Coltrane At The Half Note

[Free For All]

It's really, really good. We are truly fortunate to have gained access to it.

Sometimes I neglect the Trane portion of my collection a bit. This just reminds me that he was indeed a superhero.

Same with the Monk and Bird releases. Not much to complain about this year.

Those three recordings should be at (or near) the top of nearly everyone's best-of-the-year list IMHO. No contest.

[Gary]

This is my favourite release of the year (I am biased towards everything Trane though) , music doesn't get much better than this for me.

[JSngry]

Sometimes I neglect the Trane portion of my collection a bit. This just reminds me that he was indeed a superhero.

Indeed. I'm "all or nothing" with this stuff. Can't just casually check it out and then move on. It's all-consuming with me, so often I just leave it alone. It's just so freakin' massive that it leave me feeling that trying to play anything is just going to be an exercise in futility. And where's the fun in feeling like that?

Some cats (and we all know at least one or twenty of them) respond by chasing the Trane like a dog chasing a car - an obvious exercise in futility, but they do it anyway, almost as if they can't help themselves (and they probably can't...). Myself, I take solace in the observation that although Trane pretty much closed the door on harmonic-based improvisation (really, what else is there left, especially after Interstellar Space?), his timbral and rhythmic "zone" was nowhere near as infinite. Plenty of room for discovery left there (which is probably why, where 60s Trane often leaves me feeling blissfuly paralyzed, 60s Rollins leaves me feeling blissfully inspired).

I gotta laugh at attempts made to "deny" this stuff. the claims that it's too this or too that, or not this and not that are all just bullshit execrcises in aviodance, afaic. There is nothing in Trane's music (especially this 65 material) that isn't 100% real, and nothing that is not 100% true. Anybody who can't handle the message should just say so without attempting to blame the messenger. We all have our "tastes" and such, which is cool, but taste should not be confused with comprehension. "Not liking" something is one thing, attempting to deny its truth/validity is another thing altogether, and far less defendable. I'm no fan of the atom bomb either, but jeez, it happened, and life's not been the same since, so I gotta deal with the implications of atomic fission, dig? It's a fundamental fact of life now, right? If I try and claim that it's all a bunch of hooey, how big of a fool does that make me?

I certainly dig later Trane a helluva lot more than the atom bomb , but I can also see how the sheer massiveness of this stuff can be overwhelming to some. But that's not the point, is it?

Reality's a bitch, no doubt. But what's the alternative?

Edited December 10, 2005 by JSngry

[DukeCity]

[Larry Kart]

Probably shouldn't open my mouth until I've gone back to listen to a fair amount of later, more or less metre-less Trane for purposes of comparison, but I'm struck on "One Up, One Down" especially by the same thing that Ravi Coltrane mentions in his portion of the notes: "The attention to rhythm ... is as detailed as can be found on any John Coltrane recording." That may be one reason why, as John Tapscott pointed out, the 27 minutes of "One Up" seem to go by so quickly.

Also, as with the Monk/Trane Carnegie Hall recording, thse performances seem to me to come from a specific wedge of historical/musical time -- different wedges of course, and the Monk/Trane wedge as it was captured onthat particular night is one that I for one didn't know existed, in part because there's no other recorded evidence of it ASFAIK (the other Monk/Trane recordings aren't like this). Back to the Half Note Trane -- while there's certainly continuity with what came before and after with this quartet, the feel of this band at these particular moments in time is at once so intense (nothing new there) and so damn CRYSTALLIZED. I heard Coltrane play at the length he does on "One Up" on several occasions in Chicago in '63-'64 especially, and I remember this level of intensity but not the other thing -- or at least not nearly as much of it.

[Larry Kart]

Oops -- that's "One Down, One Up" of course.

