Stompin at the Savoy

Well, he produces reissues and recent 'discoveries' so I am willing to cut him quite a bit of slack. Yes he does toot his own horn too much and yes I hate the idea of expensive, luxury vinyl in limited editions that I will never buy. That said I assume he is doing this as a career, has to make money at it somehow, and pricey vinyl is a thing right now, incomprehensible as it may seem to me...

I have some of the Muse albums on previously issued cds and would be interested in purchasing several more but not on pricey, deluxe lp editions. Good quality downloads (cd or better) would work fine for me too.

I received a tracking number! It often takes several days to my little corner of Oregon. On top of that today I received a very nice copy of the Buddy De Franco/Sonny Clark quartet and quintet set, for which I have searched many's the long year, and the price was shockingly low - counting for 30 years of inflation, probably less than the original price. I tried for a while to get all the original albums but some were pretty difficult to find on cd.

I had to think about this one for a while too but I finally pre-ordered it. Wasn't sure if I would want to listen to it. The curious thing is that I was actually a big Pharoah Sanders fan in the early seventies. My interests lately have been delving back into swing, big band and older stuff.

Rhoads is more like the electric guitar virtuosity I used to admire listening to the radio in the 80's. Yes it's licks and tricks but it's damn fooking impressive nonetheless.

So, are you impressed by this? He says it's a "jazzy solo" but it's a memorized passage and you can go to a guitar store and hear people playing as well or better every day. Okay this is probably not leading to edification so I will shut up.

I've been playing guitar since around 1968 and I'm pretty familiar with guitar blues licks and all that. Not that I am any great shakes after all these years. I think what is really going on here is Iommi has a sound, that metal electric guitar sound, and was a pioneer with this sound. I will certainly go that far - he is good at that sound and a certain rough-hewn attitude in his playing. But that sound is mostly settings on the guitar, amp, and perhaps some signal processing devices in the chain. If you took off all the amplification and distortion and whatnot and he just played the same thing on an acoustic guitar, there would be very little to it. I can in most cases easily play the pentatonic riffs he is playing - it's not hard stuff. Doubtless I cannot play those same notes on an electric and get his sound but then again I don't want to. These guys are not famous for beautiful melodies, musicality, or memorable lyrics; they are famous for a kind of melodic and rhythmic minimalism coupled with a loud, vaguely menacing, sound, along with campy showmanship and costumes... IMO. Johnny Winter, btw, is a whole different thing and really has guitar chops.

I suppose whatever music people were dancing to in high school burns a particularly deep impression in one's mind. But it is possible to overcome this sort of bias. In my case the music that came out in high school was the Beatles, Stones, etc. And I really liked all that very uncritically at the time but later on it occurred to me that quite a bit of what the Beatles put out, for example, was dreck.

Well, I listened to the first and second tunes on there. There was a little break in between with some acoustic guitar which sounded like a nylon string guitar or three. Call me unimpressed! If you think that is very good guitar playing I envy you because there is so much good guitar playing out there which you can look forward to hearing. The electric guitar sounds nice - authentically metal - but in my view is nothing much musically - simplistic pentatonic riffs and power chords. If this is the best you can come up with for Iommi's playing then I guess I need listen no further. The melody and singing on the first number are absolutely what I was talking about: throwaway repetitive melody and lyrics. To each his own and if this does something for you, great! Does very little for me.

OK but when I listen to Black Sabbath I find nothing like Joe Pass or Jim Hall. Iommi may claim them as influences but where's the influence? Do you hear it? Or failing that, name a cut where Iommi plays well, whatever style... I'm willing to be convinced.

