A Lark Ascending

I got the cane* at 10 for getting less than 15/20 in a spelling test. I still can't spell! * 'the cane' - a piece of bamboo traditionally used in UK schools for corporal punishment until the early 80s.

I voted for Schneider. But in second place I'd put the Colin Towns Mask Orchestra...an absolute gem that is virtually unknown outside Europe.

I'd give 'Journey's End' a big thumbs up. Not really fusion at all - with both John Surman and John Taylor on board it is very similar to their recordings. Worth buying for 'Tess', to my mind Surman's most beautiful composition. If you've an aversion to ECM (as some people have) I'd say ignore it. If you like things like the Ralph Towner Solstice group or the Jarrett European quartet of the late 70s then you'll love this.

Unlikely. I saw them in a small pub in Nottingham. Thanks, Claude. I don't pay much attention to DVDs so clearly missed this completely. It would seem to be the same tour but at a different venue. Sadly, no 'Laurie'.

But all the others are crap!

Who'd want to live in a world that had nothing you could complain about? The thought of a world with nothing to grumble about gets me so angry. I have to say...

Fair enough. Though it does beg the question as to why one should feel the need to complain about a board one does not contribute to. Human nature, I suppose. We all like to grumble about something.

None of my friends like jazz. But then I don't like rock climbing, belly-dancing, football and all the things they individually love. We're friends because we enjoy one anothers company, not because we necessarily share interests. It'd be nice to have a friend who did like jazz, but...we'd probably lose all the others in jabbering about music all the time!

That's exactly how I see it. Perhaps the best thing to do if one has issues with a board is to take them directly to the board in question rather than carping about it elsewhere.

Anyone know anyone about this, listed on Jazzmatazz (http://jazzmatazz.home.att.net/) I'm especially intrigued by the Evans section. There was a Beck discs called 'Seven Steps to Evans' that has long been OOP. I saw Wheeler and Beck do an Evans tribute concert in the early 1991 and long wanted to hear this music. They did a glorious version of Evans' late composition 'Laurie'.

No problem with the 'insider' nature of the board. Anyone who chooses to post here has to relate to that or go away. I could just do without the swipes at other boards by some members. But maybe I've just got to learn to bite my tongue on that one.

I'd suggest this was a good thing! AAJ has never had the communal thing that this place has. It has always seemed to me like a high-profile bar on the front street that has a passing trade that often never returns. Organissimo is more like a 'local' with a lot of people who know one another and with a 'code' all its own.

I'm being overharsh, Leeway. Every couple of months there seems to be one of these comparing todgers (I think that's peckers in your part of the world) threads over here (they don't seem to do it at AAJ). I never see the point. AAJ can't match the depth of the posts of some of the posters on this site; but it compensates by having a greater interest in the jazz world beyond America. As for 'idiots', well I suppose one person's idiot is another person's sage. There are people on both boards whose sanity I doubt! I'd imagine people on both doubt mine! Strengths and weaknesses on both sites. One site has more action than the other? OK. But I'd say that's as interesting as one saxophonist playing more notes per minute than another. Unless, one's a financial analyst tracking the economic viability of both places. AAJ has provided a place to post for Organissimo members when this site has been down, a service people who rarely post there otherwise have made use of; Organissimo has done the same for AAJ. The way I see it AAJ and Organissimo are two strong sites that complement each other. But then I'm a woolly European liberal, resistant to hardnosed competition.

I'll recommend a bit of self-congratulatory back slapping and 'Arn't we better than them guys' group hugs. That should get the testosterone level back up.

The original Liberation Music Orchestra disc and the later Ballad of the Fallen heavily feature Carla Bley. They both have the slightly edgy, askew feel that I miss in later Bley. Both highly recommended.

I really love "Útviklingssang" off this disc. Beautiful melody, marvellous saxophone. I'd strongly recommend "European Tour (1977)" from around the same time. "Spangled Banner Minor and Other Patriotic Songs" is a wonderful piece of musical irony. My two favourite Bleys are the earlier 'Tropic Appetites' and the sprawling, very 60s but thoroughly marvellous 'Escalator Over the Hill'. All records I've lived with for 30 years and still play regularly. There was a Kurt Weill-ish off-centred feel to the Bley of the 60s and 70s. Personally I've found her music from the 80s to be more conventional. The eccentricities seem more studied, less spontaneous.

