Rabshakeh

What's QPR?

Ismael Rivera Con Kako Y Su Orchestra – Lo Ultimo En La Avenida This one's a good'n.

Nubya Garcia – Odyssey Her second record. Seems about as bland as music can be to my ears on first listen.

WSQ - Steppin'

It took me a while but I got it eventually.

David Murray, Questlove and Raymond Angry – Plumb

It was contemporary at the time? It is a self-published big band record to from 1981, close-ish to early George Russell maybe. Definitely worth streaming.

Karlton Hester And The Contemporary Jazz Art Movement

That's terrible. We were like that last year. One of the worst fortnights of my life, and it didn't go away really until months after. This year we got the kids flu vaccinations (hardly essential at that age but I don't regret it) and we have escaped with no more than sore throats so far.

Faces – A Nod's As Good As A Wink...To A Blind Horse Listening to this whilst the kids are in the bath, being unusually well behaved. It is one of my favourite rock records, largely for its sloppy stupidity, and young Rod Stewart's vocal performance. Great record. My wife is currently on an Albert Collins kick. Even in these days of hipster ubiquity, one of the most uniquely dressed men of all time. Legendary. I was lucky enough to have an English lit teacher when I was 7 who had the whole class reading Inglan is a Bitch. I have very strong memories of reading it and marvelling over the different meanings of "beech" (as it was spelt). Obviously he couldn't be "bitch", as that was rude. Was it "beech", as it was spelt, or perhaps "beach", with savage irony? Maybe it was "bitch"? I knew not to ask my parents. I remember the classroom scene like yesterday, although it was now a few decades ago. I think it was some of the first poetry I really remember reading, other than poems like Horatius at the Bridge, The Jabberwocky, or the Highwayman, which my Dad introduced me to. Certainly it was the first poetry that I remember really thinking about. The teacher made a big deal about having had to go deep into Brixton (to our 7-years-old ears, a legendary no go zone) to purchase it, in pamphlet form. It was the late 1980s, when London certainly was rougher, but I have often wondered how much of that was actually true and how much of it was just about casting a glamour over impressionistic kids. Certainly the books we were reading were unusually poorly printed. I have no idea how easy it would have been to purchase 30 copies of Linton Kwesi Johnson poems at the time in London. Years later, I was speaking to an uncle from the part of my family who remained in SA after Sharpsville. Apparently this record was one of the few that got through the Nationalists' cultural restrictions of the time, and it was a huge deal in the anti-apartheid movement. Reggae along with House was one of the most important foreign influences on South African music post-apartheid, and this record was apparently one of the main influences on the likes of Lucky Dube and other legends of that era.

It has a few duff tracks and some superb tracks. When I first heard it, it really blew me away but with time I think I rate it less highly.

Sorry! I haven't always been posting I have loved following up what you've been posting. It goes far beyond other resources out there!

Herbie Hancock - Mr. Hands

Nice stuff!

Pass it on. It is like the Ring virus. It is the only way to save yourself.

Not usually one for this thread, but this is Christmas dinner: Starter is a northern Rhone wine. Main is a 2016 St Emilion, courtesy of an error in pricing that meant that we are getting £73 per bottle for the price of £17 (sadly not repeatable, God knows we have tried). Now onto this: a port from the 1970s that was bought the day I was born. Label lost in a flood a few years back.

Oh. I didn't know that. I thought it was later. That clears that up too, then.

It is a sample! Of Ron Carter! Not Bootsy Collins at all! And it is from the Herbie Hancock soundtrack to Blow-Up!. I feel like my whole life up to now has been a lie. It does raise the big question though how something from a 1966 jazz album, coming years before James Brown or Miles' 'invention' of fusion, manages to be so impossibly, Bristol-student-union-in-1995 level funky.

This is my Christmas jazz.

Me too. A disaster all round.

Yeah, thanks... I fear it will be a Metal Easter too.

Budd Johnson and Buddy Johnson gets me a lot. In fact I find it very easy to confuse Budd Johnson with a host of other musicians.

After all that jazz education, the six year old asked Father Christmas for an Iron Maiden record for Christmas. Probably the first time my mother in law has been pleased to be deaf

How old is he? I love this kind of stuff.