Ornette Coleman - University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 11/30/67
There’s a lot of DJ talk both before and after the music and if there’s one thing that gets hammered in over and over is that this is apparently very rare footage of the band in a rarely captured line up, whose significance is something I’ve forgotten. Musically it doesn’t last very long, but while it does you know you’re in the presence of a master. And despite the DJ’s complaints about the sound quality, it wasn’t bad at all and very acceptable for the time period. The rest of the sound just took my breath away.
McCoy Tyner - North Sea Jazz Festival, The Hague, Amsterdam 7/13/96
McCoy Tyner Trio with Michael Brecker - Sage Centre, Gateshead International Jazz Festival 3/18/05 BBC 3
Mentioned in another thread, it gets a little weary dealing with some audience jazz shows. I know for a fact it would be very difficult to get away with it at Yoshi’s, and given the pillow over the sound at the North Sea Jazz Festival, I’d bet it might be similar, especially since good soundboard and FM recordings do show up from that particular festival. It can’t be repeated more, but there’ s a certain energy and vibe to many jazz shows and especially McCoy Tyner that doesn’t reveal itself through recordings, no matter how good they sound. It might be the case that Tyner’s modern style, more mature and less aggressive than it used to be, is so sublime that it’s just hard to grasp that in a bad recording.
On the other hand, the FM recording from BBC3 with Michael Brecker (which I remember from its broadcast as it was near the time Hermeto Pascoal played with his big band on the BBC) is much better quality, naturally, and even though Brecker’s health was to deteriorate not long after this gig, you’d have never known it from this show where he plays a couple solos that were tremendous. I’d take a quintet show over a quartet one any day with these type of players and given this is a trio + guest, it actually sounds like that as well, Tyner’s repertoire here is pretty close to how it usually is these days.
The Olivia Tremor Control - Brownies, New York City, NY 10/20/96
Been listening to my Olivia Tremor Control shows to inform a friend of what’s out there, but I’m not finding a one I can get behind. If I didn’t cross wires, this is one of the better performances, maybe the best sounding audience in the bunch, but I haven’t heard anything to make me believe they ever excelled outside of a studio. But I think a definitive opinion would need a house soundboard to make a final call on the vocals. OTC definitely have the Beach Boys on their mind, but without being anywhere close to their level of talent, they often sound like a train wreck with the harmonies. And where the squirly sound effects and weird noises a la the Dukes of Stratosphere are beautifull done on the albums, live they just seem out of place and silly rather than psychedelic AND silly.