Last week Part One - St. Vincent

Playing right now: Nels Cline Singers - Initiate
(Prepping for a review so no observations here.)

Last week was the Week of Music for me. So much so that there was no time for blogging between the music and snow, which hopefully will finally start to subside. I heard it's supposed to be 38 degrees today. Good riddance to bad rubbish and the mindframe in which it put me.

Anyhow............

Last Sunday, St. Vincent came to town, playing at Diesel. Pittsburgh ex-pats might not know the venue, but it was once known as Nick's Fat City. With new ownership comes better shows, but it's one of the worst places to try to literally see a band. Worst since Metropol. The visibility is obstructed on either side of the stage by metal girders, with several ceiling lights covered in beads that dangle to the floor. There's a second level so that floor requires there to be a low ceiling above the bar, which is positioned along the wall opposite the stage, cutting off the view further. Upstairs if you're not leaned up against the ledge on either side, looking down at the stage, you can't see squat. There are a few seats in a slightly sunken area, but you have to get there really early to get them. The soundboard takes up most of the area in the sunken section and they don't let people near there.

I got to the show an hour after it started and the place was jam packed. It almost looked sold out. And I knew absolutely no one. (That changed by the end of the night, but I don't want to get ahead of myself.) I stood there wondering, Who the hell are these people? How do they know St. Vincent? They look a little too straight and too old to be college radio fans. Is this what Pitchfork readers look like?

After wondering all this and waiting for someone to play (there were supposed to be three acts), a dude who looked to be about my age or a few years older walked up to me and started chatting me up. Turns out he was from Cleveland and drove down to the show in Columbus the night before, only to find out at the last minute it had been cancelled due to p.a. problems. That explained it. Much like some of the big name Warhol shows, it seemed like this show had drawn a lot of out-of-towners. Makes sense. Don't judge our music scene by this club, brothers and sisters.

St. Vincent came on at about 8:30, just half an hour after I got there. So my timing was good. I like St. Vincent (I guess I should call it a band, as opposed to "she" since Annie Clark isn't the sole member anymore; at least not on this night) in part because the songs don't really sound like anything else I've heard, although there are touchstones, unusual and normal in a lot of the music. They play the kind of music that I'd throw under my favorite catch-all phrase: mutant pop. On the odd side, at least two songs at Diesel had melodies that really reminded me of the verse of Carly Simon's "That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be." Annie, if you're ready this, that isn't necessarily a slam.

Everything written about St. Vincent talks about the challenge of taking songs that were created in the studio and trying to recreate them live. And it's a valid issue. She had a five-piece band, including her: drums, bass, guitar/violin, keyboards/sax/flute, plus her guitar. The drummer looked like he was playing synth drums or triggers on a couple songs, and switching to the kit when things kicked in. And several times it was hard to tell who was doing what, or if anyone was actually doing the strange sound in question or if it was generated by a sample.

That always keeps things interesting but it also seemed to keep the songs from breathing a little more. There's no reason that she couldn't have allowed the band to sound more like a band playing the songs, as opposed to a recreation of the record.

This is not to say I didn't enjoy her set. For one thing, it reminded me of how much I still need to explore her albums. (I bought her debut Marry Me that night.) Clark is clearly a really good guitar player too. She seemed to spend half the set playing around of above the twelfth fret, looking like she has plenty of technique that she can draw on when needed. A couple times she cut loose with some great guitar noise too.

A few songs toward the end of the night, I saw my friends Peter and Jess, both from work. Turns out they had been there the whole time. A few days later, another work friends said he had been there too. I never would've known.

Music Week continued on Monday when I finally was able to get a copy of Vijay Iyer's Historicity which I've been passively coveting for a couple months, and the Magnetic Fields' Realism. The latter album wasn't listened to until today. It took me a few days to get through Vijay too. But I'll explain that in the next post.

How Sesame Street shaped me, installment #46

Playing right now: Liverball - Bullet Burn (a CD comp of two EPs released in the early '90s by a band that features Buck Knauer, who plays in the Love Letters with me).

Youtube is stocked with a surprising number of ultra-obscure clips from the early days of Sesame Street. I'm not sure exactly when I started watching the show, but I was two when it premiered and it's always been there as far as I know, so chances are I watched it from the get-go. That show is probably the singlemost reason I connect music with specific images. It so frequently presented nature films or other educational films with hip music in the background. When those clips were repeated often, it made it easy for an impressionable young kid who dug music to retain the melodies and think of certain images with it.

A few weeks ago, I decided to see if anyone had posted an early Sesame Street film and song about what happens to garbage, with a rousing coda where the singer bellows "Goodbye garrrrbage, goodbye garrrbage," as a barge floats down the river loaded with everything we just saw the trucks compacting as they made their way through the city. (Let's avoid the message the clip sends. I don't approve of it and the conclusion it drew in my young mind back then was that the garbage was going to be dumped in the river. Not cool. But I was smart enough to both realize that wasn't the case and that recycling is good. Just had to include that caveat.)

Lo and behold I found the clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a_qfO4tG2E

Most of the catchy songs with vocals from SS's early days featured Joe Raposo singing them. (Confession: I found his voice kind of annoying back then, though now I know better. My mother once thought he sounded like he was trying to be Mel Torme but was more annoying. Maybe that's what soured me.) "What About Garbage," the above song, actually comes from the mind of Peter Schickele, who is probably best known as the creator of P.D.Q. Bach, a character or ongoing performance that spoofs classical music and is considered HI-larious by many people. (I've never seen it.) To me, Schickele's claim to fame is being the father of Karla Schickele, the amazing songwriter and member of Ida. She used to play in the band Beekeeper with her brother Matthew and she also had a solo project called k., which was also amazing.

If any conclusion can be drawn from this clip, it is that great songwriting is hereditary in that family. Maybe lyrically this song doesn't have much, but if you consider its audience, it has all it needs. Besides, when I heard it again, the "ba ba dup ba da da da" chorus came back to me immediately, like a long lost grade school friend. And the piano part has all the trappings of a classic pop song. His voice reminds me of either Mark Volman or Howard Kaylan of the Turtles - pure pop magic. Never has garbage sounded so beautiful.

10 years ago, I was completely enamored with Karla Schickele's songs. I pressed her a couple times, trying to find out what her influences were. Surely there had to be some jazz in her past. Nope, not by a long shot, she politely explained. Hearing this video, I can see that it was something in the genes.

Playing on the radio and a new old Monk album

Playing right now: Thelonious Monk - Monk in Europe
I never knew that this was an album that Riverside released while Monk was still under contract with them. I saw the title once or twice and figured it was just another in the unending pile of live recordings of Monk + Charlie Rouse + whatever rhythm section that came out years later. It popped up on eBay and after it was relisted in an auction for the third time I made sure I didn't forget to place a bid on it. I figured I'd buy it to be a completist with regard to all the Riverside albums. I still don't have Monk in Italy or Two Hours with Thelonious Monk the latter which I always swore was just a compilation, but I might get them someday.

This finally arrived in the mail last week and it turns out that it's pretty good. John Ore is the bassist and despite the fact that he went on to play with Sun Ra, he's usually considered pretty unadventurous with Monk, playing solos that are basically continuations of what he does behind the soloists. That's pretty true here, but he throws in some nice double-stops during the solos to offer a little variety. Frankie Dunlop is the drummer and he swings pretty hard during his solos.

As for Monk and Rouse, they both throw down some of their classic licks, but they both sound pretty inspired. Finally, a lot of these albums are intriguing because they include a tune or two that Monk rarely played beyond a studio session or two. On this album, the song in question is "Off Minor," which is one of my favorites. Wonderful melody and some great soloing here.

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Once again, it's taken me five days to dispatch a report on the Love Letters' most recent performance. But with all the snow here (21" over the weekend and more falling as I type) and the cancelled daycare days and the subsequent baby wrangling - plus a bit of anxiety that I feel over dealing with the snow as a driver - only now am I able to fire off an entry on the show. (I changed my work schedule, so I have tomorrow off and I'm enjoying a second drink for the evening in celebration.)

So the Love Letters played on WRCT-FM last Thursday for the Live Show performance. I listened back to the recording and overall I suppose it went pretty well. But there were some things working against us. One of them was the monitor which proceeded to feedback anytime we weren't playing music and then a few times while we were playing. It kind of baffles me that these folks - nice as they are - can't use all their experience to figure out a way to give us a halfway decent vocal mix in the monitor without feedback. I've played in that studio several times and it never works.

Then there's my voice. I thought I could hear myself alright but I still veer off pitch quite a bit. I think I go sharp, but I'm not sure. If I was flat at least it might sound like I was going for a flat-seventh sound, I think. And I just sound warbly. One or two songs made me wince. Thankfully the songs that work at the higher part of my register came off pretty well. The ones where I barked a little more, not so cool.

We're practicing on Friday for our Rock and Bowl show next week at Arsenal Lanes. I think we'll have more time than usual to practice which will be cool. Or at least we will if we're able to get through the streets and get to Aimee's house.

The Grammys? Who cares?

