clifford_thornton

Siegfried Kessler - Invitation - (Impro)

I don't know if it's a "great find" or not, but I was at a usually high-priced record store in Austin yesterday and picked up a VG++ Liberty of John Patton's That Certain Feeling for $5. No locked groove on A3, clean sound and what seems like a good deal. Strong session IMO.

John Patton - That Certain Feeling - (Blue Note, Liberty) no locked groove on this one.

SME - Face to Face - (Emanem)

Oh no! RIP to one of the greats.

McCoy Tyner - Time for Tyner - (BN Liberty)

Oh, good news! Enjoy!

great cover! Wonderful LP. Alvin Fielder once told me that this is one of his favorite records.

Sad news. RIP.

Yeah, both of those are good points. Thanks. He responded in detail to my concerns, and I have yet to go through and itemize it (and I'm leaving town tomorrow). Part of me thinks diversification is good and having material in TMT really helps the visibility angle. But then again, I don't get a paycheck from them and the adjustable ratings system really cheeses (!) me off.

Yeah, I put the ratings in and they're lowered. I don't know, generally I only send them the stuff I think is really good and could use some cross-genre attention, since they mostly cover rock & electronic music. I've done one 5 and one 4.5 in two years, most are in the three or four range. If anything's below three, I just don't bother with it at least for this pub. For NYCJR or even my own blog, I've definitely noted some 2s - or would, if a rating system was in use. Would be curious if any o-board contributors to places like Down Beat have anything to add, since that pub. relied so heavily on ratings. If it were up to me the star/dot system would be kaput.

The Williamsburg Annex is usually pretty picked over in my experience; I think the Village one has better records, but what I'm curious about is the Record Grouch. Apparently one of the better record stores in New York, and I'd not heard of it until recently.

If it's the material collected in early quartets - Clouds in my head; Shimri; Green shading into blue - then i've the vinyls. I'd say they were all interesting but maybe not essential. I feel they're let down a little by the writing. The playing is generally very good. I hear a rigidness to the arrangements and perhaps a rhythmic deficit which is inexplicable if you consider Andersen's ability - maybe the drummers? I purchased them primarily to hear Juhanni Aaltonen, sax and flute, a personal favourite whose contributions are very strong. Overall they rarely seem to catch fire and display a certain tentativeness. Compared to the near contemporaneous Garbarek/Stenson dates (also just compiled in a box) then they're less adventurous My favourite of them is Shimri. If you see Lifelines (w. Kenny Wheeler) then grab it, it's everything the quartets aren't and it has Kenny Wheeler which is good enough for anyone, surely Agreed with the points above. I also really like his performance on Nana, with Edward Vesala and Juhani Aaltonen, but that's way earlier.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to swallow hard before pressing the "send payment" button on PayPal, but I'm in for it now!

So I write for a little online magazine called Tiny Mix Tapes. Kind of like a Pitchfork-esque publication, where I review jazz and outsider music. They use a "dot" system (instead of stars) on a 1-5 scale, with five being the highest. Most things that they have heard of or are hyping get 4 or 5 dots, I'll say that off the bat. Most of the things I submit I give between 3.5 and 4.5 dots, with a few submitted as 5s. I rarely review anything I don't like. Unfortunately, rarely do any of my "gushing" reviews or even "very positive" reviews stand with the rating I submit. Usually half and sometimes a whole dot is notched downward, but I haven't complained... until now. Here's part one of my exchange with the editor, and I'm interested to see how he responds. I've had back-and-forth with people on whether or not it's worth giving something a "poor" review. I don't always give perfect marks, obviously, and have ripped things a new asshole on a number of occasions. But if I'm going to submit a review to a more "general" site like TMT, it's usually going to be for a release that I think is really worthy of the attention of a wider audience. Hence the usual positivity. I'd be interested in thoughts from the o-board, though, on whether my bitching is worthwhile, egoist, or something in between.

Vic Ash, Bill Eyden, Harry Klein, etc. Reissue of a Tempo Brit-jazz LP. Looks like my kind of stuff. Images here.

Haven't heard Auld, really, but the name has crossed my path. Hope to have the opportunity to check out the music sometime. Now: Barry Guy - Statements for Double Bass and Violone - (Incus) Have the "original" but was happy to get this one with a hand-drawn cover by Alan Davie from Maya. Basically an unplayed stock Incus LP with a handmade new cover.

Joe Diorio & Steve Bagby - Straight Ahead to the Light - (Spitball) Forgot what a killer guitar-percussion "free rock" LP this was...

What was the rest of the Portal/Rava band like? Just curious.

:tup