robertoart

Sorry TOPAL .........topaz was the acne cream I used when I was fifteen. Before I'd even heard of GG or Blue Note. Seems even the Japanese are winding down their reissues now. I would so like to have litle mini lps of all the late sixties/seventies stuff too. Do you think BN would be transfering/remastering everything in the archives as a matter of course, even if there were no immediate plans for reissue? And yeh it has been great to be able to have regular reissues of GG happen over the last decade or so. Really everything that is vital to his and others ongoing legacies is or has been out there at some point. It seems as if the people that care have really done their best over this time.

Gentleman of Color, (Whiteness), could it be that one among you has escaped the gentle and moderate mentorship of the board. Someone who is as 'mad as hell' and is 'not going to take it anymore'. Someone whose pleasure is being controlled. Indeed creating the conditions of possibility for him to 'enjoy' the 'Green Acid' only indeed if he has 'stolen it'. If it is formerly one of your own then you have a civic duty to save him from himself, for, we have all heard the missed oportunity that was the fusion of Mozart and Idris, or the Fiddler on the Roof Strings with Grant. Admittedley I did canvas the idea covertly amongst a certain board member some time ago that we arrange an Oceans Eleven type heist to get these goodies to Gambit, and am distraught that someone may have gotton access to my nascent plans. Admittedly I was going to test run the procedure on getting the Left Bank Patton/Green/Vick/Walker tapes first. It appears though, that this poster is angrier, nastier and holds these suits as fully accountable criminals. Deserving of nothing more than full martial arts destruction at the hands fully trained fighting ninjas. If this brazen plan works we can look forward to the emancipation of all the unknown sessions with 24bit transfer and extra tracks. Released as budget two fers on Gambit. With new liner notes as well. If it fails we will never hear Grant doing Topaz in 24bit ever....again. Nor will the many trainwrecks ever find their way to the public domain. There appears to be much to be gained but so much to lose if it all goes wrong. And people could get hurt too.

F&*K those White Liberals. Have they still got control of all the cheque books?

Ya' know...there's just so many levels and layers of wrong in that.... Yeh your right. Big silly generalisation. I remember reading it in Wire years ago. Can't even remember the source article or the context actually. Thanks for pulling me up on that. Just thinking though about the relevance of that era kind of broadly defined as fusion and wondering about where that took the music and the audience as well. Is there perhaps a connection between that era and the earlier post that mentions the popularity of smooth jazz amongst black audiences. Could there be seen to be some connection or transition there? I don't intend to in any way pigeonhole a multifaceted player like Scofield into that question either. It was dumb. Any opinions yourself Allen on what it was like to be a working musican through that era and your experiences of the changing audience/and or expectations of what improvised music was striving for during that time?

Over here, I'm a bit out of touch with Marsalis/young lionsville. Could you explain this please FL? MG well now I'm reading it back I think I'm too scared to, probably at the limits of my perceptions here. Especially after Allan's post which kinda makes my statement a bit pithy now. And I should fess up that despite really not getting into the Marsalis era recordings I do love most of the guitarists associated with that generation like Russell Malone and Bobby Broom etc. I did recently read an interesting comment by Malone where he stated that he carried some resentment for the fact that players like Metheny, Scofield, Frissell etc were elevated to critical/commercial positions that were far harder to reach for himself. Although he did go on to say that when he met those players it was all about the music for them. He also said 'something like' that without that resonance of the blues, ( I think he actually said ethnic element) that the music wasn't really jazz. It was clear that it was a 'feeling' and an aesthetic that he was refering to and did not seem in any way exclusive, just that it was what defined the music for him. I also read many years ago someone say that you could listen to John Scofield and enjoy all the things you like about Grant Green without having to think about the politics of Grant's experience.

