Grant Green - Blues for Lou
I listen to a lot more Grant Green than I write about. You’ll find some division in opinion on whether his hardbop or souljazz/funk period was his best; I like it all. The two sessions that made up Blues for Lou in 1963 come from one of his finest periods, but they weren’t released until Blue Note had a connoisseur series (the ones you can immediately identify by the obi being stuck to the jewel case). Anyway, Grant was always pretty great with Ben Dixon and John Patton, and in some ways this is kind of like classic Jimmy Smith. Lots of bluesy jazz and midpace pieces, to allow the player’s great soulful emoting to come out.
Niemen/Aerolit - XIV International Song Festival, Sopot, Poland 8/22/74 (video)
I found this rather short Aerolit TV performance to be pretty fascinating, I’ve always felt a bit of distance from the Polish progressive rock scene to some extent just because I’ve never had the visual to put with the music. Niemen on stage definitely looks to be the “star” in that he’s got the vocal and keys spot but is doubled by another player who lays the tron down in waves. The music’s as thin as I remember it otherwise, but there are some rather nice ensemble moments and it’s so of the period to be quite fascinating. In fact I found it all too short in the end.
Opeth - Mundenbryggeriet, Close-Up Festival, Stockholm 4/17/06 (video)
Unsurprisingly this wasn’t likely to change my mind on the Swedish prog-influenced death metal group, although I think it’s my second Opeth video and it was a lot better quality both in performance and quality than the first one. I never seem to have a heck of a lot to say about this group except that I’ve always found them to be too predictable structurally for me to ever have come off the fence. Since this is around that period where the band, Djam Karet-style, decided to divide into two albums their metal and prog aspirations, I thought maybe it would be similar live, but in a way, despite the newer music, this is a show that could have come from a few years earlier. Definitely a good example of a band where I wish I could see what the fans like about them.