Rabshakeh

Cassius Lambert – Quote (Kaprifol, 2015) Quite gimmicky record by a younger swedish bassist, but some of the gimmicks work (hand claps; accordion) and the melodies are decent. Not everything about it works. It feels a little overproduced (which given that it is recent probably means it was not sufficiently extensively produced to not sound overproduced) and there is a bit of an 'electronica chill' to it. But some nice fresh ideas.

Now moved on to this one: Muriel Grossmann – Birth Of The Mystery Not sure this is Grossman at her most inspired, solo-wise, but overall I think it is a pretty good record, in the ALS lineage. Grossman is very popular on the wider internet, but I don't see her posted that often on here. It may be that she falls between camps too much.

Morning listen so far, all first time listens: Omer Klein – Fearless Friday J.R. Monterose, Jon Eardley, Rein De Graaff, Henk Haverhoek, Pierre Courbois – Body And Soul Boney James – Shine Yesterdays New Quintet – Angles Without Edges The Omar Klein record is unexpectedly good. I had no expectations for it. It's got a lightly funky world/modal thing going. Nothing mopey or academic. Some Jewish / Israeli folk tunes and pop melodies handled in a non-cloying way. Not quite the full deal yet but worth checking out.

That's quite a trek. I crossed via the John Zorn landbridge from an extreme metal entry point at around the same time. In terms of recommendations, the one that I really do recommend is Niacin, probably starting with the record upthread.

The boundaries between prog, metal and fusion are pretty blurry in this period. These are some fun records. I haven't listened to Ozric Tentacles in many years but I'm having fun doing it now.

Tzadik no streaming curse. I will check it out if I can.

The 60s charts are all fire, no dire. There's very little easy listening stuff on them. The most easy listening it gets is Wes Montgomery's proto-CTI stuff, which I know was viewed as pap at the time but I think has aged very well. Lots of soul-adjacent stuff. Not much purist bop, but it is a generalised chart showing mass consumption trends. It's a bit like looking at rock charts in the 1970s. There are years when there isn't a single album that is not still regarded as a classic. Thanks, both.

This is great.

I was hungry and had a twenty year old's metabolism.

I never really connected with Previte. A little too rocky and stiff. Anthony Braxton – Nine Compositions (Hill) 2000 This one is really excellent. Nice to hear Braxton with actual arrangements. A good recommendation from @mjazzg, for which thanks!

When I worked as a waiter, every day at the end of shift I used to get French fries (i.e., US style chips), gravy and mayonnaise. That was my happy place. It helped that I was running up and down stairs and on my feet for 12 hours a day.

That's interesting. I actually had no idea. I assumed everyone just always mocked the stuff. Do you recall who the main spokespersons in favour of smooth jazz were?

Boyd is the one who surprises me the most. Great drummer, good interviews, scene leader. But the records just aren't great. Journey To The Mountain with Bunker Golding was okay, but had Evan Parker on blowing everyone else away. I'll keep a look out for Rosie Turton.

Agreed on this. Fyah is my favourite non-Shabaka record that the current crop have produced so far. I think it does the best job of assimilating what's going on, has the best songwriting and strongest ideas. Plus it's got that tuba sound. For the rest, I enjoy their playing and look forward to at least a handful more major albums coming out of the scene. If you're ever tempted, I am very interested. There's a whole crop of musicians there who are assumed to be well known enough to need no introduction, but who both predated the Internet and have yet to be rediscovered or have serious reissues, meaning that they are effectively invisible. That goes for the Loose Tubes as much as the Jazz Warriors sets.

I should add that, whilst I don't dislike Connick, I would definitely take a lifetime on smooth jazz island over a lifetime in Pop Does Sinatra villas. I'm pretty partial to the smooth stuff from time to time. Particularly the early greats like Turrentine, Crawford and Washington, but also stalwarts like Najee and Kirk Whalum. Even the Rippingtons are okay in doses, provided you have your insulin pump handy. Whereas Bublé I find a bit ersatz and joyless, even if not as bad as Robbie Williams etc.

Harry Connick Jr is alright with me. I have been listening to a lot of the commercial stuff recently and Connick is a lot more "real" and less of a studio concoction than the likes of Buble. As someone who got into jazz through the avant garde, the argument that the avant garde scares away fans never made much sense to me. All of the younger jazz fans I know came in via Pharaoh Sanders, Sun Ra and John Coltrane. I do know a few people of my own age who have highlighted an experience with Ornette Coleman as negative, but they are in the minority and tend to be more serious music fans who find the dissonance difficult to cope with. I think that the biggest turn off for casual non-jazz fans is probably the music of Miles Davis' Second Quintet and its followers, which is a lot more abstract than free jazz, but also much more easily accessed by first timers. I have heard several complaints from non jazz fans about jazz being too "freeform" and I think exposure to the still widespread continued legacy of the Second Quintet may be what underlies it. Also, continued weird ideas about Kenny G, jazz flute or Jazz Club (for English speakers outside of the US of a certain age).

