Sax On Television: The Wayne Event

Well here we are, poised and ready for the second of this week's wildly divergent birthday tributations... today's is not about the World's Best Drummer -- who didn't make it to 33 -- but possibly the Greatest Living Jazz Composer, whom today reaches 83.

The name of Wayne Shorter is synonymous with some of the greatest achievements of modern music. He made his first record in 1959, and by 2016 he is in many ways the last man standing. There's a few left. Sonny. Shepp. But of the older generation, the compositional aspect might put Wayne at the very top of the still-among-us.

His own Vee-Jay sides of the early 1960s. The Second Great Quintet of Miles Davis. Weather Report. His own groups for 30 years on the road. Why, just last night he, Herbie Hancock, Carlos Santana and Carlos' wife Cindy Blackman inaugurated their super fusion group MegaNova at The Hollywood Bowl. Not bad for the eve of your 83rd birthday, eh? And here we were applauding ourselves for getting the garbage out to the curb on time this morning.

But as I stated, it's not just the longevity, or the seminal groups he has played with, or the watershed bands he has helped invent. It isn't just the lyrical, ultramelodic flair in his solos, or the sense that he creates in one that every note is both completely off the top of his head and perfectly, immaculately placed as if it was designed and implemented to be in that exact spot. Those are significant, but what makes him the giant he is is the writing.

My friend, a pretty awesome guitarist himself, once said "Wayne tunes are great," and I dunno that there can be four truer words spoken in the English language. Lost. Juju. Adam's Apple. Nefertiti. Maybe the best of them all, Footprints. Wayne is the only guy ever to bring charts to Miles that Miles did not alter in some significant manner. You don't have to change anything when everything is in its right place.

Did I mention he co-founded Weather Report, with Josef Zawinul? That's only the most legendary, and one of the longest tenured, groups in the annals of fusion. If you had a list of every important record he's made or played on you'd need another page or ten.

One of the finest living Maestros deserves a bit of a megapost, so leave it to me to bring a whole bunch of bytes for your buffers. What we have here is three different television performances from three distinct Wayne Shorter eras: an unissued broadcast of Miles' Lost Quintet (taped in 1969), a smoking hot Norwegian TV segment of the early Weather Report (from 1972), and an Italian broadcast -- taped in the center of the region torn apart by yesterday's devastating earthquake -- from when WR ended and he first went out on his own as a touring bandleader (1986).

Wayne Shorter

TV broadcasts
1969-1972-1986

1.

Miles Davis Quintet
Juan-les-Pins Festival
Antibes, France
7.25.1969

01 Directions
02 Miles Runs the Voodoo Down
03 Milestones
04 Footprints
05 'Round Midnight
06 It's About That Time
07 Sanctuary
08 The Theme

Total time: 1:04:30

Miles Davis - trumpet
Wayne Shorter - tenor and soprano saxophones
Chick Corea - electric piano
Dave Holland - bass
Jack DeJohnette - drums

PAL DVD of what could possibly be the ORTF-TV master tape

4.15 GB

2.

Weather Report
Molde Jazz Festival
Molde Kino
Molde, Norway
8.4+5.1972

01 Vertical Invader
02 Orange Lady
03 Directions
04 Dr. Honoris Causa
05 Umbrellas/Seventh Arrow
06 Joe Zawinul piano solo
07 It's About That Time

Total time: 40:06

Joe Zawinul - keyboards
Wayne Shorter - saxophones
Miroslav Vitous -  bass
Eric Gravatt - drums
Dom Um Romao - percussion

flv file of an NRK rebroadcast webstream from Summer 2016

696 MB

3.

