Two items found on CDJapan

[mjzee]

In going through the upcoming release section on CDJapan, I found two intriguing titles:

Mitoho - Ornette Coleman

From Google Translate: Unexplored peaks / Ornette Coleman

Valuable record of the 1968 European tour by double bass quartet shocking. Above all Buddha Blues by Shahanai ultra rare track! <Personnel> Ornette Coleman (alto sax, trumpet, Shahanai), David Izenzon (bass), Charlie Haden (bass), Ed Blackwell (drums )

Sounds as Roach - Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln

From Google Translate: Sounds-as-a-Roach / Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln

Record of precious concert went with elite musicians Lacey Jae Europe, Kuhn et al Roach ~ Lincoln went to 1968 European tour. The play thrilling representative song of their "Merindi" "free Suite" and "drum defunct only". Also co-starring with big band also topic. <Personnel> Max Roach (drums), Abbey Lincoln (vocals), Steve Lacy (soprano sax), Steve Kuhn (piano), Red Mitchell (bass), Max Roach Big Band

[Head Man]

In going through the upcoming release section on CDJapan, I found two intriguing titles:

Mitoho - Ornette Coleman

From Google Translate: Unexplored peaks / Ornette Coleman

Valuable record of the 1968 European tour by double bass quartet shocking. Above all Buddha Blues by Shahanai ultra rare track! <Personnel> Ornette Coleman (alto sax, trumpet, Shahanai), David Izenzon (bass), Charlie Haden (bass), Ed Blackwell (drums )

Sounds as Roach - Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln

From Google Translate: Sounds-as-a-Roach / Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln

Record of precious concert went with elite musicians Lacey Jae Europe, Kuhn et al Roach ~ Lincoln went to 1968 European tour. The play thrilling representative song of their "Merindi" "free Suite" and "drum defunct only". Also co-starring with big band also topic. <Personnel> Max Roach (drums), Abbey Lincoln (vocals), Steve Lacy (soprano sax), Steve Kuhn (piano), Red Mitchell (bass), Max Roach Big Band

Not sure if you're looking for further info, but here goes:

"Sounds as Roach"

http://www.discogs.com/Max-Roach-And-Abbey-Lincoln-Sounds-As-A-Roach/release/2552557

[Big Beat Steve]

From Google Translate: Sounds-as-a-Roach

I wonder what Google Translate would come up with if somebody tried to retranslate the above back into Japanese (or whatever language) ...

Now what does a roach sound like??

No, no P.C. needed here - I am not being tasteless, that quip was made decades ago in some song lyrics where "a roach named Max" was mentioned ....

Edited October 7, 2014 by Big Beat Steve

[colinmce]

The Roach is pretty good, but comparable to other work of the period. Not essential.

[mjzee]

I wonder what Google Translate would come up with if somebody tried to retranslate the above back into Japanese (or whatever language) ...

Check out the first few pages of the novel Galactic Pot Healer by Philip K. Dick; it's a game played by a worldwide band of bored clerks. Published in 1969!

From Wikipedia: The protagonist, Joe Fernwright, is a pot-healer, one who can perfectly restore pottery to brand new condition. Joe finds himself constantly depressed and idle at the opening of the novel. He is unemployed and on a war veteran's social security benefit, given that ceramic pottery has been replaced by plastics, and his profession is not in great demand. He longs for purpose and meaning in life. His one entertainment is to call various friends on the worldwide telephone network and swap puzzles. These puzzles are based on imperfect translations of sayings and book titles obtained by using language translation computers available to anyone. The object of the game is to guess the original from the translation.

[king ubu]

Hm, that Roach surely looks interesting, with Steves Lacy and Kuhn in the band!

What would "other work of the period" be? The Atlantic albums? It's Lacy that has me curious here!

[colinmce]

Yeah, those. Lacy only plays on a small bit and I'm not certain he even solos.

[jeffcrom]

I have the Roach on vinyl, and I'm not at home right now, but Lacy plays on two tracks and solos on both, I believe.

