Grant Green- Solid

LordEvil said:

Oh, yes indeed.

Going through a huge Miles phase at the moment - my all time favourite is 'Filles de Kilimanjaro'. It's often passed over as a 'transition' album between his classic acoustic quintet and the electric phase but for me it is one of the most beautiful albums ever made. Fantastic use of space, amazing solos from Miles and Wayne, and simply incredible 'drumming' from Tony Williams. Check it out....

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This week:




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paligap said:

I have a jazz record in common with Paligap!!!

ThreadBare said:

Kool!! which one?



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I really don't thrive on negativity that much, but I have to say that Wayne Shorter album a few posts above is some of the worst piece of shit ever produced.

There, sorry.

novabrkr said:

Naw, it's just one of the more polarizing albums ever produced, at least among critics ...( for alternating views, see NY Times' Peter Watrous versus Wayne Shorter, as opposed to Allmusic.com http://www.allmusic.com/c...4gtq5znu43)

If you don't like it, that's Kool, you're probably in good company. I love it, like lots of other folks !! I'm sure everyone doesn't love Andrew Hill's Point of Departure. Different Strokes....





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[Edited 1/17/07 10:05am]

I have to say though that the Pat Metheny album on the same list is something I really used to listen to a lot when I was a teenager. I'd probably find it "horrible shit" as well would it be the case that I'd get to hear it for the first time only now.... but back then I used to love many of the tracks on it. His version of Buong Suong is great, altough the original cambodian traditional is just as beautiful.

novabrkr said:

That's Kool, too...again, different strokes...(I like Buong Song, too!!)

Regarding Wayne's High Life, I can certainly see why a lot of people don't have much time for it. On the other hand, Jazz pianist and composer Michael Weiss wrote this on a Jazz bulletin board, not too long ago (though I'm sure many detractors could give just as many thoughts on why it 'sucks' to them) --- I think it touched one some of the same things I liked most about it, the compositional detail:


"...I don't follow too closely what may be considered the rage, or "movements," but I can comment from my own perspective on the last twenty years as I was personally affected.

Like myself, many of my peers in the eighties were dyed-in-the wool hardboppers, certainly not because of any movement or trend, but that was the mode of expression that appealed to us. And likeminded artists tend to congregate. If you're serious about playing, you have your own convictions about why you do what you do. If your chasing after trends, better to pick another career, maybe advertising.

When you're learning to play and developing your identity, you have to immerse yourself in one thing at a time, to get as deep as you can into the subtleties of the language. If you spread yourself too thin at this stage you can end up with a surface-only style and never explore the real truths underneath. As I tell my students, the important thing is to keep an open mind and admit that if you don't like something one day, you might like it in the future.

In spite of having grown up in the seventies - the heyday of fusion, once I was bitten by Bird, Bud, Trane, etc. music with a rock beat didn't seem to have relevence to me. And until I started composing in earnest, my career was more or less defined by the musicians I worked with, like Junior Cook, Bill Hardman, Johnny Griffin, Art Farmer, Charles McPherson, Lou Donaldson, Wynton Marsalis etc. - all essentially bebop musicians. Not that that's such a good excuse, but nevertheless, I regret that through the eighties I was ignoring a lot of great jazz music that used electric keyboards and rock beats.

I had my "awakening" in the mid nineties after hearing Wayne Shorter's album, High Life. I hadn't been so inspired since my early twenties. Wayne's writing and soloing on that record drove me to tears on several occasions. I then went deep into his Columbia recordings, Atlantis, Phantom Navigator and Joy Ryder, as well as his tunes for Weather Report. I felt like an ass for sleeping on such a rich body of work when it came out, just because of a rock beat, which as a matter of fact, perfectly compliment those compositions.

Inspired by Wayne's attention to detail and multisectional forms, I went back to my tunes and really tried to flesh them out. These days I want to write music that's 80% composition, 20% improvisation rather than the other way around. I can express much more, and take my time about it. So the solos become the ornaments rather than the bulk of the piece.

