JSngry

The High-Hatted Tragedian Of Song!!!

Yeah, good gig tonight. Other than the Franck, which struck me as being a lot of not so much (due to performance or composition, I can't say, but the damn thing just went on and on and was very "etude-y" in it's construction, it seemed), it was an evening of highly lucid performances of some pretty meaty musics. The Prokofiev was a delightful surprise, in some ways the anti-Franc, it did have a more traditional structure and such, but the details moved shit along instead of making waves by treading water. Everything else was more "contemporary" (whatever that means), but my wife dug it all, and she will balk at "that type of thing" if it loses her, so I don't know if my sense that this music was being played "from the inside" might have not been entirely imagined? These pieces virtually sung in their shapings and phrases and placement of cadences. There was a lack of raw passion, but no shortage of feeling, sensitivity. That's not a trade I automatically make,but in this case, no question, it was a fair trade. Special mention to the tone of Piccinini, one of the fullest, fattest flute tones I've ever heard, live or recorded. Just gorgeous, and loud when it needed to be, in all registers. Haefliger was fun too, and ok, I forgot about Stanley Turrentine & Shirley Scott when it came to having reservations of non-comedy husband/wife duos. Don't know it this was at quite that level of Ultimate Intimacy, but qualms definitely not justified here. They talked too, talked about the musics, what it meant to them, both before and during the sets. Haefliger got a good one in when he related what Boulez told him when for whatever reason on whatever occasion he functioned as a page-turner for Haefliger ("Don't worry, I can read it") that one certainly hopes is factual! The house was shamefully small, maybe 150 people (and about half of them coughed...we've had a warm winter, wtf? DFW. WTF?), too many empty seats, especially on the two front rows "reserved for friends of Soundings", but kudos to all involved for just having it It was refreshing.

So...one day Larry gives the McPherson rec, I go looking for it, it's too damn expensive everywhere, but Dusty Groove lets me put it on my want list. The next day, DG gets a copy in, I carpe diem on the notification email, and today the copy arrives. Who did DG get their copy from just in time for all of this to sync up, eh? Fate, in a pleasant mood?

Oh, I'd quibble with the unqualified notion that "digital is better than vinyl" (and not just because the real comparison is digital vs analog). If we're old enough, we all had experiences of buying some of those early CD reissues of classic LPs that just flat out SUCKED in comparison to their LP counterparts (no scratches, but also no body!). And then new-recordings of instruments that sounded like they had all their guts removed. Pianos that were all pingy and shit, no body at all. Real drums that sounded like halfass drum boxes. Yuck. Things have progressed exponentially since then, thank god, but some dumbass cluelessly doing digital will always get powned by an expert doing analog/vinyl, and vice-versa.

As consumer product though...playback machines varied in quality, you had to keep your heads clean, some companies used 3 3/4 ips as their playback speed, some 7 1/2 (I have both in my collection), tape was seldom(?) studio stock, and overall, mostly, really, it was one of those things that sounded good in theory but really fell apart in the practical commercial execution. The few I've picked up over the years still play, and still have a certain "pop" to the sound, but there's SO much hiss, a little print-through starting to develop, some tape stretching, things like that. Devil again in the details, and if I had all my old LPs on RTR instead, I'd be, like, SO fucked right now. But hell yeah, some of that wideass studio tape expertly recorded at 15 or 30 ips, dude, unbroken, analog waveforms with room to roam...the ears water at the thought. And yet, I hear what people are getting out of digital these days, no hiss, no noise, no distortion, seemingly unlimited dynamic range...if it's music that really benefits from that (and I don't know that all musics do...), then that's what I want to be getting out of today's recordings.

Oh, lest I be misconstrued, when it come to the matter of contemporary recording, yeah, inserting analog into the recording chain somewhere still has its uses, but for playback, the physics speak for themself, surely. Which is just to say that the tools are there to make a digital recording "sound" freaking awesome and have that elusive "character" - and when that doesn't happen, don't blame digital. Three's so many tricks and toys and filters and what not now...remember when Miles said that car wrecks don't sound the same now as they used to because the cars are made out of plastic instead of metal? This is the same guy who talked about being able to tell the pitch of a door squeak. Just saying, people who can tell the difference should go ahead and use that to their advantage and have all options at their physical and intellectual disposal. Anything else is just kinda cheap, I think.

