The Now Spinning/Recent Purchases Thread

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This is fascinating to listen to. It's like the bass equivalent to John Klemmer's Cry: Solo Saxophone recording, in that Eberhard Weber uses layers of his own bass to create the recording, including use of something similar to an Echoplex. The difference here is that Weber uses overdubs to create the layers. Since he has added two higher strings to his custom bass, this allows him to play melodies in higher octaves. And he is able to get sounds you wouldn't normally think of from a bass.

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Weber had a stroke in 2007 and has been unable to play the bass since then. However, he was able to create two new albums (Résumé and Encore) based on solo pieces he had played in concert over the years and recorded, having now recorded new parts himself (using keyboards) and guest musicians such as Jan Garbarek (woodwinds) and Michael DiPasqua (percussion) add to a few tracks.
 
I have listened to this album for decades but never looked into the setting of this concert nor the meaning of the album title.

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This was recorded (not released) in July 1971 at the Newport Jazz Festival. I had originally thought it was maybe the last set of the evening and didn't think anything of it.

Turns out it literally means the last full set of jazz played at the Newport Jazz Festival...in Newport, for several years.

The organizers of the festival had for the first time added a few popular and rock bands to the festival, but did not take into account the surge in attendance because of this. As a result, many festival-goers camped on the hillside next to the venue, getting a good view of the stage, rather than paying for tickets to attend. Brubeck was scheduled to perform on Saturday evening. At 8pm, the popular band Chase played a set, followed by Brubeck's quartet.

Following Brubeck was Dionne Warwick. During her performance of "What The World Needs Now Is Love" (which ironically is an anti-war song), the hillside group, many of them high on drugs, decided they were entitled to the empty seats in the venue proper, and stormed the fences, with police stepping in to control the mob. Some of the mob eventually got to the stage and destroyed equipment. Dionne stopped her show, and it was announced shortly thereafter that the rest of the festival was cancelled (so essentially, the remaining Saturday gigs, plus all of the Sunday and Monday gigs, never performed).

The following morning, the hillside group was informed that they were on private property and needed to vacate the premises. It wasn't fast enough for the police, who set off tear gas in the crowd to get them to leave.

The festival would bounce around New York for several years before it was finally brought back to Rhode Island.

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An album that has been floating around in my collection for a good 40 years. Tom Rush, LADIES LOVE OUTLAWS.

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This was a 1974 album from when Tom had moved away from Elektra and recorded for Columbia. One of his signature songs "No Regrets" got a re-do on this album, and it's the one song on it that I was reasonably familiar with, as I always liked it. The old Elektra version was a simplified, fairly straight-ahead folk song, delivered without a lot of fanfare.

The Columbia re-do was a much bigger production, and just like the Sergio Mendes stuff with Dave Grusin's bigger sound, I like it. One of the original drawing cards for me was the inclusion of Carly Simon on backing vocals on this newer version. I like the way she blended her voice in with Tom's on this track.

What was really a hoot for me in digging this one out was studying the credits. One of my old favorites, Rupert Holmes is present on the album a number of times, rendering both backing vocals on some tracks, and providing string arranging and conducting on others. No wonder I always liked it!
 
I just downloaded on itunes with a blank CD, Neil Diamond "On The Way To The Sky" (late 1981) on Capitol Records NOT Columbia Records. The title track reminds me of the classic song "Ol' Man River" as Neil is singin' "We are two & two of us are one". The song "Yesterday's Songs" was my late mom's favorite song!! Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
I just cracked into this one (via Qobuz) a short while ago. Since it's a 2-CD set that clocks in at two hours, twenty minutes, I'm keeping this one ready to play tomorrow morning. Bernard Haitink is one of my favorite conductors and has so many recordings that it's easy to get familiar with many different classical works through his performances. Qobuz has the 7-CD Art of Bernard Haitink and 10-CD The Philips Years sets, but (like Tidal) does not yet have his even larger Symphonies set. I have yet to see if Qobuz has any of those RCA mega-sets, like the Fritz Reiner/Chicago Symphony set, or the Living Stereo sets.

 
When the current music queue is finished, Roon (my digital library/player software) starts something called Roon Radio that plays related music. A track from this album by Swedish pianist Jan Lundgren came up and I liked it. Playing the album right now.

 
Having just finished Maurice White's memoir My Life with Earth, Wind & Fire (highly recommended BTW), I've naturally been spinning some recordings he's been part of. Here is one from his days with the legendary Ramsey Lewis Trio.

