clifford_thornton

Cro-Magnon - s/t - (ESP-Disk' orig) stoned communal hippie clamoring, which has its moments.

Need to dig that one out again. Now: Nucleus - Elastic Rock - (Vertigo, GER)

Yes indeed - good show in spite of his absence and Grace Kelly's singing/grandstanding.

The great pianist Don Friedman has passed, as I'm told by my editor at the NYC Jazz Record (who's confirmed it). I was slated to see him recently but he was too ill to perform. A life in music well-lived and he'll be missed.

Lungfish - Sound in Time - (Dischord)

Yes indeed, have that one as well and it's quite a trip.

Another giant gone. Oof.

wow. RIP.

Maarten Altena - Tuning the Bass - (ICP, NL) pretty fine series of snappy and grubby solo bass vignettes.

William Burroughs - Call Me Burroughs - (ESP, US)

I love it. Longtime fan of this record. Now: Amalgam -- Innovations -- (Tangent, UK) expertly threading funky grooves and rugged improvisation, and quite well-recorded.

Sam Rivers. Should have seen him but I was not in Kansas anymore when he played in Topeka, and I was not able to get to NYC for the trio reunion. Probably should've just flown down to Florida!

Rodan and Crain. I caught the last 5-10 minutes of a Peter Kowald gig and he died not too much long afterwards; I talked to him a bit, at least, and he seemed like a really nice guy. Mal Waldron would've been another, since we're talking like geography isn't an issue. I was a fan but he never played anywhere near where I was in the last years of his life.

Fascinating. Thanks.

and it's not even used!

wait, what? $2,000 ?

Ah, yeah that does make sense. If I'm allowed to say Wounds and Cholagogues are birds of a feather, that is...

yeah, the bassist on Snowsnake is not quite at that level, but fits in.

At the end of the day I wouldn't call the Ivan Lasso record free jazz. The electric bass is something of a sore thumb here but, as with Odean Pope's "Almost Like Me" and Prime Time, it's also texturally intriguing. At least to me.

Ivan Lasso Quintette - Snowsnake - (Dragon, US) knotty Chicago-based modern jazz outfit, I assume the LP was recorded in the late 70s. Lasso is, by all appearances, a strong tenor player and the group is quite fine. Never seen or heard of anything else under his name.

Yeah, probably true. There's a strong transitional JuMu/EMT LP by Harth and pianist Nicole Van Den Plas (among others) called 4.Januar.1970, privately released, which is also a corker.

Been looking for that pre-release Just Music for many years. Alas, it hasn't appeared. The music is quite good, and the scene around Just Music and Harth in Frankfurt around that time is pretty interesting.

Jeanne Lee - Conspiracy - (Earthforms, US) partial to the overdubbed solo voice piece but overall this is an excellent record with a well-applied ensemble cast (Sam Rivers, Gunter Hampel, Steve McCall, Mark Whitecage et al).

Nice. Now: The Vaselines - Enter the Vaselines - (Sub Pop) 2009 3LP compilation of pretty much everything this Scottish post-punk duo ever recorded, much more thorough than the 1993 release (which I had on cassette way back when).