ghost of miles

I'm with ya, man! Up, Up and Away I need to order that new Maria CD. Anybody else heard it yet?

Another 25%-off sale on Heps, with shipping free on orders of $50 or more. Recent Hep releases listed here.

Very, very hard to watch...

Was one of the Spacemen 3 guys also involved with the band Spiritualized? Guy Yeah, that was Jason's band after Spacemen 3 broke up. I assume Spacemen 3 was a better band? Guy Clem and/or others could probably speak better to that. I didn't really follow either Jason or Sonic Boom's solo career.. the last Spacemen 3 album had come off as a dud to me & I just sort of lost interest, but Spiritualized was a critical fave throughout the 1990s in the UK (seems like Ladies & Gentlemen, We Are Now Floating In Space gets namechecked a lot as one of their better efforts). I'd still seek out the two titles that Clem mentioned (Perfect Prescription and Play With Fire).

Was one of the Spacemen 3 guys also involved with the band Spiritualized? Guy Yeah, that was Jason's band after Spacemen 3 broke up. Clem's rec re: PERFECT PRESCRIPTION is well-taken. I used to have the cassette & I think I kept it even after I got the CD--some tracks on each that aren't on the other.

Clem, I actually do have both of those Spacemen 3 records (still!) and dug 'em at the time. (British music press had a field day w/the falling-out between Jason & Sonic Boom... man, they just thrive on that sibling-rivalry-type stuff, don't they?) You're right, they should be given more credit than they are... I used to play them on the overnight show at WFHB here in B-town and precede it w/some deep, dark, scary blues. They were a great band and I loved them... but I had a hell of a sweet tooth for MBV and probably still do (this whole discussion will no doubt inspire me to haul out the CDs/EPs again for replay). I never heard Here's Your Bloody Valentine or any of the other mid-1980s stuff... entry point for me was the 1987 Ecstasy and Wine, which is a comp of EPs and catches them sounding more like early Jesus and Mary Chain. "Consensus" on the early material is that it's awful, but "consensus" is almost always dubious. My laugh for today: I ordered the 33 1/3 book about Loveless--delayed already for three years--and then found out last night that they had to yank it from the printer because "Kevin Shields has some last-minute changes for the author." God help us... Another note re: Spacemen 3--they came up with one of my alltime favorite album titles, Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs By. Ain't it the truth!

I haven't listened to it in several years, but just yesterday I ordered the new 33 1/3 book about it (Loveless). I was an MBV fan back in the 1989-91 era, really into Isn't Anything and even the EP comp before it, Ecstasy and Wine. I thought Loveless trumped both of those records and set a new standard for the British dreampop movement... turned out to be the pinnacle and pretty much the end of it. Saw them at the Vick in Chicago in 1992 (Yo La Tengo opened) and it was one of the loudest shows I'd ever been to... ears ringing for the next day or so (shudder to think about that now). Sister Ray on an Ecstasy trip... brilliant stuff, but I'm not surprised that it ultimately proved to be a dead end. Kevin Shields created an incredible sonic landscape, a beautiful, swirling, layered haze of sound, then anchored it with basic, catchy rock 'n roll riffs. Loveless was one of those albums that got played over and over for an entire year after it came out. Perhaps it's overrated in terms of influence (I think one could make that argument), but I don't think it's overrated as an achievement.

Yes! I love Dmitry's stories about the effect of various records/artists upon his patients (particularly the Ella story).

Do you have the 1953(?) Birdland broadcast w/Bird, Dizzy, Bud, Forgetwhoonbass, & "Sgt. Roy Haynes"? That's another one... Don't have it--I've got a ton of live Bird, but not that date. What's it on? (I've got a bit of Bird w/Bud at Birdland on one of the ESP 1953 discs, but that's w/Art Taylor on drums, along w/Candido--just two cuts.) Did that second Ember live-Bird set ever come out? Probably would've covered the date you're talking about...

First Parker I got was the old Stash LEGENDARY DIAL MASTERS V. 1. I went for at least a month without listening to much of anything else--save for the several Parker Savoy/Verve sides that I picked up as a result of the Dial. A friend of mine said, "You are in a Charlie Parker haze." I don't have much of a musician's appreciation for what Bird accomplished (a rudimentary understanding, and certainly an abstract sense of it), but I surely have the human (as Jim said) appreciation of it. It's all there, all right... and the all that's there is an awful lot.