Don't mean to hijack this thread (not that what I have in mind would amount to that), but my trip this evening back to late-late Trane ("Interstellar Space," in particular) thrust a thought into my head (and very suddenly and powerfully too) that's never been there before. Namely, that one principle (maybe the key principle) at work in late Trane (and nascent in his previous work) is ... well, let me take a step back and try to say it the way it came to me. Listening to "Jupiter," I suddenly had a sense of Trane's location: both in physical space, as a man holding a tenor saxophone in close proximity to a microphone in RVG's recording studio; and in musical space, as a man who is aware that it is common in our culture for sequentially occurring sounds to be heard sequentially, and that they then are felt to make patterns through time (both musical time, according to prevailing conventions of what musical time is and how it's parcelled out, and, of necessity, clock time as well -- though musical time doesn't equal clock time, nor does clock time necessarily determine what musical time is and how it's parcelled out -- see the researches, if that's the right word for them, in this realm of Messiaen). But what I heard on "Jupiter" was that Trane was tethered to/sticking to his basic location in musical space (i.e. in relation to musical time, he was essentially oscillating "in place" -- more about that in a bit -- rather than "moving forward" in any way whatsoever). And as I then moved on through the album, I heard the same thing more or less -- the nature of this being especially striking when, at the end of "Leo," Trane give his final figures a semi-walking feel , to which R. Ali responds in a semi-Elvin manner; the contrast between these figures, which do move "forward" through musical time for a short while, and all that has come before could hardly be greater.

So what then is happening language-wise if Trane is tethered to/sticking to his basic location in musical space on these pieces? Well, another step back. The reason I get such a strong "he's tethered to/sticking to" etc. feeling here is twofold, I think -- that there is both no sense of a "progression" through or against either a linear harmonic framework or a steady rhythmic pulse (natch, in both cases) and that there is a near-constant sense of ... "balance" isn't the right term, but it's as though every gesture that initially might seem to have some horizontal/linear component to it is very swiftly curtailed (as though it had run into/butted up against a wall or barrier) and is then more or less hurled back in the opposite direction, across what one feels is Trane's basic central or nodal point and often in a shape that is felt to be more or less an inversion of the shape of the original gesture, until then it runs into/butts up against the wall or barrier on the other side -- the sense of there being "sides" flanking that central node arising after the first few times one has heard gestures whiz past in one direction and then be curtailed and return with similar force in the other. In any case, after a while one has to sense the consistent presence of those walls/barriers (thinking again of Trane's actual physical stance holding the horn, they seem to be no more than half-an-arm's-length from him, or even no further apart than the width of his horn) and the forcing-upwards effect they tend to have on the figures that so fiercely "run into" them. Typically, on these pieces there's an arch pattern -- a rise in pitch and in the number of semi-pitched "vocalized" tones that peaks at the midpoint of each piece and descends on the far side -- and now that I think of it, one of the things that Trane may have had in mind here would be to so alter or compress our sense of musical time that the shape of the piece as a whole and the shape of the basic language-unit within it is virtually the same -- a series of fierce oscillations/reverberations against tight barriers that leads to a fierce forcing upwards. I know that "fierce" is a loaded word, and one that raises a question that "tethered to/sticking to" may also have have raised: What is the emotional tone of this music, and what was the stance of the man who was making it? At the moment, ferocity is a word that is hard to put out of my mind, but hearing this music the way that I've just begun to, it feels more often than not like a ferocity of an immense necessary inventiveness -- as though Trane's discovered need to "stay" in one place (if indeed one agrees, or even wants to entertain the idea, that something of this sort is going on in this music) could be sustained only by climbing/forcing himself upwards.

OK, those men with the net can come and get me now.

[SEK]

... OK, those men with the net can come and get me now.

Then they can get me too. I've tripped/contemplated/grooved Trane all kinds of ways.

[Larry Kart]

I wonder if Coltrane dug Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," where the imprisoned narrator is momentarily freed (by rats that gnaw through his bonds) from the menace of the descending "sweep of the fearful scimitar," only to find that the walls of his chamber are made of heated iron and are closing in on him:

"'Death,' I said, 'any death but that of the pit!' Fool! might I not have known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me? Could I resist its glow? or if even that, could I withstand its pressure? And now, flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for contemplation. Its centre, and of course, its greatest width, came just over the yawning gulf. I shrank back -- but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly onward...." Etc.

