Rabshakeh

Where would you go with Flaherty? I've always seen him as a bit one dimensional, but very willing to be proven wrong.

You'd expect that as Amba grows she will deepen a bit. At the moment it is a small number of licks, clearly borrowed from Ayler via Brotzmann. To my ear she didn't have any particular issues with tone or air control. The quality of the "ruckus" itself was good. It was good ruckus. Nor did she struggle to listen. She is clearly comfortable working with others and in different settings. The biggest issue for me was the limited set of ideas of what to play on the saxophone - She tends to jump straight into the blasting, and then even within a short performance she was repeating herself. Hopefully at some point she begins to deepen her ideas and acquires a widening palette and understanding of how to build to the solo and sustain a performance. In a world where every second younger saxophonist is a Sanders or Coltrane clone, I think that she is one of the few who would benefit from a bit more Sanders and Coltrane in her sound (particularly the nuanced sound of late era Coltrane). I think that the biggest risk though is falling in with a passing hipster audience and then missing those opportunities to develop, instead sticking with the monotonous fire eating stuff and aging into a Paul Flaherty type. I don't think that it is helpful to have Cafe OTO describing Bhakti as one of the greatest albums of the 21 century. That's the sort of praise that leads to a fall. That said, the venue at which I saw her hosted an unusually young crowd that night. And the casual jazz fans who I dragged with me loved it and called her "the real deal". I certainly enjoyed myself, even if I wasn't all that impressed.

Freddie Roach - Mo' Greens Please Who was Conrad Lester?

I don't listen to these but I really love reading the written summaries. They're always fantastic.

Shorty Rogers And His Giants – Clickin' With Clax

What is your tolerance for monotonously lachrymose hagiographies of jazz greats?

Ha! I wondered at that too.

It is your chance to see what a But Beautiful chapter on Albert Ayler would have looked like.

Thanks for forwarding! Geoff Dyer, though... I somehow managed to get to the end of But Beautiful, and this is giving me flashbacks.

What I would say is that it was a hearteningly young audience. Very nice to see.

I really came away thinking that she had about five tricks and not much more. Amadou made it good by tying it together and keeping it punky, which meant that I was less concerned by Amba's repeating herself.

No flute. Very similar to the first set, really. Do you know Amadou in any other setting? I don't think I have ever heard of her.

Saw Zoh Amba at Cafe OTO, with Farida Amadou on bass and Chris Corsano on drums. It was a good gig. I am half and half on Amba and a bit sceptical on Corsano, but I really enjoyed it. Amadou, who I didn't know at all, played 80s harmolodic influenced electric bass, which gave the whole performance a gritty punk free jazz edge. I went with two civilians, who both really enjoyed it.

Yeah. That's a great record. Sabuuuuu

It's no Jazz Espagnole

This is one of my favourite Sanders records. There is a real smoothness to it, along with a lot of brawn. My wife burst laughing when I brought it out of the bag.

Charlie Parker - Bird/The Savoy Recordings (Master Takes)

Ironic name. I was very impressed though.

Abdul Zahir Batin & The Notorious Ensemble – Live At The Jazz Cultural Theatre

Joel Futtermann, Jimmy Lyons and Robert Adkins – In-Between-Position(s) - A Trio In Eight Movements

Another recent acquisition, this time not a jazz record: Albert Collins - Ice Pickin' Again, happy to own this one finally.

It's one of my favourite of his weirder ones.

Eddie Harris - Instant Death A record that I have wanted to own for a while but which never showed up at the right price point, bought on recent trip to Phoenix.

I did not know about this. Having checked up on it, it looks really interesting! A family affair. How does it sound?

I started listening to jazz in the 1990s, during the reissue era that Cuscuna himself ushered in. At the time, those pastiche-Reid Miles style re-covered CD reissues of LT-era releases were everywhere. It really shaped what I listened to and bought. Cuscuna and his involvement in the LT series and beyond is a piece of jazz history that I would love to see explored in a detailed longform article. Anyway, RIP.