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Category Archives: recordings
Throwaway Throwbacks
Given my ingrained biases in the–for me–narrow realm of pop music, a recording being a throwaway isn’t a bad thing. It just means a favored artist isn’t advancing their artistry via a recording. Such a holding action may provide a lot of pleasure. For some artists this lack of advancement is their default. For example, last year Richard Thompson released a live record, Sweet Warrior. It’s a very fine, even stirring, slab of ‘more of the same.’ It’s a bit shy of being a throw-away too.
Los Lobos is one of my favorite rock bands over 25 years. As gritty proponents of rootsy Chicano folk and rock and roll, their artistry long ago achieved a dependable consistency. As well, Los Lobos is an awesome live band; right up there with contemporaries, The Allman Brothers, Pearl Jam, Neil Young, Derek Trucks, Richard Thompson, Little Feat, and others.
However, their 2009 release, Los Lobos Does Disney sits squarely in the throwaway box. This is so in spite of its not being more of the same because the record’s line-up of songs is exclusively drawn from the repertoire of Disney ‘classics.’ This wasn’t a bold move. Los Lobos versions of Disney mostly secure the classic Los Lobos aesthetic. But, the problem is that where this isn’t the case, the music is whimsical beyond belief! How whimsical?
To the point of being fey, and it’s this that doesn’t sit well for this listener. Even felicitous touches in arrangements, such as the pumping organ on Grim Grinning Ghosts, are subsumed by the odd material. And, there are many such touches. Los Lobos are terrific players and singers, but here their talent is wed, mostly, to weird material.
When their classic rock and roll approach dominates, as it does on the fuzz drenched The Ugly Bug Ball, it comes as a relief. Yet, this tune is truly a lesser moment of more of the same. Only Bare Necessities really works the concept to a complete success. Not In Nottingham is an enjoyable ballad. Three pleasurable tracks suggests Los Lobos Does Disney is a well executed misstep.
It can be contrasted with power poppers Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoff‘s second record of classic rock covers,Under the Covers, Volume 2. Here, the pleasures are modest but at least the duo’s rendering of a different stripe of novelty tunes, classic FM radio chestnuts, is respectful and much more than dutiful.
I chuckled as I listened because Sweet and Hoffs may constitute the slickest bar band of all time as they cover Fleetwood Mac, Todd Rundgren (twice,) Tom Petty, Raspberries, Derek and the Dominoes, Big Star, and other pop luminaries. They don’t reach for revelations and it’s all way too shiny, yet when they nail it, as they do on Big Star’s Back of a Car, their sincerity trumps the undeniable display of craft.
There is one moment of revelation: in the iconic up-shifting modulation between Yes’s Your Move and All Good People, Sweet breaks out a romping Moby Grape-esque chunk of prime guitar psych, and it’s as if I was hearing one of my least favorite bands, Yes, for the first time. Bread’s Everything I Own is the other highlight. Hoffs, a splendid singer, basically makes this forgotten MOR staple her own. Otherwise, this record lands in throwaway territory, albeit its pleasures are many. Some of its moments might end up on a wedding mix tape if I ever get called to do one.
Sid & Susie aka Matthew Sweet/Susanna Hoffs on myspace
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Look Beyond Appearances – 2009 Music Gems
Staff Benda Bilili from Congo. ‘Staff Benda Bilili’ means look beyond appearances–an apt title for my brief listing of some of my favorite new music from last year.
Every new year between 1974 and 1986 I prepared a listing of the previous year’s best jazz records. I used my evaluation to merchandise records at the store and support broadcast on the radio. At the time, it seemed my sense of the previous year had to be credible for the simple reason that I was in a good position to mightily sample the year’s jazz releases. The record companies were generous in recognizing my dual role. My base sample was large, usually numbering several hundred records.
This comes to mind because this year I have for the first time since then gone to the considerable trouble to assess listening highlights for the past year. The biggest challenge was going back to figure out what actually came out last year. Then, armed with a raw list, in January I mined for recordings I had missed and was interested in.
