A Lark Ascending

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic..."

Yippee! You have been greatly missed, MG. Somewhere in a thread from last week called 'Last Shop Standing' you will see mention of your beloved Spillers.

Good to read the piece in Jazzwise about you, Alex. Law and criminology, eh? You could be put to good use here. And what's all this about having a thing about Jarrett/Evans imitators?

Very odd. I'm pretty sure he never played the Cheltenham festival in 2007 and it would be an unlikely place for an international jazz gig outside of festival time. Could be wrong. He did play this year with McCaslin though not with Caine. It was fabulous!

The BBC have always known this.

I'm in the 'change genre' when things sound jaded group as well. Though it's often enough for me to change within genre - after a few weeks on the hard bop a gear change to ECM or Ellington normally has the desired effect. Having bought far too many records over the last 40 years I can always find something to freshen my ear buds.

If you get the time, take a train out to Roskilde to visit the fabulous Viking ship Museum: http://vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/index.php?id=...cache=1&L=1 When I went around 1980 you had to catch various boats (the train drove onto the boat!) to cross between islands but there are bridges all the way now.

I only have the one disc, which would suggest that he's not exactly excited me. Just mentioned him because he's well known - had quite a high profile here in the late 80s.eearly 90s but I've not heard much fuss about him in rrecent years. So, dont worry, I won't have a strop, Jeff! (One of those smiley things)

It was always a Saturday or holiday time for me so it would have been tea-shirt and jeans. I loath suits!

John Harle is a saxophonist who is mainly associated with the classical/film music world. His recent discs seem to be heavily weighted in the film/TV music direction. There's a discography here: http://www.johnharle.com/johnharle/discography.html Most of the classical is contemporary classical. I have the Nyman/Bryars/Westbrook disc. Haven't played it for a long time. There's a disc of music by Debussy, Glazunov, Ibert, Villa-Lobos, Richard Rodney Bennett and Dave Heath on the list that might be what you are looking for. Though I suspect its OOP. You can hear saxophone used in some of Vaughan Williams' music. 'Job, a Masque for Dancing' and one or two of the later symphonies. Doesn't sound a bit like jazz sax - quite eerie.

Acorn gets a good write up in the Graham Jones book. There was an excellent shop in one of the lanes in Norwich when I briefly lived there in 1977. Bought things like Coltranes's 'My Favourite Things', Dexter Gordon's 'Homecoming' and several of the then contemporary Oguns there as my jazz interest began to pick up. I don't think it was 'Andys', a store I noticed there on irregular visits in the early 80s which expanded as a chain across the east of England before disappearing like so many similar ones (Our Price, MVC, Fopp etc). There was also a good independent in Exeter around '76-77, not far from the bus station. It got a fair chunk of my student grant in the year I did teacher training there. Gosh, even the cultural desert of Mansfield had a shop called Sid Booth's that stocked a wide range of music including jazz. I lived there when I started teaching in 1978 so my first pay packet was spent there - 'Happy Daze' by Elton Dean's Ninesense as I recall. I remember ordering 'A Love Supreme' and 'Africa Brass' there and having to wait six weeks or so as they scoured the world - neither were in print in the UK at the time. They did stock ECMs as they came out and those Blue Note twofers - I picked up the Gerry Mulligan/Lee Konitz and Gil Evans ones.

Decoy was a great shop. I used to go to teaching conferences at UMIST in the city - they used to let us out as 3.00 and I'd always sprint to Decoy to make a quick set of purchases.

The main record shop in Newquay in 1970 was just such. I bought my first record player there with money earned from washing dishes. In fact, in those days even a small town like Newquay that three places to buy records - that one, the place I pictured earlier and Woolworths (which had a broad selection in those days...I bought King Crimson's 'Lizard' there).

Bev, Hickies it was - I never expected to come across that name again! Grew up in Reading and occasionally looked in their racks when not searching for AC/DC records in Knights or the independent store on the first floor of the Butts Centre (the name escapes me - probably a good thing) Yes, welcome, mjazzg. I was at university there from 1973-6. I recall a pokey place that was on one of the alleys that ran between the two parallel shopping streets. Though my main haunt, because it tended to have the less mainstream records, was on the main street nearest the railway station at the Butts end of town. Bought my first Keith Jarrett's there in '75 which started the tilt away from rock. Sorry about the directions - I've only been briefly back to Reading twice since '76. My mental map is probably all wrong.

