Joe

All of the 70s material is worth hearing, IMO. The "Beyond The Valley of A Day in the Life" / "Flying" 7-inch, now available on certain expanded reissues of THIRD REICH N ROLL, still may be my favorite of their all their recordings. COMMERCIAL ALBUM is great "fun," ESKIMO one of those jokes that turn serious midway through the telling, NOT AVAILABLE what "prog rock" could have been. The earliest stuff (THE WARNER BROS. RECORDINGS... an official release? I can't recall.) is the most Beefheartian / Zappa-esque. Once they discovered MIDI implementation, however, I find their sonic world much less interesting / inviting.

Had been looking forward to this one. A bit disappointing: the prose is intentionally dry, the narratives conceptual. I suppose I wanted more of a display of imagination, and beyond the tropes of a North American magical realism. Perhaps the best piece in the collection is "Rivers," in which a manumitted Jim relates the story of his life post-HUCK FINN.

How many dudes have worked with both Joe Raposo and Madonna? My wife just finished reading Nile's autobiography. She highly recommends it.

Nile Rodgers is the key linkage here.

An underrated album. Not his best, but certainly not without interest.

Too young. Only recently have I really come to appreciate all Bowie was capable of. Looking forward to the new one as well.

Not the way I would have liked to kick off 2016. What a career, and what a life. Sui generis.

Perhaps this version of the Lighthouse All-Stars? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY4In7p91Vw

My introduction to his work. It holds up. Of his more recent releases, I find this among the more rewarding.

One of the great "uninhibited" tenormen.

Some poetry. A profound, humble, uniquely lucid meditation on time's passage, place's place, and what it means to inhabit history. http://entropymag.org/a-kind-of-intelligence-that-refuses-to-act-smarter-than-its-life-a-conversation-with-ed-pavlic/ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/books/review/lets-let-that-are-not-yet-inferno-by-ed-pavlic.html

Whoa.

Cherry knew his bebop.

I believe John Litweiler has pointed this out (FREEDOM PRINCIPLE) but it sure sounds like Miles was listening closely to Don Cherry around the time of MILES SMILES and the Plugged Nickel recordings.

Merry Christmas from Sun Ra. http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/a-sun-ra-christmas-hear-his-1976-radio-broadcast-of-poetry-and-music.html

https://youtu.be/HUQrIuzRH7U

LORCA and BLUE AFTERNOON fans will absolutely want to own this: I pretty much find something of value on all of Buckley's recordings, but, generally speaking, the riskier the better.

SME for sure. Foundational work. Ditto the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza.

Word.

Losing Tony Williams at 51 sucks. Thanks goodness he started so young. Also, just imagine... leading your own Blue Note record date at the age of 19.

I'll look for this. And, agreed: the McKusick IN A 20 CENTURY DRAWING ROOM is one of the finer "soloist with strings" LPs in my collection. Barry Galbraith has a lot to do with that, of course. https://youtu.be/GvyCgEEhw_k

Well, heck, I'd not realized that series had continued into this material. Thanks! Which is not to say that there's not also room to consider reissuing Amina Claudine Myers' Marion Brown recital, POEMS FOR PIANO. http://www.discogs.com/Amina-Claudine-Myers-Poems-For-Piano-The-Piano-Music-Of-Marion-Brown/release/5784478

The Scianni date is news to me. Its sure not like Izenzon was all that well-documented... Would there be interest here in seeing Marion Brown's Impulse dates (GEECHEE RECOLLECTIONS, SWEET EARTH FLYING and VISTA) restored to wider ciruculation?

I sort of look at this album the same way I look at Gertrude Stein's "book for children" (THE WORLD IS ROUND). I mean, Wooley's "game" here appeals to me as very syntactical, with all that terms implies and entails. Like, OK, let's REALLY go back to first principles -- something the Young Lions advocated, a "return" to the essentials of the music -- and see what happens when we start to experiment at that level. A) Like impulses can produce very unlike results; B) Let's entertain the possibility that, latent in these compositions is a musical direction that WM and the YL et al. could have taken but did not. But the seeds of their aesthetic's own undoing (or full flowering, take your pick) are lying dormant in the aesthetic particulars themselves. Counterfactual history, perhaps. And, given where Wooley is positioned generationally, it makes perfect sense to me. Isn't there a bit of counterfactual history at work in the music of Albert Ayler, Gil Evans, Mingus?

I stand by my Taliban analogy.