CD Review: Kenny Dorham - The Flamboyan, Queens, NY 1963

Kenny Dorham
The Flamboyan, Queens, NY 1963
(Upfront)

During the late '80/early '90s, we college radio geeks had different perspectives on what made a band successful in our eyes. A band that released an album on a label like Homestead, SST or, later Matador, was about to get blown out of the water and make a name for themselves, or so it seemed. The reality was that a band on any of those probably wasn't all that different from an underground band in Pittsburgh (heck, our own Weird Paul Petrosky fit both criteria) except that they had an album on those labels. And maybe a few more people around the country knew about them.

50 years later, nearly everyone who released an album on Blue Note Records is looked at as anything from unappreciated genius to god. For a musician to be on that label, it meant that you had it made. The reality is that these jazz musicians might really have been on the same boat as indie rockers were in the early days of the labels mentioned above. Time has a way of changing perspectives on things like this.

All this came to mind while listening to this release from Upfront Records of a radio broadcast of Kenny Dorham's quintet. Dorham, the trumpeter who had played with Charlie Parker and later held a spot in the original Jazz Messengers, was leading a group with tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson in 1963. The pairing was considered a hot commodity. Henderson was the new guy in town, about to be record with the trumpeter and eventually get signed to his own Blue Note contract. One year later, he'd appear on Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder," which turned the imprint into a successful label.

So it's ironic to hear these two playing on a Monday night at a bar in Queens that must not have been very full, judging by radio MC Alan Grant's virtual pleas to listeners to stop by and check it out, which almost sound a little desperate. What's even more illuminating is that the band doesn't sound like their firing on all cylinders at the beginning of that night, although that could be the fault of the recording not bringing out everyone's true nature. Pianist Ronnie Matthews has some punchy comps during his own "Dorian" that borrow from McCoy Tyner's solo in "My Favorite Things." (That piece and this one feature bassist Steve Davis, it should be noted.) But Dorham's solo consists of long tones and quick phrases that don't always connect to a full idea. Henderson stokes the fires though those fast triplets that he'd unleash in "The Sidewinder" and in a few of his own pieces.

Henderson sounds ready to cook from the beginning, but Dorham takes a few tunes to sound close to the Kenny Dorham. It happens around "My Injun From Brazil," which thankfully was retitled "Una Mas" by the time it was recorded in the studio. By this part of the set, the quintet has gone through passable versions of "I Can't Get Started" and "Summertime," the latter getting a little more kick going for it. By the time the Dorham original is reached, the trumpeter is engaged in some spry staccato lines, with drummer J.C. Moses (a Pittsburgher, which is mentioned by Grant!) doing some good ride cymbal work behind him. Moses plays it pretty straight, not going in the direction he would with Eric Dolphy or the New York Contemporary Five with Archie Shepp, but he's still solid.

By the time they get to "Dynamo (Straight Ahead)" they start to chew up the song's "I Got Rhythm" chord changes. Good things might've been coming in the next set, but unfortunately that's the end of the show, and Grant signs off and the music fades after four minutes. Speaking of Grant, the DJ serves as a good host, without any of the condescending swarm of Symphony Sid or acting with the pretentious hipster aura of radio men that might follow him. When he talks to Dorham he doesn't sound stiff either, but respectful. It's another sad reminder of something that you can't get on commercial radio anymore: live people on the air after midnight broadcasting a live performance, which you could potentially attend if you were still making plans that late in the evening.

Aside from that bout of nostalgiz, The Flamboyan doesn't exactly rank as required listening or a holy grail of hard bop, but does have some fine moments from two strong players who were a bit under the radar in comparison to some of their peers.

Love Letters at Irma Freeman Center

On Friday, work was pretty busy and felt like a constant game of Beat the Clock. If that wasn't enough, I got there nice and early, only to realize - as I was walking across the parking lot - that I had forgotten to pack my change of clothes for the Love Letters show that night. And there was no way I was going to wear a work t-shirt during our set - as much as I love the company that employs me. So I drove home, expletives spewing out that car window, and got the clothes.

The Love Letters played at the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination, a really beautifully designed gallery in Garfield. As part of the First Fridays/Unblurred/gallery crawl that happens each month, our set was one of three performances that coincided with an opening of an exhibition of Evan Knauer's paintings. (Evan is the brother of LL's guitarist Buck and is a Pittsburgh music vet himself). I missed Erin Snyder's classical duo since I was still at work, and I arrived as the trio of Bob Wentzel (sax), Emmett Frisbee (bass) and Winston Goode (drums) were playing.

Once I got there, all the stress of the day started to dissipate. I had been looking forward to this show more than I realized and a lot of people whom I was hoping to see were there: my sister, a long lost friend who recently stumbled across me, this friend's mom (who was more like a bonus guest) and another friend who had an art closing that same night and still managed to arrive and turn our set into a dance party.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The room where we played is a converted garage, which looks great but still might be a little boomy and echoey. We weren't worried, though and there was a p.a. for all four vocals so the voices could compete with the instruments. I couldn't hear the voices clearly, so I'm not sure if I was on key but it felt like it. We started with "The Last One," which is a pretty charged-up number when we're firing on all cylinders. And I think we were. It was a good indicator of what was to come.