[JSngry]

Larry -

A friend of mine once said that time was what keeps everything from happening all at once. Whether or no that thought was original with him, I can't say.

To me, much of Interstellar Space ties into that thought, because there's so many moments where everything does happen at once. "Time", musical or linear, just ceases to be a factor. There's this overwhelming quality of all-at-onceness that suggests that Trane has found a way to escape from linear and musical time into a realm of just-is-ness, a perspective that sees/feels/knows everything that is and plays it back verbatim, without the interference of any "human perception" being involved.

Now, as to whether or not it "moves", that's hard to say. On the one hand, of course it does. But on the other hand, if it's moving, what is it moving relative to? Can everything move in relation to itself? Wouldn't part of everything have to remain stationary, or at least move at a different rate that the other part, in order for a sense of movement to be felt? I'd think so, and I also think that that doesn't happen here. Everything's moving, yet nothing moves. And/or vice versa. Tough call, that one. If everything is split into different parts, it becomes a different type of everything, doesn't it? It's then a unity of parts rather than a unity of one. Same thing in the end, perhaps, but experientially different, and experientiality is the name of the game here, I think. It's all one, and that one just is.

What I do think you can say is that Interstellar Space is Trane's "Moses On The Mountaintop" moment, the time when he actually got a perfect glimpse of his Promised Land Of The Oneness With And Of All Things. That Trane experienced at least this one moment of Satori was a personal blessing. That it was captured on a recording means that the rest of us no longer have the excuse of ignorance.

Edited December 14, 2005 by JSngry

[Larry Kart]

Many thanks, Jim. I was hoping you'd respond because I knew in my bones that you knew, and from the inside, what I was muttering about. I agree with everything you say in your "Now, as to whether or not it 'moves'..." paragraph but wonder re: "A friend of mine once said that time was what keeps everything from happening all at once" whether it could be said that Trane came to WANT or NEED to feel in his music that everything was happening all at once or that "this overwhelming quality of all-at-onceness ... suggests," as you said, "that Trane has found a way to escape from linear and musical time into a realm of just-is-ness...."

Yes, "experientiality is the name of the game here," and I don't hear Coltrane -- extrapolating from my own experience (so far) of what's going on here to what I'm of course just guessing his experience was in the making of this -- escaping into a realm of Moment of Satori just-is-ness as much as his drive to escape into such a realm in the face of particular musical circumstances and perceptions. For one thing, if you can make (or come close to making) everything happen at all at once -- and Coltrane I believe comes damn close to doing that on much of "Interstellar Space" -- then the whole rhythmic "problem" of post-Parker jazz virtually disappears or collapses in upon itself (that "problem" being [to quote from something I once wrote] that "the ability to make meaningful microsubdivisions of the beat [within relatively stable metrical frameworks]" -- the circumstances from which swing springs, though it may not wholly depend upon them -- "may have reached a kind of physical or perceptual barrier [in Parker's music]."

To put it another way -- were the undeniable pleasures (to put it mildly) of swing (i.e. "swing feel," not the style labeled Swing) always a bit paradoxical or equivocal, in the sense that the music had to fully experience and expand upon those pleasures over a longish stretch of historical time in order to be the music that it was (and to have the effect on wave after wave of listeners around the world that it did), but that within the music (from the first?) were the seeds of a need to proceed otherwise -- in particular, to break or significantly alter the special pact with musical time that swing more or less invented and exemplifes. (BTW, I certainly don't mean to suggest that any post-swing jazz, if such there be, invalidates ANY worthwhile jazz of the past or present that does work with and within the pact of swing.)

[RDK]

Trane play good music.

