Kalo

That WAS a good band, Allen. I have fond memories of that show. I'm sorry if I gave the impression of putting down Terry Gross. Actually, I would consider myself a fan. My point was simply that there wouldn't be a show at all if she only interviewed "outcats" and the like. As for Davis, I have all of his books except the Kael interview. And I refer back to all of them fairly frequently (except the Blues one). I find him to be an excellent writer on the whole--I just think that the mingy amount of space he gets in the Voice is not his best forum. I read that rag less and less as they shrink down ALL of their reviewers' space. Has anyone noticed that they now banner an "Essay" in every issue, when it used to be that almost every article could be considered an essay? So, as I said before, mark me down as a Davis (and Gross) appreciator.

Oy. Now I have to get Wiley's A Night In Manhattan. And I'm even pondering, for the first time ever, buying a disc with the words "Maynard Ferguson" in the title. Thanks, JSngry! But much thanks to sjarrell for convincing me to HOLD OFF from purchasing something (the Bethlehems), at least for the time being.

Spiro Gyro: Nixon's VP + meat on a rotating spindle= ???????????????????????????????????????

OK, (deep breath), Mark me down as, on the whole, a Davis appreciator. I agree with Peter when he says, "I like his writing, read his stuff and find that the stuff he positively reviews I generally like as well." (He turned me on to, among others, Walt Dickerson, Joel Forrester, Phillip Johnston, Anthony Cox, and Gianluigi Trovesi. Except I'll never understand why Davis likes Stephen Sondheim. Even so, I take him at his word and never thought he was PRETENDING to dig Sondheim.) That being said, Davis's Free America Village Voice review did seem a bit, shall we say, peevish? Not cool calling Alan Shorter "fucked up." On the other hand, I take his dislike of Annette Peacock as a genuine esthetic quibble, rather than Clem's suggested misogynistic response. Davis has gone to bat for many a female artist that I, personally, don't like or have a hard time responding to. He's hardly a knee-jerk woman-hater. Chalk this review down to a bad day. It hardly invalidates the rest of his writing. Clem's wringing Terry Gross into the argument strikes me as bogus. To grossly simplify, it seems as though he's claiming that Davis hates women because he's henpecked by a more successful, middlebrow hack of a cultural commentator, who just happens to be female. Who's more the mysogynist? That being said, I would say that Davis' recent Village Voice pieces seem constrained by the stringent word-counts that this publication has (not alone) imposed of late. It's my understanding that Gary Giddins left the Voice, in part, owing to the shorter article lengths that the editors (or more accurately, owners) have imposed in the past few years. (And by the way, since Clem keeps hammering on the vast remuneration this gig entails, just how well do they pay? Anyone?) Aside: (I, myself, have been lucky enough to score several assignments from a major metropolitan newspaper in the last year. The powers that be at this 'paper have recently decided that reviews of one-night gigs should be no more than 350 words in length. A recent concert that I reviewed was the 30th anniversary concert by a respected new music ensemble, The Dinosaur Annex, which was conducted by Gunther Schuller. I repeat: GUNTHER SCHULLER! I had exactly 350 words to attempt to do justice to the TEN musicians, NINE composers, and SEVEN world premieres that were a part of this concert, NOT TO MENTION LIVING LEGEND GUNTHER SCHULLER. I did my best... but, REALLY!) Back to the point: OK, so Davis has a blind-spot regarding Beefheart. I bought the Fast 'N' Bulbous CD and find it to be a nice tribute to the Captain, but not ESSENTIALLY different from his own recordings. To Davis, on the other hand, it's superior to the old 'fheart's original recordings. So what. We all have our blindspots (Clearspots?). It's not as though other commentators haven't called BeefH an unsuccessful combo of Howlin' Wolf and Ornette*. That's not my take on it, but I understand how others, given the limited time we have on this earth, could maintain as much, looking from the outside in. I recall that Dave Marsh (who I generally dig) dismissed Pere Ubu as an unsuccessful attempt at Ornette-style rock (?), not to mention that he reviled Brian Eno as a blinkered elitist. (Eno, the guy who, admittedly elitist in his own way, helped bring both Talking Heads and U2 to their greatest top-40 successes.) Well, enough rant. I actually enjoy and learn from Clem's postings, as abrasive as they (intentionally) may be, and I share many of his musical and literary tastes. But how long do you think Terry Gross would last if she had Thomas Bernhard as a guest on every show? (Even assuming that he wasn't dead already). Curtis White, a writer I admire and part of the Dalkey Archive axis that Clem seems to revere, has also attacked Gross. Well, yeah, maybe she's the Øprah of public broadcasting, but so what? Mass culture is mass culture. At least there's someone in there pitching for the middlebrows and above. I'm sorry, but Thomas Bernhard and Albert Ayler, love them as much as I may, will never be media darlings. Yet it would be hard to say that they don't receive as much attention as they deserve, albeit at the fringes (If "the fringes" include major publications such as The Village Voice and The New York Review of Books, among others). Ask a 23-year-old if he or she has heard of Ayler or of Tina Brooks, or is acquainted with Bernhard or with Ronald Firbank. For my money, though most have heard of neither, more have heard of Ayler and Bernhard--MANY more. That's fashion for you. The bottom line? As Peter wrote: "Plus Davis turned me on to Alan Lowe, whose "Dark Was the Night, Cold was the Ground" is a fine collection of recordings!!!" Agreed . I saw Allen Lowe's band in the mid-1990s at the erstwhile Cambridge, Massachusetts venue called Nightstage, in support of his CD "A Modern Portrait of Louis Armstrong." And it was Francis Davis who got me interested enough to check out Lowe's ensemble in the flesh. In the band that night was ROSWELL RUDD, making his first Boston appearance in many a year. Davis and Lowe, I submit, inarguably helped spearhead Rudd's return to the jazz scene in the U.S. For that alone we should thank the both of them. *It's my opinion, and surely not mine alone, that folks who diss Beefheart's reed playing miss the point. He used the reeds as occasional color, rather than a focal point, akin to the way the AEC used their "little instruments." He's not presenting a romantic, heroic "jazz solo," so it's stupid to judge it as such, just as it's correct, but beside the point, to belittle the AEC as "percussionists" per se. Funnily enough, those who choose to foreground 'fheart's technique on reeds betray their own "avant" pretensions by foregrounding what was intended to be background.