One of the things that I want to do with the band is dig up songs by old local bands (i.e. my friends) that would otherwise be lost to the ether. This is sort of an extension of playing songs I wrote in previous bands, I suppose. We've done at least three Mofones songs, and one Bone of Contention song. (A new Love Letters song is a rewrite of one of my old songs, but that was conceived about four or five years ago, so maybe that doesn't count.)

So far, we've done a song by Catamount and one by the Smoking Pets (which was never released). A few months ago, Buck has brought up the idea of doing a song or two by his first band, Cousin It. They were a great band, existing right around the time that Bone of Contention first came together, and I always liked them. "Shower of Dreams" is/was a great psychedelic droning pop song with room for a lot of harmonies. Not only was I thrilled to do it, but Buck was going to sing lead. Something he's never done in 24 years of playing in bands.

The last practice before the show, I asked if he was going to introduce the song that night. "Uh, no." Fine with me, because even though a little context would've been nice, I wasn't about to tell him what to do. But sure enough, he gave a nice intro and some background that night. Playing it felt really good. Playing Aimee's new song felt good too, even though I messed it up and only by the grace of Erin our drummer did it hang together while the three of us got our balance.

Then there were the dancers who showed up about 1/3 or halfway through the set and brought more energy to the room. It was a good time. And it made going to work the next day kind of hard. Mostly because I felt a little sore.

We need to book another show.

What the thought of death brings out in me

It's been a strange week. And it's only Wednesday.

I was driving around yesterday when I heard on the radio that Hank Jones died. All I could do was take off my beret and salute him. It's sad - he's the last of three Jones men of jazz to go, with brothers Thad and Elvin before him. But then, Hank was 91 years old. And he played like he was 60. I saw him last year at the Detroit International Jazz Festival and although he did sort of look his age around the eyes, he was eternally young around the fingers. All I can say is I'm glad I caught him before he split.

Of course, the world lost Lena Horne last week too. There's no need for me to rehash what's been written about her over the past week, but suffice to say, she was always one of those artists that I just kind of took for granted. I never owned any of her albums until about eight years ago when I found two RCA records at a flea market. Whoa, goddam. That's what I felt after listening to her. She's freaking amazing, with a ton of fire power. No wonder Cecil Taylor loves her.

Plus I love the fact that she was on Sesame Street a few times and once, she helped Grover overcome his shyness and he told her she was a great kisser. Lucky monster.

Tonight I finally wrote a review for Blurt of Susan Cowsill's latest album, Lighthouse. Normally I wouldn't tell you anything about it here and urge you to read the online review. But for one thing, I haven't sent it to them yet. (I always sleep on it, unless I'm right on a deadline.) For another thing, there's one song that's been heavy on my mind lately that I feel the need to write about. "River of Love" was written by Susan's brother Barry who was in the Cowsills with her. The song has a lost-love theme where the singer hopes they'll be reunited again by the river of love. But considering the theme of loss that runs through this album, it's clear that the song is now more about Barry, who drowned in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and wasn't found for about four months. His own song is a tribute, a wish to him. That's heavy enough but Susan got her surviving brothers Bob, John and Paul, and sister-in-law Vicki Peterson Cowsill (yes, that Vicki Peterson, my fave Bangle), to join her on the chorus and lift the bandstand.

And boy, do they ever. The song makes me fucking cry every time I hear it. It's like "The Bleeding Heart Show" by the New Pornographers, except that this time the emotion is based on real events. And the music has all the trappings of a perfect pop song.

Death has been on my mind lately. I was worried that if death always comes in threes, who would be the next jazz person to leave? Please not Sonny Rollins. Not Cecil either. Then I remembered Ronnie James Dio was gone, making Hank #3. Small consolation, but I needed it.

Last night a longtime friend was telling me about going to Lillydale and trying to communicate with her dead grandparents. It sounds like she did, but it wasn't the conversation she had hoped to have. It was just kind of typical, average conversation. There were no over-arching pearls of wisdom, just some random everyday observations.

While it bothered her - and me, in a way - it did make me think that these methods of communication can probably happen but that we can't expect to get major insight from talking to the dead anymore than you could've gotten immediate changes in yourself from talking to John Coltrane when he was alive. He wasn't an actual God. He was a guy, albeit one that was extremely talented. And the dead... are the people who loved you and you love them. They're just in a different place now. That sounds sad, but the best was to keep from feeling sad is to go on living.

CD review: Rempis/Rosaly - Cyrillic

Rempis/Rosaly
Cyrillic
(482 Music)

Horn and drum duo sets can explore any number of different formats: balls to the wall honking, screeching and splattering; pointillist dots of sound that may or may not yield a complete statement; or a strong dialogue that gives the impression that at least one of the musicians is hearing a full band in their head and using that as a guide.

Saxophonist Dave Rempis and drummer Frank Rosaly draw on a little bit of each of these ideas, which keeps their duets flowing and makes sure that they won't lapse into anything too familiar. Of course, they aren't exactly strangers either. Rempis (who also plays in the Vandermark 5) has lead a quartet that includes Rosaly as one of its two drummers. The saxophonist changes horns on each track, playing alto, tenor and baritone. Different instruments bring out different ideas in his playing, although his baritone tracks seem to feature the most diversity, going from long, vibrato tones to the one track that seems to possess a stated, almost staightforward theme. Frank Rosaly, whose shows up on a myriad of Chicago sessions, begins the album in a most unorthodox manner - considering his background at least - and acts like the in-tune partner throughout, listening closely to Rempis's developments.

