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Chick Corea´s RTF was very very popular when I was at high school, but I think among all those, who loved the then en vogue jazz-rock/electric jazz, the fans of RTF were a certain group. Most of my school-buddies were more into Hancocks "Headhunters", the Billy Cobham-George Duke stuff and sure....the Miles bands were he played mostly the trumpet connected with the "wah wah pedal". But one guy, his nick was Bimbo, who was a more quiet and sensitive guy, got me into RTF also, so I picked up the then recent albums "Where have I known you before" and "Romantic Warrior". Maybe I was not as enthusiastic about it like Bimbo, who stated that this music "changed his life". Well, I was not a super wise kid, but at least I thought "what can change my life if it just has started ? So let it run how it is". We had several discussions.......what kept us together was the love for the music, since he listened to other kinds of jazz as well, but when he started about more philosofical stuff about how to change your life and how the world can become a better world ....., well I think I was or still am too hedonistic for those thoughts...., I love to work, I love my family, I love my hobbies, that´s all. It also was the same thing with girls: Bimbo was nice looking, he had a slight similarity with John Travolta, so some girls might scream over him, but his "mistake" was that if he fell in love with a girl or thought he felt in love with her, he idolized her too much and wanted to convince here that "together we will make this world a better world and will work hard to become ideal human beings or stuff in that direction..... Many girls soon got tired of that, they wanted fun and what ever else...., or got scared or unsure because of those ideals... I told Bimbo "hey why not just f..... them girls, why all those heavy and deep thoughts.....? Well, at least we kept in touch, listened to records and visited each other. About 30 years ago I lost contact, I had an increasing demandig job, a side job, a house and a family....and I don´t know in what direction he went further... When my wife bought for me this fine album with Jean Luc Ponty added (she said "I don´t know what it is, but I liked the cover photo"), I was overwhelmed, that´s just a fantastic live album with some of the stuff from "Romantic Warrior" and "Where have I known you before" ) I remembered Bimbo, the strange guy from high school and searched him on google, but without succes. He seems to have disappeared. The combination with Jean Luc Ponty is really an ideal one, and Ponty´s own composition "Renaissance" is one of the highlights of that fantastic album. As well as Frank Gambale replacing Al DiMeola, the original guitarist. Stanley Clark and Lennie White still are some of the greatest musicians on bass and drums as they were then. An interesting aspect on CD 2 is that at some point they get into old straight ahead stuff with a typical Blakey-Jazz Messengers Beat, and then including Horace Silvers "Senior Blues". The combination of "Aranjuez-Spain" is wonderful, such a wealth of music. Fantastic compositions and new aspects of "Romantic Warrior" Highly recommended.

I also have this CD. But I almost never listened to the second CD with all the remainders with fals starts and discussion and so.

I bought it in the 70´s, I don´t have many of that silver cover series, maybe "Ornette Coleman´s Free Jazz" and "Mingus Blues and Roots", and for more easy listening the then very popular "Les McCann Eddie Harris Montreux 1969". At that time I was astonished that "Avantgarde" was quite traditional, it´s all straight ahead swing, and they don´t really go "far out". But this was still in 1960, when there was still a lot of the old hard bop. But they all sound wonderful, "The Blessing" is one of the most traditional compositions of Coleman, also a very interesting version of it is on the 1958 Hillcrest Club recording, sometimes released under the leadership of Paul Bley, though he is barely audible on those. Both Trane and Cherry loved "Bemsha Swing". Trane played it with Monk, and Don recorded it on several occasions....

All of those are great. I was only a bit disappointed with sound quality of the Griff/Lockjaw, since the piano of great Tete Montoliu is underrecorded and sounds sharp. But nobody mentioned one of the greatests: The Elvin Jones group. That´s maybe one of the very best.

Arthur Blythe was very much in demand in the early 80´s and got a lot of admiration. I also like his one LP side on the McCoy album 4xQuartet. Very very powerful alto. Too bad he died quite early. The great Allen Praskin, with whom I could play on some occasions than around 1980, was the first to tell me about Athur Blythe. It was still a time where some things would happen. I remember Roland Shannon Jackson as a big name in the early 80´s too. In general, my memories about early 80s was Arthur, World Saxophone Quartet, Prime Time and musicians who started with Prime Time, and as a surprise in 1981 the comeback of Miles...., the other half were new traditionalists like Wynton, and some of the older survivers who filled the festival halls (Dex, Art Blakey etc. ). .....

