shanleyonmusic

Rhapsody Jazz Critic's Poll

2012-01-12T06:47:00.003-05:00

Here's a link to the Rhapsody Jazz Critic's Poll, of which I was a part. http://www.rhapsody.com/blog/2012/01/davis

You can view each critic's individual Top 10 at the end of the piece. Mine is there but for some reason they didn't list my affiliation with JazzTimes or this blog. FIE!

Up until about 10 minutes ago, I swore today was Friday.

Herculaneum Came to Pittsburgh

2012-01-12T06:02:00.003-05:00

Playing right now: Herculaneum - Uchu

I got to see the above Chicago-based band and thought it fit to spin their album while writing about them this morning. They played at AVA, which hosts a Monday night jazz jam each week but doesn't usually have live bands. Most of the time, they present d.j.s.

There had been some confusion about this show, because at first I wasn't sure if it was going to happen at the Shadow Lounge (the older venue that's connected to AVA) or here. Then, not seeing any listing for it anywhere, I wondered if it was still happening. But I heard from the band's drummer Dylan Ryan that yes, it was going to happen and things would start at 7 p.m. Which of course meant 8 p.m., which is also fine, since that allowed for me to run across the street and get some pizza. (I hadn't had dinner.)

Herculaneum consists of four horns - trombone (Nick Broste), alto sax (David McDonnell), tenor sax/flute (Nate Lepine), and trumpet (Patrick Newbery) - plus Ryan on drums and Greg Danek on bass. A review in NPR described them as "like Charles Mingus if he lived in the 21st century" which gets to the heart of the matter, I suppose. But their tendency to play in non-4/4 time made me think of Dave Holland's larger bands, or something in league with another great horn-heavy band, Dead Cat Bounce.

Their tunes, many written by Ryan, with some by McDonell, Lepine and Newbery, often have simple chordal structures, with Danek holding things together with a steady riff, which leaves the horns to play melodies and countermelodies and harmonies on top of them. Things never got too free, though it was often at arms length. I especially liked McDonell's approach on alto, since he sounded pretty melodic but he wasn't after to overblow a little or get into a high trill for dramatic sake. There simply aren't enough trombone players doing this kind of music so I always seem to get caught up what they do. Broste was no exception. I thought of Roswell Rudd during one of his solos and I'm not sure if that's an accurate assessment or if it came to mind because he sounded gruff. Ryan really kept things swinging too, especially in the 5/4 tunes. Every so often he'd let fly with some killer accent during a solo. One time he even started a song sounding like George Hurley. (I heard he's actually from California, so maybe that's why.)

Uchu, the album I'm playing, is out on vinyl, so I had to buy it. I had a no-cover advance sent to me that didn't even have the song titles on the one-sheet, so it was a necessary purchase. I also got a copy of a previous disc that Clean Feed put out. Look these cats up at Herculaneumsound.com

Best of 2011? I forget

2012-01-05T06:06:00.002-05:00

Before we get too involved in 2012, I want to weigh in on the subject of "Best of 2011" lists. And I have a feeling that this commentary will be very similar to what I wrote about a year ago on the subject.

I was asked to participate not only in the JazzTimes Best Of tabulations but also the Jazz List for what used to run in conjunction with the Village Voice, but this year will be posted on rhapsody.com next week. This year, I felt like I was a lot more familiar with more albums and would have a more vast opinion on the subject. Compared to last year, when I bought two of the Top 10 albums after reading about the list (Jason Moran's Ten and Paul Motian's Lost in a Dream, which both deserved their accolades, by the way). But I did a lot of hemming and hawing anyway: "Yeah, I heard that and it's good, but, ah........ I don't know if it'd go in my Top 10. What about this? I'm not sure about that either."

Much to my surprise, when I looked at downbeat's round-up of all the albums that received five-, four-and-a-half and four-star reviews, I didn't even know the albums that got five. Maybe I shouldn't confess all this in a public forum, because it might lead my editors to question my opinion on the subject. Or maybe it indicates that it's good to have a guy like me, whose tastes don't always cater to the status quo, adding some extra titles to the fray.

Here's the JazzTimes list. It doesn't surprise me that Sonny Rollins made #1. It shouldn't surprise you that I plan on buying that album today after work. The first album on this list that appeared on my list is #4. And I was pleasantly surprised to see that my personal #1 actually made the cut as #36 all around. (By the way, I realize I always unapologetically say, "Buy JazzTimes," to help keep print media going, and this is no exception. However the other good reason to do it is because the current issue has a great article on Vijay Iyer.)

I inadvertently blew off writing a Best Of list for Blurt in part because I didn't pay attention to when we were supposed to submit one. Besides, I feel like my rock list is full of even more holes than my jazz list. And when I saw their tabulations........woah, I really felt out of touch. Every year around this time, I tell myself, "This is why you shouldn't feel inhibited about asking for promos of stuff that you might not review anywhere: Because those labels should realize this one extra copy might actually get them into a Best Of list at the end of the year." Or I might just blog about them.

These end of the year lists are really for readers. People love checking them out. I know I do. I just don't like compiling them. They're also for the p.r. brass. I'm sure Sonny Rollins doesn't care, although I'm sure he'd express some appreciation.

Now before I make breakfast, I'm going to fire off an email to a friend of mine who usually sends an email out to me and some other friends of his, which triggers a discussion of releases from the year. That made contradict everything I concluded a moment ago, but I'm doing it more as a way to keep in touch with these guys.

Space Exchange in Pittsburgh

2012-01-04T09:48:00.003-05:00

Last night was the first installment of Space Exchange, a new weekly series at the Thunderbird Cafe. Each week it's hosted by a different musician, all of which plays some strain of modern jazz, be it electric, acoustic, traditional or somewhere on the outs. Here's an article explaining it.

Last night Dave Throckmorton, drummer extraordinaire, sort of played host in a trio with guitarist Chris Parker (also one of the Space Exchange hosts) and bass guitarist Jeremy McDonald. Dave was his usual powerful self, throwing all sorts of accents in and strrrretching the tempo for just a few beats, like he was trying to slow it down, only to pull it back. Chris and Jeremy seemed to be playing with restrain at first. The tunes (no titles were mentioned) were chordally pretty simple and kind of repetitive. But Chris has two banks of pedals, and two amps too. He was playing a Silvertone which gave the music a great sharp sound. Plus he had some effect that made it sound like there was some keyboard backing up what they were playing.

Jeremy's playing really anchored the group. Occasionally he let loose a bit with some melodic lines, and I really envied both his tone and his bass - a Fender Precision. (I've never been one of those musicians who knows squat about different instruments and what different pickups do. But I love the sound of a Precision. I think Mike Watt had one the first time the Minutemen came to town. I also think that John Wetton played one in King Crimson, and a few years ago I realized that Wetton's attack and slightly distorted sound was something I tried to emulate in my playing.)

Anyhow, they played two sets. After the first I started getting a little restless. Might've been the hooch. They also seemed to be veering just a tad towards New Tony Williams Lifetime sounds, without dipping into something as badass as "Snake Oil." It was good but it didn't grab me as much. But I stayed the whole night and was glad I did.

On top of that, there was a really decent, attentive crowd there. That was really encouraging and I hope it'll sustain itself over the coming weeks.

There's actually a number of good shows coming up this month. In addition to all the Space Exchange shows, a Chicago jazz group called Herculaneum are coming to AVA next Wednesday, and a new Merge band called Hospitality are playing at the Brillobox on January 17, which wouldn't you know it, is the night Ben Opie's Flexure group is playing the Thunderbird.

On Jim Krenn

2012-01-01T22:19:00.002-05:00

Somebody searched this blog in the past week using the phrase, "Where's Jim Krenn." And while I didn't have any information to answer that question, then or now, I felt like it was a good idea to start off the new year by opining on the situation with at-least-until-recently, longtime WDVE DJ Mr. Krenn.

I am a fan of the morning show hosted by Krenn and Randy Baumann. I'm not sure how long I've been listening to it, but I know it's been at least the last five years (basing that on when my son was born, which will be five years in a few months). The reason I like these two is because they're clearly pretty sharp guys. They're sharp in their commentary, because they don't cater to lunkhead responses to issues, unlike say the morning team on WJAS-AM, Jack Bogut or whoever is anchoring. (Yes, I listen to them too. We have the bathroom radio tuned to WJAS, though I'm getting less and less enamored as time goes on. But that's a different story.)

Granted, the latter team's curmudgeon responses to what us young folks and what that crazy liberal president does, caters to their target crowd, which is the retiree crowd. But by the same token, it would be easy for Krenn and Baumann to go for the blue collar, knee jerk response of the Pittsburghese crowd. And they don't. I'll even go farther and say they're pretty progressive in terms of their politics. They balance their opinions in such a way that they don't alienate guys like me, or the other crowd who want to hear AC/DC every morning and want to hear more opinions about how Troy or Sid the Kid played last night. To go out on a limb, they virtually carry on in the fine tradition of Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, who clearly had more liberal ideas about the world, rather than dismissing all the freaks as such, but they love good cheap sex joke once in a while. I can dig that.

Further, their skits are hilarious and have a level of thought that Saturday Night Live could really use. (I thought that show was through with their "let's take one sorta of funny joke and just repeat it through the skit" formula, but once Amy Pohler left, that seemed to be their m.o.) For one thing, Jim and Randy know that brevity is the soul of wit. I've never heard a skit of theirs drag on too long. Many times, I've wished they wouldn't end. That, my friend, seems to be rare in comedy, and they deserve an award for that.

This might seem to contradict my SNL bash in the last 'graph, but as much as the variations on the Pittsburgh Prom Kings might follow the same pattern, they put enough of a spin on each one that it never sounds like a rehash. And the Wilfred Brimley bit... they manage to make that funny every time. Bad puns and everything.

As the relative of a Pittsburgh Morning Radio originator (Rege Cordic, FYI), I'm well familiar with the issue of local stereotypes used in this format. Rege said in interviews that what he and his team did was never mean spirited, and I feel the same way about most of Jim and Randy's stuff. It walks the line, but it never crosses it.

A year or two ago, Whirl did a profile on the guys and there was a section where they asked each guy to list some albums they'd been listening to lately. Jim listed a bunch of classic rock stuff and Randy listed a bunch of things that looked similar to my playlist of the time. (The only thing I can remember now is the Arcade Fire, so you get the idea.) So maybe Jimmy and I would disagree on some points. But I'm sure he would join me in rocking out to Deep Purple's "Child In Time" (studio version from In Rock).

So what the hell is going on with him and WDVE? I can't tell you the many times I've said to my wife, "Man, those guys must be the station's meal ticket, since they replay their bits so much." Is he tired of getting up so early, after doing it for two decades? Is the station putting the screws to him in the name of numbers? Is he okay? The PG said today that he's still employed by the station, which is probably because they want to be able to keep playing the skits.

Losing that morning duo is bad for this city. And not just him. I know the PG said today that Randy will be back on Tuesday, along with Val Porter and Mike Prisuta (who always seems like the voice that balances out the others' progressives). I can only imagine how challenging it could be to be in their shoes, having to conduct business as usual with all this going down, plus having to field calls or comments from people who either just want to know the truth or be jagoffs about it.

Whatever is going on, I doubt we'll ever hear the truth.

CD Review: Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet - Apparent Distance

2011-12-31T07:27:00.002-05:00

Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet

Apparent Distance

(Firehouse 12) firehouse12.com

Taylor Ho Bynum plays with a sharp clarity which indicates that he knows exactly what he wants and how to get it. Even when he's rapidly spraying notes, somewhat reminiscent of Donald Ayler, he tongues some of the notes instead of merely letting his fingers run wild on his cornet valves as he blows. It indicates this isn't just random energy gone wild. A master of extended technique on his horn, he emits some incredible intervallic leaps in a fast blow, deceptively making it sound like a high harmonic that can naturally be felt on the horn.

Apparent Distance came together through from a 2010 New Jazz Works grant from Chamber Music America and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Bynum states in the liner notes that he wanted to blur the lines between composition and improvisation and "upend listeners' expectations in other ways: circular melodies without beginnings or ends... transitions that are simultaneously jarring and organic." Considering his extensive performance career, not to mention his affiliation with Anthony Braxton (Bynum serves as president of the saxophonist's Tri-Centric Foundation) anyone familiar with the cornetist should probably come to expect such vision from him. And this music delivers it, wrapping such adventure in an approach that still manages to swing hard.

"Shift" opens with a couple minutes of unaccompanied Bynum, almost serving as an introduction to his cornet approach, sounding puckish and bright, along with some smears and squirts. It becomes more of a chamber ballad when Jim Hobbs (alto saxophone) and Bill Lowe (bass trombone, and later tuba) join in after a few minutes. Along with their wildest moments, it shows the sextet can be lyrical.

The piece is considered a four-part suite but each section has several different movements of its own. "Strike" follows "Shift" immediately, with Ken Filiano hitting a groovy vamp that adds an extra beat with each repetition, and then following it by subtracting it in the next series of riffs. Hobbs blows in the upper register while Mary Halvorson bangs out chords that threaten the foundation of the riff, eventually turning into interstellar space noise. This breakdown turns the presentation over to Lowe, who whips out the tuba, growling as he drones, methodically. When the group returns with some gentle but jarring intervals, Filiano bows his bass in the upper register like a cello.

The 20-minute "Source" is a virtual suite-within-in-a-suite, and it begins with one of Halvorson's strongest solos yet. In a lot of her work, she uses some sort of effect pedal that bends the pitch, which as great as it sounds, can become pretty similar each time. Here, she manages to blend that effect in with her mutant fretwork in such a manner that sounds unprecedented. Hobbs follows her with another wailing solo that could serve as a textbook lesson on how to play free jazz with passion. It makes me want to hear more from this guy.

"Layer" also crams a lot into the confines of nine minutes, although "crams" might be the wrong word because like everything else on the album, nothing comes across as excessive or overstuffed. This music has plenty of room to breathe freely. Bynum gets back in the spotlight here, at one point shifting from high scrapes down to clear bass notes in a matter of seconds. Gradually the sextet begins playing what sounds like a funeral procession, complemented by alto squonks, frenzied bass bowing and - in the final moments - fuzzed out power chords from Halvorson.

The lines that Bynum says he wanted to blur don't actually seem that blurry to anyone who enjoys music like this. But that only goes to show that composer and ensemble were successful with the execution of this suite. It's an amazing work by an amazing group of players.

CD Review: Kieran Hebden/Steve Reid/Mats Gustafsson - Live at the South Bank

2011-12-29T21:53:00.001-05:00

Kieran Hebden/Steve Reid/Mats Gustafsson

Live at the South Bank

(Smalltown Superjazzz) www.smalltownsupersound.com

Maybe you just had to be there.

The unlikely union of British electronic musician Kieran Hebden and American jazz drummer Steve Reid was already four years underway when they teamed up with Swedish free saxophonist Mats Gustafsson at the Meltdown Festival in London, an event curated by Ornette Coleman. A former member of Fridge, Hebden has been working under the name Four Tet, doing remixes and working with the likes of Thom Yorke when he met Reid. His partner's resume includes Miles Davis' Tutu album and extends back to the soul-jazz Legendary Master Brotherhood and, prior to dates with Sun Ra and Frank Wright, begins with the house band at the Apollo Theater. He died in 2010, less than a year after this concert, from throat cancer.

From the way the two musicians talked about each other, they felt a kinship that bridged the gap between their ages (Hebden was 33 years younger than Reid.) Reid went so far as to call the event a "special relationship, like Miles and Coltrane, or Dizzy and Bird." It's nice to hear about such a strong bond, but that unfortunately doesn't come across in the music.

The group didn't lay any claim to being a jazz unit. They played free improvisation group, open to wherever the sound took them. But Hebden's contributions don't sound like much more than samples or loops, and most of the time, none of them last longer than a few beats so they get repetitive quickly. "Morning Prayer" begins hopefully with a swelling chord but never really expands beyond that idea, aside from a few noises that drop in on top. Reid doesn't really forego tempo for free splatter. He straddles fills and groovy accents. Clearly he was an aggressive player but the mix flattens the impact. It sounds like it was all recorded overhead, making his performance sound more like a series of rolls on the rack toms and cymbals splashes, all echoing behind Hebden.

Gustafsson allegedly got so caught up in what they were playing that he didn't join in for nearly 20 minutes. When his baritone sax finally makes its entrance, it adds some more dimension to the texture. But no one really seems to be responding to his co-conspirators, at least not in an audible manner. Gustafsson blows in the Ayler/Brotzmann tradition of growling overtones, which can get a little much on its own. In "25th Street" he just blows the mouthpiece while an organ riff repeats without regard for the drums, and everything just gets grating.

The final track of the two-disc set, "The Sun Never Stops," reveals a little more of a connection. Hebden's keyboard sounds come from early '80s new wave, which sounds oddly intriguing in the setting. They gradually collapse into noise, including metallic clatter like cowbells, which may or may not come from Reid. Either way, the energy is contagious, with Gustafsson's guttural blowing generating excitement onstage and off. But it arrives after too long of a journey to fully appreciate that final destination, cohesive as it is.

CD Review: Jason Stein Quartet - The Story This Time

2011-12-28T06:19:00.004-05:00

Jason Stein Quartet

The Story This Time

(Delmark) www.delmark.com

It's been a good 14 months for Jason Stein. Last November, he released Three Kinds of Happiness with his trio Locksmith Isidore (go here for a review of it) and less than a year later this fine release hit the streets.

Stein plays bass clarinet exclusively, a rarity (maybe a first) in jazz, and he continues to develop his own identity on the instrument, incorporating the past accomplishments on the big stick, and using them in a way that's highly original. Taking that originality a step further, he has tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson along as his frontline foil. Jackson is a great choice on the basis of his musicianship, but the combined sound of the two reeds gives the music a snaky quality. Bassist Joshua Abrams and drummer Frank Rosaly round out this A-list of Chicago adventurers.

The Story This Time is divided pretty evenly between Stein originals and interpretations of others. The latter category presents a good idea of the bass clarinetist's bold thought process: While many musicians think nothing of playing three Monk tunes on an album, only a certain breed would choose "Skippy," "Gallop's Gallop" and "Work," three of his more obscure and, in at least one case, challenging pieces. For "Work," Jackson switches to contrabass clarinet, adding more of a low-end gait to the piece, making it even more playful. Abrams plays like a third voice in this track too, bowing along side the horns.

The other covers come from the Lennie Tristano lineage, with one tune each by the great pianist, and his proteges Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz. Marsh's "Background Music" speeds along sounding like vintage Ornette Coleman with this arrangement. Stein and Jackson almost sound like they have trouble keeping up with the tempo, though that is not a criticism. Konitz's "Palo Alto" begins with some very un-Konitz like honks and squawks from the horns before they settle into the theme. "Lennie Bird" doesn't leave a lot of room for horn players to breath between phrases, but it energizes these two, who solo simultaneously for three concise minutes.

The quartet stretches out in "Laced Case," Stein's nine-minute tribute to Steve Lacy, which is marked by tempo accelerations and open sections where the composer runs wild all over his instrument, moving from rumbles to simulated feedback. "Little Big Horse" could pass for a hard bop classic, with its easy going line and off-beat accents, and flow of ideas from the horns. Jackson enters during Stein's solo to add some color the bass clarinet, and the transition to his own solo feels impeccable. For "Hoke's Dream" the horns plays a series of long toned themes, while Rosaly gently moves freely around his kit. Stein begins in kind, eventually escalating his feeling to keep the excitement going. As wild as he gets, he never forsakes the melodic voice in favor of visceral shrieks, though.

With its combination of challenging covers and strong original works, The Story This Time is definitely one of the year's best releases.

Honoring Sonny Rollins, missing Sam Rivers

2011-12-28T05:51:00.002-05:00

Last night, Sonny Rollins was honored on the Kennedy Center Awards show. Just the thought of that is pretty exciting. Naturally I think ol' Newk is more than deserving of the honor, and it's good to know that others feel the same way.

I love Sonny, as a musician and as a human being. He was one of the first interviews I did as an intern at InPittsburgh and we talked for about an hour. A few years later, he wasn't doing interviews around the time of his appearance at the Pittsburgh Jazz Festival. So I faxed him some questions. Not only did he answer back a day later, his answers were very thoughtful and looked great in print.

Bill Cosby did the "induction" speech for Sonny, and while I feel like Cos has reached the point in his life where his shtick comes across more like a rambling old man (and the whole grumpy old guy act just isn't funny), he ended on a note of sincerity that was moving in its directness. The speech focused on how Cos traveled around the world, and in remote places like a dentist's office in Greece and a rickshaw in Japan, he heard Sonny Rollins' music - making it universal. "And tonight, we say, Sonny - welcome home." Something about those last two words carried a lot of weight.

For the musical part, Joe Lovano and Ravi Coltrane played with Christian McBride and a drummer who I can't remember. Then across the stage, out came Herbie Hancock, Jim Hall and Jack DeJohnette, along with Roy Hargrove, Benny Golson and Jimmy Heath. (McBride put together the film in between Cos and the performance and he probably assembled the band, which explains why there were two drummers but only one bassist.) It was brief and concise but good.

Much to my surprise, there was no sign of Wynton Marsalis.

Right before the show started, I went onto Facebook and found out that Sam Rivers died the day after Christmas. That hurt. Maybe it shouldn't, maybe it was a selfish, "now I'll never get to meet him" hurt but nevertheless, it got to me. It's hard enough losing a jazz musician, but losing such a mover and shaker of free jazz, feels even worse. If I didn't have the urge to write a review right now, I'd put on some wild Sam. Maybe I will on the way to work.

The American Song-Poem Christmas: Daddy, Is Santa Really Six Foot Four?

2011-12-18T21:27:00.006-05:00

(Note: I wrote this review eight years at Pulp, a Pittsburgh alt-weekly for which I served as arts and entertainment editor. Back then, I wanted to give this CD five stars, but our star criteria didn't go up that high. It stopped at four. I stand behind this review all these years later and I'm reprinting here as a salute to what I think is a mandatory holiday release. Much like my original review, I'm publishing this too close to the holidays to generate any sales, but oh well. Maybe the cyberworld can offer a quicker fix than it did back then.)

Various Artists

The American Song-Poem Christmas: Daddy, Is Santa Really Six Foot Four?

(Bar None) www.bar-none.com

One thing that made vinyl records so enthraling in their heyday was the sheer number of so many weird and unusual recordings - the kind that made listeners wonder who in the Sam Hill believed that such ridiculous ideas deserved to be pressed and unleashed on unsuspecting ears. The dawn of recordable CDs makes it even easier for anyone to clog the market, but burning your own disc is now the equivalent of dubbing cassettes: They often have the basic look of a blank tape, regardless of the sound quality.

A record, on the other hand, brought with it at least some credibility, from the look of the label to the artwork on the cover - even if it came in a plain, white single sleeve. So when budding songwriters around the country received a single with their lyrics put to music, sung and played by some, er, "professional" musicians, it's no wonder they might think they could be the next Neil Diamond or Carole King.

The American Song-Poem Music Archives documents this institution - scam, some some might say - where folks submitted a check along with their preference for the tempo, style and gender of the singer who would immortalize their prose. After the music was whipped up, a not-quite-crack team of musicians would bang it out, usually in one take that ended with a fade-out so the players wouldn't have to worry about a clean ending.

The holiday season is perfect fodder for such lyical inspiration, with many yokels figuring they could write the next "White Christmas" or "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." This compilation, the second culled from the the Song-Poem archives, documents 21 such exercises. There's no reason this slice of Americana deserves any less than four stars, despite the fact that most of the lyrics are horrible. They're still catchy.

Besides, if we have to get bombarded each year with Steve and Eydie's insipid version of "Sleigh Ride" or Lou Monte's "Dominick the Donkey (The Italian Christmas Donkey)," there's no reason why catchy hokum like "Christmas Treat, Peppermint" can't fit right in. Sung by the studio gals under the name the Sisterhood, it sounds like something straight off the Lawrence Welk show. On the comp's title cut, Saint Nick becomes Mom's back door man, and singer Kay Brown sings it with all the subtlety of a high school choir soprano ripping through "Whatever Lola Wants." In other words, all the right pitches and none of the appropriate conviction - which is what makes this disc so entertaining.

Forget "so-bad-it's-good" ideology, just revel in the fact that this exists. The quaintness of tracks like "The New Year Song" or "Snowbows" (first line: "I know you've all seen rainbows...") evokes visions of lyricists resembling the woman in Far Side cartoons or Tex and Edna Boyle from SCTV. Even "The Rocking Disco Santa Claus," another Sisterhood monstrosity, sounds less like the handiwork of Giorgio Moroder wannabe than a dad - in this case, one William Dibble - in a desperate attempt at hipness. If you think about it hard enough, the Sisterhood starts to sound like Silver Convention rather than the Lennon Sisters.

These tracks all deserve to be holiday perennials, because no matter how bad they are, they're still a better listen that, say, the Manheim Steamroller and Celine Dion holiday bombast.

(Afterthought - I don't think I've heard Steve & Eydie's aforementioned "Sleigh Ride" anywhere since I wrote this review. And I've come to a point where I'd like to. Irony.)

It's nice to be appreciated

2011-12-17T20:53:00.003-05:00

Playing right now: The Creeping Nobodies - Augus & Auspices

Thursday night was Customer Appreciation Night at Mind Cure, the record store around the corner from my house. After being home all day with a sick child, I was granted a brief reprieve from the kid and headed over to take advantage of the appreciation. (I stopped at Lili, the coffeeshop downstairs first, for a post-dinner joe.)

There was pizza and beer, but I was full from dinner so I started perusing the racks. It had been a few weeks since I was in there and there always seems to be some new stuff worth checking out, or else there's a rack that I missed the last time, since my attention span ran out.

I picked up this Creeping Nobodies album there. I've seen them twice in Pittsburgh (though it's been about seven years since their last visit) and have two of their CDs. This is might be the most consistent one, even though it appears to be a compilation of stuff from split EPs. And it really has a Sonic Youth-via-Thinking Fellers thing going on.

I also picked up a Neko Case album I'd never seen or heard of before, Canadian Amp, which is sort of a mini-LP with a number of cover tunes. While thumbing through the jazz I started thinking that it'd be cool to find another Von Freeman album, because he's a great Chicago tenor player... and lo and behold I came across an album on Muse by him and Willis Jackson. It's kind of split between the two of them, from a live concert, with standards and a some blues blowing vehicles, but maybe it'll grow on me.

While paying for the records, Mike asked if I was sure I didn't want a beer. I'm not a beer drinker, so I declined. Then he offered me a shot of bourbon. To that, I couldn't say no. I left feeling like I had just dislodged the remains of my cold, and I also felt glad to live in a neighborhood with a vinyl store, a coffeeshop and evening events like this.

I DO have reviews I want to write for the blog, but between illness in the family and change in temperature outside, I haven't had the motivation. Maybe tomorrow, which is my last day off before Christmas Eve.

LP Review - Tony Jones, Kenny Wollesen & Charles Burnham - Pitch, Rhythm & Conciousness

2011-12-11T07:18:00.004-05:00

Tony Jones - Kenny Wollesen - Charles Burnham

Pitch, Rhythm and Consciousness

(New Artists) www.newartistsrecords.com

This might be the album that can introduce straight ahead jazz fans to free improvisation. Whereas most free music can scare greenhorns away with its aggresive energy and extended technique, Pitch, Rhythm and Consciousness sounds subdued, bringing together gentle, lyrical ideas with the loose approach to group interaction. It's banded into nine individual tracks but it flows like one continuous piece, where a few written ideas launch the trio and bring them back together at certain times to make sure things remain cohesive. Although there are moments when things sound extremely spare and open, the trio typically keeps a mood flowing so that the listener's mind won't wander.

Tenor saxophonist Tony Jones, who acts as a de facto leader, hails from Berkeley where he grew up playing with trumpeter Steven Bernstein, saxophonist Jessica Fuchs (now his wife Jessica Jones) and multi-instrumentalist Peter Apfelbaum, the latter who lead the group Hieroglyphics Ensemble, which added "New York" to their after relocation there in the '90s. (The group played on Don Cherry's Multikulti album in 1990.)

Burnham might be best known for his performance on James Blood Ulmer's trio album Odyssey, but he has also worked with Henry Threadgill and Cassandra Wilson, among others. Wollesen, another Bay Area resident, played with Mrs. Jones when he was younger, and has become pretty ubiquitous due to work everyone from Bill Frisell and Myra Melford to Tom Waits and David Byrne.

Wollesen's contributions to this album are the icing on the cake, but it's worth starting at that point and working backwards. He skips a traditional trap kit, and plays nothing but bells, gongs and shakers throughout the album. Without any attempt to either keep pulse or keep away from it, Wollesen adds to the texture of the music, providing shape and direction to the sounds his co-conspirators create. There are moments when he isn't heard prominently, but even then his presence can be felt.

Jones maintains a strong lyrical stance throughout the album, staying in a warm, thoughful mood rather than exploring extreme dynamics of his instrument. Only two of the tracks have songwriting credit (his) and it's clear these are both preconceived themes that he brought to the table. "Dear Toy" opens the set with a minor ballad, where he concentrates on the middle register after following a Burnham solo with some long tones.

Burnham's playing brings up some of the most intriguing moments of the album. While he does bow gracefully, he also plucks his instrument's strings, making it sound like a koto or some other pungent Asian instrument. It makes a great introduction to "Billie," where Jones comes in with a mournful melody that evokes a stretched-out "You Don't Know What Love Is" (I feel like I hear this earlier in the set too). If they named the piece for the singer who spelled her name that way, they certainly good the mood right. In "Jessie," Burnham sounds like he's playing a banjo. This track is the only one, however, that stays a little too spare. Wollesen's gongs move to the forefront, over the "banjo" notes and soft tenor pedal points, but no one steps up to solo. But like all the tracks on the album, it doesn't overstay its welcome. (One track lasts just over seven minutes, the rest average three to five minutes.)

There's one other interesting quality to Pitch, Rhythm and Consciousness that could have been the opening statement had I not wanted to put the music itself up front: Tactile copies of the album are available only on vinyl, with digital downloads or MP3s available too. Last year around this time, on this blog, I opined that Nels Cline's Dirty Baby should be purchased not only because it was a great album but to give Cryptogramophone positive reinforcement for having the guts to release a double-CD set with two elaborate booklets at a time when any release is a financial risk.

The same should be said for Tony Jones. It's hard enough playing adventurous, bold music and releasing it on compact discs. But putting it out on vinyl shows a true commitment to your craft and to the people who influenced you (I think it's safe to say that Jones' formative years of music listening happened when vinyl was in its prime). The people who still buy vinyl are the ones who love music, which of course is a select group. Hopefully enough of them will check this release out because they won't be disappointed. Then they can play it for their friends who are scared of free jazz, and they will open their ears more and suddenly the whole of avant garde jazz will have a bigger fan base!