On that opener, "Antiphony," ("anti-phony" or "an-TIF-o-nee" - you be the judge), Rosaly's drumming begins by emulating what sounds like the classic "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" drum riff, and taking a detour into waltz time before finally playing a heavy backbeat towards the end. Over this relatively fluid action, Rempis emits short bursts of ideas that blend well.

The other alto showcase, the nearly 16-minute opus "How to Cross When Bridges Are Out," indicates the duo uses time wisely to build and rebuild on ideas. Rempis blows a mix of fast lines, crazy trills, and upper register panic, before his partner takes a solo marked by fast rolls, rim shots and crashes. There is a minute when things get too noodly, but they lock into a wail fest before attrition sets is.

On tenor, Rempis takes a stab at the "classic" free jazz attack on "Tainos" and lands a hit, running fast and wild, with Rosaly moving all over his drum kit to goad him to take it ever higher. "Don't Trade Here," features a lot of staccato tenor, as well as what sounds like a passing reference to Monk's "Evidence."

Only one track fails to break from the meandering. "Still Will" is full of baritone honks and splats and cymbal clicks that plumb the instruments' sonic possibilities, but it doesn't fare well in the momentum department. But otherwise, Cyrillic, which ends with the relatively melodic "In Plain Sight," delivers a focused set of duos.

Love Letters latest show

Just got back a little bit ago from a Love Letters gig. We played at Rock 'n Bowl, which takes place at Arsenal Lanes in Lawrenceville. People pay $8 to bowl all night and they get to have us serenade them from Lane 14, which gets covered up with a blanket so we have a nice non-slippery place to stand.

The last time we played there, I was in an awful mood. It was about a week after the big snowfall in Pittsburgh. Highland Park was still under siege, with a lot of snow still in the middle of the streets, making it hard for us to load out and get to the show. A layer of ice was forming as we unloaded equipment. I was all out of caffeine, so everything was bugging me. Then at the end of the night, after playing to uninterested bowlers and four friends, we were paid pretty handsomely. It was kind of a trick ending to a bad night.

Tonight was the opposite, at least in terms of the set up. We got there way early, had time to set up in a leisurely manner, and played everything we knew, in the form of one set list. And we sounded really together, the tightest I think we've been since we started. There weren't as many bowlers there but a few friends showed up too so it was pretty worthwhile.

By the way, in case you didn't know the new New Pornographers album came out yesterday. Guess who was the first person to by it at the local new record store! C'mon guess.............

Tonight in the jukebox

Playing right now: Hafez Modirzadeh - Dandelion (bought it at his show last week.)

Tonight's listening pleasure included: Liz Phair's Whip-Smart, which has held up remarkably well, especially the first half of it, which I like best; Big Brother & the Holding Company's version of "Ball and Chain," which beats the pants off the live version on Janis' greatest hits album if only because the searing guitar work holds up under repeated listens better than Janis' "I don't understand why half the world is cryin'...., man...." spoken interlude; and Sonic Youth's Confusion is Sex, which is not a consistant album, but when it's good it's really dangerous. It reminds me of being 16 and getting my head blown off. And knowing that I could clear a room by playing it.

Between "Ball and Chain" and Sonic Youth, I had to check out the BB&tHC performance of that song from the Monterey Pop movie courtesy of youtube. Janis is stunning. Absolutely electrifying. After than I had to see Jimi Hendrix smash his guitar after "Wild Thing," also at Monterey. That's probably the most pornographic rock and roll performance ever. And I mean better than GWAR because Jimi was just doing what comes naturally. The best part is after he set the guitar on fire, it's still making noise. Even after he starts smashing it. Amazing.

CD Review: Mike Reed's People, Places & Things: Stories and Negotiations

Mike Reed's People, Places & Things

Stories and Negotiations

(482 Music)

Even when some of those Chicago guys pay homage to past masters, they still sound like they're on a modern track. The latest by drummer Mike Reed's People, Places & Things bares this out. A percolating group improv kicks off the opening minutes of the album, giving the faint impression that the octet will be blowing free for the entire program. But after a few minutes, they lock into some hard-swinging bop in the form of John Jenkins' "Song of a Star." This might be a lot more straight ahead than the previous minutes alluded to, but Reed's version of straight swings much like Sun Ra's Arkestra (more on them to come) did: the rhythm section moves with so much authority, with a propulsive beat and taut basslines, and takes it beyond any older period of the music and lands with a crash in the here and now.

