Listenin' to Jazz and Conversation

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Lonson, Sep 1, 2016.

  1. fatwad666

    fatwad666 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Fat City, USA
    Larry Young - Contrasts

    So dense. Thanks to @Lonson for the tip on the Japanese Blue Note SHM re-releases from last year. I got this and Blue Mitchell Bring It Home to Me from the same series — on deck later.

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  2. Crispy Rob

    Crispy Rob Cat Juggler

    Location:
    Oakland, CA
    A friend turned me on to it last year, but I agree, there is so much out there to discover, particularly so for me in the jazz realm, I have a half-decent grasp of some classic and a pretty good grasp of Miles' and a few others catalogs, but my knowledge is dwarfed by most on this thread.
     
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  3. dzhason

    dzhason Forum Resident

    Location:
    PA
    I think @Lonson may be the inventor of SHM or something, :laugh:. Ok, well... maybe not, but someone should probably start paying him a commission on them because I know I personally have probably been picking up more SHM and BSCDs than I have regular CDs lately (confession: I just got a box of 17 SHMs in the mail today).
     
    Last edited: Jan 12, 2018
  4. Jim Walker

    Jim Walker Senior Member

    Location:
    southeast porttown
    The Newport Jazz festival cuts from '69. A quartet because
    Wayne shorter missed the date.



    [​IMG]
     
  5. Archtop

    Archtop Soft Dead Crimson Cow

    Location:
    Greater Boston, MA
    I always read @chervokas' posts because, while I don't always agree, I almost always learn something. I think it's more a matter of what I've observed of human nature on these and other forums: "academic" statements of fact (or opinions expressed as such) are interpreted as value judgments rather than what they are, which are simply statements of fact (or somewhat objective opinions regarding what the music is perceived to be without casting a negative or positive light on it). For example, I've said more than once that instrumental x is not a song, by definition, since songs are sung. I got the 12th degree for that and I thought "many members of this forum can explain the differences in cartridge specs on every type of Ortofon vs. Brand X off the top of their heads, but they don't understand the very basics of the musical lexicon." My stating that, for example, Pachabel's Canon in D is not a song was interpreted that it was somehow a lesser entity. I don't know why some people think like this, but apparently, they do.
     
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  6. dzhason

    dzhason Forum Resident

    Location:
    PA
    Well, I have organist recordings that I have dug in the past, but I caught myself recently passing over recordings from organists for some reason. I suspect it may be due to the lack of a bass proper on many organ dates; of course, there is plenty of low frequency from the pedals of the organ, but I suspect that I may sometimes lament the absence of the transient attack of a string bass. As far as starting point, I don’t know, I really liked “Into Somethin’” earlier, the music was really fantastic and the sound of the Music Matters 45 was stellar (lots of thick and chewy bass from the organ). Other organ albums I’ve listened to recently and liked a lot were Jimmy Smith’s Midnight Special and The Cat (I posted listening to The Sermon the other day but it didn’t make quite as lasting of an impression). I don’t have any Big John Patton recordings, but, as usual, Lon could very well be into somethin’ there.
     
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  7. Archtop

    Archtop Soft Dead Crimson Cow

    Location:
    Greater Boston, MA
    As a former jazz double bass player, I respect anyone holding down the low end, but I'd prefer it to be some calloused string bass player with a growly, woody tone.
     
  8. Jim Walker

    Jim Walker Senior Member

    Location:
    southeast porttown
    One more Miles for the evening.


