I have a personal love/hate relationship with Record Store Day, but that’s mostly to do with the chances of being able to actually get my hands on the material released any particular year. In recent years, this has much improved, as more labels have released their limited editions in less-limited formats (i.e., digital) after RSD proper. My other issues have to do with some of the so-called collectors who gobble up these limited releases only to resell them for exorbitant amounts on Discogs, eBay, or wherever. I get it, everybody needs to make a living, and this is just one way to do that, but it’s still frustrating. Nevertheless, the one thing I know I can count on for RSD is doors being blown off the vaults as some fresh and exciting music is heard for the first time. And so, let’s dig into a couple of things that have caught my eye (and ears, for those I’ve been privvy to).
Picks
Sun Ra - At The Showcase: Live In Chicago 1976–1977 (Jazz Detective/Elemental Music) This has to be at the top of any fan’s list, previously unreleased recordings from one of Ra’s many peaks. With liners by John Corbett and additional texts from Marshall Allen, David Murray, Dave Burrell, Matthew Shipp, Thurston Moore, Amina Claudine Myers, Jack DeJohnette, Michael Weiss and Reggie Workman. More words to come on this set, as I’m still reading Ahmed Abdullah’s A Strange Celestial Road, this set’s perfect companion.
Shelly Manne - Jazz From the Pacific Northwest (Reel To Real) Yes, I’m looking forwards to these archival recordings from that Shelly Manne, a difficult and troubled man who was also an extremely talented drummer (and fellow member of the tribe). This set spans almost 10 years in Manne’s career, with previously unreleased shows from 1958 and 1966.
Memphis Slim, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Matt “Guitar” Murphy - The Reissued 1963 Blues Festival (Red Lightnin' Records) I haven’t heard this one yet, but it’s a remastered edition of an older recording from a blues festival in Oberhausen, West Germany, featuring Willie Dixon on bass.
Misc
I remain somewhat at sea (appropriately) trying to come to terms with the permanent loss of John Barth. For anyone new or merely casually associated with Barth, aside from the maestro’s works themselves, I can recommend no better place to start than this 1985 interview with George Plimpton, which I’ve been rereading on and off for days.
I start every new project saying, “This one’s going to be simple, this one’s going to be simple.” It never turns out to be. My imagination evidently delights in complexity for its own sake. Much of life, after all, and much of what we admire is essentially complex. For a temperament such as mine, the hardest job in the world—the most complicated task in the world—is to become simpler. There are writers whose gift is to make terribly complicated things simple. But I know my gift is the reverse: to take relatively simple things and complicate them to the point of madness. But there you are: one learns who one is, and it is at one’s peril that one attempts to become someone else.