colinmce

I actually enjoyed that book when I read it, although I certainly didn't take the parts on avant garde and more recent jazz very seriously. I keep it around because it does a good job untangling the MCA/RCA/Bluebird/etc reissue scene of the 80s and 90s, but his tone re: free jazz is total bullshit. He dismisses Cecil Taylor with such confidence. To so fully conflate one's taste with the objective truth is delusion on a grand scale. There's a book about Miles Davis and Coltrane that is so doltish I can't believe it was published. The author repeatedly refers to MD as "The Chief" and insists that he was widely known by this nickname. I have literally never seen or heard that anywhere else but you'd think it was Pres or Pops the way they lay it on. Bizarre. I also think the Richard Cook Blue Note book is largely a waste of time. I once read a long book about free jazz by an author whose name I forgot that was so bombastically anti-white that it could only have been written by a white man, if you know what I mean. Cranky and pointless.

In the context of the film, marvelous. On its own I think it'd be a bore.

I can't explain how much Levine's poems have meant to me over the years. He was one of the great American artists. He was also a prodigious lover of jazz. Here is one I especially like: Call It Music by Philip Levine Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song in my own breath. I'm alone here in Brooklyn Heights, late morning, the sky above the St. George Hotel clear, clear for New York, that is. The radio playing "Bird Flight," Parker in his California tragic voice fifty years ago, his faltering "Lover Man" just before he crashed into chaos. I would guess that outside the recording studio in Burbank the sun was high above the jacarandas, it was late March, the worst of yesterday's rain had come and gone, the sky washed blue. Bird could have seen for miles if he'd looked, but what he saw was so foreign he clenched his eyes, shook his head, and barked like a dog—just once— and then Howard McGhee took his arm and assured him he'd be OK. I know this because Howard told me years later that he thought Bird could lie down in the hotel room they shared, sleep for an hour or more, and waken as himself. The perfect sunlight angles into my little room above Willow Street. I listen to my breath come and go and try to catch its curious taste, part milk, part iron, part blood, as it passes from me into the world. This is not me, this is automatic, this entering and exiting, my body's essential occupation without which I am a thing. The whole process has a name, a word I don't know, an elegant word not in English or Yiddish or Spanish, a word that means nothing to me. Howard truly believed what he said that day when he steered Parker into a cab and drove the silent miles beside him while the bright world unfurled around them: filling stations, stands of fruits and vegetables, a kiosk selling trinkets from Mexico and the Philippines. It was all so actual and Western, it was a new creation coming into being, like the music of Charlie Parker someone later called "glad," though that day I would have said silent, "the silent music of Charlie Parker." Howard said nothing. He paid the driver and helped Bird up two flights to their room, got his boots off, and went out to let him sleep as the afternoon entered the history of darkness. I'm not judging Howard, he did better than I could have now or then. Then I was 19, working on the loading docks at Railway Express, coming day by day into the damaged body of a man while I sang into the filthy air the Yiddish drinking songs my Zadie taught me before his breath failed. Now Howard is gone, eleven long years gone, the sweet voice silenced. "The subtle bridge between Eldridge and Navarro," they later wrote, all that rising passion a footnote to others. I remember in '85 walking the halls of Cass Tech, the high school where he taught after his performing days, when suddenly he took my left hand in his two hands to tell me it all worked out for the best. Maybe he'd gotten religion, maybe he knew how little time was left, maybe that day he was just worn down by my questions about Parker. To him Bird was truly Charlie Parker, a man, a silent note going out forever on the breath of genius which now I hear soaring above my own breath as this bright morning fades into afternoon. Music, I'll call it music. It's what we need as the sun staggers behind the low gray clouds blowing relentlessly in from that nameless ocean, the calm and endless one I've still to cross.

But oh god do read Dan Morgenstern on Collier.

Fujiwara runs hot & cold for me, sometimes too polished and polite, but when everything clicks he's got a touch that's unmatched. His playing on Mississippi Moonchile is simply transcendent.

Also the convo about 70s Tyner reminded me I have yet to investigate this period so I started with the Mosaic Select, found at an impressively affordable price. Can't believe almost all of these are OOP now.

Maneri binge at DG: Trio Concerts Blessed Trinity Lift & Poise Tenderly Transylvanian Concert Joe Morris Quartet - Underthru

The Steins are worth your while. Three Less... is probably the stronger if you're getting just one.

I used to have this one. I thought the conceit of doing Monk with a trad-like lineup was smart and the record was not bad.

I saw some clips of that group. Kind of laced up, not really too interesting. She's much more impressive in freer contexts.

no clue - the Die Like a Dog set is actually on Jazzwerkstatt - but that kora disc looks absolutely sick. Yeah, that link is wonky. If you search FMP > CDs > Coming Soon you'll see the 10 in question.

FWIW I think Dusty Groove has an inside line with WXU. Their early Hat Hut announcements have always come through.

Yep. I've often been curious about the Liebman/Eskelin/Marino/Black group. Any one particularly better than the others?

I do. It seems the only hatOLOGY titles I'm still after are now all OOP.

Frode Gjerstad Trio + Steve Swell - At Constellation is out a mere 2.5 months after recording (a new land speed record?) Also some nice lookers from Relative Pitch: Joe Morris Solo "Title TBD" Birgit Ulher/Leonel Kaplan "Stereo Trumpet" (Release Date February 17th) Nate Wooley "Battle Pieces" Susan Alcorn "Soledad" (Release Date April 7th) Matthew Shipp Chamber Ensemble "The Gospel According To Matthew & Michael" (Release Date April 7th) Mette Rasmussen and Chris Corsano Duo "Title TBD" Matana Roberts Solo "always." (Release Date May 18th) Most excited about the Rasmussen/Corsano duo. Mette is the shit:

In a confusing turn of events, it appears the last 10 CD titles issued by FMP will be (re?)released in the US on February 24. Dusty Groove also lists some of these as Coming Soon. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_n_date_2?fst=as%3Aoff&rh=n%3A5174%2Ck%3Afmp%2Cp_n_date%3A1249114011&keywords=fmp&ie=UTF8&qid=1423609975&rnid=1249111011 Anyone know what's up here?

Squidco is having a Hat sale: buy 3 titles and get 50% off. I still need the two Aylers but am not turning up a third option.... As per DG, looks like the next releases are Cecil Taylor - Garden Pt. 1, Ellery Eskelin - Solo Live at Snugs, and ..... Braxton's Santa Cruz. They do not denote 'Vol. 1' on the latter so I"m assuming this will be the full 2CD set. They also list Steve Lacy - Shots for April.

Damn, sounds nice!!

I really like this record. Me too. Probably haven't spun this or Baklava in almost 10 years.

I love John Surman in all his varied incarnations (and there are many) I'd recommend grabbing the tremendous :rarum compilation from ECM and unfurling the albums from there. I mentioned in another recent thread how much I like his solo work from the 80s, though it may come across as dated to some.

We have a link!!

Also, Matos is a great guitarist. I would be interested to hear him in that setting, having only ever heard him with Sara Serpa. Should be a good one.

Matchbox looks like a kicker. I thought Nate McBride had hung it up, but apparently not. Good to see.

Still working on getting one up but should be there tomorrow. Sorry for the delay, this is much harder than it was last time I did it ...

Great!! Can't wait to finally hear it and stop scoping out DIW CDs.