Ron Sylvester: Iraq vet: Wounds outlast combat: The Wichita Peace Center sponsored a video/talk at the library last night, where a local Iraq War vet, Ethan McCord, talked about the WikiLeaks "Collateral Murder" video. It basically shows a US helicopter mowing down a group of Iraqis on a street in Baghdad, one of whom was carrying a video camera (mistakenly identified as some sort of weapon). A van then pulls up, the driver trying to load up the wounded to take them to get help. The helicopter then destroys the van. McCord was one of the first soldiers on the ground in the video. He pulled two badly wounded children out of the van, and carried them to an Army vehicle nearby to be taken for treatment. (Not clear if that even happened, since at one point we hear orders countermanding use of the vehicle to help the civilians, let alone whether they survived.) McCord left Iraq disabled with wounds from an IED, and is currently working with Iraq Veterans Against the War. Another Iraq vet, Will Stewart-Starks, also appeared.

For me the most striking thing about the talk was the detail in how US soldiers are desensitized and brutalized to fulfill their combat roles, and how this is constantly reinforced through the ranks. When asked about fragging, which happened often enough in Vietnam to sour the officer core on the draft, McCord pointed out that today's soldiers are more likely to kill themselves. He then cited yet another case just a day or two ago.

There was much play on the "support the troops" meme, but what I took away is something different. The real atrocity isn't what happens when you put troops into action, regardless of the reasons for doing so; rather, it starts in basic training, when you start to turn normal people into soldiers. Once they are soldiers, their skillset and survival instincts are bound to produce atrocities, as we've seen continuously in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those atrocities raise serious questions as to whether there is any practical political use for the US military in foreign nations where the US wants to consolidate any sort of friendly popular alliance -- i.e., where the collateral damage intrinsic to the way US troops are trained and deployed makes it impossible to sway enough "hearts and minds" -- and that should be enough to convince us to shy away from those wars.

But the human cost of supporting this kind of military goes back further, all the way to basic training. If we really cared for the people who fall under the "support the troops" slogan we wouldn't turn them into soldiers in the first place. We'd work to give them education, jobs, a chance to build families and grow old without the scars of war.

One person at the meeting made the point that he voted for Obama in 2008 specifically to stop the war, then was shocked when Obama turned around and escalated the war in Afghanistan. He didn't seem to take this personally -- e.g., as an example of the perfidy we expect from politicians. Rather, he wondered what there is in the power structure in Washington that bends people who should know better to their will. Another person pointed out that as we were meeting Obama was speaking about the semi-withdrawal of US forces and semi-closure of the US war in Iraq. Reading about Obama's speech in the paper this morning was far more disappointing than imagining it last night. There was no need for Obama to hie off to an army base to frame the speech, or to make a big show of going around shaking hands with soldiers. And there was no excuse for saying this:

As we do, I am mindful that the Iraq War has been a contentious issue at home. Here, too, it is time to turn the page. This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush. It's well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset. Yet no one could doubt President Bush's support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security. As I have said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hope for Iraq's future.

It's bad enough to continue some Bush policies because you can't move the federal bureaucracy around fast enough to realign it on a new set of principles. But it's something else completely to go out of your way to whitewash George W. Bush, a president who ended eight years of one miserable, cynical failure after another with public support polling around 22% -- Obama, despite being the victim of a well-financed, professionally-managed smear campaign, as well as the drag of two wars and a huge recession he didn't start, still polls better than 45%. If Obama was elected for any reason at all, it was to bury Bush. What he said isn't just false -- if Bush was truly committed to our security, he wouldn't have started wars to engender future attacks on us; if he loved our country, he wouldn't have bankrupted the government and filled it up with corporate cronies to pick over the remains; if he cared about our young people he wouldn't have turned so many of them into soldiers to be cracked in hopeless, pointless foreign wars. And it's not time to turn the page: there are still 50,000 troops in Iraq, more than double that in Afghanistan, plus unlimited air power and imperial embassies relentlessly poking and prodding their way in what should be the internal affairs of other countries; there are still strong efforts to resist our presence and dominance, and they will keep fighting as long as we are there; there are still millions of displaced people, with little hope of returning to any sort of normal life until we leave; and we are still burning up hundreds of billions of dollars every year we stay, while our own country rots and collapses. Just because Obama has surrendered to the pro-war forces in this country doesn't mean we should; all it really means is that Obama has become as much a part of the problem as the hawks he once ran against.

Then Obama goes on to say:

Americans across the political spectrum supported the use of force against those who attacked us on 9/11. Now, as we approach our 10th year of combat in Afghanistan, there are those who are understandably asking tough questions about our mission there.

Uh, hullo! Some of us were dead set against "the use of force against those who attacked us on 9/11" as of that very day. Obama may be asserting that we're not in the political spectrum, not even at the far fringes of it, which would be a pretty insulting position to take for someone so eager to forgive and cozy up to war criminals like Bush. But more importantly, it's a downright stupid position to take. One big reason so many people went along with the "use of force" idea after 9/11 is that they didn't have the faintest notion of what they were getting into. Had it been well understood that nine years later "use of force" would wind up meaning that 4,400 US soldiers would die, another 32,000 would be wounded (many gravely), that 20-25% of US soldiers would suffer from PTSD (leading to a rash of suicides), that we would have burned through $750 billion in direct expenses while incurring long-term debts and liabilities of several trillion dollars, that we would have vastly destabilized Iraq and Afghanistan (and less directly Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia and Lebanon, while pushing Iran much closer to developing nuclear weapons), that even after drawing down troops in Iraq we would still have more than 160,000 troops stationed in Asia, that we still wouldn't be able to lay our hands on the two supreme leaders of Al-Qaeda, would we still be talking about near-unanimous "use of force" support?

Some of the people who opposed that "use of force" did so for basic principles, but some were just a hell of a lot smarter than the conventional wisdom. But then conventional wisdom was pretty dumb to think that you could round up a small cell of religious fanatics on the far side of the world with a huge army and air force and navy that were built to reduce whole nations to stone age rubble. In fact, the only people, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who were in any way responsible for 9/11 who were captured were picked up by old-fashioned police work, by Pakistan -- we'll see about bringing them to justice when/if they ever get a trial, but we've so debased the concept of justice along the way it may not matter.

As if that wasn't enough, let's wind up with one more Obama quote:

Every American who serves joins an unbroken line of heroes that stretches from Lexington to Gettysburg; from Iwo Jima to Inchon; from Khe Sanh to Kandahar -- Americans who have fought to see that the lives of our children are better than our own. Our troops are the steel in our ship of state. And though our nation may be travelling through rough waters, they give us confidence that our course is true, and that beyond the pre-dawn darkness, better days lie ahead.

First, the wars that Obama lines up here aren't equivalent, and to the extent that they form a trend line we should be disturbed. The American Revolution was a war to throw off an abusive foreign power, fought against their troops on our soil. The Civil War was a struggle between competing notions (ideals and interests) of what our nation should be, with one side defending their custom of holding most of their workforce in perpetual slavery. WWII was a war that we reluctantly entered after an aggressively imperial Japan attacked us, or more specifically our relatively benign imperial interests in the Pacific. Korea can still be painted as a defensive war, but only if you assume that our occupation of Korea is legitimate and a Korean invasion of our occupied zone isn't. Although Vietnam was superficially divided like Korea, it was us who invaded there, with over 500,000 troops to prop up a puppet government that even we had to overthrow several times before we got a stable combination. And Afghanistan didn't even offer us the fig leaf of a favorable invitation: from 1979 on we deliberately and perversly wrecked a country that meant nothing to us, promoting a religious fanaticism that ultimately turned back on us, leading us to further escalate the destruction.

There are three vectors to these wars: one is that each one is further removed from home; the second is that the ideals we use to justify these wars have become ever more debased; the third is that the soldiers have become more mercenary -- even before the draft was eliminated the balance of effective force shifted toward the professional air force and navy, but today's warrior caste is an unprecedented extreme.

The second big problem with this quote is the assertion that fighting these wars has made "the lives of our children better than our own." Independence removed an imperial burden, the Civil War cleared the stage for a vast industrial expansion, but those blessings were accomplished post-war. WWII is a bit anomalous in that it did significantly boost the domestic economy by proving the value of massive Keynesian spending and regulation, traits that we kept for the most universally prosperous decades of our history. On the other hand, all subsequent wars have drained our economy and sapped our resources for virtually no benefit. We haven't been threatened by a foreign power in over 200 years. Virtually everything that has made our lives better results from science and industry and trade, and those are blessings of peace.

As for "troops are the steel in our ship of state," it's hard to imagine a more brazenly imperialist line of crap. If Obama keeps spewing lines like that it's going to be awful hard to argue back when Glenn Beck accuses him of being a fascist.

Of course, what Obama's doing here is probably just pandering. Practically everybody panders to the troops -- probably more than half of the crowd in last night's antiwar meeting are guilty in some sense, even if what they really mean by "support" is that they want to salvage the human beings they presume the troops were before they were shipped off to war. But pandering to the troops isn't about salvaging people: it's about keeping the war machine grinding along. At least when Bush rambled on about "support the troops" you knew he didn't care how many were broken; all he really meant was "support my wars." Maybe what Obama really means by "support the troops" is "don't blame me for my wars." Fair enough, but what I don't see is how he gets to peace without cutting way back on the machinery of war, and the troops are a big part of that -- both because they serve and because they gravitate into cheerleading groups like VFW, which politicians like Obama wind up thinking they have to placate.

This is the second installment of Michael Tatum's post-Christgau consumer guide. The debut came out a month ago, and I expect this to remain a monthly feature as long as he can stand the workload. I've built a nice little archive area for these columns -- first one is here and you can work out the rest from links there.

A Downloader's Diary: September 2010

by Michael Tatum

In classic lapsed-Catholic fashion, my superego spent all of August wondering if I championed the critically-drudged Liz Phair and Eminem records last month merely to make a splashy impression for my first column. This month I felt guilty about gravitating toward an obvious album of the year consensus pick, so I branched a little out of my comfort zone and found an Afropop excavation I loved even more. What do they have in common? They're both masterminded by two men from conservative religious backgrounds who realized they needed to leave a little bit of their world behind because the great wide world had something more to offer. So what if I'm projecting -- take that, Glenn Beck.

Arcade Fire: The Suburbs (Merge) One of the many reasons I admire Win Butler is that when he titles his band's new record The Suburbs it won't be a two-dimensional attack on the same -- he leaves the sophomoricism to Green Day, who keep it so simplistic Broadway comes a-calling. Not to say he is uncritical of where he came from, but like his relationship to the Mormon faith into which he was born, he can't dismiss it entirely -- it informs one of the many facets of the man he has become. This confuses a lot of people who confuse irony with complexity: contrary to what some have suggested, Butler doesn't hate his fans. His gentle derision of the arcade kids in "Rococo" doesn't derive from anger, but from empathy -- he was once that kid who was bored when the bombs were dropped, that kid in the corner with his arms folded tight, the one who used to wait but now he's ready to start. The message here is that the distance that young people cultivate to deal with the painful transition from innocence to experience is an emotional dead end, and this album means to shatter those defenses, one exhilarating anthem after another. And if you need further balance, there's Régine Chassane's glorious "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)," about why starry-eyed arcade kids flee to the city -- even if they return home to settle down to raise their future daughters before the damage is done. A

Best Coast: Crazy For You (Mexican Summer) The superior shoreline in question is Los Angeles, a slacker Shangri-La where Bethany Cosentino smokes weed, hangs out with her cat Snacks, pines for various pretty boys, and with multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno cooks up a dreamy pop amalgam that suggests Sister-era Sonic Youth channeling, well, the Shangri-Las. The swooping, instantly hummable melodies confirm that not only does Cosentino have the Carole King/Barry Mann part down, but the way she wraps her decorous vocal cords around them shows she's got the Ronnie Spector part down, too. But the shallow lyrical conception -- twice she promises to love the object of her affections "till the end" as if it means till the end of summer vacation -- leaves one wondering how much she's really pondered "Leader of the Pack" and "Will You Love Me Tomorrow." Has she spent too much time lying in her deckchair reading teenage romance novels, or did she think such complexities would mar the music's sunny innocence? I enjoy basking in this music's considerable charms regardless -- but truthfully, I've never been the beach-going type, and I've been a fellow denizen of the superior shoreline in question for twenty-five of my thirty-nine years. A-

Flying Lotus: Cosmogramma (Warp) His vaunted Coltrane connections aside, Steven Ellison's frenetic samples overlaying samples overlaying samples, denser and more ambitious than anything he attempted on 2007's Los Angeles, at their best recall great Jon Hassell, Nils Petter Molvaer, and other inheritors of Miles Davis' mid-70s fusion fracases. Cue up any track and he'll cram your ears with fistfuls of sonic candy, though Auntie Alice's harp flourishes are an irritation, and like other laptop wizards, I wish he'd curb his fondness for film soundtracks. But what's missing, especially since the music isn't guided by or tied together by any organizational principles other than a mix so clinical you can hear the clanging together of surgical instruments, is emotional payoff -- what a big-brain like Ellison might cynically dismiss as "cheese." With twelve of the seventeen tracks ranging from one minute to two and a half, cutting out before their patterns induce the hypnosis this branch of electronic usually intends, there's no ebb and flow, no climax, either within tracks or across the record as a whole -- randomly jumbling its sequence (yes, I tried) neither improves nor weakens its shambolic mesh. The pop junkie in me wonders whether or not this could be strengthened by more guest vocalists, but Laura Darlington's wobbly offer as a "sounding board" is upstaged by the finest use of a ping pong ball as percussion in the history of recorded music. And Thom Yorke pontificating in his highly processed warble if there's "anyone out there" inadvertently illuminates that if Ellison knew he was reaching people emotionally, he wouldn't have to coax Yorke to ask. A-

El Guincho: Piratas de Sudamerica: Vol. 1 (XL/Young Turks) The brainwave behind this five song EP, the first of a projected series, is both so ingenious and obvious I'm surprised Manu Chao or Tom Zé didn't think of it first. In an aesthetic strategy similar to Moby's Play, Pablo Díaz-Reixa tweaks various "field recordings" (in this case, lost classics from the Cuban orchestras of the '30s -- the title is a slight misnomer) with his bag of studio tricks, aiming for shimmering lo-fi charm rather than extravagant arena-ready grandiosity. Díaz-Reixa realizes his cross-cultural dreams best on his remix of the Lecuona Cuban Boys' "Hindou," a shameless romanticization of the far-east so beguiling in its naivety even V.S. Naipaul would approve. My only objection to the package -- aside from the anti-climactic closing lullaby -- is its brevity. Treated as an in-between side project, a warm-up for the release of Díaz-Reixa's Pop Negro in September, the music is strong enough to warrant a wider exploration, a grander context -- a Play of its own. A-

Los Lobos: Tin Can Trust (Shout! Factory) Compromise has kept these amenable East Angelenos thick as thieves for thirty years, but it's also trapped them in an artistic rut since the bean counters kicked them off Warner Bros. By "compromise" I don't just mean the vagaries that defined their tenure at the accursed Hollywood Records, but the aesthetic cease-fire that's prevented David Hidalgo from instigating the kind of power play that enabled them to make such daring records with Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake (1996's underrated Colossal Head more so than 1993's overrated Kiko, and the Latin Playboys spinoffs most of all). Although they cared enough about the music to fight their way back onto the roster of a sympathetic indie -- the first they've been on since the Slash years -- this band has been through too much for one of them to start rocking the boat: second banana Cesar Rosas, still the band's traditionalist, contributes lively if predictable salsa and norteño pastiches, while Hidalgo mildly indulges the band's more experimental side, without veering too far into the strange. Having said that, this is their strongest record since their mid-90s peak regardless -- even on the new original saddled with an embarrassing Robert Hunter lyric (never, never, never rhyme "in this world" with "give it a whirl") Hidalgo executes one of the record's many fierce, stark guitar solos. And then there's the amazing "27 Spanishes," which makes "Cortez the Killer" look two-dimensional -- starts off with foreboding whip-crack snares, then ends by offhandedly pointing out that these days the Conquistador-Aztec progeny "sit around on their porches playing guitar." Hey guys -- those imperialist assholes are responsible for my existence, too. A-

M.I.A.: Maya (XL/Interscope) Theoretically, I approve of the metallic, lo-fi aesthetic -- it's the natural of impulse of artists following a blockbuster to head for the metaphorical ditch: Neil Young of course, Nirvana's In Utero, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk. Some have suggested a more precise analogy might be to Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, but these are the kind of squiggles, squawks, and bleeps that fire the synapses, rather than blur into white noise tedium. Tune into the lyrics however, and you realize that the difficult music is actually the artiste's way of covering up -- subconsciously, I bet -- her insecurity about the ideas she's expressing. The intro suggests that the government utilizes the internet (Facebook, apparently) for purposes of identity theft, but the pop psychologist in me wonders if Maya Arulpragasam might actually be worried about losing her identity to her fiancé. "You know who I am," she repeats unconvincingly in the first track, before bemoaning "You want me be somebody who I'm really not" when her man gets a little too close in the next: "I try and not show it/But I think you really know." Sometimes she buries her fear in political metaphor: "They told me this is a free country/But now it feels like a chicken factory/I feel cooped up, I wanna bust free/Got nothing to lose if you get me." Sometimes, as in the defensive "Born Free," she transfers her fear to the media. Other times, she's more oblique: "Gravity's my enemy." When she resigns to her fate by copping to the terminally lame "It Iz What It Iz" cliché, I throw up my hands. We existentialists believe it is what you make it. And it doesn't "take a muscle to fall in love" -- how about lowering your defenses a little? A-

D.O. Misiani & Shirati Jazz: The King of History (Sterns Africa) Over the last decade, Sterns Music has cemented its reputation as the finest distributor and compiler of classic Afropop by assembling long overdue, definitive sets by the genre's giants: Papa Wemba, Rochereau, Franco (twice), and Etoile de Dakar. Comprised solely of vinyl-only recordings almost entirely unheard outside of their native Kenya, this left-field surprise accomplishes something I didn't think possible: it adds a new giant to the canon. You won't be disappointed if you hunt for Daniel Owino Misiani's only other American showcase, the '80s provenance recordings collected on Earthworks' long out of print Benga Blast!, but despite its clear mastery, it's also somewhat by the numbers, perfunctory -- expressed in Beatles terms, a Let it Be. This mid-'70s explosion of hit singles, which rescues only one of the three smashes cited on Misiani's entry on Allmusic.com, is the real blast: a benga Please Please Me. The Shirati Jazz are young guns ready to make some noise, led by a rebel-rousing young man whose deeply Christian father destroyed his first guitar, delighted for the opportunity to commit heresy after joyous heresy on a slew of killer 45s. You say you want rollicking rhythms, rubbernecking bass, dualing quicksilver guitar lines, and harmonies so indelible you could interchange with them the equally indelible melodies? You'll get them -- but you could get those on Benga Blast! too, if not so ebulliently or energetically. What will keep you coming back are the whoops, whistles, birdcalls, cowbells, and other surprising percussive devices that sound spontaneous as they leap out of your speakers even though some of them must have been carefully timed in advance. Think the New York Dolls, of girl groups, of early rock and roll -- hell, of the Beatles. Such exuberance, such joy -- you'd think they were inventing a new kind of music or something. A+

The Roots: How I Got Over (Def Jam) The title is the latest of their multi-layered pop-culture in jokes: a reference to the classic Clara Ward gospel tune inspired by the night Ward's sister faked a bout of glossolalia to scare off white lynchers, but also a nudge and a wink to the cynics who think it takes samples from Jim James and Joanna Newsom to entice the indie audience into lapping up Ahmir Thompson and Associates' expert rap-rock-R&B-whatever hybrid. Fact is, the indie crowd has been hip to these Philadelphians since their debut, released on the same now-defunct label that broke Nirvana and Beck. It wasn't until they made the lateral switch to MCA and then Def Jam however, that they actually began deserving their rep: partly because their revolving door of rappers, singers, and musicians has kept their sound in a perpetual state of fruitful evolution, and partly because they realized the medium is the message -- that good songs are more compelling than good politics and good intentions. Because of this I prefer 2007's Rising Down, but it's a measure of their remarkable consistency that 2002's breakthrough Phrenology, 2004's underrated groove workout The Tipping Point, and now this, supposedly their swansong but don't count on it, all come pretty damn close. Like Win Butler, their searching ruminations on God are far from vacant navel-gazing -- thank the smarts of Black Thought and the revolving door of rappers, etc. for that. But what makes a quatrain like "Out on these streets where I grew up/First thing they teach you is not to give a fuck/That type of thinking can't get you nowhere/Someone has to care" affecting in song like it isn't on the page isn't the otherwise expert vocals, it's the power and subtlety of the rhythm section -- suspiciously described this time around by more than one young indie-rock critic as "in the pocket." I'd say that if Ahmir Thompson challenged Al Jackson, Jr. and Tony Thompson to a round of billiards played with drum sticks as cues, I know who I'd put my money on. A-

Honorable Mentions

Robyn: Body Talk Vol. 1 (Cherrytree) "My label's killing me," she complains, though does concede to their ill-conceived marketing scheme ("Don't Fucking Tell Me What to Do," "Fembot," "Dancing on My Own") ***

Brian Wilson: Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin (Disney) Making up with modestly gorgeous arrangements for what he completely lacks in interpretive nuance and ironic subtext ("It Ain't Necessarily So," "Someone to Watch Over Me") ***

Janelle Monáe: The Archandroid (Atlantic) George Clinton and Outkast's sci-fi was goofy and they knew it, hers is pure camp -- too bad the American Musical and Dramatic Academy encouraged her to take camp seriously ("Cold War," "Tightrope") **

Reflection Eternal: Revolutions Per Minute (Warner Bros.) "A shift in the hip hop paradigm" no, "Download from your local internet provider" why not? ("Ballad of the Black Gold," "Just Begun") **

Sage Francis: Li(f)e (Anti/Epitaph) This former fiction writing group proctor would like to point out his short stories could be tightened by a sharp DJ and/or a well-programmed drum machine ("I Was Zero," "London Bridge") **

Method Actors: This Is Still It (Acute) Athens, GA's own Gang of Two ("Do the Method") *

Jason Moran: Ten (Blue Note) Stride-happy pianist with deceptive taste in song titles constructs unassuming foundations that cry out for some dissonance, cognitive and otherwise, from a more daring soloist ("Gangsterism Over Ten Years," "Old Babies") *

Field Music: Field Music (Measure) (Memphis Industries/Revolver) Hooks with no bait ("Them That Do Nothing") *

Trash

Rick Ross: Teflon Don (Def Jam) It's obvious why mush-mouthed William Leonard Roberts II failed as a corrections officer -- his oafish baritone conveys the authority of a bar drunk bellowing at you to pass the peanuts. Nevertheless, like so many civil servants before him, he harbored dreams of hip hop stardom, so he adopted both the name and persona of a famous drug trafficker (who sued for ten million), generating his own tepid publicity by manufacturing an absurd beef with 50 Cent -- who retaliated by coaxing Roberts' babymama to spill the beans about Roberts' employment history on YouTube. Fortunately, it's almost written into the Def Jam contract for the likes of Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Erykah Badu to lend their names even to the label's D-list artists, which proved just the commercial push Roberts needed to fund the debauched lifestyle he details so banally in song. What baffles me is why even critics are cottoning to his rote gangsta boilerplate -- he'll never die a "bitch nigga," whoop de ha hey. This record compensates toning down the faux-gangsta posturing of his previous flops by upping the misogyny, but I reserve special umbrage for "Tears of Joy," which begins with a snippet of Bobby Seale quoting Huey P. Newton in favor of offing cops and declares, "I gotta represent for Emmett Till / All the dead souls in the field." I'm no advocate for murder, but at least Bobby Seale was standing up for years of Emmett Tills who died at the hands of bigots merely for being black -- the only civil rights the Teflon Don seems to give a shit about are the rights to cruise hot bitches, drive Lamborghinis, and (no kidding) take his mom to the Poconos, all in the guise of a unrepentant pusher defending his turf by pointing his automatic at guys he, in his previous life, would theoretically have worked alongside. Bet in a real shootout between the cops and whomever, he'd choose whichever side had the most guns. In the meantime, I believe this liar like I believed Ronald Reagan -- nothing stuck to that motherfucker either. B-

Sam Amidon: I See the Sign (Bedroom Community)

Budos Band: Budos Band III (Daptone)

Matthew Dear: Black City (Ghostly International)

Lissie: Catching the Tiger (Fat Possum)

Laura Marling: I Speak Because I Can (Astralwerks)

John Mellencamp: No Better Than This (Rounder)

Pulled Apart by Horses: Pulled Apart by Horses (Transgressive)

Ra Ra Riot: The Orchard (Barsuk)

Wavves: King of the Beach (Fat Possum)

Almost blew another week, but in the end enough stuff came together that I can say that Jazz Consumer Guide (24) is done. Initial query suggests it may appear in the Village Voice around September 29, although later dates are possible as well. Draft currently totes up to 1617 words covering 56 albums, so expect the HM list to be long. Leftovers come to 1400 words and 44 albums, so it looks like we'll be trapped in backlog for quite some while. I still have a fair sized shelf of rated, still in need of review albums, so I'll probably focus on them the next week or two, adding to next cycle's draft and kicking some into surplus.

The collected Jazz Prospecting file is here: totals came to 218 albums prospected, plus 97 carryovers from past rounds. Despite my best intentions to rush up the cycle, the prospecting period was almost exactly three months (July 1 to August 30). I still have a fair amount of transitional paperwork to do, but did at least catch up with the incoming mail. Two weeks of Jazz Prospecting notes below, with almost nothing new getting into the final draft -- not even the Joe Locke dud, which is my usual rationale for bothering with Rhapsody this late in the game.

Will post a new "Downloader's Diary" in short course, and rather thin "Recycled Goods" and "Rhapsody Streamnotes" should be out by the end of the week. I'm beat, bothered, bewildered, but hopefully the nastiest summer we've had since 2000 will wind down before long. New cycle begins now, and the queues are overflowing.

Conference Call: What About . . . . ? (2007-08 [2010], Not Two, 2CD): Quartet, on their sixth album since 2000, the core Gebhard Ullmann (tenor sax, soprano sax, bass clarinet), Michael Jefry Stevens (piano), and Joe Fonda (bass), with George Schuller their present and most frequent drummer -- other albums have used Matt Wilson, Han Bennink, and Gerry Hemingway. Ullmann is very prolific, but he seems to perform best when someone else sets the parameters, which Stevens does here -- most likely Fonda too, as the Fonda/Stevens group goes back even further and has been recorded even more extensively. Two live in Krakow sets, the second a bit easier to get into -- Stevens' "Could This Be a Polka?" had me thinking first of tango -- but both satisfying mixes of sour and not-quite-sweet. A-

Esperanza Spalding: Chamber Music Society (2009-10 [2010], Heads Up): Bassist, singer, Downbeat cover girl; b. 1984, Portland, OR; third album since 2005, singing more each time, with a lot more scat here, but also with Gretchen Parlato taking over two vocals, and Milton Nascimento chiming in on a third (a Spalding original -- Parlato takes the semi-obligatory Jobim cut). The chamber effect comes from violin-viola-cello, steadied by Leo Genovese piano, with Terri Lynne Carrington drums, and Quintino Cinalli percussion. "Wild Is the Wind" is a welcome cover, but there's not much else to latch onto. B-

ROVA & Nels Cline Singers: The Celestial Septet (2008 [2010], New World): World renowned saxophone quartet plus world renowned guitar-bass-drums trio, works out to be a pretty full-featured band. The saxophonists -- Bruce Ackley, Steve Adams, Larry Ochs, and Jon Raskin -- are used to orchestrating their own harmony, but assuming the Singers will take up the slack they get to stretch out a bit here. But Nels Cline, bassist Devin Hoff, and drummer Scott Amendola don't harmonize so much as build up the ambient noise level, putting this into Electric Ascension territory, minus the annoyances of the Coltrane script. Closest they come is Ochs's 25:23 paean to Albert Ayler, "Whose to Know," where the noise climax seems well-earned. B+(***)

Judith Berkson: Oylam (2009 [2010], ECM): Vocalist -- "soprano" is how she puts it -- plays piano and various keybs here, accordion elsewhere; studied at New England Conservatory; based in Brooklyn; cantor at Old Westbury Hebrew Congregation Kehilat Shir Ami; also has a band named Platz Machen into Hebrew liturgy. Second album. I've heard the first, Lu-Lu, and, well, didn't like it. This was headed the same way, but little bits started to connect -- fragments of Porter and Gershwin, a slice of German (OK, very probably Yiddish), some piano. Very spare and rather arty. B+(**)

Kneebody: You Can Have Your Moment (2009 [2010], Winter & Winter): Postbop group with a little funk undertow, probably related to their fondness for Fender Rhodes and effects. Adam Benjamin (as I said), Shane Endsley (trumpet), Kaveh Rastegar (electric bass), Ben Wendel (sax, melodica), Nate Wood (drums -- the only one not credited with effects). Cut an eponymous album for Dave Douglas's Greenleaf Music label in 2005, and got their name out front on Theo Bleckman's Twelve Songs by Charles Ives. Played this one too many times and have to move on: the horns are names I recognize but have yet to register strongly, the Rhodes is neither here nor there, and the drummer's a busy guy who has something beyond funk to add. B+(*)

Theo Bleckmann: I Dwell in Possibility (2009 [2010], Winter & Winter): Vocalist, b. 1966 in Dortmund, Germany. Has a rather high voice, which he supplements with various toys to produce odd sounds. Francis Davis raved about him in a recent Village Voice column: "Beckmann is the most startlingly original male vocalist since Bobby McFerrin" -- then thinking further insisted that Bleckmann's "more rigorous intellect" will help him avoid "the same slippery slope into feckless novelty" McFerrin was prone to. This is the most hard core of Bleckmann's records, a solo effort, but not exactly acappella -- his credits read "voice, autoharp, chime balls, chimes, finger symbals, flutes, glass harp, hand-held fan, Indonesian frog buzzer, iPhone, lyre, melodica, miniature zither, nut shell shakers, rotary pan flute, shruti box, tongue drum, toy amp, toy boxes, toy megaphones, vibra tone, water bottle." The songs include James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Kurt Schwitters, Meredith Monk, "I Hear a Rhapsody" and "Comes Love," plus original music to lyrics from Emily Dickinson, Euripides, and the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Rather difficult to hear and/or to pick up on, sometimes cute, no doubt brilliant. B+(*)

Hat: Local (2008 [2010], Hatmusic): Spanish group. I've been listing them under pianist Sergi Sirvent, but this one swings pretty hard to guitarist Jordi Matas, who outwrites Sirvent five to three and plays the crucial instrument here, while Sirvent plays Fender Rhodes and a little trumpet -- not what you'd call brilliant but he's still rather effective. The quartet is rounded out with Marc Cuevas on bass (acoustic and electric) and xylophone and Oscar Doménech on drums and tinaja, each writing one song. All four also enjoy voice credits, although there's not a lot -- part of the opener, and a Matas song called "Money" that may be the first such song not to ring up some cash registers. Matas plays terrific screeching guitar there -- I'd peg it as a rock song but the musicians are way too fancy and the vocals don't get any mileage out of their crudeness. Seems transitional, but no idea to what. B+(**)

Dawn of Midi: First (2010, Accretions): Piano trio: Pakistani percussionist Qassim Naqvi, Indian contrabassist Aakaash Israni, and Moroccan pianist Amino Belyamani. Based in New York and/or Paris. First album. Evenly balanced group, the piano more rhythm than melody, especially setting out various minimalist lines, while the bass covers the whole gamut. Got stuck playing this too many times today, which makes me want to force the grade and move on. Agreeable as background, but really appreciates your full attention. B+(***)

Commitment: The Complete Recordings 1981/1983 (1980-83 [2010], No Business, 2CD): Bassist William Parker was less than 30 when he formed this group, with one self-released album (released 1981; reissued as Through Acceptance of the Mystery Peace by Eremite in 1998), side credits with Frank Lowe and Billy Bang, with Cecil Taylor still in his future. Violinist Jason Kao Hwang was less than 25. The senior member was Will Connell, Jr., b. 1938. He turned to music after an accident in the Air Force nearly blinded him. In Los Angeles in the 1960s he fell into Horace Tapscott's circle, then moved back to New York "because I wanted to be a hermit." He plays flute, alto sax, bass clarinet, wood flutes here. I haven't found any other credits for him, unless he's the "Will Connell" playing bass clarinet on a a 2007 Bill Dixon album -- would have been close to 70, still 13 years younger than Dixon. Fourth member is drummer Zen Matsuura, who went on to play with Billy Bang and Roy Campbell -- not a long credit list, but he's on Campbell's 2007 Akhenaten Suite, deserving of another plug. Parker recorded a piece called "Commitment" in the late 1970s, but the piece doesn't appear here. What we get is the 1981 Commitment Ensemble album (recorded October 13-14, 1980; 36 minutes on the first disc) and a long live set from Germany in 1983 (38 minutes on the first disc and 48 more on the second). One of those records that would have sounded interesting but unfocused at the time, but sounds prophetic now. Hwang, who was born in Waukegan, IL, had yet to develop his mastery of Chinese classical music, so he sounds more like Leroy Jenkins here -- a pretty good deal. Connell is plug ugly on alto, but his flutes hit the right notes in contrast to the violin. Parker and Matsuura keep it all moving at breakneck speed. A-

Bobby McFerrin: Vocabularies (2010, Emarcy): Actually, title is consistently spelled "VOCAbuLarieS" -- a not-so-subtle way of pointing out that most of the sounds are vocal. The balance comes from producer-cowriter Roger Treece's synths and programming, Alex Acuña's percussion, and small doses of Donny McCaslin sax and Pedro Eustache woodwinds. The cover notes Treece's contribution "and over 50 amazing singers" -- not counting a crowd of 2500 in Bergen, Norway. Each song has at least 16 singers, a chorale effect that trivializes any individual -- McFerrin is always credited as "lead vocal," and Lisa Fischer often as "featured vocal," but neither make much of an impression. B

Ismael Dueñas Trio: Jazz Ateu (2009 [2010], Quadrant): Pianist, b. 1975 in Badalona, in Spain up the coast from Barcelona. Fifth album, as best I can reckon, since 2003 -- I've heard the two on Fresh Sound New Talent, both excellent but somehow lost in my shuffle. Joan Matera plays bass and Oscar Domènech drums. For the most part this maintains a steady rhythmic flow, something I'm tempted to call postmodern stride, although it may just come from listening to Jarrett and Svensson. But he doesn't stick to the groove, shifting into melodic passages that work off something familiar, and in at least one case breaking into dissonance that resolves itself into something lovely. A-

Portico Quartet: Isla (2009 [2010], Real World): British group: Jack Wyllie (saxes, electronics), Milo Fitzpatrick (double bass), Duncan Bellamy (drums, piano), and Nick Mulvey (hang drums, percussion). Record also has a string quartet -- two violins, viola, cello -- arranged by Fitzpatrick, but mostly what you hear is soprano sax riffing over percussion, not much as jazz but a very listenable synthesis of postrock minimalism and world fusion. B+(**)

Ergo: Multitude, Solitude (2009, Cuneiform): Brett Sroka on trombone and computer; Carl Maguire on Fender Rhodes, Prophet synthesizer, and effects; Shawn Baltazor drums. I've run into Maguire before -- a fine pianist who pushes the state of the art in postbop compositions, but he's less distinctive here. Sroka has a previous album under his own name. This is the group's second. B+(**)

The Stanley Clarke Band (2010, Heads Up): Bass guitarist, b. 1951, came out of Chick Corea's Return to Forever and established a fusion rep in the 1970s, which I can't say I paid any attention to. This is only the second of 30+ albums under his name that I've heard. The album is a mess, with Ruslan Sirota's keybs and Charles Aluna's guitar standard pieces, along with a lot of guests -- Hiromi gets a shout out on the cover, and her piano does stand out, if garrishly. Some funk, one cut dedicated to Zawinul, one cut is called "Sonny Rollins" but gives you Bob Sheppard instead, some vocals. Hard to sort it all out; not awful, but little reason to. Nor am I sure if the "global warming" song is as dumb as it seems, but could be. B-

Pharez Whitted: Transient Journey (2009 [2010], Owl Studios): Trumpet player, from Indiana, studied at DePauw and Indiana University, two previous albums on Motown (1994 and 1996), based in Chicago now, teaches at Chicago State. Sexet with Eddie Bayard -- Edwin on Mark Lomax's more challenging record -- on tenor and soprano sax, Ron Perrillo on piano/keyboards, Bobby Broom on guitar, Dennis Carroll on bass, Greg Artry on drums, with Broom producing. Freddie Hubbard and Barack Obama inspire pieces. Solid hard bop, nothing spectacular, not much from Bayard, who made such a big impression on the Lomax album. 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.

Theo Bleckmann/Fumio Yasuda: Berlin: Songs of Love and War, Peace and Exile (2007, Winter & Winter): Twenty-three songs, most Weill-Brecht or Eisler-Brecht, the few others including several I'm equally familiar with, like "Lili Marleen" and "Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss auf Liebe eingestellt." Yasuda, Bleckmann's partner in Las Vegas Rhapsody, plays piano and arranges string quartet for that Weimar feel. Bleckmann is German, gay, possesses remarkable facility in the upper registers. This is, in short, his patrimony. One play can't possibly do it justice, but will have to do for now. B+(***) [Rhapsody]

Oliver Lake Organ Quartet: Plan (2009 [2010], Passin Thru): Follows an Organ Trio record, adding trumpeter Freddie Hendrix to returning Jared Gold (organ) and Jonathan Blake (drums) -- Lake, of course, plays alto sax. The second horn reminds me of the harmonics Julius Hemphill coaxed out of the World Saxophone Quartet (minus the booming tenor and baritone parts), and Gold does some very interesting things -- I've seen reviews invoke the idea of Monk on organ, but he doesn't just jump around a lot; he gets some positive spin on chaos. Main caveat is that it seems off here and there, a sign of the risks they're taking. B+(**) [Rhapsody]

Joe Locke: For the Love of You (2009 [2010], Koch): Instrumentally a fairly snazzy quartet, with Locke's vibes rattling against Geoffrey Keezer's ivories, and George Mraz and Clarence Penn pushing the rhythm. Problem is they added a singer, Kenny Washington, like Jimmy Scott a little guy with a lot of octaves. First song is awful. Second is "Old Devil Moon" -- can't hardly ruin that. Evens out a bit after that. B- [Rhapsody]

Nasheet Waits: Equality: Alive at MPI (2008 [2009], Fresh Sound New Talent): Cover can be parsed various ways: one implication is that Equality is meant to be the group name. Waits is a drummer, best known for driving Jason Moran's Bandwagon, a piano trio with Taurus Mateen on bass. All three are present and accounted for here, and all three contribute songs -- Mateen one, Moran and Waits two each. Moreover, Moran doesn't seem to be too unhappy to see the tables turned. He has his own record and has shown up on several more lately, but this is his most energetic performance in several years. Oh, and there's a fourth guy here: alto saxophonist Logan Richardson. He had a terrific debut album, Cerebral Flow, in 2006, and is in prime form here too. A- [Rhapsody]

Bill Charlap/Renee Rosnes: Double Portrait (2009 [2010], Blue Note): Two pianists; you know that. Husband and wife as of 2007; I didn't know that, and having also not known that vocalist Sandy Stewart is Charlap's mother, I'm glad not to have missed that. Rosnes is four years older, from Canada, more of a modernist and more of a composer -- albeit only one song here among a batch of eight covers -- where Charlap is more retro and more of an interpreter. I have them down for one A- each, out of six Charlap records and three by Rosnes -- both have comparable discographies, but Charlap has been more active lately. Just piano here, sounds more like solo than duets, can't tell you who does what. Attractive, of course, but nothing really enticing. B [Rhapsody]

Scott Hamilton/Alan Barnes: Hi-Ya (2009 [2010], Woodville): I heard an interview with Benny Carter once where a caller asked "what did you learn from Johnny Hodges?" Carter's answer: "never to play any of his songs." Only two of nine songs here don't have Hodges' name on them -- some also Ellington or Strayhorn, but Hamilton gives Barnes some cover with his tenor sax, and Barnes plays baritone as well as alto. Nice, loose, plenty of swing. Still, not Hodges -- I imagine Barnes is as leary of that comparison as Carter was. B+(**) [Rhapsody]

Scott Hamilton Quartet Plus Two: Our Delight! (2005 [2006], Woodville): The "plus two" are Mark Nightingale (trombone) and Dave Cliff (guitar); both do nice work, the trombonist roughly comparable to John Allred. Ten standards, starting off in rousing fashion with "Get Happy", ending with "In Walked Bud," some Ellington/Strayhorn along the way, the title cut from Tadd Dameron. Delightful indeed. B+(***) [Rhapsody]

Portico Quartet: Knee Deep in the North Sea (2007, Vortex): First album for British quartet, new record Isla reviewed above. This one was nominated for the rock-centric Mercury Music Prize which put it on the UK Top 200 Albums Chart, so I guess we can consider it pop jazz, although it's much more interesting than that. The hang drums at least start out with that shimmering steel drum sound. A bit less minimalist, more pop than the new one, with the sax searching out hooks; otherwise the same basic sound. B+(**) [Rhapsody]

And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further listening the first time around.

