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Carla Bley Live | 
| Artist: Carla Bley
Label: Ecm
Category: Music
List Price: £14.99
Buy New: £12.69
You Save: £2.30 (15%)
New (10) Used (2) Collectible (1) from £10.14
Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 83170
Format: Live
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
UPC: 042281573026
EAN: 0042281573026
ASIN: B0000262NS
Release Date: July 1, 1988
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Tracks:
| • | Blunt Object | | • | Lord Is Listenin' To Ya Hallelujah | | • | Time And Us | | • | Still In The Room | | • | Real Life Hits | | • | Song Sung Long |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
The eccentric Carla Bley is a most remarkable and inventive writer who persistently went off in unique directions of her own, with her musicians being clutched up and swept along in the backdraft. Her most notable early achievement was the Escalator Over The Hill suite, which she recorded during the years between 1968 and 1971. No one was quite sure what it was, but it sounded good. By the time of this exuberant and irresistible concert at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall in 1981, her music sounded even better and she had opened the windows to let in more straight jazz playing. Her soloists here, notably trombonist Gary Valente and altoist Steve Slagle preach powerful sermons from her pulpit. The simple gospel sound of "The Lord Is Listenin' To Ya, Hallelujah!" is intellectual rabble rousing, and it made Valente's name with one huge stab of the trombone. The varied writing and Bley's penchant for melodic and innocent themes gives the music its strong character. Add in a strong rhythm team with bassist Steve Swallow and drummer D. Sharpe, and you have the foundation for memorable performances like "Time And Us", with its oratorical solo from Slagle. The horns, hardly polished as a section, impart great fire, and the contrasts between them and quiet passages from pianist Arturo O'Farrill, Bley on organ, or Swallow, are well used. --Steve Voce
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| Customer Reviews:
Classic live album April 11, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Recorded 19-21 August 1981 in San Francisco, Carla Bley's "Live" is one of the great jazz recordings of the past thirty years. Bley's jazz is not, I must confess, the kind of jazz I thought I would ever have found myself listening to - except for the fact that having come upon it accidentally, I couldn't stop listening to it. It's not jazz like in traditional jazz, or swing or be bop. Rhythmically there is a lot of rock in it. It doesn't swing in any conventional sense. At its core, though, is the cooperative interplay among the members of the band, and the horns with the rhythm section.
Carla Bley plays organ for the most part, composed and scored the arrangements. She is not a great instrumentalist. She has mastery of few notes - as Count Basie had of his. This is shown in her gentle solo on "The Lord is Listenin' to Ya, Halleluhah" in the middle of two barnstorming solos from Gary Valente on trombone, but it is perfect in the way she lowers the temperature and sheds light before Valente's thunderous return. Similarly her simple but gracious arpeggios (on piano this time) behind Steve Sagle's firm alto on "Time and Us" and her own solo of wide spaced single notes, like a clear ray of light in a forest of horns, aided by Steve Swallow's disarmingly simple playing on electric bass. The band as a whole she uses to punctuate solos, create tension and lift the soloist into a crescendo.
Swallow's melodic bass playing against Arturo O'Farrill's piano chords opens on "Still in the Room" shifting into a wash of sound, with organ and cymbals. The theme is not of itself very distinctive, lead by Michael Mantler on plangent trumpet at slow tempo, before hitting double time, leading to raucous and aggressive Coltrane inspired tenor playing from Tony Dagradi. The aggressive mood continues with the inimitable Valente barking madly on trombone. Swallow is slightly overwhelmed by the band during his solo (which is more a cadenza than a solo), before we are back to slow tempo and reprise of theme.
"Song Sung Long" is a masterpiece. Bley, Swallow, O'Farrill and Sharpe (drums) laying down the beat. Valente blasts the theme across staccato riffs. Soloists flit across the riffing backdrop, soprano sax first before fading back into the swamp. Tenor emerges with primeval guttural utterances. French Horn (????) ethereal before Valente again growling like a bear (or dinosaur) in the wilderness. The sound fades as wild sounds fading into night before they all roar back in a pack, Valente at the head.
Like Ellington, Bley shapes her arrangements around her musicians, notably Valente. She is at her best here when at her simplest, not trying to impress.
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