Well....no, not really. I'm not that naive and hopeful. But this is a great album and a great format in which to hear it.

Can't talk now. Listening

2011-12-05T23:40:00.003-05:00

Playing right now: Cylinder - s/t (Clean Feed)

I got home tonight and a package from Clean Feed was waiting for me. Ha cha! I got two albums that feature Aram Shelton, but this one is more like a co-operative (I'm tempted to, but won't, use that word ascribed to bands like Blind Faith to describe Cylinder). Along with Shelton (alto, b-flat and bass clarinets), it includes Darren Johnston (trumpet), Lisa Mezzacappa (bass) and Kjell Nordeson (drums).

The other disc is by Arrive - Shelton, Jason Adasiewicz, Jason Roebke and Tim Daisy.

Too busy listening, but just wanted to make a request. It looks like the hits to this blog are starting to come more from people looking to actually check out the reviews, and not so much spammers or people who just hit "Next blog" while viewing. If you're checking out the blog, please stop to say hi, or leave a comment or something. It'd be cool to know what people think. And to see if the googlebot person in Mountain View is a. a real person and b. someone interested in the music or someone just doing their job.

7" review: Lovin' Spoonful - Alley Oop / Night Owl Blues

2011-12-05T09:43:00.002-05:00

Lovin' Spoonful

Alley Oop/ Night Owl Blues

(Sundazed) www.sundazed.com

I had no idea that Black Friday was also another Record Store Day. Among the things released and available on that day, Sundazed released this - an outtake from Lovin' Spoonful's first album (available on the reissue of it) and an extended version of the closing track of the record.

Back around the time I posted an entry that appreciated the band's Everything Playing album, I considered ordering their debut, Do You Believe in Magic. It's the only album of theirs that I don't own and I really wanted to hear "Night Owl Blues." The opening seconds of that song are really light years from the band's lighter fare, such as that album's title track (though I will say the backing track of that song has a lot of drive). John Sebastian blows an extremely dirty harp intro that gets especially raunchy against Zal Yanovsky's echoey guitar chords. These weren't any ordinary white kids copping the style. This is genuine.

I haven't heard the song since I sold my two-fer Kama Sutra Best Of album about two decades ago. It wasn't a tragic loss, but something I would enjoy revisiting. So when I saw that was on this single, I was sold. Plus Zal's guitar solo doesn't fade out after three minutes. It goes for another chorus or two before Sebastian comes in, Joe Butler takes things into double time for a few bars and the whole thing wraps up neatly.

"Alley Oop" is indeed the novelty song originally done by the Hollywood Argyles. The band turns it into something of a garage rave-up, at least as far as the tempo goes, which gives it a nice bump, along with vocals by Zal.

At $8, these Record Store singles can be a little steep, but considering I would've paid more for a CD reissue that I'd probably set aside after a spin or two, this was a good investment.

Love Letters at Gooski's - a recap

2011-12-05T09:22:00.003-05:00

Over the past couple of years, gigs have turned into dicey events for me and my psyche. The smallest thing can set me off, from a lack of caffeine prior to a show to the size of the audience to the amount of attention the audience pays to us. At the same time, if five people come to a show that I didn't expect, and/or if a few members of the audience laugh at our banter or whoop their heads off between songs, that can be all I need to have a great time.

I'm saying this because the planets aligned Saturday night at Gooski's. Arrival was easy (another factor in my mood). By 10:00, the bar was jammed with people, both in the back room where the bands play, and up front.

City Steps went on first, not too long after a constable showed up and served their frontman with papers. It sucks that he's getting sued, but I was almost relived that he wasn't carted out of there in cuffs. (Don't laugh - it's happened at Gooski's before, albeit at the end of the night as a set was winding down.) They really have a Belle & Sebastian vibe going on, but that could be because Michael happens to write catchy songs that follow the same sort of melodic path as that Scottish act. Having Bill and Kate, formerly of the Hi-Frequencies, in the band and adding a '60s vibe doesn't hurt either. They played for almost exactly 30 minutes, which was a little brief for me. Always leave them wanting more, I guess. And considering that I was worried about them going on at 10:30 rather than earlier, it meant things were right on time.

Neighbours were next, all tight Mod-pop in their sweaters. Keyboardist/singer Mike (there was a pattern here) had a Steelers sweater on, but it was still kind of in keeping with the theme. It's great hearing a band that's so incredibly tight, and clearly listening to each other to make sure things sound so cohesive. The sound was a little muddy, but it didn't matter. It felt great.

Then we Love Letters went on. Earlier in the evening, my paranoid side almost got the best of me, worrying that everyone except our close friends would leave before we got on. Not the case. In fact at least one friend from work showed up after checking out the Beagle Brothers at their show about five minutes away, at Sonny's. We were pretty well rehearsed for this show, and I think it gave us confidence. Sure there were a few flubs here and there, but when you're playing a song that alternates between 5/4 and 6/8, it's impressive enough that you attempt it. Especially when it's a deep cut Monkees song ("As We Go Along"). Erin, our drummer, sings the tune, which requires a good set of pipes, and she definitely has them. Since drums are really minor in the song, she came out front to sing it and only went back for the coda, which kicks it up to a dramatic level.

My other setback with playing last is that I try not to drink, or not drink too much, before we play because my hooch of choice kills what little vocal range I have. I was good and had just one before we started. And to lube the vocal chords a bit, I bought a shot of Irish whiskey before we went on. AND I SIPPED IT. Say what you like, but I enjoy sipping shots because you can appreciate them that way. I learned that from my friend Rob, who came out for the show, and heard us do one of his songs.

So good times, good set list, good bands. Now I'm yearning to do it again.

Have plans for tonight?

2011-12-03T16:51:00.002-05:00

In case anyone reading this is in Pittsburgh, looking for something to do, my band the Love Letters are playing at Gooski's tonight, on Brereton Street in Polish Hill. City Steps are opening, followed by Neighbours and then us.

Good times. Be there.

CD Review: Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone - Departure of Reason

2011-12-03T16:48:00.000-05:00

Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone

Departure of Reason

(Thirsty Ear) www.thirstyear.com

Mary Halvorson (guitar) and Jessica Pavone (viola) have played together in Anthony Braxton's 12+1tet and the Thirteenth Assembly, and they've each developed respectable careers on their own, in a variety of settings. Halvorson has been one of the most talked about modern guitarists in the past year or two, thanks in part to her trio and quintet albums. Among numerous other projects as a co-leader or supporting member, she also plays in People, a sort of free rock duo with drummer Kevin Shea. Pavone co-leads the groups Army of Strangers and the Pavones, and has received funding to compose several extended compositions, including the album Songs of Synastry and Solitude (which, just to prove the variety of influences here, was inspired by a Leonard Cohen album).

If the duo had been around in the early '90s, it's easy to imagine them as a fixture on the burgeoning Knitting Factory scene, when the club's original locale was releasing compilations and booking acts that combined uninhibited improvisation with music that drew on art rock or folk or something hard to peel apart with words, due to the blending of it. (It was usually summarized as "Downtown New York.") This is especially true when the two of them sing (on three of the 10 tracks), and their sullen voices are matched by equally obtuse lyrics. "The Object of Desire," regularly gets hung up mid-thought: "In the city city city city city/of events... it's the object object object object object/sometime before then." The effect creates intrigue more than abrasion, and makes them sound closer to Mary Timony or Rasputina's Melora Creager if they hung around with the college improv crowd.

Some of the songs on Departure of Reason (the fourth Halvorson/Pavone album and second for Thirsty Ear) sound like madrigals. Halvorson sets up a 2/2 riff, hitting a low chord and answering with a high one (and at times she does really smack the strings on her big hollowbody gitbox) and the viola plays a simple melody with an equally brawny tone ("That Other Thing").

The sparse sound of the duo occasionally would benefit from the addition of more instruments to fill in the surroundings, especially when they're both playing similar parts. But Halvorson and Pavone never like to stick with one mood for too long and many of the songs naturally flow into new movements, which sometimes require a check of the track listing to see if a new song has started. "New October" offers one of the best examples of this, starting with a minor folk melody, gradually bringing in ugly, atonal chords behind it and turning into a free metal freakout where Pavone sounds like she too is banging away on six strings. Halvorson regularly steps on her effect that bends notes to the extent that they sound like they're coming from a warped guitar (which presumably is too extreme to come from a simple whammy bar). The sound can be pretty similar with each use, and it detracted a little from her otherwise excellent Saturn Sings album from last year. But now she seems to have advanced her use of it, distorting it even further to a point where it picks up the sound of her hand, or pick, attacking the strings.

The previous albums by the duo struck something of a balance between their songwriting and improvisational side, making a clear jump from the song structures to the free skronk. This time, the transition feels more seamless, like their ability to blend the two has reached a new level of precision. It's jarring, but interesting, music.

Holiday weekend at Gooski's

2011-11-27T07:08:00.002-05:00

Playing right now: Amir ElSaffar Two Rivers Ensemble- Inana (Pi)

I love going to Gooski's on Thanksgiving weekend. It's usually crowded, but the crowd usually includes a bunch of out-of-towners coming back to visit. The turnout is great for anyone playing there on either night. And unlike most people, the smoke doesn't bother me too much. At least not until I put my coat on the next morning.

On Friday night, I dropped by to try and spread the word about the Love Letters show happening there next week (although I didn't have any flyers to hand out) but also to see the Dirty Faces, Brass Chariot and House of Assassins. It's been awhile since I've seen Dirty Faces or House of Assassins, and I've been meaning to see Brass Chariot for awhile.

Once upon a time, the wife and I used to go to Gooski's for Sunday dinner, which usually consisted of wings and provolone sticks, with a pierogie or two switched in for one of the others. I decided to get some provolone to absorb some of the hooch a few drinks into the evening. Little did I know the current variety of provolone sticks are NOT the long skinny variety but the huge muscular ones that look more like those vegetarian field roasts that I saw plenty of last week at work. Or a more apt description is that they look like the scotch eggs from Piper's Pub. I ate three (more than enough) and gave the other two my friend Josh.

That snack came after House of Assasins' set and during Brass Chariot's. HoA is lead by Jason Baldinger, WRCT DJ and Paul's CD employee extraordinaire, and they cranked out a set of raw but right tunes, heavy on the lyrical twists. The lyrics got a little buried, naturally, in the mix, but it made me remember their album from a couple years ago and how the scope of his words made up for any vocal shortcomings he might have. A closing cover of "Turn the Page" was... ah, entertaining. But, brother, if you're going to do that song, remember to end it on "There Iiiiiiiiiiiii go-woh."

I had been listening to Brass Chariot from the other room while eating, admiring how tight and hard they sounded. Sam has been playing guitar for years, long before I came along and started checking out bands, but he fits right in with the next generation cats in this band. And it was great to see him and Ben (bass) standing there in the unlit Gooski's back room. Ben's hair has been a trademark look for years and Sam's mop comes close to the same size and shape. They made the Damned's "Neat Neat Neat" sound like it was their own. Someone commented on how loud they were, but they didn't seem painful to me. Then I realized that the guitars might have been muffled a bit by the power of the drums. But there was plenty of meat and potatoes there.

Crossing the third drink threshold.... provolone settling in, but not feeling like a cinder block, thankfully........ Dirty Faces took the stage in a ball of swagger. Almost didn't recognize guitarist Ernie when he said hi to me earlier, due to the salt and pepper in his hair and on his puss. T Glitter's puss was buried in a sea of long hair, which made me wonder if he had been sitting close to me all night and I didn't realize it. They guys rocked with no inhibitions whatsoever. There was six of 'em onstage, though I don't think I could hear the keyboard at all. The energy never ceased and they seemed to play a good long time, but my eyelids eventually got droopy. Since I had to work the next morning, I cut out before the set was over.

CD Review: Jason Adasiewicz's Sun Rooms - Spacer

2011-11-25T08:49:00.003-05:00

Sorry if you're here looking for the review. I'm filing a review with JazzTimes and it wouldn't be cool to have both of these up at the same time, so I pulled it down. Go buy yourself an issue of that magazine and read it there. (The copy with the review is not out yet, but you should still buy one anyway. Keep print media alive!)

CD Review: The Four Bags - Forth

2011-11-24T07:36:00.007-05:00

The Four Bags

Forth

(NCM East) www.ncmeast.com

For a band whose instrumentation consists of trombone, clarinet/bass clarinet, guitar and accordion, the Four Bags sound extremely percussive as they start their album in "Wayne Shorter's Tune With All Different Notes." Michael McGinnis slap tongues a beat on his clarinet briefly during the theme to reinforce the tempo but everyone is blowing with such focus that the extra click acts like a nice addition instead of a click track. The piece is tightly arranged with everything in the pocket, so it's designed to groove.

Still, flying without the net sounds pretty impressive. McGinnis and trombonist Brian Drye solo in tandem first, with Drusky sounding especially inventive and light on his feet. Then guitarist Sean Moran and accordionist Jacob Garchik get their chance for parallel solos. The latter gets some great wheezes and backwards sounding notes out of his instrument while Moran wraps up a challenging solo with some pedal effects that turn his axe into a ring modulator.

And that's only the first track. Each member of the group composes, and they also cover electronic duo Air, and compositions by Brazilian and Persian performers. All of the New York-based Bags are active with a number of projects. Drye also leads Bizingas (reviewed here back in January 2011). Garchik has written for the Kronos Quartet and Slavic Soul Party. Moran has done everything from metal to accompanying vocalist Rene Marie. McGinnis has performed in Fela! On Broadway and Anthony Braxton's Trillium E Orchestra.

With all that diversity feeding into their music, the Four Bags change moods rapidly while maintain focus and that continuing knack for tight arrangements that makes their sound expansive. "Run" their Air cover, actually evokes Radiohead to these ears, since Drye's muted trombone evokes the whine in Thom Yorke's voice. McGinnis switches to bass clarinet for "Pope Joy," Moran's death metal spotlight where he switches to baritone guitar which again uses some sound-melting effects. One track later, Drye is demonstrating some lush long tones on trombone in "Comfort Toon," a ballad with some nice Bacharach chords at its center.

"Girias Do Norte," a forro (Northeastern Brazillian dance), is based on a bright folk melody and features the Bags skillfully working with counterpoint over a vamp. In another nod towards smart album programming, they follow that with "The Burning," a slow, pensive Persian composition that gets some Western spice from Moran's dramatic strumming.

Together since 1999, the Four Bags have released two albums prior to Forth. (Yes, they're funny too, as if the song titles and the anagrams on the front cover didn't make it clear.) The time has given them the chance to develop a rather unique style that keeps this album exciting from beginning to end. Hopefully they'll get some Year End list recognition. And maybe I'll try to hunt down the rest of their catalog.

Blogging problems

2011-11-23T09:47:00.002-05:00

The previous post was written early this morning, but I didn't get to post it until I got into work just now. (Don't worry, boss, I'm not on the clock yet.)

I upgraded to Internet Explorer 9 yesterday and now I know what I hesitated. For some unexplained reason, I can save drafts of posts but I can't publish them on the blog. Something to do with Javascript. And our new PC is the same way. I hate technology.

If anyone has suggestions or help, please put them in a Reply here. (All I could find in my haste this morning were umpteen "Yeah, I have the problem too" comments.)

Paul Motian - Last Words

2011-11-23T06:45:00.001-05:00

File this one under the take-it-anyway-you-want: I was driving home from work last night a little before 6 p.m. I'm pretty sure the clock in the car said 5:53 when turned on the engine (recalled only because of my usual quandary of "do I bother to fish a CD out of my bag to listen to on the 10-minute drive home or just put the radio on....and what's on now?")

Paul Motian's name popped into my head, for no particular reason. A few months ago when Lee Konitz was interviewed in JazzTimes he alluded to the fact that Motian felt like he had said all he needed to say in interviews and that he didn't need to do anymore. Motian seemed like a bit of a curmudgeon, at least as far as interviewees go, too. Or at least he was a tough egg. So it got me wondering what I'd say to him if the chance ever arose for me to talk to ol' Paul. I thought about a Blindfold/Before & After test. Or just asking him, "How do you listen to music? Do you draw a conclusion on the first listen or do you give it several chances?" I suppose all of this came up because I wonder how many jazz musicians try to keep up with what all is out there - people who get buzz and people who deserve buzz. I wonder if his mailbox is flooded on a daily basis with CDs from people hoping to get his approval.

Of course as you already have concluded, or already know if you follow this music, Paul Motian died yesterday at the age of 80. Not only that, he died at 4:52 p.m., a mere 62 minutes or so before I started ruminating about him. Maybe it's a strange coincidence. Maybe his spirit reverberated across the stratosphere as it went on to the next place, and left me thinking about him. Maybe his parting words were, "Ain't gonna happen, man."

He was on original. Nobody played a kit like he did. Here's a good obituary on him if you want to read more.

CD Review: Travis Laplante - Heart Protector

2011-11-17T21:22:00.002-05:00

Travis Laplant
Heart Protector
(Skirl) www.skirlrecords.com

Once at a Peter Brotzmann show, I ran into a saxophone player whose personal style was more in a straight ahead direction, having come up during the heyday of bop and hard bop. He, obviously, was open to other things since he was there at this show, and I asked between sets what he thought of Brotzmann's music. His reply went something like, "As an apparatus for producing sound, he really has a command of his instrument. His technique is incredible. As far as what he produces, I'm not really sure about that." It was clear he respected the German titan for what he did, because my friend could've said, "It's a bunch of noisy crap, and I'm leaving," but he didn't. (I'm pretty sure he stayed for two sets.)

This encounter came back to me while listening to Heart Protector, the solo album by Travis Laplant, a tenor saxophonist who also plays in the band Little Women and in a trio with bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Gerald Cleaver. Solo albums can be intriguing if nothing else because they can make the listener wonder what inspired the soloist. Is the musician following changes they hear in their mind? Is it completely solo? Is it spontaneous? Is s/he lost in their own thoughts? Did you have to be there - "there" being inside their head - to fully appreciate it?

Laplant comes out of the gate impressively, blowing two harmonized tones on the opening title track, and he's clearly producing them simultaneously through his sharp technique. It's not clear at first, but there is melodic structure to what he's playing, as the whole thing repeats. Still, it's long, gruff notes and nothing else so it requires focus. "Five Points" shows a different skill, since he uses circular breathing to blow a torrent of notes that gradually shift in tone with the way he manipulates his fingering. It's barbed in a very Pharoah Sanders kind of way, climaxing after six minutes with 10 low honks from the bottom of the horn, delivered slowly, like someone who can't resist adding to a point they've already made. Although once you realize he's going to keep honking, it gets more entertaining.

At this point, after two of the five tracks, the interest in Heart Protector has more to do with Laplante's chops than his compositions. Which is conflicting because this music is clearly close to him. He wrote these pieces while suffering from a severe case of vertigo that debilatated him for a whole summer. Each one represents his struggle and eventual triumph over the illness.

Of course, I know all of this because of the disc's press release, not because of the music or anything contained in the cover. "The Great Mother" doesn't sound like a triumph over adversity. It sounds like a really good imitation of guitar feedback. Which is good, but... it gets a excessive in its simplicity.

The bits of the concept do come across to some degree in the final track, "The Tear Dam." After all the squonk and squeal, Laplante plays a straight forward, meditative melody, full of pregnant pauses and it ends with a repetitive sense of triumph. He says it makes him feel "emotionally naked" and his no frills delivery conveys that open feeling so the effect is penetrating.

While Heart Protector winds up being something of a mixed experimental bag, Laplant shows a smart sense of economy: the five tracks only last a total of 30 minutes, so he doesn't wear out his welcome.

CD Review: Nice Guy Trio & Darren Johnston

2011-11-15T18:20:00.000-05:00

The Nice Guy Trio
Sidewalks and Alleys/Waking Music

Darren Johnston's Gone to Chicago
The Big Lift

(Porto Franco) http://www.portofrancorecords.com/

Both of these albums arrived at the beginning of the fall, collectively heralding the work of trumpeter Darren Johnston. They present the San Francisco resident in two different situations, each showing him to be a diverse performer and composer.

Sidewalks and Alleys/Waking Music is actually the Nice Guy Trio's second release. Along with Johnston, the group includes Rob Reich (accordion) and Daniel Fabricant (upright bass). For the two suites on the album, they also add two violins, a viola and cello. There's something wildly evocative about this kind of instrumentation that makes the music seem beg for some cinematic image to accompany it, and that's the case in Reich's five-piece Sidewalks and Alleys. Inspired by "countless hours spent wandering around the streets of cities, particularly San Francisco and New York," it begins with a slow minor waltz that evokes the pensive footsteps of such trips. While the pieces have a very written-through quality, there is room left for some improvisation. No group like this would feel complete without a tango, and for "The Inside Job," Johnston makes sure that it breaks from tradition with a solo renders that begins with some bent notes worthy of Lee Morgan and continues in something of a boppish mode.

Johnston composed the five pieces that make up Waking Music. His writing leans more towards jazz settings than Reich, and although it doesn't have quite the impact of the first set, his five tracks still have plenty to offer. The strings play with little to no vibrato and avoid giving the songs too much of a sweet color. When they do veer towards that end, in "Tiny Gods," they're balanced out by the minor key, a brusk 7/8 time signature and an intro that begins with Johnston blowing some smears and kisses. "Beyond the Paper Garden" has some stormy, heavy riffs from the strings, which may be the composer's way of describing the rough reality that comes with waking up.

As the band name of the other CD indicates, Johnston traveled to the Windy City in the summer of 2010, where he reconnected with compatriots Jeb Bishop (trombone), Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone), Nate McBride (bass) and Frank Rosaly (drums). They recorded six of the trumpeter's own pieces and two far-flung covers. The session sounds a little loose on first listen, but closer examination reveals a group working with some strong compositions, keeping a free feel while still showing a lot of forward motion.

What comes across in "The Big Lift," which opens the set, is the counterpoint between trumpet and trombone. They play parallel to each other, in a way that offers mutual support. Beneath them, McBride really grooves, even though this is a free tempo. The written section of "Rubber Bullets" amounts to just a few seconds of throat-clearing at either end of the piece, with Bishop and Johnston both blowing flurries of ideas (the latter with McBride again nearly stealing the show with some excellent bow work). This contrasts with "Cut" in which Bishop trades the out-of-breath attack for a vaguely romantic tone.

Johnston's writing, coupled with the approach of his bandmates, gives the album an original sound, which for the most part is not akin to easy comparisons. However the tricky time signature of "Glass Ceiling, Paper Floor" coupled with the instrumentation gives the tune some faint traces of Dave Holland's recent work. It also, being track four, features the first solo by Adasiewicz, who makes his presence known but doesn't overstep his boundaries. All of these, of course, should be considered positive attributes to the album.

To add to the diversity, Johnston chose a rather deep Ornette Coleman piece ("Love Call") and a Duke Ellington classic ("Black and Tan Fantasy") for his interpretations. "Love Call" begins in a very rubato mood and then gives the spotlight over to Adasiewicz, on the instrument that was probably least likely to be heard in a harmolodic mood. "Black and Tan" stays pretty faithful to the original, though it's Bishop who conjurs Bubber Miley with his plunger mute.

This is the part of the review where I tell you to keep an eye out for this guy, and for once there are actual performance dates to plug for each disc, although they're in different cities. (Anyone reading this in either place is encouraged to let me know.)

On November 18: Johnston will host a Big Lift CD release at the Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco with a different band: Ben Goldberg (clarinet), Sheldon Brown (tenor sax, bass clarinet), David Ewell (bass) and Hamir Atwal (drums.

On December 2: The Nice Guy Trio will host their CD releaseat the Community Music Center in San Franciso.

On December 18: The Johnston's Gone To Chicago band will perform at the Hungry Brain in Chicago.

So keep an eye on this Johnston guy. And if, by some chance, someone reading this decides to check any of these shows out, tell them you read about it here.

CD Review: Wadada Leo Smith - Heart's Reflections

2011-11-14T06:20:00.004-05:00

Wadada Leo Smith's Organic

Heart's Reflections

(Cuneiform) http://www.cuneiformrecords.com/

Wadada Leo Smith dedicated each of the four lengthy compositions on Heart's Reflections to a different musician or artist, although the music may or may not actually invoke the honoree's style. That doesn't detract from the power of the album. The trumpeter has once again brought together a band of electric and acoustic musicians, including four guitarists and two laptop "players," and created music that rolls along without excess. In fact, the group sounds a little more streamlined and focused than they were on 2009's Spiritual Dimensions, which was good but got a bit noodly by the end.

"Don Cherry's Electric Sonic Garden" is built on a fuzz bass riff, anchored by both John Lindberg and Skulli Sverrisson. This groove plays into the comparison to electric Miles Davis, especially considering the way Smith uses a minimal number of trumpet notes to say a lot (and his recordings with Henry Kaiser that pay tribute to Davis) but a lot of things differentiate this group. The groove is straight, without any extra rhythms over top. Pheeroan akLaff's drums sound more like a rock kit throughout the album, due to way he tunes his bass drum so low and lets it resonate. Smith sounds more gruff than Miles, and the way the guitars send out solar flares in the background adds a unique trimming to the music.

After a howling guitar solo by Michael Gregory, the rhythm section drops out briefly around the half-way mark (10 minutes into it, by the way), before it returns with a slightly different vamp to accompany Angelica Sanchez's electric piano solo. That slight break, along with another guitar solo (from Brandon Ross) and some swirling psychedelic textures, keeps the whole thing consistent.

Smith's composition titles can be a mouthful, and "Heart's Reflections: Splendors of Light and Purification" also consists of 12 individual movements or tracks, which spill from Disc One onto Disc Two. (On top of that, it's dedicated to one Shayk Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili.) There are moments in this piece where Organic sounds a bit like Prime Time, had that group all operated on the same melodic page. Some sections consist of Smith and akLaff going at it, some have an eerie group of sounds that could be either guitars or laptop noise adding to the suspense.

"Silsila," which opens the second disc, gives akLaff plenty of room and he uses it to play a solo that recalls Elvin Jones' masterful opening to "Pursuance" on A Love Supreme. His thundering crashes morph into press rolls and cymbal splashes that energize the quick rubato theme the group plays. The final two movements of the piece feature the best Smith solo on the whole session. His tone is loud and crisp, and here he plays with the bright authority of a classical trumpeter. It makes you appreciate both the depth of this composition and proves that Smith ranks high in the pantheon of jazz trumpet players. Or at least that he should.

"Toni Morrison: The Black Hole (Sagittarius A*), Conscience and Epic Memory" might be the longest title here, but at 10 minutes, it's the shortest track. It begins with some wild group noise, in a continuation of the previous piece's final moments, it seems. From there, it pulls back for some drones and sputters from the laptops and some violin scrapes before Sanchez plays an understated piano solo that slowly brings the group back in.

"Leroy Jenkins's Air Steps" pays homage to the late violinist with a 22-minute piece that alternates loud, full band sections and quiet lyrical passages. Smith should be commended for leading such a heavy group that can blow freely without ever getting too busy or heavy handed. While it's hard to single out each and every string player, they don't step on each other's feet either. A few quick stops and starts in the music indicates that this clarity isn't merely left to chance. These players are in tune with Smith's vision. More of those ghostly textures creep up behind his lyrical trumpet lines and Gregory creates some Fripp-like string attacks during his solo.

People with shorter attention spans might find the track listings on Heart's Reflections a big daunting, but it's easy to lose sense of time in this music, due to its power.

Sebadoh article in Blurt!

2011-11-13T07:11:00.002-05:00

Blurt posted my Sebadoh article on Thursday. Here it is. There were a few different angles I could've taken. Hopefully this one worked.

The Ditty Committee in Pittsburgh

2011-11-10T06:23:00.003-05:00

In the early '00s, I struck up a friendship with a New York band called Fake Brain, after they brought their spastic sort of indie rock to town a few times. They really seemed to be on the same page - or at least on the same chapter - as the Mofones.

Like most struggling bands they broke up before they garnered the big time success they deserved, but two members of the band continued playing together and last night their new lineup, the Ditty Committee rolled into town and played Rock 'n Bowl at Arsenal Lanes. Gideon, their lead singer, got in touch with me a while ago about trying to set up a show here for a mini-tour they were putting together. Considering how I've had mixed feelings about shows, and worrying about whether or not we could get a good crowd on a weeknight, I opted to put them in touch with Paul, who books Rock 'n Bowl. This way I'd get to see the band (first priority) and if they didn't exactly get a receptive audience (always a question there), at least it'd be a fun venue and they could make some dough. Well, they did, and everyone seemed to be happy. Except maybe my right arm, which got a little sore from using a bowling ball that was a tad too heavy.

After Fake Brain's traditional rock lineup (guitar, bass, drums and homemade keyboard/noise thing), I was pleasantly surprised by the Ditty Commitee's instrumentation: bass, keyboard sampler thingy (make partially of parts of the aforementioned thing), Casio (masquerading as a couple different things) and electric drums. After awhile it was clear the lyrical wit of Fake Brain had found a new home with this band and they use the instruments really well to create something solid that doesn't rely on the novelty of the sounds. These guys have a lot of great tunes. A lot of short ones too.

A few friends of mine showed up, who I told about the show and who I thought would appreciate them. Turns out, one friend works with a guy who knows the Ditty Committee and who will be playing with them in Morgantown on Saturday. And my friend Katie and her boyfriend let me bowl with them. We were all so-so bowlers, which made us a good team.

CD Review: Gigi Gryce - Doin' the Gigi

2011-11-08T22:56:00.011-05:00

Gigi Gryce

Doin' the Gigi

(Uptown) http://www.uptownrecords.net/

In the final, live portion of this CD, announcer MC Hugh Downs (yes, that Hugh Downs) describes Gigi Gryce's set as the music that "musicians have good reason to believe will outlast rock and roll music or any other kind of fad music that comes and goes. Maybe everybody thinks that except teenagers." That probably seemed believable in those days pre-Beatles days of 1957, yet it sounds terribly ironic when considering both the stature of that rock and roll music in the 21st century, and the stature of alto saxophonist/composer/publisher Gigi Gryce in the history of jazz. Most hard bop fans know his tunes like "Minority" and "Nica's Tempo," which have both been covered by musicians with discriminating tastes for years. He also played an active role on albums by no less than Lee Morgan and Clifford Brown for Blue Note.

But in his lifetime, Gryce was one the extremely talented but struggling musicians that fell through the cracks. He had lofty goals to run a publishing company that would get musicians the royalties they deserved, and to start his own record label. His good intentions burned him out and by the early '60s he kissed the jazz life goodbye and became a school teacher.

Doin' the Gigi uncovers some valuable radio broadcasts and unreleased sessions that offer some glimpses into the world of this alto saxophonist, who managed to hold a band together, get them tight and play music that was both innovative and accessible enough to gain fans. A close parallel can be seen with his friends Benny Golson and Art Farmer, who both played with Gryce before they started their Jazztet, which stressed the melodic swing over the frenzy of bebop.

