I was so looking forward to the threshold of reaching 5000 artists in my last.fm library. My music library on my hard drive lays claim to 7095, but I know that at least a couple hundred of these are bizarre naming variants from files I have picked up. Like a cold from a stranger, when you shake hands by exchanging files, sometimes you get unhealthy results.

Attaining 5000 was thoroughly anticlimatic. I had been hanging in the neighborhood of 4980 for what seemed like months. Each new artist added seemed to represent a long stretch of listening without encountering anyone…

StDionysus said:
I'm looking for RnB/Soul recommendations. My knowledge in this field is very limited.
Something along the lines of Marvin Gaye, Issac Hayes, O.V Wright, Bill Withers etc. (Maybe even more stuff by said artists)

I apologize if this has been covered a hundred times.

25 Zorn Albums for Rohit

Bar Kokhba Sextet - Lucifer: Book of Angels Vol. 10 (50th Birthday Series) 2008
Buck Jam Tonic - Buck Jam Tonic 2003
Derek Bailey, George Lewis, John Zorn - Yankees 1983
John Zorn - Alhambra Love Songs 2009
John Zorn - The Big Gundown: John Zorn Plays the Music of Ennio Morricone 1985
John Zorn - The Bribe 1998
John Zorn - The Circle Maker - 1998
John Zorn - Filmworks X - In the Mirror of Maya Deren 2001
John Zorn - Filmworks XIII - Invitation to a Suicide 2002
John Zorn - The…

I don't feel right posting this in my profile–too showy–but I thought it was a brilliant little piece of data mining.

Last.FM Milestones:

10000th track (6 Mar 2005) :
Tokyo Kid Brothers - Throw Away the Books, Let's Go Into the Streets

15000th track (19 May 2005) :
Miles Davis - Calypso Frelimo

20000th track (3 Sep 2005) :
Madvillain - The Illest Villains

25000th track (11 Dec 2005) :
Lee Fields - Let a Man Do What He Wanna Do

30000th track (31 Mar 2006) :
Sly & The Family Stone - (You Caught Me) Smilin'

35000th track (5…

Some year end recommendations posting. The Jazz Desk at MAC came up with this list back in August (yeah, I've got some catching up to do).

Ahmed Abdul-Malik - Jazz Sahara (1958)
Alice Coltrane - Journey In Satchidananda (1971)
Art Blakey - The African Beat (1962)
Bengt Berger - Bitter Funeral Beer (1981)
Bill Cole's Untempered Ensemble - Live in Greenfield, Massachusetts, November 20, 1999
Clusone Trio - I Am an Indian (1994)
Colin Walcott - Cloud Dance (1975)
Derek Bailey & Min Xiao-Fen - Flying Dragons (2002)
Don Cherry - Eternal Rhythm (1968)
Dorothy Ashby - The…

Quoth zorzynek:
McCoy Tyner live was one of the best things that happened to me in past few years. I see You're heavily listening to that guy. I never got into his discography. Any ideas what should I check out first? (Of course, I know his recordings with Trane, it's solo records I'm interested in.) Thanks in advance.

• Tyner as a leader while still in the Coltrane Quartet
• Tyner on Blue Note after the Coltrane Quartet
• Tyner on Milestone 1972-1981
• Tyner after Milestone/1981 onward

Tyner's albums on Impulse!…

I noticed that I recently passed one hundred thousand plays as a last.fm user/subscriber. Yes, I am an obsessive who had to know what the tune was.

As befits, it was a particularly poorly tagged short piece from the Last Tango in Paris (OST); the track was Last Tango in Paris Suite: Part 4, but of course if you count back in my plays, you won't find it tagged so neatly.

I have fond memories of both the artist Gato Barbieri, anda the movie.

Start with the artist, Leandro "El Gato" Barbieri, the Argentinian tenor saxophonist. I think…

astro1_rohit started this list. If I remember correctly, he wanted to have a listener-collected and compiled list of about 15 albums to guide an unfamiliar listener into the waters called Sun Ra and the Solar-Myth Arkestra. (Pinning down the name for the Arkestra is a little like settling on a name for a deity–there are a 1000 names for the joy of the Arkestra.)

Rohit suggested that we tag the entries using commonly agreed upon top level tags to describe the music on the albums. Electronic, soul jazz, free jazz, bebop, big band. You get the picture. At first, I…

I just noticed that my 50th journal was a list from the Jazz Desk at the Music Advice Center about 25 Great Tenors in jazz.

To commemorate my 50th, I created a PTT (pure track tag) radio for 25 Great Tenors Not Named Coltrane or Rollins or Henderson. So, if you're interested in making this radio available to a wider audience, then may I recommend that you use the above link to open the tag list "25 Great Tenors Not Named Coltrane or Rollins or Henderson" and then cut & paste: 25 Great Tenors Not Named Coltrane or Rollins or…

You know how this works by now, right? Over at the Music Advice Center's Jazz Desk (resident director Beelzbubba), we start a list, give it a name and some vague parameters, and then readers contribute their nominations. The purpose is to promote listening to jazz of all styles and genres. I openly admit to my bias toward post-bop and American free jazz post 1959 to present. What I'm saying is, new blood and divergent viewpoints are always welcome. One list ends, another one starts up soon.

Oh–this list? Early on, I should have amended the title to include Shorter, Webster,…