Nate Dorward

11: Nice swing-to-boogie version of a familiar tune. The stomping closing peroration is the best thing, & it shows that the bassist & drums aren't really needed! There's a wrong note near the end & I like how the pianist makes it sound "right" through the next phrase. 12: "Solitude" for 2 basses. A little too lazybones for me--I mean, it's hard not to like this, but it's not making me jump out of my seat either, and the business-like piano just seems to be trying to avoid getting in the way. Hm.... the clarinettist sounds familiar, maybe Michael Moore judging from the tone, though I wouldn't expect some of those top notes from him. 13: Vaguely Monkish tune on some familiar changes. The drummer sounds familiar, can't place him, I don't think I know the others. This style of alto sax definitely sounds European, it's not fashionable in the U.S., more like a Dutch sound. This sounds "different" without maybe being all that idiosyncratic. I liked it--the pianist actually did something with the Monkisms rather than just quoting them or toying with them knowingly--without its really hitting me hard. 14: Bud Powell tune, I think. I must confess that I like this style of slightly "off" piano--the touch having that poking-the-keys flavour, the notes a little cracked, the lines dragging a little behind the beat--much more than the flavourless in-control sound of most contemporary jazz piano. Probably an older guy but recorded fairly recently. It's not exceptional--I don't get the sense of a cumulative building in tension between choruses, it just seems to amble along, & there's no "spillover" in energy from chorus to chorus (everything seems to be cut off every two or four bars)--but nice to hear nonetheless. No idea who it is--sounds like whoever it is ought to be picked up by the Smalls guys, if he/she hasn't been already. 15: A familiar but not overplayed standard (I forget the title, though the flavour suggests it's Adair/Dennis; is it "Will You Still Be Mine?" Whatever....). Not crazy about this one for some reason.... I like the pianist most just because he keeps surprising me & because he sounds like he's pushing himself the hardest. The tenor is one of those players who just sounds like he's turning on a tap. No idea who anyone is here. 16: A tromboney "Our Love Is Here to Stay". Amusing to hear someone's voice after that II-V passage on the head! (I initially thought one of the musicians, but turns out this is live.) I initially thought this would be painfully cute/cozy but the double tbn solo at the start really has its own knotty intensity, & while, yeah, the pianist does seem to be trying to tickle the crowd's fancy, that's fine, I like the glisses & pranks. Olde-style bowed bass solo, surely an older guy? Only Ari Roland plays bass like that now (& he's not as good). Yeah, this is nice, I liked the feeling, which is good-humoured but not two-dimensional or lazy. 17: OK, a very fast "Evidence" done by some cool hands. The pianist starts out SO minimalistically, with all those pauses & the homeopathic doses of left hand chords, that you just know he's waiting to eat up the keyboard..... This is impressive enough but, in terms of music, I dunno, just seems to me one of those tracks where everything seems in the right place, but it's a kind of playfulness that doesn't invite me to come & play--it's jazz as self-enclosed playground. 18: Good, got the vocals out of the way.... Sounds like Susanna McCorkle with less sense of pitch. The pianist is a little..... bouncy. 19: Thanks!

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Yeh, I should really post more about music rather than just films...! I guess that should be my new year's resolution. Thanks everyone for the bday wishes...! (I guess I might as well take the opportunity to say that if anyone's so inclined, I'm taking signups for February's BFT #62 over in the Blindfold Test forum.... the usual compilation of out-of-the-way things that have caught my ear.)

Good to hear a few snatches of this, though unfortunately I had guests visiting so missed a lot (including the Ayler!). Caught Jan Johansen, Fats Waller, Ornette on Tenor, & a pianist playing "Everything I've Got" (didn't catch the name), among other things. Great to hear your voice, & your thoughts on the selections.

Thanks folks--another milestone passed! .... #35, to be precise. Best wishes to everyone at Organissimo in the new year, too.

Trepidation? Any reason why? Probably most of this will be in my usual zone of not-quite-mainstream, not-quite-avantgarde, hopefully all fairly userfriendly. Plus there are a few tracks that I keep leaving off past BFTs that will surely make the cut this time round....

Truthfully, it's not the electric bass that bothers me, but just the general rhythmic feel of the track--it just seems really flat and untogether. Well, maybe I'll have 2nd thoughts once the identity of the players is revealed..........

Glad to see I added to the total of i.d.'d tracks -- Takase is a pretty interesting pianist--I know her duo with Conny Bauer (saw them live), the very interesting trio disc on Leo with Aleks Kolkowski & Tony Buck, & the OK disc of covers on Psi. 5: not my thing, I'm afraid! 6: some blistering playing on uke, I believe. Pretty damn amazing. 7: odd phrase structure to this tune, which keeps making me think it's losing half a bar at one point. The guitarist is good, & I liked the somewhat strange (non-Grappelliish) violin playing with (sorry I'm not one for technical terms) the quirky bow weight & phrasing. 8: hm, electric bass?? aside from questions of instrumentation, this is so terribly unswinging I can't take it. & what's with this non-solo by the tenor? At points this is so clunky that I assume these guys are doing it deliberately..... I hope?? 9: I'm no expert in this kind of traditionalist jazz but, yeah, I liked this track. 10: I like the way the trumpet straightens out the kinks in Dizzy's break...! This is knowing stylistic reversion, but, yeah, it's fun & it's done well--the rising harmony in the last chorus is a nice touch. [more to come]

Just saw that Ben Ratliff gave a nice writeup of the disc in the NY Times (link here). Good to see, as so far (Drip Audio being a Canadian label), virtually all the coverage has been north of the border.

