John B

I saw Lisle Ellis in concert with Marco Eneidi a few months back and very much agree - he was fantastic! I've never heard him on record, so I will make note of your suggestions and explore some of his work. I just found out last week that he will be coming back to the same venue with his own group in November, so I'll definitely go to that show. I agree about the Ware on Columbia comments. None of them ever really clicked with me. There are better Ware discs out there, but, as I get more discerning with my listening I find less and less in Ware's albums that really say anything to me. Branford Marsalis was responsible for Ware being signed to Columbia, fwiw.

I won't be buying much music for a while after my spending this past month. Too many albums I want to hear, too little extra money to spend. I picture Chaney's backyard looking like Gary's current avatar. I would love to see my 90 year old neighbor's reaction as Brotz went into overdrive.

there are some great releases on Nessa. Get the Fred Anderson, the Air disc, the AEC box and Roscoe Mitchell's Snurdy McGurdy and her Dancin' Shoes to start.

A solo on FMP as well. also Tales Out of Time, with Joe McPhee on Hat. That's seven. One a month, not too shabby. I keep hearing rave reviews for this. If I were only going to buy one of these 2004 Brotz releases this would be it.

Here is a view from one of the tallest mountains in the state, looking south towards my town off in the distance.

I'm still here, just really busy both at work and at home. Not too much time for music recently and most of what I have been listening to is not jazz. Fela, Lightning Bolt, Faust, Oren Ambarchi, Sunburned Hand of the Man, the Boredoms and some old, old blues have been played sporadically over the past few days. Ray Anderson is fantastic live. If you ever het a chance to see him I highly recommend it. I have seen his group Pocket Brass Band as well as BassDrumBone, which is his trio with Mark Helias and Gerry Hemingway. I don't know of any Atavistic UMS that have gone oop. emusic has all of them, if you have a fast connection that would be a cheap way to pick them all up. The Fred Anderson's the Brotz', the Joe McPhee's and the Schlippenbach are the pick of the bunch. I also really enjoy the album Funky Donkey, by Luther Thomas, out of the more obscure UMS' it is probably my favorite. Haazz and Co - Unlawful Noise is also a lot of fun. It is a blowout of noise featuring Kees Hazovoet with Brotzmann, Han Bennink, Peter Bennink, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo. I also noticed there is a new Brotz trio album called Medicina scheduled for release through Atavistic. No notes on who else is in the trio. It is getting very difficult to keep up with new Brotz releases, never mind his back catalog. How many discs has he put out this year? The two tentet discs on Okka, the lp on Bro, the clarinet album on UMS, Medicina...that's five this year, so far.

if you are planning on buying a bunch of these alldirect has quite a few for $11.88, free shipping for orders over $99.

There is a nice review of Brotz' 14 Love Poems posted over at Bagatellen now: 14 Love Poems

I have the same question about the limited edition Okkadisk releases. The Brotz/Kessler/Drake Empty Bottle cd is fantastic, but went out of print a long time ago and will not be repressed. The Atlanta Concert, with Brotz, Drake and Fred Hopkins is vinyl only and is also extremely limited. A lot of people who are discovering this music "too late" will never have a chance to hear these or, if they get a burned copy, the artists will get no money from it.

I checked with Eremite about the Bennink/Brötzmann and it is an LP-only release, unfortunately. I think all releases on Bro are lp only at this point. I still want to hear the Brotz/Walter Perkins release on Bro that was released last year.

great interview! thank you for posting that, ubu.