Bryan and the Haggards: Pretend It's the End of the World (2010, Hot Cup): Four of seven songs written by Merle Haggard, a couple more that I was surprised to find credited elsewhere. The band is a second cousin to Mostly Other People Do the Killing, with Moppa Elliott and Jon Irabagon common denominators, guitarist Jon Lundbrom useful for music that originally guitar-dominated, and Bryan Murray the nominal leader, not just because his tenor sax looms the largest. Like MOPDTK, they know their history and run it through hoops, starting with Bird and skittering through Ornette until "Trouble in Mind" bears the holy ghost of Albert Ayler, which frees drummer Danny Fischer to rip off a pretty good Rashied Ali impression. B+(***)

Dave Holland Octet: Pathways (2009 [2010], Dare2): Basically Quintet plus extra horns, not as much as the big band, but plenty for all practical purposes. Recorded live at Birdland, some applause and shout outs. Intermittently terrific, especially when trombonist Robin Eubanks bowls his way to the front. B+(***) [advance]

Scenes [John Stowell/Jeff Johnson/John Bishop]: Rinnova (2009 [2010], Origin): Guitar-bass-drums trio. Stowell is a subtle craftsman, and Seattle's standard rhythm section lay out smartly measured postbop ambience. B+(***)

Brad Mehldau: Highway Rider (2009 [2010], Nonesuch, 2CD): Started out with piano trios, making an impressive debut and sustaining his Art of the Piano Trio series longer than anyone has a right to; dropped the obligatory solo album, but then started moving onto large canvases, more composer than improviser. This one sprawls over two discs, awash in a huge string orchestra, which alternately annoys and soothes me. Joshua Redman also graces the affair, sounding functionally comparable to Jan Garbarek if not quite so sweet or sharp. B+(**)

Some re-grades as I've gone through trying to sort out the surplus:

Angles: Epileptical West: Live in Coimbra (2009 [2010], Clean Feed): [was: A-] A

Billy Bang: Prayer for Peace (2005 [2010], TUM): [was: A-] A

Satoko Fujii Ma-Do: Desert Ship (2009 [2010], Not Two): [was: B+(**)] B+(***)

The Mark Lomax Trio: The State of Black America (2007 [2010], Inarhyme): [was: A-] A

Unpacking: Found in the mail this week (and the week before):

• Rez Abbasi Acoustic Quartet: Natural Selection (Sunnyside): Sept. 21
• Newman Taylor Baker: Singin' Drums: Drum Suite Life (Innova): Sept. 28
• Lucian Ban & John Hébert: Enesco Re-Imagined (Sunnyside): Oct. 26
• David Bixler & Arturo O'Farrill: The Auction Project (Zoho): Sept. 14
• Blob: Earphonious Swamphony (Innova): Sept. 28
• Hadley Caliman & Pete Christlieb: Reunion (Origin)
• Andrea Centazzo/Perry Robinson/Nobu Stowe: The Soul in the Mist (Ictus): advance, 2007
• Nels Cline: Dirty Baby (Crypgogramophone, 2CD): box includes thre 40-page booklets, 66 images by Ed Ruscha
• Ryan Cohan: Another Look (Motéma): Sept. 14
• Decoy & Joe McPhee: Oto (Bo Weavil)
• Joey DeFrancesco: Never Can Say Goodbye: The Music of Michael Jackson (High Note)
• Denise Donatelli: When Lights Are Low (Savant)
• Paquito D'Rivera: Tango Jazz: Live at Lincoln Center (Sunnyside)
• Jean-Marc Foltz/Matt Turner/Bill Carrothers: To the Moon (Ayler)
• Fond of Tigers: Continent & Western (Drip Audio): Oct. 12
• Rebecca Coupe Franks: Check the Box (RCF)
• Joe Gilman: Americanvas (Capri)
• Jared Gold: Out of Line (Posi-Tone)
• Goldbug: The Seven Dreams (1k)
• Conrad Herwig: The Latin Side of Herbie Hancock (Half Note)
• William Hooker Trio: Yearn for Certainty (Engine)
• Lena Horne: The Essential Lena Horne (1941-75, Masterworks/Legacy, 2CD)
• Jon Irabagon: Foxy (Hot Cup): Sept. 14
• Bobby Jackson: The Café Extra-Ordinaire Story (Jazzman)
• Tomas Janzon: Experiences (Changes Music)
• Matt Jorgensen: Tatooed by Passion: Music Inspired by the Paintings of Dale Chisman (Origin)
• Andrew Lamb Trio: New Orleans Suite (Engine)
• Anne LeBaron: 1, 2, 4, 3 (Innova, 2CD): Sept. 28
• Barton McLean: Soundworlds (Innova): Sept. 28
• Tim Moltzer + Markus Reuter: Descending (1k)
• The NYFA Collection: 25 Years of New York New Music (Innova, 5CD): Sept. 28
• Michael Pagán/Colorado Saxophone Quartet: 12 Preludes & Fugues (Tapestry)
• Ivo Perelman/Rosie Hertlein/Dominic Duval: Near to the Wild Heart (Not Two)
• Ivo Perelman/Brian Willson: The Stream of Life (Leo)
• Portico Quartet: Isla (Real World)
• Mike Pride: From Bacteria to Boys (AUM Fidelity): Oct. 12
• Tom Rizzo: Imaginary Numbers (Origin)
• Florian Ross: Mechanism (Pirouet): Sept. 28
• Scanner with the Post Modern Jazz Quartet: BLink of an Eye (Thirsty Ear): advance, Nov. 2
• Dolores Scozzesi: A Special Taste (Rhombus): Sept. 7
• Blaise Siwula/Nobu Stowe/Ray Sage: Brooklyn Moments (Konnex): advance, 2005
• Blaise Siwula/Dom Minasi/Nobu Stowe/Ray Sage: New York Moments (Konnex): advance, 2006
• Nobu Stowe-Lee Pembleton Project: Hommage an Klaus Kinski (Soul Note): advance, 2007
• Nobu Stowe & Alan Munshower with Badal Roy: An Die Musik (Soul Note): advance, 2008
• Nobu Stowe: Confusion Bleue (Soul Note)
• Achille Succi/Nobu Stowe/Daniel Barbiero/Alan Munshower/Lee Pembleton: L'Albero delle Meduse (www.vlme.org/ensembles/jelly.html): advance, 2009
• Trio Ricochet: February 2006 (Trio Ricochet): advance, 2006
• Helen Sung: Going Express (Sunnyside): Sept. 14
• Tribecastan: Strange Cousin (Evergreene Music)
• Tribecastan: 5 Star Cave (Evergreene Music)
• Doug Webb: Midnight (Posi-Tone)
• Kenny Werner: No Beginning No End (Half Note)
• Bruce Williamson Quartet: Standard Transmission (Origin)

I used to do these extra link collections, then stopped when I decided to comment on links more often. Still, I'm not getting to everything I want to note for future reference, so I'll try it this way on Sundays.

• Joel Kovel: Zionism's dreary burden on Jewishness
• Paul Krugman: Appeasing the Bond Gods
• Paul Krugman: This Is Not a Recovery
• John Quiggin: A Keynesian zombie idea
• Jane Mayer: Covert Operations: I've previously linked to this piece on the Koch family's scheming, but worth linking again.
• Frank Rich: The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party: in turn, based on Jane Mayer's piece above.
• Maxine Udall: Capitalist Myopia
• Nation Readers' Summer Books: more list fodder.

Andrew Leonard: "I was wrong again!" What Ben Bernanke meant to say: A pretty apt translation of the Fed Chairman's speech to the choir in Jackson Hole. Most memorable line: "The working class is unbelievably screwed." Followed by the gratuitous, "This is kind of bumming me out." It's not like Obama had no choice but to renominate Bush's top pick for the Federal Reserve chairmanship. The chatter campaign behind giving him a second term was based on his supposed success but any way you slice it we're worse off now than when Bush nominated Bernanke in the first place. It's bad enough when Obama recycles Clinton advisers; it's downright indecent when he keeps Bush cronies in office.

Andrew Leonard: Paul Krugman: "I told you so, again": This was written over a week ago, so it doesn't include Krugman's latest Predictions I Wish Had Been Wrong:

Looking for some other stuff, I found this post from October 2008 in which I predicted a level of right-wing craziness about Obama similar to that facing Bill Clinton, but worse.

But Leonard is right that that "Reading Paul Krugman's blog these days is like looking into a hall of mirrors, infinitely refracting the same message: I told you so." I'm not sure that Krugman's prescription for the stimulus was big enough but he was sure right that Obama's figure was way too small. I see today that Laura Tyson has a New York Times op-ed on Why We Need a Second Stimulus, so maybe that's something that Obama will finally run on even though passing it has no chance in the current Congress. She doesn't note that at least since Nixon Republicans have a perfect record of supporting stimulus spending when in office and only opposing it when they think the Democrats will get blamed for the economic downturn. One thing that Krugman points out is that austerity-minded Germany has actually done more stimulus spending than the US given how Obama's efforts have been eroded by cuts in state and local spending. You'd think they could have thought that through, and moreover that they could have explained the analysis, but they don't seem to have even tried. In fact, Christina Romer's analysis was in Krugman's range, about double what Obama asked for, so you can't even say they didn't have the analysis. They just didn't have the guts to level with the American people, and that at a time when they had virtually nothing to lose.

The old saw is that hindsight's 20/20, but that's clearly wrong here. Even Obama's hindsight isn't that good. On the other hand, people like Krugman and Leonard keep seeing these things as they're happening.

Glenn Greenwald: Racial and ethnic exploitation of economic insecurity: Starts with Glenn Beck looking whiter than ever and a packet of Charles Krauthammer lies -- nothing new there. But the following paragraph hit home:

There are few more bitter ironies than watching the Republican Party -- controlled at its core by the very business interests responsible for the country's vast and growing inequality; responsible for massive transfers of wealth to the richest; and which presided over and enabled the economic collapse -- now become the beneficiaries of middle-class and lower-middle-class economic insecurity. But the Democratic Party's failure/refusal/inability to be anything other than the Party of Tim Geithner -- continuing America's endless, draining Wars while plotting to cut Social Security, one of the few remaining guarantors of a humane standard of living -- renders them unable to offer answers to angry, anxious, resentful Americans. As has happened countless times in countless places, those answers are now being provided instead by a group of self-serving, hateful extremist leaders eager to exploit that anger for their own twisted financial and political ends. And it seems to be working.

Seems to be working, but that's partly because the people who are bankrolling the anti-Obama revolt have lots of friendly support from the media, and partly because the Democrats are playing rope-a-dope, certain that no matter how much principle they concede they'll still be viewed come November as the lesser evil.

To put this in perspective, read Jane Mayer's New Yorker piece Covert Operations, on the billionaire Koch brothers. They've been bankrolling libertarian think tanks for decades, but their ideas have never gained much traction, so now they've moved on to mass organizing:

"Ideas don't happen on their own," Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, a Tea Party advocacy group, told me. "Throughout history, ideas need patrons." The Koch brothers, after helping to create Cato and Mercatus, concluded that think tanks alone were not enough to effect change. They needed a mechanism to deliver those ideas to the street, and to attract the public's support. In 1984, David Koch and Richard Fink created yet another organization, and Kibbe joined them. The group, Citizens for a Sound Economy, seemed like a grassroots movement, but according to the Center for Public Integrity it was sponsored principally by the Kochs, who provided $7.9 million between 1986 and 1993. Its mission, Kibbe said, "was to take these heavy ideas and translate them for mass America. . . . We read the same literature Obama did about nonviolent revolutions -- Saul Alinsky, Gandhi, Martin Luther King. We studied the idea of the Boston Tea Party as an example of nonviolent social change. We learned we needed boots on the ground to sell ideas, not candidates." Within a few years, the group had mobilized fifty paid field workers, in twenty-six states, to rally voters behind the Kochs' agenda. David and Charles, according to one participant, were "very controlling, very top down. You can't build an organization with them. They run it."

Of course, getting a lot of moderate income people to rush out into the streets and demand tax breaks for the rich, government services cuts for everyone else, an end to regulating pollution by chronic despoilers like Koch Industries, a never-ending spiral of extortionary health care costs. So the Tea Party talk points don't put it like that -- they appeal to conservative personal virtues, and they spice it up with market-tested fear-mongering, jingoism, and good old fashioned bigotry. While enough people respond to this to form crowds and get pictures taken, they're a declining demographic.

Still, I wonder what would happen if someone tried to organize a counter-movement, a populist uprising for equality and a real program of opportunity: education, health care, infrastructure development, small business loans, antitrust, a non-imperialist foreign policy, wring the money out of elections and drive the lobbyists out of Washington.

Tim Potter: Wichita's graffiti law stirs up worries. My sister's son, Ram Hull, was in the news Monday, stirring up resistance to a new law likely to be approved next week that would criminalize possession of "spray paint, broad-tipped markers and other potential graffiti tools on or within 100 feet of public property." The photo shows Ram violating this law by sketching in a public park. Schools are public property too, although there may be some kind of exception for art students -- at least as long as the city can afford to keep art in the curriculum.

Seems like a parody of other laws which give the police broad discretion to hassle people they take a dislike to. I haven't talked to Ram about this, but one thing I'm struck by is that he has the perspicacity to imagine being the victim of the law -- that he just doesn't see it as something that will be applied to other people. In doing so, he also shows more respect for law than others have who mostly see it as a club for attacking people they don't like.

PS: For much more on this, including some art, goto www.civilmarkers.org.

Frank Rich: How Fox Betrayed Petraeus: I've had nothing to say about the so-called Ground Zero Mosque for the simplest of reasons: it's really none of my business. In fact, that seems like such an obvious position I don't get why anyone is yapping about it. I suppose I can imagine that the backers of the project might like some publicity for some reason, but they weren't the ones who came up with the button-pushing Ground Zero Mosque banner. But as Rich points out, the project known as Cordoba House (or merely as Park51) was ignored by everyone for the better part of a year until Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. propaganda machine jumped in and stirred everyone up. In the old days that used to be called sensationalism, or simply yellow dog journalism, but these days Murdoch doesn't do much of anything without ulterior political motives. Moreover, Murdoch seems to have really hit the jackpot here, getting virtually everyone to take an embarrassing stand on something virtually no one should even care about. You read a lot of charges that so-and-so hates America and is working to destroy our country, our economy, our freedom, our way of life. Well, that's Rupert Murdoch for you, laughing all the way to the bank as he turns his conveniently adopted country into a cesspool of idiocy and hatred.

The most easily excitable Americans are the conservative masses, and Murdoch has been pushing their buttons for decades. It is easy to dismiss conservatives as stupid because they seem incapable of recognizing a fundamental contradiction in their thinking. On the one hand, they revile government for interfering with the private sector, especially for regulations to prevent the private sector from harming itself or others. On the other hand, they demand that the government butt into anything and everything that in any way annoys them. (Sure, some self-styled libertarians are consistently anti-government, but they're statistically insignificant.) There are two ways conservatives manage to bridge this contradiction: one is that they feel specially entitled, that they alone should decide what should be free and what should be suppressed; and the other is that they simply hate everyone else, so they never have to take an opposing view seriously. And nowadays the world is just jammed packed with people they hate: foreigners, Muslims, colored folk who might as well be one or the other, gays, and pretty much anyone liberal enough not to hate any of the people they hate. Wave a mosque in front of them -- any mosque, anywhere -- and they get riled up; add the "ground zero" insult and they go ballistic. And that's no theory: that's what just happened.

Conservatives are wrong on this issue in so many ways people are tempted to argue them all, which is a waste, even though it is certainly true that most Moslems, especially in America, are harmless, that freedom of religion protects believers more than heretics, that much of what we treasure in America is the result of our diversity and our progressive overcoming of prejudice, and that (as Rich points out in his title) all the public diplomacy money can buy, meant to advance our interests and to protect our troops in the Muslim world, is instantly undone by such displays of anti-Muslim bigotry. Such arguments not only don't register with conservatives, they simply make them hate you more than ever. The only argument that stands a chance of prevailing is the simple one: that it's none of their business. You might even add that if they want to blow off steam making fools of themselves, they have that right, but their tantrums aren't going to get us to abandon the constitutionally protected freedoms this country is based on.

Still, there is one conservative argument here that sticks in my craw: all this 9/11 "hollowed ground" horseshit. What happened was horrible -- you know, I was there at the time and lost a loved one, so it was a lot more real for me than it was for 99% of America sitting at home watching the media cheer on the warmongers -- but it's just plain unhealthy to keep picking at the scab, reveling in victimhood without the slightest consciousness that our lust for revenge -- over a crime that hardly any American had the slightest comprehension of -- has since killed 10 (20?) (50?) (who knows?) times as many of them, and profoundly disrupted and deranged the lives of at least ten times more. With no real end in sight as long as we keep picking at it, feeling entitled to, well, act like conservatives: hating people for not submitting to us, feeling the need to strike back at every offense, locking ourselves in a perpetual war of all against all, when in fact we live in a world where there is plenty of everything except mutual respect. I don't mind an occasional nod to history, but real estate in lower Manhattan can be put to better use than to perpetuate our self-indulgent madness. If we can't break out of this death spiral, we'll turn into Israel, a nation doomed to fight on forever, alone, reviled, for no better reason than that they can't imagine a world of equal rights and mutual respect.

Of course, Murdoch is also blindly helped out by chickenshit liberals -- some seeking compromise, some merely sympathizing with the distraught emotions of bigots and crybabies. Murdoch loves them because they legitimize an issue which actually doesn't deserve to be taken seriously, and because ultimately all they do is feed the fury. On the other hand, if there is a silver lining if all this, it will be for yesterday's liberal hawks to realize that their cause is doomed -- that America itself is so broken that there is no way it can fix anything else.

There are lots of real, important, and difficult issues facing the nation. This isn't one of them. Enough already.

Thought I might wrap up this Jazz Consumer Guide round last week, but the week didn't cooperate very well. Still have work to do to get the new server sorted out and the legacy websites running. Still have a bunch of other things I'm working on around the house. Have had an exceptionally tough time writing, and haven't managed to get my incoming mail catalogued. Still, I'm close enough that I'm sure I will have it all wrapped up this coming week.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd post this little Downbeat poll item. I still haven't looked at the Downbeat Critics Poll results, even though the August issue is off the newsstands now. I will do a more systematic review of it, as in past years, when I get a bit of time -- sometime after I get this column wrapped up.

I filled out a ballot for the Downbeat readers' poll ballot. Did it off the top of my head, not looking at my notes, so I leaned on their suggested lists except in the rare cases where I didn't find anyone or thing to my taste.

• Hall of Fame: Lee Konitz. Figured I should pick one from the checklist. George Russell, Anthony Braxton, and Abdullah Ibrahim were equally tempting.
• Jazz Artist: William Parker. Again, from the list, as is everyone below except those noted as write-ins.
• Jazz Album (June 1, 2009 to May 31, 2010): Rudresh Mahanthappa & Steve Lehman: Dual Identity (Clean Feed). Write in. Best album I saw on the list is Mostly Other People Do the Killing: Forty Fort (Hot Cup), my other pick hit last column.
• Historical Album (June 1, 2009-May 31, 2010): Ella Fitzgerald, Twelve Nights in Hollywood (Hip-O Select). Wish I had some of the Mosaic boxes everyone else is voting for, even more so the Stan Getz-Kenny Barron People Time box that unaccountably missed the ballot.
• Jazz Group: Mostly Other People Do the Killing
• Big Band: Steven Bernstein Millennial Territory Orchestra
• Trumpet: Dennis Gonzalez. Surprised he was on the list, also surprised that Randy Sandke -- my first thought -- wasn't.
• Trombone: Roswell Rudd
• Soprano Saxophone: Brent Jensen (write in)
• Alto Saxophone: Rudresh Mahanthappa
• Tenor Saxophone: Houston Person. Lots of ways one could go here.
• Baritone Saxophoone: Ken Vandermark. Don't normally pick a second instrument player.
• Clarinet: Ben Goldberg
• Flute: Juhani Aaltonen (write-in)
• Piano: Satoko Fujii. Again, many real good choices.
• Electronic Keyboard: Craig Taborn
• Organ: Jared Gold. Not many good choices, but I've just been listening to his work with Oliver Lake.
• Violin: Billy Bang
• Guitar: Bill Frisell. I thought of several others, like Anders Nilsson, Wolfgang Muthspiel, and Mark O'Leary, but none on the list.
• Bass: William Parker
• Electric Bass: Stomu Takeishi
• Drums: Lewis Nash
• Vibes: Joe Locke
• Percussion: Han Bennink
• Miscellaneous Instrument: Howard Johnson (tuba). Had to limit myself to the list here otherwise I'd go crazy.
• Male Vocalist: Freddy Cole
• Female Vocalist: Sheila Jordan
• Composer: John Zorn. Don't know if it's cheating to commission recordings of your compositions, but he's done that often enough to gain some focus as a composer.
• Arranger: Gerald Wilson
• Record Label: Clean Feed
• Blues Artist or Group: James Blood Ulmer
• Blues Album (June 1, 2009 to May 31, 2010): Maria Muldaur, Garden of Joy (Stony Plain). Surprised to find one on the list that I knew and could get behind.
• Beyond Artist or Group: Youssou N'Dour (write-in). List runs from Angelique Kidjo to Grizzly Bear to Pink Martini to Wilco, including Anthony Braxton for some reason.
• Beyond Album (June 1, 2009-May 31, 2010): Leonard Cohen, Live in London (Columbia). No question once I saw it on the list, eligible by time frame. (My own lists are annual, so I don't have an easy way to sort on their time frame.)

More on this when I finally get around to doing a Critics Poll review. I'm more struck than ever by the imbalance in the instrumental categories: with Steve Lacy gone, I'd probably name twenty tenor saxophonists before thinking of a soprano; same ratio or steeper for acoustic piano over electric, and acoustic bass over electric, and not much less for drums over percussion. One thing I've done a bit here is to flip back and forth between mainstream and avant players -- there's no real way to compare them, so I decided just to split my own rather catholic interests. Hence Houston Person instead of David Murray or Ken Vandermark, and Lewis Nash instead of Hamid Drake or Paal Nilssen-Love -- any of which would be equally valid.

I'm in the middle of an especially turbulent bout of interesting times right now. That this has kept me from posting is the least of my concerns. Much of my problems are due to those machines that a former boss -- actually, the VP of Software Development at my first engineering job -- insisted on calling the Confusers. I'm in a lull right now, temporary no doubt, so let me unpack this a bit.

I have had a dedicated server since 2003, originally at Rackshack, which eventually got sucked into a company that calls itself The Planet. I never got a lot of good out of it, and never got it to do a lot of the things I thought I'd like to do with a dedicated server, so it's sort of limped along for several years now -- on my long list of things to do. Finally, it fell down a couple weeks ago, so I started shopping for another one. Finally on Monday I ordered a new one from Hosting and Designs in Beaverton, OR. I got a faster machine (E8200 Quad Core), more memory (2GB vs. 1GB), a larger bandwidth allotment (2TB vs. 1TB), for less money, which I immediately threw away by adding cPanel/WHM in the hopes that it would finally put me ahead of the sysadmin curve. Also threw some money into the setup fee for a "Total Security Package" which is so effective that it has not only kept me from logging into the server, it's managed to keep H&D's technical team from fixing the problem. (Or something has, but I'm getting ahead of myself.) While shopping for this, I got some bad vibes from H&D: they were slow responding to questions; admitted they didn't have the "best ping times" and weren't using "Tier 1 providers"; their help desk tools were buggy, and their SSL certificate was self-signed (Firefox didn't like that); they don't provide DNS servers, and I didn't fully understand what that meant or how they figured I could work around it (still don't).

Anyhow, I didn't find anything else that looked better, and I had a slow, annoying burn from Planet, so I ordered their deal on Monday. They promised it up in 24-72 hours, and I was notified it was up mid-Wednesday -- about 48 hours, not fast, but OK. I tried logging in and the machine didn't like the password they gave me. After three tries it banned me. I filed an urgent ticket request, and 24 hours later the machine is still inaccessible (to me, at least). I've complained several times since then. (In fact, could complain again now, but I'm trying to chill out.) In the meantime I raised the DNS question, and got at first a completely evasive answer. When I challenged this, the reply was basically: that's your problem. I've spent a bit of time looking into workarounds -- supposedly they do work, otherwise how could H&D get away with this? -- but not being able to log in and configure my server I'm just guessing (or maybe hallucinating).

Meanwhile, another long-desired computer project has come in. I have a Linux machine that I set up in 1998 and is still the heart of my system. (I'm typing this on a much more powerful machine I built in 2007, although I'm actually just using it as an X-server for a laptop where emacs is running and storing files. But the old machine is the Internet firewall and router, and I've accumulated over 10 years of mail on it, as well as totally clogging its puny disks. The Red Hat Linux on it is ancient, the Mozilla browser doesn't know about certificates issued in the last 5-6 years, and the 512MB RAM is pretty much always overloaded into swap. The migration plan is to move all of its application purposes -- chiefly mail -- onto my other machine(s), and replace it with a small computer running a lightweight Linux firewall/router (like IPCop, or maybe a BSD-based one like pfSense). While shopping for the dedicated server, I got worked up one night and ordered the parts for the new router box.

I wanted something small and specialized. Looked at a lot of rackmount boxes which, despite the small height, are really pretty large and awkward (and expensive). I looked at a lot of boxes before I happened on the idea of a Micro-ITX motherboard with a low-powered Intel Atom CPU. I found an Intel board for $76.99 that should do nicely, then I found an Apex chassis with 250W power supply for a real cheap $38.99. Added 2GB RAM, a D-Link NIC so I'd have two ethernet ports. Could have gotten away with a smaller disk drive, but couldn't find one much cheaper than a 320GB Seagate, and added an ASUS DVD burner, mostly just to install the software. Whole thing came close to $250, about twice what an appliance router would cost, but still a pretty good deal. Put it all together yesterday. Makes a neat little package, smaller than a shoebox. Haven't fired it up yet, mostly because the big issues remain: what distro, and what are all the other things that have to happen to move the old machine out?

Copying the files off the old machine should be easy. Managed to NFS-mount its file systems onto my main machine. Mail would be tougher. Installed Thunderbird on the main machine. Previously had Evolution, but Thunderbird's a successor to the old Mozilla Mail I had been using, so I figured that would be easier. It wasn't: Thunderbird has some wizards for your mail server settings and to pick up old address books, mail, etc., none of which worked, let alone explained their failings. I did get the address book moved by exporting it, copying the file, and importing it (the only time the wizard actually let me select a file). Couldn't pick up any of the old mail, but I was able to manually work out the server settings, so now I can send and receive mail on the main machine.

I then tried installing another mailer, Claws, advertised as lightweight with good import features. I copied all of the old mailboxes, including my big Sent and Inbox files, to places and names I could keep track of, then started feeding them into Claws. It picked them up with only one problem: the old Inbox hadn't been compressed in a long while, so it still had about 30,000 deleted messages in it, all of them restored. (Other mailboxes may have the same problem, but I rarely delete from saved or sent mail.) So I deleted that, compressed the file, copied it, and imported it again, message count now down to 5000. Claws insisted that I set up its mail server settings, but let me get away with tom@localhost, so it's not competing with Thunderbird for the real mail.

Don't know whether I'll wind up using one or the other. For now, Claws manages my mail archive, and Thunderbird is my current mailer. Both have novel features, at least for me. Claws doesn't display HTML, but does a nice job of hacking HTML down to plain text, and a lot of mail looks better that way. Thunderbird formats HTML, but doesn't by default display graphics from elsewhere, so all those shopping and music publicist messages are showing up with big holes in them. I can get the graphics by clicking, and can whitelist certain mail addresses, but it's amusing and not unpleasant to drop them out. Thunderbird also tries heuristics to identify junk mail and scams -- most of what I get from music publicists fall into the latter category -- and presumably adapts to my reports. A lot of squishy uncertainty here, but looks and feels like progress. Only thing I've used the old machine for today was responding to a piece of yesterday's mail.

Also on the confuser front, I saw that there is a new release of Ubuntu (10.4.1) and tried installing it on one of my two Ubuntu machines. The change was from 8 to 10 and it failed -- first time I've seen that happen with Ubuntu. Very little info and no hint of how to work around it, so for now I'm stuck. Will have to dig a lot deeper. (I've had a similar problem with Fedora, and found that the command line tools work better than the window ones.)

Also have a bookcase I need to build, which actually I felt more like doing yesterday than all of this computer stuff. Too hot right now, but I may get the wood cut up for that later this evening. Also got two new books: Andrew Bacevich's Washington Rules and Chalmers Johnson's Dismantling the Empire. Also got Nicholas von Hoffman's Radical: A Portrait of Saul Alinsky and Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus out from the library, so the thing I'd most enjoy doing right now is taking the next week and just reading.

The thing I'm least enjoying is trying to finish up the Jazz Consumer Guide column. I play stuff and can't write shit, play more stuff and still come up empty. Play new things and have no space for them. Play old things and can't come up with words. Meanwhile, I have lots of other things I do want to write about. Getting to where I hate this job.

Of course, it will be better when more things work -- and they will start working, much as mail last night bounced around from disaster to hopeless before it kind of came together.

PS: Nagged H&D right after posting this. After a couple minutes thumb twiddling, they came back and said, "try it again." Ping worked. I logged in as root. I logged into cPanel/WHM. Now all I have left to do is . . . all sorts of things I barely understand. Starting, I suppose, with DNS.

PPS: Roughly 24-hours later, I have made some progress. After much confusion and a few failed efforts, the nameserver is resolved and DNS set up for my initial domain. Adding more domains should be straightforward, but I'm trying to think through how I manage accounts and map accounts to websites and all that, which is something that cPanel provides tools for but doesn't offer a conceptual model (as far as I can tell). Also got the Ubuntu upgrade to work: had to delete some packages before upgrade then restore them afterwards. Have one more machine to upgrade, but should be the same deal.

Time kind of got away from me this week. The main distraction was the need to do something about the demise of my dedicated webserver, which is still up in the air -- although I do expect to ink a new deal sometime this week, which will result in a lot more things to do. Meanwhile, I did finally take the first steps toward closing out this Jazz CG round. That isn't much evident in this week's Jazz Prospecting, which has tended to follow my usual random methodology. (Well, not quite random, as I've been focusing on the priority box, aside from some time pretty much wasted on Rhapsody.) Next week the shift should be more evident, with fewer new records -- although some that I have played and didn't write up will likely poke through -- and a final return to the handful of records I've previously left hanging. But mostly I need to play stuff that I've rated but haven't written up. And I still have no idea for pick hits. And the duds list is empty while the HMs are way, way too long. I figure odds of wrapping up are 50-50. Got enough words, but it still strikes me as rather scruffy.

Peter Evans Quartet: Live in Lisbon (2009 [2010], Clean Feed): Trumpet player, best known for his role in Mostly Other People Do the Killing, but has two solo albums on Psi (haven't heard either) and a slightly different Quartet on Firehouse 12 -- bassist Tom Blancarte and drummer Kevin Shea return here, but the guitar is replaced here by Ricardo Gallo's piano, at once more traditional and more shocking. AMG describes Evans as influenced by Don Cherry and Lester Bowie, but I don't hear either. In chops and conception, he reminds me of early Freddie Hubbard, when he could cross from avant to hard bop without ever seeming out of place. B+(***) [advance]

Ab Baars/Meinrad Kneer: Windfall (2008 [2010], Evil Rabbit): Tenor sax-bass duets, although Baars occasionally lightens up with clarinet, shakuhachi, or noh-kan (a "high pitched Japanese bamboo transverse flute commonly used in traditional Imperial Noh and Kabuki theatre"). One of Baars' more appealing, more charming efforts, although the real test here is following the bass, which demands and rewards concentration. B+(**)

Myra Melford's Be Bread: The Whole Tree Gone (2008 [2010], Firehouse 12): Pianist, b. 1957, cut a couple of trio albums in 1990-91 that Francis Davis noticed, and gradually worked her way into the front rank of cutting edge jazz pianists. Teaches at UC Berkeley. Be Bread is her most expansive group, previously heard on the 2006 album The Image of Your Body, much advanced here: Cuong Vu (trumpet), Ben Goldberg (clarinet), Brandon Ross (guitar), Stomu Takeishi (acoustic bass guitar), and Matt Wilson (drums). A-

Meg Okura and the Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble: Naima (2009 [2010], Meg Okura): Violinist, also plays erhu, b. 1973 in Tokyo, Japan, based in New York. Has a previous album, Meg Okura's Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble (2006), as well as several in Japan that AMG doesn't have a clue about. Also shows up in side credits on a couple dozen albums, mostly John Zorn circle but also with Dianne Reeves, David Bowie, and Ziggy Marley. Group is chamber-ish, with flutes (Anne Drummond Jun Kubo), piano, cello, bass, drums, and percussion (Satoshi Takeishi), and the pieces tend to be suite-like, the last four under the group title "Lu Chai I-IV." The title track, of course, is an arrangement of Coltrane; everything else original. Striking music when it all clicks, which often it does. B+(**)

The Claudia Quintet + Gary Versace: Royal Toast (2009 [2010], Cuneiform): Last three Claudia Quintet albums rated A- in Jazz CG although they've all been sort of marginal: soft sounds (Chris Speed's clarinet, Ted Reichman's accordion, Matt Moran's vibes, Drew Gress's bass) floating on John Hollenbeck's quirky rhythms. This one is much like those, with Gary Versace's piano adding one more soft touch -- he does take one cut on accordion, but after Reichman that's anticlimactic. But it also slips a bit when soft gives way to slow, and I think that tips this just a bit under. Still a fascinating group. B+(***)

Allison Miller: Boom Tic Boom (2010, Foxhaven): Drummer, from DC, based in New York, second album after one in 2005, substantial list of side credits since 1999, mostly rock (exceptions include Virginia Mayhew, Marty Ehrlich, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Judy Silvano, and Todd Sickafoose). Mostly piano trio with Myra Melford leading, Sickafoose on bass, and some guest contribution from violinist Jenny Scheinman -- just one cut as far as I can tell. Four originals from Miller, two from Melford, one each from Mary Lou Williams and Hoagy Carmichael ("Rockin' Chair"). Slows down for the finale, but Melford is in very fine form -- a better showcase for her piano than her own record. A-

Remi Álvarez/Mark Dresser: Soul to Soul (2008 [2010], Discos Intolerancia): Saxophonist, lists soprano first but cover pic features tenor -- website also lists alto and baritone up front, perhaps alphabetically -- from Mexico City. Website shows this as fifth album since 1996, although it's only the second with his name first. Duet with the veteran bassist, very solid and relatively straightforward here, with the sax working cautiously around the edges. B+(***)

Pete Robbins: Silent Z Live (2009 [2010], Hate Laugh Music): Alto saxophonist, b. 1978, grew up in Andover, MA, studied at Phillips Academy, Tufts, and New England Conservatory; moved to Brooklyn in 2002. Fourth album since 2002. Two quintet variants, half with Jesse Neuman on cornet, the other hand with Cory Smythe on piano; both with Mike Gamble on guitar, Thomas Morgan on bass, and Tyshawn Sorey on drums. Gets a sweet sound out of his horn, working freebop grooves and angles, dicier with the cornet than with the piano, but engaging in all cases. B+(***)

Jim Rotondi: 1000 Rainbows (2008 [2010], Posi-Tone): Trumpet player, b. 1962 in Butte, MT, attended UNT, based in New York, has more than a dozen albums since 1997, mostly on mainstream/hard bop labels Criss Cross and Sharp Nine; also more than 50 side credits since 1992. Sole horn, with Joe Locke on vibes, Danny Grissett on piano, Barak Mori on bass, and Bill Stewart on drums. Hard-edged, bright sound, another very solid record. B+(**)

Dave Mihaly's Shimmering Leaves Ensemble: Eastern Accents in the Far West (2010, Porto Franco): Drummer, plays some piano here, also has a voice credit; based in San Francisco, after starting in NJ and NY; credits Andrew Cyrille, Barry Altschul, and Zakir Hussain as teachers, and reports that he's taught for some thirty years. First album according to AMG, although his website lists several more, including three string quartets and an expanded "Coretet" version of this group. Two-horn trio, with David Boyce on tenor sax and Ara Anderson on brass instruments (trumpet, bass trumpet, sousaphone), both occasionally spelling Mihaly on drums. I recall Anderson from Tin Hat; Boyce has a couple dozen credits, the only one I recognize a hip-hop album, Haiku D'Etat (actually, a pretty good one, with Aceyalone). The two horns twist in interesting ways, with just enough support from drums (and sometimes piano) to tie it together. B+(**)

Bill Frisell: Beautiful Dreamers (2010, Savoy Jazz): Guitarist, has cornered a slice of Americana and keeps working it, in this basic framework with Eyvind Kang on viola and Rudy Royston on drums. His originals fit in neatly enough, but the gems are the covers, including "Beautiful Dreamer," "It's Nobody's Fault but Mine" (Blind Willie Johnson), "Tea for Two," "Goin' Out of My Head," and especially "Keep on the Sunny Side." A-

Ratko Zjaca/John Patitucci/Steve Gadd/Stanislav Mitrovic/Randy Brecker: Continental Talk (2008 [2010], In+Out): Guitarist, studied in Zagreb, based now in Rotterdam; AMG lists 3 records since 2000 (not including this one); website lists 8 but not much detail. Mitrovic, b. 1963 in Belgrade, also based in Rotterdam, plays tenor and soprano sax. The others, better known, play trumpet (Brecker), bass (Patitucci), and drums (Gadd). Mostly modern postbop, with nice sax runs and trumpet blasts, but slips into some skunk funk near the end. B

Kihnoua: Unauthorized Caprices (2009 [2010], Not Two): Larry Ochs group, second his his website's group list after Sax Drumming Core, but then ROVA is on the far end. Ochs plays saxophones (probably sopranino and tenor), rough and rugged as usual, but not as rough as Dohee Lee's vocals -- her attack is barely restrainted. Also on board is Scott Amendola, drums and electronics. Group name "borrowed from ancient Greek might have meant 'the difference.'" Vocals draw on Korean "p'ansori singing" and "sinawi improvisation," but could just as well be avant horn attack. Some guests: Liz Allbee (trumpet + electronics), Fred Frith (guitar), Joan Jeanrenaud (cello). B+(**)

Contact: Five on One (2010, Pirouet): Not what you'd call a supergroup, but well-established veterans -- bassist Drew Gress is the youngest by more than a decade, drummer Billy Hart the elder by much less -- the front-line players easily recognized, each with sweet spots that are undeniably theirs, the rhythm section impeccable, pianist Marc Copland playing both roles. Most prominent, of course, is the sole horn, Dave Liebman on tenor and soprano sax. I've never been a fan of his soprano, but he works it in nicely here -- a sinuous interweaving that is likely inspired by the master of the art, guitarist John Abercrombie. B+(***)

Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra: Mezzanine (2010, Owl Studios): The biggest band in Indianapolis, or at least Bloomington, where this was recorded and Brent trombonist-conductor Wallarab teaches. I thought their previous album, Where or When, was a terrific territory band throwback, but they get all orchestral here, and while arranger fans will find bits to admire, this doesn't really get going until third cut from the end, where they take a break from Wallarab's book. Even then, how often are you tempted to call "Stompin' at the Savoy" and "Cherokee" dainty? B

Correction: Two Nights in April (2009 [2010], Ayler): Piano trio, from Sweden: Sebastian Bergström on piano, Jaocim Nyberg on bass, Emil Åstrand-Melin on drums. First album, drawn from two live sets on two consecutive nights, the piano has a hard edge that leans free but may know a thing or two about rock. B+(***)

Myron Walden: Momentum Live (2009, Demi Sound): Tenor saxophonist, b. 1972 (or 1973?), started on alto, establishing himself as one of the better mainstream boppers around before taking time off to refashion himself on tenor. Got hit with a lot of hype on him last fall, including a bunch of advances for albums that the publicist never followed up on. The first was called Momentum, and it seemed like a pretty decent hard bop outing. This is a live reworking, with Darren Barrett (trumpet) and Yasushi Nakamura (bass) carrying over from the studio album, Edin Ladin (piano) and John Davis (drums) replacing David Bryant and Kendrick Scott. Main diff this time is sonic, where they're going for (or stumbled on) the thin-skinned underwater sound of Charlie Parker boots. The plus side is an engaging looseness, especially the horns sliding to and fro. The piano solos don't do much, and the usual live ballast doesn't add anything. B+(*) [advance]

Myron Walden/In This World: To Feel (2009 [2010], Demi Sound): Last fall's batch of CDRs included two Walden albums promised for Jan. 15 release. I did what I usually do: wait for the real copy, which in this case never came. Looks like everyone else did too. I haven't found a single review of either album, and the only place where it is Amazon, fronting for a retailed identified as Myron Walden. Not clear if "In This World" is a band name or just a logo. One page in the hype package lists the band as: Jon Cowherd (piano), Mike Moreno (guitar), Yasushi Nakamura (bass), and Obed Calvaire (drums). AMG, with no track info, confirms Cowherd-Moreno-Nakamura, but has Brian Blade and/or Kendrick Scott on drums, plus David Bryant on Fender Rhodes and Chris Thomas on acoustic bass. Band doesn't matter much here. Walden's To Feel approach is to run ballads past us, everything slow and soft. B [advance]

Myron Walden/In This World: What We Share (2009 [2010], Demi Sound): Same deal here: don't know anything more about band, recording date (presumed 2009 because I got the advance before 2010 rolled over), etc. Record is a little more energetic, and guitar (Mike Moreno?) does a nice job of framing the tenor sax. Walden is an attractive mainstream player, worth taking seriously, but he's not making any big breakthroughs. I have one more CDR in my pile, a 2-cut thing called Singles, which I assume is just a pure PR fantasy. He seems to have one more album in the pipeline, Countryfied, also on Amazon. Didn't come my way. B+(*) [advance]

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.

