Playlist, Week of 2026-04-26

Tom Rainey rocks out on Downpour... Paul Gonsalves nails it again and again on Featuring Paul Gonsalves... XTC tries too hard on White Music... Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton together: exquisite perfection... Al Foster and Michael Henderson: deep funk on "Mtume"... Craig Taborn: sublime on Bells for the South Side... lots to be thankful for...

Playlist 2026-04-27:

*[Ahmed]: Sama'a [Audition] (side 1)
*Art Ensemble of Chicago: 1977-07-28 NYC (CDR) (disc 3)
*Art Ensemble of Chicago: 1977-07-29 NYC (CDR) (disc 1)
*Art Ensemble of Chicago: Live in Berlin (disc 2)
*Beach Boys: The Smile Sessions (sides 1, 2)
*Daniel Carter: Makeshift Spirituals, Vol. 1
*Nels Cline Singers: Initiate (disc 2)
*Nels Cline: Downpour "Downpour 2"
*John Coltrane: Evenings at the Village Gate (side 2)
*Miles Davis Quintet: Live [1960-04-09 Scheveningen] (side 2)
*Miles Davis: The Columbia Years 1955-1985 (disc 2)
*Miles Davis: The Complete On the Corner Sessions (disc 5) "Mtume"
*Richard Dawson: The Ruby Cord
*Bill Dixon: Bill Dixon in Italy, Vol. 2 (side 1)
*Duke Ellington: The Complete 1932-1940 Brunswick, Columbia and Master Recordings of Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra (disc 8)
*Duke Ellington: Money Jungle
*Duke Ellington/John Coltrane: Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (sides 1, 2)
*Duke Ellington and His Orchestra: Featuring Paul Gonsalves (sides 1, 2)
*Entropic Hop: Live at Downtown Music Gallery "Action Prevails Where Words Will Fail"
*Flying Sutra with Ayumi Ishito: Out Beyond Orbit
*Grateful Dead: 1972-06-16 Hatford CT (CDR) "The Other One"
*Grateful Dead: 1974-05-14 Missoula MT (CDR) "Dark Star"
*Grateful Dead: 1978-04-10 Atlanta (CDR) (disc 3)
*Grateful Dead: Dave's Picks Vol. 34 (1974-06-03 Miami) (disc 3) "Dark Star Jam > Spanish Jam > U.S. Blues"
*Heldon: Third ("It's Always Rock'n'Roll") (disc 2)
*Charles Ives: Symphonies No. 2 & 3/Central Park in the Dark (Leonard Bernstein)
*Joseph Jarman: As If It Were the Seasons (side 2)
*Allen Lowe: Jews and Roots: An Avant-Garde of Our Own (disc 6)
*Magda Mayas' Filamental: Murmur
*Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66: Equinox
*Roscoe Mitchell: Bells for the South Side (disc 2) "Red Moon in the Sky/Odwalla"
*Thelonious Monk: Brilliant Corners
*New Order: Substance
*Wadada Leo Smith: Najwa "Ornette Coleman´s Harmolodic Sonic Hierographic Forms: A Resonance Change In The Millennium"
*Soft Machine: Seven
*Sun Ra and His Solar Arkestra: Other Planes of There (side 1)
*Sun Ra and His Arkestra: Omniverse (side 1)
*Craig Taborn: Dream Archives
*Cecil Taylor Quartet featuring Anthony Braxton: 2007-06-08 London (CDR)
*Pat Thomas & XT: Strata, Act (Joy Contemporary)* (disc 2)
*Phil Upchurch Guitar Sound: Feeling Blue
*UYA: 1994-11-17 Keep Saying this (wav)
*UYA: 1994-12-01 Bend, Monster (wav)
*Various artists: Nigeria Soul Fever (disc 1)
*Weather Report: Live and Unreleased (disc 2)
*XTC: White Music
*XTC: Transistor Blast: The Best of the BBC Sessions (disc 4) 

Reading List, Week of 2026-04-26

Reading List 2026-04-27:

*King, Stephen, and Peter Straub. The Talisman (reread/started)
*Munday, Anthony et al. Sir Thomas More (Arden Shakespeare 3rd series, ed. John Jowett) (started)
*DuBois, Gaylord et al. Brothers of the Spear, Vol. 1 (finished)
*Hummer, T. R. The Infinity Sessions: Poems (finished)
*Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire (reread/finished)
*Garner, Bryan A. Modern American Usage, 2nd ed. (in progress)
 