Wayne Shorter Quartet
Umbria Jazz
Perugia, Italy
7.20.1986

01 The Last Silk Hat
02 Who Goes There!
03 Beauty and the Beast
04 Face On the Barroom Floor

Total time: 48:52

Wayne Shorter - tenor & soprano saxophones
Mitchell Forman - keyboards
Gary Willis - bass
Tom Brechtlein - drums

PAL DVD of a 2nd gen VHS of an RAI-TV broadcast
3.04 GB

DVDs are all in the same folder/August 2016 archive link

That's a lot, but then so is Wayne. I made three separate Mega links so you all can just grab one or collect 'em all, your choice. If it were me, I'd be hungrily clicking on the lot, as all three of these performances are unissued and provide three unique windows into what makes this titan of Jazz such a figure of renown and still such a vital force in the music of our age. You know the drill: pull 'em down, crank 'em up and let's give it up for Wayne Shorter -- born this day in 1933 -- and whom we all hope lives until age 183.--J.

Who Moon Resources

Welcome to the first of this week's big birthday tributes! For this first one, I have taken the liberty of jamming two sticks of dynamite into this page, which will explode when you click on the links.

He would have been 70 today, how loony is that? Obviously he wasn't interested in lasting half as long, and he's been gone a very long time, but the intervening years have not dulled the appreciation of what he did and how he did it.

It's never easy to be considered the best at something, especially when it's something so subjective, as in "Who is the greatest drummer of all time?" Especially when you know you really aren't, and you've lifted much of your style from someone from another realm the people listening and calling you the greatest aren't familiar enough with to make the connection.

It's easy to fathom how it all happened if you look at his personality and how he was off the 'stand. Always in need of attention, craving the spotlight at all times, never quite settled in to life away from the cheering crowds. Difficulty switching off the "performing" switch. 

If you look at his style of playing through the prism of his personality, it becomes obvious why he played as he did. You see, most drummers are there to keep the beat, 1-2-3-4. Their fills and rolls are dramatic devices to motivate the music and supply drama, inserted at the appropriate moments.

This gent? The exact inverse of the traditional approach. Always on a roll or a fill; the beat interrupts the drama rather than the traditional other-way-'round. It drove the audiences mad, but it must have driven his fellow bandmates even madder, in an entirely different way.

I once heard Pete Townshend say that he was the only one who played the beat in The Who. His mates were off on another trip, so it was up to him to curtail the cacaphony and introduce some sort of recognizable structure; the drummer and bassist were in no way interested in such things.

In all honesty, Pete's skinsman was only emulating the bomb-dropping style of a prominent Jazz drummer the whole time. If Mitch Mitchell brought the style of Elvin Jones into Rock via his membership in The Jimi Hendrix Experience, then by extension it is truthful to say that Keith Moon -- who'd have been 70 years old today, had he not exterminated himself with drugs and alcohol -- brought to Rock the always-pushing, high energy style of Jazz dynamo Gene Krupa.

You always hear that Keith was unusual because rather than the traditional drum techniques that take the player from side to side for rolls and fills, Keith's drive to animate and dramatize the music at all times molded him more in the Krupa aesthetic of back-to-front, where the player is always pushing forward to the toms you can see him smashing with typical gusto in the above pic.

Add to the fracas the idea that you knew at the end he was gonna demolish the whole kit, and you get the idea. I mean, he always looked about two seconds from demolishing the kit during the whole set anyway, am I right? He is possibly the first -- and only -- Rock drummer who is essentially the lead instrument in the band.

Everyone knows the tragic end of his story, and how he overdosed on the pills prescribed to him to combat his rampant alcoholism that saw him begin each day out of bed with a bottle each of champagne and brandy. He was only 32 years old when he died, but if you fast forward to now you'll have noticed that his name has never drifted far from the "Greatest Drummer Ever" discussion. 

How to celebrate the Loon of the skins -- he's even thought to have given Led Zeppelin their name --  then? I have broken out the heavyweight guns, and will share what is commonly held to be the best and best-sounding Who boot ever. It's the station reels from Dutch Radio, remastered by the adept fan who located them, of the first performance ever of Tommy -- and one many feel is the definitive rendering of this opus -- in an actual opera venue.

