All Activity

February 15 Henry Threadgill - 1944

https://storyvillerecords.bandcamp.com/album/copenhagen-1964

Another warmer night and a warmer day ahead. Lots of melting going on. . . I expect soon to hear the crashing sound of snow and ice sliding off the roof! The eery quiet of a Sunday morning out here . . . the already low ambient sound lowered still. I really enjoy being up this early and spinning a disc. I’m starting off with a bunch of real pros, One4All, “The Long Haul” on Criss Cross.

February 15 Kirk Lightsey - 1937 Kirk Lightsey was in Göttingen for the first time with Dexter Gordon on October 15, 1980, and most recently with Benny Golson on November 3, 2006 – photo by me.

Good suggestion. God knows with the weather this side of the Atlantic at the moment we need that palliative.

Rex Stout works a bit like P. G. Wodehouse: very useful to have around to self-prescribe as a palliative for the blues. A roommate of a girlfriend I had in grad school recommended Rex Stout and I immediately picked up a used copy of Some Buried Caesar at a used book shop. Over the years I acquired many more volumes and read some from the library. Decades ago I came across an ebay listing for all of the Nero Wolfe series in various paperbacks at a surprisingly low price and bought it. Since then I have re-read the series (plus his other series and one offs) in sequence a few times. As my vision deteriorated I acquired the Wolfe series again on kindle. I recommend Rex Stout! There was quite a good video dramatization with Timothy Hutton and Maury Chaykin but nothing beats the books.

Xavier Cugat And His Orchestra – Cugi's Cocktails You can keep your Buena Vista Social Club. I prefer the sound of real authentic Cuban music.

This made me curious, of course. In case you're familiar with the respective LPs, am I right in assuming that this version is very similar to the recording of "Begin The Beguine" (which might be described as a "Tone painting and exercise in dynamics on Begin The Beguine" ) recorded around the same time in 1948 that is on Golden Era GE 15014 and Hep LP 3?

Rufus & Chaka – Masterjam

Plus XANADU for its reissues of jazz from the 40s and 50s that complement Onyx very well and expand their scope (in addition to much more recent recordings) - as well as HighNote for the CD spinoffs of several Onyx vinyls. But since neither Onyx nor Xanadu are active anymore (or so it seems even in the case of Xanadu) I hesitated mentioning them.

Now playing: Such a fantastic album!

LP 2

ICMC Presents Hindustani & Carnatic Jugalbandi – Violin & Shehnai Duet This event is supported by ICMC Donor Members Event: VVS Murari (Violin), Ashwani Shankar (Shehnai), Sai Giridhar (Mridangam) and Amit Kavthekar (Tabla) Date: Saturday, March 7, 2026 Time: 4.00 PM to 7.00 PM Venue: Kathak Rhythms Studio - Plano 4020 Hedgcoxe Road, Suite 150, Plano, Texas 75024 Tickets:ICMC Members: Free; Non-Members: $50; Students: $30 Memberships:Donor Circle $750; Family $300; & Individual $150 Tickets or Membership Payments via Zelle - ICMC ID: 2143363459 Contact: (214) 336 – 3459 or e-mail to mihirviolin@gmail.com ICMC 2026 Spring Season 1. March 7 - VVS Murari (Violin), Ashwani Shankar (Shehnai), Sai Giridhar (Mridangam) and Amit Kavthekar (Tabla) 2. April 25 - Dhananjay Hegde (Vocals), Pt Sudhir Nayak (Harmonium), Yogeesh Bhat (Tabla) 3. May 16 - Sandip Chatterjee (Santoor) & Subhajyoti Guha (Tabla) 4. June 6 - Abhisek Lahiri (Sarod) & Subrata Bhattacharya (Tabla)

Nice!

Also interesting to find Dizzy Gillespie arranging Claire's performance of Who Started Love. This Boyd Raeburn group is good stuff!

Pete LaRoca “Bara” Blue Note Japan UCCU-8110

Nels Cline “Lovers” Blue Note, disc 2. Quite inventive arrangements and the engineering is just awesome.

I don't consider the majority to be unlistenable either (though five or six discs are). And agree that the music is an experience. We all have varying, but limited, amounts of time, money, shelf space, and listening energy, and each of us need to make our own decisions on how to invest those. My decisions are different than yours, but I don't know that I am therefore a "lazy listener" with "lazy results". I also experienced lo-fi Bird bootlegs and stuff like that (we're basically the same age, got the bug for the music at basically the same time), and decided not to go there moving forward except for certain selected cases (such as the Coltrane 1961 Sutherland Lounge recordings) . There's good stuff each of us is never going to hear or re-hear, and we each need to decide what our own parameters for that will be. YMMV, which is fine.