Michael Fitzgerald

You want I should give you everything?

http://www.bsnpubs.com/atlantic/atlantic100400.html Mike

Ask him about working with Conte Candoli, Bill Perkins, and Jack Sheldon. I regret that I am not familiar with most of his Swedish compatriots. Mike http://www.sittel.se/artists.php?view_artist_ID=5

Doubtful. Costello has probably been listening to jazz longer than Diana Krall has been alive. I think it quite possible that the reverse influence would be the case. Mike

I'd love to read a good book on Gigi Gryce if someone can come up with information that we missed. Mike

I seem to recall a recent CD reissue of the Time album was canceled or postponed, Japanese, I think - did it ever come out? Mike

Actually, I didn't mind the "rug" album - Will Power - too much, if my memory serves me well. It may not have been a masterpiece, but there were some interesting things going on. I haven't heard the other classical things like Symphony No. 1. Mike I'll have to relisten to this (and maybe check out the others) in light of Costello's attempt (Il Sogno). I suspect that Jackson is more capable in this area.

There has been extensive research done on Hot Lips Page by Todd Weeks - book planned, don't think anything is in place yet. Yusef Lateef has reportedly written his autobiography (or it may be a "told to") and it needs to be edited. Mike

Sure - he's one who has done some very interesting things in different areas over the years. I myself am not crazy about all of it, but he's for real. I think his "Breaking Us In Two" could have some legs the way that EC's "Alison" or "Baby Plays Around" have - anyone know other versions of that one? Jackson has a much better grasp of harmony than Costello or the other guitar guys - he attended music school, was a member of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, etc. So when he writes a simple pop tune, you can find some interesting subtle twists in there. I think he sometimes gets in over his head though. Mike

The 1985 Clapton tour was for "Behind The Sun" - still an awful album, but the last good live tour he did. Immediately following this he changed the band and got involved with Greg Phillinganes, Nathan East, Phil Collins and other cures for insomnia. I think you are correct that Parker's LP was Steady Nerves on Elektra. That's one I don't own. Mike

The one AR guitar record I have is a 1978 Larry Coryell album "Difference" where Rhames and Coryell are in the company of Mike Brecker, Tony Williams, and Glen Moore. I'll have to relisten - it's been a while. Then I have the 1981 Albert Dailey record "Textures" - AR plays tenor on one tune. I think we may have just listed every issued appearance - but I'd be glad to be proven wrong on that. Mike

This guy was a MF on guitar too - folks I know who saw him play have compared him with McLaughlin - but these ones mentioned are just tenor (and some piano on the Rashied Ali), right? Mike

Yes, exactly. I'd like to see a Kampuchea DVD, or an expanded set a la The Last Waltz. (And down the road maybe a superexpanded edition.....) Regarding Graham Parker - I've got at least half a dozen of his records and have seen him live (opening for another EC, as it happens - Eric Clapton). While he had some nice pieces, I can't put him in the class as Costello, even for the period when they really were overlapping in that small area. And once Costello started expanding away from the "new wave" sound, he left Parker in the dust. I think the reason everyone brings up Costello rather than Parker is because of longevity and his ability to go into new areas and stay high quality. Parker was never at the same level of musical sophistication - he had a good band sound, some well-crafted tunes - but I never saw him developing anywhere near as much as Costello. But like I said, I do like his stuff that I have (the Mercury and Arista records - my pick of them would be Squeezing Out Sparks which has the hit Local Girls). Mike

You are almost certainly remembering the footage from The Concerts For The People Of Kampuchea, which was a heck of a nice thing (4 days: December 26-29, 1979) - the young guys and the old guys together: Pretenders, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Rockpile (w/guest Robert Plant), The Clash and Matumbi, The Specials and The Who, Paul McCartney & Wings, Queen. There was a large ensemble jam called the Rockestra combining the forces of a lot of the bands (incl. 3/4 of Led Zeppelin). Mike

