Rosco

Thank you everyone!!! Am enjoying a cold beer, a newly purchased Tubby Hayes CD and trying to figure out how to use this digital camera my folks bought me!

Curb Your Enthusiasm S1-3 Seinfeld S1-4 (Just bought S4!) Simpsons S1-5 Futurama S1-4 Family Guy S1-3 Frasier S1-3 The box of Larry Sanders S1 hasn't been released here in the UK so far (and no sign of it either). All we got here was a crappy 'best of' compilation. Bah!

Aw, don't make me choose!!! Had to go with Transition in the end, largely because it features 'Dear Lord', one of the most sheerly beautiful of Coltrane's compositions and a rare oasis of reflective calm in the turbulence of the post-Love Supreme period. Rest of the album's great too. But I wouldn't want to be without any of these.

All good advice... As someone who's been working at Giant Steps (for far too long!) I can only echo what's already been said and add a couple of thoughts... Get to grips with the key centers first, solo and out of tempo, getting the feel of changing between them under your fingers and into your muscle memory. Remember a large part of the difficulty in Giant Steps (especially for horn players) is that the three keys are major third apart (an augmented triad), resulting in very few common tones. The good news is there are basically only four permutations of this: B/ G/ Eb C/ Ab/ E C#/ A/ F D/ Bb/ F# It's also instructive (I've found) to follow through Coltrane's evolution of this idea. He started out using this sequence as an 'outside' substitution over a ii-V-I and he applied it to standard tunes such as Body and Soul and But Not For Me. Check out the 1958 version of 'Limehouse Blues' with Cannonball Adderley where he superimposes it over the chords while the rhythm section stay where they are. Very tasty. 'Countdown' is of course just Miles' 'Tune Up' with these substitutions in place of the ii-V-Is (bars 14-15 are practically identical still), 'Satellite' is 'How High the Moon'; '26-2' is 'Confirmation', etc... While agreeing (as usual) with JSngry's post, i have to say I don't think there's anything wrong with being mathematical with these changes in the privacy of your own practice room. One of the things about setting yourself a challange like this is to help increase your mental and physical agility and responses, to shorten the distance from written music to brain and from brain to fingers. I often like to play Steps for a while and then follow it up with a gentle, tender ballad, a blues or a simple modal piece. Somehow the very challange of making those changes sharpens your game. Being mathematical on the bandstand is something else of course. Sometimes you just have to play these things for a looooong time before you can actually make music with it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1510894,00.html

Me either! Bout time too... much of this stuff has been unavailable in the UK for years (if it ever was). Looking forward to the Blue Mitchell and the Jimmy Smith. Don't know much about the Leo Parker... any opinions on it?

Sonny Bono Bono The Edge

Also June 21: 1974 (& June 22): John Abercrombie: Timeless (ECM) 1989: Evan Parker: Conic Sections (Ah Um)

Just noticed this on the ESP website: ESP has begun to convert its catalog to surround sound dvd, utilizing a proprietary system called SONATURE (www.sonature.com). The first titles to become available on dvd will be Albert Ayler (Spiritual Unity, Bells, Spirits Rejoice, and a previously unissued cd and dvd of the concert at the Maeght Foundation), and Sun Ra's Heliocentric Worlds vols 1 and 2, Nothing Is, and previously unissued material. Patty Waters and the Pearls Before Swine (both One Nation Underground and Balaklava) will also be converted to surround sound. No other details of these or regular CD reissues that I could see... Don't know how regularly they update the site though.

Listening to one of the discs right now! Couldn't agree more...

Alger Hiss Richard Nixon Mark Felt

David Letterman Mike Post Terence Stamp

They've just released that on DVD too... fine, fine stuff.

More June 20th... 1965: Duke Ellington session for RCA Victor 1968: Miles Davis records two tracks for Filles de Kilimanjaro 1970: The final night of Miles at Fillmore 1973: Marion McPartland Plays the Music of Alec Wilder (Jazz Alliance) 1996: Steve Turre- Steve Turre (Verve) and on a blues tip, 1937: Robert Johnson is recorded in Dallas

I thought this was a great documentary. Ian Carr had a hand in its making and although there's an element of the hero-worship that some people have criticized his biography for (not a problem for me!) he understands the various phases of Miles' career as well as anyone. The concert footage was taken from (if memory serves) a gig at the Berlin Philharmonie in November '69; I have it on tape and can confirm it was a doozy. I don't know about its availability outside the UK but Eagle Vision released a DVD last year, 'Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue' which is worth seeking out (don't let the opportunistic title put you off). It's a two hour long documentary chronicling Miles first electric period with the usual array of talking heads and includes- uniterrupted- the entire 38 minute set from the 1970 Isle of Wight festival with Gary Bartz, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett and Airto Moreira (who seems to be... uh... *way* into the spirit of the occasion ). Real good stuff. Be warned: Stanley Crouch pops up to grind an axe or two but not enough to spoil things. There's also some extra interview footage and a DVD Rom discography; a nice package.

Oh I'm sure. It reads like a work of fiction and I'm sure anyone with a handle on Bird takes it as such. I certainly wasn't vouching for the probilty of the book or its author. Like I said, HEFTY dollop. What was the deal with Russell anyway? He was in a position to write something more substantial than a dime-store jazz novella.

I enjoyed Ross Russell's Bird Lives although it is one of those books that (like Miles' autobiography) ought to be taken with a hefty dollop of salt. Pulp fiction with saxophones but entertaining nonetheless. The great thing about these threads is being reminded of things you meant to get round to. I've just dug out Scott DeVeaux's book The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. I was totally absorbed by it on reading it about five years ago and I think it's due for a re-read.

Interesting to read the less than enthusiastic comments re: Lift Every Voice. The DVD has the same band and it's really quite good. It was going cheap so I may still pick it up, caveats noted. He sells real estate? Didn't know that. The idea of Charles Lloyd trying to sell me a house is too surreal to contemplate.

also June 17 1931: Duke Ellington records two titles for Victor 1970: The first of the four dates (supporting Laura Nyro!) at the Fillmore East that produced Miles Davis at Fillmore (Columbia) 1979: Junior Cook: Senior Cookin' (Muse) And while dating Sun Ra sessions is an inexact science at best, John Szwed has cited this date in 1960 for some of the tracks from Intersellar Low Ways, We Travel the Spaceways and the Singles collection.

Oh yeah, Off the Wall's still a great pop album; some of the Jackson's stuff too. Possibly not as timeless as the fall of the Berlin Wall, but...

Yeah, we don't have that wacky constitution thing you guys have!

Alright you got me... that remark was leaning towards facetious. However, the law of habeas corpus is not universal. The European corpus juris legal system doesn't grant many of the same rights that US citizens would take for granted. Here in the UK (where we don't have a Bill of Rights, thanks for asking) our government, eager to cozy up to Europe, has been making noises about introducing the corpus juris system, or elements of it (by the back door, like all their Euro legislation). Not a system I would want to see I'll grant you, but I don't think it's entirely unfair to speculate how Jackson would have fared under that system, however flippantly I might have worded it. I stand by the rest of it though. I really feel like I've spent waaaaay too much time talking about this.

That's amazing... and there's a lot of other great stuff on there too. I can't believe I hadn't checked this site out until now. Anybody got any idea where the pieces with Coltrane originate? And will we ever get to hear the Library of Congress recordings with Trane from Carnegie Hall?

It's as good as Gould!

ECM... Eric Clapton Music