Stompin at the Savoy

Really? OK you explain what he means. He says he refuses to talk to anyone about music unless they are up to his standards of music understanding. When it was pointed out that we talk about music here he shifts to oh I meant in the real world. So what does that mean? He's ok with us because he can always turn us off? In what world does it make sense to say I won't talk about music with you unless you are up to my level of understanding but nothing personal against you, I only do that when the person is in front of me? WTF? We are qualitatively different because we are not in close proximity? Please make it make sense. It's nonsense and I am done with it because the conversation keeps getting pulled into Jim's hangups and emotional responses to the word noodling instead of the Plugged Nickel sessions.

I discovered that I really like French TV. Just now I am streaming a series called "The Wagner Method" on PBS Passport. My French language knowledge comes from a brief class I attended in college decades ago in order to pass a test but I find it challenging to follow along in French and puzzle out the dialogue. I find myself admiring the way French women dress and their relative lack of makeup! The Wagner Method is a fairly ordinary police drama but the scripts are quite witty, full of comic relief, and constantly tease with sexual goings-on.

What you don't regard us as real people? Last I checked I actually am a real person who lives in the real world. And in that real world I communicate with other jazz fans on this board (whom I strongly suspect are real people too!). When we sell each other cd's they come in the mail in the real world and are real objects. Regarding us as internet phantoms who don't exist in the real world seems odd and very possibly disrespectful to me. As far as your feud with everybody in the in person 'real world' whose jazz expertise is inferior to yours - maybe it's time to take that chip off your shoulder.

OK I get it, you are just gonna keep flogging that horse because this is a pet peeve and hobby-horse for you. I don't like it because it condemns people for ignorance, which is curable, and it divides people into your categories of reality-based vs bullshit people. This is a defensive, blame-dealing approach which is almost always doomed to failure because people like being condemned even less than being educated.

Haha. Well, I can see that the word 'noodling' presses a button for you. I get what you mean but this isn't really the issue here. My friend listened and heard something to him very abstract and hard to get into for him at that point in time. How he described his difficulty and how people who don't listen to jazz interpret what they hear is perhaps a subject for another day and tangential to the argument that this music may not have been reissued for 30 years because it is difficult for the average person to connect to. And I would contend that it is demanding listening even for somebody in awe of it; it is not background music.

To me the Plugged Nickel sessions operate on a number of levels. On the one hand this is a band playing mostly some standards. You can just enjoy the performances as such. From another point of view there is a sort of meta message: a commentary on the playing of standards. This way of playing a standard is different from before. Previously the time might change once, into double time or something like that, and back again. Here tempo and time change suddenly at will. Instead of theme, solos, restatement of theme in five minutes, the pieces wander around and stretch boundaries for 15 or 20 minutes. This is already exploding the way that standards were mostly played at the time. Now some inexperienced listeners will take the whole thing as it comes to them and enjoy the performance without any awareness of how this is a development in the genre and I have no quibble with that. Others are aware of groundbreaking aspects of the performances in the context of the development of jazz. Just as a young person might read something that satirizes another piece of literature and only see the surface story, others who are familiar with what is being satirized might see deeper meanings and humor. As far as the request to define noodling - this is asking the wrong question. If you are reading this discussion, 'noodling' is not really part of your critical vocabulary. 'Noodling' is a term typically applied by people who are not jazz aficionados. My friend used this term when confronted with Plugged Nickel. I suppose I understand it to mean soloing in way which is casually playing around with notes that fit, conventionally, but are idle and do not cohere into a bigger pattern that feels like a story. Dinking around, fooling around, exploring as you might in practice. I am trying to explain what I believe people mean when they use this term, not how I approach the Plugged Nickel Sessions. To me they are revolutionary, serious music which is exhausting, like the over-stimulation of spending a lot of time in a big museum or art gallery.

I hear the drums and cymbals fine on the 95 legacy box. I often find myself focusing on the cymbal work. I do tweak the mids and treble frequencies upward a bit with an equalizer to compensate for old ears.

I remember that business about the defective disk. 30 years ago so I am not positive it was the plugged nickel set but there definitely was a set with one cd defective, they sent replacements and eventually fixed the unsold boxes or something like that. Then when you bought it you were hoping this particular copy had the updated cd.

I was wondering why this set has been out of print for 30 years. I mean Miles Davis - they are reissuing him over and over all over the place! And yet this sat for 30 years. I was listening to it yesterday and it occurred to me that that this set is somewhat challenging for a novice jazz listener. Most of the studio stuff is fairly short tunes with theme statement, solos, theme statement, coda. But this set is sort of for the advanced class. Sometimes the melody doesn't appear till way into the tune and in a mutated form, the solos are abstract and experimental - without some background it could be hard to grok. I was very impressed with this when I got it back in the nineties but I have listened to it less than other miles. I think everybody should hear it at some point but it maybe is not the best set to play to a jazz newbie. Yes, I have had better luck bringing newbies to a live jazz performance than playing a record for them. You are there, watching them play, picking up cues from the audience - it's exciting.

