#apparently trombonists are just like this

[gerogerigaogaigar]

Alright so here is another set of reviews. This time it's my brother who is very much into fun and goofy music so enjoy this selection from my brother Jason!

The Aquabats - Fury Of The Aquabats!

The Aquabats are living cartoons. Concentrated essence of childhood fun. They are a child friendly ska punk Gwar. Even though this album is from long before their purely kid oriented Yo Gabba Gabba! days there is still a distinct family friendly atmosphere to The Fury Of The Aquabats! It has a similar energy to Homestar Runner or The Muppet Show where it is kid friendly media made for adults. And, like those examples, it works because they are having so much goddamn fun with it. It is deliberately and pointedly stupid. Magic Chicken is a song about chicken. I'm laughing because it's funny. The Cat With Two Heads has the line "I was in my laboratory creating what i thought would be we something great for the world, a two headed cat. You can pet one kitty's head and pet the other kitty's head, but little did i know the power of atomic energy would create a

two headed man eating monster!"

So have I convinced you to listen to a 90s ska album yet? Because this is a very pure example of the genre musically. It has the pop punk pacing and fast paced ska rhythm and the horn section and everything. It does admittedly have some, uh, genre diversions I guess I'll call them. Attacked By Snakes is a tango song and Lobster Bucket is a zydeco type thing sometimes. The MC Bat Commander is a perfect vocalist for this kind of music. He's so goofy, but you never really get the impression that he isn't taking it seriously. Or at least he is meeting the music and lyrics on their own terms. It is very endearing. Plus this album has a little bonus that other Aquabats albums lack. Do the drums sound like really competent to you? Like way too much for a pop punk band? Yeah that's Travis Barker of Blink-182 fame. He's probably the most talented punk drummer and he lends a fantastic energy to these songs.

Deee-Lite - World Clique

If you know Deee-Lite already then you probably know them as the one hit wonder who did Grooves Is In The Heart. Well this album deserves more recognition than just having produced a hit single. Deee-Lite channel the 60s flower child throwback aesthetic harder than any other artist of the 90s and they bring that energy to house music. Now I feel like a lot of electronic music fans start to dismiss an artist the minute they hear pop vocals, but this is totally unfair. Dee-Lite use vocals the way they would use any other instrument on a house track. The repetitive vocal lines mesh with the piano samples, drum loops, and funky bass.

Speaking of funky bass, this album has a few performers with a pedigree. Three former Parliament-Funkadelic members feature on this album, trombonist Fred Wesley, saxophonist Maceo Parker, and bass legend Boots Collins. Plus A Tribe Called Quest member Q-Tip gets a verse on Grooves Is In The Heart. That element of P-Funk goofiness is apparent in their peace and love lyricism and overt cheesiness. And while a lot of memorable tracks like Try Me On and Groove Is In The Heart are more hip house to pop oriented the rest is populated by songs like What Is Love that show off a more traditional house style. The album has enough variety and good enough pacing that you don't need to throw these songs into a DJ mix when you can just throw on this whole album and get the same experience.

Shonen Knife - Brand New Knife

I can't pretend this is my absolute favorite Shonen Knife album, I'm more of a Burning Farm or Pretty Little Baka Guy kinda girl. But Shonen Knife doesn't exactly disappoint here either. There's a simplicity to their lyricism and playing that leaves little room to actually fuck it up. The punk rock meets 60s girl group sound feels like it should be influenced by cuddlecore musicians except for the fact that Shonen Knife's sound predates that movement by a decade. This album is smack dab in the middle of the height of that scene though (low heights admittedly) and there is definitely a bit of a cleaner sound than on previous Shonen Knife records that reflects the styles of the time and the rising success of the band. I don't personally believe that higher production quality does much for them, but as long as they are still singing about food and other things that make them happy Shonen Knife will always be a treat to listen to.

Bitch Ass Darius - Follow The Sound

This is the greatest DJ mix ever. Booty bass or ghetto house or ghettotech or whatever you want to call it is a chatic style of house that adopted a lot of hip hop tendencies and then ramped things up to eleven by using the most sexually explicit lyrics possible. Follow The Sound is the most ridiculous example of this already ridiculous genre.

Bitch Ass Darius is an anomaly to me. I can't find out who they are or if they made any more mixes under a different alias. A friend showed me this mix once and I don't know where he found it. The experience of listening to the mix is kind of similar. In between recognizable samples will be snippets of things that you couldn't place the origin of in a million years. And even if you could they probably fly by so fast you don't have time to parse what he just sampled before the world's foulest lyrics start repeating some shit like "he's not my baby daddy he's just a sperm donor" or "I wanna fuck your mouth". A lot of typical booty bass samples are present which means nothing if you aren't a freak like me, but if You've ever heard that memetic snippet that goes "ass n titties, ass n titties, ass ass ass ass ass n titties" that was DJ Assault who is a staple of the genre and that exact sample is in this mix. But the typical hyper crude samples are interspersed with something way weirder. Random seconds long snippets of literally anything else. I can't explain the experience adequately because everything is always happening so fast. My favorite example that I have managed to catch is that he rapid fire samples Michael Jackson (pitched and sped up naturally) saying "beat it, beat it!" And then without missing a beat counterpointing it with the Weird Al parody lyrics "eat it, eat it!" This happens in maybe one and a half seconds. The contrast of samples is a great vehicle for delivering the comedy inherent in the genre while also delivering a good example of the music. Despite feeling like it's poking fun it still remains respectful of the chaos of booty bass music. The album dwells on nothing. It doesn't care if you heard that because listen to this! Follow The Sound is the purest and most perfect sonic overload. If you have problems with auditory overstimulation then seriously consider skipping this album. But if you have ADHD like me then you are about to find your new favorite thing.

Accept - Balls To The Wall

This album is gay af. It was noted at the time and the band acknowledged it. To quote drummer Stefan Kaufmann "It's a phenomenon that should be taken into consideration. Because it exists on a wide scale and should be demystified. In fact, this is a phenomenon of society that needs to be taken as such. For a long time gay people have been considered as sick or insane. And yet, it's time to respect these people, open our minds which are often closed."

This is the kind of music that I think most people are thinking of when they say "heavy metal". It is riff driven heavy music with corny lyrics about tough guy stuff. Like having sex with men. Accept is like if AC/DC was self aware. And thankfully the only ballad in the album is actually good too. It's hard to review this style of metal without sounding dismissive. The camp is obviously deliberate here so I don't feel as bad poking a little fun because I think I'm laughing with them a bit. But really this is a simple and effective album with no weak tracks and themes that it plays straight. Which doesn't seem like much but in the world of late 70s early 80s heavy metal its really raising the bar for future acts.

Desmond Dekker & The Aces - 007 Shanty Town

Before ska was associated with middle school boys with frosted tips and cargo pants, before the days of London teens in ill fitting suits and checkerboard patterns, before dub and reggae there was Desmond Dekker. One of the 60s original ska artists. With a sound that blended Jamaican mento music with a solid helping of jazz and R&B to create a unique blend of Jamaican pop music.

The unique beat that we all know and love (you love it right?!) is created by muted guitar downstrokes on the one and three beats and loud staccato upstrokes on the two and four. Add in some horns, walking bass, and vocal harmonies and you've got the blueprint for basically all ska. And this combination, the crisp staccato guitar and horns especially, grant a uniquely sunny disposition to basically the entire genre so that even when Desmond Dekker is singing about poverty or crime there is an underlying love for his home in every song. Plus a lot of the gangster aesthetic is pure kitsch and is strangely one of the major aspects of the genre to have maintained throughout the years. Ska artists all wanna be in Oceans Eleven even in back in 1967.

Mastodon - Leviathan

If 17 year old me knew that in the year 2023 I was still going off about how much I love this album I think she would call me a slur and have a weird feeling about being called 'she'. I've liked this album for a while and the more metal I listen to the more I appreciate Mastodon. They are somewhere between being sludge, progressive, and death metal and they navigate that in-between with skill. The chugging skudginess can easily erupt into speedy solos and there is an abundance of complexities in the musical arrangements.

Leviathan is the second in a tetralogy that incorporated their first four albums each being themed after a classical element. Leviathan is a concept album about Moby Dick and therefore is obviously water. If their more aggressive debut is fire and the sludgier Blood Mountain is earth then Leviathan's status as water follows. The riffing crashes like waves and there are a lot more melodic flowing sequences that also suggest water. Although the album is more strictly focused on its Moby Dick themeing. Leviathan crashes forward with an intensity that is honestly too much to just call sludge metal but it never hits the level of screaming that you expect from death metal. In retrospect Mastodon have always been a very progressive metal act and I think this album in particular does the best at blending all of their different styles into one package. That said all four of their original albums, Remission, Leviathan, Blood Mountain, and Crack The Skye are worth a listen.

K.d. Lang And The Reclines - Absolute Torch And Twang

Oh so my son of a bitch brother is gonna be a bigger lesbian than I am by giving me a k.d. Lang album I've never listened to huh? Before she transitioned to a more lounge / jazz style k.d. Lang was a full on country western musician with her band The Reclines. Country music had been in severe decline for over a decade but somehow Lang avoids any of the pitfalls of her contemporaries. Instead she mines decades worth of country music blending rock influenced outlaw styles, singing cowboy western styles, and 60s Nashville sound into a monolithic style that celebrates the history of the genre without just being a period piece. And her voice is just astounding. She can sing tender love ballads and rollicking honky tonk numbers with equal ferocity. Her mezzo-soprano is maybe the richest I've ever heard.

Luie Luie - Touchy

Luie Luie is here to tell you about a new dance called the Touchy. This is going to be a bitch to explain. Luie Luie was an outsider musician from the 70s and understanding that he was almost certainly on the autism spectrum goes a long way towards understanding what's going on here. You see Luie Luie was a nightclub manager who thought that people didn't touch enough while dancing anymore so he tried to make a new dance called The Touchy that would encourage touching but with clear rules for how you were allowed to touch you dance partner. It's strange but all very well meaning. He managed to finance the creation of an album and so Touchy was born.

So after Luie Luie tells you that he's invented a new dance and that he plays all the instruments on the album and that every touchy starts with a "wild horn intro" we get a wild horn intro and holy shit he's actually a really good musician. The touchy is basically a mix of mariachi, funk, soul, and lounge music. The slightly offbeat sound and cheap production are wildly endearing especially when you understand this as a passion project that is composed, performed, and recorded all by one man. Luie Luie is a fairly talented multi instrumentalist and where his technical skills falter he covers with incredible ear for complex arrangement. Some songs like El Touchy make for fairly danceable music, although I would rather sit and listen than dance and touch if I'm being honest. Although special mention should be given to the track Touch Of Light for it's intense layering of up to fourteen trumpet parts creating an elaborate tone poem that recalls the works of Ligeti. I'm eternally baffled and grateful for the Touchy it is the rare piece of outsider music that is actually as listenable as it is intriguing.

Kumi Tanioka - Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles OST

Crystal Chronicles is such a weird mess of a game. It has an intriguing narrative structure, but the repetitive gameplay loop makes finding the plot tedious. Plus it isn't really fun to play at all unless you have at least three people with game boy advances and gba link cables. I beat it single player when I was a kid because I'm neurodivergent.

Soundtracks are difficult to review. Should you review it as a stand alone album, pretend the source material doesn't exist? You would be missing crucial context and anyway a soundtrack that does stand alone as an album probably didn't work that well as a soundtrack then. Well the answer for me is to realize everything has context. Nothing exists in a void. If you saw an album with blood and gore on the cover and the title in a death metal font and then the album contained folk rock your opinion of the music would be colored by that experience even though the cover has no effect on theusic. So let your understanding of this music be colored by the fact that it is the soundtrack to a GameCube game.

Kumi Tanioka is mainly just the Crystal Chronicles composer and that's a shame because she is extremely good. Final Fantasy games have a long history of using their music to heavily influence the game's mood, but that is partially because of the efforts of long time composer Nobuo Uematsu. Tanioka manages to outdo even Uematsu when it comes to heavily themeing the soundtrack. The Crystal Chronicles OST features music heavily influenced by a mix of medieval folk styles. Music that plays in towns and in roads will have aspects of Byzantine music while your hometown festival is very Celtic. Some tracks like Twilight In Dreamland show some influence from South American music too. The idea of a world music soundtrack to a game about trying to travel ever farther into an unfamiliar world is quite brilliant.

The music is also melodically beautiful. And catchy. There are tracks that you are severe risk of getting stuck in your head especially Annual Festival or the opening vocal track Sound Of Wind. A lot of games have a vocal pop track tacked somewhere in there and sometimes it does work (I dunno how FFXV pulled off a Florence Welch cover of Stand By Me but goddamn it worked) but usually it's just an out of genre pop song that doesn't mesh with the game at all. Sound Of The Wind is a great song that works as a pop song units own right but also sticks to the medieval themeing of the rest of the soundtrack.

You might not appreciate listening to this as much if you haven't played the game. And honestly I can't in good faith recommend Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, it's not a very good game. But this soundtrack is one of the ones I put on just to listen to and it is probably my second favorite Final Fantasy OST after FFIX.

