Bass Value: 72 Sessions of Danny Thompson

Danny Thompson - Idle Monday

Hello again! I've been up to something to honor the incredible life -- and, two weeks ago, the passing, at 86 -- of one of the bedrock, towering musicians of our age, and I've chosen today, and the start of the weekend, to lay it on you.

It's a dumb cliché, but there isn't much I can even think to say that hasn't already been touched upon, in the myriad tributes that have poured in from everywhere since this most extraordinary cat passed away -- on John Coltrane's birthday -- in September.

What can be said, because it can't ever, IMO, be stressed enough, is the song.

I've heard a zillion heavyweights from Bill Bruford to Sonny Rollins to Lady Gaga say it, but it will forever bear repeating: the song, whatever it may be in whatever situation, is what separates the merely technically-proficient from the intuitively virtuosic, Master musician.

In Indian music they call it Ustad level, you know? Where the ego and impulse to over-decorate the environment are rapturously reined in, allowing things to reach such a standard of effortless excellence, the Music begins to play the players and the song is given maximum, total service to become the best it can be.

His spirit chose Devon instead of Delhi to incarnate this time around, but had he been born in Bombay and not Britain, Danny Thompson -- not just a bass player, but a foundation-supplying, supremely sympathetic maker of Music with a big M -- would have been crowned that highest of honors, with song-serving skill and sonic sensitivity to spare.

Most folks know him principally as a point on the powerful, five-pronged star of The Pentangle -- as unclassifiably exquisite a band as shall ever exist in our world -- who, in their 1967-72 heyday, entirely redefined what the seamless fusion of Blues, Jazz, Classical and the UK's traditional music could be in the hands of the toppermost players in town.

Had he only existed as 1/5 of that inexpressibly superlative aggregation, his place in the pantheon would be as cemented as the foundation of London Bridge itself, and with none of the usual torturous, Towering hyperbole.

As we know, that couldn't be further from the case, as even a half-assed examination of his 60+ year career reveals a player as highly in-demand as any. And a participant in so many projects of his own and of others, it's almost impossible to get a grip on everything he did in a recording studio under a set of headphones, his beloved double bass he named Victoria at his side like a devoted lifemate.

As, over the last two weeks since he departed, I waded into the deep waters of his credits -- he played on literally hundreds of sessions -- I was struck by the sheer breadth of the material, which ranged from the most introspective singer-songwriter fare to ancient Traditional songs to authentic West African sounds to completely free improvisation.

As far as I know, up to this point, there has never been any sort of career retrospective attempted on Danny Thompson, and given the variety of artists and labels concerned, it would likely take every lawyer on Earth -- plus maybe a few from neighboring galaxies -- to get it blessed and pressed.

There was this hourlong compilation, called Connected, that was issued on his own small label in 2012, but it barely scratched the surface of his considerable output.

That said, you should probably grab a copy, if only as a companion piece to the 5 1/2 hours of wonderment I've spent the last 10 days hammering into launch position to bring to you here.

