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Warmed Up
11 Jun2007
A year ago (or so), we started D:O with the post below. We had no idea what, exactly, we were warming up for, but whatever we had in mind, the past twelve months have exceeded our expectations by a wide margin. As we’ve said before, we’d be doing this if no one were reading it and responding to it, but it’s a hell of a lot more fun, more rewarding, more challenging, more MORE, with the community that’s helped carry this thing along, here and elsewhere — see at right for many more ports of call. Thanks to all commenters, readers, lurkers, labels, bloggers, music makers, tinkers, tailors, sailors, and flailers. Oh, and happy birthday to us.
WARM UP
The Art Ensemble
The Art Ensemble 1967/68
Nessa : 1968
Lester Bowie, kelp horn; Roscoe Mitchell, alto sax; Malachi Favors Maghostut, bass/kazoo. Â
A throat-clearing exercise.
A group improvisation.
Something to get the juices flowing.
A building all-encompassing drone.
A series of beautifully overlapping overtones.
Two minutes of pure sublime sound that proved The Art Ensemble, even before they added the â??Of Chicago,â? could challenge minimalists like LaMonte Young at their own game.
Among other things.
A perfect way to start out a recording session.
Or inaugurate a new venture.
A warm up.
32 Responses to Warmed Up
g. camphire
June 11th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
you guys rock! i mean, uh, jazz…
seriously, you’re performing an incredibly valuable & entertaining service, especially for a broke-ass musician and vinyl addict who couldn’t possibly hear all this stuff otherwise.
muchas gracias, and mucho mas!
Robert
June 11th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
You’re doing a fantastic job here, guys – keep on with it.
Looking forward to the next 12 months. Happy, happy birthday to you!
centrifuge
June 11th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
happy birthday guys :)
Antonio Antunes
June 11th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Congratulations and many more to come!
For me (down here in Rio) You are a fantastic source of entertainment
and information. Thanks.
Arvid
June 11th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Happy birthday!
Thanks to you I now know who people like Abdullah Ibrahim and Sonny Sharrock are, and plan to buy records with them. There’s so much good music I never would have heard of at all if not for you guys. Thank you!
Jeoff
June 11th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Gentlemen:
You’ve provided me (us) with so much lovely, lovely stuff. Thank you! Many’s the performer you’ve clued me to, leading to many purchases and download chases (OOP stuff only, of course). Keep ‘er goin’ eh?
A Fan to the North
Swoody
June 11th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Thank you. Sincerely, thank you for the effort, detail, consideration, and love you put into this. I have discovered and rediscovered some incredible music through D:O.
You guys are tops.
whitehouse
June 11th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
happy anniversary
happy anniversary
happy anniversary
HAAAAAAAAAAApy anniversary!
thanks for the tuneage!
S
ledrew
June 11th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
whitehouse: I love that song. Thanks for the well wishes, everyone!
C. M.
June 12th, 2007 at 4:45 am
Bon anniversaire…
Félicitations!
Merci!
Thoralf
June 12th, 2007 at 7:58 am
Congratulations from Germany – great site. I’ve learned a lot.
Thoralf
peter breslin
June 12th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Only one year? Good God almighty! Too much sugar for a dime, if you ask me. Packing so much content into a year makes it seem like D:O has been around ever since Al Gore invented these newfangled interwebs.
Discoveries for me (up to my ears in this music since 1975 or so) have been AMM, Karou Abe, Jacques Coursil, those great Steve Lacy/Mal Waldron duets, a renewed appreciation for Andrew Hill, Brotherhood of Breath, waking up to frikkin’ Randy Weston (!), Joe Harriott, Horace Tapscott, Ric Colbeck, grudging respect for Dave Douglas. The reminder factor has been powerful as well, as many of your posts send me back to recordings I haven’t dug out in a long time. Then there’s been the rescue factor, with tracks like Dogon AD or Theme de YoYo that have long been unplayable due to being on heavily compromised vinyl.
Finally, there’s the evangelical side effect of my airing a lot of D:O tracks over the radio and handing out your URL.
I just was a member of a panel discussing independent media versus corporate media conglomerates and it occurs to me that the last remaining hope for the dissemination of “unmarketable” music is in blogs and web communities just like D:O.
PB
Ricky
June 12th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Happy Birthday.
Keep up the good work.
Its my favorite blog.
Steve Smith
June 12th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Happy anniversaryâ?¦thanks for all the fine work, the new discoveries and the re-introductions to old friends.
Ethan Iverson
June 12th, 2007 at 11:47 am
My favorite D:O! music so far has been Cecil Taylor’s “Garden,” which I have waited a long time to hear. Long live the human spirit!
Happy birthday, and also thanks for the consistent support of DTM. “And we begin to know what it is what we don’t know” (right sidebar @ the moment) is too funny.
