Alice Coltrane - S/D

pretty cool — always wondered if there was more of that show. I guess so!

Impulse usually does CDs, would be surprised if they didn't for this one, too.

Yeah, I'm sure they will, it just hasn't popped up on their webstore yet for some reason.

oh hell yeah

great, now do berkley '72

berkEley

the way things have been going, i wouldn't be surprised if they were like, "We've finally restored this concert to its original version, where a technical error muted Pharoah Sanders's microphone, rendering him inaudible for the entire concert!"

I just got the press release from the label, and the two long essays that are gonna be included in the package. Here are the track running times:

Alice Coltrane
The Carnegie Hall Concert
Journey In Satchidananda 15:02
Shiva-Loka 14:40
Africa 28:09
Leo 21:34

Total running time 79:25

aw yeah ... that's a pretty major addition to the live AC oeuvre

Excitement!

kind of wild that this was a triple bill with Laura Nyro and The Rascals (though Alice did guest on a Rascals record right around this time!)

According to the liner notes it's because the concert was a benefit for the Swami, and Alice, Laura Nyro, and Felix Cavalieri were all devotees.

Total running time 79:25

ok now we're talking

Rocking "Sivaya" on this mild morning

Fwiw, Amazon has a pre-order for both vinyl and CD, so they're both indeed coming.

the way things have been going, i wouldn't be surprised if they were like, "We've finally restored this concert to its original version, where a technical error muted Pharoah Sanders's microphone, rendering him inaudible for the entire concert!"

― budo jeru, Wednesday, February 7, 2024 6:58 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

say more about this, is there a collective will to sand the skronkier edges off alice?

I think he's referring to the altered release of Turiya Sings?

Pre-orders are up; black vinyl, orange vinyl and a 2CD set. I got the press download last night; it sounds amazing so far. Bought the 2CD set.

xp yup

I figured this was going to be good but it is good

Very excited to get my copy, glad to upgrade that grey market bootleg with only a part of the set. So the Aquarium Drunkard review isn't just hyperbole?

Had The Carnegie Hall Concert been released in 1971 when it was originally commissioned and recorded by Impulse as a double live LP, it would undoubtedly rank among the all-time holy grails of live jazz, no, live music, period.

I mean this all-time holy grails of live jazz, no, live music, period is a bit of a high bar but a few moments on here on genuinely stunning

Haha, I figured that might be a stretch, but I am just thrilled this exists now.

it's blowing my mind imagining how mind blowing it must have been being in the audience for this. the sound quality of the recording is way better than the clips i had heard alluded to. really stunning!

It's really, really good. Waiting for my CD copy to arrive.

I wonder if it was sourced from a reference master or something because there are some moments of crunchy static and some weirdness where the applause between certain songs seems looped? Maybe the promotional WAV files I was sent were wonky, I don't know. But on a purely musical level, yeah, it's top-tier Alice.

Yeah, I read in one of the reviews that there was weird looping in the crowd sounds between songs, like they were trying to cover for some other audio glitch or something. But, whatever, if weird applause between songs is the worst things about this release, we are truly blessed.

I haven't done a really close listen yet but as far as I could tell there were only the weird, static-y audio issues during the interstitial crowd noise

Listening now, and wow.

… and yeah, the applause sounds - weird.

The applause sounds very far away but that adds something to the atmosphere

the applause is being picked up by the on stage mics rather than there being a mic recording the audience sound too.

what a great recording

re:

Had The Carnegie Hall Concert been released in 1971 when it was originally commissioned and recorded by Impulse as a double live LP, it would undoubtedly rank among the all-time holy grails of live jazz, no, live music, period.

what was the initial reception of Journey in Satchidananda like? I've a feeling it wasn't an instant classic, or maybe just that "spiritual jazz" wasn't as popular then (when fusion must've been all the rage) as it is now

I love the very no nonsense liners by Ed Michel, he's very frank that the label heads didn't think much of AC's music, were only interested in her in so far as she controlled the on the label the John Coltrane estate and that even though the recording was inexpensive to do and the quality was good and AC, Sanders, and Shepp were all on the label they weren't interested in doing a live record (though sounds like they were briefly interested when she signed with Warners 'natch)

I can't speak to what the reaction was at the time and I am sure it has been mentioned upthread but the AC re-evaluation is pretty recent, even in the early 90s when I was getting into jazz she was considered a joke, lots of Yoko Ono jokes, that sort of thing

Yeah, the dude gatekeeper aficionadoes of so many scenes are colossal assholes by nature.

misogyny is a powerful drug!
the scorn heaped on women musicians really piled up in the cursed early 90s
imo/ime

Also Michel's story about his run-in with a union stagehand is straight out of Zappa's "Rudy Wants to Buy Yez a Drink"

i didn't realize he was still alive

A former acquaintance of mine was a big John Coltrane fan, and felt that Alice had 'weakened' him in some way as he wasn't splurging out endless solos on his later records but approaching the music more texturally. He had nothing but contempt for her, musically and personally. Yes this was in the early 90s of course, don't know what he thinks about her nowadays and don't care.

