sidewinder Posted July 21, 2021 Report Posted July 21, 2021 (edited) 3 minutes ago, mjazzg said: Missed postie this morning. One to collect tomorrow Worth the agro ! Glad I picked this one up, seems to have been a popular RSD issue. Kirk does a reprise of his hosepipe solo on side 2, as featured on Tubby Hayes ‘Return Visit’. A curate’s egg, perhaps? Edited July 21, 2021 by sidewinder Quote
mjazzg Posted July 21, 2021 Report Posted July 21, 2021 5 minutes ago, sidewinder said: Worth the agro ! Glad I picked this one up, seems to have been a popular RSD issue. Kirk does a reprise of his hosepipe solo on side 2, as featured on Tubby Hayes ‘Return Visit’. A curate’s egg, perhaps? Need some hosepipe action on this weather! Thankfully sorting office is only a 10 minute walk. It'll be on the deck by 8.00 for a pre-work spin from the box set Quote
mjazzg Posted July 22, 2021 Report Posted July 22, 2021 11 hours ago, sidewinder said: Audio from the Les Tomkins archive but Gearbox have done a very fine job of the LP mastering. Mike is too near Ronnie Stephenson’s drums but the music is captured very well indeed, with great ‘punch’ and atmosphere. A winner. This now. Sounding very immediate but definitely sitting on the same side of the stage as the drummer Quote
Pim Posted July 22, 2021 Report Posted July 22, 2021 16 hours ago, clifford_thornton said: that's fair -- I am not one of those to insist free players are on a higher level. It's music I love very much but I also love straight ahead jazz, trad, swing, and whatever else. There's room for everybody. +1. You are describing my thoughts exactly. Bird or Art Tatum blow my mind with their technical skills but I could not care less that Frank Wright did not have those skills. I still love his music anyhow. Quote
corto maltese Posted July 22, 2021 Report Posted July 22, 2021 (edited) 21 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said: I dont' think that not being able to read sheet music is a criterion. Many jazzmen from more "traditional" styles of jazz (a strange term to use for hard bop or post-bop, for example) have never been able to do that either. BUT - as you probably are aware yourself - the comparisons you allude to only exist because there are SO MANY out there in this never-ending debate of the place of free jazz within jazz who INSIST that playing free or free players are on a HIGHER artistic level than all those who are not (and have never been) part of that free (or avantgarde or whatever ...) movement. Which is an argument that would only hold water if they were indeed able to do everything those who came before them in the "non-free" world (which would be on a "lower" artistic level according to their "reasoning") have done and they have exhausted ALL of that and would then go above and beyond that. But if they are not able to do that then what they do in the "free" or "avantgarde" world may well have its merits but it most certainly is not on a "higher" artistic level. In fact they have not gone higher but sideways in the evolution or development of the music and have just branched out in a different direction. Which is fine if this is what they prefer to do. There are many differnt branches in the evolution of any broader style of music. But they really should not - never ever - claim they are on a "higher" artistic level. Or else their lack of "chops" in the mastery of their instruments, technique, ability to swing outright, knowledge of all the changes, etc., would be very easy to hold against them by the musicians from the non-free realms of jazz who DO have these chops. Just my 2c but I stand by them. Fair enough, but your initial argument (to which I reacted) was that the FMP "clique" played free, because they didn't have the skills to play ("real") jazz. I don't think any of those musicians ever claimed that they were playing on a higher artistic level than other musicians. Besides, as Clifford rightly points out, many of them were also very skilled in more "classical" jazz (or other music). Edited July 22, 2021 by corto maltese Quote
sidewinder Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 (edited) Back on deck with this one. As Simon Spillett’s blog points out, there is considerable track overlap with the ‘Impressed 3’ compilation Tony Higgins compiled in the naughties and which wasn’t officially released at the time. So - it sort of sees the light of day. I am inclined to agree that the large group material is some of the best in this set and is at least a match for anything coming out of the US at the time. Edited July 23, 2021 by sidewinder Quote
Gheorghe Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 On 21.7.2021 at 7:38 PM, clifford_thornton said: that's fair -- I am not one of those to insist free players are on a higher level. It's music I love very much but I also love straight ahead jazz, trad, swing, and whatever else. There's room for everybody. I also love bop, hardbop, modal, free and rock-jazz, so it´s really a large span. But the way how I got acquainted to so called "free jazz" or "New Thing" was more in the chronological manner. It was through Mingus´ band from 1964 that I became very very interested in Eric Dolphy and the next thing was to get as much as I could of Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, late Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler etc etc. So I think my tastes for Free Jazz and further developements like "Prime Time" is exclusivly based on the american side of it. Though I´m European, I can understand american music better and if I listen to a free playing guy from let´s say those I mentioned, and some others of course, I can hear where they come from, I can hear their story and can dig their music, maybe not every day, but sometimes for an entire week, especially in the colder season, when evenings are long and I can sit down, close my eyes and really LISTEN and figure out what they doin, where they comin from and where they will go further..... I have really difficulties with European Free Music, at least with very much of it, it doesn´t really touch me and it doesn´t tell me the stories I hear in American Free Jazz. Maybe with one exception, and that would be Austrian Free Music Pioneer Fritz Novotny ("Reform Art Unit"). I was lucky there were periods I saw him almost every day and we discussed music, he explained me what he does, and we´d go to his place, he played "Let´s Freedom Ring", "Old and New Gospels" and other things to show me what music impressed him, and than we´d listen to his latest album "Pannonian Flower", really a master piece, and his encounter with Burton Green. Well, Pannonian Flower is influenced from places I come from, so I really can dig what he created here.... He even wanted to try me out for his projects, but I had to decline. If I was a horn player maybe I would have found a way into it, but not as a piano player. Anyway, for "New Thing" I prefer it without piano, and Cecil Taylor only with the Unit....... Quote
