This Nearly Was Mine

Playing right now: Jason Stein's Locksmith Isidore - A Calculus of Loss (Clean Feed)
(Finally got my Clean Feed package that I ordered at the end of April, at the tail end of their sale. Looked at the sale items and two Locksmith Isidore things were what jumped out at me. This album is freer and looser than the other one I heard, but pretty hot so far. Bass clarinet squonking along with dirty, double-stopped cello - which makes me think of Abdul Wadud with Julius Hemphill - and splattery drums.)

The June issue of JazzTimes showed up yesterday. The cover story is the Top 50 Greatest Tenor Saxophone Albums of all time, with Sonny Rollins on the cover. Several months ago I got a mass email from the brass at JT asking for suggestions on the Tenor list. First I thought that I'd come back to it later (classic thought when I go through emails). Then the deadline came and I thought, well I just don't know. Well, I do, but it's all the obvious stuff: A Love Supreme, Fire Music, Sonny Rollins Live at the Village Vanguard, Coltrane at the Vanguard. Hell, I could devote half the list to John Coltrane.

But I blew it off.

So yesterday, I'm thumbing through the list, when suddenly it hits me: Rip, Rig & Panic by Roland Kirk (pre-Rahsaan).  Sure, Kirk plays two other saxes on the album, but it revolves around tenor and he's monstrous on that album. That should've been on the list, but it's not there. And I would've been the one writing about it.

There's also a story on Tim Berne. A big honking feature on him. I've been wishing I could write about him for years. You know how long I've been following him? 24 years. I remember because I heard Sanctified Dreams in 1988, a few months before turning 21. That album didn't get mentioned in the sidebar, which instead featured the album that included Bill Frisell.

I'm not slighting the magazine. It's best to have a cat in New York write about Berne, since you can see him play on a semi-regular basis and hang out, probably in some Brooklyn coffee shop. But still.

And there was some other jazz-related (not exactly a) gripe I had, with myself most likely. But I can't remember it now. Probably not as important.