Yes, very much so. "African Music" is a very broad category that encompasses many varied types of music. Some of my current favorites are Fela Kuti, Ali Farka Toure, Thomas Mapfumo and several of the African discs in the Nonesuch Explorer series. With Fela it is hard to go wrong with anything he released in the 1970's. An extremely solid and vastly influential body of work. MCA has been doing a wonderful job of re-releasing his albums with 2 records on 1 cd. I recently bought Koola Lobitos / The '69 L.A. Sessions, which feature his earliest released music, going back to previously unreleased material from 1964 by his band Koola Lobitos. This material predates his stay in the U.S. with his immersion in the music of James Brown as well as other U.S. soul and funk, leading to his creation of afrobeat. This disc is nowhere near as essential as his later '70's work but I enjoy it very much. Ali Farka Toure is a guitar player and singer from Mali. He bridges the U.S. blues music of John Lee Hooker with traditional music of Mali. All of his albums that I have heard are very good, but The Source is my favorite, partially because it is the one I heard first and partially due to the beauty of his solo guitar track Cinquante Six. Thomas Mapfumo is from Zimbabwe and features the mbira, an african thumb piano, in his group Blacks Unlimited. There are several collections of his work that are quite nice and I really enjoy his Live in El Ray album. The Nonesuch explorer series is well worth ecploring (no pun intended) for anyone interested in "world music." There are many strong releases in the African series, featuring everything from solo oud to tribal chanting. They are very affordably priced, which makes it very easy to take a chance on some music you have never been exposed to before. Also, to bring this post back to Funny Rat a bit, The fantastic Peter Brotzmann album The WELS concert features Hamid Drake along with Mahmoud Ghania from Morocco.

His album Call of the Valley, with Shivkumar Sharma and Brijbushan Kabra is fantastic! Very highly recommended. He also appears on Zakir Hussain's Making Music, with John Maclaughlin and Jan Garbarek, which is another essential disc.

From the Grob blurb: "he [Wittwer] has absorbed the lessons from Hardcore and Trash Metal and transferred them elegantly and without compromise into his own idiom". You know, I still have sentimental nostalgic Trash/Death Metal attachments, so there is no way I will want to miss this one.

brownie - I would second ubu's recommendation of Amassed. I have also heard that the live disc is fantastic, but I have yet to hear it. Also, just in case you didn't already know, SHJ's first few albums are all pretty much straight ahead techno, with none of the free-jazz crossover of Amassed or Sweetness.

Although I love Hamid Drake, that disc is my least favorite Moondoc from what I have heard so far. It has yet to click for me, for some reason.

Another for Glenn Spearman - First and Last. I find it very difficult to believe he was terminally ill when this set, his last live recording from July of 1998, was recorded. He sounds to be in fine form and the enrgy level is quite high. I also like hearing Spearman play in a trio with piano. I don't recall any of my other discs with Spearman featuring piano.

sure! the mp3 samples I heard all sounded very nice. a big to Raphe Malik Quartet - Companions, on Eremite. Recorded live in 1998, with William Parker, Glenn Spearman and Paul Murphy. I enjoyed this one quite a bit.

up for some air, with a price reduction. send me a PM if interested, thanks!

I am also hearing New World Pygmies, vol.1 on Eremite, for the first time today. Very nice, although I prefer vol. 2 w/ Hamid Drake on drums for the 2nd disc. Moondoc plays well and William Parker plays as he always plays, which is not a bad thing, I just do not find it as exciting as some of the Moondoc with Denis Charles or with Ed Blackwell on drums.

unfortunately Label Bleu has no distribution over here that I know of. Occasionally it is possible to find a cheap remaindered copy from a store's overstock - which is how I bought Suite Africaine, with Texier, Romano and Sclavis.

go back a few pages to the long Coleman Hawkins discussion. That should throw a few people who haven't been following this thread for a loop!

I need to take some time, give the entire disc another listen and compose my thoughts, but I wanted to stop in and say one thing: track 10: I really dig this one! I would guess Gato Barbieri based on the slight latin vibe I feel, but I have no clue if it really is him. I'm really looking forward to finding out who this is!

I went to Oban back in 1993 with a friend and took a tour of the distillery, followed by the requisite sample of the end product. Quite nice! It was especially well-suited to the cool, damp weather that seemed to follow me around every day I was in Scotland.

I have never heard them. I listened to Tom Bruno's White Boy Blues, which is an album from 1981 that Eremite reissued on cd. Most of my knowledge of Bruno's work comes from the three albums by Test that I own. This one is a solo performance, featuring Bruno on drums and (less convincingly) on piano, this one exceeded my expactations. Not bad at all.