Rabshakeh

The Frank Wright Quartet - Church Number Nine (Calumet, 1972) As with the other contemporaneous Frank Wright and Noah Howard albums, Bobby Few’s very melodic piano playing just makes this one zing. It’s the mixture of spicy and sweet that’s so great.

Charles Tolliver's Music Inc. - Live at the Loosdrecht Jazz Festival (Strata-East, 1973). John Hicks' piano solo on "Our Second Father" is such a killer.

It does seem like it is Warne Marsh's thing.

I'm listening to the Lew Tabackin and Warne Marsh album Tenor Gladness at the moment. The final track "Basic #1" has an excellent bit where both tenor players solo at once. Can anyone think of any other good examples of this?

I hadn’t realised they have a new one out.

By a long way my favourite Chet album.

I have never heard of this one. An incredible line up. This bunch were from yesterday, unknowingly enjoying the last day shopping prior to a new lockdown.

Emergency cheering up music: Passport - Ataraxia (Atlantic, 1978) Casiopea - Super Flight (Alfa, 1979) Archie Shepp - Kwanza (Impulse!, 1974) Willie Colon - Cosa Nuestra (Fania, 1969) Also featuring, scotch.

Judging by 20-something Twitter, there's a growing nostalgia towards the "idea" of a forum, as opposed to the current social media outlets.

Another giant.

37. The Youth of Today. Nice try.

An all-time favourite.

Asher Gamedze's Dialectic Soul (On The Corner, 2020). It's been a bad year in almost all ways, but one of the best that I can remember for new jazz releases.

Jugendstil II by Lee Konitz, Chris Cheek, Stéphane Furic Leibovici (2006) A wonderful album. The harmonies are like something out of Machaut.

That's a genre I can get behind.

A nice release.

Currently spinning Warne Marsh's All Music (Nessa, 1976), over and over. It's always been a favourite, but something about it cracked open my head a couple of days ago, and now it is just on every time I'm near my turntable. My poor wife just sighs and says "Is this Wayne Marsh again?" every time. Is this good? Great players, but you never know with drum match ups.

I often wonder about that, given the prevalence of cover art of leaders smoking. Is there a record of tobacco companies sponsoring BN etc.?

Jean-François Pauvros and Gaby Bizen's No Man's Land (Un-Deux-Trois, 1972) Elvin Jones Trio's Puttin' It Together (Blue Note)

They still sound great. In fact, I think Disable Planets sound better than they did then. I love those groups' first couple of albums. The Low End Theory had a significant impact on my own jazz listening habits (I was around 14 at the time I discovered that album). Those were innovative hip hop acts. I'm not sure Guru holds up quite as well, but, hey. It's more the stuff from the jazz side that got my goat in the 90s and early 00s. It was a good period for young fogey music faking being up to date. It was also a good period for other musics too, as discussed above. Depending on the type of jazz or improvised music you like, it might even have been a "great" period. But I remember the sad hip hop cross over attempts getting quite a lot of the more "mainstream" jazz press attention. Particularly in the UK. I find the contrast pretty stark when compared to the current set of jazz musicians like Makaya McCraven and Shabaka Hutchings, who I think have staked out a much more convincing claim.

Some of those 90s attempts at jazz / hip hop fusion have aged pretty badly I think. Not because they're fusion, per se. I just think they were mostly playing catch up. Now that rap has itself moved on, those albums sound even more wretched and old fashioned.

Oh yes

On the neo bop side, was this a continuation of the young lions thing or something new stylistically (perhaps "new" is wrong)? I'd be interested in hearing about specific albums for these artists.

I always saw the first half of the 90s as one of the weaker periods of mainstream jazz, and music as a whole, but there's lots of good stuff. Personal favourites from the decade that aren't far off McLean are Banned in New York by Greg Osby (Blue Note, 1998) and Ancient Ritual by Sonny Simmons (Qwest, 1994).

Thanks for these. Some great sounding stuff that I wouldn't have identified on my own. Looking forward to piling in.