[colinmce]

Thanks. It's two feet away from me, I'm just lazy!

[JSngry]

Sorry, had to edit the links in the original post, as these items are both bootlegs in the universally understood and accepted sense. However, if you look "n"-to the URL of where the now-edited link takes you, all should be well.

Both would be worthy additions to a completist's/scholar's/hardcore fan's collection, but remember, they are bootlegs, not professionally recorded record recordings. And ain't nobody getting paid. Not that they usually do, but just for the record. If you do this, do something else to balance it out.

[soulpope]

Sorry, had to edit the links in the original post, as these items are both bootlegs in the universally understood and accepted sense. However, if you look "n"-to the URL of where the now-edited link takes you, all should be well.

Both would be worthy additions to a completist's/scholar's/hardcore fan's collection, but remember, they are bootlegs, not professionally recorded record recordings. And ain't nobody getting paid. Not that they usually do, but just for the record. If you do this, do something else to balance it out.

That`s really a decent approach !!

Edited October 8, 2014 by soulpope

[David Ayers]

Well...Crown Tokuma seems like a legitimate label. How do we know they don't have licenses for the historical American jazz they issue? Or anything else they issue for that matter? Not sure sometimes how we arrive at these conclusions.

[Big Beat Steve]

Not sure sometimes how we arrive at these conclusions.

You know how it can be in the minds of some.

Only the bigwigs among the "majors" can hold such rights - or only esteemed, revered collectors' labels such as Mosaic.

European copyright laws? Not valid when there is an occasion of blasting the labels involved, but when it is convenient, we buy'em anyway.

Japanese reissues marked in small print "For sale in Japan only" (guess why?)? Doesn't matter, the Japanese are the good ones, per se.

Holier than thou.

[JSngry]

Yeah, whatever. These particular recordings have been booted more than once, and have never been legitimately issued. No indication that these are any different.

Again - these are not Euro-PD-Porn of once-"regular" label issues. These have never been anything but bootlegs.

If the distinction is too complicated, well, go back to school, take an acid trip, buy new socks,or do something/anything to rattle the brain back into action. It's not my job to explain basic reality to you. That's on you.

Work out your paranoia/inferiority issues elsewhere. We have basic rules here, and they have been enforced regarding two extremely unambiguous bootlegs.

For the record - I have both issues myself, and have made it very easy to get to the actual CD Japan link.

Holier than thou, no. Smarter than thou? In this case, yeah, not even close. Or so you're making it look.

End of story.

[clifford_thornton]

Just because it's on a Japanese label doesn't mean it's legit. Ornette didn't get paid for the Paris Concert that Trio/Kenwood issued in the 70s either. That's definitely a boot, albeit a nice looking and sounding one. This Lotus/Joker thing (on LP as The Unprecedented Music of Ornette Coleman) is excellent but a pirated edition for sure.

[Big Beat Steve]

JSngry, you feel concerned?

Too bad, that was not my intention. But you know as well as I do that there are others who will jump on the bootleg-complaint bandwagon anytime.

No problem if you outlaw links to bootlegs. If forum rules dictate thant, then that#s fine with me. I don't need links to issues like that and can live darn well without them.

But overall the situation situation often is more complicated. Just one example: Up to the present time nobody has given a clear-cut and all-encompassing answer to the question of whether ALL of those Japanese reissues (or belated first-time issues) that are touted here whenever a batch of them crops up ACTUALLY and DEFINITELY pay all those artist royalties that others (that are under fire here) do not. And nobody has explained those "For sale in Japan only" fine prints either AFAIK. Though I wonder what they are there for in the first place if they are there at all. And somehow I wonder if this ain't a case of holier than thou, for example.

Crying out "Bootleg! Shame!" is easy, but looking at the ENTIRE picture seems to be a bit too much to expect, it seems.

As for taking acid trips, I'll leave that to those who feel like they have to indulge in streetwise behavior in every reach of their lives. Not my cuppa.

Nuff said.

