Rabshakeh

My then-girlfriend (now wife) had bought me a copy of Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis as a holder birthday gift for something else. After I had got over the shock and realized that I was not meant to read anything into the gift, I was trying to play it to my father to show him the repaired record player. My dad was 70 at that point and is midway between being weirded out by the (then-incipient) vinyl revival, and kicking himself for having given away his vinyl collection, which he could otherwise have handed on. Then the smoke and the puff of fire.

The Antripodean Collective - Funcalls (Extreme, 2008)

Jason Palmer – Con Alma I like this one a lot.

Jo Ann Daugherty - Range of Motion

Also legs, hopefully.

I've gone for the Africa and the Blues one first. Will try the Jazz Transatlantic one after. I've always been interested in a good book on these two subjects. Most books are pretty terrible. The crits and write ups of this sound great.

It was probably a write off before that. But it wasn't a great repairs experience. The shop itself is great though.

Dewey Redman – The Ear Of The Behearer

No. I gave up. It was also time to get a proper record player.

It did, although not very dramatic. Acrid smoke and a little puff of fire.

I used Audio Gold for a portable record player about a decade and a half ago. It took them ages and when they'd finished it immediately burst into flame. Nice place though. It felt like a group of men living their ideal lives, surrounded by bits of old machinery.

Same here. Gravity's Rainbow is also very good. Not an original point of view, but it is. Really it is very similar to Mason & Dixon, notwithstanding that it is not written in mock 18th century prose.

I see that he has a book called Jazz Transatlantic. Is that the one to which to go?

I'm a very big fan of the first version. The re-recording has more of what Hutchfan is speaking about and less of what TTK is speaking about. Much more of the advanced folkloric jazz and a bit less of the strange menace. It still has the magic though. It is on any analysis very good. Easy streamer and listening to the one won't ruin the other.

Taking it as a given.

The re-recording. Quite a different vibe.

Baden Powell – Os Afro-Sambas

Off topic, but where do you get repairs done?

Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon I'm not sure why I hadn't read this until now. With Pynchon I'm in the 'forget how much I enjoy it until I read it' camp. Perhaps the idea of a late career book as long as Gravity's Rainbow but written in mock 18th C prose about the mapping of America seemed like it would be tedious and silly. Anyway, it is really good. I can see why many people regard it as the best thing he's written. Edit: It's not. The best thing he's written is that two or three page section of GR where Slothrop tries the old lady's chocolates.

Alexander von Schlippenbach, Axel Dörner | Rudi Mahall | Jan Roder | Uli Jennessen – Monk's Casino (The Complete Works Of Thelonious Monk) Last listened to this years ago. I'm not sure why I've left it so long, given that it is very strong. But in the intervening decades I have discovered Steve Lacy (who I didn't know about as a twenty year old) and it makes it sound like quite a different record to how it originally sounded to my ears, without a note having changed.

Whilst we are on the string band topic, and bringing it back a bit to the subject at hand, what is the view on the link between African American string band traditions and early jazz polyphony? There's a few blues fiddle tracks on one of the Old Hat comps (I think the Memphis one called Violin, Sing The Blues) that I remember really reminding me of early jazz, with an interplay between vocals, violin and guitar that is quite similar to the trumpet, clarinet and rhythm interplay that sounds so esoteric the first time you encounter early jazz. From my current vantage point I'm not all that certain, or less impressed with the fact than I was when I was younger. It could just as well be jazz influence, or both kinds of music having some sort of similar rhythmic substrate. Memphis blues is so closely interbred with jazz that it is hard to tell.

What motivated the question is because my particular sweet spot in pre-war Southern US music is the piedmont and 'hillbilly blues' stuff. In particular, musicians like Frank Hutchison and Luke Jordan, but also early Willie McTell or even the Carter family, when they sing blues tunes. That is a personal favourite kind of music, quite apart from interest in how jazz, blues or whiskeyjug washboard breakouts evolved. It's a point where I think one can hear Blues, now capitalised and more or less fully formed, being handed back and forth across the colour line, for the first time as it's own thing, against a still dominant background of white 'mountain music' (i.e., pre-Bluegrass folk and old timey). I love it because it is blues but it is very fragile, often with quite light, soft vocals. That's the music that then gets gets semi-codified as "Country" the genre, through the influence of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carters. What I was sniffing around looking for was whether the book is going to concentrate on African American musicians that might fall into that category of early or proto-Country (i.e., Country the genre) or whether it will be more about African Americans playing in the wider genre of southern white music, which is what I think, from the response, it will cover. I'm not sure whether Black responses (influence or reaction) to Hillbilly blues does fall within that category or not, given that this music is definitely "Blues", but if "Country" the genre is a part of it I assume it would, since that is arguably a style of Blues in itself. Sorry. Rambling. And off topic. Also, the medicine show one is really really good. Strong recommendation from this side if you don't already know it.

The Hilliard Ensemble - Guillaume de Machaut – Motets

Sounds interesting. The Michael Ondaatje one is on similar lines, I think. A novelisation of Bolden. I think (I have read neither) that the Ondaatje may focus more on the pathos of Bolden's life and mental illness, which had always been a turn off for me: I have read Geoff Dyers' But Beautiful.... Tiger Rag sounds less of a put off so I'll search that out. I used to own this record. I remember being very excited by it when it came out. It and the other comps by Old Hat were really precious to me when I was really really getting into music in my 20s.