Reed started PP&T to focus on "under-recorded, under-recognized aspects of the vibrant Chicago jazz scene circa 1954-60" and they've released two previous CDs. This one expands the concept because the core quartet of Reed, Jason Roebke (bass), Tim Haldemen (tenor sax) and Greg Ward (alto sax) are joined by three players from that era - one time Arkestra member Art Hoyle (trumpet, flugelhorn), bandleader Ira Sullivan (trumpet) and extensive sideman and leader Julian Priester (trombone) - plus one more Windy City modern cat, Jeb Bishop (trombone). Less a meeting of old blood and young blood, the 2008 concert recorded for this album presented a group where everyone was on the same page. In explaining the solo order, the liner notes say that the trombonists have a vastly different sound from one another and only attributes one specific solo to Bishop. The rest is just guesswork for the listener. It's frustrating to those of us who want to be sure, but it also shows how cohesively this band works together.

Reed picked four relative deep cuts for the set from the city's history: the aforementioned "Song of a Star" by an alto player known to this writer predominantly for an appearance on an early Hank Mobley album; Sun Ra's "El is a Sound of Joy" is built on a vicious groove pinned down by one of the tenors while the other horns blow in and around it. Wilbur Campbell's "Wilbur's Tune" is another strong piece in a hard bop-esque mold as is Priester's "Urnack" which he recorded with Sun Ra and here starts like "Song" with two minutes of free exchanges of ideas. Clifford Jordan's "Lost and Found" features Sullivan and Haldeman in an old style tenor duel, as well as a penetrating solo from Hoyle, who throws in a quote from "Little Rootie Tootie" as things almost unwind.

The drummer also penned one piece each for the veteran guests of the set. "Third Option," for Hoyle, has rich voicings that ought to impress fans of large ensembles as traditional as the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, which speaks to Reed's skills as a composer. "Door #1," dedicated to Priester, begins like a loose tone poem, before locking into a progression that could slip into "You Don't Know What Love Is," with an exquisite quality to match that standard. Sullivan's salute, "The And of 2," features not only his tenor but Ward's alto getting prodded along by shouts from the other horns during solos.

What feels especially exciting, musically, about this meeting of minds is that Stories and Negotiations looks at the past but it concerns itself with making today's music that's more than just a tribute.

Part two

There was an article in the Post-Gazette previewing the ElSaffar/Modirzadeh show, where ElSaffar mentioned that most of the suites that he and Modirzadeh composed are written out and don't rely as much on improvisation. So I went in to the Warhol show thinking about that and trying to separate the written from the spontaneous. A lot of it did seem mapped out and similar to what I remember specifically from the album. (I listened to a lot when reviewing it, but I don't know it inside out. Something like this takes a long time to wrap your head around.)

A remarkable thing about the opening notes of ElSaffar's "Copper Suite" is how you can really feel the vibrations between the notes that he and Modirzadeh play. It was almost like when you're tuning a guitar and playing two strings together: the farther you get from the correct pitch on one of the strings, the more the sound vibrates. First they played long pitches like that, then they started echoing each other. Alex Cline was rolling all over his drum kit and it was loud and relatively free, but it never got bombastic, never to that feverish point that a lot of free drummers hit. Mark Dresser was plucking his bass strings really harshly. It sounded like he was really clenching his fingers on them.

When Modirzadeh took what seemed like a solo, he stopped fingering the pads of his saxophone and just grabbed the bell of his tenor sax, letting his mouth bend the pitches of the notes. Earlier in the piece, he started playing the upper pads of the sax with both of his hands, whereas normally the right hand handles the lower pads. It's all part of reworking these instruments to incorporate scales and pitches that they weren't built to play.

Modirzadeh's "Radif-E-Kayhan" bears some Ornette Coleman influence, but to really imagine that comparison accurately you almost have to take Ornette's ideas and utilize a different set of scales and tones to play them. About five minutes into the piece, Dresser started playing a blues riff of sorts, to which Cline responded with some press rolls and fills to kept it from getting too complacent. ElSaffar wailed and peeped before it shifted back to a rubato tempo and then on to a 4/4 tempo. When ElSaffar started playing with a Harmon mute, the band took on the spectre of the Miles Davis' famed Plugged Nickel performances. This was equally as spacey. A passing phrase almost sounding like a disembodied quote from "Hot House" in there too.

All four of those guys were incredible. The two leaders of course made their instruments do things that no one has really done before, in terms of playing foreign musics on them. Dresser was great, holding down the helm or going off on his own tear. Cline did a lot but made it seem like a piece of cake. You could tell he was really listening to everyone by what and how he played.

Amir ElSaffar & Hafez Modirzadeh

On Saturday night the Andy Warhol Museum presented a performance by trumpeter Amir ElSaffar and tenor saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh, two amazing musicians who just happen to be Iraqi-American and Iranian-American respectively. Plus their rhythm section consisted of bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Alex Cline. I recently wrote a review of their album Radif Suite (Pi Recordings) for JazzTimes so I extra stoked for this show.

Like the album, the performance consisted of the two suites, one each penned by one of the horn men. It's pretty fascinating music because it involves scales (that might not be the accurate terminology) and pitches that don't really exist in Western notation, along with harmonic combinations that us Western folks would find dissonant. At the same time, it means that this music is really new and exciting. It's stuff that might sound familar, but ultimately you've never heard it before.

More details forthcoming..........

