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Monday, November 29, 2010Music WeekMusic: Current count 17413 [17385] rated (+28), 841 [823] unrated +18). A pretty incoherent week. Unrated jumped because I finally catalogued the previous week's haul. Also did a fair amount of Rhapsody, which doesn't deplete existing stores.
No Jazz ProspectingActually, I have enough to meet my minimum standards, but that's only due to a sudden burst on Sunday. The week as a whole is best forgotten: a painful one where my only notable accomplishment was to whip up a substantial Thanksgiving repast. I made some effort to listen to the long list of rated-but-not-yet-reviewed Jazz CG hits, but moved very few of them to the reviewed side. This coming week should be the one where I finally bear down and close out the column. Also should knock out a year-end list, at least for the Voice's jazz critics poll. (Haven't heard anything from Pazz & Jop yet.) One of my more exhausting wastes of time has been the construction of my metacritic file, which is currently more systematic than it's ever been before. It currently sums up year-end list thinking as follows (with my grades tacked on for value added):
I haven't heard the next two records on the list -- Joanna Newsom (at 3CD seems like much too much work) and Flying Lotus (not available on Rhapsody), but unlike last year (cf. Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, damn near everything else) there's nothing above this year that I dislike (although below top ten it does get ugly: Grinderman, Ariel Pink, Gorillaz, Yeasayer). One easy prediction is that come Pazz & Jop time Kanye West will break into the above list. It dropped late, and stands to cross over bigger than Big Boi. There are a lot of biases built into this list, and many of them carry over into P&J, but the latter is slightly more favorable to crossover rap and old farts (not much of an issue this year, but might lift Robert Plant and Neil Young out of the 60s into top 40), and no professional critic is unaware of West. Harder to guess jazz polls from my metacritic file, but Jason Moran's Ten has to be the frontrunner, followed by Vijay Iyer's Solo, maybe Charles Lloyd's Mirror, but hard to say after that. I've mostly been looking at the JJA lists. (Mary Halvorson's Saturn Sings looks like the big one I didn't get -- gee thanks, Scott -- as well as the Mosaic boxes in the reissue category.) Pretty confident I can finish the column this week. One thing I can do for now is go ahead and publish the unpacking, which I had neglected last week:
Later this week: Downloader's Diary, a smallish Recycled Goods, and a substantial Rhapsody Streamnotes. Friday, November 26, 2010Hack ThirtyAlex Pareene: The War Room Hack Thirty: One view of the "worst columnists and cable news commentators America has to offer." Looks to me like more print than broadcast, but I watch so little TV, read so few of their papers, and never listen to radio, so I'm not to best person to sort this out. I don't recall ever reading Richard Cohen, and several other names come up blank. On the other hand, I can think of others who escaped the list. Perhaps Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and their ilk were exempted as entertainers, or maybe their demagoguery is so blatant that they don't pretend to be anything else. This isn't really a list of right-wingers, although they figure prominently, and isn't a ranking of vile political opinions (otherwise Michael Savage and Max Boot and Mark Steyn would have ranked high). Pareene namechecks Ann Coulter, then picks the decidedly more mediocre Laura Ingraham. Self-conscious centrists figure prominently, especially ones who fell hook, line and sinker for the Bush war line (lies not least of all). But that may be less because they're centrists than because they're gullible when the propaganda winds blow strong, and that's ultimately what defines them as hacks. As for active right-wing propagandists like Jonah Goldberg, Bill Kristol, and David Brooks, they tripped themselves up so repeatedly they couldn't be ignored as mere ideologists. This was done as 31 separate posts, so work through the Earlier Articles links or pick and choose from the index. Nearly all are worth reading. And the Thomas Friedman one has links to two Matt Taibbi reviews that nail him perfectly. [Links: The World Is Flat and Hot, Flat, and Crowded]
I scanned through the comments for more names. Most often nominated, by far, was Charles Krauthammer, but also: Fouad Ajami, Fred Barnes, Bob Beckel, Wolf Blitzer, Max Boot, Neil Bortz, L Brent Bozell, Andrew Breitbart, Tom Brokaw, Pat Buchanan, Alan Colmes, Joe Conason, Monica Crowley, Victor Hanson Davis, Lou Dobbs, Ross Douthat, Paul Gigot, Bernard Goldberg, David Gregory, Sean Hannity, Melissa Harris-Perry [aka Melissa Harris-Lacewell], Christopher Hitchens, David Horowitz, Arianna Huffington, Al Hunt, John Kass, Michael Kinsley, Nicholas Kristof, Matt Lauer, Michael Ledeen, Mark Levin, Mara Liasson, Rich Lowry, Gene Lyons, Michelle Malkin, Ruth Marcus Chris Matthews, Megan McArdle, Dick Morris, Keith Olbermann, Bill O'Reilly, Kathleen Parker, Daniel Pipes, Frank Rich, Cokie Roberts, Charlie Rose, Michael Savage, Laura Schlessinger, Bob Schieffer, George Stephanopoulos, Mark Steyn, John Stossel, Andrew Sullivan, Cal Thomas, Chris Wallace, Juan Williams, Bob Woodward, John Yoo. I left out the Salon writers (e.g., one commenter repeatedly taunting Joan Walsh), and I'm inclined to dismiss Sullivan and most of the liberals (Kinsley, Rich) as pure right-wing snark. One letter writer complained about the parochial American viewpoint and suggested some more names: Nick Cohen, Mick Hume, Melanie Phillips, Brendan O'Neill, Frank Furedi, Helen Guildberg, Josie Appleton, Bernard Lewis, Barry Rubin, Sam Tannenhaus, John Podhoretz, Emanuele Ottolenghi, Giulio Meotti, Reuel Marc Gerecht. I'm an habitual listmaker myself, so let me say something in defense of lists: the ranking may be near-arbitrary, but building lists forces one to think of aggregates rather than individuals, and as such it puts individuals into a reasonable context. Clearly, a lot of thought goes into who's in/who's out/who ranks where here, and it provides not just a useful guide to individuals but to the whole practice of the opinion wing of the mainstream media. Given its breadth, this strikes me as the most useful broad survey since Matt Taibbi took on the presidential news reporters in 2004 by refereeing Wimblehack (won by Elisabeth Bumiller, something to keep in mind any time you see her byline). Friday, November 26, 2010Turkey ShootI looked through various comments recently on Robert Christgau's lately departed (and now miraculously revived) Consumer Guide, and was surprised to see several hoping for new editions of the long-discontinued Turkey Shoot. For what it's worth, Christgau never much liked doing the November column -- less, I think, each year, not least of all because it requires listening to so much bad music, but also because he's always been so conscientious about minor grade distinctions as well as crafting his prose. I, on the other hand, frequently invoked the following maxim in my software project work: anything not worth doing is not worth doing well. Therefore, I don't feel any guilt about offering you the following bare list of certifiable turkeys. Was aiming for 20 but only came up with 18. About half came to my attention on year-end lists, and were sampled quickly (and cheaply) on Rhapsody. And, of course, since I wasn't looking for crap, I didn't find as much as I would have had I been.
Facebook NoteFixed a lot of good food yesterday -- roast duck, east asian grilled beef/lamb/fish/shrimp (bulgogi and satays), fried rice, noodles, three veggies, two pies and a gingerbread roulade stuffed with maple-flavored whipped cream -- under difficult circumstances (sewer backup -- thanks especially to Ram for helping clean up that mess). Mostly back to normal now; back still pretty sore. Monday, November 22, 2010Music WeekMusic: Current count 17385 [17348] rated (+37), 823 [840] unrated (-17). Chugging along. Should move to finishing Jazz CG. Hurt back working on garage, and that's slowing me down and bumming me out. Also note that J.D. Burns died last week -- one of my cousins, a former big shot in the military-industrial complex; also Chalmers Johnson, an important critic of American imperialism. Jazz Prospecting (CG #25, Part 9)Hurt my back yesterday trying to build a rack for storing 4x8 sheets of plywood, panels, whatever. Had a short window of good weather, and failed to get what should have been a fairly simple job done. Now it's 30 degrees colder and I'm semi-crippled and genuinely bummed. The change in the weather also screws up my initial plans for Thanksgiving dinner -- now they're predicting 19-33° F with likely precipitation -- so I have to rejigger my plans, and worry about making my back worse. Bummer. Meanwhile, I should be closing out Jazz CG instead of listening to more new stuff -- especially since I keep finding things that I won't be able to squeeze in. The column should be leading my findings, but the year-end list I'm expected to file in the next two weeks will mostly be records that have yet to appear in Jazz CG. I'm way behind, and the way I feel can't imagine a way to dig myself out. Bummer. Matt Herskowitz: Jerusalem Trilogy (2009-10 [2010], Justin Time): Pianist, AMG lists him under classical although his MySpace lists jazz and alternative first. First record was Plays Gershwin, so you can take that either way. Uses a lot of strings here -- Lara St. John's violin, Mike Block's cello, Matt Fieldes's bass (electric as well as acoustic), the horns limited to Daniel Schnyder's soprano sax and flute, and Bassam Saba's neys -- Saba also plays oud, another string instrument. Starts with a piece called "Polonaise Libanaise," then goes into the title set. Shades of klezmer, but sounds more like tango to me with its swoosh and drama. "Crossbones" starts with heavy rock chords, like Keith Emerson aping Rachmaninoff, then segues into an improv that leaves Emerson in the dust. Ends with Prokofiev. B+(***) Marshall Allen/Matthew Shipp/Joe Morris: Night Logic (2009 [2010], RogueArt): In the label's minimalist design style, the artists are listed with first initials, but I figured I should go ahead and spell them out. Allen is well into his 80s now; b. 1924, he joined the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1956 and still directs it in its ghost band phase. He has a few albums since the late 1990s with his name on the marquee, like this one alongside other notables. He plays alto sax and flute, and is gritty enough on the sax that he draws out Shipp's David S. Ware Quartet mode, which itself is worth the price of admission. Morris is best known for his guitar, but plays bass here. B+(***) Jan Garbarek/The Hilliard Ensemble: Officium Novum (2009 [2010], ECM New Series): The third collaboration between the mediaeval choral group and the Norwegian saxophonist, again playing more of his curved soprano than tenor. The sax is a clear contrast to the voices, and no one quite matches the clarity of tone and measured riffing that Garbarek brings to such affairs. This was especially striking in the original Officium (1993), but grew tiring in 1998's Mnemosyne. This splits the difference, which doesn't make it just right -- more like: just adequate. B+(*) Roscoe Mitchell and the Note Factory: Far Side (2007 [2010], ECM): Venerable AACM saxophonist (b. 1940), leads a mostly Chicago/Detroit-based double quartet, recorded live in Burghausen for Bayerischer Rundfunk: two pianos (Craig Taborn, Vijay Iyer), two basses (Jaribu Shahid, Harrison Bankhead, the latter also switching to cello), two drumsets (Tani Tabbal, Vincent Davis), two horns (Corey Wilkes on trumpet/flugelhorn is the other). Four long pieces, like in the old days. Perhaps to soothe the label the first one takes a while to gear up, and there are uneventful spots here and there. But the clash of pianos is pretty amazing, and the horns can bring some noise, especially from the leader. B+(***) Rodrigo Amado: Searching for Adam (2010, Not Two): Tenor saxophonist, also plays baritone here, b. 1964, Portugal, has put together an impressive discography since 2000, first with the Lisbon Improvisation Players. Quartet with Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet, flugelhorn), John Hébert (double bass), and Gerald Cleaver (drums). Bynum's ecstatic squeal on the opener kicks this off in high gear. Cleaver is especially formidable. A- Norma Winstone: Stories Yet to Tell (2009 [2010], ECM): Vocalist, b. 1941 in London, came up in avant-jazz circles (married John Taylor; joined Taylor and Kenny Wheeler in Azimuth), although her voice is more the classical soprano. Her 1971 record, Edge of Time, is especially well regarded, but I've missed it and most of her discography. This draws from old folk repertoire (13th century troubadour song, 16th century Mainerio, the ever reliable "trad"), also puts lyrics to Wayne Shorter and Maria Schneider, and picks up a Dor Caymmi song. Glauco Venier plays piano, Klaus Gesing bass clarinet and soprano sax, for an intimate chamber effect. Singer is impeccable. B+(**) I Never Meta Guitar: Guitarists for the 21st Century (2009-10 [2010], Clean Feed): Recording date info is spotty -- just 5 of 16 tracks. Not sure but don't think any of this has been previously released: several contributors have records on the label, but many do not. The main one who does is Elliott Sharp, creditd as producer here. Other better known names: Mary Halvorson, Jeff Parker, Henry Kaiser, Raoul Björkenheim, Noël Akchoté, Nels Cline, Scott Fields. (A couple of others I've heard of, like Brandon Ross and Jean François Pauvros, plus a few I haven't.) Mostly solo guitar, with some effects; one cut adds bass and drums (Michael Gregory's, which, by the way, helps), and Björkenheim is credited with electric viola da gamba. Not a survey of current guitar jazz -- nothing here from the Montgomery or McLaughlin or Pizzarelli or Sharrock schools, and some notables who would have fit in, like Fred Frith, got left out. But it is an interesting subset, and the variety helps as some of these guys can get tedious. B+(*) Wadada Leo Smith and Ed Blackwell: The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer (1986 [2010], Kabell): Trumpet/drums duets, from the vaults. Not sure what it is about Blackwell that holds this so together. But Smith is exceptionally sharp, not that it hurts much when he wanders, as when he plays flute or mibira, or sings. A- Ab Baars: Time to Do My Lions (2008 [2010], Wig): Dutch saxophonist, b. 1955, has a dozen or more albums since 1989. This one is solo: tenor sax, clarinet, shakuhachi. That will most likely be enough to dissuade you, but as these things go, he comes up with interesting patterns, and never gets too ugly to bear. B+(*) Paquito D'Rivera: Tango Jazz: Live at Jazz at Lincoln Center (2010, Sunnyside): Cuban clarinet/also sax player, b. 1948, studied at Havana Conservatory of Music, co-founded Orchestra Cubana de Musica Moderna, and later Irakere, before skipping over the the US in 1980, where has since built up a substantial discography. Opens the liner notes with a rant about "Che Guevara and his henchmen" which even if it's true -- and I don't know one way or the other -- reminds me how convenient America is for right-wing Cubans and how much political damage they've done since being welcomed here so generously (unlike refugees from far more murderous right-wing regimes like El Salvador in the 1980s, or Haiti any time). Still, the gist of D'Rivera's notes is that he loves the tango music that Guevara evidently forsook, and he at least proves his enthusiasm in the grooves. The critical ingredient, not surprisingly, is the Pablo Aslan Ensemble, with Michael Zisman (and on one track Raul Jaurena) on bandoneón, Aslan