JSngry

The blimp, Frank, the blimp!

Yep.

Placed an cover-my-bets pre-order for this and then forgot to cancel it after learning more details. Surprise! It arrived today. There is nothing on here at all that hasn't been booted before, so check your collection very carefully. The two additional Kenton cuts do indeed feature Dizzy. To add insult to injury, there are brief liner notes by Keith Emerson that are among the godandest dumb things I've ever read on any musical product, ever. Try this one on (punctuation intact): If you need the music, here it is, but otherwise, avoid at all costs.

I'm wondering why Ornette's camp knew about it beforehand and didn't bring the lawyer boom then, or at least the threat of it...and who the others were who were saying "go ahead and release it". If Denardo is a better businessman than Ornette, what does that mean, exactly? But if the label guys got a threat beforehand and thought it was just an empty dare, their bluff has been called. Now let's see what their story is. And...did Adam Holzman get paid, or at least give permission? If this whole thing ends up being some variant of the whole "music belongs to everybody, money destroys art" line, I'm gonna puke, and all the idealistic artists who say that stuff and think that anything else is gonna happen, hey. If you want it to be free, make it free. Otherwise, everybody just needs to shut up about all that.

1967 Gospel from Checker. This guy is not at all a good singer, more than one note and things start getting iffy, but - album supervised by Ralph Bass, and most interestingly, produced, arranged, and mostly written by Sonny Thompson. So the tracks are solid as hell, more than the singing itself would seem to justify. And I swear to god (pun intended), The Dells are singing background on one track here, the "jazzy" Dells. Gotta be a story here, somewhere.

Buster Williams playing those grooves on wood does make a difference. And Side 2, all straight-ahead, visual sound stereo jazz, unambiguously.

Going through one of the old racks of "get around to this at some pint", and started doing research to see if there was any indication of who "Chet Grayson" really was...and found this 11 year old thread. Geez.... Anyways, those first impression still hold, but the last tune on the LP breaks formula and is a very nice Hodges-esque reading of "Don't Get Around Much Anymore"...did Bob Wilber do shadow dates like this at any point? Otherwise, elven years was not too long to wiat to give this its first full listen. In fact, eleven more would have been fine. Full Treasure Records discography here: http://www.excitingsounds.com/treasure-productions/ Sure would like to hear this one... but instead have this one:

I like the big band aggression that sneaks up on you:

Looking at the Ornette discography included in Soapsuds, Soapsuds, I see such notable works as Live At The Hillcrest Club, Coleman Classics, Vol 1, To Whom Keeps A Record, Town Hall Concert 1962, Chapaqua Suite, The Great London Concert, and Friends & Neighbors being listed as "unauthorized". And since then, haven't such claims been the delay behind CD issues of Ornette At 12? Some of these claims I can see as legit, but I've always been like, Friends & Neighbors, Flying Dutchman just up and booted Ornette, Bob Theile let that happen? That doesn't seem quite right, must be more to the story, at least something more. The sessions were recorded in 2009, Denardo was appointed guardianship in 2013 (but iirc had been functioning as Ornette's manager long before that). everybody's based out of NYC, correct?, seems like an extremely ballsy move to flat-out boot something in this much of an "in your face" manner, literally in their faces, unless they thought they had some ground to stand on. I mean, maybe they are that stupid, but they have a label with other artists on it, and as much as a "one off" this is relative to the rest of the label...what, are they suicidal? Very much looking forward to the defense's claims, whether it includes some kind of verbal agreement and/or passage of some amount of cash, and whether or not there will be a settlement before there is a verdict. Also wondering if this thing has sold a bit better than expected...I would think that perhaps it has, as it is a damn good record. If it turns out that it was actually made and released under completely duplicitous circumstances, I would urge everybody who has a copy to burn 100 more and to pass them out on street corners, for free as a public service, it's that much worth hearing.

Yeah, Don Ellis. Definitely aggressive. As fuck. Everybody loves the Beatles!

Ed sounds great...more Ed Wilkerson. It's a good thing..

I think that by the time it's over, this is, by any definition, aggressive as hell: Aggressive, roaring, lunatic, and totally beautiful. And unmistakeably big band. If it doesn't get there right away, be patient, they've got time, and they use it. Free jazz pranksters in a Nehru Big Band. What a concept.

And check out Oliver with Louis Bellson and James Brown: That's a helluva lot better record than it had any business being, for real. Like a buddy of mine once said, brown doesn't really know exactly what to do, but he sure as hell know where to do it.

Ed!

