Nate Dorward

Hm, people really like that Live in San Francisco one? I got it a couple years ago & have listened to it several times but it's now sitting in the "trade/sell" stack. Rudd's very good on it, & I like Shepp's tone, but other than that it seems to me a pretty muzzy album. The bassists are positively annoying (one of them spends half his time playing the same four note descending figure over & over).

Yeah, that Marsh/Tristano album....a lot of people seem to like that one but I find it a tough go, & as I said in the review it makes Konitz go through the roof. Oddly enough, I like the Monk album the best of those I've heard. It's afflicted by a curious egotism which surprises me given my impression of Braxton's generally exceedingly likeable, generous character--he tends to eat up all the solo space, especially on "Skippy", when I would have liked to have heard Mal Waldron given more of a look-in. But despite that I think it works out better than the Charlie Parker disc, though I'd have to go back to it & listen again carefully to quite explain why. I guess the main thing isn't: does a musician "know" how to play changes, does he/she avoid errors? but instead: can you tell if he/she is listening? or knows how to listen & how to act on that listening in this particular context? & for me there's not nearly enough listening going on on the Charlie Parker album, at least in the "straight" readings of tunes. Which is odd because Braxton can be a very quickwitted & accurate player in a free context: the duet with Evan Parker on Leo is a good instance of such empathetic, point-to-point playing. & he can do it with standards too: the eerie reading of "Embraceable You" on the Sackville album, for instance.

Larry--thanks for the kind words--I'm still waiting for it to get me into trouble (aside from the remarks about Braxton's standards playing, I'm sure Werner X won't take the 2nd paragraph scrutinizing the reissue's packaging too kindly)........ I don't know what sales of Braxton discs are typically like but my feelings are, why set a limit on the edition anyway? In any case, it's a lovely disc. The best thing on it is probably "Embraceable You", which is virtually unrecognizable. John Norris & Ted O'Reilly picked that track to represent Braxton on the fine history-of-jazz radio series they did for CJRT-FM a few years back.

Cadence & Verge carry all the Sackville titles.

FWIW I have the Collective 4tet & Karayorgis discs on good old CD. Haven't gotten to the 4tet disc yet but the Karayorgis is definitely worthwhile. Probably likely to appeal to fans of Ran Blake solo recitals (i.e.: sparse, unswinging, short track times).

Yeah the Sackville is really really good. I wish it were not a limited edition (just 1000 copies)--deserves to be more widely available. FWIW there's a piece I just did on Braxton's Bird album here: http://www.bagatellen.com/archives/reviews/000740.html

If you ruled out everyone who's been reviewed negatively by or had bad dealings with Ben, I suspect you'd have a hard time finding anyone to review him. I dunno, I kinda like Ben but seem to be in a minority. That said, yes, there's obvious personal animus there in Dan's review.

You will find the piece (by Dan Warburton) on the Bailey/Watson book also available at http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine...09sep_text.html

THe duo with Taylor is actually kinda untypical. I still like Bailey's solo albums best--Drop Me off at 96th & Lace from the 1980s are both very good.

Actually most Zappa nuts seem to hate it, is my impression. There's an intelligent pan of Ben's Bailey book by Francesco Martinelli in the current Coda.

Didn't know Doran had kept this project going. I have the CD of the original lineup, with Phil Minton, Amin Ali, Django Bates & Studer. It's got its moments (most of them Doran's) but it's a bit garish. Minton virtually disowns the album.

I can assure you there's nothing unfocussed or random about Bailey's playing. I say this having actually sat down & transcribed bits of it--it's quite beautifully put together. The partnership with Ibarra is very weak on Daedal but I'm todl the later Bids is better. However, if you want to hear a good Bailey disc try Aida, Dart Drug, Lace, Drop Me off at 96th, &c. Plenty of good ones out there. Or the albums with SME. I like the album One Time with Stevens & Kent Carter, despite the wonky balance (Carter way to the fore)--it's quite haunting.

Oh cmon Allen, spit it out... you've given us two initials..... So far the only name that springs to mind is Loren Mazzacane (Connors). Whose music I haven't heard at all. Even if you're not quite sold on the Dead Cat Bounce I'm glad you bring them up--I liked their new one a lot, & my editor at Exclaim! did too, so I even sneaked a little feature into their year-end issue about them. & just got my first Charlie Kohlhase album last year, Play Free or Die, a terrific album except for a few dead spots in the 2nd disc. So it's been something of a heads-up for me on the Boston scene. -- Joe Morris I've never been crazy about frankly--maybe I got the wrong discs (No Vertigo, Many Rings & the awful Eloping with the Sun) or saw the wrong concerts or something. He's extremely verbose, on his instrument & in person. That said, I really like Whit Dickey's Prophet Moon with him & Rob Brown. Sigh. Larry's book is still on order at the bookshop but hopefully will arrive soon.... Malaby's Adobe is very nice, though maybe not quite as superb as some reports would have it. But he was terrific last year with Open Loose here in Toronto, & no trace of after-you-ism to his playing, so maybe (Larry) it's the context that prompts that kind of self-conscious tastefulness that's irking you? He seemed to be one of the first players I know of to incorporate, not just broad-brush avantgarde effects (dissonance &c) into his (more mainstream) playing but also some of the subtle things like John Butcher/Evan Parker-style microscopic-detail focus on sound even when playing fast.

