Consider Phlebas .... but that is another story.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Alyn is on time full hour, wot was the boss not looking? ... starting north of John O Groats he hits Lands End and everything in between in a kaleidoscopic pick ...

Geoffrey does Bix er an hour is a bit long with Bix for me ... but let's look on the Sunny Side of The Street eh ...

Julian Joseph presents concert music by Martin Taylor & Alan Barnes recorded in 2012 at the Grand Hall at the Spa, Scarborough as part of the 10th Anniversary celebrations for the Scarborough Jazz Festival.

well could we not be arsed to get the details up ... what an enticement to listen eh?

Jez is not only all over the bloggy thingy [they stopped the newsletter and post on the r3 blog now, not that this was like er announced to us fans we just wondered where the newsletter was ... anyway he he is on full trend tonite with a Hoxton wet dream a fusion garage band from NYC called Snarky Puupy ... bet it craps in the corner ....

Defining themselves as 'somewhere between a garage band and a collective', US band of the moment Snarky Puppy are just as in-between when it comes to genre. Jazz, funk, and rock are all brought into the fold, while gospel, hip hop, and highlife also colour their detailed but infectiously upbeat arrangements. Bandleader and composer Michael League makes it all work on the page, and a line-up of musicians who play with everyone from Snoop Dogg to Yo Yo Ma bring it energetically to life. This performance, recorded on their recent trip to the UK, features music from their latest album, 'Ground Up'.
Also on the programme, an exclusive solo session by Sardinian guitarist Paolo Angeli. He performs on a bespoke instrument that features extra strings, hammers, propellers and other toys, creating a rich and mesmerising soundworld.

only 18 hours left to catch Geoffrey's delightful tour of The Bean

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Thanks Calum, it all sounds really, reaaaaally unmissable.

Anyone hear Alan Yentob (£6.3m BBC pension fund and rising) vs Melvyn Bragg vs Gillian Reynolds on BBC et the "Arts" on the R4 Media Show last week? Hilarious. As good as Chris Morris.

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

Calum

I can appreciate your position with Bix as there are probably few other jazz musician's whose "seminal" recordings have dated with quite the rapidity of Beiderbecke. There is something perplexing with his music insofar that it is planted slap-bang in the middle of the pop music of it's day yet , for me, I feel the music he made and the musicians he often surrounded himself with planted the first seeds of modernity in jazz. It is worth noting that Bix was at home playing whole tone scales when the ODJB first inspired him in the teens of the last century and that still shocked in 1932 when Fletcher Henderson recorded "Queer Notions" with Coleman Hawkins. When Monk used this kind of harmony in the 40's, critics said he couldn't play. It seems perplexing that Bix was using advanced harmonies even before the notion of swing had been established in jazz and some of the charts written by the likes of Bill Challis seem almost of predict the Third Stream movement. The selection on the Geoffrey Smith project is probably definative although "In a mist " in missing.

In the context of the jazz of his day, elements like rhythm are old-fashioned an jerky and did not pick up on the modern idea of swing being pushed by Armstrong. From a point of view of harmony, I think he was probably light years ahead of his contemporaries and, from this point of view, was a more adventurous and "modern" playing in his time than say someone like Clifford Brown was in the 1950's. Bix needs to be considered in a bracket with the likes of Wayne Shorter and Herbie Nichols in expanded the harmonic pallette of jazz. I know alot has been written about Bedierbecke being a "cool" player but I think this is pretty unimportant as the notion of "cool" is equally unfashionable these days as the reflective nature of jazz is far more prevalent these days and more widely spread than the "cool " players of the 1950's. You could argue that Manfred Eicher has established a whole record label on this premise and I would put to you that the roots of this more reflective jazz probably has it's origins with Beiderbecke. For me, Bix is as representative of the 1920's as "The Great Gatsby" and doesn't really transcend the decades like Louis, Miles, Mingus or Trane yet "modern" at the same time. I suppose you could see parallels with something like Fritz lang's "Metropolis" which offers a view of the future whilst being resolutely of it's time. Bix and his cohorts were really pushing at the door of modernity.

