Gramophone online archive

[A Lark Ascending]

The UK classical magazine 'Gramophone' has a new site which it claims has every word written since 1923!

A quick registration and you are in.

Should be a mind-boggling resource!

http://www.gramophone.net/

[J.A.W.]

I can only dream of a quick registration, it was refused by the server... I keep getting error messages.

Edited December 27, 2008 by J.A.W.

[papsrus]

Thanks Bev. I'm going to pass this one on to dear old dad. He'll love it.

[Daniel A]

Registration went fine over here, except that I wasn't told that I had to "confirm" my registration, but I couldn't log on using the username I had chosen, I had to use my email adress. The "view as Acrobat" fuction seems to be broken for some articles ("Stack overflow" or some such), but when it's working it looks fine.

Maybe they'll sort out the bugs.

[A Lark Ascending]

I can only dream of a quick registration, it was refused by the server... I keep getting error messages.

It wouldn't initially accept my user name as two words (a space might be not accepted). As one word it was happy! Might be worth trying.

[Larry Kart]

I got on after a glitch or too. Keep trying. Should be fun and useful, too. I have fond memories of the Grandma Gramophone of the old days, before things went haywire -- rampant boosterism (always present to some extent in pockets, but this was madness) being followed by a desparately whorish abdication of all judgment across the board. IIRC, this happened in stages beginning in the mid- to late-1980s. Now it's virtually worthless IMO. Hey, Max Harrison wrote about romantic piano music for them off and on for some years, though I don't see a way to search by authors of reviews.

[J.A.W.]

It took five attempts, but now I'm in... (sigh)

[JohnS]

They used to have two or three pages of jazz record reviews by good reviewers years ago. If accessible should make good reading now.

[Daniel A]

They used to have two or three pages of jazz record reviews by good reviewers years ago. If accessible should make good reading now.

A search for "Joe Henderson" during the period 1965 to 1980 resulted in some 13 hits. Not bad.

Now reading the review of the second Kenny Cox album on Blue Note, it got a so-so review. It is mentioned that reviews for the first album of the quintet were discouraging. Amazingly, the reviewer ("A.M.") also states that "The music these five men produce is not barrier-breaking in the stylistic sense; indeed some of it might easily have been conceived ten years ago."

[Daniel A]

I'm having a good laugh reading the review of Martial Solal's first(?) Vogue LP from 1954, today cosidered fine by most reviewers. "Young French pianist Martial Solal has such a reputation in his own country that last year he was voted in the French magazine Le Jazz Hot France's top musician. But if this record is a fair sample of his work I can only say that he is over-rated."..."For one thing he is unoriginal."..."he lacks the ability to develop his phrases and often merely fills in with flourishes and runs. He just cannot improvise effectively for any length of time."

Reading old reviews is very interesting, for sure!

[A Lark Ascending]

I have fond memories of the Grandma Gramophone of the old days, before things went haywire -- rampant boosterism (always present to some extent in pockets, but this was madness) being followed by a desparately whorish abdication of all judgment across the board. IIRC, this happened in stages beginning in the mid- to late-1980s. Now it's virtually worthless IMO.

I've been reading it since the late 70s - the biggest change I've noticed in recent years is that the writers are as likely to have become interested in classical music as a result of listening to Emerson, Lake and Palmer as from the what they heard in the music room at Eton or at Mummy's soirees. When I first started reading it there was an assumption that you already knew certain things - it had a rather gentlemen's clubby atmosphere. Today its writers seems very aware that the person reading the magazine might be right at the start of an interest in music, with a very limited background. Some can still be snooty at times but thankfully most seem more concerned to share an enthusiasm for music rather than show off how hard it is to impress them.

Its changes reflect the social changes of the last half-century in Britain where interest in classical music has broadened beyond the social and intellectual elites who once saw it as their exclusive domain.

**********

I seem to recall the jazz reviews were there in the late 70s, disappeared in the 80s, came back again for a short time (can't recall when), then vanished for good.

[sidewinder]

I've got a sprinkling of LPs (mainly Blue Notes) which were originally Gramophone review copies, signatured on the back by either Charles Fox or Alun Morgan. It'll be a hoot to find the reviews from 1960-ish whilst I spin the actual LPs !

Edited December 27, 2008 by sidewinder

[sidewinder]

I seem to recall the jazz reviews were there in the late 70s, disappeared in the 80s, came back again for a short time (can't recall when), then vanished for good.

It used to be about 1- 1.5 pages by Msrs Fox, Harrison and Morgun I think. I think it was there in the early 80s but for sure by the 90s it had gone.

[sidewinder]

Wow - here's one of them !

Kenny Dorham and the Jazz Prophets The Prophet : DX/Blues Elegante: Tahitian Suite.

(H.M.V. 10 in. LP DLP1184-27s. hOd.)