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Ramsey was very popular as a crossover artist back in the 60s with some substantial charting hits ("Wade in the Water," "Hang On Sloopy") and Maurice's professional career was given a huge boost by being part of the trio for exposure, and Ramsey's guidance along the way. Maurice would repay the favor just a handful of years later when he and Earth, Wind & Fire offered up "Hot Dawgit" and the smash "Sun Goddess" to Ramsey for his first album at Columbia.
 
I discovered Ramsey Lewis in the mid 80s starting with his "In crowd " era Los as Well as his Later Columbia period 1979 to 87 my favorites from that period are the albums "Ramsey" and "Keys to the city" the latter album really stood out for me it was 1987 and all the songs just seemed to flow together and the mellow songs really touched me inside for reasons unknown but I consider Keys to the city one of his VERY BEST .in my opinion and the smooth jazz radio format was in its infancy and albums like this were making their way into it .
 
Ramsey had some great albums back then. Since I came at his music partly from the Earth Wind & Fire connection, both the Sun Goddess and Tequila Mockingbird albums had some commonality. The former album had a deeper connection and could almost have passed for an instrumental EW&F album in places, but the latter had a lot of EW&F members playing on the tracks (Verdine White, Fred White, Philip Bailey, Al McKay, Johnny Graham, Ronnie Laws who was a member very early in EW&F's history, and Larry Dunn, who also produced some of the tracks).
 
I've heard a lot of music the past couple of days at AXPONA, but what surprised me was the following:



I was in the Needle Doctor room looking at the Hana ML cartridge, and I was asked if I wanted to hear something by Azymuth. There's a name I hadn't heard literally in decades. After a minute when the melody kicked in, I instantly recognized this tune since they used to play it all the time on our now-defunct local jazz station, WJZZ. This is a Brazilian fusion group and this tune was typical of their style from that era.

I am currently playing their more recent album Butterfly on Qobuz. And I have the album Outobro on order (from which "Papasong" is from), and it is also available from Bandcamp on CD or as a download.
 
Now here is an interesting album...of nothing.

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That isn't so much an album title as it is instructions on how to use this record. :laugh: Essentially, it is an album's worth of Riddle's instrumental background. The cover reads, "YOU are the solo star." And the album came with a booklet of music and lyrics, so you could sing along with Riddle. Presumably with the sheet music, you could also play along if you would rather do it in an instrumental style. I'm streaming this via Qobuz; I wonder if any LP copies exist out there with the booklet intact.

So yeah, this is an odd one to listen to. Background for a singer, with only a very occasional echo of a melody. But the style is unmistakably Nelson Riddle, so for anyone who is interested in arranging for a big band or orchestra like this, it's a great way to hear it undistracted with any lead voice.

It got me thinking that this also would have been cool if different vocalists like Sinatra, Dean Martin Peggy Lee and Nat King Cole each recorded their vocal tracks over this album, and we could hear how each singer approached these tunes differently.

Yesterday evening I was listening to a few tracks from Dean Martin's This Time I'm Swingin', which got me in the mood to hear some more Riddle this morning while working.
 
I was a little surprised to see this on Qobuz. They also have the third album in the series, It's A Bossa Nova World but strangely do not have Ole! Bossa Nova.

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Now here is an interesting album...of nothing.

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That isn't so much an album title as it is instructions on how to use this record. :laugh: Essentially, it is an album's worth of Riddle's instrumental background. The cover reads, "YOU are the solo star." And the album came with a booklet of music and lyrics, so you could sing along with Riddle. Presumably with the sheet music, you could also play along if you would rather do it in an instrumental style. I'm streaming this via Qobuz; I wonder if any LP copies exist out there with the booklet intact.

So yeah, this is an odd one to listen to. Background for a singer, with only a very occasional echo of a melody. But the style is unmistakably Nelson Riddle, so for anyone who is interested in arranging for a big band or orchestra like this, it's a great way to hear it undistracted with any lead voice.

It got me thinking that this also would have been cool if different vocalists like Sinatra, Dean Martin Peggy Lee and Nat King Cole each recorded their vocal tracks over this album, and we could hear how each singer approached these tunes differently.

Yesterday evening I was listening to a few tracks from Dean Martin's This Time I'm Swingin', which got me in the mood to hear some more Riddle this morning while working.
Reminds me of the Beach Boys “Stack O’ Tracks” LP.
 
Stanley's (or as we used to yell at concerts, "StanLEE!" :laugh: ) second solo album.

