Rabshakeh

I actually dreamt it had been reissued last night and that is why I listened to it. Maybe Abdul Wadud's By Myself first though.

I should add that I was already aware of the VV's list that @HutchFan posted, having discovered it a few years ago. For all its obvious flaws, when I first encountered it, it was extremely useful to me. The fact is that jazz since the start of the 1980s is pretty much unmapped territory. Those who were there and listening know, but if you weren't (or if you were more into nursery rhymes at the time, as I was) there's hardly any way in. Most older jazz fans whom I know in real life's tastes had stopped moving around 1968, so there were no recommendations from those quarters, and such information as is available online might as well have been stamped "Columbia Records Marketing Department Press Release". The result is that it took me around 15 years of heavy listening before I moved in any serious way into 1980s jazz, other than the obligatory disappointing Marsalis purchase. Discovering that VV list really opened up a lot of listening that would otherwise have not been available at all. I think it was the first time I had seen Special Edition mentioned, if that gives you an idea of the sort of information vacuum I am talking about. I think that any sort of online list relating to the period post-1969 is valuable, and what is particularly useful about the VV one is that it presents a multiplicity of viewpoints, even if they are myopically focused on "jazz" as perceived by NY critics. On a related note, I greatly enjoy the site "rate your music". The basic "rating" functionality of the site is not particularly great, but it has a very large number of user generated lists, which stretch into areas that are otherwise no much covered, even on the internet. It is one of the best resources I know of for exploring these areas.

Baikida Carroll - Orange Fish Tears (1974). On Jef Gilson's Palm label.

I think there's something in the nature of a list like this. If you are asked to pick the "Ten most worthy jazz releases of the decade" for an audience of mid-level enthusiasts, everyone would naturally pick those releases that they feel are capital-I Important and closest to the mainstream definition of the genre (in this case, US and "jazz" with no adjective in front of it). I'm sure if there were more slots, or if there was a further sub-list of "Records you also dug" or something to that effect you would start to get a more interesting and wider selection. It's true of any end of year or decade list - the good stuff in a top 100 list is always in the 100-70 category. By the time you get to the top ten it's just the same old starchy dribble. P.S., Glad to see this thread back.

I'm a great believer in just cutting your losses and not substituting. It never tastes as good, and there are a lot of other good things to eat out there that do.

This looks like a fun bunch of players. I have learned never to turn away from any with Roberto Miranda’s name attached to it.

I have to say that I agree. I listened to this for the first time on LP in my university library many years ago, and it sounded fantastic. Whatever is available on CD is just lifeless in comparison.

I cannot guarantee anything. Time heals most wounds, but in my case, not Scatman John. That takes 40 years of Jungian therapy and some pricey Ayahuasca minibreaks.

It was a playground favourite in the 1990s in the UK, to the extent that people in their 30s and 40s still shout the chorus at you if you say you enjoy jazz even now.

I am not 12, so I am not going to post Scatman John. But know that it took some self restraint.

Pharaoh Sanders - Africa (Timeless, 1987) John Hicks playing out my weekend.

My poor family have to listen to an awful lot of Sabu.

I only know Breuker in the context of the ICP and Kollektief, which I guess is on the more "avant" side. Great group / great records, obviously. Yeah. As mentioned at the start, groups like the Kollektief loom pretty large in histories of Dutch and European jazz. I selected the date range to try to scratch at what went before a little bit.

Thanks! How much dialogue was there between the East German scene and the West German? Did information cross easily and were there frequent tours?

That's interesting. What is the Fascination Jazz book? Was it a government published book on the East German jazz scene? Does it highlight any other records of note?

One point occured to me this morning: what about Denmark? One of the few European scenes from which I'm pretty sure every board member could name players, although most of them are rhythm section players hailing from Ye Era of the American Exile (which I deliberately tried to avoid in the dating of this thread, since that's when everything clearly changes significantly for the European scenes). Did anything significant come before the NHOPs and Tchicais?

Klaus Doldinger - Live at the Blue Note Berlin There was life before Passport, it turns out.

Now playing: Valarie Ponomarev - Means of Identification (Reservoir, 1987) Having just finished: Albert Mangelsdorff Quintet - Folk Mond & Flower Dream One of the recommendations from the recent Jazz Modernism in Europe & Japan thread.

I have to say I'm really impressed by it. I listened to it twice in one go. It has a unique language, which is surprisingly rare when writing for this scale. Mr. Mitchell is probably my favourite artist and it's amazing to see how he is continuing to grow at every stage of his career.

Now playing Roscoe Mitchell - Splatter (2020) Roscoe Mitchell with Strings.

Taking a break from an afternoon's increasingly frantic googling of 1950s Western European jazz men to listen to this favourite: Andrew Cyrille's X Man (Soul Note, 1944) with James Newton and especially Anthony Cox in very fine form.

I haven't listened to Riot since I upgraded my system. That's something to look forward to tomorrow.

I've spent much of this afternoon trying to track down the records in this thread and piece it all together. Some of these records are... obscure. Even Discogs is struggling. Which in itself is a really tribute to the knowledge of some of the people on this board.

Ha ha ha. Indeed!

I download on my phone and then shrink to 10% with an app called Lightroom.