ArtSalt

Lucky for you someone has PM'd, there's no way I would part with my set!

Sadly, I won't be going, but I see they're cutting funding of jazz as high art in Bonnie Scotland: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/worldfolkandjazz/10971234/Jazz-the-Cinderella-of-arts-funding.html

They're quite amusing comments. I quite like the more exotica side of Tjader, the same with Herbie Mann's world music explorations. That taste of a rumbullion, just this side of the cocktail hour. The Tjader biography is on my reading list for this year's vacation, I'm looking forward to learning more about him.

That's similar to Teachout's position on Ellington.

There's some interesting comments on one Youtube videos of Tjader's The Fakir: * Excellent. Prepare for take off. Inventory check. Pistachio nuts? Hookah pipe? Efes Pilsner? Hashish? Cal Tjader CD? I am a nutty Turkish cosmonaut orbiting Istanbul in a space age hovercraft. Buckle up. Tonight we hover over the bazaar. * there's no party like a secret agent party. swagger machine 3000: engage.

The bootleg version of the CD is available from the usual suspects, including JazzMessengers. Here's the track listing: 1. A Night in Tunisia 2. Ornithology 3. Embraceable You 4. Hot House 5. Scrapple from the Apple 6. Cool Blues 7. Dixie/Yankee Doodle March/I Got Rhythm 8. Scrapple from the Apple No. 2 9. Dance of the Indifels I've never heard it, but I imagine the sound is pretty ropey. There's been no official release has there? The personnel listed, contradicts some of those in the article: Frank Morgan All-Stars (alto saxophone); Don Wilkerson (tenor saxophone); Chet Baker (trumpet); Larance Marable (drums).

Now you put it that way.... Hmmmm......

Everybody loves jazz flute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ0U_3_4jB8

I've purchased a number of the FIM 32-Bit jazz reissues and I do believe the hype and that they are impeccably remastered. However, I do find Winston Ma's (President of FIM Music) liner notes quite infuriating, as he is clearly no jazz fan! This from Monty Alexander's Stir It Up: The Music of Bob Marley: "I am not a die-hard jazz fan. Though Bob Marley and Monty Alexander here show themselves to indeed be first-rate jazz guys, I admit there are other performances I prefer." This from the K2 remastering of Getz/Gilberto: "To be honest, I was not impressed at my first auditioning. The sound quality was clearly not five-star, though the music was very nice. My taste suggested that the two vocalists lacked in professionalis....I was left with the impression her part was like a lump of ice-cream....." And this the Cal Tjader and Stan Getz Sextets: This recording excels in musicality and sound qualitues that are rare in jazz recordings."

You can't of course, please everyone: there's always something more, a little further onward that you have digged that the critic seemingly hasn't! Or so you think. I am always astounded that Art Blakey's Orgy in Rhythm and the two Holidays for Skins are not central to Blue Note reissues, these albums seem to me to be essential to understand Blakey, the man and his music.

I had hoped AC/DC would hold out for all eternity, and I would never have to contemplate For Those About To Rock....We Salute You - ever again!

Who cares as to the vagaries and trends found in the uneducated ears of the herd?

Freemasonary means different things and levels of intensity, depending on where you actually live. In Scotland for example..... In England the lodges where once arranged on strictly class basis...... I'll leave it there, but in the US it seems a more inclusive thing. And indeed, back in Blighty they're desperate for new recruits. But in any event, the position that freemasonary has had any discernable influence or inspiration on jazz music as art form is clearly wishful thinking, delusional and quite historically incorrect.

Mr Gioia is the man, shame his jazz forum didn't work out, but of course back then, you couldn't have guessed the extent of trolls and the fact that moderators are needed to preserve the peace. Actually, I like to think my strategic and tactical purchases have helped reinvigorate the reissue market on several fronts.

A mucca of mine is big in product testing in China and he recently had a new client from Europe who was an upmarket audiophile manufacturer that was starting to source component parts in China as the original supplier had moved production there. Fair play, the audiophile equipment manufacturer went to China himself to check out the component company and witness the testing. My friend asked him the question of which is the best format, to which he replied "Well of course, undoubtedly vinyl is the best sounding format.....for the first ten plays." And then went on to elaborate further.

He makes a strong case that music will revert back to its origins of being a social construct without a physical presence. It is a good book and Byrne comes across as honest and without pretensions. He was pretty positive about downloads and streaming, but he has since changed his position on the likes of Spotify.

It's the last cut on the album that is the strongest IMCO, it all just comes together perfectly: Whisper Not.

