gdogus

Blue Oyster Cult with Rush as opening act. This was on Rush's A Farewell to Kings tour, I think 1977. (I went to see Rush.)

That's true, as far as it goes. But consider that (Z) is in fact a "sunken cost" - that is, it's money already spent and thus unrecoverable without the transaction that yields (Y). If the money so recovered is then liquid and deemed available, it might well be re-invested in the transaction represented by (X-Y). So really, Dave's warped logic is good business practice. But I'm an addict too, if you dig.

I don't understand the question. Every one of the musicians listed in the poll is already in the Jazz Hall of Fame, as Harbop's second post makes clear. So...

Nice.... Now there you go makin' us all look like freaks. Okay, but I nearly wet my pants several times a day just thinking about the board. That's gotta be worth something, right?

I tend to log on for about a half hour over coffee in the morning, and then another hour or so in the evening.

Extra-fabulous. A great night for the Dead, and a wonderful show both on CD and DVD.

I like Monk's response: "Jazz is freedom - now, you think about that."

Well, I'm just bummed out now. Thanks, Bob. You were important in my day.

Well I caught Wynton on The Daily Show couch. No big deal. Stewart effused (ironically) about how cool jazz musicians are, Wynton talked about the lessons we learn from jamming: how to give other people their own space, how to listen and accept other voices, etc. Wynton got off some good lines. All pretty low-key, as you might expect.

Alexander's system is exactly mine - right down to the idiosyncratic placement of box sets. Interesting. (But probably only to me.)

And over my weekend: Miles Davis - In Person Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk, Complete Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette - At the Blue Note: The Complete Recordings Booker Ervin - Freedom Book Booker Ervin - Space Book Booker Ervin - Song Book Booker Ervin - Blues Book Eric Dolphy - Outward Bound Eric Dolphy - Out There

Chattanooga, TN - The Southside Jazz Junction was the only dedicated jazz club in Chattanooga (this in a mid-sized city that boasts the Bessie Smith Memorial Hall and a certain song about a Choo-Choo; it's also the birthplace of Bessie Smith, Jimmy Blanton, and Yusef Lateef, among others). The owners closed their doors back in October 2003 - they couldn't make a go of it anymore. They said they'd maintain their email list and continue to promote jazz acts when they do come to town, at whatever venue. I've gotten, like, one announcement since then. Pretty sad.

None. Zip. Zero. Nada. I don't want all of the Prestige stuff, and I'm content with my VV Master Takes disc. I have most of the Impulse albums I want as single CDs - but I would like to pick up the Atlantic box at some point. I have the obvious things as single discs, but some remastered sound would be good.

My favs (so far) are the "book" albums, 1963-64, all of which feature Ervin with bassist Richard Davis and drummer Alan Dawson.... Freedom Book and Space Book, with pianist Jaki Byard Song Book, with pianist Tommy Flanagan Blues Book, with trumpeter Carmell Jones and pianist Gildo Mahones

Thanks for the encouragement, and for the recommendations. I haven't got a copy of Water Babies, so skipped past that. And yes, I am immersed in A Silent Way and Bitches Brew SInce this is the beginning of the real trouble for me, I'm taking my time on these (oh, and I ran out of weekend)