On Sundays, the Retro TV Network shows back-to-back episodes of Mike Hammer, a delightfully dated show with Darren McGavin in the title role. I think it was filmed in the '50s. I was going to flip around between episodes when I remembered that the Grammys were on tonight. After watching for about two minutes, seeing Green Day win some award that Katy Perry and Alice Cooper announced (yeah, a thrilling pair), I figured that was all I needed to see. Some new country band was on when I turned off the tv, doing what sounded like a rip-off of Ray Charles' version of "America the Beautiful." Ho hum.

But I still like rock music, folks. Don't let the recent entries fool you. I recently gave the Major Stars new album a good review on the Blurt site. Check it out:
http://www.blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1837/

There's also a review on the Blurt site of the debut from the Sub Pop band AFCGT:
http://www.blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1840/

Also, I have a post-script to my entry about Robert Wyatt entry on January 6. For years, I thought the lyric in "Muddy Mouse 1" was "Overhead, the stars are pissing..." which sounded like a great metaphorical way of describing starlight. Turns out it's "... stars are piercing."

CD Review: Bobby Previte - Pan Atlantic

Bobby Previte

Pan Atlantic

(Rank Hypocrisy/Auand)

I admitted last week that I couldn't come up with a complete Best of the '00s, but if you were to ask me about jazz in the 1980s and what some of the best albums of that era were, I would quickly mention one album in particular that not only ranks as one of the best modern jazz albums of that period, but probably one of my favorite albums of all time - Bobby Previte's Pushing the Envelope.

This drummer first came to my attention as a participant of some of John Zorn's recordings from around that time (the Ennio Morricone tribute The Big Gundown most notably). But a friend turned me on to Pushing the Envelope around 1988 and while I didn't like it too much on the first spin, a few more intense listens it was clear that my initial uncertainty was because Previte was writing stuff like I'd never heard before. The sound of it felt almost like chamber jazz, with French horn and tenor sax playing over the rhythm section to create more of an ensemble sound even when someone was taking a solo. In one piece, it almost sounded like the piano was the only solo instrument, while everyone else played an unnerving melody around the tense keyboard.

Previte got a moment in the spotlight about four years ago when he teamed up with Charlie Hunter for a series of improv albums under the name Groundtruther. They were even on the cover of downbeat. While on tour with Hunter, he stopped in Whole Foods where I recognized him, much to his shock. I mentioned loving Pushing the Envelope and he thanked me "for knowing that I did something before two years ago."

Although Previte is a thoughtful drummer, his compositions are really his strong point. His various bands - which have included outfits like Hue and Cry, the more recent New Bump, some pithy one-offs on his other Gramavision albums following Envelope on albums like Claude's Late Morning and Empty Suits - possess qualities that have a great amount of detail put into the combination of various instruments. His Pan Atlantic Band features four European musicians and continues in this tradition, showcasing his smart approach in a sound that borders on '70s prog-jazz as much as straightahead jazz, Previte-style. (While looking for the cover image online, on site used a term like broke beat to describe the album, so he's really staking a unique realm for himself.)

Bassist Nils Davidsen deserves an award for holding down the metronomic one-note beat (playing on the one and three, no less) in opening "Deep Lake" for 10 minutes. The piece has several wide open spaces where Davidsen just pulses along while Benoit Delbecq drops in atmospheric sheen on the Fender Rhodes. At one point Previte and alto saxophonist Wolfgang Puschnig solo together over the oblivious but solid bass. Overall, the song takes it time getting to its destination and the band enjoys creating both the scenery on the trip and the wide open spaces between scene setting. As a reward for his discipline, Davidsen gets a brief, rapid solo to close the piece.

This approach - where things move slowly or main melodies give way to vamps that support solos - occurs throughout the album. On the title track, Puschnig and trombonist Gianluca Petrella create a huge, somewhat raunchy sound (possibly through overdubs since it sounds so thick) for the main theme. Delbecq solos with a lot of tremolo on the keyboard. It reminds these ears of "1958," another '80s Previte piece (from Bump the Renaissance) that sets a mood by having one hand of the pianist (Wayne Horvitz, just like on Envelope) repeat two skeletal notes of the chord throughout the piece. Talk about setting a scene.

Previte's recent history in spacey music comes out on "Veltin." His sits down at the Rhodes for nearly nine minutes of solo spacey noodling, that continually returns to a two-note motif. It never rises to the engaging level of the other tracks, but if Tortoise ever needed an extra musician to sit in at a show, Previte would fit right in.

The Pan Atlantic Band suits Previte's writing perfectly, saying a lot with a few notes or jumping into more animated solos when the opportunity presents itself. This is the kind of album that makes you want to explore their other work more. And it makes me want to catch up on the numerous Previte albums that have shot past my eyes before I could grab them.

Rank Hypocrisy is Previte's own imprint. Digital versions of it are being distributed by Palmetto. Physical copies are available through the Italian label Auand. Go to www.auand.com or www.bobbyprevite.com or www.palmetto-records.com for more details.

A week of Rege Cordic; Hypnolovewheel

This week, I experienced two great mementos of my late uncle, Rege Cordic. Wednesday night, intent on heading to be early to make sure I was over a mild stomach flu, I turned on the Retro TV Network just in time to see the episode of The Rockford Files with Rege in a guest role. I've seen it before, but couldn't resist checking it once more to see him. The episode is called "Say Goodbye to Jennifer," and as someone who likes a lot of those old Rockford episodes, I can honestly say this isn't one of the better ones. But Rege is great, playing a dentist who helps fake a death report of one of his patients so that she can go on the lam.

He's in the first scene after they roll the opening credits, gesticulating to the coroner, waving his hands and looking a lot like his sister - that is, my mother. As a kid I was slow to pick up on the resemblances of people, but now, it's as clear as night and day. That could've been Mum on the screen. Conversely, she could taught him everything he knows about mannerisms.

Rege only has one other major scene in the episode, when Rockford finds him and after he's been roughed up by two goons. (Every Rockford episode has two goons in a Cadillac that grouse with each other like a darkly comical Laurel and Hardy.) I hit the hay before that scene came on.

If that wasn't great enough, I won a copy of Rege's 45 "Bingo" / "5 Channel Hi-Fi Demo" on eBay, and it came in the mail yesterday. We had at least one copy of this record when I was a kid, and even got him to autograph it during one visit from Los Angeles, but that copy got lent out and never returned. When I saw my brother John over the holidays, I remembered that I wanted to try to find it online, and lo and behold the next time I looked there it was.

"Bingo" is what I consider a pretty brilliant spoof of the Lorne Greene western song "Ringo," taking the don't-kill-the-villain-who-once-saved-my-life plotline and changing it to a guy who notices that a bingo game is fixed (no one will ever win!) and what happens when he tries to stop this travesty.

"5 Channel Hi-Fi Demo," which I always liked a little more as a kid thanks to its blatant zaniness, is a spoof of top of the line "makes you feel you're at a concert hall" stereos. It begins by replicating the music then it gradually adds all the crowd noises in the hall that would interrupt a performance.

Talking about these sides don't do them justice. Maybe these will have to be my first attempts at mp3s for this blog.

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On Tuesday, I stayed home from work due to the aforementioned stomach flu-like feeling I had. The one consolation of that, besides a lot of much-needed sleep, was that when I checked the mail, my other recent eBay victory was waiting for me: Hypnolovewheel's Candy Mantra album. It came out in 1990 and was great combination of catchy pop and hopped-up pre-indie rock guitars and harmonies. Opening track "Honeymoon Mowdown" alone is worth the price of admission. The rapid guitar picking and powerhouse rhythm section is something to be admired.

Like the Rege 45, I lent the record out to somebody who never gave it back. Rather than track him down, badger him for years until he finally brought it with him when he came to town to visit, I figured I ought to buy it again. $3 and change is worth it to relive a memory of that time. If you ever see a copy of it, snatch it up.

I also won a copy of Thelonious Monk's Monk in France but that hasn't shown up yet. Not sure how good it is, but since it's an original Riverside LP, and no one had bid on it the three times it was posted, I figured it was time to add it to the collection.

CD Review: Jason Adasiewicz's Rolldown - Varmint

Jason Adasiewicz's Rolldown

Varmint

(Cuneiform)

Wasn't sure exactly when this came out, as it came in the mail sometime around early December. Turns out it was released last September.

Varmint is another piece from the ever shifting crew of musician-leaders out of Chicago that all play together on each other's sessions. They don't treat it like indie rockers, where a band adds or subtracts one player and changes their name but essentially sounds the same. These Chicago jazz guys have a lot of distinct ideas going for them.

Jason Adasiewicz (a-dah-shev-its) played drums with indie rock bands like Pinetop Seven and Central Falls, but during college he picked up the vibes. After trying to use them in a more abrasive settings - liner note writer Peter Margasak recalls a performance where Adasiewicz seemed like he was trying to beat the vibes into the ground - he started exploring the subtleties of the instrument. (For the sake of dynamics contrast, he also toured with pensive songwriter Edith Frost, so the gentler side has always been there.) That understated approach makes Varmint - Rolldown's second album - a strong set.

