

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5 hours ago, romualdo said:

BTW anyone having problems removing the discs from their cases, especially Disc 2 - had to break one of the tabs to finally release it (I'm overcareful these days as I have split a disc in the past trying to remove it - one of the Ellington sets if I remember correctly)

Me too - I had the problem with the middle disc in all 4 cases.

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2 hours ago, gmonahan said:

Yeah, that's been a problem with a number of Mosaics over the years.  I've had issues with a couple of discs in this set as well.

 

 

gregmo

 

Yeah, with this set, I thought I was going to snap a disc in half.  Seems fixable ...

Edited by Eric
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On 1/4/2016 at 3:38 AM, romualdo said:

I noticed the "Be-Hive" when i ripped the set to ITunes last week - even pointed it to my partner - I couldn't stop laughing

BTW anyone having problems removing the discs from their cases, especially Disc 2 - had to break one of the tabs to finally release it (I'm overcareful these days as I have split a disc in the past trying to remove it - one of the Ellington sets if I remember correctly)

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I too had a lot of trouble extracting the second disc from these fatboy jewel cases. I swapped all 4 of them out with older fatboy cases I had laying around.

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  • 2 months later...
1 hour ago, mjzee said:

Listening to the Bee Hive set, I am surprised by how much I like the two Sal Salvador dates.  Hard, swinging, melodic, smart...just my kind of jazz.  

Totally agree. I don't have the Mosaic box but I've had the Salvador discs since they first came out.  Fine stuff.

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On January 3, 2016 at 3:38 AM, romualdo said:

I noticed the "Be-Hive" when i ripped the set to ITunes last week - even pointed it to my partner - I couldn't stop laughing

BTW anyone having problems removing the discs from their cases, especially Disc 2 - had to break one of the tabs to finally release it (I'm overcareful these days as I have split a disc in the past trying to remove it - one of the Ellington sets if I remember correctly)

I had problems removing the middle disc from several of the boxes in the Bee Hive set. I complained to Mosaic and they told me they have passed on this info to their jewel box manufacturer, but with no response. Great music, though I owned a number of the LPs.

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The two Ronnie Mathews dates are strong.  Could've come out on Blue Note in the '60's.  Listening now to "Legacy."  Look at the band: Bill Hardman, Ricky Ford, Mathews, Walter Booker, Jimmy Cobb.  Mathews is an excellent pianist, very underrated IMHO.

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