Record Store Day, after the fact

Playing right now: Dave Holland Octet - Pathways

I missed Record Store again this year because I had to work on Saturday, per usual. At 6 p.m. I was ready to stop at Paul's CDs to see what they had, and also because I had a few discs waiting for me (ironically, it was the little shiny plastic things I was ready to purchase instead of the big black ones). But there weren't any parking spaces close to the store, and the family was in the car, and I was a little tired. So I went yesterday. What I needed wasn't contingent on getting there on record store day. Plus, with 45 minutes until closing, I knew that I had missed the boat on any of the big magic from that day.

I could have picked up the special Record Store Day edition of the Dave Holland Octet CD, for the price of two copies of the regular disc. Had it included another disc of music, I would've grabbed it without a second thought. But it had five concert posters in it, which are nice I'm sure, but didn't strike me as mandatory. If my tax refund had arrived before the weekend, there's a good chance I would've squandered $83 on the six-10"-records edition of the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs. That's a lot of getting up to change the records between sides, but it's also a lot of beautiful 10" records.

The only real Record Store Day exclusive I purchased was a Moby Grape live 45. I'm pretty sure the version of "Rounder" is the same one that I have on the two-disc comp from the 1990s, but the version of "Sitting by the Window" is unavailable anywhere else. Yoink.

I finally picked up the latest Lou Barlow album, Goodnight Unknown, which is as awesome as I hoped it would be. Also got Grant Hart's most recent solo disc and a recent remastered version of Cecil Taylor's Conquistador, which I only had on tape.

Another crazy record from my past

Last night there was a record fair, of sorts, at Belvedere's in Lawrenceville. It reminded me of the record fairs that I attended in the '80s, except this one was held in a bar, and it was free to set up tables and hawk your wares. Plus, if you wanted to smoke or have a beer while wandering around the tables of vinyl, that was okay too.

I picked up a small handful of albums, but the one that got me really geeked was not the original RCA copy of Charlie Mingus' Tijuana Moods but the copy of Ted Heath's The Big Ones.

This was an album that my family had on 8-track as a kid and it eventually met its demise after I played it one too many times. The album features the British Heath leading his big band through classic pop hits from the late '60s/early '70s like "Spinning Wheel," "Light My Fire" and "Good Morning Starshine," among others. Back when I heard it, I always had a naive trust in musicians. As far as I was concerned they knew what they were doing and there was no such thing as a really bad idea, musically speaking. Playing "Satisfaction" on a trombone with a plunger mute? Surrrrrrrrrrrrrrre, why not? Follow that chorus with a modulation and give the melody over to the oboe? Why not? Sometimes you come to your senses and think, what the Sam Hill is going on here? That happened Friday night when I got home and slapped this critter on the turntable. But not necessarily in a bad way.

The Big Ones contains a good number of arrangements from Squaresville like that. But it has a lot of great drum breaks that rescue such tunes like the stiffest reading of "Spinning Wheel" ever. As the record proceeds, through "Light My Fire" and its amusing acoustic guitar and bongos intro, through "Woman Woman" and "Nights in White Satin," Side One closes with "Get Back" which starts off a bit like a marching band and switches to a swinging 2/2 riff that opens up room for solos. Maybe this album will work, you think.
Side Two comes out fighting - which is surprising considering that it begins with "In the Year 2525." When I finally heard Zager and Evans' original version of the song, it was a huge letdown. Not only where the lyrics idiotic in a way that tries to convey a deep message about the Future and the Man without having any of the tools to pull of such a feat, but it had none of the firepower of this version. With each new verse, the band gets fuller and louder, like when the trombones who come in during the second phrase, evoking the feeling of the secret police that are marching down your street to stop any free thinking. (Hey - music evokes images. ) And not only does this song have multiple drum breaks, it has two drummers! In different channels! Two-bar break in the right channel. Two-bar break in the left channel. Add in some key changes, and a rubato guitar intro, and you've got a kick-ass big band. My only hope is that several high school marching bands got ahold of this chart during the '70s and wailed away on this.

Where do you go from there? Well, Ted and the gang proceeds to the 5th Dimension's "Don'cha Hear Me Calling To Ya" which turns out like Gerald Wilson's big band version of "Viva Torado" in the way that it riffs, shifts up a half-step and then comes back down. "Good Morning Starshine" has a Tonight Show-style arrangement, meaning a little square. But without those idiotic "gloop gloopy" lyrics and with the addition of some killer press rolls and drum fills during the fade-out, it succeeds. The album closes with a Tom Jones' "Love Me Tonight" that has the dynamics worthy of the singer himself. And a killer vibes solo. And some tympani breaks.

Finding The Big Ones was definitely one of those purchases that takes me back to my younger, carefree days. I have a feeling a lot of musical things on this album have shaped my listening a lot more than I realize. I'll enjoy all the goofiness as much as the well-executed moments. So while $8 was a little steep for such an album, it was worth it because I've already gotten at least $5 of pleasure out of it. Besides, it's in excellent shape.

Dig - it's Harry Babasin!

Sometimes I get the idea in my head that I need to find a certain record (it's usually a record; rarely a CD) for no other reason than I want to hear it, as soon as possible. Right around the time that Bud Shank died, I got curious about Harry Babasin, the bassist on several of the saxophonist's early 10"s. Part of the interest stemmed from his name. I don't know if BAB-a-sin is the correct pronunciation, but if it's said that way, it sounds like a set of scat syllables. And Eugene Chadbourne wrote a very detailed biography of Harry on allmusic.com that made him sound like more than just an obscure West Coast cat. Turns out he was a cellist in addition to a bassist.