Drummer Frank Rosaly never gets too overbearing, or even gets too loud in the mix, yet he weaves all kinds of changes that bend and contour the music. There is an implicit feeling that the band could cut loose at any minute. Their strength lies in the way they can keep a listener's attention, wondering what will happen next. When cornetist Josh Berman fires off a solo of growls and guttural smears in "Hide," it's one of the few times where the music gets free and wild, but it doesn't really pull the music off towards the left.

It's telling that the group's token non-original track is Andrew Hill's "The Griots." Adasiewicz's writing could be compared to the late pianist's work, which never fell into unhinged, free territory, nor was it straight bop, existing instead somewhere in between. Rolldown's version of "The Griots" sticks close to the original vibes-and-rhythm arrangement, but fleshes out the harmonies with the two horns.

Berman, alto saxophonist/clarinetist Aram Shelton and Adasiewicz have proven themselves numerous times to be gifted soloists on each other sessions, and Varmint continues the feeling. Adasiewicz regularly sings/scats/grumbles along with his solos, and uses vibrato and sustain on his instrument to achieve a strong, mysterious quality. Bassist Jason Roebke even gets some spotlight time, bowing a solo on "Hide."

Of all the periods in Blue Note's history, the early '60s period of Andrew Hill and trombonist Grachan Moncur III might be the least emulated in their catalog. Adasiewicz has taken hints from that era and helped it to develop his own personality. Hopefully it won't take several decades and a Mosaic box for listeners to catch on. Hint, hint.

Looking back at the 00s, a limited glimpse

My dear friend and former bandmate Sharon "Mama" Spell was back in town this week, cleaning out her old house of stuff that has accumulated over the last 12 years or so. She stayed with us and brought over things that she thought we'd either want or would give us a laugh.

Among the things she found was a handbill for our band the Mofones, in particular one for a show we did at Chatham's coffee house. I remember the show pretty well, but had no recollection that the headlining band was We Are Scientists, a group who two or three years later, seemed poised to be the next Strokes Hopeful, or someone like that. And I don't mean that in a bad way, I thought their debut album contained a good combination of heavy riffage and swagger. Plus they posed with kitties on the front cover.

I reviewed their album a few years later, post-Pulp for an awful entertainment rag that I got into through a friend who was their graphics editor. Every couple of weeks, I'd bang out a 500-word piece on some new album, most of which the readers, whoever they were, would likely never hear and which probably dumbfounded them. ("How do you know about music like that?") The rest of the magazine was pretty fluffy business news and some a&e, topped off by an I-want-to-be-Dave-Berry column by the editor. I liked the $40 I got for my work, but most definitely did not cry when it folded.

In other news, I was thinking at the start of the month how I once had high hopes and some eager anticipation for this year to come, since it was going to be my first chance to do a Best Albums of the Past Decade list, somewhere, somehow. But looking back, only two immediately come to my head. Ben Folds' Rockin' the Suburbs and the New Pornographers' Electric Version.

The former might seem surprising, but when I finally gave it a good listen, maybe a nine months after it came out (he was coming back to town), it made my head explode, sounding to me like a modern Brian Wilson marriage of melancholia and beautiful music. If I had heard it upon its initial release, in the fall of 2001, I don't know if I'd still be alive. That was when InPgh shut down and "Mr. Jones Pt. 2" would've felt too true to life, for one thing. For years, I took "Still Fighting It" to be a really sad song about how freaked out you can get when you're suddenly a parent, but I later heard Folds wrote it more a song of hope, written for his newborn son. It still tears me up though when I see the Scrubs rerun where they use it, when Drs. Cox and Kelso are talking about their kids.

Rockin' the Suburbs made me feel like a Shanley-come-lately, finally discovering this guy who had made a name for himself about 10 years prior. But then the album that came two discs later was kind of a wash, and then I heard he ditched his (second) wife for someone else, and it made think he's just another dude. Oh well.

Carl Newman, on the other hand, was just getting started with The Electric Version, album number two from the New Pornographers. I've professed my love for him and them on this blog numerous times, so there's no need for repeat. Suffice to say, that album came out right when it seemed like Pulp had its feet planted in the ground and would succeed, during the summer months, and it was the perfect soundtrack for it. And when I saw the NPs on that tour, I ran into Aimee DeFoe who came out of musical retirement and joined the Mofones and who is still playing music with me to this day.

CD Review: David Murray & the Gwo Ka Masters - The Devil Tried Kill Me

David Murray & the Gwo Ka Masters

The Devil Tried to Kill Me

(Justin Time)

It's probably been about 15 years since I've seen David Murray live, but the two or three quartet and the three World Saxophone Quartet shows that I saw left a distinct impression on me. The first time I saw the tenor saxophonist in a quartet (which included Dave Burrell) around 1986, I came up with a metaphor for improvising that seemed so obvious, I'm surprised no one else has used it. A solo during one particular tune reminded me of a model of DNA - you know, the model that's like a ladder or a spiral, twisting and turning upward in a never ending pattern. Murray was playing a fairly straight ahead tune, and with each chorus he pulled away from the changes until finally he was unleashing a swell of sounds that had honks and squeaks in it - like the upper notes of the chords if you followed them all the way up, past the 11th, the 15th, etc. He was still tethered to the basis of the song, he was higher than the ground layer of the model - the DNA model.

Maybe that concept is a little more abstract that it seems to me, but I once mentioned it to a local guitarist and got it completely, even imagining how to tell a soloist who wasn't cutting it to "use the DNA model, c'mon."

To borrow another metaphor, Murray was really lifting the bandstand that night.

The Devil Tried to Kill Me, the second album Murray has made with the Gwo Ka Masters (after 2004's Gwotet), the DNA model doesn't reemerge, but the depth of Murray's solo gifts are in evidence. The combination of his full-throttle tenor and a group that includes several natives of Guadeloupe is far from world beat. Anything stamped with that categorization seems to sanitize all the vital elements of the original music by fusing it together in a more homogenized package. This album has too much fire brewing beneath it to be considered smooth.

Blues singer Taj Mahal appears on two songs, singing lyrics by poet Ishmael Reed. "Africa" is especially convincing, with Mahal addressing the country, imagining himself as a hospice worker and the country as a patient, and the things he would do to help it ("I would remove the flies from your eyes/ I would sit with you day and night." ) The message of the lyrics (reprinted in the CD booklet) hits hard as words on the page, let alone when delivered by the veteran's serious growl.

Sista Kee (who also plays piano on the session) and Mahal trade vocals on "Southern Skies," using the words of writers Grace Rutledge and Kito Gamble respectively over the band's propulsive funk. Kee's solo vocal on the title track, again with the words of Reed, falls somewhere between straight up singing, spoken word and rap in a blend that leaves plenty of blowing room for Murray.

With one trap kit and two Ka drummers, in addition to trumpet and a couple guitars, the band has a lot of promise. Murray spouts his usual wealth of feeling and ideas. His bass clarinet serves as a perfect compliment to the setting of "Africa" and to Mahal's delivery. Trumpeter Rasul Siddik responds in kind, especially on the title track.

But when the two horns finish their solos, the energy dissipates on several tracks. A lot of this comes from the production. With that many drums interweaving, you should be able to hear the sounds of hands on skin during "Canto Oneguine." Instead, the drums sit in the background during that track. Aside from "The Devil Tried to Kill Me" where the drums get more of a push, perhaps to accentuate the lyrics, the rhythm section has a compressed smooth sheen that also makes the bass sound polite instead of gritty.

The combination of group vocals and electric instruments reminds me of the excitement of the one Osibisa album I've heard (Heads for anyone who's wondering). Combining that with one of the United States' strongest tenor players should be a can't-miss situation. The album still has plenty of fine moments, but the production makes it feel like there was a particular level of energy in the studio that was edged out of the final mix.

Richard is Stranger than Ruth?

Playing right now: Nothing, and I'd like to play the new Jason Adasiewicz album, but if I did, I wouldn't get this entry done. My discman died without advance notice on Christmas and I haven't had a chance to replace it yet, which blows because now more than I ever I'm ready to have it playing constantly when I'm coming and going from work and on when I'm on break.

When I was is high school, I had a two-fer of Robert Wyatt's solo albums Rock Bottom and Ruth is Stranger than Richard. I discovered Soft Machine after finding a slightly beat-up but still playable version of their Third album right before Christmas during ninth grade. And I was told Rock Bottom was a must-have by a friend of my brother's, so I eventually snagged the double-album with absolutely no regrets.

During college the Wyatt record disappeared, in one of those situations where you don't notice it being lost for about six months. Maybe even longer. I think I took it to my jazz show at WPTS (Pitt's radio station) - along with Soft Machine's Volume Two, Kai Winding's Dirty Dog and Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra - and left the bag somewhere either during or after class. When the copy of Dirty Dog showed up in the new bin at Jerry's a few months later, I had a sneaking suspsicion that that was where I left it. I knew it was my copy because it had a dot sticker and a hole punched in it in a noticeable spot. The store had given me so many breaks in that I didn't feel right telling them the ridiculous story that I just recounted here. I bought Dirty Dog without ceremony and chalked the loss of the others up to absent-mindedness.

