the new Pharoah Sanders Anthology (beef)
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Saw this on up on dustygroove. Please pay attention to the part highlighted in bold:
"A tremendous collection of work from the legendary Pharoah Sanders -- easily one of our favorite jazz musicians ever, and a righteous talent whose records only seem to get better over the years! This career-spanning package is the first of its kind to take a look at Sanders' work -- and features tracks from his albums on Impulse, Theresa, and Verve -- all brought together into one amazing set that offers up the best side of his talents! The Soul Brother team have followed the same vibe here as on their other excellent collections -- and go for some of the more rhythmic and soulful sides of Sanders' career -- eschewing some of his too-out moments for a focus on the kinds of tunes that have continued to resonate far into the 21st Century. One cool feature of the album is that it edits down a few longer tracks -- pulling out the sometimes overblown outside passages, and presenting instead only the core modal rhythms and more spiritual solos -- all while still preserving the great spirit of the work.[/b] All tracks are still quite long throughout -- making for a really wonderful double-length collection... "I understand doing a whole comp. of his more accessible works, but I'm not sure I'm into the "gutting" of jazz tracks, if you will. I don't think you can do this without completely altering what the music was supposed to convey. Unlike say... cutting up a disco track. Whats the SS collectives' opinion on this?
"A tremendous collection of work from the legendary Pharoah Sanders -- easily one of our favorite jazz musicians ever, and a righteous talent whose records only seem to get better over the years! This career-spanning package is the first of its kind to take a look at Sanders' work -- and features tracks from his albums on Impulse, Theresa, and Verve -- all brought together into one amazing set that offers up the best side of his talents! The Soul Brother team have followed the same vibe here as on their other excellent collections -- and go for some of the more rhythmic and soulful sides of Sanders' career -- eschewing some of his too-out moments for a focus on the kinds of tunes that have continued to resonate far into the 21st Century. One cool feature of the album is that it edits down a few longer tracks -- pulling out the sometimes overblown outside passages, and presenting instead only the core modal rhythms and more spiritual solos -- all while still preserving the great spirit of the work.[/b] All tracks are still quite long throughout -- making for a really wonderful double-length collection... "I understand doing a whole comp. of his more accessible works, but I'm not sure I'm into the "gutting" of jazz tracks, if you will. I don't think you can do this without completely altering what the music was supposed to convey. Unlike say... cutting up a disco track. Whats the SS collectives' opinion on this?
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He is still alive, right? I saw him just 2 years ago in a Coltrane Memorial concert, and he looked pretty young & healthy...
Editing songs is pretty wack, but if they are cutting down 38-minute album-side tracks to be able to fit a seminal piece onto a compilation, I guess I can kind of see it...
...it reminds me of the joke I used to make about how they should have made a 45 of Coltrane's "My Favorite Things," with just the intro and finish, cutting out the entire solo...it would have been Top Ten!!
Stuff like this annoys me but I've come to expect it from compilations. Anymore it seems almost shocking when an artist compilation isn't fucked up because they include a live version of song where the studio version was what was popular (and vice versa), a single edit is used, etc.
They put out a Maze & Frankie Beverly hits compilation last year and I wanted it because it was remastered... Overall it sounded good, but there were two things that annoyed me. One, they included the live version of "Joy And Pain", and two, they had the fucking single edit of "Before I Let Go" which cuts a lot of stuff out of the outro that I really like. What irks me the most is when they don't clearly mark stuff like that on the packaging and you discover it only by listening to the album after you've purchased it.
Editing of jazz tracks is worse than editing of regular pop/rock-type stuff in my eyes. With jazz, especially when you're dealing with an artist like Pharoah, it isn't just a typical pop song structure based around a hook. You can't just cut out some repetitive solo stuff or an extra chorus or whatever; a jazz composition is a total picture, sort of a destination, and cutting a part of it out kind of changes the whole thing. But then, maybe that's just the jazz purist in me speaking, I dunno. I understand with jazz you're often talking about tracks with extremely long playing times but it's the nature of the beast. Cutting stuff out seems to me a bit like cutting a chunk out of a Monet because you found it to be unneccessary.
Nice introduction to his work though!
Maybe the folks who get this comp will be spurred into the picking up the OG albums that the tracks came from so they get the bigger picture?
Really, do you know the tracks that got chopped up on the 1972 best of?
I don't have it to check but I think it was Upper Egypt And Lower Egypt & Creator Has A Masterplan
bingo
Lower E didn't even make it on the best of that I have and CHAMP is split on two sides. There should be a notation or disclaimer when they edit the original recording on comps.
haha! yeah, I wanted to make some sort of "drone mix" untill I realized the same thing. you'd just be using half of 3-4 lps.
Never thought of that acronym. Takes the title to the
Signed,
Just another fan of
they used to do this all time time with jazz tunes on 45s. Nothing new. It sucks but not really much different than any "greatest hits" album if you think about it. Hopefully new people will becoming interested and seek out the albums.
No matter what, if this means more people will be listening to Pharoah Sanders I don't really see it as a terrible thing.
Exactly. I'm not mad at it. Looks like a good listen. The tracklist needs a little "Elevation", though.
God.... I totally have OCD.