Various Artists

Bass Value: sessions of Danny Thompson

1964-2009

CD1

01 Alexis Korner - Haitian Fight Song (1964)

02 Pentangle - Let No Man Steal Your Thyme (1968)

03 John & Beverley Martyn - New Day (1970)

04 S. E. Rogie - Koneh Pelawoe (Please Open Your Heart) (1994)

05 Graham Coxon - Brave the Storm (2009)

06 Peter Gabriel - No Way Out (2002)

07 John Renbourn - Faro Annie (1971)

08 Barbara Dickson - Fine Horseman (1995)

09 Norma Waterson - Rags & Old Iron (1996)

10 Danny Thompson - Sandansko Oro (Bulgarian Dance) (1989)

11 June Tabor - Pork Pie Hat (1989)

12 Bert Jansch - Poison (1969)

13 Darrell Scott - The Invisible Man (2006)

14 Jeremy Taylor - Isle of Wight (1972)

15 Mara - Streets of Forbes (1984)

16 Kate Bush - Pull Out the Pin (1982)

17 Loudon Wainwright III - Hard Day On the Planet (1986)

18 Donovan - There Is an Ocean (1970)

CD2

19 Mary Hopkin - Martha (1971)

20 Duffy Power - Hound Dog (1967)

21 Sandy Denny - Whispering Grass (1974)

22 Nadia Cattouse - B.C. People (1970)

23 Pentangle - Reflection (1972)

24 Bread, Love & Dreams - The Strange Tale of Captain Shannon (1970)

25 Tasmin Archer - In Your Care (1992)

26 Everything But the Girl - Rollercoaster (1994)

27 B.J. Cole - The Regal Progression (1972)

28 Danny Thompson - Idle Monday (1987)

29 Julie Felix - The Lean Years (1972)

30 Therapy - Sir Ebeneezer (1971)

31 Shelleyan Orphan - Jeremiah (1987)

32 Billy Bragg - Must I Paint You a Picture (1988)

33 Dizrhythmia - Standing In the Rain (1988)

34 Davy Graham - Both Sides Now (1968)

CD3

35 Pentangle - Street Song (1985)

36 Richard Thompson & Danny Thompson - Ghosts In the Wind (1993)

37 Toumani Diabaté - Tony Vander (1995)

38 Richard Barbieri - All Fall Down (2008)

39 Shelagh McDonald - City's Cry (1971)

40 The Blind Boys of Alabama - Jesus Gonna Be Here (2001)

41 Linda Lewis - Red Light Ladies (1973)

42 Hunter Muskett - Snow (1970) 

43 Ketama, Toumani Diabaté & Danny Thompson - Africa (1988)

44 Boo Hewerdine - World's End (1995)

45 Talk Talk - Happiness Is Easy (1986)

46 Tudor Lodge - Recollection (1971)

47 Rod Stewart - Reason to Believe (1971)

48 Sam Brown - Piece of My Luck (1988)

49 Lynsey de Paul - Ivory Tower (1973)

50 Dorris Henderson - When You Hear Them Cuckoos Hollerin' (1967)

51 Christine Collister - God Bless the Child (1998)

52 Vic Abram - Whichever Way the Wind Blows (1981)

53 Danny Thompson, Allan Holdsworth & John Stevens - Jools Toon (excerpt) (1978)

CD4

54 Nick Drake - Time Has Told Me (1969)

55 Harold McNair - Barnes Bridge (1970)

56 T. Rex - Interstellar Soul (1974)

57 C.O.B. - Sheba's Return-Lion of Judah (1972)

58 Harvey Andrews - Hey! Sandy (1972)

59 John Williams - Nuages (1971)

60 David Sylvian - The Ink In the Well (1984)0

61 Mike Lindup - Life Will Never Be the Same (1990)

62 Ayuo - Tao (1997)

63 Sally Barker - Or Did You Jump (1990)

64 Magna Carta - Romeo Jack (1969)

65 Incantation - El Amor Es un Camino (1987)

66 Dawud Wharnsby - Argus Array (2005)

67 Tom Paxton - You Should Have Seen Me Throw That Ball (1972)

68 Ralph McTell - Stuff No More (1974)

69 Danny Thompson & Peter Knight - Number Two (excerpt) (1995)

70 Vivian Stanshall - Peristaltic Waves (1978)

71 Steve Ashley - Farewell Green Leaves (1975)

72 John Martyn - Go Down Easy (1973)

Total time: 5:18:54

4CD compendium of music of the last 60+ years, all starring the great Danny Thompson on the double bass

selected, assembled & remastered for unity by EN, September/October 2025

special thanks to The Music Aficionado for assistance with clarifying these selections
1.83 GB FLAC/direct link

An especially basso profundo chunk of gratitude goes out to The Music Aficionado, whose insanely excellent (and highly informative) six-part series, entitled The Artistry of Danny Thompson, really provided the tracks upon which this thing could run, so to speak. With a few revisions, additions and exceptions, this bad boy is really just a lossless recreation -- in case you wanna play the whole thing in the car! -- of what TMA did, via YouTube links, on that exceptional page back in 2021.

Beyond that, it's truly a full 4CD excursion into the realms of the All Killer, No Filler zone, with every selection -- some, not all that easy to find in non-mp3 form, trust me! -- offering ample illustration of what made Danny Thompson as supple, supportive and sublime a bassist and overall master muso as will likely ever populate this world. Where I felt it necessary, I used all available tools on these tunes to make sure he is heard to optimum and appropriate effect.

Danny Thompson's 87th birthday would have been next April, but I wasn't waiting a whole winter of discontent to put this thing together in his honor. Of course, it's also a labor of love for your enjoyment -- we all need some these days, don't we?  -- and an education, if you needed it, into just what made this Maestro of the Low End Theory stand so exceptionally elevated above the merely mundane musical mortals on the map of our millennium.
--J.

4.4.1939 - 9.23.2025

Iran So Far Away: Azam Ali 55

Niyaz - Beni Beni

It's another day, another big berfday, and with this one you get a little bit of Story Time with your October festivities.