A few years ago I got Rock Bottom on CD, but only this week did I get a disc of Ruth. (A friend made me a cassette dub about 10 years ago, which kept me satiated in the meantime.) I was surprised to discover that the original sides one and two had been reversed from the way I played them. It always seemed to me that side one started with "Soup Song" and side two had the "Muddy Mouse" suite. Not on the Thirsty Ear reissue. It kind of makes sense because the version of "Song for Che" make a more triumphant ending to the whole set, while "Muddy Mouth" (no typo there) concludes the album by slinking mysterious off into the evening.

But when did this happen? Did Wyatt want the sides to be ambiguous? The cover did list the titles on opposite corners of the back, but I'm pretty sure they went with Sides one and two - or three and four - of the album. The allmusic.com entry doesn't make any reference to this. My cassette dub went with my original idea.

I listened to both of those albums so often in high school that they're imbeded in my brain. I think I tap out the beginning to "Solar Flares" at work a lot, imagining the cowbell tempo when I'm stationed at my metal table. During one of those space-outs, it occurred that the riff of the song must be a loop. What a relief to know that Gary Windo didn't have to play that bass clarinet ostinato over and over and over again.

------------------------------------------------

During the holidays, I was really hit with a bout of nostalgia for Christmases past, specifically for my high school years. I thought by now I would've blogged at least once during the holidays about them, but a check of the archives came up empty.

In Christmas 1981, I was a freshman in high school, just starting to discover punk rock, but still very much into '60s psychs (not garage rock, but more popular versions of psych) and some art rock. That Christmas Eve, my brother John came over to stay the night and he brought a pile of records: Rip Rig and Panic's God, Killing Joke's Almost Red EP (J had convinced me to buy their second album the previous summer) and some crazy-ass band called the Birthday Party, who I thought had a song called "200 Music Girl" until I realized that the first character in the title was a "Z" not a "2." To give an indication of where my head was at the point, I got a mail order package that day that had Moby Grape's Grape Jam and Talking Heads '77 in it. (The Soft Machine album I mentioned earlier was still in heavy rotation.)

My musical tastes where taking a seismic shift that night. One month later I'd go to Jim's Records with Johnny and buy Echo and the Bunnymen's Crocodiles and he'd get the Birthday Party's "Release the Bats" 45. A few months later, I'd start tuning into WYEP and Buck Bryce's jazz show would become my wake-up music as I got ready to deliver the morning paper. Oh yeah, I also bought Joy Division's Closer over Christmas break too.

I was wondering why this particular Christmas was in my head so much, and then I remembered that it was the first year without my two great aunts, who I would always visit, as they leaved around the corner from us. They were actually my mom's aunts and a trip there was the equivalent of a trip to most people's grandmas: running around their apartment, eating goodies and watching tv. One aunt died the previous summer and the other died the day before Thanksgiving. Without their apartment as a refuge from home (but still a safe haven) suddenly I was forced to deal with the rest of the world, in this case more music.

And another thing: that Christmas I got King Crimson's Discipline from my other brother Tom. I remember asking my folks (Santa Claus, that is) for that album and the Go-Go's' Beauty and the Beat. When I woke up that morning and got neither, I was pissed. Then Tom got up and gave me the Crimson one, and I was happy again.

Next December, I'll talk about what happened during Christmas of 10th grade, 1982.

CD Review: Aram Shelton's Fast Citizens

Aram Shelton's Fast Citizens

Two Cities

(Delmark)

On one hand, the Fast Citizens operate under a crazy premise, but in terms of name exposure it's a great idea: whomever contributes the most compositions to an album receives credit as the leader. On their 2006 debut it was tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson. This time, alto saxophonist/clarinetist Aram Shelton gets a chance. Along with Jackson (who doubles on bass clarinet), the group includes Josh Berman (cornet), Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello), Anton Hatwich (bass) and Frank Rosaly (drums). All of them have played in various aggregations (on October 27, I posted a review of Berman's excellent Old Idea which includes a few of these guys) and the rapport comes across. Shelton's writing operates in territory that feels familiar but it's never derivative. And just when he seems set on one thing, the music takes an original, unexpected turn.

This happens early, in the title track which opens the album. "Twin Cities" refers to Oakland, California and Chicago, Shelton's current and former homes, respectively. After stating the brief, bright melody, Shelton embarks on a free solo full of clipped phrases and fast tonguing which comes to a boil when he climaxes in high shrieks. If the set-up feels familiar (like a younger cousin of Tim Berne circa Fractured Fairy Tales), what follows doesn't. A tranquil non sequitur of an interlude gives Jackson an opening line for a solo that moves to the next city. He's gruff and meaty but keeps his feet on the ground during an equally convincing solo. Berman takes the final solo, with only Rosaly's rolls and splashes backing him. The quick changes in structure sound striking enough, but each soloist plays with fire, which adds to the mood.

"Big News" is marked by interesting contrasts in Shelton's influences. Again his alto solo gets unhinged, but Rosaly's drum solo feels like it skates back and forth between between straight swing and free meter. This, as well as the bass and cello's deft ability to dance around the soloists, makes for a compelling listen.

The Citizens don't slow down throughout the album and they explore different styles with nearly every track. In Lonberg-Holm's "VRC#9" the horns play a rigid arpeggio while the rhythm section changes the tempo and the center of the melodic phrase. Right as the repetition is about to burrow under your skin, dead silence drops in, followed by a series of musical splats. It might be unnerving but that's good. Besides it keeps you listening.

Hatwich contributes "Wontkins" a piece that says a lot about the band in the shortest amount of time - 1:19. The fast theme sounds a lot like an early Ornette Coleman tune (a little like both "Little Symphony" and "The Invisible"), and the statements lead to contained moments of free blowing where everyone interjects clearly instead of competing for space. Things seems to be headed towards chaos when the piece suddenly cuts off. Whether the tape ran out or the bassist wrote it that way, this sneaky trick sounds just as fun as what could have happened.

Other fine moments occur between those already mentioned: Both saxophonists deepen the sound of the frontline when they switch to their respective clarinets, and the group plays a ballad marked by dissonant harmonies ("I Am Here, You Are There") and the strings throw in another duet that helps change the scene between soloists ("In Cycles").

Shelton might not live in Chicago these days, but he's really still part of the scene that gave birth to Fast Citizens. It seems like these guys are unstoppable (on the heels of this album there is a new disc by vibist Jason Adasiewicz that includes three Citizens on it), and there's no reason for them to slow down anyway.

Monk leads me astray, again

Woke up early today, intent on writing another review. Then I got sidetracked looking at the NPR site, in hopes of finding the Fresh Air interview with Robin DG Kelley about his Monk biography. Not only did I find that, I also found the A Blog Supreme blog and an entry about Kelley by a guy I knew in Pittsburgh about 20 years ago - Walter Watson. We worked together briefly at Public Interest Communication before he pursued his dream by moving to D.C. and writing about cool stuff. Tried to log on to send him a salutation, but I couldn't find the right link to register. Maybe the system was down. I dunno.

So now it's time to get ready for work. (Yeah, I'm working today and tomorrow.) Maybe I'll write the review tomorrow morning.
Happy new year.

I've made the big time at last

This week The Village Voice published their poll of the best jazz albums of the year, and I was one of the writers asked to submit their lists. That puts my two cents - or one-and-a-half as you'll see in a second - right up there with guys like Howard Mandel and Bob Rusch. Here's the link to the list:
www://www.villagevoice.com/2009-12-29/music/2009-voice-jazz-critics-poll-the-results

I skimmed through the list and many times thought, I didn't know that came out; What? A new Von Freeman album?; or Yeah, I forgot about that. Maybe I shouldn't say that, for fear of jeapordizing my chances of getting asked to participate in next year's poll. Or maybe I should start listening to more CDs. There's also a link where you can see critic's individual lists. Mine is blank in all the categories save Top 10 albums. At this time of year, I usually draw a blank, especially when it comes to sections like Best Latin album or debut. I didn't even try to get a list to Blurt. Actually I tried but could only come up with four rock albums that I liked for the year.

But unless I get an email stating that I'm a knucklehead and who the hell do I think I am trying to opine with the big dogs, I'll be okay.

CD review: Wadada Leo Smith - Spiritual Dimensions

Another installment of something I want to talk about before 2009 is over.

Wadada Leo Smith

Spiritual Dimensions

Cuneiform

This two-disc set came out sometime around October, but I didn't get wind of it until about a month and a half later, after I had submitted my Best of 2009 list. It took several listens for me to decide that Spiritual Dimensions would have been on that list had I heard it earlier. Like a lot of great albums, multiple listens are important because the depth of the music doesn't reveal completely itself right away.

Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith was a co-founder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in 1960s Chicago and has gone on to release over 30 albums on his own (his Kabell label) and with other musicians and imprints.

Spiritual Dimensions presents him leading two groups as fascinating for their instrumentation as for what they produce. The Golden Quartet, the group on the first disc, includes Vijay Iyer on piano and synthesizer, John Lindberg on bass and both Don Moye and Pheeroan AkLaff on drums. Recorded at the 2008 Vision Festival in New York, they are the freer of the two Smith ensembles, in terms of rhythms and tempos. Even with two drummers, the music never gets heavy-handed, even when they get a little more spastic on "Crossing Sirat." At times Smith seems to act more like a catalyst, who leads the group, jumping in at points to add coloring to the proceedings. But even when Smith is unleashing wild smears and growls in the tradition of people like Lester Bowie, he's always doing much more than blowing free. These moments are often when the structure of the tune comes out and charts the piece's next move.