on bass, and Daniel Piazzolla on drums. Aslan's own tango records have tended to be elegant updates -- Avantango kicked off the series, and Buenos Aires Tango Standards is even better -- but the band gets hot and rowdy here, especially when Gustavo Bergalli cuts loose on trumpet. A- Paquito D'Rivera: Panamericana Suite (2010, MCG Jazz): Large group, twelve musicians and a singer but nothing near a big band -- Diego Urcola is the brass, D'Rivera the reed section, unless you want to count cellist Dana Leong's secondary trombone. Instead, you get vibes/marimba (Dave Samuels), steel pans (Andy Narell), harp (Edmar Castaneda), bandoneon (Hector del Curto), piano (Alon Yavnai), bass (Oscar Stagnero), and lots of percussion. The title cut runs 11:16, not much more than the other pieces, which include a cover of "Con Alma." The pans and vibes are often remarkable, and D'Rivera's clarinet is in peak form. Would rate higher but for the two vocals by soprano Brenda Feliciano, way too operatic for my taste. B+(*) Dan Tepfer Trio: Five Pedals Deep (2010, Sunnyside): Pianist, b. 1982, in France but parents American. Looks like fourth album since 2004 -- AMG lists three, and missed one called Twelve Free Improvisations in Twelve Keys (2009, DIZ). Only one I've heard is a duo with Lee Konitz last year, which made my HM list. Trio includes Thomas Morgan on bass and Ted Poor on drums. Couldn't follow this closely (my fault) but parts were dazzling, and the closing coda from "Body and Soul" ended things on a nice note. Will return later. [B+(***)] Eero Koivistoinen & Co.: 3rd Version (1973 [2010], Porter): Finnish saxophonist, b. 1946, plays soprano, sopranino and tenor here, leading a band with Fender-Rhodes piano (Heikki Sarmanto), guitar (Jukka Tolonen), bass (Pekka Sarmanto), and two drummers (Craig Herndon and Reino Laine). His "selected discography" lists 35 items going back to the Hendrix-influenced Blues Section in 1967, including some UMO Jazz Orchestra records. This has a fusion angle, at least in the guitar/keyb vein, but it's much rougher and freer, even more so than the McLaughlin-influenced English avant-garde of the period. Porter has been reissuing a lot of rare gems from the early 1970s, things I hadn't heard but would have latched onto instantly at the time. Also in their catalog are three discs by the keyboard player here, Heikki Sarmanto, clearly a SFFR. A- Prester John: Desire for a Straight Line (2010, Innova): Duo, with Shawn Persinger on acoustic guitar, David Miller on mandolin. Group name comes from the mediaeval legend, something about a Christian king who lost his nation to the muslims or the Mongols or some such. Music has a mediaevalist flair to it, dense and sometimes monotonous. Persinger has a previous record called The Art of Modern/Primitive Guitar -- title sums up what he's working for. B Bruce Williamson Quartet: Standard Transmission (2009 [2010], Origin): Alto saxophonist (also soprano sax, flute, bass clarinet), cut an album in 1992 called Big City Magic, and his this is his second, plus a couple of side credits per year since 1989. Pianist Art Lande gets a "featuring" on the front cover and kicks off the first song; Peter Barshay (bass) and Alan Hall complete the quartet. Mainstream, a bit on the lush side. One original, a couple of mash-ups (e.g., "Misterioso" + "How High the Moon" = "Mysterious Moon"), mostly covers. Very nice "Nature Boy" with Williamson on soprano sax; flute feature ("The Touch of Your Lips") also well done. Arrangements split between Williamson and Lande. B+(**) Matt Garrison: Familiar Places (2009 [2010], D Clef): Not Jimmy Garrison's bass playing son, who generally goes as Matthew but is listed in Wikipedia as Matt. This one plays tenor and baritone sax, was b. 1979 in Poughkeepsie, NY. First album, mostly a hard bop lineup: Bruce Harris (trumpet), Michael Dease (trombone), Zaccai Curtis (piano, Fender Rhodes), Luques Curtis (bass), Rodney Green (drums). A couple of songs add extra: subbing Claudio Roditti (covers gives him a "featuring" credit) on trumpet (2 cuts) and flugelhorn (1 more); Mark Whitfield (guitar, 2 cuts); Sharel Cassity and Don Braden (flutes, 2 cuts). Nothing wrong with any of this -- well, the second flute song, "Left Behind," is pretty awful -- but it's more like he's trying to establish his credentials than do something distinctive with them. B Anthony Brown's Asian American Orchestra: India & Africa: A Tribute to John Coltrane (2009 [2010], Water Baby): Drummer, mother Japanese, father African-American with a bit of Choctaw, came up on the idea of organizing a big band of Asian-American musicians -- an early fruit was Big Bands Behind Barbed Wire, inspired by Japanese-American bands who played in WWII concentration camps. His records incorporate various bits of Asian music, but they're also masterful exercises in big band arranging -- as was proven, for instance, in Brown's previous Monk's Moods. This one is organized in two sets, mostly using Coltrane's compositions, in particular "India" and "Africa." The India set picks up more Indian music than Coltrane ever knew, including a duet between Steve Oda's sarod and Dana Pandey's tabla. The Africa set is less exotic, and ends with a slice of Mongo Santamaria's "Afro Blue" -- a piece Coltrane used to play. (Afro Blue Impressions is one of Coltrane's better live albums.) The percussion is notable, and the horn solos and section work are muscular and daring. A- John Burnett Orchestra/Buddy DeFranco: Down for Double (2000-10 [2010], Delmark): Standard swing-era big band -- four trumpets, four trombones, five reeds, piano, bass, drums. Songs dedicated to Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Buddy Rich, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Slide Hampton, and (4 of 12) Count Basie. Third album since 2000, when Burnett featured clarinetist Buddy DeFranco on Swingin' in the Windy City. Also headlines DeFranco here, but only on 3 cuts dating from the 2000 sessions. We also get three cuts from 2005, and six from 2010, all live. Loud and brassy. B Ches Smith & These Arches: Finally Out of My Hands (2010, Skirl): Drummer, from San Diego, CA, has more than 30 credits since 2001, two or thre with his name up front. This is a quartet with Tony Malaby (tenor sax), Mary Halvorson (guitar), and Andrea Parkins (accordion, organ, electronics). That's a talented but combustible group, and sometimes I wonder if Smith isn't more into mischief than music here: I go up and down on the record moment to moment. B+(*) Metropole Orkest/John Scofield/Vince Mendoza: 54 (2009 [2010], Emarcy): Mendoza conducts the bloated Orkest -- 15 violins, 5 violas, 2 flutes, oboe, French horn, harp, etc. -- and arranged 7 of 10 pieces, farming the others out to Florian Ross and Jim McNeely. Every now and then they jell into a powerhouse, but mostly they clutter things up. The guest star can still play his trademark fluid guitar, when he gets a chance and can be heard over the din. B- The Glenious Inner Planet (2009-10 [2010], Blue Bamboo): Bassist Glen Ackerman, Houston, TX, first album, basically groove-based although I'm reluctant to file it under pop jazz. With Woddy Witt on tenor/soprano sax and clarinet, Ted Winglinski on keybs, Paul Chester on guitar -- all making notable contributions -- and different drummers for two sessions. B+(**) And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further listening the first time around. Nik Bärtsch's Ronin: Llyria (2010, ECM): Must have been a typo on the promo, since the out-of-sequence "Modul 4" that caught my ear is "Modul 47" here, still the lowest number and the hottest track in a series that threatens to go ambient. The other winner is "Modul 51" where Kaspar Rast goes for rock drama on the drums. The least satisfying of his ECM albums, except during those high points when comparisons are moot. B+(***) Unpacking: I'm behind on this, so will postpone until next week. Sunday, November 21, 2010Weekend RoundupA week's worth of useful links I didn't get around to commenting on previously:
Alex Pareene: House GOP Fails to Defund NPR "Nazis": I was inclined to defund NPR myself when the bathroom radio spontaneously turned itself on the other days and tuned in NPR to spout some nonsense about the insolvency of social security, but then I figured they were only repeating commonplace lies rather than manufacturing them from whole cloth. Besides, what's the alternative? Fox?
The piece then quotes from a Roger Ailes rant calling NPR Nazis, then qualifying ("They are the left wing of Nazism"), then having to apologize (sort of) to Abe Foxman for unauthorized use of the Nazism charge. Wednesday, November 17, 2010Another pile of 40 new book notes: Ari Berman: Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics (2010, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Just in time to neither influence nor analyze the current election cycle -- perhaps just a historical reminder that handing the gains of 2006-08 over from Dean to Obama managed to squander both focus and fervor, opening the door to an intransigent, unrepentant Republican effort. Timothy P Carney: Obananomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses (2009, Regnery): Yglesias writes: "I'm continually gobsmacked by the number of business executives in the United States who haven't read Tim Carney's book and don't realize that Obama is just a patsy for the big business agenda. Maybe the White House should buy a free copy of Obamanomics for every corporate headquarters in the country." Jonah Goldberg says, this "is conservative muckraking at its best." Foreword by Ron Paul. Dick Cavett: Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets (2010, Times Books): Late night talk show host. I did watch his show in the late-1960s/early-1970s, and recall fondly his intelligent engagement with his guests, and special attachment to Groucho Marx. His rise was largely based on his ability to cultivate relationships with celebrities like Marx, and he had a knack for making them look good while not making himself look foolish. Book evidently comes from an online column he writes, one of those ways people have to extend their 15 minutes of fame into a minor career. Noam Chomsky/Ilan Pappé: Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians (paperback, 2010, Haymarket): Draws together various pieces by the two authors since Israel's 2008 siege on Gaza -- their opening salvo in their campaign to neuter any audacious hopes Barack Obama might have had about bringing peace to the region. Pappé's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is the first book to consult from Israel's 1948-49 expulsions on, and Chomsky's Middle East Illusions is one of his most acute (and also best written) books. Angelo M Codevilla: The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It (paperback, 2010, Beaufort): This seems to be an important conceptual leap in reassigning blame for lots of things wrong with America away from the patron saints of the far right. Still, you'd think that if the "ruling class" -- all those smug elitist liberals -- was powerful enough to have caused so much damage they'd have bothered to control the right-wing media and think tanks that are their undoing. Rush Limbaugh wrote the intro, as always chipping in to fight the power. Still, you'd think the real ruling class would be a bit chagrined to have been swept aside like this. Heidi Cullen: The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes From a Climate-Changed Planet (2010, Harper): Front cover shows, what? A raft of skyscrapers waist deep in rising sea level. The usual catalog of future horrors. More books on the subject keep coming (just to pick titles I haven't mentioned already, and this is far from complete): Kristin Dow/Thomas E Downing: The Atlas of Climate Change: Mapping the World's Greatest Challenge (paperback, 2007, University of California Press); Gwynne Dyer: Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats (paperback, 2010, Oneworld); Clive Hamilton: Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change (2010, Earthscan); James Hansen: Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity (2009, Bloomsbury); Robert Henson: The Rough Guide to Climate Change: The Symptoms, the Science, the Solutions (2nd ed, paperback, 2008, Rough Guides); John Houghton: Global Warming: The Complete Briefing (4th ed, paperback, 2009, Cambridge University Press); James Lovelock: The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning (2009; paperback, 2010, Basic Books); George Monbiot: Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning (2007; paperback, 2009, South End Press); Chris Mooney: Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming (2007; paperback, 2008, Mariner Books); Eric Pooley: The Climate War: True Believers, Power Brokers, and the Fight to Save the Earth (2010, Hyperion); Joseph J Romm: Straight Up: America's Fiercest Climate Blogger Takes on the Status Quo Media, Politicians, and Clean Energy Solutions (paperback, 2010, Island Press); Peter D Ward: The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps (2010, Basic Books). I came up with a big list of anti-global warming books too: Ralph B Alexander: Global Warming False Alarm: The Bad Science Behind the United Nations' Assertion That Man-Made CO2 Causes Global Warming (paperback, 2009, Canterbury); Christopher Booker: The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession With 'Climate Change' Turning Out to Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History? (2009; paperback, 2010, Continuum); Christian Gerondeau: Climate: The Great Delusion: A Study of the Climatic, Economic and Political Unrealities (paperback, 2010, Stacey); Steve Goreham: Climatism! Science, Common Sense, and the 21st Century's Hottest Topic (2010, New Lenox Books); Doug L Hoffman/Allen Simmons: The Resilient Earth: Science, Global Warming and the Future of Humanity (paperback, 2008, Book Surge); Christopher C Horner: Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed (2008, Regnery); Patrick J Michaels/Robert C Balling Jr: Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know (2009; paperback, 2010, Cato Institute); AW Montford: The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science (paperback, 2010, Stacey); Fred Pearce: The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth About Global Warming (paperback, 2010, Random House UK); Roger Pielke Jr: The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming (2010, Basic Books); Ian Plimer: Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science (paperback, 2009, Taylor Trade); Lawrence Solomon: The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud (2008, Richard Vigilante Books); Roy W Spencer: The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World's Top Climate Scientists (2010, Encounter Books); Brian Sussman: Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam (2010, WND Books); Peter Taylor: Chill: A Reassessment of Global Warming Theory, Does Climate change Mean the World Is Cooling, and If So What Should We Do About It? (paperback, 2009, Clairview). Carl Elliott: White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine (2010, Beacon Press): Asks the simple question: what happens when you mix medicine with the profit motive? One thing that happens is that you can never be sure who has who's interest at heart. One piece of this business is drugs -- Marcia Angell writes, "Elliott shows how the big drug companies have bribed and corrupted the medical establishment so that we no longer know which drugs are effective or why our doctors prescribe them." Previously wrote: Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream (2003; paperback, 2004, WW Norton). Mark Feldstein: Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture (2010, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Anderson is little remembered today, but he thought of himself