[1-800-thebees]

You ever just go down the association rabbit hole until you end up remembering some shit that happened in middle school?

I'll spare the details but I started thinking about how I love music while my brain is already just making a mashup of whatever comes up, which heavily involves the main melody of Candy Shop by 50 Cent. The mashup doesnt stop, ok?

Thinking my way down this hole, I stumbled at the final thought: middle school band.

I was in band from grade 6 to grade 12 where I promptly just stopped playing altogether. Really should pick trombone back up. Never know when it's gonna come in handy...

Anyway, I had a new band director in 7th grade cause the old one got caught having had relations with a student (Yall, they got married.) This new band director thought it was a great idea to have us all do a mock solo and ensemble for a grade. You guessed it, you could either do a solo or be in an ensemble.

I picked a random song that looked doable. Practiced like two days before. I did ok and passed.

I noticed this other girl, the only other trombonist, hadn't gone. She was talking to the band director and crying. Well, the band director came up to me and told me the most peculiar thing. Apparently I told that girl I would do a duet with her and never did.

Now I know children can be mean but please trust me when I say I was not a mean child. This girl had never approached me in the history of ever to do a duet with her. I would have said yes. Trombone solidarity you know?

You know what did happen? She got off the hook for that day and was allowed to do a solo later for a makeup grade. All cause little ol' me was pushed under the bus. I came down with a bad case of confusion that day until realization hit me just now.

[iamthemaestro]

15 Questions, 15 Mutuals

Tagged by: @meerawrites—thanks!

1. Are you named after anyone?

No; my parents named me because "they had never met a [given name] they didn't like." My chosen nickname (Lee) is based off that name—*I* like it because it's gender neutral but some of my irl friends insist on calling me "The General" in, like, a wrestling announcer voice, which regrettably is a cool ass nickname despite the unfortunate namesake.

2. When was the last time you cried?

This is going to sound extremely stupid but I'm pretty sure it was because I couldn't find a trombonist to play the quintet I wrote for my final concert of the semester. In my defense it was six days out from the concert and I had literally emailed every trombonist in the conservatory.

3. Do you have kids?

No lmao but I do have instruments

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot?

Not like... really? I think it's the moral ocd

5. What sports do you play/have played?

I was a hardcore marching band kid in high school. These days I don't have access to a marching band so I fence instead. Apparently I only do sports that involve uniforms and saluting (which explains how I got into reenactment...).

6. What's the first thing you notice about people?

I've never thought about this and I feel like I'm always too busy avoiding eye contact to know. Next time I'm out in public I won't be able to stop thinking about it.

7. What's your eye color?

What I call Asian Brown

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

I love a tragedy but... happy endings. I'm not particularly into horror or not into horror; it just doesn't necessarily interest me.

9. Any special talents?

Uhh my proudest is that I have a very very good ear—I can improvise a harmony on the spot, sightsing from a notated melody, play a tune completely by ear, identify a pitch despite not having perfect pitch myself, etc etc. I also play a rather eclectic variety of instruments, which tends to delight people.

10. Where were you born?

East coast USA—not going to get any more specific since I still very much live there lol

11. What are your hobbies?

Playing folk music, composing not enough music, drawing, going feral over my own ocs, collaboratively writing a 500+ page gay pirate story, spending four hours straight researching 18th century folk tunes and British regimental lace, and my most recent addition, historical reenacting

12. Do you have pets?

A dog, a cat, four geckos, and unfortunately we recently lost the last of three turtles who were all older than I am.

13. How tall are you?

5'3ish except my doctor told me I was a quarter inch shorter last year than I was two years ago. So who knows how short I am now.

14. Favorite subject in school?

I'm like... legally obligated to say music as someone studying music... but currently the burnout is giving me The Horrors so I'll say history, as someone also studying history

15. Dream job?

At this point probably an archivist/historian/some kind of museum worker with a side of music composition. The freelance life is not for me.

Tagging: any mutuals who want to say I tagged you—I'm tagging you in spirit rn

15 Questions, 15 Mutuals

Tagged by:@amc-iwtv.

1. Are you named after anyone?

Meera Bai, the Bhakti Poet, Hindu Saint and devotee of Krishna.

2. When was the last time you cried?

I haven’t cried for a geniune in real life reason in… a month. Which is good I think(?)

I did cry over my original character Audrey and her taste in lying blondes who lie (affectionate).

If you know, you know.

Also, when Sarah Livingston got brutalized and died in TURN: Washington’s spies. She’s the one (1) Tory I’ll apologize for and it’s cause she’s not real. 

3. Do you have kids?

My characters. 

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot?

Only if my characters do it, in real life, cause autism, I try to not.

5. What sports do you play/have played?

I used to fence and horesback ride, these days: Kathak and live theatre, mostly. Yes both count, they involve dance and more.

6. What’s the first thing you notice about people?

Eyes. 

7. What’s your eye color?

Dark Brown.

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

Can’t stand slasher movies, personally.

My best answer to this is: period dramas with vampires/werwolves/etc.

9. Any special talents?

Writing (different kinds), memorizing niche facts when I am hyper fixating, organizing when motivated, empathizing with people, speaking (to the shock of everyone), I don’t know, people think I’d make a good lawyer, or should run for local Canadian government, I don’t see it, but, articulating, I suppose. 

10. Where were you born?

Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 

So…. New England vampire scare country and a hop skip from the county outside Boston where John Addams was born. 

11. What are your hobbies?

So many… writing, reading, cosplay, meta analyzing media, history, I am a book hoarder and I can tell you niche facts about the culper ring (almost) no one cares about. 

12. Do you have pets?

A dog, a half beagle. 

13. How tall are you?

5′2″ my attitude is 6.” 

14. Favorite subject in school?

Going into college so this doesn’t apply the same way, but, history, when I was in school. 

15. Dream job?

Author/historian, archivist. 

I presently work as an archivist and curator here. 

Tagging: @sam-glade, @no-depression-for-vampires, @lesbian-scully, @lestatdelioncoeur, @lauraroleplayss, @mxtallmadge, @rhogeminid, @quinnharperwrites, @megaeralwrites, @parrisblood, @faelanvance, @iamthemaestro, @aristobun, @theballadofmrslovett, @words-after-midnight, & @how-absurd23rd. 💞

[bcdrawsandwrites]

Here’s a random, unpolished oneshot I wrote on a whim. Features the alebrije character Pizzicato, whom you’ll recognize if you’ve seen some of my other works.

In which Héctor winds up with an unfortunate nickname, and Gustavo learns why you don’t make comments about Héctor’s wife.

(Warning for some inappropriate comments from some of the characters.)

---~~~---

Héctor paused to lean his head against the cool metal handrail again, trying in vain to relieve the burning ache in his head. Shutting his eyes to block out the overcast sky ahead, he gripped the rail a moment longer, grateful they had actually bothered to install one on these stairs. (It was a rarity to have railings of any sort in the Land of the Dead, when one couldn't really die from a fall, but some buildings did have them, whether out of newly-dead contractors building them out of habit or from the insistence of people sticking to tradition.) After a minute, he heard a sleepy chirp from the tiny bat alebrije hanging off the back of his collar, and pulled himself away, forcing himself up a few more stairs.

He'd stop drinking one of these days, he promised himself. When he found a reason to quit, anyway.

Memories from the night before swam indistinctly in his mind as he continued to mount the stairs. He'd been working in the arts district, as usual, and had taken up some local musicians on an offer for drinking. While music was something he tried to avoid these days, the musicians had seemed friendly enough, and as much as he loved Pizzicato, talking with an alebrije tended to get a bit one-sided at times. Pizzicato hadn't exactly been thrilled with his joining them, he recalled, but the temptation of just... normal human interaction had been too strong to resist.

Might've been nice if the cerveza and tequila hadn't been too hard to resist, though.

Shaking his head (and then regretting it a second later when the world tipped), Héctor finally reached the top of the stairs, practically collapsing through the open window. Pizzicato gave a sleepy squeak in protest before snuggling back into his collar—he wasn't entirely sure why she was like that, other than that it probably had something to do with whatever happened the night prior. Leading him home while he was in a drunken daze, maybe.

"I was half-tempted to pull the stairs back up on you," Ceci muttered around the pins she held in her teeth. She didn't look up from her work, focused entirely on the dress hung on the mannequin before her. "What were you doing, sightseeing?"

"Buenas dias to you too," Héctor grumbled, pulling himself up to his feet and brushing off his hopelessly dirty jacket.

Ceci did give him a look, then, eying him over her shoulder. "Buenas tardes."

"Buenas tar... oh." He scratched the back of his head, blinking blearily. "Sorry. Lost track of time."

"Hopefully you didn't lose track of that delivery I sent you off with," she went on, resuming work on the dress.

"Oh, no no no, that's... that's all taken care of." Rubbing his hand over his eye sockets, he strained to remember yesterday. That memory was a bit clearer, at least—he definitely remembered the weird look the customer gave him when he handed him the package, and the lack of a tip. "I got it to them, no worries."

"Good."

He stood there awkwardly, hand on his wrist, as Ceci continued to work on the dress in relative silence (other than the record player running in the background—Héctor wasn't really paying attention to what it was playing, only grateful that it wasn't another de la Cruz album). Briefly he wondered if she'd forgotten he was there, and he pointed his finger to speak.

"If you're looking for another job," she began—Héctor flinched, the sudden volume sending a spike of pain through his head—"the dancers left a mess out in the gallery after their practice last night. The art crew won't clean it because they say it's not their mess, but they're still whining about the glitter getting into their paints." She paused. "And on the materials," she added, brushing something shimmering from the hem of the dress.

"Ah, g-gracias," Héctor stammered, passing through the designer's workshop and out into the main studio. At once he was greeted with the familiar sight of the hastily set-up barriers separating the work spaces of different artists. Many of them were lined with various paintings and sketches, but as Ceci had said, some of them were dusted in glitter. Frowning, he stepped up to one painting of a xolo dog, swiping his finger across the canvas to remove a few flecks of glitter... and yelped when some of the gray pigment came off with it, smearing on the painting. With a hasty glance aside, he wiped his hand off on the inside of his coat and speedily walked away, looking in the opposite direction of the painting.

"Okay, okay, glitter, glitter..." Head turned downward, he found scatterings of the stuff on the floor, and then looked up again. "Ah... I need a... uh... mop? No, no... broom? Dustpan?" He glanced over his shoulder, hoping Pizzicato might be of some use, but only heard a high-pitched snoring. Cute, but not helpful at the moment. Sighing, he looked to the walls of the studio, hoping one of the janitors may have left their equipment there, but no luck—only rows of outlandish costumes. Ugh... where was the janitor's closet, again?

Héctor poked his head into the entrance to one of the partitions, raising a finger and opening his mouth to ask, only to find several very, very tired artists and a skeleton posing nude for them. Clapping his hand over his eye sockets, he stumbled away. "Okay, okay, bad idea, do not ask the artists," he muttered, uncovering his face just in time to dodge another artist hurrying by with a large canvas. Looking around to make sure he wasn't about to collide with anyone else, he continued his aimless journey through the cluttered gallery. "Ask the... uh..."

The sound of laughter caught his metaphorical ears, and Héctor looked toward the far end of the studio, by the glass windows. They were still out of sight, but he was pretty sure he knew who was hanging out there.

His suspicions were confirmed by the sound of a trombone making a long, drawn-out note, followed by more laughter. "Right... ask... the musicians," he said, nodding to himself as he approached them.

As they came into sight, one of them spotted him and hastily shushed the others. That was... a little weird, but he was honestly too tired to care right now. He would've given them a sharp whistle to catch their attention, but was afraid of the noise only worsening his headache, and besides, they seemed to all be looking at him anyway. "Hola," he said, waving casually with one hand as he rubbed his head in the other.

"Ey, Héctor!" one of the violinists—what was his name, Héctor knew his name... Gustavo, that was it—said with a grin. "You doin' okay there?"

"Ehh... I've been better," Héctor said, making an effort to straighten his stance. It took a bit more effort than usual, but with the condition of his bones, what didn't these days? "Just... a bit too much to drink last night, I think."

"We could tell!" One of the musicians began to snicker, only to be elbowed in the ribs by another.

Héctor blinked. "Right. I just needed to ask a favor—"

"A favor?" one of the other violinists asked, while a few of her peers chuckled next to her. The noise seemed to be bugging Pizzicato, who stirred behind him, whining.

"Yes?" His bewilderment seemed to prompt a few more laughs that the musicians tried to cover. "Is... something funny about that?" he asked, briefly looking over his shoulder and wondering if his alebrije was doing something behind him to prompt the laughter.

"No, no," Gustavo said, waving his head. "Go on, what favor do you need?"

"I... just need someone to show me where the supply closet is. Ceci—"

The group immediately burst into laughter, the trombonist accompanying it with ridiculous playing. The sound was like a dagger being driven into his skull, and he held his hands over his head. "Ay, stop it!" he cried, staring at them in utter confusion. "What's so funny?!"

Finally Pizzicato seemed to be roused from her slumber, and he felt her little claws digging into his wig as she climbed up to the top of his head, squeaking in displeasure.

