Guy Berger

I think Ghost is talking about the 1972 band that is represented on In Concert (and a few bootlegs including the Paul Mall one), not the fall 1971 iteration of the Cellar Door band. Imho the 1972 recordings are fascinating but IIRC the sound quality isn’t great. if sound quality is a constraint then the top pick would have to be the 1975 Japan tour. I think you could get a fair amount of mileage out of the 1973 Japan and Europe concerts too. It’s been a while since I listened to the North American shows from this period - do any of them have good sound quality?

This one is great, as is Another Place on Label Bleu.

Thanks for sharing!

Gave this a few listens. Enjoyable if you liked the prior two. No strong opinion beyond that.

Bingo. I don’t mind the stylings, I do mind the lack of substance

arrived!

It’s funny I wrote this way back when… a few years after, Rudresh Mahanthappa recorded Kinsmen which has a relevant vibe and is a top notch album.

Wait how did you find this out?

RIP. I love his “ugly beauty” Coltrane-influenced approach to the organ

Yeah. I think this is a general feature of takes on Davis’s music from 1965 onward - a lot of the innovation was happening in concert, and official documentation of that is not necessarily representative

Thanks guys. Familiar with a little but not all of this stuff!

The group’s 4th album overall, and 3rd one overall. Hart, Mark Turner, Ethan Iverson, Ben Street, I liked their prior two ECM outings a lot, especially One Is the Other. (Separately: I wish someone would reissue Enchance, even digital only!)

I’ve been starting to explore this group of musicians. A lot of them pop up on Spotify, some I’ve encountered on my Clean Feed Records binge, some are active in collaboration with American musicians. any recommendations? I have a wide range of tastes from straight ahead to avant-garde to fusion. My sweet spot is music that sits somewhere between those poles.

The afternoon and evening concerts at Osaka’s Festival Hall turn 50 tomorrow (February 1st 1975). Ive been listening to these albums for more than 25 years. It’s taken me a long time to appreciate them. (And I’d still say that I like some of Davis’s other electric music better - though I like them a lot.) Some things I’m interested in: 1/ “this was just one day in the life of the band”. My sense from lightly grazing recordings of other concerts from this Japanese tour is that these 4 LPs weren’t even the best performances. 2/ On a similar theme, a lot of our received history of post-1965 Miles Davis is because of a few releases. So for a long time folks thought of these as the last word. Now it’s more apparent there was a steady evolution from On the Corner to the summer of 1975 (final recording we have is from July). It’s interesting to imagine what would have happened if Davis had not retired due to health/drug issues - maybe there would have just been a smooth transition to the more commercial early 1980s music. 3/ I remember listening to “Bush Baby” from Arthur Blythe’s Illusions for the first time and thinking, ok, that’s an obvious nod to this music! A lot of Julius Hemphill’s stuff, too. Though maybe just convergent evolution.

Never got any notice except the announcements on the website

Listening to my first Simon Nabatov - Last Minute Theory on Clean Feed. A top notch group w/Tony Malaby, Brandon Seabrook, Michael Formanek and Gerald Cleaver. Great stuff.

This is such a great throwaway lyric (I mean this as a compliment!!!)

RIP. The only one who didn’t sing, right?

I liked Ethan’s piece and appreciate it highlighting some overlooked music, but the lines between this kind of advanced straight ahead music, fusion and free jazz were often blurry! Not to mention that soul jazz was a key element in the jazz style mix during this period, and influenced some of the recordings he mentions

I forgot about that! Y I K E S

I really doubt it was a scam because most of the series shipped (to a lot, though sadly not all, of us). The guy just overcommitted and botched the execution

Damn. rip.

I mean, if your benchmark is Page One or Hank Mobley it’s “out”! If it’s Ayler or post-1964 Coltrane, not so much. I agree that he never tread the path set by Cecil T and Paul B (to pick 2 archetypes) - the path that other mainstream giants like Herbie, Chick, Keith explored, but… The intensity and abstraction of some of those recordings WAS out! I think it’s telling that a lot of the incorporation of Tynerisms into modern straightahead jazz piano is much more restrained and controlled.

No need to apologize - that’s a real bummer

Yes, a lot, though none of these are quintets. If we’re talking just officially released recordings: Black Beauty (April 1970) at Fillmore (June 1970) Isle of Wight Festival (August 1970) cellar door (December 1970) and a recording from Europe (fall 1971, on the Newport box) obviously there are tons of unofficial recordings too. between Shorter’s departure in March 1970 and Liebman’s arrival in early 1973, we have live recordings with Steve Grossman (spring/early summer 1970), Gary Bartz (late summer 1970 - fall 1971), Carlos Garnett (summer/fall 1972) His playing is intense, cerebral and uncompromising - more so than other “straight ahead” Coltrane acolytes. (Though I am not sure you can really call him SA.) It took me a while to get into it, too.