I don´t have so many Sonny Stitt albums, though I love his playing. I have some from the 40´s , 50´s and one of those Muse recordings from the 70´s. "Sonny´s Back" as a title I know from an Archie Shepp album that was much earlier, late 60´s .

Yes, the Dizzy Quartet from 1978 at Onkel Po´s . Featuring Rodney Jones on guitar, Benjamin Franklin Brown on bass, and Mickie Roker on drums. Very very fine. Towards the end, alto player Leo Wright , who was with Diz in the 60´s sits in. This Quartet was touring much, later they were replaced by Ed Cherry and Mike Howell. In 1983 J.C. Heard was on drums, that was one of the best Dizzy performances I saw live.

That´s me, ready to climb down to the river for having a fine day of flyfishing for trout. The cap is not a statement, it´s only because it is soft and has the right greenish colour for fishing outfit. I´m quite skinny, but that´s how I look like...

just wonderful ! Such a great view.....and beautiful landscape or is it a little town or a suburb ?

I bought collections for two times. The first occasion was when I was about 15,16 years old and some kid from school told me there is a lady who will emigrate to Brazil and sells her record collection. I bought a lot of it, it was much electric Miles, Ornette, Sun Ra and Sanders (Live at the East), most of the stuff was avantgarde to electric. But the funniest thing was that I liked what I saw, I mean the lady who was maybe 26-29 years old. I thought: She looks fine, she listens to jazz, and the only thing I can do is buy her records...... The second occasion was a sad one. My live long friend Cristi, who shared my passions for jazz and for fly fishing, had died due to pancreatic cancer, agravated by live long heavy drinking, and his widow sold me anything I wanted from his collecton, for only 1 Euro each CD....

interesting thought. The only piano played "crossed hands" is Thelonious Monk. I tried to do it but failed. Monk would have had fun to play around with this "furniture piece". On the other hand, playing from different angles was familiar to me when I did electric when this was en vogue, them old keyboards, a Fender Rhodes and a Yamaha DX 7.

Yes those two America LPs of 1970. Great band, mostly for Bobby Jones, Jakie Byard, Charles McPherson, but not much fire. That was also the only time I heard of Eddie Preston. Shortly after that I bought the then outcoming Miles Davis "Get Up with It" and I think there is a track "Billy Preston" on it, and since I had not heard about Billy Preston and had forgot ....Billy or Eddie..... I thought wow, Miles did a dedication to a quite obscure fellow trumpet player ?

I have those early 1946/47 trio recordings as a Japanese LP that I bought decades ago, very expensive, and a painting of Lennie Tristano on the cover. Very short playing time, but very fine music. Those ballads are really great and he played them on broadcast too in 1947 for Barry Ulanov.

Great. And he doesn´t just copy Bird, he has a lot of own things to say. They are great and you see they have fun.

Just wonderful both of them. They really can play. Again I hear some very nice Mobley licks, and the piano player has listened to Bud, and that short stride section is great. Some years ago, in my home district there was someone who also did kind of private house sessions at his home. He once had a club in Hamburg called "Jazz by Ralf" and I was a regular. Sorry to say it was during a period I didn´t want to perform. It was only once during a kind of repetition that I asked if I "can try the piano for a minute" and played "Bouncin with Bud,some chorusses and that Ralph called "I remember Clifford" and sure I played that too.

Ronny Matthew with T.S. Monk, I can imagine that. Matthew loved Monk, I witnessed it on a soundcheck, where he played a few bars of a Monk ballad and it sounded exactly like Monk, and everybody smiled. And you can here it on a tune dedicated to Monk on Griffin´s first comeback album "Return of the Griffin". Hayes featuring Dizzy Gillespie ? I didn´t know something like that exists. I saw a Diz Allstar Group in late 1983: Diz, Harold Land, George Cables, Herbie Lewis and Louis Hayes, but I have not heard about a recording they made..... anyway it was great.