Between the fan blogs and forums, and, the old line critics, I apprised myself of other critical views. Just a few steps in this direction had me reflecting on how much the critical culture around music has come to–paradoxically–accept and deny the ramification of the internet in its year-end recaps. In a follow-up post, or two, I’ll delve into this. It’s suffices to suggest that the old style critical culture has not grasped how prolix the wider musical culture has become. On the other side, the smart musical mobs do not grasp, and likely have no good reason to grasp, what were the precedents to today’s iTunes and share-ism.
One way the old and new school may be bridged is to consider the consequence of share-ism: as music sales have imploded, exposure has increased. This means that the critic is no longer positioned as a gatekeeper by their main advantage, that the critic can sample more music than the dedicated fan. Where this really is evident is in the new school muso’s ability to deeply ‘sample’ on the margins. This comes about because the unit cost of exposure has plummeted. This is in contrast to the old line critic who seems to still be wed to taking stock of what gets pushed their way. Whereas the informal and amateur culture is advantaged more by pulling music into their orbits. Think about it!
Meanwhile, my own list simply reflects what I really enjoyed. I make no other claim. Some of the music below represent long standing guilty pleasures. *marks one recording in each broad genre that I’d tell you to leap into first. I’ll be highlighting individual recordings in the future.
*Asleep At the wheel – Asleep & Willie country-folk
Levon Helm – Electric Dirt country-folk
Michael Hurley – Ida Con Snock country-folk
Buddy & Julie Miller – Love Snuck Up country-folk
Lhasa De Sela – Lhasa country-folk
*Celer – Breeze of Roses electronic
Sunn O))) – Monoliths & Dimensions electronic
Burkhard Beins – Structural Drift electronic
Stephen R. Smith – Cities In Decline electronic
Monolake – Silence electronic
*Abdullah Ibrahim – Bombella improv
Sun Ra – In Detroit improv
Pierre Dørge & New Jungle Orchestra – Whispering Elephants improv
Keith Jarrett – Testament improv
Louis Moholo-Moholo – Sibanye: Duets with Marilyn Crispell improv
Martial Solal – Live at the Village Vanguard: I Can’t Give You Anything But Love improv
Cyro Baptista & Banquet of the Senses – Infinito improv
Wadada Leo Smith & Jack DeJohnette – America improv
Bill Dixon – Tapestries for Small Orchestra improv
Kenny Barron – Minor Blues improv
David S. Ware – Shakti improv
Gretchen Parlatro – in a Dream improv
*Or the Whale – s/t pop
Neil Young – Live Archive v.1 pop
J.D. Souther – If the World Is You pop
Ry Cooder – I, Flathead pop
The Band of Heathens – One Foot in the Ether pop
*Allen Toussaint – Bright Mississippi R&b
Los Cenzontles – American Horizon r&b
Buckwheat Zydeco – Lay Your Burden Down r&b
*Staff Benda Bilili- Tres Fort , Tres Fort world
Lucas Santanna – Sem Nostalgia world
Orchestre National de Barbès – Alik world
va – Brazilika world
Tinariwen – Imidiwan:Companions world
Oumou Sangare – Seya world
Amadou & Mariam – Welcome to Mali world
Culture Music Club – Shime world
(139 recordings I enjoyed from last year – below the fold)
The master list – the contenders – all of interest
Abdullah Ibrahim – Bombella
Abner Jay – Abner Jay
Allen Toussaint – Bright Mississippi
Amadou & Mariam – Welcome to Mali
Anouar Brahem – The Astounding Eyes of Rita
Asleep At the wheel – Asleep & Willie
Baaba Maal – Television