[Steve Reynolds]

I love reaing your posts, Larry

I especially like where the discussion was going in the sense of where I read it - what to do with the drummer - for me - now some of the music doesn't need it anymore - after years of post-Coltrane jazz by some great players, sometimes real energy and intensity now comes from the quietest of thinsg - and the smallest detail - whether it be in jazz (mostly freeish improvisation) or in non-jazz based improvisation

maybe I am thinking this today having just listened for the first time to the first CD 1 of Cloud - by Rowe, Fennesz, Arbachi and Nakamura

these people don't come from this tradition - but the sounds they make work with this listener who does come from that place

then again, it took me a while to hear what Rowe was doing with AMM - or what AMM was doing - taught me a new way to listen - and when I did, it changed everything for me

[JSngry]

Well, that's a lot of questions, Larry, and if I knew that I knew the answers, I'd probably be either dead or rich, depending on how much integrety I had...

Anyway, here's what I think, not necessarily "connected" in the end, but at least the parts of the puzzle as best I can see.

1) The timeless/fundamental human conflict between the quest for unity and the inevitable separation that follows after it is achieved, if it ever is. It's what drives sex, it's what drives non-corrupt religion (and it's what corrupt religion plays off of), it's what drives literature (Seven Basic Themes my ass! There's only one - separation vs unity), it's what drives damn near every aspect of human experience.

2) The uniquely African-American experience of same. Call it "genetic memory", "subliminal cultural heritage" call it whatever you want, but there's no denying that the African "concept" of layered rhythms (some call them poly-rhythms, but that simplifies the technique relative to the end result far too much for my satisfaction) is a key factor in what we call "swing". Due to the circumstances of this experience, what was once a ritualistic/spiritual/whatever deeply meaningful and fundamental experience of elementary oneness morphed into one of "entertainment" (which is not to say that it was in anyway cheapened, just to say that the function of the experience took on new clothes that, no matter how stylish and wonderful they might have been, were at some level different than what they originally were). You gotta wonder how somebody with the unique perceptual genetics of Bird would've sounded if he (and, of course, his ancestors) had lived in an African milieu and been able to express what he saw/heard/felt about life in general without having to do it in a "commercial" environment that was not at all relevant to the root of his perception. Or maybe it was - maybe the American experience gave Bird something unique to react to that he'd not have had otherwise. Who knows? But this is relevant to Trane's times in that Afro-centrism had been "in the air" for quite a while, and was really to the fore in the mid-late 60s. So, you gotta think that this was on his mind in some form or fashion, if only as a factor in shaping the personal nature of his quest (and a quest it certainly was). Not the only factor, of course, but a factor that somebody like Messiaen would not have had a, uh... deeply personal interest in.

3) Albert Ayler - Now, here you go. Here's a guy who took a look around at his musical landscape and said "fuck it, there's more to it than this", and rather than putting in a lifetime of attempted transcendence, just went on ahead and went there. Didn't ask anybody's permission, didn't see the need to "evolve the tradition" or some such, just saw that it was there and didn't see any good reason whatsoever why he shouldn't just go on ahead and take it. And he did. Trane was hip, very hip, to the deepest implications of Ayler. Check out his comment about Ayler dealing in the "upper partials of energy" or some such, a comment which is equal parts Einstein and metaphysics in both it's revealing of what was the process and what was the goal.

The goal was that elusive "oneness", "unity", whatever, the experience of a totality so real that you have to "cease to exist" from a perceptual standpoint in order to experience it (contradictory in a lot of ways, I know, but there it is nevertheless...). The means? A refusal to break down time and space into component parts, to instead be all/everything at once. That's the way things really are, right? Only the limits of our "perception" makes it appear otherwise/ So why shouldn't music reflect that? Shouldn't be all that hard...

Unless you've spent a lifetime or fifty living and perceiving otherwise, which most all folks do. A professional musician is going to live even more deeply in a world where subdivision matters - metronomes, scales, arpeggios, all the tools of "perfection" are based on separating the whole into component parts and then reassembling them in a manner that strikes somebody's fancy. An obsessive musician like Trane is going to be so far deep into this zone, albeit, most likely, in a quest to get past it, if and when whatever "past it" really is would become apparent, that it literally becomes all they know - take apart, reassemble, take apart, reassemble, take apart, reassemble, take apart, reassemble, take apart, reassemble, take apart, reassemble, take apart, reassemble, take apart, reassemble, take apart, reassemble, take apart, reassemble, take apart, reassemble ,take apart, reassemble, take apart, reassemble, take apart, reassemble, each disassembly becoming more and more micro and each reassembly becoming more and more an attempt at creating the macro.

