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Broken Time: Nardis and the Curious History of a Jazz Obsession


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28 minutes ago, JSngry said:

About the title, there is this: https://flashbackdallas.com/2014/04/03/nardis-of-dallas/

Miles was into clothes, don't know if he was into women's fashion or not, but a name like "Nardis" doesn't just pop up randomly?

When Ben Sidran interviewed Miles for “Talking Jazz,” he point blank asked him about how he came up with the name Nardis.  Miles hemmed and hawed, and Sidran blurted out “That’s my last name spelled backwards!”  Miles replied “That’s a good name.”

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12 hours ago, Brad said:

Fascinating essay in Believer Magazine about Bill Evans and “Nardis.”

It may take awhile to load but it’s worth the wait. 

Broken Time

Very interesting, but FWIW for me all those latter-day "live" recordings of "Nardis," with those long intros, are the musical equivalent of watching a cocaine-fueled hamster run himself to near death on a wire wheel in a cage -- lots of desperate spinning movement, but Evans never really gets anywhere.

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Unrelated to Bill Evans, probably, but one of the reasons I'm ok with not playing now is that i was having nightmares about showing up to some lameass restaurantjazz gig and this even-older-then-me skinny guy with a beard and glasses bigger that a tv set limps up on stage and say hey man, let's play NAAAAAAAARDIs. Hey, that is so NOT something to live for...

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5 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Very interesting, but FWIW for me all those latter-day "live" recordings of "Nardis," with those long intros, are the musical equivalent of watching a cocaine-fueled hamster run himself to near death on a wire wheel in a cage -- lots of desperate spinning movement, but Evans never really gets anywhere.

When I heard one of those versions of Nardis it scared the hell out of me. I had no desire to hear it again. 

The same with his coked up version of "In Your Own Sweet Way". Unfortunately, the Evans fanatic I play with insists on playing at that coked-up tempo.

It should be pointed out that regardless of the experience with the "Explorations" session, there are a lot of CDs that have been put out after Evans' death that Evans insisted not be released. Add to that the numerous bootleg live CDs that have been released, and the only sure way of assessing Evans' legacy is to go by recordings released prior to his death.

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7 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Very interesting, but FWIW for me all those latter-day "live" recordings of "Nardis," with those long intros, are the musical equivalent of watching a cocaine-fueled hamster run himself to near death on a wire wheel in a cage -- lots of desperate spinning movement, but Evans never really gets anywhere.

I owned a bunch of "early" Evans recordings, bought the Turn Out the Stars (VV, 1980) box, and the many long renditions of "Nardis" totally put me off late Evans. Interesting article, but I've heard my fill.

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7 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Very interesting, but FWIW for me all those latter-day "live" recordings of "Nardis," with those long intros, are the musical equivalent of watching a cocaine-fueled hamster run himself to near death on a wire wheel in a cage -- lots of desperate spinning movement, but Evans never really gets anywhere.

That’s the things with obsessions. 

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