Michael Fitzgerald

That's a good question and one that I have pondered many times. I still don't have a perfect answer for it. Judging by my collection one might think my answer is "do both!" Then there's that finite amount of listening time in one's lifetime.... Anyway, for me, Keith Jarrett is another "buy-sight-unseen" like Maria Schneider. I mean, he's putting out a record a year, he's not doing sideman appearances, he's not oversaturating the market like whoever - David Murray or Lee Konitz, say. Mike

As the group with perhaps the finest sense of musical interaction and the highest standards of execution currently playing, this trio has very few peers. I have every release, go to see them live each tour, and for me, another CD by them is always welcome. So many other groups hit a peak and then decline, or else they disband prematurely, leaving us to wonder "what if?" The Jarrett trio is *still* playing at that very high level and as mentioned, they *have* been exploring other things - remember, this is the group that started off playing "standards". Then we got some free stuff, we got some bebop and hard bop, we got some originals - how much more do you want? Besides, it was not long ago that there was the very real possibility of NO further recordings or performances by Keith Jarrett. As for the varied settings, this is what it is - you can't complain about steak not tasting like lobster. Would I buy a new CD of say, Jarrett reunited with Jan Garbarek? Absolutely. But this is a trio record and I look forward to hearing it. Mike

Kind of a drag - too much new blood. I always liked the fact that the band had some real history in its earlier incarnations - people like Motian and Dewey who had been there forever and were on all the studio records (if not all the gigs). Don Cherry and Mike Mantler were there for the first two records. I have been less impressed with things like the video from Montreal 1992 which has Robin Eubanks, Javon Jackson, James Williams, Bill Stewart, Tim Hagans, Ryan Kisor. Too many notes, not enough feeling, not enough personality for me. But with folks like Cherry, Jim Pepper, Ken McIntyre gone - I guess there have to be changes. (Can Curtis Fowlkes do the Roswell/Valente/Ray-bone blasting? Robin Eubanks certainly couldn't or wouldn't - or just didn't. And I think that sound is really a part of the ensemble's palette.) Sharon Freeman has been there since the second record (1982) and Joe Daley has been there since the third record (1990). But they aren't really significant soloists. Carla, of course, is the one who gives the band its identity, no matter who the players. In the end, I'd like to hear this group. Mike

Yes, a nice record. There are other albums on this label (Riley is 105) - 102: Bill Barron: Higher Ground (with Kenny and Eddie Henderson) - 103: Sumi Tonooka: Secret Places. I have never seen #101 or #104 - anyone know if they exist? Mike

How someone tunes the strings can't possibly change *what* an instrument is. Just because Red Mitchell or Glenn Moore tuned their basses differently than the traditional EADG doesn't make those *not* basses. Scordatura (alternate tuning) is used by guitarists all the time. It was more common in olden days for bowed strings, but is still called for sometimes. So, anyway, this *is* a cello, regardless of what Percy likes to call it. It is a specific model designed by Ray Brown (replacing the tuning pegs with machine tuners) and built by the Kay company. See below. Mike

Billy Brooks was playing drums with Eddie Harris in Chicago - late summer 1964 is the date I have pinned on the account. The club was the West End in the south shore section (71st and Stony Island) and the band also had Bill Fielder (t), ? Watson (tb), Jodie Christian (p), Melvin Jackson (b), Bucky Taylor (d) - the drummer depended on the repertoire. The gig lasted 2 or 3 weeks. Billy Brooks was 17 or 18 at the time. His move to Europe helped him avoid the Vietnam War draft. Mike I'm revising the date - a bit later to include the period including October 21 and 24, based on the fact that Coltrane was at the Plugged Nickel and Blakey was at McKie's at the same time. Jimmy Garrison and Lee Morgan got busted together during this gig. Apparently the charges didn't stick.