as a muckraking journalist and Nixon was so full of it that Anderson soon found himself perched on top of Nixon's enemies list. That's the core story here. The implications may well be more interesting. Since then every Washington scandal was dubbed -gate until they were cheapened in to cliché, but they've also managed to make up in quantity what they lacked in quality -- the press has become dirtier in more trivial ways, but also the politicians have learned to play more effective defense. Caroline Fraser: Rewilding the World: Dispatches From the Conservation Revolution (2009, Metropolitan): Reports on several large projects aimed at restoring natural habitat, including the DMZ between the Koreas where humans are dissuaded from entering by massive mining. Mark Frauenfelder: Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World (2010, Portfolio): Editor of Make, a quarterly DIY journal for geeks published by O'Reilly. Book tries to put such interests into the broader context of his own home life. One chapter, for instance, is about raising chickens, which among other things looks like a really good way to cut down on bugs and spiders in your yard. Ian Frazier: Travels in Siberia (2010, Farrar Straus and Giroux): One of those travel books where you're glad someone else is doing the traveling, especially someone who can dig up the background history and turn a decent phrase. Cover notes that Frazier also wrote Great Plains and On the Rez, both of which I've read and can recommend highly. Chas W. Freeman Jr.: America's Misadventures in the Middle East (paperback, 2010, Just World Books):Longtime US diplomat -- among his credits, he was Nixon's main interpreter for his 1972 trip to China -- was nominated by Obama for an advisory role on Middle East affairs and shot down by the Israel lobby -- wouldn't want a range of opinion on that subject anywhere near the president, now would we? One of the first releases on Helena Cobban's new venture, a spinoff from her excellent blog. Pamela Geller/Robert Spencer: The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America (2010, Threshold Editions): The usual right-wing talking points, wrapped in fabulously great hyperbole. Chris Harman: Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx (paperback, 2010, Haymarket Books): Late editor of International Socialism (d. 2009), author of A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium (paperback, 2008, Verso). After all the crowing over the collapse of communism some blowback seems to be in order. Joshua Holland: The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy: And Everything Else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America (paperback, 2010, Wiley): Good idea for a primer, but mostly stuff I already know laid out on a broad political level. I'd be more impressed if the author could tackle some deeper problems, like John Quiggin does in Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us. Michael W Hudson: The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America -- and Spawned a Global Crisis (2010, Times Books): A former Wall Street Journal reporter, now writes for Center for Public Integrity. Hardly the first to tackle the big story of our times, nor to focus on the subprime mortgage machine. Previously wrote Merchants of Misery: How Corporate America Profits From Poverty (1996; paperback, 2002, Common Courage Press). Not the same Michael Hudson who wrote a 2006 essay in Harper's predicting the subprime collapse ("The New Road to Serfdom: An Illustrated Guide to the Coming Real Estate Collapse"); the latter is an economist who wrote Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1971; new edition subtitled The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance, paperback, 2003, Pluto Press), and A Philosophy for a Fair Society (paperback, 1994, Shepheard-Walwyn). Laura Ingraham: The Obama Diaries (2010, Threshold): By a leftist, this would no doube be satire? But what's the word to describe something like this from someone with no sense of humor, let alone grasp of reality? Garbage seems too kind. Wes Jackson: Consulting the Genius of the Place: An Ecological Approach to a New Agriculture (2010, Counterpoint): Runs the Land Institute near Salina, KS, where he's been experimenting with alternative approaches to agriculture for close to 35 years. Has a couple of previous books, but this looks like the one where he pulls it all together. Wendell Berry is a big fan. Tony Judt: The Memory Chalet (2010, Penguin): A collection of short pieces, mostly memoirs, mostly published in New York Review of Books, from the period when Judt was struggling with ALS. With his mind free within the prison of a dysfunctional body, Judt went into an extraordinarily prolific phase. Ill Fares the Land was the first book to come out of this, and Thinking the Twentieth Century is still in the pipeline. Robert D Kaplan: Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power (2010, Random House): Further travels around the periphery of the empire, no doubt splattered with more of Kaplan's shallow thinking and fanciful imperialist cheerleading. Gilles Kepel: Beyond Terror and Martyrdom: The Future of the Middle East (2008; paperback, 2010, Harvard University Press): Having established himself as the most acute historian of political Islam back in the 1990s, Kepel's post-Jihad books keep having to chew up more events that mostly just go to show how unfortunate it was that US policy makes hadn't taken him to heart much sooner. Josh Lerner: Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed -- and What to Do About It (2009, Princeton University Press): Seems to come up with a dozen or so suggestions on how to make public efforts work even though the main thrust is that they don't. Might be useful to help clear the air, although it might just reflect the confusion: government actually does a lot to promote business even though the dominant ideology denies that it can ever work, while lobbyists have their own unworkable schemes to peddle. David Lipsky: Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace (paperback, 2010, Broadway Books): Transcribed tapes from interviews with the late novelist by the author, assigned by Rolling Stone to do a profile based on Wallace's book tour supporting his touted debut novel, Infinite Jest. Seems like before I would take the time to read 320 pp. of such I should crack open one of Wallace's novels, or at least an essay collection not dedicated to John McCain, but I've always been a fan of interviews. In fact, I learned an awful lot of what I know about American history from John Garraty's interviews with historians. Jeff Madrick: The Case for Big Government (2008; paperback, 2010, Princeton University Press): Former New York Times economics columnist pushes back on the right's anti-government mantra. Previously wrote The End of Affluence: The Causes and Consequences of America's Economic Dilemma (1995, perhaps a bit prematurely); Why Economies Grow: The Forces That Shape Prosperity and How to Get Them Working Again (2002), and Taking America: How We Got From the First Hostile Takeover to Megamergers, Corporate Raiding and Scandal (2003). I'm sure he can make a case for government; less sure about the poison adjective big. Hooman Majd: The Ayatollah's Democracy: An Iranian Challenge (2010, WW Norton): Specifically on Iran's disputed 2009 elections, which officially elected Ahmadinejan to a second term as Iran's president despite charges of fraud, widespread demonstrations, and a serious political challenge to Grand Ayatollah Khomeini's rule. The author was conspicuous on US television during the election controversy, and quite partisan. Previously wrote: The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran (2008). Jack Matlock: Superpower Illusions: How Myths and False Ideologies Led America Astray -- and How to Return to Reality (2010, Yale University Press): US ambassador to Soviet Union 1987-91, presumably belongs to the realist camp. Seems to focus on how ideological blinders messed up the post-Soviet transition -- as Robert Gates shows, we never have managed to clear house of the clueless cold warrior crowd. Patricia A McAnany/Norman Yoffee, eds: Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire (paperback, 2009, Cambridge University Press): A collection of papers casting aspersions on Jared Diamond's book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004) -- the sort of big theme comparative study that begs specialists to nitpick, especially once it hits the bestseller list. Ian Mortimer: The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century (2008, Bodley Head; 2009, Touchstone): A friendly synopsis of a century in a backwater corner of Europe, something we're only vaguely familiar with. Jerry Z Muller: Capitalism and the Jews (2010, Princeton University Press): Tries hard to walk a straight and narrow path of praising Jews for their numerous contributions to capitalism without falling into the usual anti-semitic traps. Then, of course, there was Marx and his followers, and many others who added noise to the equation. David H Newman: Hippocrates' Shadow: Secrets From the House of Medicine (2008; paperback, 2009, Scribner): A doctor, writing about the art and craft, nuts and bolts of practicing medicine. Includes a section on "pseudoaxioms" -- practices enshrined in custom that may not be effective. Keith Olbermann: Pitchforks and Torches: The Worst of the Worst, From Beck, Bill, and Bush to Palin and Other Posturing Republicans (2010, Wiley): Recall him as a mild-mannered sports announcer, but never watch his show since he turned to politics. When he suspended his "worst person in the world" shtick recently I was reminded how much my late father-in-law liked that bit. But I'm pretty sure he didn't drop it because he ran out of candidates. Richard Overy: The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars (2009, Viking): The post-WWI settlement was the last orgy of the imperial era, kind of like an excessively rich dessert following an evening of overeating and overdrinking, after which it became awfully difficult to keep it all down. The British Empire was never larger than then, but had ceased to be profitable or even much fun. Looks like this tends to intellectual history, most likely the least fun of all. Cleo Paskal: Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map (2010, Palgrave Macmillan): Actually, war has not had much impact on the global map of the last 60 years: the main changes we've seen are smaller patches breaking away from bigger ones, and most of those have happened without much violence. That the world is in for a good deal of stress, hurt even, is a given, especially given the worst of the global warming projections -- the subtext here. Too bad that one peculiar nation still thinks that war is an option. Scott Peterson: Let the Swords Encircle Me: Iran -- A Journey Behind the Headlines (2010, Simon & Schuster): Istanbul bureau chief for Christian Science Monitor, has made more than 30 trips to Iran since 1996 ("more than any other American journalist"). Reports at depth (768 pp), giving some credence to the idea that his book is more than headline deep. Previously wrote Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda (2000). Sally C Pipes: The Truth About Obamacare: What They Don't Want You to Know About Our New Health Care Law (paperback, 2010, Regnery Press): Predictable nonsense given who wrote and published it, but given how lame the reform was I wonder how often they'll slip up and slip in a real complaint, like the bit about how the law will leave us with 23 million uninsured in 2019. Wendell Potter: Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans (2010, Bloomsbury): Former CIGNA PR hack, focuses on the propaganda angle but must in the process reveal much of what he was paid to cover up. Nir Rosen: Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World (2010, Nation Books): Perhaps the only reporter to see all sides of the Iraq conflict, on the one hand embedding with US troops, on the other passing behind and through Iraqi lines. Includes reporting from Lebanon and Afghanistan, or what he calls the "Iraqization of the Middle East." The initial 2003-04 stretch of the Iraq war has been relatively well covered -- including Rosen's own In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq (2006), the best book on how resistance erupted in post-Saddam Iraq -- but the later phases have been the preserve of US propaganda. I wouldn't expect that here. Richard E Rubenstein: Reasons to Kill: Why Americans Choose War (2010, Bloomsbury Press): Why we went to war, and why we felt justified in doing so -- not sure how far back this goes but rehashing the Global War on Terror covers a lot of the bases. I'd like to see this tracked through the progression (or regression) of the wars in question. Abdulkader H Sinno: Organizations at War: In Afghanistan and Beyond (2010, Cornell University Press): Barnett Rubin writes: "Sinno's finding should end the current search of U.S. policymakers for a 'moderate Taliban' that can be broken off from the insurgency." Otherwise I can't tell much. Matt Taibbi: Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America (2010, Spiegel & Grau): The "vampire squid" is Goldman Sachs, the dominant member of the "grifter class" in this tale of "the stunning rise, fall, and rescue of Wall Street in the bubble-and-bailout era." I have a copy on order. Previously mentioned books (book pages noted where available), new in paperback: George A Akerlof/Robert J Shiller: Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism (2009; paperback, 2010, Princeton University Press): Behavioral economics, the stuff that Richard Shelby hates; the original ideas picked up from Keynes and reformulated into various rules of thumb -- they strike me as realistic, verging on commonsensical. [link] Seth G Jones: In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan (2009; paperback, 2010, WW Norton): RAND Corp. analyst reviews America's fiasco in Afghanistan, suggests tweaks to make it more/less bad, but at least covers the background enough for a basic primer. Paperback reissue includes a new afterword, most likely I-told-you-so's. [link] Jon Krakauer: Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman (2009, Doubleday; paperback, 2010, Anchor): Bestselling account of how a pro football star quit the NFL to join the army for the war in Afghanistan, only to get killed by fellow US troops. [link] Robert Skidelsky: Keynes: The Return of the Master (2009; paperback, 2010, Public Affairs): A short primer on Keynes, from his most comprehensive biographer, for a generation that sorely needs a refresher course. [link] Future new releases:
Tuesday, November 16, 2010Library BooksI keep meaning to post notices as I build up book pages, but seem to keep piling them up in limbo. The books split into two big classes: ones I own I mark up occasional notes with the intent of eventually transcribing them into the book pages, but have little compulsion to do so because I still have the books handy. On the other hand, I do a pretty thorough job of copying quotes and noting structure in books I get from the library, but rarely have time to develop more commentary, or write introductions. The following are a batch of library books in such limbo. Lots of quotes; not much commentary. Doesn't expunge my pending list: I've held back several clusters, like books on Israel and books on Reagan.
Will try to do a better job of noting when these come out. Monday, November 15, 2010Music WeekMusic: Current count 17348 [17309] rated (+39), 840 [868] unrated (-28). Did a bit of work outside trying to paint garage, but mostly sat here and suffered through lots of B-list new jazz. Pretty high ratings count. Pretty miserable week, making only a bit of a dent, not enough to even think, well, at least that's over.
