Ornette Coleman: Classic Or Dud?

it steams maybe

shit is positively dry cleaned

i doubt ornette himself has much to deal with the album's release much less its pricing, but yeah, it's not cheap. i guess i'm willing to pay the premium considering the album has a small niche and is being released by a tiny boutique label. that seems to be the way things are.

Oh man thanks for letting us know there was a new (2009) Ornette record. It is pricey but hey, it's Ornette and he could probably use the cash.

Wait this record is from 09?

upthread: The new album was recorded in 2009.

Interestingly the band behind him was into live drum and bass circa 99-2000 (in the 'market' section of that website) - now there was a Prime Time direction I would have liked to have heard

can't remember where I read it, but I think ornette has built up a LOT of unreleased material over the past two decades or so...
so who knows, maybe there is a drum n bass thing somewhere lurking in the archives.

Ornette there is this thing called Bandcamp

yow that SNL performance is/was bonkers

Getting Bill Dixon "Vade Mecum" vibes off this new one so far

Getting Bill Dixon "Vade Mecum" vibes off this new one so far

OK, now I'm definitely gonna check this out.

In terms of the sound I mean. It's a lot less intense

That SNL clip is tremendous. Does anyone know what piece that was and if its on an LP? Thx.

"Times Square," from "Of Human Feelings."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dA5qoTOa3Q

i love "on human feelings," but i think the SNL performance nearly smokes the studio version

yeah i think so too. so was that the only thing he played that night?

and what did milton berle think?

milton berle says "let's hear it again, once more!" which implies there was a previous performance, but the only in the episode as it appears on hulu is "times square"

someone on Facebook was saying that (speaking of early TV legends) Ernie Kovacs was a big fan of avant-garde jazz (!) -- if only he hadn't died in a car crash, he could be hosting SNL with Ornette as a guest. wouldn't that be somethin'?

bizarrely, just before the prime time performance, Milton Berle does a "joke" in which he speaks to a bunch of suited japanese businessmen in a kind of pidgin Japanese.

Buck Henry seemed genuinely reverent in his introduction to Sun Ra's performance in season 3.

man, people on youtube be shittin' all over denardo's playing. he's great! he also seems like an incredibly cool guy.

Thx Josh. Just got it on Discogs.

I've never understood the rap against Denardo. He was literally born to play drums for Ornette.

I wasn't aware there was a rap against him?

Denardo's fantastic to watch live. They put him behind those big plexiglas baffles and he just demolishes the kit.

Yeah he's great. I'm sure for ornette detractors back in the day it was more ammunition -- ornette got his 10 year old to play drums! But he's plenty talented.

Digging the musical excerpts in this review:

http://www.npr.org/2015/02/20/387772281/ornette-coleman-returns-with-his-unmistakable-sound

85th all-day birthday broadcast today:
https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/wkcr/story/ornette-coleman-birthday-broadcast-monday-march-9

(fair warning: Phil Schaap is currently on minute four of a wall of speech)

schaap is gonna tell us what ornette had for dinner the night before he recorded skies of america

happy b-day ornette!!!!!

I clicked their Listen Now link but this chamber music doesn't seem very Ornetteish?

Huh, my mistake, I'd never heard "Sounds and Forms" before.

I just watched Ornette: Made in America recently. Great movie, just love the man.

if i liked the harmelodic funk insanity of that live tv appearance posted upthread, what else should i check out?

body meta!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23QVY94tAj0

happy b-day ornette!!!!!

― tylerw, Monday, 9 March 2015 17:36 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"sulk"

love ornette and tbh i love phil schaap

ha i kid but i kind of love phil schaap too, in all his ridiculousness.

Yeah, I do too...honestly, my first thought when I tuned in yesterday morning was, "When does Phil's shift start?"

did anyone end up taking the $$$ plunge for the new vocabulary record? is it worth it?

I haven't bought the New Vocabulary disc, and honestly now I'm more excited to get this previously unknown to me 2014 expanded remaster/reissue of the Naked Lunch soundtrack.

one of the best

>if i liked the harmelodic funk insanity of that live tv appearance posted upthread, what else should i check out?
>
>― nuumerykah (dog latin), Tuesday, March 10, 2015 2:06 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

'of human feelings' is so good I can not believe I'd never even heard of it before that SNL link made the rounds, the intensity of 'dancing in your head' boiled down into eight little mutant tunes. I'd heard the later prime time records and I liked them, but this is a little crazier

want to hear that Naked Lunch reissue

You'll want to hear James Blood Ulmer's 'Tales of Captain Black' as well since it has essentially the same band as Of Human Feelings.

will do!

have we ever dealt with this? via the revenant records facebook page (a couple years ago)

REVENANT ARCHIVES, #3 in a Series
<<tracks we planned to release but never did>>

Ornette Coleman (alto sax solo): Who Do You Work For? (1972)

Concert: "The Art of the Solo," Berliner Jazztage, Philharmonie, Berlin - November 4, 1972.

When Fahey and I were scheming about starting a new "raw musics" label in 1994-95, Ornette was a rallying point for us, as totemic a figure as we could think of for what it meant to be uncompromising, fearless, idiosyncratic and great. We set to work trying to license some of his out-of-print records like Forms and Sounds, Who's Crazy, and some 1965 recordings from Swedish TV. Nothing worked out.

In about 1999 or 2000, we began a conversation with Ornette and his son Denardo about a Secret Musics series - unissued, mostly unheard (sometimes unheard of) recordings from all stages of his career, culminating (perhaps - who knew?) with a set of his Moroccan recordings with the Master Musician of Jajouka. More about those in a later edition of this series. The point is, a ridiculous stockpile of rare recordings (including this one) was heaped, we haven't issued anything yet, and this remains a project near and dear to my heart. I'm hopeful it can still happen.

This recording is from a concert called "Art of the Solo" for a TV broadcast in Berlin, in which Ornette alternates between piano and alto. There are some excerpts of the TV footage in circulation on the web if you look around, but I didn't see this track among them.

In 1971, Ornette had been performing "Who Do You Work For?" in a series of live shows in Europe with one of his best-ever ensembles - the quartet with OC on alto, Dewey Redman on tenor, Charlie Haden on bass, and Ed Blackwell on drums. Blisteringly intense, this run of shows is also a real primer on intuitive ensemble play. "Song for Che," "Street Woman," and "Who Do You Work For?" are consistently crackling. Check out the show from Belgrade, Yugoslavia on November 2, 1971 if you can track it down - a real jawdropper.

By the beginning of '72, Ornette was onto other things - the orchestral stuff of Skies of America, some woodwind pieces that would appear on Broken Shadows. But for November, at least, he returned to "Who Do You Work For?" in a brief solo workout that seems like a natural bridge of the lyrical and the ass-kicking. To my knowledge, a studio version of this track was never recorded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYSlJK5ytlY

Wow, never heard of that -- the solo or the Revenant project! Thanks for posting!

I remember they announced a Milford Graves/Derek Bailey duo record as "coming soon!" when the label first started, but evidently nothing came of it. And nothing on youtube.

hadn't heard of it til today! seems amazing -- rumors of 30+ hours of unreleased material.

Years ago I read a book that featured a long section on Ornette, and his approach to the music business, interpersonal relationships, etc. It detailed the times he'd gone bankrupt, and hinted at a number of projects which never saw the light of day. The quote I remember (though I don't recall who said it) was an associate saying "He must have spent all his money on music, because I never saw any women and I never saw any drugs."