IMHO it is pretty easy to hear, I had the white box album collection before seeing the VH1 Classic Albums and still couldn't get into it. I'm not restricting this to just Steely Dan, even with my favorite artists I just wouldn't bother with their over produced albums unless the music was really good. And if they had to enter that phase of their career there is a good chance the music was starting to fall off or already had. I just think SD turned it up to 11, though I certainly accept they are fine songwriters, the music is in no way for me and when I was replying to Ty I was only speaking for myself. Edit: and I didn't mean it to come off as aggressive either (hope the smilies added to that) and I hope Ty took it that way, I felt I could be a bit more candid since we've had several PM conversations on all sorts of things.
The Jazz Crusaders - Freedom Sound Wilton Felder, tenor sax; Wayne Henderson, trombone; Joe Sample, piano; Roy Gaines, guitar; Jimmy Bond, bass; Stix Hooper, drums. from Disc I - Session (A) The Jazz Crusaders: The Pacific Jazz Quintet Studio Sessions
Bill Evans – You're Gonna Hear From Me (Milestone Records) — With Eddie Gomez, Marty Morell; more material from the concert that produced Jazzhouse; recorded live at the Jazzhus Montmartre, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra – Treasury Broadcast No.23 [15Sep45 on Vol.12 of The Treasury Shows] (Storyville Records—D.E.T.S.) Personnel: Shelton Hemphill, Rex Stewart, Taft Jordan, Cat Anderson(t); Ray Nance(t,vn,v); Lawrence Brown, Joe Nanton, Claude Jones(tb); Jimmy Hamilton(cl,ts); Otto Hardwicke(cl,as); Johnny Hodges(as); Al Sears(ts); Harry Carney(cl,as,bar); Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn(p); Fred Guy(g); Junior Raglin(sb); Sonny Greer(d,ch); Marie Ellington, Al Hibbler, Joya Sherrill, Kay Davis(v). Titles include: C-Jam Blues, The Jeep is Jumpin', Creole Love Call, Frankie and Johnny, Everything But You, Emancipation Celebration, Warm Valley. Lve broadcast on the Blue Network from Radio City Studio 6-B, NYC.
@alankin1 I'm joining in with the Ellington Treasury Broadcast playing. I recently picked up vol 2, the first of these that I've ever gotten. It's great, and right now I'm enjoying the Black, Brown & Beige excerpts.
Miles Davis - Filles De Killimanjaro Miles Davis, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, electric piano; Ron Carter, Dave Holland, bass; Tony Williams, drums. Recently acquired this and Nefertiti, my first forays into Miles' mid 1960's transitional period. Probably should look at E.S.P. and Sorcerer.
Yep, you should , they're just as essential. Pity MFSL hasn't done Miles Smiles, which is also essential.
I've seen at least a couple versions of Miles Smiles (one mono?) floating around and there is a Speakers Corner which I bet is pretty good.
I had to sell my entire LP collection in the mid-1990s and never looked back, so those are not an option for me. I have the early Japanese (32DP) CD of Miles Smiles, and it's included in the big Complete Columbia Album Collection box, which I got years ago.
Benny Goodman Classic Columbia And OKeh Benny Goodman Orchestra Sessions (1939-1958), Disc 1 The first disc is such a delight. That big band swing sound at it's most supreme!
Warne Marsh - All Music (1976) Warne Marsh (tenor sax), Lou Levy (piano, electric piano), Fred Atwood (bass), Jake Hanna (drums). (Nessa Records)
Anthony Braxton - Eight (+1) Tristano Compositions, 1989: for Warne Marsh (1989) Braxton (alto sax, sopranino sax, flute), Jon Raskin (baritone sax), Dred Scott (piano), Cecil McBee (bass), Andrew Cyrille (drums). (Hat Hut CD 2012)
Columbia also released an SACD which is very good and still available at a decent price despite being OOP. SACD layer only though.
I don't have an SACD-player, so that's not an option for me either. I got the MFSL Miles Davis SACDs because they're hybrids and the redbook layers sounded excellent to me.