@Clifford Thornton:

Valid point. The problem MIGHT go further when it comes to whether the artists benefit or not. See above.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Big Beat Steve

[David Ayers]

Ok guys I was NOT trying to cause an argument. The two titles mentioned are part of a batch of unusual and interesting forthcoming releases from this label. Since they don't look to me like a bootleg label on the face of it I am just wondering. Prevailing laws and actual contracts can make these things ambiguous. I know that many Ornette titles including the Impulses are labelled by him unauthorised in the booklet of that LP the title of which I can't remember. I'm assuming this 'new' one is the sme as the LP originally released on Joker in Italy. I was wondering though if there is actually a story behind this whole batch or if this label is for some reason now in the business of making an opportunistic market drop.

[clifford_thornton]

Re: the Impulses, I thought only Crisis was "unauthorized" according to Ornette. Maybe he signed a contract that he didn't like? Not sure.

Yes, this is the Joker LP (it was also issued with the same title/art on Lotus). I agree, unraveling bootlegs or grey-label releases and semi-legit ones can be a tough task.

Edited October 8, 2014 by clifford_thornton

[JSngry]

Let's do a little homework here...

Also being offered by this label (Crowntokuma), in addition to a ton of what certainly seem to be legit releases:

Art Farmer - Art Worker (formerly on Moon)

Bop Fathers Complete Edition (likely covering at least some of the Giants Of Jazz Lotus material)

Art Blakey - Art's Break (formerly on Lotus)

Stan Getz - Grand Stand (formerly on Joker)

Griff/Dex - Jazz Undulation (formerly on Joker)

Mingus - Statements (formerly on Lotus)

I don't see any "for sale in Japan only" type thing, I do, however, see this:

Description

Note: This is an import edition (manufactured outside of Japan).

So, the answer to "what happened?" is likely an extremely simple one - somebody made a deal to get their Joker/Lotus/Passport/Etc bootleg material released on CD in Japan (interestingly enough, I don't see the Sonny Rollins side from this collection being offered...). The odds of that somebody being anybody other than whoever it was who's held that stuff from the git-go is very slight. So the assumption is that boots they were, boots they remain. Proof to the contrary is gladly welcome, although certainly not anticipated.

Not that I don't indulge in such things myself. I certainly do (and do own most of the items listed above in earlier LP incarnations...I know bootlegs, ok?). But board rules prohibit linkings to bootleg material, and barring the extremely unlikely simultaneous negotiation of rights with the estates of all the above artists and/or any other legitimate rights holders of the material in question, bootlegs they will continue to be considered.

Pretty damn basic common sense, really.

Buy them, hell, the Ornette is a motherfucker, actually, the two basses on "Lonely Woman" will shift your phase, believe me, just don't bitch if/when direct links to them are removed from the board.

[David Ayers]

Yes I see it is a Lotus etc. batch. These likely fall in the period that Italian copyright law did not cover live recordings. From the days when countries were all separate and did things all their own naughty way

[Big Beat Steve]

...

I don't see any "for sale in Japan only" type thing, I do, however, see this:

OK, just so straighten things out:

My remark about "for sale in japan only" referred to the problem of the status of Japanese (re)issues as such which somehow seems to be glossed over when discussing the status of European (re)issues.

Remember that longish discussion about Bethlehem reissues thrown on the market in Japan last spring?

I bought only one of them (Hank d'Amico) but lo and behold, the fine print on the back says "Not for sale outside of Japan". How come? What's up? Hard to believe this was the only one that carried that notice. Could it be, just maybe, that by whatever deal Solid Records (who??) negotiated with VMG, this reissue was okayed for the Japanese home market but nowhere else? Or what other reason would there be for such an explicit statement?

At least one likely conclusion should be fairly self-explanatory yet I find it strange that no clear-cut explanation seems to have been given here. Uncomfortable discussing this at length because that would group them (and/or their buyers) too close to those oh so bad European reissues and those who buy them? Call it holier than thou, call it double standards, call it whatever you want, but short of a detailed explanation (by whomever) that demonstrates convincingly this kind of reissue is perfectly legal for sale OUTSIDE Japan the gist of the debate of when to complain about bootlegs and when not to complain seems a bit skewed to me.