    [​IMG]
     
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  9. dzhason

    dzhason Forum Resident

    Location:
    PA
    First of all, I want to say that I enjoy reading your posts and I’m personally enjoying this discussion with you, hopefully you are as well and you neither feel as though I have been waging some sort of attack against you nor, as @Archtop puts it, feel as though I have been giving you the 12th degree. This is not the case and I do not feel that way in return. Like you, I also think we are being burdened by semantic interpretation of language and have perhaps been independently belaboring two separate, yet closely related points, and that perhaps my initial use of the phrase “terms of derision” (a phrase that I chose somewhat hastily as an attempt to provide a contrast to the phrase “terms of endearment”) may have inadvertently put you on a defensive, trying to further clarify an idea (that I’m quite positive I already understood from reading your previous posts), probably because that particular word implies a contemptuous mockery of something, whereas you, as you have explained extremely well, actually do feel respect for the object in question (in this particular case Weather Report and the associated musicians). I did apologize up front for the misrepresentation that phrase may have incurred and I’ll reiterate that apology again now (note: I wanted to reply to you earlier, but also wanted to wait until I have a good opportunity to devote time to a deserving response as I'm afraid my previous response was crafted too hastily in a between moment and may have exacerbated things).

    From reading your elaborations I get a sense that we, at least to some degree, are kindred spirits (and I’m sure that this applies to the folks in this thread, and, I'm even optimistic, that this may apply to the forum at large ), and many of the things you have said are things that could, and some of which probably have, come right out of my own mouth. For example, sometimes I find myself in listening situations, as I'm sure we all have, where someone may say about the music "this is crap!". Personally, I may not have "liked" (I put that in quotes because I'm hesitant to use this word at all) the music all that much either, but my feelings about it are usually something along the lines that the music isn't something to which I would listen often. The other person might ask me if I liked it and I will often embark upon an explanation which I feel is similar to how you said earlier "[there is nothing] negative about the music. I don't really think or feel that way about music", that "[there is] certain music connect with... and certain others don't", that it doesn't resonate with me in a way that would make me want to listen to it frequently, or, to quote you quoting Austin Powers, "That sort of thing ain't my bag, baby... baby... baby". However, such responses can become cumbersome, sometimes it seems to annoy the other person or that they're looking at me like "c'mon already, why can't you just say you don't like it", so I will just sometimes opt for the easy out and say "I don't like it, but I also don't dislike it" and hope that it makes sense.

    Also, I understand what you mean when you say the terms you are using ("coloristic washes" etc) are neither negative terms nor positive, and simply are descriptions of the music; such as fast, slow, tonal, atonal, major, minor, 2#s, 1b, and D dorian are all possible characteristics that can describe a piece of music. I think this is somewhere along the lines where we may have parted in our discussion and I'll return back to the point I was making originally, which I originally felt was quite simple yet now feel as though it has become a serpentine mess we may never unravel. But, I think we agree that people feel differently about music (let's call those people A & B), just like we agree that the original phrases you used, and I quoted, are descriptions of music (let's call those phrases X, and let's call some piece of music W). Now let's say that W+X is music that is described by the particular phrases X. So now we have cases where W+X=A and W+X=B. If people in group A listen to W frequently (i.e. W is A's bag) and people in group B rarely, if ever, feel like listening to W (i.e. W ain't B's bag), then we might say, hypothetically, that terms X represent "terms of endearment" for group A (because X are terms describing music most frequently in their bag), but we might say, again hypothetically, that the same terms X represent "terms of derision" for B (because X are terms most frequently not in their bag) . Sorry to use the word "derision" again here; again, I merely chose it as a contrast to "endearment" (we've already firmly established that we respect W). Now, we know that W+X=A and W+X=B, and we also know that this should mean that A=B (i.e. the transitive property), yet we very clearly have a situation where A!=B (A does not equal B) because we have different people in A and B. I don't know about you or anyone else, but I think that is freaking awesome, and this is the excitement I was trying to express in my original comment:

    I think how chervokas described WR as “lite cocktail” was akin to my initial impression of them. It’s interesting, though, how he is using phrases like “impressionistic”, “coloristic washes of synthy sound”, “electronic groove music”, “Shorter’s moody kind of impressionistic ‘world’ fusion”, and “moody airy music” as terms of derision, yet I would excitedly use the same as terms of endearment, sign me up.
    I think though if you were to boil this whole thing down to an essence, it might be that people feel differently about the same thing; one could adopt the attitude that this, as I said earlier, is simply a matter of fact and is not that interesting at all. I don't hold that against anyone who does, but I find that sort of defeats the joy I feel about things in life and do not choose to do so. Lastly, after expressing this sentiment initially, my subsequent posts were meant to acknowledge that no one was deriding anything yet to arrive at some substitution for the phrase "terms of derision" that would satisfy us both.
     
