A Lark Ascending

I sold my ELP discs in order to buy a few Family records. Also my Deep Purples but can't recall what I bought instead.

I've been racking my brain all day about this. I have memories of them doing a version of 'Spinning Wheel' (the BS+T song) but can't find any evidence. So maybe there was another organ trio around that time of the same ilk. I have memories of the organist wearing dark glasses and emoting a lot. Around that time I did a holiday job in a seaside restaurant washing dishes. The early 20s chef, son of the owner, used to love this sort of music and express total contempt for the rock music I'd spend my wages on. Seemed to have an impact. He used to bed the waitresses. I'd go home and listen to 21st Century Schizoid Man. I went to a fondue party once. No wife-swapping. As I didn't have a wife (I blame 21stC Schizoid Man) it wouldn't have been much good if there was.

Back in August I went to the Vortex to hear Keith Tippett in various situations. Wonderful all round. But the totally free quintet he did with Julie Tippetts and three young string players had me on the edge of my set from start to finish. I can't believe I was any less excited than listening to Henry Cow in a teaching room at Reading University back in 1973 (mjazzg was there at the Tippett and can vouch that it wasn't just my befuddled brain!). I also find listening to the younger folk singers very exciting (might have something to do with the fact that some of them are very pretty!) - people taking music that has often been done time and time again yet giving it a totally personal stamp. And then there was watching Wizz Jones live again back in August - only knew him in passing but again I was utterly engaged in that concert. I suppose the excitement I recall from my early days was the sense of something totally new unfolding as new records came out. Now, in retrospect I can see a lot of that was less new than I imagined it, but it was part of the thrill of being in your late teens. Don't often get that sense now. Though, to take one example, hearing Alex Hawkins records emerge, never quite knowing where they are going to go next, can put me back in that mindset.

Probably one for older folks... I've just noticed quite a few posts of late where listeners of long experience comment on how hard it is to get excited by music in the way they once did. Natural, I suppose - everything loses its novelty impact with time. I don't think I get as excited as when it was all brand new (though I'm suspicious of the telescoping of the past there - all the highs roll into one whilst the periods of boredom get deleted). I'm 58 and very much in the still excited camp; new music, playing old favourites, rediscovering old music, discovering old music that I've never previously known.

And I'm there for bits of 3 of the Freezone Appleby discs from the mid-noughties - not sure which bits!

I remember them from around 1970 - they appeared on UK TV quite a lot. Slotted into variety shows and talk shows that needed 'sophisticated' instrumental breaks. At the age I was they seemed a bit fuddy-duddy - couldn't compete with ELP!!!! One of those bands you got the impression the BBC hoped you'd like once you'd got over this rock nonsense. Like Ken Dodd or Julie Felix. Think their records came with a free one of these:

If only Stalin had obsessed on record collecting.

Don't know about jazz, but Previn did a lot around that time to deschnabelise classical music. He always presented it as something you could enjoy rather than something you 'appreciated' alongside the correct caviare and the finest wine. I think I got my hair 'style' from him!

Apart from a brief period in the early 80s when I thought I had become too grand for my rock records I've always held on to everything. I've even got a few U2 records bought in a failed early 90s experiment to stay relevant! The LPs are now in the loft! They may need to go when I relocate in a few years.

And in another genre:

Not necessarily my favourite records by the performers involved, but these were the ones that between 1971-9 opened my ears on a musical world that proved to bring as much lasting pleasure as jazz:

But Eric had to show him how to swing. Man.

Been wanting to see this for many a year. Ordered it from my online DVD rental place over a year back but it was out of print. Suddenly appeared in the post the other day, recently reissued. A wonderful documentary interspersed with lots of playing. These people were just before my time - Pentangle were on their last legs when I got interested in folk - but its easy to see how they provided the roots of what I cut my teeth on.

Amazed by this...the Michigan pasty. Would never classify as a sandwich in Cornwall. But I love they idea of the Finnish-Cornish culinary interaction.