So you don't like Zappa then either eh? But seriously, thanks for posting that video, I'd never seen it and I can watch that sort of "behind the making of...." from a musician's perspective all day long. And, coincidentally, as a budding young drummer who had the delusion of being a rock star and/or studio pro back then Rick Marotta was one of the drum idols of the day, along with many other Steely Dan contributors including Steve Gadd, Bernard Purdie, Jim Keltner, Paul Humphrey (hello FZ! again!) Jeff Porcaro and the much overlooked Jim Hodder. The grooves, patterns and overall playing style was something to strive for when learning the instrument, and all of them have played on countless other classics across multiple genres. That "beat" (to use a simplistic term here) that is shown in that video that Marotta came up with for "Peg" is an amazingly nuanced and complex thing to get right. I can tell you that I had an easier time grokking the entire 2112 suite by Rush, released the year before, than I did in getting that groove for "Peg" to sit right, to feel right, to work in a musical way with other players. Art can be wholly spontaneous, but it can also be meticulously crafted. And while I spend most of my time with the former when it comes to Jazz I love and respect the finely crafted work as well, whether it's a multi-tracked Zappa album or a Steely Dan LP. Hell, even if it's a Teo Macero cut-and-splice Miles Davis album (Don't forget, there were ~17 different musicians on Botches Brew.) Interesting though about Donald Fagen (aside from him citing Red Garland and Wynton Kelly as primary influences from whom he learned to play by listening to their records) but he has said that what he was going for sonically was modeled after the RVG sound of the Hackensack Prestige albums, mostly mono of course. The clarity, the immediacy, the ability to hear all the instruments in a small but real space. Fagen just had different tools available to him 20 years later, tools that Rudy himself would adopt as recording technology advanced, for better and for worse. Rudy talked lovingly about his multi-track digital recording system, and noted that the records he did later in his career were more constructs than events. Not too many artists distilled and incorporated the tenets of Jazz into "Rock" music like Steely Dan and I wonder if some of the dislike that folks have could be preconceived biases about how those (and many many other) albums were recorded. Hell, I remember how disappointed I was when I first found out about some of those Miles albums, finding out they were not fully spontaneous complete performances despite the obvious edits and overdubs. Sometimes it may not be best to know what's in the sausage. P.S. I said nothing about the efforts of the great engineers who made those SD albums possible, including: Roger Nichols, Gary Katz, Al Schmitt et al. I actually got to help Walter Becker (RIP) and his engineer David Russell sort some bass issues they were having at his home studio in HI, so I may be a bit biased myself.
But of course! I enjoy this because it makes me think of why I myself may like or dislike something, and may turn me on to something new. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool contrarian so I'm open to anything 'opposite'.
Just to qualify the "transitional" thing. Between the "second great quintet" and the "electric period"? Because Nefertiti, Sorcerer and ESP don't fit that definition, although Miles always seemed to be "transitioning". And yes, you must have all of them, despite the terminology. Filles and maybe Miles In The Sky (with the introduction of electric instruments on a few tracks) could fit that bill, but not the previous releases. Collect them all, they are magnificent, especially as issued by MoFi. BTW, for LP, there's also a very fine 33 of ESP from Impex and you'll need to source Miles Smiles from Speakers Corner for "Audiophile" reissues.
McPhee/Brotzmann/Kessler/Zerang: Guts Peter Brötzmann: Alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, clarinet, tárogató Joe McPhee: Alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, trumpet Kent Kessler: Bass Michael Zerang: Drums Recorded at the Empty Bottle in 2005 by Malachi Ritscher this acts as a bit of an hommage to the recordist who died soon thereafter. An excellent performance that is not all "Guts" but contains wide dynamics of playing, conjuring of spirits and Brotz even riffs on a bit of a soul-jazz line! Excellent interplay by the longtime collaborators rendered in 'honest' sound: true to source, balanced and wholly enjoyable with an excellent bottom end from Kessler. Preceded by this. Last night we had a whopper of a rain storm. It did not pour, it was not a deluge, it was as though someone were tossing buckets of rain against our doors and windows. I was up in the middle of the night wondering if I should shut down the HiFi, which is always on unless we leave for a few days+. Luckily we almost never have lightning so it stayed on but the rest of the night, stuck in my musically obsessive brain was that damned lyric: Buckets of rain Buckets of tears Gotta play this album to get it outta my ears
