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so what's 'electric boogaloo', and why did I write it on the wall of a supermarket in 1984 when I was 11?

Cargo Records are selling this in the UK for £50 (the cheapest price over here that I can see) and say that these will be the last copies... "Holy Ghost Rare & Unissued Recordings (1962-70) 10CD Spirit Box Revenant have let us have the final copies of this fantastic box set - once these have gone then it will be deleted. Revenant follows up its triple grammy winning Charley Patton box with holy ghost, a career spanning collection of the music of the sax titan Albert Ayler (1936-1970). " It has a 'release date' of Oct 11th I might get it, along with American Primitive 1 which has just shown up on Amazon UK again, no doubt for a limited time.

yeah, why not... though you'd have to act a bit grumpy

I guess that answers it really. I haven't seen Melmoth... I picked up a few of these things from Compendium bookshop in Camden ages ago - Arsenal, and the Leeds group's Manticore (and I was attempting some experiments with a particular kind of automatic painting/drawing)

Interesting - thanks. Yes I need to read those books... do you know anything about the attitude of the Chicago Surrealist group towards George Melly? At the end of Paul Garon's 'Blues & The Poetic Spirit' he attempts to highlight the few points where blues/jazz and surrealism have converged in the history of the movement, but neglects to mention the London group and Melly, surely the most obvious example (this presumably due to Garon's/Rosemont's ideas about whites singing blues), or is it simply a matter of chronology... erm... I've got other questions in my head but I'll read Melly's books first...

I was going to ask you (a long time ago - back on the Devil's Music Forum probably!) about George Melly... I wondered if you'd met. He was always doing radio half-hours at that time (2003-4ish) on Bessie, as well as on homosexuality in jazz, boogie-woogie, and sundry other things*. His shows were always entertaining and I miss them, but he had this particular delivery which belied his sophistication (probably to do with his illness I suppose). Very interesting about that party, and the 'surrealistic' dancing! - I suppose this was when George was a surrealist... maybe some of the British surrealist group were there? There was a documentary on TV recently about his death, and the period leading up to it. He was meeting with a succession of his 'mistresses', who were brought to his room to say hello (or goodbye, can't remember really), while his wife carried on as usual - then he was being a pain with his carers, and at the end did his last performance singing blues in a wheelchair - he was very emaciated. But you got the impression that his type are extremely rare indeed. *He also did a show on the British rock band The Stranglers, he had done a b-side with them called 'Old Codger' which was based on Shave Em Dry - with harmonica backing by pub-rocker Lew Lewis, who later robbed a post-office and got caught when he went back in to buy stamps, and got seven years... Anyway, frenchman96, I agree with Christiern - keep the letter, even if it doesn't compliment your legs!!

Registered Madness freak here (soundtrack to my childhood - I mean really) Like your tribute to the nutty boys (squelch). Next time Barso steps out, get your foot in the door ... Liquidator too - memories of the Shed at Stamford Bridge.

A few examples I love (much toward the blues side): Otis Spann - Nobody's Business Roosevelt Sykes (c1940 w Sid Catlett on drums) Little Brother Montgomery - early sixties (late in his career) sorry all have vocals!

Last time I was at Ray's jazz in Foyles Bookstore they had the box in the glass case at the back of the sales desk. Couldn't check out the price though. I was hoping they might have had the Patton instead ! Probably fairly expensive... I've only been into Ray's a couple of times since it moved from over near Covent Garden, but I was diappointed with the blues section, as it used to be all of the lower floor in the old shop. I used to stare at the wall of Document CDs like a rabbit caught in the headlights...

Anyone know of anywhere you can get this reasonably cheap in the UK? I missed it when they had it on sale for 17 quid a while ago, when Revenant dropped the price of the Charlie Patton box too.... presumably it's permanently up/out of stock now.