Cecil Taylor on Artistry and Time

...I mean the first time I saw Carmen Amaya dance, in 1955, it was as though everything stopped for me, I mean everything stopped. When you see that. Now that, to me, is the highest kind of compliment that can be paid to another artist, to make somebody else lose all sense of time, all sense of their own existence outside, like the perception of all their energies on that figure. That to me is the greatest. (Cecil Taylor, interview with Bill Smith, 1974-09-07)

This is absolutely what it was like for me every time I saw Cecil Taylor live. (And that Bill Smith interview is one of the best I've read with Mr. Taylor.)

 

Playlist, Week of 2026-04-19

 

I have been on a bit of a Nels Cline kick lately... he's such a versatile guitarist... I am particularly drawn to his skronky, atonal noise playing, like on the live disc of Initiate... good stuff...

Playlist 2026-04-20:

*Amon Duul II: Yeti
*Art Ensemble: 1967/68 (disc 3) "Number 1"
*Anthony Braxton: Trillium E (disc 1) "Act 1, Part 1"
*Anthony Braxton: Trillium X (disc 8)
*Nels Cline: The Inkling
*Nels Cline: Downpour
*Nels Cline Singers: Initiate (disc 1)
*Walt Dickerson Quartet: Impressions of A Patch of Blue
*Duke Ellington: The Indispensable Duke Ellington and the Small Groups (Vol. 9/10) 1940-1946 (side 2)
*Farmers By Nature: Love and Ghosts (disc 1) "Love and Ghosts"
*Grateful Dead: Dick's Picks 11 (1972-09-27 Jersey City, NJ) "Dark Star"
*Grateful Dead: 1973-12-18 Tampa FL (CDR) "Dark Star"
*Grateful Dead: 1974-02-24 Winterland SF (CDR) "Dark Star"
*Allen Lowe: Jews and Roots: An Avant-Garde of Our Own (disc 5)
*Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Orchestra: Out to Lunch
*Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Quintet: Hat and Beard
*Otomo Yoshihide Special Big Band: Stone Stone Stone
*Evan Parker ElectroAcoustic Septet: Seven "Seven-2"
*Sun Ra and His Solar-Myth Arkestra: The Solar​-​Myth Approach, Vols. 1 & 2 (discs 1, 2)
*Sun Ra and His Omniverse Jet-Set Arkestra: 1980-12-27 Detroit (CDR) (disc 5)
*Sun Ra and His Omniverse Jet-Set Arkestra: 1980-12-28 Detroit (CDR) (discs 1, 2)
*Pat Thomas & XT: Strata, Act (Joy Contemporary)* (discs 1, 3)
*UYA: 1994 (CDR compilation)
*UYA: 1994-11-01 Image of a Stale Jazz (wav)
*UYA: 1994-11-08 Newt-Dole Hole Merger (wav)
*Various artists: WSAM: Short Cuts I (cassette compilation) (side B)
*Weather Report: Live and Unreleased (disc 1)
*XTC: Drums and Wires (sides 1, 2) 

Reading List, Week of 2026-04-19

Reading List 2026-04-20:

*DuBois, Gaylord et al. Brothers of the Spear, Vol. 1 (started)
*Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire (reread/started)
*Creepy Archives, Vol. 1 (ed. Shawna Gore) (finished)
*Green, Daniel. Gilbert Sorrentino: An Introduction (finished)
*Herriman, George. Krazy and Ignatz: "There Is a Heppy Lend--Fur, Fur Awa-a-ay": 1925-1926 (finished)
*King Edward III (Arden Shakespeare 3rd series, ed. Richard Proudfoot and Nicola Bennett) (reread/finished)
*Garner, Bryan A. Modern American Usage, 2nd ed. (in progress)
*Hummer, T. R. The Infinity Sessions: Poems (in progress)
 

Record Collections and Time

...I realized something about record collections. I've long understood that what they represent, in aggregate, is time, and if you look at their spines you're looking at a visual marker of potential time, roughly five LPs per inch, at forty minutes per, so each linear foot equals nearly twenty-four hundred minutes or forty hours of continuous listening duration. When a  collector is young, what their collection represents to them is boundless possibility, the optimism of time unspent; as the years press on, the collection comes to suggest something different, the inevitability of the unfulfilled, potential time that will never be realized. I will not listen to the bulk of my records again. I console myself: there they are if I need them. (John Corbett, Microgroove: Forays into Other Music, 2015, p. 428)

I'm working on it... 

