Rabshakeh

A lot of the earlier records sound pretty @Teasing the Korean approximate: After Hours: Middle East and How To Strip For Your Husband: Music To Make Marriage Merrier are two examples. I like that website a lot.

I mean, the Groove Merchants look great and they often sound great. As a label, it has a high hit rate in my view in terms of quality. The cover art is often so good that you wonder why they haven't been picked up by the Insta-clout crowd, and the music is in that soul jazz sweet spot such that you would have assumed acid jazz and rare groove fans would be all over them. Leaving aside Kudu, the similar Mainstream label has far less attractive cover art and generally weaker records, but it has a far larger presence.

Two record labels that were founded by Sonny Lester and covered one of jazz' commercially / critically tougher periods, working a commercially minded soul jazz vein after its original popularity has ceased. I'm quite partial to the former label's work in particular, and I have never understood it's comparatively low profile among fans of soul jazz. Did Sonny Lester have a bad reputation? Or is it just that the distribution etc was not enough to keep up with the likes of Kudu?

Air - Air Time

I was at the second night. A genuinely great gig. SN was at his absolute best and JA was a fantastic foil to PB.

Alan Skidmore + Radio-Philharmonie Hannover Des NDR + Colin Towns Mask Symphonic - After The Rain: A Collection Of Ballads

Steve Coleman And Five Elements – Weaving Symbolics

It was the latter. I couldn't see whose record it was. Thanks Tapper Zukie always seemed to lose more and more prominence with time. I remember his name being mentioned a lot more as a kid.

I believe JS' comment may have been a self-reflexive joke.

What is this one?

I was thinking the other day of how massive ECM used to be. It had a whole section of its own in my local Tower Records. It was almost a lifestyle choice. A lot of jazz people I knew hated it. For a long time there was almost a genre of articles going 'Guess what? You wouldn't know it but ECM used to release good records'. It all seems so long ago now.

I'll miss Allen. Obviously sometimes he could be quite difficult, but he is an original thinker with a lot to say. His substack is a strong dose of Allen-ness in all of its forms.

It's one of my favourite BYG records too. Certainly my favourite to emerge from that trip to the Panafrican Festival. Just an idle thought, but I think that the Paris 1969-70 period is ripe for a book length history. So much happened in such a short time. Its as much a story of the closing of Jazz's canonical era and the opening of the next chapter as Bitches Brew and Red Clay.

It is really about Bobby Few for me. That said, I don't own it. I am on a strict moratorium these days for space reasons.

Why did you sell it? Space issues? I really like it.