dave douglas

That description also makes me think of Joey Baron's Tongue in Groove, one of the more fun jazz albums ever made.

Suddenly, almost the only new releases I'm looking forward to buying are jazz CDs.

I agree that the Tiny Bell Trio is one of the best things he's done. As good as his current quintet (The Infinite, Strange Liberation) is in some ways, they've really lost that directness and humour. The tunes are unmistakably jazz tunes that wouldn't really be played by anyone else, and when I saw them live everything sounded very monotone, despite them all being great players.

The smallness of the group (not just the number of players but the instruments and the sounds) is the key I think. Not much needs to be prepared ahead of time, they can turn on a time, and it's not a format where tunes with really complex chord structures are really going to work anyway.

Other stuff: if you haven't listened to Masada, please do. They play jazz like rock music, it's all about the melody and hitting the people hard. There's a lot of humour and sadness and burning vamps and left-turns too. In a way, Sex Mob is about this too, but they totally cross the line into camp (i.e. they're trying really hard to be schticky and rock & roll). Not my favorites, but they've done some good stuff

Also, check out Songlines Records, I got a great compilation from them a long time ago that includes some unreleased Tiny Bell Trio and likeminded stuff. Jim Black and Brad Shepik were in like every band on there, and I always meant to buy more of their records.

The '80s weren't so bad once you factor in the downtown scene (Zorn, et al), plus anomalies like the James Blood Ulmer/Ronald Shannon Jackson axis. I just had RSJ's Barbeque Dog out the other night, and it still sounds great.

Another great small group that might tickle your fancy based on the above info: Clusone 3, especially their stuff on Hat Art/Hut, if you can find it. And seriously, Joey Baron's Tongue in Groove. Not the albums by the Baron-led band of that name, but the album of that name.

Some possible explanations (none of which I can really even begin to try to substantiate):

Generational change:
--widespread acceptance of Miles Davis electric music simply taken for granted by a certain younger element in jazz
--less "wed" to swing (accept maybe in the broadest sense), more openness toward newer pop/popular rhythms
--Sun Ra's emergence as a more central inspiration for the a.g.
--less commitment to some a.g. program, less to prove, (maybe even no more fundamental musical assumptions left to question?)

I like the sound of this. I'm so sick of the jazz ghetto, of "mainstream vs. avante garde" (or swing vs. free, or swing vs. beats), of fusion/electric Miles still being a remotely controversial issue in jazz, of people being stuck in the 60s & 70s.

It's all so tired. Everyone now has grown up with rock, hip-hop, electronic music, pop music, the same things as everyone else. People are going to play what they wanna play, and it's fucked up that jazz musicians would compartmentalize or suppress their influences. It's disingenous.

I want to back-pedal from this a little bit. I do look forward to some of the new salsa releases I buy, but realistically, there are few surprises, and rarely do I find a CD that is mostly good all the way through. Checking out something like the Groundtruther CD I plan on buying has an edge of the unexpected about it.)

I go in phases. If I buy jazz cds, I'm pretty much only interested in new stuff these days. Nothing's blown me away for awhile though, and I haven't actually bought any jazz in few months.

(x-post)

Gonzalo Rubacalba's drummer was playing in town this week, I think I might have missed him. :(

Grupo Folklorico? Nah, that's a Nuyorican supergroup from the '70s; I finally tracked down a copy of it on CD. It had been recommended to me, and the recommender did not lie. I don't know much about the NYC Latin scene, but I'm curious. Doesn't really have much to do with DD though, I guess.

I was at a Jewish wedding in NYC once that had a klezmer band. They were pretty mediocre, but the trumpet player was fucking hot. I asked around and apparently he was one of the top salsa brass players in the city, go figure.

Yes. This is all pretty new to me, even though I know a lot of the names. (I've even seen Previte at least once. In fact, I thought he was one of the most interesting drummers to watch, because of the way he rolled his body into what he was doing. He looked like he was dancing while he was drumming. I haven't liked the solo recordings I've heard by him, but that was probably at least ten years ago.)

You can also check out:

Is anyone here listening to salsa? Other Latin music?
Salsa Thread 2004

Freak In is a nice riff on the classic Miles fusion sound.

I still think Constellations is pretty hard to beat but all the other stuff I know is just piece-meal downloaded from the electron futurenet

And for the record, the live Masada records I've heard (Live at Sevilla and Live at Tonic) blow the studio records out of the fucking water.

Word. They're nice records, but the more of them he makes, the less each one stands out. That said, his restless tacking keeps him popping out interesting projects. Straight-ahead line-ups getting a little snoozy? Check out his accordion band, or his protest album, or that Free Jazz-double-quartet-meets-electric-Miles thing.

http://www.freejazzblog.org/2019/07/dave-douglas-with-uri-caine-and-andrew.html

it's funny, i feel like the jazz records i am least able of evaluating properly are contemporary ones that don't have a whole gimmick or philosophy or method or whatever but are just good

like sorry pal, you made a record? and it's good? pffffft miss me

Dave Douglas is great.

love that album, there is something really poignant about Francis of Anthony as well.

Love this guy...that last soundprints album was fantastic

https://jazztrail.net/blog/dave-douglas-engage-album-review

His Engage album w/ Anna Webber/Tomeka Reid/Jeff Parker is so so good.