MomsMobley

after & before

tremendous 'la belle helene' under minkowski's 'wand'

Thanks, King-- I'll check Cerasni out. I was fortunate to find a cache of Miklos Spanyi on BIS & for the most part, find both the solo recordings and the concertos tremendous, one the glories of the label we already revere etc. & hey, look what I just found also by Spanyi-- *** Here's good text interview w/ Spanyi from 2011, about CPE Bach, Mozart & -- http://seenandheard-international.com/2011/06/miklos-spanyi-on-mozarts-other-father-a-review-and-interview-with-the-c-p-e-bach-specialist/

Place holder until our dedicated Wellesz thread is open for business. FACT: Egon Wellesz violin concerto alone >>>>> ALL Benjamin Britten orchestral music combined. FACT: each Egon Wellesz quartet >>>>>> all Benjamin Britten chamber music combined

I dunno if this best possible production-- dunno that it isn't either-- but this Busoni 'Doctor Faust' is rather revelatory-- I might be a smidgen less 'convinced' by this Prokofiev 'The Gambler' but shows you what Barenboim can actually do when inspired

Vertavo studio Vertavo live at the Het

Sylvain Cambreling SWR-SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg-Freiburg

and solo-- and while I don't long for piano CPE, Mikhail Pletnev is always at least interesting, and so he is here-- was "wild," in its way, to see this come out on DG back then too... tuff not to prefer this sound world, however--

Antheil "better" and more "interesting" than his reductionist rep suggest, enfant huggamugga turned soundtrack hack. I recommend the piano concertos for starters-- Markus Becker here a renowned Regerian btw.

Definitely, Ubu. I'm an Ogdon fan anyway and though one wishes he'd maybe tackled this at a different point in his the OC's 'impossibility'-- and what we learn by trying-- is parts of its 'gestalt' etc. Would be interesting to hear say Marc-Andre Hamelin tackle it in the studio, just to hear where complete technique and time for interpretation takes us but... Have you ever heard Sorabji's organ music?

Sabine Liebner is a fantastic Feldmaniac & Cage-ologist, Scelsi-nian +++ on Wergo, Neos & Morty the American Delius, almost

the first Haydn set I got was Jochum's London symphonies-- four CD budget set DG, what's to lose? Let's say Papa Jo strong enough I kept looking, Jochum more ponderous than not. Bernstein obviously the better choice but at that time Lenny was cooped up in those ridiculous Prince Charles watercolors sets (!?!?!) and I wasn't going to buy those, even during a Tower Records Sony sale. Beecham? Colin Davis? Bernstein and Davis still quite good though I'll nearly always before earthier sonorities, fleeter tempos etc. Bruggen or Minkowski first choice today. Marriner Haydn masses on EMI are excellent too, even with big band sonics. The great undersung-- but not underhung, if musical virility is any indication-- Haydnaut is Manfred Huss, wonderful series of orchestral discs on BIS, some reiussing previous sets on Koch, some new, no symphonies per se alas.

Sorabji's book of essays MI CONTRA FA: The Immoralisings of a Machieavellian Musician (Porcupine Press, 1947) is brilliant, hilarious, much underknown. Elsewhere, lots of Sorabji piano music is worth hearing-- playing too, if you have the fortitude & chops-- and it's not all gargantuan. frederik ullen jonathan powell, 5th movement, piano symphony 6

Max! Any Organauts at the Chicago gig?

in an attempt to further discussion on specific composers... the symphonies & many of the keyboard concertos (performed on instruments from clavichord to fortepiano) & sonatas/fantasies are 'essential' listening, on some days & in some works I prefer Carl (or Karl) even to Papa Jo Haydn. ludger remy, harpsichord (on CPO) miklos spanyi, tangent piano (on BIS)

ooof. you're too kind, CT. that text is awful on numerous levels and someone should really step up to Tom Surgal and explain that because if that's reflective if his intended presentation... better not to have bothered. the "outsider" schtick is particularly galling-- and insulting to everyone from King Oliver on down (Satchmo to Fletcher to Sun Ra etc)... how were Coltrane or Dolphy outsiders again? i'm going to ignore "Fire Music" reductionism for but how did 'free jazz'-- ok, here I have to ignore the inane 'musicology' (sic) displayed in this pitch (i.e. composition versus supposed 'free' 'collective' improvisation)-- ah forget it. passages likes these-- "ideas" likes these-- are misleading, simple-minded, WRONG. "Good intentions" fine but with such comes RESPONSIBILITY and from the evidence put before us... (Nels Cline a great musician & surely knows better but he's obviously just a 'friendly name' to...) "There wil never, ever be another Duke Ellington." -- Bill Dixon (from "Odyssey" interview disc)

