RogerF

For those who missed the original Sony reissues of these two classic Columbia releases, Hux Records have now got them both on a two-fer with new liner notes. Howard Riley's 'Angle' and 'The Day Will Come' are exceptionally good albums and received four star awards in the Penguin Guide to Jazz. These were two of pianist Riley's earliest trio recordings from the 1960s and whilst hardly "mainstream" are arguably more (instantly) accessible, before he moved into more solo work. Riley's a great pianist and innovator and these are two of his very best. Release imminent - end November or beginning December. http://www.huxrecords.com/cdsales141.htm Edit: Angle was 1969 and the Day Will Come was 1970, also Barbara Thompson guests on one track on Angle.

Clifford you took the words right out of my mouth - a very apposite description. Miles' 'Nardis' is something else - the definitive version IMO

It's now on the Dusk Fire website catalogue and can be ordered direct from there:- http://www.musicsogood.com/duskfire/catalogue.htm

Any idea where I might be able to pick up a copy of this on CD at a reasonable price, Roger? Amazon has some second hand CD copies but at quite a price. It is an excellent album though.

Arguably Acker's most significant album was a meeting of the mouldy fygges and the dirty boppers in the middle ground of mainstream inspired by Ellington. 'Blue Acker' (With the Stan Tracey Big Brass) from 1968 was an album recorded with the cream of British jazz at that time (1968). A memorable album, it was thankfully reissued on CD by Lake a few years back. Ian Carr, who played on the album, also wrote the sleeve notes which are made available in full on Stan's web site: http://www.stantracey.com/LinerNotes/BlueAcker.htm R.I.P. Acker

Dealing with the points above in order. I am not aware of an impending vinyl release for this, but it isn't impossible as I seem to remember this did happen with Rendell Carr Live at the Union but sadly this was not a Dusk Fire release. It may well happen, but there is no mention of this in the press release I've seen. Also, with regard to the release and availability, again the press release states the date as 6 January but on Amazon it says 5 January. So some ambiguity there, but rest assured this is going to happen definitely, at the very start of January. No mention on the Dusk Fire website yet but again, I'm sure that will be amended quite shortly. It will be worth the wait.

Same here too but - this deserved to be officially re-issued years ago. Now thankfully it is. No vinyl, but some original used vinyl copies do re-emerge from time to time commanding ridiculous prices.

At long last the brilliant Le Déjeuner Sur L'Herbe recorded in 1968 by the New Jazz Orchestra under the leadership of the late Neil Ardley is being re-issued for the first time on CD. This classic recording features Ian Carr, Henry Lowther, Dave Gelly, Harry Beckett, Mike Gibbs, Derek Watkins, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Barbara Thompson, Frank Ricotti, Jack Bruce (on double bass!) and Jon Hiseman, amongst others. The Dusk Fire release (DUSKCD110) is superbly packaged in digipak format with a booklet of photographs and extensive sleeve notes by Dave Gelly and others. It has been described in an extended article on the recording as “One of the finest jazz recordings ever made and arguably the best big band recording by British musicians …” (Jazz Journal February 2012)(*). It has a 1,000 CD limited run, so get your order in now! It's released on 6 January 2015. Track listing: Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe Naïma Angle Ballad Dusk Fire Nardis Study Rebirth (*) ok, declaration of interest here...I was the author of that article!