Ivo Perelman: Brazilian Watercolour (1998 [1999], Leo): Several Perelman albums have been reissued in Brazil on Atração Fonográphica and worked their way to Rhapsody that way -- this one under the title Aquarela do Brasil, but aside from a few title translations this matches the release on Leo. One of the few cases where Perelman plays a couple of pop tunes from his homeland, here "Desafinado" and "Samba de Verão" -- the strain and choppiness he adds makes them all the more alluring. With Matthew Shipp on piano, Rashid Ali on drums, Guilherme Franco and Cyro Baptista on percussion and wood flutes. A singular tenor saxophonist, even on a lite samba. Also has a piano credit somewhere, but it's not clear to me where Shipp gives way. B+(***) [Rhapsody]

Ivo Perelman with C.T. String Quartet: The Alexander Suite (1998, Leo): The quartet is sharp and jazzwise, led from the bassist: Jason Kao Hwang (violin), Ron Lawrence (viola), Tomas Ulrich (cello), and Dominic Duval (bass). That makes them about as astringent as the tenor saxophonist, who squeaks and squawks above them, pretty much as sharp and bloody as cutting edge gets. B+(***) [Rhapsody]

Joe Morris: Colorfield (2009, ESP-Disk): Guitarist, from Boston, with about 30 albums since 1990, has been on a roll lately -- I count three A-list records since 2004 under his own name, a near miss, and a few more under other names, but most of those rode in on the coattails of hard-blowing saxophonists (Ken Vandermark, Jim Hobbs). Missed this one from last year, a trio with pianist Steve Lantner and his usual drummer Luther Gray. Don't know Lantner, but he worked with Joe (and Mat) Maneri, has a half dozen albums since 1997, and provides a consistently interesting contrast to Morris's irrascible guitar. B+(***) [Rhapsody]

Lee Konitz/Chris Cheek/Stephane Furic Leibovici: Jugendstil II (2005 [2010], ESP-Disk): Bassist Leibovici, who previously recorded as Stephane Furic, wrote all eight pieces, and acts as music director for the two saxophonists. He sets the ground rules, reining in the saxes as they're mostly yoked to the melody -- not much here for rugged individualists, although the music is pleasantly engaging. B+(*) [Rhapsody]

Herbie Hancock: The Imagine Project (2010, Hancock): Recorded in seven countries with guests from even further across the universe, this is a colossal engagement of liberal internationalism, and a pretty good showcase for at least some of the talent. But is the choice of such obvious songs lazy thinking or a real paucity of alternatives. Lennon's "Imagine," sure, but can't you do better than Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up" for an encore? (Pink sings both, paired first with Seal then with John Legend.) Lennon-McCartney return later, showcasing quintessential good guy Dave Matthews, almost as wasted as Sam Cooke is on James Morrison. Colombia and Brazil get some respect, but Bob Marley is routed through Somalia and the Sahara to East L.A., faring better than Dylan "Times They Are a Changin'" done by the Chieftains with Toumani Diabate kora. Silly as the others seem, the latter is the album's only real gag moment. High point? The closer with Chaka Khan, Anoushka Shankar, and Wayne Shorter. Plus a pianist who always sounds impeccable no matter how little he does. Not a jazz record, but the finale could be worked that way. B [Rhapsody]

Some corrections and further notes on recent prospecting:

Ivo Perelman/Dominic Duval/Brian Willson: Mind Games (2008 [2010], Leo): Drummer's name is "Willson," not "Wilson" as I had it. In my defense, the label says "Wilson" on the front cover, the back cover, the credits in the booklet, and at least three times in Art Lange's liner notes. The label did get Willson's name right on the newer Ivo Perelman/Brian Willson duo, The Stream of Life -- the one I didn't get and haven't heard. AMG has his name both ways, several times, adding to the confusion. The publicist also has the drummer's name as "Wilson" in the hype sheet, so this looks like an uphill battle.

For this cycle's collected Jazz Prospecting notes -- 196 records thus far -- look here.

Unpacking: Found in the mail this week:

• Henry Darragh: Tell Her for Me (Henry Darragh)
• Matt Garrison: Familiar Places (D Clef)
• Robert David Hall: Things They Don't Teach You in School (Robert David Hall Music)
• John McNeil/Bill McHenry: Chill Morn He Climb Jenny (Sunnyside): Sept. 21
• Myra Melford's Be Bread: The Whole Tree Gone (Firehouse 12)
• Marc Ribot: Silent Movies (Pi): Sept. 28
• Joan Soriano: El Duque de la Bachata (IASO, CD+DVD)
• Paul Tynan & Aaron Lington: Bicoastal Collective: Chapter Two (OA2)
• Greg Ward's Fitted Shards: South Side Story (19/8): Sept. 28
• Sarah Wilson: Trapeze Project (Brass Logic)

Alex Pareene: Poll: Americans not actually that worried about the deficit: I don't put much stock in polls, which can always be jiggered in all sorts of ways, but this one does help point out that deficit hysteria is a big issue only because it's been chatted up by a couple of special interest groups with hidden agendas: the finance industry, who now that they got theirs don't see any need for further government largess, at leat in favor of anyone else, and the Republicans, who are committed to this idea that if you make government miserly and unresponsive to people needs the masses will give up on the notion that they can use their votes to defend and advance their, and the public's, interest, and will settle for the party that best feeds their prejudices and exploits their fears. Yet for all their frenzied hand-wringing over the issue, they never bother to point out the obvious: that deficits can easily be fixed by raising taxes, that the rich are currently taxed at rates way below historic norms, and that taxing the rich (unlike consumption taxes which hit everybody) wouldn't drag the economy further down -- they're productively investing virtually no money now; indeed, they're mostly parking it in government bonds (even at record low rates) because that's the safest bet they can make (which shows you how little they are really worried about the deficits.

What makes this poll significant isn't the paltry 7% obsessed with the federal deficit. It's the contrasting 58% who say "the most important problem facing the country is either the economy or unemployment." Again, that's a problem that translates into a straightforward solution: the government can pick up the slack by pumping money into the economy, creating jobs directly and indirectly by contracting for services, multiplying as the cash flows throughout the economy. There are smart ways of doing this, and not-so-smart ways, and it can be financed through deficits and/or taxes and/or inflating the money supply. But the argument that you can't fix the unemployment problem because we can't in any case raise taxes or suffer even moderate inflation or cope with long-term deficits comes down to the 7% telling the 58% to forget it: to live with chronic unemployment and underemployment, suppressed wages, greater insecurity, and a persistent unraveling of the social fabric because rich people might be inconvenienced contributing back to a nation that has actually treated them very generously.

That ratio -- 7% to 58% -- actually seems to explain a lot of what's going on in this country. There are a lot of issues that if fairly discussed and evaluated would break down into ratios like that. A well connected but tiny minority -- 7% is probably too generous here -- managed to keep a single-payer health care away from serious consideration, even though it consistently polls at close to 50%. (Actually, among people all around the world who actually have such systems it polls much higher, as indeed it does in the US when we discuss Medicare.) Foreign wars, and defense spending in general, is another matter where a tiny percentage of well connected interested parties has been able to keep fair discussion from every happening.

One has to wonder why right now there is so much loose talk going around about the urgent need to preemptively attack Iran in hopes of halting or significantly delaying their nuclear program. The US war in Iraq is clearly winding down, with US forces withdrawing to their luxury bases and forces being moved out of country. Afghanistan is in worse shape, but Obama is certainly hoping for a similar result there: the key, as in Iraq, is to tone down the conflict, to improve security and improve the functionality of the Karzai government. On the other hand, Israel's real problem is the international backlash against the occupation, especially the cruel siege on Gaza. Meanwhile, Iran has been locked in its own internal political crisis, doing pretty much nothing else. So why all the war hysteria over Iran?

The centerpiece is Jeffrey Goldberg's broadside in The Atlantic, titled The Point of No Return, or as it's touted on the magazine's front cover: "Israel Is Getting Ready to Bomb Iran: How, Why- and What It Means." Some reactions: Glenn Greenwald discusses "how propagandists function," pointing out how Goldberg himself has changed his story according to whatever line he wants to push. Stephen Walt points out that the main thing Goldberg is doing is getting us accustomed to talking about war; he calls this "mainstreaming war with Iran." Paul Woodward focuses on the gamesmanship between Israel and the US here: the Israelis are saying that if you don't do it they will try, but it's really beyond their capabilities to do it right, so if the US wants to save Israel from fucking it up, better for the Americans to throw their greater firepower at it. Tony Karon explores the question, "Why do people talk to Jeffrey Goldberg?". Gary Sick pooh-poohs the entire proposition, mostly by looking at Iranian reality.

Then there's Trita Parsi: A campaign for war with Iran begins, which adds much more than reaction to the debate. In particular:

Two days after President Obama's election victory in November 2008, then-Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni expressed her categorical opposition to U.S. engagement with Iran. "We live in a neighborhood in which sometimes dialogue -- in a situation where you have brought sanctions, and you then shift to dialogue -- is liable to be interpreted as weakness," Livni told Israel Radio. Asked if she supported any U.S. dialogue with Iran, Livni replied in no uncertain terms: "The answer is no."

A big part of the problem with Israel and/or the US bombing Iran is that doing so will almost certainly make the problem worse in the future. A show of force would only harden opinion against Israel and the US, and redouble Iran's efforts to develop better defenses and a deterrent against future attacks. So what would reduce or end the threat? The very thing that Obama's election promised, the one thing that Livni was so emphatic about preventing: diplomatic talks. The only possible conclusion is that Israel is against what might work and in favor of what surely will not. Such disinterest in solving the problem makes one wonder whether Israel even considers Iranian nukes to be a real problem.

Indeed, this is hinted at by quotes in Goldberg's article; e.g., where Ehud Barak admits that the problem he sees is demographic: that Jews would be less likely to immigrate to Israel, and more likely to emigrate from. Of course, a much more sensible answer would be for Israel to agree to one of many reasonable solutions to the Palestinian conflict, which would let the hot air out of anti-Israeli passions and reduce Israel to being a normal state. But that's the problem they really don't want to solve.

PS: This has been heating up for a while. Back in July Steven Simon and Ray Takeyh published an op-ed, characterized by Tony Karon as "a how-to-bomb Iran manual, adding that "The idea that you can bomb a country and then 'make sure the confrontation does not escalate out of control' is, quite simply, bizarre." Of course, people need reassurances to keep from thinking these things through -- like, for instance, how Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq would cost no more than $20 billion and how its reconstruction would be "self-financed."

Karon starts his piece off with a photo of Iraq War-enabler Peter Beinart chatting with Hillary Clinton, and titles his piece "On Iran, Liberals Are Enabling Another Disastrous War." Glenn Greenwald has a follow-up today which starts off with Goldberg's own track record of promoting war with Iraq: his piece is called "Does the past record of jouralists matter?" -- he's responding to James Fallows defending Goldberg's "journalism." The one interesting thing about Fallows's post is the paragraph summing up a 2004 piece on the same recurrent threat:

And then there was the previous Atlantic cover story about bombing Iran, which I did back in 2004. It was based on a mock war-game exercise to see what, in practical terms, it would mean to "take out" Iran's nuclear facilities. The conclusion was that, even then, Iran's facilities were too dispersed to eliminate by an aerial attack; that an attack would likely unify and motivate Iranians behind their government and the drive to become a nuclear power; that even if Israel attacked on its own, the United States would still be blamed; and that even the most "successful" attack would exchange a temporary tactical advantage (temporary delay in Iran's plans) for a major strategic setback, namely lasting complications and vulnerabilities for the U.S. around the world. Last year Anthony Cordesman, of CSIS, laid out a similar analysis of an Israeli strike, which came to similar cautionary conclusions.

Fallows goes on to quote Goldberg doubting that bombing Iran would do any good (and then waffling), a neat little bit of deniability in case it all blows up. Does make me wonder why we even stop to take such fantasies seriously, but Greenwald has an answer:

I'm now finishing up a long article for Harper's about America's War Culture: why war advocacy has been and continues to be the reflexive, required perspective of the nation's foreign policy elite. I don't want to say too much about the piece, but one central reason for this is that those who were most spectacularly wrong in cheering for the attack on Iraq have not only faced no accountability, but have thrived, been rewarded, have seen their positions of influence elevated. Conversely, those who were right continue to be marginalized. That's due in part to the ethos implicit in Fallows' defense of Goldberg: it's so unfair to have their prior behavior affect their current status and credibility. As a result, our war policies -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and now Iran -- are all being shaped by the very same war-hungry political and media elites who performed so disgracefully in 2002 and 2003.

I have to admit I share that frustration, but the core reason is certainly simpler. Any time Israel needs to deflect attention from its own deeds and wants to bolster support from Washington, it drums up its bogeyman, which has been Iran since the fall of Iraq and the Soviet Union. So, Israel taps its usual mouthpieces, like Jeffery Goldberg. That he was wrong on Iraq in 2003 is your opinion; as far as his employers are concerned, his record is spotless, because he's always said what he was supposed to say.

Glenn Greenwald, on Jeffrey Goldberg's Atlantic article "Israel Is Getting Ready to Bomb Iran":

If you were an Iranian, is there anything that would convince you of the need for nuclear weapons more than watching Israel bomb your country?

Of course, most Americans won't see that, because we lack the ability to imagine how other people see things. We're not even very good at understanding each other.

Alex Pareene:

Former Mexican President Vincente Fox calls for Mexico to legalize drugs, which would probably help their situation a lot, though not as much as it would help them if we legalized drugs.

This isn't even a case of putting our interests ahead of theirs, as "realist" foreign policy wonks suggest we should do. It's more a matter of forcing our hypocrisies onto others so we can avoid facing up to our own problems.

David Frum (quoted by Glenn Greenwald after Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs said "the professional left . . . should be drug-tested"):

More proof of my longtime thesis, Repub pols fear the GOP base; Dem pols hate the Dem base.

Frum tries to pretty this up a bit. If "Repub pols" so feared the GOP base, they woundn't work so hard to push its buttons, but then the GOP base is usually satisfied to get out and vote then stay out of the way while the pols go about their main job of servicing the rich. The "Dem pols" don't have it so easy because the "Dem base" actually has reasoned interests and concerns in conflict with the interests and concerns all pols face day to day -- the lobbies, the media, etc. -- which often makes the base inconvenient.

Of course, Gibbs wasn't talking about the base. He was talking about pundits who care about actual issues regardless of whatever's most tactically convenient for Obama. Greenwald quotes Bob Herbert: "Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House." That seems like a pretty sober statement to me. There are more than a few examples; even some, like the surge in Afghanistan, where Obama has outdone Bush, and some of these (maybe not Afghanistan) are retreats from his campaign pledges. It shouldn't be surprising that Obama gets some flack from people who supported him in 2008: he's fallen way short of their hopes, he's fallen short of his promises, and he doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of what we desperately need from him, which is to keep the Republicans out of power for the next 2-6 years.

Going back to the top item above, one thing that nearly all of us expected from Obama was to do a better job than Bush of sorting out our differences with Iran. That hasn't happened, and he hasn't excluded the possibility of doing something far worse.

Matthew Yglesias: Progressive Consumption Taxes. I meant to write something about this a few weeks ago, but it slipped out of my consciousness, until Yglesias brought it up again. What he calls a "progressive consumption tax" is actually an opt-out income tax: it lets rich people opt out of paying income tax on any money they choose to save rather than spend. I can think of several things wrong with this.

For starters, consumption taxes should be point-of-sale, since that's precisely when one has the money to pay them -- if the tax pushes the price above what you are willing to pay, then you walk away from the purchase. (Sales taxes depress economic activity a bit, but more often than not you need what you're buying so you pay the tax. Sales taxes also depress profits a bit, since every now and then a seller will settle for a bit less profit rather than losing the sale.) The problem is that point-of-sale taxes can't be progressive unless you can distinguish how much buyers have bought in the past, something that would take a lot of nosey bureaucracy and would still be almost laughably easy to subvert. (You could, of course, tax more expensive items or certain kinds of items at higher rates, which would make a sales tax somewhat progressive, but that gets real complicated real fast.) Robert Frank's scheme gets around this problem by taxing income minus savings, so the rap on consumption is false advertising.

The bigger question is why exempt savings, especially since savings is simply what people who have too much money have left over after they've bought everything they needed. For years and years economists lecture us on the virtue of savings, arguing that the economy depends on investors, that government policy should do everything possible to increase savings. We already bend over backwards to encourage savings, deferring taxes on retirement accounts, deducting taxes on home borrowing, barely taxing dividends and capital gains. One paradox is that with all of this policy favoring savings the nationwide savings rate keeps dropping -- which of course is cited as evidence that we need even more favorable treatment of savings. Also curious is that the rare occasion where savings goes up is precisely when the economy as a whole tanks. So why on earth should we think that savings drives the economy?

Well, the reason some people say that is because pretty much by definition savings is the exclusive defining trait of the rich: people who have more money than they need to satisfy their consumption desires have savings, and people who don't don't. Sure, there are marginal cases where poor people scrimp to save something away, and there are rich people who come up with ever more fanciful ways to squander their money, and you're no doubt right to find the former virtuous and the latter foolish, to expect that the former will improve their lot and the latter will throw it away. But what's good for individuals is often irrelevant to the whole economy or society. (Drug use is often tragic for individuals but is big business coming and going for the economy as a whole.) So whenever you hear someone talking on about how we need more savings, what he's saying is that rich people should be able to dig deeper into your pockets. Encouraging savings is one of the main ways we allow our country to become more and more inequal.

Another big way we make wealth more inequal is by flattening the tax rate. That's what repeated movements to cut "marginal" tax rates have done. Shifting to sales taxes, which are necessarily flat, also favors inequality. And capped payroll taxes and special treatment for unearned income is even more regressive than flat tax rates. The only real way to keep inequality from getting way out of hand -- as it's pretty much done in America, and done even worse in the crony capitalist havens of the developing world -- is to progressively tax excess income, which is to say: what we need to do is to tax savings. Frank and Yglesias imagine they can make up for the inherent shortcomings of their scheme by jacking up the tax rates on extravagant spenders. That might help a little, but the opt-out nature of their scheme is a big and dangerous loophole.

I've written a lot about taxes in the past so let me reiterate a few points:

• Taxes are necessary to support government spending while keeping the currency reasonably stable. How much spending we need depends on how many services we prefer to be provided equitably through public spending rather than through profit-seeking private enterprise -- we now have many examples of this like education, roads, sanitation, parks, justice, and defense, and one can easily add to this list. We need to raise approximately as much in taxes as we plan to spend for all of these reasons.
• A government is too big only if it crowds out and doesn't satisfy private economic activity that we actually need. (I doubt that such conditions are actually possible, at least in a responsive democracy.) As long as government spends what it takes in, its effect on the economy should be neutral, except in times when private sector lags, in which case government spending stimulates the economy.
• Because tax policy distorts economic activities, you generally want to make taxes as invisible and unobtrusive as possible. (This is the exact opposite of most US practice, which is to make taxes appear as ugly as possible.)
• Sales taxes, like VATs, are a good way to provide the bulk of tax revenues, because they are always available -- their funding is a necessary part of the transaction -- and they can be efficiently collected through businesses. They can be varied by product, which is useful for adjusting prices to reflect externalities. A VAT can be structured to exempt labor costs, thus minimizing its depressive effect on jobs. They can even be seasonally adjusted, and as such can be autotuned to reflect revenue needs.
• Income taxes should be retained and should be significantly progressive to counterblance the extraordinary advantages that our economic system allows some individuals. Progressivity helps to maintain a fair and equitable society, and expresses a general desire to limit greed even short of confiscatory rates. (We have in the past had marginal income tax rates as high as 90% without damaging the economy. In fact, growth rates during that period were much higher than they have been since the rates were cut.)
• I would make a distinction between earned and unearned income. Both would be taxed progressively: earned income (wages, small business profits) would be taxed same as now; unearned income (interest, dividends, capital gains, gifts, inheritance) would be taxed at a rate that progresses as your total unearnings accumulate over your lifetime. This has the merit of encouraging poorer people to save to supplement their future income without unduly favoring the rich (who save because they have too much money, and whose money multiples with very little effort on their own).
• Stiffly progressive estate taxes are necessary to prevent the undemocratic accretion of a hereditary aristocracy. There are countless examples of the harm such people do -- the fact that the new right has been largely funded by heirs is just a particularly odious one. Whatever inheritance that does slip through the tax net would be treated as unearned income as above.
• Corporate profits should continue to be taxed, but using a progressive rate structure which would encourage competition by undercutting the advantages of scale that large corporations enjoy.
• Since so many government services are borne at the state and local level, we need a system for uniform tax collection and systematic tax sharing. This would also work to counter political lobbying for local tax preferences which too often these days guides plant location and corrupts local politics. This system should provide automatic countercyclical measures so that state and local government can adjust appropriately to economic cycles. State and local governments which receive a larger tax share than they wish to spend should be able to rebate the excess to their constituents on an equal basis.
• I would get rid of the current system of property taxes, mostly because it requires a tax to be paid from savings as opposed to sales and income taxes which are paid from available funds -- i.e., if you cannot afford the tax on a purchase, you have the option of foregoing the purchase, but if you cannot afford the tax on a property, you can be forced to liquidate the property. (Estate taxes are like property taxes, but since the owner is no longer with us, he or she isn't distressed by the judgment.)

Most people on the left instinctively reject non-progressive or even regressive taxes, probably because they are tired of losing battles over progressive income and estate taxes. You can have a progressive tax system with a lot of regressive or flat taxes if the progressive component is truly effective. Similarly, people on the left rarely care to cut or eliminate property taxes because taxing property is a straightforward way to soak the rich, but the need to save for property taxes introduces a lot of distortions in the system.

This all seems to self-evident to me that sometimes I think someone should set up a soapbox and campaign on these ideas -- I'm tempted to call them Smart Taxes. (Can't use Fair Tax, which has already been debased to sheer stupidity. How can anyone think that eliminating a one-page rate table simplifies the tax code, as compared to the thousands of pages of FASB rules that try to figure out what is income and deductible expense, a problem that will persist no matter what the rate.) But this sort of jiggering of the tax system is just a nice way to make the system a bit more efficient and sensible. The real question is whether we want to live in a more equitable society, whether we appreciate the core values of mutual respect, openness, fair treatment, equal opportunity, honesty. There is much research, as well as common sense, that shows that more equitable societies are happier, less stressful, more productive societies. If you want that, then devising a tax system to represent those values is straightforward. Meanwhile, the people who don't want that will be screaming bloody murder over any scheme that hints at progressivism, even one like Yglesias and Frank proposed with an opt-out for the superrich.

Shortly after I built robertchristgau.com in the fateful month of September 2001, a few longtime fans of Christgau's got in touch with me. They offered various forms of help, and over the next few months we put together a substantial chunk of Christgau's pre-1989 (i.e., pre-computer) oeuvre. Some found missing pieces, including old Consumer Guide reviews that had failed to show up in the three decade-summing books. Some found faults with what had been posted -- many my mistakes in transcribing the written sources I had accumulated over the years, some mistakes that Christgau himself had made. (The book pages now have extensive corrigendae.) One of these people was Michael Tatum. He was at the time music editor for Chicago-based webzine Static, and he talked me into writing a monthly column for him. I was especially interested in filling in the cracks in my understanding of history, so the result was Recycled Goods, and that in turn started my return to spending way too much time writing about music. Even after Tatum left Static, he generously helped to edit the column, at least up to January 2008 when I got frustrated and pulled the column from Static. (I haphazardly picked it up again in April 2008, publishing whatever I happened to have accumulated in my blog, but without consulting Tatum for any finishing touches -- consider this the column's shaggy dog years.)

Over the years, we've kicked around various schemes, including a jointly written record guide that'll only happen if he pushes me hard enough to get it done. The last couple of years he hasn't been in touch regularly, but I prodded him to do a year-end list back in December -- a pretty close match to the one Christgau wound up with. After MSN dropped Christgau's forty-one-year run of Consumer Guides, Tatum stepped up to do his part to carry on. He found he could survey a lot of chatted-up records by downloading, and asked me to post his findings. Hopefully, he'll keep doing this and let us know what he finds every month or so. He certainly adds a lot of music intelligence to that thread in this website.

PS: In response to several letters, yes, Tatum plans on continuing this monthly, and I will post his columns. I should also note that I have been and will continue to post monthly notes based on what I glean from Rhapsody, including a big one next week. These will in some cases be redundant and in others will disagree with Tatum, but that's how it goes. I'll also note that Christgau, who isn't involved in either of our efforts, is still listening and writing and will be heard from on many (if not all) of these records in due course.

A Downloader's Diary: August 2010

by Michael Tatum

When I wrote rock criticism for my college newspaper -- not very good rock criticism, but my ears were only beginning to open up -- promotional copies of current releases were easy to come by. This was in the mid-nineties, the boon time for the industry: every few days my editor and I would haul a mound of mail stuffed with CDs that I had systemically requested from publicists (a list freak by nature anyway, my handwritten compendium of label contacts was extensive), augmented by whatever they happened to be feverishly promoting that month, often in duplicate. (I think they sent us four copies of Tricky's Maxinquaye, and I got away with requesting a fifth after shamelessly claiming the others had been "lost in transit.") It was the rare title I couldn't acquire by asking politely, and whatever they felt that they "didn't need to promote" (i.e. a blockbuster that didn't need my two cents attached to it) I obtained by trading my surplus swag to an independent music store in nearby Westwood. As I said, this was the boon time for the industry: when I later put my B.A. in English Literature to good use by working at the aforementioned store, label employees would show up weekly with questionably procured boxes of the latest hit records, sometimes a dozen or two of each title, each still wrapped in the original cellophane and marked by that telltale notch on the spine. I think I got every single Interscope/DGC release free for at least five years.

The second time I tried my hand at rock criticism, from 2002 to 2005, when I was the music editor at a struggling Chicago-based webzine called Static Multimedia, my promo well had dried up -- partly because my venue was smaller, but also because leaks from file sharing had made publicists a little more cautious. Plus, bloggers and webzine critics require tangible proof that someone will actually read your reviews, i.e. that you will be able to promote their record to the publicist's satisfaction. Fortunately, armed with dubious statistics about our "hit rate," the cycle familiar from my time in college soon renewed itself: review, trade, review, trade. In college the pond had been big enough so that I could basically do whatever I wanted and none of my superiors (who were good friends anyway) noticed, but to my surprise, at the indie-level that alternative types tend to ballyhoo, I encountered an unbearable level of mind-numbingly stupid politics. In my first month, I angered a publicist from a label that was considering paying for advertising. (Could you pretend to find merit in a Voodoo Glow Skulls record? I thought not.) My scathing review basically meant that we wouldn't be seeing the (I'm guessing) hundred dollars or so that would have accounted the majority of the revenue generated that month. Later, my editor skipped over me entirely and planted self-penned reviews under various psuedonyms, often plagiarizing whole chunks of PR sheets.

I've found a simple solution, cutting out the middle men from publicists to editors: downloading. Sure, downloading hurts the industry's sales line, but it provides a way to find out what you'd be buying before you waste your money on crap you'll never play again. No longer can artists get away with padding a few hit singles with filler, because even a relative Luddite like me can enlist Limewire and Kazaa to separate the wheat from the chaff with a few keystrokes. But in many ways, downloading is the great equalizer: now everyone can potentially be their own rock critic, and sift through countless releases to find what really hits his or her sweet spot: to ascertain who should be rewarded with your hard earned bucks and who should be booted from your hard drive. I can't be the only person that thinks this way -- many of the fans who streamed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or purchased In Rainbows for a penny rewarded the artists in question once hard copies became available in record stores.

The methodology behind this column is very simple. I download current releases to my hard drive, determined either by past personal interest or critical word of mouth, and spend a few weeks listening to them on my iPod. After some thought, I grade them using the Christgau Consumer Guide grading system, including the 3-star levels for B+ records. In the the top section are records (almost always A- or better) that I have something to say about; below that are honorable mentions -- B+ records that are likely to interest people into that specific artist or genre -- and Trash -- B records not worth further thought, or worse. If I really do have something to say about an exceptionally interesting B+ record or an exceptionally hideous dud I'll add it to the top section.

Despite the online availability of music before its intended release date, I am sticking to titles you could purchase from a well-stocked local record shop, or at least on the internet, although Liz Phair is online only (rumored to be released on Rocket Science in October), Old 97's is online or free at their shows, and the Loudon Wainwright is sucker-priced at $20 and hard to find at that. The Dangermouse/Sparklehorse collaboration only recently came out of legal limbo, having floated around the net for over a year, though I personally would rather it have vanished into the virtual ether.

So, I've eliminated the publicists, and found a non-commercial outlet with a sympathetic editor. Admittedly, I won't make any money off these endeavors, but there is a certain appeal about being "unfiltered" -- as Liz Phair has described her wonderful new record -- and I hope also conveys the fun I had while putting this together. Fun -- people foolishly dismiss the word because they feel the concept is at odds with depth, but I've never thought so. If Sly Stone taught as anything, isn't that why we love the music in the first place?

Big Boi: Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty (Def Jam) There's no gainsaying that Andre Patton is an equal partner in the Outkast franchise -- the expert production, lyrics and raps prove that, and at just under an hour, this has less fat than your average hip hop record. But just as Speakerboxxx could have used a little Love Below, even the highlights here could have been brightened up by Andre Benjamin's lighter, goofier touch. It's not just a matter of Patton's (relative) conventionality, made plain when George Clinton shows up to stank around on "Fo Yo Sorrows," but also a matter of how the Andres' personalities complement each other. Much as Benjamin's introspection added an extra dimension to Patton's bitterness in "Ms. Jackson," Patton's macho swagger on the the breakout sex jams "Turns Me On" and "Tangerine" could have benefitted from Benjamin's more playful way with the ladies. Self expression -- so overrated. A-

The Books: The Way Out (Temporary Residence) I couldn't tell you what sort of post-modern tomes grace Nick Zammuto and Paul De Jong's bookshelves, but their treasure trove of self-help tapes and found sounds constitutes an entirely different story. In a spiritual mode one of their re-contextualized gurus dubs "thumbing your nose at the universe," they continually upend our preconceived expectations. "Welcome to a new beginning," one of their many cheerfully disembodied voices tells us -- okay, we've heard that before. "Music specifically created for its pleasurable effects upon your mind, body, and emotions," we've heard that too. But we're then told to mix that music with an "orange-colored liquid" after which another voice identifying himself as our journey's guide apologizes for his "Irish accent." And that's only the first track -- I haven't even mentioned the disturbing set piece that finds foul mouthed siblings upping the ante on their threatdowns, the hymn that praises trigonometry and tanograms, or the one you think will chronicle the life and times of Kurtis Blow but reveals itself to be a bedtime story about bunny. "We genuflect before pure abstraction," they swoon, but that's just a sop to their clique -- their laptop fantasias are as vivid as a Technicolor musical and as tightly wound as an alarm clock. In fact, only toward the end, where they lapse into folkie vagaries, do they slip up. "The average human only uses about five percent of their brain," we are informed. "The other ninety-five percent is available [pregnant pause] for food." Those starving for a nourishing avant-garde record that won't leave a bullshit aftertaste in the morning should gobble this up pronto. Now if only they could convince my wife there was more than one way to do the dishes. A-

V.V. Brown: Travelling Like the Light (Capitol) Had Vanessa Brown reared her head in 2000, we might have lumped her unique brand of neo-soul with D'Angelo and Erykah Badu. The difference is, while the aforementioned auteurs used the success of Brown Sugar and Baduizm to convince their record companies to bankroll more ambitious sophomore efforts that confused fans, wowed critics, and sent their creators off the deep end, Brown's debut aims for maximum commerciality without sacrificing an ounce of her endearing weirdness, or (a related fact) her Britishness -- the monster hooks of "Joker" and "Shark in the Water" are pure Brill Building filtered though the sensibility of someone who grew up with Dizzee Rascal and the Streets. I wish the pace wasn't so hyperactive, but if Jill Scott or Mary J. Blige tackled a semi-autobiographical concept about a failed relationship with a married man, they'd lard it with ballads (and would bloat it until they ran out of disc space). By contrast, Brown doesn't lower the beats per minute until well into the second half, when she slows down a stolen moment to observe the sensuality of bicycles and plastic restaurant seats -- leading me to believe that she'll have an even better record in her when she's on the rebound. A-

Eminem: Recovery (Aftermath) Mathers complains that the critics never ask him how his day went, but he must give them some credence -- why else would he concede to the consensus that his last record sucked? Wish they'd reward him for this roaring return to form, but since they haven't, would the overstatement that this is his Plastic Ono Band entice you to give it a try? The Lennon comparisons aren't entirely un-apropos -- you've heard the AA clichés before, but never in the context of this kind of music, and while he's approached this level of intensity many times, never before has he been this convincing. Sure, you've heard him unpack his psychological baggage, deconstructing his relationships to the ex he can't quit on and the daughter that won't quit on him, but few rappers have dared challenge the notion that their chosen medium carries an expiration date -- one that at 38, Mathers has theoretically far exceeded. As before but never so explicitly, the key is a toughness that masks vulnerability transparent by design: how many rappers would admit that they considered dropping a dis on the world's greatest rapper because they felt threatened? And then invite said rapper for a cameo on a track later on the record? Who they then proceed to smoke? And though Mathers may have given up booze and pills, he hasn't forsaken vulgarity, or twisted rhymes, or bad taste, or killer hooks, or irony -- wonder what the comedians at GLAAD think of Em comparing himself to Elton John because he's a "mean cocksucker," or his proud declaration as a "Cinderella Man?" Misconstrue it, no doubt. But you know better than that -- don't you? A

Mary Gauthier: The Foundling (Razor & Tie) Gauthier has a back story that makes John Lennon and Eminem's look like an ABC afterschool special: orphaned at birth, stealing cars at fifteen, drying out in detox at sixteen, and spending her eighteenth birthday in jail, all while struggling with being a lesbian in Louisiana. Culinary school led to redemption as a restaurateur, but she sold her beloved Dixie Kitchen once her "country noir" found an audience, culminating in this devastating confessional song suite about the childhood it took her years to recover from -- if I hear a more harrowing song this year than "March 11, 1962," which details a brutal phone conversation with the absentee mother who refused to meet her face to face, I'm not emotionally prepared for it. Gauthier being a folkie rather than a rocker or rapper, the tenor of these songs gravitates to quiet catharsis/dignity rather than bold victory/rejection. But her understatement can be powerful, like the way she drops the ends of phrases in the verses of "Mama Here, Mama Gone," and the dry, austere production of Cowboy Junkie Michael Timmins sets her songs perfectly, like a jeweler who knows his pearls will look most alluring draped unadorned against plain black velvet. Though I personally find picking up the tempo a perfectly acceptable way to cheer oneself up (and don't consider "Moses, Batman, and James Dean" suitable role models), she's not as pure as your usual Razor & Tie type: I love the sour hour section that grumps through "Sideshow," and violinist Tania Elizabeth saws away on "Blood is Blood" like John Cale was Bob Wills. And not only is folkie self-pity in short supply, she even imagines a heartbreaker from the point of view of the absentee mother she'll never know: "Some people never really love/They don't mean the sweet words they say/Other people can't see the truth/I didn't know I was that way." A-

Liz Phair: Funstyle (lizphair.com) "Ding dong, the witch is dead," declares Liz in her scathing kiss-off to Capitol Records dictator Andy Slater, or perhaps would-be benefactor Dave Matthews, but that hasn't stopped humorless rock critics from burning her at the stake in effigy. I'm here to tell you the witch in question is not only very much alive, but that is her funniest, wildest, best record -- including her classic debut, which by now has become a bit of an albatross. If you think Liz has lost her last marble, she's already anticipated all of your petty objections -- the all-purpose gripe "You think it's all about you" could apply to the thousands of American women (and rock critics) who complain that Liz no longer speaks for them, as well as the bepenised corporate spoilsports she calls out by name in the uproarious "U Hate It." Why doesn't it occur to the little boys at Pitchfork that the boat party Liz is barred from in the opener is a succinct metaphor for their carefully guarded cool club? Or that Liz is fully aware that "portfolio" and "dough you know" is a bad rhyme? (I mean, does anyone think Liz Phair really has a portfolio?) I guarantee that if the faux-Bhranga sample in the much-derided (and very funny) "Bollywood" popped up as the backdrop to a Jay-Z track, it would be praised as stupidly as it's being currently dismissed. Sorting out what's "commercial" and what's not is beside the point -- would Sheryl Crow begin a song "Well, I've been in this Garden of Eden a long time/And I've never seen Adam do anything I understand," or waste her most soaring melody thanking a stranger who held back her hair while she vomited? If Phair's debut was a response to Exile on Main St., this is the Black Album with the sonic variety of the White Album -- except that unlike Prince and Paul McCartney (not John Lennon), Phair is not afraid to be vulnerable when it's time to be sincere. And you can download it straight from the artiste for a mere $5.99. A

Sleigh Bells: Treats (Mom + Pop) Sleigh Bells ring -- they also clang, peal, gong, detonate, and explode. As has been noted in almost every review I've read, this duo intends to polarize, annoying adults and other squares, while galvanizing a target demographic suggested by this priceless aside: "Wonder what your boyfriend thinks about your braces." Kathleen Hanna owns the patent on punk guitar wedded to laptop disco, but even Le Tigre's power chords weren't this dirty, while the booming coliseum-echo propelling the beats suggests Queen banging out "We Will Rock You" without respite for a manic half-hour plus. The melodic relief/contrast provided by Alexis Krauss's j-pop coo recalls the aesthetic strategy of My Bloody Valentine, except 1) unlike Bilinda Butcher, Krauss possesses rhythm worthy of a Brooklyn girl, and 2) unlike Kevin Shields, mastermind Derek E. Miller's mission is to move as many units as humanly possible. Here's hoping it inspires even those decades past orthodontics to dance like irresponsible teenagers around their mortgaged condos. A-

Honorable Mentions

Loudon Wainwright III: 10 Songs for the New Depression (2nd Story Sound) Unlike Liz Phair, Wainwright really has a portfolio, so perhaps he'll be hip to my metaphor when I say the new songs could use a little more emotional investment ("House," "The Panic Is On") **

Alejandro Escovedo: Street Songs of Love (Fantasy) Bruce Springsteen's management does not Bruce Springsteen make -- and the femme chorus doesn't help ("This Bed Is Getting Crowded," "Street Songs") **

Against Me: White Crosses (Sire) Only three years after their breakthrough Tom Gabel channels the Boss's nostalgia and beautiful loser bullshit rather than his youthful idealism ("I Was a Teenage Anarchist," "High Pressure Low") **

Allo Darlin': Allo Darlin' (Fortuna Pop!) Young Elizabeth Morris auditions for the next Stuart Murdoch or Stephin Merritt side project ("Dreaming," "The Polaroid Song") **

Old 97s: Mimeograph (New West) Rhett Miller's no interpretive singer, but he sure beats David Bowie and Michael Stipe, if not Mick Jagger ("Driver 8," "Five Years") *

Chemical Brothers: Further (Astralwerks) Caveat emptor: a soundtrack intended as the backdrop for a series of short films, rather than a mix tape for Saturday night ("Horse Power") *

Trash

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: Before Today (4AD)

Caribou: Swim (Merge)

Dangermouse & Sparklehorse: Long Dark Night of the Soul (Capitol)

The Like: Release Me (Downtown)

Sia: We Are Born (RCA)

Squeeze: Spot the Difference (XOXO)

Sting: Symphonicities (Deutsche Grammophon)

Paul Weller: Wake Up the Nation (Yep Roc)

More than the usual load this month, which is partly cyclical: the month was spent in the low ebb of the Jazz CG cycle, letting me indulge more than usual my desire to listen to something else. There's also an element of post-Christgau activism, much the same response Michael Tatum had. And Tatum's correspondence added to the flurry: he hepped me to the Books, Wainwright, and Best Coast, while I pointed him to Sleigh Bells. (Gauthier had been on my rader, but Rhapsody was being fussy there.) It's also a bit long because I held this back a few days to give him first shot -- although the lag worked the other way on Arcade Fire, which he'll certainly have something more substantial to say next month.

One new thing here is that I've included a couple of records that I didn't survey via Rhapsody. I cover new jazz in Jazz CG and Jazz Prospecting, and new world music in Recycled Goods (on the pretext that since it comes from abroad even the new stuff gets recycled a little bit), which leaves a very small number of other records -- things that I would have done here but one way or another managed to wrangle a hard copy. Somewhile back I tried to handle them separately, but I never had enough to fill an at-all-regular column. So I figured I'd put them here, marking them as [cd] or [advance] (for promos that aren't quite real). Only two this time, and I don't expect there'll be many more in the future. (The Hold Steady record, which I preemptively bought then didn't get to, is the only one I'm sure is on the shelf.)

More albums pictures this time, simply because the A-list got out of hand: left M.I.A. and Sage Francis out thinking they're slightly more marginal; left Wainwright out because his business model didn't make it easy to grab a cover -- a different kind of marginality. Order has no significance.

Usual caveats apply: These are short notes/reviews based on streaming records from Rhapsody (except as noted; e.g. [cd]). They are snap judgments based on one or two plays, accumulated since my last post along these lines, back on July 8. Past reviews and more information are available here.