When in Bath I always pop in here: It's actually Duck, Son and Pinker (who sound like renegades from Beatrix Potter) and still looks like record/music shops used to look in 1970 (and probably in 1940!) - wooden floorboards, record/cd racks that have never seen the inside of IKEA etc. The jazz selection is a bit random - a lot of Gambit and Lonehill type things but you can hit on some goodies. Good folk and classical section. I recall a branch in Swindon when I lived there in 1972-3 (confirmed by the Last Shop Standing Book) - you could also get a good selection of LPs in Menzies, Bon Marche (where Andy Partridge of XTC worked around the time I was there) and another big department store (and I recall a new chromey type shop opening next to the Wyvern Theatre in the Autumn of '72). When I moved to Reading in late '73 there was a big store like the one pictured above...might have been Hickies...that had pianos downstairs and records upstairs. Ainsley's in Leicester was like this well into the late 80s and there was a place in Sheffield that was mainly a piano shop that had the same sort of layout until the mid 90s. Bath regulars will also worship this place an d hope it stays in business: [i always chuckle in a superior 'I'm normal' way when I see blokes (only blokes) photographing buses. What do people think of me taking pictures of record shops? Having said that, I wish I'd kep a photographic record of everywhere I'd bought records since 1970! Favourite shop? One in Dingle on the west coast of Ireland that sold books and records about Ireland and had a nice coffee shop before coffee shops in bookstores became the norm.]

I'd quite forgotten the paper bags they used to serve records in!

We're not the only codgerswith this sad obsession. These lot go back even earlier: http://www.charliegillett.com/phpBB2/viewt...4cc235787b2aa43

Just to prove that this is all now officially history: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/C...ct&id=64652

He could have signed over 'Highway 61 Revisited' or 'Blonde on Blonde'. Might not get the same immediate windfall but in the long run far more lucrative.

Similar feeling as to the last track. I thought it was one of her compositions for the Jimmy Giuffre 3 Jesus Maria? Haven't had the chance to dig that out yet though I do believe you are right! I can hear the Giuffre version in my head now. The Xmas album is definitely on the cards with Amazon US having a Nov 3rd date. Found this Googling: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...;type=printable Kooky as ever! Hope that translates into the music. Nice line-up too: Carla's Christmas Carols features Carla, Steve Swallow on bass, and The Partyka Brass Quintet

Are you saying that Dylan is playing a joke on the rest of us? No idea. With his fame he can record virtually anything - 'Aida', the theme from 'The Snowman' etc - and someone will commend it for its brilliance and irony. I like Xmas records - buy a couple each year. But I think I'll go for the Carla Bley if it appears.

I remember Colletts moving to Charing Cross Road but for the life of me I cannot remember it having a music section, but I am sure that is just my memory failing me. I must admit my memory of exactly when Collets morphed into Rays is very hazy. One record shop that WAS in Monmouth St was 'Soul City' but that was at a different time and a different sort of music. I seem to remember that the music bit of Colletts in Charing Cross Road was in the back. I remember a large-ish, hippy-ish woman on the folk section ( Jill? ) who was very earnest. I'm not absolutely sure that the Jazz section ( with Ray ) moved there from New Oxford Street, or were there for only a short time before setting up in Shaftesbury Avenue. I recall the Charing Cross Road Colletts. Always good for 'unusual' books. My memory is of the music section being downstairs. Though it might have moved around. I think I bought 'Beneath the Underdog' there in 1977, before I'd ever heard Mingus.

I have a feeling we might both be right. I half recall Asman's changed premisis from the place you remember to, very briefly, the one I remember. Could be wrong. Whilst Googling James Asmans I came across this. Don't be fooled by the 2009 date...its an article from 1987 advising US visitors where to find records in London. Sadly not the one I'm trying to recall - probably gone by then: http://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/29/travel/s...d-bargains.html

It definitely wasn't Asmans - that was a pokey little place. I seem to recall it being on the west side of CCR, close to the Leicester Square cinema area. The place I remember was a modernist place where Asmans did mainly trad/swing type stuff.

Wonderful, Steve. That's how I remember it.