Back in the 80's I used to occasionally listen to a Tommy Vance program on the BBC. I forget what it was called but it was music "on the heavy side" as he would say. In my view it was kind of lightweight musically but these bands often put on an impressive display of electric guitar virtuosity which could be enjoyable in and of itself, the tunes and lyrics largely simplistic and barely audible. OK a lot of it was repetitive tricks and pentatonic cliches but it had a certain cocky majesty in its braggadoccio. I don't know if my tastes have changed over the last 40 years. I still find the occasional shredder exciting but when I went through several notable Black Sabbath tunes mentioned in the newspaper, and when I listened to the excerpts that Rick Beato played in the clip linked above, I was struck by how rudimentary, obvious, and unswinging it all is. The combination of third-hand blues mixed with English music hall and camp satanism, hyper-masculinity blended vaguely with an ethos hinting at drag-queens - not that there is anything wrong with that - does little for me.

Ozzy Osbourne did not become popular until my college years and that was the period I got into jazz, so I never really listened to him. I did not own a tv in the 70's or 80's so I never watched the show. I was reading one of the obits in one of the papers and it mentioned several of his supposedly seminal hits so I listened out of curiosity. I admit that a lot of stuff I liked as a kid in the 60's and 70's no longer appeals to me but gee whiz this is trashy stuff and not in a good way. I know Ozzie did not play guitar and I am not the greatest player but the playing on that stuff makes me look like a wildly imaginative and hip guitarist. Truly awful.

This is what they are saying on the site: So I guess end of July.

Because terms like broadcast tv, streaming and cable tv refer to the method of signal propagation, in other words OTA, internet, or using some sort of land cable. Not which channels are carried. Broadcast tv = OTA. I can see why you are thinking like that. When we were younger broadcast and cable were each synonymous with a set of channels. Network tv was broadcast and CNN, etc were cable. But now I receive channels that I used to think of as cable - but via OTA! I live in a rural part of Oregon. OTA tv signals are available here from a number of mountain top broadcast stations but they are all fairly far away, so my signal can be weak or intermittent. Lots of mountains here and line of sight often won't work - usually has to be a bounce. I use a signal amplifier, which is a small, inexpensive gadget that goes in between the antenna (a paper-thin sheet about a foot square) and the tv (or pc). Numerous good signals from several directions.

I used cable long ago but I've been using over the air broadcast tv since 2014. Back in those days Windows 7 and 8 had a program called Windows Media Center which, along with a usb stick tuner, allowed you to view and record OTA and other inputs on a PC, which I've been doing since then. Microsoft eventually discontinued support and stopped supplying tv schedules for the program but there is a cheap service ($25/yr) called Schedules Direct which works with WMC. I mainly watch PBS and am a member of Southern Oregon PBS so streaming with PBS Passport is taking over a lot of my viewing. But picking up an inexpensive and small antenna and trying OTA on your tv set is an option people should consider, depending on the availability of signals in your area. The resolution is superb and it's free.

Digital broadcast tv has probably accounted for some drift back to broadcast tv. You get high definition for free with an antenna.

It's a bit like the way Samuel Johnson described a dog walking on two legs. One is impressed not so much that he does it well but that he does it at all.

Broadcast TV refers to traditional radio frequency local broadcasts which bounce off the ionosphere and can be received by a dedicated TV receiver set. While you may receive a similar selection of channels via cable, the term refers to the method of broadcast, ie radio broadcast. This is sometimes referred to as OTA, over the air.

I think this is similar to the one Steve was referring to. Depending on how much you have already it can be a pretty good start.

Something about Eric Dolphy's flute playing freaks out my cat. He's not quite ready for Eric?

I bought this set on ebay last year for $30 more than this seller is asking. I have bought from Face of the Bass before - excellent transaction! Great set.

Might be a little beyond 10-15 years old.

Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron's Memoir, 1934-1969. I've been eyeing this for a long time but the price has always been prohibitive. Today I noticed that the price for the kindle edition dropped from about $97 to about $41. I had some credits which brought it below the psychologically significant barrier of forty bux and went for it. Interesting book!

Great to hear that the series might continue. Having all this on spotify and youtube is a great resource. This set is great to listen to while reading Eddie Lambert's book, which covers the material in order.