The set moves in reverse chronological order, starting with a 1961 radio broadcast from Birdland, for better or worse with Symphony Sid announcing some of the four tracks. Richard Williams (trumpet), Eddie Costa (vibes), Richard Wyands (piano), Julian Euell (bass) and Mickey Roker (drums) join the saxophonist for a solid set that exceeds expectations of such a frontline. The original "A Premonition of You (aka Baby G)" has a structure similar to "Lover Man," although the closing phrase doesn't have the chord shift that gives the latter its hook. For "A Night In Tunisia," Gryce has Costa play the theme over a 6/4 rhythm, switching to the standard 4/4 to end the phrase. If that wasn't unique enough, the tag at the end of the chorus is taken in 7/4, clipping off a beat while adding to the urgency. Gryce has a tone like Charlie Parker, although he was less interested in drawing on bebop licks than establishing his own personality. The same group appears in two studio tracks for what seems to be plans for a self-released single. "Blues in Bloom," which lasted 11 minutes at Birdland, is limited to three here but still sounds tight.

Another session, found on a demo disc dated 1960, has Gryce, Williams, Wyands and an unknown rhythm section in an odd selection of tunes. Curtis Fuller's "Down Home," (another inclusion from the Birdland set) appears with "Stompin' at the Savoy," and "Take the A Train." All of them, especially the Strayhorn perennial, sound contemporary, by '50s standards, thanks to Gryce's arranging skills.

Back in 1957, Gryce was involved with the short-lived Signal label. Among his contributions was a quartet session with Thelonious Monk which included the pianist's rarely played tunes "Shuffle Boil" and "Gallop's Gallop." (Why the otherwise detailed booklet reduces that session to a passing phrase seems odd.) In June of that year, the label held a release party that was broadcast on tv, and is released here. This time the band includes Cecil Payne (baritone sax), Duke Jordan (piano), Wendell Marshall (bass) and Art Taylor (drums). Five tracks range from "All the Things You Are" to the Jordan-Payne "Man of Moods" (which sounds a lot like Charlie Parker's "Segment") and "Blues Walk," another much-contested melody that had been recorded by Clifford Brown, but is said to have originated with saxophonist Chris Woods.

All of these tracks last less than three minutes and commentary from Downs and Al "Jazzbo" Collins seem a little quaint all these years later. And while the liners make the argument that the brevity didn't give the quintet enough time to make an impression - thus contributing to Gryce's fate - it overlooks the fact that a lot of jazz back then was probably in the single format. So we jazz fans might dig an 11-minute workout more, but John Q. Public might get hitched on songs that come in short spurts on his television screen.

Taken together, it provides a nice profile on Gryce and makes me want to dig out the albums he did with Lee Morgan or hunt down the Prestige albums done under his own leadership.

The man with the best job in the world

2011-11-04T00:05:00.002-04:00

Michael Cuscuna spoke tonight at Pitt as part of the university's Jazz Seminar. (The print version of my Q&A with him in City Paper is pretty short but you can find the whole, uncut interview, full of all kinds of jazz geek anecdotes, right here.)

When I got the William Pitt Union tonight, I saw Mr. C towards the front of the auditorium, talking to another guy. I got a chance to chat with him and found that he was as warm a guy in person as he was on the phone. He spoke for about 45 minutes, all killer, no filler. And when it came time for questions, I was actually first, asking how many Mosaic projects were charted for the future. (Answer - it all depends on when the label licenses the albums to him. Right now there are 2 in progress, and 8 on paper.) Someone asked about Andrew Hill, which I was glad to hear because the world needs more Andrew Hill champions. I really wanted to ask him who was more of a challenge to work with, Cecil Taylor or Andrew. But I didn't get the chance. After the talk, he had what seemed like an interview or something going on with some other fellow.

And now Michael has my card, so if he decides he needs a second banana to hang out with him while combing through the latest batch of tapes for his next project, and no one else picks up when he calls, then once pigs start flying, then he'll give me a call.

Sebadoh, Morty and Me

2011-10-27T06:03:00.003-04:00

Tuesday night, Sebadoh played at the Brillobox. This has been a much-anticipated show for me, in part because it was 20 years ago this month that I first saw them at the Upstage Lounge, besides the fact that I really liked the band. A group called Mazes opened up, a trio that was also into the catchy-but-noisy approach. They reminded me a little of what Pale Saints sounded like on their first album, underneath all the dreamy reverb and glitter.

Before the show Jason Loewenstein (also known as "Jake"), was milling around the room (for those who don't know, Brillobox is pretty small, upstairs where the bands play) and I talked to him for a little bit. I've met him several times when he's come to town playing with the Fiery Furnaces and he actually seemed to remember me this time. Me and guy from another band were both kind of politely geeking out while we talked and Jake seemed geniunely flattered and amused that we remembered so many details of shows and albums (like his solo album Sixes and Sevens that I talked up to the other guy).

The last time I saw Sebadoh was probably around 1997 or '98 and they took so damn long between songs that it killed the momentum. That's all changed. Now the band - which is completely by Bob D'Amico (also in the Furnaces) on drums - is tight. The only time things slowed between songs was when they either talked to the audience or when Lou Barlow and Loewenstein switched instruments.

Sebadoh's songs were always powerful because the subject matter often dealt with personal issues that I really related to, and the delivery also made it pretty real, whether it was a quiet solo Barlow song, or a loud raging one. To his credit, Loewenstein seemed to show a vulnerable but tough side on Bakesale too. Hearing those songs again all these years later, they still have the same emotional and visceral impact that they did originally, which proves the band's strength - that this wasn't just some musical drama that everyone goes through in their 20s. This is still great music that gets you right here. Hopefully that makes sense.

I went home after Sebadoh and got to bed around 1 a.m. At 5 a.m. I woke up and started writing an article on a Morton Feldman mini-festival/symposium that's happening in Pittsburgh next week. I kind of felt like that particularly yoke was around my neck for the past 10 days or so, since it took almost that long to get some interviews set up. Plus there was also the issue of getting schooled in his music before I wrote the piece. But me and Morty have completed our work.

With all that work done, I just dawdled last night. There were some things I should've done, and actually thought I would but I nodded off in front of the laptop, but this time I didn't beat myself up over it. I only four hours of sleep, so I was well within my rights. Then I hit the hay a little before midnight.

CD Review: The Spanish Donkey - XYX

2011-10-21T06:08:00.000-04:00

The Spanish Donkey

XYX

(Northern Spy) http://www.northern-spy.com/

Let Joe Morris go a few weeks without a shave, put him together with two rough looking bearded dudes, and - wham - he can pass for a metal dude.

Actually, that's not really true, nor fair. But seeing the liner photo where Morris is flanked by Mike Pride (drums) and Jamie Saft (keyboards, bass), the trio known here as the Spanish Donkey looks like it could be the latest entry in progressive death metal. As it turns out, the legend on the back cover ("File under: avant-metal jazz") is pretty much on the money.

Morris is no stranger to free improvisation or any kind of adventurous jazz, but his own releases have never gone this far in terms of heaviness. Saft has played keyboards with John Zorn (who's never been afraid to mix metal or any kind of noise like that with a jazz sense) and he also plays in a duo with drummer Bobby Previte. It's clear that Saft has a deadly combination: a desire to create heavy, ugly music and utilize some serious chops to pull it off. With Pride along to help shape some contours of the music, things fall into place.

XYX consists of two tracks, one 37 minutes long, the other 23 minutes. Make no mistake, this is brutal, heavy and ugly, but in the best way possible. And these guys play with their ears turned to their bandmates, to ensure that it doesn't sound like an endless wall of noise or noodling. Pride plays a key role in "Mid-Evil" for when he pulls back off the trap kit, it gives the music a chance to take on a different shape. The first five minutes create a ruckus of Morris's guitar and Saft's low-end keyboards dancing around over Pride's free clatter. When he stops, the guitar lapses into would might be a metal spaghetti western theme. One quality that also makes this session more compelling is Morris' clean tone. Where some old might be tempted to play through a bank of pedals, Morris plays absolutely clean, putting all of his melodic and technical skills to work.

Around the 13 minute mark, a change comes as Saft holds down some bass synthesizer notes that lead to some percussive, high notes that howl over Morris's skronk. Later on, some actual chords emanate from one of Saft's battery of keys, sounding for a moment like Rick Wright's performance on Pink Floyd's "A Saucerful of Secrets."

Although there's a clear break between "Mid-Evil" and "XYX," it could easily be one that was inserted in post-production so the listener would have a breather. The second track continues in the same spirit as the first, although the second half of it does actual become more of a long wave of sound that doesn't offer any dynamic shifts and just pummels away. But if you've made it that far into the set, you clearly have the stamina for such a mind numbing sound.

If you're still left wanting more after an hour of this stuff, the CD contains download code for a bonus track that can be found on the Northern Spy website.

Work. Sort of.

2011-10-20T22:45:00.003-04:00

It's turning out to be a week of phone interviews. On Monday I talked to Lou Barlow, which - as you might have deduced if you checked out the entries from a few years back about Sebadoh III - was quite a thrill. Not only that, Lou was a great interview: very laidback and forthcoming about his songwriting. And quotable, which was what really made me happy. I didn't get to preview Sebadoh's upcoming Pittsburgh show for City Paper but Blurt is interested in something.

Then tonight I got to talk to the guy with the best job in the world. No, not Ashley Kahn. I mean Michael Cuscuna. In case the name doesn't ring a bell, there's a good chance his work might. Michael has been involved with pretty much every Blue Note reissue since the CD age began. Plus he's worked for other labels too. And (put your hand on your heart) he created the Mosaic label in the early 1980s, which has set the standard for deluxe reissues in all that time since. Talk about music as works of art. Look here.

Then tomorrow night I'm talking to a guy who's coming to Pittsburgh to perform at a mini-festival honoring the late composer Morton Feldman. And on Monday night (fresh back in town from a trip to Ohio) I'm interviewing this guy's daughter, who teaches at Pitt and it putting this thing together.

In other news, I saw Ned Rothenberg last night at Frick Fine Arts. He performed a piece with a string quartet that was released on the Tzadik label. It wasn't quite what I had hoped for - I know he's played alto in the past, but last night he was playing clarinet. Still it was a good show, at least the parts that I stayed awake for. Nothing against Rothenberg or his band, but between the pain in my back and my general feelings when I need to sit still, there was much nodding off happening last night. I can't tell, but I think I got some dirty looks.

Social Climbers - Vintage No wave you might like

2011-10-15T07:17:00.001-04:00

Also Blurt ran my review of a CD reissue by the Social Climbers, a band sort of affiliated with the no wave scene of late '70s/early '80s New York. This one has music too! So check it out.

Review from JazzTimes website

2011-10-15T07:10:00.002-04:00

JazzTimes posted my review of the Starlicker show right here. Check it out.

Interview with Rob Mazurek

2011-10-13T17:01:00.003-04:00

Last week to preview Starlicker's show at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh City Paper ran a very short Q&A that I did with Rob Mazurek, the band's cornetist and main composer. Mazurek preferred to do the interview by email, which was fine with me. No need to schedule a phone call or transcribe the interview afterwards. After reading what he had to say, I was kind of glad too, because I might've missed some of the subtleties of what he had to say.

Here's the transcribed interview in its entirety. (I didn't post it sooner because I thought CP was going to do that on their website.)

Q: You've played in both large bands like Exploding Star Orchestra to duos like Chicago Underground Duo. Do those two settings present different musical challenges to you, or do you see it as all part of one big musical picture?

Mazurek: Composing sound for me is like is like watching stillness grow into enormous wings. Exploding Star Orchestra has had up to 19 people in the group and as little as four, while the Chicago Underground Duo is Chad Taylor and myself sometimes manipulating up to 13 different sound sources. The idea is to project a sound that that has the potential for psychedelic illumination, or what I like to call PSYCHEDELIC ILLUMINATION DRONES. The different musical challenges that you are speaking of are all inherent in the way in which you move the sound in the mind, on paper, in the room... and what kind of palette you are dealing with as far as what instruments or non-instruments people are actually playing.

Q: In the liner notes to Starlicker’s Double Demon, you're quoted as saying, "I feel like I've been looking for this sound for 20 years." What is "this sound" in this case? Why has it been so hard to find?

Mazurek: I have always been searching for this sound that happens above the head. A sound which has nothing to do with genre, hip lines, denigrating the past. I have been searching for a way to illuminate sound, so it just hangs there in the clouds, like a cloud, like a complex cloud of power and sweetness. Maybe it has been so hard to find because of the confusion of mass media/political feeding frenzy that tries at all costs to penetrate your natural creative life force and kill it.

Q: Again, according to the liner notes, you wrote the tunes for the album in a day and a half. How did they come out so quickly - pressure or inspiration? Were they based on things you already had in mind?

Mazurek: I put together a group a few years back called the Rob Mazurek Quintet where we made a record for Delmark records called Sound Is. This idea for the group came out of my desire to find a way to create these PSYCHEDELIC ILLUMINATION DRONES. The first rehearsal of this idea was with John Herndon on drums, Jason Adasiewicz on vibraphone and myself on cornet. I did not quite find the sound I was looking for and in the meantime created a book of songs that needed two bass players to project the idea in the best of ways. After time and more writing and thinking, the sound came to me in a wave and I wrote the six compositions on Double Demon. Not pressure as much as inspiration, especially from the illuminating sound of John and Jason.

Q: Aside from instrumentation, what else is different about this set-up as compared to other groups you have?

Mazurek: For some reason I feel incredibly free within the confines of the structures. All the instruments sing in a very peculiar way that is beyond words. Perhaps a distilled sound that takes into account specific frequencies from limited sound sources to create the illumination that seems so important to me at this time.

Q: How did you settle on Starlicker as a band name?

Mazurek: I enjoy the idea of evolution and the fact that we have no idea where we came from and where we go after this life. New galaxies are being found daily and it is an interesting thing to ponder. I like to reach as far as I can and attempt to discover things on my own terms, in my own way with like minded people. I am not interested in rehashing endlessly what has happened before. Whether for good or bad I want to stretch the tongue out, split the sky, and taste the furthest star.

Q: Both this band name and Exploding Star Orchestra seem to have a connection with outer space. Does that factor into the way you write, and/or is it part of a philosophy in your life?

Mazurek: I would like to send out to the world and worlds beyond PSYCHEDELIC ILLUMINATION DRONES for healing and learning and respecting everything that IS and IS NOT in hopes of ultimate communication that might not even make a sound. We live in a world that loves to kill. Killing the spirit, killing the hope, killing the creative in all things. The connection to outer space is the connection to inner space and all else that is seen and not seen. The philosophy is to live a creative life with the idea of cracking the shell of this absolutely conservative/corporate imposed existence and peer into the un-known/known in order to learn something that was never there before and has always been there.

Q: In Chicago, do forward-thinking bands like yours get respect from a larger audience that might reach into the "straight" jazz community too, or are you more of a fringe group?

Mazurek: Last year I released the Exploding Star Orchestra record Stars Have Shapes which I believe was an attempt to really push the boundaries of what is at least a little bit possible in my mind to project in the realm of electro-acoustic sound making. If you look what was said in my own home town of Chicago about the music and what was said in other parts of the world, it was almost an opposite response. It was record of the year on Italian National Radio3, you could hear the crickets in Chicago. On the other hand Exploding Star Orchestra will play two nights at the Green Mill in Chicago or four nights at the Whistler and there is a line out the block. You play festivals in Europe and Brazil and the listeners are ecstatic and many. Starlicker is getting ready to tour France, Italy and Poland this month. Exploding Star Orchestra just played Sardinia!

Although there are plenty of folks looking for there "angle" on how to make music or how to conduct their life, I prefer to just make sound and let it fall where it may. From my observations there certainly could be a little more boundary pushing in Chicago, but this is a tricky thing. There are certainly a few people making nice records with nice songs done in a nice way and perhaps this is enough for some people, but it's just not for me. There are a few people trying to crack the egg as well and this is exciting for me. I am in no way trying to say the way I make or project music is good or bad, but it is honest and I am desperately reaching for something else.

Birthday Weekend in Review

2011-10-10T23:53:00.011-04:00

Playing right now: Jason Adasiewicz - Rolldown (482 Music)

Not to be confused with Varmint by Jason Adasiewicz's Rolldown, which I reviewed some time early last year. This is an album I picked up on Saturday when the vibist played at the Warhol Museum in the trio Starlicker. Rob Mazurek (cornet) and John Herndon (drums) make up the rest of the band.

I was eagerly anticipating this show for several months. I'm familiar with Mazurek's various projects, and I like him a lot, but I really like Adasiewicz. He's appeared on a lot of albums, most of which I had forgotten about when I saw him. But if I had remembered, there's a good chance I would've turned into Fan Boy and started humping his leg. (Jason, don't worry, that's just metaphor.) They had vinyl, and everything was only $10 a pop so I couldn't resist getting Rolldown as well as the new Sao Paulo Underground LP that includes Mazurek.

I'm holding off on details of Starlicker's performance because I'm going to write a review for the JazzTimes website. I'll link it here when it runs.

It was a good weekend for bold jazz around these parts. I know the VIA fest was going on, but I was out of town during some crucial shows that were part of that event, on Thursday night. On Friday, my birthday I might add, Ben Opie played a double-set of sorts. First, Thoth Trio played, followed by Opie's new group Flexure. Thoth was great to see, since it's been awhile since I've made it to one of their shows, and they don't get to play all that often (although this month they have an unprecedented three shows!). Ben played "a birthday song" for me, which he didn't announce by title. It was Monk's "We See," which I recognized but couldn't remember the name of that night. (I did remember in my mind which Columbia and Prestige albums it appears on, though.)

Flexure is inspired by electric period Miles Davis, and it features guitar, trumpet, percussion, drums and bass guitar, along with Ben's alto. They were pretty hot - straddling freedom and grooves. But, man, at 44 I can't stay awake at a show past 12:30. I was nodding off again. But too committed to leave until the set was done. I probably should've just ordered a water to go with my drink.

An appreciation: Lovin' Spoonful - Everything Playing

2011-10-04T15:32:00.006-04:00

A few weeks ago when we had a yard sale, I combed through the record collection I bought over the summer, pulling out things that were worth more than $1, or that I just didn't want to sell. Shoved in with a bunch of classical albums, I found a few gems including Lovin' Spoonful's Daydream album. This was a cool discovery because during my junior high school years, I was really into '60s bands and this group ranked high on the list. I found a sealed copy of Daydream back then, and played it a lot until I sold either because of money or because I felt like I had outgrown it.

Lovin' Spoonful is something of an unsung act, I think. They get dismissed as a group that played fluff, largely because of "Do You Believe In Magic," which has been used endlessly in commercials which have really sanitized the song. (To extend that thought, a former bandmate of mine used to play the sugary "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice" and switch out the words for equally sugary, bland phrases to poke fun at them.) "Summer in the City" proved that they was a hard edge to them, due to its driving riff. But to really find out what the band could do, check out the instrumental "Night Owl Blues" from their first album. I haven't actually heard the song in over two decades but I can still hear John Sebastian's searing harmonica intro.

Daydream has a lot going for it, like the sharply worded "Jug Band Music," another great instrumental called "Big Noise from Speonk" and "You Didn't Have to..." which actually sounds pretty solid thanks to a great guitar riff and electric piano accompaniment. But right now I want to present an appreciation of Spoonful album number four, Everything Playing. Released in 1968, it had to catch up with the new direction in which Sgt. Pepper had pushed pop music, and the band was also recovering from the departure of guitarist Zal Yanovsky. (Although the liner notes to one CD reissued stated that Yanovsky was still a presence at least in the studio while the album was being made.) Regardless of the situation, Everything Playing stands up as a strong album that offers plenty of AM radio-friendly hooks, which get balanced out with more sophisticated studio arrangements. For that reason, it should be considered an overlooked gem that should be ranked along with revered albums like Pet Sounds and S.F. Sorrow. Hopefully I will prove my point.

The cover art was a departure from the previous three albums, which typically pictured Sebastian, Yanovsky, bassist Steve Boone and drummer Joe Butler in poses where they were hamming it up. Sebastian drew the front of Everything Playing which depicts the band playing on the beach with various animals and sea urchins. He drew himself in a very Lennon-esque way, and Yanovsky's successor Jerry Yester looks pretty stoned. The band photo on the back replaces the group's wide smiles with a more saturnine look, especially Sebastian himself, who doesn't smile and has swapped his trademark Granny glasses for something a little more styling. Boone looks like a hip college professor, or Match Game era Richard Dawson, in a turtleneck with a jacket over it. Yester, the only one smiling, and Butler both wear suit jackets and white ties. Below them, the song titles are written in various colors and sizes and scripts, looking very random.

"She Is Still a Mystery," one of the singles from the album, kicks things off with a smarter-than-your-average-pop-song structure from Sebastian, which gets a boost from the use of horns and possibly strings (arrangement credited to Yester). It has a dreamlike quality to it but it doesn't lack any of the band's spot-on harmonies, which come through in the chorus. There's almost a Van Dyke Parks feel to the song.

From there, the group could go anywhere and they cover all their bases. Boone gets his first and last lead vocal in "Priscilla Millionaira" which is a little frayed but it suits the goofball quality of the song, which has a little bit of a garage rock sound to it. The lead break seems to wander away towards another key, and then suddenly it snaps back for the last verse. "Six O'clock" another single, proves how strong of a rock band the Spoonful could be. It starts out with an overdriven organ, pounding out the rhythm, and Sebastian again proves how skills with lyrics and melody. In the coda, the slashing guitar and drums sound like the band channels the Who - and pulls it off. As a total contrast, side one ends with a Boone instrumental called "Forever," which features the session horn players as much as the group. At best, there are some Bacharach colors to the changes; at worst, it's smack dab in Easy Listening territory. What's the back story on that one, I'd like to know.

Speaking of Sebastian's gift with words, "Younger Generation" might sound a little dated and maybe a little cutesy, but it really nails the feeling of impending fatherhood as seen through the eyes of a guy trying to maintain the open mindedness that he thought his parents lacked. If only Sebastian were better known for this and not his acid-laced comments from Woodstock, things might be different.

Butler and Yester get some songwriting credit mid-way through this side. The drummer's "Old Folks" probably didn't endear him to any listeners moving into the counterculture, what with his sympathies for the titular people. Not exactly on the same level as Paul Simon's "Old Friends." His collaboration with Yester, "Only Pretty, What a Pity" is a gem, which was the b-side to the "Mystery" single. Beginning with a galloping snare roll, it yet again brings up Who references (Butler comes across as an underrated drummer throughout the album). Yester's strong folk vocal gets a little buried in the verses but the band all joins in for the breaks, sounding like a bunch of choir boys. The weird part comes in the middle, where the vocal sounds like its run through the vocal devise Peter Frampton would use 10 years later. It makes the lyrics indecipherable, though and I only discovered what they were a few nights ago when I finally found them online. (A search a couple years ago was fruitless.)

After Sebastian's somewhat soulful "Try a Little Bit," Yester returns to the spotlight for "Close Your Eyes," an odd but suitable ending for the album. It foreshadows, melodically, what he'd do with Judy Henske on Farewell Aldebaran, with a minor key and high vocal by him that gets more impassioned with each verse. The strings in the break really push it towards dissonance, evoking a feeling of darkness. By the time he repeats the last verse, he's dueling with them to be heard.

Then the song goes into a coda that reminds us what band this is: an instrumental riff lead by Sebastian's autoharp. And more of those thunderous Butler drums. It feels as if Lovin' Spoonful went through a transformation from happy jugband to something else and came out intact. Then it fades.

This was the last album that the band released. (One more featured Butler and session musicians.) After a career known for lighter fare and a lighter delivery, Everything Playing indicates that they could get heavy if they felt like it.

CD Review: Ernie Krivda - Blues for Pekar

2011-10-03T16:56:00.008-04:00

Ernie Krivda

Blues for Pekar

(Capri) http://www.caprirecords.com/

Some albums try to recreate a moment in time, a certain sound and/or style. Others sound like they could have just as easily been pulled from a previous decade and time-traveled into the 21st century, sounding fresh all along. Ernie Krivda's Blues for Pekar falls into the latter category.

In a way this is no surprise, at least to these ears. I saw the tenor saxophonist pull out a series of warhorses at the Detroit Jazz Festival in 2009 - the likes of which make me so "oh, not that one" despite the strength of the material - and blow the hell out of them. It's rare that "A Night in Tunisia" does that to me, outside of a jam session. A few months later, he released a solid disc for CIMP of solo saxophone performances (November Man). Suffice to say that Mr. Krivda's full of melodic creativity and sounds comfortable in all kinds of settings.

Still when he and trumpeter Dominick Farinacci fly out of the gate blowing an upbeat version of "The End of a Love Affair," they impress, sounding like some lost frontline from the Jazz Messengers. The rhythm section billed as the Detroit Connection (pianist Claude Black, bassist Marion Hayden and drummer Renell Gonsalves) respond to that high-raised bar too. Krivda unleashes an endless stream of melodic ideas over several choruses and Farinacci evokes Clifford Brown with his crisp and clear, tongued flurry of notes. Yes, it may sound be rooted in a 50-year old approach, but it has a lot of fire.

None of the seven tracks on Blues for Pekar last any less than eight minutes, so there's plenty of room for blowing. On three of those tracks, Krivda is the only horn and he sounds comfortable by himself. Sean Jones joins him on Dexter Gordon's "Fried Bananas" and Sonny Rollins' "Valse Hot," the latter which featured Clifford Brown in its original version. The head to "Valse Hot" is the one rare place on the disc that seems a little clunky. While the original featured both horns in a waltzy swing, Krivda and Jones play it almost staccato which makes the theme sound a little stiff, especially when going into the out-chorus. In between, though, there's plenty of bright moments. Krivda, who sounds a bit like Rollins in some of the other tracks, adds some vibrato to his phrases here so he won't sound too close to the original. This approach also works well in "More than You Know," where he evokes a smoky feeling, slyly quoting "Softly As In a Morning Sunrise" like he created the line.

Among other highlights, Krivda and Hayden duet on the theme to "One for Willie," an original based on the changes of "Out of Nowhere," a melodic structure that always sends me. "Blues for Pekar" is indeed dedicated to Harvey Pekar, the late jazz aficionado who was better known for his ornery comics, which reflected his personality. The track doesn't attempt to evoke the man, instead offering another strong blues performance, with Farinacci again matching wits with Krivda.

Where've I been?

2011-10-01T21:31:00.002-04:00

Playing right now: The Oil Tasters -s/t and only album.
On CD no less! Yes, I found out used at Paul's and had to snatch it up. Turns out there are only three non-LP tracks on it. I, for some reason, thought there were almost the same amount of bonuses as there were original tracks. Oh well, I need these songs. This band was a big inspiration to me during high school. Tenor saxophone, bass and drums with a singer who sounds all nasal whine and snarl. A band like this wouldn't exist today in such an unself-conscious way. "We lived on speed, whisky and doritos," bassist/singer Richard LaValliere says in the all-too-brief liner notes.
Richard, if you come across this blog, write to me, brother. I was in what might have been the only band to cover the Oil Tasters. And I'd do it again.
I will say, I think I can tell what the remastering has done to change the sound a little. (Keep in mind I listened to this album a lot after buying it.) The sound is kind of wide and expansive where it was once all close and claustrophobic. I sort of prefer the album. But now I have both.

The roll of steady blog entries really died this month, eh? Somehow about two weeks ago, I lost my drive to keep it going. Now that I've looked at how long it's been, I think that'll be a good thing to recharge me. I want to make sure that I end the year with more entries than last year, by a significant upgrade.

Part of the delay could probably be attributed to the yard sale that we had last week. I went through the 30+ crates of records from the summer collection and tried to pull out what I thought I'd want to keep or sell for more than $1/each (the price I was asking at the yard sale). Then Jennie went out of town at the start of this week and it was just me and the kid until Thursday, when we drove down to Elyria to pick her up and visit her mum. On the way down, I said, "I think we need a little traveling music."

He replied, "Like Herb Alpert."

"That's my boy," I thought. (Yes, he knew we had packed Herb for the trip, but I didn't prompt him to say that. We had to listen to Going Places by Herb twice on the way down, and once on the way back. Lest you think I'm abusing myself or him, that album was a daily listening ritual when I was his age, and I'm just so amused that he likes it.)

The week before last, his uncle in Denver sent him his first phonograph, along with some records to play on it - a different Herb album, Snoopy & the Royal Guardsmen and a Spike Jones 78 of Old MacDonald. I'm doing my damndest to not micro-manage his listening experience. He can hold the record whereever he wants, even on the playing surface. As long as he stays away from my records (or ones that I give him), he can do whatever he wants.

The Week in Review

2011-09-17T22:22:00.003-04:00

Oh, what a week it's been! Everyday there was some writing project going on.

Monday - Tweaked an interview with Will Cullen Hart of Olivia Tremor Control for Blurt. Transcribed an interview with In One Wind leader Angelo Spagnolo (graduate of Pittsburgh CAPA). Interviewed Ben Opie, his former teacher. Nodded off at the laptop.

Tuesday - Woke up early, finished transcribing (always a good feeling; writing an article never has the same burden as transcribing). Had Love Letters practice for the first time in a month. We sounded pretty good for a band who hasn't practiced in that long. Started writing the In One Wind article for City Paper. Nodded off again at the laptop, but not before making some good progress.

Wednesday - Woke up around 5:15 and finished article. Went to baseball game with a bunch of people from work. Good times, bad game. Wrote a CD review for JazzTimes.

Thursday - Wrote another review for JazzTimes. Started getting pissy that I hadn't gotten replies to a set of emailed questions submitted to Kathryn Calder (New Pornographers keyboardist who makes great solo albums). I KNOW she's on tour in Europe, but my deadline is tomorrow, mannnnnn. Went to the Olivia Tremor Control show. Woooooooooooooo! (Specifics to come.)

Friday - Scrambled to write an intro for the Olivia Tremor Control piece for Blurt. Still went over the word count, though not by much. Received Kathryn's answers via email by mid-day, while on break at work. Read them at night. Nodded off while listening to Azita (nothing personal). Listened to it again after waking up.

Saturday - Woke up at 6, and banged out the Calder piece. Worked. Nodded off while listening to St. Vincent, came to a few songs later, wondering, "What CD is on now? What was I listening to before this?" (Note: I was listening to the vinyl version of the album.)

Still have three CD reviews due to Blurt, which I'll work on tomorrow morning before work.

Olivia Tremor Control was awesome. Much like my memory of seeing them in 1999, they played these amazing pop songs that always seemed to be on the brink of collapsing into chaos, under the weight of having eight, and occasionally nine, guys onstage at once. Three guitars (tho Will didn't seen to be playing chords a lot of the time), good ol' Julian Koster bowing a banjo and making it sound like a gypsy violin, keys, drums and trumpet. There was one moment where a song fell apart, but by and large they were pretty tight. And nice guys. On the way out, Peter Erchik spied my newly purchased Dusk at Cubist Castle 2LP under my arm and thanked me for coming, adding how great he thought the turnout was. That was swell. So's the record.