Well, imagine the shock that Trane must have felt when he heard Ayler and realized that there was really no need to take anything apart (and therefore no need to reassemble it), that all you had to do was get the whole damn thing in its natural form and let it be what it is. Of course, it's not that easy, not by a long shot. you gotta be able to handle the whole damn thing in its natural form, precisely because it is what it is, and people like Ayler & James Brown are proof that you can only hold it for a little while before it fucks you up, whereas people like Warne Marsh are proof that you can hold for as long as you like if you're prepared to submit and be its totally submissive bitch and live by its whims, not yours, not ever, for as long as you can draw a breath. But we get ahead of ourselves...

Anyway, I hear Trane's last year or so as, at least in part, an attempt to get to where Ayler already was in terms of "perception" with the tools he had, which were, to put it mildly, massive (the depth of the structures, micro and macro, in the playing on Interstellar Space is damn near supra-human, as is the instrumental facility which is used to create them). The irony, of course, is that as fine of a saxophonist as Ayler was (and he was a damn fine one in terms of knowing the fundamentals of the instrument as deeply as they could be known), he didn't have anywhere near Trane's overall knowledge of music and saxophone technique. The cross-irony is, of course, that it just didn't matter. Ayler's vison was whole, fully formed, and, for a little while any way, expressed likewise - as is, everything is everything, it's already here, what's the big deal? IT"S OURS BY RIGHT OF BIRTH!!! TAKE IT!!!

Trane's vision was always in the process of forming and/or reformiong, the whole take apart/reassemble thing. So, I think he set about trying to forget all about the taking apart and instead decided to focus entirely on the reassembly. Well, he had taken apart so much that putting it all back together, really putting it all back together, in a form that had no suture marks, was flawless and organic, was nowhere near a simple task. There were bound to be (and were) moments of awkwardness. There were bound to be (and were) moments of stunning brilliance that nevertheless didn't accomplish the ultimate goal. And there was bound to be, and was, at least one moment were the goal was reached, the vision fully fulfilled. That moment was Interstellar Space.

Why the obsession with getting it "right" (or what Trane had come to see as right given all of the above factors?

4) Trane's sense of imminent demise. Much has been written about this, how as early as 1963(?) he had begun to feel that his time here was limited. Draw you own conclusions. And also allow for the possibilty that Trane's acid use was an attempt to "get there" as quickly as possible, the luxury of a long-ish life not necessarily being a possibility that he entertained for himself.

Now, as to whether or not he needed/wanted it to "swing", imo, he felt that it was going to swing because of what it was, which was everything at once. A part subsumed back into the whole doesn't cease to be what it is, it just becomes what it is in a different form. Purple is purple, at least as we percieve it. Do red & blue stop being red & blue in purple? No, they're still there. Purple couldn't exist if they weren't. And when green keeps the blue, where does the red go? To yellow to make orange? Or to lunch with its agent? It's all light, dig, and none of it ever goes away, it just gets filtered and shit so that we think we see colors when what we really see is light. Now, I think that Trane was looking for the light, not the colors, if you know what I mean. If that's the case, then "swing" would have to be there, because that's part of the spectrum. But if you see one color, you don't see the pure light, and the pure light (or energy, or wholeness, or whatever) was by this point what Trane was looking for. Does that make any sense? Does any of this make any sense?

Like I said, the parts of the puzzle as best I can see, not necessarily "connected" in the end. Which is, I suppose, considering the matter at hand, fitting.

At least for a while...

Edited December 14, 2005 by JSngry

[md655321]

I think it makes alot of sense. Excellent contributions from both of you, and they are greatly appreciated.