My understanding is that live gigs and touring is now the biggest money spinner and concert promoters and venues now give much better deals to the artists than previously. Money can be made, but you're not going to make it on album or download sales. On Sexmob's last CD Cinema, Circus & Spaghetti, Steven Bernstein states that he thought he would never make another studio album as the state of the recording industry makes it unprofitable and he was content just doing the European circuit. They only did the album at the behest of promoters who wanted a new program. In David Byrne's recent book How Music Works, there's a chapter on business models for musicians and he also gives a breakdown on the production costs and profits on his album with Brian Eno Everything That Happens. I think they made something like US $160.000 over a couple of years of sales (it may have been less, I will need to check) between them. Now, that CD was produced in his home studio and not in a recording studio with session musicians, if it had, then it would unlikely to have made any money at all. But the liberating and revolutionary quality of these new technologies is that they allow you to create albums in the home - well, depends on what type of band you are. There was an interview I saw not so long back with Glen Gregory and Martyn Ware of the electronic synth band Heaven 17, where they stated the last album they did was basically done in the home bedroom studio of one of them. They said they had to be careful when the binmen were around and noise of traffic, but they said the cost savings compared to how much it would have cost in the "old studio system" was phenomenal. Of course, if you're in a big band or nonet then this might not be the ideal and be too restricting. For some, this new world is going to open doors that were previously closed in terms of costs, unless you got a big advance to produce an album. The new business model seems to be that Spotify is good at introducing people to new music, but the musician is not necessarily going to make any real money unless they tour constantly. If studio recordings are no longer profitable, then the big grandiose produced studio albums recorded over several months are also dead. Some may say, that this is a good thing.

I agree and disagree, but as the situation is in flux, so I think this confusion is permitted. I miss the era when as a 10 year old, my grandparents knew who Adam Ant was and the video of Stand and Deliver was part of the shared experience of everyone. That's what is missing today, that power to reach everyone, and everbody have an opinion, good or bad has gone.

Exactly, the diversity of it means there is no longer a common culture to it, as there was in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s, early 90s and of course before. It's so diverse, splintered and with everything available at any time, it has fulfilled the post-modern promise that everything is true and everything is permitted. I agree that on the individual level music remains as powerful as the recorded music allowed it to become, but on the level of a force of social integration, as it was before recorded music mediums, it has lost its power: I can walk into my place of work, or go for a drink with friends and with very, very few exceptions our playlist will not overlap at all. In the 70s and 80s there would be a common understanding of chart music.

Between €19.99 and €21.99, if I remember rightly.

Interestingly, my young nephew back in Chester said the same thing to me recently, arguing that music was more important now than ever for young people. Incidently, he is a streamer too and advised me that neither he or any of his friends purchased physical CD's or records. I don't believe that music has the power to be at the vanguard of the cutural zeitgeist as it did from, if we believe the hype about teenagers, the rock 'n roll era from Elvis through to The Beatles and beyond to the over blown production and contracts of the 1980s. I actually don't belive the hype, so I place the beginning of music as the dominant cultural expression, or what was to come, earlier in the jazz age of the 1920s. Anyway, I don't see any musical form, artist, band, or record label as representing the culture of our times. It is no longer a vehicle of revolutionary change, or at least, the expression of this. You only need to look at the rank mediocrity and the wheeling out of Debbie Harry and Chris Stein at Glastonbury to give very bad karaoke interpretations of their hits to realise that rock is a dead art form. Well, IMCO. The era when music represented the common culture, along with Bond films is over. What is left is music as it originally was, outside of classical stuff, as a cottage level industry that will be uniquely, a global affair. From that perspective it is exciting for the canny musician, but at the same time, another Elvis or Paul Simon's Graceland will not come again.

Didn't Joe Pass live with one of the junky Beats for awhile, or was it Charles Bukowski? Can't remember now and can't find a reference readily on the internet. Anyone know? I think there is tendancy with all great guitarists to fall into the trap of technically brilliant playing that is all phallic dexterity resulting in boredom in the audience, unless ofcourse, you are a fellow guitarist who can marvel at the genius of it all. I think Pat Metheny and definitely John McLaughlin fall into this arena.

I see the SHM's and Blu Spec's have infiltrated the Dutch record shops - what's left of them - plenty of the reissued Blue Note's and others in the Hague Jazz Center and some in Sounds in Delft.

There's always going to be individuals who want the physical artifact, be it a 12" record, tape reel or CD. A box that streams or is full to the brim of downloaded, is just not the same, it lacks physical presence and the ability to browse as if in a library. There will always be a niche market for these physical formats, but as for saving the music industry, it is reverting to a cottage level industry practised by musician-publishing-distributers in their bedroom and garage studios and I can't see this trend changing. The old record label model is dead, but so too is popular music as the defining and dominant cultural expression, as it was in the last years of the 20th century. Music is no longer as important culturally as it was for the baby-boomer generation.