king ubu

John, "Drift" is the only Blake disc I have heard, but I really like it: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/pgblake/mblake/drift.html ubu

I have to admit Mike, my comments about the first two tracks may sound a bit more positive on paper (well, on the screen) than what I actually felt, but I strive for the positive, usually, and try to be open for as different music as I can - that's what the BFT thing is about! Now I hope to find time this weekend to really explore disc 2 (although I will be away from my collection, which will keep me from identifying those swing small group tracks - I can't ever manage to keep those titles in memory... but some of the tracks sounded very familiar). ubu

Is this out in Europe? Anyone seen it yet? ubu

Had a listen to the army band and the '62 tracks. While the two former are not more than a nice gesture, the '62 tracks are rather nice! Ayler stretches out on "Sonnymoon", tackles "Summertime" (his version on "My Name is Albert Ayler" is awesome, maybe my favourite recording of this tune!), and his favourite standard, "On Green Dolphin Street" (this too is on "My Name..."). Is this just me or are there, if not traces, at least similarities, in Ayler's style (sound AND lines) to Yusef Lateef's? I am not really strong about it, but I seem to hear ties. Anyone else? ubu

Well, my comments are as meagre as usual... but at least I didn't draw a full blank, if that disc with Hendricks is indeed where "Sidewinder" is coming from.

Uncle Albert? ubu B-)

Glad to see Nat Su mentioned! I got me a burn of that Ellington disc he made in duo with pianist Fredi Luescher for the AltriSuoni label, after hearing a track from another disc with Luescher on Nate Dorwards BFT. The Ellington disc, "Smada", is a real beauty! Steve Coleman is not someone I really have heard many times, yet when I hear some of his work, I usually are rather impressed. Though - that might provoke some controversy - in my opinion, he's a highly able bop player, presenting his art in slightly un-boppish surroundings... and those surroundings I'm not sure I really like them. His current Five Elements has a very able trumpet player in Jonathan Finlayson, as well as the usual tight and grooving rhythm section, yet somehow I am not sure how well it all comes together in the end. It does, somehow (otherwise I'd be bored by the music, and that is not at all the case). Bright Moments: my Zorn with questionmark was rather questioning his greatness (or, as is the topic here, favourite-ness), than age. He's a chameleon, and certainly an able altoist, but I'm not sure he really has something such as his personality on the horn. ubu

Well, I finally got my discs a few days ago, and was able to listen to them once yesterday, so this is real blindfold, no getting to know the music yet, and no learned and knowledgeable things to be expected... #1 - Who'd have thunk it, a doorbellist for starters... Nice and easy swingin' stuff, a bit too far on the light side for my taste. Like the brushes, though. No need to guess, as this is not at all my usual fare. #2 - That beat is a little bit too, shall I say generic? Well, that's my opinion, only. Like the singer alright, but I'm not too fond of teh rest. They sure listened to some Weather Report, the b/d team sounds quite a bit like the Pastorius/Acuña unit to my ears. #3 - This is a bit more like it for my ears. Again no idea, though... #4 - Sounds a bit like Larry Young I'd say. Very very nice! The barisax is good, so is the trumpet, with that brassy sound. Not Young though. Percussion adds to this, too (rather than - as it often seems to do - distracts). #5 - This sounds slightly familiar, like it! #6 - "Lush Life", beautiful! Would like to hear more of this! The good run continues! #7 - "It's Only A Paper Moon". Very nice tune! First time I heard it was on Nat Cole's great "After Midnight" session. Like the bass, love the voice! No idea once more... #8 - Another winner. Love the understated style on guitar. Sound is a bit like Wes, but not the rest of the playing. Should I know this? What-/whoever it is, I do like it! #9 - The good run, well... it does continue! Altough the beat again is a bit too smooth, I like alto and trumpet. #10 - "Sidewinder" - I guess a bit of googling could bring this up. Nice one! Jon Hendricks? Or Bill Henderson (don't know any of Henderson's discs, so this is just to throw in at least some names...) #11 - Will need a few more listens to this one to decide. No comment yet, except it's a strange listen (which has nothing to do with good/bad or like/dislike). #12 - A terrific closer! Mike loves them vocalists, yes? Guess I could learn some from him... Thanks for the enjoyable discs! I did enjoy a first spin to disc 2 even more, but that was just background music, no notes taken, no time to look into my collection trying to identify some familiar sounding ones. ubu

Happy birthday!

