Rabshakeh

Yeah. But it's not a clever agenda. He likes to stress how fiery hard bop was and how political it was, presumably because he thinks that grows engagement (and he probably believes it and hears it). But he clearly loves bop, cool and the rest. So there's a disconnect between his general overview sections and his specific discussions of records. What appeals to me about him is just how different he is to the rest of the people discussed on this thread. He's not a 78 year old hi fi obsessive from New York. He's some guy in an American football shirt in a tiny suburb of some small mid western town. And he doesn't just do Blue Note stuff every day. It is all second hand stuff too. No reissue wankfests. Sorry. Enough about this guy, who I rarely watch anyway these days. I don't want to derail the thread. Those YouTube hi fi guys are the pits.

All of this is fair and the political stuff is particularly daft but he knows his stuff for his period at least. I like how he pushes records on Bethlehem and Mode and other labels that are completely unfashionable in the wider internet.

Ha!

Also, the internet frieth the head.

I think this is pretty damn cool. I am 41 and I can barely release a bowl of pasta so I am filled with admiration. Well done to him.

One guy I quite like who is a Micallef acolyte is a Minnesota guy called the Jazz Shepherd. Seems like an off but decent guy. He has very deep knowledge of 50s and 60s jazz, but a ferocious hate for anything avant. There is the usual tedious engagement stuff, but his knowledge of his subject goes deep.

I mean, you've pretty much nailed Micallef's audience there. On his YT channel he used to occasionally have a guest spot with some guy who had a stall on a New York street (literally on the street). I always liked that guy a lot. A huge amount of enthusiasm and some excellent records. I think his name was Jimmy Vinyl or something. I forget. Micallef less so. He occasionally does those show off videos where he shows you his amazing collection but the actual videos he does are so primed for engagement and devoid of actual information that they make me queasy.

I love your written summaries.

Okay. Its Monday morning today, so I'll have to save it up for next week, I guess.

Is this good? I liked that NYC 5 record but I don't think I know him otherwise.

Richard Dunbar – Dancing To The Light

I can see this as a valid argument, but in my opinion the quality tails off hard after episode three or so. What's left is still very good until the second series but it isn't anything like the level of the first episodes. My opinion only, obviously. I still wonder whether even with that tail off it isn't his Great Work.

Roswell Rudd - Steve Lacy - Sheila Jordan – Blown Bone

This is essentially my view too. Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet are the beginning to end masterpieces. The first few episodes of series one of Twin Peaks are even better but then tail off hard. The rest is a bit of a mixture really. Lost Highway, despite being so so, has the second greatest film depiction of oily white boy saxophone in American cinema (the greatest is of course Tim Capello in Lost Boys) and had a soundtrack that radicalised a generation, myself included. But overall he achieved one of the greatest things that I think an artist can, which is to re-invent the world, such that it is different for having him in it, and people recognise it differently.

They also don't seem to have the same sort of "clout" for whatever reason, which might explain why they aren't getting the international reissued. You don't see them being posted on Instagram that much, for example, even by Japanese accounts. Again, not just Japan but continental Europe is the similar. Conversely, in the last few years the Japanese stuff from after 1968 has become as Insta-prominent as anything on Black Jazz or Strata-East, much more than the British stuff.