Ed S

I really don't know much about Boulware beyond the gig I saw him play with John Scofield a few years ago. It was a tour that Scofield was doing on the heels of that album he did with MMW. Boulware did a nice job, or at least nice enough for me to pay attention during the band introductions AND remember his name.

He's got a real nice band with him: Lonnie Plaxico - Bass Will Boulware - B3 and Rhodes Teodross Avery - Sax Kenwood Dennard - Drums

Any Rodney Jones fans out there? I just picked this one up and have been spinning it for the last 24 hours or so. Not bad. I'm digging it. If you like his BN Soul Manifesto record, you should like this one. It has that live edge that studio albums can't generally duplicate. Lots of funky soulful jazz grooves. Some of the tunes are absolutely smokin'. There are a couple of numbers that have some hip-hop rap thang vocals that I dug but may not be for everyone. He does a fairly straight reading of Light My Fire that I was hoping would have lit my fire more and a pretty soulful version of Morning of the Carnaval that is just okay. Other than that, this album grooves like crazy. Nice party music for sure. Anyone know why he parted ways with BN? This album would certainly fit the bill as a BN release

I scored a zero. Is that good or bad?

I had wanted to check this one out but sort of lost track of the release date. A review in the Buffalo News got it back on my radar screen. I ordered it from CD Universe and should be getting it any day. I'm really looking forward to listening to it, especially after reading the review. The reviewer - Jeff Simon - is mostly a straight ahead jazz guy, though he digs Scofield and the Matthew Shipp crowd. I guess his tastes cross a pretty wide jazz spectrum, but I was sort of surprised to read the review that he wrote. Here's a cut and paste: Whatever it was that happened to trumpet players in the past 18 months, cross your fingers and hope that it never stops. Where once we had one of the Neos from Ellis Marsalis' unofficial New Orleans Jazz Conservatory - a vest-busting but unambitious mainstream bop chopmeister with a tone as wide as the Delta - we now suddenly have a hugely daring and imaginative horn player who has made one of the most inventive jazz records of an otherwise timid year. Imagination and integrity were the qualities most conspicuously absent from the backwash of garbageous hack "fuzak" that swamped jazz in the years following Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew," where every no-talent Jeff-Lorber-Come-Lately thought he could get in on the act and ride profitably over a wretched marriage of art and commerce. It was pretentious pop jazz with neither the pop or the jazz. This disc, on the other hand, is a brilliant, restless, post-Milesian riot of electronic textures with these titles: "Cannabis Leaf Rag I," "Tantric," "Sabba-Unranked." It is a hugely ambitious and multi-colored canvas out of which Payton's trumpet continually emerges with startling new statements (his scat vocal on "Shabba Unranked" is raucous low comedy). If this extraordinary tapestry of samples had been the kind of electronic jazz that followed Miles' great pioneering, something wild and woolly and wonderful might have come of fusion after all, rather than pompous drivel. Cohorts helping Payton's cause here include his usual mob, most notably Tim Warfield and Kevin Hays. - Jeff Simon

Matthew Shipp - Equilibrium. That's all I listen to in the car.

I know that my style of listening doesn't suit most on the board, but what I'll do with this disc is throw the Dodo Greene disc on my multi-disc changer along with a bunch of Ike Quebec discs like Easy Living, the 45 Sessions and Blue and Sentimental and hit random. Makes for nice few hours of listening with the Greene vocals spaced out so as to reduce the quality of sameness that you mention. Funny thing about the Dodo Greene is I have come to like more over time and with each listen. When My Hour Of Need came up as a result of this thread I pulled it off the shelf and gave it a spin. Still like like it.

I know that my style of listening doesn't suit most on the board, but what I'll do with this disc is throw the Dodo Greene disc on my multi-disc changer along with a bunch of Ike Quebec discs like Easy Living, the 45 Sessions and Blue and Sentimental and hit random. Makes for nice few hours of listening with the Greene vocals spaced out so as to reduce the quality of sameness that you mention. Funny thing about the Dodo Greene is I have come to like more over time and with each listen. When My Hour Of Need came up as a result of this thread I pulled it off the shelf and gave it a spin. Still like like it.

