Leeway

Your handle is "Leeway", you use that album as your avatar and this is how you feel about hard bop? I'm confused. Yup, it's complicated.

Evelyn Laye Alec Bedser Bobby Shaftoe Alan Sillitoe Samuel Foote Salvatore Ferragamo

Baraka's interests are with free jazz. I've run into him a number of times at free jazz shows and festivals around NYC. This is the music that interests him, and which provides a scaffolding for his polemical interests. I think his critique of hard bop is essentially accurate; it's a retrograde music that fits folks like Wynton like a glove, which pretty much indicates why Baraka has a point.

Leroy Jenkins was such a fantastic artist. For my tastes, one of the very best creative music violinists. An album I'd like to have in original form, but alas, only in reissue for now:

I'm a Leimgruber fan, so that would definitely be a "great find" in my book.

I assume you mean why Wells rather than Verne?

I finally found a decent copy of the first pressing of LOVE CALL at a reasonable price:

Firstly, thanks for the insightful reviews, Leeway. I'm glad the gig was a good one and it whets my appetite. I find it very interesting to read this comparison between the live and studio experience especially as I'm having to await the live version. I really don't want to start the ECM 'good v. evil' debate again but having heard Berne talk about the opportunity to record this music in this way precisely because it is on ECM I can't quite agree with 'pernicious' which my dictionary defines as 'destructive or ruinous'. I believe that he's quite clear (In the Jason Crane interview) that he chose the music to sound as it does as a predetermined artistic decision because of the options that ECM afforded him. In fact he goes as far as to say that it doesn't sound like it would on screwgun precisely because he can't afford to prepare and record such a release on his own label. He's very complimentary about Eicher's influence too. Now, of course, none of this does nor should undermine your response to the recorded artefact - that's 'different ears, different views' as it always should be. And just because TB likes the end result doesn't mean any of us listeners should. I just hope I'm not disappointed in the live version because it's not ECM enough I have to say I think Tim is rationalizing. Maybe he's tired of scrabbling, and happy to grab the big paycheck that ECM, promises (and likely delivers). Good for him. But I've always admired his fierce independence, and I see this as a concession on his part. There is some great music on Screwgun; nothing at all wrong with it. "Snakeoil" is a good album, but one can quite easily tell that it has been produced with goals in mind that are extraneous to the music itself, indeed tend to distort the music. For those reasons, I think "pernicious" is an allowable word here. It will be too bad if more of Tim's music becomes homogenized by ECM. If Tim starts playing like an ECM recording, he's finished.

Marvelous Marvin Hagler Marvelous Marv Throneberry Marvelous Kiddo

I've got this one and it's pretty good:

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Mike!

Read this:

Caspar Brotzmann Caspar David Friedrich Friedrich Nietzsche

AEC minus drummer for this 1969 Paris session. Sounds beautiful and vital to me.

OK, as I mentioned above, I took in both sets of Snakeoil on Sunday night (forgot to mention, they did a splendid encore after the 2nd set-- things were that good). Today I listened to the CD. There is no doubt the music was "ECM-ed." There is a sort of acoustic glaze over it all. Weirdly, it sounds as if the higher sounds were rolled off. As much as possible the music is made to sound like that Scandinavian-Arcti-ECM music that we all know. Not until the 2nd half of the disc does the band's character become more apparent. But nothing on the disc approaches the band I saw Sunday night. I know there is often a difference between live performance and studio music, but this was a good opportunity to see how ECM alters not just the sound but the musical values of the music they record. It's rather pernicious really. If this was a Screwgun release, it would sound vastly different--and much better.

A friend of mine who is a serious collector was just telling me that he is going to move all his digital music onto a local server with hard drive backups, and run it through a DAC at 24 bit/96K, using an iPhone as a controller. Better sound, less space. At the same time, he is continuing to build his vinyl collection. Makes sense.

gelukkige verjaardag! (hope I got that right)

Happy Birthday! Keep swinging.

Just back from the Tim Berne concert. First set packed. The band was very good, obviously working hard to make a good impression on the crowd. The second set, with a slightly smaller crowd, was simply outstanding. The band was looser and more open. They sounded great. First time I've seen Oscar Noriega; interesting tone on clarinet, rather dulcet really, and somewhat the same on bass clarinet too. Oscar makes a nice matchup with Tim. Ches Smith reminded me of a young Tom Rainey, and Matt Mitchell on piano was excellent. The band can hit hard, so it will be interesting to listen to the Snakeoil CD and see if ECM took the edge off the band.

Ooops, sorry mjazzg, I missed that. I'll catch it later. I'm leaving for the show shortly. Will report back.

INTERface, with John Fischer, Mark Whitecage, Phillip Wilson, and Rick Kilburn. Recorded in 1978, I think at Environ, the loft space founded by Fischer. A really fine album.

"Godfather" "Consigliere" "Capo de Capo"

Well, I don't much like Alter Ego, a duet with bass clarinetist Walter Zuber Armstrong, but I haven't listened to it in years. Probably time to give it a spin and see if it's grown on me. I liked it the first time, but I liked it a lot more the second time. Hopefully, it works for you on the next spin.