Kalo

Great album, Great choice for AOTW! I agree with Free For All, its sum is greater than the parts.

that's arguably worse!

OK, now I know what you meant by your initial post. According to AMG "the much loopier and more jazz-oriented tracks here sound more like Sun Ra jamming with the P-Funk All Stars." That definitely is, as you wrote, "Everything you'd ever want out of 70's 'Afro-Centric' funk but were afraid to ask for, for fear that it didn't really exist the way you thought it did." Another one to add to the ever-burgeoning list.

So where's "jazz central" in Texas?

Yeah, I think that beautiful B&W cover was why I bought it at the time (circa 1978) from among several alternatives. One day when we were goofing around in the music room in high school, a pianist friend played a tune for me that turned my head around. It was the craziest, catchiest thing I'd ever heard up to then. I asked him what it was. Thelonious Monk, "Well You Needn't." I bought the Columbia Monk on my next trip to the record store (a weekly pilgrimage from Newton, MA to the Harvard Coop in Cambridge).

I'm intrigued. Tell us more, Jim.

I did read the Arnold a few years back, and you're correct -- these two cases are of very different orders of magnitude. Amen to that.

This, too, is avant-garde. ← Is it just me, I love Lester but this session is really poor. Much like th eworst of Bud on verve it should have stayed in the vaults IMO ← Well, this is one of those session that people either love or hate, and it's hard to argue it one way or the other, simply because the criteria for one reaction have very little, if anything, to do with the other one. I love it, and the recommendation is sincere and ongoing. On a session like this, it's as if Prez, not having the physical resources at hand to deal with the instrument in a "traditional" (even for him) way, found a way to get his story out anyway. A triumph of mood over matter, if you will. Granted, that story is sad, at times even disturbing (deeply so, in fact), but it is his story for that time and for that place, and like the "worst" of Bud Powell, I think it's a mistake, at a level beyond "musicality", to equate unpleasantness with unworthiness, much less with "unrealness" of some sort. The story was what it was. What it was not was false in any way. I listen to this session for a sign, any sign, that what came out of Prez' horns that day was unintentional, and I don't hear any. Even the clarinet work, which finds him struggling with an instrument which he was ill-prepared at the time to return to, comes out as a statement, a message that took instrumental shortcomings & physical perils into consideration before being delivered. I don't hear a man "trying" to do something and falling short, I hear a man who knew in advance what he had to work with, physically, instrumetally, spiritually, and then proceeding accordingly from there. The results are such that one can either embrace them or be repelled by them, but it's hard to imagine anybody being indifferent to them. That's how strongly the message came across. Yes, it's painful to listen to, no disputing that whatsoever, and those who wish to argue that such blatant pain and dissipation has no place being put on public display will get little if any argument from me. But it was, so how do we deal with it? For me, it's a matter of love. I love Lester Young (to the degree that I "know" him through his music), and to a depth that I love very few artists. Because of that, I'm as willing to hear the "bad" with as much empathy as I am the "good". My love is unconditional, and that means sharing the deepest pain as well as the highest euphoria, no questions asked, no "judgements" made. Very, VERY few artists reach me like that, but Prez is definitely one of them. Can't say that I've ever heard a note from him where I didn't feel it, good bad, or indifferent (and there are plenty of each). When somebody reaches you like that, even the "bad" has meaning, and sometimes that meaning cuts closer to the quick than the "good", or than is comfortable. But so be it. Love's a bitch sometimes. ← Wow, Jim. Very eloquent. I've always valued this as part of the overall story of Lester Young, but your post will send me back to this album pronto (well, probably later tonight).

And I thought Austin was supposed to be THE music town in TX. There's always the internet. Yes!

Gretchen Mol's not bad-looking, for sure, but the real Betty has her beat by quite a margin. Of course, very few besides the real Betty ever looked good with that hairdo. And I see that 'do coming and going in my quasi-bohemian Boston neighborhood every day. It's sort of a female mullet when you think about it.

Funny, that's the first one I ever bought, back in vinyl days. Nice session. Buy it now or buy it later, I predict that you'll dig it. -_-

THAT'S what I'm talking 'bout. Thanks, Mike. Should we start a pool to bet on when the "reverted" edition comes to DVD? Of course, in a few years, the way things are going, we'll all be able to do our own edits. (Hmmm. What about Robert Mitchum in the Heston part? Even Ricardo Montalban would be an improvement...)

I had the music on the radio in the dining room while I was fixing dinner in the kitchen. So I assumed with half an ear that I was hearing a half-throttle Sonny. Tribute to Lovano? Or my stupidity? Mike - You don't give him credit for assuming that everyone knew he was referring to the "classic quartet"? ← I give him credit for reading the copy provided him.

