The Spitfire Band - Flight III (1983)

Following on the success of Flight II the year before, the Spitfire Swing Band followed up with a second recording, this time on CBS Records

Flight III

The Spitfire Band - Flight II (1982)

The Spitfire Band's second release, Flight II from the 1982 Canadian Talent Library on RCA

Flight II (1982)

At a recent performance, an elderly fan lent us a stack of cassette tapes of Canadian swing and concert bands, among them several recordings of the legendary Spitfire Band; The band and its recordings are described at The Canadian Encyclopedia.com (http://bit.ly/ZHe5h):

Toronto dance band, formed in 1981 as a studio orchestra by the singer Jackie Rae, with the trumpeter Mickey Erbe as music director and arranger and the trombonist Laurie Bower as vocal arranger. With the success of its first LPs, The Spitfire Band (RCA KKL1-0432) and Flight II (RCA KKL1-0449), it began to perform publicly in 1982, making its debut in St Catharines, Ont, and giving the first of many concerts at Ontario Place. Rae has served as featured vocalist and master of ceremonies, and Erbe as bandleader. After a Christmas album that year, Home for the Holidays (RCA EP-102), it had LPs issued 1983-5 by Columbia (Flight III, PCC-80008; A Sentimental Journey, PCC-80097; In Flight, PCC-80106) and later by Attic (Swings Down Broadway, LAT-1230; Swinging the Movies, LAT-1234). A compilation, The Make Believe Ballroom (Qual RSPD-205), was issued in 1990.

Other public engagements have included many fund-raising events, performances at the CNE Bandshell, Roy Thomson Hall, the NAC, Lincoln Center (New York), and several appearances, as well as a residency 1988-9, at the Imperial Room of Toronto's Royal York Hotel. Initially the band's repertoire comprised Erbe's updates of swing-era classics ('Marie,' 'Tuxedo Junction,' 'In the Mood,' 'Pennsylvania 6-5000,' 'I'll Never Smile Again', etc) but came on record to include movie and Broadway themes, and other pop material. Personnel is not listed on the band's LPs but has included musicians from Toronto's jazz and studio circles - eg, trumpeters Arnie Chycoski, John MacLeod, and Dave Woods, saxophonists Bob D'Angelis, Steve Lederer, and Jack Zaza, and trombonists Bower and Bob Livingston.

This is first-class Miller-style swing all the way, expertly executed and updated to the 80's. The Spitfire Band may still be performing and recording so if you like this one, please show them some love: they still have an artist's homepage at arbproductions.ca for contact and bookings, and while Flight II appears out of print, they do have newer recordings available at Amazon.com. 

Remember: We share because we want you to want them!

Adventures on the Sun

"It???s no surprise considering that reinterpretation has been a cornerstone of hip hop production since the beginning, when loops and breaks were getting chopped up. Today though the new generation of producers are taking things further thanks in no small part to the internet and modern technology allowing people to link together regardless of distance and make use of a wealth of recorded music.

"With this in mind, it was a surprise to see something pop up on twitter yesterday about a bunch of producers, including L.A???s Ras G, having released a mix of reinterpretations of Sun Ra. The surprise quickly turned to pleasure when I started listening to it. There isn???t a wealth of information about it, beyond a tracklist, some art (one of which is used in this post) and a link to a myspace page for Re:source who seem to be the mastermind behind this effort. Looking at the tracklist it features quite a few known names to us, such as the aforementioned Ras G, Powell from Paris, Elaquent from Canada and Ichiro from Tokyo."

via The beat generation interprets Sun Ra

The Best-Selling MP3 Album of 2008 ... was free

NIN’s CC-Licensed Ghosts I-IV was Amazon's Best-Selling MP3 Album for 2008: "NIN fans could have gone to any file sharing network to download the entire CC-BY-NC-SA album legally. Many did, and thousands will continue to do so. So why would fans bother buying files that were identical to the ones on the file sharing networks?"

Because Amazon is so easy to use? I don't buy that argument if only because the payment transaction itself is several screens long. The only answer left says the NiN fans were assured far more of the (reasonable price) $5 they spent would go straight to their idols, coupled with their just wanting to be a part of the hyped temporal happening of it all.

Curiously, or maybe not curious at all, there is a lot of freely trade-friendly file-shared artists in the Amazon lists.