king ubu

Belated best wishes!

Yeah, tell me 'bout it! It was done via email, so it wasn't any kind of real dialogue, which would of course have been much more fun, but that would rely on me being able to join Chuck for a glass or whatever and really get into business. I did that a few times, but I'm afraid I'm not that good at it ... and I wouldn't really want to try and so such a thing via any means of "modern" communication, too. Anyway, this is all very low-profile, but I really did enjoy helping Chuck getting some exposure since I have a huge admiration for what he did and is still doing. The printed edition was considerably shorter, alas, but it was part of a large special on music in Chicago, also including a few more bits on jazz. And amazingly enough, three AEC albums made the top fifteen voted amongst the editors and authors of the magazine: "Les Stances à Sophie" even ended up on #5, Roscoe's "Sound" followed on #11 and "Song For" made #15 (and yours truly was asked to write short reviews on them ... but they're in German, so of little use here, I'm afraid).

These 2CD cases are moronic anyways ... they put way too much stress and strain on the discs. Never had a disc break ... I did break some CDRs, but that was deliberate and needed plenty of force. Not sure how you guys seriously arrive at breaking discs, I'd make sure to crush the jewel case (or rather the inner part with the evil "teeth") before that happens!

Cheapo set, I know - but a nice addition to the Mosaic ... playing the four tracks with Herb Ellis from the Kern, Rodgers and Youmans songbooks (the other tracks are all with Kessel and part of the Mosaic, the info in the above box is way off there, Ellis' first date was Dec. 10, 1953, on Dec. 6 & Dec. 7, Kessel was returning), then the Warren, Arlen and McHugh songbooks, and finally the Plays Count Basie album on the last disc.

Into disc six now and soon disc seven ... very good!

Well, thank you! I really enjoyed doing this! Just a word of explanation for the others: a shortened version of the interview was printed in the fourth issue of get happy!?, an independently published german music magazine (mostly german language, too ... I'd already done a rought translation of the interview by the time i got to know that they'll publish it in english).

For some single discs I recently bought I went via amazon.it or jazzmessengers.com and they all look like the real thing to me (I stocked up all the Muhals not in the box and not yet in my possession, four or five of them from those two sites) ... never ordered straight from CAMjazz, I think.

dang! and apologies again, too many things going on lately to keep everything under tight control!

disc four now ... lovely stuff! Kessel was amazing!

Thanks for the psi/Emanem update ... definitely got some catching up to do there! Ordererd a few things (including the first Rutherford/Iskra 3CD set), including some Parker discs. Hard to get the wishlist down to a sensible length (I'm somewhere between 250 and 300£ now ...) I could really band my head against the wall for having missed out on the reissue of "Topography of the Lungs" ... if anyone has an extra copy or finds one that fell of some truck, I'd be very interested!

OP, disc three

discs one and two

Thanks, David - did the same yesterday! Seems it will just slip through customs/tax-mongers ... but I'll keep an eye on amazon.it and amazon.fr, just in case. (Both don't seem to list the set yet, at least not under the same link/number.)

Marilyn Horne singing Händel's aria "Lascia ch'io pianga"

Not that I understand the technical aspects of it, but purely from listening, this makes perfect sense to me! There's a freshness to Richie Powell's playing in the Brown-Roach Quintet that I adore! And a very similar freshness turns up in the first Coltrane sessions with McCoy (those Oct. 1960 Atlantic dates).

Disc four - "Sonny Meets Hawk" and the first four tracks from "Now's the Time" ... guess I'll pop in disc five, too (not enough time for disc six right now, alas). Somehow, whenever I turn my back on this box, I keep to underestimate the greatness of the music it contains, can't quite explain why, but this is amazing stuff!

Yes, the covers are all there by now ... except for the Gaslini.

yadda yadda yadda nothing to see here - move on!

I don't really know much late Sarah ... but I love "Crazy and Mixed Up"!

Are they worth hearing? http://www.jazz.fm/index.php/news-a-events-mainmenu/8559-concord-to-re-release-sarah-vaughn-ellington-records-

Just because you reject even the notion that anyone might get an ounce of pleasure out of their music, I don't think you ought to flat out deny the mere possibility.

more into transmogrification myself ...

Sorry, missed checking in here ... of the couple of dozen or more NDR JWS recordings I've heard, most run from anywhere between 80 and 150, so the Surman is on the short side, methinks?