There is a huge amount of overlap between Lord and Bruyninckx, but each has information that the other lacks (or has incorrect). Lord's approach is convenient but because of the many flaws in his data (misspellings, duplicated names, duplicated sessions, etc.) it doesn't work as well as it should. Bruyninckx doesn't try to get too sophisticated, so the same errors don't affect things as much. Either or - toss a coin. Mike

There should be a lot of discussion in those earlier threads. Do I need to supply further information or clarification? I will be glad to. Let me know. I have spent a great deal of time with the Lord CDROM. I have found over 100 pages worth of problems in the Lord CDROM. Some of these are over 12 years old still uncorrected, some are brand new. What is most annoying is that they are so easily found - if one even bothers to look. But Lord doesn't even bother. Mike

Too bad you can't even get the original Star Wars anymore. Mike

Seems there were at least 2 incarnations of Mr. Kelly's. The first club (on Rush Street) burned out on February 8, 1966 (called the "worst fire in 25 years"). The second was going in fall 1968 and I still see it listed in 1975. Not sure of that location right now. Mike

Here's that article: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/magazine/22CONSUMED.html? ---------------------------------------------------------------- May 22, 2005 Last Year's Model By ROB WALKER Elvis Costello, the Rhino CD's As Elvis Costello kicked into ''Chemistry Class,'' at a live performance in Washington, on Feb. 28, 1978, a voice could be heard cutting through the boisterous crowd noise, shouting, ''You're brilliant!'' Enthusiastic, uninhibited, barely articulate and kind of embarrassing -- that's a real fan. This performance can be heard on Costello's ''Armed Forces.'' Not on the original album, from 1979, or the expanded CD version reissued by Rykodisc in 1993, but on a superexpanded version put out by Rhino Records in 2002. Since 2001, Rhino has released lavish, double-disc reissues of most of the Costello catalog, basically finishing up last month with a rerelease of the 1987 record ''King of America.'' In many cases these are the third or fourth iterations of a given album, and it turns out that at least some consumers will buy them a third or fourth time. ''We sort of count on that,'' says Jeff White, a spokesman for Rhino, a division of the Warner Music Group that specializes in reissues, including ''deluxe'' editions of previously released records by everyone from the Cure to Randy Newman to Cher. The most successful rerelease in the Costello series has been ''My Aim Is True,'' which has sold more than 100,000 copies, despite having been released in at least three earlier versions. Gary Stewart, who oversaw Rhino's Costello project (and has since left the label to serve as the chief music officer for Apple's iTunes), says he believes that plenty of buyers of the new discs are getting them for the first time. Nevertheless, it's fairly clear as he describes the strategy for the discs that the superfan was definitely part of the calculus. ''The Ryko versions are quite good,'' he says, so the Rhino round included maximum-length 28-page booklets stuffed with lyrics and new notes from Costello himself, and a pile-on of previously unreleased tracks. ''Get Happy,'' for instance, was a 20-song album; the Ryko version had 30 songs; Rhino's has 50. The idea was to give the buyer so much material, Stewart says, that ''the stuff you already had is just a bonus.'' Stewart says Rhino also made a particular effort at ''rehabilitating'' the less-celebrated Costello records, like ''Goodbye, Cruel World'' (which even Costello was once quoted dismissing as ''a waste'') in selecting bonus material and alternate versions that practically add up to a whole new, and arguably better, version of the original album. ''King of America'' was a critical favorite the first time around but a commercial dud. So perhaps its 21-song bonus CD with nine demo tracks as well as live recordings and outtakes is a bit more than a reasonable person needs. But being beyond reason is the whole point of fanhood. The solo demo version of ''Poisoned Rose'' might not mean much to most people, but to the blinkered fan (like, O.K., me), it's definitely worth owning. ''The human propensity to adore celebrated strangers infuses life with a hundred different flavors of stupidity and sadness, hope and joy,'' the editors of the Benetton-financed magazine Colors observed in a special issue on fans last year. Consider that fans of the canceled ''Star Trek: Enterprise'' TV series claim to have raised nearly $145,000 in an effort to keep it going for another season. Or on the Costello front, consider the Web site devoted to deconstructing the Rhino releases and speculating about what material might yet resurface. (The site points out that the 1978 ''Chemistry Class'' live recording officially released on Rhino also appeared on ''one of the earliest Elvis Costello bootlegs.'' Duly noted.) Whether these things seem like evidence of stupidity or joy depends on whether you're a fan of ''Star Trek'' or of Costello or of something else. It's only other people's fandom that seems embarrassing or irrational. Stewart, meanwhile, who will admit to having seen Costello perform live ''more than 50'' times, seems to have just one regret about the Rhino versions of the Costello catalog: There is so much bonus material that the greatness of some individual extra tracks has been overlooked. He speculates about an additional disc that would simply highlight the very best of the Costello bonus material. ''This is a possibly prejudicial statement,'' Stewart says, ''but I think his biggest curse is making too much good music.'' Spoken like a real fan. ---------------------------------------- Mike

