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J*zz A* Th* P*wn Sh*p

It's just some competent jazz played by competent musicians. No hate here for the music actually.

What irks me is that it is often wheeled out for demo by audiophiles and dealers when someone asks for jazz music. I can think of so many jazz albums of great music and sound that could easily be played instead.

I've only heard Pawnshop at hifi dealers, no 'normal' person I know with an interest in music or jazz ever listens or have even heard of this album.
 
A nice enough recording – I play it from time to time – but it was multi-miked unfortunately. A clear mistake.
It would have sounded much better with just a pair. The drumset is particularly badly recorded, it’s all over the place, totally unnatural.
Funny Jez, in another version of the story it was recorded with an even more mundane A77!

The most natural jazz recordings I have were recorded with a stereo pair. Close-up recordings are spectacular but are nothing like the real event.
 
hockman said:
It's just some competent jazz played by competent musicians. No hate here for the music actually.

What irks me is that it is often wheeled out for demo by audiophiles and dealers when someone asks for jazz music. I can think of so many jazz albums of great music and sound that could easily be played instead.

I've only heard Pawnshop at hifi dealers, no 'normal' person I know with an interest in music or jazz ever listens or have even heard of this album.
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I think that's it in a nutshell.
 
Though I am absolutely convinced it has sparked huge numbers of people to listen to a whole world of jazz. It certainly played a part in getting me there. I knew nothing about jazz in the early ‘80s, it just wasn’t on my radar at all. I remember hearing JATP on a LP12/Naim/Isobarik system and kind of liking it, but being blown away that the drums actually sounded like drums; like being in the room with a drum kit. Totally unlike rock/pop recording. I bought it, then swiftly discovered a lot of stuff I obviously consider vastly better (Blue Note, Miles, Brubeck, Coltrane, Mingus etc etc).

You could draw a similar comparison to any number of UK blues-rock bands leading people to John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters etc. Gateway albums are very useful things and I view JATP as being one in a very specific niche.

PS Agree about RVG. I knew I’d found what I was looking for once I heard Somethin’ Else, Midnight Blue, Sidewinder and the other Blue Notes I bought soon after both JATP and the BN Anniversary album. Mingus Black Saint was one of my first purchases too and that is one of the most intense albums ever recorded IMO. Again I can’t stress just how challenging it was for folk to explore this stuff in pre-internet times. It wasn’t on the radio, friends didn’t know it, so it really was a matter of taking blind punts in second hand shops. Basically buying stuff because you had heard a name somewhere and liked the cover typography! We have lived through an amazing liberation and democratisation of music over the past few decades. I grew up in the bloody dark ages!
 
Rega distributed Proprius (Swedish record label) in the 80s, probably accounting for JATPS's ubiquity in hifi demonstrations.

Tony L said:
Again I can’t stress just how challenging it was for folk to explore this stuff in pre-internet times. It wasn’t on the radio, friends didn’t know it, so it really was a matter of taking blind punts in second hand shops. Basically buying stuff because you had heard a name somewhere and liked the cover typography! We have lived through an amazing liberation and democratisation of music over the past few decades. I grew up in the bloody dark ages!
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It was challenging in the 70s and 80s, but with some spadework and research it could be done. Derek Jewell and Charles Fox were certainly playing the Blue Note and the jazz you are talking about, as well as the then current British jazz and improv scenes (I still have some live radio sessions from the mid 70s recorded off air onto cassette by Mike Osbourne, SOS, Tony Oxley, Michael Garrick et al and even the likes of Lol Coxhill and Derek Bailey). It also helped having a close friend who had a brother 10 years older than us who wrote jazz and alternative music reviews for the Liverpool Echo, and who dragged us along to some amazing gigs.
 
Listening to JATP2 now, chatter and clinking glasses and all. It’s a bit of fun.

Great post Tony, your explorations and experiences mirrored mine too.
 
Graham H said:
It was challenging in the 70s and 80s, but with some spadework and research it could be done. Derek Jewell and Charles Fox were certainly playing the Blue Note and the jazz you are talking about, as well as the then current British jazz and improv scenes (I still have some live radio sessions from the mid 70s recorded off air onto cassette by Mike Osbourne, SOS, Tony Oxley, Michael Garrick et al and even the likes of Lol Coxhill and Derek Bailey).
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The late night jazz on BBC Radio 2 and 3 late on Saturday and Sunday night’s from the middle 60’s or a bit before and onwards was certainly what sparked my interest in Jazz while my friends were only interested in rock music. These late night listening session didn’t go down to well with my parents though. Even though I lived in East London I also remember visiting the Six Bells (Trogg’s) Jazz club in King’s Road Chelsea that was well known for putting on good British Modern Jazz musicians. Some more local to me pubs also put on Jazz bands when they were not hosting rock bands. Most though were still hosting Trad Jazz bands then.

Occasionally when I could afford it I visited Ronnie Scott’s, even once or twice to the old club in Gerrard Street that closed in 1967. Also from 1967 and for a few years I used to attend a photography summer school in Barry, South Wales usually for the whole month for the 2x2 weeks courses it ran. It also ran Jazz courses for the whole month as well run by Graham Collier and many well known British jazz performers then or who later became so attended or contributed to the course. They had open performances \ jam sessions every night to the early hours and special concerts at the end of each week of a composition they were all involved in composing under Collier’s guidance during the week. I particularly remember a long great one in 1969 to celebrate the moon landing where Keith Tippett was the main composer.

Dobell’s in Charing Cross Road allowed me to get a very few good records when I could afford it and they were always friendly and helpful even to people like me who knew very little, even if you did not buy much. I now wish I had money to buy the originals they were selling back then. :(

Perhaps it was a bit easier if you lived in or near London and were interested in Jazz than elsewhere in the UK?
 