This approach becomes especially noticeable when listening to both discs back to back since the first ends and the second begins with the same composition, played by both groups: "South Central L.A. Kulture." Both begin the same way, with solo Smith emittings some long, lonely notes that he wrings dry as he forces them out of his horn. Gradually both groups morph into a funk riff, which Lindberg. on the first disc, anchors with an over-the-top wah-wah effect.

The bassist returns on disc two, along with AkLaff, but this group is decidedly more electric with no less than three guitars (Michael Gregory, Brandon Ross, Nels Cline), with a fourth on half the tracks (Lamar Smith), along with another bassist (Skuli Sverrisson) and a cellist (Okkyung Lee). The four extended pieces (between 12 and almost 20 minutes) come from a show at New Haven's Firehouse 12, although the booklet states that Cline actually overdubbed his parts in Los Angeles, so purists could quibble about the not-totally live aspect of that.

Again multiple players don't make the music busy or in any way cluttered. In fact, try singling out all of the instrumentalists, and you're likely to get lost in the swell of arrangements which again speaks well of Smith's skill as a band leader. Guitars rise and fall in the music, adding countermelodies here, textures there. Look for the other bass and it often becomes clear that both are making a harmonized vamp.

An obvious reference for this set could be 1970s Miles Davis, which isn't a ridiculous assessment, since Smith has played in Yo Miles!, a group that pays tribute to that period of the Prince of Darkness' career. But this group doesn't go for as much of a heavy funk feeling as their predecessors. Sometimes they evoke the first spacey side of Get Up With It, but they play with more direction. At 19 minutes, "Angela Davis" doesn't have much in the way of dynamic shifts, but they go on an interesting journey with it. "Organic" starts with outer space string transmissions, gradually sets up a two-bass groove and includes a rubato Smith solo before closing out on the opening riff.

Sometimes when a musician has been around for a while and has been prolific, it can be easy to take them for granted, thinking that their work will always be there to explore. Wadada Leo Smith has definitely been a productive musician but hopefully this set will garner more attention and help the uninitiated to discover him. It's a good place to start with the trumpeter and it makes you curious to hear more about what he does.

CD catchup capsule: Rez Abbasi - Things to Come

(Another in a pile of albums that have been lying around that I've meant to write about over the past few months)

Rez Abbasi

Things to Come

(Sunnyside)

Guitarist Rez Abbasi was 1/3 of Rudresh Mahanthappa's Indo-Pak Coalition that released Apti at the beginning of this year. For Abbasi's album (which came out sometime in at the tail end of the summer) that group reconvenes - Mahanthappa, drummer Dan Weiss - along with pianist Vijay Iyer and bassist Johannes Weidenmueller.

There are a lot of times where Abbasi's guitar sounds very clean and mild-mannered, which downplays the complexity (rhythmic and harmonic) of his writing. I expected things to get a little more tense or aggressive, especially considering the way Mahanthappa can tear things up. (It does, to an extent on "Why Me Why Them" and "Realities of Chromaticism.") And of course there's Iyer, the critical darling of this year - a distinction he has earned with good reason. He makes some unusual intervallic leaps in at least one track.

Things to Come is an appropriate name because while it isn't as strong as one might expect from this guitarist or this group of people, it shows great signs for Abbasi's future. In the meantime it still has a lot going for it. One thing that's especially strong in the use of Kiran Ahluwalia, the guitarist's wife, contributing wordless "indian vocals" (her credit on the CD, not my phrase) on four tracks. Never a fan of this type of singing, and a skeptic of most singing in progressive jazz, I was really taken with Ahluwalia's skill at acting like another instrument in the mix.

CD review: Seabrook Power Plant & Jeremy Udden

There are some CDs that have been sitting around that I swore several months ago I would write about. Now that the end of the year is coming, I figured it was time to do it as a way of looking back. So even though some of the things have been out for several months, there's no better time to sound off on them.






Seabrook Power Plant
s/t
(Loyal Label)

Brandon Seabrook has a great idea - playing noisy, improvisational and sometimes heavy music with a banjo. After all, Steve Martin once told us you can't play sad music on a banjo, so presumably all of this would extol a certain joie de vivre. Few people outside of Eugene Chadbourne have utilized the ol' string box this way.

The problem is, if this music is joyous, that feeling gets lost as it moves out of the heads of Seabrook Power Plant to the listener's ears. The first track on the album with banjo (Seabrook also plays electric git-box) come off almost a novelty noise number, or a generic attempt at emulating a great classic rock band. "Peter Dennis Blanford Townshend" finds Seabrook raking his instrument at lightning speed while his brother Jared unleashes machine gun drum rolls. It has stops and starts a la hardcore, but it really sounds, as the press release states like a cassette stuck on fast-forward. But not in a good way.

It could be the Seabrook trio (rounded out by bassist Tom Blancart) intends to unnerve listeners. That could explain why the last two-and-a-half minutes of the six-minute "Waltz of the Nuke Workers" consist of an abrasive arpeggio on the upper part of the guitar neck played over and over and over and over and ........... you get the idea. The trio heads in a bone-crushing metal direction on "I Don't Feel So Good," which could mow down everything in sight, but then they never move beyond the initial riff.

That approach brings down a lot the album. Several songs show Seabrook has some great ideas about how to use the banjo in a new context, but he needs to cut out the repetition that makes a lot these songs sound like sketches.






Jeremy Udden
Plainville
(Fresh Sound New Talent)

As a support player, Seabrook really fleshes out the songscapes of Jeremy Udden on Plainville. Seabrook and Pete Rende (Fender Rhodes, pedal steel and most significantly pump organ) lend a cinematic quality to backgrounds that are equally as important as the alto saxophonist's spare but riveting melody lines. In effect, the music ends up sounding like a rural version of In a Silent Way, especially on the closing track, which slowly unfolds over rubato guitar and banjo strums and droning organ. Eventually it begins to catch fire, though not in a way that implies chaos so much as a reawakening.

Plainville features many pastoral moments like this, from "The Reunion" which seems like it could serve as the soundtrack to such an event, to "Christmas Song," a lyrical Udden original where his alto plays a melody that sounds like it's written for a vocalist. In some ways these tunes feel tranquil enough to be background music, but the difference is sonic wallpaper doesn't have anything in it to grab your attention. Udder's music, on the other hand, has all sorts of little elements that tug at the ear.

The band can also rock out if they feel so inclined. "Big Lick" pounds a bit, with Seabrook producing a trebly, brittle sound similar to Marc Ribot, thereby making this track recall late '80s Lounge Lizards. "Curbs" also dips into mutant surf twang, while "Red Coat Line," a delightfully rigid waltz, includes some plinking and feverish banjo strumming from the string man. Udden, who also plays soprano sax on one track, holds back in comparison as a soloist. But his simplicity

sounds deliberate, and in the best interest of the mood, rather than a lack of ideas. Keep an eye out for this guy.

The Love Letters' holiday highlights, overdue

At this point, it's been two weeks since Thanksgiving. Two days after the holiday, the Love Letters climbed onto the stage at Gooski's for show number two. Since we had a few weeks between that night and our previous gig, we got a number of practices in and things were really starting to click. The songs were starting to sound more comfortable, the comfort brought new arrangement ideas or experimentation with how parts are played. You know, all the usual band stuff that I kind of forgot about during my time off from playing.

So by the time we were ready to play, I felt some eager anticipation. The first song we did was really new, built on one riff (though I cheated and threw a simple break in the middle of it, so it's more like 1 1/2 riffs). The words are kind of a work in progress, about some things that have been going on around me lately with people and things. But it was a good bring-them-to-their-feet opener, especially because for the first 20 seconds or so, we just stand there (me with my face in hands on that night) until Erin does a couple cymbal crashes. That song (known at this point at "One Riff Shanley") went so well that when we charged into "The Last One" immediately after, the tempo got pretty fast and Husker Du-like. I can use them as a reference because a friend from work said that song reminded her of the Huskers.

During one song I could see Erin out of the corner of my eye behind the drums and the way she was playing seemed so in tune and in command of the moment that it really energized me for the rest of the set. Later on I realized that the stage volume might have been loud as hell but everything was perfectly balanced. Aimee had bought a new amp for her keyboard a few days earlier, so I could hear what she was playing. Buck was pretty loud during his solos but didn't drown anyone out. He always seems to know right where to be. When Aimee and Erin sang together it hit you really hard and it made me a little relieved that my mic wasn't as loud, just in case I wasn't hitting the notes. I didn't drink until after the set so my voice would survive, and I chugged lemon juice with club soda to keep my throat strong.

The Four Roses played one of those sets that sounded strong from the first note. They're kind of countryish, but the opener almost had a Mersey beat riff to it that I loved. The impact reminded me of a night about six or seven years ago when Shopping played a show with the Mofones and Shopping just killed as soon as they started.