That's all.

Now blame me for going off on a different aspect of Japanese reissues that is outside this topic if you will - I will have to admit that (but I can take it ... )

And no, I don't bitch about removing links to what is perceived as being a bootleg by some. I can live with that. But it might be argued that the term "bootleg" might possibly even extend to "items that are off-limits to those who do not buy them ON SITE within the territory where these items are sold legally".

As for JOKER, those Italian LPs were all over the place (usually in the budget-priced bins) here throughout the 70s and 80s. In the 70s they did some well-programmed reissue series (Jelly Roll, Bix, and others) but fidelity was so-so (I remember buying an NORK LP on Joker - nothing else available at the time - that was virtually unlistenable due to hiss and distortion that did not come from the condition of the original recordings). In the 80s those JOKER LPs sounded better but most often were bypassed because programming of reissues often was done quite randomly and erratically and records that looked like first-time issues had a fairly cheap look and feel to them and looked more like latter-day "also-ran" recordings by an artist that had somehow been dug out and thrown on the market (many of them live recordings indeed IIRC) but obviously did not figure high on the priority lists of those who wanted to gather the key recordings by a given artist.

As we see here, this may be a different matter for completists TODAY but back then and over here the Joker LPs usually were not cnsidered much to write home about.

As for the bootleg status, some must have been aware of that aspect back then. I remember attending a Bo Diddley concert in the late 80s where everybody tried to get their LPs signed after the gig, and one friend had brought an Italian LP from one of those reissue compilation series (pretty erratically programmed at that, and with post-50s material at that), and when Bo Diddley saw THAT LP his face took on an utterly displeased look. It took him a while to return that LP and before he did so a roadie stepped up to my friend and asked him where he got that LP - which left my friend in a mild state of shock because of course he was unaware of what this was all about (he probably had bought that LP on a whim just because it was very affordable). He did get it signed but clearly Bo and his entourage made a note of the title, label, etc. to maybe follow up that trail later.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Big Beat Steve

[David Ayers]

Re. bootlegs and other grey area stuff, a lot of gambit and lone hill cds were listed as newly available in the UK on the Crazy Jazz website which is a useful guide (to me) as to what is around here. Legality aside, I was struck how impressive those Andorran lists are. Lots of it is on Spotify so you can work through it quite easily. As it happens the OC tracks are on a gambit release called Love Revolution. So much stuff out there you can access however you like these CDs seem a bit redundant to me, maybe, but back in the day of LP boots of artists I loved were gold as far as I was concerned. Didn't really know what the legal issues were, if indeed at that time there really were any.

[JSngry]

What we're looking at with the items under question in this thread are unauthorized releases of live recordings (which themselves may or may not have been authorized to begin with..if it's a Euro radio broadcast, the odds are good that it - the broadcast itself - was).

"Bootleg" in the most basic form/sense, former Italian (and, apparently, Israeli - my Unique Jazz LPs came from Israel, although they differed not one bit from the Jazz Connoisseur LPs from Italy!) copyright loopholes not withstanding. These are releases for which nobody legitimately involved ever said, yeah, that's cool, where do I sign?

And actually, I bought those things back in the day. Hell yeah I did. This was before bit-torrenting and all that, and live shows were hard to come by. I don't claim it to be "right", but...like the man said, to live outside the law you must be honest, so no illusions, and as much corrective/balancing action taken as possible, overcompensation at times, actually.

The Euro/PD Porn things, hey, I'll not buy them myself, but they have at least a veneer of legality in their countries of orign, and were at one time fully authorized on all fronts. If editing out of links occurs in discussions about items like these, it most likely won't be by me. And the Fontana things...definitely probably back-alley legalities, but the veneer of PD-Propriety within Japan apparently exists. So link away until proven otherwise.

But these are not that, never have been that. And unless/until the board owner changes the board policy, linking to items of this nature will not be allowed. Discuss away, just don't link.

Ain't gonna be any simpler than that.