Jazz Prospecting (CG #25, Part 8)Should shift gears and finish off the damn column, especially since it's been more like ten weeks, not the eight suggested. Cleaned up the office space enough that I could get to the mid-priority queue, and had to open up some space there for incoming, so spent most of the week picking things, playing them, refiling them. The low-B+ records really have no chance of making the HM list -- I'm wondering if I'm ever going to find room for B+(**) records again, although a bunch of them are still on the done shelf. So I didn't waste much time trying to figure if they might inch up or slide down a notch if I gave them more chance. More tellingly, I didn't give them an extra spin to find something to say when the notes got slim. I stil have 225 records in the pending queue, so this is really just triage. Doug Beavers 9: Two Shades of Nude (2007 [2010], Origin): Trombonist, full name Doug Beavers Rovira, favors large groups, his previous Jazz, Baby! even larger than the nonet here. Has a lot of fire power here -- Kenny Rampton and Alex Sipiagin on trumpet, Marc Momaas and Jon Irabagon on tenor sax -- which shorts the trombone without really blowing out of the postbop formulary. B Ryan Cohan: Another Look (2010, Motéma): Pianist, b. 1971, based in Chicago, third album since 2001. Appeared recently on saxophonist Geof Bradfield's album, who returns the favor here, impressively when he is featured, but not often. Joe Locke (vibes) makes a big splash, complementing the piano and adding a lot of flashy depth. Also here: Lorin Cohen (bass), Kobie Watkins (drums), and Steve Kroon (percussion). B+(**) Brad Goode: Tight Like This (2010, Delmark): Trumpet player, b. 1963 in Chicago, based in Boulder, CO; eighth (at least) album since Shock of the New in 1988 has him returning to Louis Armstrong for the title tune, but in a new-fashioned mode that isn't all that tight. With Adrean Farrugia (piano), Kelly Sill (bass), and Anthony Lee (drums). Starts with five covers, adds five originals, closes "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise." Not sure that this was the intent, but pretty good quiet storm record. B+(**) Alexander McCabe: Quiz (2009-10 [2010], CAP): Alto saxophonist, third album since 2001, website suggests he's mostly interested in doing film music. Mainstream, exceptionally fluid and inventive, recorded in two sessions with different drummers -- Greg Hutchinson on two cuts, Rudy Royston on five -- with Ugonna Okegwo on bass and Uri Caine on piano. Most albums like this trip up on the piano solos but Caine really takes off. A- Joey DeFrancesco: Never Can Say Goodbye: The Music of Michael Jackson (2010, High Note): Fluffs up his organ trio -- Paul Bollenback on guitar, Byron Landham on drums -- to approximate studio dynamics on records that are evidently so earnestly loved he doesn't want to mess with them. Results trip over themselves. The sound effects on "Thriller" are worthless, and Joey's vocals aren't much better. B- Mike Mainieri: Crescent (2005 [2010], NYC, 2CD): Vibraphonist, b. 1938, discography starts in 1962 but AMG only lists 17 albums over 48 years and he's never registered much on my radar -- just enough to keep him separate from the Maneri clan. Been sitting on this for a while, noticing how far behind I was when another new 2CD set came in. Can't say I was looking forward to it, but that's only because I missed the fine print. Actually, front cover says "featuring Charlie Mariano" then adds another name in smaller print, Dieter Ilg -- the bassist here. Mariano died in 2009, an alto saxophonist whose vast discography goes back to the early 1950s. Don't know him all that well either, but he's blown me away on occasion, especially on the two It's Standard Time volumes he cut with Tete Montoliu (1989, Fresh Sound). Don't have the recording date here, but liner notes refer to a 2005 session with Mariano winded from an illness and Mainieri affect by a hand injury. Title and more than half of the songs are from Coltrane -- the other half must fall in the songbook somewhere. Mariano sounds more poignant than I expected, suits a posthumous album. The vibes and bass keep a respectful distance. B+(***) Mike Mainieri/Marnix Busstra Quartet: Trinary Motion (2008 [2010], NYC, 2CD): Vibraphonist Mainieri is the senior here, but guitarist Busstra is the driving force, writing most of the pieces and providing the thrust which the vibes accentuate. The others are Eric van der Westen on bass and Pieter Bast on drums. B+(**) Either/Orchestra: Mood Music for Time Travellers (2007-10 [2010], Accurate): Russ Gershon's near-big band, a fixture in Boston since 1986, back for their tenth album -- only the second since 2003. They've picked up some African beats, and keep piling on the layers like a postmodern Ellington. B+(**) Jacob Melchior: It's About Time (2010, Jacob Melchior): Drummer, b. 1970 in Copenhagen, Denmark; passed through Brazil before landing in New York in 1994. First album, a piano trio with Tadataka Unno on piano and Hassan JJ Shakur on bass with "special guest" Frank Senior singing one cut, "For All We Know." Unno was b. 1980 in Tokyo, Japan; also based in New York; has two albums. Nice mainstream work. B+(*) Klezwoods: Oy Yeah! (2010, Accurate): Boston klezmer ensemble, nine instruments including tuba and accordion. Alec Spiegelman (clarinet) and/or Joe Kessler (violin) seem to be the movers in a group full of strikingly unjewish names -- Laughman, McLaughlin, O'Neill, Stevig. They play traditional fare including pieces from Yemen and the Balkans, plus one semi-original by Alec Spiegelman patterned on "Giant Steps" (called "Giant Jew"). Tends toward sweet and nostalgic. B+(**) Ziggurat Quartet: Calculated Gestures (2009 [2010], Origin): Seattle group: Eric Barber (tenor & soprano sax), Bill Anschell (piano), Doug Miller (bass), Byron Vannoy (drums, percussion). First album together, although Anschell has a half dozen records under his own name, and Barber and Miller have one each. Anschell has the edge in writing, with four songs to three each for Barber and Miller. But Barber is the one you listen to, with enough energy to break out of the usual postbop straitjackets. Name suggests some Afro-Asian mystery, and there's some of that too. B+(***) Lauren Hooker: Life of the Music (2010, Miles High): Vocalist, writes most of her material, plays some piano (although Jim Ridl probably plays more). Second album. First one, Right Where I Belong, spent a lot of time in my HM pile before I gave up on crediting it. This one drags badly from the start, with "Song to a Seagull" (her Joni Mitchell cover) especially arch. Still has a lot of nuance in her voice. Scott Robinson is invaluable among the side credits. B Dana Lauren: It's You or No One (2010, Dana Lauren Music): Standards singer, from Boston, b. 1988, second album. Nothing here Ella Fitzgerald hasn't done better, a comparison begged by closing the album with "Mr. Paganini." Good piano support from Manuel Valera, and she's fortunate to have Joel Frahm's tenor sax around. Nonetheless, she dispenses with both for a a "Sunny Side of the Street" with nothing but one-shot guest Christian McBride's bass, and it's the best thing here. B+(*) Hilary Kole: You Are There (2008-09 [2010], Justin Time): Another standards singer, also second album, different approach: thirteen songs done with eleven duet partners on piano, nothing more -- exception: can't keep Freddy Cole from singing, wouldn't even want to. Double helpings for Hank Jones and Dave Brubeck -- the former a delight, the latter better when he's not doing his own tricky song. Impressive, slow, austere, traits that can turn into a drag except when they're not -- "Lush Life," which has sunk many singers, is nothing less than splendid. B+(**) Jay Clayton: In and Out of Love (2007 [2010], Sunnyside): Singer, b. 1941 in Youngstown, OH, originally Judith Colantone; started cutting records around 1980 and has, well: AMG lists 13, her website lists 19, Wikipedia says more than 40 but only lists 10. Has tended to work in avant-garde circles, with a lot of scat and sonic whatever, or at least that's my impression -- can't say as I've ever gotten a good read on her. This is fairly conventional and understated, with just guitar (Jack Wilkins) and bass (Jay Anderson), mostly working standards like "How Deep Is the Ocean" and "I Hear a Rhapsody." B+(**) Nadav Snir-Zelniker Trio: Thinking Out Loud (2009 [2010], OA2): Drummer, b. 1974 in Israel, based in New York. First album, a piano trio with Ted Rosenthal and Todd Coolman on bass. Wrote (or co-wrote) 3 of 10 songs, two more songs most likely by Israelis, the balance ranging from "Blue Skies" to "Isfahan" to "Interplay" (Bill Evans) plus one by Rosenthal. I have no doubts about the drums, and Coolman is a dependable bassist, but the record inevitably turns on the piano, and somehow Rosenthal had escaped my attention all these years. Did recognize the name: he was one of those mainstream pianists Concord adored in the early 1990s, so his name showed up on the Maybeck Recital Hall Series list (Vol. 38). B. 1959, has more than a dozen albums since 1989, including one on The 3 B's -- Bud, Bill, someone named Beethoven. Don't know about the latter, but he has a nice mix of Bud and Bill in his playing. B+(***) John Lee Hooker Jr.: Live in Istanbul Turkey (2010, Steppin' Stone, CD+DVD): B. 1952 in Detroit, played some as a teen but didn't assume the family trade and start cutting blues albums until 2004, a couple years after his father died. Straight second-generation bluesman, doesn't feel the pain or the worry but knows all the licks, and how to turn them into a good time. Don't have a date on the concert. Didn't watch the DVD. B+(*) Nobu Stowe: Confusion Bleue (2007 [2010], Soul Note): Pianist, from Japan, based in Baltimore. He sent me about six albums dating back to 2006, and I've been remiss in getting to them. This is the most recent, the one I figured I should focus on, and it's been tough to get a handle on. Quartet with two looks, depending on whether Ros Bonadonna plays guitar or alto sax. The former steers this in a fusion direction, a configuration of unruly grooves, while the latter lets the piano undercut the sax pressure. With Tyler Goodwin on bass and Ray Sage on drums. Intriguing record. Should return to it when I get around to the others. B+(***) Chris Washburne and the SYOTOS Band: Fields of Moons (2009 [2010], Jazzheads): Trombone player (also tuba), based in New York, where he's the New York end of the Norway/Denmark postbop group NYNDK. SYOTOS is nominally a Latin jazz band, an octet, with four records to date. The Latin focus isn't especially strong -- mostly the extra percussion and Leo Travera's electric bass, and sometimes the brass -- John Walsh's trumpet joins Washburne, although more prominent (and less Latin) is NYNDK saxophonist Ole Mathisen. Closes with a sweet "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans." B+(**) Greg Lewis: Organ Monk (2010, Greg Lewis): Hammond B3 player, based in New York, first album, a trio with Ron Jackson on guitar and Cindy Blackman on drums. Thelonious Monk compositions as far as the eye can see. It's a concept; just not an especially interesting one. B Jeff Antoniuk and the Jazz Update: Brotherhood (2010, JAJU): Tenor/soprano saxophonist, b. 1965 in Edmonton, in Canada; lived in Nigeria for a year; studied at UNT; lives in Annapolis, MD. Second album. Quartet with Wade Beach on piano, Tom Baldwin on bass, Tony Martucci on drums (including congas and batá). Nice mainstream postbop with a little extra riddim. B+(*) David Bixler & Arturo O'Farrill: The Auction Project (2010, Zoho): Alto saxophonist, b. 1964 in Wisconsin, based in New York; fourth album since 2000; side credits include another album with O'Farrill, son of Cuban bandleader/arranger Chico O'Farrill, a competent but often overrated practitioner of the family trade. The point of the project is to do something Afro-Celtic, mostly picking up Irish (or Scottish) trad tunes and rattling them around radical Afro-Cuban time changes -- Vince Cherico (drums) and Roland Guerrero (percussion) handle those chores along with the pianist. Bixler's wife, Heather Martin Bixler, plays violin, supporting the straight Celtic parts, while Bixler plays over and above. Makes for some rather strange juxtapositions, but offers a few surprises. B+(*) Mercury Falls: Quadrangle (2010, Porto Franco): Group; first album. Writers are Patrick Cress (alto sax, baritone sax, bass clarinet, flute) and Ryan Francesconi (guitar, electronics); others are Eric Perney (bass) and Tim Bulkley (drums). Two songs have guest voice credits. Not clear where they are based: MySpace says "United States"; Francesconi says Portland, OR; Cress has another group in Oakland, CA; Bulkley says Brooklyn, but is also in the other Cress group; guest Michelle Amador also hails from Brooklyn. Could be they think of this as experimental rock -- they list Tortoise first on their MySpace list of influences -- but it's more lukewarm, measured and tasteful. B+(*) Denise Donatelli: When Lights Are Low (2010, Savant): Singer, from Allentown, PA; based in Los Angeles. Third album since 2005. Striking voice. No original songs, but even the Rodgers & Hart and Styne & Cahn aren't common standards, and the only one from a rock-based singer-songwriter is by Sting, who hardly counts. Geoffrey Keezer plays piano and did most of the arranging, mostly just piano-guitar-bass-drums, two cuts with some strings, a couple with a guest horn -- Ingrid Jensen's flugelhorn, Ron Blake's soprano sax, Phil O'Connor's bass clarinet, nothing dominant. Played twice while somewhat distracted, both times losing me midway. B Tarbaby: The End of Fear (2010, Posi-Tone): Group's MySpace website explains: "We are not TAR BABY ...... JAZZ is ..... We simply want to hug him for as long as we live." Site lists (in this order) band members as: Nasheet Waits (drums), Stacey Dillard (sax), Orrin Evans (piano), Eric Revis (bass), but Dillard doesn't appear on this, the group's first record. Instead, we have "special guests" JD Allen (tenor sax), Oliver Lake (alto sax), and Nicholas Payton (trumpet). Two group songs, two from Revis, one each from Evans and Waits, one from Lake, outside pieces from Sam Rivers, Bad Brains, Fats Waller, Andrew Hill, and Paul Motian. With Dillard this would have been a tough postbop group, but with Lake and Allen it's something else, and they bring out a dimension in Evans I've never heard before. B+(***) Jerome Sabbagh/Ben Monder/Daniel Humair: I Will Follow You (2010, Bee Jazz): Tenor/soprano sax, guitar, drums, respectively. Monder is a guitarist who shows up on a lot of records (6-10 per year since 2000, smaller number going back to 1991). Humair's credits go back to 1960 -- he was b. 1938 in Switzerland -- and fill three pages at AMG, with more than a dozen under his own name. Sabbagh is (much) younger, b. 1973 in Paris, with three previous records since 2004. Plays tenor and soprano sax, and wrote almost everything here (with some help from his bandmates). Monder strikes me as unusually aggressive here, like he has a big stake in the outcome. Sabbagh is the opposite, so thoughtful as this is it does tend to drag a bit. B+(*) [advance: Dec. 7] Rebecca Coupe Franks: Check the Box (2010, RCF): Trumpet player, also sings -- four songs here, voice is throwaway casual and all the more charming for it. Had a couple of records in 1992, then nothing until a Joe Henderson tribute in 2004 -- this looks like her fifth. Basically a bebopper, with the Latin tinge from Luis Perdomo's piano and Richie Morales' drums keeping her jumping. Mary Ann McSweeney plays bass, gets in a nice solo. While I like her vocals well enough, the three extra vocal tracks (making 7 of 14) by Summer Corrie are too much, especially since they don't amount to much. B+(*) Marcos Amorim Trio: Portraits (2009 [2010], Adventure Music): Brazilian guitarist, from Rio de Janeiro, has at least three previous albums since 2002. Trio with bassist Jorge Albuquerque (who writes the 3 of 10 pieces Amorim didn't) and drummer Rafael