papsrus

Best wishes and many happy returns.

Thanks for the recs! I'm on board with the Roberts discs you mentioned, and would add her recent "Chicago Project" to the mix with Fred Anderson sitting in on a couple of tracks. The Atomic/School Days sounds very good indeed and definitely worth checking out, thanks.

You know they've built a performance center at the site of Woodstock. There was an article about it in the NYT mag a while back. I'm pretty sure it's on the actual site, with that natural bowl.

Three I've snagged this year after recs elsewhere on this board are: "Drunk Butterfly" -- Adam Lane / Lou Grassi / Mark Whitecage First-rate. They get some nice grooves going, and these three seem highly tuned in to one another. "The Beautiful Enabler" -- Gerry Hemingway (d), Mark Dresser (b), Rudresh Mahanthappa (as) Can't hardly go wrong with that lineup! "Stratostrophic" -- Ivan Johnson (b), Jason Mears (as), Kris Tiner (t), Paul Kikuchi (d) Was just spinning this one earlier. Excellent. Others I have enjoyed quite a bit are alto player Steve Lehman's "Manifold," and the several Clean Feed releases by trumpet player Dennis Gonzalez, particularly "Idle Wild" from 2005. Solid. On the down side, the Herb Robertson releases just don't do it for me. Swing and a miss. Just not my thing.

Enlighten me. Well the liner notes spend a lot of time discussing a famous take of "Up and Down" that they left off the cd. It can be found on a cd celebrating Ralph Ellison. That take was the RELEASED take; it can be found on the vinyl LP of Such Sweet Thunder. At a certain point, Clark Terry plays a bit that sounds like the line, "Lord, what fools these mortals be." The CD used an alternate in which he doesn't do this. There was a lot of screaming about this when the CD was released, so you'd think they would have corrected it in a hurry. But nope. Thanks to both of you. I wasn't aware.

Thank you for the insights. Great review. This in particular caught my attention: This is exactly the sweet spot for me in new music -- free playing that hangs on a kind of structure which allows for, and embraces, melody and rhythm; it swings! Total free playing that wanders too far into that micro-tonal or, alternately, angry screaming territory and abandons any pretense at melody and rhythm is just too damn taxing to listen to. IMO. You've put some flesh on the bone with your thoughts. Thanks.

Enlighten me.

Well, I'm 66, and since maybe 2001, the music I choose to go out and listen to (usually at least once a week, sometimes much more than that) is mostly the stuff that the younger Chicago-area musicians are playing -- often avant-gardish to some degree I'd say, but typically not in ways that would leave many here scratching their heads. I know, why haven't I been writing/reporting here all the time about what I've been hearing? I have done that some times, but I think I don't more often because most of the people I'd be writing about are people who also are to some degree friends (and not only friends but also, because of the gap in age, almost sons and daughters), and I don't want to be writing about my friends in public anymore, for a whole lot of reasons -- some of which I understand, some of which I don't. Maybe I'll get past that, though, whatever "that" is. Larry, your thoughts on this new music would be very much welcome. If you would write only that Group A is really worth hearing, that would lead me to check them out. If you do not want to write about details or specifics about your friends, just your mention of their names is enough recommendation for me. Agreed. Great idea! I used to get information about new music at Recycled Sounds in Kansas City, from Ann Winter, the owner. While the store was doing well financially, she closed it a few years ago. One of the reasons she gave to the newspaper reporter is that she was tired of listening to so much poor music, in her efforts to remain current. So I think that Allen's idea has real merit. Agreed. I was toying a while back with the idea of a thread along the lines of "If You Like X, You'll Probably Like Y" as a way to generate some leads. Sniffing around here in a haphazard way is useful but a dedicated thread would cut the legwork down.

Yikes!

It's on order. Should be here in the next few days. And now I'm really looking forward to it!