Route 22 in Union, NJ is home to "The Flagship" - a onetime dance hall from the big band era, when it was known as "Flagship 29" - Route 29 was the earlier name of Route 22 before all the roads got renumbered in 1953. This is a huge building in the shape of a boat. It has gone through so many incarnations - a little history is here: http://www.agilitynut.com/eateries/14.html Jean Shepherd did a show in the 1960s that referenced The Flagship. http://www.flicklives.com/database/summary.asp?ID=19650819W It's currently a P.C. Richard electronics store. Ignominious. Mike

Apart from the bigger names suggested, Passport, Focus (and Jan Akkerman), and Brian Auger might be worth checking. Maybe Iron Butterfly. All the Yes members did solo albums in 1976 too. Stretches: Steve Hillage, Arthur Brown, Jean-Luc Ponty if you consider him progressive. Now, how did you know it was Atlantic? Green and red label? That might help because some folks on Atco or Cotillion wouldn't have that. Mike

I think you might have better luck familiarizing yourself if you spell Sibelius as "Saint-Saens".......... Mike

Picking a few nits: But Led Zeppelin IV does not contain Kashmir, The Rover, Celebration Day, nor The Crunge. Or maybe that wasn't your point. I was thinking you were advocating for "lesser-played tracks from great albums". Maybe you were just pushing for "lesser-played tracks from over-played bands". BTW, Boston does have more than two albums. Six, in fact, including a greatest hits set that has new material. But your intent is well-taken. The first album gets 90% of the Boston airplay. The other 10% is the track Don't Look Back from the second. The thing that early 1970s FM radio did was create the "album-oriented" format, where it *wasn't* about playing the single. That's what MADE some bands who weren't AM single-friendly - like Led Zeppelin. Some of their most over-played tracks were NEVER issued as singles. But now they're being treated in the same way. No dj makes the choice as to what goes on the air, it's all done by central office. Watch WKRP In Cincinnati for the dramatized version of how automated playlisting came into radio. For real present-day quality, try non-commercial radio like WFUV-FM, NYC online at http://www.wfuv.org/ That's where the original FM disc jockeys are now, people like: Vin Scelsa, Pete Fornatale, Dennis Elsas. It's like a little WNEW reunion, and they have John Platt too, who was big in Chicago. Here's a blast from the past for those in the NYC area: http://www.billdulmage.com/skeds/others/wnew-fm.html If you can stand Jonathan Schwartz, he's on WNYC on the weekend and also on XM Satellite radio - which I've never investigated. His show is more jazz/standards with some folk/singer-songwriter thrown in. Some people think satellite radio is the answer, but I suspect it's just a marginal improvement that will quickly deteriorate the same way that cable TV improved on antenna TV for a while before we started to get commercials and bottom-of-the-screen logos and previews. For the REAL blast from the past, you can listen to some of the djs only (music cut out): http://airchexx.com/ and other similar sites. I just listened to a little snippet of Dennis Elsas from 1978 - amazingly, back-introducing Boston! No fewer than three tunes!!!! (Including some non-overplayed ones - this is when they were new) Plus the concert calendar announced Weather Report, Ahmad Jamal, Michal Urbaniak, Larry Coryell, Anthony Braxton, Dave Brubeck, Chet Baker, alongside Talking Heads, Blondie, Janis Ian, etc. The name of Anthony Braxton has been mentioned how many times on commercial radio in the past 25 years? Boy, even 1979 is miles away from what classic rock radio sounds like now. And here's some recommended reading: http://archives.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/books/02/07/fm.neer/ Mike