Rabshakeh Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 2 hours ago, Gheorghe said: Maybe with one exception, and that would be Austrian Free Music Pioneer Fritz Novotny ("Reform Art Unit") I actually don't know his music. Other than Pannonian Flower, is there anything you particularly recommend of his or anything by the RAU? Quote
mjazzg Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 23 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said: I actually don't know his music. Other than Pannonian Flower, is there anything you particularly recommend of his or anything by the RAU? Start with a second mortgage if my memory serves me right about vinyl copies of RAU Quote
Gheorghe Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 25 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said: I actually don't know his music. Other than Pannonian Flower, is there anything you particularly recommend of his or anything by the RAU? I remember "Impressions" from 1978, that was about the time. But my personal contacts to Fritz Novotny were mostly from 1982-85. I saw the RAU live in 1985 at Hollabrunn Festival. And I heard his tapes mostly at his place, especially the encounter with Burton Green. I don´t remember the place, it was in the fancy first district of Vienna, there were some places where the performed "Alte Schmiede" where I have been, or Café Brückl I think.... The tape with Burton Green was very fine. Burton played Novotny´s Pannonian flower with very much feeling, and then called "Crepuscule with Nellie". It´s 40 years ago and Fritz Novotny died few years ago. He also had a weekly radio show presenting avantgarde, stuff like Archie Shepp, Clifford Thornton, Bill Dixon and many others, and his own stuff. It was on Ö1 I think, while the more straight ahead radio-shows "Jazz-Shop (Herwig Wurzer) and "Vokal Instrumental International" (Walter Richard Langer) were on Ö3. Quote
Rabshakeh Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 50 minutes ago, mjazzg said: Start with a second mortgage if my memory serves me right about vinyl copies of RAU He he he. 43 minutes ago, Gheorghe said: I remember "Impressions" from 1978, that was about the time. But my personal contacts to Fritz Novotny were mostly from 1982-85. I saw the RAU live in 1985 at Hollabrunn Festival. And I heard his tapes mostly at his place, especially the encounter with Burton Green. I don´t remember the place, it was in the fancy first district of Vienna, there were some places where the performed "Alte Schmiede" where I have been, or Café Brückl I think.... The tape with Burton Green was very fine. Burton played Novotny´s Pannonian flower with very much feeling, and then called "Crepuscule with Nellie". It´s 40 years ago and Fritz Novotny died few years ago. Thanks! Quote
Big Beat Steve Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 20 hours ago, corto maltese said: Fair enough, but your initial argument (to which I reacted) was that the FMP "clique" played free, because they didn't have the skills to play ("real") jazz. I don't think any of those musicians ever claimed that they were playing on a higher artistic level than other musicians. Besides, as Clifford rightly points out, many of them were also very skilled in more "classical" jazz (or other music). I wasn't so much thinking of musicians considering free or avantgarde music to be on a higher artistic level (no doubt many of the U.S. ones, in particular, acknowledge what went on before them style-wise) but of many (period and more recent) debates in magazines, radio, among fans, critics, etc. Claims that anything "free" or "avantgarde" was THE ultimate in artistic elevation and advancement in jazz were rampant over here in many (mediatic) circles from the 70s onwards. And once you have been exposed to that to a certain degree that just lingers on ... As for the "initial argument", it was made by Gheorghe, not by me. And if I understood him correctly then "free" players who do not konw their basics in "non-free" jam session contexts just have no point being in those jam sessions. Because for what THAT jam session was all about they just did not have the chops. Which I fully understand and agree with. And I also understand that there are jam sessions where there are strict limits to the kind of "crossover" (or similar) the ones who decided to jam are willing to digest. Which I do not find inappropriate either. To each his own (playing field ). Quote
Rabshakeh Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 12 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said: Claims that anything "free" or "avantgarde" was THE ultimate in artistic elevation and advancement in jazz were rampant over here in many (mediatic) circles from the 70s onwards. And once you have been exposed to that to a certain degree that just lingers on ... Do you have any examples? I have an never ending appetite for long dead jazz polemics. Quote