Mingus at Antibes!

Happy birthday! Your avatar is one of my favourites around here! ubu

looks good! those guys are the ones Stephan Wittwer was involved with in the seventies as well. Also Grob, of course. Is that a reissue?

(Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/542291.htm) Meanwhile: Dissing the dirt: Slang outruns its iffy past Jan Freeman The Boston Globe Thursday, October 7, 2004 BOSTON In a recent New Yorker magazine profile, Teresa Heinz Kerry got some grief for her grasp of English idiom after she called her detractors "scumbags." "I doubt that she knows the literal meaning of 'scumbag,' wrote the reporter, Judith Thurman, "but perhaps, after 40 years in America ... she should have learned it." Thurman does not, however, enlighten her audience; maybe she assumes that all New Yorker readers know what John Kerry's wife doesn't. If so, I suspect she's wrong: When I wrote about the word in 1998, after a Republican congressman called Bill Clinton a scumbag, dozens of readers told me they'd had no idea of its origins. Though it's now usually just an all-purpose derogation, a cop-show synonym for "dirtbag," "creep" or "lowlife," scumbag originally meant "condom" (to many, "used condom" - scum being slang for semen). But if lots of people don't know this, do we really want to spread the word? Or are we better off letting scumbag enjoy life as a nonspecifically nasty term of abuse? A few slang words, after all, have outrun their unsavory origins. "Bollix" for "mess up" is no longer vulgar, having left "ballocks" in the dust; "nuts" (though it used to be euphemized "nerts") is likewise untainted by its past. "Screw up" is now acceptable, though other uses of "screw" vary in their vulgarity ratings. "Futz around," which may be either a euphemism for you-know-what or a descendant of the Yiddish "arumfarzen" (no translation necessary), is not uncommon in print nowadays, and even "putz around" is gaining ground. (Its resemblance to "putter" may make it seem milder than "futz," though in fact its root is Yiddish slang for penis.) Origins are not, in any case, what make a term taboo; it was cultural consensus, not any secret meaning, that once made "bloody" Britain's worst swear word. These days, though, consensus can be hard to find. Newspapers try to hold a conservative line on language - The New York Times, for instance, will print "crap shoot," but you can't say "crap" unless you're Lyndon Johnson (and dead). But print editors are the Canutes of usage, trying to turn back the usage tide rolling in from TV, pop music and the Internet. For would-be gatekeepers, the speed of slang evolution keeps reviving the essential scumbag question: How dirty can a word be if nobody knows it's dirty? For the past decade, the slang word most delicately balanced on this usage bubble has been "sucks," as in "Mom, these sneakers suck." Seven years ago, when I first wrote about it, I was sure it was headed for respectability: The kids using the term had no sense of any sexual meaning, after all, and (as my then-teenage daughter pointed out) the new usage was intransitive; there was no grammatical object being sucked. Sucks may have been borrowed from the slang for fellating, but innocent employment, I thought, would neutralize its iffy past. It had respectable relatives, too. "Sucks to you!" (origin unknown) had been ordinary British youthspeak since the early 20th century, and "suck up to," though probably of indelicate ancestry, was so thoroughly domesticated that in 1953, C.S. Lewis used it in one of his Narnia books for children. Besides, "suck" has so many standard uses that you can't really quarantine the syllable. "Sucker" meaning "dupe," for instance, is merely a babe in the woods, a still-suckling newborn; and to children in many parts of the country, a sucker is an innocent lollipop. But I didn't reckon with the literalists, who decided kids should know this was a bad word, even if they'd prefer that someone else explained why. We could have told the kids "sucks" was short for "sucks lemons" and left well enough alone, but no: Parents banned it, then Boston Red Sox baseball fans adopted it for their (increasingly pathetic) anti-Yankees slogan, and some of them, just to show that they really meant to be crude, dragged their rivals' star shortstop into it, wearing their "Yankees suck" T-shirts with "Jeter swallows" on the back. This is a shame; though every civilization needs a store of taboo words, "sucks" is a useful slang verb. The finger-waggers say we should use "more descriptive" words - "the Yankees are evil," perhaps- but in fact, "sucks" energetically fills a syntactical role that would otherwise belong to "to be," that essential but uninspiring verb. Strunk and White ("Use the active voice") would have to approve, and so do I. Jan Freeman's column appears regularly in The Boston Globe.

