Guy Berger

I like them fine and am glad they exist, but they don't speak to me the way the BNs do. But I do think Big Beat Steve's point is well-taken: our listening is framed by the conventional wisdom.

Lon, this one? I want to make sure I don't get a CD-R by accident.

I've been making my way through the Stones catalogue this year, based on that superb guide Hans posted a while back. Have made it as far as Between the Buttons. (Before this "adventure" I just had Hot Rocks - it's amazing how much great music that collection omitted!) Some quick thoughts - at least through 1966, the Stones were nowhere nearly as good as the Beatles at producing consistently-high-quality albums (though the Stones singles by this point were almost uniformly excellent). Aftermath gets accolades, but my sense is that it's pretty uneven - a combination of absolutely brilliant, not-to-be-missed material ("Under My Thumb", "Out of Time", "Mother's Little Helper") and filler (especially the blues jam). Maybe my expectations were too high coming into it. I'm with Paul Secor on Between the Buttons - it's quite good, as long as you don't worry too much about what a Stones album "should sound like".

Tim, this is very exciting! Are you going to be recording any more sideman dates for ECM? The Rub and Spare Change and Prezens were fantastic!

I'm really embarrassed to say, as a big Wayne fan, that I have not yet heard Odyssey of Iska. Et Cetera is a must hear if you're into the label's edgier mid-60s post-bop recordings.

You know, it's funny - this thread prompted me to dig out this recording. It will never be a real favorite, just because I'm not crazy about this genre of piano trios, but it's a very enjoyable listening experience.

My appreciation for Chicago-era Sun Ra grew significantly as I became a more seasoned jazz listener (just describing my own experience). The music's merits were less obvious to me early on than those of, say, ATLANTIS.

Good call. I really like Friedman's early/mid 60s playing.

I like those recordings, don't love 'em - but I would add that I generally prefer them to the other BE stuff I've heard as a leader. I tend to prefer his musical offspring (Herbie, Chick, Keith). FWIW, Paul Motian said he and Gary Peacock quit to join Paul Bley because they found the music to be too restrained - but that was in reference to the stuff BE was doing in 1963, not to what he was performing at the VV in 1961.

One of these days I'll make Scott D happy and listened to Radio KAOS, but Pros & Cons of Hitch-hiking is a serious contender for the worst album I have ever heard.

I liked the audio clips on Dark Side of the Moon (and, I guess, on "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast"). After that, like a lot of other features of PF's music, they became progressively more gimmicky. I also like The Final Cut - it has very little of what I like in PF's music, but brings other stuff to the table and also avoids most of The Wall's severe shortcomings. As far as AMLoR, I think Rooster nailed it - quite a bit of good stuff (though I think only "Sorrow" really gets close to great), but the 80s production is a downer, and generally it has a feeling of "trying too hard". TDB feels a lot less forced/contrived; just a bunch of middle-aged musicians making music they like. I'm fine with that.

Anything can be stultifying if the creators let themselves be stultified

Enjoying this discussion. Jazz at this point is a mature art form. I'm not sure the "linear"/"teleological"/"progressivist" intrepretation of jazz history ever had much merit, but it certainly doesn't now. There's something worthwhile left to be said in each jazz "sub-style" and there are also likely to be musicians in each of those sub-styles that are producing uninteresting music.

I don't feel an urgent need to pick this up, but will probably get around to it eventually. It's interesting that this one is getting a fairly positive critical reception, unlike The Division Bell which was (to my mind unfairly) panned upon release.

The original is a very schmaltzy tune.

Some friends and I saw Houston and his quartet last night. Very good, as you would expect. My wife was amused by the fact that he played "The Way We Were".

I'm planning to pick up the Gustav Mahler bio because I've always been interested in whether he was actually a mainstream (bop) jazz guitarist before he became a big-time composer/conductor.

They really are terrible compared to other smartphones

Yeah, I love that rating system. Sorry for starting the new thread - I just wanted to ask about this specific reissue

Hey guys, I was finally going to get around to picking up the reissue of Pharoah Sanders's Thembi and realized the late 90s reissue has gone OOP. Amazon instead offers this import: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000024Y5J?pc_redir=1413733105&robot_redir=1 Is there any reason I should avoid this? It's not a CD-R, right?

Whoever did that, well-played. I think it's certainly possible for this to simultaneously be bad music and good conceptual art - and I thought that was DTM's point. I am not sure critics of this recording have really addressed this argument. Love this cover. It looks like he is on a giant celestial slip and slide. I wonder whether the detached piano keyboard looked more incongruous to 50s listeners - my first thought was "yeah, NBD, he's holding a Casio keyboard".

Nice to hear someone say that. I put it on last week too and was pretty unmoved, as usual. It's a one-of-a-kind album no doubt but it never totally pulls me in. "All Blues" remains the highlight to me while the slower tracks like "Flamenco Sketches" and "Blue In Green" just come off as dull. I'm not trying to suggest the album doesn't deserve its status-- but it does take up too much space. In a discography that encompasses Walkin', Milestones, In Europe, ESP, Nefertiti... I guess I get why this one rises to the top, but I also don't. So this is obviously a matter of taste, but I've found that these tracks grew on me a lot over time. I'm a big Coltrane fan and he's magnificent on these - "Blue in Green" is one of his best performances on record, "Flamenco Sketches" not far behind.

RIP JB

I enjoyed both of these.

The album PEACEFUL WORLD is a good one.