is Karma by Pharoah Sanders the best record ever?

ha, mayyyybe. but i might say jewels of thought is better than both of those!

That Armstrong cover of "Creator" is cool but also kinda sad.

Karma might not be "the best" by some sort of technical standards, but emotionally, for me, it's the best. Always always always inspires me. Mother nature seems to love us.

Saw a large Armstrong bio in a charity shop today, but then noticed it was auf deutsch. :(

feel like "Karma: Classic or Dud?" might come down to where you stand on "Colors"

(I used to think it was kinda cheesy... like, the first two times I heard it. then I realized it was fucking awesome. because it is.)

I haven't listened to Jewels in a while; I remember "Hum-Allah-Hum" but am blanking on what "Sun In Aquarius" sounds like

I love Live At The East almost as much as I love Karma.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwl55i6VDrk

Has he really not cut an album since 2003?

no, i don't think so. any reasons why?

It's got soul, man. And some heavy metal sax.

I listen to this every Thanksgiving during dinner. It's the best tradition!

i can't believe izipho zam is still unavailable

listened to that earlier! it's all pharaoh all day here.

last pharoah i listened to was live at the east -- so good! that is weird that izpho zam is out of print. that one rules too.

Prince of Peace from Izipho Zam has become one of our holiday season tunes over the years. Great album. Speaking of maddening OOP Sanders, why can't I find "Harvest Time" anywhere? I love that record.

Speaking of Izipho Zam, I have a Leon Thomas compilation that includes the version of "Prince of Peace" from Izipho Zam, and at least on that comp it has a very obvious and irritating sound glitch towards the beginning of song. I've never gotten Izipho Zam because of the high price you have to pay for it, but can you who own the album tell me whether this glitch is there too?

High price on vinyl you mean? I got a CD of it for like £2 or something.

No, these days I think you can actually get it cheaper on vinyl than on CD. AFAIK it was reissued on CD in Germany in the early 90s, and the only CD reissues after that have been in Japan, so even the cheapest used copy I could locate at Amazon is 24 quid.

But can you tell me, does your CD copy have that glitch with "Prince of Peace"?

I don't know, I'll have to look out my copy, don't know where it's from, they were almost giving it away in the shop I got it (4-5 years ago)

Dunno when it was issued (1990s I think), but this Charly CD edition of Izipho Jam is extremely common in the UK, and (as Tom D) sells for peanuts. Don't remember hearing a digital glitch on it.

sorry, this edition:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51SWIC3-WlL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Well, it might've been cheap once, but it doesn't look like it's anymore, at least not on the UK Amazon (though of course some UK record stores might still sell it for cheap):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Izipho-Zam-Pharoah-Sanders/dp/B00000BICI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353933990&sr=8-1

The glitch I'm talking about doesn't sound like a digital glitch to me, more like there's something wrong with the master tape. That's why I was wondering whether it exists on the original album as well.

I don't have the album at hand, so I can't check it, but IIRC it sounds like some of the channels suddenly cut off, but you can still hear part of the sounds.

Is there much Strata East on cd or reissue vinyl? Seems like all of my SE albums are vinyl rips I found on blogs awhile back.

Like his records but find his actual sax playing often very boring.

I think most of the Strata East/Tribe/Black Jazz stuff got reissued on vinyl 10 or so years ago.

Lot of the Strate East stuff was reissued on CD by Charly back in the 90s: I have a couple of Charles Tolliver and Stanley Cowell CDs released then. Though it seems all of those reissues have been long out of print, judging by the prices they sell for now.

Anyway, I'd still love to hear if anyone who has the Izipho Zam CD can confirm whether it has the glitch on "Prince of Peace" or not? I've considering buying the album despite the steep price, but if the flaw is there too I'm not sure if I want it, the glitch is so blatant it kinda ruins my listening experience.

Gilles Peterson played a version of "The Creator ... " on his show last Sat.: shorter, with more vocals. Does anyone know where it's from? - he didn't say. It was part of his brief interview with Lonnie Liston Smith, about an hour in, iirc.

this, from the first Leon Thomas solo album?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipRZEHRx6ow

aha. Thanks.

Thomas' first two solo albums on Flying Dutchman are well worth getting if you're a Pharoah Sanders fan... The sound is pretty similar, and they have many of the same players as on Pharoah's Impulse! albums (including Pharoah himself, under the pseudonym "Little Rock"), though the focus is obviously more on Thomas' singing. His two later Flying Duthchman records are more soul/R&B than jazz, but they're good too, especially Blues and the Soulful Truth, which shows Thomas was just as good with more straightforward material as he was with avant-garde stuff.

Oh man, I forgot to listen to this to see if it has the glitch Tuomas speaks of

my downloaded copy doesn't seem to have it. Not that that helps much

OK, my CD copy has the glitch - I don't know how I didn't notice before - but that's Charly for you, buncha cowboys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OofJ2-AkBAg

at what timecode is the glitch on "prince of peace"?

i have the strata east LP on which i've never noticed a glitch and the sunspots CD reissue. i listened to the CD today and if there was a glitch in the first half of the song i didn't hear it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JvxMlir8Ks

You can hear it here, on the left speaker, starting from 0:18. It's not as bad as I remembered though, it seems to affect only the piano. Which makes me suspect it's a flaw in the recording process itself. This vinyl rip also has it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AAELC5Kzno

Anyway, since I already have "Prince of Peace" on the Leon Thomas comp, and it looks like there's no unglitched version of it, is the rest of Izipho Zam worth the 25 quids that I'd have to pay for it?

Sorry, the glitch is on the right speaker, not the left one.

afaict my sunspots CD doesn't seem to have that glitch!

either that or i am deaf - i can hear what you're talking about on the youtubes but i don't hear it on the cd. haven't got my turntable set up so i can't tell you whether the LP has it or not.

if you like karma, i'd say you should need izipho zam. whether you want to spend 25 quid on it or you want to download mp3s i can't really say.

ignore that "should"

I know there was a 9 minute edit of Creator that was on a couple of compis, I think including the yellow covered 2cd Pharaoh compi thta came out around 10 years ago. I couldn't find that compi when I put the tracks on my walkman at the start of the year or it woul ddegfinitely have featured, & interface between that player & my computer has meant I haven't edited the content since. Keeps wanting to totally wipe what's on there (reformat) and have you start again.

Was also on an Impulse sampler i picked up a couple of years earlier I think.

But as far as i know that was just a shorter edit not a different version. Is there a different version on an lp by LLS? I'm not as familiare with his solo material as I might be. Do like Expansions though.

The shorter version of "Creator" is on Leon Thomas's debut album, not on Lonnie Liston Smith's. And yeah, it's a different recording, and it also has Thomas singing the verses of the song, which don't appear on the version Karma (though the lyrics to the verses are in Karma's inner sleeve). Someone posted a Youtube link to it upthread.

Lonnie Liston Smith's debut album has a different, shorter version of "Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord" though, which is quite good (as is the whole album, well worth checking out if dig Pharoah).

"on the version on Karma"

22 minute version by Sanders.

My Favorite Things

Or not. Scroll down the list on the right until you see Sanders from 2008.