I don't think that the late 60s / 70s scene was any more or less indigenous (not a great word in this context) or imitative. Those records mentioned upthread are classic records that sound like their own thing, not like American models. The current London scene is thriving in terms of sheer wealth of young and youngish talent (it's crazy how many players and groups there are suddenly, and how good they are), but I think it underperforms in terms of album quality so far. Leaving aside the avantgarde scenes, out of the London scene stand outs, only Shabaka Hutching's groups' records have so far struck me as "classics". There's a little too much eclecticism and cross-pollination for it's own sake, and possibly not enough cohesion or songwriting. Lots of pretty good records and very promising players, but maybe not a lot of really great records. Yet. The Manchester musicians like Nat Birchall and Matthew Halsall seem to produce much stronger records but are much more imitative. Again, opinion only.

He made a few records. They combine North African influences with hard bop, but much more hard bop. Good, catchy records. I recommend them.

But it does bear considering. Why do Robbie Williams and Michael Bublé flood the charts but Tony Bennett and Linda Ronstadt don't? Another underrated thing is the sheer dominance of Harry Connick Jr at the start of the 80s. It's not quite Kenny G but it is very close. Connick is barely mentioned nowadays.

I guess that this belongs here: Joe Satriani – Surfing With The Alien Apparently he trained with Lennie Tristano and Billie Bauer. Can't say that would have necessarily occured to me unprompted.

90% Ramsey Lewis. All year, every year. Doesn't help that "the new Anthony Braxton album" was 68 different box sets every year.

Salt and vinegar on fries / chips is pretty common over here, too. So common that it was the first ever flavour developed for commercially available crisps / chips (created in Ireland, where it is also common). I'm no Canadian but I am duty bound to ask whether or not it was poutine made with "real curds" and then to cluck under my breath, deeply unimpressed, whatever your answer might be.

I stumbled across this old thread today. An interesting discussion. One possibility that is not considered save for in one aspect* is the problem of a accessibility. British jazz in the 1950s - 1970s is mapped. There is lots of information out there in books and on the internet (listicles etc.). People who are interested in finding out about the era can quickly find out who are the important artists and which are their canonical records, all of which have now been reissued and are mostly streamable. In contrast, British jazz from the 1980s - 1990s is very much unmapped. There is a dearth of good information out there. Courtney Pine is one of the few names that is widely known, with a canonical album attached to his name. But even major groups like the Loose Tubes are rarely discussed, and hard to find and listen to. It is difficult for a younger person to find about their existence. It took me years as a British jazz listener to even hear about them. This is quite a different situation to the US. Although US jazz after the 70s (a few years ago I would have said after the 60s) is less discussed than what went before, it is still comparatively easy to find out information about it. There are plenty of lists / guides etc out there to help you tell your David Murrays from your Terence Blanchards. There are odd gaps, but most of the information is there. Very different for the rest of the world, with some exceptions. * I think that the issue of fragmentation mentioned above is part of the accessibility issue.

I assumed it was a tuning fork. Hence "that's music to your brain". Forks can produce music whereas fucks less so.

Just the year end charts. From the late 1970s it is the two jazz genres for albums, but they do have sections for labels and artists too. With time it is quite sad to see jazz shrink from a major position in the year end lists to one that is far smaller than even subgenres of country and hip hop. Eventually there isn't even any jazz on the jazz charts. I've been thinking about that last point a bit further. From around 1985, the likes of Linda Ronstadt or Tony Bennett become mainstays of the jazz charts. But it is always just one or two records in the top ten, with the rest of the charts being quite healthy with records that we now regard as classics (surprisingly few that are not still well known). It is only really from the late 1990s that the top 20 best-selling albums section gets completely crowded out with the Christmas records and the likes of Michael Bublé. I had expected to see the 90s and 00s jazz charts full of Jarrett, Garbarek, Redman and Mehldau and other records of that (in my opinion) rather underwhelming period for jazz, but they are (comparatively) barely present. @Teasing the Koreanbrought up the traditional pop and GAR phenomenon of the late 90s and early 00s in a recent thread. But I hadn't really realized the scale of it. What was it about GAR / pop star goes swing thing that allowed it to drown out the jazz charts so completely? Did Bennett sell less well than Bublé? Or was it more that jazz albums were selling comparatively less well in 2003 than in the 1980s? Was it because jazz fans were buying more diverse types of jazz, or buying more historic reissues? Or was it that jazz fans were buying Bublé that hadn't bought Bennett?