Basseko Kouyate & Ngoni Ba – I Speak Fula
Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba – I Speak Fula
Ben Allison – Think Free
Benny Golson – New Time, New ‘Tet
Bill Dixon – Tapestries for Small Orchestra
Bjork – Voltaic
Bobby Sanabria: Kenya Revisited Live
Branford Marsalis – Metamorphosen
Buckwheat Zydeco – Lay Your Burden Down
Buddy & Julie Miller – Love Snuck Up
Burkhard Beins – Structural Drift
Caetano Veloso – Zii e Zie
Cecil Taylor – The Last Dance V1&2
Celer – Breeze of Roses
Celer – Four Pieces
Chas Smith – Nokadai
Corey Wilkes & Abstrakt Pulse – caves from the Ghetto
Cowboy Junkies – Trinity Revisited
Culture Music Club – Shime
Cyril Neville – Brand New Blues
Cyro Baptista & Banquet of the Senses – Infinito
Cyrus Chestnut – Spirit
David S. Ware – Shakti
David Sylvian – Manafon
Delbert McClinton – Acquired Taste
Diana Jones – Better Times Will Come
Dinosaur Jr – Farm
Drive By Trukcers – Austin City Limits
Ellen Jewell – Sea of Tears
Elvis Costello – Secret, Profane And Sugarcane
Extra Golden – Thank You Very Quickly
Fanga – Sira Ba
Fred Anderson – Staying in the Game
Gary Louris/Mark Olson — Ready for the Flood
Geoff Muldaur & The Texas Sheiks – Texas Sheiks
Gerald Cleaver/William Parker/Craig Taborn – Farmers by Natu
Ghana Special –Modern Highlife Afro Sounds Ghana Blues
Graham Parker – Live in SF 1979
Gretchen Parlatro – in a Dream
Harmonica Shah – If All You Have Is A Hammer
Henry Threadgill Zooid – This Brings Us To, Vol. 1
J.D. Souther – If the World Is You
James Moody – 4A
Jayhawks – Music From the North Country
Jesse Winchester – Love Filling Station
Jessica Williams – The Art of the Piano
Jimi Tenor and Tony Allen – Inspiration Information 4
Joe Lovano: Folk Art
John Campbell – Good to Go
Jon Balke & Amina Alaoui – Siwan
Jon Hassell – Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street
Keith Jarrett – Testament
Kenny Barron – Minor Blues
Khan Jamal – Impressions of Coltrane
Kid Loco – The Remix Album
Kimi Djabate – Karam
Klaus Voormann & Friends – A Sideman’s Journey
Kristina Train – Spilt Milk
Laura Viera – Troubled By the Fire
Levon Helm – Electric Dirt
Lhasa De Sela – Lhasa
Los Cenzontles – American Horizon
Louis Moholo-Moholo – Sibanye: Duets with Marilyn Crispell
Lucas Santanna – Sem Nostalgia
Lustmord – The Dark Places Of The Earth
Luther Allison – Songs From the Road
Luther Dickinson & the Sons of Mudboy – Onward & Upward
Lyle Lovett
Madeleine Peyroux – Bare Bones
Mahsa and Marjan Vahdat – I Am Eve
Manassas – Pieces
Martial Solal – Live at the Village Vanguard: I Can’t Give You Anything But Love
Matthew Shipp – Harmonic Disorder
Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs – Under The Covers Vol. 2
Michael Hurley – Ida Con Snock
Michael Hurley – Parsnips
Miranda Lambert – Revolution
Monolake – Silence
Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics – Inspiration Information
Muslimgauze – Cobra Head Soup
Neil Young – Live Archive v.1
No Blues – Lumen
Novalima: Coba Coba (Cumbancha) Perú
Or the Whale – s/t
Orchestre National de Barbès – Alik
Orchestre National de Jazz – Around Robert Wyatt
Otis Taylor: Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs
Oumou Sangare – Seya
Pierre Dørge & New Jungle Orchestra – Whispering Elephants
Ran Blake – Driftwoods
Rashied Ali – Judgment Day v2
Rashied Ali Quintet – Live in Europe
Red Molly – Love & Other Tragedies
Richard Thompson – Live Warrior
Robert Henke – Indigo_Transform
Rosanne Cash – The List
Roswell Rudd – Trombone Tribe
Ry Cooder – I, Flathead
Said the Whale
