A Lark Ascending

Enjoyed the Martyn programme, though he seemed in a bad way. Not just from the leg op. It seems all those years of excess have really hammered his health. A unique talent in the 60s and 70s. That point when he was mixing his folky past with the echoplex guitar weirdness was sheer perfection. The drift towards a more conventional rock style from the mid 70s seemed to lose all his individualism. Yet I saw him play with Danny Thompson in the mid/late 80s and it had all the power of the early 70s!

I don't much like the idea of 'rating' players. Strikes me as a job for bean counters. Interpreting the title as players who are only noticed by a few and could be enjoyed by many more... Harry Beckett Henry Lowther Pino Minafra

Beware. It's a long, long way to Reno, Nevada, it's a long, long way to go... ************** I'm having a couple of weeks between Seville, Cordoba and Granada doing Moorish Spain. Then a week taking my parents back to my mums home in Ireland. Expensive summer!

Funny you should ask. I just put one together this evening for a younger colleague at work who wanted to hear some interesting saxophone music. This is what fell together. Named by the saxophonists rather than the leaders: 1. Stan Getz (ts) - Manha de Carnival (1962) 2. Charlie Parker (as) - Ornithology (1946) 3. Sonny Rollins (ts) - To a Wild Rose (1974) 4. Gianluigi Trovesi (as) - Verano (1998) 5. Jan Garbarek (ts, fl) - Nimbus (1975) - [Ralph Towner's 'Solstice'] 6. Ben Webster (ts) - My One and Only Love (1956) - [Art Tatum] 7. Lester Young (ts) - When You’re Smiling (1938) [Teddy Wilson, Billie Holiday] 8. Hank Mobley (ts) and John Coltrane (ts) - Someday My Prince Will Come (1961) [Miles] 9. John Surman (ss) - Tess (1983) [Miroslav Vitous] 10. Jackie McLean (as), John Handy (as), Booker Ervin (ts), Pepper Adams (bs) - Moanin’ (1960) [Mingus] 11. Iain Ballamy (ts) - Danny Boy (2004) 12. Wayne Shorter (ts) - El Gaucho (1966) 13. Coleman Hawkins (ts) – Crazy Rhythm (1937) 14. Evan Parker (ss) – Variation Four (2000) No attempt at making any historic point. Just 14 tracks that seemed to go nicely together and provide a way in for a newbie. Track 14 might be a bit of a shock but it's less than two minutes long!

You could argue that jazz is all swing. But that doesn't negate the use of the label 'Swing' to denote one of the phases jazz went through in the 30s and 40s. In the same way, all jazz is fusion but 'Fusion' is a label that denotes a particular phase it passed through in the late 60s and 70s. The term was not greatly used in the UK except later in the day to describe the American version of what we called jazz-rock. Where the boundaries were? Who cares. Swing, Fusion, all grist to the mill. Had its good bits, had its bad. Had its bits that one lot of jazz fans loved whilst others didn't care for. All part of the great jazz salad. Worth revisiting? I'd say yes. I think it got chased off the stage before it had even begun to realise its possibilities. So when I hear Douglas or Roney or Gerard Presencer or Martin France embarking on 'fusion' projects I'm intrigued.

If you look closely at Tony's Edinburgh castle shots you can see several of the bodies from Ian Rankin's books! Arn't digital cameras amazing. Point, click! Just like an old instamatic. Slip straight back in your pocket. The results come out better than the cumbersome SLR I had in the 80s that needed several sherpas to carry the lenses!

No intention to decry funk...even though personally I like it in very small doses. It's just that by the late 70s it became the overpowering flavour of most fusion/jazz-rock/electric jazz. I always felt there were 1001 other options. But very few of the musicians seemed interested in exploring them, prefering to stay safely in that groove. Fair enough. It's fun. But surely just a few people could have tried electric jazz without the funk? (a few did - Weber's Colours discs mentioned above; Ralph Towner's 'Solstice'; some of the later UK Canterbury bands like National Health could be said to fit in there. Maybe I'm just an ECM child at heart!) Miles certainly did some interesting and unique things within the genre in the 80s, well away from the commercial side of things. But was there anywhere else to go after Pangaea/Agharta without letting slip of the moorings of funk? His 80s discs, however enjoyable many may be, suggest to me that there was no-where else to go but round and round that funky groove. Fun some of those discs were but a development into something new from the mid 70s maelstrom? Hardly. I like chilli in my food occasionally. I don't like it on my cornflakes, in my tea, on my salads or in my beer. Flavours work best when used sparingly. By the late 70s the funk element in fusion was smothering most of the other options. As a student in the mid-70s I recall being constantly irritated by bands playing the university gig who promised the latest jazz-rock either bludgeoning us to death with power chords and million mile an hour solos (with free orgasmic facial expressions from the soloist) or exhorting is to...ahem...'get down.'