That Birdland 1950 airshot w/Navarro, Powell & Blakey is my favorite live bebop-era date. Love the 1945 Town Hall date on Uptown, but man, that 1950 show smokes up the stereo every time. I was a bit bummed when Savoy yanked all of the chatter, commercials, and other extraneous stuff from the last reissue of the live Royal Roost material. The late-1980s set (I have only one volume) really gives you a sense of hearing Bird in an NYC club setting. Speaking of live Bird--the other Uptown release, BOSTON 1952, definitely worth checking out. Hell, the chance just to hear Bird w/Mingus, Roy Haynes, Joe Gordon, and Dick Twardzik is worth the price of admission alone!

Big Al, I'd definitely go for those Verve and Dial/Savoy Master sets through BMG (maybe tonight, while the 60% off and free shipping offer's still good). Especially that Dial/Savoy set. And hey, you'll love it all the more for not having heard it before--I remember back in 1998 when the Miles 1965-68 set came out, and I told a trumpeter friend that I was picking it up. I commented that I hadn't really heard much from that period of Miles yet (I'd been holding off on buying ESP & other titles from that era because I knew the box was going to come out); he looked at me with an envious smile and said, "Man, I wish I was hearing all of that music for the first time."

Maybe Tom/umum cypher has a U.S. publication date? It's on my birthday & Christmas list as well.

This week on Night Lights it's "The Avant-Garde Plays the Great American Songbook." The jazz pioneers of the 1960s--artists such as Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and others--all came up in the entertainment world of the 1940s and 50s, when what we know now as the Great American Songbook was taking hold in the musical canon. Although we think of these musicians today as groundbreaking innovators who abandoned traditional song form, they all knew it, respected it, and in many cases genuinely liked it. In this program we'll hear Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, and Arthur Schwartz as interpreted by the above players and Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, and Sonny Rollins. "The Avant-Garde Plays the Great American Songbook" airs Saturday, Nov. 18 at 11:05 p.m. EST on WFIU, at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville, and at 10 p.m. EST Sunday evening on Michigan's Blue Lake Public Radio. The program will be posted Monday afternoon in the Night Lights archives. Next week: "Mary Lou Williams' Zodiac Suite."

Came across a used paperback set (in good condition) of Shelby Foote's Civil War history. How does it hold up, 45-plus years later? I was a big Civil War geek as a kid (then got into baseball, now into jazz... good Lord, am I distantly related to Mr. Burns? )

A lot of discussion about her going on right now on the jazz programmers' list... I'm going to check out her albums, especially the first one. What do folks here think of her work (apart from the influence she had on Miles, etc.)? Supposedly she's still around, but living quietly in Pennsylvania.

I don't think that any of NPR's funding actually comes from the NEA--doesn't all of the government funding come through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Part of the fault does lie with Congress (although this will change with the new one--Democrats are unanimous in their support of public broadcasting, and about a third of the Republicans are... so we're hoping we won't be under the budget axe for the next two years). But NPR was headed in this direction anyway. I see nothing wrong with the "professionalization" of public radio--we should have always aspired to that--but I do think the cultural mission, as outlined in the original CPB manifesto that Lyndon Johnson signed into law, has been betrayed to some extent. (How on earth is wall-to-wall, non-stop news & talk "preserving the cultural heritage of America"?) And yes, there is some politicking going on in the current efforts by some to steer NPR back towards cultural programming--but it's really beside the point. I'm just grateful that my station, like Lazaro's, is in the classical/jazz/news format. Sure, some folks want more of each and less of the others, but generally there's something for everyone. The "digital" angle--well, are we going to pony up for podcasting fees? Strictly observe RIAA rules? Do that and you're severely limiting the kinds of programming you're going to be able to offer. Internet listening will continue to grow (perhaps especially among frustrated jazz fans who can no longer tune in for local shows), but Lazaro's right, and it's going to be a loooooong time before it approaches anything like the terrestrial audiences.

Where is the sly dog? Sleeping it off, no doubt!

Lots of Chris Connor, Mabel Mercer, and a singer I'd never heard before--Mae Barnes. I've only checked out disc 1 so far, but great stuff, if you're a fan of that sort of singing.

Just means you have to party for three days straight, that's all!

Read the essay in Larry Kart's book last weekend on THE ERTEGUNS' NEW YORK: NEW YORK CABARET MUSIC, a 4-CD Atlantic set that came out in the late 1980s, and found a copy online for $9.99. Arrived yesterday--complete as described, with booklet and CDs in excellent conditiion. Wow!!

... and many happy returns!

The Thad Jones Mosaic. I pulled this one out about a month ago and damn, I'd forgotten how sweet it is.

It's now online.

Happy birthday to a fellow lover of history, books, and jazz!