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What are you listening to right now #59

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Back in 1989 I was perusing a market stall that sold new and 2nd-hand cassettes and I happened upon a cassette of the newly-released Artie Shaw Gramercy Five Sessions. This cassette had music which been treated with the 'Sonic Solutions noise reduction and restoration system'.

Shaw, being a bit easily bored, had already ditched big band music by 1939 (or before) and gone into one of his several 'retirements'. In Late '39 he gathered together some musicians for these Gramercy Five sessions recorded at his house (on Summit Ridge Drive). The first five tracks are notable for using a harpsichord rather than a piano and it really works. The music has a more bluesy sound to anything else he was doing around that time. All tracks are great, but Summit Ridge Drive, Grabtown Grapple and the Sack Sack stuck in my mind.

I haven't played the cassette in years, but found a CD of it not that long ago. It's possible I paid more for that old cassette!

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I have been a fan of Artie Shaw's playing.. rather less so his abrasive personality, since I was given several of his 78s way back in the 1960s. I have most of his big band stuff. I shall seek out his Gramercy Five stuff.
 
Bob Marley and the Wailers - Burnin - the half speed master. Just noticed the track, Small Axe, “If you are a big tree, we are the small axe sharpened to cut you down”, which presumably is where Steve McQueen got the title for his recent excellent series of black history dramas. Great album.
 
DMBX2 - Depeche Mode. Some of the B sides on this, when played loud as well, are immense IMV(Fools(Bigger), In Your memory(Silk Mix)).
 
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