Ravi Coltrane Quartet & Special Guests - “A Love Supreme” Release Party, Joe’s Pub, New York City 11/12/02 WBGO FM

This show reminded me quite a bit of seeing Alice Coltrane last year in San Francisco as she’s on this show and her band also played a good chunk of A Love Supreme towards the end of the show. In good quality FM recording, the band also plays some other Trane work throughout the 73 minutes. Everyone plays solidly, although there wasn’t quite the intensity I usually expect with anyone in this family. Ravi himself gives a little more space to the music than his father did while still being a master riffster in his own right, but unfortunately he leaves his band behind at times. You get the impression this was as much party as it was concert and as if often the case with tributes of this sort, you’d have been better off there.

Ange - London School of Economics 1976

Muddy but classic period Ange show, the band’s in full flight playing all the great works, its everything you want but for the pillow. The show actually varies in quality starting muddy, getting a little clearer and then murking out again. By the end it’s quite bad, almost unlistenable. Such a bubble sort of keeper for me, I think if it weren’t for the great guitar work all over this I’d cut it loose, a true case of sound vs musical quality.

Anthony Braxton Quartet - Kool Jazz Festival, Irving Plaza, NYC 6/22/84

Sometimes I plan listening so that I end an evening with something mellow like hard-bop or electronic and then there are others were I’m closing in on the end on the fly and find myself playing Braxton after midnight. So as I’m nodding over and trying to convince myself it’s bedtime, I have this sonic onslaught, a 68 minute non-stop sonic onslaught at that, playing loudly and for the most part I’m sucked in. Anyone else have those internal debates where you’re wondering if Braxton is going free or if he actually wrote what you’re hearing? My brain was having those debates as this ensemble flew the waves of the dynamic rise and fall, at once battering me into insanity, at others feeling like I was pacified but being teased gently by little horn noises. If I wasn’t exhausted going into it, I was on the way out.