The Crow Flies ended the night with a reunion set that didn't seem like they were under-rehearsed. But they've been playing together off and on for 20 years, so they can go on instinct. They segued a bunch of songs together and played with the kind of focus that I admire. I've told the Love Letters that my goal at this point at least is to get us to a level where we don't have to wonder, "What should I play here, where are we? What do I do?" and instead just play something knowing that the rest of the band can follow along or guide us towards an alternative idea. In other words, get to a point where we can work together musically and not worry about verbal stuff.

Where I was last Saturday

Playing right now: Nellie McKay - Normal As Blueberry Pie (A Tribute to Doris Day)
It's kind of a strange introduction to Nellie McKay - picking up her Doris Day tribute album before getting any of her original albums, but this is pretty good. She has a great voice, naturally the songs are good, and even the ones with the perky-gal-swwwwwwingin'-with-a-band don't sound too treacly.

This time last week I was sitting in the very last row of seats at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theatre here in Pittsburgh checking out Steve Nelson. Originally from Pittsburgh, this vibraphonist left in the late '70s and went on to play with people like Grant Green and David "Fathead" Newman before eventually hooking up with Dave Holland in his incredible quintet, which also included Chris Potter.

While Holland's band spent a lot of time making songs in odd tempos swing like crazy, Nelson's own work is a bit more traditional but still really exciting. Among the pieces he played, his quartet tore through a fast version of Jobim's "Wave" wherein Nelson kept finishing phrases with a distinct clip to them. Mulgrew Miller - a long time friend and collaborator of Nelson's - played whole chords in his solo that he turned into melodic ideas. As far as I'm concerned, a musician has to really have it together to pull of a convincing version of "'Round Midnight," and Nelson did, with double-time phrases that he kept pulling back into regular time, and a cadenza that lasted about 30 seconds before the rest of the band came in for the final chord.

The Kelly-Strayhorn was packed to the gills that night. Part of that could be due to the fact that (from what I heard) 65 people in the audience were members of Nelson's family, but regardless it was great to see that many people at jazz show that was put on by an independent organization like the Kente Arts Alliance. Last year at this time, they brought Billy Bang which was also an amazing show, but which didn't draw as well as this one. Hopefully more people will come out in the future for these kinds of shows, whether they know the musician's work already or whether it's new to them.

When that show was done I wandered over to Sonny's Tavern (with a stop in between at Crazy Mocha for a 10:30 spot of joe) to catch the Beagle Brothers' four-year anniversary show. It wasn't as packed as I thought it would be, but they were still tearing it up. And cutting up.

I've been remiss....

Tonight I was standing at work thinking that a lot of musical events have happened in the past couple of weeks, and I've blogged about absolutely NONE OF THEM. What the hell is my problem? Kahil El'Zabar and Hamiett Blueitt came to town; the Love Letters played at Gooski's; Steve Nelson played at the Kelly-Strayhorn. All good stuff. This blog is going to die on the vine choking on old posts and Japanese porn spam. (Josh Berman, why do attract those freakazoids?!)

Part of my lack of performance can be attributed to Thelonious Monk. My brother got me Robin D. G. Kelley's new bio of Monk, Thelonious Monk - The Life and Times of an American Original and though my time to read is always limited, I have been spending every free moment reading it. It's so detailed about every aspect of his life, which I love in a bio. There are some qualities I don't like, but overall it reminds me how much I love this guy and what a great human being he was. Plus he and I are both Libras and I think that might be why I feel such empathy for him.

Because I have been so into Monk again (it happens a couple times a year) I had to rent Straight No Chaser the absolutely brilliant film about his life, with a lot of incredible footage in concert and in the studio. It doesn't try to be a straight up and down history of his life, but it gives several great slices of it. And when they show his open casket in one of the final scenes, I almost lost it.

I keep wishing he would visit me in a dream and help me find the answers to everything. Too bad life doesn't work that way.

So that's where I am right now. I'm going to go to bed, and when I wake up I'll try to start blogging about the other things I mentioned, working backwards to get all caught up.

My two sonny boys

This picture was taken a few weeks ago. Brisbane was never to sure about Donovan, but on this day he knew better.

A Real Gone Cat is Gone

This might not seem like a music entry, but it will be by the end.

On Saturday night my cat Brisbane left his bowl of Fancy Feast almost full. That sent up a red flag because he lives for that stuff. We usually feed him around 5 p.m., and he starts meowling for it around 2:30. And doesn't let up.

He's been looking pretty scrawny and my wife said that he also threw up pretty bad earlier in the day. The next day he was hiding behind the couch so I decided that, as much as he absolutely despises going to the vet, and how much it breaks my heart to put him in the pet carrier, I had to do it. When he's had check-ups he usually has to have a tranquilzer to calm his nerves, and to ensure that he won't pee in the carrier. I skipped it this time given his condition.

A little background: I have no idea when Brisbane was born. He was a stray cat that used to chase our cat Ivy up a tree, in hopes of getting some action. One summer I began a courting process where I'd take food out to him. I dubbed him Sad Kitty because he looked forlorn and lonely. As much as a cat can be a bastard, he needs to eat. Eventually he became bold enough to jump through the hole in our screen door, come in and have something to eat and then curl up on the floor for a nap. For the first time in my life, I had a pet.

That was 1995.

Ivy passed on in 2003. The next year we got Nina, who liked him a lot more than Ivy ever did. (Ivy tolerated him, but just barely.) Then after a bout with kitty lymphoma, Nina crawled under the basement steps last year and went to sleep.

During one vet visit a year after he was adopted, the doctor took a guess at Brisbane's age. He put it around four or five, judging from the wear on his teeth. This would put him at 17 or 18 in 2009. He hasn't been to the vet since 2003 when he got his teeth cleaned and his canines broke due to age. He's been an indoor cat and he's lived the life he wanted, so I don't feel too guilty about that.

When I took him to the vet on Sunday, I expected to here one of two things: "Yeah, he's pretty broken down, so this might be the end of the line for him," or "He just has __________ and that can probably be treated with a dose of _______."

Instead they wanted to draw blood to see how it looked. Then they wanted to take x-rays. Since they weren't conclusive, they wanted to keep him overnight and do a ultrasound in the morning to get a better idea. That didn't lead to anything conclusive, so they talked about keeping him a few more days and........ and......... and..........[insert sound of a cash register here]

It took a phone call and some time to come to my senses to realize: he's 18 years old. He despises the vet. I'm not with him. He can't take it and I can't take it either. I've been gearing up for this awful moment for a while now. It's time for him to go to sleep.

On Monday night, I fussed over him a little and let him walk around the room. They trimmed his claws, something he never let me do and something I never had to guts to force on him. Maybe his paws felt better. He was shaved underneath and looked scraggly but his head looked sharp as always. I held him as he drifted off. For the first time ever he seemed cool with medical treatment.

He must've known I love when you go out with a joke: After he was asleep, I noticed his tongue was sticking out a little bit. That not sick, you see, because Jennie and I always loved when kitties forget to put their tongue back in after grooming, so I got a final laugh from Brisbane. I'm sad but I'm okay.

In 1997, my band Mystery Date did a song called "Tryst" and the second verse was all about Brisbane:

Never knew where you next meal was coming from
You had to be sure to eat every crumb
On the back porch rolling in the dirt
When I got close to you I could see the hurt
In your eyes

I picked you up and took you inside
You regained some of your pride
In your coat
Then we built up a level of trust
But every once in a while your crust
shows through

Now you've got me wrapped around your paw
Empathy is my fatal flaw
Someday I will learn to say no
To you

The power of educational television

40 years ago today, Sesame Street debuted, armed with the crazy notion that television could educate kids. All those years ago who'd'a thunk that it was more than just a wild idea and would go on to have words like "institution" attached to it.

I've always felt that a lot of the significant education we get doesn't come when we're sitting at the desk listening to teachers. It comes from the in-between stuff: the revelations you have while reading books; conversations with fellow students, who offer a greater perspective on how people comprehend different things; off-the-cuff advice from teachers or instructors. In other words, when you don't think you're learning that is often when you can pick up more things.

So one weekday morning in 1971, I sat down to watch Sesame Street and the show opened with a blind keyboard player singing through something that made his voice all garbled:

1-2-3 Sesame Streeeeeeeeeet
A-B-C Sesame Streeeeeeeet

He did the numbers and letters and his three back-up singers did the other part.

For years I wondered if I was just piecing this together in my mind or if Stevie Wonder really did sing that song. A few years ago, my thoughts were confirmed with the Sesame Street box set Songs from the Street came out. Stevie did sing that song and he was on the first disc. And it was exactly how I remembered it.

Then a few months ago I was routing around youtube and found this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ul7X5js1vE
Go ahead - look at it. Now. It's 6:47, just so you know.

Now you don't put something that heavy, that badass on a kids tv show without realizing that it's going to leave an impression on them. First of all, that song is one of the bad-assest songs ever written - with that killer clavinet riff and the funky bassline/countermelody. But kids aren't going to know what a clavinet is. They're just going to get caught up in the beat and Stevie's head bob. Because he's into it. All those guys look cool, even the pudgy trumpet player and the geeky bass player.

