Monday, October 2, 2017


Music Week

Music: Current count 28749 [28719] rated (+30), 404 [398] unrated (+6).

I wrapped up September's Streamnotes on Saturday. I couldn't update the website, so the only workable link at present is here. Inability to update means that eight cover pics of A- records won't be found. Same for the seven A- records in the list below (only one not in Streamnotes). Still no idea when I'll manage to straighten this mess out. There are so many things to do I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around it all.

The one new record was recommended by Phil Overeem, as he expanded his 2017 My Fav-O-Rite New and Old Records of 2017 list to 85. I'm not much of a Cajun fan, but the latest Lost Bayou Ramblers album hits the spot.

I tried closing the week on Sunday, but found a couple more incoming records on my messy desk, so I figured I should at least add them, and wound up updating the rated totals as well. One thing I notices was that I hadn't recorded the grade (A-) for Samo Salamon Sextet: The Colours Suite, so most likely that didn't get registered in its appropriate Music Week post. Things slowed down after posting on Saturday. I've been playing new jazz in FIFO order, but decided to let the September Intakt releases jump the line. Both -- an Irčne Schweizer duo with Joey Baron and a second record by Tom Rainey's Obbligato quintet -- are somewhat less than I hoped for (well, expected), but still close enough I wound up sinking a lot of time in them. Schweizer has a lot of drummer duos on record, and the ones with Han Bennink and Pierre Favre are nothing short of astonishing. I've long admired Baron, but he doesn't bring out the same spark in the pianist. Rainey's record is tougher to decide -- I'm not really much good with subtle, and there's a lot of that here.

I tried to catch up with Robert Christgau's recent picks, and was most impressed by L'Orange. The 2015 album with Jeremiah Jae had the special mix of sound and words that Christgau recognized, but I was every bit as taken by the 2016 collaboration with Mr. Lif, in part because its Orwellian dystopia seems amusingly quaint next to the actual hell we're (mostly) living through. I woke up this morning to news of last night's mass shooting in Las Vegas, with TPM offering as its lead story: White House: 'Premature' to Talk Gun Control in Wake of Las Vegas Shooting. "Too late" would have been more like it, but with an average of one mass shooting per day (273 times in the first 273 days of this year, counting 4+ people shot as a "mass shooting"), timing doesn't really seem to be the question. (For a level-headed summary of the facts: German Lopez: Gun violence in America, explained in 17 maps and charts.)

I come from a family chock full of hunters, and I grew up with guns in my home and in the homes of most of my relatives. My father took a course on how to do taxidermy, so I also grew up surrounded by stuffed dead animals -- they were my specialty at school show-and-tells (the rattlesnakes were the biggest hits, but the badger and owl were the stars). The Idaho relatives are more likely to have stuffed bear and moose. One of them not only hunts; he makes his own antique rifles to get back closer to the pioneer spirit. My father and most of his generation served as soldiers, and that's still pretty common among the Arkansas-Oklahoma relatives. So I'm not someone who gets riled up easily over guns. Nor do I think it's government's job to protect us from every possible harm -- especially self-harm (one of those charts shows that guns kill many more people through suicide than murder -- I'd like to see the same chart include accidents and "justified" self-defense, which is surely the smallest slice of the pie). Still, I do have a problem with stupid, and there's way too much of that -- on both sides, but it's far from distributed evenly.

It's also important to realize that when people understand a problem, they can if not fix at least ameliorate it. In this regard, I noticed two tweets today. One pointed out that "The Onion has run this story verbatim five times since 2014, switching out only city, photo, and body count" (link). The story title: "No Way to Prevent This," Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens." The other was The Onion's own tweet: "Americans Hopeful This Will Be Last Mass Shooting Before They Stop On Their Own For No Reason." Probably the single most obvious point one can draw from the Las Vegas shooting is that it would have been much less destructive had a federal law banning assault weapons not been allowed to expire back when Bush was president. (The latest count I've seen is 59 dead, 525 injured. That takes a lot of bullets over a mere 15 minutes.) Sure, it's not like Congress authorized the massacre, but that Congress could have prevented it (and some lesser cases) had they maintained existing law. You can blame them not doing so on NRA lobbying ($3,781,803 donations to current members of Congress), but I think it has more to do with continuous war since 2001, habituating us to the notion that all we need to solve problems is more firepower.

I bring up the lapse of law because Congress has just allowed several other important laws to expire, replacing them with nothing but anarchy and cowardice. As Rep. Joe Kennedy III listed them:

  • Healthcare for low-income kids
  • Community health centers
  • Loans for low-income college students

This story is unlikely to make the network news, especially on a day with so much bloodshed, but over time they will affect many more lives than the shooter in Las Vegas, and some of those effects will be dire. Again, these are not new things that we cannot do. They are things that we have been doing -- things that we actually should be doing better -- but are stopping because we've elected a Congress that can't be bothered even maintaining a semblance of civilization. (Isn't there a quote somewhere, to the effect that taxes are what we pay for civilization? One reason these laws are lapsing is that Congress is preoccupied with slashing taxes -- no doubt figuring that if they focus on helping the wealthy civilization will take care of itself.)