Salif Keita – La Difference
Samba Toure – Songhai Blues
Shelley King – Welcome Home
Sleeping Me – lamenter
Son Volt – American Central Dust
Sonny Landreth – Levee Town (extras)
Staff Benda Bilili- Tres Fort , Tres Fort
Stefon Harris/Blackout – Urbanus
Stephen R. Smith – Cities In Decline
Steve Kuhn Trio with Joe Lovano – Mostly Coltrane
Steve Roach -Dynamic Stillness
Sun Ra – In Detroit
Sunn O))) – Monoliths & Dimensions
Susana Baca – Seis Poemas
Tam Echo Tam – Dawn
The Band of Heathens – One Foot in the Ether
The Bottle Rockets – Lean Forward
The Doors – The Complete Matrix Club Tapes
The Stone Coyotes – A Rude Awakening
The Subdudes – Flower Petals
Thomas Koner – La Barca
Tinariwen – Imidiwan:Companions
Tinsley Ellis – Speak No Evil
Tom Harrell – Prana Dance
Tony Allen – Secret Agent
Trilok Gurtu – Massical
Trio 3 + Geri Allen – At This Time
va – Brazilika
va – Tudo Ben
va – Chicago Blues: A Living History
Wadada Leo Smith & Jack DeJohnette – America
William Parker – Petit Oiseau
Willie Nelson – Naked Willie
Posted in inspiration, Music Business, recordings, World of Music
Tagged best recordings 2009
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Graham Parker – the year, 1976
33 years ago, 1976, was the bicentennial year, but for me it was mainly the year I latched onto a dream job running a record department in the back of a book store in the college town of Middlebury, Vermont. Very soon after my arrival I struck up a friendship with a like-minded jazzbo and began sitting in on his weekly radio show on the college station, WRMC. One way or the other, I would spend one radio slot a week there for nine years, mostly presenting jazz on Tuesday nights under the title Groovin’ High. Tidbit: for two years CNN’s Frank Sesno read the news after my show.
So, this was the background for 1976. Graham Parker released two superb recordsHeat Treatment and Howlin’ Wind in the same year! I have to confess too: to my tastes, both records wiped away my fascination with the Boss, who had released Born to Run the previous year. To place these records in context, both Elvis Costello and the Sex Pistols would issue their debut records the next year. Meanwhile, the FM radio dial was increasingly dominated by corporate rock.
Parker recorded for Mercury, yet their hype machine fell short with his one-two punch in 76. There really wasn’t a place for pub-rock driven singer-songwriter rock and roll on the stateside dial. I didn’t need any extravagant pitch. As soon as I learned that Parker had hired en-mass the legendary Brinsley Schwarz outfit to be his back-up band I was off my rocker. They were my favorite countrified import from the isles, and Silver Pistol (1971) and Nervous On the Road (1972) remain among my favorite listens in the down home vein of The Band and Better Days and Bobby Charles. Okay, as it turned out: guitarist Schwarz and keyboardist Andrews, and they picked up buddy Martin Belmont from Ducks Deluxe.
Billy Rankin-drummer
Bob Andrews-piano
Nick Lowe-bass
Ian Gomm-guitar
Brinsley Schwarz-guitar
Only a little of that flavor is in the mix of Parker’s two opening shots. Parker is a ferocious soulman and one of the great rock-and-roll songwriters, and the Brinsleys morphed into The Rumour so as to match the ferocity with their own fervor. No hits was the reward for two statements of fierce rock and roll. Only surprising—since the era’s trends were unkind to so much terrific music—in that the two records have nary a bad cut, and, including lots of hit-worthy cuts.
