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felser

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Posts posted by felser

  1. The first Jarrett I ever heard and ever owned. I had so little money back then as a college kid, and the Columbia 2 LP sets for the price of one were very attractive to me. Very well rounded set, you sort of get all the Keith Jarrett's in one on this. Definitely worth owning. From memory, the 2-CD reissue sounds great.

  2. Felser, I'll be interested to hear your opinions of 5, Six and Seven if you got them.

    I have Six on now and it sounds great - the live stuff especially is night and day from the previous releases of this. Will play Seven next. Deep Discount CD messed up and didn't send me 5, so I won't get it for awhile, but will report through how it sounds when I do. BTW, re: Six - has there ever been a more purely exciting piece of music than "Stanley Stamps Gibbon Album"? (rhetorical question, folks)

    Seven sounds pretty great too, big upgrade. Four is the most stunning to me, though.

  3. Felser, I'll be interested to hear your opinions of 5, Six and Seven if you got them.

    I have Six on now and it sounds great - the live stuff especially is night and day from the previous releases of this. Will play Seven next. Deep Discount CD messed up and didn't send me 5, so I won't get it for awhile, but will report through how it sounds when I do. BTW, re: Six - has there ever been a more purely exciting piece of music than "Stanley Stamps Gibbon Album"? (rhetorical question, folks)

  4. I just got them, have only listened all the way through on Fourth, which sounds wonderful, a stunning upgrade. I took a quick listen on Third, and it still doesn't sound very good.

    'Third' still sounds really bad, and the bonus CD of BBC cuts (originally available as a separate CD. 'Live at the Proms') sound even worse. On the other hand, you get 3 LP's worth of great music, plus wonderful notes and photos for $10.

  5. dan gold flipped my dip for calling collectables POS in another thread but come on....there's no love or tenderness being put into their releases (or intelligent thought, for that matter).

    Agreed Colletables is often maddening (the bizarre pairings of unrelated Atlantic albums come to mind - the Jack Wilson album paired with the Frances Wayne album is my "favorite"), yet I'll give them some props for putting some of this stuff out at all, rockwise as well as jazzwise. And their sound has gotten a lot better over the years. I'm very thankful indeed for the Sugarloaf twofer, the Pacific Gas and Electric twofer, the first New York Rock 'n' Roll Ensemble album, the John Lewis twofers, the Charles Lloyd reissues, etc.

  6. This 1998 session on ENJA is one of the few of the last 25 years I consider truly great. Burton to me is criminally underregarded, and his playing here is on fire even more than usual. I will sign out with the AMG review by Michael Nastos, which expresses thoughts on this CD more eloquently than I could (I don't have phrases like "bituminous strokes of swing" in my arsenal. Calling my friend Nate Dorward!):

    Intensity, pride, and passion are the earmarks for the modern mainstream jazz quartet co-led by tenor saxophnist Burton and drummer McPherson. They display a fervor that is consistently buoyed by the insistent pianistics of James Hurt, while bassist Yosuke Inoue stokes the fire with bituminous strokes of swing and steadying brute force. Each of these six compositions allow each member to stretch out and dig in, and they have a definite center from which to draw upon. Many will be reminded of the classic John Coltrane quartet from their Impulse recordings: slightly on the edge, forever moving forward. "Nebulai" is set up by a probing ostinato bass sets, Hurt's roaring piano, and Burton's bridge workout, which reflects Coltrane's energy, but sports Burton's voice. In 6/8, the title track over is 16 minutes and uses a repeated modal piano line and a bowed bass solo, churning tick-tock drumming, and a four note bassline, setting up extended tenor and piano excursions, and a hard bop second half where Burton and Hurt bubble over. That same crescendoing capsized boil also crops up on the lithe Afro-Cuban danza "Punta Lullaby." There's also a spirit ballad for "Dad," with Burton far from tame or languid, a hip, modern bossa "Forbidden Fruit" in beats of seven, and the most consistently hard swinger "The Last Laugh." If concentrated doses of highly motivated, nitro fueled expressiveness appeals to you, this album and band should more than adequately fill the bill, as Burton, McPherson, and Hurt emerge as individualists and powerful purveyors of this thoroughly modern milleu.

  7. It has been known for many years that the master tapes to Third are lost, only poor later generation copies are around - and the recording was pretty crappy to start with.

    As to the others, I haven't heard, but the Japanese DSD versions from last year were excellent, so I doubt these could be worse.

    I just got them, have only listened all the way through on Fourth, which sounds wonderful, a stunning upgrade. I took a quick listen on Third, and it still doesn't sound very good.

  8. He certainly wasn't part of the reactionary crowd who referred to Trane as "anti-jazz."

    I forget the guy's name, but the first jazz criticism book I ever read, in the early 70's from my local public library, was some British guy who considered Coltrane and the Miles Davis Quintent with Hancock/Carter/Williams to be "anti-jazz". It was just awful stuff to read, as 'A Love Supreme' brought me into the jazz world.

