king ubu

almost done with disc 5 by now - the first Joe Williams session is terrific! and as always I'm rather underwhelmed by the "April in Paris" material - just one of many similarly good Basie albums, I never understood why this was such a classic, Atomic and other of the Roulette dates are better, as is, in my opinion, the Gus Johnson material (mainly the dance sessions) of the Verve period. How is the Basie Verve set ?.......I'm thinking about ordering this soon . Plenty of good music (I made it to the first tracks on disc 6 today), but there's a bit of a sameness to some of it. Not sure that's fair, but mainly the second band was an arrangements/textures/ensemble-based outfit, not a bunch of individuals having fun like the old band, still, let me try... First you have the sessions with Paul Quinichette (and then also with Lockjaw) - Quinichette is great, so is Lockjaw, two very individual voices that stand out. Then the Dance Sessions - one date with a few very nice Joe Wilder solos. The two Franks, Wess & Foster, some of Fosters arrangements are great, he - and a bit later Thad Jones - bring some bop into the band, Foster's rather agressive/hard sound and style of soloing are great. Wess who's in the Hawk tradition is good as well, and his flute (not there from the very beginning, first he's only on sax) brings in a new colour that's pretty nice. Then enters Joe Williams - some of the sides he cut with the band are terrific, classy stuff. Also there: the famous (but see my comment above) "April in Paris" album sessions, a small group date with Buddy Rich on drums, a band/small group date with Oscar Peterson (and Basie on organ or sitting out on one big band cut). So in the end it contains lots of good music, but still I think it's not totally unfair to mention the sameness... Oh, and as much as the crowds seem to have loved Sonny Payne's showmanship, Gus Johnson (who as Mr. Albertson mentions in the liners, was ousted by other band members, eventually) is the better drummer, I think - a terrific big band drummer, while Payne is good fun and more than able, but not quite up to Johnson's level, I think.

These are the cds from the 30th anniversary box. The ones with Lacy are very good. Thanks for the link - looks different from the ones I have, or I haven't looked close enough to see... John Carter/Centazzo/Vinnie Golia/Gregg Goodman - USA Concerts West (Ictus Reissue Series #3) (trio with Carter/Golia, duo with Goodman - all previously unissued) Centazzo/ALvin Curran/Evan Parker - Real Time One (Ictus Reissue Series #4) (#1-4 orig. released as Ictus 0006, #5 prev. unreleased) Centazzo/Trovesi - Shock!! (Ictus Reissue Series #9) (orig. released as Ictus 0016) Centazzo/Lol Coxhill/Franz Koglmann/Giancarlo Schiaffini - Situations (Ictus Reissue Series #12)* (first 7 tracks - prev. unissued - are Koglmann/Coxhill/Centazzo, rest is Ictus 008 with Schiaffini & Coxhill) These are on the Felmay label, rather than on Ictus itself, numbers are rdc 5028, rdc 5029, rdc 5043 & rdc 5046.

almost done with disc 5 by now - the first Joe Williams session is terrific! and as always I'm rather underwhelmed by the "April in Paris" material - just one of many similarly good Basie albums, I never understood why this was such a classic, Atomic and other of the Roulette dates are better, as is, in my opinion, the Gus Johnson material (mainly the dance sessions) of the Verve period.

yesterday discs 1-3 of the Basie Verve set, hoping to continue today and finish tomorrow!

I posted about this group's Zurich gig over here: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...st&p=577007 Still have good memories of the music, but the lack of audience was a shame! As far as I understand, it's more of a co-led Ullmann/Swell band, with most of the music being by Ullmann. I assume in the US they give Swell main-billing while over here Ullmann is a bit better known and thus goes first?

Thanks for your reply, Matthew - I'll have a look at the Ictus page (or was that the DMG page or something - the one with infos on the individual discs) once I'm done with the army crap (two more weeks to go). So the packaging is different, but the contents are the same?

I'm home for the weekend between some more weeks in the army band, so forgive me for not going deeper into the thread and the web, but is this Ictus box different from the single disc releases that generally get lukewarm reviews in Penguin? I got four or five of those in a sale a couple of months ago, as yet unplayed... Is the stuff in the box better, if it's indeed different stuff, or are the Penguin chaps totally missing the point there?

payment & mail sent!

Belated best wishes!

Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" - great one so far, but I'm only into it by 150 pages or so...

Hope you had a good one, belated best wishes!

Moholo is still active, he appeared here with a swiss group (he was the leader, of course) a few months ago and probably a second time - I missed it, though...

Thanks brownie, being at work I couldn't find the correct quote within a reasonable amount of time... that whole thing is rather worrying!

so that weirdo chap with his tongue out on that photo and unable to bind his own necktie, he seems to have said something like "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left." http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/...icle2314202.ece

I haven't seen it yet, don't know if it's out already or not... Intakt releases more/faster than ever before, they seem to do pretty good, which is great! The Anderson/Schweizer/Drake I think was out for release (with the cover backed white instead of black) two years ago or so, but then disappeared and now it's finally in stores... no idea what happened, but this just as an example that their fast release schedule isn't really documented on their website in a proper way... Just did some googling and found the Sommer/Smith is already out!