(I count Heat Treatment, Black Honey, Pourin’ It All Out, and Fool’s Gold, just from Heat Treatment.) It was the same result for Squeezing Out the Sparks, released in 1979, albeit at least it is considered one of the great rock records. However, it came out in even more ungenerous times: 1979 was the year disco broke through, and, punk ruled most muso’s hearts.
Quality wins out in the end. Graham Parker has been churning out grown-up rock and roll ever since that bicentennial year–enough so that he is one of the masters.
Graham Parker tells the story himself on his defunct blog Chairman Parker. It’s an amusing and edifying read.
Graham Parker (home page | Wikipedia)
Essential:
All-time favorites
Brinsley Schwarz – Silver Pistol
Brinsley Schwarz – Nervous On the Road
Graham Parker – Howlin’ Wind
Graham Parker – Heat treatment
Desert island worthy:
Graham parker – Squeezing Out the Sparks
New and likely fab:
Graham Parker & the Rumour – Live in San Francisco
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Vibrations Slowing But Not Resting
Robert Rich, serious auralnaut
Part IV. Initially I acquainted myself with the artistry of Robert Rich via his collaborating with Steve Roach on the superb Strata from 1991; but, probably I got to hear it sometime in 1993. By 1993 Rich had released ten records. Yet, at the time, I didn’t seek to unravel the Rich strand in Strata, and so he wasn’t on my radar screen. This all changed the first year working back in a record store. It was 1995 and my very hip assistant manager Chris (aka DJ Weirton,) hipped me to illbient and other urban electronic music. To make a short story shorter, both of us were all over certain labels, so when Asphodel dropped the two sets, A Swarm of Drones, and A Storm of Drones, that year, each slid into the CD player in the store pronto.
The compilations spread a massive exhalation of drones over seven sides. There, amongst tracks by Steve Roach, Ellen Fullman, Stuart Dempster, DJ Spooky, Robert Fripp and Robert Rich–those being the the only participants I was familiar with–were a host of new lights about to shine in my deep space cosmos.
Yet it was Rich and his tracks Bouyant On a Motionless Deluge, and and an excerpt from The Smorgh Sleeps On Velvet Tongues, that leaped out. I jumped on two records released the previous year, Propagation and Rainforest. Wow. Robert Rich’s ambient vision was, at that time, a bit more advanced than that of Steve Roach. His music was more diverse and the tribal elements more organic. I wouldn’t make this distinction about their relative standing today; after all, to me Roach and Rich are the equivalent of Miles Davis and John Coltrane in ambient music. But, back then, Rich’s mellow, exotic, shapely and spacy music drew me to it with an even greater siren song.
Alas, his older records were hard to get. A compilation drawn from those older records, A Troubled Resting Place, helped my investigation. I was restless, and, then excited to learn Rich had a new record finished, a collaboration, with one B. Lustmord.
Stalker. I will say this: it’s the ambient music that had the most far-reaching impact on me. It is in the same esteemed place with respect to my appreciation of ambient artistry as Mingus’s The Black Saint & the Sinner Lady is in with respect to my appreciation of jazz artistry. This is to suggest that it was through dealing with Stalker, that I began to intuit how deep was the craft and technique involved in etching sound worlds where events could be said to happen slowly.
Not as prolific as his peer Steve Roach, Rich continues to present a masterpiece every so often. Although Rich’s tribal ambient style is sustained these days in various collaborations, when left to only his own devices he seems to be recently zeroing in on a simmering, very slow, mellow dark ambient sonic vision. He’s got no competition as a drone-maker.
Deep Sonic Space
Pioneering and stellar ambient music creator, Steve Roach
Part III. Here is where my recollection of musical influence and inspiration gets interesting–to me. When I returned to Cleveland in 1992, one of the first resources I tapped into was the two fabulous library systems. This happens before the internet, and even commenced about a year before Cleveland Public Library got rid of their vinyl records. Also, this era (of my listening,) in Cleveland was greatly advantaged by the local used record and CD scene. (I obviously didn’t know at the time record retail would implode in Cleveland within 10 years.) But, at the time almost all my listening time was invested in jazz.