Here's the entry from Bruyninckx: BILLY BROOKS -Windows of the mind- : Bob Comden, Mike Artega, Al Gottlieb (tp) Michael J. Conlon (cnt) Billy Brooks (skoonum hrn,electronics) Britt B. Woodman, Mihran Vartan, Al Hall Jr., Ray Jackson, Buster Cooper (tb) Ken Sawhill (b-tb) Lonnie Shetter (as,fl) John Steven, Tom R. Vigil (as) Herman Riley, Tom Vigil, Wilbur Brown, Clifford Solomon (ts) Bill Carter (bar) Jeff Lee, Calvin Keyes (g) Larry Gales (b) Clarence Johnston (d) Benny Powell (tb) replaces Woodman on (1) Los Angeles, 1974 Rockin Julius Crossover CR9003 Cooling it - The jagged edge - The speech maker - Black flag - Good news blues - Shetter cheeze - C.P. time (1) - Fourty days - http://www.vinyl.com/product_id/LPCROS9003 Apparently Forty Days was sampled and used in some rap things. Mike

That's the trumpet player. Mike

The Lord discography shows this entry: Eye of the hurricane [H1349-4] Herbie Hancock Live under the sky: The V.S.O.P. Quintet: Freddie Hubbard (tp,flhrn) Wayne Shorter (sop,ts) Herbie Hancock (p) Ron Carter (b) Tony Williams (d) Concert "Den-En Colosseum", Tokyo, Japan, July 26, 1979 One of another kind CBS/Sony (Jap)40AP1037/8, SME (Jap)SRCS5823/4 [CD] Teardrop - - Pee Wee - - Para oriente - - Fragile - - Domo - - (Medley - - Stella by starlight - - On Green Dolphin Street - - Eye of the hurricane - Note: All titles on CBS/Sony (Jap)40AP1037/8 also on CBS/Sony (Jap)40DP5610/1 [CD]. The formatting is lost - what this says is that Eye of the Hurricane first came out on the CD issue. So, I'm confused. It looks to me that the SECOND disc is the Live Under The Sky album since the medley appears there. Or have they left off the original medley and replaced it with a previously unissued medley - I hate when labels do that. There are no other previously issued VSOP albums that include Para Oriente or Domo, and the other VSOP Japan-only albums don't match that setlist. Mike

This is the guy who I proposed as the drummer in that Weather Report story on another thread. BTW, a different Billy Brooks was a trumpeter (in the Lionel Hampton band c. 1954 among other things). His real name was Julius. No family connection, I think, although both worked with Slide Hampton. Lord discography confuses the two. http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/02/0...therobit01.html Mike

The small bass is actually a cello. It's not in the same family - the rounded rather than sloped connection to the neck is the giveaway. Viols (like the bass) are actually the predecessors of the violin family (violin, viola, violoncello). Mike This photo I took at the former Potting Shed at Music Inn in Lenox, Mass. lets you see the difference.

i | i | i | i | iv | iv | i | i | iiø | V7 | i | V7 Mike

For you, the CD is $22 and the shipping is $1.90 - happy now? This is a 10,000 item limited edition. Since there are no alternatives for purchase, you either pay the money - all of it - without worrying about the breakdown (and seems like those who have paid are very happy with both the quality of the music and the speedy delivery) or you don't get to enjoy it. And I'd say that would be your loss, particularly as you're a fan of her other stuff. Mike

Yeah - and just imagine folks who last attended 10 years ago coming back now - the exits on 287 have actually been re-numbered! Mike

It's pretty easy if you can just follow the numbers - the Holiday Inn is on Rt. 529 (which has many different names, but remember 529). It's quite close to I-287. 529 intersects US-1 in Edison, so you *could* take 1 to 529 and then arrive, just before hitting 287. But 287 is probably easier. Mike

No, Marshall never recorded with Morgan. You might be thinking of Wilbur Ware or perhaps remembering the composer Owen Marshall, both of whom contribute to the first BN Lee Morgan session. Mike

Doug Ramsey is writing one now. Mike

Why? Workshop Jazz was a Motown subsidiary. Mike

Oh, you mean that feeling you get that one hand doesn't know what the other is doing? Like when the review complains that there isn't a CD issue of something and the discography section lists a CD? Or when the discography section has absolutely no personnel, and the review mentions the players by name? Nobody is minding the store. Glad we have a flashy new site - still no substance. Mike