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  10. Now playing and keeping me warm on the coldest night of winter so far..

    [​IMG]
    Ahmad Jamal- À L' Olympia Dreyfus Jazz (2000) digipak cd.

    One of my favourite live performances. George Coleman is superb on this, a great fit with Jamal. Not unlike Stan Getz and Kenny Barron- not so much for a similarity of sound but just the way they make each other sound so 'right'. Jamal is Jamal, peerless as ever.
     
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  11. Archtop

    Archtop Soft Dead Crimson Cow

    Location:
    Greater Boston, MA
    Some 30 years ago I picked up, very much on a whim, a used copy of Ahmad Jamal at the Blackhawk with Israel Crosby and Vernel Fournier. I was blown away by it. Not that it's some tour-de-force of jazz, but that it's a virtuosic piece of brilliance. Jamal plays piano as if he's making a sandwich. A really, really good sandwich, mind you.
     
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  12. That's one of the gaps in Jamal collection I need to fill. There's magic in his live albums. The sandwich analogy is amusing but I don't quite get it. To me he plays piano as if he's cutting diamonds. Flawless diamonds.
     
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  13. Scope J

    Scope J Senior Member

    Location:
    Michigan
  14. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I completely understand and agree with the idea, which I think was the idea you were first expressing, that those things in Weather Reporter's music that are kind of a turn off for me, are a turn on for other people, obviously.

    And yes, I think what I was responding to was the word "derision." I don't feel any contempt for the music or the musicians or people who like the music and I'm not trying to ridicule or mock it or them.

    I do think my use of the term "lite" also probably carried more freight than was probably wise on my part and it was probably a less considered word than it should have been. That's a loaded word that has come to imply derision, and a poor choice therefore by me.

    I do have the impression that there's a kind of hard funk (like say JB's "I Can't Stand Myself") and a kind of light funk (like, I dunno, Grover Washington's "Mister Magic" ) and, maybe a "lite" funk, meaning in the later case something deliberately softened or lessened in a self-conscious attempt to pitch a product at a specific audience, but that's a question of intent and I shouldn't be guessing at these artists' intent.

    And while I do think there's a lot of softer edged funk in Weather Report's oeuvre, there's some stuff, like, I dunno, "Non-Stop Home," or "125th Street Congress" that's a little bit harder edged too, if not "I Can't Stand Myself" hard. The group's music is pretty varied, considering how long the band ran, and all the lineup changes, and it probably isn't accurately characterized as one particular thing or another.

    For me, even a somewhat harder edged funky Weather Report thing like "125th Street Congress" still is something I kinda get bored by. Shorter's great on that track but it's in bits and piece of soloing that don't quite cohere as a whole, and the groove just kind of chugs along never really making much of an impression on me. Then it's followed up with a track like "Will" which almost seems like it's designed to drift along without leaving an impression. For me, getting through that is a chore. Like I said, I keep going back to this stuff to try to find my way into it and I can never quite get there. But who knows, a couple of years ago, after another one of my occasional looks back at something big in music, I found myself deeply engaged by Schoenberg's music, which had never been the case before. So, maybe someday.
     
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  15. Archtop

    Archtop Soft Dead Crimson Cow

    Location:
    Greater Boston, MA
    He's so adept, that one of the most difficult things one could ever do sounds as simple as the most mundane of tasks.

    'Trane destroys his replacement, Hank Mobley, in no uncertain terms on the title track. Miles specifically asked 'Trane to come into the studio and light a fire under him.
     
  16. Yesternow

    Yesternow Forum pResident

    Location:
    Portugal
    During winter we should have more vitamin C. So, I doubled my Eddie Henderson doses with
    [​IMG]
    This one was out one year after Sunburst.

    Let me tell you that is not that commercial as you might think. On the contrary, looking at what others were doing in 1976 this is much more jazzy.
    A lot of great tracks and good taste jazz funk on it. This vitamin is sweet.
     