Big Boi: Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty (2010, Def Jam): Half of OutKast on his own, give or take a dozen or more guest stars each contributing to a big, messy, excessively sweet pot of ear candy. Had trouble finding the center, but virtually all OutKast albums take a while to kick in -- not that "Tangerine" had any problems. First two plays left me on the fence, but when I went back to another I lost my doubts -- even the fake operatic shit did the trick. A-

Kelis: Flesh Tone (2010, Interscope): More coherent, mostly because the beats are narrower and more mechanical, almost as narrow and mechanical as her voice. One advantage this has is that it builds momentum gradually over the course of the album. "Brave" should make a pretty good single; not as tasty as "Milkshake," but she's moving on. B+(*)

Drake: Thank Me Later (2010, Universal Motown): Young rapper from Canada, had a good EP last year and sustains it over 60 minutes this time. B+(***)

The-Dream: Love King (2010, Def Jam): I've been resistant to his charms and spiel thus far, but something clicks here -- maybe it's the Neptunes, maybe just the hinted Nelly-like encouragement from his posse. I still don't buy the argument to "Sex Intelligent" but the ear candy is hard to resist, and he keeps is going for much longer than anyone has a right to. Comes in at 54:44, so maybe he's not quite a sixty-minute man, but he makes a pretty good run at it. A-

Bako Dagnon: Sidiba (2010, Discograph): Malian griot, female division although I wouldn't swear that by her voice -- lower and slightly muddier than Youssou N'Dour. Music is rather spare, mostly guitar or guitar-like with little percussion. Thoroughly enchanting at first, wears a bit thin by the end. B+(***)

Salif Keita: La Différence (2009 [2010], Decca): The most famous of Mali's vocalists, going back to Les Ambassadeurs, with a solo career since the mid-1980s -- his reputation in a voice that exudes power but also grace. Looking back over my database, I see that through a half-dozen previous records I've never much warmed to him, though I can't tell you why. Problem here is the music, which wraps around him like a decadent toga, the least glitz a distraction, best at its plainest. B

Kylie Minogue: Aphrodite (2010, Astralwerks): Australian dance diva, cut her first album in 1988 at 20 and has a dozen now that she's passed 40. Never listened to her before, but she hits her stride here midway through on the title track and the rest of the album is fully functional and fun. B+(***)

Kele: The Boxer (2010, Glassnote): Bloc Party singer-songwriter-guitarist goes solo, producing a pretty typical Bloc Party album; synth beats, plasticky grooves, wan vocals, a bit of angst, but exhilarating out the gate. B+(**)

Kesha: Animal (2010, Jive): Né Kesha Rose Sebert, 1987, d/b/a Ke$ha, a piece of typographic banality we'll overlook for now. Daughter of a Nashville songwriting pro, moved to LA to ply her hitmaking connections, and launched this number one album with a number one single. First two songs are terrific ("Your Love Is My Drug" and "Tic Tok"), and nothing falls way short -- can't say as I liked the message in "DINOSAUR" but the pop hooks (if not the CAT scan lyric) pulled it out. For all the "$$$" seems more like a party girl, sometimes aspiring to be Amy Winehouse when she grows up. A few more plays could cinch this, but it feels like it'd be irresponsible to credit her now. B+(***)

Laurie Anderson: Homeland (2010, Nonesuch): Ambitious, distinctive, thoughtful, clever, unique, asking big questions, evincing deep concerns, but still this is not just dreary but rather murky in the early going, and stretches out with pieces like "Another Day in America" and "Dark Time in the Revolution" that deserve to be called didactic. Only "Only an Expert" really brings it together, partly because it quickens the pace and beefs up the harmony but also because the insights it drives home are profound. B+(***) [advance]

The Coathangers: Scramble (2009, Suicide Squeeze): Atlanta girls scratch out some art moves to follow up an eponymous punk debut that got by on attitude alone -- not too arty, mind you, more like the sort of competence that comes from practicing. Haven't worn out their attitude either. B+(***) [cd]

M.I.A.: Maya (2010, XL/Interscope): I expect I'll pick up a real copy fairly soon, but gave it a spin anyway. Unique shtick, Bollywood raps with sharp beats and harsh, shrill shoots. Wouldn't call her a terrorist, but she does thrive on conflict. Deluxe edition adds four tracks, not as dressed up as the four on the cheap edition. Not sure what else. [PS: All the Deluxe edition adds is four cuts, on the same cheap piece of plastic -- a price differentiation strategy that augurs ill for the future. Did buy a copy, the overpriced one. I'll stick with my grade, but do wonder how often I'll feel like playing it once the shock-excitement wears thin.] A-

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: Before Today (2009-10 [2010], 4AD): Group led by guitarist Ariel Pink, né Ariel Marcus Rosenberg. Ninth record since 2004, counting things like Oddities Sodomies Vol. 1. Lo-fi, uses other vocalists, including some falsetto. Some songs are evidently rerecorded from early albums, which may explain why it seems so erratic. Last couple songs start to sound like the Fall -- i.e., better. B-

The Like: Release Me (2010, Downtown): Four LA girls in mod dresses on the cover. So straightforward it could have been done in the 1960s. B

Sage Francis: Li(f)e (2010, Anti-): Alt-rapper, works with alt-rockers and comes off more as performance poet, but actually sings some and the unsynthy music rings true. One piece on a dutiful son with transportation challenges. One piece on growing up which makes it all seem to be a miracle, or lots of dumb luck, anyway. A-

Rhymefest: El Che (2010, Rose Hip): Chicago rapper, given name Che Smith, which he plays off for the title and hints at some political import. I liked his 2006 album Blue Collar both for his plainspokenness and his guest networking, but I'm less clear on this one. B+(**)

She & Him: Volume Two (2010, Merge): Actress-singer Zooey Deschanel wrote most of the songs -- note that the two exceptions are the two Christgau picked out as choice cuts. I'm not that picky, or at least didn't find them standing out compared to some of the others. Him is Matthew Ward, a singer-songwriter on his own who takes a back seat here. Light, straightforward pop, serious enough. B+(*)

Casiokids: Topp Stemning På Lokal Bar (2010, Polyvinyl): Norwegian group, sing in Norwegian (or something like that), play more/less danceable synth pop, none of which does much to overcome the language barrier. Album appears to exist in two versions, one 8 cuts long, the other 16 (mostly remixes and alts). Played the short one, pleasant for sure, but not enough to convince me I need to hear the long one. B

Devin the Dude: Suite #420 (2010, E1 Music): Weed anthems and arcana, including a little sex on the side, rolled thin and kept tight under wraps. Funny little skit on Twitter and Google. B+(*)

Field Music: Field Music (Measure) (2010, Memphis Industries): English group, brothers David and Peter Brewis, third album since 2005. Expected something more techno, but sounds more like Oasis to me: light pop songs with heavier guitar, but also a bit more experimentation. B+(*)

Sleigh Bells: Treats (2010, Mom & Pop Music): Brooklyn duo, Derek Miller (guitar) and Alexis Krauss (vocals), sounds like heavy synth pop but all that noise is evidently just ginned up from laptop and distortion pedals. Short songs, Loud, sharp, shrill even, but not from attitude. B+(***)

Reflection Eternal [Talib Kweli + Hi-Tek]: Revolutions Per Minute (2010, Warner Brothers): Most sources go with Reflection Eternal as artist name here, even though the front cover identifies Talib Kweli + Hi-Tek in larger, bolder type. (Reflection Eternal was the title of their 2000 album, which I don't think they've reused in the meantime.) Flows along with periodic consciousness: one called "Ballad of Black Gold" could use some bonus verses about BP, but people need to hear more about Nigeria. A-

The Books: The Way Out (2010, Temporary Residence): Duo, guitarist-vocalist Nick Zammuto, cellist Paul de Jong, although most of what they work with seem to be samples, and they like to call the results collages. First thing you notice is the spoken text, which works when it's clever as it most often is, but soon the electrothrash sorts out into interesting patterns as well, and I even find myself caring about stories, like "The Story of Hip Hop." A-

Zu: Carboniferous (2009, Ipecac): Italian group, loosely aligned with The Ex and connected to Ken Vandermark and Mats Gustafsson, both with guest shots and collaboration albums in the catalog -- Radiale with Spaceways Inc. was my first Jazz Consumer Guide Pick Hit. Also seem to have a fascination with geology, born out on an album called Igneo which won me over on many levels. Was surprised to see this appear last year mostly on metalhead lists, but that's clearly where they aimed it. Mostly instrumental and not bad but rather monotonous as far as that goes. Vocals are truly dreadful. B-

Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse: Dark Night of the Soul (2010, Capitol): Brian Burton first came to our attention with his bootleg mashup of Jay-Z's Black Album with the so-called Beatles "White Album," and he keeps coming back in various guises, the best known Gnarls Barkley. Sparklehorse is some kind of alt rock group, led by a Mark Linkous who co-wrote most of the songs here and shot himself three months before the album was released. (Didn't know that when I played this, and don't feel like going back to plumb for clues.) Various guests are brought in to sing. Black Francis and Iggy Pop move the music toward metal, but nearly everyone else succumb to Burton's postmodern Beatles aura, which isn't such a bad thing. B+(*)

Mulatu Astatke: Mulatu Steps Ahead (2010, Strut): The Ethio Jazz guru, on his own without the Heliocentrics helping to jack up the beats, falls back into a well-worn groove with soft vibes and airy moods, with a little vocalizing from way back home. B+(**)

Loudon Wainwright III: 10 Songs for the New Depression (2010, Second Story Sound): The folk singer from posh Westchester County has been boning up on economics, reading Paul Krugman's op eds in the New York Times and packing Maynard Keynes for his beach reading. After all, he's stuck with a California house he can't sell, and his "financial advisors tell me that the present will most assuredly stretch into the foreseeable future." Moreover, after his Charlie Poole project he has a few usable Old Depression songs on his mind, like "The Panic Is On" (recently done by Maria Muldaur on his similarly themed Good Time Music for Hard Times) and "On to Victory, Mr. Roosevelt." The others are originals, with "Cash for Clunkers" upbeat, "Halloween 2009" spooky (with a line about Greenspan "on the lam"). Sucker-priced at $20, more than his 2-CD High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project -- maybe someone should hide his economics primers. A-

Jace Everett: Red Revelations (2010, Wrasse): Country singer, second album, strays from Nashville formula to pick up a rock-retro beat and some psychobilly echo around his deep voice and shallow thoughts -- only "Little Black Dress" puts them to good use. A little monotonous. B

Asleep at the Wheel/Leon Rausch: It's a Good Day (2010, Bismeaux): After 40 years, Ray Benson's band has settled into a western swing groove, and after a few false starts they've got it down pat. Maybe it makes them feel young to work with even older artists, like Willie Nelson, or in this case Leon Rausch, who took over as the singer in Bob Wills' band in 1967, making him one of the last direct links. Old tunes, four from Wills, one from Earl Hines, a "Basin Street Blues" and a "Route 66" that gets a workout. Elizabeth McQueen also sings some. B+(***)

Carrie Rodriguez: Love and Circumstance (2010, Ninth Street Opus): Austin country singer, third album not counting the fetching debut that Chip Taylor got his name up front on. Covers, two from her family, most of the rest picked up from the alt-country fringe running as far afield as Richard Thompson and Steve Van Zandt, with a Spanish-language piece to close, she's about as good as her songs -- Lucinda Williams' "Steal Your Love" is a choice cut. B+(*)

Robbie Fulks: Happy: Plays the Music of Michael Jackson (2002 [2010], Bloodshot): Not sure of recording date, which could be a tad earlier. At any rate, planned release was cancelled in 2004 when Jackson became untouchable. Now Jackson is dead and Fulks has moved on to another label, so why not? Sure, Fulks' twang is unsuppressable, but Jackson's funk lines send it into outer space, so universal it's hard to dismiss most of this as a joke, even when it is. More problematic is when they try to cover the Five's harmonies, run through the horror movie motifs of "Privacy," or do anything with "Ben." B

Deadstring Brothers: São Paulo (2010, Bloodshot): Detroit band, dead ringers for the Exile-era Rolling Stones, at least when Jagger tries on his country drawl, Kurt Marschke's sweet spot. Repeated listenings are likely to surface minor imperfections -- the guitars are close, but Charlie Watts is nowhere in evidence, and no one has the ego to pretend to be the world's greatest rock and roll band. Last few cuts back down even more. B+(*)

Alejandro Escovedo: Street Songs of Love (2010, Fantasy): Started way down in Americana, but with a new label his tenth album surrounds his "Tender Heart" with a lot of dense rock muscle -- it's almost as rippled as Springsteen, but lacks space and depth and lyrics you can follow and care about even if they turn out to be despicable. This, on the other hand, is claustrophobic. Chuck Prophet co-wrote most of the songs. B-

Best Coast: Crazy for You (2010, Mexican Summer): LA group, Bethany Cosentino singing; Bobb Bruno enveloping her in harsh, echoey surf guitar; Ali Koehler the drummer. Thirteen cuts in 31:31. A couple come close to breaking through, but then a couple are just short of migraine-inducing, and it's not like there's much range between one and the other. B+(*)

Arcade Fire: The Suburbs (2010, Merge): Montreal group, third album spaced on three-year intervals, each one hugely praised, this one at 16 cuts in 63:57 pretty monumental. Not my thing, but rocks awful hard for someone so sincere, and the guitar shimmer is pretty amazing, leading a harmonic richness that has rarely been equalled. Finally turned it down and found some songs speaking to me -- "City with No Children," don't recall the others. A-

Mary Gauthier: The Foundling (2010, Razor & Tie): Three records from 1997-2002 (Dixie Kitchen, Drag Queens in Limousines, Filth & Fire -- sounds like a real Dixie kitchen) were most likely primitive and raw, something to check out sometime. They landed her two records on Lost Highway, with Mercy Now still raw but a major accomplishment. This one is over that, her craftsmanship honed to yield several very seductive songs. Lacks that sharp edge, but portends a future. B+(***)

Hank Williams III: Rebel Within (2010, Sidewalk): Mostly goes by Hank III, like redneck royalty, which I suppose he is. Voice seems a little starchy, as if he's actually been living the depraved life he sings about, or maybe he's just bored. First few songs, including the title one, he just sort of walks through. Still, they're not the problem; that would be the thrash rock one toward the end. B+(**)

Blake Shelton: Hilbilly Bone (2010, Warner Brothers): Six cut, 24:25 EP, thrown together fast when the title yarn smelled like a hit. Second cut doubled down on the attitude with the title "Kiss My Country Ass." Too bad they couldn't think of (or find) more, since even at six cuts it starts to thin out. Your basic good old country singer, with five previous albums since 2001. Hadn't checked him out before, but he'll probably have a good best-of someday. B+(**)

Started out the week playing Mike Reed's record (below), and spent a whole day playing it over and over before I eventually concluded it wasn't going to get any better. Then I decided to try something different: play a record once, then hold it back if I wasn't ready to write something. So I spent a couple of days doing that -- Bill Frisell, Portico Quartet, Ergo, Dawn of Midi, Hat will face further plays -- then I lost all discipline. Had to get Recycled Goods and Downloader's Diary up, and spent more time on Rhapsody, padding out tomorrow's post. Sunday wound up being Ivo Perelman day. After having fallen for three straight records, I went to Rhapsody to see what else I could find -- I mean, they can't all be A- records, can they? So I don't have much here, and I'm likely to remain real distracted over the next couple weeks due to the server crash. But closing out this Jazz CG round isn't far off.

Mike Reed's People, Places & Things: Stories and Negotiations (2008 [2010], 482 Music): Chicago drummer. Personnel in this particular group has shifted around depending on what Reed wants to focus on, but the basic theme is 1950s proto-avant-garde jazz in Chicago, which includes pieces here from Clifford Jordan, John Jenkins, Wilbur Campbell, Julian Priester, and (especially) Sun Ra. Art Hoyle (trumpet) and Priester (trombone) are featured here, as is Ira Sullivan, a tenor saxophonist who also hails from the 1950s. The younger set includes Greg Ward (alto sax), Tim Haldeman (tenor sax), Jeb Bishop (trombone), and Jason Roebke (bass), so we get a lot of horns freebopping along. Reed wrote three originals, one for each of his featured guests. In several plays they have yet to resolve -- when I do perk up it's invariably in one or another of the covers. B+(***)

Kali Z. Fasteau: Animal Grace (2005-07 [2010], Flying Note): Eclectic gadfly; soprano sax is probably her key instrument, but she also plays piano, violin, mizmar, nai flute, and sanza here, and uses her voice for something I wouldn't exactly call singing -- actually sounds processed. She first landed in free jazz in the mid-1970s with husband-drummer Donald Rafael Garrett -- cf. Memoirs of a Dream, two discs from 1975-77. Two sets here: 2007 "Live from Harlem" duo with South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo, and 2005 "Live in the Alps" with Bobby Few's piano trio. In both Kali Z. makes the rounds, so this has its ups and downs. The ups include Moholo's game drumming, Few's testy piano, and a pretty amazing stretch of soprano sax on the noisy closer. B+(*)

Niklas Barnö/Joel Grip/Didier Lasserre: Snus (2009 [2010], Ayler): Trumpet-bass-drums trio, respectively; Barnö and Grip from Sweden, Lasserre from France. Snus may or may not be group name; also is some kind of tobacco product in Sweden, banned in the EU. Rough free jazz -- the drummer definitely has a knack for it, the bassist harder to hear at all clearly. Barnö goes for a gutbucket sound, more like a trombone, no less dirty but higher and faster. B+(**)

Mike Fahie: Anima (2010, Bju'ecords): Trombonist, b. 1976 in Ottawa, Canada; wound up in New York in 2000. First album, quintet with Bill McHenry (tenor sax), Ben Monder (guitar), Ben Street (bass), and Billy Hart (drums), produced by John McNeil. Postbop, nicely measured, with a lot of space for sax and guitar to lead, the trombone holding the record down to earth. B+(***)

Elliott Sharp: Octal Book Two (2009 [2010], Clean Feed): Guitarist, b. 1951. AMG lists him under classical (chamber music) since 1986, although his rather large discography goes back to 1977. I hadn't heard anything until he showed up playing Monk on Clean Feed, and now I'm up to four records, barely scratching the surface. Solo guitar -- having a lot of trouble with the small print here, but the credit actually looks like "Koll 8-string electroacoustic guitarbass." Interesting but marginal, turning ambient toward the end. B+(**)

Sun Ra Arkestra, Under the Direction of Marshall Allen: Live at the Paradox (2008 [2010], In+Out): Sun Ra died in 1993. Alto saxophonist Allen joined Ra's Arkestra in 1958, was a mainstay until the end, and at 86 is the ghost band's undisputed leader. I don't know how active the Arkestra has been since 1993: Allen's website shows three albums including this one, another live album from 2003 and an earlier album dating from 1999. I only count four band members here who also played on 1990's Live at the Hackney Empire, the last of Ra's full Arkestra albums I have listings for: Allen, Noel Scott (as), Charles Davis (ts), and Elson Nascimento (surdo). The nine songs are split 4-4 between Allen and Ra, with Fletcher Henderson's "Hocus Pocus" the odd tune out -- Ra learned his craft arranging for Henderson; don't know if any of Allen's pieces are new. This covers all the bases, most of the planets and quite a few moons, cranking up the space synths, cracking up into cacophony, breaking down with corny vocals, and swinging like hell. You've heard it all before, yet still can't predict it: this is one ghost band that never gets trapped in its past because its past is still so far in the future we can't anticipate it. B+(***)

Food [Thomas Strønen/Iain Ballamy]: Quiet Inlet (2007-08 [2010], ECM): Group originally an album title from 1999, by a quartet: Iain Ballamy (saxophones), Arve Henriksen (trumpet), Mats Eilertsen (bass), and Thomas Strønen (drums), with at least Strønen contributing electronics. The quartet cut four Food albums through 2004, then slimmed down to Strønen and Ballamy for a fifth album in 2007, Molecular Gastronomy. This is number six, taken from two live performances, one with Christian Fennesz on guitar and electronics, the other with Nils Petter Molvaer on trumpet and electronics. First cut, with Fennesz, reminds one of Molvaer's drum machine, but eventually the percussion gives way to ambience, laced with Ballamy's reeds and occasionally fortified by Molvaer's trumpet. B+(**)

Dino Saluzzi: El Encuentro (2009 [2010], ECM): Bandoneon virtuoso, b. 1935 in Argentina, picks up from the tango tradition but usually adds a jazz dimension. Eleventh ECM album since 1982, plus a few others scattered here and there. Cut a duet album with cellist Anja Lechner in 2006, and continues that collaboration here, adding Felix Saluzzi on tenor sax and, most fatefully, the Metropole Orchestra (Jules Buckley, conductor) for a live album. Metropole is a Dutch group, limited here to strings, which pushes all of my I-hate-classical-music buttons. (Not sure how this group relates to the Metropole Orchestra founded in 1945, currently directed as a big band by Vince Mendoza.) The Saluzzis and Lechner are hard pressed to stand out against such dross. B-

Ivo Perelman/Daniel Levin/Torbjörn Zetterberg: Soulstorm (2009 [2010, Clean Feed, 2CD): Recording date just given as "April 18" -- presumably before the March 2010-dated liner notes. Tenor saxophonist, b. 1961 in Brazil, based in New York, has at least 35 albums since 1989, including a few more in the queue that I haven't gotten to yet. Levin plays cello (as has Perelman on occasion), and Zetterberg bass, so they sort of flow together into a backdrop for Perelman's musings, some rough and tumble but most sensitive and eloquent. A-

Ivo Perelman/Gerry Hemingway: The Apple in the Dark (2010, Leo): Hemingway is a drummer with a notable discography under his own name, as well as renown as a sideman, perhaps most importantly in Anthony Braxton's 1980s quartet. Perelman is the tenor saxophonist from Brazil. I have in my notes that he's also played cello (in Strings, a duo with guitarist Joe Morris), but hadn't noticed him playing piano before (the only instance I can find is a 1999 album, Brazilian Watercolor). In these duos, he plays piano about half of the time -- didn't manage to count the cuts -- and tenor sax the other half. He's more assured, and more relaxed, on his main instrument, but I'm even more struck by the piano. James Hall's liner notes described it as "a kaleidoscopic jumber of Erroll Garner and Monk" but I was thinking more of Cecil Taylor, and not just because he makes a lot of noise but because he turns it into something remarkable. A-

Ivo Perelman/Dominic Duval/Brian Wilson: Mind Games (2008 [2010], Leo): Conventional tenor sax trio, with Duval on bass and Wilson on drums. I saw Duval play once, with Cecil Taylor, who ran him ragged for about 20 minutes, then after Duval was worn out Taylor started to play a little himself. Wilson is a drummer. Can't find out much about him, but he's certainly not the ex-Beach Boys singer-guitarist who shows up in his stead for the first million or so Google searches. Pretty good drummer, too. As for the tenor saxophonist, this is billed marking the 20th anniversary of his recording career, and he's in his prime, sticking to what he knows best. Before this string, I had only heard 4-5 of his recordings, the delta there an unrated duo with Borah Bergman, and only had one at A-: 1996's Sad Life. It, too, was a sax trio, with William Parker and Hamid Drake. I wonder whether, had I played the records in some other order, I might have nitpicked one or the other down a notch. After three plays I'm not totally blown away here either, but have no nits to pick. I need to go back the review the others, and figure out what to do with this cluster -- probably a lead and two high HMs. (Also wonder why they didn't send me the Perelman/Wilson duo The Stream of Life -- hard to think of any label I don't get that I'd be more excited to hook into than Leo.) A-

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.

Ivo Perelman: The Ventriloquist (2001 [2002], Leo): Rhapsody has two copies of this with different artwork -- this one matches Leo's website. With Paul Rodgers on guitar, Ramon Lopez on drums, and either Louis Sclavis on bass clarinet or Christine Wodrascka on piano. The horns squeak more than squawk, but that's the basic range, at a pretty intense level. The piano pieces, especially the long title track, are at least as intense; she throws fits of unbalanced chords, and Perelman has to play his ass off to keep from being buried. Very intense, not comfortable with it myself. B+(***) [Rhapsody]

Ivo Perelman & Dominic Duval: Nowhere to Hide (2009, Not Two): Tenor sax-bass duo, a subset of the trio that recorded Mind Games, which benefitted from the accents and dynamics of drummer Brian Wilson. Perelman is close in tone and temperament to the later albums -- much mellower than on the early albums -- but stretches a bit thin here, partly listener fatigue setting in approaching 76 minutes. B+(**) [Rhapsody]

No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further listening the first time around.

Unpacking: Found in the mail this week:

• Marcos Amorim Trio: Portraits (Adventure Music)
• Richie Beirach/Dave Liebman: Quest for Freedom (Sunnyside): Sept. 14
• Cynthia Felton: Come Sunday: The Music of Duke Ellington (Felton Entertainment): Oct. 5
• Dave Liebman Big Band: As Always (MAMA)
• Jacob Melchior: It's About Time (Jacob Melchior): Oct. 1
• Milton Suggs: Things to Come (Skiptone Music): Sept. 28
• Benjamin Taubkin: Piano Masters Series Vol. 1 (Adventure Music)

Maria Glod: Burning trash led to illnesses: Relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, but worth quoting:

Hundreds of military service members and contractor employees have fallen ill with cancer or severe breathing problems after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they say they were poisoned by thick black smoke produced by the burning of tons of trash generated on U.S. bases.

In a lawsuit in federal court in Maryland, 241 people from 42 states are suing Houston-based contractor Kellogg Brown & Root, which has operated more than two dozen so-called burn pits in the two countries. The burn pits were used to dispose of plastic water bottles, Styrofoam food containers, mangled bits of metal, paint, solvent, medical waste, even dead animals. The garbage was tossed in, doused with fuel and set on fire.

The military personnel and civilian workers say they inhaled a toxic haze from the pits that caused severe illnesses. Six with leukemia have died, and five others are being treated for the disease, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. At night, more than a dozen rely on machines to help them breathe or to monitor their breathing; others use inhalers.

"You'd cough up black stuff, and you couldn't seem to catch your breath. And your eyes were burning," said Anthony Roles, 33, a father and Air Force retiree from Little Rock who was diagnosed with a blood disorder shortly after returning from Iraq in 2004. "I can still smell it to this very day."

Roles said there was a nickname for the symptoms: "Iraqi crud."

Back around 1950, my father built a brick furnace in the far corner of the backyard. He buried organic garbage, recycling it into a large vegetable garden, and he burned trash -- mostly paper and cardboard, probably a little plastic. (Metal was reused: small tin cans washed out and filled with screws or buttons, large coffee cans cut apart and flattened. Glass milk bottles were returned to the deliveryman.) The city banned trash burning in the early 1960s. They were probably more worried about amateur firebugs than toxic fumes, although they were lucky on the latter count. Hardly anyone burns trash in America any more, and when they do they use large, intense incinerators, not open pits doused with gasoline. We know better now, and won't stand for such irresponsible behavior in our own country. We even chastise campers who don't pack all of their trash to dispose of it properly when they get home. Yet when we spend billions of dollars to invade someone else's country, we revert to savagery.

And, of course, we make excuses:

Where and how to get rid of garbage is a difficult problem in wartime. Military officials say open burning was often the best -- if not the only -- option for getting rid of huge amounts of trash. No trash-removal system existed, incinerators are expensive and take time to install, and the military lacked the time and space to build landfills on bases. The burn pits often are close to where soldiers live and work because it's too dangerous to put them far from base.

"Although disposing of certain substances in burn pits may not be ideal from a health standpoint, on an installation in a hostile environment in wartime, there may not be any other viable options," Postlewaite said in court papers.

Well, they could have thought of that before they started the wars. They did, after all, think of all the "comforts of home" they wanted to bring along. I recently read Ann Jones's piece on being "embedded" with US forces in Afghanistan, In Bed with the U.S. Army, and she was especially struck by all the stuff the Army takes to war:

The frontline FOB where I landed and its soldiers, by contrast, are spic-and-span. Credit for this goes largely to the remarkably inexpensive labor of crews of Filipinos, Indians, Croatians, and others lured from distant lands by American for-profit private contractors responsible for making our troops feel at home away from home. The base's streets are laid out on a grid. Tents in tidy rows are banked with standard sand bags and their super-sized cousins, towering Hescos filled with rocks and rubble.

The tents are cooled by roaring tornados of air conditioning, thanks to equipment fueled by gasoline that costs the Army about $400 per gallon to import. It takes fuelers three to four hours every day to refill all the giant generators that keep the cold air coming, so I felt guilty when, to prevent shivering in my sleep, I stuffed my towel into the ducts suspended from the ceiling of my tent.

More permanent buildings are going up and some, already built by Afghans and deemed not good enough for American habitation, are scheduled for reconstruction. Even in distant FOBs like this one, the building boom is prodigious. There's a big gym with the latest body-building equipment, and a morale-boosting center equipped with telephones and banks of computers connected to the Internet that are almost always in use. A 24/7 chow hall serves barbequed ribs, steak, and lobster tails, though everything is cooked beyond recognition by those underpaid laborers to whom this cuisine is utterly foreign.

There's a remarkably speedy laundry and, as for the toilets and showers -- I can speak only for those few designated "Female" -- they were the best I'd seen anywhere in Afghanistan. A sign politely suggested limiting your shower to five minutes, a nod to the expense of paying for-profit contractors to hire truckers to haul in the necessary water, and then haul out to undisclosed locations the copious effluence of American latrines. (At Bagram, that effluence goes into a conveniently nearby river, a water source for countless Afghans.) The other detritus from this expanding FOB is dumped into a pit and burned, including a staggering, but undisclosed, number of plastic water bottles. All this helps explain the annual cost of maintaining a single American soldier in Afghanistan, currently estimated at one million dollars.

Repeat: all that stuff comes packaged, and all that packaging gets "dumped into a pit and burned." As more soldiers get sick and die from the fumes, the military is under increasing pressure to come up with better solutions -- which means expensive incinerators, since backing down is just not in their genes, but spending more money is.

What the article omits is that most of the contractors doing the burning -- the ones presumably most exposed to the fumes -- are foreign contractors, which leaves them out of the lawsuit. Moreover, virtually all of the "toxic haze" settles in the neighboring areas -- the people we claim to want to help are in fact people we unwittingly poison. Of course, they are also the people we unwittingly bomb, shoot, kidnap, torture -- things that get more press because they're more dramatic. And more commonly, they're people we just tick off with our arrogance and sense of entitlement. We're good at excusing all these things as inevitable consequences of war, but where are they factored into the calculus of war? Has Bill Kristol ever worried that when he wanted to bring freedom to some besotten people he'd also be responsible for a big cancer spike (both there and here)?

And the FOB description above is a relatively sanitary one. I'm reminded of a paragraph in Evan Wright's Generation Kill when he's describing the actual invasion of Iraq, before we built all those world-class latrines:

There are nearly 10,000 Marines parked on the road, as well as a sprinkling of British troops who appear to be lost. Everyone defecates and pisses out in the open beside the highway. Taking a shit is always a big production in a war zone. There's the MOPP suit [protecting against chemical weapons] to contend with, and no one wants to walk too far from the road for fear of stepping on a land mine, since these are known to be scattered haphazardly beside Iraqi highways. In the civilian world, of course, utmost care is taken to perform bodily functions in private. Public defecation is an act of shame, or even insanity. In a war zone, it's the opposite. You don't want to wander off by yourself. You could get shot by enemy snipers, or by Marines when you're coming back into friendly lines. So everyone just squats in the open a few meters from the road, often perching on empty wooden grenade crates used as portable "shitters." Trash from thousands of discarded MRE [meals ready to eat] packs litters the area. With everyone lounging around, eating, sleeping, sunning, pooping, it looks like some weird combat version of an outdoor rock festival.

At least that's what it looks like to Wright, who's no doubt been to outdoor rock festival in the US. To Iraqis it must look like something far more horrific. Our chronic inability to see, or even to hazily imagine, what other people see dooms us.

Much more worth reading lately about Afghanistan, especially in the wake of the WikiLeaks dump. Anyone who claims that they reveal "nothing new" is doing nothing more than showing utter disdain for the actual details of war. That such people are concentrated high in the war's administration and their cheering section in the media points out how little they care about facts, at least in comparison to their treasured ideas.

If Obama persists in prosecuting the leakers you might as well conclude that he's abandoned the reality-based side and gone over to the imperial fantasists. He should be handing out medals to the leakers; prosecuting them is unforgivable.

But rather than dwell on the folly in Afghanistan, look at Glenn Greenwald: What collapsing empire looks like. Just a few vignettes, like states shuttering schools and libraries for lack of budgets, and paved roads reverting to gravel. Hits a false note toward the end:

Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights -- or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State -- that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability?

Makes it sound like the imperialists might have second thoughts and decide that in order to save their cherished empire they might realize that yes, indeed, we do need schools and roads to keep it all functioning. Personally, I don't see anyone who actually wants to keep an empire going. Rather, I see a lot of right-wing psychopaths who hate most of the people in this country, who can't abide any government that in theory represents them, and who want to bring the whole thing crashing down. For such people, militarism and imperialism is a means toward hollowing out and discrediting the state, and it's working pretty well for just that purpose. For such people unwinnable, self-perpetuating wars are the best of all worlds, draining resources that otherwise might possibly be put to some constructive end, making political leaders look like fools. (You have to wonder whether the real point of impeaching Clinton wasn't to coax him into bombing Iraq. And if draft-dodging Clinton could be turned into an imperial mobster in eight years, well, you saw what happened with Bush, and are seeing the same thing happen with Obama.)

Asking Americans to do the right thing in Afghanistan or Iraq (or even in Louisiana) clearly doesn't compute, but at some point you'd think a survival instinct would start to kick in. Soldiers should realize that even relatively pampered wars are hazardous to their health. Officers should realize that actions bound to fail aren't worth their efforts. Politicians should realize that foreign wars bring little but heartbreak and misery. The rich should realize that living in a country where everything is crumbling from rot will eventually impoverish even themselves. And even the right-wingers should realize that making everyone else miserable won't make themselves happy. But they're playing this game awfully close to the vest, making it seem that the only way anyone can learn lessons is the hard way -- and that evidently the finance meltdown of 2008, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Katrina, the oil spill in the Gulf, and (at least to date) global warming just haven't been hard enough. Scary to imagine just what it will take.

I have, or used to have, a dedicated web server, which I initially set up in 2003 at a company named Rackshack. At the time I meant to do more freelance website development work. In particular, I planned to develop a more generalized version of the software I wrote for Robert Christgau's website, and make that available to other writers, especially music critics. I never got much done on that, although eventually the web server wound up hosting about ten small sites. It's been a rather expensive indulgence and persistent headache over the years. In particular, I've been unable to keep the server software up-to-date, which has kept me from updating the PHP-based packages I have deployed, like drupal and serendipity, and from introducing new ones I'd like to use, like wikimedia. I've also been harrassed by hackers, who have occasionally been able to break in and use the machine to add to the world's avalanche of junk mail. (I caught and fixed a number of those problems in the past year.)

Anyhow, the upshot of all this is that the server crashed early this week and we haven't been able to get it up and keep it up for more than a couple hours at a time ever since. Consequently, all of the websites and blogs that I host are down. (I never got around to moving my own website, or Christgau's, away from their original virtual servers, so they fortunately survive.) It's a old, fairly lame machine, running obsolete (2005) software. Reasonable thing at this time is to junk the machine, get another, and rebuild. Rackshack has been sold and resold several times, so the current proprietor calls itself The Planet. I'm not real happy with them, so I'm also looking around for competitors. There are many such, but it's hard to evaluate them. Some I'm intrigued by are: Hosting and Designs, Singlehop, Server Point, iWeb, Hosting Source, Netsonic. My list goes on with 17 less interesting vendors, and 21 more that I dismissed, mostly because they're trawling for bigger fish. Budget is approx. $100/month. Should be Linux (probably CentOS). I've never used Plesk or cPanel/WHM but wonder if they might be worth the expense ($20-40/month) and breach of open source faith. I've never used more than a tiny fraction of my 1TB monthly bandwidth allowance, and I've never had problems with lack of disk space (7% used when the server died) or for that matter performance -- obviously, it's not longer possible not to improve on a 2003 Celeron with 512MB RAM, although I have noticed that most of the low-end server deals use CPUs that are no longer in production.

I figured I'd make a quick decision, but The Planet hasn't been responsive to my questions, and the longer I take the more patient I'm becoming. Should have something decided by sometime next week. Maybe I'll even have a stroke of sanity and give it up (although a fresh start might be refreshing). Meanwhile, I apologize to my few clients -- Carol Cooper, Don Malcolm (2Random4Chance, Deep-Count, Noirvana), Fifth Column Films, the amazing Superartists, the vital and indispensable Wichita Peace Center. Also down are my own projects, Notes on Everyday Life, and Terminal Zone. (No point linking to these as they're down now, although Fifth Column and Superartists have their main websites elsewhere, and Wichita Peace will soon.)

Working haphazardly. I doubt that I conveyed how turned off I was by the fetishism surrounding the Exile on Main St. reissue, especially in its original $180 packaging. But hectored by repeated requests to buy the newly released music, I finally checked it out on Rhapsody, wrote the review below, then finally gave in and bought a copy of the 2-CD version. And of course, the best thing out of my changer this year is the reissue of the original album. I've never had any doubts about that, but still the hype grinds. Greatest album by the greatest rock group of all time? Better than Layla or Loaded or Moondance or Call Me or Otis Blue or Pet Sounds or Sgt. Pepper or In the Jungle Groove or a dozen others? Maybe, but I wouldn't make a big deal out of it.

Other threads were arbitrary. Fred Anderson died and I've found a record I've been wanting to hear. (Unfortunately, I didn't find his late 1960s work.) Horne and Jarreau were jazz reissues, business as usual -- several more of them crop up downstairs. I tracked down Sounds of Liberation out of interest in the label, and that led me to Byard Lancaster -- a name I knew but hadn't put a sound to. Billy Eckstine was a spinoff from a new Freddy Cole album I like, and that led to a Helen Humes set I had missed -- her other Black & Blue album, 1973's Let the Good Times Roll, is slightly better, an old favorite. The African Pearls set is actually one of ten or so compilations of old Syllart material, but is only the second I've heard -- African Pearls 1: Congo: Rumba on the River is even better. Would love to hear them all, but it's expensive for beggars to become choosers. Maybe someday.

Fred Anderson: On the Run: Live at the Velvet Lounge (2000 [2001], Delmark): Born 1929 in Monroe, Louisiana. Made the trek to Chicago, picking up the tenor sax in the early days of the AACM. Cut a few obscure records 1978-80 then went inactive, but as the proprietor of the Velvet Lounge in Chicago he kept connected. Finally resumed recording around 1995, perhaps figuring that with social security checks coming he could once again afford to be a fringe musician. I still haven't managed to hear his early sides, but I suspected that getting old and slowing down helped focus his play. Certainly also helped that a teen from Louisiana he mentored turned out to be his long-time drummer, Hamid Drake. He hit a sweet spot with Back at the Velvet Lounge in 2002, and his next four albums were equally sublime: Back Together Again (with Drake, 2004, Thrill Jockey), Blue Winter (with Drake and William Parker, 2004, Eremite), Timeless (2005, Delmark), and From the River to the Ocean (with Drake, 2007, Thrill Jockey). He died, age 81, on June 24, so I thought it would be a good time to see what more I could find. His latest albums slip a bit, and I didn't find any early ones, but I did find this trio, with Drake and bassist Tatsu Aoki, the first of four Velvet Lounge live shots Delmark released. Takes a while to get in gear, with Anderson reticent and Drake showy, but the fourth (of five) pieces, the 18:53 "Tatsu's Groove," does the trick, with Anderson unleashing a relentless torrent of ideas. Final cut, appropriately named "Hamid's on Fire," is equally powerful. B+(***) [R]

Lena Horne: Sings: The M-G-M Singles (1946-48 [2010], Verve/Hip-O Select): The first black actress granted a Hollywood contract, she was gorgeous in ways that transcended race -- her ancestors reportedly included slaveholders like John C. Calhoun as well as slaves, with a little American Indian mixed in along the way -- and a pretty good standards singer. Her "Stormy Weather" was a hit in 1943, the title of an MGM musical, and not included here although it seems like it should fit. This picks up a bit later. The house orchestra is completely ordinary, and more than half of the songs you no doubt know from Billie Holiday and/or Ella Fitzgerald. Horne wasn't in their class, but the best songs here -- "A Foggy Day (in London Town)" and "The Lady Is a Tramp" are two -- are completely satisfying. B+(***)

Al Jarreau: An Excellent Adventure: The Very Best of Al Jarreau (1975-2009 [2009], Rhino): Originally slotted as a jazz singer because he scatted a little and tackled a couple of Dave Brubeck-Paul Desmond odd-time experiments, Jarreau cut a dozen 1975-94 albums for Warners, grabbing popular and critical acclaim, including Grammys in pop and R&B as well as jazz while never really fitting anywhere. I find his "Blue Rondo a la Turk" one of the more hideous pieces of vocalese ever recorded, and "Boogie Down" one of the lamer exercises in rote disco. That leaves a couple of decent R&B songs like "We're in This Love Together" in a compilation that proves Gödels Theorem: like math, he's a system that cannot both be complete and consistent. B-

Rolling Stones: Exile on Main St. (1972 [2010], Universal Republic, 2CD): While their archrivals, the Beatles, fissioned into shards with short half-lives, the Stones beefed up their sound, adding keybs and horns, flexing their muscles as their conceits inflated to acclaim themselves as the "world's greatest rock and roll band" -- plausibly, even, given their string of albums from Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed to Sticky Fingers and finally their consensus masterpiece. Exile's singles, unlike those on recent albums, didn't stand out much from the murky filler, but each side of two slabs of vinyl had memorable moments, and the very even-handedness of the whole marked this as their crowning album -- as did the fact that their streak ended a year later with Goat's Head Soup, a slip so severe they spent most of the following album -- the uncharacteristically modest It's Only Rock 'n' Roll -- moaning over their sudden senescence. Of course, it's just product now. In releasing their $179.98 list "Super Deluxe Edition" they're assuming their fans invested their earnings as successfully as biz school grad Mick Jagger did. For that you get the same two CDs of the $29.98 "Deluxe Edition" plus some vinyl, a book, and a box. The latter has a remastered edition of the original on the first disc, plus a second disc -- available separately as a "Rarities Edition" but exclusively at Target for $9.99 -- with ten songs (41:05): two sloppy outtakes and eight losers that came nowhere near making the album. Slim pickings, except of your pocket, although "Pass the Wine (Sophia Loren)" is one of their better throwaways, and "So Divine (Aladdin Story)" is an interesting aside they never really followed up on. For newbies, the obvious choice is the remastered single-disc (list $13.95) -- or you could scrounge for a used old copy which must be flooding the market by now. I have no opinion on the remastered sound vs. the old CD reissue let alone vinyl old or new, but the music is still fabulous, and having to listen to all four sides in a row is pure pleasure. Reissue: A+; Rarities Edition: B+(**); Super Deluxe Edition: D; Deluxe Edition: A-

Briefly Noted

African Pearls: Senegal 70: Musical Effervescence (1971-82 [2009], Syllart/Discograph, 2CD): Early material from Youssou N'Dour (Etoile de Dakar), Orchestra Baobab, and others less famous -- Super Diamono and Xalam are names I've run across before, but not Ouza or Ifang Bondi or N'Guewel; the salsa hasn't separated from the native drums and voices, the guitar is slinky and grooveful, the occasional horns a lift. A-

Avishai Cohen: Aurora (2008 [2010], Blue Note/EMI Music): Israeli bassist, reaches back to his mother's Ladino folk songs juxtaposed with clever Bachian counterpoint, fleshed out with oud and piano, sung with the touching faith of an amateur. B+(**)

Hamilton de Holanda Quintet: Brasilianos 2 (2007 [2010], Adventure Music): New fangled Brazilian bluegrass music, the leader's 10-string mandolin tempered with guitar and bass, with Gabriel Grossi's roughhousing harmonica a voice beyond language. B+(**)

Billy Eckstine: Jukebox Hits 1943-1953 (1943-53 [2005], Acrobat): One of the legendary crooners of the postwar era; sauve, debonair, with a deep, rich baritone that seems stuffy now but was exceptional at the time; this cross-section starts his crack big band that folded in 1947 and ends with a small combo backing a surprising spat of scat, but in between there is little but strings gradually encasing his marvelous voice in concrete. B [R]

Billy Eckstine: Basie and Eckstine, Inc. (1959 [1994], Roulette): Basie is less than atomic here, maintaining a comfortable simmer for the classic crooner, a bluesman in a pinch but not a shouter like Jimmy Rushing or even Joe Williams; not much swing, but the brass remains short and sharp, as finely burnished as the baritone. B+(*) [R]

Helen Humes: Sneakin' Around [The Definitive Black & Blue Sessions] (1974 [2002], Black & Blue): Count Basie's girl singer -- picked up the job when Billie Holiday left -- basically a blues shouter with a smooth, even-tempered delivery, singing songs she likes, cut cheap in France with Gerard Badini unstable on tenor sax, filled out with extra takes. B+(**)

Byard Lancaster: It's Not Up to Us (1968 [2003], Water): Released on Atlantic spinoff Vortex when this Philadelphia avant-gardist was stepping out of Coltrane's footsteps; plays a lot of flute here, substantial enough to lead especially with Sonny Sharrock's guitar covering his back, but his alto sax has more muscle. B+(**) [R]

Byard Lancaster: Personal Testimony (1979 [2008], Porter): Starts with a 1979 solo album with piano and/or percussion overdubbed on his flute, alto sax, and other reeds -- not enough to overcome the minimal framework of solo efforts, but a rough precis of his toolkit; reissue adds six new pieces, also solo with overdubs, if anything sparer and starker. B+(*) [R]

Jerry Leake: Cubist (2009 [2010], Rhombus Publishing): A schematic worldbeat collector with more books than records on his CV attempts to flesh out his interests -- India, Turkey, all over Africa -- with a potential octet, hard to nail down as a whole but interesting things going on all the time. B+(**)

Luisa Maita: Lero-Lero (2010, Cumbancha): Seductive young Brazilian singer with all the usual curves, and nothing that really sticks out to distinguish her from the pack. B+(*)

Archie Shepp: The New York Contemporary Five (1963 [2010], Delmark): A primeval avant-garde group with Shepp's tenor sax, John Tchicai's alto sax, and Don Cherry's cornet wrestling for the spotlight, roughing up Ornette Coleman and pushing one original each; actually just half of a live set from Copenhagen previously available on Sonet and Storyville. B+(***)

Sierra Maestra: Sonido Ya (2009 [2010], World Village): Cuban institution, dates back to 1976, started out playing classic son and pretty much stuck that way, the rhythms complex, the horns simplistic, the vocals deeply sincere, the songs scarcely varied in pitch, volume, or temperament -- not that they don't put out. They always put out. B

Sounds of Liberation (1972 [2010], Porter): Philadelphia group, very much of the black power moment when shards of avant-sax clashed with funky conga rhythms, merging into something far out but not inaccessible; Byard Lancaster is the saxophonist in a septet with guitar, bass, and four percussionists counting vibraphonist Khan Jamal, the founder and best known member of the one-album group. A- [R]

Phil Wilson & Makoto Ozone: Live!! At the Berklee Performance Center (1982 [2010], Capri): Japanese piano prodigy, prodded, poked, teased and torn by grizzled trombone professor, crude and so much the better for it. B+(*)

Legend: B+ records are divided into three levels, where more * is better. [R] indicates record was reviewed using a stream from Rhapsody. The biggest caveat there is that the packaging and documentation hasn't been inspected or considered.