"Who do you want to meet in the closet, eh?" one of the musicians jeered.

"¿Qué?" Héctor blurted. He couldn't make any sense of what they were talking about. Whatever it was, Pizzicato seemed upset by it, letting out a growl, but he couldn't make heads or tails of it. "I don't... meet? I'm just trying to—"

"Not one of the girls, that's for sure!" the female violinist added, causing the others to laugh harder.

"I... uh?" That made nothing any clearer, and Héctor was feeling increasingly lost. It would make more sense if the group were just a bunch of cackling hyena alebrijes in disguise. But one thing was becoming clear—whatever they were laughing about, it was at his expense. But what would they...

A sudden panic bolted up his spine, and Héctor whipped around, yanking his alebrije off of his head. "Pizzicato," he whispered desperately, clutching the bat close to his face. "What exactly did I say last night?"

Of course Pizzicato could not answer, only staring up at him apologetically. But his question had apparently not been as quiet as he'd hoped, as Gustavo spoke up behind him: "Oh, nothing too important... chorizo."

The word was punctuated with a few ridiculous notes from the trombonist, and Héctor let go of the alebrije, turning back around to face them again. "C-chorizo?" he repeated. What did that have to do with...?

"Chorizo!" one of the other band members shouted, with a few others echoing it between laughs. Still none of that cleared it up, until another went on: "What a way to go!"

What a way to... oh. Right, that was how he'd... Was that what had happened last night? He'd rambled about how he'd died? That's what was making them laugh like deranged hyenas?

His chest burned in indignation. "W-well I'm sure the way you all died wasn't much better!" he said, gesturing at the group.

"Sure it was!" Gustavo said, getting close enough to elbow Héctor in the side. "Better than choking on a chorizo!"

"What?!" Héctor stepped back, hands up defensively. "That wasn't—! It was bad, I got food poisoning!"

"Sure you did, chorizo!"

He found himself staring at them as they continued to laugh, wondering why the difference even mattered, whether he died by food poisoning or choking on—

Oh.

...Oh.

His cheek bones burned furiously, and he turned away again, covering his face. "That was not what happened," he grumbled into his hands. Not that it would convince them. Pizzicato fluttered around nearby, squeaking angrily at the group, but he tried to wave her off. "Basta—all right, you've had your laugh. Very funny. Now could you just show me where the supply—"

"Ey, didn't you say you were married, too?" Gustavo asked, one brow raised, and the inside of Héctor's rib cage was suddenly burning in anger. "Did she know about—"

The shock of anger traveled quickly from Héctor's heart to his fist.

Next thing he knew, Gustavo was staggering back, supported by the trombonist while the other musicians gave ooooohs of both sympathy and interest. A small part of Héctor regretted the action, but the rest of him didn't care, and his fist remained clenched.

Stupid jokes were one thing, but to even dare to suggest infidelity...

"What's your problem, man?" Gustavo cried, rubbing his jaw where he'd been struck. "Can't you take a—"

Before he could finish, Pizzicato buzzed in front of the group, letting out a terrible, high-pitched shriek that left all of them shrinking back, including Héctor. The noise magnified his headache, nearly blinding him, and he staggered back, blurting out a curse. Immediately the noise stopped, but he was already storming away, eyes narrowed against the ringing in his skull. "Forget it, I'm done," he snarled. "Ceci or whoever can clean the place themselves."

Pizzicato was fluttering after him, squeaking an apology, but Héctor did not slow his pace. He couldn't find the stupid broom, but he knew very well where the exit was—a different one from the fire escape ladder in Ceci's room. Unfortunately, while he left Gustavo and his stupid group behind, the anger and humiliation followed him out of the studio, clinging to his bones. He punched the metal railing of the stairs in an attempt to rid himself of the emotions, but it only resulted in a shock of pain traveling up his arm.

Finally Pizzicato caught up to him, landing on his head and squeaking in concern. "You know," he muttered, narrowing his eyes against the light as he stepped outside, "I'm starting to hate musicians."

His alebrije whined, but said nothing more.

She didn't need to remind him.

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Insomnia Brass Band

Photo by Frank Schindelbeck

The Insomnia Brass Band — made up of trombonist Anke Lucks, baritone saxophonist Almut Schlichting and drummer Christian Marien — was founded in spring 2017 and spent the next several pre-pandemic years on the road at jazz clubs and festivals. Their recorded debut, Late Night Kitchen, out near the end of 2020, was raucous, irresistible and bursting from its seams; it is hard to believe that it required only three musicians. In her review, Jennifer Kelly wrote, “Insomnia Brass Band sounds like a cubist painting of an oompah band, noses jutting off in every direction, cerebral and off-beat, yet somehow capturing an eccentric, unexpected groove.” The band’s sax player, Almut Schlichting, contributed this listed.

Bloor (now Bloar) — “Bast” from Drolleries (Astral Spirits)

This record invariably calms me down, it is so wild and screaming and so clear and concise at the same time. Right now, it seems like a dream — One dark Berlin winter night in 2019, I rode my bike down the hill to a small place full of friends and musicians, listening to wonderful sets of improvised and composed music spun around Ken Vandermark’s New Marker band, and talking and drinking beer in between... and their drummer Phil Sudderberg recommended his Brooklyn friends, Sam Weinberg’s band Bloor (now Bloar). We hope these situations will soon be real again. Meanwhile, Dusted is not the worst digital place to spend a dark winter night in 2021.

Miles Okazaki — “Misterioso” from Work (Complete, Volumes 1-6)

Work (Complete, Volumes 1-6) by Miles Okazaki

To me, this is Monkish in a double sense of the word — Okazaki shines through Thelonious Monk’s work in a deep and thorough way; but he also seems to be a medieval Monk himself — severe, concentrated, meditative, playing the solo guitar, a clear sound, in transparent magnetic rhythmic layers, in the early morning abbey garden...

Elza Soares — “Luz Vermelha” from A mulher do fim do mundo

The Woman At The End Of The World (A Mulher Do Fim Do Mundo) by Elza Soares

Who else wants to sound like Elza Soares when they are old? No matter if singer or instrumentalist? Moreover, the band and arrangements are amazing, the detailed care with which the sound is built... I love listening to this on headphones while taking a midnight walk across empty streets.

Sons of Kemet — “In The Castle Of My Skin” from Lest We Forget What We Came Here To Do (Naim Jazz)

Lest We Forget What We Came Here To Do by Sons Of Kemet

Grooves in cycles and cycles in grooves, the music is sparse and focused and fascinating, driven by the tenor saxophone of Shabaka Hutchings, who in turn is carried through the song by the tuba and the two drummers. I listened to this album a lot before our Insomnia Brass Band studio session in January 2020. Like most of the tracks chosen here, it resonates with my growing wish to fall into an intense rhythmic trance, repetitions welcome, no matter if listening or playing myself...

Frank Rosaly’s ¡Todos de Pie! — “Cantares de la Sierra (Yaguaré)”

Frank Rosaly's ¡Todos de Pie! by Frank Rosaly's ¡Todos de Pie!

Discovered thanks to Rigobert Dittmann’s great little magazine Bad Alchemy — Drummer Frank Rosaly and vocalist Jaap Blonk go back and forth between abstract landscapes and the carnival with a fat band, combining underwater-like weirdness and a Puerto Rican All Star attitude!

Tom Waits — “Clap Hands” from Rain Dogs (Island Records)

Tom Waits and this record are very old friends of mine, fueling the addiction to tell bizarre stories in songs, each song carelessly-carefully arranged to become a dark few-minute-fairytale...

Charles Brackeen — Rhythm X (Strata East)

An old recording, a new discovery — my current online jazz history class is New-York-based trumpet player Thomas Heberer’s Facebook stream, where he is sharing his giant record collection little by little under the simple heading “from the ongoing series of recordings that I love.” Adding to my thousand projects for next week — listen to every record Ed Blackwell and Charlie Haden made together; finally find out more about Don Cherry; and get to know Charles Brackeen at all...

Konono No1 — “Kin 78 One” from Kinshasa 1978 (Crammed Discs)

Kinshasa 1978 by Konono N°1

Another track featuring masters of cycles and grooves, grooves and cycles, the music very vivid and animated through minimal but infinite variations – apparently one of the first recordings of “Congotronics,” presented by the wonderful label Crammed Discs.

Danyèl Waro — “Plantèr” from Gafourn (Piros)

Since the first Corona lockdown in March 2020, I have been doing improvised late night dance sessions in my kitchen— and the music of Danyèl Waro, Maloya from far away La Réunion, is among my favorite dance partners, as well as the London band Melt Yourself Down, and the old acquaintances Celia Cruz and the Beastie Boys...

Nils Wogram Root 70 — “Hot Summer Blues” from Listen To Your Woman (nWog Records)

Listen to Your Woman by Nils Wogram Root 70

A great band. A great band, has been for years, playing brilliantly and radiating warmth and companionship on this record... according to the liner notes, they had been on the road just before recording this album on a Berlin winter night in 2010, doing what we are all dreaming of right now — travelling and playing and travelling and playing and travelling and playing and really being together again!

[trevorbarre]

John Russell (1954-2021)

There are already several tributes to John Russell, who died on Wednesday (20th January) out there, from critics and fellow musicians, so this my own small acknowledgement of the passing of this great English free improviser. It coincides with the death of another important figure, the trombonist Malcom Griffiths, so, all in all, not a great week for UK jazz/improvisation. Griffiths was 79 years old, but Russell was only just 66. (He was only 6 months older than this author, so all the bollocks about 'time's winged chariot' seems less and less to be bollocks.)

I've always felt some affinity with Russell (a great jazz name, what with George and Pee Wee!), as his early musical influences approximated mine in the early 70s, with the likes of King Crimson and other early 'prog' bands. He was also eventually bitten by the 'Bailey bug', and took lessons off the Grand Old Improviser for a year or so - Derek Bailey apparently refused to 'teach' him free improvisation, and focused mainly on technique. When Russell landed up in London, alongside several of the 'Second Generation' improvisers, he was soon, along with fellow Teatime'rs (arguably the first album featuring this new group of players), asked, along with Steve Beresford and Dave Soloman, to join the Musicians' Cooperative (MC). He thus was one of the few who formed a concrete enjambement between the 'generations'. (He was, in a short time, an important participant in the London Musicians' Collective, the putative successor to the MC, as was Beresford). These newcomers marked the arrival of improvisers who came from other backgrounds than the jazz-influenced 'First Generation' (who were, in fact, not that much older than them).

I think that I first came across the man in a Mopomoso (ultimately his greatest contribution to the scene?) all-day pre-Christmas bash, across a weekend, at Crouch End's King's Head, in its basement that also gave space to a residency featuring Veryon Weston's trio of the time (actually, in point of fact, it was Ollie Blanchflower's?) with various esteemed guests from the free improv world. A rather forgotten residency (called ‘Changes’?), across a couple of years, I particularly appreciated it because it was only a few streets away from where we live. Sadly, Crouch End was not to prove to be as receptive to the music as Dalston would later.

Most of my live Russell experiences were from the long-lasting Evan Parker Trio with John Edwards on bass, a mostly unrecorded combination of almost inevitable high quality. I must have seen this group around 20 times. However, one of the last times was at Cafe Oto, when Russell performed with a resurrected String Thing, with Ian Brighton, Phil Wachsmann, Marco Mattos and Trevor Taylor (parts of which were released on FMR Records as the recommended Reunion). Parker was also in attendance, our own Zelig of free improvisation. When I saw JR a couple of years later, he was clearly game, but unwell.

I was hoping to interview Russell as part of my new Musicians' Cooperative project, but it was not meant to be. His contribution to the UK improvisation world is incalculable, but he leaves his Mopomoso series, at 30 years of age (started in 1991) now the oldest improv organisation in the UK, and regularly situated at The Vortex Jazz Club since 2008.

Thank you, John.

[justforbooks]

Lee Konitz, jazz alto saxophonist who was a founding influence on the ‘cool school’ of the 1950s  died aged 92

The music critic Gary Giddins once likened the alto saxophone playing of Lee Konitz, who has died aged 92 from complications of Covid-19, to the sound of someone “thinking out loud”. In the hothouse of an impulsive, spontaneous music, Konitz sounded like a jazz player from a different habitat entirely – a man immersed in contemplation more than impassioned tumult, a patient explorer of fine-tuned nuances.

Konitz played with a delicate intelligence and meticulous attention to detail, his phrasing impassively steady in its dynamics but bewitching in line. Yet he relished the risks of improvising. He loved long, curling melodies that kept their ultimate destinations hidden, he had a pure tone that eschewed dramatic embellishments, and he seemed to have all the time in the world. “Lee really likes playing with no music there at all,” the trumpeter Kenny Wheeler once told me. “He’ll say ‘You start this tune’ and you’ll say ‘What tune?’ and he’ll say ‘I don’t care, just start.’”