BTW, y'all, since this thread began I've been immersing myself in the Ellington suites I possess, and as a result, have been experiencing an efflorescence of beauty and majesty in my general vicinity. I must add that this board has positively influenced my quality of life over the time I've been lurking (say about a year), despite the financial drain of the (mostly excellent) exhortations to BUY, BUY, BUY. However, as in this Ellingtonian example, you've also returned me repeatedly to my own extant collection to my great profit. That's why I finally began posting, to join the amazing conversation you are all engaged in; I should say: WE are all engaged in. Thanks.

EKE BBB Posted on May 6 2005, 03:05 AM "BTW: in the latest CD issue, the silence between Dance#1 and Dance#2 has been eliminated. But, in this process, the first bar of Dance#2, has also been cut off !!!" That sucks. Thanks for the heads up, EKE BBB. What's the best way I can access the original, intended version?

But who did the mastering?

Funny, I can hear the dialogue. IN MY MIND.

I fell in love with Lee Wiley the first time I heard her warm, sweet and husky voice on James Isaacs' Boston radio show in the mid-1980s (he had a cool feature where he'd play a few tunes by a featured vocalist at 2:45 a.m., introduced by Sinatra's "One For My Baby": "It's quarter to three..."). I rushed out and bought the then-newly-reissued 1939-1940 Liberty Music Shop Recordings: Sings the Songs of George & Ira Gershwin and Cole Porter, and the 1940 Music Box and 1943 Schirmer Recordings: Sings the Songs of Richard Rogers & Lorenz Hart and Harold Arlen. These were Audiophile Records LPs. I believe I've seen these on CD, too. Originally issued, of course, as albums of 78s, these are reputedly the first Songbook recordings ever devoted to the classic Broadway writers. Even though I've heard a lot more since then, these are still the definitive Wiley to me (especially the Gershwin/Porter). They all have her backed by small Condonite groups. There are a few nice tracks she did with Jess Stacy on Commodore. I still need to catch up with the Columbia stuff. I've got a 1981 Japanese RCA mono LP reissue of West of the Moon, and it's pretty good. The arrangements are by Ralph Burns in a 1950s Songbook orchestral style different from, but reminiscent of the kind of backing Fitzgerald and Sinatra were receiving at the time. She sounds a bit nasal throughout the record, almost like she has a cold, though the Wiley warmth comes through winningly. Also, oddly enough, one side of the record has a good deal of reverb while the other does not. (I'm not sure if this is a characteristic of only this particular issue. It's a bit jarring to flip sides, and hard to imagine that the original was done this way on purpose. You'd think a reissue wouldn't introduce such an anomaly, but I'm sure such things happen. Has anyone else noticed this?) Anyway, it wouldn't be my first choice, though Will Friedwald places it very high in his book Jazz Singing. The only Connor I have is the aforementioned 2-disc 32 Jazz "Warm Cool," which draws from the Atlantic recordings. It was programmed by Connor in collaboration with Friedwald, and it's an excellent anthology. It includes a totally credible vocal version of Ornette's "Lonely Woman." I haven't felt the need to expand my holdings of Connor yet, but when that urge hits I suppose I'd start with the Bethlehems. The Gershwin Atlantic is tempting, too.