For this column and the previous 75, see the archive.

Slogging through. Trying to get organized. Also worked a bit on Recycled Goods -- should get it posted tomorrow -- and added some odd bits to the Rhapsody file. Will also have Michael Tatum's post-CG guest column sometime this week. Finally got the promised "big package" of things Fully Altered had neglected to send to me, plus a few more things that should soon jump to the head of the queue -- the Rova/Nels Cline came today, along with a piece of Tom Johnson minimalism. Didn't feel like working the better prospects this past week, so I tried to chip away at the backlog, which is still more than I ever recall. After this week's music posts, I expect to clamp down and finish the column -- should close out by mid-August. No obvious pick hits or duds yet, but way too many HMs and plenty slightly better.

Sierra Maestra: Sonido Ya (2009 [2010], World Village): Cuban institution, dates back to 1976, started out playing classic son and pretty much stuck that way, the rhythms complex, the horns simplistic, the vocals deeply sincere, the songs scarcely varied in pitch, volume, or temperament -- not that they don't put out. They always put out. B

Ellen Rowe Quartet: Wishing Well (2009 [2010], PKO): Pianist, b. 1958, from Connecticut, teaches at University of Michigan, third album since 2001. Runs marathons, climbs mountains: Aconcagua, Denali -- second album was called Denali Pass. Wrote 9 of 10 pieces, covering "Alone Together." Quartet includes Andrew Bishop on tenor and soprano sax, nice balance since she doesn't push her piano real hard. Higher peaks come from the guests: Andy Haefner (tenor sax) on one cut, Ingrid Jensen (flugelhorn) on two. After playing John Zorn most of yesterday, I found this sublimely relaxing. B+(***)

Adrian Iaies Trio: A Child's Smile (2009 [2010], Sunnyside): Pianist, from Argentina, b. 1960, nine albums since 2000; second album I've heard, Vals de la 81st & Columbus a high HM. Piano trio with Exequiel Dutil on bass, Pepi Taveira on drums. Another fine album, although after three plays I'm blocked on how to describe it -- the most memorable cuts for me are the one standard I know, "Just the Way You Are," and "Alfonsina y el Mar," the one cut with Raul Barboza's accordion added. B+(**)

David Weiss & Point of Departure: Snuck In (2008 [2010], Sunnyside): Trumpet player, b. 1964, from New York, in New York, third album since 2001, although I also filed The Turning Gate by New Jazz Composers Octet, a recent HM, under his name. Quintet, what's becoming the standard post-[hard]-bop configuration: trumpet, sax (JD Allen on tenor), guitar (Nir Felder), batt (Matt Clohesy), drums (Jamire Williams). The back end is more freebop, the guitar navigates the open spaces, and the horns slug it out, with Allen frequently making a play to steal the album. B+(***)

Music of the Sphere: Thelonious Monk Songbook [The Composer Collection Volume 5] (1977-2009 [2010], High Note): Continues the label's efforts to pad their product line with samplers. You'd think that Monk's pieces (excepting "'Round About Midnight," natch) are so distinctive they'd provide a unifying theme for an inherently disunified various artist selection, but the compiler seems to have taken that as a challenge to make the selection more perverse. The Arthur Blythe/John Hicks duo is sketchy. The Joel Harrison nonet is one I'd just as soon never hear again. Larry Coryell excels, and Frank Morgan seems refreshingly normal. But I'd still rather hear the whole of the Mary Lou Williams trio I missed than a pastiche like this. B-

Cedar Chest: The Cedar Walton Songbook [The Composer Collection Volume 6] (2000-08 [2010], High Note): This follows compilations based on Silver, Coltrane, Ellington, Davis, and Monk. Walton moves into a slightly younger generation -- he started recording when Coltrane checked out -- and it's gotten much rarer for jazz musicians to cover more recent composers. The label has released six albums by Walton since 2001 -- Seasoned Wood is my pick -- but they must have considered that too easy. Still, they wound up with Walton playing piano on 4 of 10 tracks, and he sets a high standard for the others. Still, the selections are spotty, with two Larry Coryell treats, two by Fathead Newman, two by Sammy Figueroa. B

Hamilton de Holanda Quintet: Brasilianos 2 (2007 [2010], Adventure Music, CD+DVD): Brazilian mandolin player, b. 1976, father a choro guitarist, caught the ear of bluegrass-turned-choro mandolinist Mike Marshall, who's tapped de Holanda repeatedly for his label. Has a bit of bluegrass sting, nothing you'd call "high and lonesome," but with ten strings backed by guitar and bass has a lot of resonance. Better still is Gabriel Grossi's harmonica, which functions as a horn without being easy to peg. Haven't got to the DVD. B+(**)

The Convergence Quartet: Song/Dance (2009 [2010], Clean Feed): Artist names listed on front cover alphabetically: Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet, flugelhorn), Harris Eisenstadt (drums), Alexander Hawkins (piano), Dominic Lash (bass). All write, Bynum one song, the others two each. I filed this under Bynum, who has a substantial discography since 1999, but early on Hawkins is the focal interest, with his jumpy, blocky chords chopping up time. B. 1981 in England, based in Oxford, has a new Ensemble record I haven't heard, played organ on two Decoy albums, seems like someone to keep an ear opened for. Lash is also from England, "one of the busiest players on the UK scene." Album ends with a bang-up fractured version of a South African tune, "Kudala." I'm tempted to credit Eisenstadt, who regularly works African music into free jazz contexts, but I also see that Hawkins has played with Ntshuka Bonga, and has played in a trio with Louis Moholo-Moholo and Evan Parker. B+(***)

Billy Cobham/Colin Towns/HR-Bigband: Meeting of the Spirits: A Celebration of the Mahavishnu Orchestra (2006 [2010], In+Out): Songs originally from John McLaughlin, with Mahavishnu Orchestra drummer Cobham employed for quality control. Arranged for big band, directed, and mixed by Towns. HR-Bigband is one of two major outfits in Germany -- WDR Bigband Köln is the other -- that record prolifically under the names of their guest stars. Martin Scales plays guitar, but most of the lines have been shunted off to the horns. The music holds up pretty well, and the drum solos are solid. B+(**)

Dither (2010, Henceforth): Interesting concept, an electric guitar quartet, similar in principle to sax quartets but with chords and electronics thickening the sound. Guitarists are Taylor Levine, David Linaburg, Joshua Lopes, and James Moore. Starts off very quiet as if they're daring you to turn it up, although they can and do get plenty loud when they want. Played it once too loud and once too soft and figured it's not worth fiddling with the tuning, at least at this point. Could develop into something, and I've heard enough that I'm hedging. Elliott Sharp wrote the liner notes. B+(*)

Dave Anderson Quartet: Clarity (2009 [2010], Pony Boy): Saxophonist, lists soprano first, alto second (but shows a tenor on his website); based in Seattle; first album, a conventional quartet with piano, bass and drums, with Thomas Marriott's flugelhorn added for one cut. Nice mainstream group, nothing exceptional. B

Hiroe Sekine: A-Mé (2009 [2010], Sekai Music): Pianist, from Japan, studied at USC. First album, produced by Russell Ferrante, who plays synth on one track. Most tracks are sextet, with trumpet (John Daversa), trombone (Bob McChesney), tenor sax (Bob Sheppard, also soprano and flute), bass (Tony Dumas), and drums (Peter Erskine or Chris Wabich), generating a robust mainstream sound -- Sheppard is typically superb. Half originals, half covers -- Gigi Gryce, Frank Loesser, Jerome Kern, Isham Jones, Milton Nascimento. One solo piece, which I found quite likable. B+(*)

Joel Yennior Trio: Big City Circus (2007 [2010], Brass Wheel): Trombonist, from South Orange, NJ; studied and now teaches at New England Conservatory; first album, although he has side credits since 2000 with Either/Orchestra, Gypsy Schaeffer, Alejandro Cimadoro, and Mulatu Astatke. Trio adds guitarist Eric Hofbauer (Blueprint Project) and drummer Gary Fieldman. Trombone is a little thin for the lead here, but that has its own appeal, and Hofbauer is an interesting player even in small roles. B+(**)

Michael Treni: Turnaround (2009, Bell Production, CD+DVD): Composer-arranger, started out on trombone -- has a side credit on a 1977 Bobby Watson album -- based on New Jersey; has a previous album, Detour! (2007), and a more recent one, America: Land of Opportunity (2010). Big band with some extra percussion and occasional strings. First solo caught my ear, but that's just Jerry Bergonzi for you. Don't care much for the strings, but the brass section work is sharp. Comes with a DVD I haven't watched. Also a political screed about how socialism may be OK for classical music but doesn't work for jazz. B

Justin Janer: Following Signs (2009 [2010], Janer Music): Alto saxophonist, 25 (b. 1985?) from Seattle, grew up in L.A., based there (although he also lists New York on MySpace). Bio talks about his Puerto Rican heritage and Latin jazz interest, but this is postbop, mostly quintet with Ambrose Akinmusire on trumpet and Fabian Almazan on piano -- one track adds guitar. Catches my ear when he stretches. 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.

John Zorn: The Goddess: Music for the Ancient of Days (2009 [2010], Tzadik): Another Zorn-as-composer-only album, the titles casually plundered archaeology, but actually nothing ancient about it; reminds me more of cocktail jazz, exotica with the spurious weirdness supplanted by a higher-powered Riley/Reich minimalist engine. Played on piano (Rob Burger), guitar (Marc Ribot), harp (Carol Emmanuel), vibes (Kenny Wollesen), bass (Travor Dunn), and drums (Ben Perowsky). B+(**) [Rhapsody]

John Zorn: In Search of the Miraculous (2009 [2010], Tzadik): Zorn's promised one record each month this year, which isn't a lot more prolific than his usual pace, but seems likely to involve cutting some corners. Composer-only album, built around the Rob Burger-Greg Cohen-Ben Perowsky piano trio that cut Alhambra Love Songs, with a few extras -- Shanir Blumenkranz (electric bass), Kenny Wollesen (vibes), but focuses more on the piano, adding a bit of dramatic range rather than sinking into minimalist repetition. Gains something toward the end. B+(***) [Rhapsody]

John Zorn: Dictée/Liber Novus (2009 [2010], Tzadik): Two pieces, close to 20 minutes each, one based on Korean-American writer/conceptual artist Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha, the other "a mythic psychodrama inspired by the legendary Red Book of Carl Jung. Keybs (Sylvie Courvoisier and Stephen Goslin on piano, John Medeski on organ), Ned Rothenberg's reeds (shakuhachi, bass flute, clarinet), percussion and sound effects, could be a soundtrack cluttered with random events, not horror but not normal either. B+(*) [Rhapsody]

John Zorn/Fred Frith: Late Works (2009 [2010], Tzadik): Alto sax/electric guitar duo, the latter's screech closely tuned to match the former. Ten pieces, most likely improv, although occasional oblique strategies lurk. Often interesting, but does wear a bit thin. B+(*) [Rhapsody]

John Zorn: The 50th Birthday Celebration, Vol. 1: Masada String Trio (2003 [2004], Tzadik): Looked for the new Masada String Trio, Haborym (Book of Angels, Vol. 16), not available (yet), and found this one from a few years back, one of a big stack of live shots from Sept. 2003 when Tonic put on a series to honor the club's owner. Most are Zorn-less groups picking over his songbook. This trio consists of Mark Feldman on viola, Erik Friedlander on cello, and Greg Cohen on bass. The Jewish themes provide some bounce, lack of violin cuts down on the screech, and the bass adds depth. Could do without the applause. B+(***) [Rhapsody]

Ben Goldberg Quartet: Baal: The Book of Angels, Vol. 15 (2009 [2010], Tzadik): First of these I've heard, variations on John Zorn's Jewish-themed Masada songbook. Goldberg's clarinet stays on top of it all, although pianist Jamie Saft gets in some long runs. With Greg Cohen on bass and Kenny Wollesen on drums. B+(***) [Rhapsody]

The Dreamers: Ipos: The Book of Angels, Vol. 14 (2009 [2010], Tzadik): John Zorn group, appeared on his albums The Dreamers and O'o, not that Zorn actually plays in it. Marc Ribot's guitar and Jamie Saft's keybs tend to lead, backed by a groove-happy rhythm section -- Trevor Dunn (bass), Kenny Wollesen (vibes), Joey Baron (drums), and Cyro Baptista (percussion). It occurs to me that Ribot is especially adept at taking up these dress-up roles, like with his Cubanos Postizos. B+(***) [Rhapsody]

Mycale: Mycale: The Book of Angels, Volume 13 (2009 [2010], Tzadik): More of John Zorn's new-old Jewish music, this time rendered a capella by a group of four women vocalists: Ayelet Rose Gottlieb, Sofia Rei Koutsovitis, Basya Schecter, and Malika Zarra -- I've run across records under the first three names already. Lyrics picked up from various texts in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, French, and Arabic. The music has some bounce and resonance, sort of a klezmerish barbershop quarter. B+(**) [Rhapsody]

No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further listening the first time around.

Some corrections and further notes on recent prospecting:

Ran Blake/Christine Correa: Out of the Shadows (2009 [2010], Red Piano): I erroneously identified Jeanne Lee as singing on Blake's Short Life of Barbara Monk. She sang on Blake's You Stepped Out of a Cloud. The pairing had stuck in my mind, and looking through my list of Blake's albums I pulled out the one I liked best. Turns out there was no singer on that album, and Ricky Ford played tenor sax. B+(*)

Unpacking: Found in the mail this week:

• Ralph Alessi: Cognitive Dissonance (CAM Jazz)
• Greg Burk and Vicente Lebron: Unduality (Accurate)
• Mina Cho: Originality (Blink Music): Sept. 7
• The Claudia Quintet + Gary Versace: Royal Toast (Cuneiform)
• Either/Orchestra: Mood Music for Time Travellers (Accurate)
• Tom Johnson: Rational Melodies (New World)
• Darrell Katz/Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra: A Wallflower in the Amazon (Accurate): Aug. 10
• Klezwoods: Oy Yeah! (Accurate)
• Rebecca Martin: When I Was Long Ago (Sunnyside): Aug. 31
• Mercury Falls: Quadrangle (Porto Franco): Aug. 17
• Allison Miller: Boom Tic Boom (Foxhaven)
• Nils Petter Molvaer: Hamada (Thirsty Ear)
• Mike Reed's People, Places & Things: Stories and Negotiations (482 Music)
• Pete Robbins: Silent Z Live (Hate Laugh Music)
• Rova & Nels Cline Singers: The Celestial Septet (New World)
• Thomas Savy: French Suite (Plus Loin Music)
• Jacky Terrasson: Push (Concord)

Mitchell LaFortune: Learning From WikiLeaks: Hallucinating uncontrollably is more like it. Credentials: "LaFortune, a former Army sergeant, was an intelligence analyst with the 82nd Airborne Division from 2006 to 2010." Hard to find a better example of someone stuck in a mental rut because his livelihood give him no better options. Still, he thinks reform is possible:

If we need a model, we should think about what Afghanistan was like in the 1970s. The country functioned relatively well with a weak central government, strong local leadership and a marginalized religious class. The resistance to the Soviet occupation, steeped in radical Islam, overturned that traditional power structure. By the time the Soviets left, the village mullah had a higher social standing than the tribal leader or local political representative. It was not hard to foresee the rise of the Taliban.

But no one in the 1970s would have described Afghanistan as functioning "relatively well": it only achieved that status in comparison to the 30 years of war that followed the US decision to try to roll back a Soviet Union advance that occured because the "weak central government" was prone to coups and ultimately split between two communist party factions. The rise of the mullahs was the direct result of US patronage, the purpose of which was to destroy any secular-progressive political forces in the country, because we would much prefer medieval theocracy over modernity if the latter showed any hint of socialism -- not that we actually gave a shit what anyone on Afghanistan actually wanted. Still, it's pretty quaint to think that all the answer takes is to forget the last 30-40 years. And even if you do think that the past is the answer, isn't that the Taliban's solution?

LaFortune makes a series of astonishing proposals to turn the war around:

The key to turning around the war will be to change that dynamic. In fact, we must clamp down on the three things the Taliban do particularly well: manipulating the news media, intimidating the rural population and providing shadow governance.

Let's take these one at a time:

The Taliban's media machine runs circles around our public information operations in Afghanistan. Using newspapers, radio broadcasts, the Internet and word of mouth, it puts out messages far faster than we can, exaggerating the effectiveness of its attacks, creating the illusion of a unified insurgency and criticizing the (real and imagined) failings of the Kabul government. To undermine support for United States troops, the Taliban insistently remind the people that America has committed to a withdrawal beginning next summer, they jump on any announcement of our Western allies pulling out troops and they publicize polls that show declining domestic American support for the war.

To counter the spin, we need to add the Taliban's top propagandists to the high-value-target list and direct military operations at the insurgents' media nerve centers. A major reason that people in rural areas are so reluctant to help us is that Taliban propaganda and intimidation have created an atmosphere of fear.

This is pretty incredible. Back in early-2001 at the peak of their power, the last thing you'd ever imagine hearing about is how savvy the Taliban's PR operation was. They seemed to be singularly inept and dysfunctional at everything they did. In particular, the Afghan people were utterly dependent on foreign NGOs as the government itself could be bothered with social services -- they were preoccupied with banning soccer and music, and blowing up ancient Buddhas. On the other hand, the US pumps billions of dollars into PR, hiring hordes of talent, saturating every conceivable media. So how did the Taliban get to be so much better, not just compared to their old selves but compared even to the reigning world champions?

I think you have to entertain three theories. One is that most US propaganda efforts are targeted at Americans, partly because we're all we know and care about, but largely because of the perception -- one of the few "lessons learned" from Vietnam -- that the only force that actually threatens the war effort is the disapproval of the American people. That's still a tough sell, but it wouldn't even be taken seriously if not for the huge PR push to keep us upbeat (or terrified or whatever) on the war.

The second is that the facts don't offer a level playing field. Everybody spins, but it's a lot easier to spin an air strike killing dozens at a wedding against the US than for the US. A US-built school or hospital or road should be easy to spin the other way, but when the money's funneled back to US contractors or siphoned off by Afghan cronies and what's left doesn't make much difference anyway, your PR opportunity wastes away -- and besides, what are those infidels teaching in those schools anyway?

The third is that we're just using PR as an excuse for losses elsewhere. We're a bunch of foreigners who invaded their country on a mission of pure revenge; we kill a lot of people, blow a lot of shit up, snatch people and torture them, bribe people and turn them against their community, then can't understand why they don't like us -- why some even go so far as to fight back against us. So we think up rationalizations to comfort ourselves for losing -- hey, better than introspection! Still, it strains credulity to think that our problems are largely the result of the PR gap. For one thing, how many Afghans -- especially in the rural areas where the Taliban is so successful -- plug in to any kind of media?

Another indication that this PR gap is just scapegoating is LaFortune's quick fix: hey, they're better than we are so let's just kill them! Such a prototypically American solution, I have to wonder why nobody thought of that before the problem got out of hand. LaFortune continues:

A second initiative is to bring back the traditional rural power structure. We have to restore the power of the tribal leader, the khan. Afghans are fond of saying that the thing they do best is politics; we must let them do it. This means moving toward a far weaker concept of central government and encouraging local solutions to local problems. American aid should go directly to rural communities rather than to the Karzai government. And we must identify key tribal leaders and local politicians and give them around-the-clock protection with American troops. It's astonishing how much credibility a village leader can gain simply by not being assassinated.

But it's also remarkable how much credibility a village leader loses by being surrounded by American troops, especially when they act like American troops and get a little trigger-happy (or drunk or abusive or sacrilegious). I don't doubt that it would have been better to build up local governments around local leaders -- for one thing it allows each ethnic group its own domain, for another it boxes in the losses due to corruption -- but the US didn't do so because they didn't trust local leaders. They preferred instead to deal through an agent like Karzai and a few trusted warlords, and their attendant sinkhole of corruption. Moreover, the US army hasn't been bashful about bypassing the Karzai government -- every commander has a slush fund for dealing with locals. The problem is more that every occupier has tried to govern through bribed local leaders and the result is that those leaders have steadily lost credibility.

Last, we must destroy the credibility of the Taliban's religious authority. The insurgents' concept of Islam is objectionable to most Afghans, but there is little alternative, as most clerics who rejected the Taliban have been killed or have fled. While creating a network of more enlightened religious figures to compete with the hard-liners will take time, we could jump-start progress by creating a group of "mobile mullahs" -- well-protected clerics who can travel through rural areas and settle land disputes and other issues. These men should come from the general areas in which they will be performing their duties and be approved by community leaders.

When the US decided to overthrow the popular democratic government of Iran in 1953, the first thing the CIA did was to bribe a bunch of imams. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003 we brought along our own pet ayatollah (who was killed practically on sight). In between we watched the Saudi royal family requisition fatwas for whatever political purpose suited them, not least our anti-Soviet mujahideen project in Afghanistan. So there's nothing surprising about the assumption that all we have to do is pay a few tolls to get Allah on our side. Still, the assumption that there's this vast reserve of credible mullahs (and other local leaders) eager to do our bidding if only we can provide them with a phalanx of bodyguards is, well, suspect. Also suspect is the idea that you can bolster the credibility of a mullah by surrounding him with armed infidels. And when all's said and done, a mullah is nothing more than his credibility.

We really don't know whether the Afghan people like or dislike the Taliban ulema, largely because there's no framework where one can speak an honest opinion, but partly because you just can't tell. But if you wanted to reduce the power of the Taliban mullahs, a better solution would be to provide secular alternatives -- civil law, personal rights, honest democracy, something to look forward to, maybe even something to fight for. This idea that the Afghans will follow us if we just line up the right mullahs and village elders to lead them back to the placid 1970s is, well, nonsense doesn't begin to cover it -- it's embarrassing. Shameful. I mean, no wonder the US is losing. Pogo understood: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Something I meant to add to yesterday's "The Raw and the Cooked" post but ran out of time and/or patience. One point there is that I recognize that where one stands on global warming is more often than not consistent with one's political stance. Leftists of most stripes not only see the need for aggressive state intervention to mitigate (or even better to reverse) the global warming trend, they tend to insist that the dire threat of global warming commands us to adopt their policy directions. One reason I'm especially cognizant of this is that I've recently read two books that do just that.

One is Bill McKibben: Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet; the other is Juliet B. Schor: Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth. Neither book has much to say about global warming, other than to assert that the global warming crisis makes their economic schemes all that more urgent.

McKibben, whose first book, The End of Nature was one of the first books on the subject back in 1989, does have an introductory chapter which reads like a catalog of horrors, but he's more interested in reprising his 2007 book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future -- you wouldn't be wrong to think of the new book as a mash-up of the two previous books -- which is to say he's primarily concerned with promoting the ideal of small scale local economies. McKibben builds on a lot of recent work, especially regarding food, but his basic ideas have been kicking around for decades now, developed by people like Murray Bookchin and Paul Goodman who developed them without the slightest concern for global warming.

Schor is a sociologist who at least as far back as the early 1990s decided that the rat race isn't all it's cracked up to be. She's expressed that in at least two previous books: The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (1992) and The Overspent American: Why We Want Want We Don't Need (1998). The new book goes further toward sketching out a more satisfying economy based on less overwork and overspending. And while global warming and peak oil play into her rationales, there's no reason to think she'd think differently if they weren't factors at all. Again, her ideas aren't terribly original -- Goodman and Bookchin have been there, as well as Marxists like Paul Sweezy and Andre Gorz, and for that matter the notion even shows up in John Maynard Keynes, who -- see John Skidelsky: Keynes: The Return of the Master -- saw capitalism as a path to "the good life" rather than an end in itself.

You can click on the links, including the cover images, to pick up a fair sampling of quotes from each book.

The economic visions of McKibben and Schor are only two of many possible programs that can be hitched to global warming, but all but the most dystopian involve taking deliberate and systematic direction to mitigate (or better still to reverse) the consequences. The proposals of someone like Al Gore or the various thinkers in the Obama administration hardly seem to me to be leftist, but conservatives are stuck in such a rut of denial they can't even warm up to market-oriented approaches like cap-and-trade or tax credits to stimulate investment in non-carbon-based energy sources -- ideas that used to come out of conservative think tanks when thinking was still permitted.

There is, of course, something disingenuous about hoisting one's pet ideas (or nonsense) up whatever flag pole seems to be getting attention, but that doesn't invalidate them -- best to try to sort out each problem and each proposal on its own terms. McKibben and Schor (and for that matter Skidelsky/Keynes) offer attractive notions of how to re-engineer the economy to make is more satisfying, and that seems like something worth thinking about -- at least on the left, where we believe that how we run the world is at least largely a matter of choice.

PS: It finally occurs to me that one defense of Schor and McKibben is that if one adopted their economic ideas, there would be an immediate and substantial reduction in the forces driving global warming. Again, if you choose an economy meant to satisfy the needs and desires of its inhabitants, you'd come up with something that doesn't just drown us in destabilizing pollutants, like we have gotten from laissez faire approaches.

One might also add that the cap-and-trade people are the real conservatives, since they're basically trying to stabilize the existing system using levers that are consistent with its current operation. Again, the right fails to conserve anything; they're happy to let the economy flail itself to death in contradictions they're too ignorant and/or uncaring to even recognize.

Paul Krugman: Who Cooked the Planet? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threw in the towel on trying to pass any climate-change legislation this year, so Krugman tries to pin down responsibility for inaction:

The answer is, the usual suspects: greed and cowardice.

If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money. The economy as a whole wouldn't be significantly hurt if we put a price on carbon, but certain industries -- above all, the coal and oil industries -- would. And those industries have mounted a huge disinformation campaign to protect their bottom lines.

Look at the scientists who question the consensus on climate change; look at the organizations pushing fake scandals; look at the think tanks claiming that any effort to limit emissions would cripple the economy. Again and again, you'll find that they're on the receiving end of a pipeline of funding that starts with big energy companies, like Exxon Mobil, which has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting climate-change denial, or Koch Industries, which has been sponsoring anti-environmental organizations for two decades.

Or look at the politicians who have been most vociferously opposed to climate action. Where do they get much of their campaign money? You already know the answer.

He then lashes in to "climate cowards" like Sen. John McCain. Fair enough. But as a card-carrying Keynesian, shouldn't Krugman suspect that ideology ("bad ideas") is more to blame than mere interest? For a better explanation, turn to: Ross Douthat: The Right and the Climate:

There was no way to get a bill through without some support from conservative lawmakers. And in the global warming debate, there's a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the conservative movement and the environmentalist cause.

To understand why, it's worth going back to the 1970s, the crucible in which modern right-wing politics was forged.

The Seventies were a great decade for apocalyptic enthusiasms, and none was more potent than the fear that human population growth had outstripped the earth's carrying capacity. According to a chorus of credentialed alarmists, the world was entering an age of sweeping famines, crippling energy shortages, and looming civilizational collapse.

It was not lost on conservatives that this analysis led inexorably to left-wing policy prescriptions -- a government-run energy sector at home, and population control for the teeming masses overseas.

The fundamental political issue of our times is whether government should act as a counterbalance against the various problems kicked up by capitalism, or whether government should be limited to support of the capitalist order. The latter position, which had been gaining ground from the 1970s up to the current Great Recession, seeks to do three things: 1) to concentrate wealth in private hands; 2) to make the regulation of business private and discretionary, not subject to public policy; 3) to make government as unattractive as possible to anyone without significant money, and thereby keep them from looking to government for any kind of support. The latter isn't easy: we live in a putative democracy, where government is supposed to belong to and serve the people, and the people actually served by deregulation and wealth concentration are inevitably a tiny minority. That they have any chance of ruling at all is due to their skill at spinning a story line -- an ideology -- that seems to back their case.

They're good at spinning that story -- indeed, they should be, given that they have most of the money and practically all of the media -- but sometimes they run into trouble, like when the economy crashes, and then their spiel loses credibility. That happened big time in 1929-32 when many people concluded that capitalism had broken beyond repair. That led to desperate efforts at reform, all of which involved deliberate massive government intervention: communism (which was too anti-capitalist), fascism (which was too anti-worker), and Keynesian liberalism, which sought to save capitalism by rebalancing productive forces, and by using public spending to make up for shortfalls in demand. And it happened on a smaller scale in 2008 -- the mitigating factor is that we've kept relatively high levels of government spending all these years even though the ideology disparages it.

So conservatives reject doing anything about global warming because only government can do anything about -- worst still, only most world governments acting in concert -- and they've been trained to see any government effort at solving any problem as an existential attack on the privileges of the rich (err, on conservative principles, God and country, family values, all that we hold near and dear). That story about alarmists in the 1970s being proven wrong is just window dressing. Still, that doesn't mean they're right now, or were even right in the 1970s.

Ehrlich is certainly right that persistent population growth will eventually exceed the feeding capacity of the earth. What caught him unawares was the increase in productive efficiency caused mostly by putting more oil into agriculture. That such an increase happened doesn't mean that further increases will continue to happen, especially if energy inputs get much more expensive. (The other main hope is genetic manipulation, which is harder to predict -- especially side-effects.) The 1970s also saw an oil crunch, in large part politically concocted but also tied to peak oil being passed in the US. This led to a glut in the 1980s partly driven by politics -- the UK tried to drain its North Sea fields in record time -- and in any case unlikely to be reproduced.

In retrospect, Ehrlich's biggest mistake may have been to think that limiting population would conserve resources. The best counterexample is China, where drastic restrictions led to an extraordinary growth spurt and corresponding demand for natural resources (energy and materials, of course, but even food demand increases especially if it involves meat). The same correlation applies throughout the developing world, where economic growth is closely tied to limiting population growth -- which for one thing means that the right's pronatal obsession works to keep the developing world from developing.

Still, the issue is something else: conservatives maintain that concerted government action to mitigate climate change would cause more harm than benefit, at least compared to what unregulated markets may (or may not) accomplish. It's hard to see why that might be the case, unless you believe that even a successful governmental intervention would be a bad thing for your political standing. It's certainly easy to see how government action could go wrong, especially given our system of political influence peddling. On the other hand, if you take the threat seriously, it's even harder to see how an unregulated private sector would solve it except through a painful process of crash and retrenchment -- a cycle that unregulated markets never tire of repeating.

I don't have much to say about the threats posed by global warming. It should by now be obvious that we tend to take some threats more seriously than warranted and others less. Climate change splits both ways, probably because it's been reduced to a right-left litmus test, but also because climate seems so basic it must matter greatly while at the same time it is so changeable day-to-day that the projected ranges don't stray much from our experience. (I've followed many paleontological debates about climate change vs. other causes for extinction events, and have never found climate change to be convincing as an explanation, so I tend to be skeptical about disaster models. On the other hand, we are dreadful at evaluating rare but extremely dire prospects, which certainly are possible here.)

Douthat does say one more thing of special interest here, about "global-warming heretics" like Bjorn Lomborg and Freeman Dyson:

Their perspective is grounded, in part, on the assumption that a warmer world will also be a richer world -- and that economic development is likely to do more for the wretched of the earth than a growth-slowing regulatory regime.

In one sense I don't see the assumption. A warmer world will be one where a lot of resources will be dislocated, which will favor some people while disfavoring others, but at least in the short run such shifts are most likely to destroy more wealth quicker than they will allow new wealth to be created. Maybe in the long term that balances out, but I don't see how you can count on that. Moreover, the change will disproportionately take its toll on those who own wealth now, simply because they have the most to lose. It is, therefore, easy to see why Europe and the US should be more worried about global warming than the developing world -- even aside from fairness issues, or the suspicion that we are trying to lock in a permanent advantage. For the developing world -- especially the part that really is growing its economy -- the tables are reversed. For countries like China, India, and Brazil there is virtually no reason to sacrifice growth now for climate stability later. (Research shows that more money does make you happier, but only to a point: once you've broken out of poverty it makes less and less difference.) Douthat concludes:

Not every danger has a regulatory solution, and sometimes it makes sense to wait, get richer, and then try to muddle through.

Indeed, if you're a developing country that is growing fast enough that it's not just the rich who are getting richer, that sounds like good advice. On the other hand, that doesn't sound like America, where government inaction and irresponsibility over the last 30 years has eroded everyone's wealth except for the upper crust's. For most people in America the time to act is now -- if not on climate change, at least on the more basic political dispute.

Heat wave broke a bit this weekend, although it will be back to 98F by midweek. Got my bathroom wall tile grouted and caulked, (nearly) finishing one of the nastier and messier house tasks of recent times. Still have a lot of rearranging to do, but I've resolved not to try to build anything until it cools off -- which around here usually means October. Internet went down after that, but I mostly plugged away on computer, taking notes on Geoffrey Wawro's Quicksand, and starting to construct a new edition of the shopping list I used to carry around when I used to be able to find used CD stores. Cutting it back from the old one, starting with only including 4-star Penguin Guide jazz unless I have real good reason to think a lower-rated record is worth searching for.

Will probably take it easy this week: see if I can round up something interesting for Recycled Goods (not much yet), work through some more Jazz Prospecting, clean things up around the house. Figure out what to do about my obsolescent web server and my antiquated firewall/mail home. Also note that sometime in the next week or so I'll start posting Michael Tatum's "A Downloader's Diary" -- at least that's the working title. What I've seen so far looks like the first decent stab at making up for the loss of Christgau's Consumer Guide. Meanwhile, some finds below.

Fred Hersch Trio: Whirl (2010, Palmetto): Pianist, b. 1955, has more than 30 albums since 1984, seemed to be the big mainstream piano hope (Bill Evans division) in the early 1990s, when he came down with AIDS. He became if anything more prolific after that, and the sidestory gradually faded until now, as he mounts a comeback after an episode that left him in a coma for two months. You get no sense of that from the music here, which is as bright and chipper as anything he's recorded. Don't really understand how it works. Maybe something about concentrating the mind. Maybe just another instance of bassist John Hébert elevating the game. Drummer Eric McPherson does good, too. A-

Aaron Goldberg: Home (2007 [2010], Sunnyside): Pianist, b. 1974 in Boston, passed through Betty Carter's boot camp, graduated from Harvard, moved to New York; fourth album since 1999, with a lot of work on the side. Trio with Reuben Rogers on bass and Eric Harland on drums; augmented by tenor saxophonist Mark Turner on three cuts, getting a bit lift on the opener, "Canción por la Unidad Latinoamericana," and on "Aze's Blues" -- one of 4 (of 10) originals. Covers scattered from Mandel to Monk, Jobim to Stevie Wonder, with the title track from Omer Avital. B+(*)

Avery Sharpe Trio: Live (2008 [2010], JKNM): Bassist, built his career on long turns with McCoy Tyner and Yusef Lateef, each honored with a song here. Ninth album since 1988. Group is a trio with Onaje Alan Gumbs on piano and Winard Harper on drums. Three originals by Sharpe, one by Gumbs, one more cover: "My Favorite Things." B+(*)

Dr. Lonnie Smith: Spiral (2010, Palmetto): Organ player, b. 1942, has twenty-some albums since 1967 with a big gap from 1979 to 1993. Fourth album with Palmetto, a trio, with Jonathan Kreisberg, who's found a seductive niche on guitar, and Jamire Williams on drums. First cut is from another Smith, Jimmy, setting out the basic funk parameters. Gets a substantial sound when he slows it down, too. B+(**)

John Escreet: Don't Fight the Inevitable (2010, Mythology): Pianist, from England, b. 1984, studied at Manhattan School of Music, based in Brooklyn; second album, like 2008's Consequences a quintet with Ambrose Akinmusire on trumpet, David Binney on alto sax, Matt Brewer on bass, and Nasheet Waits on drums (replacing Tyshawn Sorey). Ambitious, aggressive stuff, especially out the chute with the horns pumping each other up. First play I found that exhilarating; second play annoying. Gets more complicated later on, for better or worse. B+(*)

Paul Carr: Straight Ahead Soul (2010, Paul Carr Jazz): Texas tenor, b. 1961, studied at Texas Southern University and Howard, based in DC. Got his blues tone but doesn't indulge in much honking, and plays a little soprano which doesn't sound Texas at all. With Bobby Broom on guitar, Allyn Johnson on piano, Michael Bowie on bass, and Lewis Nash on drums, all filling the straight ahead formula, plus a little Chelsea Green viola that goes somewhere else. Willard Jenkins wrote the notes, bringing up Arnett Cobb. For what it's worth, Cobb's Party Time has been stuck in my bedroom machine for the last month or two: a wonderful record, never fails to pick me up. B+(**)

The Mark Lomax Trio: The State of Black America (2007 [2010], Inarhyme): Drummer, b. 1979, from Columbus, OH; describes himself as "the Quincy Jones of his generation"; first group, 1999, was called Blacklist, their first album Blacklisted; trio has a previous gospel-themed album, Lift Every Voice!; this one has originals titled "Stuck in a Rut," "The Unknown Self," "The Power of Knowing," and "To Know God Is to Know Thy Self" (well, also "Blues for Charles"). None of that prepared me for this record, a sax trio, with unknowns Dean Hulett on bass and Edwin Bayard on tenor. First approximation on Bayard is that he sounds a lot like David S. Ware, and I mean a lot. A-

Freddy Cole: Freddy Cole Sings Mr. B (2010, High Note): Nat's baby brother recalls Billy Eckstine. Makes me wonder how many people today can recall sauve Nat, much less the debonair Eckstine, let alone relate to him. He had a deep, rich baritone, an exceptional example of a style that many 1940s singers aspired to, but which seems old fashioned, stuffy even, today. Nat, on the other hand, sounds as hip today as he did before rock and roll, and Freddy had the same voice, at least until he aged enough to differentiate it. But in applying the old/new Cole treatment to Eckstine's songbook, he achieves a remarkable synthesis. Houston Person joins in on 7 of 12 songs, lifting each, not that Cole can't get by on John Di Martino's piano and Randy Napoleon's guitar. A-

Ran Blake/Christine Correa: Out of the Shadows (2009 [2010], Red Piano): Internet down as I play/write this, so research is limited (and error-prone). Blake, of course, is the well known pianist, b. 1935, with at least 35 albums since 1961, including collaborations with vocalist Jeanne Lee -- Short Life of Barbara Monk is one of his (and their) best-known albums. Correa is a vocalist I've bumped into a couple of times, mostly with pianist Frank Carlberg (if memory serves, her husband). Rather difficult on both ends, with Blake's blockish piano interesting but providing little support, leaving Correa to wing it, which she does with admirable gusto. B+(*)

Ran Blake/Sara Serpa: Camera Obscura (2009 [2010], Inner Circle Music): Another Ran Blake piano-vocal duo. Serpa was born in Lisbon, Portugal; studied at New England Conservatory, where she ran into Blake; based in New York now. More songwise than Blake's album with Christine Correa; Serpa seems to draw out Blake's support, where Correa was more intent on challenging him. B+(**) [Sept. 1]

Peter Brötzmann/Paal Nilssen-Love: Woodcuts (2008 [2010], Smalltown Superjazz): Sax-drums duo, or when Brötzmann decides to cut your ears some slack he switches to bass clarinet or Bb-clarinet (but no tarogato this time). Nilssen-Love has a bunch of these duos in his discography now, including a previous one with Brötzmann (Sweet Sweat), others with Joe McPhee, John Butcher, Håkon Kornstad, Mats Gustafsson, and especially Ken Vandermark. Seems about par for the course, noisy, exciting, wearing. B+(**)

Lean Left: The Ex Guitars Meet Nilssen-Love/Vandermark Duo, Volume 1 (2008 [2010], Smalltown Superjazz): Maybe artist name and title should be switched. "Ex Guitars" are Andy Moor and Terrie Ex of the Dutch mostly-rock group The Ex, which started much like the Mekons but instead of going country-folk hung out with African noise bands and avant-jazzers. Drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and Ken Vandermark (tenor sax, Bb clarinet) have five or six albums as a duo, many more in larger configs, and in fact many Vandermark albums have been multi-band mash-ups along such lines. Cut live at Bimhuis. Liner suggests that Vandermark couldn't hear himself over the guitars although he was aware of blowing his lungs out; no problem, the sax is loud and clear here (especially loud). The guitars are less obvious, cutting in and out with harmonic strings and blasts of distortion. While the rockers are ripping up the sonic landscape, the jazz vanguardists rock out, with Vandermark riffing heavy and the drummer tying it all together. Three short pieces and one long at 27:26 for an intense bit over 41 minutes. A-