Regretting that I must leap entirely over the period 1960-1965 (I don't have any Miles recordings from those years), I forge ahead to resample the second great quintet, with Shorter, Hancock, Carter and Williams: E.S.P. (1965), Miles Smiles (1966), Nefertiti (1967), Miles in the Sky (1968), and Filles de Kilimanjaro (1968), with the track "Circle in the Round" (1967 – from the quintet's Complete Columbia box) thrown in for good measure (thanks to .:.impossible for the suggestion). E.S.P. and Miles Smiles are near and dear to me, and don't get any particularly new impressions of them on this go-around. I now realize how big a hole there is in my Miles collection, though, since it seems very strange, even dishonest, to go straight from Sketches of Spain to the second quintet. Note to self: fix this. Nefertiti is a different story. This middle-period quintet music (along with Sorcerer) is all about building sound shapes. It's more abstract, not unlike parts of Sketches of Spain – just sparser and more angular. The direction in which we're headed seems much clearer to me now. "Circle in the Round," with Joe beck on electric guitar, is the technical advent of electronics. There's tremendous playing here, furthering some of Nefertiti's sound architecture approach, but blended here more overtly with the Spanish idiom. Glancing backwards at Sketches, and forwards, perhaps, to Bitches Brew's "Spanish Key." Miles in the Sky – I really don't think I've ever had a problem with "electric Miles" because it's electric – it isn't the instrumentation that seems to trip me up, but the music itself: fierce abstractions rearing their heads above slabs of glowing funk that I can't quite sort out. Miles in the Sky starts us off – BAM! with both of those features, continuing the icy angularity of Nefertiti, but undergirding that aspect of the music with funky rhythms. "Stuff" announces the agenda pretty clearly. "Paraphernalia" is all jittery bass from Carter and eruptions of noise from Williams, sliced through with Hancock's edgy piano and slathered over with Miles's horn washes. The "electric" Miles, if it begins in earnest here, is less about the electric piano and George Benson's (admittedly mild) electric guitar. It's about a BEAT – not a swing or a pulse, mind you, though those are present on Miles in the Sky, too - but a BEAT. Damn – where did that come from? I haven't listened to Filles de Kilimanjaro in a couple of years, so it seems quite new to me. Also surprisingly bluesy and very beautiful. Shorter sounds marvelous throughout, and the electric pianos (Hancock and Chick Corea) make perfect sense. I'm hearing a lot of Gill Evans in "Tout de Suite" and the title track in particular – something similarly cinematic in the music. But onward…I'm going in, lads! Next up: In a Silent Way (1969) Bitches Brew (1969) Live-Evil (1970)

My little Miles odyssey continues with 1957-60, a period that finds the trumpeter dividing creative energies between his sextets (Milestones, Kind of Blue) and his collaborations with arranger extraordinaire Gil Evans (Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain). I tend not to pull the Gil Evans stuff off of my shelves very often. Listening to Miles Ahead this time around, I have no idea why; this is wonderful stuff, and clearly a resumption of ideas left unuttered in the Birth of the Cool sessions years earlier. Miles as the principal, distinct, sharp voice against a complex, highly-arranged background - or maybe floating above a dense foundation is a better way to put it, a twisting pastiche of Ellington, Bernstein, and Gershwin. Until now I haven't cared too much for the Davis-Evans Porgy and Bess for some reason, but on this listen it's really fascinating! There's an even clearer contrast between Evans's background/foundation and Davis's singing voice than I find on Miles Ahead, and - call me crazy - but there are definitely large stretches where Porgy and Bess sounds like Bitches Brew. Something about the modal, pulsing feel of the foundation, dense and sparse at the same time, against which Davis smears and blurs swaths of colored sound. Sketches of Spain furthers the approach, taking the foundation outside of the familiar (e.g., Gershwin), but still maintaining a coherent and identifiable atmosphere (the Spanish feel). And Miles's horn is even starker in contrast. Interesting. The sextet sides? Ah, well. Milestones is a wonderful album, cooking along in the same vein as the Davis-Coltrane quintet (this is the same group, after all, adding Cannonball Adderley on alto), but also picking up the orchestrated feel from the Miles Ahead project, especially on the title track. Kind of Blue is a different sextet (replacing Philly Jo Jones with Jimmy Cobb and Red Garland with Bill Evans or Wynton Kelly), and musically it's a whole other animal. The shift between sextet recordings is important if not absolutely seismic. It now sounds to me as if the Porgy and Bess project (which also used Adderley, Chambers, and Cobb) had real impact on the conception of Kind of Blue, showing Davis how to seek, create, and value musical "texture" in a small group more consciously than he had done before. "It Ain't Necessarily So" and other tracks on PaB, are immediate progenitors of KoB. Musical texture. Textural settings. An integral density from which voices might emerge, and into which they might submerge again. Maybe I'm moving somewhere toward "getting" later, electric Miles? But, onward…Next up: 1965-68 E.S.P. (1965) Miles Smiles (1966) Nefertiti (1967) Miles in the Sky (1968) Filles de Kilimanjaro (1968)

Funny you should say so, Peter - up this morning are: Miles Ahead (1957) Milestones (1958) Porgy and Bess (1958) Kind of Blue (1959) Sketches of Spain (1960) Creeping a bit closer to the troublesome period. I'm lingering here a bit exactly because I now suspect a critical connection between the Gil Evans collaborations and the musical landscape of, say, Live-Evil. I'll keep you posted on my impressions.