The Who
Het Concertgebouw
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
9.29.1969

CD1
01 house announcement
02 Heaven and Hell
03 I Can't Explain
04 Fortune Teller
05 Tattoo
06 Young Man Blues
07 A Quick One, While He's Away
08 Substitute
09 Happy Jack
10 I'm a Boy
11 Overture
12 It's a Boy
13 1921
14 Amazing Journey
15 Sparks
16 Eyesight to the Blind (The Hawker)

CD2
01 Christmas
02 The Acid Queen
03 Pinball Wizard
04 Do You Think It's Alright?
05 Fiddle About
06 Tommy Can You Hear Me?
07 There's a Doctor
08 Go to the Mirror
09 Smash the Mirror
10 Miracle Cure
11 Sally Simpson
12 I'm Free
13 Tommy's Holiday Camp
14 We're Not Gonna Take It
15 Summertime Blues
16 Shakin' All Over
17 My Generation

Total time: 2:03:27

Peter Townshend - guitar, vocals, percussion
Roger Daltrey - vocals & percussion
John Entwhistle - bass and vocals
Keith Moon - drums, percussion & vocals

1st gen pre-FM reels of the complete concert, located, transferred to mini-disc and remastered by Prof. Stoned in 2005 and 2006

854 MB FLAC/August 2016 archive link

This performance is deeply shredding, no doubt about the fact that they are delivering the goods with this one. If you're gonna play the first Rock Opera in an opera house, you better bring it. Anyway I'd invite you as usual to pull it down and crank it up... when it's over you might refrain from throwing your TV into the swimming pool or driving your Lincoln Town Car into it, or not! It's all up to you, but whatever you do you oughta have an inordinate amount of fun in honor of Keith Moon, Rock's most feral, high impact drummer -- yes, Jim Henson modeled the Muppets' "Animal" on you-know-who -- born this day in 1946 and in no danger of ever being forgotten.--J.

8.23.1946 - 9.7.1978

Vibraphone Home

All right, let's begin a new era for this page by catching up to an unfortunate passing from earlier in the week.

I have attended countless concerts and live performances in my nearly 50 years, and seen some artists multiple times over multiple decades. On Monday last, the artist I have witnessed play live the most of any left us after one of the most distinguished careers in the annals of American music.

I was researching this post and was going through the list of how many records he played on, both as a leader and a participant, and I stopped after I lost track past 100 several times. If you think about it, he is the man who appears the most on those seminal Blue Note sides of the 1960s. 

Dozens of albums that are considered bedrock Jazz catalogue and will be forever. Dolphy's Out to Lunch. Jackie McLean's Destination... Out! Donald Byrd's Ethiopian Knights. It's a list to impress even the most cynical sourpuss among us, and that's before we include his own albums like Stick Up! and Components, Total Eclipse and of course the seminal San Francisco, with go-to co-conspirator and tenor titan Harold Land.

A career spanning over 50 years as an ambassador of Jazz and possibly the greatest living practitioner of his instrument (Gary Burton, close 2nd). Universally loved by players and listeners alike. Probably played as many gigs over those 5+ decades as anyone you could name in any musical field. The vibes just got a little darker down here, folks, for the great Bobby Hutcherson has left us after a lifetime of monumental music making.

I've been cooking up a sweet little set in tribute to this swinging Maestro of the vibraphone and marimba all week, and it's ready at last for your enjoyment. It's the complete two sets of the classic 1969 Hutcherson/Land Quintet, recorded over two nights at the Juan-les-Pins festival in Antibes, France... the same one from which that famous Miles Davis set with the Lost Quintet comes. 

I fixed up the first night to sonically match the second, and even tossed in a third disc containing a professor goody remaster of performances of the same band from Hamburg during 1969/1970, as well as an utterly wild track recorded for Dutch radio during the same period.

Bobby Hutcherson/Harold Land Quintets

Europe, 1969-1970

1.
Juan-les-Pins Festival
Antibes, France
7.25.1969

01 Spiral
02 Theme from "Blow Up"
 03 Herzog
04 Maiden Voyage
 05 Man On Mercury

Total Time: 56:20

Harold Land - tenor sax, flute, oboe
Bobby Hutcherson - vibraphone, marimba, percussion
Stanley Cowell - piano
Reggie Johnson - bass
Joe Chambers - drums