Born in Chicago, the youngest of three sons of immigrant parents – an Austrian father, who ran a laundry business, and a Russian mother, who encouraged his musical interests – Konitz became a founding influence on the 1950s “cool school”, which was, in part, an attempt to get out of the way of the almost unavoidable dominance of Charlie Parker on post-1940s jazz. For all his technical brilliance, Parker was a raw, earthy and impassioned player, and rarely far from the blues. As a child, Konitz studied the clarinet with a member of Chicago Symphony Orchestra and he had a classical player’s silvery purity of tone; he avoided both heart-on-sleeve vibrato and the staccato accents characterising bebop.

However, Konitz and Parker had a mutual admiration for the saxophone sound of Lester Young – much accelerated but still audible in Parker’s phrasing, tonally recognisable in Konitz’s poignant, stately and rather melancholy sound. Konitz switched from clarinet to saxophone in 1942, initially adopting the tenor instrument. He began playing professionally, and encountered Lennie Tristano, the blind, autocratic, musically visionary Chicago pianist who was probably the biggest single influence on the cool movement. Tristano valued an almost mathematically pristine melodic inventiveness over emotional colouration in music, and was obsessive in its pursuit. “He felt and communicated that music was a serious matter,” Konitz said. “It wasn’t a game, or a means of making a living, it was a life force.”

Tristano came close to anticipating free improvisation more than a decade before the notion took wider hold, and his impatience with the dictatorship of popular songs and their inexorable chord patterns – then the underpinnings of virtually all jazz – affected all his disciples. Konitz declared much later that a self-contained, standalone improvised solo with its own inner logic, rather than a string of variations on chords, was always his objective. His pursuit of this dream put pressures on his career that many musicians with less exacting standards were able to avoid.

Konitz switched from tenor to alto saxophone in the 1940s. He worked with the clarinettist Jerry Wald, and by 20 he was in Claude Thornhill’s dance band. This subtle outfit was widely admired for its slow-moving, atmospheric “clouds of sound” arrangements, and its use of what jazz hardliners sometimes dismissed as “front-parlour instruments” – bassoons, French horns, bass clarinets and flutes.

Regular Thornhill arrangers included the saxophonist Gerry Mulligan and the classically influenced pianist Gil Evans. Miles Davis was also drawn into an experimental composing circle that regularly met in Evans’s New York apartment. The result was a series of Thornhill-like pieces arranged for a nine-piece band showcasing Davis’s fragile-sounding trumpet. The 1949 and 1950 sessions became immortalised as the Birth of the Cool recordings, though they then made little impact. Davis was the figurehead, but the playing was ensemble-based and Konitz’s plaintive, breathy alto saxophone already stood out, particularly on such drifting tone-poems as Moon Dreams.

Konitz maintained the relationship with Tristano until 1951, before going his own way with the trombonist Tyree Glenn, and then with the popular, advanced-swing Stan Kenton orchestra. Konitz’s delicacy inevitably toughened in the tumult of the Kenton sound, and the orchestra’s power jolted him out of Tristano’s favourite long, pale, minimally inflected lines into more fragmented, bop-like figures. But the saxophonist really preferred small-group improvisation. He began to lead his own bands, frequently with the pianist Ronnie Ball and the bassist Peter Ind, and sometimes with the guitarist Billy Bauer and the brilliant West Coast tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh.

In 1961 Konitz recorded the album Motion with John Coltrane’s drummer Elvin Jones and the bassist Sonny Dallas. Jones’s intensity and Konitz’s whimsical delicacy unexpectedly turned out to be a perfect match. Konitz also struck up the first of what were to be many significant European connections, touring the continent with the Austrian saxophonist Hans Koller and the Swedish saxophone player Lars Gullin. He drifted between playing and teaching when his studious avoidance of the musically obvious reduced his bookings, but he resumed working with Tristano and Marsh for some live dates in 1964, and played with the equally dedicated and serious Jim Hall, the thinking fan’s guitarist.

Konitz loved the duo format’s opportunities for intimate improvised conversation. Indifferent to commercial niceties, he delivered five versions of Alone Together on the 1967 album The Lee Konitz Duets, first exploring it unaccompanied and then with a variety of other halves including the vibraphonist Karl Berger. The saxophonist Joe Henderson and the trombonist Marshall Brown also found much common ground with Konitz in this setting. Konitz developed the idea on 1970s recordings with the pianist-bassist Red Mitchell and the pianist Hal Galper – fascinating exercises in linear melodic suppleness with the gently unobtrusive Galper; more harmonically taxing and wider-ranging sax adventures against Mitchell’s unbending chord frameworks.

Despite his interest in new departures, Konitz never entirely embraced the experimental avant garde, or rejected the lyrical possibilities of conventional tonality. But he became interested in the music of the pianist Paul Bley and his wife, the composer Carla Bley, and in 1987 participated in surprising experiments in totally free and non jazz-based improvisation with the British guitarist Derek Bailey and others.

Konitz also taught extensively – face to face, and via posted tapes to students around the world. Teaching was his refuge, and he often apparently preferred it to performance. In 1974 Konitz, working with Mitchell and the alto saxophonist Jackie McLean in Denmark, recorded a brilliant standards album, Jazz à Juan, with the pianist Martial Solal, the bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen and the drummer Daniel Humair. That year, too, Konitz released the captivating, unaccompanied Lone-Lee with its spare and logical improvising, and a fitfully free-funky exploration with Davis’s bass-drums team of Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette.

In the 1980s, Konitz worked extensively with Solal and the pianist Michel Petrucciani, and made a fascinating album with a Swedish octet led by the pianist Lars Sjösten – in memory of the compositions of Gullin, some of which had originally been dedicated to Konitz from their collaborations in the 1950s. With the pianist Harold Danko, Konitz produced music of remarkable freshness, including the open, unpremeditated Wild As Springtime recorded in Glasgow in 1984. Sometimes performing as a duo, sometimes within quartets and quintets, the Konitz/Danko pairing was to become one of the most productive of Konitz’s musical relationships.

Still tirelessly revealing how much spontaneous material could be spun from the same tunes – Alone Together and George Russell’s Ezz-thetic were among his favourites – by the end of the 1980s Konitz was also broadening his options through the use of the soprano saxophone. His importance to European fans was confirmed in 1992 when he received the Danish Jazzpar prize. He spent the 1990s moving between conventional jazz, open-improvisation and cross-genre explorations, sometimes with chamber groups, string ensembles and full classical orchestras.

On a fine session in 1992 with players including the pianist Kenny Barron, Konitz confirmed how gracefully shapely yet completely free from romantic excess he could be on standards material. He worked with such comparably improv-devoted perfectionists as Paul Motian, Steve Swallow, John Abercrombie, Marc Johnson and Joey Baron late in that decade. In 2000 he showed how open to wider persuasions he remained when he joined the Axis String Quartet on a repertoire devoted to 20th-century French composers including Erik Satie, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.

In 2002 Konitz headlined the London jazz festival, opening the show by inviting the audience to collectively hum a single note while he blew five absorbing minutes of typically airy, variously reluctant and impetuous alto sax variations over it. The early 21st century also heralded a prolific sequence of recordings – including Live at Birdland with the pianist Brad Mehldau and some structurally intricate genre-bending with the saxophonist Ohad Talmor’s unorthodox lineups.

Pianist Richie Beirach’s duet with Konitz - untypically playing the soprano instrument - on the impromptu Universal Lament was a casually exquisite highlight of Knowing Lee (2011), an album that also compellingly contrasted Konitz’s gauzy sax sound with Dave Liebman’s grittier one.

Konitz was co-founder of the leaderless quartet Enfants Terribles (with Baron, the guitarist Bill Frisell and the bassist Gary Peacock) and recorded the standards-morphing album Live at the Blue Note (2012), which included a mischievous fusion of Cole Porter’s What Is This Thing Called Love? and Subconscious-Lee, the famous Konitz original he had composed for the same chord sequence. First Meeting: Live in London Vol 1 (2013) captured Konitz’s improv set in 2010 with the pianist Dan Tepfer, bassist Michael Janisch and drummer Jeff Williams, and at 2015’s Cheltenham Jazz Festival, the old master both played and softly sang in company with an empathic younger pioneer, the trumpeter Dave Douglas. Late that year, the 88-year-old scattered some characteristically pungent sax propositions and a few quirky scat vocals into the path of Barron’s trio on Frescalalto (2017).

Cologne’s accomplished WDR Big Band also invited Konitz (a resident in the German city for some years) to record new arrangements of his and Tristano’s music, and in 2018 his performance with the Brandenburg State Orchestra of Prisma, Gunter Buhles’s concerto for alto saxophone and full orchestra, was released. In senior years as in youth, Konitz kept on confirming Wheeler’s view that he was never happier than when he didn’t know what was coming next.

Konitz was married twice; he is survived by two sons, Josh and Paul, and three daughters, Rebecca, Stephanie and Karen, three grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

• Lee Konitz, musician, born 13 October 1927; died 15 April 2020

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

Opera Discovery Challenge 2020 #5: L’amour des trois oranges (Lyon, 1989): Reactions, Part I

So apparently I am watching an opera about oranges. (I’m going into this completely blind so if this is in fact a metaphor I have no idea)

@monotonous-minutia​, what have you gotten me into

okay so apparently if there are in fact oranges they do not sing :(

also I may need to follow with a synopsis even though there are English subtitles because there are like sixteen characters and half their names sound almost identical

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh so this is meta

yeesh calm down we’re literally 30 seconds in

okay so this is an Ariadne auf Naxos sort of thing

the trombonist is now my spirit animal

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

is he just. hiding under the cloak.

oranges?

yeah, go ahead, suggest a masquerade because masquerade parties in opera never go wrong

I’d be willing to bet that this guy does not have your best interests in mind, sir

1) I want this guy’s costume it looks cool 2) why does he have a doll of the king that’s creepy

unexpected entry points are my JAM

THAT ENTRANCE WAS ALSO COOL

I love the oversized cards 

also it looks like they’re playing war which means they have good taste in card games

*screams then dies*

BOSS PRINCESS

no comment

“DAMMIT the audience members are PO’d again”

and Truffaldino is just casually eavesdropping on all of this

you’re really adamant about those being the only two choices huh

as my 13-year-old brother would say, “that’s a Big Brain idea”

yes it was

we in 2020 are all the Prince except all the suck is real

“WOULD YOU STUPID AUDIENCE MEMBERS SHUT UP FOR FIVE SECONDS”

ICONIC

also I’ve heard this march before!

major props to the set designer

love the Look

okay how is ‘human fountain’ not funny

yeah I’d say Léandre deserves a pie in the face

oof

after everything, THIS is what makes you laugh?

they’re all so excited but there’s still a lot of opera left to go...

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I GET IT NOW

tfw you’re just having a good time and then get cursed to fall in love with three oranges

on this episode of ‘things I did not expect to hear today in any context whatsoever’

I mean, at least your reaction isn’t “put the son in jail and make it so his boyfriend feels the need to sacrifice himself in order to free him”

I adore meta

[mangosdoodles-moved]

Hearts and Minds - First Encounter

Summary: After years of struggling with a chronic illness, I had no other choice but to move to England to not only seek treatment, but realize my dream as a composer. However, after countless of failures, and on the edge of giving up for good, I hear a melody in the distance. I follow it and before I know it, I'm outside 221B Baker Street. How did I end up here again? And who in the world is playing..?

Words: 7410

A/N: This ship is split into two main AU's. One is in the 19th century, while the other is in modern times. I might write something similar to this but with the modern AU later. English is not my first language, please be gentle ;w;

@dreamingcore

«221B Baker Street?» Margaret thought as she read the sign, panting heavily after running as fast as she could. How she ended up here was a mystery, even to her. Never in her life had she been so reckless, running past several blocks just for one simple melody. But it was more than that, so much more. After spending time in a small cottage similar to a dark void with no money or hope left in her name, she just needed something, anything to lift her spirit up. She couldn't even remember where she was or what she was doing minutes ago. She could only sense an endless trace of dread, guilt, and hopelessness. Somehow, a melody from a distance managed to snap her back to reality. A heartbroken, yet incredible melody. Hope had once again filled her heart as she went on a whim, in search of the beautiful melody's source. There she was, outside of 221B Baker Street, and up she looked, and there he was.

A sentimental-looking man stood outside on a tiny porch on the second floor, playing the violin to his heart's content. Margaret's eyes widened as she studied him. He looked like he had just got up in the morning! His raven black hair was incredibly messy, and he had dark circles under his eyes. His clothes were pretty neutral to an ordinary English gentleman, but they had a few wrinkled spots spread out his outfit. She just stood there and watched him from afar. «I wish I was like you.» she thought, «So melancholy, yet so determined to create. If only I had that strength.» She got lost in her own thoughts, as she stood there, her eyes automatically resting on the man. Suddenly out of nowhere, her little bubble was burst by a sharp voice: «I know you're watching me, miss.»