This would change very quickly because the cost of a music trial via borrowing from the library was minimal, and, the potential for a rewarding listening experience was great. For the next ten years, including my five year stint in record retail, I set in motion a huge process of discovery that roamed over the world of music. Whilst I had scratched the surface–outside of rock–in all sorts of locations, (ie. genres,) for the previous decade, upon returning to Cleveland, it was on.
Except, not everything hits one’s aural radar screen. Until you take a flyer. The flyer in this case was taken on a CD by the American instrumentalist, composer and sound designer Steve Roach. It’s spoke to me from the rank it occupied on a to-be-shelved cart at the Mayfield Heights Branch. I pulled it out. Its cover was intriguing.
Listening to Roach (Wikipedia) for the first time, I was amazed. On one hand, here was sound akin to my favored The Deep Listening Band, on the other hand here was also something unhinged from new age music. (I did not like new age music!) Familiar as I was with Stockhausen and Ligeti and Vetter and Hykes and others, Dreamtime Return seemed to me to be experimental and ambitious. And, I really like ambitious experiments!
In my estimation Dreamtime Return, four years past its release by the time I heard it in 1992, is Roach’s first complete masterwork. Although working backward through his discography circa 1992 was enjoyable enough, as it happened, Steve Roach was about to go on a roll, one that continues to this day. He’s made a mountain of brilliant music and produced many other masterworks. His collaborations with Vidna Obmana and Vir Unis opened the door to a huge wellspring of deep ambient music from Europe.
A huge influence is putting it mildly. One more thing, Steve Roach is equally accomplished as a 21st century entrepreneur, nailing down an enlightening web presence and a DIY ethos years before the scramble along the same lines was unleashed.
Steve Roach – The Magnificent Void – desert island disc for me – hard to pick just one – steveroach.com
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Grateful Dead Winterland 73
My favorite Grateful Dead are the psychedelic monsters of 1967-1970. I collect Dark Stars.
However, I’m not deaf to how the Grateful Dead became adept musicians, better songwriters, and built the awesome music machine that resulted in a singular success achieved on their own terms.
The Winterland run from 1973 has been loosened from the grips of the GD mother ship-shop and was re-released on Rhino in April. In 73 the band had completed the foundation. They’d integrated Keith and Donna Godchaux, and withstood the temporary hiatus of Mickey Hart.
In the 9 cds from Winterland, there’s not a lot of repetition, and, there’s a ton of joyful playing and singing. Here, the band wears their tunes like proverbial old shoes. They cruise but they weren’t on cruise control.
Doug Collette’s review at allaboutjazz says it better and more expertly than I could.
Brotherhood
In 1976, having moved to Middlebury Vermont to run the record department of The Vermont Book Shop, I soon fell in with the musos broadcasting on WRMC-fm, the radio station at Middlebury College. My main guy there was Jon Hart. He was from Philadelphia and was a total jazz head. Late that winter I started guesting on his weekly show, and by the spring we were co-hosts. I learned a lot about jazz from Jon. He hipped me to Berendt’s The Jazz Book, to Sun Ra’s Philly roots, and told me of his many music quests to Third Street Jazz, the legendary record store in his hometown. In fact, he regularly brought back from such quests the limited edtion hand-coloured covers and records Sun Ra was producing in the seventies.
One of the rituals of doing or show was diving into the station’s large collection. By 1976 I was basically oriented to the great spread of Riverside and Prestige and Blue Note hard bop, and to the masters. Whereas Jon’s interests were broader and more advanced. He was a junior by then and he knew the station’s collection like the back of his hand. Before shows he would pull out, for example, Don Pullen’s ESP record, or those of Milford Graves and Guiseppe Logan, and have me deal with ‘em! Jon turned me onto Pharoah Sanders, Randy Weston, Mal Waldron, and, bless him, he pulled out Dollar Brand’s African Piano disc on Japo one evening before a show. . . .turning point.
