JSngry

Donaldson had been recording for BN as a leader, right?

I know of promo films for "Penny Lane" & "Strawberry Fields Forever"...caught them on Hollywood Palace(?) when the were first released...what other promo films are we talking about? I've found this, but is this an actual/real-time "promotional film" like the others, or an ex posto facto assembleage? I mean, any video is going to be that, just wondering about "intent" and wondering becuase I honestly don't know. Yes, Hollywood Palace! ABC! Saturday night prime-time! VAN-FUCKING-JOHNSON! http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22a6p_beatles-hollywood-palace_music Before Pepper was released...the look here was a ginoromous WTF? for a kid in the sticks like me who had last seen them on the back of Revolver.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/arts/music/jiri-belohlavek-dead-czech-classical-conductor.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fobituaries&action=click&contentCollection=obituaries&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0 Not a conductor whose names I immediately recognize, which is no surprise....any thoughts from those who know? Opinions, recommendations, etc. And thanks in advance for those!

A lot of guys who came up in that "post-Trane" vibe were obviously not fully formed (which is why the NEXT thing, the AACM esthetic was so grabbing, it WAS, if not fully extrapolated, fully formed), but you can tell now, rather easily, who had more on their mind than just "in the moment". Pharoah and Archie both were like that, I can go with them because I can feel them wanting to keep going past that moment. Some others...maybe not so much. It's a beautiful moment to be in, but a moment ends up being all it is. To the point of that Kiermeyer album....it's pretty unlike other post-Trane Pharoah records in that he brings all of it, unfiltered. It's a lot to bring, and it's everything he had with Trane plus everything he didn't yet have. A lot of people get happy being in one place, this guy knew he had more work to do, work that maybe would not have gotten record deals and such, but dammit, he did it, even if it's still not going to be what gets him record deals and such. Gotta love a guy that works like that.

Also, why Pharoah might be wearing for some people...he had one aspect of the horn down at least as good as Trane (possibly more good), the overtone/tone/range part. But what he did not yet have was the macro-awareness of harmony and form that Trane did. Trane was improvising structurally, developmentally, his "free improvisations" flow more like a classical composition than a "typical jazz improvisation". It's his and the band's cultural contexts and musical genomes that make this music "jazz", a lot more than the actual/transcribable content. Trane had absorbed Bartok for crissakes, Bartok and raga and Monk and Bird and church and god knows what else. Pharoah did not have that depth of macro-absorption, which is not at all a disparagement, I mean jeesus, how many people alive in any world could, not but a few, right? You got Beethoven, and then you got how many other people in the world, even some great ones, but how may really....macro-people? Not many, right? Just saying Pharoah never runs out of chops, but he could be kinda Sonny Stitty and get to a zone where idea walls are hit and emotional projection is what's going to get it over or not, and emotional anything by definition becomes very subjective.

Ah, Shepp...he definitely had the emotional chops to hang with that band, but I don't think he had the saxophone chops, not to be a regular member. Probably too "inside baseball" but you can really here the types of things that both Trane and Pharoah were shedding on, very specific, and very much a linear evolution technical schematic. Archie could play, for sure, but not like that, at least not yet. Again, probably too "inside baseball", but the overtone manipulations that those guys were working with, and the evenness and purity (sic) of tone across the whole range of the horn, from very bottom to waaaay above the "normal" top end, and the cleanliness at which they negotiated all of it...Archie had not gotten there yet, not even close. Which probably does mean that he would have brought a different level of "realness" to that band. But Trane was soooo immersed in physics and math and how they worked as it pertained to his music, that...I don't know if would have been as comfortable a fit over the long haul. For all this music, though...the longer it exists as history, the more I come to evaluate it azs history, objectively. It can still raise my hair, and does (oh god yes it does), but..."how did they do this" increasingly becomes more a matter of science than of mystery. And that's kinda fun, really, because then you can not worry about if you "like" it or not, that's really no longer the point, that's just a choice, a personal subjective choice. We can worry about "points" as they pertain after the facts instead of before and during.

Considering that Lion was already recording Brown for BN, and that Lion was already midwifing the nascent Silver/Blakey Messengers concept and actively recording LD as a leader, I'd not be at all surprised to say that recording live at Birdland specifically with Blakey/Silver/Brown/Donaldson was not a Blue Note "project" in at lease some part.

Art Blakey always told a good story, but CB was already recording on BN (as leader and as sideman) and gone to Paris with Hamp before the Birdland date, so I don't know about this "about a year" thing, or about ever being a permanent member of Blakey's band. I don't doubt that Bird hipped Blakey to Brown, though. But Art Blakey always told a good story.

http://exhibits.baseballhalloffame.org/dressed_to_the_nines/uniforms.asp?league=AL&city=Washington&lowYear=1960&highYear=1970&sort=year&increment=9 1963 & 1968, it appears.

The album covers are often at least as stimulating as the music!