OK--time to start this thread. I will try this time to create a downloadable version, but anyone who wants a physical CDR mailed to them should just ask. I will keep this to a single CDR's worth of material, as I think two CDs are simply too much to digest & comment on. No overarching theme, just some music I like. Probably to vary the pace I'll include some older tracks along with recent stuff (whereas my last two BFTs were all new material). Signed up so far: The Magnificent Goldberg Bright Moments JSngry Durium Bill Barton relyles sidewinder Big Al king ubu RDK mikeweil stereojack John B Thom Keith

OK, haven't looked at this thread yet..... 1: Well, it's definitely Rudi Mahall on the bass clarinet, no idea about the rest, but a guess (given the material) would put this as Aki Takase's Fats Waller album. Ehhhh.... they seem to be trying too hard to be wacky. 2: Jiminy cricket! No idea, maybe Bud Shank, hard to get a bead on given its brevity. 3: So it starts MJQ style before switching to the hot club swing of the dedicatee. The flash is enjoyable, though there's none of the lyrical abandon of Django. 4: This is much more my speed than the preceding tracks. Ahmad Jamalish pianist, I forget the name of the tune. It doesn't strike me as really lifting the roof off, but I liked it. [more to come]

My great-aunt did.

They're all good. The sound on Coventry is the worst of the bunch, alas, but the music's probably the best.

How about an entire band playing something other than their usual instrument? Don't think Sun Ra's Strange Strings has been mentioned yet...?

Hm, never heard of it, & tend to have a skeptical view of anyone who appends "Ph.D" after their name.... still, 4 volumes suggests he's put in a little spadework, at least. I note that he's published with the Mellen Press, which adds substantially to my doubts--it's a quasi-academic vanity press. (What press is the 4-vol set from?) He does seem to have a clunky way with titles--I note that he has a CD called 21st-Century Musicism.

Yanow was doing some reviewing for the magazine under Daryl Angier's editorship. I haven't seen the most recent issue or two--I no longer contribute to it, though I did send in a year-end top-ten anyway--but my recollection was that Yanow hadn't been seen in its pages for a while. Ken Dryden, Ken Waxman, & Kurt Gottschalk seemed to be some of the main contributors.

Apart from the front piece on Allen, there's also a really nice LOOOONG piece on Delmark Records & Bob Koester.

Stuart Broomer, most likely.

Sure, I'll sign up. Hmmmm.... considering my grief in the past with broken CDRs, maybe this time I'll give the download a shot.

Truthfully, except for taking the little one to see Bolt, I have no plans to see the current slate of films in the theatres. Somehow none of them looks that appealing.

The current fave for me & the daughter is a banana & Nutella sandwich on toast. If I have time to make them in the morning, then ham & cheese muffins are nice. It's a modified version of a recipe I found in a cookbook with the unappetizing title "Grey Poupon muffins"--I don't think you could sell the kid on the idea of mustard-flavoured muffins, but if you describe it a little differently then it beomes her favourite snack.

Whatever happened to the law of the excluded middle?

Hm, figured that Allen'd weigh in on this one -- Well, no, it's not rough-edged & sloppy but in many ways I feel like that would be an affectation for this group of musicians; they don't sound like they're only concerned about getting it right, which is for me where "stiffness" would set in. (Actually, I've heard plenty of sloppy performances that sound oddly "stiff" at the same time...!)

Chords are not copyrightable, but melodies are.

My friend Captain Hate (who was on Organissimo for a bit but I haven't seen him in these parts lately...) is a big fan of trumpeter Steven Bernstein's work, so when I spotted this one on a review-copy list I was sent I gave it a try. It's a marvellous disc which has been in frequent rotation in this house for the past week. It's a 9-piece band (with guest vocalist/banjoist/guitarist Doug Wamble making it 10 on the last couple of tracks)--Peter Apfelbaum, Doug Wieselman, Ben Allison, Charles Burnham & Ben Perowsky, among others, in the band (of the familiar names--& I was also quite impressed by the guitar work of Matt Munisteri & trombonist Clark Gayton, new names to me). Aside from a rocking electric blues opener by Bernstein (wonderful fiddle intro by Burnham), the rest is covers of mostly fairly unusual repertory: some items from the 1920s and 1930s (Cecil Scott's "In a Corner", Fats Waller's "Viper Song", Preston Jackson's "It's Tight Jim", Prez's "Dickie's Dream" [stunning version!], Don Redman's "Paducah"), plus a little Ray Charles & one of the best Beatles arrangements I've come across, "All You Need Is Love". There's nothing about the arrangements that seems self-consciously clever or "postmodern"--they don't try for either authenticity or knowing updates (the Scott version is pretty straight, though Allison happily throws in some substitute changes), but they care very much for warmth of sound & for making smart connections between R&B and early jazz. Wonderful stuff. It's dedicated, by the way, to the memory of the late Joel Dorn.