I have exactly two albums of which the one I'd recommend is Dances & Ballads, which is very lovely. If you see Hemphill's 1970s work on vinyl like Dogon AD snap it up. (I have it on a crackly Arista/Freedom LP. Great stuff.) Sackville recently reissued one in a limited edition, I gather it's pretty strong. The only Hemphill I've heard which should be avoided is the Big Band disc on Elektra/Nonesuch, which has about 3 excellent tracks & then about 20 minutes of a dire poetry+jazz thing. I'm told the posthumous stuff (without Hemphill in the band) shouldn't be overlooked.

I was trying to write a piece on Braxton's recently reissued Charlie Parker Project album, which I find rather difficult because, while I kinda like it for its sheer loopiness, it's also a big fat mess. Sat down at the piano & transcribed bits & pieces of "Passport" & "Koko" to try to decide for myself whether Braxton knows what he's doing--slow going, & really a bit dispiriting. Among other things the musicians get lost in just about every track--e.g. on "Passport" Braxton loses track of where he is & adds an extra 16 bars to the tune (or omits 16 bars, depending on your perspective); "Koko" is a complete shambles, especially after Misha hits a wrong chord during the trading-16s that seems to completely confuse the band & they never recover. & then there's the problem that no-one seems to know how to lead back to the head without adding a bar or so. & Fonda, Misha & AkLaff seem to be on different pages half the time. & this is before even getting to the harmonic content, which frankly leaves me bewildered. Braxton doesn't "play changes" really, which I'm cool with, but I really don't know what to do with his habit of filling solos with endless unsteady strings of chromatic filler. When he happens upon a coherent motif it tends to collapse the moment he tries to expand on it (which suggests a player who's not really put in the hours of mindnumbing transposition exercises that are basic for most jazz musicians). I don't know. I tend to have an affection for AB's highly idiosyncratic style almost independently of the context--& this is really the problem, that with standards performances it's virtually detachable from the context (it's rarely tied to the changes in any obvious way, beyond being more or less in B-flat for both tunes). But I was wondering if there were any more extensive attempts to transcribe or analyze Braxton out there, as I suspect any attempt to argue for the coherence of his playing would have to take in much longer stretches of his solos than I have the patience or time to transcribe. It's been a long while since I looked at the Heffley book--is there anything in there? (I remember it as largely reproducing Braxton's compositions not solos.) Or any other resources?

Why? No, I haven't heard of 'em either & I'm even in the same country.

If I had a digicam I could easily post a non-digitally-altered pic of our male cat Hamlet that would be just as scary. He's often been mistaken for a dog by inobservant visitors.

No, the bilingual site isn't especially political--I think probably most Quebec musicians have bilingual sites.

I hated Carrier when I saw him live, & his recent trio disc on 482 is dull too. Haven't heard the disc with Caine. What do you like about him? Maybe I'm a little biassed because a Montreal friend of mine who is otherwise the most generous of men spits blood when his name's mentioned (I gather his assiduous hustling hasn't endeared him to many of his peers on the Montreal jazz scene). But this was only after I saw him live anyway--it was one of those Canada Council things where you buy in an American guest star (Jason Moran in this case) to play with a Canadian band. Rough-hewn, rather blah free jazz with zero connection to Moran's elegant playing. If you want the 482 disc give me a shout, I have a review copy on the to-get-rid-of pile.

c.t.: it's just that when someone logs on & the first thing they do is sing the praises of a brand of saxophone & an obscure band, then it looks kinda fishy. There are oodles of adult publicists who like to pose as teenagers & sign onto jazz boards & post a message: "hey have you heard of xxxx? they're so kewl!! LOL!!!". i.e. spam/covert advertising. What IS a purple snurple?

I'm amused by the passage about Bailey's "much sought-after chats"--I like those things on Bailey's albums but I'm not quite sure that I or other fans really hunt them out that eagerly. -- Been ages since I've seen Derek live (I think it was April 1994, to be exact, a solo concert in Cambridge)--I guess the chances are ever remoter given his poor health & relocation to Barcelona. Drat.

Well, maybe, but the introductory post was already filled with this kind of stuff:

Just got a little bumf from Incus, FYI:

Knock it off with plugging reeds & saxes & bands, willya?

The phrasing here suggests to me that Heffley's borrowing from George Lewis's essay on improvised music from 1950 to the present & its binary between "Afrological" & "Eurological" aesthetics.