Yeah, "wildly grandstanding", that perfectly sums up Billy Bang's music in recent years. But I have to say, Nate, that despite summarising the album as "pretty enjoyable", your description makes it sounds bloody awful, one to avoid, or perhaps even strenuously avoid. Many thanks for that.

I'm glad to be helpful :) ...... Seriously, I flipflopped about this one several times, so if this piece comes across as a simultaneous recommendation-&-disrecommendation that's about right. It's one of those "if you like this stuff, you'll like this disc; if you don't, you won't". Yeah, Bang is way over the top on his solo on the last track. Actually I was reminded of my dad's Hot Tuna albums with Papa John Creech.

Bags denizen Dan Warburton was unexpectedly enthusiastic about this one, despite having also just written one of his more vitriolic pans about a Bang concert. The link to the CD review is here if you scroll down a little (cmon Dan, add some more anchors!), & the link to the concert review is here.

Bang’s “wildly grandstanding” style is hardly a product of recent years. It’s pretty much been in place from the start, and it’s something I’ve come to both expect & enjoy in his playing. Aggrandizing showmanship is part of his shtick- strutting & stomping & ratcheting up the excitement through well-trodden tropes- but it’s by no means the sum of his talent. His work with The String Trio of NY and elsewhere offers plenty of proof of both range and creativity. And I don’t understand the beef with his wearing his veteran status prominently on his sleeve- he’s definitely shown conflicting feelings towards his tours of duty both musically and politically over the years. I don’t get the impression that he’s calling attention for the sake of cheap publicity or to curry favor.

Back to the disc, I like it quite a bit, though my opinion took some time & numerous spins to coalesce too. Agree that Gayle is a square peg through much of it (still trying to figure out what the deal is with him these days & on the fence about his new Clean Feed w/ Sirone and Gerald Cleaver), but the other three make an exciting team to my ears. “Configuration” locks a monster groove and the Ayler homage peels some serious stage paint. I’m actually looking forward to two other discs on the immediate horizon: his reunion with the Ritual Trio on Delmark (also in dvd form) and the CIMP w/ Dave Taylor, Steve Swell, Tomas Ulrich & Ken Filiano.

And hey, what's up with dissing Monsieur Creach?

I seem to have liked this disc more than any of y'all. My review is in the current (May) Wire.

And I don’t understand the beef with his wearing his veteran status prominently on his sleeve- he’s definitely shown conflicting feelings towards his tours of duty both musically and politically over the years. I don’t get the impression that he’s calling attention for the sake of cheap publicity or to curry favor.
Who's complaining about this? I didn't say anything about his Nam vet experience in the review.

Phil, glad you liked it but I don't read The Wire anymore...! Maybe you can give a quick rundown on what you think of the disc?

I've nothing again Papa John Creach, I listened to those discs a lot when I was younger. There was a live one with eye-damaging stripy coverart (electric blue & pink if I remember rightly) which I played a lot.

Well, I liked the reduction of Gayle to sideman status, and the fact that it pretty much was the string players' show, as the title indicates. But when Gayle did come forward to solo, Sirone did a good job of bolstering him, reminding me a little of their prior work on Silkheart, years ago. I thought the structure helped Gayle a lot; much as I love Touchin' On Trane, I've also got a soft spot for later, slightly straighter albums like Ancient Of Days. And I really like Bang's work; I don't find him overly showoffy or anything like what's been discussed so far.

Sorry about the confusion on the 'Nam vet reference Nate, I was responding to a spot in Dan's concert review (linked in your post above). Glad I read you wrong on Creach too. His solo records are great fun IMO.

I dig Ancient of Days & Gayle's more reined-in side too (could do w/o Delivered tho'), but still hear him as a wobbly fit on this disc. The Clean Feed is relatively restrained too, with the old brimstone-slinger sounding almost postboppish in parts & Sirone/Cleaver ceding solid support, but there are meandering sections that still leave me scratching my head. Maybe it's just me & the residual effects of a Vandermark O.D. I've been nursing after listening to nothing but Alchemia for the past couple days.

Few points. 1) You'd better give me a quick Dreamweaver Tutorial Nate. I can just about manage to change the background colours. Adding anchors and all that tech stuff is something I usually leave to PT webmeister Guy Livingston.
2) Derek, my live Bang review was certainly meant to hit hard but I wasn't aware I was taking the piss about the Nam experience, if that's the impression you got.
3) Hey, Phil and I have found something we agree upon! My review of the disc is as +ve as yours!C'mon everyone else, the Sirone work on "We Are Alone" is BEAUTIFUL. My pal Didier Kowalski was at the Sons d'Hiver concert I reviewed until the end (we had to leave before the Revolutionary Ensemble set) and said that Sirone's solo blew away the other two bassists that evening: Messrs William Parker and Henry Grimes. I can well believe it. I also LIKE Gayle on the one-chord jams Nate. Don't think Gayle sounds any more "at sea" than he ever does, either.
4) OK Derek so we look forward to an appendix to the Alchemia review soon. (I'm still plodding through the box and not ready to say anything yet. A full length review maybe in July's PT.. we'll see

Appears I’m overdue to have my bifocals prescription checked again; apologies if I misread you, Dan. Looking forward to your Alchemia review & good luck with the swim, it's something of an Irish Channel magnitude. Weighing in at just under 2500 hard-wrung words mine should be up over at Dusted next week. And no arguments from this corner on the momentous merits of Sirone.

Anyone else have an opinion on the Gayle Clean Feed outing?

Dan--oh, Dreamweaver's not too tricky--just poke around in the Help files & tutorials. For inserting an anchor: go to Insert > Named Anchor on the menu.

Yeah Sirone's in good form on the disc! -- Hm, well we could get into a whole discussion about Gayle.... actually I started one on the Jazzcorner board & as you can imagine the opinions about Gayle tend to be all over the map.

Any advance word on the KVDM set by the way Derek?

I note that Fred Lonberg-Holm is now Bishop's replacement in the KVDM5.

I'm something of a Gayle completist & dig the majority of his back catalog. A lot of people point to Touchin' on Trane as the prize amongst the 90s glut, but IMO that tag goes to More Live on Knitting Factory & more specifically the 2nd disc w/ Marc Edwards on cans. Took me a dozen or so spins to even crack it, but once it clicked, oh man! Stacking that slash & burn slugfest up against the new Clean Feed, it's like Charles acquiesced to regimen of mollifying meds. Not necessarily a bad thing, but a muffled cry from his old motto: "if the walls are still standing, we haven't done our job."

Nate, the V5 box has a lot of good stuff on it, but I've found the best way to listen is in small doses of 1-2 discs with liberal breaks between. One of the things that's struck me most is how thoroughly it illustrates the chops differential between Ken and Dave. The disparity is well-evident on the band's last few studio albums where Rempis repeatedly steals the solo thunder, but here it's driven into the ground on a fifty-foot flagpole. As Adam noted awhile back, the covers aren't terribly adventurous, mostly just vehicles for stage-storming solos w/ 'heads' dispensed quickly, & the "free jams" don't break much new bread either, but nearly everything is enjoyable on some level & some of it very much so.

I'm gonna have to give More Live another listen one of these days; I hated it when I first started listening to Gayle.

My first eleven attempts resulted in antipathy too, Phil. But somehow the planets aligned on that twelfth try & I’ve been a believer ever since. A stroll in the park amongst the daisies it ain’t.