I agree with Adam's first assertion. Once you've seen a film on the big screen then a DVD or video can be a fine reminder. But if you've only seen something at home, then you can't truly evaluate it. Of course with the newer home theater set-ups, the image is more of a scale with the moviegoing past. Still, there's no substitute for a living, breathing audience (especially for comedy). I've been lucky enough to live in the Boston area for many years, within walking distance of Brookline's Coolidge Corner Theater, and Cambridge's Brattle Theater and Harvard Film Archive. Movie history Heaven. Sturges keeps growing over the years, despite his flaws (primarily an affection for but lack of ability with physical slapstick). He's perhaps the primary example of film as a verbal medium as well as a visual one. See him in a theater with an audience if you ever get the chance. Otherwise, just SEE him any way you can. My favorites are The Lady Eve and The Palm Beach Story, but almost everything he did was good-to-great, including stuff he just wrote but didn't direct.

brownie wrote: "Since Buster Keaton's name popped up here, anyone seen 'The Cameraman? Not sure it's on release now. I love the other Keaton classics, but 'The Cameraman' is so perfectly constructed and beautifully photographed. It is my Keaton favorite." I saw this on the big screen years ago. It's an excellent film and the last great Keaton. It's currently available on DVD as part of a Keaton at MGM 2-disc set. As for The Cameraman's perfect construction, it was used for years as a training film for MGM comedy production teams, explicitly as a model of perfect comic construction. Apparently it held this place at MGM well into the 1950s. Meanwhile, substantive author of this perfection, Keaton himself, was employed by MGM as not a director or comedy scenaist, but as a "consultant" and gag man for lame Red Skelton re-makes of his silent classics. Ah, Hollywood.

Has anyone ever made better period films than Keaton? The General, set in the Civil War era, looks like Matthew Brady photos in motion. And Our Hospitality, set even earlier, boasts glimpses of a rural Manhattan and an amazing early train journey. I have no hesitation in saying that these Keaton films are great American art. We see in Keaton's grace, humor, timing, sense of form, and intelligence exactly what it is that speaks to us in the great jazz players and composers works.

I second the Keaton endorsement. Great choice of favorites, Nate. The General is (deservedly) a perennial on top ten movies of all time lists, but Our Hospitality is an over-looked gem (love that train). Steamboat Bill, Jr., is a wonderful and under-rated film, too. And don't forget Sherlock, Jr., as technically innovative and philosophically provocative in its own time as folks say The Matrix is now. And Sherlock, Jr. still holds up magnificently 80 years on. How will The Matrix look ten years from now? Hell, silent era Keatons are among the best films ever, in any genre. The Marx Brothers were a great comedy act (well, at least Groucho and Harpo), but their films are not great as films. Keaton's are. Beautiful, timeless stuff. BLACK & WHITE FOREVER!

There's a Thin Man DVD box set coming out soon. Heads up for William Powell Fans (not to mention Myrna Loy lovers). I haven't seen the Criterion My Man Godfrey yet, but I hear it's an amazing restoration. I love the film, but every print I've ever seen has been very gray and washed out. Apparently the Criterion is better than most circulating theatrical prints. No surprise from this exemplary company. I second Berigan's hats off to Criterion for restoring a PD title this way. I have 16 Criterions. I got most of them used. I just scored a Criterion of the Maysles Brothers amazing documentary Grey Gardens for $8.