Trumpeter Kenny Dorham formed the Prophets after leaving Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in December, 1955. The music of both groups is based on the same " post-Parker Quintet" formula, with extended solos and skeletal frameworks. Dorham, an excellent and greatly underrated musician, has a hot, attacking style, sometimes reminiscent of Conte Candoli on a good day. Unfortunately, Dorham's front-line partner, tenor saxist J. R. Monterose, is not up to his standard by a long way. Monterose is one of many young men who have subjugated their individuality in favour of slavish imitation; Sonny Rollins is quite obviously his idol and he copies him even to the extent of playing with occasional technical imperfections. Although Monterose performs well on Blues Elegante most of his solos rarely get beyond running up and down the chords.

But the record is worth buying for Dorham, who plays with authority, good taste and genuine excitement and who also wrote all four of the tunes. The plaintive Tahitian Suite is hardly a suite in the true sense of that term, but it uses 6/8 and 4/4 time signatures. The rhythm section—Dick Katz (piano), Sam Jones (bass) and Arthur Edgehill (drums)—performs adequately. This session took place on April 4th, 1956. Due to the swift-paced life of modern jazz groups, the Prophets no longer exist as a unit. A.M.

[sidewinder]

And this one..

Freddie Hubbard "The Night of the Cookers" Pensativa/Walkin'. Blue Note Q 8LP4207 0 BST84207 (12 in., 45s. lid. Incl. PT) 'Location' recording (i.e. when portable equipment is taken to a club or concert) involves a dangerously high element of chance. Having taken his gear along to Brooklyn's "Club La Marchal" last year, engineer Orville O'Brien must have realized, with despair, that he had chosen a night when the musicians were simply off form. For this is not a particularly good example of either Freddie Hubbard or his guest, Lee Morgan. I suspect, in fact, that if the musicians had had any say in the matter they might well have decided not to sanction the issue of this LP. In retrospect (and how easy it is to be wise after the event) the cards appear to have been stacked against the project right from the start. There is, after all, no reason to suppose that a regular unit (in this case Freddie Hubbard's quintet) will benefit from the addition of a couple of guests (Morgan on trumpet, Big Black on conga drum). The musical balance of the regular group is thrown off-centre and it is clear at the outset that no one was very happy with Clare Fischer's Pensativa. As is sometimes the case with lack-lustre performances, both tracks go on far too long, and this is an occasion when less might have meant more. The total playing time is over 40 minutes, yet I suspect that the really valuable moments could all go on to a single EP. Incidentally, the sleeve carries an advertisement for a second volume (Blue Note mono BLP4208 stereo BST84208) from the same session, and again comprising only two titles. If the present LP is anything to go by, then I suspect that we shall be presented with yet more filibustering by Hubbard, Morgan, Black, James Spaulding, Harold Mabern, Larry Ridley and Pete LaRoca. A.M.

I'm assuming Vol 2 never got reviewed.

Edited December 27, 2008 by sidewinder

[Larry Kart]

I have fond memories of the Grandma Gramophone of the old days, before things went haywire -- rampant boosterism (always present to some extent in pockets, but this was madness) being followed by a desparately whorish abdication of all judgment across the board. IIRC, this happened in stages beginning in the mid- to late-1980s. Now it's virtually worthless IMO.

I've been reading it since the late 70s - the biggest change I've noticed in recent years is that the writers are as likely to have become interested in classical music as a result of listening to Emerson, Lake and Palmer as from the what they heard in the music room at Eton or at Mummy's soirees. When I first started reading it there was an assumption that you already knew certain things - it had a rather gentlemen's clubby atmosphere. Today its writers seems very aware that the person reading the magazine might be right at the start of an interest in music, with a very limited background. Some can still be snooty at times but thankfully most seem more concerned to share an enthusiasm for music rather than show off how hard it is to impress them.

Its changes reflect the social changes of the last half-century in Britain where interest in classical music has broadened beyond the social and intellectual elites who once saw it as their exclusive domain.

**********

I seem to recall the jazz reviews were there in the late 70s, disappeared in the 80s, came back again for a short time (can't recall when), then vanished for good.

Yes, the current/recent Gramophone reflects those changes, but I would read what happened differently -- through the lens of the publishers' and editors' (and eventually of course the writers') anxiety to think of some attitude to strike that would woo (or at least not alienate) this new, less elite audience for classical music. The problem, though, is that to the degree that audience exists, I don't think it really needs or wants the Gramophone in any conceivable incarnation. What I would call the pandering and dumbing down that is characteristic of the magazine in recent times (yet another story about some artist whose chief virtues are that he/she is young and cute or voluptuous or handsome and, one hopes, British and, say, plays Radiohead pieces arranged for mallet percussion and orchestra) only further alienates what's left of the old audience without winning over a new one. A further aspect of that problem -- when one read, say, Alan Blyth on opera or song or Robert Layton on Scandinavian symphonists one felt that within reason that they actually believed what they said, that their enthusiasms and disparagements were genuine and based in their responses to the music at hand. Today, I find few Gramophone reviewers and virtually no writers of feature articles who give me that feeling. Instead, their eyes seem to be on their, or their bosses', sense of who we might be and what we might want to hear.