Barata. Tasteful low-keyed work, supple textures. B+(**) Benjamin Taubkin: Adventure Music Piano Masters Series, Vol. I (2007 [2010], Adventure Music): Cover also follows Taubkin's name with the qualification "[brazil]" but we know that, right? Solo piano, something that rolls off my back without ever fully engaging me -- a big contrast I have with the auteurs of The Penguin Guide to Jazz, who invariably dote on solo piano recordings. Brazilian jazz is dominated by guitarists, but Taubkin is a well-established and worthy pianist. All originals except for "Giant Steps" and one by Pixinguinha. B+(**) Dave Bass Quartet: Gone (2008-09 [2010], Dave Bass Music): AMG lists four guys named Dave Bass: Pop/Rock 90s, Country 90s-00s, Pop/Rock 70s-80s, Religious 90s. None of those seem right here. Pianist, b. 1950 in Cincinnati, moved to Boston and studied with George Russell and Margaret Chaloff; moved on to San Francisco; wound up in law school at UCLA, became a lawyer in 1992, advancing to California Deputy Attorney General for civil rights enforcement. This looks like his first record, reuniting with some of his San Francisco crew: drummer Babatunde Lea, bassist Gary Brown, and tenor saxophonist Ernie Watts. Also features Mary Stallings singing two songs. Nothing earthshaking, but he's pretty sharp for a debut-album pianist, and it's always a delight to hear Watts, or for that matter Stallings in front of a good band. B+(**) Tomas Janzon: Experiences (2010, Changes Music): Guitarist, from Sweden, studied at Royal School of Music in Stockholm, moved to Los Angeles in 1991. Third album since 1999. Quartet mostly with Art Hillery on organ or piano (4 cuts to 2), Jeff Littleton on bass (9 of 11 cuts), and Albert "Tootie" Heath on drums (10 of 11) -- last cut is a brief solo. Likes Wes Montgomery, including a take on "Full House" here. B+(*) Chris Colangelo: Elaine's Song (2010, C Note): Bassist, not much bio to go on, has a couple of previous albums and a dozen-plus side credits since 1998. Basically a piano trio with an extra horn (or two) on 7 of 9 tracks -- mostly tenor sax, with Bob Sheppard on 3 and Benn Clatworthy on 2. Sheppard also plays soprano sax on one, Clatworthy flute on one, and Zane Musa's alto sax joins Clatworthy tenor on one dedicated to Kenny Garrett. The pianist is John Beasley, playing his role admirably but the dominant tone is the sax. B+(**) No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further listening the first time around. Unpacking: Found in the mail this week:
PS: After posting this, I got an anonymous email: competent but often overated . . .you're an ass Quote comes from the Dave Bixler/Arturo O'Farrill review, specifically referring to O'Farrill. Email address suggests it came from O'Farrill or someone close to him -- was given on a webpage as his contact for booking information. Neither term is meant to be complimentary, but neither is damning either. Competency is commonplace enough it's the bane of reviewers but it's an underappreciated trait in the world at large. I recall a girl telling me I was the most competent person she ever met. I wound up marrying her. Overrated, of course, is relative. It basically means that other people -- especially ones in positions of authority and influence -- rate the person more highly than I do. Charlie Parker is my standard example of an overrated jazz musician. I actually think he was pretty sensational, but virtually every other critic and musician regards him as God. Clearly, by their lights, I'm the one who is underrating Bird, and in doing so all I'm doing is betraying my ignorance. O'Farrill isn't as overrated as Bird, but he gets uniformly adoring press, and he got the nod to head up Lincoln Center's Latin Jazz division -- one of their records was a slam dunk dud in an early Jazz CG. I hear him play tricky Afro-Cuban time changes, which are no mean feat but they are the norm for his idiom. I'm not unimpressed -- I've generally graded him low-B+, with a mid-B+ for Song for Chico -- but there are lots of guys who do his thing and make better records out of it. So I stand my ground. Sunday, November 14, 2010Weekend RoundupA week's worth of useful links I didn't get around to commenting on previously:
Two things I could have done more on are the Fed's QE2 program and the Simpson-Bowles deficit report. The latter, as you can gather above, is a crock of shit, and a self-inflicted Obama wound. QE2 is more complicated, and ultimately depends on two unknowns: how much and how long it is maintained, especially after it starts generating inflation. It's the one way the government can stimulate the economy without having to go through Congress. That's basically because the Fed is largely free of public control -- it really belongs to the banking industry, the one industry in America privileged to get to decide how much money it wants to play with -- and because whatever extra money it decides to create goes first to the banking system and trickles out from there. Saturday, November 13, 2010Belated Movie NotesMovie: The Hurt Locker: Finally watched the 2010 Academy Award Best Film on TV tonight. Politically, the film doesn't offer much, but least of all for liberals who think we might at least be trying to do something noble in Iraq. Conservatives won't be much bothered, because the terrorists come off as evil and ubiquitous and utterly without scruple, and the bystanders are suspicious and if they're technically innocent now, just give them time. The film is supposed to follow a support-your-troops line, but they all look like damaged goods, and even if they were damaged before they got to Iraq, I don't see why we should go around invading other countries just to satisfy their primal urges. The film is constructed around four or five bombs and an ambush, and they all provide the expected tension plus bits of technical sophistication. B+ Haven't been posting on movies lately. Haven't seen many, and haven't had much to say about those I've seen. I think the last movies I posted anything on, back in July, were Cyrus and The Secret in Their Eyes (both A-). Very briefly: Movie: The Town: Nice aerial shots of Charlestown, MA, although I haven't been back since they built the new bridge, so the views strike me as a bit off. One bank robbery, one armored car, one more complicated caper at Fenway, plus some ancillary violence. Lead actor from The Hurt Locker returns as pretty much the same psychopath. Probably more gunplay this time, but that may just be that they prefer AK-47s and they run louder. I didn't buy the Rebecca Hall romance angle at all, but the FBI is as nefarious as ever. B+ Movie: The Social Network: The founding of Facebook and the squabbling over the spoils without anyone ever explaining why it's worth all the money it's supposedly worth. Works with sharp dialogue -- not least of which is that the technical jargon is fundamentally sound -- and lots of details that ring true even when they're ridiculous. A- Movie: Never Let Me Go: Kazuo Ishiguro novel. Laura read it; found it "incredibly sad," which isn't really a good formula to transplant to the screen, not just because Carey Mulligan's tear (but not her mope) looked manufactured. More likely the novel has suspense and inner depth that couldn't be maintained or expanded. B Movie: The Girl Who Played With Fire: Second in the trilogy that I haven't read but everyone else has. Good thing to have seen the first first. A- Movie: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: In Swedish, finally granted a one-week showing as a warmup for the new second film. Swedish title: Män som hatar kvinnor. Over the top, what with the Nazi shit, but pretty extraordinary. A Movie: Get Low: Robert Duvall plays a geezer, set in Tennessee in the late 1930s. He has something bad on his conscience, and decides to purge it by giving himself a funeral/party, offering his land as bait to draw a crowd. With Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek. A- Movie: Winter's Bone: Set in Ozarks among meth heads, with a 17-year-old girl raising two younger siblings with dad gone -- dead, actually -- and mom lost to the world. Plot line doesn't remind me of my Ozark relatives, but cooking and cleaning do. A- Bad timing and/or minor squabbles kept us from seeing: The Kids Are All Right; Inception; Jack Goes Boating; Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps; It's Kind of a Funny Story; You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger; not sure what else. Lots of things don't get here fast and don't last long when they do. Only saw Up in the Air on TV a couple months ago -- much better than The Hurt Locker. By the way, a few days after seeing The Social Network I finally set up my own Facebook account. Been thinking about it, and fretting about it, for a while, mostly because it provides a communications channel with my nieces/nephews who otherwise aren't very good at keeping in touch. One reason for not doing it is fear of getting swamped by the music industry, who already hit me with way too much spam, and had already lined up with a long list of pending friend requests. My rule for now is to ignore everything that comes in from musicians and publicists (so if you're one of them, that's why). May change that later, depending on how it works out. Since starting up, almost all of my posts have been short notices of blog posts. Thus far I don't like anything, don't have any meaningful info public, don't have a picture, don't have any pictures, have written only a couple of very brief comments on other people's posts. Don't know what the limits or parameters are -- I'm tending to think of it like what I imagine Twitter to be, although I have no interest in going near Twitter to make sure. Thursday, November 11, 2010Mark Thoma: "White House Gives In On Bush Tax Cuts": Title comes from a Huffington Post piece, where David Axelrod laments, "We have to deal with the world as we find it." That's evidently a world where a mere president is unable to dig in his heels on an issue which consistently polls better than 60%: ending the Bush tax cuts on incomes over $250,000, which would negatively impact some 2% of the public. It would be a different story if Obama was dependent on the Republican House to end the cuts, but they are already expiring at the end of the calendar year. All Obama has to do to put an end to those cuts is to veto any bill that attempts to extend them, then find enough Democrats willing to sustain his veto. How hard is that? Andrew Leonard: Obama's Tax Cut Surrender: Is based on the same source and later Axelrod comments, including: "Our two strong principles are that we need to extend the tax cuts for the middle class, but we can't afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthy." The lower bracket cuts were a sop added to the Bush bill to make them more sellable, but they are relatively trivial in terms of revenue and relatively unimportant to the people who got them: sure, everybody prefers to pay less tax, but not necessarily at the cost of crippling government services. Obama's desire to extend those cuts always had an air of pandering to it, and that he didn't make a serious push to extend them when the Democrats had big majorities suggested that he might not be all that serious about them. Now, however, Axelrod is insisting that they're so important that Obama is willing to give in on the superrich tax cuts. (Which, by the way, right now include a complete wipeout of the estate tax. Any deal on extending it would be far worse than extending the top tier income rate cuts.) Admittedly, tax sheltering the superrich is the Republican Party's number one priority -- way above starting senseless wars or beefing up the police state or making sure every nutcase in America has an assault weapon or making sure pregnant girls serve their full nine months before handing over their offspring to Right to Life (TM) adoption mills -- so they might be willing to deal something Obama really wants to make sure the rich keep getting ridiculously richer. But it's hard to imagine what that would be, and it's harder to imagine Obama demanding it. Trivial tax cuts for the middle class at the long-term expense of government solvency and viability isn't a sane, let alone a gutsy, bargain. How about repealing Taft-Hartley? That at least might be a game-changer. On the other hand, the tax rates at issue here are just one small part of a much bigger problem, which is how to reverse the trend toward ever greater inequality. Progressive taxation won't solve the problem, but it is the most straightforwardly simple way to start. Surrender that issue and less direct methods, like ratcheting up labor rights and expanding educational opportunities are going to be harder to do and less effective. Over the last thirty/forty years, we've let our democracy erode into oligarchy, and we're pretty far gone now. It's easy enough to see why the Republicans have led the struggle to beat down every potential challenge to the rich. The question is why don't the Democrats even try to put up an effective defense of, well, democracy. You'd think that if nothing else some instinct for self-preservation would eventually kick in? If Obama can't stiffen up on such a clearcut issue, I don't see any hope for him. (Although with McCain's latest trip to Afghanistan, still agitating for his hundred years war, I'm still thankful he lost.) One more thing: we all got a good laugh over Ron Suskind's report about how we're the "reality-based community," but I just reread that line in John Dower's Cultures of War and I'm starting to find it less amusing, especially when you pile on Axelrod's "We have to deal with the world as we find it." One thing Bush's people did, and as the quote shows weren't bashful about, was to deliberately move the world as far to the right as they could. They did this in lots of ways, ranging from making the rich richer to making the poor madder and meaner, and they were often audacious both in their tactics and ambitions. That they were often unhinged, sometimes completely raving nuts, may have given us too much faith in the rebounding power of reality. There is a pretty straight line from the 2001 Bush tax cuts to the 2007-08 financial crisis, but how many people realize this? (For that matter, does Obama realize this?) There's an even straighter line from PNAC's tinhorn militarism to the quagmires in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, but who in the Obama administration is making that point? Bush and Cheney were, as Nick Lowe put it in song, "Nutted by Reality," but Obama seems to be merely perplexed by it. It would be in the interests of Obama, his party, and his base to move the world to the left: to cut through belligerent conflicts, to build up countervailing power in the lower and working classes, to promote the notion of a public interest and put real prices on the many ways that private interests work against public trust. Obama wants to present himself as a mediator, but the Republicans simply won't take him seriously unless they perceive some scary threat on the other side -- indeed, FDR did his best work saving capitalism when he was being attacked from the left. But he can only maintain his credibility by giving tangible credit to the left -- as, for instance, Roosevelt did with John L. Lewis, who kept the labor movement from going over the deep end by keeping Roosevelt honest. Facebook NoticeAnother post asks why the reality-based community is so timid about kicking reality in the ass: Facebook Comment: Lily AllenBeing old-fashioned, I've only heard the whole album -- both of them, actually, the first real good and the second so great I rated it incisive, thoughtful -- you might compare the one speculating about God, or the one where she's satisfied watching telly and eating Chinese. Monday, November 08, 2010Music WeekMusic: Current count 17309 [17274] rated (+35), 868 [870] unrated (-2). Substantial rating count. Not a lot of Jazz Prospecting, so must have been a lot of Rhapsody. Posted Streamnotes and Recycled Goods, plus Tatum's column, so lots of fresh recommendations there.