Dobell's was brilliant, as was Mole Jazz and Ray's Jazz Shop. My route into it all was hearing a Charlie Parker compilation in the early 80s. That was the first jazz LP I listened to all the way through and made sense of. It probably wasn't until the early 90s that I really started to get into all this stuff properly though, and that was largely down to buying a couple of Coltrane albums and becoming immediately obsessed.
 
It was a remarkably thin market up here. I spent the ‘80s in Liverpool and when I first got into jazz I used to trade classical albums I’d found for pennies in charity shops, market stalls etc to the only shop that had a decent second hand jazz section, Circle Records in the town centre. I got a fair bit of good stuff there, it’s certainly where I got my RVG-stamped Somethin’ Else. Beyond that there was very little aside from new reissues in Virgin or HMV. Jazz didn’t seem to hit up here the way it did in That London. When I moved down south in the mid-90s I was astonished what could be found at Honest Jon’s, Ray’s, Mole Jazz etc. A fair chunk of my original US pressings stem from that buying period. Lots of nice Verve, Atlantic, Impulse etc stuff. Up here one was lucky to find an Acker Bilk album! Manchester seems better now, e.g. I often do well at King Bee, but I just didn’t have access to good jazz back in the ‘80s at all.
 
Tony L said:
It was a remarkably thin market up here. I spent the ‘80s in Liverpool and when I first got into jazz I used to trade classical albums I’d found for pennies in charity shops, market stalls etc to the only shop that had a decent second hand jazz section, Circle Records in the town centre. I got a fair bit of good stuff there, it’s certainly where I got my RVG-stamped Somethin’ Else. Beyond that there was very little aside from new reissues in Virgin or HMV. Jazz didn’t seem to hit up here the way it did in That London. When I moved down south in the mid-90s I was astonished what could be found at Honest Jon’s, Ray’s, Mole Jazz etc.
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Circle was excellent, Probe in the 70s was good for imports and avant grade jazz. To be honest I can't recall whether it was Circle, Probe or the early Virgin that used to stock the likes of Incus and Ogun. I moved away in the late 70s to London and remember being overwhelmed by the new and second hand sections at Ray's, Mole and HJ's. Generally the 80s wasn't a great time for jazz in Britain, although we had great groups from Anthony Braxton and Steve Lacy to keep things sizzling. Thankfully they toured here. And of course there were some great LP bargains to be had if you knew what you were looking for.

poco a poco said:
Perhaps it was a bit easier if you lived in or near London and were interested in Jazz than elsewhere in the UK?
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IME certainly easier, I think anywhere in the UK would have a hard time competing with London for diversity and choice. My collecting began in the early to mid 70s, but I imagine things were much more fertile in the 60s and 70s compared to the 80s.

I think we are now way off thread..........
 
More offthreadness...
In Manchester when I was first getting into Jazz and Blues in the early 90s I'd go to Decoy.
http://www.britishrecordshoparchive.org/decoy-records.html
Vinyl Exchange had a small Jazz section at very reasonable prices. Very little demand and the price would often have been cut two or three times.
I guess the Band on the Wall was the main venue but I didn't go to live gigs really.
And Sifters in Burnage where I once got a dozen of the BN reissues for £3.49 each.
My intro was also the BN sampler, and then the Penguin book: https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/ric...hwJcC40FiYCIiyYJ-iTqd8i6VDb3q8F8aApf7EALw_wcB
Bought a lot of CDs in the Virgin on Market St at 5 for £20 and suchlike.
 
Weekender said:
I guess the Band on the Wall was the main venue but I didn't go to live gigs really.
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Didn’t get to Manchester too often, but at Band On The Wall I did see Steve Lacy Quintet, Keith Tippett solo and a star studded John Surman’s Brass Project in the early 80s. Apparently according to my gig ticket history I also saw Mike Gibbs at the university, but can’t recall a thing about it - and yet I can recall small details like finding a stranger’s contact lens that had dropped on the floor whilst Keith Tippett tore the place up. I bet things weren’t half as exciting at Jazz at the Pawnshop.
 
Back in the day, it was much more difficult to learn and explore the music but luckily, I spent time in the great cities of Chicago and New York for my jazz education. Hamstrung by lack of money and like-minded friends but armed with my Rolling Stone guide (the Penguin one had not yet been written), I managed to pick up recommended albums and explored the live music scene. I was not one for pop or rock concerts but during that formative period, I managed to see Sonny Rollins, David Murray, Modern Jazz Quartet, Dizzy Gillespie, Pat Metheny, Art Blakey, Branford Marsalis, Miles Davis (I didn't 'get' the music though :confused:) and Sun Ra prancing around my university quad with a lamp shade on!

My only regret is that I really should have done even more. I just don't have the opportunity to do that any more except for being able to afford albums that I want.
 
Tony L said:
Again I can’t stress just how challenging it was for folk to explore this stuff in pre-internet times. It wasn’t on the radio, friends didn’t know it, so it really was a matter of taking blind punts in second hand shops. Basically buying stuff because you had heard a name somewhere and liked the cover typography! We have lived through an amazing liberation and democratisation of music over the past few decades. I grew up in the bloody dark ages!
Click to expand...

Longsight Library had a fantastic record section in the 80's (Thank you, Manchester City Council!) At some point in the 90s (early 2000s?), I made a special trip back to Manchester, when my mum tipped me off that they were selling all the vinyl off. Unfortunately, the decent stuff and the Loricraft had already gone :(
 
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