Excuse me for coming late to this conversation, but I just want to get this right. By "rip-off" you guys mean labels that steal masterings, rather than labels that issue stuff still under copyright in the U.S? Correct? Thus John R.T. Davies JSPs are kosher, while recent ones aren't? Even though it's the same company getting the money? I really like Davies' work, but have been holding off from buying ANY JSPs. I assume that Chronogical (sic) Classics does its own mastering. Definitive just reeks of rip-off, as does Lonehill. Proper, too, though I did buy the Woody Herman box used for $15. Hard to resist, as I had none of it.

Clusone Trio-Soft Lights and Sweet Music: that's a good 'un. Irving Berlin meets new Dutch swing! I'm glad I've already got a copy. Surprised to see the price for I Am an Indian--I thought that was pretty easy to find. The tough one is Rara Avis on Hat. I've got all the others though, as well as my memories. Saw them in '98 in a tiny lecture hall at MIT. One of the best shows ever.

Such Sweet Thunder is a great album, indeed. I'm listening to it again right now. It's even better than I remembered. This thread has inspired me to pull out ALL my Ellington Suites. Such sweet listening in store. Thanks, guys.

I agree that Hodges on "Half the Fun" is great, but would argue that it's more of a cameo for him than a showcase. That being said, it's a great piece, and Hodges plays with beautiful, smoldering restraint.

Monorails and Satellites is my favorite. Here's something I wrote about it a few years ago on another site: I don't play the piano, except in my dreams. And I mean that literally: sometimes, when I'm asleep, I dream that I'm playing the piano. And when I do, it sounds just like this Sun Ra record. So much so that I experienced a shock of recognition upon first playing this disc. Piquantly dissonant Ellingtonian note clusters struggling towards form and fitfully finding it; a species of stride with a dreamy deliquescence reminiscent of Dali's melting watch; a sidelong slipperiness of phrasing that brings to mind the impressionistic ballads of Andrew Hill or, again, Ellington. The previous reviewer found this recording too dissonant and abstract, and it's true that the first two tracks are among the disc's most daunting, but the more ballad-like numbers are quite accessible. There's even a relatively straightforward rendition of the standard Easy Street. This is one of Ra's few solo piano recordings and my nomination for the best. In fact, it's one of my favorite Ra albums period. (And you've got to love the classic cosmic cover art.)

In the late '90s my band had a song on a compilation CD of winners of Musician Magazine's Best Unsigned Band Contest. We also put out a CD on our own label, called It Must Be Jelly (the label, not the CD). The CD was called "File Under: Popadelic Funk'n'Roll." We sold it at gigs and online. We also made a video that was shown on a Swedish digital interactive television network (a friend ran the station). If you liked a video you could order the CD by clicking your remote. We actually sold a few in Sweden that way! Without airplay or press, the only way a buyer could have known about us was through seeing the video the 8 or 9 times it was shown at off-peak hours. I have this fantasy scenario in my mind of a drunken, suicidal Swede catching us in the wee small hours and finding a new reason to live, then buying the CD as a memento. I can dream, can't I?

I've been a big fan of The Queen's Suite since buying the LP back in the early '80s. "The Single Petal of a Rose" is amazing. So beautiful. But my favorite is probably Such Sweet Thunder. I LOVE the swaggering title tune, and Strayhorn's "The Star-Crossed Lovers" is one of his finest Hodges showcases. The idea of translating sonnet form into musical form is cool, too. Too bad Phil Schaap F'd up on the CD version. Maybe this has already been covered elsewhere on the board, but in his notes to the CD, Bill Berry writes of the tune "Up and Down, Up and Down (I Will Lead Them Up and Down)" "At the end, Terry's trumpet pronounces Puck's famous quotation from A Midsummer Night's Dream: 'Lord what fools these mortals be.' " What we hear on the CD, unfortunately, is an alternate take with a different ending. As usual with Schaap there's a boatload of alternates on the disc--but we don't get the take that the liner notes on BOTH the LP and CD refer to. It's hard to imagine that he was unacquainted with the original; but what other explanation is there for leaving off one of the most distinctive moments in the suite? I'm glad I held on to my vinyl. I only recently picked up Latin American Suite and The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse. I'm not sure what took me so long. I'm enjoying them both. (I appreciate JSngry's observations about Eclipse--right on the money.)