Well the point about subsidy raises some issues. Cause when the language of the music is so far removed from that which you will naturally acquire through osmosis, you've gotta go to school to learn it. Seriously who that's at the mercy of street life and an insecure home environment has got the time and inclination to 'learn' 251s and "coltrane's' superimpositions over them. you want to relate and express yourself in something far more immediate and urgent. I remember reading a jazz musician saying once that 'the whole world was singing the blues these days and that a rapper has the blues so bad he can't even sing anymore, he's just got to speak'. The poetry of Coltrane is so far back in the distance. I think that hits on something true - the idea that effectively, the black ghetto "has the blues so bad he can't even sing anymore, he's just got to speak". And then the line about Coltrane's poetry being past. It's like no poetry after Auschwitz. Or the line about not being able to express ultimately what went on the Holocaust. All these are part of the same spectrum - with the more horror you're confronted with the less able you are to express it - like all the lyricism goes out the window, or indeed, one can't make jokes about it. Like things become more and more unspeakable. Maybe I'm misreading you, but Fire music/venting seems to imply a diminished value to a certain sort of black 60s-70s expressionistic playing. That is this music was, in part, only venting. That basically there were no useful forms to be extracted from it, drawn upon, built on. I don't agree. On the other hand, I think rap, on some level, is only venting. It's just a vehicle for rage, in that way. It's true to say that much out expressionist 60s music we're taking about had rage in it. But the rage seems to be part of a spectrum of emotions. In rap it's the emotion. So I would distinguish between the rage of the 60s - when there was still hope of getting out of the ghetto - and now, when one is in the ghetto for life, knows it and is enraged. The reason I think that rap has become popular (= commodified) is because, since the 70s, all the things we used to believe in have gone out of the window. To be believe that there is nothing worth believing in is to be hip, to be Post-Modern. And that's what rap is really about, not believing there's any point, being enraged about it. I think 60s black expressionistic music still retains a feeling of hope - and is connected to deep expression of the concerns of the ghetto. I don't think that it is venting at all. But to hear those deep concerns would put the wider audience - in America, in the world - on the road to doing something about that. In my view that's why it hasn't become popular. "There are ghettos everywhere, including in everyone's head" (Albert Ayler 1966) It's universal. Simon Weil i definitely didn't mean to imply Simon, that free jazz was simply venting. I was thinking back to another recent thread that I thought had some relevant comments that related to this one as well. The music of that era has been, and will continue to be among the most important listening experiences I have. In fact I wish I had more emotional energy to give to it. I think that any aesthetic that requires considerable committment on behalf of the listener/viewer will always stay marginalised at best, obviously. And for many of the reasons you also express. It does seem though that much of the legacy of that era has been 'claimed' to a certain extant by the post-punk generation, (if only in claim to it's expressive range and energy being influential), as much as it was marginalised even further by the polemics of the Marsarlis generation. Maybe the very things that are dismissed as not relevant/or negating of the development of jazz heritage aesthetics are in fact the very things that some listeners/audiences find lacking in Marsarlis era music. To me the sound of Julius Hemphil still feels more 'in the world' than the simulacrum affect of much contemporary jazz. So yeh, anything that has sincere and challenging aesthetics, that also challenges tha social order, that can't be so easily diluted for consumption by the masses, is/will get left behind. Although the 'young lions' probably contributed in rehabilatating the reputation of soul jazz to a certain degree, so thats something positive.

Well the point about subsidy raises some issues. Cause when the language of the music is so far removed from that which you will naturally acquire through osmosis, you've gotta go to school to learn it. Seriously who that's at the mercy of street life and an insecure home environment has got the time and inclination to 'learn' 251s and "coltrane's' superimpositions over them. you want to relate and express yourself in something far more immediate and urgent. I remember reading a jazz musician saying once that 'the whole world was singing the blues these days and that a rapper has the blues so bad he can't even sing anymore, he's just got to speak'. The poetry of Coltrane is so far back in the distance. That the urgency and intent of rap was able to become another commodity and grow consumer culture legs is now a given. I think it's the distance of the jazz language and it's connection to another eras conception of pop culture that relagates it to the same, subsidized academic spaces as the opera. Much more than rappers filling a vaccuum that was already there, and needed something more direct than three part harmonies. If Fire music/venting could have been commodified it would have been. After all Fluxus is now entry level cognition for the visual arts.