Speaking of dead people, Tom Paley and Tom Petty passed in the last few days. [The Petty report may have been premature.] The former was a founder of the legendary folk group New Lost City Ramblers. Their early work, before Paley left in 1962, was their best. The latter is a well known rocker, although the first image that pops into my mind is the girl in Silence of the Lambs singing along to "American Girl" in the car on her way to being kidnapped.


New records rated this week:

  • Atomic: Six Easy Pieces (2016 [2017], Odin): [r]: B+(**)
  • Lena Bloch & Feathery: Heart Knows (2017, Fresh Sound New Talent): [cd]: B+(*)
  • Collective Order: Vol. 2 (2017, self-released): [cd]: B+(*)
  • Fat Tony: MacGregor Park (2017, First One Up, EP): [bc]: A-
  • Four Tet: New Energy (2017, Text): [r]: B+(**)
  • Eric Hofbauer: Ghost Frets (2016 [2017], Creative Nation Music): [cd]: B+(***)
  • Eric Hofbauer: Prehistoric Jazz Volume 4: Reminiscing in Tempo (2017, Creative Nation Music): [cd]: B+(***)
  • L'Orange & Jeremiah Jae: The Night Took Us in Like Family (2015, Mellow Music Group): [bc]: A-
  • L'Orange & Mr. Lif: The Life & Death of Scenery (2016, Mello Music Group): [bc]: A-
  • Lost Bayou Ramblers: Kalenda (2017, Rice Pump): [r]: A-
  • Matt Mitchell: A Pouting Grimace (2017, Pi): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Chris Parker: Moving Forward Now (2017, self-released): [cd]: B-
  • Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever: The French Press (2017, Sub Pop, EP): [r]: B+(**)
  • Irčne Schweizer/Joey Baron: Live! (2015 [2017], Intakt): [cd]: B+(***)
  • Lyn Stanley: The Moonlight Sessions: Volume Two (2017, A.T. Music): [cd]: B+(***)
  • Stik Figa: Central Standard Time (2017, Mello Music Group): [r]: B+(***)
  • Summit Quartet: Live in Sant' Arresi (2016 [2017], Audiographic): [bc]: B+(**)
  • Fred Thomas: Changer (2017, Polyvinyl): [r]: B+(***)
  • Nestor Torres: Jazz Flute Traditions (2017, Alfi): [cd]: B+(*)
  • Trio Da Kali and Kronos Quartet: Ladilikan (2017, World Circuit): [r]: B+(*)
  • Vector Families: For Those About to Jazz/Rock We Salute You (2017, Sunnyside): [r]: A-
  • Ken Wiley: Jazz Horn Redux (2014 [2017], Krug Park Music): [cd]: B+(*)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

  • Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever: Talk Tight (2015 [2017], Sub Pop, EP): [r]: A-

Old music rated this week:

  • James Brown: Cold Sweat (1967, King): [r]: A-
  • L'Orange & Stik Figa: The City Under the City (2013, Mello Music Group): [r]: B+(*)
  • L'Orange & Kool Keith: Time? Astonishing? (2015, Mello Music Group): [bc]: B+(**)
  • Fred Thomas: Everything Is Pretty Much Entirely Fucked (2002, Little Hands): [r]: B+(*)
  • Fred Thomas: All Are Saved (2015, Polyvinyl): [r]: B+(**)


Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Borderlands Trio [Stephan Crump/Kris Davis/Eric McPherson]: Asteroidea (Intakt): October 15
  • Cowboys and Frenchmen: Bluer Than You Think (Outside In Music): October 13
  • Jason Paul Curtis: These Christmas Days (self-released): November 24
  • Jeff Dingler: In Transit (self-released)
  • Hans Hassler: Wie Die Zeit Hinter Mir Her (Intakt): October 15
  • Steve Hobbs: Tribute to Bobby (Challenge): January 8
  • Bob Ferrel: Bob Ferrel's Jazztopian Dream (Bob Ferrel Music): October 6
  • Danny Janklow: Elevation (Outside In Music)
  • Alma Micic: That Old Feeling (Whaling City Sound)
  • Nicole Mitchell and Haki Madhubuti: Liberation Narratives (Black Earth Music)
  • Paul Moran: Smokin' B3 Vol. 2: Still Smokin' (Prudential): October 29
  • Lewis Porter/Phil Scarff Group: Three Minutes to Four (Whaling City Sound)
  • Adam Rudolph: Morphic Resonances (M.O.D. Technologies): October 20
  • Samo Salamon/Szilárd Mezei/Achille Succi: Planets of Kei: Free Sessions Vol. 1 (Not Two)
  • Marta Sánchez Quintet: Danza Imposible (Fresh Sound New Talent)
  • The U.S. Army Blues: Swinging in the Holidays (self-released)
  • Deanna Witkowski: Makes the Heart to Sing: Jazz Hymns (Tilapia)
  • Mark Zaleski Band: Days, Months, Years (self-released): October 6

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