Face of the Bass

That's good stuff, Allen. I think that 1950s stuff ages really well...actually, all of Sun Ra's stuff from the late 1950s through the mid-to-late 1960s ages well. I don't think the band was ever quite the same after Ronnie Boykins left, but there are some good albums from the 1970s too. (I've never really been able to get into his 80's material, though.) Anyway, there is no doubt that there is a glut of Sun Ra recordings out there, but the man was an absolutely brilliant musician, composer and bandleader. In terms of critical recognition, he might be the most underrated American musician of the twentieth century. For those interested, I think Szwed's biography of Ra ranks as one of the best jazz bios ever written, IMO.

I'll put it this way: if somebody burst into my house, put a gun to my head and said that I had to get rid of every recording that I had by every artist, except one, I would save my collection in this order: 1. Miles Davis 2. Sun Ra 3. John Coltrane 4. Ornette Coleman 5. Cecil Taylor 6. Charlie Parker 7. Steve Lacy 8. Thelonious Monk 9. Anthony Braxton 10. Pharoah Sanders 11. Charles Mingus 12. Duke Ellington And so forth. Dude could have my Louis Armstrong recordings, as I've sold most of those anyway after an aborted attempt to make myself like something that I just wasn't digging. I keep the Hot Five & Sevens around out of a sense of obligation more than anything else. Everything else has been listened to and then resold.

I studied poetry throughout college, and was blessed to have a wonderful, encouraging mentor in the poet Jane Shore. Then I went to NYU and Levine was the exact opposite of that, and suddenly, without any encouragement or helpfulness, I realized I didn't really want to be a poet. I wanted to be a writer, but I wanted to work in history, so that's what I did. So in a way I am grateful that my encounters with Levine convinced me to give it up, as there is far too much "navel gazing" going on in poetry for my tastes anyway. Levine's self-styled everyman persona is a joke, though. Butchers and factory workers aren't the ones reading his poetry or giving him prizes. It's the "ivory tower" academics that he is so disdainful towards that have nurtured and advanced his career.

To my ears he and Ellington produced the best big band music in jazz history. I think his Afro-futurist musings and costumes have caused many to dismiss him as a clown, but I stand by what I said. His music holds up as well as (and often better than) all the people I mentioned above. Further, his influence on the avant garde scene is considerable, to say the least.

Nice!

Sorry, I can't help myself...I took a class with Levine at NYU in 1999, as part of the MFA program there, and I really didn't like him at all. He was always putting people down, whether it be students or other famous poets, while projecting this image of himself as the tough everyman of American poetry. I was not a great poet, but he convinced me to give up on it altogether, and to pursue something else with my life (which I'm very glad I did, so I guess I can be thankful for that.) To me he was just an arrogant s.o.b., and I see that in an interview with the Times he talks about how he thinks the Library of Congress has named a number of really mediocre poets as the Poets Laureate. Well, as far as I'm concerned he can add his name to his own list of poets undeserving of the honor. Really didn't want to crap on this thread, but my experiences working with this man were so negative that I just have to take the opportunity to rag on him at least a little bit.

Yeah, I think there are probably more like 25-30 top-notch Sun Ra albums. The guy was just incredibly prolific, and an amazing musician. If there was a Mount Rushmore of Jazz musicians, I'd put him up there with Miles, Coltrane, Ellington and Monk in terms of guys who were incredibly prolific and who brought their own very unique visions to the jazz idiom.

Last night I was thinking about how I got to know Bill several years ago, through the Internet. I posted on another site and he sent me a pm, and then we were emailing each other. He sent me CD-Rs of the entire Roland Kirk Mercury set, and it really opened my ears to something new. I started listening to his radio program, and he was the one who got me into Sun Ra, after he played "Lanquidity." Last night I read a Sun Ra interview from the 1960s where he says the following: I don't know what else I want to say. I may be thinking about this too much...

Soul Trombone is really good; Cabin in the Sky is pretty awful, IMO.