The Babasin Bug died off not too long after that. In fact, I came across one of his albums at Jerry's last summer and ended up putting it back because I already had about three with me. And it didn't have the appealing, "original pressing" lure of some albums.

Well, there I was in Jerry's yesterday when I stumbled across a copy of the self-titled album by the Jazzpickers, a quintet spearheaded by Mr. HB. On EmArcy, with the infamous "drummer logo," it had all the trappings of the Find of the Day. I just got through the first side of it, and it's pretty swinging. It didn't occur to me right away, but there's no bass on the whole album. Crazy, man. At least for that time period.

I'm guessing the quintet pre-dated the Chico Hamilton group because the liner notes don't compare the guitar/cello/flute instrumentation to that group, and the sound is pretty similar: subdued but burning underneath. Plus, Buddy Collette is on this album, and he was in the original Hamilton group. There's no mention of Harry's stints with Bud Shank either.

Another point of interest, sort of, is the band itself. Boy, these cats are the squarest looking bunch of dudes ever. Well, Harry has the Dave Brubeck/egghead look going on. But vibist/drummer Bob Harrington looks like Jack Webb's homely brother, and guitarist Don Overberg should've learned to smile without letting his bad teeth show. Collette and drummer Bill Douglas look okay, but they have a lot to balance out.

It just goes to show you that you can never judge a jazz band by their looks. I guess back then not everyone could look as hip as the Jazz Messengers.

...and while we're speaking of the Verlaines

In the time that I didn't blog over the last month, I've had more and more cravings for albums that I listened to 20-some years ago. Maybe I've finally reached that age where all I'm really interested in are albums that I played a lot in my, uh, youth.

The Verlaines' Bird Dog was one such album. It fell into my hands in the summer of 1988. A fanzine that I published (very sporadically) called Discourse occasionally received albums from Homestead Records, which was releasing several bands from the Verlaines' New Zealand home at that time. Over the next year or so, the label would familiarize us all with the musical force that was New Zealand. This was really my first exposure to it. (They released an album by the Chills around that same time, but that didn't spark the interest right away.)

From the beginning of Bird Dog, guitarist/singer Graeme Downes indicates that he's not a standard writer by any means - this isn't punk rock, nor is some modern version of folk. He sings in an impassioned voice that often goes into high tenor territory, taking the drama up there with it. An easy comparison to a singer of that era would be Billy Bragg, but only in delivery. Downes sounds like he has a lot more training. (As a side note, he was working on a Masters on the music of Gustav Mahler, so he wasn't just some punk with a good set of pipes.)

"Makes No Difference" was an unusual opening piece since it moves along slowly, with a sad trumpet and harmonica break at the end of each chorus. But the melody and vaguely dark lyrics make it riveting. "Just Mum" has a bassoon, of all instruments, joining the trio in the coda. It starts off playing just two long tones and the simplicity and tension of the second note adds an ominous edge to the music. I'm not sure if "baroque pop" was a term that someone else applied to the Verlaines, or if I came up with that. Regardless, songs like this justify it.

Nothing in the first few songs prepare you for punch that comes with Side One's last track, "Slow Sad Love Song." After a low bass note and a few distant notes blown from an oboe, Downes begins a tense lyric about the aftermath of a relationship, which again comes in indirect but brilliant verses. When the tempo increases, it builds to a climax, in which he lays his heart and life on the line:

The only thing that you spared me to love was your breath
and now it's gone
So long, it's been good to know you
So long, it's been good to know you

and in what always seemed like a pretty deeply cutting line:

Sooooooooooooo long....... to know you

which he ends with a wail that takes the band into the biggest, most thunderous climax since "A Day in the Life." That song probably inspired this ending, but instead of trying to induce some sort of euphoria, the Verlaines create the sound that someone hears in their head after they've thrown themselves off a cliff. And it goes on for several seconds, making sure that you understand what the character is feeling. I was nursing a broken heart at the time, so that angst (oh yeah, I was 20) really resonated with me. All these years later, it still packs a wallop because it's done so well.

If you listen to the CD version of Bird Dog (that format was just entering the independent label field by then), the next song presents a more hopeful comedown. The jazzy, acoustic "Only Dream Left" almost implies that Downes didn't do himself in, but has moved on and has found someone to help him cope, albeit someone with a heavy weight on their shoulders if the title is any indication. But anyone who has the album edition would need to peel themselves up off the floor after that huge roar before they can breathe freely.

There are plenty of other reasons to recommend Bird Dog, but "Slow Sad Love Song" is reason enough to hunt it down. "Worth the price of admission," and all those other great musical cliches.

On being a writer

Playing right now: Satoko Fujii's Mado - Desert Ship

I was emailing with a fellow music writer a few days ago. This is a guy who's been writing about music for ages. As an example, I recently pulled out the Verlaines' Bird Dog (from 1988) and said writer's byline was among the clips in the press kit that included reviews of previous albums. (More to come on that album in an upcoming post.) Suffice to say this is someone that I sort of look up to, or even envy.