  9. Lots of bulls**t & pontificating in this thread.

    FWIW, I started listening to "jazz" 50+ years ago.

    Williams & others (Hentoff, Max Harrison & yes, Ralph J. Gleason among others) were very helpful in providing guideposts.

    Anyone remember the original Jazz Review magazine?

    I also recall that Williams was among the first to "boost" attention to Ornette Coleman.

    Good enough for me.

    We all have our "blind spots".

    Coupla thoughts on this.

    1 - Often, the only thing that makes another person's opinon "bulls**t" is that it disagrees with ours. These are some incredibly knowledgeable guys you're dissing here. One of the reasons I come to this site is to read their "pontifications".

    2 - 1961 Coltrane is a pretty huge blind spot for a jazz critic. I don't see a way to overlook or trivialize that.

    And I don't see championing Ornette, admirable as that may be, as cancelling it out.

  10. Don't forget to buy the Blakey at Birdland Vol 1 & 2 discs. Essential brownie. It's all on the BN/PJ set, it's just a matter of whether or not you want the RVGs.

    I had both for a while and solid the "Complete" set - the Birdland RVG discs sound MUCH better.

    That's what I did too, for what it's worth.

    So did I. The Birdlands, the JJ Johnson CD, the Blue Note Memorial, and the Pacific Jazz, all RVG's, and you have everything on the box set. Nice artwork and book on the box set, and it's slightly cheaper than the five individual CD's, but the sound difference on some of the RVG stuff and the retrospective notes and additional photography more than make up the difference.

  11. i'm actually not sure if the JOS in question is on this Russian Fed label but Felser, here's a link to

    Lilith (Russian Federation)

    yeah, the Flanders is excellent, rather diff than Blues Project howev-- can't remember right this second which New York studio heavy plays gtr on-- maybe Bruce Langhorne even? once upon a time i actually had that reunion BP side bc it had one (or two?) Tommy songs. there's also a Flanders cameo in...The Trip? back when Jack Nicholson an enjoyable actor/writer, not an overacting (s)ham act (sorry soap opera fans).

    anyway, i've had the Verve Forecast vinyl for ages; don't miss-- if you like Dylan/Cohen at all (Dylan's Modern Times is still dogshit btw; bring back The Tramp!!) don't miss Carl Ogelsby, two sides on Vangurd. First is among handful of best ever Am. folk-rock sides, second a little more country inflected but still estimable. Then he disappeared (or quit music entirely.)

    edc

    Clem, totally agree with you on Jack Nicholson's acting and on 'Modern Times'. I like 60's Dylan but not Leonard Cohen (like his writing, can't hack his singing or the production on that first, famous Columbia album), so not sure where that leaves me on Carl Ogelsby. Is "The Trip" the movie that Electric Flag did the soundtrack for?

  12. w/o doubling back to make sure, it's actually a lot more, how you say, "curious" than that John. this "Russian Federation" label has an increasingly interesting, eclectic line of reissues that are, how you say, "extremely unlikely" to really be emanating from Russia. the Tommy Flanders side they also reissued (first time on cd) is long-time pastoral folk-psyche fave of mine... others were glad to see some non-Japanese issue of No New York etc etc.

    Zaebis'!!

    edc

    Tommy Flanders was the original lead singer of the Blues Project before Al Kooper took over that role also. That album would be nice to hear!

  13. My thoughts exactly. I enjoyed both MM albums when they came out, but I do not rate them as highly as a number of other Canterbury albums.

    Agreed there. The Caravan albums up through 'Cunning Stunts' have some amazing tracks on them.

    mine, too; maybe even closer to Soft Machine Vol 2 than to the Wyatt Solo stuff i know, liked it but haven't listened in a while

    Totally agree. Wyatt's solo stuff didn't have the instrumental approach that the first two Soft Machine albums did, and those two albums (and the great "Moon In June" on 'Third') gave Wyatt an opportunity to express himself which he lost afterwards when they became strictly a (great, unique) jazz fusion group. The MM albums, while different than Soft Machine, gave room for the soloists in ways the Wyatt solo albums didn't.

  14. So did any buy/hear these yet? What's the verdict??

    Slightly off topic - any thoughts about Matching Mole?

    I ordered them from deepdiscount.com a while ago, haven't received them yet. Under $10 each and free shipping from there. Matching Mole was interesting at times, a vehicle for Robert Wyatt's whimsy to be more out front than Soft Machine became. I prefer Soft Machine, though.

  15. Proble with that is there are tons of GREAT sessions from that period still not properly reissued. McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Ron Carter, Pharoah Sanders, many others did their best work during that period.

    So if more of that stuff comes out I guess the series will be justified.

    Agreed, but the Henderson may be an anomoly, as everything else in the first batch is just the same ole same ole, with another four bit increment. There are a lot of Milestone gems that have never seen (at least domestic) CD release. Riverside is pretty well tapped out, I think, except for the occasional obscurity.

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