Right, tonight my wife asked me how I would feel if this had happened to one of our children. I'd feel an anger and a hatred that would be difficult to control, I am sure. But the thing is, this didn't happen to my children, and I don't know any of the victims in this case. On the other hand, I do know Bill. So what I am forced to think about in this case is the possibility that someone for whom I had much respect doing something truly awful. And even though he didn't do anything to me, I think I am being called upon to forgive. Because when something like this happens, all of society reacts in horror, thus the responses that we've seen on here over the last couple of days. As I've said elsewhere, I think the worst kind of hell in the world has to be the one that you make for yourself. The worst feeling would not be to be wrongly accused of something atrocious, but to be justly accused. That is to say, to do something so vile that all the world rightly turns away in disgust, your friends abandon you, and you are truly alone. That, for me, is the worst kind of punishment I could possibly imagine. And that's something that he will have to deal with, assuming all this stuff we are reading about on the Internet is true. For me, the only meaningful forgiveness is the one that hasn't been earned, but that is extended anyway, because of the common bond of our shared humanity. That's what I have been thinking about today, not Bill as some monstrous "other" outcast from society, but Bill the human being. To be honest, I can't understand the compulsion for pedophilia; it makes no sense to me. But I think some of the other emotions that are probably prevalent in his mind right now--self-loathing, sense of doom, raw fear, anger, etc.--are emotions that I know only too well.

I have known two women that were molested as children. One is an alcoholic, the other killed herself. Forget him, and see what you can do to help out those that were molested when they were young.... Believe me, I know about the horrors of child abuse. But the reality is that we don't know what happened here, we can surmise based on reports in the newspapers, but we still don't know. The one aspect of Christianity that I most agree with is the fact that Jesus, during his time on earth, spent much of his time with criminals. I don't think it is right to just "forget" anyone.

Well, this is awful news. I've never met Bill but have considered him a friend since I first crossed paths with him many years ago. We traded CDs a few times, and he hipped me to the music of Rahsaan. If he did what they say he did then it is horrible, but he will still be my friend. I would write to him in prison if I could obtain an address.

Just about everything reissued on the Evidence label is worth getting. It's all good, although my favorites are Other Planes Of There, Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow, The Magic City, Atlantis, and the Heliocentric Worlds discs from ESP.

I don't have the liner notes for this one, but does anyone know why they decided to call their collaboration by this name? Was it purely an analogy, a commentary on their own musical gifts and legendary status, or did they also intend the music, such as "S & J Blues," for instance, to be a musical reflection on Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson? Thanks in advance for any help with this one.

Yes, because the idea that you would be stranded on a desert island with a cd player and speaker system that plugged into an electrical outlet was just far more realistic.

Listening to the first four discs of the Modern Jazz Quartet box. Love discs one through three...such thoughtful, patient music, and the collaborations with Giuffre and Rollins are beautiful, arresting. Disc four, on the other hand, presents the kind of music that made me skeptical about grabbing this set. I find that I can't stand Third Stream Music, maybe because I'm not that interested in the arrangements, and the whole thing feels encumbered by the added instrumentation. Not a fan.

That's be like 75 percent of the Prestige catalog, probably.

Yeah, of course just about anything there you can get elsewhere on the internet. I still like the in-store experience...that's the thing that I would find addictive.

If I lived within a three-hour radius of Chicago, I'd go broke spending my money at that place.

I decided to order the one from Amazon. Considering that the box is OOP and that none of my usual sources had it, it seemed like a very reasonable price. Now the great reshuffling of my music collection is just about complete. I think in the last couple of weeks I've sold about 12 or 13 box sets, and have used the proceeds to buy a different batch of music, that I think is more reflective of where my current tastes and interests actually lie. It was kind of like I was a kid again, trading baseball cards...enjoyable.

Thanks...I actually missed that one in my Amazon search, somehow.

Does anybody know if this box set is available anywhere? It can be had as an MP3, but I'm looking for the actual physical artifact. Thanks.

Cool...glad to hear it navigated the Atlantic without any difficulties.

Wow, thanks guys! It has been a good, peaceful day, which is all one can really ask for.

Just tried to send a PM and it seems to have blocked me for some reason. PM me, I'm interested in the set.