Jim, that is a really dumbass attitude. Sorry but true. Your argument boils down to if somebody doesn't understand this music the way I do, they are stupid, insensitive clods. Brilliant Jim, and dumb.

Yes, the perception was based on ignorance. Congratulations, you understood what I was trying to say! How about you? If you listen to northern Indian classical music are you able to pick up all the nuances? Do you understand the different sections and different rhythmic breakdowns of the piece? Are you able to appreciate it as well as somebody who is into that? (Or substitute any other music form which you don't happen to be familiar with). I'm pretty sure there is some music somewhere which will sound like nothing to you and fail to do anything for you and you will think to yourself it all sounds like much of a muchness - ie noodling. Not because you are unthinking or the music is bad, but because you have no background. Peking Opera. Music in Japanese drama.

Well Jim I disagree completely. If one has no structure upon which to hang the sounds coming at you, if you are unable to anticipate anything or see any regularity or pattern, it becomes noodling. It can't be that for me because I have a background from listening to this music. But it absolutely can for someone who doesn't recognize what tune it is, when the piece ends and repeats, what the musicians are trying to do etc. They have no way to organize the data they are receiving. I recommend you listen to the set for a few minutes and place yourself in the position of a pop music listener who has never heard the tune.

To elaborate on that, the band is playing mostly standards like Stella by Starlight, Green Dolphin Street, etc, but they are deconstructing these tunes, trying them with different tempos and rhythms, playing with the structure, ignoring the melody, etc. But if one does not have even a passing familiarity with Stella by Starlight, how is one to interpret this performance? Very differently from someone aware of the tradition.

I played some of this once for a friend who listens to pop music. His reaction was that he didn't much like jazz that seemed like "noodling". I wonder if there was a problem selling a large, relatively expensive set like this with music like this. I guess it actually may be difficult to appreciate these live sessions without having experienced quite a bit of jazz and understanding the context? The music is kind of 'advanced'?

Whoa, this is starting to sound like a real mastering mess! They are going to have to clarify the sources they are using before I would consider a new "remaster".

Hearing that they were on sale I decided to try out some cheap earbuds - Soundcore P30i - which are similar to P20i but with noise cancelling. They arrived today and are not too bad in a pinch, like in a dentist office, riding a bike or some other public situation where it feels a bit clunky to wear bulky headphones or they might fall off, etc. The controls are fiddly, require some memorization (tap twice on the left ear, etc), and there is a tendency to activate every switch while trying to screw the earbud more tightly into my ear. The soundcore app is ok but they don't have a pc version so you have to use a phone or something, which means I have to keep putting on 3x cheaters to see anything - this is not an old person's world.

It's unclear whether the CD set mastering is any different from the earlier Legacy CD set, which I have. I might be interested in a hi res download but they don't seem to mention any downloads. Probably end up sticking with original cds... It's a great box and I've often wondered why it remained oop for so long.

Anker Soundcore brand makes some inexpensive blue tooth products (made in China) which have pretty good sound quality and offer noise canceling. I like the full over ear headsets they make, for example Q35. They have earbuds which probably have similar electronics. With blue tooth you get marvelous freedom of movement but the signal occasionally cuts out when you turn your head just the right way or get into a corner of the house where reception is poor. The dropouts are pretty rare and I just accept that. Another approach I sometimes use with iPhone is a small adapter which plugs into the the phone power port and has a mini-plug socket on the other end. Then I plug in wired Sony Studio Monitors or other phones, such as lightweight Koss SportaPros. To me Koss SportaPros sound better than most earbuds and are less wearying on the ear, physically. Sony Studio Monitors etc sound better but they are bulky.

Yup.

This seems like a really interesting release. I'm up for it!

Bill Evans could not make a bad record. A couple of decades ago I reached a saturation point and decided to stop buying Bill Evans records. I still enjoy his music and welcome reissues of classic Evans like this but feel no need to upgrade.

This is just my opinion - some dude on the internet - but I think this would be better if the bass had more of an acoustic feel. It sounds like a pickup to me (what do I know?). I feel that a big acoustic bass has a lot of tonal character if well miked. But this bass sustains a lot and has a sort of fundamental tone, it's hard to hear the woody goodness of the instrument. To me it seems overwhelming and boomy. The horn is playing something that could be intimate but the bass is playing to an auditorium.

It's a very fine set. I love it. I think I paid more for mine.

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