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  17. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I'm with you about what a "song" is -- though obviously it gets a little complicated because in colloquial use we have come to use song to mean almost any kind of short-form popular music, and because a piece written as an instrumental can and often is made into a song (as the Pachelbel Canon in D has been), or because midcentury popular AABA 32-song form has often been used as the structure for instrumentals. People do the same thing with songs and performances or songs and records. They'll say X is my favorite song, but what they're really liking about it is the production work on a record, or some arrangement aspect, or some element of the singer's performance, not something that's actually part of the song. Sometimes bringing it up is a nit-picky point that doesn't really matter substantively because we understand what the other person is getting at. But sometimes that kind of catch-all usage creates confusion.
     
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  18. More Jamal..

    [​IMG]

    Ahmad Jamal - In Search Of Momentum [1 - 10] Dreyfus Jazz (2003) digipak cd.

    No horn this time around but Idris Muhammad and James Cammack lay down some funk on this one. This is turning into hot winter night indoors. ...
     
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  19. Ahh... I'm with you. I was standing a little too close, stepping back a little I see exactly what you mean.
     
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  20. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Yeah, "unfiltered" I have a problem with the filtering thing...but I think I understood @dzhason and he understood me from the start, I just think I didn't like leaving the impression that I was deriding anything, because that wasn't my intent.
     
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  21. Six String

    Six String Senior Member

    Yes! Can I get a witness?!

    On the larger subject of jazz organ dates, I do like organ based jazz but I'm picky, especially when it comes to even Jimmy Smih. My favorites are Larry Young and Big John Patton these days and there's a new guy(to me) I got turned on to by Oliver Lake with his organ quartet with JARED GOLD. If you dig Larry Young then you should check him out.
    The album I have is What I Heard on Oliver's label Passin' Thru. For a while I stopped buying organ jazz and then one day I picked up two in one day and one of them was a Sonny Stitt album with Leon Spencer on organ and the album blew me away. It was the sum of the parts. The entire band kcked a$$. Maybe that is what is missing. A jazz organ group has to be good, not just the organist. Miles didn't work alone. Neither did Trane.

    Two albums to check out if you are skeptical of organ based jazz.

    Oliver Lake Organ Quartet - What I Heard (Passin Thru)
    Sonny Stitt - Turn It On! (Prestige)

    At least they aren't the same old answers (not that there's anything wrong with those answers).
     
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  22. Scope J

    Scope J Senior Member

    Location:
    Michigan
    np:
    [​IMG]
     
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  23. Six String

    Six String Senior Member

    I'v not heard that one but I have the other live one you posted earlier. The two studio albums that preceded the 70th birthday show are The Essence (part 1) and (part2). George Coleman plays on a few tracks on (part1) and both are really good imo. Another good live one is Chicago Revisited/Live At Joe Segal's Jazz Showcase on Telarc. No horns on that one, just his trio. Back in the late 80s/early 90s his lps were plentiful in used shops but that has dried up significantly like it has for many other artists. His run on Argo was near perfect imho.
     
  24. Lonson

    Lonson I'm in the kitchen with the Tombstone Blues Thread Starter

    I don't know. I have deep RESPECT for those who can rock organ pedals, and if well-recorded (and in well-engineered live performances) they can really get the job done.

    I got to sneak in one cd before turning off the system for the day and heading out to Dad's. . . and all this organ talk made me choose this BURNER:

    Charles Earland "Black Talk"

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    Charles Earland, Virgil Jones, Houston Person, Melvin Sparks, Idris Muhammed, Buddy Caldwell
     
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  25. Six String

    Six String Senior Member

    Yes, Charles Earland! I failed to mention him in my organ re: post which I actually typed up last night but never hit the send button. :eek: It was late and my wifi stopped working and I chose not to stay up and wait for it to return.

    WP Hank Jones - Bluesette (Black & Blue)

    NP Elvin Jones - And Then Again Elvin Jones (Atlantic) plum/orange mono label
     
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