[eighthobstruction]

Calum ...I was looking at Yentobs BBC expenses (not so huge these days, but does seem to lunch fairly reg')....it would be very easy in a couple of weeks time when his bills get processed to identify how much that lunch cost when you saw him in London....

....Bluesy....Well Y has been with Beeb since man and boy....(£6.3 mil pension pot....should keep him in sneakers to keep his gout at bay)....very arrogant during MEdia Show R4 this week cough ahem BBC is great.... damn straight chaser....BBC doing alright....yes BBC is fine....

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

sneakers or no, no one is as good as Chris Morris even unintentionally ...

let's start the Yentob Lunch Bill Sweepstake ...my guess is £51-33p; but he was with someone who might well have paid [always get the junior staff to buy lunch eh ...]

ian take all your points about Bix whom i greatly admire and like ... but it does depend on the company he was keeping ....

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Yentob has one of the highest pension funds in the public sector...if not the highest. Hey, no post from Ian is complete without a sad swipe at Clifford Brown. Says it all really.

BN.

...I was listening to an interview with Sonny Rollins on a black US radio station last night where he became gloriously animated and alive talking about Clifford's qualities and contribution. There's a also long Max Roach interview on Utube, equally fascinating.

Newk et Max Roach vs Ian...who would you chose?

BN.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

yep the ducks have it

BIG TREAT FOR A SUNNY SATURDAY AFTERNOON

[eighthobstruction]

Typical of you lot in Class 5 trying to take advantage of us in the Precariat, due to you having seen the menu, guaged the£ambience....and seen whether entres were served.... f typical.... £46.97....

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

on yer bike kiddooo

[eighthobstruction]

I'm a 7....and proud to let em believe I feel oppressed....

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

The welfare system is being shreaded, meanwhile R4 and Guardian listeners agonise on -line as to what social strata they are!

Priceless.

BN.

BTW, I see that listening to jazz was one item in the "Social Capital" upwardly mobile shopping list. Me, I only listen to Ken Colyer. Tres proletarian, tres home made banjo from old pit props. But I do shop at Waitrose.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

yep keep them ducks outa Sainsbury's

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Only Mallards shop at Sainsburys Calum, you can see em around the own brand cider stack. My ducks, Welsh Magpie button down ducks (b/w), demand the Waitrose Calvados.

BTW, Thanks for the Clifford et Max track, he was such a joyous player, as Art Farmer said, "I didnt want to play like me, I wanted to play like Clifford!"

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

that is no single tracl El Senor but 1hr 20mins of the complete Brown roach Rollins sides .... only at Sainsburys....... Armagnac in the coffee innit ...

[Ian Thumwood]

Hey, no post from Ian is complete without a sad swipe at Clifford Brown. Says it all really.

I'll make my point clearer as I think it is a salient observation. My point is that some jazz musicians have an approach to jazz which is radically different from the current mainstream. For me, Brown was a musician who was consolidating jazz and irrespective of how much of a fan you are of his work, I think he was working at the vangaurd of the jazz scene in the 1950's just as you would consider players like Donald Byrd from the same period , their music wasn't a radical re-thinking of what jazz should be. I don't really think Bix understood that his ideas were quite so different (especially if you read the impressions of him within Ralph Berton's book) and he seemed to stumble upon ideas which mirrored the contemporary classic scene of the early 20th century by chance. In many respect Bix's approach is very similar in this respect to what Ornette Coleman was doing in the mid-50's especially at the point at which OC stumbled under the influence of people like Gunther Schuller. Coleman also arrived at a whole new way of playing jazz that seemed to acknowledge more radical music beyond jazz and I would be curious to know whether he was as informed by Classical music of the kind as was Beiderbecke. My point is that Bix should be looked at as a radical musician who chose to pursue a different projection than the current mainstream even if I have no idea how aware of how different his approach was. Given that Clifford Brown died tragically young we can only surmise at where his music would have gone . (I think he would have ended up very much in the Blue Note school of things as opposed to pursuing a more radical path.) Beiderbecke's work may have be recorded in the context of some of pretty dreadful pop music of the day yet he frequently surrounded himself with musicians like Challis and Trumbauer who assisted in setting his music in a context different to anything which has been produced in New Orleans by the likes of Morton / Keppard / Oliver / Armstrong.

Trust that this makes my point clearer.