king ubu

As usual, I haven't read anything before, have played the disc once at work, thus no CD collection at hand to do any comparisons... #1 Sounds like Booker T. & the MGs a bit? Nice how piano and organ get along! I think I should know that tune, but I rarely play the few Stax/Booker T./Otis Redding etc. discs I have. (I need more, and more time to play them...) Formulaic stuff, but I like it. #2 Alto has heard some Cannonball? #3 Fun start! Retro stuff? Piano lacks the finesse of say, Teddy Wilson, but he and Fats (Sheik of Araby) are who this reminds me of... #4 Hawai guitars playing four brothers with a capetown jive groove? No clue once again, but this sounds pretty old, maybe Les Paul involved? Late forties or early fifties? #5 I can imagine a cheesy soundie to go with this... tenor isn't that bad at all... some Hawk disciple? Byas? #6 Now this one I know... but hell, what is it again? Very catchy tune that I like quite some! Early Milt Jackson? Is this on the quartet album with Horace Silver? Seems not, no timing matches, says AMG... hm, still, enjoy this one a lot! #7 Another tune I know but can't pin down. Ray Anderson? Great trombone playing! Camp meeting tune... nice, but no idea! #8 Similar stuff, nice tenor here, but nothing earth-shaking... Griffin? One or two of the last phrases of the tenor solo reminded me of him. #9 More soul meeting music... nice one, but a bit too easy for me. Gene Harris? Or would that be too easy to find out? #10 Alright, finally a tune I can pin down, "In a Mellotone" (what's the original title, Mellow Tone, Mellotone?). Nice, but again nothing that really grabs me... #11 Nice enough... hard-boppish big band. Clueless who this could be, but the solos are good. Sounds a bit muted to me. Tenor builds up nicely, not showing off at all, nice linear improvisation. #12 Sounds like a Billy Strayhorn tune at the beginning... wow! Ah, that's the tune I also included on my BFT and everybody jumped at me stating only Rabbit is supposed to play this one? Mike will tell me if I think of the right tune, I won't make a fool and mention the title... it's that bloody one... Beautiful performance! Made me think of Joe Hen's Strayhorn album, but it's not from that one. Haunting! #13 Good sequencing here! "Angel Eyes" - lovely tune! Very nice arrangement with the barisax, brushes etc. #14 Very nice one! Again pretty clueless, but the sax does sound somewhat familiar... #15 "Blue and Senti..." oh wait, Mike, am I making a fool again? Lovely! A good run here, from #12 onwards! Huh, what's that guy's name? Very nice one, for sure! #16-18 A few short tunes to end things... The first one is Basie-ish, but not Bill himself, I assume... Second another standard I know and Mike will mention its name Third is a nice, a soft and easy closer. An enjoyable disc you put together, Dan. Nothing here that really jumped in my face and grabbed me, but some very good things, mainly #12-14, as you will have noticed from my comments, with #12 being my favourite.

Did he beat someone up? Can we hear it on the disc?

Nate, have you heard the fellow I mentioned, Gallio? If not, try some!

Larry, the "Trio/Quintet" came out also on Savoy, yes? That's the same one? I played it last night, and "Summertime" is terrific! Moody, almost impressionist, pure beauty! The tune for his wife and daughter is also very nice. Plus the line up with tb/bari is not one heard that often, so the quintet does sound different from most comparable albums of the time... and Bert is a fine musician, not heard as often as he would deserve!

Yes King Ubu - I was thinking of his soprano playing on the Rendell/Carr LPs, which is very fine indeed. Lovely clear tone he gets. He plays some soprano on that Carr/Rendell/someone else Universal reissue as well, doesn't he? "Greek Variations" is the title, can't remember who the headliners are.

Welcome, Chris! Can anyone record the Barney film and bring it onto DVD? I saw that it was on arte (which we only get here from 7 p.m. onwards, the Barney film was screened on a Sunday afternoon...) I would love to see it!

Why "was" UBU? STEVE POTTS is still alive and kicking in PARIS (at least every week or so in "Les Sept Lézards). And it'll be fair to add to the bunch of "sopranists" ANTHONY BRAXTON, don't you think? Sorry, I mis-typed! I am well aware that Potts is alive! I haven't made my way into the Braxton universe yet, but I know some day I will, so I cannot judge that yet... Don Rendell has just been mentioned, and his soprano playing is very good, indeed!