The last day of the Festival

2011-09-11T07:13:00.003-04:00

Playing right now: St. Vincent - Strange Mercy (arrived yesterday in the mail. I pre-ordered it because it was only $13 from the label, plus shipping. White vinyl too!)

After I got back from the Festival, I was back into the world of deadlines for articles, the day job, the family life, and how-am-I-going-to-get-this-done-and-sleep-too? My condensed, overarching piece for JazzTimes is on their website now right here. I also wrote a preview for the Olivia Tremor Control show that's happening at the Hazlett on Thursday. So I never got to blog about the last day of the Detroit Jazz Festival until now.

Before I talk about the acts on Labor Day, I need to go back to Saturday. Before all the chaos of the rain and the wildness of the performance by the Dave Holland Octet, I saw the Sean Jones Quintet play in the afternoon and they were truly one of the best acts of the whole event. I sincerely hope that their set is one that most people will talk about when rattling off their favorite moments from the weekend. And believe me, this isn't local bias for a Pittsburgh artist coming through. (He's from Youngstown, but he lives here, or at least he did until recently.) The band was amazingly tight in a way that happens when you've played together for a long time and get to know each other and trust the music.

When I got to the Carharrt stage, they were into the first tune, "Look and See," and Brian Hogans was flying through an alto solo. When Jones took his solo, he did that thing I always notice that he does when I've heard him at the Ava jam sessions: The band pulls back and gets quiet and reserved and he starts that way too. As time goes on, he slowly ratchets up the mood until he's finally wailing and screaming. It's not a formula. It works every time. When I asked him about it, he compared it to a preacher doing a sermon.

Jones spoke after every song, explaining the idea behind the songs, since they all came from his No Need for Words album, which all deal with some dynamic involving love. His mood was relaxed as the band joked with him and audience members casually yelled back at the stage. At one point he stopped in his introduction and said, "Y'all don't wanna hear me talk!" But he kept going anyway. The whole band was great. Obed Calvaire used his whole kit constantly. Luques Curtis' bass was like a rock. And Orrin Evans show a whole range of styles and feelings throughout the set, banging piano keys with his forearm if the mood called for it, getting funky or playing off of the rhythm section. Boy, were they good.

I got to their set late because I was checking out Curtis Fuller across the way. He has a really unique trombone tone, which avoids the classic bright, brassy sound you might expect for something a little darker. He's still very fast with his slide, blowing fast lines on his own "The Clan" and Freddie Hubbard's "Up Jumped Spring." The young looking tenor playing with his band was pretty astounding. Then they announced that it was Eric Alexander, and I thought, well no wonder. That guy's hot.

Speaking of hot, oy was it bad at that time of day. I have that written on my notebook somewhere between those two sets. That wouldn't last.

On to Monday. There's something about the last day of the festival that makes me feel a little melancholy. The feeling that there's just a few hours left before we go back to reality. The chill in the air didn't help much. Then after going back and forth, I decided to skip trying to stop by People's Records. I had talked to the owner the day before and he said he might be open that day. But it was too far of a walk and I would've spent the whole time wondering if I'd be back in time for music.

The New Gary Burton Quartet played that afternoon and while I've never really kept up with the vibist, I want to check out more of his stuff now. His new album The Common Ground has some really great blend of his four-mallet approach and Julian Lage's guitar, so I wanted to hear it live. Loge plays a hollow-body which was both amped and miked, giving it a sound that was very clean but also very bassy.

Back Downtown, Karriem Riggins played a show that got out the younger, not-necessarily-jazz-crowd because the rapper Common was with him. Maybe it was the wild wind getting to me as I waited for them to start, but the set was kind of disappointing. Before Common came out, Riggins' group played a couple tunes, the opener being a piece that Gene Perla played with Elvin Jones. What I thought might have been something from wild Blue Note albums that Jones did, actually turned out to be more like '70s soul fusion, with no trace of Jones until Riggins took a solo to segue into the next tune. Guitarist Perry Hughes sounded good, doing the Wes Montgomery style of finger picking, but the band couldn't seem to really cut loose from the grooves. Common sounded great, bringing some good energy to the set, although the dj's sampled overpowered the band in the mix.

Back over at Mack Avenue stage, pianist Helen Sung was wailing the hell out of some boppish tune when I got there. Turns out it was "In Walked Bud," and though her trio missed some of the subtleties of the theme as played the closing head, it was still a good time. Then she invited vocalist Carolyn Leonhardt to join them for the "Helen Sung with Words" portion of the set. This began with a version of "It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing," which was everything bad about modern jazz vocals, with all the goofy note bends and interval leaps. They got better next with a poem by former NEA chairman Dana Gioia. The music was thoughful and the lyrics had a sense of optimism that didn't get saccharine. The closing Wayne Shorter piece, "When You Dream," had Leonhardt asking the audience to "la la la" along with her, and it made me think it was time to go home.

Walking back across the park, Terri Pontremoli was on the Carharrt stage giving an impassioned thank you to the audience, preparing to bring on the final performance of the festival, the Detroit Jazz Festival Orchestra. Sitting down with a lamb gyro, I checked this set out and was glad I did because it was pretty triumphant. First they played a series of arrangements that Christian McBride wrote of his pieces, on which they all wailed. Then vocalist Ernie Andrews came out and proved that you can still slay a crowd with an Ellington medley at age 83. A guy sitting in front of me, who saw my notebook, said, "He wants you to believe that it's still 1945," and he was right. While I get bothered by younger cats who get caught up in paying tribute to the older material, there's something about seeing someone from that era singing that does take you back there. Ernie is a treasure.

For the very last piece, "Detroit Chanson," violinist Regina Carter and clarinetist Anat Cohen joined the group, McBride and Rodney Whitaker traded bass solos and in the most triumphant moment, the University of Michigan Trombone Ensemble played from the back of the amphitheatre with the orchestra, finally joining them in front of the stage. That's the way to send us home.

That, and a cup of coffee (which I finally found at one of the vending booths that afternoon!) blew away my end-of-the-festival blues.

Well, that and the party at the hotel bar that night.

Comin' down..... comin' down...

2011-09-06T14:52:00.003-04:00

I got home from Detroit at about noon today and while I was waiting for my anti-virus software to get installed (long story, but it's okay), I had a craving for the Monkees. I've listened to two of them in a row.

Maybe I needed a break from jazz.

Recap of Monday will be up sometime tonight.

Recap of Sunday

2011-09-05T12:29:00.002-04:00

This morning I went out for breakfast to a diner around the corner from the hotel. Walking back, I had to wait to cross the street due to the Labor Day parade that was marching down one of my cross streets. Then when I got to the hotel, two cops, one after another, made me show my room card at the driveway of the hotel before they'd let me pass. Obama is speaking at a rally just down the road from here. I wish I had packed my coat with me because I would've taken the extra time to find a record store that's up the road from here. Oh well.

Yesterday, I went to a brunch where I met a few cool guys who are involved in internet radio and jazz media. They were all really great guys who are passionate about what they do and love the music, which was encouragement I need to keep doing this thing.

I had that in-between feeling yesterday because I couldn't figure out what to do with myself in the early afternoon. There were shows to see but not until a little later in the afternoon. So I got on the people mover, which is what us Pittsburghers might call a skybus or what Simpsons fans might call a monorail, and rode it in a complete circle.

Jeff "Tain" Watts played a set with the Michigan State University Jazz Band. They did a pretty hot take on Oliver Nelson's "Down by the Riverside," which featured all five of the trumpets taking a short solo. A lot of them entered seamlessly, picking up on the last guys' idea and running with it. It started raining during the last tune, Herbie Hancock's "Eye of the Hurricane," and I walked back behind the stage for shelter. Unfortunately I missed seeing who took the alto solo because whoever it was had some Dolphy influence going on. That's not something you hear very often in this context. I mean the band was strong and tight, but I wish some of these bands would get a little more adventurous with their repetoire and try to some Mingus charts, or maybe Hall Overton's arrangements for Monk. Or maybe even some Sun Ra. Some of his grooves would get the audience moving. Nevertheless, Tain set this band on fire.

Speaking of big bands, there was a tribute to the late drummer J.C. Heard on the same stage a little bit later. I only got to see a couple songs before running off to another stage, but Walt Szymanski, who played with Heard, had that band swinging really hard and he also blew some delicate flugelhorn solos.

Wish I would've stuck around to see more of them because Anat Cohen was late getting started. By the time I thought about it, I was already situated in a spot out of the rain and didn't feel like getting up.

Anat was worth the wait. "Anat's Dance" opened the set almost sounding like an early '60s Miles Davis tune with clarinet in the place of his horn. She was using space to create suspense, and threw in a couple fast chromatic runs. That piece was written by her pianist Jason Lindner, but several of the tunes she played were by Brazilian composers like Milton Nascimento (whose tune almost sounded like a soul number) and Ernesto Lecuona. But the way the band played didn't adhere to any strict Brazilian style, good or otherwise. They were straight ahead and looking forward.
Drummer Daniel Freedman pushed the songs in all different directions, making "Anat's Dance" a little elastic and taking a ballad into stronger territory. Cohen was smiling the whole time, dancing around the stage to the music, or else she was having trouble balancing on those heels. Either way she was graceful.

It was interesting seeing the Jeff "Tain" Watts 4 back to back with the Vijay Iyer Trio. Both groups were astounding but in completely different ways. In fact at the end of the night I started wondering if I knew how to write about music anymore, since most of my adjectives seemed to be overused in my notepad.

After playing all weekend, it's safe to say that Watts was all fired up and ready to go to town in his own quartet. With Christian McBride on bass, how could he not? Plus he had Marcus Strickland on tenor and soprano and Lawrence Fields on piano. It seems like an easy comparison to describe a tenor-and-rhythm lineup to John Coltrane's classic quartet. But with the fire power coming off the stage last night, these guys rank as players with the same level of skill and passion. Although you'd never imagine Elvin Jones making a joke about the show being a celebration only to have his bassist launch into the Kool and the Gang song of the same name. Yes, there was good humor mixed in with the band. Tain had the quartet play their take on "May 15, 2011," the ballad he premiered with his Drum Club on Friday night. It wasn't as much of a ballad with this group, meaning it hit a little harder, but it still sounded strong. "Attainment," which begins like the best transition period Trane tunes with a rubato theme, brought the house down thanks to Tain's thunderous mallet work and Strickland's screams in the climax of his solo.

Then there's Vijay. The music from the Carharrt Amphitheatre was echoing up to his stage, and there was some river boat on the water about 50 feet away that kept booming calls of "Work it out!" and "Come on!" thorough a tinny p.a. periodically through the set. I couldn't tell if it was a gambling boat or an exercise cruise. But I didn't let it bug me and neither did the trio.

Iyer has a distinct touch on the piano. As he played I realized that he's the only player outside of maybe Monk or Cecil Taylor that I think I could identify easily. Of all the offbeat song choices he often digs out, he threw in a song by the '70s R&B band Heatwave. Not "Boogie Nights" or "Always and Forever" (though I could hear him doing something swell to the latter tune) but "The Star Of a Story." It was hard to tell where that one started and the one prior ended but the group was tinkering with where they were playing in relation to the beat. Drummer Marcus Gilmore was playing straight 4, Iyer was getting choppy and Stephan Crump was bowing his bass, making his trademark (?) weird faces and singing along with what he was playing. The way that guy plays in the context of this band seems so innovative. He doesn't just support the trio, he becomes another lead voice along with Iyer. Later on in a tune Iyer said they call "Lude," since it's not a pre- or a post-lude, I thought I was hearing the downbeat in one place, until the drums dropped out and Iyer just followed Crump with his right hand. It made me think the center had shifted. Or maybe I shifted.

I did have a couple moments last night in Iyer's and Watts' set where I couldn't keep track of the beat. Now that I recall it harder, I think it was Watts' version of Bjork's "107 Steps" that really did it for me. McBride and Fields were holding down the riff while Watts played like he was trying his best to throw those two off, with a torrent of crashes and fills and beautiful clatter all over the drums. It didn't confuse his bandmates, but it convinced me to stop counting and listen.

The guy sitting next to me during Iyer's set kept asking about him and, being the supporter that I am, I kept feeding him info about Iyer's albums. Hopefully he'll pick them up.

I was hoping Iyer and crew would pop by the hotel bar after the set but I didn't see them. I did get to talk to Stephan about the review I wrote here of the album he did with Steve Lehman though.

CD Review: Seabrook Power Plant - Seabrook Power Plant II

2011-09-04T09:18:00.009-04:00

Seabrook Power Plant

Seabrook Power Plant II

(Loyal Label) http://www.loyallabel.com/

Brandon Seabrook's banjo technique sounds astounding. He plucks the strings so rapidly that sometimes it has the sound of a harp glissando. At other times his attack sounds like he's playing a percussion instrument. When your instrument has little in the way of sustain, you do what you can to work beyond those limitations. He's carving out a whole new niche.

The problem with the first Seabrook Power Plant album (reviewed here back in December 2009) is that the tunes didn't match up with the level of playing on the album. A lot of them sounded like riffs or simple irreverance. Or to be diplomatic, Seabrook (whose band includes his brother Jared on drums and Tom Blancarte on bass) were still figuring out where to take the band. Seabrooke Power Plant II indicates that they're on their way.

The album is just as wild and wooly as its predecessor but this time it seems like there is less done for mere yuks. It's still a little unnerving. "Lamborghini Helicopter" has double-tracked string boxes flailing away in what would probably be thrash metal if it was played on guitar (more on that instrument later). Halfway through the song vocalist Judith Berkson adds some soprano whoops and ahs, which cut in and out like they were random notes struck on a keyboard. Where SBB started their last album off with an idea (a tribute to Pete Townshend that amounted to a few minutes of raked banjo) this is complete concept that rocks.

Seabrook gets his guitar out for "The Night Shift," playing some dramtic minor chords for about a minute, before he launches into what sounds like Zoot Horn Rollo playing a Beefheart lick on 78. This quality, where a song never exactly sticks with one idea, shows how the group has evolved as a unit and how Seabrook has evolved as a composer. And while metal, especially progressive metal, might be an influence on the trio, they execute it in a way that makes sure it rocks hard.

I have to admit I was a little hesitant to put this disc on after the previous one, but I'm glad I did.

We Jazz Econo

2011-09-04T08:48:00.006-04:00

So after posting the previous entry, I figured it was time to definitely find out if the rain had shut everything down and, if so, it was time to start drinking. I asked a couple people here around the lobby if anything was happening outside and the answer was, "No, but the guy was going to play such-and-such is going to play in hotel lounge." Who could it be? Jason Moran? Mandrill?

After returning my laptop to the room I came down and saw Jordy and Don sitting in what I like to call a Sinatra booth (a semi-circle booth that rises up in the back) with Sammy Figueroa, with Joe Lovano leaning over the back of it.

A few minutes later Terri Pontremoli, one of the key festival organizers, was running around telling everyone that, yes, there was going to be music here in the bar, which was already getting crowded. First it was going to be Jason Moran, followed by the Dave Holland Octet, then the Deacon Jones Blues Band.

The room started filling up and they had to move a lot of equipment around, and it made me think of when punk bands couldn't get regular clubs dates or got shut down and they'd just set up wherever they could and play. This was especially apparent when the Holland Octet was setting up. It turns out Jason Moran "didn't feel comfortable" playing there. I can understand that. It was a crazy spot and the emcee kept stressing that we needed to be respectful and not talk throughout the sets tonight.

I staked out a spot with a good view of the stage and stood there for about an hour (seemed like it) while the band set up. The other DIY/jam econo aspect to the evening is seeing Dave Holland take his bass out of the case and set it up himself while we all watch. There's always something that adds to the excitement of the music when you see that. I think it takes me back to seeing Sonic Youth in the '80s at the Electric Banana, tuning up a dozen guitars before they started their set. Last night especially, it proved that these guys really wanted to play more than anything else. Holland - who while we're on the subject of DIY guys, looks a bit like an older mellower Mike Watt - said as much: "My friends and I said we ain't leaving town till we play some music."

The sound was a little ramshackle. Gary Smulyan's baritone sax got a little lost during his solo on "Pathways" and there were times when the vibes and bass were coming close to drowning out the saxes in general, but ultimately it was a tight amazing set. The intimacy of the evening really seemed to charge things up.

After standing still that long, I felt spent for the rest of the night. Apologies to the Deacon Jones Blues Band, who sounded pretty tight in their first couple songs.

Making my way to the elevator, I saw Marshall Allen from the Sun Ra Arkestra. Considering he was first break into JazzTimes after I interviewed him nine years ago, I had to say hi. I heard the group tried to play as the rain started, but I missed them and expressed my regrets. Mellow sage that he is, he told me that you just have to roll with whatever happens because you can't control something like the weather. Or something like that. With that, it was off to bed.

Rain is stronger than Jazz, alas

2011-09-03T20:08:00.006-04:00

Here's a word of advice: When the wind is almost knocking you over as you walk toward a jazz festival, and hordes of people are walking towards you (i.e. away from the festival), follow their lead. Because it's very likely that a. the heavy wind has postponed the performances and b. that ran is about to come and you're going to get soaked if you try to keep going.

Right now I'm in the lobby, missing the Sun Ra Arkestra and God knows what else. They were supposed to go on at 7 p.m.

That was some serious wind, I'll tell you what. I did feel like it could've knocked me over if it had been just a tad faster. And when the rain comes, there's nothing worse than blowing rain.

First night in Detroit

2011-09-03T11:28:00.004-04:00

I’m sitting in my room as I write, although when you read this I will in the lobby of the Marriot since there is free wireless there, but not in the room. Who knows maybe I’ll splurge for the $12/day DSL in my room. It’s a little pricey, but think of the freedom.

Anyhow, with that out of the way…things are off to a good start in the ol’ Motor City. The flight was fine, no major hassles at the airport. It was a little bit of a challenge hooking up with the shuttle but it happened eventually. Met up with my press pal Jordy, got into my room and went to check out the opening VIP reception. I found out one of my musical journalist role models is not coming this year [name withdrawn to avoid embarrassment on my part and uncomfortable feeling for him if ever saw this blog]. But I did hook up with Gary Graff, a writer who lives in Detroit but grew up just a few blocks from me in Squirrel Hill. He writes about all manner of music so we ended talking less about jazz and more about things as remote as the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

Just around the corner, in the middle of Downtown, stands the JP Morgan Chase Main Stage where Jeff “Tain” Watts (the Artist in Residence of the festival) was leading his Drum Club. What a club that was! Susie Ibarra moving from percussion to trap kit, Joe Locke on vibes, Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez on trap kit, Pedro Martinez on congas and, for the last couple tunes, Tony Allen the former co-hort of Fela Kuti. Bassist Robert Hudson [not totally sure if that name is accurate at presstime] anchored the sound.

And then there’s Tain. I mention him last because what was interesting is that he almost took a backseat to his bandmates, literally. I was sitting stage left and his trap kit was in the back corner, so when he was back there it was hard to see him. I feel like that said something about him as a leader: that he doesn’t have to be in the spotlight the whole time. He was also playing tympani early in the set too.

Joe Locke really seemed to be in the solo spotlight a lot of the time. That makes sense since he had one of the few fully melodic instruments on stage. His double-mallet work was pretty astounding. Saxophonist Rafael Stanton [not totally sure on him either; factchecking in progress] blew some pretty strong solos, on soprano, alto and tenor. On “May 15, 2011” (which Tain said was a working title and invited anyone to offer a better one) his soprano sounded kind of Wayne Shorter-like. But his alto on “Coolie Blue” was really strong, with a gruff tone. Allen joined the group on that tune, which definitely had a different feel to groove, although he seemed to be holding back a little. Maybe that’s part of his mystique though: doing a lot when it looks like you’re doing the minimum. It was definitely solid. That tune wrapped up with a quote from Charlie Parker’s “Cool Blues” over what was now a funk beat, hence the title.

My quest for coffee made me lose my seat and while I met up with another good friend of mine briefly, I never did find that elusive cup of joe. But I did wind up in the very first row for Sing the Truth!, the collaborative unit of singers Dianne Reeves, Angelique Kidjo and Lizz Wright. (Their backing band featured Geri Allen on Rhodes and piano, and Teri Lynn Carrington on drums.) It’s almost intimidating being that close to these three dynamic women, who throw everything into the performance and leave a crowd screaming. They did a few songs together but mostly each one had a solo, while the other two looked on in awe and/or sang harmonies. They were fun, but the looooooooooong, stretched out treatment of “From Both Sides Now,” was something I could’ve done without. They did it well but it wasn’t my thing. Plus, the whole audience participation thing, complete with “C’mon, I know you can do better than that” ain’t my bag either. In fact I feel lucky that Kidjo didn’t catch me nodding off in the front row. She might’ve made an example out of me.

I headed back to the hotel bar to beat the crowd, but before I did, the Sing the Truth! set was the moment when I knew that I had really arrived in Detroit.

Today is chock full of shows including the Sun Ra Arkestra, Dave Holland, Jason Moran and the band Mandrill who I’ve been told is not a show to miss.

24 hours till takeoff

2011-09-01T08:32:00.004-04:00

Tomorrow, I leave for Detroit, to check out the city's 32nd Annual Jazz Festival. (I'll be getting on an airplane for about the sixth or seventh time in my life.) It's going to be a great event. Among the people I'm going to see are Vijay Iyer, the Sun Ra Arkestra and Dave Holland. Not to mention Sean Jones and Artist-in-Residence and Pittsburgh native Jeff "Tain" Watts. I'll be there straight through until till the end, Monday night. Flying back the next morning.

This time, I'll have a laptop with me, so I'm hoping.....really hoping that I'll have some discipline and get some writing done in the mornings when I wake up. I have two assignments due for City Paper on the day I get back. One is a review that I might write tomorrow when I wake up before I leave. But of course there are more albums I'd like to review here. Plus there's the whole concept of gin-infused blog entries the night after each set of shows.

I've been off work all week to spend more time with the kid (who's between the end of summer camp and the start of school) and actually did a preliminary packing job last night! That's a first. Now I just have to figure out what CDs I'm taking with me and when I'll listen to them. (This sounds anal, but it's true because if I don't have it mapped out, I'll just end up listening to Charlie Parker the whole time.)

Speaking of the kid, yesterday I gave him a crash course in open chords on the guitar. He wanted to bang away on my old Kay acoustic so first I tuned it to an open D chord. He put me on the organ while he went crazy on the strings, so we had a raga going on. After a quick change to an open G (his favorite chord) I went back to an open E and showed him how to play bottleneck slide with an empty Bombay gin bottle. Don't tell CYS.

Free to Be... You and Me: Next Generation

2011-08-27T07:27:00.003-04:00

A few nights ago, Donovan was in his bed, not going to sleep right away, but singing happily as he often does. Usually his song choices include "London Bridge," "Skip to My Lou" (sometimes with new words) or the blessing he learned at summer camp.

But on this particular night, I heard something way different. He was singing the chorus of a song from Free To Be... You and Me. I don't normally disturb this bedtime ritual, but I went upstairs and asked what he was singing. He was coy as usual. When I mentioned the song "Glad to Have a Friend Like You," he nodded.

"I have that song on a record downstairs."

"I would like to hear it."

It became clear that he learned the song at Waldorf and not from a secret excursion into the record stacks. But gee whiz, it blows the mind to hear your kid singing a song that you've thought you'd turn him on to, some day in the future. Free to Be... You and Me was a big album in our house. Actually, my mother got the book first for me and my sister. Then we used to check the album out of the library all the time. "My Dog is a Plumber" is a simple poem about a serious subject that can really get young minds to think with humor. Rosey Grier's calming philosophy that "It's Alright To Cry" make me do just that in appreciation.

The next morning, as he was having a waffle, I played "Glad to Have a Friend Like You" for Donovan. He seemed quietly entertained. I got choked up because I'm a sap and felt like we were bonding a bit. Pressing my luck I played him "My Dog is a Plumber." (Dick Cavett was the perfect person to read this, by the way.) He was more interested in knowing who the dog was that barked in the background.

I took a chance on thinking that he'd like Carol Channing's recitation of "Housework," with its rapid list of cleaners that keep popping up in the text. He left the room.

Save that for next year.

CD Review - Steve Coleman and Five Elements - The Mancy of Sound

2011-08-27T06:38:00.007-04:00

Steve Coleman and Five Elements

The Mancy of Sound

(Pi) http://www.pirecordings.com/

Steve Coleman's Harvest Semblances and Affinities was one of last year's most complex and spellbinding releases, but The Mancy of Sound might be an even stronger set. Once again the alto saxophonist has created compositions with the inspiration of a non-musical sources - in this case, the philosophical system of West Africa's Yoruba, which is represented by a series of dots (in the four-part "Odu Ifa" suite). Two pieces ("Jan. 18" and "Noctiluca (Jan. 11)") are also based on eight lunar phases "as viewed from a specific place at a specific time." The eight musicians in the band frequently sound like they're operating on their own musical plains but the music comes together without sounding crowded or too ambitious.

Drummer Tyshawn Sorey is joined this time by fellow trap player Marcus Gilmore and percussionist Ramon Garcia Perez. The three blend together to the point that it's more of a challenge to try and single out Sorey and Gilmore than to just follow the music. Perez chants on some of the "Odu Ifa" movements, creating overlapping voices and rhythms in "Earth-Idi" and doing what sound like comments on vocalist Jen Shyu's performance "Water-Oyeku."

Shyu continues to evolve as a performer, his voice fully integrated into the blend of horns on an equal level. In the past, she sounded like she was just singing wordless lines, but this time clear English lyrics come to the surface the lunar tracks, including such observations as "Nature calls for progression." The line that closes the album - "None should overflow" - could refer to either the swirl of the music or something nature-based. Either way, it will hopefully inspire Coleman to include a lyric sheet in future releases.

The leader's own performance places his unique alto in the ensemble just as often, if not more, than it does in a solo spotlight. Three minutes into "Jan. 18" he emits some fast, short phrases that are pure Coleman. "Formation 1" and "Formation 2" both jettison the rhythm section for recreations of a piece originally written for saxophone and orchestra. It gets busy once trumpet and trombone (again Jonathan Finlayson and Tim Albright respectively) join him, along with Shyu, but no one ever gets lost.

The Mancy of Sound is one of those albums where the John Coltrane approach to album listening is probably best utilized: focus solely on the saxophone one time, trombone the second, etc. That's not an academic way of listening, but a way to fully appreciate some heavy music.

Big show of October

2011-08-20T21:34:00.004-04:00

I found out this week that the Warhol Museum is bringing Starlicker to town. That's the trio of Rob Mazurek, Jason Adasiewicz and John Herndon, all three heavyweights on the Chicago jazz scene. Rob leads a number of groups, including the Exploding Star Orchestra and Chicago Underground Duo. Do a search of Jason's name on this sight and you'll find out all about him. (The New York Times recently wrote about him too.) John also plays in a number of bands, including one called Tortoise.

If this show wasn't cool enough, it's happening the day after my birthday, October 8. And I ran into Ben Opie a few days ago, who told me his new project is debuting ON my birthday. That's going to be a crazy week because I have to go out of town for work on the 5th and 6th.

It'll be worth it since I'm seeing Starlicker.

CD Review: Allen Lowe - Blues and the Empirical Truth

2011-08-18T07:30:00.001-04:00

Allen Lowe
Blues and the Empirical Truth
(Music and Arts) http://www.musicandarts.com/

Ah, music critics. Ask them a yes or no question about an album and you'll get an oratory. Ask for a compilation and you might get... a nine-disc anthology.
That's just what Allen Lowe compiled in the recent past. The descriptively-titled American Pop: An Audio History - From Minstrel to Mojo: On Record 1893-1946 contained nine discs. Then he outdid himself with That Devilin' Tune: A Jazz History 1895-1950, which contained a whopping 36 pieces of plastic. And you probably don't believe that much music was even recorded during that period. In addition to compiling the music, Lowe also wrote extensive texts to go along with each of these productions. Some might call it crazy, but it makes Lowe a man after my own heart.

In addition to being an extensive musical commentator ("critic" seems like a limiting word here) Lowe is also a musician himself, another trait to which I can relate and admire. To add a personal note on that subject before I take myself out of this story, I feel a certain a kinship in his alto saxophone playing because his tone reminds me of what I aspired to sound like years ago when I thought I had a future on the horn: a clean tone with raw edges, and a searching quality that's equally ready to blow straight or scream at a moment's notice. (Personally I never got past the aspiration part to the actual execution of such a sound, but that's another story.)

Lowe the musician is gifted on the alto, but also picks up the C-melody and tenor horns, in addition to being extremely fluent on guitar. For his own music project Blues and the Empirical Truth (a witty play on Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth) he has produced no less that three discs of music. One volume lasts 66 minutes while the other two creep close to 80 minutes each. True to his other calling, Lowe offers track by track analysis. Some of this comes in quick phrases or a few sentences. One goes on for a whole paragraph - or is it sentence - which includes a parenthetical statement that on its own could be a short paragraph in itself. The set-up reminds me of philosophy tomes that I read in college. The comparison makes sense since the subject is empirical truth. Besides, music is a more interesting subject that existentialism anyway.

Three discs is a pretty serious listening commitment and speaks to an artist's confidence in his output, but truth be told there's very little filler on this whole set, save for the occasional track that noodles a little with multiple solos happening at once. Lowe is joined by a pretty heavy group of friends including veteran trombonist Roswell Rudd, guitarist Marc Ribot, pianist Matthew Shipp (who also plays Farfisa!) and pianist Lewis Porter, among others. The blues can be a limiting structure, but this is nothing like an attempt to chronicle all the various styles of blues and present them for consumption. Sometimes it feels like a blues set, other times it's a jazz set, and with his references to Richard Hell and the Velvet Underground in his notes, inspirations comes to Lowe from beyond even these immediate sources. Titles like "(Bull Connor Sees) Darkies on the Delta" and "Pauli Murray, at the Back of the Bus, Suddenly Realize She Has the Blues" prove that Lowe also has a handle on the social issues that informed a lot of the music from its earliest days. Out of context - meaning right here - the titles might seem glib, but don't believe it. They come out of empathy or understanding.

More so than my previous description, Lowe's alto playing sounds a bit like Ornette Coleman if the latter had straightened up and flown right. Clear and sometimes plaintive, it also has a combative quality somewhat like Archie Shepp on "Blues and Transfiguration" which has a Mingus mood in the composition. Anyone who can hold his own in a wild exchanges with Rudd really knows his stuff anyway, and "Entrance, No Exit" and the several installments of "Ras Speaks" prove that. They also show Shipp in a very subdued state, holding down chords on an organ with a tone that seems to thin for a heavyweight like him, while the two horns have all the fun. (Although Shipp's volume changes in one gets a little trippy.)

