kenny weir

Actually, I hate horses and horse racing. I think the French have the right idea - they eat the nasty things. Is there any other country where a horse race is an excuse for a nationwide public holiday? Bizarre! But it's a sunny spring day here in Melbourne and, with wife and child absent, I'm doing the obvious - shut up inside with a succession of mostly Australian albums spinning away very loudly. And chomping away on the lemon loaf I baked yesterday.

OK - I'll out myself as well. I think her records have basically got progressively worse - or at least more and more insipid. All For You, her third, though is a little gem - and almost makes the after hours classic realm.

Heck Bev, I expected you to claim you were there!

Has anyone read the first volume of Giddin's biography of Crosby? I'm a fan of both, but after hefting this (ahem) tome in a couple of book shops, I suspect it may be a case of too much information.

John Patton - Mosaic Select. Oh ... my ... God!!! Martial Solal - NY-1 Andrea Keller Bartok Project - Mikrocosmos Art Blakley & The Jazz Couriers - Indestructible Grant Green - Grantstand Kynan Robinson's En Rusk - 1000 Wide Way Out West - Footscray Station

This is the key to this stuff - it's not spring or summer music. it's very definitely winter music. Just depends on your mindset.

I would suggest the Proper box - Boss Bird. amg link It's cheap and has a wide spread of Bird's stuff across the various labels - the only problem is if (when) you get really hooked you're gonna want the complete Dial/Savoy thingy anyhow.

Chuck: Serge Ermoll is still around - I heard him at he Wangaratta Jazz Festival a few years back playing some tasty more-mainstream stuff than was the case with Free Kata. John Clare is better known these days as a Sydney writer/critic/proselytiser. It's interesting that when Australian jazz is mentioned online I often get names thrown at me that are even more obscure to me than some '50s/'60s US hard bopper. I love the past decade or so and the new generations, and would love to backtrack to the '70s and '60s of Australian jazz history, but only a few CD reissues - such as John Sangster's classic Lord of the Rings Trilogy and The Hobbit - have been forthcoming. The Australian jazz record biz is a tough one for those involved without even thinking of reissues. Bev: Regarding Stuart Nicholson and US jazz - that accurately reflects what happened when I interviewed him. I'm all for supporting the brilliant music being made here but I'm not sure being part of someone else's agenda is a great way of going about. While I'm a (print) journalist of long-standing I'm not so experienced at broadcasting journalism. Had I been, I might not have let Nicholson get away with such a broad, blanket condemnation of US jazz. After all, even a wide-ranging critic in his position could not have heard all - or even close to all - the independent/small label music released in the US in the past decade. What does he think of 8 Bold Souls, Quartet Out, Organissimo for instance? While he was going on about the bankruptcy of US jazz he also, several times, strongly stated that Michael Brecker was and is the best thing going in the US. And this, according to a thread at Jazz Corner, from a man who has just recently portrayed the Dave Holland Quintet as being full of soulless techocrats with bugger all to say!

golden raisins? Yeah - I think that's about it. In fact, I think sultana is an actual grape variety. In an case, raisins or sultanas work here and I've also used dates.

Burrows and Bob are for sure still going around, very much as elder statesmen these days. What I'd love for the greater world to be experiencing are any or all of the following (and heaps more): Joe Chindamo Ishish Kynan Robinson's En Rusk Paul Williamson (trumpet) Paul Williamson (saxophone) Gai Bryant Sandy Evans Andrea Keller Jamie Oehlers Scott Tinkler Peter Knight Frank Di Sario Alister Spence James Sherlock Fiona Burnett James Muller Adam Simmons Theak-tet Michelle Nicolle Frock Sam Keevers Clarion Fracture Zone Tim Wilson The Java Quartet Willow Neilson And many, many more - so many approaches, so much talent, so little heard! Arghhhhhh!!!

Thanks for that Bev. We don't get that rag down (?) here, and I couldn't see that piece on their website. Could anyone post it? Nicholson spent a few days in Melbourne in his role as judge/chairman of the first ever Australian jazz Awards, having heard hundreds of artists before he arrived and was duly (and rightfully) impressed. I interviewed him on my radio show while he was here. He had very set ideas about which he was determined to tell me and my listeners no matter what questions I lobbed his way. Stll, if he's talking up contemporary Aust jazz it's a good thing, as there's no doubt it's the equal or better of any "jazz" music being made anywhere. I'm sure it's pretty difficult to get ahold of the stuff I mean in the northern hemisphere, but I reckong Bev (having some familiarity by now with your approach and tastes) would dig much of it very, very muchly.

I love baking but get a bit of grief from within the household about the amount of butter, eggs, sugar etc needed to do it right. So I tend to look out for recipes that have some semblance of "healthiness" about them - and this one, ripped from a community cookbook my mum sent me, is a beaut. It only has about a tablespoon of butter and no eggs. 115 sugar 15g butter 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 1/2 cups sultanas 1 tablespoon syrup 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 225g flour Put all ingredients into bowl except flour and baking powder. Add boiling water and stir well. When mixture is cool, add flour and baking powder. Pour into greased loaf tin and bake for 1 hour at 180C. Of course, given that this quite an austere baking trip, the end result definitely tastes better after being smeared with (you guessed it) butter. But at least you have the choice of if and how much ... (Cooked most recently this evening to the strains of the Horace Silver Trio).