 

Playlist, Week of 2026-04-12

 

A solid listening week... I just can't... anything to avoid thinking about the news... 

Playlist 2026-04-13:

*Art Ensemble: 1967/68 (disc 4) "Number 2 - Quartet Version Take 7"
*Art Ensemble of Chicago: 1977-07-28 NYC (CDR) (discs 1, 2)
*Anthony Braxton: Trillium E (disc 3) "Act 3, Part 2"
*Anthony Braxton: Trillium X (disc 7)
*Clifford Brown/Max Roach: Clifford Brown and Max Roach
*Nels Cline: Destroy All Nels Cline
*Nels Cline Singers: Initiate (disc 2)
*Nels Cline Singers: Macroscope
*John Coltrane: The Classic Quartet: Complete Impulse! Studio Recordings (disc 1)
*John Coltrane: Ascension (Edition I/take 2) (side 1)
*John Coltrane: Transition
*Creative Construction Company: Creative Construction Company "Muhal (Part II) > Live Spiral"
*Richard Dawson: The Ruby Cord 
*Walt Dickerson Quartet: Impressions of A Patch of Blue
*Duke Ellington: Volume III (1937-03-18 Cotton Club, NYC) (side 1)
*Duke Ellington: The Complete 1932-1940 Brunswick, Columbia and Master Recordings of Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra (disc 7)
*Duke Ellington: Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra [1941 Hollywood] (side 2)
*Duke Ellington: The Intimate Ellington
*Famous Actors from Out of Town: FA3574
*Farmers By Nature: Love and Ghosts (disc 1) "Seven Years In"
*Grateful Dead: Dick's Picks 14 (1973-11-30 Boston) (disc 2) "Dark Star Jam"
*Grateful Dead: 1973-12-06 Cleveland (CDR) "Dark Star"
*Grateful Dead: 1978-04-10 Atlanta (CDR) (disc 2)
*Hatfield and the North: The Rotters' Club (50th Anniversary Ed.) (side 3)
*Jimi Hendrix Experience: 1967-03-18 Hamburg (CDR)
*Jimi Hendrix Experience: Electric Ladyland (Deluxe Ed.) (disc 2)
*Impressions: Definitive Impressions
*Impressions: ABC Rarities
*Jefferson Pilot: Spirit of '77
*Allen Lowe: Jews and Roots: An Avant-Garde of Our Own (discs 3, 4)
*Roscoe Mitchell: Discussions (side 4)
*Ikue Mori: Hex Kitchen
*New Ting: 2026-04-06 Gnostic Time (wav)
*Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Quintet: Tails Out
*Rova/Nels Cline Singers: The Celestial Septet
*Alan Silva/Sound Visions Orchestra: Alan Silva & the Sound Visions Orchestra
*Wadada Leo Smith/Roscoe Mitchell Creative Orchestra: 1979-06-03 Moers "track 1"
*Sun Ra and His Arkestra: Supersonic Jazz (21st Century Expanded Ed.) (side 3)
*Sun Ra: Monorails & Satellites: Works for Solo Piano Vols. 1, 2, 3 (disc 1)
*Sun Ra: Uncharted Passages (side 2)
*Sun Ra and His Omniverse Jet-Set Arkestra: 1980-12-27 Detroit (CDR) (disc 4)
*Pat Thomas & XT: Strata, Act (Joy Contemporary)* (discs 1, 2)
*Henry Threadgill Zooid: In for a Penny, In for a Pound (disc 2) "Unoepic (For Guitar)"
*UYA: 1994-10-20 Horizon Bunny (wav)
*Various artists: WSAM: Short Cuts I (cassette compilation) (side A)
*Weather Report: 1977-11-09 Norfolk (cassette) (sides A, B)
*Ben Webster: King of the Tenors
*Yes: Tales from Topographic Oceans (Super Deluxe Ed.) (disc 10)