Guitarist Ray Suhy appears frequently throughout the set, with a skillful approach that varies his sound from straight blues to something a little wilder, depending on the setting. Ribot is his usual spiky self, and speaking of that adjective, a gentleman named Spike Sikes also plays alto, which gives Lowe a chance to play his other instruments. His guitar recalls Black Flag's Greg Ginn, a remote comparison true, but both have a tendency to get so manic during a solo that tempo gets overlooked in favor of passion. Maybe it's just my limited blues knowledge showing, but he also plays with the adventurous scope of Zoot Horn Rollo's best moments with Captain Beefheart. (Now there's someone to draft for the next session.)

The only odd element to the whole set is Jake Millet's use of electronic drums. On the first disc, they sound appropriate - sounding like little more than a battered ride cymbal that holds things together. As time goes on, it almost feels like Sunny Murray has dropped by, agreeing not to do his usual thing, but never completely settling into a straight tempo. The decaying sound of the cymbal sounds fun, like a delay pedal was accidentally bumped. But by the last disc, the thin sound has one wondering why a real trap kit wasn't used.

If there's any justice in this world Blues and the Empirical Truth should win an award for its packaging alone. Along with all the music, the three-panel cover includes a booklet not only of Lowe's thoughts (which are equally deep, fiery and humorous), but an introductory essay by Village Voice columnist Francis Davis. Hopefully Lowe doesn't take that as an oversight of the music (like Mingus did when he won Best Liner Notes for Let My Children Hear Music).

But there I go, dropping music trivia like a music scribe who knows too much. This isn't an item designed just for the likes of Lowe and Davis and lower-totem-pole music geek/scribes like me. This is music for people who still get excited about music, and relish the size of packages like this.

CD Review - Aram Bajakian's Kef

2011-08-15T00:01:00.008-04:00

Aram Bajakian's Kef

(Tzadik) http://www.tzadik.com/

Without a drummer to anchor the tempo, it can be a bit of a challenge to avoid rushing the beat. Factor in some exotic tempos - like weird combinations of beats that add up to 9/8 or 7/8 - and suddenly a whole lot of thinking is required. Guitarist Aram Bajakian's trio Kef features him on electric and acoustic guitars; Shanir Blumenkranz on acoustic and electric basses, oud and gimbri; and Tom Swafford on violin. Their songs have roots in traditional Armenian music but Bajakian spices it up with some searing modern and post-modern rock, which makes the trio kick out some serious jams. Not once do they fumble through a dizzying melody or rush the tempo.

Bajakian, who just wrapped up a tour in Lou Reed's latest band, boasts a track record that includes work with Can vocalist Malcolm Mooney, Yusef Lateef and Marc Ribot. His tone on the guitar has the similar kind of irrascible twang of Mr. Ribot. After opening with the solo acoustic "Pear Tree," he switches to electric for "Sepastasia" which leaves the gate in a wail of noise that evokes another guitar renegade: Eugene Chadbourne (who, much like Bajakian, has numerous, diverse influences factoring into his work). With a little bit of Hendrix influence weaved in throughout the album, Bajakian does a good job combining rock and world influences.

His bandmates do an admirable job in developing the sound too. Wofford plucks so percussively on "Sumlinian" that he sounds like either a bongo drum or a banjo at first. Blumenkranz usually has the challenging job of riffing behind his bandmates in order to hold things together, though he gets to break away from his role as an anchor.

Among the highlights, "Wroclaw" has a middle section that sounds an awful lot like a Camper Van Beethoven instrumental from their early, East-meets-West days ("Four Year Plan" from the album II & III). The tunes where guitar and violin play the same melody tend to make me restless (bad memories of Mahvishnu). However the line in "Raki" is so rapid and twisty that the strings pull it off sounding more astounding than indulgent. Besides, the track starts off like a Middle Eastern version of Cream's "Swlabr" and has some great power chords between choruses, and a great use of a delay pedal during Bajakian's solo.

It also bears mention that these guys don't feel in any way inhibited by the odd time signatures during their solos. They let 'em rip like it's second nature. Probably because it is.

Here's what I've done for you lately

2011-08-09T06:05:00.003-04:00

Playing right now: Starlicker - Double Demon (Delmark)

It's 6:05 a.m., I've got coffee in hand and I could be watching a rerun of Dobie Gillis right now. I actually have something of a soft spot for that show, as much as it seems to rely on a formulaic style of comedy. Bob Denver's role as beatnik pal Maynard is a much better gig that his more famous role as Gilligan.

But anyhow if I'm up this early, I want to use my time more productively and I told myself before I hit the hay last night that I'd post links to recent reviews and things that I've done.

Last week, I went to Club Cafe to check out Wye Oak. Here's a review of that show, done for Blurt. Wye Oak's last album was the first one I'd heard so I was looking forward to Civilian, their newest one. It didn't get into my hands, though, until the day before the show because of my unending desire to have it on vinyl and find it locally instead of ordering it from the label, since the price tag would've taken over the line of dollars that I'm comfortable spending when compared to the price on CD.

The same day that I bought the Wye Oak album, I picked up a copy of Eleanor Friedberger's album, despite already having a download I had to listen to for a review of it that can be found here. Why did I buy it? Two reasons: downloads aren't as much fun and because the cover art reminds me of a Francoise Hardy album, and why wouldn't I want that? Besides, the download didn't have a lyric sheet.

Going back a few weeks, there was the reissue on Drag City of a '70s folkie named Carol Kleyn as well as a rather tepid tribute to Billie Holiday.

There's a new issue of JazzTimes on the streets now, the September issue which has Ella Fitzgerald on the cover. But for anyone who'd like the luxury of clicking a link to go right to the page and read some stuff, here's my page with links to virtually everything I've done for them lately. Everything prior to the current issue, that is. The next time you're out at a place that sells magazines, does me a favor and buy one. I saw it Barnes and Noble on Sunday and, a few weeks ago, at an independent store in Lawrenceville... was it Time Bomb?

Speaking of JazzTimes I get to represent the magazine again this year at the Detroit International Jazz Festival! It's happening Labor Day weekend and while leaving the family for four days is going to be hard, I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing a lot of music. And hopefully blogging. Last time I went, in 2009, I had just bought this laptop and the shlubs at Big Box mislead me on what I could do with it after they set it up for me. Also, they put the wrong power chord in the box with it.

Maybe I'll post new, drunken updates each night from my hotel room. We'll see.

CD Review: Stephan Crump & Steve Lehman - Kaleidescope & Collage

2011-08-07T22:58:00.007-04:00

Stephan Crump/Steve Lehman

Kaleidoscope & Collage

(Intakt) http://www.intaktrec.ch/

It's no critical hyperbole to say that Stephan Crump and Steve Lehman should be considered among the ranks of jazz's most exciting musicians. Crump's bass work with Vijay Iyer's trio adds a new depth to the way the bass can operate in the trio setting, going beyond accompaniment while adding some intense foundation work at the same time. Lehman's alto saxophone also cuts a new swath in groups like Fieldwork (which includes Iyer) and his own unit, which recorded one of 2009's most astounding releases Travail, Transformation and Flow.

This meeting of the minds doesn't consist of written works, but it's also more than just two mutually compatible friends blowing freely. Crump and Lehman recorded together five times between February 2008 and December 2009. The fruits of those sessions have been diced up to create the two tracks on Kaleidoscope and Collage. So in a way, it's a combination of spontaneous improvisation and some cut-and-paste composition after the fact.

It's likely that the original sessions would have been pretty interesting on their own, but this presentation keeps things moving forward, keeping some moments quick, letting others draw out a bit and occasionally cutting ideas off mid-thought, leaving you to wonder if your disc player decided to stick.

The 22-minute "Terroir" introduces the duo's individual traits: Crump's rich tone and brawny bowing technique, Lehman's dry, occasionally rough tone, which sounds like it can be especially loud and edgy in person. Like his peer and occasional collaborator Rudresh Mahanthappa, Lehman has the tendency to unleash rapid sheets of complex melodies as if they were major scales. This piece finds Crump locking into riffs several times, albeit ones in odd time signatures. For one of them, he uses the body of his bass percussively, tapping out the beat. This doesn't make the track into groove music, especially since Lehman often charges against the ostinato, playing off of it rather than with it. While things get frenzied at various points, this never turns into a shrieking and slapping improv. The duo also stays on the more pensive side of freedom.

"Voyages" runs a bit shorter, at 16 minutes. It's a little less dynamic but still has many fine moments. It opens with a minute or so of Lehman and Crump making it hard to distinguish who's bowing and who's growling into their horn. Instead of grooves, droning tone poems pop up a couple times, with one sounding like it could break into "In a Silent Way" at any point. When Lehman gently tongues one note over and over, while Crump plucks out a melody, it really does sound like a conversation, in this case one that feels like the opening stages of an argument. Although the edits are fairly easy to discern throughout the album, the cut after this particular moment is particularly prominent since this argumentative exchange suddenly stops and refocuses on Crump, now scraping his bow on the strings as Lehman emits some quick yelps. The end of "Voyages" feels like a written conclusion, which is also understated but feels like a bridge to bigger things. In some ways, it feels disappointing when it fades away, but that's also the sign of a good album. Besides, you must admire to improvisers who have the discipline to keep an album under 40 minutes, when they had twice that much time at their disposal.

CD Review - Bebop Trio

2011-08-07T07:33:00.005-04:00

Bebop Trio

(Creative Nation Music) http://www.compro.com/

The name of this trio is fairly deceptive. They aren't blowing traditional versions of "Salt Peanuts" or "Hot House." Nor are they playing irreverant takes on bop standards, as clarinetist Ben Goldberg did with the nearly thrash versions of Bird and Diz on his Junk Genius album. Letteris Kordis (piano), Alec Spiegelman (clarinet) and Thor Thorvaldsson (drums) play something rather deep cut bop compositions - bop might not even be an operative word when discussing Lennie Tristano and Duke Ellington - which they perform them as a whole suite and link together with improvised interludes. I almost used the word "ironic" to describe them, but that doesn't fit.

In addition to Tristano and Ellington, the Trio meditates on Bud Powell's "Celia," Elmo Hope's "Boa," and Herbie Nichols' "Change of Season." In a way it doesn't seem right to merely compare these versions of the tunes to the originals and judge them accordingly. It's clear that Kordis, Spiegelman and Thorvaldsson know the contours of this music. (Spiegelman recalls his college days in the liner notes, when he played Monk themes 10 to 20 times through with Kordis "until we could not play them wrong.") Yet sometimes this conservatory approach to the music seems to work against them, making it sound too studied or wrapped up in technical approach.

"Celia" comes right out of their three-minute "Prelude" and the segue is easy to miss if not paying attention. Thorvaldsson almost plays the tune as straight swing, and his comrades state the melody almost like a canon, suspending chord changes until their halfway through the piece. The arrangement motivated me to investigate Powell's original piece to find out exactly what they're using as a springboard, which goes against what I said earlier but it helped appreciate the group's arrangement. The piece gets a full length reprise at the end of the album, by which time the trio is fired up and cutting loose. However the first version serves as an interesting exposition of what's to come.

Hope's "Boa" has interesting moments, with some deceptive use of the beat, and a section that sounds like the coda of "Round Midnight." This may or may not be an intentional borrow from the standard of this genre, or perhaps Hope actually borrowed the motif from his longtime friend (or vice-versa). Either way, it works. Monk also shows up - in my mind at least - during Tristano's "317 East 32nd" with the way Thorvaldsson plays a beat similar to the way Art Blakey played "Bye-Ya" with the pianist. This track begins with some striking free exploration from the group.

"Change of Season"(by Nichols) is a piece that seems most disconnected from its original source and it's also a bit unsatisfying. Spiegelman, who has an impeccable tone and can shift from a crisp note to a nice growl in a moment, plays the melody with gentleness, but Kordis approaches it with a classical feel during the theme that detracts from the piece, and Thorvaldsson never seems to get a good feel for whether he should add color or play time.

"Postlude" ends the album with 68 seconds of what sounds like toy whistles and clarinet tweets. They're not meant as a wild, noisy conclusion to the set. In fact they sound like they're just off-mike, and are more like a playful wrap-up to a fun performance. This sense of joie de vivre could have been more visible in conjunction with the technical approach throughout the album, but Bebop Trio still has some strong elements going for it. Better to just sit back and listen to the album as a whole than try to figure out where one piece ends and what tune the next improvisation cues in.

Did Video Really Kill the Radio Star?

2011-08-04T06:00:00.004-04:00

Playing right now: Fruit Bats - Tripper (Sub Pop)
(Working on a review for Blurt.)

Yesterday I heard a story on the radio about this being MTV's 30th anniversary. I also came across a headline online a few days ago. It's kind of funny because everyone's talking about how much of a cultural impact MTV had in the '80s and now it seems pretty behind the times. Or else it's just another cable station now because they gave up on the regular rotations of music videos a long time ago. Meanwhile the institution of the music video is alive and well. Even artists like the Sun Drops and Katherine Calder have videos for their last albums.

But I'm not here this morning to defend and bury MTV. I'm hear to talk about something else.

At the end of the story on the radio yesterday, NPR faded out by playing - what else - "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles. This of course was the first video to be played on MTV in 1981. By today's standards, it looks pretty quaint, what with the tween girl listening to a big wooden radio and all sorts of washed out images of the Buggles superimposed over it. And there wasn't anything all that polemic about the song. Really, it was just catchy.

That got me to thinking that when the Buggles wrote the song, they surely didn't know what they were getting into. They couldn't have possibly known about the video craze that was just around the corner. The title might've just been a line they dreamed up, and said, "Hmm, that's clever. Let's write a song around it." Their album also included a very of-its-time noo wave song called "Living in the Plastic Age," which ironically was on WDVE's playlist briefly while "Video" was not. And of course Trevor Horne and Geoffrey Downes, the two Buggles, went on to join Yes for Drama, replacing the big shoes of Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman.

However, they were right on. 30 years later, radio stars are pretty much dead. Not "stars" like Jim Krenn and Randy Baumann, who are a big part of my morning (although not right at this moment) but the medium of radio doesn't break musical acts like it used to. It's been relegated to background music or a motivating factor to get us out of bed in the morning with commentary and songs we know to assure us that things will be okay.

Not only that, video has been killed by the Internet. In a way that's fine with me, because that medium always put the image before the song.

But yesterday I started wondering where we'd be now if "Video Killed the Radio Star" wouldn't have been such a well-crafted song. Or if the MTV programmers thought, "No, that song is, like, too weird. Roll the Mike Nesmith video."

*********

The "I Heart Radio" ad campaign has been going pretty hot and heavy on commercial radio as of late, which to me sounds like an act of desperation. To deal with the exodus of listeners to digital, one-format radio stations, this program has sprouted up allowing you to listen to radio stations around the country (good thing, especially if you're homesick or nostalgic for bygone days [I have no problem with that on a limited basis, and relate to it, in fact.]) or coming soon, the ads say, you can create your own Pandora-like programs with the application. You mean, just like we do with our iPods now? Or just like we do with Pandora, which we do since we gave up on listening to radio in the first place? I don't see the point in creating a program that'll do something that a lot of listeners already do on their own.

-----------------------------------------
In other news, one of the reasons I haven't posted lately is due to the fact that a couple weeks ago, a friend dropped off 50 crates of albums and I'm trying to make my way through them all. Four crates immediately went to the curb due to a high concentration of mold. It's never a good thing when you have to peel covers off of each other. It's even more heartbreaking to find Nina Simone albums on Colpix that are in good shape butin covers that have been eaten away by dampness. I also found doubles of some Barbara Streisand and Englebert Humperdinck among them. (They're at the South Side Goodwill in case you're interested. )

But there are some nice items in there. I'm just trying to figure out what they are, and where to put them so we can walk about the house without obstructing any major paths.

CD Review: Muhal Richard Abrams - SoundDance

2011-07-23T07:18:00.007-04:00

Muhal Richard Abrams Duos with Fred Anderson & George Lewis

SoundDance

(Pi) http://www.pirecordings.com/

Muhal Richard Abrams played key roles in the early days of the Chicago's free thinking jazz scene where, among other things, he co-founded the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). His work might not be as well known outside his city as Anthony Braxton or the Art Ensemble of Chicago, but he was recently inducted into the downbeat Hall of Fame and became a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. Plus, he has worked in all sorts of musical formats, so at age 80, calling Abrams a "jazz master" might be something of an understatement.

The two discs in SoundDance bring together two duo performances at AACM Concerts in New York with two of Abrams' Chicago comrades, creating two vastly different and equally challenging performances. "Engrossing" is another word to use when describing them as well.

Abrams teamed up with tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson in October 2009, in what is considered to be one of the saxophonist's final performances before his death. The rapport between them pushes and pulls, never letting either one, or the listener, lapse into anything easy. "Focus, ThruTime...Time" is divided into four tracks, breaking only when the mood shifts. Part 1 contains some fast chases, which leads into some slower, almost call and response sections in Part 2 where both listen attentively to each other, and really lock into an idea around the six minute mark.

What makes the music rewarding is how neither player fits into a certain stylistic box. Anderson is not a reed-biting free blower, nor does he attempt to wrench strong melodic playing into this format. Part 3 starts out sounding like he's borrowing intervals from "Giant Steps" but the overall piece feels even closer to a ballad, thanks to Abrams, who works just as easily in a sensitive mood as he does when makes ominous rumbles at the bottom of the piano.

"SoundDance," the 45-minute performance with George Lewis (trombone, laptop) requires a bit more of an open mind, especially in the early stages where silence is as much a part of the music as the spare, ringing chords that Abrams leaves hanging in the air. It's the kind of trick that makes you crank up the volume knob, only to run back a few moments later to turn it down when Lewis enters with a forthright trombone blast. (This assumes most listeners will check this out via CDs, rather than downloads, in which case, the earbuds should beware.) While listening to Part 1, sirens went down my street, lasting as long as any of Lewis' and Abrams' brief emanations, and fitting in just fine.

Throughout the disc, Lewis confounds the ears by using his laptop to create a third voice in the setting, sometimes sounding like bowed bass noises, other times recreating old school synthisizer bloops. He even sneaks into a mutant blend of drums and tuned bowls. By the final 17-minute section of the piece, he has picked up the plunger mute and the piano rumbles have developed fully. The suspense of the early stages have paid off by developing into something with substantial, sonically and melodically.

It's a challenge to pick up on all of this, but of course Muhal Richard Abrams didn't get to where he is simply paying homage to his role models.

CD Review - Inzinzac

2011-07-21T06:55:00.003-04:00

Inzinzac

(High Two) http://www.hightwo.com/

This album has one of the most unsettling cover images to be seen on a jazz album in ages. There's probably a questionable cover from CTI's '70s catalog that compares. Stanley Turrentine's Sugar, with the silhouette of a foot being licked was a bit racy, but it doesn't compare to this: a smaller chimpanzee standing on the chest of a bigger chimp, and choking it. The fact that these monks are apparently man-made sculptures only adds to the uncomfortable quality.

Inzinzac's music also feels a bit unsettling, but this Philadelphia trio are far from being simply a wild, bassless group of improvisers. They definitely let go and run wild in many places throughout their eight-song debut, but they also rock pretty hard within their tightly built compositions.

Guitarist Alban Bailly, a French transplant to the U.S., writes all the tunes and plays with a tone that isn't quite as brittle as Marc Ribot, but still has that sharp, trebly attack. He also sounds like the bass tone on his amp is cranked up to fill in the sound. (At least my speakers said as much.) "71" has a stop-start/staccato feel to it but drummer Eli Litwin gives it a solid beat that keeps it driving. His background in metal is put to good use throughout the album, as he knows when to hold things together and when to let them implode. (He also plays in the improv group Normal Love and he has a solo project called Intensus.) "Chapi Chapo" begins by rocking hard on an art rock riff before it falls into a free break, complete with drum rolls, tenor sax overtones and guitar plinks.

Dan Scofield alternates between soprano and tenor with nearly every track. His smaller horn sounds fairly muscular during an unaccompanied section in "Otis," as well as "Lemurien," where it goes from quiet to loud, finally settling on a theme that sounds like a deranged Irish jig.

Although guitar/saxophone/drums groups can't really be called common, there is often a certain attack that bands with this instrumentation have, with chaos and gruffness being the order of the day. Inzinzac possesses a strong, wild streak but it doesn't take long to realize they have a great deal of clarity in how they present themselves. And once you get past that nasty front cover, this is one of the more impressive debuts of the year.

Up to my ears in crates

2011-07-19T06:23:00.003-04:00

On Saturday night around 11 p.m., 50 crates of records showed up at my house. Not mysteriously. Oh no, there was fanfare and anticipation. In fact, I screwed up and was expecting them the night before because I was a knucklehead who didn't read the email correctly until after I had sent my friends home, the ones who said they'd help unload them.

Anyhow, my wife's former boss brought them to me from Buffalo where they used to belong to her uncle. She said I could have them if I paid for the cost of hauling them and if I had at least three able-bodied people to help me unload them.

Before you go pounding on my door or sniffing around the yard, trying to detect what kind of albums there are, I'll tell ya this: there is a lot that I and you can't use. Not only polka albums but regional ones. There's some cache with stuff like that but when you've got all these crates sitting around you, the whole thing gets overwhelming and you just want what you know because I know I'm never going to have the party where I had the opportunity to say, "Hey, I know just what we should listen to," and whip out that polka album.

Although, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure there was a copy of the Jimmy Sturr album they used to advertise on tv in the '70s, which had all the big polka classics, including "No Beer in Heaven," which I would like to hear. Once.

Along with the piles of records, there's something else that's permeating the house: the smell of must. I immediately threw out a crate Saturday night and three more the next night, when I saw records covered in black mold. There's very little reason for Bread or the Lettermen to be in this house anyway, and if they have mold on them - out the window they go. We had a really heavy rain last night too, so they got even soggier than they were when they got here.

There is a lot of classical music in the collection too. I'm hoping to find out if any of that has any resale value or if it's strictly Goodwill bound. Beyond that, there are a few intriguing soundtracks. And quite a bit of Jerry Vale. The Jack Jones album with "Wives and Lovers" on it is there too, but I think I prefer to just randomly hear that tasteless song on WJAS rather than have it in the collection.

The first - and so far only - thing that I pulled from the collection and threw on the turntable was something from my youth: Dino, Desi & Billy's I'm a Fool. This might've been one of those albums that my aunt Mary found for me at the Mary S. Brown church flea market when I was about 6 (along with Question Mark, Sam the Sham, Dave Clark 5, Tom Jones and others that escape me right now). It was my first exposure to the sound of a 12-string guitar, which I loved though at the time I didn't know what it was. I was too young to realize how hokey it was that these kids were singing "Like a Rolling Stone" or "Satisfaction" or that they're attempts at replicating Roger McGuinn was to sound really whiney. But I dug that line about "I can't GET no," and couldn't read the last word in that song title.

The song I really wanted to hear was "The Rebel Kind," which Lee Hazelwood wrote for them. It was really fuzzy and garagey and it's their anthem to being non-conformist. Yeah, right. You're the sons of Dean Martin and Desi Arnez, and Frank Sinatra signed you after hearing you practice at Dean's house, and you're trying to tell me you're rebels? Come onnnnn. Hell, that's probably not even Billy playing that fuzzy guitar. I'll bet it's Al Casey.

CD Review - Jon Lundbom & Big Five Chord - Quavers! Quavers! Quavers! Quavers!

2011-07-08T07:31:00.002-04:00

Jon Lundbom & Big Five Chord
Quavers! Quavers! Quavers! Quavers!
(Hot Cup) http://www.hotcuprecords.com/

If the title doesn't offer any indication, Jon Lundbom seems to have picked up on some of the zaniness that is part and parcel with another project by his bandmates. This refers specifically, to saxophonist Jon Irabagon and bassist Moppa Elliot, who play in Mostly Other People Do the Killing. Lundbom and Big Five Chord released the excellent Accomplish Jazz in 2009, framed by the guitarist/leader's strong compositions (along with a Louvin Brothers cover) and country tone, cavorting with some occasionally wild blowing. Quavers! starts on the wild side and stays there, and although it might not be as rewarding immediately as its predecessor, there's still plenty to dig with each listen.

Lundbom's guitar introduces itself by sounding like John McLaughlin under water in the descending riff of "On Jacation." (It's actually the sound of his instrument going through two rotating Leslie speakers.) He continues to play through the descending riff as Irabagon (on alto) and Bryan Murray (tenor saxophone) take turns soloing. It's a nice raunchy sound and it makes his solo a welcome relief from the comping, which gets a little repetitive after awhile. As he did on several songs on his last album, Lundbom ends this and all the album's tunes without repeating the head. It's a good way to make sure you pay attention, and leaves a stronger impression of the soloists.

"The Bravest Little Pilot No. 2" adds electric pianist Matt Kanelos to the soundscape, giving the music some more atmosphere. This time Irabagon pushes the aggression button since he takes great pleasure in returning to one buzzing note on his horn throughout his chopped up solo. In "Faith-Based Initiative" he switches to sopranino, which he plays with astounding speed, collapsing into a pile of wheezing and skronk only after he explores every possible nuance of the little horn. Ironically this tune starts off with a theme closer to swing, thanks to drummer Danny Fischer.

On the subject of unusual horns, Murray is credited with playing the "balto!" (exclamation point included) on "Meat Without Feat." The credits don't offer much insight into exactly what the instrument is, but the instrument that sounds like a tenor in this emits some nice raspy growls, somewhat like vintage Archie Shepp, and it adds to the song's funky vamp and theme of long tones. Ironically, Lundbom's solo doesn't catch fire here because he limits himself to one range of the guitar.

Big Five Chord isn't afraid to go for the throat if the music calls for it, even if it means that Irabagon pulls out the MOPDtK trick of ending a solo by sitting on a "wrong" note and holding it. But this is high energy music, combining somewhat straight ahead foundations with a rock execution, and hopefully Lundbom will start getting more attention for his fresh perspective, both as a writer and player.

(For a review of the last Big Five Chord album, see my entry from March 10, 2010.)

More writing in other places

2011-07-07T22:06:00.002-04:00

Yesterday morning, I forgot to include my review of Jackie-O Motherfucker's latest album in my set of recently published pieces. It's here on the Blurt website.

Today, they ran my White Hills album review. After hearing the album, I kind of wish I had checked them out when they came here a month or two ago.

Finally, it is with great pride that I offer you a link to a story called "outstanding " by the editor of Blurt, himself. Yes, I'm talking about my R. Stevie Moore article that I just finished a night or two ago. Or was it the wee hours of the a.m.

Right now I could go for some booze.

Maybe I will.

CD Review: Alexander Tucker - Dorwytch

2011-07-06T09:12:00.010-04:00

Alexander Tucker
Dorwytch
(Thrill Jockey) www.thrilljockey.com

With its press release dropping phrases like "chamber pop" and references to Brian Eno, Dorwytch seemed like it was right up my alley, like a possible combination of brainy hooks and maybe something reminiscent of Here Come the Warm Jets. But when the disc started playing, I wondered if I had gotten ahold of the wrong album. "His Arm Has Grown Long" sports a sea of churning cellos, sawing away on one chord, with counter-melodies layered over them. These are definitely rock cellos, and they go for a whole minute before Alexander Tucker's voice enters the picture.

The initial impact requires a shift of gears. This isn't the Ladybug Transistor's chamber pop. In fact, "pop" doesn't really seem like the appropriate descriptor.

Tucker, who has recorded in a tape loop project called Imbogodom, might have more connections with English art rock of the '70s as well as more traditional folk music. He seems adept at disguising instruments in order to make the whole song seem like the object of interest. "Red String" features more of the folk approach, with breaks that could either be more cellos or acoustic guitars. Either way, they're reminiscent of some of the textures on The White Album and they push away any predisposed ideas about this music and lure you into Tucker's strange world.

His tenor voice comes through clearly but often times the lyrics are secondary to the overall flow of the music. The cellos are occasionally plucked for contrast and a couple songs use synths to create a pulse and a bass line. A drone that forms the basis of "Atomized" could either be crickets or an organ. In "Jamie" he challenges listeners to figure out if he's singing a wordless vocal or if the melody comes from some hard-to-decipher instrument, soaring over a lush loop of backwards guitar loops that indeed evokes ambient Eno.

Dorwytch was recorded over three years, which can help to account for the diversity in arrangements. It might also explain the album's weakness: Many of the songs have very similar basic foundations. At least two other tracks follow a riff similar to "His Arm Has Grown Long" which might not be so noticeable if Tucker threw in a chord change here and there. After the success of "Jamie," which climaxes in a mix of feedback and scraping strings, "Craters" uses the same one-note rhythm as a pedal point for a set of piano chords. Initially catchy, it gets to be a little much after 4:39. It closes the album on a somewhat odd note, albeit one that begs reexamination at a later time.

Here's what I've been doing

2011-07-06T05:53:00.003-04:00

Yeseterday, I finally finished and submitted an article about R. Stevie Moore to Blurt. It took a little bit of doing because I also spoke to Jon Demiglio, who is making a documentary about Stevie, and who is acting as a de facto tour manager for him. He was a really nice guy and I sincerely hope that he and Stevie (and the band, of course) do well over the course of the tour. I don't think I used any of the same quotes in this article that I did in the one I wrote for City Paper. Stevie's good that way - a lot to say.

Oh, wait. I did re-use the one where he describes himself as looking like "goddam Santa Claus." You can't help but reuse that.

Before I concentrated on that article, I reviewed White Hills' new album H-p1 and revised my story on Trotsky Icepick, both for Blurt. (Both of these pieces have yet to run.) The week prior to that, I was working on a preview of the Ladybug Transistor for City Paper which can be found right here. Scroll to the end of that, and there's a quickie on Bill Callahan too.
Now that those things are all done, I intend to get back on the blog horse and fill up this space with writing. In the meantime, the Love Letters have a show at Arsenal Lanes tonight. And I have to acquire review copies of a few new CDs for Blurt. Gonna start doing that now.

R. Stevie Moore - one week later

2011-06-25T23:33:00.003-04:00

Playing right now: Trotsky Icepick - Baby (It's not that I've been playing it continuously since it arrived in the mail. It helps me get moving, so I don't either turn on TV and get pulled away from listening to music and writing, or else get bogged down in the eternal question of what should I listen to.)

A week ago today was the R. Stevie Moore show in Pittsburgh. Half of the previous week was spent transcribing interviews for an article on the Ladybug Transistor for City Paper that will run this coming Wednesday. So when that was finally put to bed, I didn't feel like writing nothing. Plus I think I was fighting some kind of sickness that I hope I'm finally shaking.

So I haven't been able to get to writing about the show until now.

In short - what a performance! What a songwriter! What a ham! (All good things in the Shanley book.)