I've always had a hard time really getting into the music Miles Davis made beyond, like, 1968. In a Silent Way irritates me. I'm fascinated by much of Bitches Brew - I even own the Columbia Complete Bitches Brew box - but find Live Evil and Jack Johnson rough sledding. Beyond that, forget it. I admit all of this because I decided to take another shot at electric Miles, this time approaching it by a selective survey of his career as a leader up to that point. Hoping that refreshed context will help me out with these recordings. I started this afternoon with Birth of the Cool (1949), Bags Groove (1954), and three from the "first great quintet" of 1955-56: Relaxin', Steamin' and 'Round About Midnight. I don't know if this will help me get my groove on with the Dark Magus Miles, but it's been a great afternoon of listening. I haven't put on Birth of the Cool in a long while, and it made a greater impression this time than it has before. Wonderfully orchestrated and arranged jazz for a tight nonet. Bags Groove cooks along as always, but I'm reminded again how good Miles and Sonny Rollins were together. And then, the Davis-Coltrane-Garland-Chambers-Jones quintet swings so hard and sweetly by turns, producing such a wonderful pile of music. Coletrane amazes me all over again, and Davis's manipulation of tone, with and without the Harmon mute, is breathtaking. But onward...

Hmmm...well, I ran across this recently somewhere... In Ashley Kahn's book A Love Supreme, Carlos Santana says: "If I did do it [record another version of A Love Supreme], I would do it differently than the way John McLaughlin and myself did it when we just went for it. Now I dream big, man, I don't dream small. I would do it with a symphony, with real African drummers, Brazilian musicians, with Alice Coltrane, [indian sarod master] Ali Akbar Khan, Wayne Shorter, Pharoah Sanders, Herbie [Hancock], McCoy and everyone in tuxedos." (p. 204)

There are sevral DVDs available documenting the trio of Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette in concert. Can anybody who's seen some or all of these recommend one over the others? I'm trying to construct a Christmas list ... Standards (1985) Standards II (1987) Live at Open Theatre East (1993) Concert 1996 (1996)

Add Chet Baker to the list of singer-trumpeters...he and Armstrong are probably the two who are best and equally known for their playing and singing.

Wow! Congrats on the great snag! If I ever find such a deal, I'll post a pic of the set ...

Ahhhh, looking back on November...it's been a good month of listening for gdogus. What I can remember spinning: Miles Davis - Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965 (8 disc box) Miles Davis - A Tribute to Jack Johnson Wayne Shorter - The Soothsayer Wayne Shorter - The All Seeing Eye Jelly Roll Morton - 1926–1930 (5 disc JSP box) Chick Corea - A Week at the Blue Note (6 disc box) Chick Corea - Three Quartets Joe Lovano - From the Soul Lee Morgan - Search for the New Land Art Pepper - Gettin' Together Art Pepper - Smack Up Art Pepper - Intensity McCoy Tyner - Sahara McCoy Tyner - Super Trios Shelly Manne and His Men - At the Blackhawk Volumes 1-5 Shelly Manne and His Men - At the Manne-Hole Volumes 1 & 2 Thelonious Monk - With John Coltrane Yusef Lateef - The Sounds of Yusef Yusef Lateef - Eastern Sounds Yusef Lateef - The Centaur and the Phoenix Bill Evans - The Last Waltz: Final Recordings, Part 1 (8 disc box) Bill Evans - Consecration: Final Recordings, Part 2 (8 disc box) Vince Guaraldi - Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus Wynton Marsalis Septet - Live at the Village Vanguard (7 disc box)

I don't think anyone's mentioned two sax/bass/drum trio albums by Branford Marsalis: Trio Jeepy (1988; featuring Milt Hinton or Delbert Felix on bass, and Jeff "Tain" Watts on drums) and The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1991; Bob Hurst on bass and Watts on drums). The latter album does have a couple of cameos by Courtney Pine (tenor) and Wynton Marsalis, but it's almost all the sax trio. Both are terrific, exploratory sessions. And the album covers match in a cool way, too... ....