Yawn - oh why bother? Yanow and a bunch of the other people writing for the dreaded allmusic site are basically clueless, simply regurgitating cliches (and hammering them into the reader's head by sheer repetition) and received wisdom. Besides - if you like a record and give it five stars, does it really matter whether someone else gives it three? Do you need validation for your opinion? These writers have little or nothing to go on when they make their pronouncements and yet (apparently) people are taking them seriously, simply because they're on a (buggy, error-ridden, incomplete) website. What bothers me is that one writer (Ron Wynn) pegs Steve Kuhn as having a "derivative style" - then does nothing to identify of WHOM or WHAT it is derivative. I can almost take Yanow's received wisdom about how Don Friedman started off as a Bill Evans clone [not true, of course, but oft said], but Kuhn? On the other hand, a different writer (Thom Jurek) tells us that "Kuhn's style is signature" and a third (Ken Dryden) tells us, "Predictable is not an adjective associated with the recordings of pianist Steve Kuhn." So, derivative yes, predictable no? Obviously this guy Wynn was out of his tree. And out of his depth. I've frequently ranted about the problems in the basic discographical data, but the written reviews are just as bad. Errors of basic factual history are there too - we are told that Kuhn's The October Suite is "an anomaly in the Impulse catalog of the time in that it did not pursue the free jazz realms with the vengeance that most of the label's other acts did during that year" - which makes 1966 Impulse records by Benny Carter, Chico Hamilton, Hank Jones, Oliver Nelson, Clark Terry & Chico O'Farrill, Sonny Rollins, Shirley Scott, Stanley Turrentine, Pee Wee Russell & Red Allen, Earl Hines & Johnny Hodges, Gary McFarland, Zoot Sims, and Gabor Szabo - all just "anomalies" - if they're anomalies what is the "norm" - John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Roswell Rudd, apparently. Most acts. That's what Thom Jurek wrote. Not the most prominent acts, not acts most stereotypically associated with the Impulse name. And speaking of stereotypes: "An interesting set of inside/outside music with a bit more energy than the more stereotypical ECM set" - Scott Yanow on Kuhn's Non-Fiction "In a blindfold test it would be easy to identify pianist Steve Kuhn's CD as a stereotypical ECM recording" - Scott Yanow on Kuhn's Remembering Tomorrow "very much in the stereotypical ECM mold" - Scott Yanow on David Darling's Cycles "in general this is a stereotypical ECM date" - Scott Yanow on Miroslav Vitous's Atmos There's the sheer repetition of cliches I mentioned. Way to enforce the idea of a stereotype. I could go on, but the damn site is so slow that doing any kind of searching just elevates my blood pressure - and that's *before* I have to read the nonsense reviews! Mike

The Romances album is not live. All selections were recorded at Criteria Studios in Miami. Unfortunately discographical details are not extensive - no dates, no individual personnel (everything except the Three Romances comes from "archived files spanning the decade of the '90s"). Completely disagree about experiencing Maria Schneider music in small doses. In fact, I feel quite the opposite: I need to listen to nothing but that stuff for several days. Mike