In long.... the show took place at Modern Formations. Andy Mulkerin said I "hit it out of the park" with my article in City Paper that week. See for yourself. Stevie was such a great interview, and so full of good comments that it was hard to figure out what would make it into the article and what wouldn't.

For as much as he sounded shy about being around adulation, there he was standing in the gallery of ModForm, talking to a few guys between sets. (I think they were Hot Dog Forest who I had missed. Sorry guys.) Unlike a certain other "legendary" musician that I interviewed prior to a performance in town, Stevie at least seemed to remember our conversation and was a personable guy. I gave him a copy of the article and he gave me a copy of his latest CD, Advanced (which you should be able to find on iTunes soon but not right now). Nice fella.

As his band was setting up, he ambled onto the stage, setting up his bass and arranging song lyrics on a music stand. Then he held up two different tops that looked like the kind of scrubs that you might see on a nurse walking down Liberty Avenue near West Penn Hospital. "Which one?" he asked the audience. We picked the one in his left hand. And that point I remembered a comment from our interview, that came out of a discussion of his beard and how he thought he shouldn't talk about his looks. He shifted gears: "I am a fashion plate. It's getting really big. I'm starting to buy real gaudy women's clothing, mainly for stage. Rapper's hoodies, I'm really showing off. Way beyond my means. It's not my style to boast and show off, but I'm so desperate for attention these days."

Then he took a big swig from a wine bottle and one from a seltzer bottle and says, "Thank you for coming to my concert." (It's always so quaint to me when someone refers to a small-venue show as a "concert.")

From the get-go, the band sounded amazing. Stevie played the bass with his thumb the whole time, strumming it, not popping on it. The only other person I've seen do that is the guy who played with Tito Puente in the '80s. The first song wasn't really psychedelic in the traditional sense, but it contained a certain level of psych feeling, and it wrapped up with a great boogie coda. "Pop Music" (which appears on Advanced) had some Brian Wilson high vocals and 7th chords, along with some clipped and extended time signature tricks. Later on in the set, some Byrds influence could be felt. He quipped that "Theorem" was something that "meets fuckin' Timberlake or Bieber." (On Advanced it sounds like something from Forever Changes.) The thing to remember is that even though Moore has some of these cultural touchstones in his music, he wasn't trying to really emulate them. It all sort of flowed from him naturally and helped him make something original.

The band (drums, guitar, guitar/keyboard + him) played five songs and then walked offstage, which puzzled all of us. He came back by himself and played a couple songs on guitar, including one about seafood that ended with a weird tag about Popeye and it was hard to tell if it was spontaneous or part of the song. (I hope the latter.) In all, he played about a dozen songs.

"Carmen Is Coming" was the final song of the night, which sounded like the metal freakout that Stevie mentioned in the interview. It has another mutant proggy blues line and by the end, when the sound refused to die, he wound up lying on the floor because that's where the spirit put him. It was a good way to end the show. (Point of interest - the version of "Carmen" on Advanced sounds less like metal and more like a Captain Beefheart melody played on nylon string guitars.)

In closing, if you have an opportunity to see R. Stevie Moore perform, do it. And buy as much of his music as you can. I bought one more disc on the way out.

Weird Paul played just before Stevie, pouring on a helluva lotta ham: He sang a new some short tunes, some classics and even had his son sing along. Even though he wasn't there. The preprogrammed tracks featured his voice, at which point Paul pointed the mike at the picture of his son.

Jooklo Duo in Pittsburgh

2011-06-16T00:40:00.003-04:00

Playing right now: Knives from Heaven (Matt Shipp, Wm Parker, Beans & HPRIZM) (Thirsty Ear)

My R. Stevie Moore article hit the street today. Read it online right here. Then this week, I wrote a Trotsky Icepick article for Blurt, only to find out that the first reunion show is happening as we speak and that the second one is tomorrow. I thought they were playing this weekend, so I don't think the site will post the article in time. Then I discovered that Blurt ran my Kid Congo piece on May 24. Check it out. Finally this morning I gave them two more CD reviews. Oh yeah - I also wrote something about Jeremiah Clark for City Paper, which will run next week.

In between all that, I made it out to a show at Garfield Artworks on Monday night. Manny brings in a lot of avant jazz folks that I've never heard of and don't get a chance to see. So when I saw the flyer for the Jooklo Duo - a man and woman from Italy - I made a mental note to check this show out. I had no idea if they were the free jazz type of improv or noisy electronics kind of improv. Regardless I was going to be there.

The opening act was a local fella who performs under the name Burnout Warcry. He had a table full of instruments: a small keyboard, a chain that looked like line used when fishing; a kazoo, bells, metal plates. He also had a suitcase that he routinely kicked to fill the space that a kick drum would typically handle.

He played for about 20 minutes, all told: one longer piece, one shorter one. And he used all the instruments to fill the space. Sometimes he looked like he wasn't sure what to grab next, or how to continue the sound, but most of the time, he seemed pretty assured. Most people would've thought he was just messing around and that it was pointless, but he kept the sound going. The length of his set was just enough.

Jooklo Duo were actually a trio that night because guitarist Bill Nace had joined Virginia Genta (reeds and things) and David Vanzan (drums) for this tour. Nace's guitar added a level of consistant drone to the set, but it could've come down in the mix a little bit. As the set started, he was bowing the guitar and Vanzan was gentle playing his kit. For the longest time, he didn't pound the drums, which gave the drums a nice muted effect. It helped put the spotlight on Genta, who began by blowing the double-reed horn the zorna, on which she used circular breathing to keep her tone flowing. She picked up the clarinet, but some of the nuances got lost in the swirl of guitar drone (he had it in his lap the whole time) and drums, which by now were getting kind of loud.

When Genta picked up her tenor saxophone and started to blow, I wrote "Oh yeah, now you're talking" in my notebook. The band was now firing on all four cylinders. Her tenor playing was reminiscent of early Gato Barbieri, with a gush of wild overtones. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was coming from her and what was coming from Nace due to the volume and the echo from the room and instruments.

As the set moved on, the sound swelled more and more. Genta pulled out the jew's harp, the one instrument that was hard to hear over everything else. But that boing was in there somewhere. Vanzan, whose past-the-shoulders length hair and full beard, together with his lanky frame made him look like some '70s prog rock dude, whipped out a flute and started playing it into one of the drum mikes without batting an eye. I don't think he looked at his trap kit once while he was playing. Nace creating the sound of a beehive and later a leaky faucet, while Genta moved to melodica, then cowbell and police whistle, to which she added some vocal yells. Then after about 45 minutes, things died down and Vanzan let fly a final thump across his drums. The kind that says "the end," and mean it. I wasn't about to argue.

The Return of Trotsky Icepick

2011-06-04T07:11:00.003-04:00

This week I received a package from Vitus Matare, founding member of Trotsky Icepick (also a former member of the Last). He sent me a copy of Baby, the one album by the band that I did not have on vinyl (or CD). After all these years, it still sounds really, really good. It also takes me back to those carefree days when I was 20 and living on my first apartment.
In an email explaining the box, he mentioned that there was a TI facebook paged, which he created in part to promote "the two reunion shows we're doing with the Meat Puppets." What?!?!
He had made some passing wisecrack about a reunion when I first tracked him down on FB, but I thought it was nothing more than that - a joke. Boy, was I wrong. The group is playing June 16 & 17 in or around LA with said Puppets. So I did what any fanboy turned music writer would do: I pitched a story to Blurt, who took me up on it and I interviewed Vitus last night. He's still the same nice guy who put up with my numerous phone calls 20+ years ago. I'm thinking of calling John Talley-Jones too, but I also have to interview R. Stevie Moore sometime today, although he wants me to do it via Skype! I don't have that shit. I'm lucky I can record interviews that are audible.
Which reminds me, I ought to start reading up on him before I have to go to work.... Even though I'm worried this thing won't come off.

Will the funeral be televised? Gill Scott-Heron RIP

2011-05-28T06:54:00.002-04:00

Playing right now: Kirk Knuffke & Jesse Stacken - Orange Was the Color (SteepleChase)

Last night as I was brushing my teeth, I had WJAS on in the bathroom and the CNN top-of-the--hour news came on. That's not the place you expect to hear this, but the final story was that Gil Scott-Heron died yesterday. "He was best known for his song 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.'" I wonder how many insomniac WJAS listeners know the piece, which might actually be considered a poem (and the newscaster might've actually said that. I can't remember). Kudos to that white bread news station for mentioning that. And Gil, may you finally find some peace. Thanks for what you created when you were here, too. You were so gifted and articulate from an early age.
In high school, my friend Freya lent me a copy of Small Talk at 125th and Lenox Avenue which had the first version of "Revolution," accompanied only by conga drums. He was 20 goddam years old and already extremely deep and moving. Last year the New Yorker ran a great and rather lengthy piece on him. He was either on the mend from a crack addiction or still dealing with it, and his mind was still sharp and focused.
Many people have riffed on the "revolution will not be televised" idea since then, saying that of course it will be televised because of the way mass media works these days. There will be extensive coverage and the history will be written before it happens. But the thing to remember is something that I saw Gil say on a PBS special about 20 years ago: What he meant was that the revolution was going to start "up here" [pointing to his head], which I take to mean you have to start with an idea and that the coverage is all secondary to that.

Speaking of people who are still pretty sharp, Lee "Scratch" Perry has a new album out and here is my review of it from Blurt.

I also reviewed the new album by Helado Negro right here.

Recent articles in other publications

2011-05-18T23:04:00.003-04:00

Since my posts have been limited to about one a week lately, here are links to things I've been writing elsewhere. I filed a couple reviews with Blurt recently. Here's a review of the new Let's Wrestle album on Merge. Here's a new one by saxophonist Matana Roberts.

I just went to the JazzTimes website and my review of the Billy Bang/Bill Cole CD was featured on the first page as one of the teasers. If you scroll down to the bottom right of the page, you can see links to other things I've written for them recently. Here's a link to the latest Matthew Shipp album. Check out the rest on the page. Incidentally I saw on the main page that Bob Flanagan, the last surviving original member of the Four Freshman has died. Sigh. Bob, I don't know where my family would be without you. (True story. My folks were Freshman fans and two guys from the group actually showed up at a party at my Mom's house back in the day.)

See I have been writing. Now I should review that Lee "Scratch" Perry CD.

The Beatles take a hack song and make it better

2011-05-11T09:37:00.003-04:00

I have this scenario in my mind that from 1963 to sometime in 1965, Brian Epstein or one of his mates that was close to the Beatles (Mal Evans, Derek Taylor) would lock John Lennon and Paul McCartney in a room, maybe with some speed or coffee as well as guitars, and say, "Lads, we need six new songs for the session tomorrow, right? The door will open when you've written them." There was plenty of pressure on them to produce in those early days. A lot of the early songs seem rather tossed off bits of fluff, but even in those throwaways, the Beatles managed to inject some catchy element that helped them rise above the slag heap of assembly line pop music from that era.

Last night I pulled out the UK version of A Hard Day's Night and listened to side two. For those who only know the CD version, this refers to the songs that did not appear in the film, which all follow "Can't Buy Me Love." Most of them are pretty simple fair, and maybe not the strongest in the Beatle catalog, but they're all pretty good.

"Anytime At All" rides on the strength of John's vocals: the passionate delivery in the chorus - not to mention the clever idea of Paul singing the higher second line and nothing else - and the way his voice drops down an octave in the version. Ringo really seems to be drive the band in the verses too. I don't think they ever played this song live but I can only imagine how strong it could have sounded if they really worked it out. This song was going through my head yesterday evening, which inspired me to put the record on in the first place.

"I'll Cry Instead" has very little not working in its favor. George's guitar line provides an excellent foundation, especially with that twangy response to the second line of each verse. Great extra percussion too - good ol' Ringo. The only thing that could be considered dubious is the line, "I've got a chip on my shoulder that's bigger than my feet." After the half-baked lines in "Anytime At All" ("There is nothing Iiiiiii won't do") at least this one has some wacky imagery to go with it.

"Things We Said Today" doesn't really qualify as assembly-line Beatles. This is one of Paul's strongest songs from that period, methinks. For a song played on acoustic guitars, this one's bridge really rocks. That way it descends so smoothly back into the verse after the middle eight reveals one of the reasons these guys could make a simple song so memorable. It's almost like a jazz hook, which they were hip to. They knew all about augmented chords and whether they got it from a Mel Bay book or from jazz records - probably the former - they knew how to incorporate it.

I always disliked "When I Get Home" until I read that John was trying to channel Wilson Pickett with it. Suddenly those "woah-ah woah IIIIIIIIII"s made more sense. The guitars in the verses because they slash hard on those 7th chords, and Paul goes down low on his bass which gives it something of a funk. That doesn't excuse the line "I'm gonna love her 'till the cows come" but it makes the whole song a little more listenable.

The side of the record ends with two songs that really shouldn't be considered in the assembly-line discussion, even if they came together that way. "You Can't Do That," as my wife has said a couple times, is like the Beatles in drag doing their best Shirelles for the accompanying vocals. Ringo again gives it extra punch with the cowbell. Also, I just noticed last night that the bridge doesn't rhyme in the traditional sense. "Green" and "seen" do, but they're in the middle of the line. Brillant, John, positively brilliant.

If you think too hard about how John borrowed Del Shannon's "Runaway" and turned it into "I'll Be Back," it can put a damper on the song. So don't. Besides, he tried to make it a waltz at first, as Anthology One proved, before realizing that he should play it natural. Those three-part harmonies are impeccable and it shows what playing together for - what was it at this point, five years? - can do for an act. The way John phrased the middle eight, not to mention the lyrical punch of it, also shows that he could toss off great ideas like they were nothing. I've always loved the major-to-minor switch that they pluck on the acoustic during the fade.

Several years ago while working at Pulp I got into a discussion with an intern about this very subject with the Beatles. She thought "I'm Happy Just to Dance With You" was written strictly to cash in on the teeny bopper crowd. She was right about it being a dumb song, but it does have a great major-minor chord change as the song moves on. And if they had only written better words for it, it could have been a lot better. As it stands, those "ahhhh oh"s are still pretty catchy.

More recently (well, maybe about two years ago), I ran into Celanie, the former intern, and she remembered having that talk where I explained how the Beatles weren't hacks. I had completely forgotten about it until she brought it up. But it was nice knowing that there was some info in all my hot air.

CD Review: Honey Ear Trio - Steampunk Serenade

2011-05-04T09:50:00.006-04:00

Honey Ear Trio
Steampunk Serenade
(Foxhaven) http://www.foxhavenrecords.com/

The trio of Allison Miller (drums), Erik Lawrence (saxophones) and Rene Hart (bass) came together literally through the work of nature. When a volcano in Iceland erupted in April 2010, it prevented Miller (one of the busiest drummer in all music, not just jazz) from getting to a tour in Europe. She stitched some silver lining to those ash covered clouds and got her trio mates together for several weeks of practicing that lead up to these recordings. They have all worked together with trumpeter Steven Bernstein and keyboardist John Medeski. Individually, Miller has played with Marty Ehrlich, Natalie Merchant and Brandi Carlile; Hart has played bass with Branford Marsalis; and Lawrence has worked with everyone from Bob Dylan to Sonny Sharrock.

All that name dropping isn't excessive in this case since it reveals how wide the trio's scope of sound can be, and that is clear in the 13 tracks on Steampunk Serenade. It opens with "Matter of Time," a slow, big tenor ballad that evokes Sonny Rollins' trio work, or maybe even his predecessors like Ben Webster, thanks to Lawrence's big tone. Immediately after that, Miller's "Olney 60/30" takes the mood in a more frenetic direction. Hart's electronics in this track give his double-stops more of a distorted attack, while Lawrence - now on alto - seems at the brink of hysteria, prodded to Miller's skittery playing. This close-to-but-never-totally-boiling-over feeling works perfectly.

Miller gets that wild pulse going again in the coda of "Whistle Stop" but the group explores other avenues too. The title track begins with some dub-like loops before it settles into a vamp with Miller playing on the rims and constantly turning the downbeat on its ear. Hart's electronics and loops add strange, fourth member feelings to many tracks, the most unique being their take on "Over the Rainbow," where the melody actually moves in reverse until it comes to the bridge. By switching to baritone sax, Lawrence does his part to make this one of the most warped - and successful - facelifts of a song that gets ravaged too often. One of the tracks written by someone outside the trio comes from saxophonist Lisa Parrott, who has played with Miller and with DIVA. Her "Six Nettes" throws the band into a straight ahead, almost bop bag with a catchy call-and-response line that recalls Thelonious Monk's "Criss Cross." True to their methods, though, this ain't no ordinary bop and the trio pulls and twists the tempo as proof.

Lawrence pays homage to the volcano that made this session possible with "Eyjafjallajokull (Icelandic Volcano Hymn)" which sounds as reverant as its title, with the alto taking on more of a dusty quality. When looking at the consistant quality of this work, it was good to make such a gesture.

Vijay Iyer takes Pittsburgh

2011-05-02T06:18:00.006-04:00

Vijay Iyer came to the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild last Friday and after his first show, I felt like I was ready to start a religion around the guy. That sounds a little extreme, but his performance was really that good, especially in light of the fact that, during his second show, he was playing on a piano with a broken string, giving the E-flat a certain buzz like a gamelan.

Traffic was absolutely ridiculous on the way to the North Side and we didn't get there until close to 7:30, half an hour after the first act started playing. (I found out later, all the back-ups were attributed to the NRA convention, a show at Stage AE and the general detours from the 31st Street Bridge closing). That was alright because the first group was fairly lightweight. Not bad musicians by any means but they were all about respect for the canon with little about putting forth an individual voice, except for the tenor player.

Iyer, on the other hand, had one of those magical touches that spoke legions with the way he played the first three notes, all very thoughtful and pensive. (He once wrote an essay for The Wire about a three-note combination that Cecil Taylor often used that sounded perfect in its simplicity. Methinks Iyer must have picked up on that idea.) He opened with "Helix" that begins sounding very wide open. Bassist Stephen Crump sounds very powerful on disc, so it was kind of off-putting at first to see his whole body really shake with every gentle note he played. It was the total opposite of what you expect from that sound. Usually a musician moves like that to make up for the lack of creativity in their playing. Not Crump. This adds to his playing. Marcus Gilmore also began in a unique way, playing with a brush in one hand and a mallet in the other. Throughout the night, he dropped a couple of sticks, but it didn't spoil the quality of his performance. In fact, he played with one stick for about two minutes in "Somewhere."

The second song sounded like a funk tune, and Iyer started playing reggae dub echo effects with the way he hit the notes. Yes, he was recreating a studio trick in real time. Ironically, this slice of funk and dub was a Bud Powell tune, "Coming Up."

One of the most impressive things about the group was how they could take an idea and build on it, even if it was simple progression of just a chord or two, and they developed in ways that didn't seem to rely on typical methods, like simply shifting dynamics or riffing. In fact, as far as riffing goes, they often seemed to get wobbly in terms of where the beats fell - but never in a way that put the music in danger of falling apart. Time was really elastic for them. Then it hit me that this might've been something that Iyer picked up from Steve Coleman, who really has played with ideas and approaches to rhythm.

The second show opened with that buzzing from the broken string and that set things in the direction of adventure. The opening piece began very freely with some wild bowed bass and flowing movement from the trio. Iyer also mixed up the set list a great deal, instead of just repeating what he played in the first show. They played a moving version of "Abundance," which he recorded with another group (guitarist Prasanna and tablaist Nitin Mitta on Tirtha), as well as Michael Jackson's "Human Nature," which he recorded on Solo last year, and which really went all over the place, he later explained, because of the string problem.

I was also happy to hear Andrew Hill's "Smoke Stack" another tune from Historicity because Iyer played the theme so rapidly and because the piano gets a little lost in the original since Hill used two bass players at that session, which made it a little muddled.

The second show didn't wrap up until about midnight, or a little after. I went home exhaused that night. Happy, but beat.

CD Review - Ernest Dawkins' New Horizons Ensemble - The Prairie Prophet

2011-04-27T09:19:00.009-04:00

Ernest Dawkins' New Horizons Ensemble
The Prairie Prophet
(Delmark) http://www.delmark.com/

One of the best things about musicians associated with the AACM is that they don't limit themselves to one style of music. The Art Ensemble of Chicago might have a corner on the phrase, "Great black music, from the Ancient to the Future," but many of their peers and elders seem to feel the same way. Of course, when Sun Ra lived in Chicago, he had no qualms with jumping from big band swing to outer space free improvisation, and the Art Ensemble could likewise go from space to gutbucket R&B. Saxophonist Ernest Dawkins is the same way, knowing that playing changes over 4/4 isn't passe as long as you're pushing forward with the music instead of merely replicating your heroes. The Prairie Prophet succeeds because it gracefully goes from serious post-bop to the most rollicking of free excursions, and this group knows how to handle both.

The album is dedicated to the late Fred Anderson, who lead by example with his far-ranging music, as well as his humility and the way he supported other musicians in Chicago. (Since he passed last summer, there have been many tributes to him, and expect to see more.) "Hymn for a Hip King" is a nod towards Anderson (and, Dawkins says, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X) and it begins the set with a bright waltz. Marquis Hill plays a flugelhorn solo marked by a serious of staccato figures, while Dawkins - on alto - sounds tough. Drummer Isaiah Spencer gets a little wild for such a straight ahead piece, but he never gets in the way.

The 12-minute "Sketches," follows with a complete about-face. The loose theme recalls both the writing of the Art Ensemble and, in the bridge, Grachan Moncur III. Shaun Johnson (trumpet) and Steve Berry (trombone) solo with spirit, the latter accompanied by Dawkins blowing both alto and tenor simultaneously. Things only get wilder during Jeff Parker's skronking, channel-shifting solo. Dawkins clearly loves to play with dynamics, and he follows this wild track with "Balladesque," a succinct two-minute piece that doesn't need any more than a strong statement that lives up to its name.

The rest of the album keeps the spirit going. "Shades of the Prairie Prophet" starts off free and tumbling, only to switch to a Mingus boogie, five minutes in. "Mal-Lester," despite its questionable title, pays homage to Messrs. Favors and Bowie. "Baghdad Boogie" has a groovy vamp with a repetition of the title that recalls Sun Ra. Towards the end, Dawkins gets on the mike for a well-spoken political testimony about the war and its effect on youth.

Too often jazz musicians make CDs that mindlessly bow down to the legacy of this music, and they don't attempt to reveal anything unique about their own identity. (How many tribute albums to the same few popular legends do we need?) Sometimes players who fit the description of free jazz musicians or avant garde get dismissed because they don't appear to have an affinity for the past. It'd be easy to go on a rant here about listeners being afraid of new directions in music, but the point is - Dawkins proves that there isn't a disconnect between any of this music. With the right amount of focus and devotion, you can have it both ways.

It makes me regret missing his Pittsburgh appearance last summer.

CD Review: Kermit Driscoll - Reveille

2011-04-19T21:56:00.011-04:00

Kermit Driscoll
Reveille
(19/8) http://www.nineteeneight.com/

A few months ago I got a copy of Miles Davis' Live at the Fillmore East (March 7, 1970) CD. One of the more intriguing aspects of the performance is that Miles was opening a bill that included the Steve Miller Band and Neil Young & Crazy Horse. What did the counterculture cats at the Fillmore think of this band, which was playing some of the most seering music of Davis' whole career? Were they out getting high before their bands came on or were they in their seats getting their minds blown?

I mention this because I wondered, during second half of "Thank You," what would happen if Kermit Driscoll's quartet wound up on a bill ata place like Philadelphia's Theater of Arts, opening for, let's say, Arcade Fire. (I was trying to come up with a popular band that draws open-minded listeners.) The song is fairly subdued, based on a steady riff. Then around 3:30, Bill Frisell kicks on the distortion and tears it up like no one else can. Drummer Vinnie Colaiuta starts to go off as well, and things fall apart beautifully. Instead of going back to restate the head, bassist Driscoll opts to end the tune there. Smart thinking.

I could see the hipsters in the audience being skeptical of these 50-somethings (although pianist Kris Davis is a bit younger) because they're ageist, quite often. But when they find out these guys can shred better than most guys half their age, it can change some minds.

It can also make you wonder if this music can be considered jazz.

Actually I go through this mental process a few times a year, when an album comes out that's really strong and is somehow tied to jazz (the players' past affiliations or a cover tune, usually) but really sounds like it exists in its own universe. Chris Potter, Vijay Iyer and Rudresh Mahanthappa are names to spring to mind at the moment as people who elicit this response. Driscoll, the bassist probably best known for his work in Frisell's band, has done the same thing on Revielle, his first even album as a leader.

Not all of the album falls into the same rocking category as "Thank You," although their reading of Joe Zawinul's Peter-Gunn-with-a-club-foot groove "Great Expectations" (first heard on Miles' Big Fun) ups the ante even further. In fact some of the songs have something of a country feel to them. "Boomstatz" combines that country twang with a little bit of funk, over a harmonic format that takes some great left turns, especially with the vamp in the bridge. "Farm Life," which Driscoll wrote two decades ago, also has an Americana vibe thanks to some crisp guitar work. The pastoral feeling continues with "Martin Sklar," one of the few pieces where the leader gives himself some time in the spotlight.

Take all these tunes together with the traditional "Chicken Reel" (a tune that will be remembered by anyone who knows Warner Brothers cartoons) and much of the album might seem like a balance between Americana and electric jazz. But Driscoll has some tricks up his sleeve, like Davis' use of prepared piano in "Ire" and her liberties with tempo in "Hekete" which concludes with another bright Frisell melody.

So maybe this band isn't exactly equipped to open for the Arcade Fire. I'd still like to see it happen. A crazy billing like that could have some serious reverberations.

Remembering Billy Bang

2011-04-19T21:28:00.000-04:00

As I was getting ready to leave the house on Saturday to go to Paul's CDs (see previous post), my friend Toby texted me, telling me that Billy Bang had died. I knew he had been sick for a while, but the timing was especially telling because I had just filed a review to JazzTimes of a new album he released with double-reed maestro Bill Cole. He died on April 11 at age 63. Lung cancer was the cause.

I got to see Billy perform twice. The first time happened in 2000, when he, the late tenor saxophonist Frank Lowe and drummer Abbey Rader played at a lecture hall at Pitt. (Local musician Bob Wagner wrote a great column that ran in the Post-Gazette about this show. It's well worth looking up.) That show was very low key, and even got delayed when Bang broke a string, 10 seconds into the first song, and he had to stop to repair it. Specifics about that show are foggy now, but I do remember thinking how happy Rader looked as he played, swinging hard and free, alternately. Frank Lowe, who seemed a little frail and passed away a few years after that, sounded good, nonetheless. I had one album of his that I didn't think was all that good and that night I realized that while Lowe might not have a whole lot of technique he really knew how to use what he had and it made his performance strong. Bang avoided scrapey, screechy free violin sounds and kept things on the melodic side.

Bang returned to Pittsburgh in 2008 with a group called the Aftermath Band, playing music from his two Viet Nam albums. By that time, his star was shining, based on the fact that he was not only able to come to terms with the effects of service in the Viet Nam war, but also because he channeled that experience into two compelling albums. The group included alto saxophonist James Spaulding (who I've always dug) and trumpeter Ted Daniel, as well as some slightly younger players.

It was a pretty moving show, in part because it fell right around the time of Veteran's Day, which emcee Chris Moore spoke a bit about that at the beginning of the show. Between sets, they screened some rough footage of Bang on a visit back to the forests where he served during the war. There was one particular scene, where Bang - who up until this point has been pretty reserved and strong - tells the crew to shut off the cameras because the experience is getting too intense for him. When someone that proud reaches a level like that, you know they aren't bullshitting you, and it can give you a great amount of empathy for what he went through (several decades of darkness) before he could really cope with those experiences. I only hope he felt a sense of peace and musical fulfillment in his final days.

But that's the background. He'd probably prefer for folks to check out the music too. The JazzTimes obit mentions Don Cherry and David Murray as collaborators. He also recorded with Marilyn Crispell and played with Sun Ra. Check out what you can by him, it's all fascinating.

One final thought from the second Bang show (organized by Kente Arts Alliance and presented at the Kelly-Strayhorn, FYI), when the band brought down the last tune of the evening, there was something magical about the final chord. It jolted me out of my seat and gave me a big sense of energy. Not sure what it was, but I loved it.

Thanks, Billy.

What's up with that?

2011-04-19T08:28:00.003-04:00

Everyday, the review of the Bizingas CD that I posted in January gets a spam comment that's written in some language made up of symbols that I can't read. Blogger deletes it for me so I don't have to do it myself or delude myself into thinking I'm getting more hits than I have. But still - what's in that review that generates it?

National Record Store Day - A Recap

2011-04-19T08:02:00.003-04:00

I worked all weekend, and yesterday and today are my days to watch the kid alone. (He's on Spring Break this week.) So only now am I finding time to catch up for recent events.

National Record Store Day started in Pittsburgh at 12:01 a.m. Saturday morning (Friday night, in other words). Technically it started in Millvale because that's where the Attic is located, and that store is the one that opened early. I figured there'd be a few vinyl freaks hovering outside the door before the joint opened. Little did I know that a queue would be forming that snaked around the corner by the time the doors swung open. Most of the people in line looked like they were in their 20s, and it wasn't dudes either. There were several dames who had a vested interest in the music. Looks like the love of vinyl skipped a generation and is coming back in full force.

The aisles in the Attic are pretty narrow so it got claustrophobic immediately. I made a beeline back to their jazz section because the store was offering 10% off of their regular inventory, and I figured that section would be easy to maneuver. Eventually I checked out some of the Record Store Day boxes of goodies and when I got up in line, my buddy Stripey (who works with me when he's not working at the Attic) told me about the Velvet Underground single that was available. Even though I have the two songs already ("Foggy Notion" b/w "I Can't Stand It"), I felt like I needed to purchase a couple RSD specials. I decided against the Beach Boys 78 of "Good Vibrations" & "Heroes & Villains," knowing that even if the record was thick enough for my Victrola to play it, it'd still rip right through the vinyl. (I still don't have a good needle for my turntable that has 78.) Oh yeah - it was $15 too.

Total take for the night:
Velvet Underground 45
Television, live double album from San Francisco 1978 (which I knew was worth it 5 minutes into it)
Lee Konitz - Inside Hi-Fi (black label Atlantic, a little scratchy but still great)
Chico Hamilton - Ellington Suite (still there 2 years after I first saw it, so I had too)

The next morning, I stopped at Paul's CDs on the way into work. They too had a line, though it wasn't as long. It was a little easier to move around, but again I wasn't interested in waiting in line at the counter to check out the 45s. I picked up Mates of State's Team Boo (on red vinyl) wondering the whole time if it's the one album of theirs I have on CD (it isn't) and Destroyer's new Kaputt not because it was a RSD item but because it's intrigued me since the day the guys at Paul's played it for me and made fun of it so bad that I decided not to buy it. (I can be easily swayed with these things.) I hope to talk soon about that album in this space.

