Journal: BIG FUN at CAPITOL RECORDS

What a spectacular day! Went with Cheryl Pawelski and her dear dear Audrey (Bilger) to meet with legendary Ron McMaster at Capitol Records to watch Ron make the final master for Omnivore's Art Pepper set of 3 LPs, NEON ART -- which will be released on the same day as Unreleased Art Pepper Volume VII from Widow's Taste.  You can hear a little bit of it below.

Ron told me that he had created the Art Pepper Blue Note LP masters a long long time ago.

 I SAW this building going up when I was in my teens back in the early fifties, and I've been inside on business but never really inside like today. Maybe the record business isn't dead after all? It's just been waiting for vinyl to come back? No, no, don't worry fans, I'll keep on making CDs. But wow, what a day!

Me, Ron, Cheryl in the studio

My original tapes were first remastered by Wayne Peet, and then mastered for vinyl by Ron. They sound AMAZING.

And HERE'S the lacquer being cut (and a little taste of the music)...


and finally, Ron inscribed the master (and this will be right there on every copy of Volume Three).  I told Ron to carve out the phrase Art liked to write when he was asked to signed our book, Straight Life.  He wrote, "Keep Swingin'"

Audrey, me, and Ron inscribing....

Journal: Mercury's Retrograde and So Am I

Everything that can go wrong has been going wrong with the publication and pressing of the latest album.  

I'm a week behind schedule but I gave myself a LOT of wiggle room this time, so little holdups aren't devastating, just really really annoying.

Meanwhile been working with the ingenious Terri Hinte on the press release to (which she'll publish and I'll publish here) announcing the release on August 28th of Vol VII of Unreleased Art (see previous) and of the first of 3 Art Pepper vinyl singles from Omnivore (entitled Neon Art) with nothing but totally mad, swinging, weeping, dancing tracks, to which I'm listening right now, and my mood is escalating even as I write this.  You're gonna want these tracks!  They work better than anti-depressants or anything else, really.  Here's the cover of disc One from Omnivore plus a pretty picture of me taken by my sweetie, Hugh.

MUSIC: Mambo Koyama

Scroll down past the chatter to play (and download) the music

Some of you have asked for more glimpses of my memoir-in-progress. So I've added another bit about the buildup to the Village Vanguard date.  Look at the top of the sidebar for the Memoir.

   The latest release from Widow's Taste is due soon!  August 28th, to be exact.  It's a two disc set.  More details about it soon.  Here are pictures of the cover, front and back:

I've been digging through my old tracks more energetically than usual recently to find tracks for Omnivore who'll be releasing THREE Art Pepper vinyl singles in the next few months under the heading "Neon Art." (I'll keep you informed of all releases).

  

While I searched through a wonderful series of live recordings from our last tour of Japan in November, 1981, I found quite a few frustratingly incomplete and thus unusable tracks: The tape ran out or started too late or got eaten in the middle.

This is a track that made me tear my hair, because it is so great but started too late to use.  It's missing the melody statement and the piano solo (and it's George Cables in top form, and I'm really sorry!).

The music begins right before the Art Pepper solo.  There's a terrific bass solo by David Williams.  The drummer is Art's beloved stalwart Carl Burnett.   Named after Kiyoshi Koyama, once the editor of the once wonderful Swing Journal, MAMBO KOYAMA was recorded in Okayama, Japan on November 14, 1981 (George Cables's birthday).

Here, in all its incomplete gorgeousness is:

 
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