MEEP! Andrew Mortensen wrote:

i'd like to hear from it: Song for Che (C. Haden) (5:48) Strawberry Fields Forever (J. Lennon & P. McCartney) (7:09) These are the two tracks that give me the most pause: I was never a big fan of Kikuchi's sax playing in the Ground-Zero days, and it's just as overblown and schmaltzy on parts of Tails Out.

Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk (C. Mingus) (4:18) Mingus with sine waves is... different. Sachiko M's presence is unnecessary (she adds a lot to the title track, though), but at least the saxes are reined in to the point where the dignity of the tune survives more or less intact. I also really like the cover of "Canon" on Emergency!'s first album: it reminds me a bit of the playing on the Haunted House disc on Erstwhile (have they recorded anything else, by the way?), with a kind of American-plains echo to it that's pretty amazing. Are there any other notable recordings of Mingus tunes by contemporary musicians out there? Mark Spybey's band Propeller does a neat version of "No Man Can Sing Another Man's Blues" (I think it can still be downloaded from his web site, www.spybey.net), but that's about the only other one I can think of right now.

-me PS: I seem to remember a bunch of people talking about Thirsty Ear's Blue Series sampler a few months back. If you haven't picked up a copy yet, hiphopsite.com is giving it away for free with El-P's High Water these days. (They're giving away the supposedly-limited "Sunrise Over Brooklyn" 10" with the vinyl version of the album, too, in case anybody is interested.)