Big Beat Steve Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 (edited) This is going to be difficult. Apart from statements from other jazz fans and experts that I vividly remember, I have long since parted with what copies of "Jazz Podium" (the German jazz magazine) from those years or other music periodicals touching on jazz that I had, and of course I doubt that the radio jazz shows on the German SWF and SDR radio stations (where I remember often hearing jazz experts like Werner Wunderlich in that respect) are still archived anywhere. Maybe all this boils down to what Gheorghe hinted at. Euro-free jazz or avantgarde jazz of the 70s (onwards) really was a very special affair in a corner unto itself, and maybe all that hullaballoo about touting these Euro free jazz artists in the media over here was in part spurred by the fact that a certain breed of German jazz scribes or radio men all went haywire as soon as these Euro-free men (and women) hit the scene. These scribes seemed to have long been bothered by what they considered European jazz artists just "copying" U.S. musicans and styles (an unfair accusation IMO), and now there were those "new" Euro voices - so "this is THE THING", this is what it's all about, this is "THE original European jazz voice", this is "OUR emancipated Gernan jazz ART now" at last ... regardless of whether they retained any ties at all with how jazz had evolved. So they pushed it in many ways, and there were some among them who from that point on considered "non-free" (or even outright tradition-bound, e.g. by referring to the blues) jazz anachronistic or old hat at best. Up to the point of considering artists like Scott Hamilton "reactionary". See what I mean? Edited July 23, 2021 by Big Beat Steve Quote
porcy62 Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 (edited) As far I remember, was a teenager then, european Free Jazz had a strong political characterization, like everything back then. So Free Jazz was anticapitalist, anticolonialist, anti-borgeois, in one word far far left. As Big Beat Steeve pointed out, every music form was considered "reactionary" in itself, as form was considered the product of capitalist society, a unfair thing. More or less : Musicians of the world, unite, you have not to lose than your chords and scales. Edited July 23, 2021 by porcy62 Quote
Rabshakeh Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 Thanks. That's really interesting. As I mentioned in the new Jazz Modernism Outside the Americas thread, I've been surprised at the extent to which even now the historians' version of European jazz really is just the Avant Garde. It's always interesting to hear the other side of the story. Quote
porcy62 Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 (edited) You’re welcome. It might be considered that most of the jazz critics were marxist in Europe, so the perspective of scholars were often sociological rather than musical. It considered the history of jazz and black music in general as the struggle and emancipation of black people in a capitalist society. In this way it’s logical that the free movement of the sixties was considered the highest “form” of music. Edited July 23, 2021 by porcy62 Quote
sidewinder Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 (edited) Esquire 10” in great condition. According to the price sticker I paid $9.99 in New Zealand with a $20 discount. If I remember correctly the store also had 2 copies ! Early JR Monterose appearance. Imported by Chappell via Sydney according to back sticker. Repatriated by me ! Edited July 23, 2021 by sidewinder Quote
mjazzg Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet - Blue Beginnings [Jazz In Britain] Staying in Europe, prompted by the thread elsewhere Jef Gilson - A Gaveau Live [Sam Records, 2020] wondering if I need the studio version too Quote
sidewinder Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 Easy one - Yes ! (apologies to your wallet) Quote
mjazzg Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 (edited) 14 minutes ago, sidewinder said: Easy one - Yes ! (apologies to your wallet) Bother! (wallet accepts the apology) They differ sufficiently then? edit to add: Honest Jon's to the rescue! Edited July 23, 2021 by mjazzg Quote
sidewinder Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 (edited) The studio version has better sound and solos (eg. Shaw) in my opinion. Live version very nice addition. Quite different feel to the two versions. 27 minutes ago, mjazzg said: edit to add: Honest Jon's to the rescue! They should do a T-Shirt with that logo ! Edited July 23, 2021 by sidewinder Quote
mjazzg Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 14 minutes ago, sidewinder said: The studio version has better sound and solos (eg. Shaw) in my opinion. Live version very nice addition. Quite different feel to the two versions. They should do a T-Shirt with that logo ! good to hear about the variation, I love the live version. I'd buy that T-shirt Quote
clifford_thornton Posted July 23, 2021 Report Posted July 23, 2021 8 hours ago, Gheorghe said: I remember "Impressions" from 1978, that was about the time. But my personal contacts to Fritz Novotny were mostly from 1982-85. I saw the RAU live in 1985 at Hollabrunn Festival. And I heard his tapes mostly at his place, especially the encounter with Burton Green. I don´t remember the place, it was in the fancy first district of Vienna, there were some places where the performed "Alte Schmiede" where I have been, or Café Brückl I think.... The tape with Burton Green was very fine. Burton played Novotny´s Pannonian flower with very much feeling, and then called "Crepuscule with Nellie". It´s 40 years ago and Fritz Novotny died few years ago. He also had a weekly radio show presenting avantgarde, stuff like Archie Shepp, Clifford Thornton, Bill Dixon and many others, and his own stuff. It was on Ö1 I think, while the more straight ahead radio-shows "Jazz-Shop (Herwig Wurzer) and "Vokal Instrumental International" (Walter Richard Langer) were on Ö3. Novotny is/was fantastic. I never met him or saw him live, but I have a number of vintage LPs: RAU, Three Motions, and the related outfit Masters of Unorthodox Jazz (which Novotny was not part of, far out stuff) and would love to hear the recording with Greene. Quote
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