Wayne also inspired me to use "straight-eighth" rhythms with the bass supplying the bulk of the syncopation. In one recent piece I realized the beat I was looking for was what John Bonham plays on Kashmir. Now that's a totally unexpected reconnection with my early roots! It's nice to feel genre-liberated, where the only dictate is my sense of good taste. Listening to Wayne's solos on High Life I hear Prez, Bird....it's all there. You hear things Wayne played with Buhaina thirty five years before. That's very inspiring, especially from a guy in his seventies, who continues on prolifically to this day.

I think you put it best yourself: electronics and rock beats are simply another set of variables musicians can explore and grow through. All musicians certainly have the right to explore whatever they want to. Is a visual artist evaluated by their choice of materials - oil, ink, clay, wood, paper - or what they do with them? The basic elements of music - rhythm, melody, harmony, timbre - transcend style, genre, era, etc. Can we evaluate music on the basis of the creative use of these basic elements without prejudice to style, genre, trends or fashion?

Great composition and improvisation is not limited by style, only imagination."

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Anyway that's his take. But again, I'm sure lots of jazz fans just don't care for those types of settings to house compositions...



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[Edited 1/17/07 11:13am]

paligap said:

As I recall, Bobby McFerrin rips it up on one its tracks...

ThreadBare said:

That's my favorite track on there!!!... that track called "Summersong"....




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sooo much. I've been collecting a lot of jazz of a lot of different varieties. I suppose "ethnic" or "world" jazz has been a major focus of mine lately but here's a few i've recently been getting into.

Pharoah Sanders-I think Karma may be among the most sublime/transcendent albums I've ever heard, I don't usually use words like that.
Eric Dolphy
Yusef Lateef
Horace Silver
Rabih Abou-Khalil (Lebanese oud player who plays a mixture of Arabic, Turkic, and jazz music)
Jonas Hellborg and Shawn Lane (neo-fusion, usually with an indian/pakistani bent)
Stanley Clarke
Shakti with John McLaughlin
L. Shankar (the violin player with Shakti, released many jazz/fusion oriented solo albums as well)
Dexter Gordon
Roy Eldridge (check out his live at Montreux 1977)
Oscar Peterson

jacktheimprovident said:

Ndeed!!! Just like Coltrane's A Love Supreme, you hear everything in the wellspring on that one -- Free Jazz, Gospel, African, Blues....





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[Edited 1/17/07 14:28pm]

BT11 said:

oh, same here. i am having a big coltrane season at the moment, for some reason.
also on heavy rotation:
Ornette Coleman: Shape of jazz to come & Change of the century.

Alice Coltrane - The Impulse Years

Donald Byrd Band and Voices - A New Perspective

unkemptpueblo said:

A Great Compilation!!! Rest in Peace, Alice...



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paligap said:

I love it. Just ordered World Galaxy and cant wait for it to get here. Normally when someone passes I get a little sad, but with Mrs. Coltrane, I feel like she had a grasp on the impermanence of life. That this is just part of the journey. She's really a beautiful inspiration.

paligap said:

Is 'Karma' a good place to start with Pharoah Sanders?

unkemptpueblo said:

I love that one, but it's the only one of his that I have...Jacktheimprovident, or one of the others here might have a better idea...





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paligap said:

cool. thank you.

Bitches Brew

unkemptpueblo said:

I'd say that one or Black Unity is the best place to start with him. Others that I'd recommend: Thembi, Izipho Zam, Deaf Dumb Blind, Jewels of Thought.

jacktheimprovident said:

noted.

Ken Ford...electronic jazz violinist...



but he is better live and in person....his CD is a bit too 'smooth jazz' for me.....he tore it up last night at Sambuca in Atlanta, though

This is very short-noticed but my station is doing a "Featured Artist Week" and
on my show I'm doing the music of Charles Lloyd. Short noticed for me cuz I wanted to do either Oscar Brown Jr. or Jan Hammer and the store I went to didn't CD's be neither person So I settled for Charles.

Listen today at whfr.fm over the internet. My show is from noon to 2 p.m.

Currently in the rotation...







tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

Is that a new Joey DeFrancesco album? He's really great!

And that Cornucopia album is one of my faves too!

guitarslinger44 said:

Organic Vibes came out last year and Falling In Love Again in 2003.

There's a 2007 release on Concord titled...



...LIVE: The Authorized Bootleg but I haven't heard it yet.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431