Margaret almost jumped. She noticed the man glared right back at her, with a somewhat frustrated look on his face. «My apologies, sir! I didn't mean to disturb you.» she said, a bit embarassed. Was she that obvious? Good lord.. «I heard you a few blocks away, and--» «And by listening to the melody you ended up by my doorstep? You could've at least knocked on the door, or.. something.» he interrupted her. She looked down, realizing how improper she acted.  «I'm sorry if I offended you, sir. I--» «Are you a musician, miss?» he interrupted again. Margaret froze for a sec. He calls her improper, yet he doesn't bother to let her finish-- Wait. Did he just ask if she's a musician? She looked up at him, a bit confused, and nodded. «..Yes? I am. A trombonist, in fact. How did you know?» she asked, a bit shocked that he figured her out, despite that she had left her instrument at home. «Quite easy. Your lips looks a bit swollen. Granted, if you take it out of context it could mean a lot of things, but since I heard a sound similar to a brass instrument yesterday, I can only assume it was you.» he answered, as if he didn't need to think about it twice. She blinked in suprise. That's.. impressive? She let out a nervous giggle, still a bit suprised by the man's incredible attention to detail. But that wasn't all.

He continued: «Usually, this part of the neighbourhood is awfully quiet, so the fact that someone who starts playing here out of the blue so professionally is a bit confusing, don't you think? Unless, it's someone new. Based on the scandinavian style of your dress and your somewhat thick germanic accent, I can only assume this: You're a Norwegian woman in hope to find luck in London so you can make a living out of your so-called «dream». But alas, that didn't go so well, did it? Or perhaps, am I missing something?» Margaret's jaw almost dropped to the floor as she listened to him. Is this a joke? Or he is a psychic? She tried to collect herself as she stuttered: «I uhm.. I don't-- I mean..» The man sighed: «So it is true.» he said. «It's a shame, really. Based on your performance, I could tell that you have some great potential. As if you know precisely what you're doing.» he added before he continued to play, this time in pizzicato*.

It was like all the air in her lungs had vanished in a span of seconds. Margaret stood there in shock, trying to let it all sink in. This man knew everything, despite only talking to her for a few minutes. And now she's getting pity? Overwhelmed, she felt her head boil as she said: «What else am I supposed to do..?» The man looked back at her. «Pardon, miss?» «I said, what else am I supposed to do?» she said again. «I don't have anything else to cling on to. My family is struggling, I'm too ill to work, and all you got to say is 'It's a shame'? Despite it all, I'll never give up. I want to show everyone that I'm not just a sick poor child who's doomed to fail. I.. I want to show them that I am capable, that I'm strong enough, that I'm good enough! But what am I supposed to do when there are people out there who are so powerful, yet do nothing to help the powerless? What am I supposed to do when I can't work to save my god forsaken life? What am I supposed to do, sir?!» The man stood there in silence, looking at her with somewhat widened eyes. After a few seconds Margaret realized how reckless she was. How could she act like this? It's not his fault that she's in this position. He's just a man with a thing for details. Nothing more, nothing less. She covered her mouth in embarassment as she started to tear up. «..F-Forgive me, sir. I'm so sorry, I really didn't mean to shout at you like that.» she stuttered. «I should leave. Forget what I said. Just keep playing, alright?» she said so quickly as she tried not to let out a whimper. She then noticed that the man was gone. She let out a deep sigh. Of course. She turned around and took a few steps before she heard behind her: «You can't work, you say?»

The man had apparently went downstairs and out the door, as the two were now face to face on the same ground. Margaret shook her head, swallowing the tears. «No, I can't.» she said. The man hesitated before he asked: «Can you clean?» «P-Pardon, sir?» «Can you clean your own clothes? Can you clean your own room? Ever touched a broom?» he said. Margaret couldn't help but let out a weak laugh. «I mean, I guess? Isn't that what every young child needs to learn?» she said. «Then afraid your claim is incorrect. You see, you claim you can't work, yet you say you work for yourself. Don't you have a maid?» he said. She turned around and looked at him, somewhat confused. «Sir..?» she uttered out. «Holmes. Sherlock Holmes.» the man said and carefully took her hand in his, before kissing it. «I know you didn't-- Oh well.» he added and rolled his eyes at his own little mistake. «You see, our landlady is soon to be an old lady. Seems to be quite exhausted, alright. We thought perhaps she needs some assistance, but unfortunately no one in town has been willing to cooperate.» Sherlock explained. Margaret listened carefully as her eyes slowly started to lit up as a spark of hope. Was he serious? «What's your name, miss?» he asked. She blinked, letting it all sink in, before she smiled and answered: «Stark. Margaret Stark, sir.» «The salary is not the best, but based on the somewhat lightened up look on your face, I assume you accept?» he didn't get to finish his sentence before she nodded excitedly. «May I ask, sir? Your sharp thinking is so astounding, I just have to know.. what's your profession?» she asked. Sherlock went over and opened the door to his home, with a small smirk on his face. «I'm a detective.»

*Pizzicato - A playing technique by plucking the strings

[prorevenge]

The suck button.

My band’s drummer, John, is also a sound guy; for several years before we hooked up musically, he had been doing sound for other bands I was in, as well as for touring acts I booked shows for. He’s very good at what he does, and has a pretty massive rig. Anyway, he’s the nicest guy in the world at band practice, at Burger King, or at a gig we’re playing, but when he’s running sound for other bands, he can be pretty crabby.

Very little patience for bands who start late or end late. Even less patience for bands who take an encore when they’re the second band playing out of five. Very little patience for singers who ask for more vocals in the monitor while cupping the microphone ball in both hands (feedback, anyone?) In general, just an altogether grouchy sound man. For example, he ran sound once for this seven- or eight piece ska band. One of the trombone players said he needed two mics: one for his horn and one for his backup vocals. Normally at this venue (a 120-seater), John didn’t bother to mic horns at all. Rolling his eyes, John put up a Shure Beta 58 and some AKG condenser mic. “This Shure is for your vocals, and this AKG is for your horn, OK?” he said. “Don’t blow your horn into the vocal mic, because your horn is about 30db louder than your voice and I’m going to have everything mixed properly.” Horn player nods his head. During the second song of the set, apparently this trombonist was set to get a solo. Right before his solo starts, he grabs both mics and pushes them close together, so that the capsules are actually touching. He then blows this fortissimo opening note into BOTH mics. I was sitting at a table in back, by the sound board, at the time. John’s limiters caught most of it, and I STILL had ringing in my ears for two days. At the end of the song, John mutes both of the guy’s mics (and leaves them mute), and basically threatens to ream out the guy’s plumbing with his own horn if he ever pulls that shit again. John does this through his talkback mic, which is clearly audible over the monitors. The crowd bursts into laughter, and the horn player goes bright red in the face.

At any rate, for years I had heard John threaten bands with the “suck button.” Bands who were taking too long to set up, or whose members repeatedly refused to follow reasonable directions (please keep that vocal mic away from the monitors!), would be threatened. “Pull that shit again, and I’m gonna hit the suck button on you guys!” I took it to mean that he would intentionally make them sound bad, but he never followed through on the threat, so I took it as a vague general warning.

So anyway, a little while back he’s running sound on a four band show. The second band, a Matchbox 20/Train kind of band, has him running 20 minutes behind before they even play a note because their lead guitarist was late. Their allotted set time is 40 minutes, but their last song runs over and by the time it’s done, they’ve played for almost 45 minutes. John says quietly over the talkback mic, “Hey guys, you’re done.” The lead singer says loudly over the vocal mic “Sound man says we gotta get off the stage. We got one more song for you!” as they kick into another soupy jangle-rock tune. John shakes his head at me. Then, the most amazing thing happened. After their “encore,” this band kicks straight into ANOTHER song without announcing it, apparently in the hope that John wouldn’t notice it was a different song.

John leans over to me to be heard over the PA and asks, “Hey, wanna see the suck button?” “Sure,” I replied. I figured he was going to muck with the levels or just turn them off or something. Instead, he reaches to one of his racks and starts scrolling through patches on his trusty DigiTech unit. Sure enough, he gets to a patch titled SUCK BUTTON. He engages it, and all hell breaks loose onstage. The lead singer and the lead guitarist (who was singing backup), immediately start to sing WAY off key. They try to get back in tune, fail, trail off in mid-line, try again, and start glaring at each other. The guitarist is so distracted by this that he starts muffing the chord progression. If not for the drummer, I think the whole song would have derailed. For the entire four minute duration of the song, I was treated to this asshole band sounding like crap and getting madder and madder at each other. John explained the patch to me; basically it pitch shifts all tracks from the vocal submix up one step, BUT ONLY IN THE MONITORS. So the audience, out in front of the mains, was treated to the sound of two guys trying to get in tune, only to be utterly confused. If they got it sounding right in the monitors, they could tell that something was grossly wrong in the mains. And each of the singers thought it was the other guy who was singing out of tune. I just about died laughing.

(source) (story by bobvex)

[zrtranscripts]

Season 6, Mission 26: Band on the Run

Chariots of fire

[crickets chirp, zombies growl, orchestra chatters and idly play their instruments]

JIM: Um, don't we need to do something about those zombies?

PETER LYNNE: You mean the zombies that have been drawn here by the noise all your friends are making?

JIM: Oh, is that what attracted them?

PETER LYNNE: Is killing a trombonist really murder?

SAM YAO: Okay, okay, this is the situation. We've got one orchestra, recently escaped from Sigrid. We didn't actually mean to have a whole orchestra, but now we have, and we're just going to have to live with it. 

We've got Sigrid's people in hot pursuit, we've got zombies, and we haven't got enough passes to get everyone over the border. Even if we could reach the border.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: I have a plan.

SAM YAO: Oh, thank God.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Steve and I talked about this as a way we could bring me back. It's simple. We only need 15 zombies, a large articulated lorry, and a small packet of Semtex.

PETER LYNNE: You have a strange definition of simple.

SAM YAO: Aha, yeah, there's... yeah. Looks like there's a Laundry munitions dump not far from you, and the M25 has plenty of abandoned lorries on it. That's in running distance.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: And the zombies will not be a problem. Peter, you go after the explosives.

PETER LYNNE: Aye aye, Captain. Uh, I mean, Doctor. Dr. Captain.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: I will obtain a lorry. Five, you will need to attract enough zombies for us and lead them to the lorry. If this is all right with you, Sam?

SAM YAO: Yep. I-I've no idea what you're planning, but I'm excited to find out.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Then let's get moving. Run!

SAM YAO: Yep. Bit of noisemaker, Five. [backpack unzips and rustles, noisemaker alarm rings] Good, good. Yeah, that's keeping them interested. Looks like Five's got those zoms for you, Kefilwe. Now, where do you want them?

[truck engine turns over]

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Back here, please. When I've – when this lorry starts. The engine is feeling lazy, today, I think.

[truck engine turns over]

SAM YAO: Listen, Kefilwe, um... I heard what you were saying to Five about Jim.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: You also believe he's having an affair with the violin player?

SAM YAO: No. Well, yes. I mean, they couldn't be more obvious if they'd started shagging on the back seat of the car. I just... [sighs] well, you know Steve never would, right? I mean, he definitely hasn't. Not that I've been monitoring him like, 24/7. That'd be creepy and weird. But... [sighs] look, if you wanted to come back, this is probably the best chance you're going to get. You've been apart a long time, and if you and Steve – [truck engine starts]

KEFILWE LOBASTE: At last! Five, you need to bring me those zombies now. Hurry.

[truck engine rumbles, brakes squeal, truck door opens]

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Five, good! You're here. And you have... 18 zombies. Oh. That's 3 too many.

[three gunshots]

PETER LYNNE: And then there were 15.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Thank you, Peter. Now we need to bring the zoms into the back of the lorry. You see that X I've marked on the ground?

PETER LYNNE: Yes, I see where you're going with this. Me and Five run together, perform a McShell maneuver at the X, and the zoms all run straight into the lorry.

SAM YAO: Nice plan! I mean, I still don't know what the point of it is, but it's definitely working. And the orchestra are all fine. They're in the van. Um well, actually, quite a lot of them seem to be kissing each other. But they're safe for now.

PETER LYNNE: Oh. On the subject of snogging...

SAM YAO: Well, that can't possibly go anywhere good.

PETER LYNNE: Kefilwe, I heard what you and Sam and Five were saying earlier. Now, I know it's none of my business -

KEFILWE LOBATSE: No, it isn't.

PETER LYNNE: - but I just want to say Sam's right. Steve's much too upright and honorable and all those frankly boring things to ever cheat on you.

SAM YAO: Well, yeah, but that's not really the point, is it?

PETER LYNNE: Oh, it's totally the point!

SAM YAO: No! I mean, you don't want someone not to cheat on you just because they're too honorable not to. You want them not to want to in the first place!

PETER LYNNE: Well, uh, yeah... well, okay. Actually, that's true -

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Will you both please shut up?! [sighs] Peter, Runner Five, run to the lorry and perform the McShell maneuver. Then lock the zoms in the back of the lorry.

PETER LYNNE: But we were just only saying -

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Go!

[zombies groan, truck door slams shut]

PETER LYNNE: There you go. One lorry filled with exactly 15 zoms.

SAM YAO: For some reason.

PETER LYNNE: So can we please now talk about your love life?

KEFILWE LOBASTE: No.

SAM YAO: Look, well, can we at least ask -

KEFILWE LOBATSE: No!

