felser

Very good music, but very bad theology. PM sent inquiring details on the Lorez Alexandria.

Allen, what's THAT all about? Hope it's only because you have remastered individual CD's of all the sessions and wanted this to read the book, or something. Some of the greatest music in the history of the planet is in this box!

Email sent on John Fahey CD.

PM sent on these: Don Braden, The Open Road (Doubletime) $8 Joe Cohn, Two Funky People (Doubletime) $6 Kenny Drew, Solo-Duo (Storyville) $9 Kenny Drew, At The Brewhouse (Storyville) $9 Billy Pierce, Give and Take (Sunnyside) $6 Billy Pierce, Equilateral (Sunnyside) $6

PM sent on the following: Eric Alexander Quintet featuring Cecil Payne, Two of a Kind (Criss Cross) $8 Jimmy Bruno Trio with Bobby Watson, Live at Birdland (Concord) $7 Jazz Crusaders, Freedom Sound (Pacific Jazz) $6 Harold Johnson, House on Elm Street $7

I have Six on now and it sounds great - the live stuff especially is night and day from the previous releases of this. Will play Seven next. Deep Discount CD messed up and didn't send me 5, so I won't get it for awhile, but will report through how it sounds when I do. BTW, re: Six - has there ever been a more purely exciting piece of music than "Stanley Stamps Gibbon Album"? (rhetorical question, folks) Seven sounds pretty great too, big upgrade. Four is the most stunning to me, though.

I have Six on now and it sounds great - the live stuff especially is night and day from the previous releases of this. Will play Seven next. Deep Discount CD messed up and didn't send me 5, so I won't get it for awhile, but will report through how it sounds when I do. BTW, re: Six - has there ever been a more purely exciting piece of music than "Stanley Stamps Gibbon Album"? (rhetorical question, folks)

'Third' still sounds really bad, and the bonus CD of BBC cuts (originally available as a separate CD. 'Live at the Proms') sound even worse. On the other hand, you get 3 LP's worth of great music, plus wonderful notes and photos for $10.

Agreed Colletables is often maddening (the bizarre pairings of unrelated Atlantic albums come to mind - the Jack Wilson album paired with the Frances Wayne album is my "favorite"), yet I'll give them some props for putting some of this stuff out at all, rockwise as well as jazzwise. And their sound has gotten a lot better over the years. I'm very thankful indeed for the Sugarloaf twofer, the Pacific Gas and Electric twofer, the first New York Rock 'n' Roll Ensemble album, the John Lewis twofers, the Charles Lloyd reissues, etc.

This 1998 session on ENJA is one of the few of the last 25 years I consider truly great. Burton to me is criminally underregarded, and his playing here is on fire even more than usual. I will sign out with the AMG review by Michael Nastos, which expresses thoughts on this CD more eloquently than I could (I don't have phrases like "bituminous strokes of swing" in my arsenal. Calling my friend Nate Dorward!): Intensity, pride, and passion are the earmarks for the modern mainstream jazz quartet co-led by tenor saxophnist Burton and drummer McPherson. They display a fervor that is consistently buoyed by the insistent pianistics of James Hurt, while bassist Yosuke Inoue stokes the fire with bituminous strokes of swing and steadying brute force. Each of these six compositions allow each member to stretch out and dig in, and they have a definite center from which to draw upon. Many will be reminded of the classic John Coltrane quartet from their Impulse recordings: slightly on the edge, forever moving forward. "Nebulai" is set up by a probing ostinato bass sets, Hurt's roaring piano, and Burton's bridge workout, which reflects Coltrane's energy, but sports Burton's voice. In 6/8, the title track over is 16 minutes and uses a repeated modal piano line and a bowed bass solo, churning tick-tock drumming, and a four note bassline, setting up extended tenor and piano excursions, and a hard bop second half where Burton and Hurt bubble over. That same crescendoing capsized boil also crops up on the lithe Afro-Cuban danza "Punta Lullaby." There's also a spirit ballad for "Dad," with Burton far from tame or languid, a hip, modern bossa "Forbidden Fruit" in beats of seven, and the most consistently hard swinger "The Last Laugh." If concentrated doses of highly motivated, nitro fueled expressiveness appeals to you, this album and band should more than adequately fill the bill, as Burton, McPherson, and Hurt emerge as individualists and powerful purveyors of this thoroughly modern milleu.