Zentralquartett is fantastic all the way! First choice for me would be this one: http://www.intaktrec.ch/069-a.htm "Careless Love" I don't have, "Plié" is almost as good as the above, and so is the most recent one, which is their take on traditional songs from Germany. Sommer also has a new one coming out of his duo with Wadada Leo Smith: http://www.intaktrec.ch/128-a.htm And here you'll find all his Intakt releases in one place: http://www.intaktrec.ch/babysommer-a.htm

one of my latest, and a good one: also, finally the 8CD Duke Box has shipped...

Very sad news

I don't really get it that so many of you despise that Thad Jones album! I have the Mosaic and like all of it, although the second one with Mitchell is probably better and my favourite likely is the United Artists album with Al Grey added. Anyway, his three BNs have a freshness and a modest way of being just slightly more interesting than the usual hardbop stuff on BN. Thad is just a bit too sophisticated for run of the mill stuff, and I like that a lot. As for the others, I have all of them as part of some boxes (Dexter, Hill, Byrd) or in older editions (Mac & AT). Not sure I need to upgrade/replace any of them, maybe the AT? THat's a fine one in my opinion, probably one of the least known BN albums?

Not counting the early Pathe titles, the Columbia/Brunswick/Master titles (not counting alternates and the small group stuff on Mosaic) runs to 7 cds. I have the Classics and deleted the small group stuff for some cdrs and have 7 discs (180 titles) covering 1931-1940. The Pathe titles were included in the French lp series but will probably be excluded in the future Mosaic box. Thanks for the info, Chuck... I'll just keep looking for anything including material I don't yet have I guess. It's probably difficult to have the full run of early Ellington without ending up with a number of duplicates... My Storyville box just shipped, finally... won't be there to listen to it when it arrives, but I'm still looking forward to the day I'll have it in my hands!

So you say you didn't get the hybrid SACD? The OJC sounds a lot inferior! OJC, yes. No SACD on display in any of the stores here, usually... I never bothered about SACD and I think it's safer to keep it that way for now... (same with the whole japanese reissue material... I don't even dare think of it!)

saw a great and a lousy concert last night (double bill): Susie Ibarra Trio w/Craig Taborn & Jennifer Choi - everybody by now knows uub's got a crush on her, I assume, and indeed she was terrific, very sophisticated approach, great groove, and a beautifully tuned set of drums, really a sound of her own... but, BUT... the other two were just so talkative, fake, boring - bullshitting all the way, nothing felt in there, all just made up facade... really annoying, and mostly pretty ridiculous, pathetic, Taborn doing boring neo-/pseud-romantic stuff, and Choi helping him making sure the music didn't breathe once in a 45 minute set... no space, no sense for pacing, a totally misled concept. The tunes all sweet and often almost like what's called "Salon-Musik" over here, muzak of the worst kind, all beautiful surface and nothing below that - and no, irony was NOT involved. Misguided in the sense that they don't know what they actually do there - bullshitting in what I assume is more or less the Harry Frankfurt way of defining it... Second was the Co Streiff Sextett - she's a local alto/soprano sax player and the Sextett have their second CD "Loops, Holes and Angels" just out on Intakt. The band includes another reeds player, Tommy Meier (tenor sax & bass clarinet), Russ Johnson on trumpet, a local bass/drums team, plus Ben Jeger on piano, accordion, farfisa and some other old synthesizers. They did a superb set, lots of the music being really group-music, not about egos and solos, but more about creating colours and grooves, doing a tune from Mali, some almost highlife like material, and lots of other great things, you can hear much of jazz history in there, from basic blues to Sun Ra and Roscoe (both of whom were covered on their first disc, "Qattara", also on Intakt) and Fela Kuti (nothing of his on disc, but they do some in live shows, not last night, though). Anyway, this more than made up for the pastiche banality of the Ibarra trio... Again let me stress that Susie Ibarra is a master percussionist, no doubt about that, just she ought to do different stuff... and Taborn is quite interesting and good when playing with Tim Berne... but then again his own disc "Junk" (?) on Matt Shipp's pretentious label is pretty boring, too...

oh, and I do like the cover of this CD a lot!

Finally got it, almost done with a first spin - pretty good! I think I like it better than the two "funky" GG albums I've heard. Only got "Alive" and "Carryin' On" so far... generally I like his earlier stuff quite a bit better.

I and Nate Dorward (visiting from Toronto) heard Golson live at the Jazz Showcase last year. He was in very fine form (i.e. Golson; Nate was in fine form too). That's good to hear Larry - too bad I had my only chance to hear him when he had a bad day/night, then He's really some kind of idol for me, so I was pretty sad after that concert - if his music wasn't so dear to me, I'd not have even bothered to type the above post, I guess...