Lets blame it on Hal Wilner. He seems able to destroy anything he gets his
hands on. What a shame.
I always figured he must be a realyl nice guy, or something :-) I never heard his solo album, even though I heard it should be great, but his all star projects like the Harry Parch one, and even worse the Disney one always fell like a big waste of time to me.
I was not too sure you were talking about the same Hal Wilner as the one I know, but dropping the Partch name set me on the wonderfully produced 'Weird nightmare' Mingus tribute. The great music by Bill Frisell, Greg Cohen and Joey Baron, combining Mingus songs with Harry Partch instruments' interludes makes me eager to forgive anything bad willner might have done, although I have never *heard* such turkeys, to be fair. I have to listen to the Disney album now, don't I? The eighties tributes I know (Nina Rota Amarcord, Monk That's the way I feel now) have stellar moments to say the least, but they REALLY stand out for their togetherness, combining at the same time the throwaway feel of a regular various artists album. I really like that unpretentiousness, especially as the music itself comes out so brilliantly (Steve Lacy & Elvin Jones doing 'Evidence', or Jaki Byard playing La Strada). And the willner solo album is great, too, indeed (Whoops I'm an Indian). But this is a 'DJ album', a collaboration with Martin Brumbach and Howie B. With samples from Willners wild collection of 78's, it 'wasn't that far from what a lot of club/ mix dj's were doing- my own taste excluded' is what willner himself sai\ys about the album in the liner notes. The conclusion of the record is a ridiculously slowed down very old version of 'What a friend we have in Jesus' with Ralph Carney overdubbing equally low and slow woodwinds over it. To me that was worth buying the album alone, but there are other great finds there. Regards, Remco Takken