A few questions,

1. Why is seperation inevitable after unity is acheived? I would think seperation is IMPOSSIBLE after unity is achieved.

2. Was that a dig at Warne Marsh, or a compliment?

3. More of a comment, but probably the most difficult thing it the world is to explain WHY Interstellar Space is what it is. I dont have the musical knowledge that you guys do, but I do have some. Regardless, hearing the album gives me a very similar response. It just plain is to the point where it just fucks up any paltry existence that I try to string together. To try to understand it completely let alone explain it is WAY beyond my abilities, and really anyone elses. But, Jim and Larry, you have come as close as is probably possible.

I really need to give the Half Note more of a listen as well.

[Nate Dorward]

Larry--jeez, thanks for adding your thoughts to this discussion--I find myself really irritated by the way that so much of the discussion around this recording has to do with its circumstances, complaints about sound quality/truncation, &c.... & I find it hard to imagine anyone not finding this a truly remarkable album. Given the way that familiarity breeds complacency, it's been a while since I've been simply floored by a Coltrane record, but this one had a emotional & physical impact which I can't remember since.... hm, probably since I got Impressions as a teenager..?

[JSngry]

I think it makes alot of sense. Excellent contributions from both of you, and they are greatly appreciated.

A few questions,

1. Why is seperation inevitable after unity is acheived? I would think seperation is IMPOSSIBLE after unity is achieved.

2. Was that a dig at Warne Marsh, or a compliment?

3. More of a comment, but probably the most difficult thing it the world is to explain WHY Interstellar Space is what it is. I dont have the musical knowledge that you guys do, but I do have some. Regardless, hearing the album gives me a very similar response. It just plain is to the point where it just fucks up any paltry existence that I try to string together. To try to understand it completely let alone explain it is WAY beyond my abilities, and really anyone elses. But, Jim and Larry, you have come as close as is probably possible.

I really need to give the Half Note more of a listen as well.

1. Beats me. Better minds than mine have come up short on that one.

2. Most definitely a complement.

3. I hear ya'.

Edited December 14, 2005 by JSngry

[Larry Kart]

Does any of this make any sense?

Yes. A lot.

About Messiaen, here's a passage about what I had in mind from a book, "Finding the Key," by British composer (a good one) Alexander Goehr, a former student of his (and son of conductor Walter Goehr): "Probably the aspect of Messiaen's teaching that made the strongest impression on me was his concern with time and duration.... Being a realist, and concerned with the real world, he perceived real time: clock time. We spent a long time doing tests to develop our consciousness of time. He would bang on a table and, after a longish silence -- possibly twenty seconds -- bang again. We were expected to identify the duration between the two bangs and compare it with others only minutely shorter or longer than the first. This was done by counting, but I think he himself supposed that he could, and we might learn to, recognise durations of silence as if they had specific chracteristics.... In analysing a piece of music, he implied that a sequence of absolute duration could be in its way as expressive as could be a melody of pitch levels.... In conventional, 'metrical' music, he observed duration without regard for metre or accent, or regarded accent as the beginning of a duration and continuing silence as resonating sound, the whole all together comprising a single durational identity."

[John L]

What a great read! I nominate this thread for publication. We could also arrange a sermon or two at the Jazz Church of St. John Coltrane.

Reverend L. Kart: "Sheets of Sound Cement to Walls: The Only Way is Up"

Reverend J. Sangrey: "The Quest for Unity is the Driving Force"

I am curious as to how you guys interpret the very last Coltrane. If Interstellar Space was the summit where it all came together, what was Expression all about? Was it a temporary retreat back into more comfortable territory, a humble surrender before death, or a new breakthrough of sorts that was bringing back strong melodic motion to the picture? Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders seem to have interpreted it as the latter, at least judging from where they tried to go with it.

Edited December 16, 2005 by John L

[Larry Kart]

So who is this Rev. Katz?

