Guy Berger

You'd probably need to add Ornette Coleman and Carla Bley to that list. Guy

Good call, Brownie. I really like Horace's comping, and piano playing in general. Also, not sure who mentioned Duke and Monk, but I like their comping as well. Guy

I think this pretty much nails it. That's why I was kind of surprised by the OP's initial premise -- which recent (say, past 15 years) Golson or Silver tunes have become standards? Guy

First off, the "doubling" of the Trane Impulse! catalogue is enormous -- depending on what you own, the albums Impressions and Ascension are totally superfluous, and Kulu Se Mama almost superfluous. (This is the one that has the "Dusk Dawn" alternate, right? Everything else is available either on Transition or Major Works.) Second, Living Space is worth picking up for two tracks: untitled track #4 and "Living Space". #4 is a mindblowing free tune that anticipates Sun Ship and First Meditations -- Trane plays a really unearthly, intense scream when he comes in for his closing solo, you gotta hear it. People that have heard this know what I'm talking about. "Living Space" is his last known studio recording with the soprano saxophone, and it's unusual because (A) it's not a waltz and (B) it contains saxophone overdubs which give the tune a really exotic, almost psychedelic vibe. There's an incredible saxophone cadenza at the end. I'm not a huge fan of "The Last Blues" or, for that matter, "Dusk Dawn". Guy

What about Bjork or Radiohead? Guy

I don't have much by the guy, just Art of Rhythm and the VV Quartets album. Both are very nice. I'll plug AoR simply because I'm guessing that it's not as well known as the Lovano album and is worth hearing. Guy

Agree about Herbie -- almost perfectly responsive to the soloists, and he got even better after Maiden Voyage. Chick Corea and McCoy aren't quite on that Olympian level, but they're stupendous. Guy

I bought Wayne's Moto Grosso Feio at the Hamden, CT Super Stop & Shop. Guy

Are these guys still writing standards? Guy

Holy shit.. ← That is some seriously fucked up shit. As Evis Costello said, "clown time is over..." What can we do to stop this? ← I guess the first thing to do is to investigate further -- I'm not sure how much I trust this website. I recently read an article in the WSJ about Coke's practices in India -- shady, but antiglobalization activists completely blew them out of proportion. Guy

About half of Borboletta is great (the instrumentals), and half is crap. I know Lon/jazzbo disagrees with me about this. There's one tune near the end -- "Promise of a Fisherman", I think -- that's incredible. Guy

I listened to the whole thing and my opinion: The studio stuff on disc 1 is OK The live stuff on discs 1, 2, 3 is great; even the Horn stuff at the end of disc 3 is quite good. "Fast Flute" and "Caravan" are especially good. Things start heading south on the "music of Fred Katz" stuff. Yawn. And they get really bad on that South Pacific nonsense. I think the Ellington Suite is better with Eric Dolphy than with Horn and Collette, though the latter is better than the South Pacific material.

I like his playing in this group, but haven't heard anything that's made me want to look for CDs under his name. Guy

I'm pretty happy with my iPod 20 gig. I almost never listen to CDs anymore -- only in the car and at home. Guy

I did see him, with Mike Stern's fusion group, in 2000. Any recommendations for this guy? Guy

Anybody else in the NE get some crazy thunderstorms early this morning, c. 5:30 AM? It's cool when they happen in the afternoon or evening, but sucks when they wake you up. Guy

I would have dropped all those tracks and put on Out to Lunch

Thanks, Ubu -- I was thinking the same thing -- as soon as I download this stuff from the Underground Trane seeds I'll put my own "Complete Stuttgart" together on my ipod. Pete -- I still have the files on my computer but I've never seeded anything -- I'll try to reseed it sometime soon. As ubu said, the current Underground Trane includes the entire concert (but in worse sound quality than the excerpt I described above). Guy

No, this is a live version from about 2 months earlier. Trane's solo is about 20 minutes long, half of that dedicated to a duet with Elvin. Good call from the Wheel about the studio "Pursuance" -- hard to choose between that one and the live version... Guy

I'm listening to a torrent I downloaded a long time ago from EasyTree -- the John Coltrane quartet playing in Stuttgart, West (?) Germany on November 4th 1963. I think these live recordings from '62 and '63 are interesting because they puncture a big hole in the "Trane all of a sudden went avant-garde in 1965" myth. (Not an original Guy thought -- I'm borrowing this from Ed Rhodes.) You listen to the sax-drums duet on "Impressions" from this gig and then something like "Vigil" (or "One Up One Down" from the Half Note gig), and it's not such a huge leap. It's a shame there aren't any live '64 recordings (AFAIK) to bridge the gap. Anyway, the gig -- it's a real shame they didn't include it on the Live Trane box -- the sound is stupendous. It's not the complete concert: Afro Blue, I Want to Talk About You, Impressions, My Favorite Things. I've only listened to this concert once so far. I Want to Talk About You has a (typically -- I am not familiar enough with the non-Birdland versions to rank this against the others) beautiful unaccompanied coda. It starts out really lyrical, then gets more intense and verbose as it progresses. The unaccompanied codas on versions of this tune always remind me that Trane was an incredibly logical, cerebral, methodical improviser. Impressions, 29 minutes long -- par for the course at this point. Great McCoy solo opens it up for 5 minutes, then Jimmy Garrison has a longish solo (8 minutes or so) that calms things down. Elvin comes in near the end of the solo, then Trane and McCoy reintroduce the theme. Then Trane begins one of his incredible improvisations around 15:30 or so... frequently playing around with the melody, or at least fragments of it. After about a minute, McCoy drops out. The interplay between Elvin and John gets a lot more intense, wow. Lots of those high-low register jumps at some point. At just under 20 minutes Jimmy drops out and high-level Trane-Elvin insanity ensues. Wow wow wow. This mayhem lasts for over 7 minutes, getting especially intense near the end, before Trane slips back into the melody and McCoy and Jimmy return to bring us back to planet Earth. Guy p.s. I just realized that there is another version of this circulating with three more tunes: "The Promise", "Every Time We Say Goodbye" and a 36 minute version of "Mr. P.C." Gotta get that!

A few years ago a dude on the Coltrane list posted his favorite solos. I haven't heard all of these, and haven't heard some of them enough to know whether they are favorites, but I thought I'd post the list to get a discussion going. What are your favorites? Personally I'd add "Straight No Chaser" (from Milestones), "Blue in Green" (from youknowwhat), "Someday My Prince Will Come", "Ole" (not a nut about this album, but Coltrane's solo near the end is one of my favorites), the studio "Acknowledgment", "I Want to Talk About You" (from Live at Birdland), and "Serenity" (from First Meditations). Also, #41 and #43 on the list (as well as the honorable mention at the end) are truly phenomenal -- can't wait to hear the cleaned up versions on the upcoming Half Note release.

I'm in the same boat -- my box-set allergy went down a lot since I started listening to music via iPod. Guy

Definitely helpful -- thanks Marty. It looks like I'll get this one after Rush Hour. Guy ← Glad I was of help but just out of curiosity, which one are you getting? ← Whoops, I'm getting On This Day sometime over the next five years. Guy

Definitely helpful -- thanks Marty. It looks like I'll get this one after Rush Hour. Guy