I got bit c.1976 and am still spending silly amounts of money on jazz recordings. I've had a couple of periods away from the jazz...a couple of years in the early 80s, a long stetch in the late 80s into the 90s when classical took over. But since c.1991 jazz has been centre stage. I'll still have the odd month when I'll play anything but jazz but jazz I always come back to. August/Sept were Irish folky months for me but I'm back to jazz again now.

I ordered the set over the phone on Saturday from the source above. It was sat on the doormat waiting for me when I got in from work 20 minutes ago. Great service, excellent price (for the UK).

You don't have to look far on jazz boards to find hosts of people who get upset about just that. Wade into any discussion of pop or smooth jazz...

Dual disc is already old hat. The HEXADISC plays as a CD, SACD, DVD, DVD-CD and Minidisc on five of its respective sides. The sixth side has the CD with built in snaps, crackles, pops and jumps to please the vinyl market. The Hexadisc can also be used as a Rubiks Cube. A new player is mandatory, of course. As is rebuying your record collection.

I can see exactly what you're saying. The fact that the likes of Anderson made a huge fortune way beyond what Kirk could hope for, displaying a fraction of the talent, is bound to rankle...and the racial politics dimension only intensifies that. [Despite having a general affection for the prog-rock of that era JT are not my cup-of-teabag either] But I'd imagine Kirk 'borrowed' alot of the devices he used from earlier musicians before he started to develop his own innovations. It's how we all start. Bruckner, Mahler, Elgar, Debussy, Schoenberg...it's hard to listen to any of their early music without hearing Wagner. It's that thing of hearing or seeing something new and striking and saying 'I want to try that.' I'm reminded of a similar example. Back in the 70s and 80s a bunch of Irish musicians turned traditional Irish music on its head and made it relevant and exciting for the rock world. Yet the likes of Planxty and the Bothy Band never really broke out of the world of the folk revival and the marginal folk-rock area. And from the late 70s onwards interest went elsewhere and they ploughed on in their own way. Anyway, towards the end of Planxty's lifetime that used a keyboard player called Bill Whelan to provide colouring and arrangements. Ten years later Whelan puts together an extravaganza called 'Riverdance' and cleans up across the world. The whole musical basis - in a more sugary form - lay in the 70s work of Planxty. Whelan had found a way to bring it to a mass audience. I've read interviews with Andy Irvine (one of Planxty's members) where without being openly hostile, his indignation with Whelan is barely supressed. In terms of innovation it should have been the Planxty lads who got the fortune. But that's not the way it seems to work. Whelan might have had little of musical interest to add to what they'd achieved...but he sure knew how to dress it up for wider consumption.

The indignation is understandable. But it would be interesting to speculate what music would sound like today if every musician had begun their career determined not to appropriate an idea that had been first dreamed up by an earlier musician.

It's probably inevitable that anyone in any field will commence their careers 'borrowing' from elsewhere. I know I took most of my teaching techniques from other teachers in the early years...and continue to steal to this day. Another example of influence/robbery I recently noticed - I was listening to some very early John Taylor and Keith Tippett recordings (late 60s/early 70s). What stood out was how much of McCoy Tyner both had absorbed. Probably inevitable for a young piano player at the time. By the mid-70s there's hardly a trace of Tyner there and he'd be one of the last pianist you'd compare either of them with based on their recordings of the last 30 years.

I see the distinction. Prog-rock groups of that era were keen on 'appropriation'. Lots of 'chunks' of classical music got appropriated. Having said that is Ian Anderson 'appropriating' RRK any different to Martin Carthy 'appropriating' a Bob Copper song? Often he transforms the music he gathers from the tradition; but sometimes he...and other folk revivalists...just get off on singing a bloody good song or playing a bloody good tune with little embellishment. Maybe what matters here is acknowledging the source, which Carthy has always been very strict to do. Did Anderson acknowledge the RRK source?

I came to jazz in the 70s partially through the Keith Tippett/Louis Moholo/John Surman/Mike Osborne/Brotherhood of Breath area of the music. It always sounded quite unique to my ears. I was recently listening to Albert Alyer's Greenwich Village recordings and was astonished by how much of that UK/South African exile music owed to Ayler. Not just in its high octane freedom but in the use of marches and tunes derived from folk/popular culture. Now the musicians mentioned have never hidden that influence. But having never previously really listened to Ayler except in passing I was greatly struck by the parallels. Robbery? I think not. They take Ayler's way of doing things which they clearly love and take it somewhere else. Strikes me as the way music happens.