Kicking this one back up with the respectful observation that the "What are you listening to?" thread has become a disaster. Everything is buried there, intimate observations and casual streaming, Tatum knows how many pages of Haydn alone if we put it back together... How is anyone going to find it? If it's someone like Egon Wellesz, OK, there's probably not too many 'hits' but... Ubu, where did you come to stand on Brautigam? I recall it as disappointing, overall-- better than his Mozart with the boomy acoustic, not nearly as hot as the Beethoven that was forthcoming. Granted, I'll almost always prefer a fortepiano in this repertoire but I might also recall Mikhael Pletnev a strong Haydnista too.

i had not seen that either! and starting with Red-- tho' not ending there-- "we" are supposed to be "impressed" with ofays who show up for gigs in sweatpants, scraggly ass stubble & wrinkled shirts? hell, Red's collar even looks a little tight here bit if it works... more music here in eight minutes most "free" or neo "trad" can manage in an entire show-- or an entire career, lack of discipline one side, lack of gumption the other. i'd hope even those who don't recognize or remember oh wait, Joe Dukes, would think damn, this kid's got sumpin'...

Weirdest thing is Sonny knew this was straight bullshit but the Williamsburg Bridge has never been & never will be as iconic, salable? Yen power!

as to her credibility, i read on the net that she changed her story a couple of times. i am curious as to what became of her. re: credibility, if Albert jumped off a ferry to Liberty Island... how does his body end up at Congress St pier, Brooklyn? Even given complex mix of currents, tides it's essentially impossible. If Albert jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge, however... ending up where he did is quite likely. He also could have gone in the water closer to Congress St but without an autopsy, we don't know is Albert had other injuries etc (it is possible, if uncommon, to jump from the bridge w/o injury so this not foolproof.) I'd be curious to know exactly where the mafia, jukebox etc rumors started-- everything but suicide seems highly unlikely for lotsa reasons though people weren't wrong to recognize Brooklyn (& NYC generally) as having pervasive, powerful mafia familes, associates etc. Remember also Albert dies during period of peak "Mafia chic" (dated between "The Godfather" novel & the months following the first movie) and it's easy thing to suggest. COINTELPRO was serious but, in this case, it seems very farfetched. Has anyone filed FOIA request on Albert to see if he had FBI file? There were lotsa shades of "black radicalism" in NYC 1960-1975 and it is conceivable Albert crossed paths with and came into Hoover's view. side Q: does anyone know where Albert played golf in NYC? Brooklyn is probable but it'd be interesting to learn how often, where he pursued it.

JL-- we agree 100% on this. Ultimately I'm far less concerned about anyone's enjoyment of this/that RJ side than placing his achievement in context. I vastly prefer the messy, sprawling, riotous, goofy, sublime etc predecessors of RJ to most of his work & that of his self-proclaimed acolytes but whatever... Some people like clams, some peiple like oysters, some people like Oscar Peterson and Foghat. And here's where I suspect Wald pulled his punches: rather than crafting a rigorous historiography of Robert Johnson- as could reasonably be done in one chapter, i.e. finding those (very?) few Johnson references from before the Columbia lp and tracing those which came after, year by year, book by book, rock cover by rock cover w/ attendant 'rock star' interviews, culminating-- for the time being-- with Greil Marcus' "Mystery Train" shuck. And while most Organauts may rightly consider this book ignorable, its influence on subsequent pop and academic writers has been substantial-- alas! Credit Marcus' concept, OK, but often-- and nearly always with Robert Johnson-- neither his historical nor musicological chops up to the task.) We should be able to open up Wald's book and bam bam bam bam-- see THAT's how the Robert Johnson myth (most likely) originated & spread. We don't need to go all the way-- ending with Marcus would have been enough. (Informed rumor has it, btw, that Greil greatly dislikes Wald for puncturing his pseudo-"authority" on the matter but that's not unique, Greil has reputation for being very prickly about what he considers "his" "proprietary" critical turf (no matter how latterly staked, as when he "discovered" the Harry Smith AAFM... four decades after its release... ) I don't have Wald in front of me & perhaps some of it could be pulled from his endnotes but I don't recall him being that explicit about it. Does he mention, say, Sam Charters or Peter Guralnick? I'd suspect he'd want to 'protect' the latter, who's something of Wald "mentor" in any case.

Yes, apologies for confusion! I do aspire to avoid misattributions etc. Big Beat Steve, the Wald & the Mary Beth Hamilton books are worthy companions on mythos etc, likewise reading contemporary Chicago Defender, Atlanta Daily World +++, just to get a deep sense of vastness, levels of black culture, society largely absent most so-called 'blues' scholarship.