The internet has its faults (anyone else here stopped reading as many books because of it?) but how the web enables the passionate sharing of information unavailable anywhere else is just amazing. I’m not sure, but I think some healing of old grievances and the clearing up of old misconceptions is slowly being done, and that’s because of sites like this.
Keep it coming, D:O!
Requests: More Air, rare Ayler, European Don Cherry, bootleg Old and New Dreams, Ornette with Blood Ulmer and Billy Higgins, and some totally obscure and out Kenny Wheeler that I know lurks somewhere in an English record collection.
Also, if that Braxton, Wheeler, Dave Holland, Barry Altschul quartet stuff on Arista isn’t ever coming out again, you know what to do.
Chris
June 12th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Happy birthday–thanks greatly for the fantastic tracks you’ve put up, and for shining a light on an era of music which still remains sadly neglected (by the general public, not y’all, naturally).
Matija
June 12th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Guys,
much thanks for all these beautiful sounds, for me it is kind of “blast from the past” that put me immediatelly back into my academic years in late ’70. when it was THE MUSIC.
One day I saw 3 record covers only in the window of the small record shop in Vienna, Austria, Postgasse street: Afganistan folk music, Eric Satie and Ayler, and that was It. Sorry for this personal escapade but your site is such a personnal link to those time.
As you regular visitor, please, keep going !!!!!
jab
June 12th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Thank you for a year of great music; and great writing of a neglected music.
A side comment, for Ethan Iverson: that is a wonderful essay about Branford and the 90′s. As for Branford, I agree with you – I saw him with his quartet at Yoshis a few months ago, and on the first tune (Blackzila), the four of them took the music so far out, with such intensity, it was astonishing. Then they followed it up with almost repertoire music, a Monk tune played like Monk, a Clifford Brown tune played like Roach and Brown. It was good but a letdown from the envelope-pushing music that started the show. A few musicians that I think deserve a great deal of credit for blending the two realms of music you mention; Jason Moran, Vijay Iyer (who’s Reimagining disc is simply incredible), and Greg Osby. Not to everyones tastes, but I feel they work their own solutions to a history of jazz that splintered into defending camps.
Richard Kamins
June 12th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Happy Anniversary! It’s been a fun and educational 12 months, rediscovering music from the 70s and 80s. Keep up the good hunting – there’s so much to find, such as Abdul Wadud’s solo Lp and one can never have enough Julius Hemphill. Great work on the Blindfold stuff, too, even if I messed it up.
In Peace.
AK
June 12th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Congratulations from the hometown of Albert Ayler!
Also, I second Mr. Iverson’s motion about Anthony
Braxton’s work on Arista; fine playing and fine recordings…
Dan
June 12th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Happy birthday guys! Thanks for all the great music and insight.
Tim (wallofsound)
June 13th, 2007 at 6:26 am
Congratulations. Not only for lasting longer than many a blog, but for keeping the standard so high; not only for all the great music you post and therefore promote, but for enabling the development of a really knowledgeable community of well-informed and interesting commentators and enthusiasts; not only for setting me on new journeyâ??s of discovery, but also for allowing me to contribute.
John in England
June 13th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
Definitely my favourite port of call since I discovered your site while mourning the passing of Alice Coltrane.
‘Music is the healing force of the universe’…
Thanks for the therapy, and long may you keep up the good work.
Chris M
June 13th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Happy b-day, guys.
rodrigo
June 13th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
~FELIZ CUMPLEANOS D:O, i cant think of a blog that i enjoy more, thank you CJC and DLD for sharing this music and your knowledge. . . much appreciation from tenerife/california~
Richard
June 13th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
yay! happy one year anniversary guys! there’s been so much great music on this site, but I’m going to especially thank you for reminding me about Bill Dixon… thanks!
rod warner
June 14th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
…slightly belated happy birthday… keep on rolling out the good stuff… (by the way the anti-spam word is ‘jug’ for all the Gene Ammons fans…)
doug w
June 14th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
What’s left to say? The accolades are spot on. D:O has continually shown itself as an essential addition to the music blogosphere. Happy anniversary, guys.
David
June 15th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Great blog – can’t imagine what my listening habits would be like without your website! You’ve posted so many rare and intriguing things which have sent me off looking for stuff I’d never have even heard of otherwise. Happy birthday!
Dean
June 15th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Happy blogiversary, guys! Keep up the good work…
matt
June 16th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
i’m a bit late to the B-Day party but want to send my somewhat belated and very best wishes. Congrats on a very impressive first year. Here’s to many many more. i echo all the above accolades. Cosmic tones for mental therapy indeed.
–all the best. cheers!
djll
June 19th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Braxton Arista quartet addicts, your Jones is currently served over at Church #9.
HapBir D:O!