Ketil Bjørnstad: Remembrance (2009 [2010], ECM): Norwegian pianist, b. 1952, has recorded with ECM at least since 1994. Leads a trio here, with Tore Brunborg on tenor sax and Jon Christensen on drums -- all three were previously in Masqualero, along with Arild Andersen and Nils Petter Molvaer if memory serves. One title piece in eleven parts. B+(***)

Billy Bang: Prayer for Peace (2005 [2010], TUM): No idea how this set, recorded in New York half a decade ago, came to this Finish label, but the packaging, artwork, and full biographies are all pluses. The group has an interesting balance, with pianist Andrew Bemkey and trumpeter James Zollar as prominent as the violinist -- also with Todd Nicholson on bass and Newman Taylor-Baker on drums. Starts off with a sprightly Stuff Smith piece, a mood that returns with the only other non-Bang cover, an Afro-Cuban piece from Compay Segundo. Title track seems to drag a bit, but before long its slow build turns elegiac. Not at his strongest or most consistent, but a thrill nonetheless, with Zollar more than picking up the slack. A-

Eric Boeren 4tet: Song for Tracy the Turtle: Live at Jazz Brugge 2004 (2004 [2010], Clean Feed): Dutch cornet player, quartet includes Michael Moore (alto sax, clarinet), Wilbert de Joode (bass), and Paul Lovens (drums). Radio shot, tape discovered (or brought to Boeren's attention) only recently. Rough to start, interesting free play, don't get much sense of Moore although he's in the thick of it. B+(*)

Bo van de Graaf: Sold Out: 25 Soundtracks (2009 [2010], Icdisc): Dutch saxophonist, has contributed to the notion that the Dutch avant-garde has as much to do with comedy as with music, although the funniest things here are the titles: "Cat on a hot thin roof," "Ascenseur pour un escargot," "Lost tanga in Paris," "Et Depardieu créa la femme," "The gossip father," "Koyaanisquatsch," "For your legs only," and the 26th cut, disguised as a "bonus track" so as not to dispute the title, "Silence of the lamps (suite)." Would be more fun -- not the same thing as funnier -- if he played more sax, but only 6 of 26 cuts get that treatment. Mostly he hacks out melodies on electric keyboards with samples, and employs a few helpers for bits trumpet, harmonica, english horn, and to voice some Anna Akhmatova words. B

Cochemea Gastelum: The Electric Sound of Johnny Arrow (2010, Mowo!): Sax player; have him listed on alto first, but plays more tenor here, more baritone than that, more "electric sax" than anything, with flute a close second, bass clarinet, all sorts of keyboards, vibes, drums and percussion. First album, has some studio work with pop stars like Amy Winehouse (also Sharon Jones, Angelique Kidjo, New Pornographers), and funk-oriented jazzbos -- Robert Walter, Will Bernard, Melvin Sparks, Reuben Wilson (also something called Phat Jam in Milano listed under Archie Shepp). This one was co-produced by Mocean Worker, who contributed "bips & baps" as well as most of the bass. Beatwise funk, takes off when Elizabeth Pupo-Walker turns on her congas, stalls when the velocity drops too much. B+(*)

Tia Fuller: Decisive Steps (2010, Mack Avenue): Alto saxophonist, also plays some soprano, b. 1976 in Aurora, CO; third album since 2005. Toured for a while with Beyoncé, but her jazz ambitions certainly aren't pop -- she's more like a younger generation Kenny Garrett, a mainstream player who can turn up the heat and draw on deep well of Coltrane antics. Band includes her sister Shamie Royston on piano, Miriam Sullivan on bass, and Kim Thompson on drums; guests include Sean Jones on trumpet/flugelhorn, Christian McBride, and tap dancer Maruice Chestnut. B+(**)

Steve Cardenas: West of Middle (2009 [2010], Sunnyside): Guitarist, from Kansas City, based in New York; third album since 2000; lots of side credits since 1991, notably with Ben Allison and Paul Motian. Trio here, with Allison returning the favor at bass, and Rudy Royston on drums. Nice leads, but still strikes me as a first rate sideman. B+(**)

Lena Horne: Sings: The M-G-M Singles (1946-48 [2010], Verve/Hip-O Select): The first black actress granted a Hollywood contract, she was gorgeous in ways that transcended race -- her ancestors reportedly included slaveholders like John C. Calhoun as well as slaves, with a little American Indian mixed in along the way -- and a pretty good standards singer. Her "Stormy Weather" was a hit in 1943, the title of an MGM musical, and not included here although it seems like it should fit. This picks up a bit later. The house orchestra is completely ordinary, and more than half of the songs you no doubt know from Billie Holiday and/or Ella Fitzgerald. Horne wasn't in their class, but the best songs here -- "A Foggy Day (in London Town)" and "The Lady Is a Tramp" are two -- are completely satisfying. B+(***)

Nikki Yanofsky: Nikki (2010, Decca): Standards singer, from Montreal, b. 1994, which makes her 16 or probably 15 when she recorded this, her second album following a 2008 CD/DVD combo called Ella . . . of Thee I Swing. Produced by Phil Ramone and Jesse Harris. Didn't bother digging through the fine print to see who all's playing. No doubt she can belt the songs out -- a plus on "Take the 'A' Train" and "On the Sunny Side of the Street" and "Mr. Paganini" but not so much on "Over the Rainbow." While the Ella and Billie songs don't match up, at least they swing. The less obvious pieces don't reveal much of anything, even fandom. B

Eleni Karaindrou: Dust of Time (2008 [2009], ECM New Series): Pianist, specializes in composing for films, with seven albums on ECM since 1991, hard to tell how much more. This one is for a film by Theo Angelopoulos. Booklet has lots of pictures, presumably from the film. Mostly strings, some orchestral, but with a delicate touch, soft, easy flow, poignant. 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:

• Nik Bärtsch's Ronin: Llyrìa (ECM): advance, Oct. 12
• Dave Bass Quartet: Gone (Dave Bass Music)
• Theo Bleckmann: I Dwell in Possibility (Winter & Winter)
• Patty Cronheim: Days Like These (Say So): Aug. 10
• Anna Figarova: Sketches (Munich)
• Food [Thomas Strønen/Iain Ballamy]: Quiet Inlet (ECM)
• Michael Formanek Qt.: The Rub and Spare Change (ECM): advance, Oct. 12
• Anat Fort: And If (ECM): advance, Sept. 14
• Chie Imaizumi: A Time of New Beginnings (Capri): Aug. 17
• Kneebody: You Can Have Your Moment (Winter & Winter)
• Greg Lewis: Organ Monk (Greg Lewis): Oct. 1
• Charles Lloyd: Mirror (ECM): advance, Sept. 14
• Chico Pinheiro: There's a Storm Inside (Sunnyside): Aug. 31
• Prester John: Desire for a Straight Line (Innova)
• Gene Pritsker: Varieties of Religious Experience Suite (Innova)
• Jim Rotondi: 1000 Rainbows (Posi-Tone)
• Salo: Sundial Lotus (Innova)
• Dino Saluzzi: El Encuentro (ECM)
• Aram Shelton Quartet: These Times (Singlespeed Music)
• Soulive: Rubber Soulive (Royal Family): advance, Sept. 14
• Howard Wiley and the Angola Project: 12 Gates to the City (HNIC Music): Oct. 19
• Norma Winstone: Stories Yet to Tell (ECM): advance, Aug. 31

Two movie weekend, the first time I can remember that happening in a long, long time. Indeed, can't remember the last time we even saw a movie. (Checking back in the notebook, I see I did some movie posts in April.) Good ones, too.

Movie: The Secret in Their Eyes [El secreto de sus ojos]: Argentinian film, set in 1999 when a recently retired crime investigator decides to write a book about a 1974 rape-murder, cutting back and forth to trace the crime and investigation then and unravel a few last details still unclear. The murderer was caught and confessed, then was let out of jail by higher-ups as he was employed in Argentina's Dirty War. In fact, the murderer turns the tables and pursues the investigator, who flees Buenos Aires for a safe country retreat, at least until the junta fell and democracy was restored. Not much on the Dirty War directly, so it helps to know some history. Some interesting discussion of the death penalty. Won Oscar for Best Foreign Film. A-

Movie: Cyrus: Small film gets by on actors and more or less improv dialogue. John C. Reilly is divorced from Catherine Keener, who graciously struggles to help him get over it. Doesn't much work until he stumbles across Marisa Tomei, who is starved for the attention Reilly offers, mostly because she's smothered by her 21-year-old unweened son, Jonah Hill. He feels the rivalry and sets out to subvert the budding relationship in a guerrilla war with O'Reilly. Works out, sort of. A-

Belatedly caught up with Yes Man [B] and The Invention of Lying [A-]. Jonah Hill had one of many good small parts in the latter. Again, words are key; goodwill too.

Glenn Greenwald: The heroism of Shirley Sherrod: I was forced offline for the last half of last week, so missed this story as it unrolled. Sherrod is black, married to a well known civil rights leader, works for the Agriculture Dept. She gave a speech. Someone named Andrew Breitbart extracted a line from its context, turned on its head, and splattered it across the nation's fickle consciousness as an example of the Obama government's anti-white racism. Obama and Ag. Sec. Tom Vilsack took Fox News at its word, didn't bother to check the facts, and fired Sherrod -- the latest example in fascist politico-world's zero-tolerance clampdown on politically incorrect speech. As it turns out, this one was such a total crock that Vilsack and Obama wound up back-pedalling, offering Sherrod her job back. One reason was that the "white farmer" she referred to was plum thankful that she had saved his farm. Another embarrassment for Obama, once again caused by his willingness to concede the issue space to the right. The charge itself should have been a tip-off: few problems in America are more inconsequential than anti-white racism, and virtually the only people who worry about it mostly worry because they expect some retribution for their own racism.

Ryan McNeely: Texas Fried Conservatism: Of all the things that Obama has or hasn't done since the 2008 election, the one that annoys me most -- partly because it's so obvious, so consistent with his mandate, and so much within his power to act -- is his failure to put a stake into what little was left of George W. Bush's political reputation. Back then Bush's approval ratings were stuck in the 20% range, and even that most likely owed much to presidential deference. Virtually everything Bush did in his eight years in office was wrong -- more often than not, deeply, profoundly, mind-bogglingly wrong; so wrong one's tempted to call it evil, except that he poisoned that well too. Moreover, Bush's policies and acts were not just wrong in principle and in practice; they left a vast legacy of problems that would overwhelm and threaten to capsize his own term. He needed to drive home the fact that those problems were Bush problems, not just to buy time to work them through but to make sure that the American people understood what they were facing and why.

He could have done that three ways. One was to go out and talk about what happened and why, to constantly reinforce the message about Bush's malfeasances. Another, which would flow out of the first, is that he could have pushed for thorough investigations of the Bush administration, especially of conflicts of interest and more/less legal influence peddling. (At the very least, this would have alerted him to the MMS cronyism that was exposed only after BP's deepwater oil well blew up.) Finally, he could have routinely broke from Bush administration policies, especially in the security and injustice sector. Instead, he's so routinely continued Bush's policies that they've often become pinned on him.

Now, we're seeing the first efforts at not just rehabilitating but canonizing Bush's presidency -- something that should have been rendered impossible by exposing what actually happened. It may even work: after all, they've had plenty of practice dusting off and spiffing up Ronald Reagan's criminal regime. (Back in the day I frequently quipped that America's only growth industry is fraud -- not just because of the unseemly number of apparatchiks who got caught but because the whole "greed is good" ethos soaked into the culture, breeding in the soon-bankrupted S&Ls, the leveraged buyout craze, and well beyond, all the way to George W. Bush.) The old adage about those who forget history are bound to repeat it takes on extra urgency here. By failing to make the Bush history unforgettable, Obama does worse than run the risk of yet another return; he may even slip unconsciously into the Bush form, repeating it himself.

Paul Krugman: Redo That Voodoo: Taxes and deficits are a case in point. At least back in Reagan's time they bothered to concoct a hare-brained theory to argue that cutting taxes would increase tax revenues, as if their aim was to grow government. That failed, but nothing they couldn't mythologize around. Bush's tax cuts and war spending did exactly what Reagan's did: mushroom the federal deficit, leading to cries for slashing public services and special favors for the rich. Now, of course, the insatiable rich want even more -- not just for themselves, but they'd like to see everyone else pinched by more austerity too, so even if they can't make more at least they'll feel better about it. One thing you should recall is that one of Obama's campaign promises was to repeal the Bush tax cuts -- one that he hasn't lifted a finger to accomplish. The political calculus now is to let them quietly expire, but in doing so he misses a golden opportunity to pin the deficits on the main cause: Bush.

Horrible week. Don't know where to begin, but hope it ends soon. Was surprised that I had enough Jazz Prospecting to post. Not sure if the glut of (**) records was symptom or cause -- one side effect of having already used up all of my space for the next Jazz CG is that I'm more conscious of good records that I know I'm not going to have room or interest for, and that's where such records land. For what little it's worth, the pecking order: Dosh, Rypdal, Christie, Cohen, Corpolongo, Manricks, Tibbetts.

Laurie Anderson: Homeland (2010, Nonesuch): A rather dreary album, at least partly by intent, which raises such big and serious questions I'm tempted to grade it up if only to get a hearing. Some songs are worth hearing more for didactic purposes than listening enjoyment -- "Another Day in America" and "Dark Time in the Revolution" are two. Only one is flat-out brilliant: "Only an Expert" is not only deep but quickens the pace to drive its points home. Others I'm likely to remain unsettled over, including four murky ones at the beginning. Ambitious, distinctive, thoughtful, clever, unique; still, I find it sitting on my year-end list right below Kesha, its polar opposite. B+(***) [advance]

Stevens, Siegel & Ferguson Trio: Six (2008 [2010], Konnex): Piano trio, with Memphis-based Michael Jefry Stevens forgoing alphabetical order for once to claim first dibs on a record. Siegel is drummer Jeff, nicknamed "Siege," which leads to all sorts of typographical errors. Ferguson, Tim, plays bass. Both contribute a pair of originals; Stevens just places one. The other five cuts are old standards ("Straight No Chaser" on the fence there), given pleasantly straightforward readings. B+(*)

Rich Corpolongo Trio: Get Happy (2009 [2010], Delmark): Tenor saxophonist, b. 1941 in Chicago, parents from Italy. Third album on Delmark, the first two dating from 1996 and 1998 with Corpolongo playing alto and soprano sax but no tenor. All three have upbeat titles -- Just Found Joy and Smiles -- but his playing is serious, sober mainstream, spare and muscular with just bass (Dan Shapera) and drums (Rusty Jones), with Charlie Parker tunes fore and aft, standards in between including the title tune, "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams," and "Body and Soul." B+(**)

Terje Rypdal: Crime Scene (2009 [2010], ECM): Guitarist, b. 1947, part of the George Russell generation of Norwegian jazz musicians; started in rock and gravitated in and out of fusion over the years. Shows some of that here, but the album, a concert recording at Nattjazz Festival in Bergen, veers wildly about with a range of things I can't add up much less reconcile: scattered vocal samples assembled by drummer Paolo Vinaccia; free-ranging trumpet by Palle Mikkelborg; grungy organ by Ståle Storløkken; and occasional earth rumbling from the 17-piece Bergen Big Band. Each of these things are interesting. (Surprised to find him dropped from the 9th ed. of The Penguin Guide, along with 18 records, all on ECM, very likely all still in print.) B+(**)

Steve Tibbetts: Natural Causes (2008 [2010], ECM): Guitarist, b. 1954, from Minnesota, had an eponymous album in 1976 and now has eight ECM albums from 1980, the last three following 6-, 8-, and 8-year breaks. Also credited with piano, kalimba, and bouzouki -- not sure whether they are minor here or just subtly layered, as the hype sheet suggests. Marc Anderson adds percussion, but there is little more to it: quiet, measured, slips by all to easily. B+(**)

Retta Christie: With David Evans & Dave Frishberg, Volume 2 (2009 [2010], Retta): Singer, b. 1959 in Astoria, OR. Second album, following Volume 1 all the way down to the cover art, given a different tint here. Standards, but not too standard: notes place most of them in the 1920s and 1930s with a Mills Brothers hit from 1944 not so far an outlier. Evans plays sax and clarinet; is a treat on both, especially the latter. Frishberg limits himself to piano -- he's a notable singer in his own right, but plays this one close to the vest. B+(**)

Avishai Cohen: Aurora (2008 [2010], Blue Note/EMI Music): Israeli bassist, b. 1970 (many sites say 1971, but Cohen's own say 1970), established his jazz career in New York but seems to be based in Israel now. Eleventh record since 1998, carries a small Blue Note label as well as EMI Music, but was recorded on France and isn't on Blue Note's US schedule -- hype sheet gives April 27 as release date. Plays electric as well as acoustic, has a piano credit and sings most of the songs, with Karen Malka joining in here and there. Band includes Shai Maestro on piano/wurlitzer, Amos Hoffman on oud, and Itamar Doari on percussion. Several songs derive from Ladino folk sources, although most are originals. Vocals are slight, amateurish; arrangements are slow, with a baroque feel -- hype sheet cites Bach counterpoint, as well as pointing out that his Ladino was sharpened playing in New York latin ensembles. B+(**)

Jacám Manricks: Trigonometry (2009 [2010], Posi-Tone): Saxophonist, not specified but plays alto in his photos and has played soprano in the past; based in New York, teaches at Manhattan School of Music; bio doesn't provide details like when/where born, how he got to New York, etc. One previous album, last year's Labyrinth, also an impressive disc. Wrote all but a Dolphy piece. Postbop, has a loquacious tone, gets solid support from Gary Versace on piano and Obed Calvaire on drums, and occasional front line help from Scott Wendholt (trumpet) and Alan Ferber (trombone). Sorry for the grade rut, but I can't budge this up or down. [PS: Looks like he started out in Australia.] B+(**)

Ray Vega & Thomas Marriott: East-West Trumpet Summit (2009 [2010], Origin): Marriott's from Seattle; Vega's from the Bronx. Marriott thanks God in the notes here; Vega thanks Jesus. Presumably Vega's the hot one here -- play with Ray Barretto and Tito Puente and you learn to crank it up a couple notches. Each has a moderate pile of albums. Both can play but neither makes a very distinctive impression. Together they put together as hot a trumpet album as I've heard in a while. B+(*)

Gregory Porter: Water (2009 [2010], Motema): Vocalist, based in Brooklyn, first album. Wrote 6 of 11 songs; one called "1960 What?" on the Detroit riot is a choice cut, partly because he beefs up the horn section (three trumpets and trombone), partly because he doesn't try to constrain his cool. On the other hand, standards like "Skylark" and "But Beautiful" are really tightened down. B+(*)

Dosh: Tommy (2008-09 [2010], Anticon): Full name: Martin Dosh, from Minneapolis. Fifth record since 2003, all on Anticon, which is generally an underground hip-hop label, very underground. This one is more post-rock ambient electronica, reminiscent of Brian Eno's Another Green World at times, but not as blessed, not just because it's a bit noisier. B+(**) [advance]

Oscar Feldman: Oscar e Familia (2009, Sunnyside): Alto saxophonist, b. 1961 in Argentina, based in New York, has one previous album in 1999. Wrote most of the pieces, one with Guillermo Klein, one by Klein alone, and one each by Wayne Shorter, Astor Piazzolla, and Hermeto Pascoal. Core group features Manuel Valera on piano, John Benitez on bass, Antonio Sanchez on drums, and Pernell Saturnino on percussion, although he also taps Pablo Aslan (bass) on four cuts, Diego Urcola (trumpet, trombone), Mark Turner (tenor sax), Tito Castro (bandoneon), Cuartetango String Quartet (two cuts), and others. Fierce sax and roiling percussion will remind you of Gato Barbieri's early "chapters." B+(***)

Margret: Com Você (2010, Sunnyside): Last name Grebowicz, from Texas, probably based in New York now although hype sheet says she teaches philosophy at Goucher College in Baltimore. Website refers to band as Com Você, but hype sheet gives Margret as artist name, Com Você as album title. She/they have a 2007 album, Candeias, under Com Você. Band isn't really applicable on this album anyway: Margret sings on all tracks, but only has Ben Monder (guitar) on one track, Matvei Sigalov (guitar) on another, Monder and Scott Colley (bass) on a third; tenor saxophonist Stan Killian, who seems to be her senior collaborator, only appears on 3 of 9 tracks. Only 3 of 9 songs have Brazilian roots, but she does a fair Astrud Gilberto impression, especially on the sweetly synthetic "Call Me." 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:

• Julian Argüelles Trio: Ground Rush (Clean Feed)
• Michaël Attias: Twines of Colesion (Clean Feed)
• Ran Blake/Sara Serpa: Camera Obscura (2010, Inner Circle Music): Sept. 1
• Alex Brown: Pianist (Sunnyside): Aug. 10
• Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra: Mezzanine (Owl Studios)
• Fay Claassen: Sing! (Challenge)
• The Stanley Clarke Band (Heads Up)
• Bill Frisell: Beautiful Dreamers (Savoy Jazz)
• Stephen Gauci/Kris Davis/Michael Bisio: Three (Clean Feed)
• Frank Gratkowski/Hamid Drake (Valid)
• Susie Hansen: Representante de la Salsa (Jazz Caliente)
• John Lee Hooker, Jr.: Live in Istanbul Turkey (Steppin' Stone)
• Guillermo Klein: Domador de Huellas (Sunnyside): Aug. 10
• Urs Leimgruber/Evan Parker: Twine (Clean Feed)
• Daniel Levin Quartet: Bacalhau (Clean Feed)
• Mike Mainieri: Crescent (NYC, 2CD)
• Bob Mamet Trio: Impromptu (Counterpoint): Aug. 3
• Lisa Mezzacappa's Bait & Switch: What Is Known (Clean Feed)
• Nils Petter Molvaer: Hamada (Thirsty Ear): advance, Sept. 7
• Joe Morris/Nate Wooley: Tooth and Nail (Clean Feed)
• William Parker: I Plan to Stay a Believer: The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield (AUM Fidelity, 2CD): Sept. 14
• Louis Sclavis/Craig Taborn/Tom Rainey: Eldorado Trio (Clean Feed)
• Esperanza Spalding: Chamber Music Society (Heads Up)
• Ben Syversen: Cracked Vessel (Ben Syversen)
• Rob Wagner/Hamid Drake/Nobu Ozaki: Trio (Valid)
• David S. Ware: Onecept (AUM Fidelity): Sept. 14
• Chris Washburne and the SYOTOS Band: Fields of Moons (Jazzheads)

Paul Woodward: A one-state solution from the Israeli right: Every now and then someone from the Israeli right admits a willingness to grant Israeli citizenship to a lot more Palestinians in order to secure the entire West Bank as permanent Israeli territory. (What happens to Gaza is never made clear, but it is already viewed as a wasteland, so presumably would be sloughed off.) All sorts of bad things could be rolled into such a "solution": the return of any Palestinian refugees would be ruled out; even with "citizenship" much of the West Bank could remain under military rule for decades (as happened within the Green Line from 1948-67), curtailing the legal rights of "citizenship"; social and economic discrimination is likely to persist indefinitely; moreover, the right is likely to use the influx of Palestinian "citizens" as an excuse to chip away at the rights that "Palestinian citizens of Israel" already have. Gaza would be orphaned, perhaps still under siege, subject to controls and periodic mass punishment. Lebanon and Syria would still be viewed as hostile states, with Israel holding the Golan Heights and continuing to hold large numbers of Lebanese prisoners while Israel seeks to back Hezbollah down by threatening the whole country. In short, a right-wing "one state solution" is likely to look a lot like the status quo.

This raises a real question. Anyone can think of lots of ways to sort out the conflict, but the only way that is going to happen is one that Israel itself decides upon -- i.e., a settlement that that not only favors Israel over the Palestinians but that indulges Israeli fears and fantasies. So the question is: what's the worst possible settlement that both sides are likely to accept? It's a tough question, mostly because Israel's politicos and security honchos don't really want any solution -- they're quite happy to fight on indefinitely, and in any case would be hard pressed to agree on just what they are fighting for. But it's also tough for the Palestinians, who on the one hand have already conceded an awful lot, and on the other are basing their claims on justice, which sets some minimal standards for what they can accept.

I've made several sketches of how this can be resolved, and they've all been unwelcome. For instance, knowing that Jerusalem is a particularly emotional issue for most Israelis, I outlined a scheme whereby Israel could legitimately annex Jerusalem, leaving Gaza and the rest of the West Bank for an independent Palestinian state. (The key here would be for the Palestinians in East Jerusalem to ratify the annexation, which would only happen if Israel assumed its best behavior toward them -- a win-win scenario as far as I'm concerned, although before any such thing happened you'd hear a lot about "the third holiest city in Islam" and all that.)

As I was reading Kai Bird's Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978, I flashed on another even more indulgent scheme. Bird makes a big point about how the conflict would have been reduced had the Palestinians succeeded in deposing King Hussein and turning Jordan into the Palestinian state -- he sees this as a major missed opportunity, given that before 1967 and even after Jordan had a Palestinian majority and that the Hashemite monarchy was nothing more than a British invention later subsidized by the CIA. Lots of prominent Israelis had toyed with the Jordan = New Palestine idea, although they usually wanted it both ways -- a nominal Palestinian state still ruled by trusty old King Hussein. But one reason they never went through with this scheme is that deep down Israel can't abide the existence of a Palestinian state: any such state would memorialize the original sin of Israel's creation. So how about this: Israel turns Gaza over to Egypt as an UN mandate; Egypt assumes responsibility for security and holds the international pursestrings to rebuild Gaza, but otherwise allows Gaza to be run as an autonomous UN-certified democracy; Gaza would in the future (say, ten years) have the option of an independence referendum, but in the meantime Egypt also offers Gazans (including Palestinian refugees) citizenship, freedom to resettle in Egypt, and all such rights as Egyptian citizens have (such as they are). Egypt isn't obligated to become more democratic, although that would be a welcome direction. This way Israel relinquishes its occupation without establishing a Palestinian state. Same thing with Jordan and the West Bank, although it's less clear where Israel draws the borderline -- what is clear is that it will be Israel drawing the border -- perhaps along its notorious "security fence."

So would that be acceptable? Israel would gain a small amount of critical territory, and would get rid of a large number of Palestinians. The resulting Israel could be more equitable and less beligerent, or not. Israel wouldn't be assured of immediate recognition as with the Saudi/Arab League Green Line proposal, but would be in a better position to work those out. Israel already has working security relationships with both Egypt and Jordan, and Egypt has a proven track record of helping Israel to pen up Gaza. One would have to insist that any Palestinians living on land that Israel kept be given full and meaningful citizenship rights. Also that the refugees be given compensation, since they are otherwise screwed -- not that they aren't now anyway. Maybe you could insist on some protocols for dealing with border incidents and acts of terrorism -- which must, by the way, include Israel's assassination networks. Something should be done about Lebanon and Syria. The former is easily resolved by returning Shaba Farms and the Lebanese prisoners Israel holds hostage; the latter involves a more substantial piece of real estate and its watershed. (Perhaps the answer there is for Israel to purchase most of the land and water; Syria would obtain a lot of badly needed cash and get off of America's shit list.)

Or maybe Israel's right insists on keeping all of the West Bank, in which case an acceptable deal would have to safeguard Palestinian rights within a democratic Israel. This is tougher because it gets deeper into Israel's knitting, but there has to be some quid pro quo to get everyone to agree that we have a solution, and that international recognition -- basically the removal of Israel's pariah state stain -- is what Israel stands to gain. For instance, with the Palestinians satisfied, the conflict with Iran -- its alleged nuclear threat, the thing that Israel is supposedly so dreadfully worried over -- goes away.

I can't pretend that these proposals are any better than lots of other proposals. Were I a Zionist, I'm pretty sure that I'd think that the Arab League two-state proposal would be a damn good deal: in particular, there's no need to quibble and no chance of ill feelings if you simply accept the other side's offer. It would allow Israel to go right on being the paranoid racist state it has become yet would extricate itself from a state of perpetual debilitating conflict. Not being a Zionist, and being committed to justice, I'm inclined to be more generous: I'd prefer a secular, multicultural state providing generous support for resettling as many refugees as want to return. And if I were an Arab, I'd support a Law of Return, which inside Israel is a symbol of national discrimination, but outside of Israel undercuts the logic and imputed necessity of an exclusive Jewish national homeland. But the fact is I'd settle for almost anything that reduces conflict and allows all parties to live with respect and dignity.

The best solutions are based on things that at least in principle we can all agree on: equality, human rights, dignity, freedom. The more you carve out special exceptions to universal rights, the more trouble you cause, the more people you leave behind, the more resentment builds. Agreements may be dictated by relative power, but effective agreements are built on mutual respect. If Israel wanted to solve its conflict it would take pains to make its offer as generous as possible, to bind in as much consensus as possible. That hasn't happened for reasons deeply embedded in its national psyche -- Israel has trained itself to trust only its own power, so it sees any compromise as debilitating, and therefore they never offer any solution. Still, everyone else in the world needs to see this conflict come to some sort of resolution. (The Palestinians have offered all kinds of proposals, adjusting them as they grow weary and find force to be useless, but they are never deemed acceptable because they refuse to compromise on the basic issue of dignity; they are left with the one thing Israel cannot take from them, the ability to refuse surrender.) So we're left here, mulling over not just solutions that would do right but all sorts of hackneyed notions that while distasteful might ultimately be considered not so intolerable.

Israel's right has successfully managed to derail the common "two-state solution" that Americans (including Clinton, Obama, and even Bush) fancy, so when they do float a conceivable idea -- anything involving full citizen rights is at least conceivably workable -- it's worth taking seriously, probably not as a coherent proposal but at least as opening a door that until now has remained rigidly shut.

Paul Woodward: One state/two states: rethinking Israel and Palestine: Another vector moving in this same direction, quoting Abu-Zayda on his thinking why the "two states" dogma has become counterproductive. One irony is that it was only a year or two ago when Alan Dershowitz declared that any talk about "one state" should axiomatically be discarded as a non-starter; now we find several scattered instances of people arguing the exact opposite: that "two state" talk is nothing more than a formula for extending the conflict endlessly. (Which, by the way, does seem to be Dershowitz's agenda.)

I've collected a good selection of quotes from Kai Bird's Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 (2010, Scribners) on the book page. It's a rather idiosyncratic book in several respects: the personal interest breaks with the usual sense of balance, although the final third synthesizes balance in a rather unique way; the time frame essentially ignores the last 30 years -- the wars in Lebanon, the Intifada, the Oslo Accords, Ariel Sharon -- which by now is most of what you know about the conflict. (The PFLP hijackings in the 1970s are prominently featured in the book, but compared to the suicide bombings of the Al-Aqsa Intifada seem almost quaint.) On the other hand one tends to forget how tenaciously belligerent Ben-Gurion was, or how poorly King Hussein served the Palestinian cause that he occasionally gave lip service to. Even in working in his wife's family's holocaust stories, Bird sticks with the particulars and avoids generalizations.

Dion Lefler: Goyle pushes bipartisan solutions: Kansas politics has regularly been hitting new lows this year. With elected governor Kathleen Sebelius safely tucked away in Obama's cabinet -- taking her away from an open senate contest she was heavily favored for; after all, as long as Obama's in the white house, who needs electable Democrats running for other offices? -- the current Kansas governor was elected lieutenant governor as a Democrat but was previously chairman of the state Republican party. Still, even he has frustrated the state lege from passing America's most draconian anti-abortion bills, so Sam Brownback is giving up his senate seat to do his duty in Topeka. Meanwhile, two of Kansas's three Republican congressmen are running for Brownback's senate seat, or for a cushy job as a corporate lobbyist, whichever comes last -- see Crowson's cartoon for a glimpse at how that's going. Tanker Todd, who's been my hands-down pick for worst member of congress for 16 straight years now, is pretty certain to lose the vote, and win back his job as a Boeing corporate flunky, no doubt with a big payday -- especially if the tanker deal he's devoted so much of his life to comes through.

That leaves Tiahrt's seat vacant, with a wide open Republican primary between Florida multimillionaire Wink Hartman and Tiahrt crony Mike Pompeo, with a couple of minor candidates way short of money -- Jean Schodorf, one of the saner Republicans around, is likely to finish a distant third. On the Democratic side the probable candidate is Raj Goyle, an impressive (and impressively well funded) campaigner to picked off a pretty safe Republican state senate seat a few years back. One interesting point here is that Goyle seems to have raised more money thus far than any of the Republicans -- Hartman is real close, but that's mostly because he's taking money from one pocket and putting it into the other. Especially interesting, given that Tiahrt typically out-raised his opponents by 10-to-1. On the other hand, Goyle is running his campaign so far to the right that he practically belongs in the same strip as Tiahrt and Moran. Of the two state senators in this election, the one who voted to stave off the latest anti-abortion travesty wasn't Goyle; it was Schodorf.

The link above gives you a quick rundown on Goyle's campaign. (For more on the money, see here.) Goyle is "proud to be a fiscal conservative." He voted against a regressive sales tax hike that was the only way the governor could keep the state government from collapsing. He thinks all it's going to take to get the economy going again is tax cuts and small business loans. His yap on closing tax loopholes that export jobs amounts to nothing. If anyone really wanted to halt the offshoring of jobs, the thing to do would be to balance the trade deficit, not the budget.

Other than the budget balancing, there's little of substance to say about Goyle. He's smart, ambitious, flexible, opportunistic -- someone you can never trust or admire, but may wind up voting for when facing a Republican like Hartman or Pompeo. He may even do something worthwhile, but right now he's running to be the bluest dog in Washington. Right now I'm not sure the aggravation is worth it.

PS: The comments with few exceptions are appalling. Must be the readers are getting into the spirit of the season.

Jason Ditz: US-Backed Jundallah Bombs Iran Mosque, Killing at Least 27: When Obama took office 18 months ago, it seemed like burying the hatchet with Iran would be a relatively straightforward thing to do. But Netanyahu responded to Obama's feint toward the more intransigent Israel-Palestine conflict with alarmist threats against Iran, which Obama thought he could only bottle up by taking a more aggressive diplomatic course. Then there was the Iranian elections and a long period of unrest following, where Iran's conservatives and clerics clamped down on reformers -- many of whom felt themselves to be more in tune with the 1979 Revolution than were the established powers -- so that, too, backed Obama off, putting even more emphasis on his sterile program of sanctions. Now, Netanyahu is feeling cocky enough to push his belligerent tactics through American military channels -- cheered on by Likudnik-inspired neocons like the newly formed Emergency Committee for Israel. The idea of "preemptively" attacking Iran is as criminally stupid now as it ever was. One cannot imagine all of the ways such a misadventure could go wrong: it would dramatically reinforce Iranian resolve to be able to defend themselves with nuclear weapons, while at most inflicting a temporary setback; it would destroy whatever credibility Obama still has in the world's diplomatic circles. Iran would have an impeccable case to take to the UN -- subject to a US veto, of course, another embarrassment. If Iran chose to fight back, they could virtually stop oil tankers from the Persian Gulf region, triggering another runup of world oil prices. They could make life very uncomfortable for US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The one threat they can't make is to Israel, which is already itching for another fight with Hezbollah (and/or Hamas). It is easy to see why Israel sees such an attack as win-win: the one guaranteed result is that it will keep Israel away from the peace table for years to come. Best of all, it would make the US as much a pariah as Israel has already become.

What Jundallah has to do with this is sheer stupidity. Back in 1979 the Iranian Revolution embarrassed the Carter Administration and, more importantly, the CIA that had put the Shah in power back in 1953, opening up a period when the US was delighted to sell advanced weapons and nuclear power plants to Iran. Ever since then there have been agitators in the backwaters of the US security system trying to irritate Iran -- Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech back in 2003 was a high point in their crusade. One of their pet schemes has always been to incite minorities to rebel against the Tehran government, and the Balochi nationalist Jundallah group has been a beneficiary of such scheming. Never mind that they're nothing more than a terrorist group. Never mind that they also attack our ally Pakistan. We're so consumed with hatred for Iran that we're happy doing unto them what we'd never stand for them doing unto us. But don't you think Obama should find this really embarrassing? On the one hand, it shows how selective out "war on terrorism" really is. On the other, it shows that however high-minded our fears of Iran's nuclear program may be, deep down all we really want to do is drag the Iranian people into chaos and destruction.

Helena Cobban: Is an attack on Iran really more 'do-able' now? and More on America's pro-Israeli warmongers: Some background info for the above. Joe Klein claims: "Israel has been brought into the [U.S.] planning process, I'm told, because U.S. officials are frightened by the possibility that the right-wing Netanyahu government might go rogue and try to whack the Iranians on its own." The fact remains that Israel would have to fly over US-controled airspace to get to Iran and would probably need US airbases to land at, so it's hard to see how they could "go rogue" without US acquiescence. On the other hand, one of the peculiar effects of Israel's handling of the Gaza flotilla is that while it had been a public relations disaster in the world at large, Israel has managed to stiffen up American political support, making a new round of aggression possible.

Another batch of book notes, starting to drain the backlog I had accumulated before my last post on June 25. Doesn't include a couple of eagerly awaited forthcoming books: Andrew Bacevich: Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War (Aug. 3), and Chalmers Johnson: Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best Hope (Aug. 17). I've pre-ordered both.

Joseph Adler: R in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference (paperback, 2009, O'Reilly): Presumably R is a free software version of S, a very sophisticated programming language for statistics that was developed at Bell Labs back around 1975. [Yes, see here and here.] Big (640 pp), pricey ($49.95), most likely worthwhile if you use it a lot. I think I'd like to dabble, but haven't figured out how to break through. (I do have an ancient S manual but never could afford the software. I may even still have a videotape on a later commercial implementation of S Plus.)

Dean Baker: Taking Economics Seriously (2010, Boston Review Books): A prolific author of short books, one more (136 pp), a basic primer, probably suffices for Econ 101, but he focuses on especially relevant ideas. In particular, he pushes for marginal cost pricing, which would take a lot of hot air out of medical costs.

Gary S Becker/Richard A Posner: Uncommon Sense: Economic Insights, from Marriage to Terrorism (2009, University of Chicago Press): Mostly uncommon because it's mostly wrong. Leading ideologues of the rational expectations cult reason their way through all sorts of ordinary quandries. I read one section on CEO pay and found that it wasn't even wrong because it never got to a conclusion that could be disproved.

Peter Beinart: The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris (2010, Harper): Another sermon on why bad things happen to good countries, this one featuring Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, and George W. Bush -- three presidents who led us into regretted wars with high-minded rhetoric. In some ways that cuts Bush too much slack, reflected by Beinart's enthusiasm for the Iraq War -- a mistake, Beinart admits, but one good enough to fuel his first book, The Good Fight: Why Liberals -- and Only Liberals -- Can Win the War on Terror. (He was on to something there with the implicit realization that conservatives like Bush couldn't do the right things, but failed to recognize that the only way you "win" a war is by keeping it from happening.)

Adam J Berinsky: In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion from World War II to Iraq (paperback, 2009, University of Chicago Press): Tries to make sense out of public opinion poll data going back to the US entry into WWII. Claims a lot of continuity between prewar and war fever attitudes, but I don't quite see how that works.

Tom Bissell: Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter (2010, Pantheon): I've read two historically significant travel books by him (Chasing the Sea and The Father of All Things) so tend to take him seriously, much more so than his subject this time, which I tend to find abhorent.

Howard Bloom: The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism (2009, Prometheus Books): Big (607 pp), sprawling jumble of everything connected to everything else, but mostly to capitalism past, present, and future. Spent some time working in PR before wandering into quasi-science books; previously wrote The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From the Big Band to the 21st Century. Could be interesting, could be nuts, or both.

Mark Philip Bradley/Marilyn B Young, eds: Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars: Local, National, and Transnational Perspectives (paperback, 2008, Oxford University Press): Eleven essays on various aspects of the war, including some from Vietnamese perspectives.

HW Brands: American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (2010, Penguin): Big subject, succinct at 432 pp. Author has written biographies on Ben Franklin, Andrew Jackson, and both Roosevelts -- I read the latter, A Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and found he did a good job of managing his space, neatly tying up two parts that I had recently read detailed books on. Read a few pages of this book, on Nixon and Watergate, where he quickly got to the point and got the main points -- not that I wouldn't have preferred more venom.

John Broven: Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock 'n' Roll Pioneers (2010, University of Illinois Press): Big book (640 pp), based on 100 interviews with industry makers and shakers. Author is a consultant to Ace Records in the UK, high up on the list of reissue labels I wish would send me records.

Nicholas Carr: The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2010, WW Norton): Well, something is making us stupid(er), so why not blame the Internet? The thesis is that constant stimulation shortens attention span leading to shallow thinking, but that seems equally or even more true of other media, e.g. radio and television. I'd say that the worst thing about web pages is how so many attempt to emulate television. I suppose you can blame the net for making stupid people louder, but that's, well, if not democracy at least levelling, which is a price we (more/less gladly) pay for access.

Harvey G Cohen: Duke Ellington's America (2010, University of Chicago Press): Big biography of Ellington (720 pp), 1899-1974, with sideward glances at the country that change around him.

Tyler Cowen: Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World (2009, Dutton): Economist/blogger turns out a jumbled book of future think related somehow to autism -- Temple Grandin seems to understand what he's up to, but I don't. But then I've never been much impressed by his economics blog.

Elizabeth Fox Genovese/Eugene D Genovese: Slavery in White and Black: Class and Race in the Southern Slaveholders' New World Order (paperback, 2008, Cambridge University Press): Sums up what started as an innovative Marxist analysis of the slave South and turned into what? -- some kind of celebration of the slaveholders' conservative anticapitalism? I read Genovese early on and he had a big impact on my thinking. I understand he veered far to the right around 1990, but don't know what that was about. This looks much like another late book, The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders' Worldview.

Gary Giddins: Warning Shadows: Home Alone With Classic Cinema (paperback, 2010, WW Norton): Mostly a collection of short DVD reviews. Best known as a jazz critic, Giddins has dabbled in film reviews for quite a while.

Risa L Goluboff: The Lost Promise of Civil Rights (paperback, 2010, Harvard University Press): Argues that before Brown v. Board of Education the civil rights movement was much broader than just a legal challenge to racial discrimination -- that it had a lot to do with economic rights.

Alan Hart: Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Vol. 3: Conflict Without End (paperback, 2010, Clarity Press): Previous volumes were subtitled The False Messiah (up to 1948) and David Becomes Goliath (1948-1967). This focuses on Israel after 1967, the occupation and its perpetuation of conflict. It's worth noting that each of these periods offered a somewhat different Zionism, with the utopian ideology giving way to the practical politics of dominance and occupation.

