clifford_thornton

Absolutely true on the vulnerability aspect. As Burton told me, she was so fragile and the New York (free) jazz scene did not treat fragile people well.

ditto.

The Cadentia Nova Danica record is wonderful in my opinion. There isn't a whole lot out there like it. My holy grail is the collaborative session of CND and Musica Elettronica Viva. Tchicai had clean master tapes and was getting them digitized when I interviewed him, but his untimely death put the kibosh on a release. Hopefully someday...

Sad to report that vocalist and sometime pianist Patty Waters has died at 78. The family announced it on social media yesterday, though it looks like she passed in late June. Her ESP records and vocal contributions to the Marzette Watts Savoy LP, as well as the You Thrill Me archival release, are all incredible. She was an influence on Diamanda Galas, Yoko Ono, Kim Gordon, and certainly others in the underground. I've spent less time with her comeback CDs; her voice seemed to struggle (and we know it's not a forgiving instrument) but she was still out there doing it, and that's something. Spoke to her a couple of times on the phone twenty or so years ago but she was reluctant to do an interview. I'm told that later on she became more comfortable with the idea, so I guess I was just too early. She was very sweet but at the time still kind of shell-shocked from an uneasy life in and outside of music – that's how it seemed, anyway. RIP, Patty, and thank you. There's nothing else out there like this: and this is just beautiful (rec. 1969, not '66):

oral history of Mr. Newhart himself, yeah, not the show -- sorry.

He was great. RIP. In library science grad school, one of my projects was to index and encode a video oral history of Newhart for a comedy oral history project. That was quite fascinating. Even his timing in an oral history was funny!

his situation seems to be a tough one. I hope he's able to handle it well. Getting older is not a picnic sometimes.

Both of those Goykovich albums are killer. Swinging Macedonia is a hard hitting classic -- have that on a UK Lansdowne LP. Is Muzak just a licensing label? Seems like they're getting material from ENJA, DA Music, and who knows where else.

I have no problem with these choices at all.

if one doesn't have these yet, one should pick them up. I am "ride or die" for the Jym Young and the Tchicai is a longtime favorite as well.

Very sad to read this news. She was amazing & I had a fun experience interviewing her by phone many years ago. Sweet person. RIP.

Armonicord is killer! Picked it up semi-randomly at La Dame Blanche in Paris around 23 years ago (only knew a couple of musicians on the record) and was blown away. The recent archival CD on NoBusiness (featuring a similar lineup) is also splendid.

yeah, I would believe that to be true.

Right. Cooper-Moore related a story of how David S. Ware didn't listen to "jazz" though he apparently listened to a lot of Beyoncé. Whether anything specific from Beyoncé's music factored into his own sound I am a bit doubtful, though of course she does have the gospel projection thing. A fair amount of composers and improvisers also don't listen to much or any music outside of what's in their heads or made up the foundation of their practice -- Andrew Hill apparently stopped consciously listening to any music for years, I've read. For me as a listener it goes the other way, in that learning how to pay close attention to music has allowed me to hear things in an artist that I might not otherwise hear, though that can also be a negative -- the hype on brat is crazy right now, but I tried listening and feel like it's utterly empty compared to Charli XCX's earlier work.

Agree with this assessment -- Ra was musically omnivorous (as he was philosophically and in the literary sense), applying motifs from all over the place. I would be quite surprised if someone like Albert Mangelsdorff or Michael Garrick was seriously into Les Baxter or Martin Denny, though I'm sure they were aware of the landscape. Garrick was also composing masses and liturgical music as well as writing around poets, so he knew how to programmatically assemble things and create moods. He was quite an interesting character.

I think it is a good record but not necessarily a great one.

early 80s I think.

I assume non-western instrumentation, shorter tracks, and vamps. The term "exotica" is not one of my favorites either, but like "spiritual jazz" it's probably here to stay.

It's impossible to hear even a tiny fraction of what music exists on the planet. I buy a lot of things unheard/unseen/unfamiliar, but usually one has some parameters within which to work. Does the format of the band or tunes interest me? Track lengths? If it's an LP, what does the cover art look like? Not everything is gonna be one's cuppa, either. I saw Argue's Secret Society a couple of times. I appreciated what he was/they were working on but did not buy the CDs.

Thanks! The trio is really wonderful. Their set at Vision this summer was extraordinary.

oh yeah, there's a massive amount of music out there, and it often takes time to really get more than passing acquaintance with a lot of it. I'd say that this board has helped me become more egalitarian in my approach to the music. If we're talking denominations, traditional jazz, swing, "cool" jazz, and fusion to me are on par with bop and the avant-garde.

25 or so years ago when I started getting interested in the Pentangle, I had gone to the WFMU record fair and a perfect Canadian stereo of their debut album, which I'd heard and loved, was staring me in the face at the first table, first record. Definitely was hoping to pick up their records at the fair. Of course now I know they are a dime a dozen. A buddy of mine around the same time or a few years earlier apparently woke up one day thinking "it would be cool if I found the Ric Colbeck in a store" and walked into a shop and found one for like $6.

Not my gig, but passing the word along. It will be great. Also I'll be bringing a stack of books along if anyone needs a copy of Singularity Codex.

For sure.

Too bad. Too young.