Polyphonic Spree are great. You need to see them in a club where their massive arrangements work a lot better. In a huge arena, where the P.A. is stuck at 50% volume (SOP for an opening act) -- NSM.
The CD is darned catchy, but doesn't capture their quantity. The main guy admits this -- the CD was recorded as they were starting out -- and promises that the next album will more accurately reflect their mission.
[for those who don't know, the band has about a dozen singers and another dozen instrumentalists who also sing]
The CD is darned catchy, but doesn't capture their quantity.
Hmm. Okay, good to know.
[for those who don't know, the band has about a dozen singers and another dozen instrumentalists who also sing]
#1 Minion, who could not fathom why I found them entertaining, said they seemed to be a group of people who listened to Hair and Sgt. Pepper's waaaaay too many times in their youth.
Have you heard their recordings at all Jilli? They're all over the place -- VW ads, the trailer for Eternal Sunshine, the early ads for Wonderfalls.
Have you heard their recordings at all Jilli? They're all over the place -- VW ads, the trailer for Eternal Sunshine, the early ads for Wonderfalls.
I probably heard them and had no idea who it was. I had never heard of them before the concert last night.
How was the thin white duke himself, Jilli? I know his Boston show was supposed quite choice.
How was the thin white duke himself, Jilli?
A religious experience. He opened with Rebel Rebel, and it just got better. All The Young Dudes, Ashes to Ashes, Hang On To Yourself, I'm Afraid Of Americans, and the encore that ended with both Suffragette City AND Ziggy Stardust were the high points for me.
The only way the show could have been better is if he had performed Rock 'n' Roll Suicide. Otherwise, it was perfect.
As to the Spree, check out also their cover of the title track on Wig In A Box, which is aces.
Ashes to Ashes
Ahhh. My favorite Bowie song.
He didn't do Heart's Filthy Lesson by any chance, did he? Or Station to Station?
I'm Afraid Of Americans
I love this one! Did he do "Word on a Wing"?
I managed to get fuck all done today at work... so why change now? With that it's Miles Pt. 2.
Found some interesting stuff, like this NPR page. Most of the interview snippets essentially repeat the text they accompany, but the one on his use of the Harmon mute (his signature sound), and especially the one by Herbie Hancock (I'll link to it below in a more appropriate spot), are illuminating. The clips at the bottom from the NPR Basic Jazz Record Library are great, too. (The Kind of Blue address is screwed up on the Miles page, but is corrected here on the KoB page -- no not the Glory-hating, chainmail guys.) Don't know the one reviewer, but the other is A.B. Spellman, the author of Four Lives in the Bebop Business, which is a great book; not sure why they changed the name for the reissue.
Speaking of worthwhile jazz books, if you go to Amazon & check out Gary Giddins' Visions of Jazz you can read the account of the sessions that yielded Cookin' et al. (Click "Search inside this book" and enter "marathon session". Unfortunately the section runs from 343-347, and you can only go two pages ahead from a given hit, the latest one being page 344. BUT if you type in "wicked arco" - referring to Chambers' playing - you'll get the last snippet of Prestige & the beginning of the Gil Evans sessions.) One last book: Martin Williams' great The Jazz Tradition, Giddins' inspiration (okay, non-musical inspiration); you can read some of it, but the Search Inside option is not available.
And I'm sorry about that cuz I want to look up something! Williams writes that the near-simultaneous appearance of Kind of Blue, Ornette's initial recordings and some third thing I can't remember is a significant moment in 20th century music in that you had different approaches (modal jazz, harmolodics, and whatever the other one was), arrived at independently, to the same basic problem -- the implications of bebop, liberating at first, were now constraining soloists. Wish I could remember the third. All I can think of is Cecil Taylor, but I don't think that's right. I'll look it up when I get home.
1) Miles post-KoB, 1960-1964: So Miles launches the modal revolution... and then retreats from it. I don't know much about this period in Miles' career, but apparently he spent most of it treading water. That's not necessarily a knock on the music, but from such a restless and innovative musician it is surprising. Coltrane and Bill Evans really took off from Kind of Blue, whereas the leader spent the next few years shuffling bandmembers. I think there's an article in The High Hat about In Person Friday Night at the Blackhawk, but the site seems to be down. [All right, it's back up!]Anyway, I can't recommend anything from this period because I don't know enough about it.
2) The "Second Great Quintet": By 1963 Miles had laid most of the groundwork for his second great quintet, having added Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock & the teenager Tony Williams to his band. A year later Wayne Shorter would join & the line-up would be set. The NPR Hancock clip is fascinating: "Miles said to us, 'Why don't you play behind me the way you play behind George?'" My first thought was George Coleman, his tenor between Coltrane and Wayne Shorter. But the music on the clip is "Petits Machins" from Filles de Kilimanjaro, a 1968 album. So then I thought, maybe he means George Benson, who had played on the album immediately before that, Miles in the Sky. But then Herbie goes on to say that "we let him have it," and that at first Miles was lost. Day two. He's still lost, but demanded more. "The third day I was the one twisting and turning and trying to find my place. Miles had not only grabbed the ball, he ran with it.... At the end of that day Miles said, 'I don't want to play any chords anymore.'" That suggests that "George" was George Coleman and that that was the real turning point for Miles and the amazing Hancock/Carter/Williams rhythm section, even before Wayne Shorter joined: Miles was ready to face up to the implications of Kind of Blue and "run with the ball." I already tabbed Miles Smiles as this group's best. Love Nefertiti, too, Tony Williams' "drum concerto".