I have to say it was really encouraged to see how polite the vinyl freaks were through this whole thing. Indie hipsters often tend to me be socially inept, no sooner saying "Excuse me" than buying Hannah Montana CDs, but everyone I encountered seemed nice. At Paul's, one cat even let me cut ahead of him in line after we chatted about our finds. See - vinyl does cure everything!

Watt Makes a Man Start Fires

2011-04-13T23:39:00.005-04:00

It’s been a week since City Paper ran my “5 Questions with Mike Watt” piece but when it did, I still thought there was a lot of good comments that stayed on the cutting room floor. Here’s pretty much the whole conversation, which took place as he was driving in his van to the twelfth of 51 gigs on the tour and as I was whacked out on Novocain on half my face. Watt was in a great mood and at the points where “laughs” is indicated, it was typically a hearty guffaw.

What’s up with your knee?

It was at a Stooges gig in France, near Marseilles [in July 2010]. Last note of the first song, “Raw Power.” And I just turned wrong. It’s healing very slow. But I keep pushing. Gig number 12 tonight in Gainesville. 51 in 52 days. So I try to look beyond my middle-aged physical shortcomings. What can I do? I can work my fingers, though. It is difficult in a way, ’cause I want my whole body to express this third opera.

You’ve always kept going despite injuries. I remember a fIREHOSE show where your head was bandaged up because the van caught on fire.

I just try to keep perspective, Michael. For all the lame shit there’s some good shit. So I try to — [laughs] — be occupied with that and not let the other things get me down too much. Everybody has some lame stuff or circumstances. A farmer would tell you, to get a good crop, use a lotta manure!

Do you think you got that ability to keep going from your dad?

Oh yeah. I think so. Coming from working people. I think also [I got it from] the early punk scene, which was not very popular. We built a kind of self-reliant, us guys in our own band and the bands in our scene. Black Flag, the Huskers, Meat Puppets. The guys putting on the gigs. And the fanzines. It was like a parallel universe. I guess I have a huge debt to the movement. And, yeah, going back too before that with my Pop. If you weren’t into it, it wasn’t gonna get done. OK – it’s the reality on the dealio. It is interesting how in a way – there’s no choice but in a way it’s a lot about choice. It’s a weird duality.

Well it’s about making a choice and sticking to it through the thick and thin.

I guess it gets kinda like an existential [thing]. On the other hand, I kind of believe the knowing is in the doing! Instead of just thinking about it, you’re actually working on it. To make it happen, whatever that is! [Laughs]

You’re finding out what will happen instead of wondering.

Or just sitting in the coffee shop just talking about it. I’d rather be in the practice pad with my guys getting a thing ready. I’m all into talking and ideas and all this, but there’s something about acting on stuff. That’s where the whole idea of jam econo comes. You don’t let those material short comings keep it just [in the] spiel stage. Try to make it happen. Like a skater. When you fall down, get back on the board. You can’t really talk your way out of it.

You’ve spent the greater part of the last 30 years on the road, getting in a van and driving across the country. How do you still stand all that driving and squalid existence?

You can say a lot of things about the US and Canada – ‘cuz Canada’s on this tour too. They are big. That means you gotta roll some. At the same time, it’s kind of interesting: People take time off and spend money on vacations to do stuff like this and travel around. We realized this from the early tours. There is the B word burden but there’s also this O word opportunity where all these different paths… I just have this opinion – it’s kind of the bottom line of the third opera: Everybody’s got something to teach you. So it’s neat going to all the towns, all the different regions, all the different ways people cook up their chow. There’s bayou, there’s mountain, there’s river, there’s sand. I guess, again – this perspective idea. Having five starving children and working in a salt mine might be a little more tough. [Laughs] But I know what you mean, Michael, I know what you mean. I just weigh it all out and look at the net thing and think it’s happening. It’s kinda like my Pop – sailor’s life. Isn’t that trippy I almost ended up being like my Pop. Or I am. It’s kinda.. different… That’s the interesting thing about getting into the middle years. Because in the 20s you knew everything! And that’s what this third opera’s about too — things like that which you just mentioned. I never had children so I’m kind of the opinion where maybe these recorded works are like my children. They’ll be here after I’m gone. We never thought about that when we were younger. It was more like they were flyers for the gigs. I look at it as having their own little lives.

I was fascinated to see that the new album was influenced by Hieronymus Bosch. The thing I like about your work is that on one hand you’ve got the working class roots, but then you’ve got Dante and Bosch influencing your work.

Yeah, yeah. And [James] Joyce… The people I met in the ’70s punk scene, they weren’t from Pedro. They were painters and artist people. D Boon was a painter, although we didn’t know much about the culture of it. These people we met really [were] trippy people that knew about art stuff and intellectual stuff and had big influence on us. Which you might not imagine with punk, because it became more of a thing for younger people. But the first punk was actually people from literary, glam and art people. I think people got lost on that because it moved to the suburbs in the early ’80s with hardcore and it’s kind of a lot different. But that’s ok. That’s why I’m kind of a weird mixture.

So about Bosch, every track on the new album represents…

One of his creatures. Little men. I was kind fascinated as boy. In the encyclopedia, I saw him. I was into dinosaurs and astronauts too. [Laughs] It was just so freaky, you know. I actually got to see the real ones in Spain. There’s eight of them in the Museo del Prado in Madrid that was really trippy. Wow. More strong than a picture in an encyclopedia. It just reminded me of ….in the Minutemen we used to use all the little things to make one thing. I think that’s what he did. His pictures are made of lots of little pictures. So that gave me idea for the mechanical part of the third opera. Also [the album has] this thing about the Wizard of Oz. Because the Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tinman are kind of put-together men. The whole thing may seem like Dorothy tripping on what men do to be men. Which I think is a middle-aged kind of pondering a little bit. So that’s all the nature of Hypenated-Man.

In “Pinned-to-the-Table-Man,” where you’re saying, “Be brave, Watt,” is that you talking to yourself or is that supposed to be another character?

That was going to be the only instrumental. I was in Russia with the Stooges and I thought I should use words with every one of these parts. What had happened was, that was one change I came up with — that spiel and hooked it on to there. But I had to make it the middle of the record, ’cause I had taken the middle song, “Wheel-Bound-Man,” and put it on the end. I was going to end the thing with “Man-Shitting-Man,” but it was too down.

Yeah, that one’s heavy.

I kind of got caught up in the Bosch big picture, which I didn’t want to do. I only wanted him to help me with the little stuff. I didn’t like that last judgment, [laughs] but I got caught up in it. So I was in the studio with Tony [Maimone, ex-Pere Ubu bassist who recorded and mixed the album] just ready to finish and I said, Man, Tony, this is wrong. Let’s put the middle one on the end. So those were the two changes I made from how I wrote it. That’s trippy you picked up on that. I never used the word “I” until the very end. There’s one place in the beginning where I use “I” in quotes but the whole thing is supposed to be me thinking out loud and confronting myself. Without being too much of a drama queen. [Laughs] No, it’s existential. It’s getting back to that again. Yeah, yeah. I think it’s ok to ask these kinds of questions. There’s some shit I can’t reconcile like “Man-Shitting-Man.” Humans can be very fucked up with each other. Another thing …there comes — a peace, a weird harmony. You can figure out and not be co-opted or be deluded. I think that’s part of the journey of a life. The middle years are trippy. That’s why I wanted to write about it. I never really thought about them when I was a youngin’.

Was it a challenge going back to writing short songs after not doing it for awhile?

Yeah, yeah, it was. I did it on D. Boon’s Telecaster. I was a little afraid. I normally write the bass second. You know…sometimes you just don’t want to do it easy. Like most times! It’s a hard fucker to play in front of people there’s a lot of stuff to remember. It’s like one big baby with all these things. But it’s okay. I can look in the mirror and say, “Yeah, Watt, you’re still learning how to be a bass player.”

You put Hyphenated-Man out yourself, right? [It’s on the Clenchedwrench label.]

That’s right.

First time since the New Alliance days? [The label that he created during the Minutemen, which also released Husker Du’s Land Speed Record.]

Exactly. You know it, Mike. I got a lot of projects in the pipeline and I figure they’re going to come every couple of months. I won’t have to do any kind of dance. It’ll happen ’cause I want it to happen like in the old days. The more things change the more they stay the same sometimes.

You mean with record labels?

Yeah and the internet. Big labels don’t really mean that much really. They don’t mean anything.

So was your deal with Columbia up?

Yeah, after the second opera. You can’t do 12 or 13 things in the pipeline. You’ve gotta do one thing every couple of years. And…I might not have enough time. [Laughs] That’s another thing about the middle years – a little more earnest.

Weekend of Rock

2011-04-12T06:19:00.001-04:00

Just wrapped up a weekend in rock, with three very different definitions therein. Friday night, the Harlan Twins played at the Thunderbird Cafe. A few other bands played too but I just barely made it to see these guys, due to an ill, slightly shaken up child.

The Harlans are in a transition period, having lost original bassist Jules several months ago, and keyboardist Paul more recently. Both of those guys have big personalities and chops to match so it's safe to say they have big shows to fill. Rob, the new bass player, is clearly a really good musician. (Plus I think he was noodling on a section of "It's About That Time" from In a Silent Way as they were starting.) Greg, the new keyboardist also seems like he's a really good player, and he sings back-up a good deal too. But at the same time, this lineup is still coming together, and will change again once Neal the drummer flies the coop in a few months. What it all means is that the Harlan Twins put on a really, really good show. I've seen them and had my faith in music and life restored on a couple of occasions. Friday night wasn't one of those nights, but they were still great. Plus, I got to play tambourine on a song.

The next night was the hotly anticipated (by me at least) Question Mark & the Mysterians show at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater. Once again, child duty made me fashionably late, and I completely missed the screening of The TAMI Show. I saw it once during high school, at the good old Pittsburgh Filmmakers screening room on Oakland Avenue. (Let me tell ya kid, those were the days.... But that's another story.) So I wasn't too heartbroken about that.

At about 9:20, the curtain opened and Terry Lee was there to introduce the band. It's always interesting to see what a '60s band looks like all these years later. Do they try to maintain their old look? Do they just stop grooming themselves? Do they just look like old guys who just happen to play music? The answer for the Mysterians was a little bit of all of that. Bobby Baldarrama looked the sharpest - in a suit with his ? t-shirt on under his jacket. He was an amazing guitarist too, playing through a little 12-inch speaker and pulling out strong blues licks like they were nothing. Little Frankie Rodriguez looked kind of like a grandpa, plopped down behind a rack with two keyboards, neither of them a Vox Continental or Farfisa. (One was a Korg.) Frank Lugo (bass) looked older, with a buzz cut, but he had a John Entwistle thing going, barely moving but holding up the sound with his instrument. Drummer Robert Martinez had a banner draped over the front of his drum kit so you couldn't see it. After about four songs, I realized you couldn't see the outline of a kick drum underneath it. Add to that the fact that the drums sounded really ... uh, produced, and I gathered that he was probably being electronic drums, aside from his cymbals and snare.

Then, out came Q. Cowboy hat? Check. Shades? Check - Need you ask? Black shiny slacks? Check. Fringed top, opened all the way down the middle, with gold spangles all over it? Sounds crazy, but yep. That was him. On a lesser person, it'd look like some sort of Vegas get-up, but Q made it work.

And work he did. He worked the crowd up. He got the band working, turning out pretty solid grooves. And he danced. Every song ended with him at the front of the stage, arms aloft.

The thing that messed up the show for a lot of people wasn't the shaky ground in covers like "Be My Baby," where the band wasn't sure which vamp to play. It was the damn strobe light at the back of the stage, which the band's manager was regularly walking backstage to program. That's right, walking back there in plain site, and turning the four-panel light on for some dizzying effect. Maybe fans had better constitutions in the '60s, but everyone I talked to hated that. No wonder Q always wears shades.

The Mysterians took it down a notch with a version of "That's How Strong My Love Is" and it proved that Q knows his way around a ballad. This one was going to be on their third album, which was never released (and included backing vocals by the Raylettes). By and large the best moments of the set came during songs from their original albums. Along with "Be My Baby," "Stand By Me" didn't come off too well, mainly because the drum fills were more hard rock than soul.

When it came time for "96 Tears," everyone in the audience stood. And during a slight reprise as an encore, it could've been a new song, since it sounded so tight.

********************************

Sunday night, Mike Watt sold out the Brillobox. In a way, that shouldn't be too surprising since he's been at it for so long, and there are tons of guys who will walk up to him and gush, before and after the show.

He played his new rock opera in its entirety, Hyphenated Man, all 30 songs of it. And it does indeed have the feel of a Minutemen set, all taut and kind of funky, with a little bit of scratchy guitar and divebombing bass. But it's not a throwback. It's just digging into the same thought process.

I'm thinking of posting the entire interview I did with Watt for City Paper since only 250 words of it got into the article. (I need to post a link to the Question Mark article as well.) The bass man had some pretty illuminating thoughts on his career as a musician and his ability to keep it going now.

Back to the show. There's something to be said for playing the same set, night after night. It makes your band incredibly tight. You get comfortable with the music, comfortable with each other, so when you're in a new room, you can just plow ahead and know that everyone's in it together. And Watt and the Missing Men did that on Sunday. Rarely can a guy keep a whole room of people quiet, and he did that during the spoken intro to "Pinned to the Table Man." We all stood there in rapt attention. There wasn't even some loudmouth joker who felt the need to chime in.

Encores: Red Krayola's "The Conspirators," the Pop Group's "Amnesty Report" (they were a big influence on Watt, who covered "We Are Time" on a previous tour), both sung by guitarist Tom Watson (once a member of Slovenly). Plus a slew of Minutemen tunes, done right. "Toadies," "Black Sheep," "The Glory of Man" (with Tom dancing like D. Boon during the drum break) and "Anxious Mo-Fo" with Watt taking vocals back from Tom, who did the others. The last one had a great dynamics drop for the guitar solo. Quiet as a mouse.

After all that, I had to stay home last night.

Charlie Parker Never Gets Old

2011-04-06T09:45:00.006-04:00

Last week I lucked into a used copy of the Charlie Parker 8-disc set that combines everything he recorded for Savoy and Dial, along with a few stray other records (like one non-Dean Benedetti amatuer performance at a party). I own some of these sides on vinyl already - the double-album Savoy masters and a double set overview of the Dial sessions. I've always been on the lookout for the set of alternates of Savoy, which I think is called Encores. But really, I needed to have this set.

In this format.

Oddly enough, I feel like I know the Verve stuff better than I know these ones.Some of those later Verve sessions have career-defining tracks, like "Confirmation," "Kim" and "Au Privave." But he was really in his prime from 1944-48, the scope of this box set. Bebop was really starting to congeal at that point, and by presenting the sessions in chronological order - where the catalogs of both labels overlap - you get a good feel for how it happened.

And the booklet - surprise! - offers some really good insight into that. First, there's the whole existential angle: Part of the reason that Bird wrote these songs over the changes of popular songs had as much to do with his creativity as it had to do with the label guys not wanting to pay royalties to Gershwin and Jerome Kern for their songs. It also points out how his quintet with Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, Tommy Potter and Max Roach sounded so solid because they actually spent a lot of time playing together, mostly on the road. Not to downplay the greatness of the "Relaxin' at Camarillo" session which features Dodo Mamarosa, but the quintet session feels like they are on a similar, if not the same, wavelength.

I still have about one and a half CDs to get through of the set and I'm still not tired of hearing Parker blow over blues changes or "I Got Rhythm" changes. I'm even digging all the alternate takes. He always has something new to say each time. I realize I'm not saying something that hasn't been said before umpteen times. But I think his unique creative sense, coupled with the format in which he recorded all of these songs - which was limited to about three minutes so it'd fit on a 78 - makes it easier to get into four takes of "Constellation," while four takes of Wynton Kelly playing a six-minute song on a Mosaic set feels excessive.

While reading the booklet I had to wonder if it's possible to trace Bird's life - at least down to a weekly level - between all of the professional recordings he made, coupled with all the non-legitimate ones too. There are so many albums of him playing with pick-up bands in different cities too. So it'd be interesting to try. I'm not ready to invest in the Benedetti set, though.

Unless it turns up used.

Formatting is Everything

2011-04-02T21:54:00.002-04:00

Jiminy crap, I've just spent the last 30 minutes re-formatting the last two CD reviews. I can't tell if I learned something or if I'm just frustrated with it all. I'm listening to the Charlie Parker Savoy/Dial set right now. I kind of don't like hearing it all float by as I listen with half an ear.

CD Review - Endangered Blood

2011-04-02T07:56:00.006-04:00

Endangered Blood

(Skirl)

Little did this writer know that Skirl, the label whose CDs come in an oversized, 5"X8" soft-cover sleeves with designs by Karlssonwilkner, is run by saxophonist Chris Speed. The label has released several impressive albums, including Ches Smith's These Arches (see my 11/24/10 entry), Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone and drummer Ben Perowsky. Endangered Blood features the horn and compositions of the label boss in the company of drummer Jim Black (his co-hort from different projects including Tim Berne's Bloodcount), bassist Trevor Dunn (John Zorn, Mr. Bungle) and alto saxophonist/bass clarinetist Oscar Noriega (Berne's new Los Totopos, Lee Konitz).

It's the kind of album that sounds infectious from the start, even as it uses the sense of adventure that these guys always display. Speed and Noriega play in unison in "Plunge," and the melody sounds something that wouldn't have been out of place on a '50s West Coast session, or something by Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh. Underneath them, Dunn plays the 7/4 rhythm, which nevertheless turns into a funky, double-stop groove. In a clever move between sax solos, Dunn takes a solo and Speed comps behind him, which twists the sound perspective.

The horns-in-rhythm-section thought continues in "Rare," with Noriega's bass clarinet playing the rhythmic arpeggios of the changes in the theme. After that is established, most of the song consists of a thick low-end long tone groove by both horns, that becomes a springboard for a Speed solo which builds with the dynamics without the need to boil over into wails. His sense of economy - not to mention all the writing with the group - makes me feel like I need to keep better track of Speed's activities.

There must be something about Monk's "Epistrophy" that inspires people to play it in 7/8. Ravi Coltrane and Vijay Iyer both did it in the past couple years and Endangered Blood does it here too. This isn't a criticism though, because they take it at a slinky, Monk-like pace with Noriega again on bass clarinet. Plus it gives Black a chance stretch out and swing wildly.

It's tempting to continue going through the album track by track, as each one has plenty of things worth endorsing. But that would make this review too heavy-handed. So an overview is in order. A few songs have unison horn lineslike "Rare," but that never makes things seem pedestrian. The way Speed and Noriega play them seems like that was their plan. The riff of "Elvin Lisbon" sounds like an exercise brought to life by some great Black cracks on the snare. "K" shows they can pull of ballad approach. "Iris" could be a Tin Pan Alley melody, complete with slinky bowed bass. Finally, "Tacos at Oscar's" offers a delicious taste of freedom with Black leading the way.

Endangered Blood - which came together in 2008 as the Benefit Band, to play a benefit for a friend's cancer treatment, which probably accounts for the name - has produced one of the first albums of 2011 that deserves to be remembered on Year End lists. Hopefully I'm not alone in that belief.

But Chris, I know I've said this before but please do something about the point size of the credits.

CD Review: Weasel Walter/Mary Halvorson/Peter Evans - Electric Fruit

2011-03-31T05:32:00.013-04:00

Weasel Walter/ Mary Halvorson/ Peter Evans

Electric Fruit

(Thirsty Ear) www.thirstyear.com

Talk about a meeting of the minds. Drummer Weasel Walter has riled up listeners by playing strong, wild jazz and abrasive metal, sometimes under the same band name. The best known of his units is likely the Flying Luttenbachers. Guitarist Mary Halvorson hasn't been playing as long as Walter but over the past eight or nine years she's developed a stellar reputation for the work of her trio and quintet, in addition to appearances with Anthony Braxton and other reputable collaborators. Peter Evans' trumpet plays a crucial role in the sound of Mostly Other People Do the Killing and he's on his way towards amassing a resume as long and as solid as his co-horts here.

Electric Fruit begins in a way that proves this music won't be a gentle ride or one that's lacking in forward movement. All of these pieces sound spontaneous, with only a few discernible melodies bubbling to the surface. Most of the time they throw ideas at each other that either embellished or stomped on. Evans begins "Mangosteen 3000 A.D." with some squeaks that might send you to the credits to double-check that no reeds were used on the album. Walter joins him with some percussive clatter and splats. Halvorson begins playing it clean and thoughtful, as if she'll play the straight member of the trio, in contrast to these two hams. Four minutes later though, she's kicked on the distortion and starts using the wobbly effect that's become her calling card. It might be a whammy bar, but the sound envelopes the whole guitar so clearly that it's more likely some sort of pedal that bends the pitches. The effect is similar to a wah-wah pedal in that it can make everything start to sound the same before long, and after her last album, it's started to come off like a parlor trick. But for some reason Electric Fruit helped it to start growing on me. Maybe context is everything.

Walter can be one of the most spastic drummers on the planet, and the 15-minute tour de force "Yantok Salak Kapok" includes a skittery drum solo that proves that point. As much as it seems like he enjoys being abrasive and unsettling (see various pieces of the Luttenbachers' catalog) these frenetic performances are more likely to inspire wails of approval. His technique and sense of how to respond to Evans and Halvorson show how open his ears are.

Evans seems to draw on the whole history of jazz trumpet, even if some chapters only last a few phrases. "The Pseudo Carp Walks Among Us" (yes, all five tracks have goofy titles, which says a lot about these three) begins with an unaccompanied solo that purees bebop and '60 freedom with rapid lines and half-valve bends. It doesn't last more than a minute but it gives a greater appreciation for Evans' depth. In "Yantok" he sticks in the mute for some mutant Miles lines that sound delightful amongst the percussion and guitar skronk.

To put it another way, Walter, Halvorson and Evans sound like they're having a blast, and the feeling should be contagious to anyone with open ears.

Responsibility

2011-03-26T01:16:00.003-04:00

Playing right now: The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls In America
(Not sure how I feel about this one. I keep imagining a sea of baseball caps.)

While standing around at work today, I was thinking it'd be a nice night to go out to get a drink. Yesterday, I filed my Question Mark & the Mysterians article for City Paper which was a tremendous relief, after all the planning of interviews and transcribing that followed. (Have I mentioned here that Question Mark was on the phone with me for two hours?)

But around 10:30 after finally finishing the second cup of after-dinner-coffee (I had baby duty, which post-poned it) I told Jennie, "Naw, I don't need to go out. There's too much music to listen to here at home."

I spent a good amount of time deleted emails from my address that gets all the music p.r. info, trimming it down from over 2000 to about 1600. Still a lot, but a nice dent. But old knuckleheaded me didn't realize until now, post 1 a.m. that if I had gone to Gooski's, I wouldn't stumbled into Mi Ami's performance. And that Papercuts was at Brillobox tonight, not tomorrow. I don't have any major stake in seeing them, but had I known, I'd've been into either.

On the other hand, I did listen to two albums I need to review, and stayed awake for most of them.

More talk about bands and lives

2011-03-23T05:34:00.002-04:00

Since I wrote about Trotsky Icepick last week, a few things happened. I played Carpetbomb the Riff, which sounded three times as vicious as I remembered it. What a great album, and a great parting statement. It definitely should've gotten more attention. I think it's probably hard to find and that it was under-promoted. My copy came from a used store and I don't think I've ever seen a sealed one.

Listening to that turned bittersweet after hearing from Vitus. In the midst of his updates on his personal and musical life, he said that the drummer on Carpetbomb, John "Skippy" Glogovac, died of brain cancer a few years ago. Skippy was in the band when they came to Pittsburgh and he stayed at my place. I never knew him deeply, or as well as I knew Vitus or John T-J, but it kind of hurt to hear that he's gone. He was a good egg.

It feels like the last week has been non-stop writing, or hunting down interview subjects and being completely wrapped up in them. The big news is Question Mark & the Mysterians are coming to Pittsburgh for a rare performance. And that means "rare" in this city and anywhere. City Paper is giving me a fairly sizable word-count to write about them, so I talked to Mr ? (Question Mark himself, that is,) for the article. We were on the phone for two hours. You know what it's like when it comes to transcribing a two-hour interview?

Funny, listening back to it, most of what he said made fairly good sense. In some ways, he's a musical character the likes of which you rarely see anymore. In other words, a guy who's as wild offstage as he is onstage. And he seems well aware of his penchant to go on and on when giving the opportunity. I also talked to Mysterians' guitarist Bobby Balderrama over the weekend. That was another hour-long talk too. But with much less rapid-fire discussions. He helped fill in the cracks with background info on the band, which helped.

As I was transcribing the ? interview yesterday, the land line rang. If I'm home during the day and the phone rings, I rarely pick it up. The people who really want to talk to me will call my cellphone first and the calls on the land line are usually telemarketers. When the machine picked up, I heard a gruff, muffled voice: "MICHAEL! It's Mike Watt. I'm calling from the road." I figured I ought to pick up.

Watt was supposed to call the night before for another article I'm writing. He's in town April 10 - which happens to be the night after ? and the Mysterians - and I'm doing a 5 Questions piece on him. He was in a good mood, and we talked about perseverance in the case of adversity, reflecting on middle age (the big point of his new album) and what it's like putting out a record on your own label. Good guy. I felt pretty lucky that I was off of work and that I came right home after my dentist appointment yesterday. Otherwise I probably would've need to roll the dice and hope to talk to him some other time. The article is fairly brief, so I plan to post some good quotes from the cutting room floor on this blog. Stay tuned.

Then while we were talking, the guy who's bringing ? called my cell phone, so I had to call him back. He proved to be the final source for the article, so I was glad to get that done too. The day was starting to feel like "all music writer all the time." It was almost like the old days, except without all the other distractions like phone calls I don't want, and questions from co-workers.

Tonight the Question Mark piece will get finished and we can all rest. Or at least I can. For a minute. Then I have to start compiling all the stuff I need to take to the tax accountant. And then I should start writing JazzTimes reviews. Wish I had today off.

Trotsky Icepick Remembered or Our Life Could Be Your Band

2011-03-15T13:26:00.004-04:00

Playing right now: Ernest Dawkins' New Horizons Ensemble - The Prairie Prophet (Delmark)

(Love his this album has gone from consonant, nice melody stuff to wild AACM blowing in the space of the first two tracks.)

About a week ago, I pulled out Trotsky Icepick's El Kabong album and I liked it so much that I listened to it over and over again. That album in particular came out at a very telling time of my life: the summer of 1989, which I think I've gone on about ad nauseum. But just in case any readers have forgotten or don't know, that was when Bone of Contention began record our first album and I moved into what was probably the best apartment of my college life, in terms of roommates and the adventures we had. I also looked up and found Vitus Matare, guitarist and founding member of the band, on Facebook.

Come to think of it, pretty much every Trotsky Icepick album is connected to some big period of my life. So here's my personal discography on an overlooked, very good band.

Back in 1986, a friend had dubbed me 100 Flowers' album and I was listening to it constantly. I could hear the minimal, arty approach that had inspired the Minutemen but it also had a little bit of a poppy jangle to it that was a nice break from SST power chords that was part and parcel of my other musical tastes. When I heard about Trotsky Icepick, which included 100 Flowers guitarist Kjehl Johansen, I had to get it. Around that time it seemed like all of the bands that I really really liked weren't together anymore (Mission of Burma, Patti Smith and just a few months prior the Minutemen), so any new stuff had to be found by previous members of those bands (i.e. Volcano Suns).

Trotsky's Poison Summer album, in retrospect, turned a corner in my musical tastes. The guitars were very clean, with no distortion and a lot of chorus. The songs weren't tense like 100 Flowers, but they were great examples of what makes pop music good. "Ivory Tour" has some great chord changes, and a great melody from Vitus, where the phrasing of a line from the verse stretches out and almost spills into the chorus. It's a great hook. I could've done without the '80s synths, but I could also overlook them.

I wrote a letter to the band's label, which was the same as writing to the band, and Vitus sent me a copy of the Danny and the Doorknobs' Poison Summer album that came out initially. What the band started out doing was planning on changing the band's name with every album and keep the title the same. (It lasted for just two albums, as I'd find out.) This album was even better. A little more stark, it was just Kjehl, Vitus and drummer John Frank turning ideas into songs - little more jangle, a little more edge, some screamed backing vocals, good times.

The story might've ended there but I noticed a phone number etched into the clear vinyl's inner groove and called it. Turns out it was John Frank, who called back to let confirm my suspicion about his answering machine. Now that's something you'd never find these days - a band putting their phone number anywhere on a release. Unless they were looking for gigs, in which case they'd probably never get a call.

I was doing a fanzine at the time and thought Trotsky Icepick would be a great subject. Because I liked them. Never mind the lack of timeliness. I wanted to talk to them. Vitus and Kjehl were a great interview, with great stories about their anti-marketing campaign/name game and their previous bands (Vitus had played in the Last). Thus also began an ongoing correspondence between me and Vitus - I hope I wasn't too much of a pest - where I sent him updates on Bone of Contention, along with our cassette release and he sent me a tape of all those hard to find singles by the Urinals (100 Flowers' previous incarnation, who wrote "Ack Ack Ack," which the Minutemen immortalized). He also sent me a tape of the band's three videos, along with a t-shirt for their upcoming album. I still own the shirt and keep trying to retire it but I can't. It's held up (much better than my Bongwater shirt) and even if I won't wear it out, it's fine for bedtime purposes.

In the fall of '88, SST released their third album Baby (the one with the shirt). Vitus had sent me a cassette dub of it earlier in the year, which I had played incessantly for anyone who didn't run fast enough. I felt they were on the fast track to underground rock success since SST was still a pretty credible label, and maybe it meant my band's mutant pop sound would find success on that level. Ha.

Baby is the only Trotsky album I don't currently own in any form other than the advance tape. I just checked the band's Happy Squid catalog and saw it's still available in vinyl form so I'll have to order it if I can't find it locally. I can still hear it in my head - a really solid hard pop album, with even more grit and some depth in the lyric department.

By the time Baby came out, John Talley-Jones of 100 Flowers had joined the band as singer. That was really cool to me because John was a big influence on me. Even more than I realized: upon playing 100 Flowers for some bandmates they said, "He sounds like you." If Mike Watt was who I aspired to be, John T-J was someone who I could be.

Some entries on Trotsky consider Baby the band's shining hour, but I really think El Kabong is their best. There isn't a dud track on that album. Listening to it again, Talley-Jones kind of chews up the scenery on their cover of Magazine's "The Light Pours Out of Me" but even that is still pretty strong.

