Guy Berger

Whatever Pink Floyd I end up listening to in the next few decades is likely to be dominated by concert recordings from their peak as a live act (1969-73).

The Final Cut is a good album, though not unflawed. (I mean, "Not Now John"... yikes.) Less played-to-death than The Wall, and less of the glitzy bombast. On the other hand, The Pros & Cons of Hitchhiking is one of the absolute worst albums I have ever heard - be glad you avoided it. I never had any interest in investigating any of RW's other solo work after subjecting myself to it.

The difference between Syd's departure and the current PF is the continuity. THAT was an actively gigging band, this is basically a defunct project that is resurrected at a low frequency - basically, a description of music recorded under the PF name post-1977. That said, the "is it really Pink Floyd" debate is probably among the least interesting metaphysical debates ever; moreover the two Gilmour-led albums have much more stylistic similarity to the classic Floyd sound than The Wall and The Final Cut did.

New Pink Floyd album coming out in October? Doesn't seem like a hoax unless those two Twitter accounts were hacked. Is David Gilmour in financial trouble? Not sure I really care at this point - though The Division Bell was pretty good, the kind of solid album talented middle-aged British rockers would make.

I'm pretty excited about this!

Another funny factoid.. my first encounter with Tolkienworld was this translation.

Yes, very. Thanks for sharing David.

Love his music, in particular that from his mid-to-late-50s heyday (though I like the 60s stuff too). RIP Horace, you made us all very happy.

Interesting. I always thought that Germany had a more 'open' attitude to jazz (was always amazed at the amount of challenging jazz and not just Kenny G/Boney James etc. being broadcast on FM back in the 1980s at a time in the UK when it was once or twice a week) but I guess that things must have deteriorated. Shame.. oops,sorry, just noticed making an error in my previous post:it should read "wasn't given any serious grief" (now amended). Anyway, I wasn't referring to Germany in particular; rather what I think is a global phenomenon of increased pressure to adhere to accepted brands/trends. BTW: Jazz broadcasting and live jazz IMO went downhill sharply in Germany since the '80s I'm pretty skeptical that in the US there is "increased pressure to adhere to accepted brands/trends". Most likely, it's the same as it always was.

I think you are arguing at cross-purposes here, SD. MG's point is that (A) listening to artist A and then artist B, and calling it "progress" is a flawed normative judgment and that (B) it's not necessarily guided by some sort of grand deterministic process. I'm not familiar with Germany, but I'm pretty skeptical that this is the case in the United States.

Definitely. I said in my post that there were fewer jazz albums on the charts in the 90s (though still quite a good number. But yes, the number has been coming down since 1979 (which I think was the peak year since 1955 - though the charts have more records on them now ) It occurred to me the other day that, back in the fifties and sixties, there were loads of pop instrumentals on the singles charts - not just by jazz musicians like Bill Doggett, Johnny Dankworth (!), Jimmy Smith and Jimmy McGriff - but by pure pop or R&B musicians like Duane Eddy, the Ventures, Johnny & the Hurricanes, The Mar-Keys, Booker T & the MGs, the Shadows, Sandy Nelson, Bent Fabric, the Surfaris, the Tornadoes and a host of others. I don't know whether instrumental pop singles still make the charts but I very much doubt it and it seems to me that the decline of the pop instrumental has actually got something to do with the decline in young people's interest in jazz. If people don't hear instrumental music (good, bad and indifferent) as a regular and natural part of their cultural diet, jazz isn't going to mean much. MG This is part of what I was getting at too (and you touch upon in a later post in the thread). The "stylistic gap" between jazz and popular music began to widen at some point after 1940, but early on it wasn't that wide. So fans of one style could find things that were familiar in another. Over time it got so wide that "fan crossover" became much more rare, though it still happens from time to time.

You're definitely wrong there, Guy. Lots of jazz albums got onto the Billboard pop or R&B charts in the eighties. I've got a list of 388 by 131 artists... MG Interesting list, which suggests my claim was somewhat hyperbolic. But if you were to construct similar lists for other decades, my suspicion is there has been a decrease post-1980 (and I would guess the 1990s and 2000s totals are even lower than the 1980s you compiled. Jazz these days is much less relevant to popular culture than it was 50 years ago.