SAM YAO: Well, I was only going to ask what the plan is.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: The plan is for Five to take this Semtex, run to the wall with it, and wait for my signal. Peter, you go back and fetch the rest of the orchestra. Well, what are you waiting for?

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Sam, is everyone ready?

SAM YAO: Five, if you put that Semtex in the gap under the wall's foundations – yeah, great. Okay. Explosives, check.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Peter, did you get everyone in the lorry?

[orchestra chatters]

PETER LYNNE: Orchestra, check. And did you really have to put the zoms in the back of the lorry? Now we're all squeezed into the front cab, and - [orchestra sounds] they've brought their instruments.

[trombone slides, cymbal crashes, timpani sounds]

WOODWIND PLAYER: You broke my reed!

PETER LYNNE: There is an oboe sticking into a part of me where an oboe definitely does not belong!

[trombone slides]

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Good. Set the timer on the Semtex, Five, and get back here now.

[truck engine rumbles and comes to a stop, truck door opens]

PETER LYNNE: Oh, there you are, Five! Oi, you, get that double bass out of the way. Listen, just – if you put it on the oboist's lap, and then – ah! If you could sit on top of the drum kit, and the bloody string section could get their elbows in! [sighs] Right. Hop in, Five!

[truck cab creaks]

SAM YAO: All in?

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Yes. If I lean around that trombone, I can reach the steering wheel. [truck engine starts] Now we just have to wait for the explosive Five put in the border wall to detonate. Then we can take this lorry through without worrying about check points or passes.

SAM YAO: Yeah, and is that explosion going to be anytime soon? Only Sigrid's people have figured out where their orchestra got to, and they've got a whole squadron after them.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: It should be blowing right about... [explosion] now! How fast can this vehicle go?

PETER LYNNE: Oh, uh, terrifyingly fast, apparently. Do you think that you could maybe slow down? Oh, that gap in the wall doesn't look very large at all. Oh God, I can't look!

SAM YAO: It's okay. You're through.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Excellent! Then I can stop.

[brakes squeal]

PETER LYNNE: Go easy on those brakes! Honestly, you can't even slow down slowly!

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Time is tight. Everyone get out as quickly as you can.

[truck door opens]

PETER LYNNE: Excuse me. Oh, could you mind that viola, please? Listen, Kefilwe. Far be it from me to question this plan you still haven't fully explained, but since we're through the wall and we've got the lorry, wouldn't it make sense to keep driving the lorry?

SAM YAO: Yeah! Rather than, oh, you know, abandoning it when there's a squadron of Sigrid's soldiers in hot pursuit?

KEFILWE LOBATSE: These people have families, Sam. Loved ones. We may be able to drive them to safety, but what about the people they've left behind? We know Sigrid. We know what she'll do.

JIM: So we're just going to surrender? I don't want to go back. They'll kill us all anyway.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: You're not going back. You're all going to die.

JIM: Uh, what?!

KEFILWE LOBATSE: That's what it will look like to Sigrid when they find this lorry driven over that cliff there. The lorry will explode and burn on impact. All that will be left are charred remains. So when they find this lorry with 15 dead bodies inside it, they'll assume you're all dead!

JIM: Oh! [laughs] Oh, that's rather clever.

SAM YAO: Yeah, really, it is.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: It was Steve's idea.

PETER LYNNE: You still could come, you know.

JIM: He's right. Come with us! There's no need to go back over the wall. Be with your man!

KEFILWE LOBATSE: What would you know about my man?

JIM: Runner Five gave me this earpiece, you see, so I heard what you were saying earlier.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Ah, of course! I imagine Sigrid will be contacting me soon with unsolicited relationship advice.

JIM: But really, if you love him, be with him. Look at me and Sally.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: While she's been away, you've been sleeping with another woman. Possibly with the entire orchestra!

JIM: Sally knows about that. She's been having a bit of a thing with one of her research assistants. [sighs] I was touring with the orchestra, she was locked up in Sigrid's secret labs half the time, and we... I suppose we just forgot how to be married. I love her. I always will. But we're going to do a divorce ceremony when we're both in Abel.

PETER LYNNE: That's... not quite the love story I thought it was.

JIM: Still a love story. I'll always love Sally. What's happened recently doesn't erase what came before. But your story doesn't have to end the same way as ours, Dr. Lobatse.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: It won't. I'm not you, and nor is Steve. Now get out and start running. I'm heading back. Five, you drive the lorry a little closer to the ravine, jam the accelerator down with this brick, and then jump out and get away from there.

SAM YAO: Fast as you can. Sigrid's people are minutes behind you.

[truck cab creaks as Runner Five climbs in and starts engine]

[truck engine rumbles]

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Keep going, Five. Keep going... now jump!

[truck door creaks open, Runner Five jumps to the ground, truck crashes into ravine and explodes]

SAM YAO: One lorry full of zoms duly disposed of.

PETER LYNNE: One orchestra on their way to Abel.

SAM YAO: And Kefilwe?

KEFILWE LOBATSE: I'm back behind the wall, Sam. Sigrid's convoy have driven past and they didn't spot me. I'll be able to get back to my post before I'm missed.

SAM YAO: Right.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: So now Dr. Kitsnis has her husband back.

PETER LYNNE: Also, her husband's lover, her husband's lover's lover, her husband's lover's lover's lover -

SAM YAO: Yes, yes, we get the idea.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: She should be able to defect safely now, and Dr. Kitsnis will tell us what she knows about the weaknesses in Sigrid's team.

SAM YAO: Yeah. That was a good mission, Kefilwe.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Thank you, Sam. And now I really should be going.

SAM YAO: Yeah. Listen, is there anything... well, is there any message you'd like me to give to Steve?

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Tell him... hello. He already knows everything else. Tell him that I'll be there for our usual encrypted call next Thursday. I will route it via Jody's transmitter in Exmoor Militia territory for extra security.

SAM YAO: Okay.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: And that I'd like him to wear his red boxers and also the leather trousers -

SAM YAO: No, God, please! Stop.

KEFILWE LOBATSE: Take care, Sam. I'll be here when you need me.

[jazzviewswithcjshearn]

Reflections on Audiowave’s Blue Note XRCD audiophile reissue series

Generally on this blog, the spotlight is on reviews of jazz albums, new releases and some reissues.  I try not to refer to myself in reviews, shine my ego, make it about “me”, because my friend and mentor for a time, the incredible John Kelman at AllAboutJazz taught me that you have to let the words chosen say everything about the music.  Too often I've seen reviewers turn a discussion about an album into something less about music and more about them... so compared to my usual offerings, this post is a bit different, as it will explore the love of my favorite jazz record label of all time, and my love of sound.

Ever since I could remember when jazz captured my imagination as a small child, Blue Note has been a part of my life.  I recall being 3 4 or 5 and handling my first records as best I could, among them Jimmy Smith's The Sermon (Blue Note, 1958) and Midnight Special (Blue Note, 1960) the impeccable sounds captured by Rudy Van Gelder filled my ears.  I was also born with a natural aptitude for being an audiophile having grown up around stereo equipment, and my father and uncle (on my mom's side) being audiophiles.  I would be what you say an audiophile on a budget, the type that Steve Guttenberg, The Audiophiliac has called some of his favorite people.  In terms of “high end” audio, my system is not that, it's quite modest.  My main tools for listening are an Onkyo TX SR 304 receiver, Technics SB-A36 floor standing speakers, and my decade old Sony PS 3 I use as a CD player, aside from backing up my 700+ CD collection mostly in WAV format to my laptop and external hard drive.  What is the closest to being in an audiophile realm are the headphones I use, a pair of Beyerdynamic DT770 Pros which are my main form of listening.  Prior to that I've owned Grado SR 60's and two pairs of Audio Technica M40FS studio monitor headphones.  Like the Audio Technica's, the Beyerdynamics are a relatively flat frequency headphone, which is what I prefer, they are quite a bit heavier on bass than the M40's, but it's not like Beats heavy, and the Beats headphones to my ear are atrocious.  I once tested them at Best Buy to see what the hoopla was, and the completely throbbing, unmusical, bass was a massive turn off  which comes as no surprise.  The DT 770's also possess a solid mid range that enhances trumpets, saxophones and does a good job with the percussive thwack of drums... all things that relate to and benefit these Audiowave Blue Note reissues.  The DT 770's are revealing, and tell the truth about a recording, and compared to the M40's have a much wider soundstage, the M40's are almost mono, not a lot of separation. The Grado's were incredible, but they had a high frequency bump I found too overpowering.

The Journey into Blue Note XRCD

I had been familiar with the JVC XRCD series of CD's for quite a while, particularly since I owned a copy of Workin With The Miles Davis Quintet on a Japanese imported version mastered by Alan Yoshida which sounded quite nice.  I gave it to a friend who was building a jazz collection after I obtained The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions box set mastered by Joe Tarantino utilizing the K2 process.  The JVC K-2 process is a fancy schmancy system developed by JVC to enhance the transfer of an analog source at high resolution and maintain the quality of the transfer despite being down sampled to the 16 bit, 44.1 kHz red book CD standard.  I also really like the sound of Tarantino's mastering, and the Miles set sounds so smooth. The XRCD process is full of technical jargon, but in a nut shell is a highly controlled one that ensures the best sound can be achieved on the CD medium, the caveat is that although it is marketed to sound as if it's a specialized format, it really is just a CD, and especially as the days of compact disc as a mainstream format are fading in the sunset, through the care of the mastering by Alan Yoshida, what a CD it is.

I knew of this series of issues way back in 2009 when they were released and always intended on picking up a few, but this past December was when I took the plunge.  My friend, who recently bought his first high end system, which I've had the pleasure of hearing, told me the XRCD's were on sale at elusive disc for $15 a pop instead of the standard $30.  He had recently purchased A Night In Tunisia by Art Blakey based on my album recommendation and was blown away.  I decided to order 17 titles, all priced at $15.  Rather than just order a few, I went all in, buying up favorite titles like the Blakey, Cool Struttin by Sonny Clark, True Blue and Back To the Tracks by Tina Brooks, but also many titles I never owned in any previous incarnation.  From all the reviews I read from people at the Steve Hoffman forums, even the usually vinyl centric Michael Fremer at Analog Planet, I knew these might be well worth it and they were.

Point of Departure

Like most serious Blue Note fans, my point of departure (pun intended) has been the original Ron McMaster mastered Blue Note CD's from their first wave of reissues in the mid 80's, early 90's, the TOCJ's (the acronym for Toshiba Classic Jazz) aka the Japanese Blue Note Works series, regarded by many to be some of the finest sounding CD reissues.  There also has been the limited edition Connoisseur series which began in 1994 featuring many titles mastered by Larry Walsh in the initial batches and the much derided RVG series, begun in 1998 and mastered by Rudy Van Gelder himself.  More on those in a minute, particularly how the XRCD's stack up vs the RVG's of some titles.  I also have a few of the superb 75th Anniversary reissues on SHM CD from Japan, and a 24/96 hi res version of Mosaic by Art Blakey, which is from Bernie Grundman's transfers.  There are also various vinyl reissues such as those done by Music Matters, which for some, outside of original Blue Note LP's, some United Artist era pressings and Japanese King pressings are considered to be the cream of the crop of Blue Note reissues on vinyl.  I do not do vinyl mainly because, having cerebral palsy, a physical disability that allows me the use of primarily one hand, handling vinyl is just not practical, and from the way I play music these LP's would probably be worn out!  Interestingly more knowledgeable folk than myself have indicated as good as the Music Matters 33 and 1/3 and the 45 RPM issues are they are nothing like a Blue Note original mastered by RVG. As a kid I owned plenty of original CTI LP's that Van Gelder mastered, and at WHRW my college alma mater's radio station I was able to hear a lot of Blue Note albums bearing the RVG stamp in dead wax.  Though each of the labels RVG made albums for had a distinct sound, whether it be Blue Note, Verve, Prestige, CTI, Impulse!,  Milestone, or Muse a unifying factor across all is that they had a very forward, exciting quality with a particular vividness to the horns and a punchy drum sound.  Some years ago at the website of London Jazz Collector, there was a post of a track from an original deep groove copy of trombonist Bennie Green's Soul Stirrin (Blue Note, 1958) and I was struck at how similar it sounded to an RVG mastered CD: the in your face quality, with a relatively flat 2 dimensional sound stage, with emphasis on a more “you are there” quality in the horns which has been described by Ohio based audiophile and long time  Blue Note and Organissimo forum member Lon Armstrong as reflecting a live jazz club experience.  

XRCD vs. Mc Master and RVG Blue Note CD's, etc.