Sad news :-( Will play some of his music... a natural player (seems he didn't read, at least no early on, when with Bird). I cherish his lone Blue Note album.

As Jim said, all you soprano haters: check out Barney Wilen! One prime example is on Blakey's "Les liaisons dangereuses" soundtrack. Now there's a sax player who sounds good on all four main saxes! Of course it's still the tenor I like most, but he kills on soprano! I never developped such negative feelings for soprano in general, but I can imagine why others would... Lucky T is one of my favourites, for sure (yes, it's "In a Sentimental Mood", btw, one of three or four soprano tunes on that terrific album). Also Lacy (and then don't forget Steve Potts was a good soprano player as well), Shorter (though him I can't always take), Bechet of course, Hodges (seems he wanted more pay, for doubling but the Duke thought alto/soprano, who cares, it's all saxophone... so he gave up playing it on records). I don't know if anyone here's familiar with swiss saxophonist Christoph Gallio. He's been leading his "Day & Taxi" trio for years now. He's a great, probably Lacy-influenced, soprano and alto player. Nate, if you ever get a disc of his for review, give him a chance! (He's got his own label, Percaso, where most of his discs appear.)

It's good to see the graphics department at 32Jazz getting work again, though.

Oh, c'mon... you know, there were days when I read "Voyage au bout de la nuit" - but those days have been some 8 years ago and I never did much reading since, so...

I forgot to mention the CD release of this, one of the very first Intakt recordings (I think it was originally a radio recording, as was the case with Schweizer/Anderson/Drake and the Lucerne set): Irène Schweizer: Piano George Lewis: Trombone Maggie Nicols: Voice Joëlle Léandre: Bass Günter Sommer: Drums Paul Lovens: Drums 1. FIRST MEETING 10’14 Irène Schweizer: Piano George Lewis: Trombone 2. LUNGS AND LEGS WILLING? 12’04 Irène Schweizer: Piano Maggie Nicols: Voice Günter Sommer: Drums 3. TRUTZNACHTIGALL 20’30 Irène Schweizer: Piano Joëlle Léandre: Bass Paul Lovens: Drums 4. EVERY NOW AND THEN 1’21 Maggie Nicols: Voice Lindsay Cooper: Piano Recorded live at Taktlos 1984 by Peter Pfister Grafic Design: Ruedi Wyss Photos: Gertrud Vogler, Leonhard Mühlheim Liner Notes: Patrik Landolt Executive Production: Patrik Landolt First released as Intakt LP 001 / 1986 Intakt CD 001/ 2005 blurb from website: I haven't heard it, but I guess it should at least be interesting! I also just found in a sale the Diaboliques (Schweizer, Joelle Leandre & Maggie Nicols) "Live at Rhinefalls" disc - haven't played it yet, though.

Ronald the trio with Anderson/Drake was to be the same concert I spread around... and I also spread the duo with Drake, parts of whcih were to be used as filler material, since the trio set was obviously as short as what I spread back then (48 minutes or so). I wasn't the only person being enthused by the Lucerne set - even a friend of mine who usually takes Schweizer for granted and doesn't like her a lot was fascinated. And the reviewers of some daily papers liked it a lot, too!

Hm, I can't remember. First ones I heard were "Workin'" and "KoB" from the school library, also "Amandla" which my mother enjoyed a lot. Maybe it was "Birth of the Cool", maybe "We Want Miles" - I got started quickly and picked up "Bags' Groove" and "& the Jazz Giants", then two of the Prestige quintets (adding the other two much later, only), and "Round Midnight". Then some second quintet (Filles, Nefertiti, ESP), and then I guess Miles & Gil box, after which I sort of waited for the boxes and stopped getting individual sets since I knew I would get each and every box. Plugged Nickel was the second one, I think, after the Miles/Gil.

You started a thread back then about that Solal show... (as well as an Oliva "Itineraire Imaginaire") - but be not afraid... Hm, why would it be hard to swallow? Language-wise? Content-wise?

yikes happy huppy

Your post makes me think... I have Paris, time to play it again, and maybe time to check out the others, too, if I see them somewhere. It's been years, and while I have and enjoy several of Wilson's albums, the encounter with Jacky didn't strike me as successful, but as I said, it's been years since I last tried it...

