felser

Amen.

"A Fickle Sonance" was the holy grail for me. Even Jerry Gordon at 3rd St. Jazz didn't have that one around.

Agreed. Not just that Winwood kid (and whatever became of him, anyways, did he do anything else ), but Eddie Hardin was also really good.

Infation factor between 1985 and now is 2.42, so that is like a $72 album today. It was enormous, but a great choice!

With you on Dexter, give me the best of the Steeplechase's for the decade. I also am glad for "Homecoming", with the Woody Shaw/Louis Hayes group doing the honors. They were one of my favorites of the era. I like Anthenagin/Buhaina also, dig Cedar's Rhodes and Mickey Bass's electric bass, as well as the Woody/Jefferson front like. I also really like this one for Watson's playing and Watson and Walter Davis's writing ("Time Will Tell" is one of my all-time favorites). I'm with you on Schnitter and Pomeranov. They were certainly competent, but not inspiring. Wynton actually brought some real fire to that group at first when he joined, for a while. The "Live at Bubba's" semi-bootlegs are my favorites. Things really blanded out with the recordings on Concord (as if that's a surprise). I wasn't finding a lot of great cutouts by the 80's (I did in the 70's), but was finding a lot of wonderful used records.

Tough era to start, lots of young guys in nice suits and hats doing polite albums on major labels. And cassettes at that. The CD revolution later in the decade into the 90's was a miracle.

I like those Joe Bonner albums, forgot about them. And "Essence" is the Kloss album I was thinking of. Fire with Hannibal on that one. 32jazz put out three extensive 2CD sets of Mark Murphy's Muse work, which seem to contain just about everything he did on the label, but in haphazard form. I would have much preferred them arranged chronologically by album. What a strange label 32jazz was, so very right and so very wrong at the same time!

Nice Dex set. Tough to pick just one from his 70s output. And I like the Byard.

Yep. Including gems by Eric Kloss and Charles Earland and the Visitors. Also some nice titles from the predecessor Cobblestone label.

Not a masterpiece, but an interesting listen:

Mathis was my mother's favorite. "Johnny's Greatest Hits", "More Johnny's Greatest Hits:, and "Merry Christmas" were the soundtrack of my youth, and I still have a nostalgic soft spot for them. I play that Christmas album while we decorate our Christmas tree each year.

Agreed. Getting from, say, "Afro Blue" to, say, "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" or "Every Step of the Way" (the climax to Santana's 'Caravanserai') is not a long journey. And of course Santana then blatantly recorded Coltrane in that album with John McLaughlin.

etc. Not that it's terrible stuff at all (it's not), just not enlightening.

The clip sounds great, would love to see that band! To me, the guy who really comes off great in the article is Azar Lawrence. Where was he for the 30 years between the mid-70's and the mid-2000's? Loved his work with Tyner in the 70's, and his albums since his return to the jazz recording scene have been strong.

That is the best of the later Sassy albums. And that is a really good Tapscott (as is everything he released in the decade). Nimbus West is a unique and fascinating label.

A lot of artists I have complete "official" leader sessions by, but I don't even attempt complete sideman work. And then you have the issue of grey market bootlegs, etc. Do those count towards completion?

I'd be patient and buy it used from ebay or discogs. Bear Family stuff is prohibitively expensive to buy new. Thiset would go for well over $200 new.

Stunning and overwhelming. Beautifully done story of horror.

Greatest of all time? No way. Showiest, maybe. Taste counts for something, doesn't it? And that was often lacking. Give me Hendrix, Rory Gallagher, Richard Thompson, Zappa, and plenty of others.

YMMV

I don't have a preference, and I use both liberally in my BFT's.

My complaints about "I am Woman" are not sociological or lyrical, they're musical. An estimable song, but one I have always found unlistenable due to its hokey tune and arrangement.

Regardless of what else he did, good or bad (and I'm not a big fan overall), Hammer certainly made his mark on those first three Mahavishnu Orchestra albums, to their and his benefit.

The original Spinal Tap. Not rock-gods here, but one extremely iconic song and many decades of varying but generally interesting music (and Moontan and the first live double are GREAT albums).