Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Quintet-à-tête


Let's end March with a rare reunion of a band for the ages, celebrating an anniversary today.

I have about four or five friends who claim that their all-time favorite Jazz platter is John Handy Recorded Live At the Monterey Jazz Festival from 1965.

They aren't lying, it's up there for sure.

The fivesome that made it stayed together as a band until January of 1967, when they broke up and went their separate ways.

Since then, up to the point of today's share, they had only played together once, which was in Oakland and was documented on a live album.

Two years later, they reconvened across the Bay as part of the SF Jazz Festival, for a residency at a then-new (and now defunct) club in The City.

I remember this well, as I was too broke to go and unhappy about missing such an opportunity.

Michael White, Maestro of the violin, is gone now, so there won't be any such opportunities any longer.

What can I say? At least there's soundpeople mixing shows with the good sense to document the living history taking place in front of their consoles.


John Handy Quintet
Storyville
San Francisco, California USA
3.31.1997

  01 set I introduction
02 All the Things You Are
03 Cherokee/It Could Happen To You
04 John Handy announcements
05 unidentified Blues: traditional American music
06 Spanish Lady
07 band introductions & set break outro
08 set II introduction & tuning
09 New Thing
         10 I Will Leave You       
11 My Funny Valentine
12 unidentified Blues
13 If Only We Knew
         14 band introductions & outro        

Total time: 3:01:27
disc breaks go after Tracks 05 and 10

John Handy - alto saxophone
Jerry Hahn - guitar
Don Thompson  - bass & piano
Terry Clarke - drums & percussion
Michael White - violin

live 16-track soundboard mix by Peter Oshman & Marcus Buick
856 MB FLAC/March 2021 archive link


That's it for March, so let's get ready for an April to remember... but not before checking out this 24th anniversary special, if only we knew!--J.

Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Lucky Number 72

 
I'm back! Did you miss me? Look in the chatbox to the right if you wanna know what I was doing while I was away.

I'm returning with two posts to end March, the first of which is this lady's birthday.

She was in various bands coming out of the mid-1970s Punk scene in London, after moving with her family from Detroit to the UK at the age of 13.

As Punk flamed out in a fizzle of spit and vinegar, she went solo and -- thanks to a huge single that kickstarted her career -- became a princess of the New Wave as the Eighties dawned.

Then her musical director and keyboard player went solo and became even bigger than she was, blinding MTV with all that science.

Famous for her birdlike vocalizations, if I had to describe Lene Lovich -- born this day in 1949 -- to the uninitiated, I might place her as the unholy stepchild of Marlene Dietrich and Ronnie Spector.

To celebrate her 72nd voyage around the Sun she has just completed, we'll cast our eager ears back to the early 1980s heyday of our heroine, with a sweet and very well mixed concert that was originally broadcast live from a nightclub called Malibu on the south shore of Long Island by one of the very greatest radio stations of all time.


Lene Lovich
Malibu
Lido Beach, NY
3.21.1983

01 WLIR-FM intro/Savages
02 Sister Video
03 Joan
04 It's You, Only You (Mein Schmerz)
05 Maria
06 Say When
07 New Toy
08 Blue Hotel
09 Lucky Number
10 Angels
11 Rocky Road
12 Home incl. band introductions

Total time: 57:36

Lene Lovich - vocals & horns
Steve Goulding - drums
Ron François - bass
Ben Barson - keyboards
Linden Connor - keyboards
Les Chappell - guitar

spectral analysis shows an off-air FM cassette -- likely a master --
from a vintage broadcast over the late, great 92.7 WLIR-FM in Garden City, NY
392 MB FLAC/March 2021 archive link


From now on I won't be posting Zip archives, which are so 2003 anyway. The links will now just take you to a folder with all the tracks that you can download as a Zip, or one track at a time, or as a regular old folder... your choice.

I will return in 24 with more, and then we'll get after April as I transition back out of Genesis 5.1 Doomworld and into my regular shenanigans, Prog Rock PTSD as I may be.

Don't you dare miss out on the birthday girl Miss Lovich though, because everyone needs a New Toy for their birthday.--J.

Saturday, March 06, 2021

Blue Light Special: David Gilmour 75


We'll march into the third month with an obvious milestone birthday post, stapled to a great concert.

Today's big guy oughtn't need a syllable of introduction and is pretty identifiable just from a single guitar note or melodic vocal utterance.

A couple of months ago I started January with Syd Barrett, so today we'll start March with the man who replaced him in Pink Floyd.

A persuasive case could be made that without his stepping into The Madcap's large shoes, there never would have been a Pink Floyd after that one debut record.

His pure pentatonic guitar style slotted perfectly into the band from the first, and his steady creative hand helped steer the ship into unprecedented waters. Yes, waters, get it? I'm especially clever today.

Everybody knows what happened with The Floyd, and the unpleasantries between the principals, so there's no need to dwell upon them.

We're more focused on the solo David Gilmour today, especially his first proper tour on his own after the initial demise of PF.

He made an eponymous debut solo LP in 1978, but didn't get to hit the road until 1984.

This show was taped for the Westwood One radio network, and I've got it here all juiced up from the original pre-broadcast LPs, which I've suitably massaged into an improved, if not optimal, state.

Look out for sax master Raph Ravenscroft here; he just blows it up on several tunes.


David Gilmour
Stabler Arena
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania USA
7.12.1984

01 Until We Sleep
02 All Lovers Are Deranged
03 Money
04 Love On the Air
05 Short and Sweet
06 You Know I'm Right
07 Run Like Hell
08 Blue Light
09 band introductions
10 Comfortably Numb

Total time: 1:18:16

David Gilmour - guitar & vocals
Mick Ralphs - guitar & vocals
Mickey Feat - bass & vocals
Raphael Ravenscroft - saxophones, keyboards & percussion
Gregg Dechert - keyboards & vocals
Chris Slade - drums & percussion
Sue Evans - percussion

pre-FM LPs from Westwood One
converted to 16/44 CD Audio, cleaned & remastered by EN, March 2021

There's a few iterations of this, including an off-air tape and a couple of boot CDs of the pre-FM source that have a kind of artificialized sound, all bricky and compressed and with a jarring skip in the beginning of the first song.

I decided to forego all that junk and go back to the original WW1 LPs, sprucing things up a bit with some succinct Sound Forge 11 usages.

There was a good deal of static, which I tried to meticulously remove, mostly successfully. There are probably a few more subtle ticks and pops, but the bolder ones are gone.


IMO this is now the best sounding version of this one so far, and what better occasion to drop it than on the birthday of one of the most beloved guitar Maestros of our time?
 So the happiest of b'days to David Gilmour, born this day in 1946 and thankfully still learning to fly and broadcasting from aboveground.--J.