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Showing posts from February, 2008

Master of Harmelodics

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Ornette Coleman- Live at New Orleans Jazz Fest 2003 About five years ago, I ventured out to New Orleans to check out one of the most talented and innovative saxophone players in the annals of free jazz history. Ornette Coleman played a huge part in introducing the idea of " free jazz " to the general public in the 60's, after releasing his seminal 1960 album entitled Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation . He was also instrumental in formulating his own musical language called harmelodics. Harmelodic theory is essentially Ornette's theory that every instrument has its own pitches and that the same note on a music staff means different notes on different instruments. By exploring this idea, Ornette found a way to give everyone the same melody but with each person exploring various emotions within the context of the tune. If this sounds complex to you, you are not alone. Even though I can't get a handle on the harmelodics theory, I appreciate the intensely beautifu

Rediscoveries of Lost Gems- Victor Dimisich Band

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Victor Dimisich Band- My Name Is K Sorry I haven't ben posting much in the past couple weeks, but the good news is that I have finally landed a job with a biomedical company in Lake Oswego named Biotronik. It has been consuming my daytime hours, but I hope to be able to post a couple things throughout the week as well as on the weekend. Recently, I was reading about New Zealand lo-fi garage-punk group the Terminals in the Fall 2007 issue of Signal to Noise. The Terminals were formed from the ashes of previous groups such as the Vacuum,The Pin Group, The Victor Dimisich Band and Scorched Earth Policy. Today I want to focus on the Victor Dimisich Band and their My Name Is K compilation released in 1997 on lead singer Peter Stapleton's Medication imprint. This combines the Mekong Delta Blues cassete released on Xpressway in 1988 as well as the entire Native Waiter EP. As far as I know, this CD reissue is out-of-print, but please let me know if anyone objects to these files bein