I just got them, have only listened all the way through on Fourth, which sounds wonderful, a stunning upgrade. I took a quick listen on Third, and it still doesn't sound very good.

PM sent

PM sent.

I forget the guy's name, but the first jazz criticism book I ever read, in the early 70's from my local public library, was some British guy who considered Coltrane and the Miles Davis Quintent with Hancock/Carter/Williams to be "anti-jazz". It was just awful stuff to read, as 'A Love Supreme' brought me into the jazz world.

Coupla thoughts on this. 1 - Often, the only thing that makes another person's opinon "bulls**t" is that it disagrees with ours. These are some incredibly knowledgeable guys you're dissing here. One of the reasons I come to this site is to read their "pontifications". 2 - 1961 Coltrane is a pretty huge blind spot for a jazz critic. I don't see a way to overlook or trivialize that. And I don't see championing Ornette, admirable as that may be, as cancelling it out.

Up with edits

I had both for a while and solid the "Complete" set - the Birdland RVG discs sound MUCH better. That's what I did too, for what it's worth. So did I. The Birdlands, the JJ Johnson CD, the Blue Note Memorial, and the Pacific Jazz, all RVG's, and you have everything on the box set. Nice artwork and book on the box set, and it's slightly cheaper than the five individual CD's, but the sound difference on some of the RVG stuff and the retrospective notes and additional photography more than make up the difference.

Clem, totally agree with you on Jack Nicholson's acting and on 'Modern Times'. I like 60's Dylan but not Leonard Cohen (like his writing, can't hack his singing or the production on that first, famous Columbia album), so not sure where that leaves me on Carl Ogelsby. Is "The Trip" the movie that Electric Flag did the soundtrack for?

Tommy Flanders was the original lead singer of the Blues Project before Al Kooper took over that role also. That album would be nice to hear!

Agreed there. The Caravan albums up through 'Cunning Stunts' have some amazing tracks on them. Totally agree. Wyatt's solo stuff didn't have the instrumental approach that the first two Soft Machine albums did, and those two albums (and the great "Moon In June" on 'Third') gave Wyatt an opportunity to express himself which he lost afterwards when they became strictly a (great, unique) jazz fusion group. The MM albums, while different than Soft Machine, gave room for the soloists in ways the Wyatt solo albums didn't.

I ordered them from deepdiscount.com a while ago, haven't received them yet. Under $10 each and free shipping from there. Matching Mole was interesting at times, a vehicle for Robert Wyatt's whimsy to be more out front than Soft Machine became. I prefer Soft Machine, though.

Agreed, but the Henderson may be an anomoly, as everything else in the first batch is just the same ole same ole, with another four bit increment. There are a lot of Milestone gems that have never seen (at least domestic) CD release. Riverside is pretty well tapped out, I think, except for the occasional obscurity.

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What Brownie said. 'Swingin' Easy' is the greatest jazz vocal album ever released... ...Mr. Kelly's is good, but her voice was already taking on a different quality at that point. Uh... "At Mister Kelly's" was recorded the same year as half the tracks on "Swingin' Easy" (1957). At any rate, I love the late 50's to early 60's, with my personal favorite probably being the Tivoli performances. Live, with a trio in general is the way to go, imo (even up to the 1973 recordings in Japan). Yeah, but the rest of 'Swingin' Easy' was recorded in '54, and is magic. And the '57 cuts were recorded much earlier in the year than the Mr. Kelly's stuff, and under very different circumstances. Mr. Kelly's and the Tivoli recordings are good. What her "best" period is depends which of her voice periods is the one that best speaks to your soul. For mine, it's the earlier stuff.

[ I've always thought that those Tony Williams albums were overrated (and I passed on the Select), but Tokyo Live was an exception to me, the one compelling release by that group.