Carla Bley - C or D/S or D?

never did get this, but i did get dinner music

What did you make of it (don't say "dinner")?

only played the first track so far, it sounds very...slick, pastichey? it makes me think of Surrey, for some reason

It comes across to me as a satire on fusion muzak which doesn't quite come off but "Dining Alone" is a great song and "Ida Lupino," featuring CB's Jonathan Richman-style saxophone playing, was obviously heard by Smokey Robinson (cf. brass harmonies here and vocal harmonies in the verses to "Being With You").

have you seen the cover of the new emily haines album, marcello?

http://www.discogs.com/image/R-792756-1159304909.jpeg

have you read the extensive review of the new emily haines album which i posted on my blog six months ago, alex?

not yet. is it that old? anyways i always try to save the good things for later...

shit, now i realise that i know that album. at least parts of it. i hadn't seen the cover though. this is a rare case where the internet made me focus on the music without being distracted by images.

Actually I posted that review eight months ago - doesn't time fly etc.

Since this pathetic fucking retarded system won't let me link TO MY OWN BLOG go to CoM, look up Oct 2006 archives, why should I do all the work...

sorry for the hiccup when (re)loading this thread. i guess that is the discogs website telling me that i shouldn't try to link to their album cover images...

maybe the system knows it is your site, marcello. and it doesn't allow shameless self-promotion. but i as a third party can link there. ;-)

I fucking LOVE Carla Bley.

Faves are:
-Escalator Over The Hill
-Music Mechanique
-her compositions on some of the early paul bley LPs (esp the "Closer" LP on ESP.)

Just listening to Escalator Over The Hill again today and it really smokes my bacon.

EOTH is awesome, my favorite opening of a jazz album next to saint & the sinner lady

I love Carla Bley

She just turned 82

I just played a show with the guys from 0ingo B0ingo and Slugg0 told me Carla and Ann3tte Peac0ck hated each other back in the day

Another heart-stopping thread revive.

Fuck you!
S - Tropic Appetites, Dinner Music, Musique Mecanique and Social Studies. That Michael Mantler album with Robert Wyatt and Edward Gorey lyrics is off the hook too.

... in the sense that I thought she was dead, you lunatic.

haha sorry. happy bday CB!

I posted a Morricone song yesterday and ppl got mad cux they thought he was dead. I gotta calm down.

just off to revive the Sonny Rollins thread:p

She did some awesome arrangements on Haden's The Ballad of The Fallen as well.

Gary Burton, "Genuine Tong Funeral"

Searching that out now

I discovered Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports this year and it's up there with my favorites of hers.

Inspired by Downtown Music Gallery's enewsletter LP sale, I checked several listed albums featuring Bley, sale list and comments here: Rolling Jazz Thread 2018, little bit here too: Robert Wyatt: Classic or Dud?

Spotify has a bunch more.

Or some more, at least.

Gary Burton, "Genuine Tong Funeral"

― Poisoned by Johan's pea soup. (Tom D.), Thursday, 24 May 2018 18:28 (thirty-eight minutes ago) Permalink

Gary Burton Quartet's "Dreams So Real" as well

such dedication to a hairdo.

this is really good by the way. if you want something more current.

https://www.discogs.com/Carla-Bley-Andy-Sheppard-Steve-Swallow-Andando-El-Tiempo/master/1037191

also best birth name: Lovella May Borg

I get pathetically teary when I play Silence (off The Ballad of the Fallen), to me it's a profoundly sad and moving piece of music and it also makes me think of people who are gone for some reason. But anyway, basically Carla Bley is definitely classic and I should catch up on some of her newer stuff.

► Pre-order Carla Bley Trio: ‘Life Goes On’ and listen to the title track here: https://t.co/MRioVypy9p

A striking album of new music from Carla Bley, whose trio with Andy Sheppard and Steve Swallow is now in its 25th year. pic.twitter.com/QNLqRjY2Y0

— ECM Records (@ECMRecords) January 10, 2020

https://ethaniverson.com/interview-with-carla-bley/

great interview, thanks for posting

this is something, re: don cherry on escalator:

CB: It was a miracle because he didn’t have any music. And even the words, when he says the syllables again and again and again, those were words from Escalator. Again it was one of the main songs, and he didn’t even know that. Everything was mystical like that with Don. He was from a different planet, definitely, god.

really getting into Life Goes On now. i think it's just gorgeous.

that interview with her posted just upthread is so fun! man what an awesome person she seems like.

She’s a treasure.

another new interview with TheQuietus up yesterday https://thequietus.com/articles/29717-carla-bley-interview

still listen to her last album a lot, it was quite a timely move releasing Life Goes On just before all the lockdowns started.

