Rabshakeh

David S Ware Quartets - Live In The World Everyone is raving about this. I have listened once and wasn't quite sure what people love about it but I think I need to give it more time.

I'm a 1990s boy. Peak Womad. That's the sort of trauma that takes expensive therapy to overcome.

Eddie Harris – Instant Death

Kora Jazz Trio – Kora Jazz Trio First listen to this. I'm pretty kora-allergic so had low expectations but this is really good.

Enoch Light And The Light Brigade – Pertinent Percussion Cha Cha's

Everette Harp – Common Ground

Frank Emilio – Frank Emilio Presenta a Frank Emilio

Sex Mob – Din Of Inequity

Yes that is right. I really mean those later 1970s and early 1980s records that are everywhere. Interesting that despite the excitement around Japanese jazz on many parts of the Internet (Reddit runs on prestige Japanese jazz reissues), Watanabe isn't part of it. One assumes that they must have sold well to be so widely available. I find it really strange. Watanabe is not even mentioned as a major commercial jazz figure. The only equivalent I can think of Herbie Mann, who is similarly under-referenced and oversupplied. But Mann is obviously a bit of a quirky subject who dabbled everywhere, whereas Watanabe is more purely jazz, even if commercial. I don't get the reference. Did he do an album with this name?

Can anyone please explain to me why, no matter where one goes on the planet, Sadao Watanabe's records are everywhere? Singapore, Minneapolis, Guildford. The second hand jazz section always has some 'Nabe. He doesn't seem particularly popular now and hasn't received big name high gloss re-releases (even at a time when every other jazz or fusion artist from Japan is all over Instagram). I'm not sure I ever see him talked about, either artistically or as a historic commercial phenomenon. Was he really massive? What was the USP? There seems to be more second hand Watanabe stock than Chuck Mangione or Grover Washington combined, so I can only assume he was a very substantial seller.

Evolution Ensemble Unity – Concrete Voices

Mtume - In Search of the Rainbow Seekers

Sadao Watanabe – Morning Island

Yeah that's what I mean. It is weird that they weren't playing together more.

What was the view on the relationship between the likes of William Parker and Matthew Shipp and the core Downtown group?

The best bit of Rome is the way that if you don't want to go to the tourist spots, you can just turn any corner and the random church you find will be more impressive than any that you have ever seen anywhere, anyway. Also, even for Italy the food is really good, with easier restaurants than e.g. Tuscany and very child friendly.

I hope the photographer wasn't paid too much for this one.

Rome is amazing to the extent that it is one city where I have never gone record shopping.

George Crater – Out Of My Head

I get that. The Village Voice is going to focus on New York. What I mean is that the music being played at the ICA in London in 1978 was basically the same thing, with the same squeaky toys and the same duck calls. It is an interesting quirk that we now regard the Downtown scene as its own sui generis thing and not part of a very similar trend emerging in the post punk era in cities that had substantial first generation free improv scenes. I assume that a lot of that is down to later developments and in particular the platform given to John Zorn by Elektra from the late 1980s onwardss. But then again at the time I was focused on learning to eat solids so my opinion is probably wrong.

The Uptown scene.

Two things that interest me are (1) the way that the geographic descriptor means that people interpret the New York downtown scene of that period as being something different to the wider trends in improv that were also happening in London and Tokyo which went in the same direction, rather than as being part of a cohesive second wave of free improv (to use the term that I think Shoemaker uses in reference to e.g. Steve Beresford pissing off the oldies at Company week); and (2) the apparently complete dominance of Eugene Chadbourne in the early stages of the NY scene (I wasn’t there but he seems to have been everywhere). Were Slug’s Saloon and Ornette Coleman’s loft Downtown? Perhaps the descriptor was used for them? My knowledge of where the line is drawn is hazy.

What are some good examples? I haven't come across it. Oh wait is that the Royal Palms label?

Certainly! Great one.

Okay. Those are pretty bad.