Maybe you've never heard of today's honoree, but the Story is that I never would have, but for my husband Alex and a past berfday of his.

As he tells it, it was his 12th birthday and iPods had just come out. He wanted one badly badly bad, as any 2002 12-year-old might, but his parents (my in-laws) were chastened by the then-astronomical cost of one.

As a somewhat substitute, they got him a sort of knockoff MP3 player of the time, from when they first came out. The one they got him allowed you to download a bunch of songs, but they were all by unknown artists he had never heard or heard of.

The one Mystery Name he zeroed in on turned out to be today's birthday girl, then as the iPod just beginning her emergence into the mainstream of this thing we dare to call culture.

He got all her available songs that were out then, and instantly fell in love with her. Fast forward, invert some numbers in 2002 and it's 2020, and he and I have just met.

We quickly move in together, and one day -- I can't remember if this was the end of 2020 when we got married or into 2021 -- he strolls in and says Hey! I wanna introduce you to a singer called Azam Ali! And tells me the above story about how he found her.

Now, it ain't easy to stump the professor. There's few artists of our epoch here that you could queue up and I'd be completely, categorically unfamiliar with even their name. Especially someone like this, who between 2002 and 2020 made a whole bunch of recordings with a good few different bands and other players and whatnot.

As the strains of her music wafted through the space like hookah smoke, as clueless as I was, I could but exclaim, "Who the fuck is this?!?". "She's Iranian," he said. Gradually I came to understand how she came to the US in the 1980s and the backstory of her unlikely career in music.

So a great thanks and gratitude aplenty go out to my perpetually wonderful husband, who brought me this incredible vocalist who backstrokes so effortlessly between the ancient Persian and the trance-tastic, mellifluous modern waters to be found in the Sea of Electronica.

I hope your reaction, should you be as unfamiliar as I once was with Azam Ali, and the shimmering, evanescent beauty of what she does -- which is something like The Call To Prayer of the muezzin crossed with, say, the music of the Cocteau Twins in their Peter Gabriel bag, except the words are all in Urdu or Farsi and are all about how all Love is Divine -- will be along similar, WTF is this?! kinda lines.

Niyaz

Festival International de Louisiane

Legends Bar & Grill

Lafayette, Luisiana USA

4.27.2018

01 introduction

02 Yek Nazar (A Single Glance)

03 Tam e Eshq (The Taste of Love)

04 unidentified title

05 Beni Beni

06 Aurat (Woman)

07 unidentified title

08 Shir Ali Mardan (Song of a Warrior)

09 Aramada Sormadalar Beni/Azam Ali speaks

10 unidentified title

Total time: 1:09:25

Azam Ali - vocals

Loga Ramin Torkian - oud & kamaan

Gabriel Ethier - electronics & keyboards

Dimitris Petzalakis - kaval & kopuz

Ravi Naimpally - tabla

matrix of two different HD YouTube soundtracks, extracted from video captures of the event

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, matrixed, assembled, tracked & remastered by EN, September 2025
393 MB FLAC/direct link

OK, now a word about what I did with the music -- and apologies for failing to be able to identify three of the tunes -- which was a little on the nutbag side of the gated hospice for the terminally obsessed, even for me.

There are unfortunately no ROIOs of Azam Ali or her (yes, they are sublime, as you'll hear) band Niyaz, save a couple of talk-heavy radio spots and a few not-so-well-captured concerts that are on YouTube in HD. I took the audio from two distinct, pro-shot recordings of one of them from 2018 -- where one was more soundboard-y and the other more audience-heavy -- and matrixed them up in a pleasing configuration without phase cancellation, making them (IMO) into something more than what they were on their own.

Then I broke the result apart in Audacity using the stem separator in there, excavating the mostly-buried vocals that you need to be able to hear for the thing to be what it's supposed to be and represent: that is, a vocalist at the peak of her considerable powers, mesmerizing a roomful of largely uninitiated and (at first) sub-attentive audients with what's coming out of her mouth. Once reassembled and remastered/sonically optimized, it wasn't perfect -- the band is still kind of hazy and less-than-distinct behind her -- but somewhat more than the sum of its kinda-crappily-captured parts.

Anyway, it's her 55th birthday today, so I thought I would make the extra effort and sneak this in before midnight in honor of Azam Ali, as enchanting and beguiling a singer as I've gotten to discover -- thanks to my huggable hubs!!! -- in the last five years of living!--J.

