Miscellaneous What are you listening to (plus reviews)

[suethesax]

I'm listening to Bob Mintzer Big Band - Latin From Manhattan

What is you choice this moment in time?

 

[JohnB]

allan holdsworth, segovia and julian bream for guitar.
lester young, john surman and mike brecker for sax.

 

[Tenor Sax]

Kenny Burrell. Anything that gets played by "The Jazz".

Always tuned in.

 

[Jules]

Hank Mobley's 'Soul Station'- (bought from Pete's on-line store, no less), great 1960s soul jazz. Duke Ellington at Newport (same)... Plus a great CD that came free on the cover of Mojo Magazine last month called 'Global GoGo'- lots of African and so called 'world music'.. a lovely sampler of stuff I'd not normally have confidence to fork out moolah on- Ali Farka Toure etc.

 

[greg_strange]

Recent CD purchases while on holiday from Real Groovy Records in Christchurch, NZ.

1). John Klemmer - Barefoot Ballet
2). Hank Crawford - After Dark
3). Bernie McGann - McGann McGann (Aussie alto sax extraordinaire - sometimes proclaimed as the best alto sax player in the Southern Hemisphere - well, maybe)
4). Sonny Fortune - Four In One
5). The Vaughn Roberts Big Band - Title:- grrreat stuff (a big band that kicks butt from Wellington - a.k.a. Helengrad?, New Zealand).
6). Billy Strange - Strange Country (1960s LA session guitarist and bluegrass exponent - Uncle Billy rocks - finger pickin' good!)

Regards,
Greg Strange.

 

[peter_fitton]

Mingus - Live in Antibes

KT Tunstall - Drastic Fantastic. Refreshing to hear a curent singer - songwriter who actually knows how to right a song. Such a change from the nursery rhyme melodies of virtually all her contemporaries in both the singer songwriter and indie rock genres.

CD2 of Present - Van der Graaf Generator. Brilliant live improvisation from the whole band and storming sax from David Jackson. Pity he was so abysmal on the subsequent live album and has now been chucked out of the band.

Sibelius - all the symphonies but especially the 7th - the first 8 minutes of which (it only lasts for 20 mins anyway) are possibly the most sublime 8 minutes of music ever written. Just avoid Simon Rattle's godawful version, which is dire beyond words.

Coltrane - Meditations and First Meditations albums. Proof that even at the height of his uncompromising, avant-garde, free jazz phase Coltrane could still produce music of incredible lyric beauty. Admittedly there are passages on both where he sounds less like a man playing a saxophone and rather more like a man letting air escape from a balloon...but, hey, don't let that put you off!!

Peter

 

[Jules]

Peter Fitton wrote:


Pity he was so abysmal on the subsequent live album and has now been chucked out of the band.

Is that really the case? I don't remember him sounding ropey when i saw them....

 

[mfox]

hehe nach.. im revisiting hank at the moment..

by the way you should get your disc in the next day or two.
i asked my wife to post it, and guess what i found it in her bag while i was looking for my car keys,, but it is on the way now.
women phaa

 

[peter_fitton]

nachoman wrote:

Peter Fitton wrote:


Pity he was so abysmal on the subsequent live album and has now been chucked out of the band.

Is that really the case? I don't remember him sounding ropey when i saw them....

Hi Jules,

Well it's certainly the case that Jaxxon has been sacked from the band, who are to continue as a 3 piece. Apparently the problems were more to do with his erratic and "fractious" behaviour rather than anything specific to his playing. Hammill has been categoric in saying that DJ "will not play with us again".

It pains me to say it but, for me, Jaxon's playing on the Real Time live album is really pretty poor. There are 1 or 2 flashes of his brilliance but mostly he sounds woefully under rehearsed and fairly shambolic, and on several songs contributes little more than a few saxophonic sound effects. Just my opinion, you might well hear it completely differently, of course.

I saw them in Manchester in Nov 2005 for what turned out to be Jaxon's last full length gig with the band. He looked and sounded tired; it's rumoured that he is not in the best of health.

The guy is a hero of mine and I hope that he can come back and produce some more great music before too long.

Cheers

Peter

 

[jonf]

This afternoon, at my desk, Tom Waits, The Asylum Years. It's been a very hectic week, and we've had the auditors in to boot, so a bit of Tom on a Friday afternoon is very soothing. 8)

Good job I have my own office - all the twenty-somethings who work for me would have a fit at the sound of him. 🙁

 

[Jules]

JonF wrote:


all the twenty-somethings who work for me would have a fit at the sound of him. 🙁

Surely all the more reason to blast it out!!

