king ubu

Mulatu Astatke last night, at Moods in Zurich, Switzerland (my home town ... well not quite, but I grew up 25 km outside of it) -- great that Alexander Hawkins (who's playing piano and keys) had me put on the guest list (almost didn't work out), as some 80 minutes before the concert, there were huge queues already and it was so sold out, they had to send people away again! Either way, the line up was: Mulatu Astatke (vib, perc, wurlitzer), Byron Wallen (t), James Arben (ts, fl), Alexander Hawkins (p, keys), Danny Keane (cello), Neil Charles (b), Tom Skinner (d), Richard Olatunde Baker (perc). Guess Astatke himself was really the weakest link of a fantastic band that was really tight from the git-go although it took two or three tunes for the room to really start moving. They did one continuous set that turned out to be really long (didn't check the time, but it must have been around 100 minutes) and by the end, the place was cooking. I enjoyed the solo contributions by all the guys a lot, most notably Wallen on trumpet (he had several spots) and Danny Keane on cello. Arben was terrific on tenor, for one long solo he built and built and ended up kinda chanelling the great Gétatchèw Mèkurya. Alex had just one real piano solo but he made the most out of it, later on he was heard prominently on keys (they should have brought in a real B3, but the stage was crowded already). The rhythms by all were really tight, not just the hook-up of Charles/Skinner/Baker (with the cello meshing in, too), but the keys and vibes and horns as well. So I ended up enjoying it as much for the group effort it was as for the contributions by each of the musicians on stage. Had another chat with Alex afterwards and he kindly signed some CDs for me, too (and had Charles and Skinner sign the trio disc from last year, which I like a lot ... the other one I brought along is maybe my favourite of his, the solo album "Song Singular").

As it's (at least in my case) only Org that creates this issue (still right now, btw), I have a hard time believing the problem being on the end of the various users experiencing it. But it's no biggie, refreshing (F5) does the trick.

Same here several times throughout the day. F5 would do the trick.

Yes, I have "Figure and Spirit" on CD as well - mighty fine one!

You can also try it with a camera if you have a smartphone or any other device ... if the light is good and you can figure out some angle that works without too much reflection and distortion, it can turn out pretty decent.

So anyone knows if this is Left Bank Jazz Society material or not?

Sorry, but I think it looks like utter shit.

Thanks, MG! (And I know, Jim and Mike, I know ... still, there's after all quite some funk and some butts around in this world, and funds and time are limited alas, so funky butt wants to know ) at MG: type : and then tup (no space in between), and the emoticon is still there:

so this IS a Left Bank recording? if Uptown has access to these treasures, that would be mighty cool indeed!

please do comment!

Hm, Crystal Ballroom = Famous Ballroom? Or was that another venue the Left Bank Jazz Society organized concerts at? It was my first impulse too, to state just this, but then I don't know the history of LBJS that well and am not aware of the venues in Baltimore etc.

don't think so - at least not via amazon ... but you can get them fairly cheap at jazzmessenger's: http://www.jazzmessengers.com/en/98989898/complete-catalog-of-the-label-uptown?format=CD_

that was just what I thought

WHOA-ed too! ... next up please someone find decent-sounding versions of those KD w/Red (or Fathead) airchecks!

Might be interested in some of these (Cobb, Sims, Rowles/Mraz, Waldron ...) - any recommendations? Actually the Don Friedman, too ... I have two of his Progressive albums on CD, "Hot Pepper and Knepper" and the one with the mug-shot cover.

Nice! Thanks for sharing!

Yeah, looks horrible indeed.

Yeah, please do tell us more, Allen!