I don't know if you can ever really go beyond yourself, hell where can you be if you go there and you're not there? Seriously, I hear you. Trane needed to keep expanding himself, even if he didn't know where exactly it was going to go. Neither Elvin nor McCoy really went "beyond" what they did with Trane. McCoy certainly refitted it in many delightful ways, but Elvin seems to have just said fuck it. I'm Elvin, tha's enough, gimme a bassis and how many ever tenor players I can afford and let's DO this thing. And ok, hell yeah, that's Elvin Jones, what else could it be? More Pharoah w/Kiermeyer...there would be ways beyond ways to object to this if not for Pharoah just bringing it so damn REAL!

That's a drag. RIP.

Hell, I expect any Coleman group to have at least as good a time than that. And I love Arditti playing Carter. Not the same thing in obvious ways, but ultimately, pocket gonna be pocket no matter where it lives or what form it takes. Pocket gonna be pocket.

Hell, he was already Elvin. He didn't need to go anywhere else!

I love Pharaoh with Trane, especially from a saxophonistical standpoint. I know a lot of people hear just "screaming" and, but jesus, it's actually very, very methodical (in the process way), the things he plays. all the talk about him and Trane being obsessed with mouthpieces and stuff like that, these are guys using mechanics as means to an end, perhaps unlike Ayler who already had an end and then set about finding the means to it. Emotionally, make of it what you will, and it can be wearying if it's not a zone you wish to visit (or even if you are...), but from an objective saxophone standpoint, there's no mistakes, no randomness, no undisciplined rapturing, It's totally disciplined from that angle, as was Trane. Truthfully, I think Phaorah came down a notch after leaving Trane and, on record anyway, it took him a while to get back. I was not particularly enthralled by the later impulse! nor the earlier Theresa stuff, it seemed like a guy with not as much compulsion as before. But hear him back in that zone on Franklin Kiermyer's Solomon's Daughter...jeeeesus! This is a guy who heard it as it happened, understood the hows and whys of all of it, and, I guess, just didn't feel it important to always go there. But if you got this in reserve, and the world changes so much around you, maybe you pick your spots.

I don't miss the drummer..

Young, new, hot, and clean.

The "best of" disc for the Japan material would be the original LP release (2 LPs, think it might all fit on one CD?). Plus, the LP artwork inside and outside is gorgeously of it's time, full color, art, you know, not just photographs. Alice drove that bus, bless her for that. Pas that, though, the notion of completism is a pet peeve of mine, or it has come to be as I've confronted it and, hopefully conquered it even as I still find myself drawn to its visceral temptations and tickles (ok, restrained it, not conquered it). Really, it's a fallacious consumer-centric reductionist construct. The 4-CD set is, like two concerts, not even a third of a real-time 24 hour day. Hardly a "complete" anything, except for, probably, those two concerts. But there was more music on that tour, there were more music from that band, hell, there was more music in those lives, there was more life in those people than just the music that was played. Complete? Complete what, exactly? The only way to be a true completist with any music is to live it in real time, not just hear all the Bird airshots, but to be with Bird when he shot up, or when he met Chan, or when he hoboed on that train. That's the life, and the life is what makes the music. And you know, all the real-time lives that made this particular music are dead except for Pharoah. so...nobody is ever going to get the "complete" John Coltrane, not even this small part of John Coltrane. Nobody. Dead or alive. That kind of "complete" is not for us to have except with ourselves, and the idea of selling the idea that it is otherwise so...that is not something I buy into these days except as self-entertainment, a OCD-ish hobby, a lot more "necessary" than it is real, you know? The temptation, the lure, the goddamned hook, is that the more you hear, the more you can learn, and that is true, but only up to a point. Once you start believing that the more complete your collection gets, then the closer you come to "completely getting it", that's when it becomes a delusion. Because you can't. Not you not me, not even anybody who has every record ever made in the history of all worlds, known or unknown. That just ain't there. Now, having said that, I am certainly a consumer, and I certainly choose to listen to a lot of people I really get reached by, Trane (and Bird) being among them. In that sense, I aspire to "completism". But the reality is that "completism" is, at best, a scaled-down facsimile of reality, it's not life, it's a representational symbol of other lives. And in that realization, there is (or can be) liberation. There is absolutely no real experiencing the "complete" anything, so, you know, if it's fun or rewarding, proceed accordingly, grow, have fun with it. But if it ain't...don't feel that you're less complete about it. Whatever emptiness might be there ain't gonna be filled by records. Music, maybe, probably, definitely. But music ain't records. All of which is to say, I don't listen to the Japan stuff that much either. But I have fun knowing it's there when I want to go to it. The line between heavy recreational user and outright addict is a fine one indeed, perhaps an illusory line that one becomes convinced of in the interest of percieved self-preservation. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. (But nevertheless, the 65 Half Note stuff...if you really want to "know" Coltrane musically, technically, how he did got to this one point, this cumulative point, and then why he went from there to where he went...on "Creation" I swear it sounds like he's needing to break the fucking tenor because the tenor is not capable of giving him all of what he wants to get...no, one does not need to hear "all" of it (because again, there ain't no such thing as "all" of it). But if one is seeking those particular answers, they are,to be found here about as vividly as they are anywhere. 65 Trane is deep, period. But this Half Note shit is...raw nerve music)

