Need post-y2k OUT jazz recommendations

Just add late Spring Heel Jack (his post drum'n'base years) and Evan Parker to all of the above.

Hey Crazy,
If memory serves, you're in the S.F. Bay area where there's no shortage of high quality boundry stretching musicians (Good For Cows, John Schott, Ben Goldberg, Fred Frith, ROVA, Telepathy, Married Couple, United Brassworks, Scott Hill...). Unfortunately, appreciation for their music is often a limiting factor. Recently the (non profit) Jazz House in Berkeley got demolished to make a parking area for the police station and no new venue has been found yet. The Jazz House (more than any other Bay area club) featured the most innovative and talented artists around (way too many to list at one sitting).

Yoshi's, in sharp contrast has shown a preference for maximizing the bottom line over helping to build an audience for great musicians who are inclined to push the envelope. The Jazz in Flight run at Yoshi's (which was usually a monday night event) has been squeezed out/basically evicted. The series included Nels Cline, Gebhard Ullmann, Gerry Hemingway, Ellery Eskelin, Bobby Previte, Dave Douglas, Marty Ehrlich, Mark Helias, Michael Formanek, Joe Fonda and lots of others that i missed or can't recall. Yoshi's occasionally does still book some great stuff, but geez after Tuck and Patti and Diane Krall have a sell out run at $30 + per ticket how about featuring some amazingly advanced players who take a few risks (even if it's only on Mondays).

Local gripes aside, it's a great time to be a fan of intoxicating music that doesn't conform to a generic mold.
Century and Ejlif hit a homer for you. Sorry if some of these overlap:
Andrew Cyrille
Fred Frith (Massacre discs and Traffic Continues)
Frank Gratkowski
Vinnie Golia
Rich Halley
Jean Derome
Tom Walsh (NOMA)
John Rapson
Lunge
Michael Vlatkovich
Damon Short
Trio Convulsant
Kevin Norton
Cuong Vu
Tippographica
Blast
White Widow
Per Henrik Wallin
Peter Brotzmann
Pierre Tanguay
Rene Lussier
P.O.N.
Lucas Niggli (highest recommendation)
Ahvak
Mephista
Absolute Ensemble
Maarten Altena
Ken Vandermark
Ruins
Eric Boeren
Nils Wogram...
Check out the Bay Area Improvisers site for gigs, get addicted, we need more guys like Century, Ejlif, and DaveJ857.

Hey, thanks, all, for the great recommendations. I especially enjoyed the Jazz with Bob Paralocha link. I used to listen to Bob way back when he was with KJAZ. Obviously, there's a lot to check out here! Thanks!

Duane, I hope you've been working on you "best of" list for 2004, I'm still tryng to get some of the tittles you picked for last year.Thanks for introducing us to all those wonderful artists.

Yeah Duane come on cough em up.