That is a large bag of worms. I think that the book is interesting, and has some worthwhile information and perspectives. But there is one thing that really irritates me about it. From the very beginning, Wald paints himself as a rebel who is carrying out a campaign against what he calls the "blues orthodoxy." But notice that there is not a single footnote or reference in the entire book to any examples of statements from the blues orthodoxy that he is taking issue with. So a lot of his attacks end up being on straw men. In the end, the book is not nearly as revolutionary as he claims it to be. John, Wald's not a trained, self- or otherwise, historian per se so I won't go THAT far in defending his book's apparatus etc but it's a VERY good book and his targets are NOT in the least straw men: they are Columbia Records, they are Greil Marcus, they are numerous bullshittin' (ersatz) 'blues' (and black culture) scholars (nearly all white), they are every guitar magazine and rock star ersatz 'blues' turd who collectively birthed and perpetuated this asinine myth of not just Robert Johnson's artistic and creative eminence-- we can disagree on that, fine-- but also his VASTLY overstated "originality" or influence on then contemporary modes of black expression etc. Big Beat Steve, if anything Wald pulls too many punches but if nothing else, forcing-- by warm encouragement-- to listen to the previous two decades of recorded black music piano & guitar (& kazoo & washboard & fiddle etc). Jeff, I'm a bit uncomfortable with the J.S. Bach analogy-- I know what you're saying but Bach on vastly different plane of achievement as well as proflicacy... And even were it true-- why on earth, air, fire or water is that summation/reduction desirable? Why reduce two decades (or Big Johann, a century) of vastly disparate achievement into one schmuck or one genius? (To save shelf space?) I might very well pick Telemann or Handel (Rameau or Monteverdi), for starters (for entree too), depending on my interests, dramatic v. instrumental, sacred v. secular etc. I could not possibly care less about Robert Johnson's prong pointed towards the future or Johnny Shines' bootleg career as RJ's corpse carrier. If Columbia deigned to put out two 16 cut albums of Tampa Red in 1961, the world of music, sound, lyrics as poety etc would not in any way be diminished and arguably it would rather more interesting. LK, some of those people you name are smarter listeners, thinkers than others. And some of the smartest, most knowledgeable listeners were social misfits cum fanatical record collectors & the depths of THEIR knowledge has yet to be fully tapped... (If Don Kent ever wrote a book, for example, it would blow everyone's mind; as it is, there are some liner notes and SIX episodes to date of John's Old Time Radio Show where he offers much insight.) Episode 4, with Robet Johnson (yes) and Bertha Lee Patton, whom Don takes to see Howlin' Wolf in Chicago-- http://www.eastriverstringband.com/radioshow/?p=1214 Episode 5, Don having spoken to Jeremiah Sullivan for the Geechie Wiley feature ... http://www.eastriverstringband.com/radioshow/?p=1342 Episode 6, Don on "Cairo" & its remarkable influence etc http://www.eastriverstringband.com/radioshow/?p=1449 *** Q: Why should I-- or anyone-- recognize Robert Johnson as the apotheosis of what rather than thrilling to Bo Carter, LeRoy Carr, Barbecue Bob? Etc etc etc-- happily! The list is long & variegated, male & female, clay eater & champagne sipper etc etc, including many performers who didn't record enough for even half an album to be later compiled. Granted, I might have missed out on this & what would our lives have otherwise been?

John, it has nothing do with "popularity" or un--. And "Terraplane" is a good record-- maybe his best-- but decontextualizing Robert Johnson from the music of his time and the cultures/social groups he travelled within has accomplished exactly what? Unfortunately, nearly all efforts at gleaning RJ's 'meaning' among his peer group of surviving musicians-- rather than the black record buyers who mostly didn't buy RJ records--is colored by ofay insistence, i.e. if white boy keeps insisting Robert Johnson was so "important," so "haunted," etc... fuck it, say what he wants to hear. (And even so, not everyone went along with this, inc. John Lee Hooker.) Instead we have seven decades of mostly insufferable ofay bullshit, each iteration more insipid than the next, though Greil's attempted lyrical analysis are an apogee their kind. But I trust-- as a sage listening artist yourself (really)-- you & others hear "Terraplane" as the comic song it is, yes? LK, they are, RJ and OP often, if not always, executants. Nothing wrong with that, except for people winnowing history to invest waaaaaaaaaaaay more in Robert Johnson than his music can sustain. before & after RJ hmmmmmm

when Robert Johnson is good, he's a good, like Oscar Peterson is good. But I do think the relatively good sound quality, pressings of the Vocalion sides plays a part-- as does relative scarcity of single artist 1920s-30s guitar blues albums at that time. willie lofton gitfiddle jim... koko