85 today, I think

this is so cool. courtesy the algorithm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79vIUP78EsE

Gary Burton, "Genuine Tong Funeral"

― Poisoned by Johan's pea soup. (Tom D.), Thursday, May 24, 2018 1:28 PM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is such an amazing record! i love her compositions.

another favorite composition, via igor S. one assumes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiydA9t8UZw

OMG WHAT AN INTERVIEW! Thanks and Merry Christmas yall!

Oof bumping this scared me for a moment.

Ditto.

never revive threads about old people

enjoyed this as well

Really horrible news. R.I.P.

I think in interviews she said Ellington was a freeriding parasite feeding off Strayhorn's talent. Not something I'd agree with - but still v funny!

Which of her other records come closest to Escalator, Tropic Appetites and the Nick Mason album, in terms of being song-based and "rock-friendly"?

If Marcello still posted here he'd probably have a few answers, but Night-Glo but would probably be among them.

I think it’s mostly Michael Mantler’s album but it think she had something to do with the Edward Gorey tribute The Hapless Child .

"After giving up the church to immerse herself in roller skating at the age of fourteen, she moved to New York at seventeen and became a cigarette girl at Birdland."

is this amazing origin story common knowledge?

her own recordings, her work with mantler, the haden collaborations (& yes ida lupino!) so much great music.

Which of her other records come closest to Escalator, Tropic Appetites and the Nick Mason album, in terms of being song-based and "rock-friendly"?

more a mantler joint than strictly bley though she's a big part of it, but maybe SILENCE (though not the biggest fan of it myself tbh)

RIP. Would also highly recommend A Genuine Tong Funeral by Gary Burton, where Carla wrote all the tunes and plays piano alongside an incredible band. V much a trial run for Escalator.

I saw her live once, playing with Charlie Haden and a late version of the Liberation Music Orchestra during Ornette Coleman's Meltdown Festival in London. It seemed significant that she was the only musician on the night who didn't take an extended solo - a sign of reticence, even then? Or a commitment to thinking always as a composer/arranger first and foremost?

If Marcello still posted here he'd probably have a few answers, but Night-Glo but would probably be among them.

RIP. Would also highly recommend A Genuine Tong Funeral by Gary Burton, where Carla wrote all the tunes and plays piano alongside an incredible band. V much a trial run for Escalator.

Seconded.

It's basically the opposite of song-based and rock-friendly, but my favorite Carla piece is 3/4, her relentless sidelong exploration of triple meter from the 1975 split LP with Michael Mantler's 13. Somehow it's never been released digitally (on CD or otherwise). Hopefully someone steps up to reissue, though original vinyl copies are still pretty cheap for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fAJ3z293GA

xp re: song-based stuff, check out the first (live) half of I Hate To Sing if you have a high tolerance for whimsy/goofiness.

Time/Life, a tribute to Charlie Haden mostly made up of her compositions, with her arranging and on piano is absolutely beautiful and i hate it never got a vinyl release. In my top 5-10 ECM releases.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj_Z2nhDlh4

realised i'm a dummy and its not actually an ECM release! feels like it should be?

Regarding 3/4, while working on the archive for Glasgow arts space the Third Eye Centre (now the CCA), I came across a copy of the reduced score alongside a letter from Bley on JCOA headed paper. One of those amazing moments in a researcher's career when you stumble across gold. From the letter, it seems that there were plans to perform the piece in Glasgow with Scottish musicians, but it never came to fruition - mostly likely the usual logistics and funding. Bley's humour really comes across in the letter. She had visited the Third Eye in 1975 when touring with Jack Bruce, but didn't play Glasgow as leader until 1992. Photos here:
https://thirdeyejazz.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-third-eye-carla-bley-connection.html

wow

*applause*

Nice one Stew. Now where can I get some of that JCOA stationery...

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HgaUYa9wwcA/YUnuA7UOkYI/AAAAAAAACX8/Y7GDd4-3YcgfCWmQ_gxjjyJxdC6_NMj7ACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/carla%2Bbley%2Bpipe.jpg

When the kush hits

RIP to a giant. i discovered carla bley via emily haines of metric; the artwork of her heartbreaking solo piano album 'knives don't have your back' is a homage to 'escalator over the hill', one of the most mystifying records in the world, to which her father paul haines (magic jazz poet who WROTE IN ALL CAPS ALWAYS) wrote the libretto. <3

Marcello Carlin, writing for Stylus Magazine, considers the album to be "the greatest record ever made." He said: "No protest, no social commentary. No expression of love, of grief, of hope, of despair. It is literally whatever you want to make of it. It is devoid of every quality which you might assume would qualify it to be the greatest of all records. And yet it is that tabula rasa in its heart, the blank space which may well exist at the very heart of all music, revealing the hard truth that we have to fill in the blanks, we have to interpret what is being played and sung, and our interpretation is the only one which can possibly be valid, as we cannot discern any perspective other than our own.

Dave Douglas/Riverside also did a Carla Bley tribute album with 3 of her compositions in 2017.