A Lark Ascending

A name I don't recall at all. I was a teenager in the early 70s with my ears attuned to just this sort of music. I'm sure he must have been played on things like the Bob Harris and Alan Black shows. But the name and covers (and I've a good memory for covers given how much time I spend in record shops on Saturday afternoons!) don't ring any bells. Nice to know music like this can still affect people down the years. I recently bought 'The River' by Terry Reid, a record I recall from that time and one that has got itself a big reputation since. It hasn't really made an impression yet but I'm giving it time. A 'lost' group from this era were 'Bronco'. They had three LPs out, I think. There's a beautiful track on the old Island 'Bumpers' compilation that opened my ears to so much and I have their excellent second album, Ace of Sunlight. Jess Rosen, the singer, became semi-famous and the other musicians went on to play in different bands later including Robert Plants. I'd like to see those reissued.

Kenny, Perhaps when you have a few moments you could tell us a bit about some of these names. I like the idea of an Australian jazzer doing Bartok!

Yikes, so many recordings and so little actually in the shops. I actually ordered Winter Song and Street Of Dreams direct from Jardis a couple of days back. Took a bit of doing as the e-mail links on the site were out of date but got an e-mail back from Heiner Franz (I assume it's his own label) yesterday confirming my order. The one I've seen most commonly in the shops and have still not picked up is Baubles, Bangles And Beads with Peter Ind. Next time I see it! The Livia website is here: http://www.liviaarts.com/catalogue.htm Jardis for anyone interested is: http://www.jardis.de/htm_files/masterframe.htm Use info@jardis.de to e-mail rather than Heiner Franz's own e-mail address which doesn't work. The online ordering works though you don't get an automatic confirmation. ***************** Re: Serious Gold. Anyone with that record stuck in your loft - just dig it out and listen to the guitar on Forty Colours. Breathtaking. The tenor's pretty good too!

How about this:

As a kid I was quite good at drawing. It was all killed for me when an art teacher tried to bully me into taking art to 'O' Level (the academic qualification taken by 16 year olds in the UK before the late 1980s) instead of history. My interest died. I took art as my 'relaxation subject' to CSE Level (the qualification for those who were not considered academic) but never gave it my heart. The new art teacher obviously saw me as a waste of space and didn't pay much attention... Until the day I brought in a drawing I'd done at home. He went mad with excitement at the strange concept, the shading (it was black and white pencil) and told me if I did more work like that I'd do brilliantly. Of course I'd copied the picture straight of ITCOTKC! He never did get to see anything else like that. In the end I got a CSE grade 2...everyone else in the class got grade 1s (which were equivalent to O Level passes). I could copy. Beyond that...

If Trovesi ever tours 'Round About A Midsummer's Dream' again travel many miles to hear it! One of the most enjoyable concerts I've ever seen. You had great writing, great arrangement, great playing and all done with a massive sense of humour and a sense of jazz as fun.

Yes!!!! Thanks all!

Hah! Je compris! And so to: And thus to: OK, why does one come out but the other two not? Oh, I think I know why...

Bought my first jazz records at 19/20 but really started going after it in a big way at 21. I'm not sure you need a particular level of musical/listening maturity to appreciate jazz - there's plenty that's attractive there that can be picked up on without too much knowledge or experience. Obviously the more you listen the more aware you become of the riches; and there will be levels of sophistication and technical understanding that can only be absorbed after a great deal of listening, reading, probably playing (I know there are whole areas I still miss out on being a non-player)! What you need more is the will to listen past what is current and part of the general culture of the day. I know my early forays into jazz from the rock and jazz rock world were initially disappointing because much of it sounded quite old-fashioned. Once I could hear past that a world opened up. I've found that experience repeated again and again as I've moved into areas of jazz (and other music) that had previously seemed too locked in their specific time frame to make any connection. When you've been listening to jazz a long time and can enjoy Armstrong or Parker or Ellington or Coltrane as if it is today's music you can easily lose sight of how strange and colourless it sounds to those whose ears are not attuned. Going back to the original question maybe a certain level of maturity is needed to want to get past the general culture of the day* and appreciate what other eras or other areas of experience have to offer. * I don't mean rejecting it; just wanting to hear something else beyond.

Wonderful! Put my 5 minute assemblies to shame!

I think I've worked out the resizing bit. Is the IMG box the main text box or the attachments box? When I add attachments the always land at the end. How do you get image/text/image/text sequences. Thanks for the help but I'm not quite there yet.

Testing: C:\Documents and Settings\Bev Stapleton\My Documents\My Pictures\zz_Personal\zz_LP sleeves

Erik, Like arguments about who matters most in jazz, squabbles over what really happened in history go round in endless circles. And no-one's right! That's where the fun is. [On the Revolution there are a million and one interpretations - popular history views Louis XIV creating a regime that had so many internal contradictions that revolution was inevitable. I tend to be more convinced by the view that the revolution happened through the particular failure of Louis XVI and his ministers to deal with the stresses of the 1780s rather than any deep seated inevitability.]

