king ubu

bumping this up again - discussions have barely started yet, so there's plenty of time to still join in! this also goes as an alert to those who got my spam PM without asking for the links - still plenty of time to download the files and give the music a listen, I'd enjoy any additional participants! also if anyone still hasn't figured out how to get the effing links to work or how to unpack these darnded rar-files, let me know and I will help you!

Cleveland made 4 lps for Emarcy. All 4 LPs are included in the Lonehill double CD. That reissue even includes a track ('Our Love is Here To Stay') that was not on any of the LPs but first appeared on the Mercury VSOP 4LPs box in Japan Yeah, you see, I'm trying so hard to stay away from the evil Lonehill that I didn't even know how many albums it contained. I assume brownie, that "Our Love is Here to Say" is the track included as a bonus on the VEE edition of "Introducing"?

My "Rara Avis" and "Root of the Problem" hatOLOGY discs have already arrived. Gave the Clusone a spin and love it as much as I did last time (had it on CDR, copied from a library that had a copy). About the Potlatch sale, check out this post @ my blog with short reviews and look for the next post in an hour or so with some samples from these 8 discs! (crappy 128 kbs samples - I want people to buy the actual discs!)

The Cleveland can be had on a 2CD Lonehill "complete" set, in case you're interested in that... (I have the VEE, don't have the Lonehill, but it's still tempting to get the other two albums...)

Happy Birthday!

I love the Ilori and enjoy the Sabu as well! Great indeed to have some Arsenio Rodriguez... I know some of his tunes but don't have anything else with him.

First one that came to mind was the Bohemia material with Mobley, but Golson is terrific on "Moanin'" and of course there's "Free for All" and the Blakey/Monk album with great Griffin!

Happy Birthday!

I assume you all are aware that Potlatch has another June sale going on now... ordered five more, as if I need them... and gave all the ones I have a spin again - will do a little write-up and add some samples soon on my blog, in case you're interested! The Lazro/Zingaro duo, "Hauts plateaux", is about to go OOP - act quick, it might be the best of them all! It's fantastic, to say the least! Also that site here: www.discplus.ch, in fact does deliver the OOP hatOLOGY discs I mentioned in that post on my blog - I got "Rara Avis" and "Root of the Problem" yesterday (along with 10 or 12 other hatO discs, all for that tiny sweet price)!

thanks a lot for the headers, I already put one in use!

Guy I'm not sure there... avantgarde is not avantgarde any longer if it's 30 or 40 years old. It may be historically considered as avantgarde still, but hey, just if the public didn't catch up doesn't mean Brötzmann is still avantgarde - he's doing his schtick for too long now...

Jackie is most definitely stretching the boundaries of hard bop on several of the BN recordings, most notably Destination Out and the recording with Ornette, New and Old Gospel. This is the standard view of Jackie. As Steve Huey writes in his review of 1962's "Let Freedom Ring" "Jackie McLean had always been a highly emotional soloist, so it makes sense that he was one of the first hard bop veterans to find a new voice in the burning intensity of jazz's emerging avant-garde. McLean had previously experimented with Coltrane's angular modes and scales and Ornette's concept of chordal freedom...." So, whatever label it is called, several of Jackie's blue note recordings are good recommendations for someone who has expressed an interest in exploring music beyond hard bop. Yeah, sure he's stretching boundaries of hardbop, nothing I ever would deny! (And mind me, I love Jackie's BN output, have all or most of it!) But Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" had stretched hardbop limits, too, so did "Milestones" already. And how about Lennie Tristano's stuff? Nothing new under the sun in stretching the boundaries of hardbop - even more so as hardbop is very formulaic music that can be very tiring to listen if you're in for a slightly more adventurous and open-minded ride (that's my opinion, of course)! Mingus was stretching boundaries of hardbop as early as the late 40s I guess, but we can also agree on "Pithecantropus Erectus" (1956 - of course McLean is there again). Also, that's something else I find interesting: much of this boundary-stretching music I find much more "soulful" than stuff subsumed under the label "soul jazz" (Mingus prime example, but also things on Archie Shepp's early Impulse albums have that quality - nothing against "soul jazz", although I find the label about as stupid as "free jazz", this here being one of the main reasons).