There's a terrible line in Richard Cook's Jazz Encycopledia from 2005: "Her albums of her own music often come across as soft-headed and incoherent rambling… one wonders if she would have enjoyed any attention at all if she had remained plain Alice McCleod."

As anyone who's read one of the Penguin Guides will know, Cook has some spicy takes, but this is incredibly wrongheaded and misogynistic. Hugely disappointing.

that sucks. but more jazz critics are clueless losers than not, so not necessarily a surprise either, sadly

Sad but not surprising

Who cares if it’s surprising? The mundane nature of these criticisms are what characterize them for me. It’s as if everyone already believes that AC is untalented and this person is just saying it out loud.

I can't speak to what the reaction was at the time and I am sure it has been mentioned upthread but the AC re-evaluation is pretty recent, even in the early 90s when I was getting into jazz she was considered a joke, lots of Yoko Ono jokes, that sort of thing

This is really interesting to read and I'm not contradicting it at all. I do remember for me just getting into jazz as a teen in the late '90s, I was drawn to the look of all those Impulse digipak reissues and I was seeing those three AC reissues (Journey.., Ptah.., A Monastic Trio) on essentially equal footing as not just the Sanders albums but also, like...the Count Basie and Coleman Hawkins albums reissued at the same time. Obviously an ahistorical experience for me as a new listener, but it made me think her music was quality work and clearly someone at the label thought there was enough interest in her solo stuff to get those albums out there while not reissuing, say...Gabor Szabo or Shirley Scott in droves despite them both having a ton of Impulse albums.

I was drawn to the look of all those Impulse digipak reissues and I was seeing those three AC reissues (Journey.., Ptah.., A Monastic Trio) on essentially equal footing as not just the Sanders albums

Tbf that was my experience too but when I would talk to older friends, like the people who had hipped me to Ornette and Coltrane in the first place, they went out of their way to express how much they hated AC

Fair enough xp

Not mention her new age/spiritual tape-era was also seen as confirmation by those same people that her music didn't have any merit

My first encounter with her wasn't even about her music, it was clips from her public access show and she was just presented as some kind of weirdo cult leader. It was several more years until I heard her music, first Journey... and Ptah, because as has been mentioned they were the ones to get reissued. Then a few years later limited edition mini-LP CDs of Universal Consciousness and World Galaxy came out, and I got those, and eventually the double live album, Transfiguration. I remember the pump being pretty well primed (the Wire cover story helped) by the time Seraphic Light was announced and released.

The album it took the longest to find — Lord of Lords — is probably my favorite of her Impulse! run now. I don't think it was ever even reissued on its own, just paired up when Impulse! did a bunch of 2-albums-on-one-CD reissues a while back.

I've probably posted this here before but I really wish someone would press this on vinyl, even just her amazing version of Giant Steps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8xAAX198Pk

I feel like in this interview she articulates the disinterest the jazz industry has in her music.

'Journey in Satchidananda' was a game changing record for me. It was HUGE in Glasgow in the late 90s / early 2000s.

The owner of Glasgow's FOPP Records chain, Gordon (who was Terry Hall's brother in law) was a massive and lifelong Jazz fan. He realised in the mid to late 90s that many seminal Jazz labels had stopped doing vinyl releases and couldn't imagine ever doing any again (how wrong that turned out to be!). As a result they were happy to give him the vinyl license to many classic releases for a very low fee. Thus he licensed hundreds of titles and pressed up copies that were only available in the FOPP chain. He put these albums on sale at £5 which was very, very cheap even then.

This is pretty much how I got into Jazz as at £5 one couldn't really go wrong and I discovered a ton of incredible albums. Lots and lots of Glaswegians took advantage of this wild deal and as a result a LOT of people started listening to a lot of amazing Jazz records for the first time in their lives. The breakout hit by far was Alice Coltrane's 'Journey in Satchidananda' album. I believe FOPP shifted well over a thousand copies of it in the city. It was ubiquitous and I'd seem to see it at everyone's house I ever visited. I remember going into my local newsagent one Sunday morning and he was playing (a tape of) it. My newsagent was no hipster, Jazz aficionado or even a big music fan but this record had become such a cult Glasgow album that somehow this didn't seem strange at that time.

that's so awesome.

i found my copy for $20 in a williamsburg junk store around 2013. it seemed to me like an *insane* amount of money to pay for a used record at the time