Yes, I know. But if I had mentioned McLaughlin initially, everyone would have thought that I'd been wanting British fusion. 

Since they already mentioned stuff like Brand X, Hatfield & the North. They're fantastic bands for me, but that's not really what I'm looking for. 

I did specify to not mention jazz fusion, but oh well... 

 

 

 

 In the meanwhile there were those who wanted jazz but with minimal American sound, hence for instance the appearance of the previously mentioned Don Rendell and the young Ian Carr.  Big band arrangements were by the late 60's coming from Mike Westbrook - check out the double set of Westbrook's March Song with John Surman to the fore, and slightly later  Mike Gibb. One of the first British albums labelled jazz rock was Experiments In Pop by Gordon Beck. Free form or improv jazz came from a number of British musician, John Stevens (for straight Stevens, check out John Martyn's jazz blues folk rock of  Live at Leeds, for free jazz Stevens check out the Konnex released BBC Radio 3 recordings with Allan Holdsworth),  Fred Frith, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_jazz

provides far more detail, for instance I find I'm guilty of omitting Johnnie Dankworth and Ronnie Scott, to name but two.

 

 Thanks, fancy seeing you here!!??

 I suggest many reasons. Original record label defunct or so small can only reissue a limited number of albums on CD per annum (I guess labels like Ogen???) , parent label seeing little urgency on CD issues (Island Records was dreadful until bought out by WEA), master tapes lost or mislabelled (admittedly a rock band but T2 have this problem), musicians not wanting a reissue for various reasons (Miroslav Vitous sat on Warners' reissuing of Magical Shepherd - but let Wounded Bird issue it about 9 months later on CD*), people like us not making enough fuss/noise. Jon Newey, managing editor of Jazzwise magazine, tells me his editorial team rattled Warner's cage and as result two Back Door albums got issued - but there hasn't been a rush to reissue the others.

 

The above mentioned Experiments with Pops was reissued on CD by a small American label,  approx 40 years after it s release on vinyl in the UK.  The recovery of John Surman's 1969 recording Way Back When and apparently premier release, was down to Cuneiform  5 or so years ago

 

* Allan Holdsworth is legendary in vetoing the handful of live albums in the can - so it is a miracle that  3 plus a dodgy 4th on are on the market. 

 

Brittish arts' history have a lot of moments when people experimented and found something and did something ... with music ... but honestly ... other than the early experiments with Soft Machine, in their early albums (post Daevid), it is hardly jazz ... as defined by the term and music, and sometimes I thought that too much of it was way too composed for my tastes ... and to me that tastes a lot of the tastes of jazz out of it.

 

The film scene in the mid to late 60's was fabulously free and experimental. The theater scene had its free days going as far back as the late 50's and the "angry young men" ... and music had its heyday in the late 60's ... only to give way to the commerciality of it all. The music lasted the least of these 3, by the way, mostly because the rock press was always eager to kill something they did not know or understand ... and even Syd Barrett screamed about that -- lest we forget! ... "... people have stood, and cheered ... something they did not understand!"

 

I guess that I like the freer forms of jazz a lot more than the structured stuff out there ... that sometimes simply sounds like another lounge lizard jazz wannabe band.

 

But yeah ... my ears are definitly twisted!