Thanks - glad some bother to read it Next up: Mulatu Astatke on Saturday night, again with Alex on keys! Uploading pics is quite easy - the bigger part is storing them somewhere first (I'm using photobucket), then you just have to get the URL from where the pic is stored and use the "Insert other media" button, pick "Insert image from URL" and paste that URL there.

had a terrific concert weekend ... already wrote up at length in german here for those that are interested ... shorter english version: Decoy & Evan Parker - Novara (Italy) - January 30, 2016 Left Zurich in the mists, just to arrive in the even thicker mist of northern Italy's rice region - had a stroll through the lovely centre of the town in the afternoon and after pizza and a couple of beers walked out to the odd place the concert was scheduled in ... glad to see the Leslie was already turning when I got there, and that ol' hammond organ looked great indeed! Later on, warm greetings from Alex before the concert, and of course I was looking foward a lot to hearing this. It was obviously not the first time that these guys met, but it was the first time they played in this very constellation. BAM and they're off! The quartet played a very intense, mostly pretty dense long set, energy levels were high from the git-go, the free grooves Edwards and Noble locked into or chugged along jaggedly, without ever imposing anything on the others, were quite amazing, and obviously Mr. Parker dug the wealth of offers and possibilities opened up by the band - and he dug in deeply. He stuck to tenor (Mr. Noble later told me that he'd only take one instrument when he's traveling since it got so complicated), and I just love his sound on tenor, it's really gorgeous! And Alex' organ playing with Decoy is quite something - far removed from any jazz organ clichés, often sounding more like some old analogue synthesizer I thought, yet still making very good use of the power the organ has to offer. In the second half of the continuous set, there was this part where it sounded to me like Parker was channeling Coltrane - a mix of "sheets of sound" and lose-but-not-free early 1965, that's how it sounded to my ears ... and of course it was still all Evan Parker. As a listener, it actually took me 10 to 15 minutes (I guess - I lost any feeling for time) to get adjusted to the music, to deal with its richness, to kind of figure out how to listen, what to pay attention to etc - there was simply too much music to pay attention to all in detail, but that made it all the more powerful and impressive. After the concert - they closed with a great encore, maintaining the energy level, it was clear that they were here to play! - I hat chats with Edwards and at some length with Noble, very interesting at that (that's Edwards, Corrado who's one of the organisers, me, and Parker). Then I was summoned ( ) to join the gang for drinks, shook hands with Evan Parker as well, and had a lengthy chat with Alex at the bar we ended up. They were happy having their negronis (I needed a large beer first, at the venue, there was water only for the musicians, and it was packed and stuffy). I ended up in my hotel room at 2 a.m., set the alarm clock for 7 and tried catching some sleep ... up again way too early (luckily the hotel was just across the railway station). My head was throbbing, I bought a wrong train ticked (first class ... not even sure there'd have been any first class coaches) and forgot to validate it, too - luckily there was no one checking tickets. I played Rubinstein's great recording of Mozart's piano concerto KV 491 with Krips conducting - the train ride was measured to be just long enough. Off at Milano Centrale, the impressive neo-classical/fascist main train station in Milan (have a look at it here). Once in Milan, I had two hours, so I took a walk again, first into the centre, walking past all the homeless sleeping in front of the large and ugly business buildings. Then took a detour passing La Scala, the dome, the famous Galeria Vittorio Emanuele II etc, finally ending up at Teatro Manzoni, where at 11 a.m. the Muhal Richard Abrams Quintet was scheduled to play. There was a nice surprise regarding the line-up, with Leonard Jones (instead of Brad Jones) on bass. The others were Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet), Bryan Carrott (vibes), Reggie Nicholson (drums), and of course Abrams on piano. The music was totally different from the one the night before, of course. Again, they did one long set and another fine encore - they seemed very focused. There was this typical of Chicago jazz quality of opening up spaces, letting things gradually evolve and waiting what was going to happen. More like options opened rather than options used - some of them were used of course, but it was most fascinating to observe which ones, what turns the performance took etc. All the musicians had their solo spots, and one of the most beautiful moments happened when after Leonard Jones' bass solo - deep, full-bodied, reverberating sound - the master joined in on piano again. But in the end, Finlayson (without ever showing off) and Carrott were the main attractions as soloists, and I might have enjoyed hearing a bit more by Abrams himself. On the other hand, no matter who was actually soloing, it all bore the handwriting of the leader of the group. For the encore, they showed up one by one, Carrott starting off just playing with his four sticks in the air and then gradually approaching his vibes from its sides, finally ending up the keys (or whatever these plates are called). Then I had some antipasti with Corrado (the guy on both pics above) and some of his friends, but had to quit before they started ordering main dishes as I had an appointment with Claudio Fasoli, which turned out very nice and interesting indeed - we switched some of his albums (I'd been in touch a few weeks back about a bronzed/semi-unplayable disc of his, "Land", with Kenny Wheeler and JF Jenny Clark, then managed to obtain a perfect copy from another guy in Germany and created another copy for Mr. Fasoli, which he happily accepted - he had sent me his best copy of the album before, but it turned out to be quite similar to the two I already had ...) - either way, I asked him some questions (how did he end up playing jazz and the like) and it was wonderful to see how someone his age and of his pedigree can still be so much of a fan and so enthusiast about all things jazz! He really adores Lee Konitz, and hearing Lee, after having gotten acquainted with NO and Chicago trad jazz initially, was what prompted him to become a jazz musician himself. He also mentioned that he, as well as Franco d'Andrea and Enrico Rava (roughly the same age, all three) were entirely self-taught, and that he actually plays without any pressure on teeth and lip ... no idea how that would work, but the results he gets prove him right, that's for sure! So yeah, that's the *short* version ... I get carried away. As I couldn't take any useful pictures from my seat at the MRA concert, here's one more from Decoy & Parker:

and why under "artists" when it's about oguns? seriously: great stuff!

It was also Universal that licensed those (mostly) somewhat more adventurous albums to Promising Music. And Edel shut that door -- offering those "Spiegel Edition" reissues and all them downloads instead ... Spiegel, for those that don't know, is a German news magazine, and German press is trying to generate some revenue by selling books, music editions, furniture, nonsense, lifestyle, happiness, cars, luxury holiday trips etc pp)

Yeah. Different times, different musics, different musicians, different approaches -- if you (not as in: "you, Mr. Sangrey"!) want to make value judgements about this, better do your homework or you risk coming across as pretty opinionated. Fact: that someone can be a member of this board for a decade and not be aware of Vijay Iyer also says something about this very board of course. This is one of those "jazz in print"-topics that can drag you down if you don't watch out ... not that I'm the biggest Iyer fan, far from really, saw his trio live, saw him in duo with Rudresh Mahanthappa - and no, Iyer is definitely not "loose" in many ways. But his most recent trio album (ugh, it's on ECM! ) got me interested again, I enjoy it quite some, no matter if it turns to 20c classical music or to Robert Hood. Not sure if Iyer is on the way to get over the "learned" thing (that is probably connected to the "not loose" thing in some respects) or not, but I guess I'll keep watching - and listening - with some interest.

Those boxes - George Duke, Art Van Damme, Eugen Cicero, Herbolzheimer, Shearing, Francy Boland, Baden Powell (the last two just 2CD sets), and though not MPS material but very similar looking the box of Doldinger's early recordings - were all done when MPS was part of Universal (which ended with the latest merger, the big gulp that took in EMI -- MPS was one of the labels that had to be "divested" or whatever that's called ... the only box Edel has done, to my knowledge, is the Peterson box - expensive vinyl for a dying clientele I guess (I actually wonder if any of those in for *that* ride are still alive ... I mean those are some fine enough albums, but I can't really imagine many folks paying serious money). Either way, I'm not holding my breath for a Solal box, rather I just pick up whatever vinyl I can, and then help myself to some more (I have all of those sets btw, except for the Herbolzheimer and Shearings - I guess none of them are really essential, maybe the Baden Powell is if you into Brasilian music, but all of them are pretty nice, and the Duke is loads of fun!)