David Ayers

Hm. If it takes 20/40 years to 'get' how comes it was a (kind of) hit? If it normally got slated I'd be saying no no wait it's good, but... [controversy]In part I find Miles a fairly cynical musician who is selling art music, rather than someone practicing art and on whom we are privileged to eavesdrop.[/controversy] There again, Get Up With It, which was slated, I'd majorly defend for He Loved Him Madly and, I guess, for Calypso Frelimo. For whatever reason I find it more authentic than BB - maybe just more pared down and less obviously aspirational.

Newbury are serious and reliable, holiday post is slow and maybe unreliable. I'd keep faith in Newbury, if it were me.

Good Feng Shui.

On another tack, I know this music from the Sony set which has about 100 tracks, so is a fair representation and maybe shows up the quality even better than the Mosaic by being selective. There is some wonderful music here. I am guessing this is the most important of Ellington outside the early 40s though I don't know my Ellington too well so need some input on that. It does strike me that this is likely the most important Mosaic collection of those now in print, because of the importance of the music and maybe regardless of the sound issues. There are other great artists in the current Mosaic list (Armstrong, Reinhardt, Goodman, Gillespie etc) but except in the case of Django none of these sets seem to document the most important work of that artist. What do you think - is this set now the number one Mosaic priority as well as the number one Ellington priority now that the RCA set is no more? I'm interested in opinions.

I'm amused that the poll-of-polls from Voice includes no fewer than FIFTY best CDs of the year plus historic/vocal/latin for a total 75. Except for 'critics' who get endless freebies I wonder who listens to all this stuff. I've heard maybe 10% of it. The length of the list and its format in which exact votes are recorded, hanging chads and all, reflects the vanity of the 'critics' much more than any desire to explain to a public what is a real priority and why. As Bev says most of this stuff is just rehashes of the already familiar. FIFTY records of the year? Why not a HUNDRED? Why not a THOUSAND? How many new records even WERE there? Where would you find them? Who on earth is buying them? Why not just list ALL the releases for the year and have done with it?

Has anyone compared the sound with the Sony Original Masters set?

My copy of 12080 arrived yesterday. It is rather good - so thanks! I couldn't quite believe that this to me new but in fact 2006 release was OOP - in my mind it had just been issued and I was about to snap it up. How time flies.

I now notice that ECM has pulled its titles from Spotify. There are a dozen left they probably missed. Universal classics are still there. I don't use a paid subscription so maybe the stuff is there if you pay, but I wouldn't feel too sure about that. ECM went through a phase of making longer tracks on some CDs unavailable for streaming. Seems that didn't get the results they wanted so they pulled. Hm.

Those LPs are quite easy to find, in fact. A lot of them were cutouts! There are some good efforts on Enja CD as well. I disliked the funk ones mentioned. Maybe Light Blue deserves another lease of life: Lenox Avenue Breakdown had it but vanished as quickly as the original LP.

You could remove the image and caption from this site and post it on your own blog, maybe?

I don't know - but, uh, welcome to the board...

Has anyone issued a poll-of-polls absolute overall top ten yet? I don't read the jazz press but a quick look round the websites just found every individual reviewer listing a top ten - too much information!

Time to start an "album covers featuring a (fun) house" thread?

OK sorry - I'll withdraw all that and get my o-board head on. "Man I hope Mosaic do a Select of the unissued material from that recording session!" "That's definitely better than anything on ECM with all its rubbish releases by Roscoe Mitchell, Evan Parker and Paul Motian." "I'll be buying it at full price just to support the label." "Whose house is that??!!" OK I'm going to watch TV now. More enthusiasm later.

Oh so THAT'S fun. I often wondered. My analysis? Yet another vanity project destined for the cut-out bin.

Dull stuff. It's hard to see why they bothered.

We were assuming this was live trio music - were we on the wrong tack or did Scott mis-type, I wonder?

Late cheer from me too!

Did he tell you anything about what it would contain?

It will. He's added a vocal - just his own low rumblings and glottal grumblings recording in the ad breaks during Mad Men. Sounds a bit like surface noise, or some accidental telluric residue captured by a malfunctioning meteorological instrument, but if you listen you start to hear individual words in a language you don't quite know, and perhaps afterwards dream in shapes that resemble gigantic, broken fragments of the dying call of Cthulu. It's subtle and probably won't show up on non-audiophile systems. Invest in quality cable. okey dokey! answered in less than the time it took me to compose yet another fatuous post!

While I think of it, can you tell me which version, or which parts of which version of Quartet are included on the LP (which I never owned)? I could never figure this out from the notes.

Turns out these are on spotify - so here I go! Well, I say "these" - the Cohn is there anyway... good stuff

FoB posts the case for the defence! I'm going to take a look...

Well I can't get *too* thrilled about yet another jazz reissue series but there are some interesting titles and the price is right. Aren't these already in print from Timless and why do they come out now from Challenge? Maybe in due time they'll do some titles that never made it to CD. Like Marion Brown La Placita. Though that's not much cop actually. And anway, they won't will they? This is just a straight repackage job, I think.

Thanks for posting that. I knew about the VAT isue of course but that article is helpfully detailed.