Jazz Prospecting (CG #25, Part 7)Not much to show for this week, at least here. Rated count was relatively high (35), mostly using Rhapsody to liine up stuff for next month's Recycled Goods. Should be shifting focus to close out this column cycle. Certainly have enough stuff rated, and for that matter have nearly enough written up, but having a strange time focusing on all that. Weather is still pretty nice here -- today in particular -- and I've been trying to get a few outside projects done, as well as some general house cleanup and junk removal. I make some progress most days and still feel ever further behind. Michael Formanek: The Rub and Spare Change (2009 [2010], ECM): Bassist, b. 1958 in San Francisco; AMG lists eight albums; his own website lists 5 "as a leader," 6 "as a co-leader," but doesn't include this one (or anything else since 2006; AMG's most recent listing is from 1997, although AMG has 9 more recent side credits). Quartet with Tim Berne (alto sax), Craig Taborn (piaino, not electric), and Gerald Cleaver (drums). Formanek has played with Berne before, e.g. in the latter's Bloodcount group. Starts out on best behavior with light piano comping along with the bass, but through six pieces opens up into the sort of free ruckus you'd expect if Berne were leading. B+(**) The Blasting Concept (2001-07 [2009], Smalltown Superjazz): A sampler from a small Norwegian label, one of the few that does what label samplers should do: open your ears to one unexpected pleasure after another, never dwelling too long in one spot, moving through a range of pieces that somehow add up in the end. All the more remarkable given that the subtitle, A Compilation of Avant-Garde, Free Jazz, Noise and Psychedelia is accurate. The free jazz is mostly anchored by drummer Paal Nilssen-Love with one or more hard-blowing saxophonists -- Mats Gustafsson, Peter Brötzmann, Ken Vandermark, and/or Joe McPhee. The saxes make plenty of noise, but nothing like Lasse Marhaug's electronics -- his "Alarmed and Distressed Duckling" would wear you down if it went on much longer but is amazing in a small dose -- and Sonic Youth guitarists Thurston Moore and Jim O'Rourke add their own feedback. Vandermark's clarinet-piano-bass trio, Free Fall, offers a soft but far from simple respite. Psychedelia is in the ear of the behearer, but Massimo Pupillo's bass line drives the Original Silence into ecstasy. I've heard most of these albums, including the Thing's box set, but they all run on. And to think, I've been using this as a paperweight for over a year now, simply because it's heavy, and because label samplers suck. A- Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Paul Lytton + Peter Evans: Scenes in the House of Music (2009 [2010], Clean Feed): Pretty self-explanatory just given the lineup; recorded live at Casa da Música -- presumably the concert hall in Porto, Portugal. Cover lists artists as "Parker/Guy/Lytton + Peter Evans" but I thought I should spell that out even though it seemed obvious. Not sure how far the trio goes back -- latest Penguin Guide starts with a 1993 trio, but also lists a Parker-Lytton duo from 1972, and Parker played on Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra in 1972. Too much applause on the record, not unwarranted. Parker mostly plays tenor here, but gives the soprano some credit, and works in a little circular breathing. Evans' trumpet is secondary but added splash. He seems to be the serious one in Mostly Other People Do the Killing, with his solo albums and courting of giants of the European avant-garde. B+(***) Jason Adasiewicz: Sun Rooms (2009 [2010], Delmark): Vibraphonist, the guy everyone in Chicago goes to when they want one. Third album since 2008; pushing three dozen side credits. This one's a trio with Nate McBride on bass and Mike Reed on drums. McBride is Ken Vandermark's Boston bassist, and it's especially good to see him getting around -- terrific player, really lifts this up, just the setup the leader needs. B+(***) Marcin & Bartlomiej Brat Oles: Duo (2008, Fenomedia): Twin brothers, b. 1973 in Sosnowiec, Poland. Marcin plays bass; Bartlomiej drums. They've recorded quite a bit since a 1999 group called Custom Trio, sometimes as Oles Brothers, often named separately with Marcin listed first. Some are the result of international jazz stars tramping through Poland -- David Murray and Ken Vandermark appear to have been the first, and there's a more recent record with Herb Robertson. Some are fronted by Polish saxophonists -- Adam Pieronczyk is one I like, Andrzej Przybielski is one I haven't run across yet. Aside from a drum solo album, they almost always play as a team, so you'd expect tight communication and balance, but it's still surprising how well this duo works out. The bass provides all the melodic structure and harmony you need -- this never feels empty, unlike 80% of the duo records I've heard. (Not sure how many bass-drums duos there have even been -- Parker-Drake, of course, some good records there.) Helps that this mostly keeps a regular groove. A- Oles Brothers with Rob Brown: Live at SJC (2008 [2009], Fenomedia): Put a saxophonist in front of the Polish bass and drums duo (Marcin Oles and Bartlomiej Brat Oles) and you mostly hear the saxophone -- in this case altoist Rob Brown, who caught out attention originally in William Parker's Quartet. The brothers tend to be supportive in this role (as opposed to the avant norm of combative), which makes this a good showcase for Brown, an impressive player who gets stretched a bit thin. B+(**) Theo Jörgensmann/Marcin Oles/Bartlomiej Brat Oles: Live in Poznan 2006 (2006 [2007], Fenomedia): Could have parsed the titles differently here, as all the front cover and spine have is Fenomedia Live Series, the back cover adding Volume 1 (or Volume 2 for the Oles Brothers/Rob Brown Live at SJC set). Both have thin kraft brown wallets, some info in one slot, the CD in the other. I went with the top two lines of the back cover, which are formatted similarly. Jörgensmann seems to be the Oles brothers' preferred (or default) trio partner. He is older, b. 1948 in Bottrop, Germany, plays clarinet (here "bassett clarinet" -- more commonly spelled "basset"; a bit longer with more low notes than a standard clarinet), evidently has a couple dozen records since the early 1970s. He's often terrific here, fast, something the bass-and-drum style facilitates. First time I've heard him; someone I'd like to hear more from. B+(***) Myron Walden: Countryfied (2010, Demi Sound): Mainstream tenor saxophonist, dips back into his blues bag, with guitarist Oz Noy doing most of the heavy lifting. B+(*) Geof Bradfield: African Flowers (2009 [2010], Origin): Saxophonist (tenor, soprano, bass clarinet, and flute here), born in Houston, studied at DePaul in Chicago, moved to Brooklyn 1994-97, back to Chicago, taught at Washington State three years; in Chicago since 2003. First noticed him playing in Ted Sirota's Rebel Souls. Third album, with Victor Garcia (trumpet), Jeff Parker (guitar), Ryan Cohan (piano), Clark Sommers (bass), George Fludas drums). Postbop, strong flow, a little fancy and cluttered. B+(*) Joan Jeanrenaud/PC Muńoz: Pop-Pop (2010, Deconet): Cellist, b. 1956 in Tennessee, studied at Indiana and in Geneva, Switzerland, winding up in San Francisco with Kronos Quartet. Third album under her own name, the others look to be classical (or what's been called "new music"). Muńoz is a SF-based percussionist; has a previous record called PC Muńoz's Grab Bag: Otherworldly Sonic Adventures!. Doesn't have the rhythmic feel of jazz, but does keep a regular propulsive vibe going, and makes for an intriguing piece of instrumental music. B+(***) Jean-Marc Foltz/Matt Turner/Bill Carrothers: To the Moon (2008 [2010], Ayler): Foltz's name above title, the others (better known) below, all three on spine. French clarinetist, had a duo album on Clean Feed with Bruno Chevillon back in 2005; not much more to go on. Turner plays cello; has at least nine albums since 1992, more than two dozen side credits, although I hadn't noticed him before he sent this in. Carrothers is a well known, highly regarded pianist. The instrumental mix suggests this is chamber jazz, and it is very pretty with an intriguing mix of details as the individuals make their marks. B+(**) No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further listening the first time around. Unpacking: Found in the mail this week:
Facebook Notice:This week's Jazz Prospecting up now. Big find comes from a Polish bassist who noticed his record on my wish list. The other one I figured for a doorstop, but it samples a bunch of noisy B+ records into a useful configuration, something you can play for thrills and not be stuck on too long. Sunday, November 07, 2010Weekend RoundupA week's worth of useful links I didn't get around to commenting on previously (less than usual because I tried to get the election crap out of the way early, not that I got it all):
Facebook NoticeLess than the usual Weekend Roundup, but like the weekend comes around ready or not. Links from Krugman, Leonard, Pareene, Udall -- all usual suspects -- and Paul Berman, mentioned here previously. Friday, November 05, 2010Rhapsody Streamnotes: November 2010Pick up text here. Thursday, November 04, 2010Recycled Goods (79): November 2010Pick up text here. One Party RuleDion Lefler/Jeannine Koranda: GOP's Big Victory Comes with Big Responsibilities: While most of the country is looking forward to political gridlock, Kansas has completely exposed itself to one-party dictatorship, without even the old comfort of knowing that some sane Republicans were in the mix:
There's a long list of dirty work the House Republicans have been frustrated on during the last eight years with Democratic governors (not that I'm all that sure about Mark Parkinson). The article has some, and a second article focused on a coal-fired power plant near Holcolmb in far west Kansas that has been held up. And they'll gin up some more. (Kris Kobach, our new secretary of state -- i.e., the guy in charge of keeping Democrats away from the polls -- likes to brag about his role in writing Arizona's unconstitutional profiling law.) Alex Pareene: The Sad Tale of the Democrats Who Hated the Unemployed: This is the link to an article I mentioned in passing in yesterday's post.