I never really took the time to get into Django. I kept hearing so much about him, how he was such a great influence on so many players etc. But my pre hard bop bias kept me from going near any music that was not hard bop, much less pre-war. As those barriers were removed, I finally picked up the Django Mosaic just to see what all the hub-bub was about. I was amazed. I love that set. Plus its led me to pick up a bunch of other older Mosaic sets like the Bailey, Bix, Venuti/Lang. I ended up picking up the 1st JSP box, all the Jazz in Paris Djangos, the one released on Capitol a couple of years ago (All Star Sessions?) The problem I have now is with so much Django out there, I'm not sure what to pick up that A.) Doesn't sound like crap. and B.) doesn't significantly duplicate what I have. Manoir De Mes Reves has to be one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. I really dig Festival Swing - that song with the announcer who introduces the members of the band. Makes you really feel like you're there. That Django Mosaic is one of my favorites.

I love Django

Oh yah. I truly dislike mini LPs

Two - The Lou Mecca - which I really wanted to hear after hearing the fabulous 10" Conn series in the US. By the way, can anyone give me an intelligent reason why this was not released as part of this series along with the couple of other 10" BNs that have not been released in the US? Would it really have killed them to put out 2 or 3 or whatever number of discs to just get the material out? I never understood that. The other I have is a Three Sounds - Good Deal, on which I got a very good deal up in Montreal. OTherwise, I generally wait for the US releases, though I'm really starting to wonder if the Sounds will ever get their due here in the good ol' USA.

Arrr - blast your thievin hides. You're all a bunch of mangy bilge rats. Why the whole scurvy lot of ya ought ta be keel hauled.

Ah - the Rare Groove Series. Another near and dear to my heart. Do I sense another thread starting?

Well, it could be more than a couple of days. One of the items on the same order is backordered......

I ordered it from CD Universe for $12.59. Should arrive in a couple of days.

I saw that cover on the BN site a couple of days ago and thought that something like it would have made a nice cover for Mother Ship.

This disc has grown on me with repeated listenings. I'm not the biggest fan of drummerless ensembles, but this one turns out to be very nice. Like Nate said, it's a pretty album - though I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it's dull. On the other hand, I'm sitting here trying to come up with a better descriptor and the best I can come up with is lackluster. On the one hand, there isn't anything here that cries out - "you must hear this record" On the other hand, if you see it at a good price, I don't think you'll be disappointed if you enjoy the work of any of the artists involved. Maybe Jim said it best -

I'm with Ray on the Dodo disc. It's grown on me over the years, so I'm glad I didn't dump it after the first time I heard it! My reaction on first listen was something along the lines of "What the hell is this?" Of course, I was way more hard bop oriented when I first picked it up and It certainly does not fit the hard bop Blue Note mold by any means. I'll put it on every once in a while and do enjoy both the singing and music. Dodo lives and sings weekly in the Buffalo, NY area where I live. I have not seen her in years, but I picked up a copy of her CD for my parents for Christmas. They took it to one of her shows and got it autographed. Dodo was thrilled that they took the time and interest in tracking down the recording.

I've been picking up Conns since they first came out in 1994. For the most part - since I've been picking up regular BNs from about the same time, I have very few duplicates, and the duplicates are only with material on Mosaic sets. Actually, the duplicates that I have were obtained fairly recently. I saw the list of Conns and realized I had all but a few that I had on Mosaic sets. That's when the completist in me took over and I figured I buy them anyway. I think I needed a couple of Andrew Hill and Horace Parlan discs so I figured what the heck.......... Of the October bunch, I've got the Rivers and Young on Mosaics and the earlier release of the Rouse. The Rouse, if I buy it, will be my first duplicate of an older BN disc. I'll probably end up picking all of them up.

I'm a Conn completist as well. I'll be pre-ordering the October Conns.

Sven Edwich Ed Jazzwich Spam Sandwich ESwnnch Jazzbot Jazzmouse Tone def

Thanks Jim I'll take the LT cover over the new one. The new one, IMO, tries too hard to look like a classic BN cover and while it does a good job at that, it misses the mark by not representing the musical content appropriately.

Anyone have an image of the original cover?

From what I read in another article, it's a secular record and reunites him with Willie Mitchell and some of the musicians from his 70s material.