No idea as to how many get sold nowadays, but I know that an archive like Rutgers IJS has them all when I need them. The New Hampshire Library of Traditional Jazz is another place, Univ. of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign, Bowling Green, etc. WorldCat tells me there are libraries in 16 US states that include The Record Changer in their collections (can't tell completeness). For you, Jim, I'll tell you to get thee to the University of Texas at Austin, where the Ross Russell archives contains a "complete or nearly complete" run. A little websearching showed me that a set of 102 issues was being offered at $500 total minimum bid and minimum bid was $5/issue - now that's a reasonable price. I mean, this is a little magazine - sometimes it was ONLY auction information. It is an important source - but if 102 can start at $5/each (and it's true, I don't know where that auction ended), starting 118 at $20/each is ridiculous. FWIW, you can get the complete cartoons that Gene Deitch did for The Record Changer in a book (only $40). http://www.fantagraphics.com/artist/genedeitch/thecat.html BTW, I find it very offensive to call someone a "chump" just because he overpaid. We've all done it - you live and learn. Mike

J. Greg Phelan - doesn't ring a bell with me. Typically the NJ section has its own group of writers who get stuff in there but not the "regular" NYT. Now on the website: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/nyregion/22njJAZZ.html Unfortunately only two phohtos there - typical Miles and a modern-day RVG. The paper has Max, Benson, Dexter, Coltrane, and Herbie in addition. =========================================== May 22, 2005 He Helped Put the Blue in Blue Note By J. GREG PHELAN ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS It is one of the cathedrals of jazz, Rudy Van Gelder's studio here, a sacred acoustic space where some of the music's giants and near giants have done their finest work: Sonny Rollins and Horace Silver, Art Blakey and Herbie Hancock, Antonio Carlos Jobim and George Benson and hundreds of others. "I try not to think about who else has recorded there," Wayne Escoffery, the tenor saxophonist in Ben Riley's Monk Legacy Septet, said after a recent session. "But there was one time, I was recording 'Dedicated to You' with Gloria Cooper, and I started thinking about John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman recording that song at Rudy's. I felt like Coltrane was watching over me as I played my solo, and it was a little intimidating." The studio even feels like a rustic chapel, its 39-foot-high cedar ceiling held up by arches of laminated Douglas fir. The space is as timeless and pristine as the music that has been captured here by Mr. Van Gelder, whom many jazz fans consider the greatest recording engineer ever. He opened it in 1959, after spending most of the 1950's recording people like Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley in his parents' living room in Hackensack and refining the sound of recorded jazz working with Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records and other producers. But Mr. Van Gelder isn't inclined to look backward. He has not succumbed to the deification of fans, and his workplace is not yet ready to become a mere shrine. Mr. Van Gelder, who declined to give his age, still excels at his trade and makes sure that his studio remains world class. Despite his considerable reputation in the jazz world, Mr. Van Gelder deflects any credit for the sounds he has recorded over the decades. He says that praise should go to the musicians, and to the producers who hire and direct them. "I'm an engineer, not a producer," he said with characteristic precision during a recent interview in his studio here. "I'm the person who makes the recording process work. I built the studio, I created the environment in which they play, I selected, installed and operate the equipment. An analogy might be, someone wanted to put a man on the moon, but it was an engineer who got him there. "My goal is to make the musicians sound the way they want to be heard." He has certainly done that. And it's a legacy that Blue Note is preserving. The company has established "The Rudy Van Gelder Series," which consists of more than 200 classic Blue Note albums remastered by him. And Blue Note recently released "Blue Note Perfect Takes," a collection of essential tracks that Mr. Van Gelder picked for their sonic and musical excellence; the collection also includes an interview with him on DVD. Since he began working professionally in the early 1950's, Mr. Van Gelder has recorded, mixed and mastered more than 