There was also in the collection a record by another South African, like Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand,) in WRMC’s collection. It was the Neon (RCA) pianist/composer/bandleader record of Chris McGregor. One evening we auditioned it. I know I dubbed it on a cassette. I don’t remember anything of the details of what we felt about it at the time. Although, invariably Jon and me got stoked by any sound of surprise we came upon. A few years later, I had acquired every last bit of McGregor vinyl I could locate, McGregor and his small band The Blue Notes, and his big band, The Brotherhood of Breath, his music became a mainstay of my own WRMC jazz show, Groovin’ High (1980-1988.) I became a crusader for his music as record maven and broadcaster. As well, early on I reckoned McGregor to be the South African equivalent, musically, of Charle Mingus.
Although McGregor’s big band and combo music is volcanic too, the main point of it is that McGregor’s creative vision was attached to the people of South Africa. He states as much–as recounted by his wife Maxine in her book about her husband, Chris McGregor and the Brotherhood of Breath. McGregor met with acclaim in South Africa 1961 and 1963, convening various groupings of The Blue Notes starting in 1963. Unfortunately South Africa and its apartheid system provided a singularly dastardly environment for musical ambition and artistry.
Although McGregor would play farewell concerts in 1964 in South Africa, he, as did Abdullah Ibrahim and others, chose to exile himself by the end of that year. The sad fact is that McGregor managed to survive but never really thrive as a entrepreneurial musician over the next, his final, 25 years. Maxine tells that his insistence on the integrity of his music was “over the top,” unmanageable. Which is to suggest that no compromise for commercial advantage could carry for him any appeal. Yet, records were made, tours and nightlub stays were secured, and his run of iconoclastic and courageous artistic mission, today, turns out to have been well documented.
The many musicians and listeners who were drawn to the deep contact point of the Brotherhood’s sound were transformed. I’ve never met anyone who’s been exposed to McGregor’s music who was ambivalent about the experience. For me, simply though records, my experience galvanized my understanding of the joyful humanity that is the fuel for any profound people’s music.
This fall, Ogun, the music label originally founded to document his music, has released the box set of the year (or any year,) Blue Notes: The Ogun Collection. It collects previously released and unreleased recordings made in the mid-sixtiez. mostly by the most famous core ensemble, Dudu Pukwana, alto saxophone, Mongezi Feza, trumpet, Johnny Dyani, bass, and only surviving member, drummer Louis Moholo. I was previously familiar with two of the sessions, so the new music just blew me totally away.
This isn’t intended to be a review. (Try Sid Smith.) For me, this is holy African music. Don’t resist. The past four ears have brought forth a steady stream of essential Brotherhood music. Just this past year all three of the Brotherhood’s Polydor sessions have been issued, including a brilliant unreleased date. An unreleased trio date is crucial. Previously unheard Brotherhood of Breath dates are being released by Cunieform. ‘Embarassment of riches’ underplays the magnitude of these gifts!
Recently issued Chris McGregor:
Blue Notes: The Ogun Collection (5CD)*
1. Blue Notes for Mongezi
2. Blue Notes In Concert
3. Blue Notes Farewell 1964
4. Blue Notes for Johnny
Very Urgent
Brotherhood*
Up To Earth
(all recorded for Polydor Records.uk)
Our Prayer (previously unreleased trio date)*
source: Downtown Music Gallery
Traveling Somewhere
Bremen to Bridgewater
Eclipse At Dawn*
source: Cunieform Records
*If you can’t get them all at once! Blue Notes: The Ogun Collection qualifies as a desert island recording. Reviews of the new issues.