I'll have to check on this, but I think that the new version of Touch of Evil HAS pretty much supplanted the original edit. And the re-edit was based on a Welles memo, much as the Gabler Ulysses was based on various Joyce drafts. Both are legit, insofar as they are clearly accounted to be speculative alternate versions. btw, In current editions, the Gabler is no longer billed as " The Corrected Text" but as the Gabler Edition.

I love cheese. Sheep's milk, goats milk, and cow's milk cheeses. To me a "sharp" cheese is one that is high in acidity. I love "sharp" cheeses. Goat's milk is probably the highest in acidity of the three types of milk. "Sharp" cheese goes very well with high acidity wines like Sauvignon Blanc. The best cheeses are made from unpasteurized milk, which yields the most complicated aromas and flavors. If you like Cheddar, than buy the most expensive, unpasteurized "English Farm House" Cheddar that you can afford. Parmagiano Reggiano is the king of Italian cheeses, the ultimate grating cheese. The best examples are grainy and almost crystalline. The smallest smidgen when placed on the tongue creates an explosion of flavor. As Jazzmoose mentioned above, a dab of balsamic vinegar on a morsel of Parmigiano may afford one a glimpse of culinary heaven. Stilton is the king of English cheeses. Like Parmagiano, the best examples explode on the palate. Stilton is both richly creamy and firmly crumbly, like the Platonic ideal of Cheddar, and veined with blue mold to boot. Stilton is so rich that is serves as the ultimate dessert in concord with a sweet fortified wine such as Port. Here are a few cheeses that haven't been mentioned yet: Garoxta -- a delicious hard Spanish cheese made from goat's milk. Nice and sharp. Morbier -- a semi-hard, "smelly," French cow's milk cheese, in which, traditionally, the morning's milking and the evening's milking are separated by a thin layer of vegetable ash. In the best examples, the dual layers are noticeably different in flavor. Taleggio -- a semi-soft, Italian Cow's milk cheese, definitely smelly, but meaty, fruity, and delicious. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Did I mention that I love cheese?

I barely watch television at all, but I've read enough about Trudeau to KNOW that he's evil. On the other hand, it's hard not to think that anyone who beleives in this kind of shit deserves it. Unfortunately, P.T Barnum was right.

I see this one fairly frequently as well. Shouldn't be too hard to find.

I agree about The Magnificent Ambersons still being a major achievement. Many, including the great film critic David Thomson, believe that it's better than Kane, even in butchered form. But I must say that Touch of Evil, despite some great sequences, strikes me as extremely over-rated. I blame it on Charlton Heston, whom Thomson described as "a rather Aryan Moses" in The Ten Commandments. He's even less believeable as a Mexican (or as a human for that matter). Though, to Heston's credit, he's the one who supposedly convinced the producer to hand the film over to Welles to direct. And let's not even talk about the new "restored" version of Touch of Evil, an extremely speculative revision on a par with Hans Walter Gabler's "Corrected Text" of James Joyce's Ulysses.

Good points, Mike.

I heard a bit of this on the radio. Herbie Hancock was Herbie Hancock. Sonny Rollins sounded good, playing in a trio setting, though he only got a few minutes. I love Abbey Lincoln, but she's really starting to show her age (which is tough on singers). Did anyone else think that, in this context, it was weird on Bette Midler's part to sing Leiber and Stoller's theatrically jaded, sub-Brecht/Weill cabaret number "Is That All There Is," (made famous by Peggy Lee's hit version)? What was the message there? -- "It was only the worst natural disaster in American History; is that all there is?" I almost laughed when one of the NPR commentators excitedly mentioned that the arrangement of the Midler number was by Don Sebesky, as though that might make it the highlight of the evening! I hope I don't sound too jaded or nit-picky. I certainly applaud the participants for doing their part for the relief effort and to educate the public about the role of New Orleans in the formation of American culture. Still, it's silly to say, as Hancock did, that without New Orleans there would be no American music (though I understand why he said it in this context). Sure there would be American music without the Crescent City. Would it sound different? Yes, very. Would it have been as influential on the world? Perhaps not. But I thought that the old canard about jazz being born in N.O. had been laid to rest. It was a huge influence, but jazz or something very like it would have been born regardless, whatever different path it might have taken and however different it might have sounded. And I don't intend in any way to belittle the influence New Orleans had on jazz.

Thanks for posting those Cuscuna notes, couw. I haven't seen them, as I decided not to "upgrade" to the latest release (after already having "upgraded" from LP reissue to first CD reissue). I like this session a lot, and I liked the comic, too. Anyone who hasn't looked at the comic should check it out.

I'm seeing the Spanish Blue Notes all over the place here in Boston. Maybe these Verves will start to turn up, too.

Transcript of a secretly-made tape of Buddy addressing the Muppets after the show: ←