In the fall of 1991, I got a call asking if Bone of Contention would open for Trotsky Icepick. It was a dream come true. Five years in the making. Barb our drummer was getting married that weekend but somehow I convinced her that the show would be worth our while. While that was shaping up I was going through a bad break-up and The Ultraviolet Catastrophe came out with something of a thud. It has some great writing on it, but the production really cut of the low end and played up that chorused out guitar. A cover of Television's "Venus de Milo" didn't sound like the guys I knew. "Barbara Steele" is a really beautiful song once you peel away the Gilmour-esque guitar solo and the Chapman stick (whaaaaa?????????).

At the Upstage Lounge, I think I was so overwhelmed at seeing these guys that I took me awhile to really get into the set. They added at least one 100 Flowers to the set and a few oldies, and brought more kick to some Ultraviolet songs. Then they crashed at my place. I still remember making them coffee on our two coffee pots - the one that brewed, and the one that had a good heating element.

That lineup released Carpetbomb the Riff a couple years later, which was probably the edgiest album in the whole catalog. (It occurs to me I haven't pulled that one out yet as part of my renewed Trotsky phase.) Mike Patton - not the Faith No More guy but the guy from Middle Class - was a strong bass player and drummer John "Skippy" Glogovac gave the band an extra kick. They didn't make it back to Pittsburgh on that tour, only getting as close as Cleveland. And I was too bogged down with my final semester at Pitt to make the journey. I had a vested interest too: John T-J wanted to release a 7" by my band the Pundits, which had been recorded at Kramer's Noise New Jersey studio.

Vitus had left the band before that tour, which seemed like a sad turn of events. Then I think the band broke up not too long after that. John mentioned something about he and Kjehl doing that every few years.

SST released Hot Pop Hello about a year later, a set of unreleased songs spanning the life of the band, going all the way back to the Doorknobs days. Some of the songs sound quite a bit like some of the released songs but I'm with Jack Rabid in his review on allmusic.com: This is a really strong album on its own, not a mere hodgepodge of leftovers. Vitus' songwriting skills really come through as there are a lot of his tunes here. Some of those songs have been in my head for the past week.

EPILOGUE:
I posted some youtube videos of the band on Facebook and Barb from BOC and I were talking about them. I commented that for many years I got Christmas cards from John T-J and it was hard to imagine reading a "this is what we did this year" note from the same guy who inspired D. Boon to cover "Ack Ack Ack" (FYI, an additional "Ack" got lost on the way to the Minutemen's cover). You don't imagine your heroes being regular folks like us.

She replied that maybe guys like that were normal folks just like us, too, who happened to play in punk bands too. (A few years earlier my naive sensibilities were shocked to hear Kjehl Johansen was a lawyer!) Their life could be my band.

Work?

2011-03-12T22:00:00.003-05:00

The music editor of Pittsburgh City Paper wrapped up his tenure with the paper this week and it just so happens that a day or two earlier, I sent him a detailed list of pitches for about the next month and a half. And I got most of them as assignments. YIPE! Gotta start rolling on them.
But not tonight.
I need a couple nights off from trying to write. I finally finished the Kid Congo Powers article for Blurt a couple nights ago, only to find out the next morning that his new album isn't out until May. I could've waiting a little bit to finish it, but I know if I had, it still would've taken me all the free time I had to finish it. For once I'm ahead of the game.
Last night I crammed into the Brillobox to see Nik & the Central Plains, the Harlan Twins and Low Water. I met up with my long lost high school friend Marta and we got there early in order to catch up before going to see the bands upstairs. We caught some of the Central Plains, most of Low Water (who weren't doing it for me that night) and none of the Harlan Twins because the crowd and the amount of hooch in me made me want to move onto the next establishment, which is this case was Ritter's. Marta and I had been having a pretty involved conversation and I felt like continuing that at that moment. Today at work I kind of regretted missing my favorite local band, but last night it seemed like a good idea.

Tarana's set in Pittsburgh - or leave the house and hear music

2011-03-09T23:22:00.000-05:00

Saturday night around 9:45, I had finally put my son to bed and was ready to make a pot of coffee. (Having joe at that time isn't unusual for me.) Then I got a text: "Where are you? Ravish is on next."

I had thought about going to see Ravish Momin's groups Tarana (see previous entry) but it had been a long day at work, and the post-work activity wasn't as smooth as I had figured, so I was feeling to tired up to that point. Besides - coffee. Me want.

But my friend Mia's text got me to rethink the situation. Besides I figured if he's just about to go on, and he's just up the hill, across the bridge and around the corner at the Shop, it's not that far a drive. And this won't be an all-night affair.

When I arrived about 10 minutes later, the previous band was still on, making a high-volume racket. Turns out they were some touring act too, according to a flyer I saw a few days after the show. The brief downtime allowed me to run out and get the coveted cup of joe and come back in time to see Ravish setting up his drum kit.

Taranna, Ravish's band, is usually a trio but tonight they were a duo with violinist Trina Basu joining the drummer. Ravish had a mixer with a series of looped beats going, which framed their non-4/4 grooves. The first couple songs took a little bit of time to get rolling, with Momin tweaking the volume level of the samples so he could hear them over his kit. But in song number two, when the groove was set and he had both hands devoted to his drum sticks, something clicked and there was no turning back.

At times, Basu blended so well with the samples that you forgot where the line between live and programmed was drawn. On one song she was doing call and response with herself, bowing in one register and answering in the other register. One song had what sounded like French horn samples in it, playing a melody that sounded close to a phrase clipped from Henry Mancini's "Lujon" (aka "Slow Hot Wind") but that's probably me reading into it. Momin has always been a physical drummer, clearly getting really into what he plays, and the energy was really contagious during their set. At first the sound mix nearly buried his kit under the samples and violin, believe it or not, but the combination eventually evened out. When the caffeine started to kick in, the way the drums were tuned really appealed to me. I kept thinking, I'm really glad I came to this show. This is really good.

This was one of those shows were several members of the audience thought the between-song banter was directed at them and that everyone wanted to hear their replies (show organizer Ed Um, not withstanding) but even that didn't spoil it.

Where I'm at now

2011-03-04T22:39:00.002-05:00

Playing right now: Von Freeman - Doin' It Right Now (Atlantic)
(Von is a real badass tenor player, who's still kicking out some solid music. Anytime you see a Von Freeman album, grab it.)

I nodded off with the laptop on me, fading in and out every 30 seconds or so. When I finally got up, I was walking around for two minutes before I realized that today was Friday and not Saturday. I'm surprised it took that long. Friday night, payday no less, and I'm sitting by myself with the computer. And I don't even have a drink nearby.

I've been compiling a list of upcoming shows in Pittsburgh, in hopes of previewing some of them and it's getting pretty long. Tomorrow night, drummer/percussionist Ravish Momin is back in town at the Shop. He lived here in the '90s and played in an improv group called Ensemble Duchamp. Then he went to New York and before starting his own band, he played with Kalaparush Maurice McIntyre and Sabir Mateen. He's been here a few times with his own group, but I keep missing them. Then on Sunday, a singer-songwriter named Alex Winston is playing at the Brillobox.

Then later this month, a Sub Pop band called Papercuts are coming, followed a few days later by Kurt Vile & the Violaters, who I want to see because my friend Jesse is a member of that band, and I haven't seen that cat since he moved away over 10 years ago.

I finally figured out, with the help of a friend, that I can actually burn CDs from this laptop in such a way that they can be played on regular CDs players. For some reason, any disc I burned previously could only be played on machines that read mp3s. I have a bunch of album downloads that I have to write about and now I don't have to stay confined to this machine to listen to them! Hooray!

Early Morning, as it rains

2011-02-25T06:30:00.003-05:00

My review of the Jake Fryer/Bud Shank CD is up on the JazzTimes website right now. Check it out here. I figured it might get a few more hits from that page than if I just put it up here. There is at least one more disc I'm going to review for the website, and a few I want to do for here. Plus I have a couple things to write for Blurt. My problem is that I have all this I'd like to write and I get up early to get a fresh start on it, but I don't have the clarity of mind at 5:30 a.m. to remember what I have to do. Guess I ought to just make a list the night before.

I rocked then I got rocked

2011-02-19T07:30:00.003-05:00

Playing right now: Eric Dolphy - Last Date (Fontana)

For some reason I thought Nathan Davis played on this session, but I think there was some stretching of the truth with this album, that it's not actually Dolphy's last recording date (it's a live performance) and that maybe there was a studio date after this. It's odd to hear Han Bennink sounding so grounded and boppish. Knowing how wild he can be these days, this performance almost holds the group back. Bennink is solid but almost stiff or nervous.

Wednesday night, the Love Letters returned to Rock 'n Bowl. We played there almost a year ago to the date, give or take about eight days. Snowmageddon hadn't completely subsided at that time. Aimee couldn't dig her car out so I had to pick her up. There was a light sheet of ice all over the sidewalks near Arsenal Lanes. To top things off, I hadn't had a chance to make myself some coffee so I was going through a bad caffeine withdrawal and felt miserable all night. Until we got paid, and we made what I consider some good money. Then I reconsidered everything.

This week it was a beautiful, balmy 40 degrees, no snow, slush or ice in sight. We decided that rather than writing up a set list, we'd put all the songs we wanted to play into a hat. We encouraged people to help us out by fishing them out, and a few people obliged, which was a pleasant surprise. A lot of times at Rock 'n Bowl, people just bowl without any regard for the rock. A couple gals were actually dancing to us. And we didn't end up playing all the slow songs or all the songs in G in a row, so the set held together pretty well. Another key: pick two titles at once, so there isn't a lull between each song.

Arsenal closes at midnight, so we were out the door and packed up by that time. That allowed me the chance to catch half a set by Kid Congo Powers and the Pink Monkey Birds up the street at Howler's. During one song, I reminded myself, oh yeah he was in the Cramps - no wonder he can make one chord sound so good. There was a lot of primitive stomping going on and it worked really well. I regret that I walked in right as the band was wrapping up their take on the Gun Club's "For the Love of Ivy." Wish I could've heard all of that. They encored with "Sex Beat" in which Kid sounded a little more like Jello Biafra than Jeffrey Lee Pierce, but it still got everyone up and screaming.

Driving home I had to open the car window because the residual smoke was so strong that it felt like being in a car with someone who had a lit cigarette. My hat and beret spent the night on the porch, airing out.

You're hearing George Shearing... no more

2011-02-18T06:01:00.002-05:00

I forget what night I saw it over the last weekend, but we were watching the news or the Grammys and they streamed info at the bottom of the screen saying that pianist George Shearing had passed away at age 91. I always, as this blog shows, feel affected by the death of a jazz musician but this one had a bit of personal connection.

My parents dug Shearing and his name was always synonymous in our house with the folks' idea of good jazz (more melodic stuff than harmonic complexity, and much of which came from the West Coast). I still recall the Christmas that my mum got Pop a copy of The Swingin's Mutual, the album Nancy Wilson made with the Shearing group.

During his years on Capitol, Shearing made a lot of easy listening albums that involved mellow brass or strings, with some comely lass posing on the album cover. (In the opening of the hotel room scene in A Hard Day's Night, either Paul or his grandfather is holding one of them. Product placement for Mums and Dads in the audience at the matinees?) These albums are now pretty much a dime a dozen, right next to the Herb Alperts in the thrift stores, and they don't paint a definitive portrait of the British pianist.

The best way to find out what put Shearing on the map is to find his MGM sides with the first quintets, which included guitar and vibes. There, you hear his remarkable melodic skills as well as a sharp, incisive ear for arrangements that broadened the spectrum of how groups like that played. The approach was known as "locked hands," where the left hand of the piano carried the melody, which the guitar and the vibes doubled and harmonized. The beauty of the whole thing is how subtle it is. It tugs at your ear, making you think that something is going on here. It's hard to tell what it is unless you're a musician, and in the end it doesn't matter.

Also, Shearing told me in an interview that he told all his vibes players not to play with the vibrato on, so as to avoid the "yoy-yoy-yoy-yoy" sound that comes from sustained, vibratoed notes. He might've liked it mellow, but not that mellow.

That was around 2000 that I spoke with him, to preview a performance at the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild. I remember it was a Saturday afternoon, not too long after I started working full time at InPgh that it happened. Other than a Sonny Rollins interview during an internship several years earlier, this was my first time talking to a bigtime jazz legend. Since I wasn't exactly up on the Shearing catalog at that point, I was a bit apprehensive. But we got into a great conversation, where he congenially explained locked hands and myriad other subjects. He was a great guy.

There's a passage in On the Road that also made me think, as a teenager, that maybe Shearing was edgier than I had initially thought. The two main characters are up on speed and they check Shearing out in a club and get completely blown away by the fire he's creating onstage. In fact the scene practically sets the standard for that of any '50s movie that takes place in a jazz club: where some character is getting way to into the music, and keeps yelling stuff like, "Go, daddy, go! Yeah, baby!" with coiffed hair getting disheveled the more he gets into the music. I haven't read On the Road in over 20 years but I think that scene is followed by the realization by Sal Paradise that it wasn't all music that was making him feel that way, but the drugs. And the bringdown has a reflective moment to it.

Still, he could've talked about seeing the Jazz Messengers or Clifford Brown, or even Gerry Mulligan, but no - it was Shearing.

And then there are all those duo albums he did with Mel Torme, which brought together two skilled craftsmens who created something that was really top-shelf. (These are another big item in the family history. We heard them a lot in the '80s before the console broke.) Most memorable to me is their version of "I'm Hip," where Torme pokes fun at goofball jazz fans of his era. Beautiful. I hope they're playing together again somewhere.

Thanks for everything, George. Literally, without you, I don't know where I'd be.

Grammy predictions?

2011-02-13T07:58:00.003-05:00

Our PC at home stopped letting us get online about two weeks ago. It looked like a browser problem. Then mid-week last week, it started acting really wonky, warning us that it needed to be defragmented. If this ever happens to you, don't follow the steps because as you might have guessed it's a virus.
My laptop has managed to escape unscathed so far, but it wouldn't let me download a program that's supposed to help to fix it. This all means that I haven't had a chance to do much of anything at home except writing assignments that are for deadlines. Pittsburgh City Paper ran a quickie preview that I did for Kid Congo Powers. He's playing at Howler's on this coming Wednesday. The Love Letters are playing Rock 'n' Bowl that same night, but I'm hoping that I can still make it over to catch the show after we're done since we finish around 11:30.
Soooooooooo, the Grammys are on tonight. I'm shocked that they're letting the Arcade Fire play. Sure, they're nominated for Album of the Year, but that's pretty bizarre too. There are probably a lot of people out there who are going to see watch the band and say, "Who are those people? Does anyone really like them? People only like bands like that because no one's ever heard of them."
I'll probably stick with my usual Sunday night tv: reruns of Mike Hammer with Darren McGavin in the title role (although by now I've seen all of them several times) and Everybody Hates Chris.
Or maybe I'll turn the damn tv off and review albums.
That's my prediction.

CD Review - Bizingas

2011-01-29T06:42:00.003-05:00

Bizingas

(NCM East) http://www.ncmeast.com/

As far as instrumentation is concerned, anything goes with jazz groups these days. No bass? No problem. Cecil Taylor proved that the bottom end wasn't mandatory in free music almost half a century ago. Groups like the Chicago Underground Duo - who make it work with just a trumpet and drum kit, plus some electronics - are fairly standard, or at least not unexpected. The music of groups like this doesn't lack anything in its simplicity, it opens things up to new opportunities.

Having said that, it feels like something is missing in "Tagger," which opens the self-titled album by the Brooklyn-based quartet Bizingas. Guitarist Jonathan Goldberger and drummer Ches Smith lay down a 5/8 groove, which sounds as much like a rock riff as a jazz vamp. Brian Drye and Kirk Knuffke join in on trombone and cornet, respectively. It's a catchy three-minute tune, no doubt with room for a little blowing in the middle. But it feels like it could use something on the bottom end to fill out the sound and drive it home.

This is not to say that the guys in Bizingas need help. In fact they all come with some strong credentials. Drye, who leads the group and wrote all 10 tracks, has worked with everyone from the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and bassist Mark Helias. He also doubles on piano. Smith's name showed up on this blog a few months ago with his excellent release with These Arches; he also has played metal and post-rock. Knuffke, also a man about town, is a member of Ideal Bread, a band devoted to Steve Lacy's compositions, to name but one project. Goldberger also has rock roots, as well as experience with drummer Jim Black and guitarist James "Blood" Ulmer.

So really, the issue here is getting used to the open spot in the arrangements, really. My notes for "Guilty" - where the horns play some fast lines over the drums, before Goldberger starts comping - reads, "Needs something."

The same can be said for a few other songs, yet at the same time, Drye has come up with some thought provoking compositions that expand the shape of the group with nearly every tune. They hadn't intended to record the subdued "TMT," but it gives the album its first thoughtful digression, three songs in; the piano and Knuffke's horn engage in a good conversation. "Sifting," a ballad dedicated to Duke Ellington, has multiple sections and the quartet's minimalism works to a good advantage. "Stretched Thin" begins rubato with a repeated figure played by the trombone, that is later played more rapidly by a programmed keyboard. Smith steps away from the kit to play glockenspiel too. The minor, somewhat pensive "Farmer" is a composition with no improvisation that recalls Andrew Hill's early work.

Closing the album, "Untitled Moog Anthem" is deceptive in that it's not exactly anthemic, nor is it especially moog-like. The titular keyboard does however pump out a pedal point bassline that keeps a groove going with Smith, and it kisses off the album with an idea of what else might be possible down the line with them.

New records, last night's gig

2011-01-29T00:45:00.004-05:00

It's been a John Vanderslice kind of night. There is illness in the household, except for me, knock on wood. So everyone is asleep (I hope) except me. It seemed like the ideal time to pull out JV's Romanian Names album. I've been thinking I need to revisit it ever since I received my platinum package version of his new album last week, White Wilderness.

What's the platinum package you ask? Welllll - lemme tell ya: It contains both the vinyl and CD editions of the new album, plus a one-sided six-song EP, Green Grow the Rushes (limited edition of 1000, mine being around #241), along with two 7"s of songs from Romanian Names with non-LP b-sides (and beautiful covers), plus a printed poster for the album and a photo by John himself, sealed in an envelope with sticker bearing his initials. The picture supposedly has never been printed before and never will again.

The whole thing costs $45, which is a bit of change but was almost covered by money that I got from a recent Love Letters show. Besides, it's a helluva a lot less than the Decemberists' deluxe package for their new album, which costs $165. Of course it does have a 72-page booklet, but oh well.

Speaking of the Love Letters, we played last night at Club Cafe with three other local bands. It was a pretty good time. There were folks there who were whooping for us and egging us on, so that was good. It was interesting because a few of my friends that came to see us were all from very different social circles. I always hope something like that will happen, but it doesn't very often.

We played with City Steps (which includes Bill & Kate of the Hi-Frequencies), Paul Labrise & the Trees (who organized the show) and Meeka in Jail (who were flying off the rails). Our next show is at Rock 'n Bowl on Feb. 16, which I just discovered tonight is the same night Congo Powers is coming to town.

CD Review: Jason Stein's Locksmith Isidore - Three Kinds of Happiness

2011-01-22T07:18:00.001-05:00

Jason Stein's Locksmith Isidore

Three Kinds of Happiness

(Not Two)

Jason Stein named his trio Locksmith Isidore after his grandfather's first name and occupation. Two pieces on this album also have titles that pay tribute to his siblings: "Little Bird" to his sister; and "Sammy's Crayons" to a half-brother who liked to draw as a kid. It's clear from these indications that Stein's music gets some fuel from his personal history, and the way he utilizes these elements never comes close to maudlin nostalgia.

In a similar fashion, Stein's music frequently heads into a rather straightforward direction, swinging like crazy with walking basslines and jumpy bass clarinet solos, acknowledging the music that came before him. In some ways, a lot of the tracks on this album could be considered very accessible to a more mainstream audience, and not what one might expect from someone who has played with the Exploding Star Orchestra. Yet he does this through more original means.

The obvious starter is this equation is Locksmith Isidore itself, a trio led by Stein's bass clarinet together with Jason Roebke's bass and Michael Pride's drums. Bass clarinets have become a tad more commonplace in jazz, but rarely does one see it as the sole voice on the frontline. Stein doesn't draw on some of the more standard trappings of the instrument - its guttural, throat clearing rasp, percussive slap-tonguing or high range wails. Three Kinds of Happiness leans more towards composition, and Stein shows off his more melodic tendencies, leaving room with the wild stuff as he sees fit.

Sometimes, a tune starts off with the trio moving loosely or freely before jumping into a more structured setting ("Cash, Couch and Camper," "Ground Floor South"). "Arch and Shipp" - which could be an homage to Archie Shepp and possibly Matthew Shipp - stays outside for the first half of its nine minutes, so when the group hits the theme, the bounce in the melody sounds all the more infectious. At one point during his solo, Stein rapidly shapes and reshapes the initial theme somewhat like Coltrane and it makes you realize that being the only horn soloist is a challenging job and that he handles it was ease and skill.

If "More Gone Door Gone" were scored for a larger ensemble, it could easily turn into a stomping blues. Here the trio hints at its wild potential but Roebke and Pride hold back while Stein employs some circular breathing for a double-time chattering, which is just as exciting as a wild blues and whole lot more original. A couple of live, bonus tracks profile the more wild side of the group (Stein has also recorded a solo bass clarinet album for Leo), where they take an simple idea and build up around it. Coming at the end of the disc, they serve as a good contrast to the earlier pieces like "Little Bird," a strong ballad that has some passing references to the classics.

Grandpa Isidore might be perplexed at times by the trio but ultimately he'd dig them.

Back to work; Dean & Britta recap

2011-01-20T19:53:00.004-05:00

Last week I took a stay-cation from work, with high hopes of cleaning up the home office, organizing everything in here, including the pile of CDs and getting stuff ready to auction, as well as cleaning up the rest of the house. And I expected to keep up that good run of blog entries I had in the final days of 2010 and the beginning of this month.
So here it is, four days into the week after the stay-cation, and only now am I getting around to an entry to follow the Burt entry below. Eh, what are you gonna do? The weather outside is awful (which cancelled Love Letters practice tonight) and the kid is fast asleep in the next room, so it's time to get back on track.

Last week Dean & Britta played at the Carnegie Lecture Hall in Oakland, drawing on Dean Wareham's Galaxie 500 catalog. They played a similar set in town last fall at a benefit for Hopital Albert Schweitzer, but last week's show was more publicized and is part of a tour.
The incredible thing about the set was the manner in which the group really recreated the Galaxie 500 sound in all its subtleties. Obviously Wareham is going to be able to recreate the way he played those songs (and he sang in the falsetto perfectly), but Jason Lawrence replicated Damon Krukowski's drum style in both the accents and the way he hit his kit. Britta Phillips stuck closely to the upper register of her bass, much like Naomi Yang did, and when she slid down to the lower frets during the climax of "Flowers," it felt like pure sonic bliss. I also scribbled the words "BLISS OUT" on my note pad during a later song, which I think was "Summertime," based on an equally scribbled, half-remembered song lyric. I know the song was in A.
That last statement is significant because after awhile, it felt like every song was in D, or built around D and one other chord. Of course, the initial appeal of Galaxie 500 came from the fact that all their songs were pretty similar and it didn't matter. Without the Kramer's sea-of-echo production, maybe some of that appeal was lost on me, 20 years down the road. Not that it ruined the night, though. Far from it. The only thing that detracted from the evening was the way I nodded off several times during the set, despite having had my usual p.m. cups of coffee and not having worked that day. Maybe the band was just lulling me to sleep.
For Ralph Carney's tenor sax line in "Decomposing Trees," guitarist Matt Sumrow pulled out a melodica and blew the line, giving it a reggae dub atmosphere that made up for the fact that the song seemed a little too uptempo, compared to the original. (And the purist in me missed the bells that are heard at the beginning and end of the song.) Sumrow's presence was great because it kept the rhythm guitar sound chiming when Wareham took a solo. He is a really understated soloist, with the way he uses space, melody and effects pedals, and during "When Will You Come Home," he manipulated his amp by the way he stood in front of it. It was fun.
For encores, they dug into their 13 Most Beautiful set and Britta sang Dylan's "I'll Keep it with Mine." True to my prediction, they followed that with New Order's "Ceremony," which always has some extra life in it.
Meeting of Important People, a fine local trio, opened the show although it took some adjustment time for me to get into the band. For some reason, they played stripped down, with their drummer only playing tambourine and harmonizing, with bass and acoustic guitar as the only other instruments in the songs. They had me by the end of the set, making me realize I've got to hear more of them. (They were giving away free CDs and I snagged one.)

Bloggin' about Burt

2011-01-05T20:45:00.004-05:00

When I was about five or six years old, my dad bought a cassette version of Burt Bacharach's Make It Easy on Yourself. I played it all the time, most likely because it was there but also because I did think it was pretty catchy to my youthful ears. Pop had a bunch of pre-recorded tapes that factor heavily into my musical outlook. As I might have said before, some of my earlier musical memories involved the tapes of the 5th Dimension's Greatest Hits, Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66's Equinox and a Herbie Mann sampler with "Comin' Home Baby" and "Philly Dog."

Make it Easy on Yourself found Burt leading a studio orchestra through several of his hit songs. This was one of a few albums he did for A&M, and this particular one leaned heavily on tunes from his then-recent Broadway hit Promises Promises. In some ways, this album is a textbook version of Easy Listening, with strings and warm brass and anonymous female singers cooing the words to "I'll Never Fall in Love Again," "Wanting Things," and a few stray lines in a couple other songs. In Rolling Stone's first edition of their Record Guide around 1979, they gave all of these albums a bullet rating, which meant they were worse than one-star albums, truly awful.

I'm here to tell you they were wrong, wrong, wrong.

Now that I have a new needle for our good turntable, I whipped out Make It Easy On Yourself, craving the instrumental version of "Do You Know The Way to San Jose." One of the beautiful things about this album is the way Burt (sorry, I can't simply refer to him as Bacharach) regularly scores the melody so each phrase moves to a different instrument while still sounding consonant. Marimba bangs out the intro here, leading to a pregnant pause before a rather Herb Alpert-like trumpet takes the first phrase. A guitar - I think - picks up the "L.A. is a great big freeway" line, leading to some other percussively stringy instrument. It's not complex, it's irresistably catchy and it helped me to think of music in visual or human terms as a kid, which kept my synapses firing.

"Promises Promises" is a tour de force, one that kicks off the album at that. It's already a complex song time-wise, but there is a lot of tension and release. It begins gently and builds to what sounds like a climax, with a piano banging the chords beneath a surging brass section. Then it pulls back, brings those vocalists in for a whopping three lines, then it surges even higher into the real "bring it home" finale. It's so raucous that the drummer seems to lose the beat on the turnaround, and struggles to keep up. Maybe that's not true since the composer is such a perfectionist, but it doesn't take anything away from the song.

My other favorite song on the album is "Knowing When to Leave." Yet again, the melody moves around the room, from oboe to saxophone to trumpet. But the song's strongpoint comes with the way Burt gets the orchestra to roar like a rock band, punching out the lead-in beats to the next phrase and building tension around a dangling chord alteration at the end of a line.

This is sounding a little too academic. Let me put it another way - very few things, outside of Mama Cass or "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" fill me with such musical joy. The quiet coda of this song (also used in Dionne Warwick's version) always puzzled me, making me think of someone alone and sad after a big party is over. I prefer Sue Ramey's version, released on Imperial, where she goes back into the roaring part before the song fades out. I found a copy of it in a Goodwill once, with the flip-side being a cabaret-style cover of the Monkees' "Early Morning Blues and Greens," which isn't nearly as successful.

I didn't listen to Make it Easy On Yourself at all from about age 12 until the time is about 24. That summer, something in my mind told me to find a used copy of it. My roommate thought I was nuts. He had a Burt album on our mantelpiece that he used to roll joints on. He saw no other value for the schlub on the cover.

Within a year, he changed his tune.

CD Review: Scott Amendola Trio - Lift

2011-01-02T00:00:00.003-05:00

Scott Amendola Trio

Lift

(Sazi) http://www.scottamendola.com/

Scott Amendola starts his new album with a bit of red herring. The first 63 seconds of "Tudo De Bom" capture the drummer crashing all over his kit, from skins to pitched percussion, implying that a freewheeling tune is about to catch fire. But when Jeff Parker (guitar) and John Shifflett (bass) join him, the mood gets noticeably subdued. Parker doesn't even use any distortion (that comes later), preferring a warm, clean tremolo sound.

Not that the quasi-funky, Brazilian-influenced tune lacks a strong feeling. The trio locks into a different kind of groove right away with some crisp, lean lines from Parker. But like most of the album, the trio takes a turn that isn't exactly expected.

Amendola has been all over the place, musically speaking. (As I wrote here a few days ago, he's on trumpeter Sarah Wilson's Trapeze Project.) Recently, he's become known for his work in the Nels Cline Singers, but he also played with the funk group T.J. Kirk and the Thelonious Monk tribute project Plays Monk with Singers bassist Devin Hoff and clarinetist Ben Goldberg.

In a certain way, Lift brings his various styles together without employing a self-conscious, obvious manner. It shows that Amendola isn't afraid to keep all his options open, and knows how to make them all work successfully. "Cascade" begins with some electronic noise that sounds like a distorted sample of a dripping faucet. It becomes a constant in an aggresive 5/4 vamp, and it duels with Parker's effects-heavy axe, before things break down into an unaccompanied Shifflett solo.

After "Death By Flower" dives into distorted punk free jazz - with the drummer beautifully building the momentum of the piece - the title track comes off like a Paul Motian tune, if that drummer enlisted Jim Hall to join him. Here, Amendola uses his instrument more like an additional voice than a time keeper. For the closing "Lullaby for Sascha," dedicated to his son, the drummer brings back the electronics and subtly creates the setting of Parker playing the gentle melody on a ship drifting on the water and creaking. It might be a little unnerving for its namesake to enjoy as he's trying to drift off at night, but everyone else should admire the combination of atmospherics and simple, catchy melody.

A number of drummers have been popping up lately as leaders and composers. Amendola stands out among, because he's no stranger to the format (he released Believe in 2005 with a quintet) and he also is a master composer.

Wait! Here's number 10!

2011-01-01T23:48:00.002-05:00

10. Sweet Apple - Love and Desperation (Tee Pee)
I forgot to go through all the albums I bought this year too, and wouldn't you know it, I overlooked one that was particularly solid. Cobra Verde's John Petkovic (another one of the most gifted songwriters around, for his ability to combine really sharp lyrical wit with hard rock that manages to be visceral without succumbing to lunkheadedness) and Tim Parnin joined forces with Dinosaur Jr.'s J. Mascis and Witch's Dave Sweetapple on this beauty. The cover art either spoofed Roxy Music's Country Life or paid heavy homage, it's hard to tell which. (The two scantily clad ladies both looked kind of homely, just like the original models.) And the music is much this same way: it's hard rock but with more brains behind it, than most people half Petkovic's age. I like music that makes you check your biases at the door, and this one does.

So there are 10 albums for ya.