Christopher Hitchens: Hitch 22: A Memoir (2010, Twelve): Somehow I have no picture in my mind of Hitchens as a leftist journalist, which he was rumored to be before he got all gonzo and signed up for Bush's Iraq adventure. Since then he's mostly distinguished himself as a noisy atheist and a lout, which makes him a poor example for atheism. Presumably he explains, or more likely exemplifies, this here, not that either strikes me as reason to read further.

Jack Horner/James Gorman: How to Build a Dinosaur: The New Science of Reverse Evolution (2009; paperback, 2010, Plume): Original subtitle: Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever. I went through a phase reading a lot of paleontology books, including Horner's Digging Dinosaurs: The Search That Unraveled the Mystery of Baby Dinosaurs. The Jurassic Park angle strikes me as nuts, but Horner's made major contributions to figuring out how dinosaurs functioned, especially advancing the "warm-blooded" hypothesis which I find makes a lot of sense.

Richard B Immerman: Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism From Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz (2010, Princeton University Press): Subtitle reminds me of Sorel's cartoon of the evolution of presidents from FDR on, but this looks to be more episodic, with six figure singled out: Franklin, Henry Seward, Henry Cabot Lodge, John Foster Dulles, and Wolfowitz. Not sure how Franklin qualifies, but in his time expansion was largely conceived as contiguous and homogenizing. Not so with Seward's drive across the Pacific, Lodge's militarization of that drive, or the global megalomania of Dulles and Wolfowitz.

Jon Jeter: Flat Broke in the Free Market: How Globalization Fleeced Working People (2009, WW Norton): Former Washington Post bureau chief for South Africa, offers numerous examples of how globalization has hurt South Africans and others, especially in the third world.

Marilyn Johnson: This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All (2010, Harper Collins): A book about librarians and what's happening to their world as it becomes increasingly digital -- a more complicated and ambiguous story than the wishful subtitle suggests.

Wayne Karlin: Wandering Souls: Journeys With the Dead and the Living in Viet Nam (2009, Nation Books): Starts with a diary a US soldier took off a Vietnamese soldier he killed in 1969, then follows the soldier and diary back to Vietnam to see what he has done. Karlin tags along, writes it up.

Rashid Khalidi: Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1998; paperback, 2009, Columbia University Press): New introduction to Khalidi's 1998 book on how the Palestinians came to think of themselves as Palestinian -- long the standard book on the subject.

Stephen Kinzer: Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future (2010, Times Books): Not major powers, but not chopped liver either: two nations with about 75 million subjects each, major empires in their pasts, and revolutions which set them apart from the crowd. In other words, nations to be reckoned with if we want to be realistic (which doesn't seem to be the case). Kinzer previously wrote on both countries: Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds and All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.

Gideon Levy: The Punishment of Gaza (paperback, 2010, Verso): Short (160 pp) report on Israel's 2009 assault on Gaza and the policies that led to it, based on 40 weekly columns from Haaretz. One of the most conscientious Israeli journalists working the beat. Several books on Gaza are trickling out, like Norman G Finkelstein's 'This Time We Went Too Far': Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion, James Petras: War Crimes in Gaza and the Zionist Fifth Columin in America, and (scheduled for November) Noam Chomsky/Ilan Pappé: Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians. (Pappé has a bigger book scheduled further out: The Bureaucracy of Evil: The History of the Israeli Occupation.)

Andrew Moore/Philip Levine: Detroit Disassembled (2010, Damiani/Akron Art Museum): Short (136 pp), expensive coffee table photography book, with photos by Moore and text by Levine. Detroit has become such a symbol for urban collapse that this seems skimpy. Moore has another book, Russia: Beyond Utopia.

Vali Nasr: Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World (2009, Free Press): Uh, more petit bourgeoisie? Bothers me a bit that his prime example is Abu Dhabi, about as representative of the Middle East as Las Vegas is of America.

John M O'Hara: A New American Tea Party: The Counterrevolution Against Bailouts, Handouts, Reckless Spending, and More Taxes (2010, Wiley): Sort of a manifesto and how-to guide, blessed with a foreword by Michelle Malkin. Expect many more books like this.

Naomi Oreskes/Erik M Conway: Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues From Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (2010, Bloomsbury Press): The tobacco case must seem like old hat by now, but the authors claim some of the same scientists are now working for energy companies still practicing denialism. The climate change case something else. No doubt paychecks bias analyses, but it would still be useful to see just how that works, especially in cases (unlike marketing) where there is some sense of professional standards. Related: David Michaels: Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health, and Stephen H Schneider: Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save the Earth's Climate.

Sasha Polakcw-Suransky: The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship With Apartheid South Africa (2010, Pantheon): Actually, the whole history of Israel's foreign policy has been to find common cause with fellow colonial settler states, notably the French in Algeria, but also the Afrikaners in South Africa. What's been a secret was the details of Israel's alliance with Apartheid South Africa, especially nuclear proliferation.

Richard A Posner: The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy (2010, Harvard University Press): Further thoughts on A Failure of Capitalism, lest anyone take his criticism of capitalism's failure too literally.

George Prochnik: In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise (2010, Doubleday): Argues that "noise pollution" results in "insomnia, aggression, heart disease, decreased longevity," not to mention annoyance. Lives in New York City, which provides plenty of examples. Reminds me that when I moved to the 23rd floor in Waterside on the East River in NYC, I discovered I had found the only place in Manhattan where I could open the windows and not hear road noise. Now, if only we got ride of those damn helicopters.

Michael Radu: Europe's Ghost: Tolerance, Jihadism, and the Crisis in the West (2010, Encounter Books): Looks like another contribution to Europe's anti-Muslim immigration hysteria, maybe with less of blatant racism than usual, maybe not. The notion that Muslims cannot be assimilated into Europe (or America) is certainly wrong, as is the equation of Islam with Jihad.

Jeremy Rifkin: The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis (2009, Tarcher): I see him described as a "social thinker" -- I guess that means a guy whose imagination is untethered to reality even though he works hard to pretend to be relevant. This one looks to be exceptionally frothy, as evidence by the final chapter titles: The Climb to Global Peak Empathy, The Planetary Entropic Abyss, The Emerging Era of Distributed Capitalism, The Theatrical Self in an Improvisational Society, Biosphere Consciousness in a Climax Economy.

Andrew J Rotter: Light at the End of the Tunnel: A Vietnam War Anthology (3rd ed, paperback, 2010, Rowman & Littlefield): Old history but not inseparable from the present, partly because we never learned the right lessons, partly because the tables have turned on Afghanistan: instead of critics citing Vietnam as a caution against quagmire, now we have generals who again see light at the end of the tunnel precisely because they think Vietnam holds the key to winning counterinsurgent wars.

Ed Schultz: Killer Politics: How Big Money and Bad Politics Are Destroying the Great American Middle Class (2010, Hyperion): TV pundit, started right, now leans left, like most likes to keep it simple and loud: "The middle class, where the greatness of this nation is rooted, is under siege by an increasingly unethical system, managed by economic vampires who are sucking the lifeblood out of the American family and ripping the heart out of democracy itself." Much of that is true enough, but I tend to look at the Middle Class as a mirage -- an intellectual artifice that tries to imbue unionized workers with petit bourgeois values while separating them from the dreaded poor. As with most mirages, it fades on close inspection, but politicians -- like Obama with his "middle class tax cuts" -- still try to work it.

Rachel Shabi: We Look Like the Enemy: The Hidden Story of Israel's Jews from Arab Lands (paperback, 2009, Walker): In 1948, with most of Europe's Jews slaughtered by the Nazis and their Fascist allies, Ben-Gurion attempted to bolster the number of Jews in Israel by getting Jews from Arab countries to move to Israel. Once in Israel, Mizrahi Jews found themselves the butt of discrimination by European Jews and their Sabra descendents, so that's one big thing this book deals with. The more interesting part is how they see themselves fitting into both Israel and the Arab world: I think they tend toward the religious right, but actually I've read very little about them.

Mark Thomas: Belching Out the Devil: Global Adventures with Coca-Cola (paperback, 2009, Nation Books): Author is "a less-than-hilarious BBC comedian" and/or "libertarian anarchist"; he corrects a Coca Cola flack, saying that he's picking on the company not because it's an easy target but because it's a big target. It's also a broad one, doing business in nearly every country, so there are bits on India and Colombia and all over.

Paul Wapner: Living Through the End of Nature: The Future of American Environmentalism (2010, MIT Press): Bill McKibben, who coined the "end of nature" meme, contributes a favorable blurb quote. Short (184 pp), like he's trying to make it too simple.

Previously mentioned books (book pages noted where available), new in paperback:

Reza Aslan: Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization (2009; paperback, 2010, Random House): Reprint of How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror, with a more straightforward and self-explanatory title, although I do miss the bit about ending the war. [book page]

Saree Makdisi: Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (2008; paperback, 2010, WW Norton): Occupation is a word describing an abstract process, one that cannot begin to convey the subtle and pervasive layers of control and manipulation Israel exercises over the Palestinian territories.

Matthew Yglesias: Taxophobia: I read the referenced posts by Greg Mankiw and Brad DeLong, and don't think they're really saying what Yglesias thinks they're saying, but Yglesias does sum up one political view that seems to be well entrenched if not necessarily spreading wide:

What I take Mankiw et al to be saying is that taxes are really, really, really bad. And taxes on high-income people are really, really, really, really, really, really, really bad. They think that the electorate is joined by leftwing economists in massively underestimating the scale of the badness. And they look at population aging and growing health care costs and see that it's likely that taxes will go up in the future. And they think this is an incredibly bad outcome, with massive negative long-term consequences. Consequences that are far more dire than any transient, years-long period of unemployment. Ergo, it's really important to do the best one can to weather the 111th Congress -- the most leftwing congress in decades, and the most leftwing congress we're likely to see in quite some time -- while minimizing increases in the spending level. Really, really, really important.

Mankiw's nonsense can be highlighted in three lines:

1. "Higher future taxes reduce demand today for at least a couple of reasons. First, there are Ricardian effects to the extent that consumers take future taxes into account when calculating their permanent income."
2. "That is, businesses may be reluctant to invest in an economy that they expect to be distorted by historically unprecedented levels of taxation in the future."
3. "But many other economists (and I suspect many stimulus-skeptics like the tea-partiers) believe that taxes have significant incentive effects and can prevent the economy from reaching its full potential."

Let's start in the middle: nobody is arguing for "historically unprecedented levels of taxation" -- I'd be inclined to kick up the estate tax a notch, but I don't see a need for 90% marginal tax rates. (I'd cap top bracket income taxes around 50%, where they might be aggravating but wouldn't be a real disincentive -- which is not to say that higher, truly disincentivizing tax rates wouldn't have social value in capping greed.) Nor do any currently projectable federal debt levels require unprecedented levels of taxation. So a key part of Mankiw's argument -- my second quote above is an elaboration of the second point alluded to in the first quote -- is sheer demagoguery. Moreover, refuting it lets us invoke historical cases. In particular, the period when the US had its highest tax rates was exactly the period when the nation's economy grew the fastest, which at the very least lends no credence to the claim that raising tax levels depresses the economy.

The first point about Ricardian effects strains credulity. Is anyone ever so smart that they can correctly anticipate how future events will eventually prefer investment decisions today? It's easy to pile on counterexamples: when did the inevitability of a bubble of real estate or high-tech stocks or Dutch tulips bursting ever inhibit that bubble from developing? If there is any one thing you can count on it's that business only thinks in the short term. There may be good reasons to worry about the long term, but the current behaviour of business isn't one of them.

The third quote raises two problems. While it is true that current tax policy allowances and deductions affects business behaviour inasmuch as it adjusts (or distorts) prices, it isn't at all clear that overall tax levels have much effect except on distribution -- low tax rates let profits accumulate much faster (making the rich much richer and increasing inequality) while high tax rates slow down that accumulation, but there is little evidence of whole industries boarding up due to higher tax rates. More generally, investors -- i.e., people with more money than they can consume -- will seek out higher returns but will settle for the best returns they can get, folding only when there are no profits to be had at all. As long as tax levels allow for some profits, and the taxes are then recirculated as spending, it's hard to see how higher tax levels depress the economy -- at most they depress the upper classes, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The other canard is the bit about the economy "reaching its full potential." I have no idea what Mankiw thinks this means, especially since he implies that it relates to low taxes. A more plausible definition would tie "full potential" to full employment. We tend to think ass backwards on this issue: that a booming economy causes fuller employment, rather than that fuller employment is what makes the economy bloom; much as we are led to believe that business investment creates jobs, as opposed to realizing that labor is what creates all that we value in the economy. For various reasons, capitalists left to their own devices never produce full employment. The only way to get there is for government to fill the gap, both by spending to prop up the private sector and by creating jobs directly. And to pay for those jobs you have to raise taxes, and the most productive way to do that -- with inequality approaching historically unprecedented levels, and especially with the the rich sitting on cash they can't find productive investments for -- is to target the rich.

And that's the deeper context for Mankiw's argument. It's not just that he dislikes taxes. Just as important is that he isn't bothered by unemployment. In fact, I think you'll find that he rather likes unemployment: more unemployment means cheaper labor, less pressure to share profits, tilting the balance of power toward capital. Friendly economists may pollute the air with Ricardian mumbo jumbo, but the prime reason capitalists don't like taxes, labor rights, and any sort of government action to create jobs or lessen the pain of unemployment is that they don't want to share. In fact, their power viz. labor matters so much that they'd rather suffer through a sluggish economy than lose any of their relative advantages.

One problem here is that in polite political discourse, Mankiw et al. can't just come out and say, "hey! we like this 10% unemployment, we like that the safety net is unraveling, we're looking forward to squeezing labor even harder." Rather, they talk about how we can't afford the deficit (sooner or later, at least in some crackpot theories), about how taxes only hurt the economy (and therefore how we can't fix the deficit problem). They have to pretend that only the richer rich create jobs (even though most of their gains have come from bidding up each other's assets), and that the economy they build somehow benefits us all.

One thing Yglesias is right about is that Krugman, DeLong, et al. are "a bit too literal in their disagreements with the center-of-center economists [whoever that is] of the world." I have three or four recent books on why Ricardo was full of shit, but that's not what this is really about. It's really about power: who pays and who benefits. And that reflects a fundamental difference in worldviews: do we share the world, or do we compete for its spoils? The Great Depression and WWII shocked people into a sense that we're all in this together, and out of that we forged a more equitable society, based on labor rights, a safety net, and steep progressive taxation to pay for it. It wasn't perfect, and flaws going back to the beginning would eventually undermine it. But in the 1970s the rich revolted, exploiting their substantial advantages for political and economic gain, and they have gradually tore the social compact apart while compounding problems. The eight disastrous years of George Bush led to a change of leadership, but sadly, pathetically not to a change in thinking. We are in the midst of a one-sided class war, where the putative defenders of the non-rich don't even recognize they're being fired on, and don't make more than the most paltry efforts to defend the people who voted them in.

On the other hand, I don't blame Krugman and DeLong for focusing on the economic nonsense. They've worked hard to keep the economists from pulling the wool over our eyes. I blame the Democratic Party politicos, starting with the guy in the White House, for not finding principled political issues to run on and drive home, such as the need for full employment to lift working wages, and more progressive taxes to level the playing field; the need to get out of the global war business -- one which only serves to fund the right and keep the left on the defensive -- and the need to reverse the great risk shift -- the real security threat that most Americans face these days.

Aside from a pick hit candidate, listening to a lot of good, solid, exemplary even, records that don't inspire me to write further -- several stuck in the turntable for multiple plays, which is one reason I didn't get further. Pretty much in the middle of the Jazz CG cycle right now. Could shift to closing mode in a couple of weeks.

Archie Shepp: The New York Contemporary Five (1963 [2010], Delmark): One of two contemporaneous John Tchicai groups that took New York for their name -- the other was New York Art Quartet with trombonist Roswell Rudd -- yet recorded mostly in the alto saxophonist's native Denmark. This one sported Don Cherry (cornet) and Archie Shepp (tenor sax) on the front line, Don Moore (bass) and J.C. Moses (drums). They recorded a studio album in New York for Fontana in August 1963, then two live sets at Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen for Sonet in November. The latter, minus two cuts, were consolidated by Storyville into a single CD. This reissue goes back to Sonet's Vol. 1 -- perhaps the other shoe will fall later, although there is no indication of it here. They went on to cut one more album for Savoy in 1964, with different bass and drums, Ted Curson replacing Cherry on two cuts, and Shepp's name (for the first time, I think) out front. Starts with the three horns brawling before the rhythm section enters to sort things out. Rough, primeval avant-garde, of the moment, with 1967-vintage liner notes that fall into the period. B+(***)

Mikrokolektyw: Revisit (2009 [2010], Delmark): Polish duo, Artur Majewski on trumpet, Kuba Sucher on drums, both working electronics, based in Wroclaw but with some sort of connection to Chicago -- at least to Rob Mazurek, whose Chicago Underground is a basically similar cornet-drums duo. Sounds microtonal at first, but the trumpet offers relief from any potential tedium. B+(*)

Alper Yilmaz: Over the Clouds (2009 [2010], Kayique): Electric bassist, from Turkey, studied industrial engineering, based in New York since 2000, second album since 2007. Also takes credits for sound design and loops. The bass lines are highlighted by Nir Felder's guitar, while David Binney's alto sax provides a sharp contrast. B+(**)

Curtis Fuller: I Will Tell Her (2010, Capri, 2CD): Trombonist, b. 1934, has thirty-some records since 1957, the majority before 1963, this only the third since 1996. Basically a mainstream hard bop player: best known early album was called Blues-ette; he came back after a decade-long hiatus in 1972 with Smokin' and Crankin'; for his 2005 outing he vowed to Keep It Simple. But this album steps up for a bit more: a sextet, dominated by tenor saxophonist Keith Oxman with Al Hood's trumpet providing the ear candy; not his best trombone, but he gets in some licks. Two discs, one studio, the other live (no dates given). The rhythm section is lively, the sets endlessly enjoyable. B+(***)

Steve Turre: Delicious and Delightful (2010, High Note): Trombone player, from Omaha, also plays conch shells but I've never figured out how that works or what they sound like. Fifteen album since 1987, including tributes to J.J. Johnson and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. This one doesn't quite live up to its title, but it is boldly flavored, with Billy Harper on tenor sax -- his rough edges ground down by all that big band work of late, but his energy undiminished -- Larry Willis on piano, Russell Malone on guitar (just two cuts), bass, drums, and some extra bata and djembe on one cut. Harper wrote two songs, Turre the rest except for "Tenderly." Best record since the Kirk tribute, but they all seems to be coming up with the same grade. B+(**)

Frank Carlberg/John Hebert/Gerald Cleaver: Tivoli Trio (2009 [2010], Red Piano): Piano-bass-drums trio, respectively. Pianist Carlberg hails from Finland, studied at Berklee and New England Conservatory, settled down in Brooklyn. Has at least eight records since 1992. Dense, full of intrigue and pleasure. I'm tempted to give Hebert a good deal of the credit; he always seems to show up in the right places. B+(***)

Reed's Bass Drum: Which Is Which (2009 [2010], Reed's Bass Drum): Brooklyn-based sax trio, with Jonah Parzen-Johnson leading on baritone, Noah Garabedian on bass, and Aaron Ewing on drums. First album. Freebop, moderately paced, no surprise given how slow the bari takes the corners; marvelous, though, when the big horn reaches for a bottom note. B+(**)

Orlando Le Fleming: From Brooklyn With Love (2009 [2010], 19/8): Bassist, b. 1976, Birmingham, UK; moved to New York 2003. Wikipedia has an article on a professional cricket player named Antony Orlando Frank le Fleming, born on the same day in the same town (well, pretty large city), who played 1994-96; web site bio says he played cricked "for five years in the minor counties," which I guess is consistent. First album, although he has a healthy number of side credits going back to 1999, especially with Jane Monheit. Quartet here, with Will Vinson on alto sax, Lage Lund on guitar, and Antonio Sanchez on drums. Lund has some tasty guitar leads here, and Vinson is sharp but moderate. Attractive album. Seems like I'm on a run of records that sound quite good but don't quite move me to write about them. B+(**)

Jamie Begian Big Band: Big Fat Grin (2008 [2010], Innova): Guitarist, studied at Hartt School of Music, Manhattan School of Music; started teaching at Western Connecticut State University in 1991. Interest in big band led him to Bob Brookmeyer. Second Big Band album, the first coming out in 2003. Group is seventeen strong, conventional big band size and shape except second guitar instead of piano. Draws on New Yorkers, only a few that I recognize. Some terrific passages scattered about. B+(**)

TGB: Evil Things (2009 [2010], Clean Feed): Portuguese trio: Sérgio Carolino (tuba), Mário Delgado (guitar), Alexandre Frazão (drums). Delgado wrote six pieces, Frazão three; one is a group improv, and four more are from others -- only one my eyes can make out is Bill Evans. Rather scattered, as you might expect given how they juxtapose originals named for "George Harrison" and "Aleister Crowley" -- the latter may be the one that sounds like slightly bent Black Sabbath. The tango/soundtrack-ish "Close Your Eyes" is a choice cut, and the high-speed tuba bebop solo on "Tangram" is a hoot, but there's too much evil for my taste; suggest they lighten up and call their next one Mischievous Things. B+(*)

Angles: Epileptical West: Live in Coimbra (2009 [2010], Clean Feed): Sextet, haven't tracked every member down but safe to say Scandinavian. Leader is Swedish alto saxophonist Martin Küchen, b. 1966, nothing under his own name but also works in Exploding Customer (which has scored a couple of HMs here), Trespass Trio, and Sound of Mucus. Second album for group, with Magnus Broo (trumpet), Mats Älekint (trombone), Mattias Ståhl (vibes), Johan Berthling (bass), and Kjell Nordeson (drums). Big beat, roiling horns, scattered tinkles from the vibes, loud and propulsive. Makes me smile all over. A-

Kris Davis/Ingrid Laubrock/Tyshawn Sorey: Paradoxical Frog (2009 [2010], Clean Feed): Not familiar with Laubrock, although she also appears on the Tom Rainey record still awaiting my attention. Tenor saxophonist, b. 1970 in Germany, based in London and/or Brooklyn; five albums since 1997 by most counts, which file this one under Davis, a pianist from Canada who specializes in fast and furious saxophonists -- Rye Eclipse with Tony Malaby is my top recommendation. Sorey is a drummer, plays in Fieldwork and has a couple albums on his own that are more focused on his composition than his percussion. This should click in interesting ways, but Laubrock isn't that fleet and that seems to slow down the others. Also a queer stretch of silence (or very low volume) creates a false ending -- not sure what's going on there. B+(*)

Tom Rainey Trio: Pool School (2009 [2010], Clean Feed): Album says this was recorded "on September 4th, 2010" -- I assume that's a typo for 2009. Rainey is a drummer who's made a big impression, especially in Tim Berne's groups. Has a long credits list going back to 1987, but this is the first album under his own name. Gets all the composition credits, too. Trio includes Ingrid Laubrock on tenor and soprano sax and Mary Halvorson on guitar. Both tend to wobble here, which is sort of an art form for Halvorson, harder to speculate on with Laubrock. Free playing, takes a lot of attention, doesn't give much back, even from the drummer. 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:

• Bobby Avey: A New Face (JayDell)
• Roberto Cipelli/Paolo Fresu/Philippe Garcia/Gianmaria Testa/Attilio Zanchi: F. à Léo (Justin Time): Aug. 10
• Avishai Cohen: Aurora (Blue Note)
• Yelena Eckemoff: Cold Sun (Yelena Music)
• Ken Fowser & Behn Gillece: Little Echo (Posi-Tone)
• Dan Gailey Jazz Orchestra: What Did You Dream? (OA2)
• Matt Herskowitz: Jerusalem Trilogy (Justin Time): Aug. 10
• Owen Howard: Drum Lore (Bju'ecords): Aug. 17
• Paul Motian/Chris Potter/Jason Moran: Lost in a Dream (ECM)
• Ivo Perelman/Dominic Duval/Brian Wilson: Mind Games (Leo)
• Ivo Perelman/Daniel Levin/Torbjörn Zetterberg: Soulstorm (Clean Feed, 2CD)
• Ivo Perelman/Gerry Hemingway: The Apple in the Dark (Leo)
• Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra: Jimmy Heath: The Endless Search (Origin)
• Nadav Snir-Zelniker: Thinking Out Loud (OA2)
• Ralph Towner/Paolo Fresu: Chiaroscuro (ECM)
• Christian Wallumrød Ensemble: Fabula Suite Lugano (ECM)
• Jessica Williams: Touch (Origin)
• Joel Yennior Trio: Bit City Circus (Brass Wheel): July 20

Paul Woodward: Petraeus: mission will be accomplished: I think it was Wolfgang Pauli who once dismissed a fellow physicist's theory by declaring that it was not even false, suggesting there are whole dimensions of mind-boggling nonsense that are based on nothing substantial enough to even be disproved. I felt the same way a couple days ago when I saw a front page Wichita Eagle article that quoted Petraeus: "We are in this to win. That is our clear objective." Nothing can be less clear, since the problem isn't so much how to "win" as what the hell does "winning" even mean in this context? I have no idea, and not just because I've repeatedly argued in the past that war itself is failure, that the moment you go to war the only question remaining is how much you will lose before you can extricate yourself from it.

See if another Petraeus quote helps: "We're engaged in a contest of wills. Our enemies are doing all that they can to undermine the confidence of the Afghan people." For starters, this ignores a very central fact of the war, which is that "our enemies" are in fact a substantial fraction of "the Afghan people"; even more importantly, that we are not "the Afghan people" in any sense. For us to "win" a lot of Afghans have to lose, so who is it who's really trying to "undermine the confidence of the Afghan people"? Then there is the matter of will, one of our central political conceits, the notion that all it takes to bend other people is assertion of our magic will, or more to the point, that all we need for our will to work is endless faith in the force of our magic, thereby reducing the world to nothing more than a reflection of our psyche. Sounds like a clinical definition of insanity.

Even if will worked, you have to ask whose will is Petraeus trying to rally? The self-serving careerist military? The fickle politicians? The vast washed, coddled, attention-deficit masses whose idea of winning is constantly trivialized by "reality" TV? Ultimately it doesn't matter, because all it takes to disable the peculiar magic of will is the inevitable unbeliever -- the future scapegoat for failure because, well, who's going to doubt the general's will? That the bullshit is so transparent should mean that the end is near. But what it certainly means is that the war party wants to make sure we don't learn any lessons from the debacle.

Ann Jones: Strategies for "Success" in Afghanistan: Second title: "Counterinsurgency Down for the Count in Afghanistan . . . But the War Machine Grinds On and On and On." Points out that COIN in theory is "a tricky, even schizophrenic, balancing act"; in practice it's even harder, but since we're obsessed with "success" how about some shortcuts?

The part of the lethal activity that often goes awry is supposed to be counterbalanced by the "sorry" part, which may be as simple as dispatching U.S. officers to drink humble tea with local "key leaders." Often enough, though, it comes in the form of large, unsustainable gifts. The formula, which is basic COIN, goes something like this: kill some civilians in the hunt for the bad guys and you have to make up for it by building a road. This trade-off explains why, as you travel parts of the country, interminable (and often empty) strips of black asphalt now traverse Afghanistan's vast expanses of sand and rock, but it doesn't explain why Afghans, thus compensated, are angrier than ever.

Many Afghans, of course, are angry because they haven't been compensated at all, not even with a road to nowhere. Worse yet, more often than not, they've been promised things that never materialize. (If you were to summarize the history of the country as a whole in these last years, it might go like this: big men -- both Afghan and American -- make out like the Beltway Bandits many of them are, while ordinary Afghans in the countryside still wish their kids had shoes.) [ . . . ]

I could go on. If you spend time in Afghanistan, evidence of failure is all around you, including those millions of American taxpayer dollars that are paid to Afghan security contractors (and Karzai relatives) and then handed over to insurgents to buy protection for U.S. supply convoys traveling on U.S. built, but Taliban-controlled, roads. Strategy doesn't get much worse than that: financing both sides, and every brigand in between, in hopes of a happier ending someday.

Maybe things would work better if we had a politically connected shoe company to get in on the graft, but Halliburton doesn't make shoes.

Brian Katulis: Restrepo: Ann Jones wrote her article after a recent stretched embedded with US forces in Afghanistan. She talks about what she saw, but the recent documentary Restrepo gives you a chance to see some of this yourself. I haven't seen -- or for that matter the Iraq documentaries Gunner Palace and The War Tapes Katulis refers to -- and can't vouch for the movie, other than to point out the obvious that in focusing on American soldiers you'll have to work hard to try to reconstruct an Afghan view of their invasion, and will inevitably miss a big part of the big picture.

Played the Tokyo Police Club, the National and Macy Gray before Christgau's July Consumer Guide came out, although I had heard about Gray from Christgau. Dead Weather and Pernice Brothers after, although I had noticed them before and meant to get to them sooner or later. African stuff remains hard to find -- in fact, most of the honorable mentions I looked for didn't show up (not all on the missing list). With no more Consumer Guides likely, I guess I'm on my own, my fallback sources more erratic, less dependable -- you know, the kind of critics who convinced me to bother with Besnard Lakes.

Usual caveats apply: These are short notes/reviews based on streaming records from Rhapsody. They are snap judgments based on one or two plays, accumulated since my last post along these lines, back on June 9. Past reviews and more information are available here.

Bettie Serveert: Pharmacy of Love (2009 [2010], Second Motion): Dutch rock band, fronted by Carol Van Dyk, sing in English and could pass for American except for the names. I've been remiss in checking them out, with an unrated copy of their 1992 debut Palomine in the stacks somewhere, and nothing else in the database even though Christgau A-listed Private Suit (2000) and Log 22 (2003). Actually, my first choice -- if Rhapsody had it, and they don't -- is their Velvet Underground covers set, Venus in Furs. This is perfectly listenable unaffected alt-rock, starts strong, wobbles a bit, ends strong, just like you're supposed to do. B+(**)

Bettie Serveert: Private Suit (2000, Hidden Agenda): Christgau cites the songcraft: "crisply songful after years of feedback and drone." I find it remarkably clear and unaffected, rock only in the sense that most singer-songwriters start there, with occasional flashes of Velvet Underground, "Pale Blue Eyes" division. B+(***)

Bettie Serveert: Log 22 (2003, Hidden Agenda): Rocks a little more than Private Suit, still nowhere near as rote as the new one, although only "White Dogs" and "The Ocean, My Floor" really make something of it -- the Velvet Underground touchstone here is more like "Sweet Jane." Could be that multiple plays would put one or both of these records over the top. All that would take is an interest in singer-writer Carol Van Dyk, which hasn't quite clicked yet, but I wouldn't rule it out. B+(***)

Against Me!: White Crosses (2010, Sire): Postpunk band from Florida, dedicated an early album to Axl Rose, but actually has a lot of strong leftist political content. Too bad I find their so thick and dreary, because they do have cogent, important things to say. B-

Deer Tick: The Black Dirt Sessions (2010, Partisan): John McCauley group/alias, third album, named for the studio (if I recall correctly). Leans Americans, brightest on last year's Born on Flag Day, a good deal more worn and bleary here, wretched even. B

Janelle Monáe: The Archandroid (2010, Bad Boy): From Kansas City, KS, hooked up with OutKast for Idlewild, now drops her debut album. It's a big one, 18 cuts, 68:35, Big Boi on the producer list, lots of guests, enough singles snap -- rap pieces, soul shouts, plain ole pop -- that it may hit big. First time through I'm struck by the classical moves, at one even point flashing on "Bohemian Rhapsody." I don't mean that as bad as I usually mean it. No idea how will it will wear. B+(**)

The Besnard Lakes: The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night (2010, Jagjaguwar): Canadian group, what we used to call prog, alternately layered lush like Pink Floyd and/or pompous like Genesis if not quite ELP. Split into two sides, each starting with instrumental prologues, many songs split into two parts or movements. B

Tokyo Police Club: Champ (2010, Mom & Pop Music): Toronto group, first album was bright and rousing, a fresh flash on timeless rock and roll; this sophomore album shows they're getting older, slowing down, thinking harder, trying to make up for what they're losing. B+(**)

Bettye LaVette: Interpreations: The British Rock Songbook (2010, Anti-): Old-style soul singer, has a remarkable voice, was born a little late (1946) to catch the up wave of her style and didn't get noticed until recently. Her British songbook extends from the Invasion well into the 1970s, is rather eclectic and far from hitbound. She picks her way through them cautiously, an idea that doesn't quite gel even though it's sometimes intriguing. B

The National: High Violet (2009-10 [2010], 4AD): Brooklyn group, originally from Ohio, with two pairs of brothers and vocalist Matt Berninger (appealing deep voice, reminds me of Dave Alvin), although they also seem to be using lots of guest musicians, including Sufjan Stevens. Fifth album since 2001, their last one, Boxer, got broad critical acclaim and this broke high on the charts. Nicely framed, the voice serious and mature, and for that matter what I could make of the words. Drumming is even more impressive. A-

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: The Brutalist Bricks (2009 [2010], Matador): Seems well schooled, not quite as formally retro as Dave Edmunds or Marshall Crenshaw. Hard to resist as long as he keeps it fast, which is usually the case, but weird or worse when he slips up, as in the bit where he wonders "where was my brain?" You'll wonder too. B

Caribou: Swim (2010, Merge): Dan Snaith, from Canada, has a couple of previous albums of homebrewed electronica. This one is a step forward beatwise, much of it quite appealing, but every now and then the synths and/or voices get churchy, rubbing me the wrong way. B+(*)

The Roots: How I Got Over (2010, Def Jam): Selling point is such cross-genre contributors as Dirty Projectors, Monsters of Folk, and Joanna Newsom, none of whom make this sound any less like the Roots. Choppy beats, rocking hard, serious raps, with a bit more to the musical mix than DJs glean -- pretty good band, but you knew that. They're still on their run. A-

Eminem: Recovery (2010, Interscope): Long (76:56), loud, full of pop hooks but beat up and bruised. A couple of songs return to his well worn personal story without showing any sense of resolution, although the personal touch helps even if he's hopelessly fucked up. Others are trite, like "WTP" -- stands for "white trash party" -- which may be his fate. Can't focus, but he's got a knack. B(*)

Uffie: Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans (2010, Ed Banger/Elektra): Anna-Catherine Hartley, b. 1987 in Miami, raised in Hong Kong, based in Paris. Cartoonish electronica, cute voice, doesn't mince words. B+(**)

Macy Gray: The Sellout (2010, Concord): It's tempting fate releasing an album about selling out on a label as corrupt as Concord, but this is actually a very straightforward, somewhat old-fashioned r&b album -- reminds me of '50s rock and roll but less frenetic. Seen two reviews thus far, both pans, but sounds to me like her best. A-

The Dead Weather: Sea of Cowards (2010, Third Man/Warner Brothers): Jack White thang, with sharp and metallic input from Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Dean Fertita to strike a horror metal chord, which somewhat surprisingly I find more appealing -- at least more humorous -- than all the other Jack White thangs. Short at 35:09, could be considered EP length these days but would have filled an LP way back when. B+(***)

The Pernice Brothers: Goodbye, Killer (2010, Ashmont): A singer-songwriter with some things to say embedded in a brotherly band that runs light and has long lost its feel for country. Short at 32:05. Played this two and a half times and the sound smoothed out but it's still on the cusp. B+(***)

The Chemical Brothers: Further (2010, Astralwerks): Rhapsody calls their electronica "big beat," which seems especially appropriate here. Most of this moves so inexorably it's hard not to just bow and make way. B+(***)

Another month of taking what comes my way but not doing much more -- a couple of new world albums, some jazz reissues, some back catalog for an alt-pop groups with a new record I like -- the Apples in Stereo's Travellers in Space and Time. Benton Flippen fell out of a list of old records recommended in Derek Taylor's blog, and there will probably be more of those in the future (if I can find them -- struck out with Orchestra Nova, Bud Isaacs, Patato & Totico). With little coming in other than jazz and a bit of world, and no record stores to fall back on, I'm pretty much at the mercy of Rhapsody, which seems to be especially slow and spotty with reissues. Plus I have trouble digging up the necessary research on the web -- Google has transformed itself from a fast search engine to not much more than a shopping guide -- and it's painful to block out time for digesting marginal multi-artist and/or multi-disc sets -- the majors are all into "deluxe editions" of albums that never were all that significant in the first place.

Note ACN this month. Just list building, but given the shortfall up top, thought you might have some spare change. I actually started compiling the list with Sonny Rollins, which has three essential sets: G-Man is as hot as Rollins ever got, and that's saying something; This Is What I Do is a complete masterpiece; and Silver City pulls one cut from each of Rollins' Milestone albums -- Gary Giddins picked the list for a Village Voice article arguing as much, and Fantasy decided they couldn't improve on his list for a 25th anniversary double.

Tony Allen: Secret Agent (2009 [2010], World Circuit/Nonesuch): Despite a dozen albums under his own name going back to 1975, Allen always has been and always will be known as Fela Kuti's drummer. Making Fela-formula albums just surrenders to the inevitable, which isn't such a bad thing. Thirteen years after the master's death Kuti's advantages in vocals, sax, and the rigor of his political rants has thinned out a bit, and Allen has as much right as Fred Wesley or Maceo Parker. B+(***)

Arild Andersen: Green in Blue: Early Quartets (1975-78 [2010], ECM, 3CD): Norwegian bassist, one of several now-prominent musicians spawned by George Russell and Don Cherry during their late 1960s move to Scandinavia. Has a dozen-plus albums under his own name, the first three returned to print here. These are all sax-piano-bass-drums quartets, with flush flowing rhythms that highlight the leader's bass. Pål Thowsen is on drums on all three. The debut album, Clouds in My Head, features Kurt Riisnaes on tenor sax, soprano sax, and flute, with Jon Balke on piano. Balke would have been close to 20 at the time, but he already has a tough approach, and makes a much stronger impression than Lars Jansson, who replaced him on the other two albums. Riisnaes is superb throughout, but was also replaced on the later albums, Shimri and Green Shading Into Blue, by Juhani Aaltonen, who is riveting on tenor sax but plays a lot more flute, an instrument that he gives a dry, cerebral tone -- fascinating as such things go, but it's still flute, and it shifts the records toward the airy side -- Shimri has a slight edge of joyous discovery, but the two are very closely matched. B+(***)

The Apples in Stereo: #1 Hits Explosion (1995-2007 [2009], Yep Roc): Colorado group led by Robert Schneider, appeared in 1995 with a Beatles-ish multilayered pop sound and cashed in with this best-of after six albums. The sound is pretty much everything with them, suggested as much by such early album titles as Fun Trick Noisemaker, Tone Soul Evolution, and Her Wallpaper Reverie. I don't think any of these songs were actually hits, let alone #1s, and I'm not even sure they're best-ofs, but it's as good an introduction as any of their albums, especially the early ones where the sonic effects predominate. A- [R]

Chick Corea: Solo Piano: Improvisations/Children's Songs (1971-83 [2010], ECM, 3CD): Three solo piano albums find Corea in an exploratory mood. The first two came from a 1971 session, when Corea was working with Miles Davis on the one hand and Anthony Braxton on the other, before he took off on Return to Forever. Aside from pieces by Monk and Shorter on Vol. 2, everything was improvised, with the melodies on Vol. 1 especially charming. Children's Songs came twelve years later, all improvised, nothing childish about it other than that he tries working from elements. Final cut adds violin and cello, a nice little piece of chamber jazz. B+(*)

Art Pepper: Unreleased Art, Vol. V: Stuttgart May 25, 1981 (1981 [2010], Widow's Taste, 2CD): Cut about a year before his death, on a European tour that has already yielded two superb doubles -- Unreleased Art, Vol. III: The Croydon Concert eleven days earlier, and Art Pepper With Duke Jordan in Copenhagen 1981 eight days later. This is the same quartet that played Croydon -- Milcho Leviev on piano, Bob Magnusson on bass, Carl Burnett on bass -- even rougher and rowdier, with Leviev especially hot, and Pepper rising to characteristic heights at least three times: a magnificent "Landscape," an "Over the Rainbow" that he deconstructs so severely he finds new twists after thirty years, and a red hot "Cherokee." You certainly don't need every live tape they can scrape up, but they all seem to add something. He was more alive in the year of his death than you'll ever be. A-

Gabor Szabo: Jazz Raga (1966 [2010], Light in the Attic): Hungarian guitarist, plied every angle he could think of to break in including this Indian nod, with titles like "Krishna," "Ravi" (for Shankar), and "Raga Doll." He gets a lot of twang and a heavy whiff of late-'60s incense from his overdubbed sitar, especially on covers that help date it: "Caravan," "Summertime," and (thanks to Brian Jones) "Paint It Black." Reissued with old artwork and one of the best (and at 36 pages largest) booklets I've seen in recent reissues -- the label thinks this amusing period piece is a gem. B+(**)

Briefly Noted

The Apples in Stereo: Electronic Projects for Musicians (1995-2007 [2008], Yep Roc): B-sides, bonus cuts, outtakes, promo fluff, a couple of previously unreleaseds including "Stephen Stephen" from The Colbert Report; since their obsession is sonic, not much differs here from their primo product. B+(***) [R]

Larry Coryell: Prime Picks: The Virtuoso Guitar or Larry Coryell (1998-2003 [2010], High Note): Back in the late 1960s the great American hope for jazz-rock fusion guitar, he was always too subtle but aged gracefully; a random sampler from five fin de siècle albums, best when focusing on the guitar, as silvery as his hair. B+(*)

Richard Bona: The Ten Shades of Blues (2009 [2010], Decca): Electric bassist-vocalist from Cameroon branches out, finding blues on nearly every continent, mildly spiced with banjo and sitar, harmonica and fiddle, Fula flute and Afrobeat drums, and a New York horn section. B+(**)

Benton Flippen: Old Time, New Times (1970s-93 [1994], Rounder): Old-time fiddler from North Carolina, born 1920, hung around long enough the archaeologists finally got around to recording him, picking up scattered radio shots and a 1993 studio session; plays some banjo, sings some, makes the impression you'd hope for at each. B+(***) [R]

Mick Goodrick: In Pas(s)ing (1978 [2001], ECM): American jazz guitarist, influenced Pat Metheny and taught John Scofield and Bill Frisell; not many records, but this one develops clean, crystal clear lines, impressive enough but John Surman juggles three reeds -- bass clarinet, baritone sax, soprano sax -- in a tour de force. A- [R]

Kinito Méndez: Exitos de Kinito Méndez (1995-2005 [2005], J&N): Dominican merengue arranger-producer (vocalist?), born 1963, got his start young and worked is way through Cocoband and Rockabanda before going solo in 1995 with "Cachamba," presumably the first cut here -- don't know much more; the hits are pure formula, popping horns, romping basslines, chomping choruses, everything not just upbeat but riotously so. A- [R]

Carmen Souza: Protegid (2010, Galileo Music): Cape Verdean singer stretches out in heterodox directions, with jerky Afro-Cuban rhythms, psychedelic tropicalia, and sometimes spoken dramaturgy where I expect to recognize some German words buried in the Portuguese, or maybe I'm grasping at straws; in any case, different in ways I still find weird. B+(*)

Gabor Szabo: Gypsy '66 (1965 [1966], Impulse): The Hungarian guitarist's debut album, you can imagine the machinations -- why not do a gypsy guitar album, like Django but, you know, more modern, like with today's pop hits (you know, Lennon-McCartney, Bacharach-David), and hey, why not let Gary McFarland arrange and, like, play his marimba, and say, we can work Sadao Watanabe's flute in there somewhere? -- the word you're looking for it kitsch; the album would have been much better had Szabo stretched his original "Gypsy Jam" to 35 minutes and lost the rest. B- [R]

Additional Consumer News

I've been scrounging through the clearance section at oldies.com, mostly looking for deals on the house Collectables label -- they shovel a lot of quick and dirty reissues out, including some hard to find gems -- but I'm also seeing other labels' cutouts, especially jazz that Fantasy assiduously collected and Concord is actively dumping (although they also seem to have a knack for dumping their own releases, especially the rare good ones).