The reason we were writing was that I bemoaning the trouble of getting paid for some freelance gigs, and he agreed, even going on to say that he recently filled out an application at a Home Depot. Maybe he was joking around, but I kind of doubt it.

Wow, I thought. After 20-some years, it's come to this. A guy who's a vet in the industry, who could write rings around most young buck writers half his age (and he does) might have to take a job at a Home freakin' Depot. Nothing against that store. Hell, I was there today. But it's a sad state of affairs for music journalism that a guy of that high caliber can't make a living by writing about music anymore. Where does that leave a mid-level or sub-mid-level yutz like me? Maybe I have it okay with my retail job and my occasional freelance gigs.

CD review: Jon Lundbom & Big Five Chord - Accomplish Jazz

Jon Lundbom& Big Five Chord

Accomplish Jazz

(Hot Cup)

"Truncheon" starts off Accomplish Jazz with an opening line that sounds rather evocative of Eric Dolphy's "Out to Lunch." The similarity doesn't quite extend beyond that phrase, which ends with a long sustained note from the tenor and alto saxophones while guitarist/leader Lundbom does some pretty picking underneath them. But considering the name of the tune, which could be a mash-up of Dolphy's title and how the band takes this tune back to the trenches, it seems like less a coincidence than my bad habit of hearing similarities between different songs.

Besides, it's a great jumping off point no matter what the origin.

Lundbom is an intriguing composer and an even more idiosyncratic guitar player, writing songs that have wonderfully odd melodic quirks and playing solos with a tone that wouldn't be out of place in country music. Good country music. To further that point, Accomplish Jazz's one non-original track is a cover of the Louvin Brothers' "The Christian Life." That particular song choice could carry its own baggage with it (irony, understated religious beliefs) but the quintet plays it reverently, so nothing else matters.

Part of the power of this disc can be traced to the caliber of the band, which includes two members of Mostly Other People Do the Killing: alto saxophonist Jon Irabagon and bassist Moppa Elliott, who it turns out was born with the first name Matthew, according to the credits. (Just a little extra surprise for those of us who care about the backgrounds of musicians.) Bryan Murray, who co-leads another band with Lundbom, plays tenor saxophone. Danny Fischer, who apparently made a name for himself in native Melbourne, Australia before hitting New York, plays drums.

Irabagon balances his frenzied MOPDtK side and the more straight laced personality heard on his recent Concord debut. After Lundbom's solo on "Truncheon," the saxophonist enters playing fast lines over top of the rhythm section without letting his sometimes whiny vocalizing digress into shrieks. He realizes that would be too easy. Elliott shows amazing discipline during the 12-minute sort-of ballad "Phoenetics" by holding down the tempo with metronomic double-stops while Lundbom's metallic, dreamy noise drives Irabagon from pensiveness into pungent upper range honks. When Lundbom enters for his own solo, his clean tone makes him sound like a different guitarist, and his crisp execution is spellbinding.

Murray's solo on "The Christian Life" starts with a smooth, almost gospel swing that incorporates guttural singing/growling through the horn as he blows. "Tick-Dog" begins with four minutes of a choppy guitar/drums duet before moving into a loopy rhythm that is based on Cedar Walton's "Bolivia" but also seems to have either the spirit or flair of both Tim Berne and prog rock. Murray's solo works over the horn's whole range, stringing together small phrases that make a fascinating whole. He also inspires the rhythm section to turn up the heat as they in turn drive him.

"Baluba, Baluba" uses a solid funk backbeat and Lundbom avoids funky riffage in favor of another unique melody line, delivered with a bit of distortion. After Irabagon delivers another satisfying journey of a solo, the groove slows down and Lundbom and Murray call, respond, agree with, interrupt and eventually talk over one another. Like the opening track, this one doesn't go back to the theme, it simply stops when guitar and sax have said their piece. That type of arrangement makes the music stand out more because it confounds listeners expecting to hear the head again, and it leaves more of a lasting impression. The same can be said for this whole album.

Since it came out in December, it's still eligible to wind up on 2010 year end lists, where it clearly belongs.

http://www.hotcuprecords.com/

For some reason, Mr. Lundbom's review has drawn a lot of spammers on a daily basis, so the comment section has been disabled. 

Last Week - Part Four: Allison Miller & 2 Degrees of Separation

I'm sitting here trying to figure out an opening line for a review of John Lundbom & Big Five Chord's Accomplish Jazz CD and it's not coming. I'm making it harder than it needs to be.

So let me just wrap up the news that's by now almost two and maybe three weeks old about my week of music, which actually began on February 21. But actually this part of it started further back than that.........I think........ aw, screw it:

Allison Miller - a fine, fine drummer. She has a new album coming out this month and it just so happens she's playing Club Cafe the same day it drops. If that wasn't cool enough, Myra Melford is the pianist with her on that tour. Bassist Todd Sickafoose and violinist Jenny Scheinman are also along for the ride.

Before I talked to her two weeks ago, I had no idea about the show. I was calling to talk about her new album with those cats, Boom Tic Boom. The interview was for a JazzTimes article, which I filed last week, bringing all the deadline stuff to a close for the big week of music.