The initial batches of RVG editions on Blue Note begun in 1998 initially were considered to be limited editions, but when the series gained momentum, his remasterings of Blue Note classics and some rarer titles gradually replaced the earlier McMaster CD's.  At the time, quite a few people were not content with the Ron McMaster renditions, and were eager to replace the then 10-15 year old masterings with the RVG's.  The first RVG I purchased and heard was Kenny Burrell's Midnight Blue (Blue Note, 1963) which I originally owned as mid 80's DMM Blue Note reissue LP when I was 6 or 7 years old. To my then 17 year old self I was struck by the clarity and the detail in the instruments, but at the same time, it was quite a bit louder and there was quite a treble and bass boost, not to mention a collapsed stereo spread that was more mono then stereo.  The early RVG's released in the US through 1999 had a near mono sound stage which was due to the anecdote that apparently Alfred Lion himself did not like the wider stereo spread, and also to the fact that Van Gelder monitored sessions in mono. Apparently Van Gelder wished to capture the original feel of how sessions sounded at playback, but according to message board posts by mastering engineers such as Steve Hoffman, and producer of the Audiowave Blue Note XRCD's,  and Music Matters LP reissues Joe Harley, this was not the sound on the master tapes.  The initial RVG batches had separate masterings for the US and Japan, and due to consumer complaints, Michael Cuscuna had the engineer restore a wider stereo spread to future releases.  There were also titles such as Wayne Shorter's Juju, The Soothsayer, and Herbie Hancock's Empyrean Isles that had to be redone entirely due to post production issues that added digital distortion.  The distortion on the horns on The Soothsayer RVG is so bad on the CD I have that I replaced it with a hi res 24/96 download from HDTracks.  The RVG is not bad otherwise, being from a much later batch from around 2007, but for whatever reason when Universal Italy put out Shorter's entire classic Blue Note run in a budget 11 CD set, The Blue Note Recordings they did not use the corrected RVG or mid 90's Ron McMaster version, which also had the error but was corrected.

I had gotten the A Night In Tunisia, and Sonny Clark Cool Struttin XRCD's to replace the RVG's and the Blakey title I had also owned in it's mid 80's Ron McMaster incarnation.  The MFSL gold CD was very out of print and far too rich for my blood to track down.  The difference between the RVG and Alan Yoshida mastered XRCD  was stunning.  The XRCD of the Clark title beat out the RVG no contest and has become my preferred version.  Here is why: the XRCD is just so natural. All these XRCD’s are so transparent. By comparison, the RVG (which was issued in 1998) is detailed, but has a narrow near mono sound stage, and over accentuated treble that makes Philly Joe Jones beautiful K Zildjian cymbals, splat rather than have a defined tonality with the attack of the stick definition, the bright initial tones that bring a sweet, dark wash that the XRCD brings out.  The horns sound incredibly realistic and vivid, Art Farmer's  fat, burnished middle register, and Jackie McLean's alto is rendered in all it's tart, acerbic glory. Paul Chambers' bass is nice and tight, round, and the infamous boxy Van Gelder piano sound? Somehow Yoshida's mastering breaks it out of the din, and the upper register sparkles.  And there is a fabulous depth of the sound stage where the sound of the famous living room of Van Gelder's parents' house is heard, bringing a 3 dimensional depth and bloom the RVG does not have.  Not to mention with all the Blue Note XRCD titles I have, the sound is breathtakingly transparent.  Even on my mid fi consumer grade Technics speakers, they virtually disappear, that's how well crafted these masterings are.  In Michael Fremer's Analog Planet review, he gives the edge to the Music Matters LP, but remarked on the “woodiness” regarding Philly Joe's sticks on drums.  What he really meant was hearing the attack of the sticks on the drum head, and cross stick patterns on the rim, and the XRCD really brings out this aspect.

Another big winner was Hank Mobley's iconic Soul Station (Blue Note, 1960) with the incredible supporting cast of Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and the ubiquitous Art Blakey on drums. Mobley recorded a grand slam of Blue Note titles that year with Roll Call, and Workout, the latter featuring Philly Joe Jones on skins instead of Blakey.  Soul Station might be akin to the Blue Note version of Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain (Columbia, 1959) in that it's a title that pops up in the collections of even those who aren't big on jazz. The relaxed, easy going vibe finds Mobley spinning inventive improvisations on standards like “Remember”, and his classic “Dis I Dig Of You” with superb accompaniment from the A list rhythm section.  The RVG edition of this title was underwhelming, again having the narrow mono like sound stage, and the bumped treble.  The XRCD version is revelatory to my ear.  Mobley has never sounded fuller, his tone is creamy and commands full attention.  Blakey's famous press rolls dynamically stunted on the RVG flow out like crashing waves with impact of the sound of sticks on the drum head.  I could go on about each reissue, but for the sake of brevity just a few were highlighted here.

Realism, 3-D Sound stage and the sense of space

In the final section of this article I would like to discuss the sense of space in these reissues.  Rudy Van Gelder recordings on many labels as I alluded to earlier possess a very specific type of sound stage where horns and drums in particular are very up front.  There isn't a huge depth in the sound stage, even on a fairly recent title like Joey DeFrancesco's Wonderful! Wonderful! (HighNote, 2010) the sound stage true to classic RVG form is very close, yet fairly monochromatic in depth.   While drums on classic Blue Note, Prestige and Impulse! recordings don't have microphones on every drum like many recordings of the past 35 years, the drum sound is very “in front” of the listener and alive.  On Jackie McLean's Bluesnik (1962) the late drummer Pete La Roca Sims' A. Zildjian ride cymbal is rendered with  stunning realistic clarity.  The A. Zildjian line is a much brighter cymbal than the K's, although they too can have a nice warm wash,  don't have the distinct shimmery metallic brightness that is a characteristic of Paiste's cymbals.  La Roca Sims' ride has a sunny attack and it's richness lies in the many rivets heard in the cymbal that create sustain.   Audiowave XRCD's positively shine in that it sounds like you are hearing an actual cymbal as opposed to a simulation.   The mid 80's and early 90's Blue Note CD's have this odd effect where the cymbals (particularly with Art Blakey) have a inarticulate white noise sputter to them.

On the mid 90's Connoiseur CD's and early 2000's entries that make use of Sony's Super Bit Mapping (SBM) process, the high end is almost hard and harsh, as an example, listen to Tina Brooks' The Waiting Game (Blue Note, 1961) for evidence, also the mids can appear a bit sand papery on quite a few of these SBM efforts.  Curiously, many Columbia/Legacy titles of Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis done by Mark Wilder use the same technology  sound wonderful and don't have this harshness to my ear.  The Blue Note Works TOCJ series is much more pleasing tonally than some of the earlier US Blue Notes.  Though mostly no mastering credits are given, it has been thought by some that these Japanese CD's are also mastered by Ron McMaster, although there has never been any confirmation to solidify this assumption.  On an early stereo session such as Jimmy Smith Plays Pretty Just For You (1957) issued only on CD in Japan, even with it's atypical sound stage of drums on the left, organ in the center and guitar on the right, there is  a depth quite similar to the Audiowave XRCD's. Another Organissimo and Steve Hoffman regular, Kevin Bresnahan has remarked that in his eyes the XRCD's are quite similar to the Japanese Blue Note reissues, and to my ear he is correct.  So for those that have both the XRCD and TOCJ versions of some of the titles, mileage may vary.  If you only have the XRCD, as far as standard CD the experience is a revelation.

The Rudy Van Gelder studio is an amazing sounding place, and A Night In Tunisia and Swing Swang Swinging by Jackie McLean capture this greatly. While on the original McMaster and the RVG of the Blakey title you could get a sense of this on the title track, on the XRCD the sound of the room naturally reveals itself beautifully.  The drums have body during the famous solo section with hand percussion and the cavernous tom drum hits with plate reverb linger at the end in a way not apparent on  other editions.  Perhaps it's a credit to Alan Yoshida's retention of dynamics that makes this quite noticeable, but the listener gets such a sense of the natural ceiling reverb combined with a bit of plate reverb on these reissues that is a characteristic of early 60's Blue Notes. You can bask in the space on Kenny Drew's Undercurrent and on Swing Swang Swinging, McLean's alto has the after trail of the ceiling reverb behind him, and on Horace Parlan's Speakin' My Piece Stanley Turrentine's big bold tenor is in the right channel with plate reverb going towards the center and left.  The realism of the horns is palpable on every title I've heard from this series but Tommy Turrentine, Lee Morgan, and Dexter Gordon are most impressive.  Al Harewood's fat, deep snare is captured to perfection on Doin' Alright by Dexter Gordon as well  as the Parlan titles.

Does the 3-D sound stage appear on other Blue Note CD's besides this Audiowave series? Yes.  On Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch reissued in Japan for Blue Note's 75th anniversary in 2013, it comes very close to capturing that depth. Although a bit louder and brighter than the XRCD series, this 2013 reissue is the best CD version of the Dolphy I've ever heard.  The Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock titles from this series are outstanding as well.

Final words

In closing, I find that this Audiowave XRCD Blue Note series remastered by Alan Yoshida to be the best digital Blue Note I've heard.  I would have loved to hear titles such as Unity by Larry Young, Blue And Sentimental by Ike Quebec, Maiden Voyage by Herbie Hancock and Happenings by Bobby Hutcherson  and A Blowin' Session by Johnny Griffin in this series, but it appears it has come to an end. The mono titles like Lee Morgan's Candy are terrific and a massive improvement over it's inclusion in Mosaic's The Complete Blue Note Lee Morgan Fifties Sessions box set released in 1995.  Although that set's version uses a stereo tape, it is marred by a severe wow and flutter effect that's very noticeable on tracks like “Personality”.  While Hancock's Takin' Off, Lou Donaldson's Lou Takes Off, Look Out!, That's Where It's At by Stanley Turrentine and Grant Green's Talkin' About are listed as pre order, they have remained so for 4 or 5 years and it appears they are not coming out.  There is only one XRCD plant in Japan and that could be a possible reason.  I would also want to see more titles from the avant garde era of Blue Note  as the albums produced between 1964-66 are some of the best in the label's history, but perhaps the Audiowave series reflects the tastes of  the series producers and consumer base.  To be fair,  though outstanding, a lot of the titles are a bit musically conservative, falling on the hard bop spectrum and a bit more adventure would be great.  “Audiophile” selections in my experience tend to be a little safe musically. Overall, the series is recommended and should be purchased while they are still around.  Thanks for reading!  Peace, love, groove and keep swinging.

(c) 2019, CJ Shearn

[onejazztrackaday]

The Sidewinder – Lee Morgan

Lee Morgan was somewhat bemused that The Sidewinder became his greatest hit. The catchy “boogaloo” tune was a surprise cross over hit on the popular music charts. Morgan apparently said that he recorded it as filler for the album. 

I’m not sure how much stock to put into that story though. Surely you wouldn’t name the entire album after a song you only put in to pad out the length. The 1964 album went on to become Blue Note's best-selling record ever. That’s a pretty high bar from one of jazz music’s premier labels. The success was not at all anticipated, and they only issued 4000 copies on the first pressing - those copies ran out in just three of four days. Who’d have thought that a long funky boogaloo blues would be so popular in the mid sixties? People must have been dancing to it or something.

Cross over commercial success can actually be hard if you think the catchy little throw away tune is not really your best work. The Sidewinder’s success was described once as both the best and worst thing that was ever to happen to Morgan (other than being shot and killed by his common-law wife at just 33 years old). Morgan felt his playing was much more advanced on avant-garde albums like Evolution by trombonist Grachan Moncur III.

Morgan was an incredibly talented and promising young musician. He was playing with Dizzy Gillespie's Big Band at 18. He was one of the original Jazz Messengers, and recorded 25 albums as leader with Blue Note records and many others as a sideman. He recorded prolifically from 1956 until the day before his death in February 1972.

The song itself is is a all about the long funky boogaloo 24 bar blues, with a surprise change to a minor chord in bars 17 and 18. A simple pulsing ostinato that runs all through the song starts on the piano, and is filled out underneath by a simple walking bass. The horns take the ostinato and turn it into a funky motif, twisting it around like a moving snake.

Don’t be surprised if it makes you wanna get up and dance.

– Bozzie 🎷

[dustedmagazine]

Bruno Maderna — Volume 38 (St. Laurent Studio)

There are multiple current philosophies concerning the restoration of historical recordings, and each has taken on layers of nuance with the advent of more advanced technologies. Yves St. Laurent, a restorationist living in Canada, presents his material in as close to its original state as possible to preserve the complexities of the listening experience. He uses little noise reduction so as not to eliminate the music’s highest frequencies, which provide a sense of air and space, ensuring more convincing instrumental timbre and natural dynamics during playback. With wax and vinyl sources, that means leaving all the surface noise intact, as with this BBC transcription set of live performances by the Italian conductor and composer Bruno Maderna. As with the rest of St. Laurent’s Maderna series (available here), the June 1, 1961 concert demonstrates why the still underappreciated conductor was considered so important as he simultaneously united the various strands of music history, sewing modernist garb out of Romantically colored thread.