Wednesday, November 03, 2010Peter Su LetterSome fragments I wrote in response to a letter from Peter Su which started:
I wrote in response:
Poor NationYesterday the American people -- or actually about 50% of adults eligible to vote, at least if Kansas figures are representative of the whole nation -- voted to give themselves a pay cut. The result is that the nation as a whole, and almost every individual in it, will be poorer two years from now, and most likely four, six, and ten years from now, than they would be had they voted differently. Many will be poorer than they are now. A lot of other things could happen, but this is the most straightforward bet. The Republicans in Congress may or may not be as obstructionist as they've been the last two years when they figured they had nothing to lose: given the big "fillibuster-proof" Democratic majorities, they figured why not make them reach? But it is certain that House Republicans will be able to obstruct anything they really dislike, and high on that list are efforts to stimulate the economy and ease the pain of the many people who lost out in the depressed economy. In the long run they argue that business will rebound on its own, and in the short run they won't mind if Obama gets blamed for the lag time. In the same vein, they'll scuttle and defang any attempts to regulate or reform business. They won't be able to pass big giveaways like the bankruptcy and tort reform laws that passed under Bush, but that doesn't mean the private sector will be stalemated like the federal government. Companies will still be able to smash unions or bully then into givebacks, and will slough off more benefits and force workers to assume more risks. And they don't really care much about unemployment: the more people are unemployed, the less pressure there is for wages to encroach on profits. As for taxes, the Bush cuts will soon expire, and Obama can veto any effort (which with the new Congress would probably pass) to extend the cuts for the rich, and the Republicans can hold the rest of the cuts hostage. Without the cuts nearly everyone will feel a pinch; with the cuts for the rich, deficits will continue to rise and take their toll in inflation and poorer government services. Either way nearly everyone loses. Moreover, Republican gains at the state level mean more regressive taxes and less services across the board. Of course, few people recognize this. Saying so isn't in the Republicans' interest, but it also doesn't seem to be within the mental grasp of the Democrats. They've tried to create more jobs and provide more safety net benefits, but they've only seen that as patchwork. They don't seem to even have the conception that a more equitable economy would be a good thing, let alone a grasp of practical ways to advance such a goal: more progressive taxes, more livable wages, a genuine right to organize unions, major investments in education and infrastructure, a trade policy that promotes jobs here instead of driving them away, making an effort to restore equal opportunity as a national ideal. If the Democrats could only commit to such a program they'd have something valuable to offer to the American people. As it is, all they can say is that they won't hurt you as bad as the Republicans will, and as often as not they don't even bother to say that. I don't have much more to add. It is sad and pathetic that the Republicans have been able to regain some measure of legitimacy in two years, especially given the way they did it. The Tea Party has been a feast for the media -- lots of emotion, laughable but scant analysis -- but ultimately it polled poorly. But by focusing on the Tea Party, the media ignored how far gone many mainstream Republicans have become. But most Democrats are as confused and inarticulate -- actually more so, because they have to solicit both conservative money and liberal votes at the same time. One thing that is interesting is that almost all of the vote shift from 2008 can be explained by voting levels: low income and/or young voter turnout was way down. That was much discussed as the "enthusiasm gap" but "alienation gap" was more like it. A few weeks back I thought about writing a post about "a tale of two cousins": I went with a cousin from Idaho to visit another cousin in Arkansas, two women with pretty much the same education, status, work history, income, family background, both living in deep red redoubts. Except that one is hard core Tea Party, the other suspicious of all politicians but lukewarm on Obama and unlikely to ever forget or forgive Bush. The former, needless to say, gets all her news from Fox; the latter supplements a local station with the BBC. But I woke up this morning thinking of something the former said, just an exclamation over something that I didn't even follow, when she said "poor nation" like you'd say "poor cat" when you recognize the road kill. This is a poor nation, indeed. No need to dwell on this, but a couple links to get them out of the way: Steve Benen: With Great Power . . .:
Peter Daou: Democrats Stood for Nothing and Fell for Anything:
Glenn Greenwald: Pundit Sloth: Blaming the Left:
Don't have the link handy, but someone else noted the very large losing percentage of the House Democrats who voted against extending unemployment benefits. Since I've mentioned Kansas several times in recent election posts, I'll note that it was a bloodbath here, completely wiping out the Democrats' considerable progress over the last two (or four) elections. The Republicans won all state offices, beating two Democratic incumbents, the Senate seat (Jerry Moran with 70% of the vote to 26% for Lisa Johnston), and all four House seats (three open seats, with one gain). In the 4th District, Mike Pompeo defeated Republican-wannabe Raj Goyle 59% to 36% -- a much bigger margin than anyone had expected. (Don't have the money figures handy; Pompeo outspent Goyle, but Goyle must have wound up spending more per vote. In the senate race Moran spent at least $9/vote, whereas Johnston got 43 votes for every $1 spent -- about 2 cents per vote). Tuesday, November 02, 2010Pre-MortemVoted this afternoon. The room wasn't empty but I had no wait for a machine -- not unusual in a non-presidential election year, but much sparser than 2004 or 2008. Kansas actually has several races where the Democrats didn't totally cave in: the incumbent attorney general has a good shot, and the Republicans nominated for secretary of state and state treasurer are completely nuts. The vacant congressional seat race has been competitive, with pseudo-Democrat Raj Goyle raising almost as much money as party shill Mike Pompeo, but the only votes that seem to count for the vacant senate seat were cast when Jerry Moran raised $5 million and his opponent, Lisa Johnston, only had $5 thousand to spend. The governor's race was Sam Brownback's to lose; while nobody much likes or trusts him his money and well oiled machine didn't blow up. With big Republican majorities in the state houses and Brownback as governor Kansas should surpass South Dakota as the most extreme anti-abortion state in the union, and may rival Arizona for general inanity. That all represents a big reversal from 2006-08 when the Democrats made significant gains across the state, threatening to turn us into something more like Iowa -- a fair-minded farm state with some of the larger clusters of manufacturing left in America. The Republicans can thank Obama for their recovery: first for getting rid of Howard Dean and the 50-state grassroots organizing strategy, and second for shunting Kansas's star Democrat, Kathleen Sebelius, off to a thankless and pointless job in Washington. Aside from voting, what got me writing about this is this morning's Paul Krugman post, the source of my title. Krugman starts by blaming the Democrats' losses on Obama's failure to secure a stimulus package large enough to turn the economy around. No surprise there, since he's long been a broken record on that very point. Then he adds:
That first point can be summed up as belief in the Confidence Fairy -- the idea that if the president thought and acted like the economy was rebounding it would rebound. (Or more cynically, the charge that if he didn't, the economy stagnating would be his fault.) That not only wasn't realistic. Given that most of the people who voted for him have been stuck in a stagnant (or worse) economy for thirty years, Obama could have projected confidence and still insisted that we needed to do more. Instead, he yoked himself to all that debt nonsense, and he signed off on the stupid notion that tax cuts were an effective stimulus. In doing so, he crippled his own stimulus package. Worse, he failed to kill off the Bush tax cuts early when he had the chance. And by committing himself to deficit-neutral reforms and longterm deficit reduction without significant tax increases, he shot himself in both legs, crippling any chance either to jump start the economy or to rebalance it to be more equable in the future. For a guy who's supposed to be smart and savvy, he did some amazingly dumb things. He kept talking endlessly with Republicans, who killed the clock and delivered nothing -- first on stimulus, then on health care, cap-and-trade, his whole agenda. He went out of his way to push programs that had originated in conservative think tanks -- cap-and-trade is a total sop to the wisdom of the markets, approximately what caused the problem in the first place -- and he went out of his way to line up industry allies who gutted his proposals, then put their profits to work to beat down what little he hadn't given away in the first place. The one deal that makes me maddest of all is the one with PHARMA, which insured that health care reform wouldn't touch the industry's profits. I mean, how hard would it have been for Obama to excoriate the drug industry? There's enough excess profit there alone to fund the entire universal expansion of insurance coverage. And even if he had failed, he would at least have defined for the public who the enemy was. Same thing happened in banking, in energy, all over the map. Obama managed to turn the banking industry against him while most of America thinks he's in their pockets. Back in 2008 the first and foremost reason for voting for Obama was that he represented an alternative to Clinton. As it turns out, the only Clinton people who didn't get jobs under Obama are Mark Penn, Dick Morris, and Bill -- and they, like Richard Rubin, most likely couldn't abide the pay cuts. The second reason was to roll back the Bush legacy, and that too has been a vast disappointment -- not so much because it hasn't happened as because Obama forgot why it needed to happen. The whole point of a political campaign is to put effective arguments into play. If one side doesn't campaign -- which is Lisa Johnston's problem in the KS senate race -- the other side wins: most people just don't know (or care) enough to figure this stuff out on their own; they look for signals, and they tend to follow the side that signals the most confidence and conviction. That's the core story of this election. All that remains is to assess the damage, and see if we can learn anything from it. Expect to hear various nits explain that the reasons the Democrats lost so much is because they tried to do too much. You should know to dismiss those voices instantly because the Democrats did no such thing. Or more precisely, Obama did no such thing: he repeatedly cut the legs out from under Democrats who tried to do the right thing, and he was conspicuously remiss in defending the party's platform against Republican obstructionism. He did one piss poor job of fighting for his party the last two years. Maybe he'll try harder in the next two years with his own job on the line. A Downloader's Diary (4): November 2010This is growing more solid as a regular feature. Did a little work to tidy up the archive area, where there are indexes by date and artist name. The blog also has a category link which will get you Downloader's Diary posts going back to the beginning, without having to slog through my own crap. Michael Tatum has also set up a facebook page which has some discussion and feedback, all the more useful since I've never figured out how to manage comments sanely on this here blog. I should have a [short] Recycled Goods and a [long] Rhapsody Streamnotes ready to post sometime later this week, plus we had a health-sized Jazz Prospecting yesterday. So it should be a good music week, even if the elections suck. Go vote against insanity today. Then play some good music. Insert text from here. Monday, November 01, 2010Music WeekMusic: Current count 17274 [17248] rated (+26), 870 [867] unrated (+3). Feeling totally fucking swamped.
Jazz Prospecting (CG #25, Part 6)Two weeks worth of jazz prospecting and unpacking here. One reason there's a surfeit of A-records this time is that I broke down and bought a few -- I didn't want to miss the Braxton set, Lars Gullin has been a long-term mystery, and David Murray and William Parker are old standbys. If I had the budget, I would do this more often, but given that I never have time to play old music that I love, it seems foolish (for me at least) to spend the little income I have on more stuff I don't have space for. I don't list purchases in the unpacking, which I see as saving me email acknowledging receipt, but I do track them in my notebook. This week has an unusual splurge of new non-jazz as I've picked up a few Rhapsody (and/or Tatum) discoveries as cheap as I can find them. Tatum's November Downloader's Diary will most likely be up tomorrow and he's finding lots of good stuff. Another reason there's more good records than usual is that I'm in the middle of trying to reorganize my work area, and I've managed to stack trays of unsorted records on top of my B and C input queue trays, so I've been pulling everything out of the the A box, plus occasionally looking something up on Rhapsody. Not sure when I'll move to close out this round -- should happen in the next 2-3 weeks in order to get it out by end of the year, which would be three months since Sept. 28. Have plenty of records prospected, although there's lots more to do. Actually have enough material written up, although it's not exactly what I want. Hugo Carvalhais: Nebulosa (2009 [2010], Clean Feed): Portuguese bassist, leads a trio with Gabriel Pinto on piano/synth and Mario Costa on drums. First album as far as I can tell. Hard to say what they're really up to, since the four cuts where they play alone offer several different looks -- rumbling piano, cheezy synth, deference to the bassist. But the main reason you can't sort them out is that Tim Berne drops in on six pieces -- the five parts of the title track plus "Intro" -- and you notice him a lot. B+(**) Jason Robinson/Anthony Davis: Cerulean Landscapes (2008 [2010], Clean Feed): Saxophone-piano duo. Robinson plays soprano, alto, and tenor sax, and alto flute. Web bio identifies him as American, but that's about it. [Let's see: San Diego, UCSD.] Has half a dozen albums since 1998, two new ones (not in my cache) out since this one dropped in September -- The Two Faces of Janus (Cuneiform), and Cerberus Reigning (Accretions). I've also run across him in the group Cosmologic. Davis goes back further; b. 1951 Patterson NJ, recorded for India Navigation and Gramavision 1978-90, shows up on a couple albums I've heard by David Murray and String Trio of New York -- a serious pianist I never much got into. AMG lists nothing by him since 1993. Teaches at UCSD, where Robinson was a student. Both players specialize in fancy abstractions, which given the limited pallette and rhythm makes for rough going. B Scott Colley: Empire (2009 [2010], CAM Jazz): Bassist, b. 1963, eight albums since 1998, three pages of credits at AMG -- throwing out the redundancies, various artist comps, composer-only credits, etc., comes to about 150 records since 1986, virtually all mainstream, lot of good saxophonists -- Potter, McCaslin, Margitza, Binney. Quintet here, prominent names: Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Brian Blade (drums), Bill Frisell (guitar), Craig Taborn (piano). Feels like one of Frisell's Americana albums, only a little lead-footed -- empires do get to be cumbersome. Alessi is especially good throughout, but by now you expect as much. B+(**) Stephan Crump/James Carney: Echo Run Pry (2008 [2010], Clean Feed): A while back I got a package of 6-7 Clean Feed releases from Portugal; opened them up and when I noticed this one, I stopped, thought about what a remarkable job Pedro Costa does with his label. In particular, I recalled Costa's comment back when I wrote that mega-article on jazz labels: that he doesn't have any special tastes, but just releases whatever strikes his fancy. That's mostly included various circles of well-connected avant-gardists, plus a wider range of Portuguese artists. I've never really thought of Crump (bass) or Carney (piano) as avant-garde, although they've been doing interesting and rather daring postbop, scoring HMs or better, so I was surprised to see them pop up together, and here. The record has the same basic flaw of all duos: limited pallette with no one extra to smooth the flow. But Carney holds back enough to work with the bass instead of runnign roughshod over it, and Crump's leads are always interesting. B+(***) Richie Beirach/Dave Liebman: Quest for Freedom (2009 [2010], Sunnyside): Pianist Beirach and saxophonist Liebman (strictly soprano and alto flute this time) have been playing together as far back as Drum Ode in 1974, and called their early 1980s configuration Quest, a name that also pops up on some of their recent work -- haven't heard them, but two more 2010 Quest releases are Re-Dial: Live in Hamburg (Outnote) and Searching for the New Sound of Be-Bop (Storyville). This one is amped up by Frankfurt Radio Bigband, with Jim McNeely