GA Russell

Here's the follow up on Chris Simms: Simms has spleen removed Associated Press Tampa Bay quarterback Chris Simms had his spleen removed after taking several hard hits in Sunday's 26-24 loss to the Carolina Panthers and was resting comfortably in a hospital. "Chris is doing well and we anticipate a full recovery," team physician Dr. Joe Diaco said in a brief statement. He added that the 26-year-old son of former New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms was in stable condition. Simms had a blood transfusion as part of his treatment and was expected to be hospitalized for several days, Peter King said during a break on NBC's Sunday night game, citing a conversation he had with Simms' mother, Diana. Simms, who left the game briefly but returned, was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital, a few blocks from Raymond James Stadium. Coach Jon Gruden said during his post-game news conference that Simms hurt his ribs early in the game and was also battling dehydration.

Interesting that you should say that, ak. I interviewed Dave Holland two weeks before Shorter left the band. I asked him if there were any Europeans that I should keep an eye out for, and he said John Surman.

I know you don't, SS1. I'm just having fun with you!

It looks like you pick the games after they've been played!!!

There is a thread over at AAJ calling for the posters to list the best 25 albums recorded since 1980. I enjoyed going through my database and recalling some albums I hadn't heard in quite a while. So while I was at it, I went through the 70s and thought I would start a similar thread here. Most of my 70s jazz featured electric instruments, and for that reason are not as appealling to me now. I was struck going through the list how many I didn't particularly want to listen to. Anyway, here's my top ten list of albums recorded in the 1970s. What's yours? First the vocals: If - If2 Mark Murphy - Sings Michael Franks - Sleeping Gypsy Blood Sweat & Tears - Brand New Day The Hi-Lo's - Back Again and the instrumentals: Attila Zoller - Gypsy Cry Charlie Byrd & Cal Tjader - Tambu Jean-Luc Ponty - Cosmic Messenger Mike Nock - In Out & Around Art Pepper - Today

Where have you been, Bertrand? LOL! Here's a lengthy discussion of the sound: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=27290

I see that CD Universe says: List Price $17.98; Their Price $14.29; Pre-Order Price $12.59.

After the Concord sale with its three dollar CDs, everything else seems so expensive! CD Universe says: List Price $17.98; Their Price $14.29; Pre-Order Price $12.59.

Here's what Doug Ramsey has to say about One and the Same in his Rifftides blog today: The leader of The Jeff Gauthier Goatette is an acoustic and electric violinist, whose other instrument is listed as "effects." In One and the Same (Cryptogramophone), guitarist Nels Cline and pianist David Witham also play effects, meaning electronics. When all of the effects and all of Alex Cline's drums are working at once, as in a piece called "Water Torture," the result resembles random noise of the universe, the perfect accompaniment for astral travel. Nearly everywhere else in the album, the Goatette commits melody. Even in "Water Torture," there is an interval of lovely free improvisation between Gauthier's violin and Joel Hamilton's arco bass. Two pieces by the late Eric von Essen are particularly moving. Gauthier, not incidentally, is the moving force behind Cryptogramophone.

Here's what Doug Ramsey has to say about Penumbra in his rifftides blog today: Bennie Maupin was on the New York jazz scene as a saxophonist and bass clarinetist in New York in the 1960s and '70s, most famously as a member of Miles Davis's Bitches Brew cast and of Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi group. He worked off and on with Hancock for twenty years. In Penumbra (Cryptogramophone), he nods briefly toward those jazz fusion days, but the loveliest music on the CD is in the Castor and Pollux interrelationship of Maupin on bass clarinet and bassist Darek Oles. The highlight is "Message to Prez," which builds langorously into a colloquy of low-register counterpoint and, finally, perfectly intoned unison on the dance-like melody.

You forgot "bilious"!!!

Sidewinder, you're making me laugh!

Reminds me of homebrewing. I wonder if one day many people will make their own fuel in their backyard.

Here's what Doug Ramsey has to say about The Image of Your Body in his Rifftides blog today: Cryptogramophone In its ninth year, the little Cryptogramophone label is attracting increasing attention for recordings on the forward edge of music, with good sound and imaginative packaging. Myra Melford and Nels Cline have new CDs on the label, both likely to attract listeners who accept that jazz values can exist apart from standard song forms and harmony, and without being tied to a steady 4/4 pulse. Myra Melford In The Image of Your Body, Melford continues her fascination with music of India. A fearless piano improviser and a composer of meticulous precision, she introduces her new five-piece band, Be Bread. She called her last five-piece band, which had nearly the same instrumentation, The Tent. The mystique of band-naming aside, Melford's music uses the evocative capabilities of electronics and amplification to summon up the exotic atmospheres of the subcontinent and hint at the spiritual mysteries there. She employs the Indian instrument the harmonium, as she did in her previous album, The Tent, to impart a kind of folk simplicity as one layer in the complexity of "Equal Grace," "Be Bread," "If You've Not Been Fed" and the title track. The iconoclastic trumpeter Cuong Vu is on board again. Guitarist-banjoist-vocalist Brandon Ross, bassist and electronicsician (it's a new word) Stomu Takeishi and drummer Elliot Humberto Kavee are recent arrivals in Melford's world, which is wide. For all of the unfettered--not to say unhinged--expressionism in the improvisation throughout a piece called "Fear Slips Behind," Melford wraps up the track in the last twenty-six seconds with a lapidary bit of ensemble writing that might have come from Andrew Hill or Sam Rivers in the 1960s. There are too few extended passages of her piano playing, though one of them begins the long performance called "Yellow Are the Crowds of Flowers." Then the piano melds into Ross's keening guitar, and we seem headed into a stretch of ECM-ish floating. Before long, however, the band is generating gale-force mutual improvisation that lasts until Melford calms things down at the keyboard and the sun comes out just as it is setting. Did I mention that this is evocative music? Cuong Vu's own CD, It's Mostly Residual, includes his Melford bandmate Stomu Takeishi and the always gripping guitarist Bill Frisell. It is well worth hearing.

