Early John McLaughlin live recording with clean tone!!
Jazzcat | 02/24/2004
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Interesting CD. Cool for the fact that it has John McLaughlin on it playing a clean toned electric guitar in 1967 which predates his appearance on the 1968 release by The Gordon Beck Quartet-"Experiments With Pops" recording by one year. The Danny Thompson CD is short, it is just under 25 minutes in length. Everyone plas well on this and it is great to hear McLaughlin in this early setting.At the end of each track you can hear the crowd applause and then it is faded. To my ears this most certainly is from a B.B.C. radio show/broadcast from 1967 with the announcements between tracks deleted. This would seem to explain the 25 minute length as most of the jazz programs on the BBC back then were 30 minutes long and if you took out the announcements you'd have about 25 minutes of music. The sound quality isn't too bad, you can tell it was a bit compressed when they mastered it to eliminate some background hiss but it doesn't detract too much for an enjoyable listening experience.With all that said this is a must have CD IF you are a John McLaughlin fan. And IF you are a McLaughlin fan then you absolutely MUST pick up the Gordon Beck Quartet-"Experiments With Pops" CD which features some blistering and amazing solos and comping by John!! The CD is on Art of Life Records and can be ordered at Amazon.com or their web site."
Unbelievable recording
Jazzcat | Genoa, Italy Italy | 08/07/2004
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is one of those albums, concerts I might say, where everything went out incredibly well. What the music contained here is, it's quite clear. Jazz, the bebop way played at the highest level with a young but already stellar John McLaughlin. I prefer this records to a lot of more recent albums from him. John here had a really good clean tone, dry, clean without that acid chorus (at last!) and he played straightly bebop lines. This is bebop, not avan garde, not fusion, not indian, not intellectualism, it is bebop played in trio without drums in the right way, with great focus. We all know John but who remind nowadays Danny Thompson? And what about the great tenorman here, Tony Roberts? But these guys were tremendous players? Where the h..l did they go? Why aren't they play jazz today? I don't know. It's true, this album is short, only 25 minutes of music, but these may be the best 25 music minutes of your life. The music has a sort of light quality ... somewhere it has some empty moments due to the absence of drum play, but it's good. You have to like this kind of situation, I like it very much. Fantastic the track list, the opener is "Celia" a 1948 tune by Bud Powell with a magnificient complex and kaleidoscopic bebop theme, melodical and challenging as every bebop theme should be, here played with the right attitude, with swing to die for and great clarity in the solo sections. Then you have a medium fast blues, then the haunting Coltrane's ballad "naima" then a 6/8 blues, by Miles Davis's pen "All blues". Last two track are "In your own sweet way" the splendid Brubeck's standard and a Charlie Parker's anatoll riff, "Anthropology" aka "Thriving from a riff". I can't ask more to a bop record. I love love, love this album. It is magnificient. Five stars are not enough."
Track Listings (6) - Disc #1