Let's bring this one back up! I interviewed Schweizer a few months ago, both for a radio show celebrating 20 years of Intakt records, as well as for a portrait of Schweizer that my friend did on his own, then. Wasn't that overwhelming an experience, but I guess it's simply a fact that not all musicians are able to put into words what they want to achieve in their playing... they might have turned into writers otherwise ;-) Anyway, I picked up a few discs since this thread was up last time. Willi the Pig is indeed a very nice one, as has been said, and contrary to Hans and others I enjoyed the Piano Solo discs quite some. Vol. 1 I enjoyed more. Then there's Ulrichsberg, and that one may be my favourite disc of her, next to Chicago Piano Solo. Also very good in my opinion is her latest solo effort, another concert, this time on a good piano, in a great hall (Jean Nouvels culture & congress centre in Lucerne, Switzerland), and professionally recorded (sort of opposite to the Chicago disc...): She starts out freely improvising (#1 and #2), then goes into a great Standard, "Ballad of the Sad Café", some of her own tunes, and then some Monk, too (the CD includes only "Oska T.", but a live broadcast with much of the same material also included two more short Monk tunes, as well as Ornette's "Broadway Blues" which she performed as a 1.5 or 2 minute encore). Highly recommended disc! Then, the trio with Fred Anderson and Hamid Drake seems to have been released on Intakt, paired with some Schweizer/Drake duos from an earlier (1998) encounter... weird enough I cannot find any trace of it on the Intakt website - maybe it was withdrawn? Anyway, I heard both concerts on the radio and if the disc appears again, I'll pick it up! Then there was a special "Portrait" release, together with the film about her (seems to be mediocre, but I haven't seen it). That one includes tracks from most (all?) her single Intakt discs, from the first to the latest. It also holds a thick book with Intakt discography of her, as well as some writings about her: Definitely recommended to anyone not yet familiar with her, or only slightly familiar. (The film is also on Intakt, DVD 121) ******************************* So I wonder: does anyone here happen to know why the Schweizer/Anderson/Drake disc disappeared? Thinkign of it, I don't think I ever saw it in a store, but I definitely saw it on the website (including an ugly cover scan whcih I posted on this board, probably in the funny rat, but I assume if it's been taken down it won't show any longer...)

I heard about it in December 2005 when Prevost did his 3 hour Solal special on France Musiques (or was that in January 2006 and the solo concert they broadcast took place in December?) - sounded intriguing then and even more so now! Guess I'll try and fight my way through a French book again, for a change!

Lon, maybe I was a bit too negative on Terrasson... the "rapturousness" is for sure not something that puts me off in his music! I enjoy "Alive" quite a lot, and I also have the first one (I think it's called just "Jacky Terrasson") and "Reach Out". Only after that I started to be less and less interested. "A Paris" is too much of a patchwork for me, for instance. Oh, and his album with Cassandra Wilson is awful - or at least there are enough awful things on it (Autumn Leaves with kitschy e-piano? no thanks!) for me never to buy it...

"Rush Hour" is great! Will check this out, too. But what an ugly cover!

On a related issue, I saw this film last year, "The Weather Undergound": http://www.upstatefilms.org/weather/main.html Here are the respective Wiki articles (including one about the film): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground For anyone interested, the film is definitely worth seeing. Interesting to note is that bare one of the interviewees, most of these people have by now reached comfortable positions in today's USA, being professors, teachers etc. And their lines of arguing are very reasonable (unless you're a conservative status quo thinking person, that is, of course). Anyway, for me this was one of the most fascinating political documentaries. Came to mind because the panthers are referred to a few times in the film...

Good move, Jim! I use amazon.de rather often! I'll try to think of searching via big-O!

Happy Birthday! This is the only leader disc of his I own, but I like it a lot:

Ok, now the good things: Kuhn has done a few nice things in recent years, so that's good news. Also I enjoy the one Lovano/Jones disc I know (though I think I like some live gigs I have better...). Kenny Werner on BN is definitely nice - he's terrific, probably one where "underrated" at least with regard to the audience/market does fit. Tolliver and Burrell sound interesting, too. And it's nice that Jacky T. is still on the label. His Paris disc wasn't that great, the one with Pahud didn't interest me any, but I still like "Alive" quite some. Anyway, somehow I lost interest in him three or four or even five years ago. A live gig late in 2000 or 2001 was the last thing of his that I really loved.