Basie w/Lockjaw was the first live jazz I ever saw. Damned if I can remember one note, damned if I'll ever forget how it sounded. You put Basie and Lockjaw together, hell, I'm there, even on stuff like James Bond songs and Beatles songs and what not, because Lockjaw would never not be ready to slit your throat and drink your blod while you wantched him do it. And you put a band like Basie's behind him, one of those "swing machines", hell, you're given a amn a fucking uzi when all he really needs is a blade, but if you insist...that kind of a thing, ya' know? There's a lot of this music, Scott, a whole helluva lot of it. Don't know if I'd call all of it "aggressive" per se, but a lot of getting a bunch of people together to move some air and make a noise to make a point, yeah. Not so much aggressive (although lord knows, that happens a lot) but...assertive, for sure. And don't be put off by "Swing Era" names, some updated their sound more than others, but the guys from that time who were truly in it to swing it generally kept swinging it for as long as they could keep going, as best as they knew how. Buying this stuff can be a mine field that leaves you stepping on all sorts of ill-advised nostalgics and/or "updates", but the upside is some of the most visceral music of the 20th century, not as much in "intensity", just...anytime a group of people come together in common purpose and work as a group, the ceiling gets higher. It's kinda like in Gospel, a great soloist can take you some places, but a quartet can take you to some other places, and a choir can take you some whole other places that only they can go to. Sections working together with and against each other, the whole push-pull-cometogether tthing. Of course, the more moving parts, the trickier it gets, and at some point, instrumentation risks monochroamticism, colorwise, but...risk/reward, totally worth it.

More big band aggression than is good for anybody: but, same album, Ronnie Cuber kisses it and makes it all better:

Get the Gerald Wilson Mosaic and play it LOUD.

Oh yeah, aggression... Gene Krupa was trying to loosen the band up so they'd swing, Buddy's trying to scare the shit out of 'em so they don't NOT swing.

Not fast and not all at once, but by the time Roy Eldridge makes his point at the end, it's there. Not really "aggressive", just fat and sassy, which is its own form of aggression towards those who would have it otherwise. Or you can start there and keep going up. By the time this thing is over, I'm surprised the cymbal stands are still...standing. People will tell you that Kenton doesn't swing, and usually, no he doesn't, and that was fully by choice. How aggressive was that?

What kind of big band aggression are we looking for here? or

Dick Katz Joey Bats DJ Spatts

OMG, memories... growing up, I knew a kid my age in Kilgore, Tx that had that record.....he got it from his older brother, who was a guitarist...this was before Albert started recording for Alligator and was still very much a "cult figure"... Does your copy have any scratches on it? My friend's copy was damn near all scratches, yet you could hear Albert and the bass player like they were right there in the speaker with you. The rest of things, not so much. But this kid lived with his granmother kinda out in the country, still in Kilgore but back off out of the way just a bit...his brother had given him a lot of records, shit I had never heard of before like Willis Jackson records with Pat Azarra, stuff like that, and they were all scratched all to hell and his record player had no pity on the records either, if you know what I mean. But dammit, they played, and few played louder or prouder through the scratches than this one...I still have memories of "Frosty" just SCREAMING right after dinner time (his grandmother cooked SERIOUS old-school meals, you didn't get bread unless you were having a sandwich, otherwise, you got cornbread), through the scratches and the screens and out onto the front porch into the almost night...probably not meaningful to anybody else, but damn, just seeing that cover took me all the way back to a whole 'nother time and place all of a sudden. You know, those types of records were not mastered like other records. Those types of records knew what they were in for even before they were born.

I'm not sure if you're joking, but the Hendrix is called The Wind Cries Mary and I think I read that Miles said it influenced Bitch's Brew. (They Call the Wind Maria is from Paint Your Wagon.) Rest assured, the tongue is firmly in cheek. Pretty sure that everybody on this board knows who Mitch Mitchell is/was. What I'm not sure about is which came first, that toothpaste, or that university? And for real, I also still have no idea what "They Call The Wind Mariah" is about, but on that one, I really do not care.

Oh, ok, I see my error. I was thinking of the Hendrix song "The Wind Cries Norah", named after Ravi's daughter Norah, who Hendrix met backstage at Monterrey. Only of course, that song was really called "They Call The Wind Mariah", which of course has nothing to do with either Norah Jones or Mariah Carey. Frankly, I still don't know what that song's about, to be honest with you, even though it's been covered by some very unlikely, non-Hendrixian singers. Sorry for all the confusion. My bad.

We're just a few blocks away from the highest elevation point in the entire DFW Metroplex (or so I'm told), so we're in no danger of any major flooding, not like that. But we keep getting the rain, and the yards and fields seem to be in a perpetual state of runoff, down the alleys, out into the streets, into the gutters, and sooner or later, into the rivers and creeks. And woe be unto the depressed area in yards and fields for they indeed have come to resemble rice paddies.