The Downing books are not as hard-edged as Furst. The main characters - the American journalist, his German girlfriend and half-German son by a previous marriage all pull in your sympathies and provide a slightly sentimental thread through the novels. With Furst you feel the characters are emotionally (and often morally) adrift in an ever-shifting world, forming temporary alliances. The Downing books are best read in sequence as a story unfolds from one to the next. You can read the Furst books in any order as the did not come out in a chronological sequence. I've just finished the Orwell bio mentioned earlier - what a strange (and often unlikeable) man he was. Now on another novel set against the backdrop of mid-20thC Europe:

I thought the Mad Dogs packaging bonkers. All got put in 5 PVC jackets. I do like an insert with the front sleeve and the track/musician details so I make one (as I mainly download I'm used to that). I can see the appeal of nice packaging - I've plenty of boxes stuffed with booklets etc. I just decided a few years back that even with the useful stuff - liner notes, essays about the music etc - it was rare I read them more than once. Things like the Mosaic booklets are tremendous but an awful lot of what you get elsewhere is fluff, there to make the package seem grander. What I really ought to do is migrate to pure streaming. But I do like those front cover pictures!

When I buy CDs I throw out all surplus packaging - tend to keep the inner sleeve and the inlay too if that's the only source of track/musician info. Slot it in a PVC sleeve. Doesn't half save space. A lot of the packaging reminds me of:

I've seen one episode so far. Very good. Thanks for bringing this up. Maybe they got inspiration for the choice of music from the opening credits of Boardwalk Empire (excellent 4th season, little Margaret, more Chalky). Not seen Boardwalk Empire - think it got stuck on Sky. 'Peaky Blinders' gets better and better, though you need to watch it with a Birmingham accent. Last episode tonight; though I won't see it until tomorrow.

If you lay all your CDs out on an underfloor heated floor there is a definite sonic improvement.

One I should have included was Buffalo Springfield's 'Broken Arrow' off the 'Retrospective' compilation. Heard that in early 1973 and was always taken by the jazzy bit at the end, thinking 'I want to hear music like that!' The jazzy bit in the middle of Joni Mitchell's 'Harry's House' on 'The Hissing of Summer Lawns' had the same impact. Joni, David Crosby and John Martyn probably laid the harmonic foundations to later preferences too. Keith Emerson also did nice jazzy bits, especially in the live recordings by The Nice. Nice!

Early 70s. I suspect there was more jazz on TV/radio then than now but I don't remember much (Oscar Peterson always seemed to be there on a programme with Cleo Laine or James Galway). My exposure came via record and then tuning regularly into Jazz Record Requests and Peter Clayton's late Sunday jazz programme; and, by 1977, Charles Fox's more contemporary based radio programme. It may not have happened this way but this is how I remember my gradual exposure by record... (1970-5) Rock records with bits on them that perked my ears up to this thing called jazz (or by musicians who constantly name dropped Coltrane, Miles etc): Chicago II and III King Crimson - Lizard, Islands Soft Machine Third (the whole Canterbury thing too) Keith Tippett's Centipede - Septober Energy Mahavishnu - Inner Mounting Flame/Birds of Fire Kevin Ayers - Shooting at the Moon Santana - Caravanserai Henry Cow - first 4 albums (1975) The turning point...reading a review of Keith Jarrett in the rock press: In the Light (a false start!) Facing You Bremen Lausanne (1975-7) Records then bought with the intention of buying a jazz record: John McLaughlin - Extrapolation Keith Jarrett - Death and the Flower Carla Bley - Escalator Over the Hill Ralph Towner - Solstice Mike Westbrook - Love/Dream Variations Stan Tracey - Under Milk Wood (the 1976 rerecording with readings). Skidmore Osborne Surman - SOS Miles Davis - Bitches Brew Elton Dean Quartet - They All Be On This Old Road Harry Miller's Isipingo - Family Affair Eberhard Weber - Yellow Fields (1977) Records then bought to delve into the history/established canon, much guided by Joachim Berendt's 'The Jazz Book': MJQ - The Last Concert Dave Brubeck - a twofer of 50s jazz at college discs Charles Mingus - Ah Um John Coltrane - My Favourite Things and Afro-Blue Impressions Dexter Gordon - Homecoming (1978) And then I bought... Kind of Blue That sealed it.

Nice and unusual. The best series about Birmingham (the real one) since 'Crossroads.' Like the way it dispenses with the usual period soundtrack (1920s) using grungy alt-rock instead to provide the edginess.

I have the original sets - if you like Jarrett (or even Just the American band Jarrett) then this release is highly recommended. Side comment - ECM seem to have an expanded Bregenz/Munchen (3CD) due soon plus one where Keith plays the contents of his garden shed from 1986. Details here: http://www.jazzwisemagazine.com/news-mainmenu-139/70-2013/12856-jazz-breaking-news-two-keith-jarrett-gems-emerge-from-the-vaults-