My Mum's from Athlone smack in the middle of Ireland! Going back for a week in August with her. If you ever get the chance to visit, jump at it. There's a lovely old Irish folk song called 'The Verdant Braes of Skreen'. Says it all. http://website.lineone.net/~cewhitehead2/skreen.htm

One of the reasons I could never leave England for warmer climes. I'd miss the green. And if you think that's green you should see the west of Ireland!

And a gloomy afternoon on the Wiltshire Downs. Note the horse carved in the hillside! Explains that cover from the local XTC lads a couple of decades back! (Actually that cover is based on a much older horse carving a few miles away).

Come on! Show off your neighbourhood! Your summer travels. Here's a glorious summer evening in Bath by the canal!

Nice and sunny last weekend when I was indoors at a jazz festival. Gloomy and rainy on the Monday I went walking in the most beautiful place in the world...the Wiltshire Downs (see pic). Bright and sunny on the day I drove home so was stuck in a car! Damp and gloomy again today. Temperature low for this time of year...as I know to my cost. Brought the wrong sleeping bag with me. Brrrr!!!

I was bored rigid by the Sclavis, sidewinder. I really like Sclavis in the trio with Texier and Romano but I've had a growing sense of alienation from his solo discs. This one lost me completely. I've explained me reaction at length over at AAJ. You might like to put the 'Aye' case over there in the interest of balance! I missed the Stimmhorn. Sounds wonderful! My favourites were the two clarinet/accordion duos. Trovesi/Coscia and Mirabassi/Biondini. Completely individual.

Like almost every style of jazz it had its wonderful moments; and its routine duds. Sadly, the latter seem to have clouded the general perception of the music. It's interesting to hear a revival of interest in the era, not just in the States with things like the Roney, Douglas or Hargrove discs but over here in Britain. I've seen some thrilling concerts by various UK bands having fun with the fender rhodes and the spacier moments of the music. I've always felt fusion got trapped into a funk groove which in turn seemed to require a direction closer and closer to mainstream pop/rock music and a consequent watering down. In the UK and Europe there was a contemporary but rather different take on fusion that owed more to In a Silent Way than Jack Johnson. The Soft Machine, Eberhard Weber's Colours seemed to typify this. Sadly the dreaded 'funk' took over here too (Weber excepted) and jazz-rock became more concerned with 'getting down' that exploring the intriguing sonic possibilities of electric jazz. If improvising musicians could just get past the funk there's still plenty more there to explore. Nothing wrong with funk. But once you're in the groove its hard to go anywhere else!

Wonderful concert by the Caber crowd at last weekends Bath Jazz weekend. John Rae's Celtic Feet in rip-roaring form accompanied by two superb Hungarians on cimbalon and violin (what with Arnie Somogyi's Hungarian project things Magyar seem to be the flavour of the year). Brian Kellock on piano was quite marvellous. A great mix of Scottish and Hungarian folk musics given a jazz treatment and carried off with an overwhelming sense of fun. Kellock also did a lovely solo lunchtime concert on Sunday, ruminating through Ellington, standards and Fats Waller. Beautiful.

The band I'd most like to see! I've recently acquired 'Boom Boom' via a Scandanavian online source and love it. Wonderfully ramshackle, imprecise (in the best Brotherhead of Breath sense) yet with gorgeous melodies. Clearly related back to Ornette in the early 60s but with its own very distinct sound. Reminds me of the wilder moments of the Jarrett American Quartet when Wiik is in full flight. Given the rave reviews for the Atomic UK tour a few years back and for the first disc when it came out here I'm surprised 'Boom Boom' hasn't had a domestic release.