Well, it was entirely coincidental that about the time I started posting here regularly, my listening interests were in the process of shifting from contemporary artists to older recordings. For quite some time my listening consisted largely of contemporary free and downtown artists such as Melford, Dave Douglas, Berne, Michael Moore, Dennis Gonzalez and the like. I gobbled the stuff up at a gluttonous pace and have more than a couple of Clean Feeds on the shelf. But it was a bit like jumping into a Porsche with a learner's permit. I wanted/needed to learn about, and listen to, the roots of this music, and so began to travel back in time. But I certainly haven't lost interest in modern music. And while I haven't purchased a lot of new releases this year (for the first year in a while), contemporary releases (music recorded in the past few years) do account for about 30 percent of my listening these days. So I, too, would like to know more about the musicians mentioned by the original poster. I am familiar with the Chicago Underground Trio/Quartet and Jeff Parker. The others, I'm not at all familiar with.

Stanley Turrentine With the 3 Sounds -- "Complete Blue Hour Sessions"

I've become quite adept with the old Swiss army knife and can fillet one of those babies in no time. The CD or the motherfucker? Or maybe the fish? I thought for a second I was being too coherent. Reassured now, thanks.

I've become quite adept with the old Swiss army knife and can fillet one of those babies in no time.

Congrats and good luck!

Surely language doesn't exist UNTIL it's codified. MG Not sure I agree with that... Surely (and don't call me "Shirley") the truth lies somewhere in between -- that is, if we're talking about literal (spoken, then in most cases written-down) verbal languages. The most "expressive" (in itself) sound or series of would-be communicative sounds doesn't really work until others get and agree that that sound or series of sounds means whatever it means or is supposed to mean. In particular, such codification means that, say, what "take my chair" indicates doesn't depend that heavily on my "performance" of "take my chair." Now, if you're talking analogously, and want to bring into the tent other non-verbal languages, like music, their "languageness" is a good deal looser and different than that of verbal languages. We are, at least in my experience, prepared to deal with pleasure and interest with large swatches of music whose principles of order we don't readily detect. Nor is the language of any music that I'm aware of -- even the simplest, most direct, and most familiar -- as enclosed by the "this means that" process as is the case with verbal languages. Musical sounds can always be taken as "just sounds," while the sounds that make up words can always be understood as words, which accumulate into discourse, unless one consciously or inadvertently disguises those sounds, or one is not engaging in discourse (i.e. words are being used but one has no intent to shape them into sentences), or the auditor doesn't know the language. I'm reminded BTW of the brutal running battle in language affairs between prescriptivists (that would be, among others, people who write usage guides and who say that there are right and wrong ways to use the language), and descriptivists (that would be most professional linguists, who say that there are no right and wrong usages, only usages -- e.g. "Descriptive grammar has nothing to do with telling people what they should say." "Languages are self-regulating systems that can be left to take care of themselves"). A wise man on the prescriptive side notes that no descriptivist linguist writes or publicly speaks other than in some version of standard English (or whatever language the linguist is using). Fascinating discussion. How does one account for the less codified uses of language? I'm thinking of poetry, for instance, which can be studied intensively to extract its precise meaning. Or scat? Or how about primal screaming? (late-period Coltrane?). Or even the howling emanating from one of the 100 best vocalists of all time at rock 'n' roll concerts? The rules of language don't strictly apply, yet communication is achieved. I guess I'm trying to sharpen the point that while rules and "codification" of languages are necessary, it's also necessary to break those rules. The English language itself, is a constantly evolving thing, is it not? The rules, in other words, are constantly changing.

I trust the celebration is/was noteworthy!

Montreal 60 points

I don't know about his chops -- a little hard-edged maybe (intentionally or otherwise), but it's his "interest" and "energy" for the music that leads him in the right direction(s), I think. I just listened for the first time to Bug Music, and it's a wonderful project. Nothing ground-breaking, just good, clean fun. You can tell the musicians had a blast doing it, and that's half the battle.

Thankfully, nothing like that has ever happened in my vicinity. I'm sure I speak for Bev, too. This just hasn't come over here at all. MG Consider yourself lucky. In Florida he is a cultural force.

Ah ... it's only headphones. You can replace 'em.

The star system is meaningless. In my book, three stars should signify a mighty-fine record. For others it means: "meh." Four and five starts should be reserved for top albums of the year and essential albums. But that doesn't seem to be the way it comes down, so I try to ignore the whole star thing and read the review, or better yet, listen.

One would think.

Bud Powell -- "A Tribute to Cannonball" with Don Byas. and, after having this on vinyl many years ago and in mp3 format more recently, getting the CD set. "The Greatest Jazz Concert in the World"