And its effect might not be one where it changes lives. It just makes you think - about music and about race and how everything seems really cool. I completely forgot about the clip, to be honest, until I stumbled across it. Suddenly it all came back to me and I remembered it and it made me wonder if it's been with me, in the back of my head for all these years.
The arrangement is great. Note that he changes the line in the second verse to reference Sesame Street, and also gives a shout-out to Cookie Monster before the break in the middle. (There's also some screaming off mike early in the song.) Then just when you think they're done, after playing that killer closing riff, he makes the band go back into the main vamp again. And dig those Fender stacks - right on Sesame Street.
So as the show marks the big 4-0 I want to thank everyone involved for what they've done to make me the way I am. Which is a lot. (I didn't even go into the vaudeville aspect of most of the skits!)

Here I Go Again

I've spent the last week to 10 days up to my ears in CDs that I have to review for either Blurt or JazzTimes so the blog has been neglected. At this point, Blurt two reviews from me with another finished one that will be sent soon, and one more to write. Then I have five jazz discs to cover. Check out the Blurt site to see if my reviews of Karl Blau (great solo artist on K) or the new Echo & the Bunnymen are up yet.

Yeah, that's right - Echo and the Bunnymen. I feel like I've spent the last few months giving updates on veteran bands that are still at it, or who have reunited: Mission of Burma, Echo and now, just this morning, I finally finished a review of the new album by My Dad Is Dead. I'm not going to offer any details here (keep checking the webzine!) but I will tell you it's good. Now I get to write about Danielle Howle, who I love. Or is it "whom I love"?

Yesterday was my first day off from work after nine straight days. It would've been a good day to write, but I was hanging out with the kid. Writing was limited to naptime. Oh well. Gotta go.

CD Review: Jon Irabagon - The Observer

Jon Irabagon

The Observer

(Concord)

Jon Irabagon cleans up good. That is to say, after hearing and seeing him exploit all the sonic potentials of his saxophone with Mostly Other People Do the Killing earlier this year, these ears were impressed that he's equally adept at toning down the wails and the irony (no covers of Billy Joel here) and leading a more traditional quartet with veterans Rufus Reid (bass), Victor Lewis (drums) and Kenny Barron (piano), with another traditionalist (trumpeter Nicholas Payton) dropping in on a couple of songs. Makes the cynic in me wonder if the MOPDTK guys are snickering.

Of course, you don't win the Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Saxophone Competition by sticking with Roscoe Mitchell shrieks. Or Cannonball Adderley imitations. But knowing his other side, it took me a couple listens to get past the free bias and get into what he does on The Observer. (Note to aspiring critics, don't make your final judgment on the first listen.) It became clear at that point that his writing and soloing skills are pretty mature.

There comes a section in the steady swinger "Joy's Secret" where the rhythm section locks into a descending progression, with Reid doing a pedal point groove, thumping the low strings (sounding at times like he's bowing) and answering on the high end. It ends a level of tension that is felt in Irabagon's solo, continues through Barron's and finally releases at the start of Payton's solo. Even in the streamlined, straight ahead setting, the saxophonist proves himself by throwing some rough little licks into his solo. His double timed, tongued phrases pass quickly in "January's Dream" but they grab your ear and wish that he had taken two choruses instead of one. At the end of the chorus, though, he turns up the heat by playing through the intro instead of using it to pull back. On "Makai and Tacoma" and the title track, Irabagon switches to tenor and he sounds just as mature on that horn.

His choices of covers are also off the beaten track and indicate a wide scope of influence. Gigi Gryce's ballad "The Infant's Song" goes for nearly two engaging minutes with just alto and bass digging into the melody before Lewis and Barron drop in. "Cup Bearers" by Tom McIntosh follows immediately, taking the tempo back up and gives Irabagon a chance to show off his speed and melodic skills. Elmo Hope's "Barfly" is not only a remarkable choice, it presents an impressive duet partner - Hope's widow Bertha on piano.

The final track is titled "Closing Arguments" an ironic name on a couple levels, because it doesn't contain any arguments as such, just a pensive minor melody where the piano answers the alto's lines.

True, Irabagon can play it straight, and he does it very well. But The Observer also seems like it's just the beginning of an adventurous career as a leader.

CD Review: Josh Berman - Old Idea

Josh Berman

Old Idea

(Delmark)

Delmark, that Chicago institution of a record label, has been documenting a newer generation of Windy City improvisers and composers over the past couple of years. (Kevin Whitehead uses the phrase "post Vandermark" to describe these cats in the notes to this disc, which is kind of how I was thinking about them.) In 2007 the label released Just Like This by tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson's 12-piece Project Project. Last year brought bassist Jason Ajemian's The Art of Dying. Now cornetist Josh Berman, makes his debut as a leader, following time as a member of Project Project, Chicago Luzerne Exchange and the Exploding Star Orchestra, among other things.

Old Idea actually doubles as the name of this quintet, which includes saxophonist Jackson, vibist Jason Adasiewicz, bassist Anton Hatwich and drummer Nori Tanaka. The "idea" encompasses the fact that Berman isn't afraid to touch on influences like Rex Stewart and Ruby Braff while creating something that's totally current and bristling with excitement. (Bill Dixon and Dave Douglas also factor into his list of inspirations, by the way.) He has a handle on compositions with structures that pull your ears in unorthodox directions. In one, the rhythm section lays down a steady riff while the horns play a melody in direct contrast; later, the sustain on the vibes creates an dreamlike state of uncertainty that says "Keep listening. Watch what's going to happen." One tune appears in three different takes: one with tenor and trumpet; one with vibes and rhythm; one with the full quintet. Each one sounds really different, stretching around in different ways that affect the sound of the piece.

It's an easy jump to compare a two-horns-vibes-and-rhythm group to Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch album, especially when the music has that loose-limbed feel that can easily shift back and forth between tempo and freedom. Plus Adasiewicz's tone on the vibes has that same kind of mysterious quality that Bobby Hutcherson brought to the Dolphy album. They sound rich without twinkling.

But even though the comparison does work in some ways, Berman and his crew clearly have their own thing going on. "Almost Late" has an deceptive theme that almost seems to fuse the intervals of "Giant Steps" with Mingus' "What Love." The trumpet and tenor begin like the former song and end the phrases inquisitively like the latter. And maybe that's only obvious when you're looking for it. When Berman is left to his own devices with just Tanaka as a safety net, he displays a great sense of bent notes and rhythmic twists. Jackson's tenor also never ceases to astound, whether growling or blowing.

This is one of those albums that I could very easily listen to over and over in hopes of delivering more specifics about its greatness. But if I do that, this review will never get finished. (That's half the reason the aforementioned Delmark releases never made it onto to the blog.) Hopefully, this has offered enough of a teaser.

W'oh! Mo Joe Mo(rris)

I think I spoke too soon.

When I reviewed Joe Morris' album Wildlife (AUM Fidelity) in the October issue of JazzTimes, I opined that Morris' bass playing might be starting to overshadow his work as a guitarist. No sooner did I write that review than three new Morris CD showed up in my mailbox, two of which have him playing guitar. So it looks like guitar and bass are getting equal time in his hands. Along with ESP-Disk's recent release by the Flow Trio - which also finds Morris on bass and is reviewed by me in the new November JT - it's been a fruitful season for Mr. Morris.

Today on Earth (AUM Fidelity) casts Morris the guitarist in a slightly more conventional setting, as part of a quartet with longtime drummer Luther Gray, alto saxophonist Jim Hobbs and bassist Timo Shanko. That is to say, the album features straight out 4/4 swinging and AABA themes in addition to some more bumpy structures.

"Backbone" opens with a guitar-alto unison theme before Morris goes into a solo full of crisp lines that occasionally toy with the rhythm, thanks to Gray's accents. The title track has a very Ornette-ish feel, from the tumbling bass and drums underneath it to the staccato melody and tone of Hobbs' alto. But similarities make way to originality as the saxophonist's growls open up his solo. The guitar and alto interplay at the start of "Embarrassment of Riches" has the sonic quality of a siren thanks to their close intervals and because of the way Morris seems to be picking.

Four of the seven tracks on Today on Earth clock in at 10 or 11 minutes, and all of that time is well spent. Of his recent releases this album is one of the best place to start (behind the Flow Trio), since its places his adventurous improvisational chops in a setting that makes them stand out even more.

Colorfield (ESP-Disk) finds Morris and Gray freely improvising with pianist Steve Lantner. In his liner notes, Morris (again on guitar) borrows the album title from a school of painting that disregards figurative elements for uninterrupted layers of color. He also says the group derived inspiration from Cecil Taylor's bass-less trio with Jimmy Lyons and either Sunny Murray or Andrew Cyrille.

Unfortunately, the color analogy at times seems appropriate in the wrong way. The four tracks, while interesting at times, suffer from the limitations of a one-colored canvas - a lack of dynamics. The group begins in a certain mood and doesn't do much to get beyond it or expand upon it. Gray sounds especially grounded in opener "Transparent," spastically tapping on snare and hi-hat. Lantner and Morris contribute some pointillistic comments, but the next level never comes. The three-way exchanges in "Silver Sun" sound spirited at the outset, but don't exactly hold up over 13 minutes. "Bell Orange Curves" switches things up a bit, because the rhythms transform themselves throughout its nearly 16 minutes, but the guitar solo also feels a bit noodly too.

