Guy Berger

My faves that I’ve heard are Henry Threadgill’s Dirt and More Dirt and Steve Coleman’s Synovial Joints. i have also enjoyed Michael Formanek’s The Distance and Tim Berne’s Open Coma. I may be forgetting other recordings of interest!

He kept playing it in the early stages of the 1980s comeback!

I’ve been exploring this guy’s music on Pi. its pretty striking and uncompromising. Not in the sense of extreme jazz but more in the sense that it has some jazz trappings but sounds quite different.

The only time (to my knowledge) that I had COVID was December 2022, and it was pretty unpleasant (worse than a cold, comparable to a mild flu - aches, fatigue, congestion). I got a paxlovid prescription and it was a miracle drug - worked almost immediately, with little of the metallic taste other people experience - but also symptoms returned once the prescription ended. I assume I'm going to get this virus again from time to time. It seems to vary a lot by person whether the 2nd time is better or worse than the 1st one.

I think that quote also said Chambers was very young. FWIW, I don't think Chambers's arco playing is without reproach

Lots of recordings of Miles with the Cosey band, from 1973 through 1975, a few of which have been officially released. i haven’t listened to this period closely - are these Brazilian recordings better than average, in terms of either content or sound quality? There’s also a recording from Rio, I believe.

The 3 most recent releases just arrived here.

RIP. Contributed to some great recordings!

This is the kind of stuff that I had in mind. Music that lands in the same place as the Miles 2nd quintet, Coltrane’s classic quartet, the music that Shorter/Henderson/McLean/Hill were recording for Blue Note… it’s telling that these guys never included guitarists in their recordings prior to 1968. Someone mentioned Larry Coryell upthread - good callout. I’d put him in the same bucket as Szabo, Zollar.

Hendrix was not a jazz guitarist. Benson was a soul jazz guitarist, and Beck also strikes me as a fairly conservative player. Sonny Sharrock was an avant-gardist. Two folks who do fit into the bucket imho are Atilla Zollar (sp?) and Gabor Szabo, but they were relatively marginal in terms of importance.

Congrats!!! A few quick reactions to reading this thread. 1) he recorded a lot of music for Blue Note! A lot of his contemporaries would have dreamed of that opportunity (though I am guessing it might have been low-paying, high volume) 2) For a guy with his “stylistic comfort zone”, he got to record across a very wide range of contexts! I don’t think they were holding him back in that respect. 3) His batting average over a very large number of recordings is quite high Fwiw, it’s interesting that until John McLaughlin came on the scene there was no big-name post bebop guitarist, in contrast to other major jazz instruments. GG was the guy that BN chose to experiment with that space. Don’t we have more recorded evidence of GG in adventurous contexts than WM? I think it’s telling that WM quickly left JC’s band, it’s hard to imagine him fitting in with most of their post-1960 recordings.

He’s great on Tim Berne’s Diminutive Mysteries.

I recently picked up McHenry's 3 albums w/Ben Monder, Reid Anderson and Paul Motian. They're very good. One thing that stands out - especially on Roses and Ghosts of the Sun - is how much this music revolves around Motian's idiosyncratic style. It's just really hard to imagine what this music would sound like with a different drummer. McHenry has a great sense for avant-garde drummers, given his subsequent partnership w/Andrew Cyrille.

Wilkins plays on a few excellent tracks from that superb Julius Hemphill box set that came out a few years ago.

How much of this do you think is just an “early career” thing?

Was listening to the 2nd Big Satan album, Souls Saved Hear. Better imho than the first - just wonderful, compact anarchy. Marc Ducret is so good.

what’s it going to take for a record label to make another Bennie Maupin album? These two were excellent - the guy has a track record!!!!

Moraz had zero impact on the trajectory either way. The band was starting to run out of ideas by the early 1970s. Fair characterization. A huge contributor to their sound, which coupled w/Justin Hayward and John Lodge’s superior songwriting made the early MB albums worn so well. There are a few instrumentals by him on the early MB albums that are awesome.

This is very good! Thanks for the recommendation.

Dang. One of the most important non-musicians in jazz over the past 50 years.

There was lots of griping at the time about his “productivity” but I am glad we have so many recordings of him There’s a new one forthcoming on Intakt in the next month or two

Terrific! Even though I’m pretty behind on actually listening to this music 🤣

Btw I ended up exploring the albums from the debut through Arthur, all on Spotify. I was able to also explore a lot of the great non album tracks. Personal taste but I’d rank in terms of quality: Face to Face (4.5 stars) Something Else (4.5 stars) Village Green Preservation Society (4 stars) Arthur (3.5 stars) Kinda Kinks (3.5 stars, largely on the strength of the 1965 singles which are bonus tracks on the Spotify version) Kink Kontroversy (3 stars) Kinks (2 stars)

So I’m finally getting around to listening to Volume 1! Very good music, if you like Horace’s music you won’t be disappointed - though it’s not the best HT I have heard.

This one and Early Reflections are both incredibly good albums. Wish Benny would record more.