Maderna’s conducting defies the reasonably easy characterization of polar opposites like Leonard Bernstein or Pierre Boulez, of whom he was a contemporary. He is passionate but reticent at all the right moments, evoking a clarity of controlled heat from whatever forces he’s helming. It’s not that eruptions are anathema to him, far from it, but often, he comes across as an architect in desperate need to communicate; his interviews attest similarly. This performance begins with “Composizione no. 1,” an orchestral work by the then fairly young Luigi Nono, which commentator Felix Aprahamian introduces by highlighting its serialist intellectuality. True, it’s second half is imbued with Webern’s points and fragmentary phrases, but in Maderna’s hands, the ravishingly beautiful string melody pervading the first six minutes is haunting, transparent but an absolutely Romantic utterance as it builds and dissipates in gently pulsating waves. Maderna grasped the breadth and depth of Nono’s work long before it became apparent, making this a pioneering performance rife with lyricism but finely etched, a recorded masterpiece, largely down to the responsive playing of the BBC symphony. The same is true of Stravinsky’s 1954 elegy “In Memoriam Dylan Thomas,” here presented by tenor Alexander Young, the Allegri String Quartet and four trombonists from the BBC Wind Ensemble. Again, Maderna infuses his lyricism with dramatic wisdom, letting loose when the word “rage” is repeated. The counterpoint so beloved of Stravinsky isn’t simply rendered but phrased, each line a series of crescendi and decrescendi in glorious microcosm. In comparison, interpretations by Robert Craft and even by the composer come off as just a bit cerebral. The other serial work on the concert is by Elisabeth Lutyens (1906-1983), her “Music for Orchestra no. 1.” Maderna is right at home in this lush, transparent and often tumultuous score, which certainly owes a debt to Alban Berg’s post-Romanticism. Again, the BBC players, while not infallible, play the work with aplomb, especially the more subdued sections, which they charge with quiet electricity. Their rendering of transitional masses is in complete sympathy with Maderna’s direction.  

I’ve saved the best for last. More recent versions of Messiaen’s little concerto, “Oiseaux Exotiques,” fall prey to the same misreading, but listen to those ascending brass whoops under Maderna’s baton and the succeeding wind sonorities as they plateau! Yvonne Loriod, the soloist for whom Messiaen wrote the majority of his piano music, is in excellent form. Every run, stab and cascade, at whatever dynamic level, matches the orchestral articulations perfectly in this bird-song celebration in miniature, and that doesn’t often happen in the best modern performances. The long builds are taken slowly, so that no line loses clarity while the slowly coalescing energy remains. Whatever latter-day version might be in your collection, this disc is worth acquiring just for the Messiaen, but the whole program is intriguing and satisfying. If the snap, crackle and pop of a transcription disc won’t diminish your listening experience, this latest volume in a superb series needs no further recommendation.  

Marc Medwin

[biofunmy]

Clora Bryant, Trumpeter and Pillar of L.A. Jazz Scene, Dies at 92

Clora Bryant, a trumpeter who was widely considered one of the finest jazz musicians on the West Coast — but who ran into gender-based limitations on how famous she could become — died on Aug. 23 in Los Angeles. She was 92.

Her son Darrin Milton said she died at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after suffering a heart attack at home.

A self-described “trumpetiste,” Ms. Bryant came of age in the 1940s, aligning herself with the emerging bebop movement. But she never lost the brawny elocution and gregarious air of a classic big-band player, even as she became a fixture of Los Angeles’s modern jazz scene.

Often faced with sexist discrimination, without support from a major record label or an agent, Ms. Bryant did not come forth as a bandleader until middle age. By that point the jazz mainstream had moved on to fusion, a style she never embraced.

And even when jazz history became a subject of major academic concern in the late 1970s and ’80s, she was rarely celebrated at the level of her male counterparts, who had enjoyed greater support throughout their careers.

But among themselves, those same musicians often recognized her virtuosity, and she played with many of them. Dizzy Gillespie, an inventor of bebop, found himself dazzled upon first hearing her in the mid-1950s, and took to calling her his protégé.

“If you close your eyes, you’ll say it’s a man playing,” Gillespie said in an interview for “Trumpetistically, Clora Bryant,” a documentary directed by Zeinabu Davis. (He apparently intended it as a compliment.) “She has the feeling of the trumpet. The feeling, not just the notes.”

Writing in The Los Angeles Times in 1992, when Ms. Bryant was in her mid-60s, Dick Wagner noted that she retained her beguiling powers. “When Bryant plays the blues, the sound is low, almost guttural, a smoldering fire,” he wrote. “When she plays a fast tune, the sound is piercing — the fire erupts.”

Clora Larea Bryant was born on May 30, 1927, in Denison, Tex., the youngest of three children of Charles and Eulila Bryant. Her father was a day laborer. Her mother was a homemaker who died when Clora was 3, leaving him to raise his children alone on a salary of $7 a week.

Ms. Bryant credited her success as a trumpeter to her father’s tireless support. “Nobody ever told me, ‘You can’t play the trumpet, you’re a girl,’” she said in a 2007 interview with JazzTimes magazine. “My father told me, ‘It’s going to be a challenge, but if you’re going to do it, I’m behind you all the way.’ And he was.”

She started out on the piano but took up the trumpet after her high school established an orchestra and marching band. Showing preternatural talent, she often woke up at dawn to take private lessons before the school day began.

In 1943 she declined scholarships to the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio and Bennett College in North Carolina to attend Prairie View A&M University — a historically black school outside Houston — because it had an all-female 16-piece jazz band. “When I found out they had an all-girl band there, that’s where I was going,” she said in a wide-ranging six-hour interview with Steven Isoardi for the University of California, Los Angeles’s oral history program.

But in 1945, after two years at Prairie View, Ms. Bryant moved with her family to Los Angeles and transferred to U.C.L.A. (Her father had been run out of Texas by a group of white people who accused him of stealing paint.) She immediately found her way to Central Avenue, the bustling nucleus of black life in the city, where jazz clubs abounded.

After hearing the trumpeter Howard McGhee at the Downbeat, she fell in love with bebop. She was underage, so she stood just outside the door, transfixed. But she soon found her way inside.

“I would not go without my horn,” she told Dr. Isoardi, remembering attending nightclubs like the Downbeat and the Club Alabam. “If I knew there was going to be somebody there, I’d have my horn with me, because I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to try to learn something.”

In 1946 Ms. Bryant joined the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, the country’s leading all-female swing ensemble, where she was a featured soloist. (Jazz bands led by women had become popular during World War II, and many of these ensembles continued to thrive for years afterward.)

Soon after, she joined the Queens of Rhythm, another large group. When its drummer left, she learned drums to fill the role. A crowd-pleaser, she sometimes played trumpet with one hand while drumming with the other.

Ms. Bryant married the bassist Joe Stone in the late 1940s, and the couple had two children. In one publicity photo with the Queens of Rhythm, she subtly conceals an eight-month pregnancy. She and Mr. Stone eventually divorced, and she raised their children as a single parent, continuing to perform all the while.

Ms. Bryant is survived by her four children — April and Charles Stone, from her marriage to Mr. Stone, and Kevin and Darrin Milton, from her relationship with the drummer Leslie Milton — as well as nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Her brothers, Frederick and Melvin, died before her.

Throughout much of the 1950s she regularly led jam sessions around Los Angeles. She also played in the house band at the Alabam, where she backed up visiting stars like Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker. She moved to New York for a brief time but soon returned to Los Angeles, where she would stay for the rest of her life, remaining a well-known performer and a mentor to younger musicians.

In 1956, the trombonist Melba Liston arranged for Ms. Bryant to meet Gillespie when he toured Los Angeles. He took her under his wing and gave her a trumpet mouthpiece that she would use for decades. Ms. Bryant later returned the favor, leading the charge to get Gillespie his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

She recorded her sole album as a leader, “Gal With a Horn,” for Mode Records in 1957. To satisfy audiences, Ms. Bryant had taken up singing onstage, and the label’s executives demanded — against her wishes — that she sing on the album’s eight tunes. But it is her trumpet solos that stand out: She often leaps out of the gate with a stoutly articulated melody before spiraling into coiled runs, her bold delivery reflecting the influence of Louis Armstrong as much as first-wave bebop pioneers like Gillespie and Fats Navarro.

By the mid-1950s, Ms. Bryant was performing around the country with various groups and accompanying the vocalist Billy Williams in his popular Las Vegas revue. They appeared together on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and Ms. Bryant contributed a track to Williams’s album “The Billy Williams Revue.”

In the 1970s and ’80s Ms. Bryant stepped forward more as a leader, fronting a combo she called Swi-Bop. She toured internationally and often performed with her brother Melvin, a singer. In the late 1980s and ’90s, her son Kevin was Swi-Bop’s regular drummer.

In 1988, with tensions easing between the United States and Russia, Ms. Bryant wrote a letter to Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, saying she hoped to become “the first lady horn player to be invited to your country to perform.” His cultural ministry invited her to the Soviet Union, where she toured the next year.

Ms. Bryant retired from playing trumpet in the 1990s after suffering a heart attack and undergoing quadruple bypass surgery. She committed herself to preserving and passing on jazz’s legacy, giving lectures at colleges and universities, working with children in grade schools around Los Angeles and coediting a book on Los Angeles jazz history.

In 2002 the Kennedy Center presented Ms. Bryant with a lifetime achievement award at its Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival. She sang some of her own compositions at the event, flanked by younger musicians.

At the conclusion of Ms. Davis’s documentary, Ms. Bryant acknowledges the frustration of having been passed over while watching her male counterparts rise to stardom, but she expresses a dauntless pride nonetheless.

“I’m sitting here broke as the Ten Commandments, but I’m still rich,” she says. “With love and friendship and music. And I’m rich in life.”

Sahred From Source link Arts

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[lucillelawlors]

The Trombonist Part 1

On his online profile, Pete described himself as "kind, intelligent, country boy values. Dark blue eyes." Coming from a music background myself, I always find I connect well with the musical ones. After we matched, he sent me a message almost immediately "hey I'm new to this, I can't believe we just matched." Pete was definitely a want to meet in real life type guy, almost immediately asking if I'd like to meet for a coffee. Yes, ok then. We meet for coffee and I'm struck by his demeanor, he's direct yet thoughtful, I feel like Pete only says words that are worth saying. He tells me about how he's returned from Peru living at the base of a volcano and previously was living in Palestine, how both experiences had a profound effect on him. I definitely feel like he's a nomad of sorts, telling me he was currently house sitting in Sunbury, a suburb that is classified as practically regional. Pete is also into barefoot running, training to run a marathon barefoot and says that he's enjoying testing his body and understanding how it works. My my, he IS a thoughtful one. 

Our coffee date is brief but I definitely enjoyed his very interesting company and say very directly "here, have my number, I enjoyed our interesting conversation." To which he immediately calls me saying "and now you have mine". Indeed. It's maybe a few days later I get a message from Pete asking me what I'm up to sat night, I say that I currently don't have plans and he suggests that we do an anthropological study of nightlife in Sunbury, ha, of all places to spend a sat night but sure, he's interesting and it has piqued my curiosity. I jump on a train and venture out to see what awaits. He greets me in his stoic way, which makes him at times hard to read but I have a hunch that Pete wouldn't invite me here if he wasn't interested in spending time with me. Once again, the conversation is anything but dull, after doing a few circles of the place we find a bar that feels like a ski resort, lots of dark wood and from memory a stuffed animal head on the wall. We settle in with some beers and move onto scotch after. We are told the bar is about to shut (11pm in sunbury is closing time apparently) but get told of another place we can venture to. Upon getting there, it's a no from both of us and Pete suggests the idea of going to where he's house sitting as he not only has scotch but also has mini cigars. I do love a man that knows the way to my heart. 

Once there we cosy up to the heater and I look at his feet remarking they are well muscled, he asks to see mine and remarks they're not bad for someone that predominantly wears shoes and doesn't run barefoot. Ha ok. As he's really into massage and understanding which part of the body affects which, he asks if he can give me a massage. Ummm yes, scotch in hand, listening to classical music and getting a massage, I decide venturing to Sunbury was indeed a plan worth pursuing. His touch like him is thoughtful and measured, it's like he's exploring my body and deciding what needs attention. It's not overtly sexual mind you, although maybe he's testing to see how I respond to his touch and/or this is like a transition thing where he's seeing if he should make a move. Regardless it's divine and I'm simply enjoying his attentiveness. After what must be an hour I sit up, our faces just centimetres away from one another and then.... Pete makes his move, kissing me very softly his hand stroking my cheek, his touch soft and tender... Oh good lord... He announces he's tired which is understandable having just massaged me for an hour and says he wants to go to bed, I say to him that tonight even though I'll be in the same bed, no sex. I go to the bathroom and come back to his room and discover a naked Pete under the covers, before getting in wearing a slip I simply laugh but not in a condescending way.... We fool around but Pete is respectful of my wishes and we don't have sex, with him pronouncing I'm not yet ready for sleep, massaging me further. Good man. Upon waking the next day, there's a nice energy between us and he decides I need more massage between some morning fooling around but no sex... For some reason my phone alarm doesn't go off and it's with a frantic discovery I realize I may just miss my train back in time for work. Pete immediately runs out to the bus stop to check times for me and comes back to inform me there's a bus to the train station in 3 minutes and that he's asked a lady waiting there to hold the bus for me. Country values indeed. He comes out to the bus stop with me, kisses me goodbye and the older lady who so kindly agreed to hold the bus for me says to me "he's a good one that one, hold onto him." Noted.