2,100 albums, according to the All Music Guide to Jazz (there are 67 releases listed for Coltrane alone). Besides Blue Note, other major labels he has worked for include Prestige, Savoy, Verve, Impulse and CTI. Don Sickler, the producer and trumpet player for Ben Riley's Monk Legacy Septet, has worked with Mr. Van Gelder since the 1970's. He said that he believes an essential ingredient in Mr. Van Gelder's success is his ability to seize on the individual sound of each player in his studio: "Freddie Hubbard said it, and I'll say it, too. When you record at Rudy's, you get your sound, not a quote unquote trumpet sound." To Mr. Escoffery, a lot of that has to do with Mr. Van Gelder's deep musical knowledge, which spans most of the 20th century. "Rudy knows where I'm coming from based on his long experience with tenor saxophones," he said. "He's recorded most of the major innovators of the tenor, if not all of them." With his extraordinary ear and problem-solving ability, Mr. Van Gelder has spent five decades pioneering the use of technology to capture the wide range of jazz instruments, from the delicate tone of Miles Davis's mute trumpet to the hard attack of Jimmy Smith's Hammond organ. From the early days, when he had to build all his own equipment, to the advent of digital recording, he has embraced any technical advance that helps him achieve the best sound possible. One recent example is a 2004 SurroundSound recording he did for the bassist Buster Williams called "Griot Liberté." And when he's resurrecting some of his old work, he uses a vast array of analog equipment to carry the recordings into the digital age. For just one set of CD's in "The Van Gelder Series," he used turntables, cartridges and electronics designed for recordings of that time to transfer the originals from 16-inch lacquer master disks to digital media. But it's not always easy to maintain equipment that is no longer supported by defunct companies. When a reel-to-reel master recorder that Mr. Van Gelder uses for playback failed a few months ago, he had to call on a friend who is an aerospace engineer. "Watching how his mind worked was a beautiful thing to see," he said. "There were two of us in the control room. He tuned me out and started leafing through the two-and-a-half-inch-thick manual, talking softly to himself, analyzing the schematics, page after page, and finally isolated the problem as a shorted diode. Keeping analog equipment working is becoming a very shaky thing." Mr. Van Gelder clearly meets the ongoing challenge to not only remain modern, but also to maintain a constant state of readiness to capture the spontaneity of a performance, a spontaneity that is essential to jazz. When Ben Riley's septet played a sample of the next song for him, he quickly rechecked the recording levels, careful not to let them rehearse too long. "It sounds great, don't waste it," he declared, providing another track number before he captured the band's performance of Thelonious Monk's "Epistrophy." After each take, the producer, Mr. Sickler, relied on Mr. Van Gelder to swiftly play back specific sections of the performance so the septet could make any necessary adjustments: "to fix the note coming into the bridge" or "punch up the horns on the last three bars," providing ample evidence of what Mr. Van Gelder describes as his ability to understand what the musicians are trying to do in real time. The recording isn't finished when the session is complete: working with the producer, the tracks must be sequenced, and levels and other parameters adjusted to achieve the final mix and perform the mastering. Unlike most recordings made today, in which different engineering tasks are farmed out to different people, Mr. Van Gelder performs every stage himself. "I don't do a session without the understanding that I will do all the steps, the original recording, the mixing and the mastering," he said. "To have each of those steps done by different people, sometimes dozens, in my opinion - and this applies only to acoustic jazz - imposes an impenetrable wall between the musicians and the final result." Sitting behind the console at the session, Mr. Van Gelder may not wear the white gloves that at least one mistaken critic claimed, but he clearly is a perfectionist. Even so, there is also evidence of the pleasure of an eminently competent man doing exactly what he wants to do. After the third and best take of "Epistrophy," the musicians directed their satisfied glances toward the control room, only to hear the most famous recording engineer in jazz history ask dryly, "Are you ready to record it now?" ===================================== Mike