Here's what Doug Ramsey has to say about New Monastery i his Rifftides blog today: Nels Cline Cline, a guitarist not shy about using electronic enhancement, is one of a small stable of Cryptogramophone semi-regulars. For twenty-five years he has worked in jazz fusion, jazz rock and free jazz, and made occasional forays into folk (with Ramblin' Jack Elliot) and country (with Willie Nelson). Cline's New Monastery: A View Into the Music of Andrew Hill, draws on all of those genres with the exception, perhaps, of country. I say "perhaps," because in the tidal wave of electronics and percussion that engulfs the listener in the final three minutes of "Compulsion" there could be hidden away some little allusion to C&W. That seems unlikely but, then, I've heard it only five or six times. At the other end of the decibel scale, a delicate rubato duet between Cline's guitar and Ben Goldberg's clarinet on "McNeil Island" contains suggestions that swing may be about to break out. Sure enough, shortly before the three-minute mark, Scott Amendola's cymbals and Devin Hoff's bass begin sliding into the mix. Now, they are Cline's customary band, The Nels Cline Singers, which has no vocalist, plus Goldberg. Soon cornetist Bobby Bradford is aboard, as slippery around tonal centers as he was in the late fifties and early sixties when Bradford, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and John Carter were enfants terribles of the Los Angeles avant garde. They meld into "Pumpkin," one of Hill's beyond-boppish themes. It may not be your grandmother's kind of swing, but now they're swinging. On other tracks, Andrea Parkins joins on accordian. Yes, accordian. At times the cumulative sound is so dense that the ears can barely penetrate it. At others, the music is gentle, open and lyrical almost in the Viennese sense or it tends toward the kind of atmospheres generated by Miles Davis of the post-Bitches Brew period. Lack of dynamic range is not a problem here. In addition to Bradford, Goldberg and Parkins, Cline brings in his twin brother Alex on a couple of tracks to ramp up the percussion. After decades in low profile following his success in the 1960s, Hill has begun attracting renewed attention as a pianist and composer. Cline's treatment of his music may be part of the beginning of Hill's rediscovery by a new generation of musicians and listeners. His approach is not to recreate Hill, but to use his compositions as launching pads for his own ideas, which have depth and complexity.

I've been listening to this one for ten days now. The first time I heard it I thought that the atonality was a gimmick and I felt somewhat disappointed. But every time I listen to it I like it more and more. Now I like it a lot. This reminds me of some others I have. The first is one that many here probably have as well - Shelly Manne's The West Coast Sound. The Manne album was also on Contemporary, and was recorded in 1953 and 1955. The Tatro was recorded in '54 and '55. The following are on both albums: Bob Enevoldsen, Joe Maini Jr., Bill Holman, Jimmy Giuffre, Ralph Pena and Shelly Manne. In the mid-60s in England, Edwin Astley did the music for two television shows whose soundtracks I have - Secret Agent and The Saint. The horn arrangements on those albums remind me very much of Tatro's harmonies here - so much so that I have to wonder if Astley had the Tatro album. P.S. Having posted the above, I dug out the two Astley soundtracks and listened to them. "Upon further review", I'm not hearing Tatro in The Saint. It's in some of the Secret Agent songs that I hear the Tatro influence, particularly the Tatro song Dollar Day.

Sal, no, that was recorded in early '56, when Miles still had the first quintet.

I have a pedestrian Technics direct drive that I got twenty years ago. Maybe one day I'll get a Rega. Maybe one day I'll upgrade the entire system. My turntable platter mat has warped! Has anybody heard of that happening before? I haven't found much on the internet to replace it with. I found an ebay seller with one for $14 including shipping. Any reason to think that one is any better than another? edit for typo

Dom Um Romao - Hotmosphere This was recorded for Pablo in 1976. It's a solid little record, what might be called a party album. Brazilian music, heavy on the percussion and horns. No ballads, all uptempo. The band is 18 members, though maybe not all at the same time, plus three female vocalists. The musicians include Claludio Roditi, Sonny Fortune, Ronnie Cuber, Lou Del Gatto and Ron Carter. Not five star, but a pleasant change of pace from what all else is available from the Prestige and Riverside recordings included in the sale.

Happy Birthday!

My first was the Teddy Charles version on the B side of the Miles/Konitz Ezz-thetic LP, which Quincy has mentioned is now available on the New Directions CD. It's still my favorite.

I was surprised to read in her obituary not too long ago that the lady who was the voice of Olive Oyl was also the voice of Betty Boop!

Happy Birthday!

Does anybody have an opinion of Harry Nillson? He sure got a lot of publicity budget behind him when I was in college, but other than the song from Midnight Cowboy and Me and My Arrow, I'm not aware of anything he did. Should I pick up his Best of album?

I don't know if it's still in print, but my favorite Helen Merrill is an album she recorded in the mid-50s for Leonard Feather which Verve released on CD entitled You've Got a Date with the Blues.