The absolute best! Thanks, good to hear that! Wow, I even got a shipping confirmation over night - not something you usually get from marketplace sellers, do you!?

speaking vocalion, there's also this great one:

had some sort of nightmare last night... a torn in two pieces package from Mosaic lying in my mailbox... ouch! hope this is not a bad omen about my Roach set which is still trying to find its way here!

yes, that's true... it was more the kind of talk that happened after the initial question that started annoying me a bit... but for now I'll take a bow...

The trumpet w/sax mouthpiece can be seen here, don't know what the third thing is...

Harris is one the forgotten/ignored greats. Not saying he was underrated, I don't care much for that concept - rather he was taken as kind of gimmick too often, it seems... all of the Atlantic albums I've got so far (on CD, that is) are fine or better, and he truly had his own sound, even to an extent on the electric tenor. Lon, you remember correctly. There's a good example on this Enja disc: http://www.jazzrecords.com/enja/7079.htm And this disc also has his fantastic solo intro to "Funkaroma" to start things off - a great album!

Both Koch and Collectables licensed the Weston from Atlantic. I'm pretty sure Atlantic supplied both with the same transfer. Collectables earned a bad reputation (for sound) in the early days but that has changed in the last few years. Their packaging has not improved at the same rate. Ah, ok. I thought that Koch would have done the mastering themselves... My collection still isn't big on Collectables, but there's lots of stuff there that would be nice to have, eventually!

Chuck, how come that? Is Collectables a rip-off organisation, too? They have an extremely cheapy look anyway, I never liked them, even though they may be reputable... of course they have a lots of good albums available, but then the best of them have been on CD on better-looking labels, no?

I've never been there (or to any of the Americas at all), but knowing this site here, I think there should be loads of interesting things going on there! http://www.bayimproviser.com/

The Koch CD has the same cover - I assume it's preferrable over the Collectables (I didn't even know it came out on that label as well!)

Yeah, ok, the date with Rivers most notably I guess - you're right there (I have just - after Hill's death - listened again to his four earliest BN albums and they're not the kind of music I'd call "free", but they're difficult and complex, yet in their own darkish way beautiful and very, very rewarding, for me). But neither "Out to Lunch" nor "Point of Departure" are free jazz records! Not that I bother much about the labelling, but I find it a bit astonishing how narrow-minded the examples/recommendations are here. Maybe something by the Art Ensemble could quite possibly be more instantly grabbing for a non-free-listener than a complex, complicated thing from Hill... and Archie Shepp's very tradition-minded albums are great and swinging affairs ("Mama Too Tight", for instance, one of his very best).

now give us a breat folks - neither Jackie McLean nor Andrew Hill ever did free jazz... maybe Jackie on occassion, but hell, what is free jazz anyway - no one here seems to know... must be one of the most stoopidest ever labels invented! Ask mmilovan for instances of Prez going free... what is free? - no tonality? - no fixed beat? - no form? - no structure? (Cecil has that, lots of it!) - no references to "jazz tradition"? all of just one of these? you'll hardly find music that gets rid of all of these ingredients, unless you delve into (euro) free improv/avant stuff... but just because McLean intones a bit weird (idionsyncrasy is not equal to free) or because Hill uses highly complex forms for his tunes and Ornette does not use repeating structures for his tunes, it's not all free... what is the first "free jazz" anyway? To be honest, Ornette's album of the same title does not sound free at all to me... much too neatly arranged (even if on the spot), fixed beat, some kind of tonal feeling (Ornette goes back to the blues much of the time anyway, at least on his early stuff on Atlantic). How about the Mingus group of April 1964 with Dolphy and Cliff Jordan? How about Jaki Byard? What then with Shepp? It's all so much related to what came before and to concepts used in "inside" playing, I really think the label isn't of much use. Maybe if we look elsewhere? Art Ensemble, NY Loft stuff, Wadada? I don't know an answer, but I just find it weird that names like Jackie Mac's keep popping up here when the talk is about (what the f*ck ever it is) "free jazz". Just open your ears (and minds! AND souls!) wide and relax and listen!