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The song "Lopsy Lu" is the standout here--it has sort of a loose, floppy vibe to it. "Vulcan Princess" is his own relaxed version of this tune he wrote for Return To Forever. The ace backing group includes Tony Williams (drums), RTF alumnus Bill Connors (guitar), Jan Hammer (keys) and Airto Moreira (percussion), in addition to Clarke on various basses on this album.

 
Once again, if anyone is fond of Sergio Mendes, especially his better Brazilian albums from the 70s and Brazilian music from the late 70s and 80s in general (Airto, Flora Purim, Milton Nascimento, etc.), this is right up your alley. One of George Duke's finest albums, recorded in Rio. These are three fine slices of goodness from the album.








BRAZILIAN LOVE AFFAIR (1979)

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This is one of my personal favorite records. It was a labor of love. I had always wanted to return to Brazil and record. So this is how it happened.

I kind of forced my hand on this one. Because of the success the band was having in the R&B world, I asked Epic to let me take the band to Brazil and record an album with some of the great local musicians from the area. They hesitated, but eventually gave in to my request. What resulted is one of my favorite albums, and one which has stood the test of time. Many of my fans think this is my best record, and a good argument could be raised for that point of view.

My idea was to take typical Brazilian rhythms and put my stamp on them with my current touring band. I wanted to work with Milton Nascimento, and I might add that I was thrilled when he said OK. I mostly worked with his rhythm section and intermixed them with mine. One regret I have is not using a young and as yet unknown singer, composer that I met on the beach in Brazil named Ivan Lins. Julie Sayres, who worked in the International department at CBS, was a real asset to this LP. Her enthusiasm was one of the reasons it got off the ground. She is responsible for introducing me to Ivan, and everyone else I met down there. I never will forget the night that I had dinner at his home, and he and his then wife Lucinha (who sang backgrounds on the record) performed these amazing songs for hours. I already had the material for the record set, so I didn't add any of his material. This was a mistake!

I love Brazil! There truly is music in the air. It seems to me that the people breathe music not air.

Charles Johnson had left the band (after I gave him money to help buy a Volkswagen I might add) and I began using Roland Bautista on guitar, who eventually took Al McKay's place with Earth, Wind & Fire.
The actual recording process left a lot to be desired. I took Kerry McNabb, my long time engineer, with me. When we arrived at the studio, none of the musicians were there. They slowly wandered in two, three hours later. I was furious, but after the first few notes were played, I learned to relax and go with the flow. Also, when Kerry wanted to splice some tape together, they gave him some scotch tape. Not only that, but we found out that the first several songs were recorded on used tape. Brazil was another world! I just wasn't used to the way they operated.

However, despite all, I had one of the most pleasant experiences of my career recording this record, also in 1979.
 
I was a little surprised to see this on Qobuz. They also have the third album in the series, It's A Bossa Nova World but strangely do not have Ole! Bossa Nova.

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A great album and it's my favorite among the 3 Almeida did as I mentioned elsewhere I own a 2fer cd with this album and "Ole Bossa Nova" I had those originally on vinyl on the original Capitol label which sadly I wore out
 
Here at my audio post I've been listening to Dave Frishberg Classics which has a few favorites one of the standouts is " A Blizzard of Lies" and "My Attorney Bernie" and "Slappin the Cakes on me" among others on the album I find them quite topical and Witty as well it's a great introduction to His recordings of course I would never have become familiar with Dave Frishberg had he not been a member of Herb Alpert's Second version of the TJB
 
I just listened to King Crimson "Discipline" (1981), "Beat" (1982) & "Three Of A Perfect Pair" (1984) (all with bonus tracks & remastered on itunes). This is them doing a "Barbershop" song (from "Three Of A Perfect Pair" bonus track): Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
While working on a music project, I reconnected with a long-forgotten song from 1970. It's one of those where I clearly remember all of the lyrics and the structure of the song, but haven't heard it in probably 20 years or so. And by playing it, it was like being reunited with an old friend.

The song is "I Can Remember" by Oliver. Yes, that Oliver, the one who did the gliddy gloop gloopy song, "Good Morning Starshine". This song came on his followup album OLIVER AGAIN, which I still own. I've been playing it over and over today.

It's on YouTube, but doesn't have too many views, so it's probably a truly forgotten song. It's chart history is that it made the Adult Contemporary Chart in the 20s somewhere, and that's it.

 
The Oliver song "I Can Remember" went to # 24 (Billboard's Adult Contemporary Chart) back in August of 1970. Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
The Raspberries (with Eric Carmen) "I Can Remember" (from their self - titled 1972 debut album) (NOT the Oliver song) which runs 8 minutes!! Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
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