Coltrane: Both Directions At Once (lost album)

[bertrand]

Please don't tell me the Japanese version has extra tracks...

[erwbol]

No extras.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Is there anything in the LP artwork that says how it was mastered? As I said earlier, I have no problem paying a bit more for an analog-cut LP but if it's cut from a digital master, I'll just buy the CD version.

[B. Clugston]

Lewis Porter writes about Both Directions at once, including a theory that someone other than Coltrane wrote “11386”

[jcam_44]

16 hours ago, B. Clugston said:

Lewis Porter writes about Both Directions at once, including a theory that someone other than Coltrane wrote “11386”

Thanks for the heads up on this. This is the best analysis I’ve heard about why the material wasn’t released. I was hoping he would discuss 11383. though fantastic, it doesn’t sound like the band is familiar with the song and I doubt it would ever have been released on an album. 

[Stefan Wood]

Listening to this now.  Damn, this lives up to the hype.

[Scott Dolan]

Going to listen to it in the morning. Hopefully without jaded ears. 

[Stefan Wood]

The whole group is coming out swinging.  Nothing held back.

[CJ Shearn]

41 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

Going to listen to it in the morning. Hopefully without jaded ears. 

I too hope to listen with unbiased ears when the discs arrive later today.  I have the feeling the music will be good, but as you said earlier in the thread nothing we haven't heard already.  I hope this is truly a worthy addition to the canon.

 

22 minutes ago, Stefan Wood said:

The whole group is coming out swinging.  Nothing held back.

  Interesting, because the New Yorker review I read, it seemed the reviewer Richard Brody felt the music was on low boil.  He felt Bob Thiele was appealing to commercial concessions, in the vein of Ballads and John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, but I don't see how that's accurate judging from hearing the link of "Untitled 11383"

[JSngry]

My buddy Pete Gallio told me a long time ago that the point of hearing live Coltrane was not to hear anything new, but just to hear that "thing" done again, not quite like it had been done before or would be done after. To just enjoy having one more moment of "that" to be in.

That's pretty much where I am with this. No revelations expected, just one more moment of "that thing" to enjoy a few times.

[mjzee]

On it's way to me, along with Porter's "The John Coltrane Reference" book.

[paul secor]

42 minutes ago, JSngry said:

My buddy Pete Gallio told me a long time ago that the point of hearing live Coltrane was not to hear anything new, but just to hear that "thing" done again, not quite like it had been done before or would be done after. To just enjoy having one more moment of "that" to be in.

That's pretty much where I am with this. No revelations expected, just one more moment of "that thing" to enjoy a few times.

The same could be said about many (any?) of the greats, though I get where your friend was coming from. So many people say that Trane was in constant flux. For me (and I guess your friend), everything he played was an extension of "that", as you say.

[JSngry]

Constant flux is a bit of a "Romantic" notion, but sure, there were pivot points. But they were just that, points, dots. And in between those, the dots had to be connected in real time, and that's where the "more of that thing" comes in, just the everyday motion of everyday life for that band and those players. I love the dots, but I love the connective tissue just as much, especially when you start to feel the gravitational pull of the next point beginning to exert itself.

You can get quantum about it (and quantum is what Trane was after, I'm convinced), but hell, if you just want to take it out for a Sunday drive, any of it, it works like that too. Greatness will handle the demands, light or heavy, always.

[uli]

3 hours ago, Stefan Wood said:

Listening to this now.  Damn, this lives up to the hype.

yep

[Stefan Wood]

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

My buddy Pete Gallio told me a long time ago that the point of hearing live Coltrane was not to hear anything new, but just to hear that "thing" done again, not quite like it had been done before or would be done after. To just enjoy having one more moment of "that" to be in.

That's pretty much where I am with this. No revelations expected, just one more moment of "that thing" to enjoy a few times.

Yes, there's nothing revealing, just hard playing and creatively executed. Even the filler is killer.

3 hours ago, CJ Shearn said:

I too hope to listen with unbiased ears when the discs arrive later today.  I have the feeling the music will be good, but as you said earlier in the thread nothing we haven't heard already.  I hope this is truly a worthy addition to the canon.

 

  Interesting, because the New Yorker review I read, it seemed the reviewer Richard Brody felt the music was on low boil.  He felt Bob Thiele was appealing to commercial concessions, in the vein of Ballads and John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, but I don't see how that's accurate judging from hearing the link of "Untitled 11383"

Brody must have been drinking when he wrote the review.  Low boil????????????  No way in hell.

[CJ Shearn]

7 minutes ago, Stefan Wood said:

Yes, there's nothing revealing, just hard playing and creatively executed. Even the filler is killer.

Brody must have been drinking when he wrote the review.  Low boil????????????  No way in hell.

Well, it appears the review, though he praises the music on one level, his expectations were that the music was going to be on the same level as the live performances of the period which I think, is unfair. 

 

" Whatever reticence a listener might experience with the new album isn’t musicological but emotional: the spiritual temperature of the music is lower, its moments of glorious invention have a logical and inviting air that never quite matches the self-exploring, self-transcending volatility of Coltrane’s very best recordings, whether made in concert or in the studio. (It’s impossible to know whether the quartet just didn’t reach its heights of inspiration that day, or whether, under the influence of Thiele and related commercial considerations, they deliberately restrained their most extreme energies.) “Both Directions at Once” is a marker of Coltrane’s work at the time rather than the very best of it. It’s as if the band were displaying what it is that they do when they do it, without quite doing it. "

[Stefan Wood]

Clearly he had expectations that just was not going to be there.  It's not like finding a previously undiscovered live date.