The memorial service for Kenny was appropriately brilliant. A stellar line-up with the cream of British jazz including Evan Parker, John Taylor, Dave Horler, John Marshall, Martin France and Chris Laurence and Stan Sulzmann. There were eulogies, all very moving and highly personal tributes from Stan Sulzmann, Evan Parker, Dave Horler and John Taylor. Norma Winstone was in fine voice throughout and there were some notable solos from Henry Lowther, John Paricelli, John Taylor and Stan Sulzmann to name just a few. The service lasted two hours with much more music than prayer and I suspect the church (St James, Sussex Gardens in London's Lancaster Gate area) hadn't seen such a capacity audience since Christmas. The music - all Kenny Wheeler pieces, naturally, with the emphasis on larger ensembles - was sublime (no other word for it) and illustrated perfectly the genius that was Kenny Wheeler. The concert ended with a vocal piece by the London Vocal Project led by Pete Churchill which was remarkably effective. Finally and most movingly, the service concluded with a poignant recording of Kenny playing a terrific solo, the notes of which reached far up into the roof. This was a fitting tribute to a much-loved and highly respected jazz musician whose many works will live on.

A nice obituary for Vic by Peter Vacher appears in the Guardian here: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/31/vic-ash I too met Vic at one of Simon's gigs and was impressed by his charm and modesty and obviously his prodigious talent. R.I.P. Vic.

Jack Bruce was a pivotal influence on me musically. I always thought his first solo albums for Polydor were amazingly good and particularly Things We Like [this was a 'pure' and instrumental jazz album, with Bruce playing double bass, so was only released after the other two solo albums despite having been recorded earlier]. His contributions to Carla Bley's Escalator Over The Hill were immense. His contributions to albums by Mike Gibbs, Tony Williams Lifetime and the New Jazz Orchestra (Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe) were essential. I only saw him playing twice, once with Nucleus in London in the early 1970s and then much later at the tribue gig for Dick Heckstall Smith (A Story Ended) where he played in a trio with Gary Husband and Gary Moore (another one gone too soon). He made an immese contribution to music generally and his sphere of influence was very wide ranging (from Soft Machine's Land of Cockayne to Frank Zappa's Apostrophe) and everything in between. He will be sorely missed by many including me, R.I.P. Jack. ps check out the jazz supergroup tracks on his box set Spirit (Live at the BBC 1971-1978) with John Surman and Jon Hiseman. Poignantly feature the track Jack's Gone (this is also on YouTube)

Yes I do, but I think the name was a misnomer, it should have been Troll Central Station

This was the same festival but not the actual performance which was Nucleus on their own. However, Leon Thomas does mention their achievement and prize (being sent off to the Newport Jazz Festival at short notice) in the introduction to the final track.

No, Gearbox is a vinyl-only label, but they usually are accompanied by a free download

News just in! Gearbox Records are shortly releasing Nucleus with Leon Thomas live at the Montreux Jazz Festival on 20 June 1970. This is the first ever official commercial release of this historic performance and almost 70 minutes worth of music is spread over a double vinyl LP. More on this here: http://iancarrsnucleus.webs.com/nucleusnews.htm

The House of Lords? MG No, the Opposition

Well I thought this one was definitely your cup of tea Bev. It seems to tick all the boxes. Don't be misled by the grungy thudding drums intro to the first track, it's really quite exceptional. Hope you enjoy it.

New UK band Blue-Eyed Hawk have just released their debut album "Under the Moon" which I have reviewed "in another place". This excellent album is a mixture of jazz, folk and rock and I highly recommend it. Special mention must go to Lauren Kinsella whose vocals are eerily (in a good way) reminiscent of the late Sandy Denny and the magnificent trumpet playing of Laura Jurd (most definitely an up and coming jazz star). It's one of the best new CDs that I've heard this year so far. http://www.editionrecords.com/artists/b-e-h/

One question. One thought. Question: If a company goes under, how have you lost your music collection? In the digital format we have the option to build so much redundancy into it, it's actually absurd. You can have a physical copy, a digital copy on your computer, a copy of that on an external hard drive, AND a copy of that in the Cloud! Imagine creating a comparable redundancy in the analog age! Thought: If you cannot "access the Cloud" for whatever reason, one would have to assume you aren't at home. Right? Because if you were, you'd simply slap on your record/CD/digital file via your computer. But, if you're away from home and can't access it, well, that's just like being away from home in the analog age. Is it not? A thousand pardons, brother. I'm not trying to give you a hard time, and I dug what you posted. I'm still just having a hard time seeing the downside. I'm not really looking a debate about this because whether I'm right or wrong doesn't change my luddite opinion that I'm essentially nervous about the longevity of digital media in general (including the stuff on my Kindle). Whilst it's there, it's there and it's very, very convenient.