W.C. Bamberger’s appreciation | Tony McGregor | The Blues Notes web site
Then there is the brotherhood of musos. Hat tip to Jon Hart; and to musicologist Doug Richardson, who laid on me a precious cassette of rare South African jazz from the 50′s and early 60′s, including several tracks of McGregor’s Castle Lager Big Band and the famed 1961 septet; and to Lars Rasmussen, who besides being a tireless supporter of South African jazz, (and Abdullah Ibrahim’s discographer,) has published an important book of biographical captures and rare photos, Cape Town Jazz 1959-1963. The Photographs of Hardy Stockman. Sad story: years ago I took the two Musica solo records of McGregor (Piano Song V1&2) to work to play in the store, and inadvertently left them on the back seat. Yeah, it was summer. It took ten years to track down some quality mp3s. (Turning up the records, each worth $500+, is impossible.) Here’s the opening track, the medley Burning Bush-Mbizo’s Baby, from Piano Song Volume 1. Enjoy.
update: December 21 site: Blue Notes The South African Jazz Exiles (hideously hard to navigate but a labor of love of one MFowler.)
Posted in Africa, desert island, masters, recordings
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Play Something Sweet
Make this land a better land
In the world in which we live
And help each man be a better man
With the kindness that you give–Yes We Can
My soul bro Jamie dropped me an email reminding me today is Allen Toussaint‘s birthday. I’m not sentimental about birthdays, even to the extent of being careless. Nor do I track the birthdays of the hundreds of musicians I favor. Yet, the reminder got me to thinking and reflecting upon Mr. Toussaint. This same friend some 26 years ago turned me onto this giant of American music when he dropped the diamond on a Meters record produced by Toussaint. If I remember that day provided a party package of ‘awlins funk as he kept skipped to his stacks and brought me my first taste of Chris Kenner, and Lee Dorsey, and Fats Domino.
So it started.My softest spot remains for Allen Toussaint. Of course he’s basically the king of the entire N.O. crew. I think the only way you can account for a 50+ year career that, for example, reached yet another high musical spot with his record made for Verve Forecast in 2006, The River In Reverse, is that Allen Toussaint is a genius. Life, Love and Faith (Reprise 1972) is an all-time favorite Toussaint record.
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Szigeti/Walter Play Beethoven Violin Concerto
DESERT ISLAND RECORDING
I enjoy all sorts of different types of music, but it is only in the genre of classical music that my favorite recording is literally ‘second-to-none.’ Years ago I ran a music department in the back of a bookstore. Somewhat awkwardly, my work desk was stuck in the rear corner. Right behind me was the stereo system for the whole store, and underneath it was the shelf of records from which the store’s musical ambiance could be programmed. I inherited a lot of programming choices, from long gone staff members and current ones. The small collection tended to classical as did the store’s ambiance. (This would change over my tenure.) Packaged in a flimsy jacket, the imported EMI issue of the 1932 concert found its way into my hands. It was as if somebody handed me a diamond but I didn’t know what the heck a diamond was or what the big deal could be.
It was 1976. I auditioned Szigeti’s traversal of Beethoven’s violin masterwork made 44 years earlier; 75 years ago from today.
Amidst the bustle of the store Szigeti’s violin climbed upward. I was transfixed.
It ascended the ladder of my esteemed classical players immediately and, as it turned out, irrevocably. Beethoven’s violin concerto demands virtuosity. It also demands sublime magnanimity. Its cadenza has to be integrated into the heroic contours of the concerto. Finally, it seems to me this particular masterwork must be made to soar without for a second mitigating its gravely humanistic, bittersweet, dimension.
LP cover
Ludwig Von Beethoven
Concerto for Violin in D major, Op. 61
Joseph Szigeti (Violin)
Bruno Walter
British Symphony Orchestra
4/18/1932
Central Hall, Westminster, London
This is part of the Joseph Szigeti CD box from Andante.
Posted in Classical Music, desert island, recordings
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