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Hey Kids, Have You Heard The News? MOSAIC's IN TROUBLE!!!


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Hans,

 

I was referring to the new Teddy Wilson set that was announced some time ago.  I think I got my Teddys mixed up.  Sorry about that.  I have not seen any anticipated release dates or pre-order notices, so I'm unsure if it is still in the works.  If it is, that's great news.  I'd be happy with a Mosaic Records still putting out a couple of sets a year

 

BBR,

The thing I know I'd like answered is how many back ordered sets they did order.  I think it's honorable of them to have had the back ordered sets repressed as there were customers like me who had placed orders for them.  Their original communications had cast some doubt on  JPJ, Mingus and a couple of others.  But I think that orders placed for them convinced them that just dropping them from the catalog.  Assuming they did order the minimum of 250 sets, I guess it will be interesting to see if they simply let the go the last chance route. 

Maybe going out of business was too strong a statement, but it seems they are at least reducing the size of the catalog and inventory.

 

We'll just have to see where this all goes.

Edited by Ed Swinnich
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14 hours ago, J.A.W. said:

Thanks. Apparently someone thinks it's funny to make a fool out of me, but seeing who it was, I don't care.

Awww, c'mon. You don't need our help for that. ;)

More seriously: you can do a Google image search on the picture, and it will correctly identify it for you.

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Not going to worry about it that level. It's pre-ordered, so it'll either show up or not. I'll either get billed or not. The only insertion point for me is if I get the wrong damn set (happened twice over the last bajillion years,, not bad, all things considered).

And you know, it's not something I have to have. I got that whole series of Hep CDs of Goodman Plays ______ . If need be, that's good enough. I just figure that Mosaic will be even better. But I'm not greedy or obsessive about it, not these days, anyway.

But hey - that was a damn good band that played extremely well. So here's hoping that it comes back in stock so people who might want to check it out have a chance to do so. If it doesn't, you can still get the Heps, usually. But if you can get the best, why not?

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The bulk of this set is pre-war (which war? does it matter? they're all the same!), and that's where my interest lies for this band from a musical, not just sociological, standpoint (and you can argue that they're the same thing, and yeah, maybe, but been there done that, just not right now, fair enough?). The Victor era was often/usually raw, ragged, and not without it's charm, very much "big band", very much "pop music". But Goodman evolved, his band went with him (that's what they were paid for, right?), and really, the music became less "pop" and more "classical", less "big band" and more "orchestral". The same thing was happening with Ellington at about the same time, right? Different energies, hell, different worlds, but much the same impulse - this music can "be" more than disposable feel-good dance music, or even better, this music can be feel-good dance music and also add more layers of substance, meaning, feelings.

"Third Stream" music as an attitude, a true blending of esthetics...I don't think that the early 40s Goodman band gets looked at in that light very often, but it certainly can/should be, maybe because "Third Stream" is not a term that's favorably embraced by a lot of people, but oh well, tell that to Ran Blake, right? And yeah, Gene Krupa was all that yowsah hot momma, but...Dave Tough? Sid Catett? Nick Fatool? Those are some tasty motherfuckers!

And hell yeah, big bands got louder over and after the war ears. Life got louder. The atom bomb is not exactly an instrument of charm. Or am i missing something about that? Does this person look beguiled in any way?

HIROSHIMA-JAPAN-_3395067b.jpg

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1 hour ago, Captain Howdy said:

 

And don't give me that facile bullshit about music emulating life: by that logic the music should have become very quiet after that loud war ended -- or perhaps the music should have become very cold during the Cold War. Or am I missing something about that?

 

A NICE Day!

OTOH, all that repressed anxiety had to find an outlet somewhere! You get too cold and it does get hot!

 

Cool better than cold, unless until otherwise. Konitz better than most, always.

 

Heroin also no better than coke, even when mixed, but either way...no matter where you go, there's always somebody there.

 

Thermostats  in action!

 

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1 hour ago, Captain Howdy said:

 but to my ears it becomes more pop in the sense that in sounds like garish movie soundtrack scores.

Give me an example of a "garish movie score" from, say, 1945. and then let's do a contrast and compare, ok?

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I am having trouble following this discussion; are we talking about the BG Columbia and Okeh sessions?

btw, not necessarily relevant here, but I just cannot listen to post-1935 Benny Goodman any more. It took me a while to figure out why, but his sound drives me nuts. It just doesn't fit the music, and to my ears it's like fingernails on a blackboard. It's too sweet and sentimental. And it just diminishes any band that plays with him. I'll take Shaw or Hasselgarde.

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There's definitely a difference, I get that. I love the way the band evolved, though, the charts got better, the band got better, the sections got tighter, dynamics got more nuanced, everything just evolved. As a soloist's band, eh..., but for ensemble playing, that band got to it's own zone. No band did that thing better, Ever,

Understand that it's not to everybody's tastes, an evolution of that nature, and I'd certainly not want all "big band" music to go like that, but it seems to have been right in line with Goodman's own personality. He had his own unique pocket, tempo, pulse, phrasing, quirky balance between absolute precision and definite swing pulsation,and his band played like him. And Toots Mondello, unsung hero, that sax section keeps sounding better to me as time goes by.

I keep coming back to this one cut..when you listen to the zone that band is in...it's a perfect unity, no detail left unexamined and refined just so. and it swings like a mofo in that quietly fastidious Benny Goodman way. Dave Tough!

That's one helluva chart (Eddie Sauter, iirc), one helluva band. Dave Tough, Jimmy Maxwell, Toots Mondello. And impeccably recorded.

That's not even on the set, but this is, and again, this has to be a band at the apex of doing that unique, Goodman-specific thing.

I'm in a phase right now where "orchestral" playing interests me quite a bit, section work, integrations of orchestrations and micro-timings to create a unified compositional performance. This band, they were doing that.

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Wow...no, not at all. Things were getting loud before that atomic bomb. Things were getting quiet before the atomic bomb. But the atomic bomb and all that came along and after it, that was a fulcrum point. Of course it was, don't think it can be anything else. Life was already getting loud, and WWII was aloud war between loud peoples. It had a very loud ending, and loud creates ripples. Of course people wanted quiet when they got loud. And of course loud kept getting louder the more people wanted quiet. And of course both things happened concurrently. How could they not? People never get what they want, they get what they want to get away from. We are hunters and prey at once.

As for that Goodman cut, gotta be this that or another you never will be, ha, I wish there was a movie orchestra that played like that. Don't know how much written ensemble music you listen to or how you listen to it, that's your business, not mine, but that band's blend and precision is really remarkable. And it swings, maybe not BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM swing, but people talk about how tight the Glenn Miller band was (and it was, the airshots are a marvel at times), but the Miller band just did not swing the way this band did (if they swung at all, somebody once said here a long time ago that no, they didn't swing, they rocked, and maybe so).

What's the point of having charts if you're not going to dig into them and make them speak? Those weren't head charts, riff excursions, jamming frameworks, those were purposeful self-contained works. The degree of detail in how Goodman got his band to play them is not at all common. If you think it's loud, listen to how it's loud, there are different types of loud, different ways to balance the balances, blends and attacks. Loud is not just a matter of decibels, ok?

 

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On 7/16/2017 at 3:41 AM, Clunky said:

I got notification from Mosaic that my order of the James P Johnson set it ready to ship

Got my notice the same day.  Big win for the "JPJ Pressure Group".  Happy to say the set arrived today.  Looking forward to giving it a spin.

 

Edited by Ed Swinnich
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