About "Expression" (the piece itself), I believe that it and "Ogunde" (both rec. 3/17/67) and "Number One" (rec. 3/7/67) are the only pieces recorded after the "Interstellar Space" date (2/22/67). Assuming, as Jim does (and I do too), that the "Interstellar Space" date was a watershed or a moment on the mountain top for Trane, that leaves AKAIK only the three pieces mentioned above as evidence of how he might have moved on from there. I haven't re-listened to "Ogunde" yet, but both "Expression" and "Number One" seem to combine some "Intersteller Space"-like playing with the way Coltrane, Alice C., J. Garrison, and R. Ali played on most of the 2/15/67 date that's been issued as "Stellar Regions" -- many of those pieces showing, or beginning with, what annotator David Wild calls "a dirge-like quality." Over this (or after this) "Stellar Regions"-date feel, in his second solo on "Expression," Coltrane gets into "Interstellar Space"-like playing with a good deal of intensity -- there's less of this (and at a lower level of intensity IMO) on "Number One." Also IMO, Alice C.'s slow-cycling washes of piano are no help at all on these pieces, especially at these moments; she's more in tune with what's going on during the "Stellar Regions" date. Possibly important footnotes: I think a preview of what happens on "Interstellar Space" (see Jim S.'s descriptions above, particularly his account of how Trane might have responded to Ayler) can be heard on the last piece recorded during the "Stellar Regions" date, "Tranesonic." Also, though the liner notes don't mention this, Lewis Porter's excellent Coltrane biography says (and one's ears confirm it) that Coltrane plays alto on both takes of "Tranesonic." Listening to the results, and with "Interstellar Space" in mind, I think switching from tenor to alto here might have been liberating in a fairly specific way -- removing some familar patterns from the drawing board and/or making it a bit harder to summon them up.

[Rosco]

Interstellar Space was Coltrane's final realization that he no longer needed a conventional jazz rhythm section (as far out as Tyner, Garrison, Ali, Coltrane [A.] took things, it was still essentially the fundamental instrumentation jazz had been using for, by that point, some decades already). On Interstellar Space the drone that had by now become the norm was replaced by a silent, inner drone. Whatever parameters Coltrane was working in/ against (and even at his most abstract Trane was a methodical, logical improvisor) were known only to him.

The March '67 tracks from Expression just confirm for me the feeling that the quartet had outlived its purpose as a setting for Trane's explorations. I don't think, had Coltrane lived, that that unit would have survived much longer.

Quite where you take that realization/ innovation next is a question Trane never got to answer of course. And jazz has been grappling with its implications for close to 40 years.

[7/4]

The March '67 tracks from Expression just confirm for me the feeling that the quartet had outlived its purpose as a setting for Trane's explorations. I don't think, had Coltrane lived, that that unit would have survived much longer.

[John L]

Larry: Sorry about the "Katz" It must have been the combined influence of my black Calico and my red wine. I have corrected it.

Thanks very much for your comments. I have always been fascinated by Expression. You are right that the melodic approach has a lot in common with what he was doing on the Stellar Regions sessions, and at Live at the VV Again and Japan the previous year, for that matter. But I still get an extra feeling of tranquility and lyricism from Expression. On the other hand, maybe that is just a subjective impression due to the knowledge that Expression is the last word that J.C. left us.

Thanks again.

John

[AllenLowe]

I'm late to the party here, and a little lost, but I will add, visa a ve the concept of time, that I would refer also to the French "new" novelist Robbe Grillet, who basically (per Proust) has taught us that tine is not necessarily sequential - that we perceive things in time but not necessarily in linear order - this seems to relate to the previous discussion. If not, than I've changed my mind and am not reponsible for anything I am posting here -

[Lazaro Vega]

Great thread, though the idea that his hard bop era is divorced from his post 1965 era is heel digging. Check out Porter's book on Trane for specific examples of how "The Night Has A Thousand Eyes" recording relates to some of the late material (I believe the example he uses is "Venus" though I'm not able to open the book right now). The gestures may be more general, even vague, but are rooted in his artistic development, his whole development.

[ghost of miles]

Purely technical CD question here: I just got the two-disc set from BMG recently, and on track 2 of disc 1 (the amazing, colossal "One Down, One Up") the music begins to experience occasional blips from about 8 minutes on. Nothing superficially wrong with the CD, but I have to believe there is--otherwise it would surely have been noted in the liners, no? Anybody else experience this problem? I've tried it on both my home stereo and my computer at work, and the same thing has happened both times.