Sure it is. Or can. Get in the time machine, go back to 1976, and play Trick of the Tail on 8-Track and then on LP. And I wasn't there for it, but there was a time when reel-to-reel was considered a superior playback medium than LP in some circles. Theoretically, room for that to be ture, but the devil was in the details of both software and hardware... And truth be told, when people tell me that their 78s go places that no other medium can with the material involved, I don't tell them they're wrong, becuase those grooves are bigger and deeper than some people's buttcracks, and if the information was put in there and is extracted out of there just right...I'm not argue. Don't know how fully I'll believe, but I ain't gonna argue.

Yeah, but some "final products" take more "putting together" than others. Nature of the beast, number of moving parts, etc. Our hypothetical Turrnetine BN records was played live, without a whole lot of artificial separation in the studio, and players who knew how to balance live because that's pretty much all they knew. And uber-minimal "post-production". Insert cuts, reverb added, mastering, not a whole lot more. Our Aja record (or our Genesis record, or our Bowie record) were made any way but that. I'm in no way one of the "if it's not playable live it's not real music" folks, oh hell no. Just saying, different means, different ends, different appreciations of what hits the runway, so to speak. I have no "absolutes" other than do the shit get good to me or not.

Digital done right is a blast. Anything done right is a blast. Right is its own blast! (and there's the rub...what is "right", is it any one thing, always, or does context of intent matter?) Are we talking "sound better" as in objectively mathematically precise or as in subjectively atmosphere-inducing? Simple example - a James Brown King 45 blasting on a juke box (or cranked up on a home turntable) and a carefully cleaned up digital version will both "sound great", but unless one is able to be objective to the point of being an Android or something, they will not "sound great" in the same way. Even if the digital gets to the point of "sounding like you're right there", "right there" is in a recording studio, and is that necessarily where you want to be when experiencing a James Brown record? Well, sometimes, but not always. Sometimes I want to be in that bar or in that basement or in that car with that AM radio saying it loud. And what to do about all those old records (and there seem to be an infinite number of them) where you can hear the VUs either going into the red or totally pegging out? How do you make that "sound better"...and do you really want to? Also, a pop record "created" in a studio(s) and a performance "documented" in a studio...I have different emotional/subjective expectations. I don't really want a Stanley Turrentine BN record to "sound" like, say, Aja, and for damn sure not vice-versa. I mean, nobody likes "crappy sound", but everybody likes "atmosphere", right? Not right? No matter. I encourage all who work in the realm of audio creation to keep in mind the music for which the audio is being created, and to proceed accordingly. The options continue to expand on both sides of that equation, and uni-directionality of expansion is not necessarily the most open of choices for all occasions.

What, you've never shot a man in Reno just to watch him die? Hell, even I've done that.

"Remember Tony Phillips", today a statement rather than a question. http://www.lonestarball.com/2016/2/19/11065162/tony-phillips-former-major-leaguer-has-died-at-the-age-of-56

Which still raises the question if ESP & the Ayler estate are cool now. Goes directly to the point of what extended benefit might come from purchasing the new release that is the subject of this thread.

Still needs to get those accents more bobby-weavy (for my admittedly out-of-style tastes). It's not a "vocal" thing, it's a "body" thing. Not for nothing was the "old" jazz culture one that included things like boxing and tap-dancing.

Cathy Berberian in the zone.

Nostalgia at its best!

Biff Henderson Gloria Fenderson Bruce Benderson

That was quite the collection of facts and emotions, but did I miss the part where they actually came together into a salient point?

Jason Kidd Willy T. Ribbs Ann M. Goade

Which again raises the question if ESP & the Ayler estate are cool now.

Eric Mingus Kerry Von Erich Erik von Detten

I bought the Revenant Ayler box because I got the Ayler tree and that was certainly a non-binding agreement that I gladly kept. It was wonderful, important work deserving of audience support. But if Revenant made no deal whatsoever with the Ayler estate, then that was on them for placing idealism above reality, especially considering that part of the reality involved Bernard Stollman. Gonna sink all this money into something like this knowing that you're likely to get lawyersmacked and NOT have a Plan B? You have my theoretical sympathy, and all the reality-based attorney fees it will buy. Good luck on that one! Another reason why consumers need to carpe diem first and worry later.

Or a really bad Anthony Hopkins movie.

ESP has gotten square with the Ayler estate, correct?

Back out of the house tomorrow night for this: http://www.nashersculpturecenter.org/engage/event?id=267&nomo=1&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=event&utm_source=constantcontact&utm_content=soundings-piccinini-haefliger&utm_term=soundings-piccinini-haefliger-banner Never have fully trusted husband/wife teams in anything except comedy, but the program looks too damn good to not give it a go.

Weaver Of Dreams Sigourney Weaver Ghostbusters