Michael Fremer

"La Nevada" means "snowfall" but the opening track of this Gil Evans classic begins as a musical desert mirage of a distant train that approaches slowly, with you sitting on the tracks directly in its path. As the train gets closer (and louder) the repeated simple four bar riff grows in intensity adding growling, snarling brass and reeds drivers by Ron Carter's and Elvin Jones's insistent yet slinky rhythmic drive. Aside from the trombone section's part being notated, the performance is improvised, a highlight being Ray Crawford's guitar searing the left channel behind which trombone locomotive horns warn you to get out of the way, but by then it's too late and the music runs you over!

Some people collect Tone Poet Blue Note reissues the way some people amass baseball cards. I know more than a few Tone Poet enthusiasts who, after buying one, had a Bert Lahr Lay’s potato chip moment and couldn’t stop buying them—at least until they encountered the late pianist/composer/arranger Andrew Hill’s Blue Note debut Black Fire (ST-84151/B0029975-01).

The "Jay Jay French Connection Podcast" just published the Ken Kessler and Michael Fremer "Analog Wars Part 1" Interview." Ken alone is hilarious, and me alone? Pretty funny, but the two of us together can be cataclysmic. No doubt you know who Ken is, but in case you don't know, Jay Jay French is a founding member of the heavy metal band Twisted Sister and a contributor to Stereophile. He also worked at now closed Lyric Hi-Fi in New York City.

A few weeks ago I visited a woman in Portland, OR whose husband ran tape duplication services for GRT Records (GRT owned the Chess catalog in the early 70s and provided tape duplication services for many labels).