Indeed!

1) Audiences at NYC clubs are generally not that old - I see lots of people in their 20s and 30s. 2) It's not surprising to me that audiences in concert halls are older, and I would guess if you live in a place where concert halls are the main jazz venue, the apparent jazz audience would be relatively old. 3) The youngest jazz audiences I've seen are at things like Medeski Martin & Wood concerts. If you want young audiences, you need to come to where young people view live music, not to stuffy concert halls. 4) Were audiences for jazz ever THAT young, especially after WW2? I mean, how old were the working class African Americans who listened to soul jazz and hard bop in the 50s and 60s? Or the middle-class whites that listened to west coast jazz during that period? 5) Like someone else said, the main identifying characteristic of audiences in NYC clubs seems to be "disposable income". 6) Related to all these points, one of the big changes in jazz (particularly straight ahead) since 197x is the complete disconnect from popular music. I would even say that a lot of discussion by current fans of pre-197x straight ahead jazz tends to retroactively divorce it from popular music of that time.

Sad.

Weren't some of those recordings made on non-BN labels that were later acquired?

Loved this episode. Seriously LOLd at JSngry's comment (in fact, I shared it with some IRL friends).

Hey guys, I am thinking of picking up recordings of John Dunstaple compositions but can't decide between the interpretations by Tonus Peregrinus (Naxos) or Hilliard Ensemble (2 CD set on EMI coupled with Leonel Power - this isn't a CD-R, is it?). Any thoughts?

AB, amazing/funny/beautiful actress. Amusingly, my fiancee and I were getting lunch a few months ago and JS and his teenage son (who was typically teenagery) were there too. I wasn't listening too closely but I think JS was pestering this kid about his supposedly terrible taste in music.

My opinion too. At first I was a little skeptical - I thought it was enjoyable "style without substance" (indeed, the show was kind of marketed that way). But I thought it improved a lot over time. By the 3rd season I was hooked. Not that anyone cares but my favorite characters are Roger and Peggy. As TtK says most of the characters exist in a grey zone.

LOU NEEDS TO HAVE AN ENCOUNTER WITH JOHN DEERE

This band became a lot less interesting after Buddy Collette left.

Yeah, so putting the political affiliation of the organization to the side... why did they give the award to such a hack? I haven't read this guy's books, but judging by the WSJ columns that have been posted here from time to time, he's quite lame.

Finally getting around to the George Russell BS/SN box and listening to this album for the 1st time. Wow. So good. Anybody who likes music at the nexus of avant-garde big band jazz and rock music should definitely check it out.

I really like it. I have a soft spot for solo sax albums for a few reasons, one of which is that i simply find them to be great background music. There's a relaxed intimacy about them; i love having a solo saxophone album playing while i pot around the house from one room to another. Almost feels like the artist is chilling in one of the rooms of your house. In particular with this Steve Coleman album i'd always loved his playing but found the production on his eighties and nineties albums to be really off putting. An album with him unaccompanied really laid his playing bare. I'm not sure what it is but his playing really speaks to me so i found this album to be really engaging. I also really dug what i'd heard of him on his albums unaccompanied (for example track one of Weaving Symbolics) and thought "yeah i could dig a whole albums of this". That's pretty much what you get. This thread made for interesting reading. Just like with any artist YMMV but you can't really judge recent Steve Coleman by his eighties or nineties stuff. Sometimes i feel like Steve Coleman's career is on the reverse trajectory of Miles'. Judging current Steve on albums like Tao of the Mad Phat would be like judging Miles purely on Tutu. In Marcus Gilmore he found a drummer that could be funky without being stuck on a grid. Jen Shyu's vocals will be a deal breaker for some, but for me her voice adds a wonderful surreal edge and some amazing colours (i also really dig Irene Aebi's vocals, so... ) Finally picked this up. This is great!!!