📜 Feature The Now Spinning/Recent Purchases Thread

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This morning, Lou Donaldson's Cosmos from 1971. After a long run of 50s and 60s era jazz in my morning listening, the growing pains as the music moves into the 1970s are really obvious here. How do you cover James Brown ("If There's A Hell Below") without sounding like James Brown? And then there are the pop covers ("Make It With You", "I'll Be There").

Overall, though, I like it. If my morning reading and coffee run long this morning, on deck is Ahmad Jamal's Count 'Em 88 from 1956.
 
Michael Hagerty said:
After a long run of 50s and 60s era jazz in my morning listening, the growing pains as the music moves into the 1970s are really obvious here.
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Many were trying to follow Miles Davis's lead, some more successful at it than others. What I like about it is that there were so many different types of jazz that splintered from when Miles brought jazz into the "electric" era. And perhaps it's an indication of how good some of the music was when it was branded a "sellout," which in my mind, means that the music had become popular and was accepted by many.

I do admit some of those early records were awkward, but everyone settled into their own style once they figured out what to do with these new sounds. I look at how Donald Byrd had a few missteps--Electric Byrd was an interesting departure (sort of like his own Bitches Brew, yet way more listenable) that pointed towards the electric future, but he didn't fall into a comfortable groove until he met up with Larry and Fonce Mizell's production team and cranked out some popular records in the mid 70s. Chick Corea's first two Return to Forever projects were interesting, but a bit oddball at the same time; it wasn't until he got the classic lineup with Clarke, White, and DiMeola that he would make that jazz/rock combination popular.
 
Ahmad Jamal's Count 'Em 88 was just terrific...no surprise there. Now listening to Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan (1962). A bit over-orchestrated in the early going, but still the work of two greats.

On deck: Steely Dan's Countdown to Ecstasy, a first listen to Nelly's Country Grammar (which might also be my first listen to Nelly), Milton Nascimento's Courage and Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark. Heavying up on not just the known quantities but the all-time favorites.
 
Okay, now I can say I've heard Nelly.

I'll be 69 in March. I can be excused for not needing:

You can find me in St. Louie
Where the gunplay ring all day (na-na-na)
Some got jobs and some sell yay
Others just smoke and f**k all day

...with my morning coffee, right?

Now playing: Milton Nascimento's Courage.
 
Rudy said:
If you endured more than one minute, that's fine by me! 👍

Bridges is one of those rare records where I often replay it immediately after the first run through.
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I probably have told the story somewhere here in the last 20+ years, but in March of 1970, when I was 14 years old, armed with birthday money, I was shopping for records in a cutout bin at White Front (a longtime discount department store in Southern California), when I ran across Courage, along with George Benson's Tell It Like It Is, J&K's Betwixt & Between, Nat Adderley's Calling Out Loud and Walter Wanderley's When It Was Done ---so, A&M's entire CTi late summer 1969 release---for $1.29 apiece.

Sold. Got them home to Bishop, not knowing quite what to expect. Wes Montgomery's A Day in the Life, Down Here on the Ground and Road Song were the only A&M/CTi albums I'd owned up to that point. I had heard George Benson on the radio (but not from that LP), and I knew who Adderley and Wanderley were---but not Nascimento.

Courage turned out to be my favorite of those albums, one of those "if I can only save 10 albums from a fire" kind of things.

Jerry wasn't wasting any time on cutting those albums. They'd been released in August of '69 and were cutouts seven months later.
 
Love "Bridges (Travessia)"!

Nascimento has the strongest version I own, but there's also a Sergio Mendes version on the BRASIL '88 album with Carol Rogers on lead vocal, and there's the recent Tamba 4 CALIFORNIA SOUL album version. All are good because the song is so strong.
 
Been a strange early evening. 😁

Started with a few tracks from Hellbilly Deluxe (Rob Zombie). Followed with the Horace Silver album The Jody Grind. Now I am spinning the Phil Collins 45 RPM Hello, I Must Be Going, and Synchronicity is up next. I may touch on Leon Bridges after this one plays out (Comin' Home), and a couple of tracks from Metallica's Load (45 RPM cut by Bernie Grundman). Plus I've been wanting to hear something by The Mavericks, but not sure what yet.

I should pull Courage for later in the evening so I don't forget.

I also have to vacuum...so, there's that. 🤣
 
Deep into the comfort food this morning...from Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark to James Taylor's Covers.

I'm astonished at how fresh Court and Spark feels after almost 51 years....and how the hairs on the back of my neck still go up on the line "send me somebody" in "The Same Situation".

As I write this, "Wichita Lineman" is playing on the James Taylor album.

If you'd asked me two minutes ago if I ever needed to hear a version other than Glen Campbell's, (perfect recording of a perfect performance of a perfect song), I'd have said no.




And I'd have been wrong.
 