master FM recording, remastered by me

2.
Juan-les-Pins Festival
Antibes, France
7.26.1969

01 Same Shame
02 The Peace-Maker
03 Spiral
04 Blues Mind Matter

Total time: 1:00:02

Harold Land - tenor sax, flute, oboe
Bobby Hutcherson - vibraphone, marimba, percussion
Stanley Cowell - piano
Reggie Johnson - bass
Joe Chambers - drums

spectral analysis says: pre-FM master reels

3.
EMI-Bovema Studios
Heemstede, The Netherlands
5.28.1970

01 radio intro
02 Our Mothers, the Creators
03 radio outro

Total time: 14:10

if you're burning 3CDs, this can go at the end of the second Antibes night

Harold Land - tenor sax, flute, oboe
Bobby Hutcherson - vibraphone, marimba, percussion
Hal Galper - piano
Reggie Johnson - bass
Joe Chambers - drums

master FM recording

4.
unknown venue
Hamburg, Germany
5.29.1970 + August 1969

01 Four
02 Oleo
03 Same Shame
04 Theme from "Blow Up"
05 Oleo (incomplete, fades out)

Total time: 1:07:38

Tracks 01-02: 5.29.1970
Tracks 03-05: 8.1969 (exact date unknown)

Harold Land - tenor sax, flute, oboe
Bobby Hutcherson - vibraphone, marimba, percussion
Hal Galper - piano, Tracks 01-02
Stanley Cowell - piano, Tracks 03-05
Reggie Johnson - bass
Joe Chambers - drums

FM broadcast, remastered and pitch corrected by professor goody

all sets zipped together

1003 MB FLAC/August 2016 archive link

So yes, like I was saying there's news to report. Beginning with today (post #251, can you believe that?), the links to the archival shares that accompany these posts will last more than just the wetransfer week... in fact, I am trying to make it so they last forever, starting with the eternal Mr. Hutcherson here. 

All links of the past will begin to be reanimated using the awesome Kiwi cloud service Mega, and all new posts will be linked to there as well. It's been three years, almost, so I figure I am safe enough from the RIAA SWAT Brigades to begin to craft this page into the permanent resource for the highest quality unissued music that I intended it to be at the outset.

Anyway there you are, 3 and 1/2 hours of this legendary collaboration, traveling the mists of time to a hard drive or listening device nearest you. I shall return on the weekend with more, but for now I want you to remember the unforgettable Maestro Bobby Hutcherson, who lived 75 years and gave us more than 50 of them in crafting a legacy for the ages. Vibe on, Bobby!--J.

1.27.1941 – 8.15.2016

The Sauerday Evening Post #2

Good day and welcome to the second installment of insane German Rock mayhem from the WDR vaults!

Last weekend we popped the first Die Deutschrock Nacht, on its tenth anniversary of broadcast. This weekend, it's déjà vu all over again and maximum schadenfreude on all the Krautrock haters!

There isn't much to say... if you love this kind of music, you're likely already bypassing my empty, pagefiller words and clicking hungrily at the belowlinks like some sort of feral wildebeest of the Black Forest. If not, you're warily dialing Interpol and instructing me to step away from the keyboard and no one gets hurt.

As with last week's excessive festivities, almost 10GB of shit wasn't enough, so I took the liberty of compiling and remastering another CD's worth of the live performances from these footages, this time focusing on instrumental jams as promised.

It's a lotta bytes to download, but well worth it as these clips will likely never again be unleashed by German TV all at once, over two successive marathons, like this. And you'll get to see stuff like this on American TV roughly around the time Herr Trump releases his tax info, with details about the offshore child sex rings he runs off the coast of Alaska. What the fuck, that tawdry sociopath must be making the Bering Strait again. I hope his balls catch on fire and explode on live TV... Die Donaldrocks Nacht.

But I digress.... what was I saying? Oh yes, look! It's Fred Braceful!!! How many blogs give you Fred Braceful footage? Et Cetera and Wolfgang Dauner are one of my favorite bands/artists of this genre and you'll find them well repped here, with 20 minutes of uncategorizable, trippy-dippy ethno-jazzrock. Sigi Schwab plays sitar like a boss too. Who else gives you Sigi Schwab footage, on sitar or otherwise?!?!?! Admit that this is a blog without any direction whatsoever, where you get Bobbie Gentry one day and Mani Neumeier the next. It looks dope, but there's no hope... it's Oxymoron!