Compared to say, Taylor's Montmartre performances on Nefertiti the Beautiful One Has Come, that group was a constant barrage (I mean that in a good way) of soloists with supporters throwing musical "yeah"s and "you said it"s behind them. That was almost combative while Colorfield comes off as more polite. Maybe it'd be different in person.

Not be confused with a band with a similar sounding name that recording for Knitting Factory about 10 years ago, the Othertet features Morris on bass with Taylor Ho Bynum (a recent Anthony Braxton associate) on cornet and flugelhorn, Bill Lowe (who has played with everyone from Cecil Taylor to Eartha Kitt) on bass trombone and tuba and Kwaku Kwaakye Obeng on drums. Their self-titled release (Engine) has an all-encompassing feel of prime era Art Ensemble of Chicago. Obeng, a master drummer originally from Ghana, at various points plays trap kit, talking drum and percussion, that latter which he cleverly pans from channel to channel during one track. Bynum, on the other hand, often sounds like Don Cherry, circa New York Contemporary Five era with some piercing lines.

Things open with a lengthy piece credited to the group, which suggests an improv. If that's the case, the rapid point-counterpoint between Lowe's trombone and Bynum's muted cornet suggest that this group must have a strong rapport among them, and the rest of the disc proves that to a great degree. Lowe's "Haptown/Trenton" sounds like a Jazz Messengers blues arranged for tuba and flugelhorn. Morris does some slow, solid walking on "Dreamsketch" and "Cold Day Clip" takes a three-note tone poem and builds it into a tour de force, full of growling brass, elastic drums that play melody and rhythm and a bass that holds it all together.

The album's relatively lo-fi quality makes the whole thing sound a bit muddy, since a lot of the high end is missing. At the same time, it makes Cole and Bynum sound otherworldly, like a soprano sax or one of its lower brothers wandered into the room at some point, thereby adding to the sound of surprise. In other words, it doesn't detract too much from the session.

CD Review: Digital Primitives- Hum Crackle and Pop

Digital Primitives

Hum Crackle and Pop

(Hopscotch)

A few Saturdays ago, Digital Primitives came to town and played Garfield Artworks. Not to be confused with Digable Planets, this band is a trio consisting of tenor saxophonists Assif Tsahar, multi-instrumentalist Cooper-Moore (specifics are forthcoming) and drummer Chad Taylor. Tsahar and Cooper-Moore played here a few years ago as a duo, following an album they did on the saxophonist's Hopscotch label; and Cooper-Moore and Taylor also made an album for that label as Triptych Myth, with bassist Tom Abbs. Now the Planets have recently releasedtheir second album Hum, Crackle and Pop.

I got to the show late and only caught about 20 minutes of their set. They were in the midst of reworking "Over the Rainbow" when I got there. Then Cooper picked up the didley-bow and they played a raunchy groove that blended well with the gruff tenor sax. The evening ending (too quickly for me) with a number that featured the mouth bow, which was basically a bow that Cooper put in his mouth and bowed with another bow, opening and closing his mouth to alter the pitch of it. I was a little disappointed that I only heard that much music (and paid $10) but figured these guys could use the cash.

Hum, Crackle and Pop sounds like the work of several different groups, since the sound changes shape every time Cooper-Moore picks up a different instrument. The title track recalls Morphine, with a dirty low-end bass groove and some raunchy tenor, which almost sounds like it's run through a bit of distortion. You almost expect the ghost of Mark Sandman to show up and start singing. A few other songs find Cooper playing a string instrument (either banjo or twinger, according to credits) that sounds like a guitar, thanks to a heavy dose of either chorus or flanger. These tracks sound like funk a la Downtown New York, where musicians don't seriously attempt to make booty-shakin' music but still come up with something highly groovy. Still others have an almost backwoods country twang to them.

To that end, "Over the Rainbow" has a free, almost swampy background from Cooper and Taylor while Tsahar shows off his lyrical side. Tsahar, who in the past has come out of a Pharoah Sanders-style screaming/searing approach to his horn, doesn't get as intense this time around and even when he cuts loose, it works well to have the support of a riff underneath him. Taylor, who has played in the various Chicago Underground groups (Duo, Trio, Quartet) contributes the opening tune "Walkabout" a riff built around his m'bira, bass clarinet and mouth bow, in addition to the credit he receives for what are likely improvised pieces. Aside from a spoken word track, that succeeds in getting more abrasive than political, the trio never meanders whether they're working on an improvisation or a pre-conceived idea. This is one of those albums that can't be filed under jazz or improvisation, thanks to the range of music on it, and that's a mark in its favor.

The Love Letters' official debut

Playing right now: Three Dog Night - Suitable for Framing
(I don't care what anyone says, those guys could sing like mother^%&*ers. I put this on because a close friend really loves them and she's really sick now, so this is providing some solace.)

The Love Letters, my new band, had their official debut last Thursday. (I say "official" because we played a show in September, but that wasn't exactly open to the public, and this gig was at a club, the Thunderbird Cafe.) The instrumentation is the same as the Mofones: guitar, bass, keyboards, drums. We even do a couple of Mofones songs. But it's pretty different, sonically. Aimee from the Mofones is playing keyboards now and writing more songs. And Erin, our drummer, sings harmonies a lot. Anytime the two of them sang together, things really kicked into overdrive. When I joined the vocal section things..... eh, I could say I sullied the waters, but that wouldn't necessarily be true. I think I did okay, harmony-wise. Still trying to regain my bass chops, though.

And then there's Buck. Oh, Buckley Knauer, you guitar master from a family of guitar masters. Buck's great. And he spun out some great solos throughout the evening. Things went pretty smoothly, overall. A few too many lulls between songs, but we'll work on that.

Trash Magnet opened the evening with some old fashioned fuzzed out punk rock, including a cover of Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak," of all things. And the Inseams played after us. They also took things back to early punk rock, with raw riffs and catchy choruses. Turns out, I met their drummer about 20 years ago through his brother-in-law, who was a college friend of mine. Hadn't seen him in almost that long. It's cool to make connections like that.

The only damper on the evening came at the very end of the night. I found out that Mike Grimes, the drummer of Liverball (Buck's other band, which also includes Ray from Trash Magnet) died the day before from a brain aneurysm. He was about my age. It's a goddam tragedy. He was a good egg.

New things on the Beatles' White Album.

Playing right now: The Beatles - Yellow Submarine (the same copy that I bought when I was in third grade. Basically a throwaway album, it nevertheless contains two of George Harrison's best songs.)

Since my birthday, I've digressed into a classic rock/classic oldies state of mind. A friend of mine from work gave me a handful of albums that includes Pink Floyd's Ummagumma, Steve Miller's The Joker and Fleetwood Mac's Then Play On (which I discussed at length with Jim Lingo last night). In eighth grade I loved Floyd and had every album up to The Wall except More. I later sold almost all of them. Ummagumma was one I had on a cassette dub and I later taped over it. Even during my anti-floyd days, I held fond memories of the live half of the album. So imagine my surprise when I listened to it and it sounded kind of dull. What happened?

The Joker was an album I owned around the same time as Yellow Submarine. Every six months I get a craving to hear the opening riff of "Sugar Babe" but never so much that I go to Jerry's to buy it. Glad to have it again.

The Beatles kick of late was motivated by the copy of the newly remastered copy of the White Album that I gotfrom my folks for my birthday. It was on a wish list. I heard it sounds the best of all the new discs, so short of getting the mono box, this was the one I wanted to hear first. And it does sound great. You can feel the individual parts coming together to make the songs whole. It's like they're a real band, not just four iconic figures. Which is probably debatable since the group was falling apart as that album was made.

Here are some key things that are noticeable on the remastered White album:
"Revolution 9" doesn't sound as scary anymore. It just sounds like a bunch of tape loops.
In "Yer Blues," Paul's low E-string is out of tune, or else he's hitting it really hard and making it bend out of tune. (I have a Rickenbacker too, and it's easy to do that.)
The overdubs seem to stand out more. Like the guitars in "Back In the USSR" that hit the high chords in the intro.
There's more I'm sure, but to be honest I've only played it all the way through just once.

I'm telling you, the Monkees knew what they talking about

Today I turn 42 years old. Every so often, especially since Donovan was born, I tend to look back on things in my life and reassess them. I suppose that's 20/20 hindsight in full effect. In dealing with the public on a daily basis at my job, I also analyze people's comments a lot: are they angry? are they sarcastic? was that just borscht-belt-style delivery?

The other day I was thinking about all this and how it's really hard to view events/people in black or white, like I did when I was in my 20s. Everything's really gray now.

Then it hit me.

Ho-o-o-o-ly crap. It's just like that Monkees song "Shades of Gray," which has always struck me as one of the saddest songs ever. When I was little, it was because the piano and Peter's verse both sounded sad. Now it's because I realize that it was talking about the uncertain state of society in the eyes of youth culture (hey, it sounded funny in my head. Funny and true.) Vietnam. The Great Society.

But 42 years later, it still rings true. It's a timeless concept. (Um, it's also kind of general, but so what.)

Those Monkees knew what they were talking about.

And so did Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who wrote the song.