neveronfriday

John, please don't post this shite anymore. Stop. Please! P.S.: I think I might add some delicate drumming to those tracks. Got nothing better to do anyway.

Yep, but only if the fruitcake stays in.

I eat different birds.

Now, let me vent here for a second. Don't get me wrong. I love the stuff Granz did, I love the music presented on these DVDs (most of which I have by now) and I have nothing but respect for Nat Hentoff. And it's great this stuff is out for us to see and it's even greater that it was released at a reasonable price. But. What did these people drink or smoke before/while putting these DVDs together? How about a photo of Montreux with fluorescent-coloured titles to match Eldridge's red/pinkish/purplish outfit and (Milt) Jackson's red checkered jacket? The DVD menu from hell which is about as ugly as the aforementioned clothes? Who decided to put Hentoff into this cutesy poopsy frame, right in the center, filming him reading a script? Huh? Jee-sus. Who do we have to shoot for the distorted sound on, for example, the Basie Jam? Who filmed the N.H.O. Pedersen interview in New York? Blank plaster wall, unmoving camera, full frontal facial shot ... even Niels can't save that one (love his Danish accent though ... made me feel right back at home).. Why is it that everyone seems to think that jazz fans have to put up/are willing to put up with great material in horrendously awful crummy packaging (the only decent thing are the covers) with production quality which harks back to old Sinclair computers (remember those)? I'm pissed. This is Norman Granz. Count Basie. Roy Eldridge. Oscar Peterson. Milt Jackson. Ella Fitzgerald. ... presented on a budget that you couldn't get a bag of peanuts for. You know, anyone with access to a computer nowadays and some decent software (damn, steal it if the company doesn't give you any) could blow these DVDs out of the water. Jeez, any one of my students could make a DVD that is so much better than these ... and they'd probably do it for free. But the material presented is grand, I give you that. I rest my case.

But it could've been ...

"Firlefranz" Sorry about the krauting. Cheers!

Can you send it again, or PM me? I haven't received it yet and wanna include ya! Pm pm'ed! Cheers!

Me, me, me. Mail sent!

Just a matter of practice. Cheers! P.S.: Mount GAY? Eminem's fave brand, I presume.

You guys are just mean ...

Scans aren't all that great ... I just came across it looking for sth else. Blue Note Covers Cheers!

Some thoughts: I often get the feeling that (not only) on Blue Note dates, the cymbals were recorded in a way that gave them that specific "pingy" sound so often audible on many recordings of the time. Is that because of microphone placement, the number and types of microphones used (maybe only overhead), was it the recording equipment, the engineer, or a combination thereof? Or could it be that our "ears" (meaning listening experience, resulting from, for example, simple things like a broader soundstage created by stereo) have also changed a bit since we are being more "spoiled" today by (some) sonically improved recordings (I'm not talking chart material here which more often than not has been equalized etc. to death)? Or was it simply intentional (taste of the person recording/mixing/mastering the stuff)? From a recording 50 years old (and older) I certainly don't expect a sound which is alive and breathing as on many recordings today, but I'm sometimes surprised about how good, for example, some Contemporary dates sound in comparison. Cheers! On a similar but different note: I just had a lengthy e-mail exchange with a drummer who is currently touring with a big band throughout Europe. We were talking about recreating that sound of old big band recordings of the 30s and 40s. If you do want to create that sound, it's virtually impossible with today's quality drums which even in the cheapo range are lightyeras ahead in sonic quality. You'd have to go the electronic way to reduce the sound quality of today's equipment. To be quite honest, I miss that charme of those old recordings, and big band dates of, say, the 70s and thereafter tend too sound to "sterile" and "direct" to me. Yeah, I know. Old fart et al.

Cacique (Venezuela): Pampero (Venezuela): I love these two, although they are very pricey in Europe. Both have absolutely wonderful taste and are so round and smooth that ... ... I think I'll have myself a Pampero right now. Cheers, and thanks for this thread!

"Anything that can't run away, we blow into smithereens. Yes, Siree Bob!"

Yes, and it doesn't miss a beat ...

Mine arrived early this morning. Thanks, Milan!. I'm about to give it a first spin! Cheers!

Absolutely.

Does anyone know if there's a decent DVD of Silent Running (Douglas Trumbull, 1971)? Here in Europe we have one single catastrophic release (4:3 although the film was released 16:9, crummy sound, virtually no extras, etc.) What's the US version like (the 2nd one, released October 7, 2003)? Anyone have this version? Any others available? Cheers!

As an old Doobies fan, let me chime in here for a second. Livin' on the Fault Line is certainly one of the more controversial Doobies albums, maybe even the Doobies' most difficult one. Many people didn't get it, and those who were looking for the old Doobies sound (Tom Johnston), were hugely disappointed. I have to agree with Aric, somewhat. This album has so much going for it that it is one of the few I still pull out once in a while (the Doobies bug doesn't bite me much anymore nowadays). It's jazzy, it's VERY soulful and it's got some very stylish stuff .... but that is clearly Steely Dan's influence, which you can hear right and left. The sound is also top-notch, by the way. Michael McDonald took the Doobies down a very different road, but I think on Livin' you can clearly hear that he didn't really know himself what he wanted and where the road was supposed to lead to (I think that is the one reason that prevented Michael McDonald from becoming more successful ... also his solo career shows that he turned first that way, then the other, and then a third one, confusing everyone as he went along). Livin' is a hodgepodge of styles and sounds at times, and that might also be its biggest problem for the casual listener. I like this album very much, and it's even got one of my all-time favourite solos (the harmonica on "There's a Light", played by Norton Buffalo) ... don't laugh. Excellent album for people who like their stuff a bit more varied and interesting. And yes, in my collection of several thousand CDs, I would consider this one to be one of the cornerstones. Cheers! P.S.: Surprises me. In Europe and in the shops I frequented, they played this one up and down. But maybe I just went to the wrong shops and listened to the wrong stations? Who knows.

Could very well be. Graves would fit the images I still have in my head. Man, that's quite some years ago I first saw that. Cheers!

OK, I'm digging around my memory here. If I'm not totally mistaken (this is from my less jazz-intensive years), I saw a film about Rashied Ali (Coltrane drummer, right?) once, on a German-French (or is that French-German?) cultural TV channel, ARTE. It was some in-depth portrait (I hope I remember all of this correctly) and it confused me quite a bit ... the guy was doing this wild free stuff (fascinating, but for me, at the time, completely alien stuff), but I also recall distinctly that there was a drum number which had Martin Luther King's "I've got a dream" speech playing in the background. That "number" somehow stuck to me because I thought it was quite a nifty idea (and it was done very well, albeit in a mostly improvisational manner). And, didn't Art Blakey or someone of that class do something similar? I'll do some diggin' around in my collection this weekend. Cheers! P.S.: I'm not betting my life on the fact that it was a film about Rashied Ali, but I'm quite sure.

That's absolutely true. And also some later stuff is just dreary. But his "Gipsy Project"(s) and other recordings of a similar nature are fabulous. Cheers!