David, here's a thread I started about a show I saw/heard in March. Stubblefield was still there, then, but he remained seated while playing and didn't really look all that well. ubu

some more: - Miles Plugged Nickel - Parker-Guy-Lytton at the Vortex - Italian Instabile Festival (2CD set on Leo) - Cecil Taylor: Two Ts for a Lovely T (Codanza 10CD box) - Miles: Carnegie Hall 1961 (LOVE it!) - Monk at the It Club - Von Freeman, The Improvisor & At the Dakota - Irene Schweizer: Chicago Piano Solo - Ahmad Jamal: the few of his Argo/Chess sides I know still missing many, I guess

the Chatterbox is on some grey labels, GREAT music! Lester Young in full flight, certainly among my favourite live recordings, as well! Some others (many or all already mentioned, I suppose): - Bill Evans Vanguard (with LaFaro & Motian) - Coltrane Vanguard 61 - Monk: Misterioso & In Action dates - Cecil Taylor: Nefertiti - CT: Willisau - Ayler: Prophecy - Mingus: all the 64 Europe material - Barney Wilen at Saint Germain ("Barney" + more) - the great Dolphy/Little/Waldron/Davis/Blackwell live date - Art Pepper Vanguard 9CD box - Randy Weston: Monterey 66 - Randy Weston: Carnival - Randy Weston: that great solo piano Freedom LP recorded in Zurich - Abdullah Ibrahim: Yarona - Duke at Newport '56 - Sonny Rollins Village Vanguard - Sam Rivers, Portrait - Albert Ayler, Hilversum Session - Stan Getz at Storyville - Massey Hall Concert I'm sure I missed many a favourite...

ditto

Friends, I am in possession of the awesome Holy Ghost set since yesterday. Haven't listened to anything yet (though I know quite some of the music from the inofficial Ayler tree). I am very impressed by this box! First, it's much bigger than I'd have expected, and second it's beautifully assembled, with all the memorabilia and the hardcover boo full of beautiful photos. Then totally unrelated: anyone around here has heard the Zeena Parkins-Ikue Mori CD? Read the cover story of the October Wire and I am very interested in this CD it seems, so any opinion appreciated! ubu

Oh, if we're also allowed to talk bass clarinet, I'm sure our friend D.D. would agree with my nomination of Hans Koch!

That's what my girlfriend would say, would I be crazy enough to listen to this music while she was around... I won't probably even show her the box (or I won't tell her it's new, you know what reactions that provokes..., she might declare ME crazy... ) ubu (still verrrry , but I won't be able to listen to it until probably tomorrow night... )

I guess he is, yes. I consider him a marvellous alto, soprano & clarinet player. What he does is sort of adding a jewish component to jazz, often performing standards, but also his own material, in a rather extraordinary fashion (yet mainstream, I guess). His discs are on Enja, so go figure... as you said it recently, some mainstream, some ethno/folk... no vocals, at least on the live recordings I have. He's leading the so-called "Orient-House Ensemble" (named after the Palestinian headquarters). Living in London in exile, it seems he's a rather staunch supporter of anti-Israel or whatever you call it, anti-Sharon, for sure, policy. It seems he's also written at least one political novel about Israel/Palestine, so he may also be considered an activist. His musical programme might be a bit ecclesticist, playing Bechet's "Petite Fleur", medleys of Gershwin, Ellington, Weill and his own material, but also having some Shorter in his repertoire (Footprints). Definitely melodic, definitely not ECM-kind-of-beauty, but definitely no free jazz. Just good music. ubu

There's some more Sonore to be heard here: http://www.radiofrance.fr/listen.php?pr=rt...telenum/jazz.rm You can record it with a programme such as GoldWave that's available for free. This thread gives the necessary explanations how to do it. After you've got it on your HD as a wave file you can set track marks with Nero Burning Room, and then pop in the CDR you got from me, add those tracks and burn it all on a new CDr. There may be differences in sound. Also, I didn't yet check the tracks from Sunday's broadcast with what I already have. What you need to know about that broadcast is taht the Sonore part is only around 25 minutes. THere are a couple of new releases being presented first, as well as after the Sonore tracks. Skip the first 15 or so minutes and there the Sonore starts. ubu

Hey fellas, the rats coming out of the ghetto!

Gianluigi Trovesi Gabriele Mirabassi Michel Portal (yes, he can still deliver some goods!) Louis Sclavis