It's really not my business (literally and figuratively) but there's got to be some legalese in the paperwork (are they incorporated?) that gives the principals some kind of soft-er landing if and when they close up shop for good. I get altruism and not being in it just for the money, really I do, but...what happened to that Blue Note(?) half-ownership stake? I can't believe that those two guys are just going to go out of business like a broke-dick dog, not at their age. Really, I hope that is not going to happen, and I hope that that accounts for a little (or more) of the extreme generosity over the years. Don't nobody need to be that nice otherwise.

Yeah, the Seattle stuff has grown on me over the years. There was a tree-d set of 3 CDs called Sweet Potato Pie which was 2.5 discs of 65 Half Note broadcasts (and everybody who takes Coltrane seriously as "pure music" needs to absorb that stuff, imo), and then, after a 22+ minute Half Note MFT, it shifts to, I think, the opening night broadcast from The Penthouse, and it's like, whoa, the Half Note shit was already ON it, right, but this is like, if your brain could talk like your voice did when you inhaled helium, this would be that, musically, Just...INSTANT New World, atoms being split Right Before Your Ears, Big Bang BOOM!!!! type stuff. It's the kind of thing that I, as somebody who essentially started with Transition and then went both ways with Trane as immediately as possible, needs to hear every once in a while to really get how...upset (in both senses) Coltrane and his bands were getting to people hearing it in real time,. Jesus, Ayler was such a breakthrough (and Trane knew it, embraced it, needed it for his own self), Cecil too, that quantum math, but Coltrane, it seems like he suddenly velocitized out from Extreme Newtonian to Raw Quantum without really knowing exactly how - or if - he was going to land this sucker. Or even if there was a place to land it at all. The Japan music...I can listen to it, but I have to be really ready to go there for that long...the band sure was, so...I get the argument that sometimes playing "for yourself" is not always the best that you can do, but if there's a few people I will not question them so doing (and there are a few), Trane is definitely one of them. And if I had been there, in the room, on those days, I would no doubt have gone apeshit (one way or the other). But 4 CDs of fully in the moment music...there is, legitimately, a reason for user disconnect here between performance and consumption/listening dynamics. There's like, zero room for interruption if you're going to lock into this, and the last time I had that much zero interruption was...I can't remember. I don't know that I've ever taken in all 4 CDs in a single listen, ever. Not that that should be an expectation, really, it's 2 CDs each from 2 different nights, almost two weeks apart. So not even the band itself could have made all that music at once. Well. maybe they could have. But they didn't. And there were no CD listenings when they made any of it, you were there, they were there, they did it there, and then it was over. Then everybody left and went somewhere else to do something else. In the meantime...in hindsight, it seems inevitable that this (Half Note 65 again) was not going to be the end for Coltrane, but god, if it would have been, it would have still been a case of ending at a unbelievably high point. But no, this was a booster rocket for the next stage. Faith, trust, naivete,whatever it was...most people just do not do this type of thing, not just musically, but as life, period. Ever.

And that's the kind of Old School Lovable Analog World Screw-Up that will have your business on the Last Chance List if it happens too often...like when they sent me a Pendulum Select instead of an Akioshi/Tabackin. They told me to keep the Pendulum at no charge, but I think I insisted on paying for it, because, you know, shit ain't free, and I'm not somebody in the promotional/distributional lane/chain, so that's not my prerogative. But I was like, geez, guys take my money in return for merchandise, please, and they were like, no, no it's ok, and now we're all like, yeah, well, nice while it lasted, etc. shame that had to happen. I mean, I know I need to get paid, I don't know about anybody else, but I need to get paid. #niceworkifyoucanavoidit

It's already out in the world, you played it! Now you just look at giving it a tangible physical form.

That all-Beatlemusic FM station signed off with a 20+ minute version of "Hey Jude" that looped the ending over and over and over and etc. This was at, like 2 AM on a Saturday night or some such, and I've talked to a few people who were also listening, and they were hoping/praying that it was a cruel joke, that the station was going to resume thier regular programmiong after all (they gave a couple of weeks lead tim, advertised that this was the end, all that). But no. More like Tough Love, we'll make you GLAD we're stopping, and it worked for a day or two. When the dead air followed, it was like, yeah, you killed it alright.But god, that was a neat thing to be able to turn on at random intervals, especially in the car with the kids, we all live in a can of pork and beans!

Maybe, not sure...but it's been noted that Goodman would often rehearse the band on new material without a drummer, the theory being that if you can swing well without a drummer, you can sure as hell swing well with a good one, and even better with a great one. Point just being, playing drummerless was not a new concept for that band. If anybody's keeping score at home, here's a different clip that imo has cleaner highs, so you can really hear the absent drummer, if you know what I mean.