doing the arrangements. I found this rough and brash and rather annoying at first, then had to admit that there is some sharp playing here, with the pianist getting a good airing. B+(*) Conrad Herwig: The Latin Side of Herbie Hancock (2008 [2010], Half Note): Trombonist, Latin jazz specialist, has previously explored the Latin sides of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Wayne Shorter, so this progression has taken on an air of inevitability. Eddie Palmieri and Randy Brecker are special the guests du jour; old hands are Mike Rodriguez (trumpet), Craig Handy (saxes, flute, bass clarinet), Bill O'Connell (piano), Ruben Rodriguez (bass), Robby Ameen (drums), and Pedro Martinez (percussion). I'm reminded of a correspondent who pointed out that anyone can throw in some clave but that the music needs something more. This has something more here and there, and I'd never accuse Palmieri of faking it, but this seems more like an exercise. Ends with "Watermelon Man," which has been done better. B Lars Gullin: Vol. 8 1953-55: Danny's Dream (1953-55 [2005], Dragon): One of the more obscure records ever granted a crown recommendation by Richard Cook and Brian Morton's Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings was The Great Lars Gullin Vol. 5, an LP that vanished from print shortly after it was cited in the first edition. Since then, Sweden's baritone sax great's recordings have been reshuffled into a new series, which has been coming out about one per year and has not reached Vol. 11. The sessions from the old Vol. 5 finally resurfaced in the new Vol. 8, along with a few extras that add a second sax (tenor) to a surprisingly light and tasty quartet -- Rolf Berg's guitar is often the secret, but Gullin himself is key. A- The Ray Anderson-Marty Ehrlich Quartet: Hear You Say: Live in Willisau (2009 [2010], Intuition): With Brad Jones on bass and Matt Wilson on drums. Anderson's trombone is always a delight, as is Ehrlich's clarinet (and for that matter alto and soprano sax), even when the two don't mix especially well. Breaks down into a nasty bit of noise at one point, which may be a turn off -- I'm uncertain on that myself. Otherwise, these are two musicians I'm always happy to hear, doing about what I expect of them. B+(**) Goldbug: The Seven Dreams (2009 [2010], 1k): Tim Moltzer, a guitarist from Philadelphia, seems to be the main mover in this group, which includes Barry Meehan (bass, piano), Eric Slick (drums, percussion), and Theo Travis (tenor sax, flute). (Moltzer also credited with keys/piano/laptop, Meehan and Slick with voice, although their is little evidence of that). Groove tableaux, mobile, can be compelling at times but also has a tendency to slip away. B+(**) Tim Moltzer + Markus Reuter: Descending (2010, 1k): Goldbug guitarist, also credited with electronics, still not sure whether he gravitates toward jazz or experimental rock or what. Reuter, b. 1972, from Germany, plays "touch guitar" and electronics; has eight or so albums, more or less ambient electronica. Several others are credited here, including Theo Travis on alto flute and BJ Cole on 12-string pedal steel, but the record is mostly swallowed up in slow, simmmering sheets of silvery sound -- descending, indeed. B Rez Abbasi Acoustic Quartet: Natural Selection (2010, Sunnyside): Largest print on the cover is the acronym RAAQ. Pakistani-American guitarist, moved to US at age 4, grew up in southern California, based in New York. Group includes Bill Ware (vibes), Stephan Crump (bass), and Eric McPherson (drums). Good showcase for Ware, especially at the start on a piece by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. B+(**) Kenny Werner: No Beginning No End (2009 [2010], Half Note): Initially a commission for a composition to celebrate Bradford Endicott's 80th birthday, took a sudden turn when Werner's daughter was killed in a car accident. Front cover credit continues: "featuring Joe Lovano and Judi Silvano with Woodwinds, Voices & Strings." The latter come from the MIT Wind Ensemble, conducted by Fred Harris Jr., their credits comprising about four booklet pages. The booklet includes a number of family photos tracing daughter Katheryn from baby to young woman, lyrics, notes, credits. I don't doubt that this is all profoundly moving once you get into it, but I find the maudlin music unlistenable when sung and uninteresting otherwise -- although there is a poignant stretch at the end when Werner's piano is isolated against faint waves of harp. B- David Murray Black Saint Quartet: Live in Berlin (2007 [2008], Jazzwerkstatt): With Lafayette Gilchrist (piano), Jaribu Shahid (bass), and Hamid Drake (drums), working under the same group moniker as Murray used for Sacred Ground, but with different bassist-drummer. Murray's bass clarinet gets first credit here, but he plays a lot of really monster tenor sax here in a typical tour de force. The weak link is Gilchrist, who gets two long solos that mostly find me missing John Hicks. Shahid does better with his spot. B+(***) Bobby Jackson: The Café Extra-Ordinaire Story (1970 [2010], Jazzman): Bassist, born in Birmingham, AL (no date given), grew up in Milwaukee, in 1966 opened a club called Café Extra-Ordinaire in Minneapolis, leading what seems to have been the house band while the booklet her wanders off into other acts that appeared at the club -- Freddie Hubbard, Elvin Jones, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk get sections, irrelevant to the music at hand. Jackson's group cut an album mid-1970 which didn't come out until 1978 and is reissued here as the seventh release in Jazzman's "Holy Grail" series. Probably the same Bobby Jackson released Quest in 2006 and Tails Out in 2010 -- both described as smooth jazz albums, the latter including Tony Moreno (drums) from this album and Bobby Hughes (sax) who shows up in booklet pictures but not on the album credits. Enjoyable record, a little scattered with only one musician contributing more than one song (electric pianist Hubert Eaves), whatever funk intent they had complicated by a propensity to swing hard. B+(**) Henry Threadgill Zooid: This Brings Us To: Volume II (2008 [2010], Pi): Same setup, probably same session, as Volume I, which came out a year ago and swept most critics although the flute and some dull spots left it down on my HM list. Threadgill is again credited with flute over alto sax, although it nags me less here. The group has an interesting balance: Liberty Ellman (guitar), Jose Davila (trombone and tuba), Stomu Takeishi (bass guitar), and Elliot Humberto Kavee (drums). Mostly works off the tension between Ellman and Takeishi, with Davila cavorting around the margins. Threadgill's flute adds slightly to the mischief; his alto sax blows it to another level altogether. A- Anthony Braxton: 19 Standards (Quartet) 2003 (2003 [2010], Leo, 4CD): This is actually the third 4-CD box from Braxton's 2003 standards tour, so it should be surplus, but like its predecessors it's just marvelous. Braxton haters won't have a clue in a blindfold test, and fans may have some trouble too -- aside from one improv where he's on home ground, he reminds me of Sonny Stitt more than anyone else, with more range and even faster, or Bird without the dank sound, or McLean without the weird bite, but where all those guys had to sweat to put out, Braxton has never seemed more relaxed or laid back. (And no one else would pick up a sopranino sax and kick out an utterly distinctive "The Girl From Ipanema.") With guitarist Kevin O'Neil getting a lot of room to stretch, and Andy Eulau on bass and Kevin Norton on percussion. Main thing that holds me back from grading it higher is that I haven't spent as much time with it as A records usually take. But you can dive in anywhere and find something wonderful. A- William Parker & the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra: For Percy Heath (2005 [2006], Victo): A record on my wish list for quite a while now; finally broke down and bought a copy. Parker's liner notes recall two times he ran into the late MJQ bassist Percy Heath: the first Heath greated him as "Mr. Iron Fingers"; the second Parker asked if he could do anything for Heath, who replied, "No, just keep playing your music." One long piece here, in four parts. Parker's big band can get pretty unruly, but a lot of focus on the bass helps rein in the excesses. And when, as for much of "Part One" they do break out they're ordered enough to be awesome. A- Doug Webb: Midnight (2009 [2010], Posi-Tone): Saxophonist, album only specifies "saxophones" and he's got a picture on his bio page of dozens of them but I figure him for a tenor man. Born in Chicago, studied at Berklee, lives in Los Angeles; no dates on any of this but photo suggests a little gray around the roots, and he claims to have "been featured on over 150 jazz recordings" -- undoubtedly the most famous was dubbing Lisa Simpson's saxophone. First record under his own name, but he also has four credited to the Mat Marucci/Doug Web Trio on Cadence/CIMP, so presumably has an avant streak not present here. This is a mainstream standards quartet, with Larry Goldings neat and prim on piano, Stanley Clarke dutiful on bass, and Gerry Gibbs on drums. "Try a Little Tenderness," "I'll Be Around," "Fly Me to the Moon," "You Go to My Head"; others more obscure, no big name songwriters other than Charlie Parker ("Quasimodo"). Lovely stuff, the sort of thing I'm a sucker for and may wind up underrating because it seems so normal. B+(***) Jared Gold: Out of Line (2009 [2010], Posi-Tone): Organ player, third album since 2008, but impressed me more for his work in the Oliver Lake Organ Trio. Chris Cheek doesn't push him as hard as Lake, but plays strong tenor sax, and Dave Stryker gives him a guitarist who can also take charge. Drummer is Mark Ferber. B+(**) Luis Bonilla: Twilight (2010, Planet Arts/Now Jazz Consortium): Trombone player, b. 1965 in Los Angeles, of Costa Rican descent. Fifth album since 1991; has a lot of side credits, mostly in Latin bands starting with Larry Harlow, but also with Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Gerald Wilson, Dave Douglas. Group includes Ivan Renta on tenor sax, Bruce Barth on piano and organ, Andy McKee on bass, and John Riley on drums and percussion, with a guest French horn on one track. Most of the horn leads are trombone, which give this a rough surface on top of fairly powerful grooves. B+(**) Dave Holland/Pepe Habichuela: Hands (2009 [2010], Dare2): Habichuela is a stage name for José Antonio Carmona, b. 1944, guitarist, head of a family of flamenco musicians which include two more Carmona here on guitar, another (plus one Israel Porrina) on cajón and percussion. The guitar work is intricate, tends to pull its punches back into a neat little ball. The bass adds something, but doesn't stand out on its own. B+(**) Achim Kaufmann/Robert Landfermann/Christian Lillinger: Grünen (2009 [2010], Clean Feed): Piano trio. Kaufmann is the pianist, b. 1962 in Aachen, Germany, based in Amsterdam; has eight or so records since 1998, some with Frank Gratkowski, some with Michael Moore, has a connection to Dylan van der Schyff, has a solo album. Landfermann plays bass; Lillinger drums. Group improvs, free form, some noise effects that remind me of prepared piano although they could come from the others. B+(*) Exploding Star Orchestra: Stars Have Shapes (2010, Delmark): Rob Mazurek big group, not really a big band given no sense of sections: one cornet (Mazurek), one trombone (Jeb Bishop), three reeds (Matt Bauder on clarinet and tenor sax, Jason Stein on bass clarinet, Greg Ward on alto sax) plus flute (Nicole Mitchell), double up on bass (Matthew Lux and Josh Abrams) and drums (John Herndon and Mike Reed, plus Carrie Biolo percussion); also piano (Jeff Kowalkowski), vibes (Jason Adasiewicz), "word rocker" (Damon Locks), and various "electro-acoustic constructions" (Mazurek's main interest -- "rain from the Brazilian Amazon, insects at the turn of an eclipse, the hammering overdrive of bicycles in Copenhagen, stacked muted cornets run through various filters drones built from electric eels and piano feedback, hi-frequency sinuous lines from tone generators, pitched bass guitars, and other prepared instruments"). Dedicated "in memory of Bill Dixon and Fred Anderson," who've livened up previous group albums, something missing here. Played it three times and am still not sure what I think. [B+(**)] Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet + 1: 3 Nights in Oslo (2009 [2010], Smalltown Superjazz, 5CD): Only two discs feature the whole loud and boisterous group. I've gotten to where I enjoy the jolt of energy they provide, but anyone with reservations about free jazz noise will want to stay clear. The front line is the reed section: Brötzmann (tarogato, clarinet, tenor and alto sax), Ken Vandermark (clarinet, tenor sax), Mats Gustafsson (alto flutophone, baritone sax), and Joe McPhee (tenor sax, pocket trumpet, flugelhorn). The brass is pure brawn, with two trombones (Jeb Bishop and Johannes Bauer) and Per Ĺke Holmlander on tuba and cimbasso. Fred Lonberg-Holm's cello and electronics spruce up Kent Kessler's bull fiddle. And the two drummers, Michael Zerang and Paal Nilssen-Love, play with the band. The middle three discs are slightly less intense as they spotlight subsets of the group: Gustafsson/Brötzmann/Vandermark (aka Sonore), Zerang/Nilssen-Love, Bauer/Holmlander, McPhee/Vandermark, Bishop/Paal-Nilssen, McPhee/Londberg-Holm/Zerang (Survival Unit III), McPhee/Holmlander/Bauer/Bishop (Trombone Choir). B+(***) These are some even quicker notes based on downloading or streaming records. I don't have the packaging here, don't have the official hype, often don't have much information to go on. I have a couple of extra rules here: everything gets reviewed/graded in one shot (sometimes with a second play), even when I'm still guessing on a grade; the records go into my flush file (i.e., no Jazz CG entry, unless I make an exception for an obvious dud). If/when I get an actual copy I'll reconsider the record. The Wynton Marsalis Quintet & Richard Galliano: From Billie Holiday to Edith Piaf: Live in Marciac (2008 [2010], Rampart Street Music): Live in France, kicked out on a vanity label -- don't know whether that means that Marsalis is through with Blue Note or this is just too low concept to bother them with. Accordionist Galliano arranged the pieces. A binational singers tribute sounds like the sort of idea Marsalis would have come up with, but neither party brought a singer -- just as well, I'm sure -- so what we get is a standards roast. "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" is done so boisterously it trips over the top, but most of the material holds together better, especially the closing "La Vie en Rose." B+(*) [Rhapsody] The Bad Plus: Never Stop (2010, E1 Entertainment): Piano trio, debuted in 2000 as a semi-supergroup after bassist Reid Anderson and pianist Ethan Iverson had knocked off several super albums for Spain's Fresh Sound New Talent label. Third member is drummer Dave King, whose Happy Apple albums started in 1997 and have continued at least through 2007. First two Columbia albums at least had the posture of a breakthrough arena act as opposed to the chambers and clubs and cocktail bars most piano trios aim for, and drove the point home with innovative covers of classic rock. Since then, they've wavered and wandered (including a dud last one, wonder if that has anything to do with why I'm not on the mailing list?). In some ways this feels like a return to form, but all originals -- if you're scoring at home: Anderson 5, King 3, Iverson 2 -- some muscling up and modulating the volume, some rollicking out, some just schmoozy. B+(**) [Rhapsody] Grant Stewart: Around the Corner (2010, Sharp Nine): Retro tenors saxophonist, b. 1971, close to a dozen albums since 1992, has developed a very clean sound, easy swinging, especially with Peter Washington on bass, Phil Stewart on drums, and Peter Bernstein on guitar. He's never swept me away like Scott Hamilton or Harry Allen, but this is a very steady, quite likable album -- good showcase for Bernstein too. B+(***) [Rhapsody] The Pizzarelli Boys: Desert Island Dreamers (2009 [2010], Arbors): Guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli and family, sons John (guitar, vocals), and Martin (bass), with Larry Fuller (piano), Aaron Weinstein (violin), and Tony Tedesco (drums), plus a Jessica Molaskey vocal at the end ("Danny Boy"). Second album under this moniker, sandwiched around their PIZZArelli Party with lots of Arbors All-Stars, although Bucky and John have a bunch of duets, Martin has been sitting in with either or both, and Weinstein's practically adopted. Gentle swing, mostly coddling standards that aren't up for anything harder -- "Over the Rainbow" is a nice one; "Stairway to Heaven" barely kicks into second gear, and "Danny Boy" is even slower. B [Rhapsody] "Buck" Pizzarelli and the West Texas Tumbleweeds: Diggin' Up Bones (2009, Arbors): Bucky, of course, the most straightforward of the nicknames the band adopted -- his sons "Rusty Pickins" and "Marty Moose," along with fellow travelers like Hoss [Aaron] Weinstein and Dusty Spurs [Tommy] White. Leans toward western swing, starting up with "Right or Wrong" and returning now and then, but also picking up "Your Cheating Heart" and "Ghost Riders in the Sky" and "Act Naturally" and "Promised Land." Three Pizzarelli originals -- probably John's, who sings the witty "Ain't Oklahoma Pretty." Rebecca Kilgore leads with six vocals, Andy Levas five, and Joe West two, and Jessica Molaskey fills in some background. Lots of fiddle and pedal steel in this Jersey hoedown. Group has an encore not up yet, called -- what else? -- Back in the Saddle Again. B+(**) [Rhapsody] Unpacking: Found in the mail the last two weeks:
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