 

[Bobby G]

This week, in common with others here, some Hanks Mobley and Crawford, the self-same Ellington at Newport CD as nachoman (Jeep's blues is my all-time favourite bit of alto, of all-time mate), some Van Der Graaf (a compilation I made up) and rediscovering early Stackridge. Oh, and whatever gets played on Radcliffe and Maconie

 

[suethesax]

Phil Woods - Hard Sock Dance

I'd forgotten how much I like Phil Woods 🙂

 

[spike]

Paul Lansky - any of the "idle chatter" tracks

 

[Bobby G]

Levon Helm, "Dirt Farmer". Again. I really love this record.

 

[spike]

Aaah, "the night they drove old dixie down" -
check out his website - www.levonhelm.com

 

[bobk]

I am noodlingly playing along to Alison Krauss & Robert Plant. I'm particularly enjoying trying to do the Klezmer-esque "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us" along with them. I am even trying to work out which keys I end up playing in rather than just figuring out which sequences of notes 'go'.

I am also listening to the new 3CD version of 'Greasy Truckers Party' having had the double LP for about a quarter of a century. This, of course, has some crucial sax on it (ok, Nik Turner sax, but still sax).

cheers,

Bob

ps - t'other Bob might well appreciate Greasy Truckers

 

[Jules]

Appreciate Greasy Truckers Party... Me too!
today I will mostly be listening ot Jan Garbarek's Twelve Moons- a very odd album indeed- a very vaguely celtic world music affair featuring Garbareks sax sounding totally unlike a sax- more like irish pipes (having been brought up on Planxty and the Chieftains I'm in a very small minority who think that making a sax sound like uillean pipes is a good thing!!)... the whole thing reminds me of a more "substance filled" version of Clannad or Afro-Celtic soundsystem (ok- Garbarek is Scandinavian not Celtic, but the general vibe is similar). Also Gogol Bordello- fun albums and the best live rock act I've seen in years...

 

[Bobby G]

Bobk, yer right about Greasy Truckers, I owned it many years ago but haven't heard it for, ooh, decades. Didn't the original LP set have one side of silence which was in fact the power cut? Remind me who was on it, I've usually got quite a good memory for this hippy-era Roundhouse stuff, was it things like the Brinsleys (bless 'em) and Global Village Trucking Co?

Spike, I've had a quick look at the Levon Helm site, I will delve more later - there's something incredibly honest and soulful about his singing, and he has been described as the only drummer whose playing can make you cry. I know exactly what was meant, if emotion can be conveyed through playing a drumkit, Levon can do it. The only other drummer I can think of on this side of the pond who can do the same is Dave Mattacks, who is probably more technically accomplished but there is something so right about everything he plays.

 

[bobk]

My vinyl Greasy Truckers Party 1972 has Man, Brinsley Schwarz, Hawkwind and one (but perhaps one too many) Magic Michael tracks on it. There is also a power-cut (miner's strike) track, but just a track, not a whole side. The truly superb 'Born to Go' is introduced with someone muttering "miner's strike, miner's strike, this'll be more like a mining disaster".

The new CD version has more of everyone but Magic Michael - I think it is basically the entire gig. Byzantium were meant to play but didn't because of the power-cut. I think remember seeing them in the late 70s in Hyde Park somewhere down the order supporting Queen!

The album with Global Village Trucking Co (and Camel and Henry Cow, I think) was also Greasy Truckers but was from a year or two later.

Greasy Truckers was a sort of hippy charity fro street people - these albums were benefits for them - a bit like BandAid except nothing like BandAid...

cheers,

Bob

Bobby G wrote:
Bobk, yer right about Greasy Truckers, I owned it many years ago but haven't heard it for, ooh, decades. Didn't the original LP set have one side of silence which was in fact the power cut? Remind me who was on it, I've usually got quite a good memory for this hippy-era Roundhouse stuff, was it things like the Brinsleys (bless 'em) and Global Village Trucking Co?

Spike, I've had a quick look at the Levon Helm site, I will delve more later - there's something incredibly honest and soulful about his singing, and he has been described as the only drummer whose playing can make you cry. I know exactly what was meant, if emotion can be conveyed through playing a drumkit, Levon can do it. The only other drummer I can think of on this side of the pond who can do the same is Dave Mattacks, who is probably more technically accomplished but there is something so right about everything he plays.