Aside from vacuum noises last night, I stuck mostly to the script. 😁 Although I played one side of Synchronicity followed by one side of Ghost in the Machine. Having two recent-ish sealed new-old-stock copies makes them great players. Having watched a (rather poorly produced) documentary on 1984, I had to play "Hot for Teacher" last night; I don't care what the documentary said--those are clearly Simmons drums at the opening, although they were based on the lumpy idle of Eddie's Lamborghini (the recording wasn't the actual exhaust sound, in other words).

I also took a dive into a few tracks from Llyria before I shut things down for the night.

Might hit a few records this morning before I'm outdoors for the afternoon. Time to tear down the front end of the spare car to find out what the clunking noises are...
 
This just in:

While Beyonce's Cowboy Carter was over-hyped as a "Country" album, it is an EXCELLENT album with a Country flavor.


However.....

Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark is 37 minutes.

Milton Nascimento's Courage is 34 minutes.

Steely Dan's Countdown to Ecstasy is 41 minutes.


Cowboy Carter is 79.

I mean, unlike a lot of albums from the 80-minute CD age, it holds up all the way through, but, still....
 
In essence, that could have had a lot of filler removed or, if it's that good, could have been split into two 40-minute albums, banking one of those for a future release. 79 minutes is a big ask for listeners to sit through that much music.

I can't think of many 2-LP sets I would sit all the way through, for that matter. Earth Wind & Fire's Faces is one of them and, when I'm in the right mood, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk and Elton's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Otherwise, I find I listen to only one record at a time. It's enough.
 
This arrived in my email, literally, four minutes ago:

1728061618603.png



I'm listneing on Bandcamp at the moment. One thing that struck me immediately is that this is not an ECM release, and the sound quality bears that out. The presentation is very compressed. It sounds more like a pop/rock album than the sounds that Bärtsch recorded for ECM, and that's a shame as the dynamics are all squashed out of the music. This is not subtle--you'll hear it immediately.

This recording has two new moduls, a new combination modul, "Modul 70_51" (combing "Modul 51" from Llyria with with a new "Modul 70"). And, new interpretations of older moduls "Modul 14" and "Modul 23"). So the music is still good.

Ronin's lineup has changed slightly--bassist Jeremias Keller replaces Thomy Jordi, who appeared on Awase. Kaspar Rast and Sha are both on board.

Release date is claimed to be November 29, but...here I am downloading the new album as I write this. Maybe it is Bandcamp-exclusive until then?
 
Incidentally, there is an interesting documentary about Bärtsch coming out soon. Here is a trailer.




Also, here is a performance of "Modul 32" recorded at Bärtsch's EXIL club in Zurich, for use in the documentary. It shows how the modul evolved from when it was release on the ECM album Stoa in 2006. (I didn't recognize Kaspar Rast with the glasses and new 'do. 😁)

 
Rudy said:
In essence, that could have had a lot of filler removed or, if it's that good, could have been split into two 40-minute albums, banking one of those for a future release. 79 minutes is a big ask for listeners to sit through that much music.
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Especially given that most people today listen to songs, not albums. We're the outliers, having come up in the album era where we sort of assumed there was a cohesive whole.

Rudy said:
I can't think of many 2-LP sets I would sit all the way through, for that matter. Earth Wind & Fire's Faces is one of them and, when I'm in the right mood, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk and Elton's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Otherwise, I find I listen to only one record at a time. It's enough.
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Well, even in the days of double albums, they were usually shorter than what came along with the CD. Chicago Transit Authority is 56 minutes, Chicago (II) is 67. Joni Mitchell's Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is one hour flat. Earth, Wind & Fire's Gratitude is 66.

Of the ones you mentioned, Faces is 66 minutes, Tusk is 74 and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is 76.
 
Funny that Tusk had an edited version of "Sara" due to the "time constraints" of an 80-minute CD.... 😐

We're at a point in time now where releases can be limitless, due to download/streaming distribution. And that actually might have a reverse effect, as artists can release the number of works they see fit at any given time, such as on an EP, rather than commit to an entire long album. It's a good thing.
 
Going back to the top of the alphabet to listen to some things I've picked up recently.

I had always focused on Sergio's "Brasil" projects ('65-'88) and never bothered with the albums that were on Atlantic. Grabbed those on news of his death.

Just finished listening to The Beat of Brasil. Very good album, no doubt overshadowed by Brasil '66 at the time.

Despite mentions of Sylvia Telles over the years here, she really wasn't on my radar until lj posted about her yesterday in the Herb Alpert 50 thread, so Bossa, Balanco, Balada from 1963 is starting right...now.
 
Michael Hagerty said:
Just finished listening to The Beat of Brasil. Very good album, no doubt overshadowed by Brasil '66 at the time.
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I didn't really collect Sergio's early Atlantic/Philips albums on LP, but I think I've got the great bulk of them on CD. The Collectables label issued some two-fers and three-fers of this material and I managed to fill in the rest with a few import CDs. My copy of THE BEAT OF BRAZIL is on a two-fer with THE SWINGER FROM RIO.

The only LP from that era that I have is a nice-looking, but thoroughly scratched-on-one-side GREAT ARRIVAL.
 
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