OK, enough of my nonsense, let's get to the substance portion of our presentation, shall we? I only write whatever stupid stuff comes to mind so I'll have a shred of legal hope for a Fair Use defense when they haul me into Copyright Court and condemn me to death by Heino for posting too much Guru Guru footage anyway. What can I say? I'm a Schlager blogger if e're there were one.

Die Deutschrock Nacht II
WDR-TV, Germany
8.13.2006

DVD1

1968
Joy & the Hit Kids - I Hold No Grudge

1969
Petards - Everybody Knows Mathilda
Tangerine Dream - Bath Tube Session
Wonderland - Jump Anna Trampaleen

1970
Amon Düül II - Eye Shaking King
Guru Guru - Der LSD Marsch
Can - Dead Lock
Ton Steine Scherben - Macht Kaputt Was Euch Kaputt Macht
Joy Unlimited - Oh Darling
Kin Ping Meh - Everything's My Way
Xhol Caravan - All Green
Kraftwerk - Ruckzuck
Amon Düül II - Between the Eyes

1971
Frumpy - Indian Rope Man
Tangerine Dream - Ossiach Lake
Can - Paperhouse
Ton Steine Scherben - Solidarität
Ruphus Zuphall - Portland Town
Floh De Cologne - Profitgeier (Wir Stehen Am Rande)

Total time: 1:24:51

DVD2

1971
Lucifer's Friend - Ride the Sky
Hotzenplotz - Ohne Titel
Amon Düül II - Kronwinkl 13
Emergency - Times Passed By
Dies Irae - Trip
Popol Vuh - Bettina
Et Cetera - Ohne Titel
Kraftwerk - Rückstoss-Gondoliere
Bröselmaschine - Light Flight
Frumpy - How the Gypsy Was Born

1972
Epitaph - Early Morning
Hölderlin - Requiem für Einen Wicht
Epitaph - Stop, Look & Listen
Frumpy - Going to the Country

1973
Subject Esquire - Grass
Popol Vuh - Kyrie
Kin Ping Meh - Sunday Morning Eve
Tritonus - Ohne Titel
Scorpions - This Is My Song
Klaus Doldinger's Passport - Schirokko

Total time: 1:46:54

DVD3

1973
Atlantis - Days of Giving

1974
Kraan - Jerk of Life
Karthago - Goin' Down
Tiger B. Smith - We're the Tiger Bunch
Scorpions - Speedy's Coming

1975
Hölderlin - Honey Pot
Kin Ping Meh - Good Time Gracie
Seesselberg - Synthetic

1976
Franz K. - Au Weia,Mensch Meier
Tangerine Dream - Barock 3
Ougenweide - Willkommen
Hölderlin - Circus

1977
Klaus Schulze - For Barry Graves
Eloy - The Sun Song
Can - Don't Say No

1978
Novalis - Sonnenwende

1979
Embryo - Try to Do

2005
Bröselmaschine - Gedanken
Tangerine Dream - Jean d'Arc (Auszug)

Total time: 1:47:25

PAL DVDs of the original DIE DEUTSCHEROCK NACHT event on WDR-TV in August of 2006,
comprising all original footage from the German TV archives

9.25 GB total/August 2016 archive link

'Oxymoron'

Kosmische & Effect 

(WDR-TV, 1970-77)

01 Kraftwerk - Köln II

02 Popol Vuh - Bettina

03 Et Cetera - Ohne Titel

04 Guru Guru - Oxymoron

05 Passport - Uranus

06 Klaus Schulze - For Barry Graves

07 Kraan - Vollgas Ahoi

08 Seesselberg - Synthetic

09 Achim Reichel - Eisenpferde

10 Tangerine Dream - Barock 3

11 Xhol Caravan - Talking to My Soul

12 Kraftwerk - Rückstoss-Gondoliere

Total time: 1:19:58

instrumental selections from Die Deutschrock Nacht, remastered and compiled by me

430 MB FLAC here

So there you is: 11 hours and 2 CDs of prime, unissued German Rockfilm, not sold in stores. I'll return soon with more posts -- hopefully substantially smaller than 20GB but no less stimulating -- in the not-too-long. Now put on your lederhosen, pull down your condimental diet for the day -- you'll need lotsa Kraut for that sausage -- and Deutschrock with your bocks out all weekend! Enjoy, y'all.--J.

