A Lark Ascending

You couldn't even get large tranches of the Miles Davis or John Coltrane catalogue in the UK (outside of specialised importers) until the CD era. Blue Notes came and went in small batches. And it was a good few years into it - the 90s - before record companies decided there was a market for reissuing more obscure recordings (and then reissuing them again properly remastered or boutique remastered in various 'bits', with some famous producer name-checked). The logical thing now would be just to do the remastering job, put them up as downloads and leave them there. Job done. I know it will never please collectors who like their physical copies with notes etc, but if you want to hear the music badly enough... But that's not how marketing works - withhold to create a demand and then release is part of the game. Though that has been scuppered to a degree by the releasing policy of Fresh Sounds et al. and the pirating sites.

I'm still a long way from my complete collection of Cage's 4' 33". Please don't tell me there are out-takes and false starts too.

Something I don't like in jazz (or popular music in general) is when a performer plays a few recognisable notes of a hit or a well known song and everyone bursts into applause. Who are they applauding? The performer for choosing that song; or themselves for recognising it within a few notes? My, that was a grouchy one!

The tubas are warming up outside. There's no rush when it comes to tubas. They are worth the wait. They were Wagner tubas. Buckner felt that made them ideologically unsound.

Not even Bruckner 7? OK, you're going to play the 'Bruckner is not 'real jazz' card! Well there's a lot of trumpets in Bruckner so could be... He'd be called 'Beans' Bruckner or something similar if he was jazz. 'Bratwurst' Bruckner, perhaps?

Not even Bruckner 7? OK, you're going to play the 'Bruckner is not 'real jazz' card!

Great! Pleased it went so well. Let's hope we hear that 'Johnny Come Lately' (and other new stuff) soon. I'm hoping Mike arranges another Drewe Arms gig to fit in with my holidays next year!

Why is eating an apple that hard? I thought I was fussy, needing to cut it in four to enjoy it!

Isn't this how jazz musicians pay the bills? I used to have a recording of Evita from the late 70s with a similar line-up of British jazzers and rock session players.

One thing that will never end is old folks worrying about what young folks listen to (with some young folks joining in to achieve accelerated wisdom!).

Tomorrow night: Opera North in Leeds.

The GAS wasn't my entry point to jazz in the mid-70s. But it was my entry point to older jazz - I'm talking pre-70s - because I was familiar with the songs from my dad's records and the sort of thing that was staple on middle-of-the-road radio then. It's one of the things that made 50s Miles, Sonny Rollins, early/mid-period Coltrane accessible when the language on those records initially sounded old hat to a teenager who'd become excited by music through 70's rock. I don't think younger people today are exposed to the GAS in the way that I unwittingly was in the 60s/70s. And yet there's a never ending stream of successful singers who continue to build entire careers around it. But I don't see that often translating into an interest in jazz today. Another change is that back in the 70s jazz along with classical was regarded as what you grew up to after you'd got over the 'inanities' of pop/rock. That expectation seems to have largely vanished. Look at the way even the more up-market newspapers and magazines are dominated by keeping their readers hip to the latest rock sounds. Not a complaint - I've attended three tremendous jazz concerts in the last month and see an endless stream of UK jazz musicians appearing, some 'in the tradition', others breaking all sorts of taboos (many in ways that don't appeal to me). Newly minted jazz continues to entertain me, regardless of where its 'artistic' status is considered to lie.

Is this the sort of thing that is disturbing you?

I blame Wynton. Well, since no-one has given him a fresh thread this week....

I suspect the money is no longer there to do it, but there's nothing beyond the tactile element that could be done on an LP or cd sleeve that can't be there online. In fact the possibilities are more flexible - the performer can keep adding to it. Hey, they can keep tinkering with the recording as well. Instead of waiting for a 40th Anniversary corrected version the performer could fiddle with it whenever they wanted to. The potential for alternate takes becomes infinite.

Beat me to it!

I'd love to see a larger photo, as this is a great shot. I'll look for it on Monday! Can now be seen here:

Put up due to a request: The avatar distorts the real picture. This nearly got chosen as the avatar:

Damn - that's a shame. A project/talent deserving of much greater support. Instead, the masses all stay in and watch 'Strictly' etc. Apparently Soweto Kinch was also in town so the Nottingham jazz audience got split. Hopefully the following night in Sheffield got a better turnout. Only Gardeners' World to compete with on a Friday.

A photo I took last year of two ruined tin mine engine houses on the coast of Cornwall near St Just at sunset. I'll put a bigger copy up when I get home on Monday - it's one of those right time, right place snaps. We must have an avatar thread somewhere.

A bit ambiguous, a bit off-centre, blurred and a bit out of focus, always morphing, never saying the same thing in a bar that you said the same way in a previous bar. That's not just a jazz preference.

Add me to electric pianos. Soprano saxophones and flutes. Interesting chord progressions with a nice key change thrown in. Lithe and limber (sorry, that sounds like a Genesis LP).

Christine Tobin touring her Sailing to Byzantium Yeats project. Just 30 or so people in the audience yet the band played their hearts out. The album is one of my favourites of the year - really well written songs based on the poems. A sad response for a singer who has consistently tried to add to the repertoire rather than always lean on standards.

Leny Andrade, Joyce, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, among others, are fluent in English. Joyce sings in English almost without an accent, having lived in NY for some time. It's not the command of English that bothers me. Maybe it's because I find the sound of the Portuguese so mellifluous that I get disappointed by an English language track. All I'm saying is what I don't much like in my jazz; I'm sure others don't bat an eyelid, like I'm not offended by soprano saxophones.