Why the hanging judge can't keep his hands to himself Crouching Stanley, Hidden Gangsta by Ta-Nehisi Coates July 24th, 2004 12:00 PM I reserve the right to be a nigger. —Aaron McGruder Stanley Crouch is a gangsta rapper. Throughout his career, Crouch has moved through black nationalism, bohemia, and places we haven't yet developed the vocab to name. But if there's one thing we've gleaned from Crouch's recent assault on novelist and critic Dale Peck, it is this—we have found Crouch's muse, and his name is Suge Knight. The backstory is simple, and for Crouch routine. On July 12, out for lunch at Tartine in the West Village, Crouch spotted Peck, who'd trashed his book Don't the Moon Look Lonesome a few years back. After greeting Peck with one hand, Crouch smacked him with the other. "What I would actually have preferred to happen," says Crouch, "was that I had the presence of mind to hawk up a huge oyster and spit it in his face." Crouch claims he recieved several calls thanking him for the act, which wouldn't be a surprise given that Peck made his name by penning extended negative and, often personal, reviews of other fiction writers. This was not a moment of hot-headed indiscretion. Crouch may use his perch at the Daily News to inveigh against gangsta rap with all deliberate fury and alarm ("Hip Hop's Thugs Hit New Low," "Hip Hop Gets The Bruising It Deserves," or "Morally, Allen Iverson's a Bad Guy"), but his habit of violent exchanges with writers and editors puts him a notch above Snoop on the ne'er-do-well scale. In most cases gangsta rap is just talk—Biggie and Tupac are the exceptions. But while Crouch has yet to peel caps, the gangsta ethos is realer for him than it is for your average gun-talker. "The thing is that Stanley will get gangsta on you," says Nelson George, who worked with Crouch here at the Voice, in the 1980s. "There is nothing more gangsta than just walking up and pimp-slapping someone. Not even punching them, just slapping them, almost as a sign of disrespect." It's almost unfair to accuse Crouch of taking a page from, say, Masta Killa—Crouch was smacking critics when hip-hop was still laceless shelltops and battle raps. Along with being one of the great essayists of his generation, Crouch has always been a man who took Ishmael Reed's Writin' Is Fightin' a little too seriously. During his colorful tenure at this paper, Crouch repeatedly threatened editors and menaced fellow writers. By the time Crouch left, he'd sealed his rep as an iconoclastic curmudgeon and a critic without peer. His litany of incidents usually began with debates over some bit of jazz arcana and ultimately ended in fisticuffs. "Stanley deserves better than his own temper" says jazz writer Peter Watrous, who also worked here with Crouch. "There are two things that happen at the same time—one of them is that Stanley is a utopian. He strongly believes people should behave in certain way. That combines with an inability to control his own temper, and it makes for a bullying streak." There was the time Crouch was arguing with jazz writer Russ Musto and told him that if he were a foot taller he'd knock his block off. Musto kept arguing, since he knew he wasn't growing any. Crouch went back on his word, and swung at him anyway. After the two men were separated, Crouch calmed down and offered to buy Musto a drink. Musto says they're friends to this day. Then there's what happened to Guy Trebay, whom Crouch stalked through the Voice's old offices threatening to kill him, relenting only after writer Hilton Als intervened. Another time, writer Harry Allen approached Crouch, hoping to exchange some notes on hip-hop. Instead Crouch, evidently in a bad mood, caught Allen's neck in the cobra clutch, prompting the Voice to give Crouch his walking papers. By then the Hanging Judge had secured his rep as king of the literal literary brawlers—an accolade that ranks right up there with prettiest journalist. Really now, administering beat-downs to pencil-necked critics is about as macho as spousal abuse, croquet—or gangsta rap. Much like the acts he derides, Crouch has a taste for swinging that is nothing short of a variation on the "I ain't no punk" theme seemingly encoded on the DNA of all black males. "I have a kind of Mailer-esque reaction to the way some people view writers," Crouch once told The New Yorker. "I want them to know that just because I write doesn't mean I can't also fight." Put another way, Crouch wants you know he keeps it gangsta. "People perceive writers as being soft and not assertive. And there is a legacy of writers, going back to Hemingway, asserting their masculinity in an overt way," says George. "Maybe it gives Stanley personal satisfaction, but I don't think it's necessary. This is something you'd expect from a rapper in The Source's office because they got three mics in a review." Crouch's street mojo also adds another layer of mystique, particularly for his white fans. His brand of withering attacks against black nationalism and the black left would normally open the assailant to essentialist charges about his "blackness." But to the frustration of his targets, Crouch is the real deal for the Tina Brown set. From his jazz criticism, to his folksy Southern lilt, down to his willingness invoke the ghost of Joe Louis, Crouch always manages to sound like his ghetto pass is at the ready. Even if in his writing Crouch derides the ethics of the street, his actions close the distance between him and the gangsta rappers he abhors, making cartoons of them all. Both could live without the electric slide, whop, or moonwalk. Both could give up the cross-over and dunk. But never let it be said that he who purports to be a black male gives up the beast. That it's all an act, and he really won't kick your ass. That in the middle of politicking over Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and tea, he won't go David Banner, upturn your table of crumpets and coffee-cake, grab you by the collar, drag you out into the darkest alley, and show you that, yes, what you have heard is true. That he will not swing through on his dick and snatch your Jane on a vine like Tarzan. Never let it be said that Jim Brown was not the essence of him. Never let it be said that he—whether Crip or Crouch—failed to be a nigga. http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0430/coates.php =============== Mike

Yes, January 17, 1949 in a radio jam session with Buddy DeFranco, Lucky Thompson, Charlie Ventura, Kai Winding, Al Haig, Oscar Pettiford, and Shelly Manne. Issued on Royal Jazz. Mike

Well, then your opinion of said Rollins recordings is hardly worth mentioning and certainly not worth listening to. Mike

The two performances of Epistrophy are just "theme" statements (0:55 and 1:24), the kind of thing that frequently gets left off listings. Mike