Brasileiro Plane

It's Sunday and time to continue the busy August doings with another birthday post, this one concerning one of my all-time favorites.

Today's birthday guy has had quite the life and quite the story. If you recall last month we did MPB legend Gilberto Gil's 75th, and he and today's honoree are inextricably linked by more than just the fact that they are currently on tour together.

There aren't too many musicians who can say that their music was at one time so dangerous that the government came to their door and took them away, but this is one of them here. Fewer still can say they were deported for making Art, and forced to live in a foreign country to which they had never been before, on almost no notice.

Yet fewer still can claim to have made arguably their best record -- and maybe the best record in the history of MPB -- while in that exile. In fact, no one can claim all these things, save perhaps the aforementioned Mr. Gil... and Caetano Veloso, who was born this day in 1942 and has been starting shit ever since.

If you had to pick who the global Ambassador of Brazilian music is, it'd also likely be down to those two guys, and the nod might go to Mr. V here. Notoriously bad Beatles cover tunes on his albums aside, Caetano Veloso has made some of the most enduring LPs in all music, not just that indigenous to his homeland. His output during the heady period from 1968 to 1976 stands alongside any songwriter of any genre, IMO.

When they came and got him, I'm sure he thought the generals' coup included his execution. But instead of killing him and risking total revolt of the youth of Brazil, they just "suggested" he split for awhile. He (and Gil) ended up in London in the winter, having never even seen snow before. Completely lost and alone, the two of them each made brilliant records while away, with Veloso's -- titled, variably, Caetano Veloso, or London, London, or A Little More Blue -- a collection of some of his very best songs concerning the situation.

I think the authorities were so deathly afraid of him back then because his songs work the most vitriolically political content into themselves whilst still retaining a lightness and innocence about them. He uses humor to illustrate the oppression he sees better than almost any writer you can name, with tracks like Maria Bethânia -- she's his sister, also a major MPB star, and that song is him writing a letter home to see if things are getting better -- that get into your unconscious with their wit and melodic flavor. 

Of course, it all blew over and the generals let him (and his compatriot Gil) come home in 1971... he immediately made arguably his finest record -- my personal favorite of his, called Transa -- which details the whole exile trip almost better than the previous platter in London did. Fast forward to today and he has never stopped making music, with a couple dozen albums to his credit and status as one of the most revered musicians Brazil will ever produce.

Years and years ago I made a compilation tape of my favorite songs of his... it started as a cassette in the 1990s and became a CD around 2004. I have modified it a few times since -- most recently to include his very rare version of his most covered track, Cinema Olympia, which he never put on any album -- and I bring it to you today in honor of this most splendid singer/songwriter.

Caetano Veloso

Alfômega

1969-76

01 It's a Long Way

02 Maria Bethânia

03 The Empty Boat

04 A Little More Blue

05 Alfômega

06 Nine Out of Ten

07 Não Identificado

08 Sugar Cane Fields Forever

09 Cinema Olympia

10 Let It Bleed

11 Irene

12 London, London

13 You Don't Know Me

14 Guá

15 Lost In the Paradise

16 If You Hold a Stone

Total time: 1:19:10

compilation from the "67/74" and "75/82" box sets

475 MB FLAC/August 2016 archive link

I hope you enjoy my little mixtape, over 20 years old and still jamming in my phone, which has taken the place of the cassette deck as my go-to music device of choice. And remember to appreciate Caetano Veloso, 74 years young today and still at it at a high level... he knows that when The Man comes to remove you from the set, that means you're probably singing the right songs.--J.

if you hold a stone

hold it in your hand

if you feel the weight

you'll never be late

to understand