Rabshakeh

On a whim, I am currently working my way through the Penguin Guides, which are easily found in charity shops these days. I was already familiar from younger years with their Core and Crown recommendations but I hadn't considered their non-Core and no-Crown recommendations before. Whilst I viewed them with a certain disdain at the time, read retrospectively they're an excellent frozen snapshot of a certain critical viewpoint in the 1990s and 200s. Brad Mehldau and the Bad Plus were supreme. On the avant side, it was Evan Parker and Barry Guy, once a week, every week. ECM was an enormous titan that required recognition. Straight Ahead jazz of the Young Lions Coltrane-gang type was increasingly seen as old hat. A very heavy domination of Europeans. No fusion. No smooth or radio friendly jazz. It is strange to be confronted with the past in this way. That was a vanished era of low access to information, high critical power / gatekeeping, a lack of any expectations of a social mission (with accompanying extreme downplaying of African-American and of younger musicians) and a time before "poptimism" shattered self-perceived elite tastes. The 1990s and 2000s is generally my least favourite era for this music. Obviously a lot of the music reminds me of the reasons for my angry dismissals at the time, but, there is a hint of nostalgia to going through some of this stuff.

Mark Dresser Trio – Aquifer

Still a good record.

Steve Lacy – Actuality

Joe Maneri / Joe Morris / Mat Maneri – Three Men Walking

George Wettling's All Stars – Dixieland In Hi-Fi All star Condon-fest to take the edge off an authentically grim London February morning.

Art Ensemble of Chicago - Les Stances a Sophie I've owned this one on the Soul Jazz reissue for a while but it was time to trade up. It sounds great. I don't normally do this, but for the AEC and Roscoe Mitchell I get vinyl-brained.

Louis Jordan – Somebody Up There Digs Me

That's interesting. Was that to do with when you first discovered the group?

Vernard Johnson - in Concert

Pharaoh Sanders - Karma Oh yeah. A great favourite of mine. From their early days. This is the only one I've kept, and agreed that they're not anything like what they should be. Now onto Kaoru Abe - Mort A Credit

Arthur Blythe - Lenox Avenue Breakdown

Butcher, Durrant, Lovens, Malfatti, Russell – News From The Shed

CCC - Muhal

Circle - The Paris Concert

Miles Davis - Agharta Birthday boy.

It's the way it profiles her as being Diego R's little wife, who is trying out painting as a hobby.

Very sad to hear.

Christer Bothén Featuring Bolon Bata – Trancedance

Will give it a go. I'm never sure about Collier but there are some records on which he's been very good. Thanks for bringing it to the attention.

Agharta is a big one for me, for a complex net of personal reasons. The first record I listened to on vinyl. A favourite of my secondary school russian teacher, who used to bring the conversation around to "avantgyard djyaz founkt" during oral tests. A big obsessive record for my elder son, aged 5 (sadly since overtaken by Iron Maiden's Piece of Mind). One of my jazz loving aunt's most hated records (she walked out of the London show of the same tour). But generally such a great record. I fell in love with it long before I enjoyed fusion or even electric Miles more generally. It is such a big aggressive soup. I'll give the birthday boy a spin tonight.

Mat Walerian, Matthew Shipp, Hamid Drake – Jungle Live At Okuden

Marcus Strickland Twi-Life Group – Open Reel Deck (2007) I dismissed this at the time, thinking it was part of the then-burgeoning jazz subgenre of 'theoretically young 30 year old impresses old people by doing supposedly young thing that the old people don't know is out of date'. It does have some of the trappings, like the subpar hip hop, but on revisiting it, I enjoy it quite a lot more than I did.

Pretty grim stuff, but I guess it was 1933, so there was grimmer stuff in the news.

Is this real? What's it from.