Allison and I have one degree of separation. One of her best friends used to live and play in a band with my ex-bandmate Megan Williams from Up the Sandbox. I was explaining this to UTS' singer Leslie Fleisher, and before I could get to her name, she said, "Are you talking about Allison Miller?" Turns out her girlfriend went to college with Allison. Maybe Allison should cover an Up the Sandbox song because of her connection to the band.

(Update, June 2014 - This entry has taken the cake for the number of spam posts, so I'm disabling the comments.)

Last week - Part Three: ESP and vinyl problems

Playing right now: Vijay Iyer - Historicity

So after buying the two CDs mentioned in the last entry (one of which is playing right now), I got to work transcribing some interviews for two pieces that I wrote last week. The first interview was with Nik Westman, the frontman of the band Nik & the Central Plains. That piece ran in Pittsburgh City Paper this week and can be viewed at http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A75980

Last Tuesday, I finally received a package from ESP Records. About two weeks earlier I received an email from them saying that they were having a special "Let's cut down on the inventory" sale, and select CDs were $6. I bought Frank Lowe's Black Beings and Don Cherry's Live at the Cafe Montmartre 1996 Volume 3. I also decided to splurge a little bit and bought the vinyl reissue of Albert Ayler's one-sided clear vinyl Bells. It's a limited edition of 1,000 and since Ayler's Spiritual Unity was out of stock, I opted for this one. I knew if I waited I wouldn't get it before it sold out and I'd rue the day.

Now, of course if you've ever read this blog, you know how I feel about vinyl. I love it. I'm not quite ready to buy a vinyl album if it's nearly twice as much as the CD version (Historicity, in this case), but I've been known to pay a few bucks more that the CD price to get an album. And I understand that since vinyl is pressed in limited quantities that the labels have to charge a little more. I'm fine with that. If my extra bucks can help a label continue, I will support them.

But if you're going to press vinyl, could you at least do a quality check to make sure it isn't pressed off center? I put Bells on and the tone arm was practically undulating. That's not really an issue with Albert Ayler since he plays with such wide vibrato that pitch is relative. But what about the Pearls Before Swine album that ESP just reissues? If I got that and "Surrealist Waltz" (the final song on the album) was all wobbly like that, you bet I'd be pissed.

This isn't the first time this happened to me. I returned a BYG/Actuel album because the off center pressing ruined any kind of enjoyment I could get out of the album. My copy of Ida's Lovers Prayers has a lot of serious droning going on throughout it, and three of the four sides have pressing issues. The first song on side 4 has a noise at the beginning that could be guitar amp noise, but it sounds more like a scratch in the pressing. (I still haven't used my digital download for compare and contrast.) This isn't some flimsy vinyl either. This is 180 gram stuff that makes us vinyl geeks drool.

I'm keeping the Albert Ayler record. For one thing, it's written as #18 out of a pressing of 1000. Besides, with a pressing that small, I feel pretty sure that the rest of the records are like that. But I hope the people releasing vinyl will realize that if this happens too often, the folks who love records won't trust them and then the vinyl action will really drop. Can you imagine how you'd feel if you purchased that latest four-record set of Monk at the It Club, only to find out the they're pressed off-center and that Charlie Rouse really sounds drunk?

Last Week Part Two - Vijay Iyer & Magnetic Fields

Playing right now: Milksop Holly - Milkweeds (Shimmy-Disc)
(One of Kramer's final releases, and a mighty fine one. Trippy, sleepy and dreamy like it was 1989, when in fact this came out in 1999.)

Don't let the title of this entry fool you. There are no collaborations - that I know of - going on between the popular pianist and Stephin Merritt, although that could be cool. I'm putting the two names together because last week I bought the latest releases by both artists on the same day during what turned out to be a Week of Music.

A few times a year, I hear something that makes me think, Okay, jazz is very much alive and this person/band is taking it into new uncharted waters. Last year it was Stephan Lehman, as well as Chris Potter, both on their new albums as leaders. But I also thought about that at Interval, the Monday Night Jazz Jam Session at Ava, here in Pittsburgh. The music was being pushed into the future, into the Now and we have maps telling us where we are now (meaning that it makes sense) but we know that the next step isn't figured out. Excessive metaphors there, but hopefully you get the idea.

Vijay Iyer's Historicity is like that. It has a bunch of his own tunes, an Andrew Hill piece and some other covers including MIA. They all work and they all smoke. Especially, no pun intended, Hill's "Smoke Stack," which originally was a tad lumbering because it had two basses. Iyer takes the melody and sprays it all over you.

Even though I peeled the shrink wrap off in the car immediately after buying it, and popped in the CD player right then and there, it took me a couple days to get through the album. Not because it's that heavy, but because I was, uh, busy. However, listening to it a bit at a time made sure that none of it blurs together either.

Magnetic Fields I didn't get to until today. Listening to it going to and waiting at Pennzoil for an oil change. Merritt is this generation's Cole Porter. All his songs are catchy and his lyrics are brilliantly witty. I need to listen to it again soon to figure out how much I like it.

Right now I have to hit the hay before I nod off and this fhhhhhhhhhhhhh [I actually did for a second and that was the result.]

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.

-------------------------------------------------
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.

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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.