Ahhh, my first Mosaic Select. Well, actually it's only my second Mosaic. I got this on the back of a big order by a buddy. These things are cool - I can slip it into the house and my wife will never know. Whereas if I got another Mosaic deluxe job to join the Chico Hamilton - well, they kind of stick out like ... well, even she'd pick up on it. Anyways ... I've long been familiar with Big John's talents , but mainly as a sideman except for Let 'Em Roll, so this is my first real exposure to his stuff. And I'm gobsmacked. For all the greasing and grooving, I'm thrilled with the great LISTENING there is here. Patton's much more than a one-dimensional talent he's sometimes portrayed as. The Green/Dixon stuff is dynamite, but what has really blown me away are the That Certain Feeling and Understanding sessions. Understanding, in particular, with just drums and sax/flute is incredible - it epitomises what someone termed on a a recent thread (somewhere) of hard grooving with outside tendencies. Yippeee!!

Ahhh, my first Mosaic Select. Well, actually it's only my second Mosaic. I got this on the back of a big order by a buddy. These things are cool - I can slip it into the house and my wife will never know. Whereas if I got another Mosaic deluxe job to join the Chico Hamilton - well, they kind of stick out like ... well, even she'd pick up on it. Anyways ... I've long been familiar with Big John's talents , but mainly as a sideman except for Let 'Em Roll, so this is my first real exposure to his stuff. And I'm gobsmacked. For all the greasing and grooving, I'm thrilled with the great LISTENING there is here. Patton's much more than a one-dimensional talent he's sometimes portrayed as. The Green/Dixon stuff is dynamite, but what has really blown me away are the That Certain Feeling and Understanding sessions. Understanding, in particular, with just drums and sax/flute is incredible - it epitomises what someone termed on a a recent thread (somewhere) of hard grooving with outside tendencies. Yippeee!!

At the start of a long day on the sports desk, me and my buddies got a laugh from the following line from a wire report about John Daly's latest woes (hic!). Stating that Daly had been undergoing a stressful time because his wife was facing charges related to a drug ring, it stated: "Daly has said he will stand by his wife unless she is convicted." Ahhh, pragmatism!

Each and every time I want to love a new Van release, but - as I have admittedly pointed out on another thread - this time he has perhaps lost me forver. Geez - four songs out of 13 about the depressing fact that he's a celeb. Whinin' Boy groaning on and on and on and on.... Leave you alone, Van? Done.

Kynan Robinson's En Rusk - 1000 Wide Gene Clark - American Dreamer 1964-1974 John Patton - Mosaic Donald Byrd - Byrd In Hand Miles Davis Blue Note Vol 2 RVG Lester Flatulance and The Silent Killers - Let 'Er Rip! Ray Brown trio - Live From NY to Tokyo Either/Orchestra - Afro-Cubism Jack McDuff - The Best Of The Concord Years Jann Rutherford - The Scented Garden Way Out West - Footscray Station Sonny Rollins - Prestige box Hank Crwaford/Jimmy Mcgriff - Road Tested

Springboks Carlton Collingwood

I have Road Tested, which is just great. And I have another, Crunch Time, froma year or so later. OK but not as hot.

I'm surprised - the reviewers for the three main Melbourne papers (The Age, Herald Sun, Sunday Herald Sun) have all given Kill Bill 4 or 4 1/2 stars. Amazing - usually they're a contrast in styles and tastes and judgments. I'll see it sometime but I'm not feverishly keen. I'm with an earlier poster - my fave QT is Jackie Brown.

In different ways I like all the folks mentioned so far playing with Monk, but I'd put Gerry Mulligan right up there them. Their session is no real masterpiece but I dig the hell out of it anyway. B)

OK. I've had a promo ciopy of this for about a week. I've played it a few times on the 'phones at work. And truth to tell, I'm not sure I'll ever get 'round to any sort in-depth listening at home. *The coolest thing about the album is the goovy BN-style cover. *But, no, the fact he's BN has had no effect on Van. Not that anybody would expect it to. *There's the same mix of ballads, blues, shuffles, rock etc that has constituted his albums of recent years. *Instrumentally, the Acker Bilk cameo is one of the loveliest things on the album. *Here's the rub, though: On no less than four of the 13 tunes - Too Many Myths, Goldfish Bowl, Fame and Get On With The Show - he overtly addresses his enormous, passionate dislike of being a celeb and a star, and the hangers on that go with it and all rest of it, and how he hates it all. On and on and on ... Fair enough, I guess, it's his record. But even as a long-time Van Fan, there's no way this kind of whining is going to win a place in my heart. Van's become a bore.

Nope, but I reckon it's only a matter of time 'till they're buggered. I play this set relatively regularly, but just infrequently enough so that I forget to hold the damn box FROM THE BOTTOM. Hold it from the top, and the discs cascade on to to the floor.

Belated congrats from me, Jim. Just one tip: Get hold of a book by Australian author Kaz Cooke - called Up The Duff here, it has apparently undergone a name-change for the US market: Amazon link to pregnancy/baby book. You'll be deluged with advice and reading suggestions, but this one is a thoroughly enjoyable, irreverant blast.

David, I may have missed it somewhere along the line, but ... what's your book about? Fiction, jazz, biography?