It's just another version of what began to happen to newpapers (in America at least) back in the 1980s. Faced with downward readership trends, the bosses decided that readers were being put off by the papers' implicit or explicit air of authority and decided to give it away in public, in effect -- as though this act would in itself be regarded as winning. Our editor famously said: "We want our readers to think of the Tribune as their friend" -- by which he meant, "Tell us what you already like, and we'll give you that." Problem is, even if we were right about what the readers already liked (Lord, the days of focus groups), why the heck assume that they wanted that from us? I mean, even if the evidence about what they already liked was accurate, a moment's thought would suggest that this probably meant that they already were getting a good deal of that from somewhere else. Meanwhile, of course, a paper that had shorn itself of authority in public was only accelerating its eventual worthlessness.

[J.A.W.]

Wow - here's one of them !

Kenny Dorham and the Jazz Prophets The Prophet : DX/Blues Elegante: Tahitian Suite.

(H.M.V. 10 in. LP DLP1184-27s. hOd.)

Trumpeter Kenny Dorham formed the Prophets after leaving Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in December, 1955. The music of both groups is based on the same " post-Parker Quintet" formula, with extended solos and skeletal frameworks. Dorham, an excellent and greatly underrated musician, has a hot, attacking style, sometimes reminiscent of Conte Candoli on a good day. Unfortunately, Dorham's front-line partner, tenor saxist J. R. Monterose, is not up to his standard by a long way. Monterose is one of many young men who have subjugated their individuality in favour of slavish imitation; Sonny Rollins is quite obviously his idol and he copies him even to the extent of playing with occasional technical imperfections. Although Monterose performs well on Blues Elegante most of his solos rarely get beyond running up and down the chords.

But the record is worth buying for Dorham, who plays with authority, good taste and genuine excitement and who also wrote all four of the tunes. The plaintive Tahitian Suite is hardly a suite in the true sense of that term, but it uses 6/8 and 4/4 time signatures. The rhythm section—Dick Katz (piano), Sam Jones (bass) and Arthur Edgehill (drums)—performs adequately. This session took place on April 4th, 1956. Due to the swift-paced life of modern jazz groups, the Prophets no longer exist as a unit. A.M.

Whwn was this review published? Judging by the price of the record, 27 shillings (about £1.35), it must be quite some time ago...

[sidewinder]

Whwn was this review published? Judging by the price of the record, 27 shillings (about £1.35), it must be quite some time ago...

1958. A heck of a lot of money back then. Before my time.. -_-

The LP is absolutely pristine by the way - I don't think it was played more than once or twice for the review, then archived away.

Edited December 27, 2008 by sidewinder

[bvy]

I must be doing something wrong. I registered yesterday totally unaware of anything new coming. All I get is the following message:

Sorry, Gramofile is currently unavailable due to technical problems. We apologise for any inconvenience.

EDIT: I think I was in the wrong place. I used Bev's link instead of going straight to the magazine's home page and clicking "Reviews"...

Edited December 27, 2008 by bvy

[A Lark Ascending]

I must be doing something wrong. I registered yesterday totally unaware of anything new coming. All I get is the following message:

Sorry, Gramofile is currently unavailable due to technical problems. We apologise for any inconvenience.

EDIT: I think I was in the wrong place. I used Bev's link instead of going straight to the magazine's home page and clicking "Reviews"...

Are you using the right site, bvy?

The old one is still up (with a co.uk suffix). This one is on a totally new site.

[A Lark Ascending]

Yes, the current/recent Gramophone reflects those changes, but I would read what happened differently -- through the lens of the publishers' and editors' (and eventually of course the writers') anxiety to think of some attitude to strike that would woo (or at least not alienate) this new, less elite audience for classical music. The problem, though, is that to the degree that audience exists, I don't think it really needs or wants the Gramophone in any conceivable incarnation.

Well, I'm very much of the new audience (I too got interest in classical music via ELP (well, The Nice actually!) and other prog-rockers) and I'm glad its there. There are always a dozen copies for sale in the main news outlet in my little market town (there's not a single jazz of folk magazine) so there must be others who want it.

The traditional audience is clearly still buying it - you'll find them grumbling about this or that or squabbling about which is the best Brahms' Fourth in the letters pages.

Edited December 27, 2008 by Bev Stapleton

[Christiern]

Thanks for the link, Bev. The Gramophone was my bible in the late 1940's when all my spare money went to purchasing 78s.

I found a nasty description of my technical work (the 1953 Ken Colyer sides) by someone whose initials are O.K. - do you happen to know who that is?

BTW, since the text was generated through OCR, iy contains the inevitable "typos", but remarkably few. I hope y'all are submitting the requested reports on these—I am.

Edited December 27, 2008 by Christiern

[bvy]

Are you using the right site, bvy?

The old one is still up (with a co.uk suffix). This one is on a totally new site.

I got it now. When all else fails, RTFM (read the first message).

And thanks for sharing this. This is vast! As if I needed another reason to stay anchored to the computer...

[Quincy]

I found a nasty description of my technical work (the 1953 Ken Colyer sides) by someone whose initials are O.K. - do you happen to know who that is?

I believe that Orville Kart, Larry's "mean" uncle.

Sorry.

Thanks for the link Bev.

[Christiern]

For a moment I thought of Orrin Keepnews