 

Edited June 29, 2018 by Stefan Wood

[CJ Shearn]

5 minutes ago, Stefan Wood said:

Clearly he had expectations that just was not going to be there.  It's not like finding a previously undiscovered live date.

 

Exactly.  When I review, I try to see the music for what it is, not what it isn't.

[Scott Dolan]

4 hours ago, Stefan Wood said:

The whole group is coming out swinging.  Nothing held back.

Which begs the question, when DID they hold back? I mean, serious. When? Because those tapes are yet to be released. 

 

3 hours ago, CJ Shearn said:

I too hope to listen with unbiased ears when the discs arrive later today.  I have the feeling the music will be good, but as you said earlier in the thread nothing we haven't heard already.  I hope this is truly a worthy addition to the canon.

 

  Interesting, because the New Yorker review I read, it seemed the reviewer Richard Brody felt the music was on low boil.  He felt Bob Thiele was appealing to commercial concessions, in the vein of Ballads and John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, but I don't see how that's accurate judging from hearing the link of "Untitled 11383"

Whether Ballads was a “commercial concession” is a debate I’ll stay out of, but that album is arguably one of the best the Classic Quartet ever recorded. Bar none. 

Now, I will humbly concede that if you hit me up for a spur of the moment “top five Coltrane Quartet albums” Ballads likely wouldn’t be mentioned. But it damned sure SHOULD be! It’s funny. They didn’t cut loose on that session, nor did they make any of those tunes their own. But somehow they made them “perfect”. Just. Fucking. Perfect. 

Along with Crescent (due to it being overshadowed by A Love Supreme in the ‘64 canon), Ballads is THE most overlooked and underappreciated albums that band ever recorded, IMO. 

[Stefan Wood]

14 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

Which begs the question, when DID they hold back? I mean, serious. When? Because those tapes are yet to be released.

Never.  It just shows that they performed at a high level, all the time. 

[Scott Dolan]

13 minutes ago, Stefan Wood said:

Never.  It just shows that they performed at a high level, all the time. 

My apologies, brother. I actually did NOT mean to call you out on a semantic level. I should not have replied as I did. 

[Larry Kart]

4 hours ago, JSngry said:

My buddy Pete Gallio told me a long time ago that the point of hearing live Coltrane was not to hear anything new, but just to hear that "thing" done again, not quite like it had been done before or would be done after. To just enjoy having one more moment of "that" to be in.

That's pretty much where I am with this. No revelations expected, just one more moment of "that thing" to enjoy a few times.

I heard Coltrane live fairly often in '63-'64 in Chicago, literally from close up (Elvin's bass drum at McKie's, if you were sitting opposite the band at the bar, was a little more than the width of the bar from your head), and what no recording I know of captured was the relative dynamics involved -- how loud the band's "loud" eventually was after 40 minutes or so  (and I also mean how intense) versus the level at which say they might begin a particular piece like "Mr. P.C." Subjective factors are involved here -- the intensity of the music-making per se adding to the sense that the end of everyone's tether had been reached -- but the only thing I've ever experienced that approached it  along those lines was Albert Ayler in person.

[Simon Weil]

1 hour ago, Larry Kart said:

I heard Coltrane live fairly often in '63-'64 in Chicago, literally from close up (Elvin's bass drum at McKie's, if you were sitting opposite the band at the bar, was a little more than the width of the bar from your head), and what no recording I know of captured was the relative dynamics involved -- 

There's a record by The Grateful Dead, Live Dead, which at one point I was completely obsessed about. I loved the thing (and still do kind of). Yet it never came up to the live performances I had heard. I used to fiddle about with electronics and had a spare, old micro stereo system and I botched up a faux quadrophonic effect with a bit of simple circuitry which created a "new" pair of channels made out of (as I remember it) the stereo channels added together and subtracted from one other. Suddenly I was in the middle of a live concert - and the experience was comparable to what I'd heard.

Sacrilege....

 

[CJ Shearn]

4 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

Which begs the question, when DID they hold back? I mean, serious. When? Because those tapes are yet to be released. 

 

Whether Ballads was a “commercial concession” is a debate I’ll stay out of, but that album is arguably one of the best the Classic Quartet ever recorded. Bar none. 

Now, I will humbly concede that if you hit me up for a spur of the moment “top five Coltrane Quartet albums” Ballads likely wouldn’t be mentioned. But it damned sure SHOULD be! It’s funny. They didn’t cut loose on that session, nor did they make any of those tunes their own. But somehow they made them “perfect”. Just. Fucking. Perfect. 

Along with Crescent (due to it being overshadowed by A Love Supreme in the ‘64 canon), Ballads is THE most overlooked and underappreciated albums that band ever recorded, IMO. 

I used to have the deluxe edition of Ballads, I preferred the original album over the alternates.  Whether that album was a commercial concession I do not think so personally, but listening now to disc 2 of Both Directions At Once, just the first spin, but the alts are of value, especially "Impressions" takes 1 and 2, in a very condensed space, Trane really goes for it, nothing we haven't heard already, but nice nonetheless.  This album is not earth shaking the way the PR said, great marketing of course, but it's a nice supplement to what this band did best.  Those are my first impressions (pun intended).

 

[Eric]

I bought the deluxe version and have been through disc one a couple of times.  It is very enjoyable stuff - to me, something of an extension of the work on Atlantic.

In case anyone is interested, you can use iTunes to "edit out" the announcement of take numbers, which I found (slightly) annoying.