That´s wonderful ! I like it so much. They sound wonderful, two tenors somehow in the Mobley tradition, and a very good piano player. Very fine bass work, only a drummer is missing. But once again, those are great musicians

Hello, didn´t know we are three guys here from Vienna. Yes, classical CD stores..... there is one very small store in my district (Hietzing Ekazent), and sometimes they have a few jazz CDs also. But really jazz sortiment, that´s gone. I was a regular at "Radio Kratz" in Mariahilfer-Strasse, and at "Red Octopus", then until last autumn, if I was in Vienna 1 district with my wife, we would have a look at the EMI, where we always found something.

In my case they just were there suddenly, I hadn´t heard of them before their huge contributions on "Me Myself an Eye" and thought who are they. Then the next year they performed as the Brecker Brothers, but some of the older folks didn´t like it. So I´m not sure if Mike Brecker was so well known over here in Europe before people bought that last Mingus album and eventually the remainder of the session on "Something like a Bird".

Sure it must have been nice to seem him play. The last time I saw him (great evening, even my wife was with me and liked it), must have been around the early 2000´s. He played fine with a trio, did some tracks on piano also (very very Monkish, it almost could have been Monk himself). But he seems to have a hard time walking, something with his legs, but I am not sure.

A very nice Archie Shepp album. I heard him quite often, is he still living ? The pianist Ken Werner is very very good. I heard him with Shepp already in 1980 , it was a quartet Ken Werner, Santi Debriano, John Betsch, very fine......

I also listen much more to Lieb. And since I mentioned "Chick Corea" there was a world tour in 1978 featuring Liebman, but it seems it was no material was released for record.

I like the British author Jeffrey Archer and have some of his books. But for fluent reading I read them in romanian language. this one is the "continuare" of "Kane and Abel" ( Cain și Abel ) and when I´m through with it there will be a third volume , something with "President"....

Well I was there when he was still a very young musician, he and his brother Randy were new heroes, they got very famous both for "Brecker Brothers" and they played very very much on the last Mingus session , the most soloes, so they really had something. Once in Italy I heard some local guys spinning a tape on the beach, it was some acoustic band with Chick Corea, Randy Brecker, Eddy Gomez and maybe Peter Erskine on drums. The guys somehow felt that I am into that great music and invited me to have a taste of their bottle of wine or grappa and we smoked a cigarette together........but......... I was not alone in holiday, you know that blonde girl with long legs who was with meon holiday and got impatient that I hang around with some boring guys who listen to "jungle music" ..... she wanted fun, fashion, dancin, and I wanted....... oh yeah.... so I decided to leave it there ...thinking that there will be enough time for music after the italian holiday, lost the trace of the album. but I still remember that Mike Brecker-Chick Corea Thing, has somebody an idea what it could have been ?

Those were the days. I also purchased this very soon after I started to learn something about bop. Though the 70´s was more electric jazz, this Spotlite somehow started. I first had thought that Tony Williams is THE drummer Tony Williams, since we all knew HIM and he was some kind of an idol. So it took me a long time to get to know that it is another Tony Williams, since I had thought Tony the drummer genius maybe found some time looking back to the roots and founded a lable as a kind of "hobby".... But as I said, some of the guys who was a bit older than me, had not only Trane but had some Bird also, he was a kind of "James Dean" of jazz for them. And the Mingus composition Parkeriana....., so I really got somehow "hooked" on Diz, Bird and Bop in general. And some went´with me, the guy a went fishing with when we were in the boat we hummed all those Mr.B. tracks and the "Ernie Bubbles Whitman announcements of "thank youuuuuuuh". And another one was the "Afro Cuban" which you mentioned. Some others were hard to listen too, to bad sound quality, sometimes only a few fragments, like the "Gene Roland".... One of the musicians then, the young Nicolae Simion always asked me to spin Bird´s Appartment Sessions" especially "Little Willie Leaps". Mostly for studying the saxophone lines. Anyway, on the "Appartment" you don´t hear much of other musicians....., only for super super fans......