The risk of falling prey to this kind of injustice is just the reason I have carefully avoided producing anything of merit throughout life

The box grants the listener/reader with a degree of knowledge/understanding which it challenges with other angles... or rather, it goes well beyond the obvious - clearly this person doesn't have the understanding that's being challenged - so misses the point. Actually, I don't think they've read it... as a reviewer neither of these factors is a good start

I've worked as a designer on magazines for about 15 years - there's often a tension between the editorial dept and the ad sales - the ad sales push to have their clients included in the editorial... the editors usually resist as much as possible. The ad sales people say "we pay your wages" the editorial say "not for long if the magazine deteriorates" etc... But I don't think I've ever encountered a case where somebody is explicitly included editorially on the proviso that they buy an ad. ALTHOUGH, they do this 'advertorial' thing, that looks like a feature, but is paid for, and sometimes has the words 'advertising feature' printed at the top, and sometimes not.... Anyway it sounds extremely unethical to me. Once I did a scuba diving guide book that made it's money on the advertising, they didn't really need to sell any copies, so they just left them in the warehouse - naturally the advertisers were each sent a sample copy. They paid crap too (surprise surprise).

If you have kids, you can use them. A year ago my 2 small boys became hooked on Art Tatum's 'Elegie' - "Put the fast piano one on" they'd say, I look at the wife, roll my eyes and on it goes. I've managed to get the eldest to demand Flatt and Scruggs to be played. Little Richard works great too, anything they can go beserk to, and can name - "rock an rollll". Generally, jazz is more difficult... but tell them Roland Kirk is playing with his nose and it does the trick for a while.

I am kind of stuck in a rut with Monk - I became obsessed (well, not quite...) with his stuff a few years ago and bought a load of his albums, and being pretty unknowledgeable about jazz found it difficult to find other stuff to slide into. - I tried Herbie Nichols cos I read that he shared certain characteristics, and I like him but... The thing with Monk is that narrowness - or, his limits force the inventiveness along a narrow path, so it all feels very regular and yet jagged - like he's stuck behind a wall being built by the bass and drums, and he's jabbing at the wall but is in no danger of getting out. OR his playing sometimes reminds me of a join the dots puzzle - fixed points, and he draws straight lines between each one, not necessarily in the same order, but always finishes at the same point in the same number of moves. This feeling is strong on some of the Columbias. But when he had people like Johnny Griffin or Coltrane it's slightly different (and amazing! - I don't think I've ever enjoyed an album as much as I did 'Monk's Music'). And when you see footage of him it's even more mesmerizing - watching him 'decide' which keys to hit. Probably the answer for me is to avoid looking for similar piano players and go for something else -

I think Dizzy's giving the bird on this one...

pteranodon - not a bird OR a dinosaur

I like biographies of old comedians - particularly British ones from the nineteen-fifties to seventies, particularly the ones with flawed personalities... This recent Hancock book is intended as a corrective to the earlier 'When The Wind Changed' which concentrated on the scandalous side

Horses for courses - I always though Ringo was doing just what he needed to do. He'd have sounded pretty daft doing a Keith Moon. But what do I know about drumming? nuffink. Watching all the old footage of the Beatles on tour that was on BBC earlier this year, it's clear how integral he was, even without the drumming!

That reminds me how much I liked 'Lipstick Traces': "...The desire begins with the demand to live not as an object but as a subject of history—to live as if something actually depended on one's actions—and that demand opens onto a free street." Very exciting for a youngster like I was! it's the only book of his I've read but it led to a lot of other stuff...

I've always liked em, since I was a kid and my mum played me their records. Some faves: The Night Before I'm Down Strawberry Fields Dear Prudence Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey Old Brown Shoe I never paid attention to the covers they did of the rock n roll greats, but heard Money and Dizzy Miss Lizzy recently and was surprised - because they kept the Liverpool accents, it worked for me better than the Stones and those that affected the American accent.

I really need to get more into stride when funds allow - love the stuff. Also Jimmy Yancey (vol 1's my fave but vol 3 essential too - for 'At The Window' - a lesson in restraint. The photo of him with Charlie Spand always makes me think, shame they never recorded Spand around the time the pic was taken - seeing as he's at the piano and all...

Never fear...

Thanks for all the recommendations - I've ordered the Shattuck book initially, because in fact my question (which I altered several times and still mangled) originally asked for an antidote to the writing of people like Franklin Rosemont and his Chicago surrealists (including Paul Garon)- and Roger Shattuck had a run-in with them in the pages of the New York Review of Books, so seems ideal. I really should have read this kind of background stuff at college years ago but always went for the primary sources, which is great but you end up with only partisan points of view, and it's surprisingly difficult to break away from that false ideal.

ok, relax - stop searching everyone... found what I'm looking for: Art Uber Alles