"As the market goes, so goes the product. It's not some nefarious scheme by Apple. It's basic economics." Yes, exactly, this is the whole nub of the problem. It's ok having iPods or whatever but when (not if) the system / company goes under then you've basically lost your collection. That is of course leaving aside the whole Cloud thing - like for instance yes it's true when you buy certain albums on Amazon you get a free download too, but this only works if the Cloud is accessible (ie you've got a signal), same with iCloud music purchases. I bitterly regret ditching some (not all, thankfully) of my vinyl collection in favour of the new technology known as the musicassette (what a joke!). I now buy vinyl secondhand at fairs because I know that the only medium which will still be playable (assuming the resurgence of the medium continues to generate turntables) in 100 years time will be vinyl. There's also the thorny question of (for example) Spotify and hiring your collection. This form of monetising music is becoming more prevalent in other areas such as Microsoft's annual subscription to its "Office 365" suite. I wish that weren't the case, but even CD players are seemingly archaic now and in the throes of being phased out (which is a bit of a shame as I have most of my collection on that medium - oh and the aforesaid iPod). Even if they do away with turntables altogether at least I can look at the vinyl, admire the artwork, read the sleeve notes and sigh nostalgically, something you can't do with a dead iPod.

Rest in peace. You enriched so many lives and your music will live on, maestro.

As the technology marketeers move the goalposts every 6 months or so I am always a couple of generations behind - at least. Whenever I hit upon a good solution, things change or "improve". I have my collection on vinyl, CD and a large proportion of the entire collection (but by no means all) on a "back up" iPod Classic. For mobile listening I use my iPod Nano (8gb) or my iPhone 4S (again 8Gb). But going on holiday I take my "collection" on the iPod Classic. For me this represents an ideal solution. So yes the only other way to improve this for me would be an iPhone with a 500Gb storage capacity (iPhone # 10?). Otherwise this is all fine as is. But the technologists aren't going to stop there. You do know that within 10 years we'll all have to have implanted receivers to pick up our Spotify library bluetoothed to a cochlear implant in our ears. I personally can't wait!!!

Me neither...arghhh!

I discovered on my "Ronnie Scott and the Band Live at Ronnie Scott's" CD reissue (Song BMG 2007 - 88697072392) one of four bonus tracks entitled "May Day" (attributed to Ronnie himself). This buzzed around in my head for a week or so until I realised I had heard it before and fished out my CD of "Acropolis" by Ian Hamer. Sure enough the first track on CD 2 is "Mayday!" (sic) attributed to Ian Hamer. But essentially, apart from a different brief intro on the Hamer recording, they are the same tune. Does anyone know anything about the provenance of this track? Are there any other recordings of it? I should point out that it's an extremely insistent track which will imprint itself quite ruthlessly in one's mind, so beware! I should also mention that both these albums are excellent and I consider essential for any British jazz fans. Ronnie's one benefiting from the likes of John Surman and Tony Oxley whilst Ian Hamer's has the fire-power of Tubby Hayes and both albums feature the magnificent bass work of Ron Mathewson. Can someone add anything to this? Help! Mayday!

yes this was reissued by Lake as a twofer; the title of the album is Work Song (LACD160). The only regrettable thing about this reissue is that is doesn't have the original cover of Sandy Brown naked but for a sporran and a wig, oh and a bass clarinet. It's a brilliant album - also features George Chisholm on trombone. Still haven't had time to read the damned Johnny Mac book yet - on my "to do" list! Have downloaded the Appendix onto my Kindle which is only around £3 to purchase.