A few months back there was a thread on how to put up images on posts. Can someone either bring this back or put a brief explanation of how to do this. I seem to have hit and miss results - sometimes they come up, sometimes they won't load up (I've tried reducing the size). What type of images do they have to be? Why are they sometimes huge, sometimes small. Yours, perplexed!

Jim Rs Blindfold disc included a wonderful Louis Stewart version of ‘The Dolphin’ that sent me back to my LPs. I thought this marvellous guitarist deserved his own thread. I came across Stewart first on the Ronnie Scott Quintet’s ‘Serious Gold’ in the late 70s, still one of my favourite jazz records. Stewart’s playing on ‘Lazy Afternoon’ and, above all, ‘Forty Colours’ was like a peep into a different world to someone used to rock guitar. I picked up a couple of his discs on small Irish labels – ‘Louis the First’ and ‘Out on His Own’ which I played constantly. The latter in particular is gorgeous – solo Stewart plus some overdubbing exploring mainly ballads and even an Irish folk song. The one where I thought he’d slipped was ‘Milesian Source’, like ‘Serious Gold’ on the short lived Ronnie Scott imprint for Pye. A quartet disc with Geoff Castle playing very 70s synths - the whole thing has a half-baked fusion feel. I get this out every few years but time doesn’t seem to have improved it. I get the impression Stewart decided this was not the direction for him! The last Louis Stewart I obtained was a 1979 straight-ahead date, ‘I Thought About You’ with no less than John Taylor, Sam Jones and Billy Higgins. A studio date that sounds like a live club recording. Wonderful. Unlike Jim I’m no guitarist so I can’t comment on the finer points of Stewarts style. All I know is that there is a warmth in his tone, a beautiful sense of harmony and an ability to roll off endless variations in the blowing stuff. After ’79 I lost touch with Stewart. His recordings never seemed to get to the UK shops in the provinces. I did get to see him about five years back at the Appleby Festival – two great sets but no recordings on sale. ‘The Dolphin’ piqued my interest again and I tracked down ‘Overdrive’ in London, a disc that on first hearing sounds as exciting as ‘I Thought About You.’ I notice that there are all manner of other Stewart discs hidden away. The Jardis label boasts: "Street Of Dreams" JRCD 20243 "I Wished On The Moon" JRCD 20027 "Out On His Own" JRCD 9612 "In A Mellow Tone" JRCD 9206 "Winter Song" JRCD 9005 "Acoustic Guitar Duets" JRCD 9613 Whilst the Livia label website has: 'OUT ON HIS OWN' LRCD 1 (as above) 'LOUIS STEWART QUARTET' LRCD 11 'DRUMS AND FRIENDS' LRCD 2 'ALONE TOGETHER' LRCD 5 'ACOUSTIC GUITAR DUETS' LRCD 7 (as above) So. Any fans…and I know Jim will have plenty to say…what post-79 albums are particularly recommended? And where’s the best place to find them?

Tupperware.

So was at least one of the Swedish kings! Old Gustav, I believe. For a moment I thought you were referring to Christina. Tell me more about 'old Gustav.'

It could be argued that he inherited one of the most powerful countries in the world thanks to the work of Richelieu and Mazarin and the inherent wealth of Europe's most populous nation. He used that for a mere 25 years to expand the borders slightly. After that it was all downhill. His last 15 years were marked by constant military defeat (apart from a last minute face-saving goal at Denain), economic stagnation, dreadful harvest failures and serious social unrest. And Versailles was a cold and miserable place as a consequence! Had the coalition sorted out its differences and put its mind to the job France would have been at least partially occupied sometime between 1704 and 1712 (it was invaded). He did, on the other hand, have some very good spin doctors. Try 'The Fabrication of Louis XIV' by Peter Burke, 1992. I could take you up on the French Revolution but that would take all day...

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned King Edward II. For those with little knowledge of English history his demise was so painful it inspired the name of a traditional English folk-reggae band..."Edward II and the Red Hot Polkas"* Think about it! (*sadly they truncated their name to "Edward II"...and more recently to "EIIK")

How do you e-mail 'sweets'? (let's get the terminology right!)

Just don't come 'trick and treating' round me! Possibly the most irritating thing ever created in the USA and now its over here! AaaaaaHHHH!!!!!!

Nice to know I made a convert! Fugace is interesting but I find it a bit academic by contrast with "Charmediterranéen" and Trovesi's other recordings.

"King Other" appears to be way ahead in the poll. Time for a Mosaic set, methinks. "The Anon Sessions"?

Albert's in Malmo next to the railway station, BB is just outside the post office in Uppsala and there's a fine likeness of Freddie overlooking the state alcohol shop in Mora.

Not as colourful, true, but if anyone could be said to have 'ruled right' then he must be a major contender. OK, he introduced absolute rule into Sweden which might seem a 'bad thing' in the 21st C democratic way of looking at things. But he used that power to put the nobility in their place (unlike all the other absolute kings who joined up with the nobility to do in everyone else!), gave Sweden the finest administration in Europe and an efficient army and then...the thing that makes him almost unique amongst the Swedish kings of the time...did all he could to keep Sweden at peace from 1679-1697. A fine king indeed. Oddly enough when I was in Sweden in the summer I could find statues of all the others...but none of Charles XI!