Charterhouse Arrest: Mike Rutherford 75

 

Genesis - Abacab


Well, it's October, and there's one Genesis guy I have never covered, so it's time -- in the words of a garden variety hipster reference from 1973 -- for an unaccompanied bass pedal solo.

It's appropriate because not only is it his 75th birthday today, but they also just released the long-awaited, 50th anniversary box set of the Prog Rock opus The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway the other day.

The live Shrine Auditorium 1975 set still has the ridiculous, 20-years-later overdubs, but we went over that in January last, I'm fairly certain.

Yes, these dudes. If there's a band that's messed up the reissues behind their back catalog worse, I hope never to meet them.

In August I went so far as to reconstitute their whole catalog up to 1984, downmixing the 5.1 surround mixes from the 2007/8 box sets... the ones that avoid the nasty, ear-immolating compression present on the concurrent CDs from those sets.

I would share those, but what happened last month, when some of their closely-held, unreleased live tapes got leaked, chastens my enthusiasm for such a disclosure.

They're notorious for holding onto these kinds of things because they have (gasp!) wrong notes in them. Even their studio catalog exists in a dodgy, substandard form and now that they've sold their post-Peter Gabriel catalog to Concord Music, there's not much reason to expect that will ever change.

There's not another Hall of Fame, superstar act for which that's as true as it is for Genesis. I hope someday they get hip, before it's too late, and make sure that before they all croak there's acceptable, modern iterations of every salient thing they did available to the world in a proper form.

Take this concert, for instance. By all reasonable accounts, this run of LA Forum Invisible Touch shows should be available for purchase as a giant, exhaustive box set, right? We're talking about one of the most popular albums ever made by humans here.

But they don't, and likely never will. So it's up to idiots such as I to sit here for weeks, meticulously reconstructing a full concert from all the best possible, mostly pre-broadcast sources.

Full disclosure: I fully lost interest in these guys after 1983, but I was in attendance at one of the MSG shows that preceded this one two weeks previous, so in lieu of posting that one (it was in the infamous August leak!), I set about turning this one into a project to produce what must surely be the best version of it yet constructed in the ROIOverse.

Genesis
The Forum
Los Angeles, California USA
10.15+16.1986

01 Bill Minkin introduction
02 Mama
03 Abacab
04 Land of Confusion
05 Domino intro
06 Domino
07 In Too Deep intro
08 In Too Deep
09 Follow You Follow Me
10 That's All
11 The Brazilian
12 Home By the Sea intro
13 Home By the Sea/Second Home By the Sea
14 Bill Minkin introduction to part 2
15 Tonight, Tonight, Tonight intro
16 Tonight, Tonight, Tonight
17 Throwing It All Away
18 In the Cage intro
19 In the Cage/In That Quiet Earth/Supper's Ready
20 Invisible Touch
21 drum duet
22 Los Endos
23 Turn It On Again/oldies medley
24 Bill Minkin outro
25 Your Own Special Way (bonus track, Sydney 1986)

Total time: 2:34:31
disc break goes after Track 13

Tony Banks - keyboards & vocals
Mike Rutherford - bass, guitars, bass pedals & vocals
Phil Collins - drums, percussion & vocals
Daryl Stuermer - guitars, bass & vocals
Chester Thompson - drums & percussion

crossfaded composite of all available KBFH preFM CD issues of these shows
embellished with missing bits from 320/48k audio streamed from Wolfgang's Vault, converted to 16/44 CD Audio
spectral analysis of the CDs is lossless past 22 kHz; streamed material is lossless to 20 kHz
Track 25 is a bonus track, with strings, from Sydney Entertainment Centre, Sydney AU 12.20.1986
from the 2000 "Genesis Archive #2" box set on the Virgin label
assembled, edited and remastered for unity by EN, September 2025
1.02 GB FLAC/direct link

So anyway, Michael Rutherford -- as responsible as anyone for the existence of Genesis, having endured his teenage years imprisoned in Headmaster Hell at English public school, his guitars confiscated as "symbolic of the Revolution" -- is the big platinum 75 today!

Obviously he's got more than just Genesis (easily one of most beloved & beguiling bands of our human era here) on his rez, what with his hitmaking Mechanics machinery and such.

I may go on a binge and return right away with some completely different -- yet just as enchanting! -- sheeit tomorrow, not sure yet. But given that I've covered the other four classic G boys, I thought it would have been a dick move to gloss over or otherwise forget Mike Rutherford on a milestone day such as this. So I hope, in his honor, you'll enjoy these funny things that happened on the way to, and at, The Forum almost 40 years ago!--J.