I just listened to this again on my walkman while waiting for my car to be serviced! My earlier post might suggest something a bit dreamy. Far from it. If anything the music here, especially towards the end, seems to be strongly influenced by the Coltrane Quartet around 'A Love Supreme' and just after. You can really hear a strong McCoy Tyner influence in John Taylor, something I also hear in early Keith Tippett. Both men very quickly absorbed and moved well past that influence! Special mention for sax player Alan Wakeman who I know mainly from some excellent Mike Westbrook discs. He's afire on 'Song for my Father'.

All of the Colliers are worth getting. I'm not sure references to Mobley or Morgan are all that helpful. Collier has a soundworld very much his own. Think the UK jazz-rock world of the late 60s/70s (a very different proposition to the US version); tone down the rock element somewhat. Put in an impressionistic glaze. Think Kenny Wheeler, John Surman but rather more sinewy. Oh! And "Songs for My Father" has the glorious Harry Beckett on board, a player who sounds like no-one else. Wonderfully, feathery trumpet and flugelhorn. I particularly like Colllier's earlier 'Deep Dark Blue Centre' - sounds like a soundtrack to a mid-60s UK existentialist film! Again, quite unique!

I'm becoming more and more convinced that the way we as individuals hear music is so different as to make comparison very difficult. Someone couched in one or many of the US traditions will hear Wheeler's music one way; someone, like myself, who discovered that tradition at the same time as hearing the likes of Taylor and Wheeler and Sultzmann and Surman on the radio (and who comes from the same cultural background as at least three of those players) will hear it very differently. When I hear Brecker playing Wheeler's music it sounds out of place. But, to my ears, Brecker has always sounded anodyne - all huff and puff but no personal sound or feel. Now I know I'm wrong! To someone attuned to Brecker's background I'm sure the heart of the man leaps out. But I know I find myself wishing Surman or Sultzman or Warleigh were in his place! As regards Norma Winstone's lyrics...well, Norma is my favourite jazz singer. But I agree. Her lyrics are generally somewhat winsome. I tend to just ignore them. What I love is her voice singing those melodies, with words or without. Again, I suspect her singing is so different from traditional jazz singing, so clearly linked to an English way of doing things that she might just be too hard for some to really 'get'. Miles251, Thanks for sharing your account of meeting Kenny Wheeler. He has always struck me as very, very shy, both on stage and in interviews I've read. There's a painful interview on the AAJ site where he almosts seems to have convinced himself that no-one wants to record him anymore. Very sad to see such self-doubt in a musician who has done what many say they wish to do but don't...gone his own way! The price of that has been to have been greatly underestimated.

I drive from side to side! It's hard keeping a straight course with only one hand on the wheel and your full attention on the CD player!

I clearly took that David Crosby song too seriously... Apart from the hair and weird musical tastes I was most unrebellious. Most youth rebellion I saw seemed to be a rejection of one sheep pen in order to take a conspicuous place in another one. I tended to be rather contemptuous of the various revolts into style.

Way back in 1974 when the IRA campaign in mainland Britain was at its peak I was at a Caravan concert. I remember it being a really marvellous concert and about 90 minutes in the lights went up and we all got ushered out for 30 minutes. After the all clear we all went back inside and the band played for another 45 minutes. I suspect the warning was called in by some proto-punks, calling time on the sort of music Caravan stood for two years before the musical sky fell in!

I live in a terraced house with walls that are designed like a guitar box...they just seem to amplify the music or TV from next door. Last weekend I bought some cheap bookcases and lined the wall with old books. Looks nice and seemsto have reduced the seepage. I identify totally with the irritation expressed here. I'm totally tolerant of most things neighbours do. They can build wierd structures, keep tigers in their back garden, run a fish and chip shop. But I just can't abide hearing the thump of someone elses stereo or the feeling that Bruce Willis is going to come through the wall due to someone's surround sound TV system! I just get irrational, turn the speakers towards the wall and play very antisocial jazz very loudly! Not a sensible way to solve the problem but it just makes me see red.

Nice ducks, Tony! Claude, Despite being beautiful this last week it has been a might chilly. With the sun out you don't notice it but when the sun goes down...brrrrr... Any chance of a pic of the floodwaters of Organissimoland?

Wot, no country? As a fundamentalist omnivore I find it impossible to vote. Jazz is my overall favourite but I have lengthy splurges in most of those categories (though with wide areas within each I don't much care for!).