Rabshakeh

I'm not sure how highbrow my criteria were to tell the truth. The tracks great. I assume I'm in the virtual presence of a Fabio Frizzi fan...

Hmm. Yes. I remember being broadly disappointed. The film perhaps didn't fulfill my, at the time, fairly specific, criteria.

Apparently it's a branch of a Tokyo shop. I may accidentally find myself there over the weekend.

What's the other one? WoE fills quite a specific ecosystem, although I rarely buy from there.

Bobo Stenson or Bobo Shaw?

Currently listening to A Message From Garcia by Dick Garcia. Some really top notch Tony Scott on this one.

The British Channel 4 used to show European art house cinema every Friday evening in the late nineties. Sometimes it was more art house, and other times it was perhaps less so. Whether it was Fellini or Kieslowski, they all had lengthy introductions by high minded film critic Mark Kermode. Looking back, it is hard to tell what caused me, a 16 year old boy, to stay up late in order to watch this obscure classic of Turkish cinema (perhaps an interest in Anatolian folklore, or a love of the Cyclades and its unique architecture? Maybe just a dedication to and love of pure cinema?), but Kermode’s 20 minute introduction, which focused primarily on the film’s bold exploration of themes of alienation and subversive deployment of mise en scene, really stuck with me as an avantgarde classic in its own right.

Veeery nice. Which shops?

I do intermittently enjoy a bit of 80s Miles, but have never really understood why I should not just listen to Prince.

Why oh no?

What? Why?

Woop!

Snap!!! Albeit not on vinyl for me.

That's true. That's certainly what I use it for.

Norwegian Wood has a lot of jazz in it. But it's one of Mr Murakami's least science fictiony works. I'm really surprised at the lack of British and American science fiction writers who were jazz fans or mentioned jazz in their writing at all. Science fiction in the 1950s-1980s was a great place for interesting, experimental and progressive writing. There seems to be an obvious cross over with jazz, which is all those things. Many great science fiction writers frequently touch on music. But no jazz at all.

I was and am a huge Zappa fan, but let's just say that I'm glad so much of his output was instrumental.

Did people find the humour funny at the time? It's something I've never understood about Zappa.

6 CDs of 200 Motels is far too much for me. The original is baggy enough.

I revisited your 1970s blog recently to see what I'd missed. I am very much looking forward to this one.

It's weird that there's no jazz at all in Philip K Dick. Plenty of Dowland. No jazz.

I thought that might be the case. I'm looking forward to finding out either way though.

Jazz Quintet 60: Presenting... (Metronome, 1962) Still working my way through euromodernism recommendations from a month or two back. What a cover photograph!

I've never come across it. One to check out. And I suppose there's not a total blank on improv: there's the Mule and his Visi-Sonor in the Foundation books. But it's not clear how hard he swings, so I'm not sure whether Wynton would have approved.

April in Paris was one of the turn offs for me for some reason. Perhaps I need to revisit it, but it didn't feel like it had the huge energy of Live at Newport. It seems closer to Atomic in style to me - emphasis on arrangements. Probably I am wrong though as I am no expert on Basie (as my question above shows).

That's true. A good shout. The closest that we have got so far to a science fiction writer who even mentions jazz. It's a weird blank point. Perhaps jazz was not where it was at during the genre's flowering, but I'm still surprised that there's almost noone there in the sci fi firmament who refers to jazz or draws any sort of parallels to improvisation.