Could it be that the avant-garde appeal is a development from the punk ethos, or music that by and large is made by disenfranchised white people. The interest in improvised music is a natural exploration from that starting point, ie the Sonic Youth millieu who move onto and into musics with a direct lineage to jazz and black expression. Whereas older people committed to those expressions have stayed alert to its development, although perhaps as you've said may be mainly musicians themselves. Is there a connection between MG's point about the socio-economic factors in terms of music being learn't and absorbed on the bandstand, within community, and jazz being colonised by academic institutions. I'm thinking of the fact that academic music might usually fall within the realm of tradition yet the post-punk ethos associated with progressive white creativity follows a development more in line with rock learning, ie let's form a band, experiment with our instruments and see what happens.

Well from the little I know the footage is from his first run with one of your major networks. I did skim through some info that said the show spent a year on another network and then was on a Public television station thereafter.This info was from a quick google search in wikipedia the other day. Though I might not have taken all that in correctly.

Wow! That is some house band. Does this mean I have some footage of Harold Vick to look forward to on these Dvd issues. That would be an unexpected surprise.

Just seen the Lennon/Ono episodes. First real exposure to the Cavett show after hearing about the legendary guests and performances like Hendrix,Lennon etc. Looking forward to seeing the Ray Charles dvd and then wading through the many hours of comedians and the like. What is great fom my perspective is seeing whole episodes in there entirety and enjoying/discovering other guests that are not quite so present in the cultural memory. Really got a lot of laughs from seeing Stan Freberg and was able to do a bit of googling to find out about him. Figure this show would have been formative viewing for many of the posters here. Any fond memories to share? Were there ever any jazz greats on the show at all?

This could be the same person that went into another store and asked the person behind the counter if they had any recordings by the saxophonist 'newsetateeth'.

Round Midnight is one of my favourites. I love KB with electric piano!

Originally from Liverpool. Scouser ! 'scuse my dreadful faux par, fancy confusing someone that came from the town that produced 'The Beatles' as coming from someplace else.

Sorry to hear about George Melly. He had a real presence here many years ago, through the wonderful documentaries that he made for the BBC about early jazz video-jukebox tunes. His funny, queer, cockney(?) persona came across as never endingly knowing and engaged. One of these programmes that featured Slim Gaillard really sticks in my memory. I guess Slim and Surrealism were fellow travellers. Old George and Slim really seemed to hit off, if I recall correctly.

I still can't find this disc anywhere!!!! Glad others are though. I really want to hear that version of "Moment's Notice". Paris Jazz Corner said they could send it to me for the price of the cd plus 24euro's postage!!!!! Which I thought was a bit rich, even from the French.

I'm glad someone else finds this session doesn't really need any of that 'he was a bit nervous' kind of qualifier that defines it as worthy but not essential. That long blues ' Seepin' is as good as it gets for that kind of groove, just as essential as "Blues in Maudes Flat". Bob Beldon's liner notes are still great though, and I always feel he adds something from the heart with each new release he gets the chance to talk about.

James Blood Ulmer Blues Allnight (In and Out) Black and Blues (DIW)

I love GG's playing on this. It's one of my favourite GGs. MG Love this album too. Grant plays great.

Since it's come up again, I think I should just note that the Grant Green Appreciation Society of Wales is ever so aggrieved at the obvious failure to mention the guitarist on the session. MG (on behalf of GGASW) Grant used his Muslim name on this session. He only appears on three tracks also.

Don't flatter him! I told Jim about five years ago to write book and not waste it all on you guys but his preferred mode is beers-on-the-porch, or its internet equivalent... Maybe you should be his Boswell? We'd have to somewhow retrieve the entire BNBB which was lost in the sacking of Norajonestown. Slacker

did you look then give him your phone number?

Boy did this thread take off. Love this board.

He was championed at one time especially by Stanley Crouch. In the liner notes to 'Home,' Crouch calls Murray the most gifted tenor player of his generation. Could there be a peception that because many players of Murray's generation were given the opportunity to document their music by European and Japanese labels and not US ones that they were only appreciated by white critics and audiences.