I've collected a more/less recommended list below -- everything rated A- or better, mostly (but not always) same edition. I've included recording dates and label from my database, but check the website for details on what they're selling. I skipped anything that didn't strike me as much of a deal (e.g., anything less than 25% off). I made note of their prices, but check that too -- some titles are available in multiple editions so I usually picked the lower price. This is mostly accurate as of July 6, but I can't guarantee anything.

• Nat Adderley: Work Song (1960, OJC) A- $5.98
• Geri Allen: The Life of a Song (2004, Telarc) A- $5.98
• Gene Ammons: A Stranger in Town (1961-70, Prestige) A- $5.98
• Gene Ammons: Fine and Mellow (1972, Prestige) A $5.98
• Laurie Anderson: Big Science (1982, Nonesuch) A- $7.95
• Louis Armstrong and King Oliver (1923-24, Milestone) A- $5.98
• Chet Baker: Riverside Profiles (1958-59, Riverside) A- $6.98
• Bob Berg: Another Standard (1997, Stretch) A- $5.98
• Benny Carter: The King (1976, Pablo) A- $6.98
• Creedence Clearwater Revival: Willie and the Poor Boys (1969, Fantasy) A $6.95
• Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis: Very Saxy (1959, OJC) A $5.98
• Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis: The Best of Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis (1958-62, Prestige) A- $5.98
• Bill Doggett: The Very Best of Bill Doggett: Honky Tonk (1954-59, Collectables) A- $9.93
• Eric Dolphy: Prestige Profiles (1960-61, Prestige) A- $7.98
• Booker Ervin: The Freedom Book (1963, Prestige) A- $5.98
• John Fahey: The Best of John Fahey, Vol. 2 (1964-83, Takoma) A- $5.98
• Lefty Frizzell: Country Favorites/Saginaw Michigan (1951-64, Collectables) A- $8.76
• Garage a Trois: Outre Mer (2005, Telarc) A- $5.98
• Coleman Hawkins: The Hawk Flies High (1957, OJC) A- $5.98
• Coleman Hawkins: With the Red Garland Trio (1959, OJC) A- $5.98
• Coleman Hawkins: At Ease With Coleman Hawkins (1960, OJC) A- $5.98
• Coleman Hawkins: Prestige Profiles (1958-62, Prestige) A- $6.98
• Jimmy Heath: Really Big (1960, OJC) A- $5.98
• Joe Henderson: Milestone Profiles (1967-75, Milestone) A- $6.98
• Elmore James: The Complete Fire and Enjoy Recordings (1959-63, Collectables, 3CD) A- $13.48
• Keith Jarrett: El Juicio/Life Between the Exit Signs (1967-71, Collectables) A- $8.76
• Budd Johnson: Budd Johnson and the Four Brass Giants (1960, OJC) A- $6.98
• Shelly Manne: The Best of Shelly Manne (1953-61, Contemporary) A- $5.98
• Jackie McLean: Prestige Profiles (1956-57, Prestige) A- $6.98
• Marian McPartland: Plays the Benny Carter Songbook (1990, Concord) A $5.98
• Blue Mitchell: Blue Soul (1959, OJC) A- $5.98
• Thelonious Monk: Riverside Profiles (1955-59, Riverside) A- $7.98
• Thelonious Monk: The Best of Thelonious Monk (1955-61, Riverside) A- $5.98
• Maria Muldaur: Heart of Mine: Love Songs of Bob Dylan (2006, Telarc) A- $5.98
• Randy Newman: Good Old Boys (1974, Reprise) A $5.98
• Walter Norris: Hues of Blues (1995, Concord) A- $6.98
• O.M.D. [Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark]: Best of O.M.D. (1979-88, A&M) A- $4.50
• Ozomatli: Street Signs (2004, Concord) A- $4.95
• Eddie Palmieri: Ritmo Caliente (2004, Concord) A- $5.98
• Art Pepper: The Best of Art Pepper (1957-80, Contemporary) A- $5.98
• Pet Shop Boys: Introspective (1988, EMI) A $5.37
• Wilson Pickett: The Definitive Collection (1961-71, Atlantic/Rhino, 2CD) A $11.95
• Bud Powell: Parisian Thoroughfares (1957-61, Pablo) A- $6.98
• Bud Powell: Paris Sessions (1957-64, Pablo) A- $5.98
• Lou Reed: Animal Serenade (2004, Sire/Reprise, 2CD) A- $7.95
• Sonny Rollins: Rollins Plays for Bird (1956, OJC) A- $5.98
• Sonny Rollins: Prestige Profiles (1951-56, Prestige) A- $6.98
• Sonny Rollins: Sunny Days, Starry Nights (1984, Milestone) A- $5.98
• Sonny Rollins: G-Man (1986, Milestone) A+ $5.98
• Sonny Rollins: Silver City (1972-95, Milestone, 2CD) A+ $10.98
• Sonny Rollins: Plus Three (1996, Milestone) A- $5.98
• Sonny Rollins: This Is What I Do (2000, Milestone) A $5.98
• Sonny Rollins: Without a Song (The 9/11 Concert) (2001, Milestone) A-
• Sonny Rollins: Milestone Profiles (1972-2001, Milestone) A- $5.98
• Jimmy Rushing: Cat Meets Chick/The Jazz Odyssey of James Rushing Esq. (1955-56, Collectables) A $8.76
• Jimmy Rushing: Five Feet of Soul (1963, Collectables) A- $3.58
• George Russell: Ezz-Thetics (1961, OJC) A- $5.98
• Art Tatum: The Tatum Group Masterpieces, Vol. 3 (1955, Pablo) A- $5.98
• Television: Marquee Moon (1977, Elektra/Rhino) A $8.95
• Roseanne Vitro: Catchin' Some Rays (1997, Telarc) A- $5.98
• Mal Waldron: Soul Eyes: The Mal Waldron Memorial Album (1955-62, Prestige) A- $5.98
• Wilbur Ware: The Chicago Sound (1957, OJC) A- $5.98
• [various artists]: Creole Kings of New Orleans (1950-58, Specialty) A $5.98

Also collected a list of a few things that I don't have in my database, although they are similar to records I think highly of, and may (note lack of certainty) be perfectly good substitutes.

• Ruth Brown: The Definitive Soul Collection (1949-60, Rhino, 2CD) $11.95; cf. Miss Rhythm: Greatest Hits and More (1949-60, Atlantic, 2CD) A
• Chic: The Definitive Groove Collection (Rhino, 2CD) $11.95; cf. The Best of Chic (Atlantic) A, and The Best of Chic, Volume 2 (Atlantic) A-
• Duke Ellington: Sir Duke: The Classic Victor Recordings 1940-1942 (Sugarbeat, 3CD) $10.95; cf. The Blanton-Webster Band (1939-42, RCA, 3CD) A, or Never No Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band (1940-42, Bluebird, 3CD) A+
• Dizzy Gillespie: Shaw 'Nuff (Collectables) $6.98; cf. Shaw 'Nuff (1945-46, Musicraft) A
• Rahsaan Roland Kirk & Al Hibbler: A Meeting of the Times / Ornette Coleman: Ornette! (Collectables) $8.76; cf. Rahsaan Roland Kirk/Al Hibbler: A Meeting of the Times (1966-72, Warner Jazz) A; Ornette Coleman: Ornette! (1961, Atlantic) A-
• Little Richard: The Essential Little Richard (Specialty) $6.98; cf. The Georgia Peach (1955-57, Specialty) A
• Percy Sledge: It Tears Me Up: The Best of Percy Sledge (Rhino) $7.95; cf. The Ultimate Collection (1966-69, Atlantic) A

That's about the best I can do. Collectables has a few specialty niches where they offer a lot more detail and I've ever bothered with: especially 1950s doo-wop, but also pre-rock pop vocals (Doris Day, Patti Page, Perry Como) and schmaltz (Ray Conniff, Percy Faith), 1960s pop-rock (Sam the Sham, Peter and Gordon). Their jazz selections are scattered (except for access to Atlantic's catalog), and they have a few interesting blues titles (especially a lot of early Lightnin' Hopkins). On the other hand, there's little consistency in their product: they tend to take whatever they find and just slap their logo on it. (For instance, Dion's Runaround Sue: His Greatest Hits on Laurie Records still has just 10 songs, even though he (with or without the Belmonts) charted 28 songs for the label. It would never occur to them to add more, although it they got rights to a better comp they'd happily reissue it.)

Legend: B+ records are divided into three levels, where more * is better. [R] indicates record was reviewed using a stream from Rhapsody. The biggest caveat there is that the packaging and documentation hasn't been inspected or considered.

For this column and the previous 74, see the archive.

Early in the cycle, and near the turn of the month I got a bit distracted with Recycled Goods and Rhapsody, both forthcoming this week. Put a couple records back for further listening. I used to do that quite often, but cut way down over the last year given the need to hack through the backlog. Checked out a couple of records using Rhapsody -- I imagine I could chase down the Regina Carter, but feel less compelled to do so now.

Bona: The Ten Shades of Blues (2009 [2010], Decca): No indication of first name on cover, but he's generally gone as Richard Bona. Born 1967 in Cameroon, moved to Germany, France, New York; main instrument is electric bass, although he's also credited with guitars, keyboards, drums, percussions, and samples here, and he sings on all tracks. Has eight (or more) albums since 1999. The blues concept here makes for a grand tour of world music, with various combinations of Indian, African, European, and American musicians, including bits of Bailo Baa fula flute, Niladari Kumar sitar, Jojo Kuah drums, Gregoire Maret harmonica, Jean Michel Pilc piano, Christian Howes violin, Ryan Cavanaugh banjo, and Bob Reynolds sax. Mildly spiced, gently groveful. B+(**)

Jason Moran: Ten (2010, Blue Note): Pianist, b. 1975, grew up in Houston, studied at Manhattan School of Music with Jaki Byard, also hooking up with Muhal Richard Abrams and Andrew Hill. Signed out of college by Blue Note, his first album appearing on a major label in 1999, making him an instant rising star. For a while it seemed like he could do nothing wrong: his first four albums made my A-list, and I can't offhand tell you if any other jazz pianist has ever done that. Fifth one was live, an understanable slip, but his next couple were merely good, and this one (which I count as his eighth) comes nearly four years after the last. Not clear where the title comes from, but it looks like a summing up: covers of Monk and Byard, Bernstein and Nancarrow, a joint credit with Hill. I've played this 6-8 times, maybe more, but haven't quite gotten into it. The last two cuts (Byard's "To Bob Vatel of Paris" and Moran's own "Old Babies") are fairly wonderful with hints of stride, and there is a lot of fancy stuff up front and thought in the middle -- impressive stuff, no doubt. Wonder why I don't like it more. B+(***)

Sunny Jain: Taboo (2010, Bju'ecords): Drummer, also plays dhol, Indian-American, b. New York, parents Punjabi immigrants. Group includes Mary Cary on piano, Nir Felder on guitar, and Gary Wang on bass, with assorted vocalists on 6 of 7 songs. Compositions based on Indian ragas but don't sound all that Indian. Project "started through a desire and a sense of obligation to use my music as a platform to address social justice issues," which sounds noble and may be worth exploring but I haven't been able to latch on to much in three plays, and feel like moving on. B

The Stryker/Slagle Band: Keeper (2010, Panorama): Guitarist Dave Stryker, b. 1957 in Omaha, NE; has a couple dozen albums since 1989, mostly on Denmark's Steeplechase, a fairly mainstream label that kept Dexter Gordon's career moving during his years in exile (Duke Jordan, too, and Jackie McLean, only in virtual exile). Steve Slagle, b. 1951 in Los Angeles, has a similar career, less prolific, more of a sideman; worked with Steve Kuhn in late 1970s, Carla Bley in early 1980s, Mingus Big Band, and bumped into Stryker on the latter's first (1991) Steeplechase album, Passage, and frequently thereafter, consolidating their business in 2003, and releasing respectable product ever since. With Jay Anderson on bass and Victor Lewis on drums, high calibre journeymen. Still, through several plays it keeps growing on me, mainstream postbop burnished up with Slagle's blues tone -- even the two soprano features fit in seamlessly. A-

John Stein/Ron Gill: Turn Up the Quiet (2009 [2010], Whaling City Sound): Stein is a guitarist, from Kansas City, MO, not sure how old but he's pretty thin on top; ninth album since 1995. Has a light, elegant style, not much evident here where he winds up playing a lot of bass. Gill is a singer, from North Carolina, based in Massachusetts, with one previous album, although like Stein I'd guess he's probably in his 50s. Billy Eckstein-type voice, but smokier. Draws songs from Victor Young, Sammy Cahn, Bart Howard, one each from Ellington and Strayhorn, two Brazilian pieces (neither Jobim), a short Stevie Wonder medley. "Detour Ahead" is especially striking. Uncredited on the front cover is pianist Gilad Barkan, who fills his unsung role admirably. B+(**)

Mirio Cosottini/Andrea Melani/Tonino Miano/Alessio Pisani: Cardinal (2009, Grimedia Impressus): This will take a while to sort out. Impressus Records is Miano's label. I added this to my "wish list" after Stef Gijssels reviewed it favorably. Miano noticed and offered to send a copy. GRIM is an acronym for Music Improvisation Research Group (or a reverse acronym for the English translation). Not clear what that means or who is involved -- can't access the website listed in the inset. Cardinal could be the group name, album title, or both. Impressus has four records, the first three Miano duos. Miano plays piano. I assume he's Italian ("obtained a degree in musicology from the University of Bologna with a thesis on J. Cage" [1993]), but he's based in New York, where he's pursued a physics degree. Cosottini plays trumpet, graduated Academy of Music of Florence (1992), played in the first of Miano's duos, also in EAQuartet. Pisani plays bassoon and contrabassoon. His website has some lovely astronomical photos and a tantalizing series on assembling a 14-inch telescope. Melani plays drums; is based in Prato, Italy. Enigmatic music. The bassoon tends to slow things down and fade into atmospherics. Otherwise, with trumpet leading you get something like Chicago Underground; with bassoon, more of a chamber jazz effect. B+(***)

Phil Wilson/Makoto Ozone: Live!! At the Berklee Performance Center (1982 [2010], Capri): Wilson, b. 1937, plays trombone; studied at New England Conservatory and the Navy School of Music; played in big bands with Herb Pomeroy, the Dorsey Brothers, Woody Herman, and Buddy Rich; taught at Berklee from 1966; has a spotty recording career which adds up to a couple dozen albums. Ozone, b. 1961 in Kobe, Japan, is a pianist, studied at Berklee, returned to Japan in 1983, where he is evidently a big deal. He also has a couple dozen albums, of which this is one of the first. I haven't heard any others, although I have an advance of a new album on Verve somewhere. Standards, ranging from "Stella by Starlight" to "Giant Steps" played with an amusing crudeness -- actually, it's just Wilson who sounds crude, a badge of merit from trombonists. B+(*)

Bryan and the Haggards: Pretend It's the End of the World (2010, Hot Cup): Bryan Murray, tenor saxophinist, from WV, now in NY, natch, hooking up with bebop terrorists Jon Irabagon (alto sax) and Moppa Elliott (bass) and fellow travelers Jon Lundbom (guitar) and Danny Fischer (drums), playing four Merle Haggard originals and three more from Hag's songbook. "Silver Wings" is done bebop-style, with the straight theme followed by working the changes, but it gets trickier after that, especially with the Ornette-ish "Lonesome Fugitive." Then someone uncredited goes Bob Wills on "All of Me Belongs to You," leading into a comic scat over bass and drums. Then there is the closer, "Trouble in Mind," done as ear-splitting dirge, channeling the ghost of Rashied Ali on drums. Not sure whether this is just an inspired joke or something more, and if the former not sure we don't need more inspired jokes. But I do want to note something in Leonardo Featherweight's liner notes, a story I hadn't heard: "During the performance, [Lefty] Frizzell noticed Haggard singing along with his songs and invited him up on stage to sit in with the band. The crowd's appreciation of his brief performance convinced him that music was to be an important part of his life, and perhaps his career." Reminds me that hardly anyone earns his ticket but for the grace of someone who has gone before. [A-]

The Britton Brothers Band: Uncertain Living (2009 [2010], Record Craft): John Britton plays trumpet; Ben Britton tenor sax. Also on hand: Jeremy Siskind on piano, Taylor Waugh on bass, Austin Walker on drums. First album. The brothers wrote three tracks each, plus one by Siskind. Name recalls the Brecker Brothers, but they are more into aggressive postbop and less into skunk funk. Chris Potter guests on two tracks, and turns it up a notch. B+(*)

Ike Sturm: Jazzmass (2009, Ike Sturm): Bassist, b. 1978, based in New York, holds a title as "Assistant Director of Music for the Jazz Ministry at Saint Peter's Church in Manhattan." One previous album. I've been avoiding this because, well, you see the title. No false advertising there. Misty Ann Sturm sings, best on the pure hymns, with choir and string orchestra backing, all of which I could do without. The horns are something else: Ingrid Jensen on trumpet/flugelhorn, Loren Stillman on alto sax, and Donny McCaslin on tenor. There are better places to hear them, but they're in form even here. B-

Bill Carrothers: Joy Spring (2009 [2010], Pirouet): Pianist, b. 1964 in Minneapolis; fourteenth album since 1999 according to AMG, but they really mean 1992, and they've only rated three, and haven't bothered with a bio. So while I was tempted to say that he's one of those guys with a sterling rep that I haven't managed to appreciate, probably because I just don't seem to hear piano trios all that clearly -- Walter Norris, Harold Danko, Marc Copland are other names that pop into my head -- he probably isn't well enough known for that. (And actually I did love his 2005 album Shine Ball, but that was goosed up with prepared piano, which I've been a sucker for ever since I first heard David Tudor playing John Cage.) This is a trio, with Drew Gress on piano and Bill Stewart on drums -- names that could someday rival Peacock-De Johnette or (in my mind) Johnson-Baron. Mostly Clifford Brown songs, like the title track, plus three from Richie Powell, one each from Duke Jordan and Victor Young, and, of course, Benny Golson's "I Remember Clifford." Interesting idea I don't understand well enough, and don't feel like digging into right now. Will play it again. [B+(***)]

John Skillman's Barb City Stompers: DeKalb Blues (2009 [2010], Delmark): Trad jazz band, based in DeKalb, IL ("the birthplace of barbed wire"), led by a clarinetist who played in the Buck Creek Jazz Band for 32 years, but also owns and runs an engineering firm in DeKalb. Featuring credit for trombonist Roy Rubinstein, a 30-year veteran of "the New Orleans style Chicago Hot Six," whose day job is Assistant Director at Fermilab in Batavia, IL. Also with Larry Rutan on guitar (a QA manager), Roger Hintzsche on bass (runs a fertilizer business), and Aaron Puckett on drums (teaches high school). First album, mostly pre-swing although it's hard to keep stuff that old pure, and also hard to resist a Fats Waller song. Starst with "Millenberg Joys"; ends with "My Old Kentucky Home"; Diana Skillman drops in to sing "Yes Sir! That's My Baby." Corny, easy to see why they stick with it even when the bread's got to come from somewhere else. B+(***)

Stephan Crump with Rosetta Trio: Reclamation (2009 [2010], Sunnyside): Bassist, from Memphis, mother "an amateur pianist from Paris," father "an architect and jazz drummer"; studied at Amherst, based in New York, plays in Vijay Iyer's piano trio. Fourth album since 1997; third was called Rosetta with same lineup here, the bass flanked by guitarists Liberty Ellman and Jamie Fox. Seems slight at first, the guitars tuned down to adorn the bass, a balance that lets you enter the framework. Didn't get much out of the previous record, but this one draws me in every time. A-

James Moody: 4B (2008 [2010], IPO): One of the most popular bebop saxophonists to emerge in the early 1950s, both through his long association with Dizzy Gillespie and through a few fluke hits of his own, and one of the last standing. This follows up on last year's 4A, more standards from the same sessions, the "4" referring to a quartet with Kenny Barron, Todd Coolman, and Lewis Nash. Straightforward, beautiful tone, swings through "Take the A Train," doesn't cut up the Tadd Dameron and Benny Golson pieces, backup is impeccable, and he leaves his flute in the case. One to remember him by, but it's still a bit early for that. Looks like this includes a label sampler, which with its Roland Hanna and Roger Kellaway piano and Tad Jones tribute band (One More) should make for fine dinner background. B+(***) [Aug. 25]

Johnny Griffin: Live at Ronnie Scott's (2008 [2010], In+Out): Recorded May 26-27 in London, about two months before Griffin died on July 25, 2008, so perhaps the tenor sax great's last record. Sounds rather fit, although he's often overpowered by Roy Hargrove's trumpet, which in classic Griffin form provides much of the energy level. With Billy Cobham on drums, David Newton (mostly) on piano, with Paul Kuhn dropping in for "How Deep Is the Ocean" and presumably taking the uncredited vocal. B+(**)

An Excellent Adventure: The Very Best of Al Jarreau (1975-2004 [2009], Rhino): Originally slotted as a jazz singer because he scatted a little and tackled a couple of Dave Brubeck-Paul Desmond odd-time experiments, Jarreau cut a dozen 1975-94 albums for Warners, grabbing popular and critical acclaim, including Grammys in pop and R&B as well as jazz while never really fitting anywhere. I find his "Blue Rondo a la Turk" one of the more hideous pieces of vocalese ever recorded, and "Boogie Down" one of the lamer exercises in rote disco. That leaves a couple of decent R&B songs like "We're in This Love Together" in a compilation that proves Gödels Theorem: like math, he's a system that cannot both be complete and consistent. B-

Carrie Wicks: I'll Get Around to It (2009 [2010], OA2): Singer, based in Seattle area, first album, backed by label regulars including Hans Teuber on tenor sax and clarinet, Bill Anschell on piano, and Jeff Johnson on bass. Standards, mostly from 1940s with Elvis Costello's "Almost Blue" an outlier and a co-credited original from 2008. Samba-fied medley of "Moonlight in Vermont" and "No Moon at All" and a "Baby, Get Lost" among the highlights. 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.

Sounds of Liberation (1972 [2010], Porter): Philadelphia group, very much of the black power moment when shards of avant-sax clashed with funky conga rhythms, merging into something far out but not inaccessible. Byard Lancaster is the saxophonist in a septet with guitar, bass, and four percussionists counting vibraphonist Khan Jamal, the founder and best known member of the one-album group. A- [Rhapsody]

Evan Parker: House Full of Floors (2009, Tzadik): Mostly trio with John Russell on guitar and John Edwards on bass, Parker playing both soprano and tenor sax, scratchy and patchy on both, with most of the muscle coming out of the bass. Aleks Kolkowski joins in on three tracks, playing stroh viola, saw, and wax cylinder recorder, respectively. I take this for easy listening background music, but you probably don't. B+(*) [Rhapsody]

Regina Carter: Reverse Thread (2010, E1 Entertainment): Violinist, got a major label break when cousin James Carter was on Atlantic, and proved popular enough to stick in the big leagues, even winning a MacArthur "genius grant." This troll through Afropop may be a genius concept but it's no genius execution. A lot of sawing on top of guitar (Adam Rogers) or kora (Yacouba Sissoko), accordion (Will Holshouser or Gary Versace), bass (Chris Lightcap or Mamadou Ba), and drums (Alvester Garnett), does develop some rhythmic roll, but seems to come from neither here nor there. Might get better with more exposure, or might seem even more misaprised. B+(*) [Rhapsody]

No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further listening the first time around.

Unpacking: Found in the mail this week:

• Billy Bang: Prayer for Peace (Tum)
• Chris Colangelo: Elaine's Song (C Note): Sept. 2
• Commitment: The Complete Recordings 1981/1983 (1982-83, No Business, 2CD): William Parker, Jason Kao Hwang, Will Connell Jr, Zen Matsuura; Sept. 1
• Conference Call: What About . . . ? (Not Two, 2CD): Gebhard Ullmann, Michael Jefry Stevens, Joe Fonda, George Schuller
• Fred Hirsch Trio: Whirl (Palmetto)
• Vijay Iyer: Solo (ACT): advance, Aug. 31
• Hilary Kole: You Are There (Justin Time): Aug. 10
• Elisabeth Lohninger: Songs of Love and Destruction (Lofish Music)
• Metropole Orkest/John Scofield/Vince Mendoza: 54 (Emarcy): Aug. 24
• Portico Quartet: Isla (Real World): advance, Aug. 31
• Puttin' On the Ritz: White Light/White Heat (Hot Cup): advance, July 13
• Adam Schroeder: A Handful of Stars (Capri)
• Benny Sharoni: Eternal Elixir (Papaya)
• Sándor Szabó/Kevin Kastning: Returning (Greydisc): July 27

Stage right is today's Fourth of July editorial cartoon from Richard Crowson in The Wichita Eagle. Wish I had a larger image to share, but the Eagle doesn't seem to be much good at writing Javascript. The signature dog to the lower left is saying, "Is this a revenge thing, BP?"

Actually, I wonder how many Americans recall that the War for Independence (and for that matter the War of 1812) was fought against Great Britain -- let alone that Afghanistan fought its own War for Independence against the British, at least three times in the 19th century, and serially over the last 30 years against Russia and the United States -- with Britain, recapitulating centuries of bad habits, once again sending troops without even the pretense of empire for an excuse.

Independence from colonial rule is a powerful idea, one that was proclaimed on July 4, 1776, and has reverberated throughout the world ever since -- even in Gaza one might find Thomas Jefferson's words inspirational. However, they are words given scant lip service in America for quite a while now. We snatched Independence away from Cuba and the Philippines in 1898, setting up direct rule in the latter and sending massive troops in to beat down a revolt that continues to this day -- despite the end of colonial rule in 1946 but possibly because we still have troops stationed there. In Cuba we set up a crony regime that protected our business interests until thrown out by Castro's revolution, an offense we protract by sanctions meant to keep Cuba isolated and poor.

One thing that especially strikes me looking back to 1776 from the present day is that the people we call the Founding Fathers all believed in the idea of a public interest, and in forging a constitutional republic were willing to subject their individual private interests to the will of the public. That's a notion that we scarcely even give lip service to anymore. Washington, and for that matter every state house and most city halls, is swarming with interest group lobbies, dedicated to the Adam Smith conceit that if everyone pursues their own private interest it will all work out in the end. (Smith, an enlightenment figure whose landmark The Wealth of Nations is the other thing 1776 is remembered for, most assuredly didn't think that in general, and his famous quote is dripping with irony.)

Crowson is surely wrong that BP's big blowout in the Gulf of Mexico is revenge for Independence. For one thing all that happened to long ago to carry over to BP's bottom line. For another, BP has enjoyed a lot more political clout, and has made a lot more money, in Washington since the 1950s than most American citizens have. BP was originally called the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company because most of their assets were in Iran, at least until Iran tried to nationalize them in the early 1950s. The US government has done a lot of favors for a lot of companies, but rarely have we stuck our necks out so far as we did in 1953, when the CIA orchestrated a coup in Iran to replace their democratic government with an absolute monarch and a brutal police state, starting an era of ill feelings between Iran and the US that persists today -- that is in fact why we fear Iran's nuclear power program may indeed turn into revenge. Looking the other way when BP violates hundreds of safety rules is a pretty small favor compared to overthrowing a country and launching a series of conflicts that 57 years later are presently tying down a couple hundred thousand US troops at an utter waste of trillions of dollars. Bad as the oil leak has been, it will be months or years before the disaster BP created in the Gulf will compare to the disaster BP created in the Middle East.

David Kocieniewski: As Oil Industry Fights a Tax, It Reaps Subsidies: When I was growing up, one of the hottest tax issues in the country was over the "oil depletion allowance," which was a rule that allowed the oil industry to pretend for tax purposes that when it pumped oil up from the ground it was losing money. This was a period when taxes in general were high for the rich and their businesses, so the tax savings awarded the oil industry produced some amazing distortions. In particular, it allowed oilmen to become fabulously rich -- the richest man in America at the time was J. Paul Getty, but he was followed by all sorts of Hunts and Rockefellers -- and that money turned them into political powers. And while oil industry moguls were utterly dependent on the state to favor them with laws that ensured their wealth, they gravitated almost without exception to the far right fringe of the political spectrum, bankrolling Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and the Bushes, the political powers who have turned this country upside down. The oil depletion allowance isn't so much of a deal now that most of America's oil has been pumped, but the oil moguls -- increasingly including corporations based abroad like BP -- have all sorts of new ways to cheat their taxes and accumulate money and power. This article details some:

When the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform set off the worst oil spill at sea in American history, it was flying the flag of the Marshall Islands. Registering there allowed the rig's owner to significantly reduce its American taxes.

The owner, Transocean, moved its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Cayman Islands in 1999 and then to Switzerland in 2008, maneuvers that also helped it avoid taxes.

At the same time, BP was reaping sizable tax benefits from leasing the rig. According to a letter sent in June to the Senate Finance Committee, the company used a tax break for the oil industry to write off 70 percent of the rent for Deepwater Horizon -- a deduction of more than $225,000 a day since the lease began.

With federal officials now considering a new tax on petroleum production to pay for the cleanup, the industry is fighting the measure, warning that it will lead to job losses and higher gasoline prices, as well as an increased dependence on foreign oil.

But an examination of the American tax code indicates that oil production is among the most heavily subsidized businesses, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process. [ . . . ]

And for many small and midsize oil companies, the tax on capital investments is so low that it is more than eliminated by various credits. These companies' returns on those investments are often higher after taxes than before.

Again, the thing that bothers me most about these tax breaks is that the profits wind up supporting such retrograde political forces.

Groping around for some background on a record, I stumbled across Derek Taylor's blog (started January 2010), Master of a Small House. Mostly an avant-jazz critic, mostly wrote for the late Bagatellen. I don't read a lot of jazz crit, but run across him now and then, and I've found his recent year-end lists to be reliable. Will add him to my rather select blog roll.

One piece of news I hadn't noticed is Bill Dixon's passing. Dixon made a big splash on Cecil Taylor's Conquistador! in 1966 -- on Blue Note, the last time that ever happened -- and went on to produce an erratic, narrowly admired discography, primarily on Soul Note until the last few years when he had something of a renaissance as a big band arranger. I've sampled his work lightly and never been a big fan, although what I heard of his recent Tapestries for Small Orchestra impressed me.

Mostly straight, rather detailed reviews, including a lot of records still in my inbox as well as some I should at least add to my wish list, and occasional old ones tagged ROW, for Record of the Week, a Bagetellen feature evidently meant to show off the more obscure reaches of one's collection. These often are not jazz, and strike me as worth looking into. From latest to earliest:

• Sonny Treadway: Jesus Will Fix It! (1997, Arhoolie): pedal steel gospel
• Prince Nico Mbarga: Aki Special (1987, Rounder): Nigerian highlife
• Warne Marsh: Warne Out (1977, Interplay)
• Quarteto Novo: Quarteto Novo (1967, Odean/EMI): Nordeste Brazilian jazz
• Benton Flippen: Old Time, New Times (1994, Rounder): country fiddle/banjo player
• Bud Isaacs: Bud's Bounce (1954-56, Bear Family): lap steel country
• Zoot Sims: Warm Tenor (1978, Pablo)
• Blind Uncle Gaspard/Delma Lachney/John Bertrand: Early American Cajun Music (1929, Yazoo)
• Sükrü Tunar: Sükrü Tunar (1907-1962) (Halan): Turkish clarinet
• R.L. Burnside: Mississippi Hill Country Blues (1982, Fat Possum)
• Kenny Wheeler/Lee Konitz/Dave Holland/Bill Frisell: Angel Song (1995, ECM)
• Patato & Totico (1968, Verve)
• Judee Sill: Judee Sill (1971, Rhino Handmade)
• Explorations by Teo Macero and Wally Cirillo (1955, Fresh Sound)
• Iron Maiden: Best of the Beast (EMI)
• Dewey Corley & Walter Miller: The George Mitchell Collection (1967, Fat Possum)
• Colombie: Le Vallenato (Ocora): Colombian vallenato
• The Staple Singers: Great Day (1962-64, Milestone)
• Joe Pass/Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen: Chops (1978, Pablo)
• Harvey Scales: Love-Itis (1966-77, Tuff City)
• Fred Zimmerle's Conjunto: Trio San Antonio (1974, Arhoolie)
• Joe Houston: Cornbread and Cabbage Greens (1952-56, Specialty): sax honk
• Deep River of Song: Alabama (1934-40, Rounder): Alan Lomax comp

I've only heard a few of these, and can't say I was much impressed with Chops and Angel Song or for that matter Early American Cajun Music, but Warm Tenor and the Joe Houston comp are finds, and the others at least look intriguing.

Laura Tillem had a letter in the Wichita Eagle Friday, under the title "War not answer":

CIA Director Leon Panetta suggested no one predicted the trouble the U.S. military would have in Afghanistan. President Obama said he doesn't have a crystal ball.

Well, I have a crystal ball, and it is called history. And many others consulted this crystal ball and saw exactly what would happen, which is exactly what has happened: More people have died, more money has been wasted, more land has been despoiled, more hatred of the United States has been created, more corruption has been funded, more prisoners have been taken, more profiteering corporations have gotten contracts, and more mindless fantasies of success have been spun.

Now more than ever, war is not the answer. War leads only to more war.

People should recall that the first thing that happened after 9/11, even before the CIA-led revenge fantasy in Afghanistan got off the ground, was that damn near everyone in politics and the media started attacking pacifists and war/empire skeptics. Panetta's "no one" is the result of pretending that anyone the least bit doubtful that the only recourse was to plunge into war and occupation of a country which over the previous 22 years had done nothing but fight wars to frustrate every possibility of legitimate government. Silencing anyone not on the war bandwagon was the quickest way to get the war on, and the powers that be were very effective at doing that.

So effective, in fact, that Obama has always taken great pains to prove that he's no pacifist. He couldn't criticize the war in Iraq without offering Afghanistan as "the right war," and that's why he's trapped there. Long time ago Noam Chomsky explained how the bipartisan foreign policy wonks "manufacture consent," but nowadays they don't even bother. They just ignore dissent, dismiss critics out of hand, pretend they can't even hear any criticism, then act surprised when their own pet wars run aground.

Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide. What makes this one different is the announcement that, "barring miracles," this is the last one Christgau will write, at least the last one MSN Music is paying for. That marks this as the end of several eras. Most simply, it ends a 41-year stretch of 421 mostly monthly columns reviewing close to 15,000 albums from 1969 through 2010. Christgau developed a mode of research and a style of writing that no one has seriously tried to compete with. For one thing, it takes an incredible amount of work. For another, it doesn't pay, at least compared to almost anything else you could do with the same time. It may have been cost-effective at the start as a way of salvaging something from albums played but not deemed worthy of longer reviews -- the first few columns read like tweets -- but Christgau gradually found his mission in the format: not just to cover pop music more broadly than anyone else but to branch out in search of similar pleasures from what he called semi-popular music and what most regarded as pure obscurities. He could do this at first because he edited the section in a paper that didn't tell him what to do, and in the long run he did it because that's who he became. In doing so, he's provided an invaluable service to broad-minded people willing to trust written words to guide them in the care and feeding of their ears.

The deeper point, I think, is timing. Christgau, b. 1942, just the right age to catch rock and roll (and only rock and roll, despite his fondness for Monk) from the beginning all the way through the present. Moreover, he started his career in the late 1960s just as rock criticism was growing out of its teen fandom phase. I'm just eight years younger, but the difference is such that there are Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly songs I first heard the Beatles and the Rolling Stones; when I discovered rock crit, Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy, and Creem were cranking, and Christgau, Paul Williams, and R. Meltzer already had books out. There were others in Christgau's generation but few stuck it out, let alone kept in front of virtually every interesting twist and turn of the last sixty years. Nobody writing about rock is ever going to have that same sense of the new again, because everyone born since Christgau has to catch up, and history is never quite the same as being there.

Then there is scope, which for a rock critic was still manageable in 1970 -- a voracious listener could pretty much be aware of everything and everyone -- but soon to spin out of control. (In 1976 Don Malcolm and I mapped this like the big bang under the title "Adventures in Diffusion.") The expansion of rock soon turned most critics in to specialists, but Christgau was unique in trying to keep wraps around the whole -- eventually he did start slicing off niches of disinterest, like metal, or vast size with only marginal interest, like jazz, but he still covers more range than anyone, and not just because his format lets him cover more records than anyone -- necessary but not sufficient. Any younger, let alone future, critic is going to be hard-pressed to get a sense of the whole.

Finally, there is the matter of money, which also had to do with timing. He could build a career doing journalism to weekly and monthly deadlines in a freewheeling alternative newspaper (The Village Voice) that was both local to New York and national in scope. (Living in Wichita, KS, I subscribed to the Voice and/or the New York Free Press as a late teenager.) Those publications are reeling now, blaming the web but also (as far as I can see) increasingly victims of their own corruption. Meanwhile, the new webzines make far less money (if any at all), pay far less for content (if any at all), and are more often than not on the slippery slope to uselessness. (Christgau frequently complains about this in his NAJP Blog.) The prospects of any young journalist putting together a career like Christgau's are vanishingly small.

Clearly, the collapsing business world with its incessant beggar thy neighbor scams has crashed down on Consumer Guide, and it's very unlikely to recover -- either with Christgau or with anyone else, since who else could do it let alone would do it? For a long time we managed to get tolerably decent content paid for on the side, mostly by advertising, but as businesses pinch pennies they find that what we will tolerate can be made cheaper and poorer until the point when it scarcely matters at all. Unless this turns around, we are surely headed for a dark age, not so much because the limits of specialist knowledge will shrink as because we are losing the media of communicating wisdom. We live in a society that is completely indifferent to wasting the vast resource of someone like Christgau for no better reason than that we don't have a mutually agreeable business model to support him. Nor is he alone; indeed, only now does he cease to be an exception.

One person commented that it sounded like Christgau is "burnt out" on Consumer Guide, but that's not my impression. He still enjoys doing Consumer Guide, but it sinks a lot of his time that could be used on other projects. He's taken a couple of breaks to research a big book on the whole history of music in popular culture, but never made much headway on writing it, and that's one thing he could do. He has had a couple of other shorter book ideas he's shopped around -- can't really explain them. I've lobbied that he should do a one-volume all-encompassing Consumer Guide book, which he hasn't found very appealing because it would going back and reviewing a lot of pre-1969 artists. Also, the Albums of the '90s book fared so poorly that he never got a serious offer on the '00s, so that, too, seems not cost-effective. But we haven't talked about this stuff in quite a while, so I'm pretty far out of the loop.

With no new Consumer Guides forthcoming, you might want to take another look at the old ones. I'm still missing the "capsules" from Newsday and/or their alternative Creem consolidations -- I don't have access to a library good enough to dig them up, and thus far no one has stepped forward to do the digging. I should get around to updating the website in the next week or so with the last four columns -- I've been rather lazy about them, and have had lots of distractions, but don't have a lot more to do.

You can also look at the versions in the decade books (see here). The mid-section reviews are pulled from the database, which has some extras omitted in the actual books, and there are quite a few corrections (see the corrigenda files). The same software could have been used to organize a Albums of the '00s draft, which in lieu of the book you can preview here.

Special bonus: top ten records I only found because Christgau found them first:

1. Michael Hurley/Unholy Modal Rounders/Jeffrey Frederick and the Clamtones: Have Moicy! (1976, Rounder)
2. African Connection, Vol. 1: Zaire Choc! (1988, Celluloid)
3. Culture: Two Sevens Clash (1977, Shanachie)
4. Franco & Tabu Ley Rochereau: Omona Wapi (1984, Shanachie)
5. Swamp Dogg: Total Destruction to Your Mind (1970, Canyon)
6. The Don Pullen-George Adams Quartet: Breakthrough (1986, Blue Note)
7. Big Youth: Screaming Target (1973, Trojan)
8. Buck 65: Man Overboard (2001, Metaforensics)
9. Hirth Martinez: Hirth From Earth (1975, Warner Bros.)
10. James Talley: Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love (1975, Capitol)

Through this together hastily, and no doubt missed much, but gives you a taste. Most likely I would have found Culture and Pullen sooner or later, Have Moicy! too, but the paths to them aren't obvious. Looking through the master list, there are a lot of other items that I in fact first discovered through Christgau but didn't include because there were other paths that would have kicked in sooner or later -- unless, that is, my brief affair with mid-1970s rock crit hadn't led to Christgau publishing me in The Village Voice and striking up a friendship that has lasted over 35 years and changed my life in many ways. It's been hard to write this without substituting "Bob" for "Christgau" everywhere, but he has always steered me the other way, arguing that formality better suits my voice. Besides, this isn't an obituary. It's just a column.

PS: I've previously written about some of this stuff here.

Also, I routinely forward mail sent to webmaster at robertchristgau.com. Have gotten a flurry of interesting mail recently.

PPS: Christgau issued his own comment here, including a comment reminding you all that it was MSN's decision to stop publishing Consumer Guide. Also links to an Ann Powers interview. Favorite line there: "People tend to abuse the grading privilege when they start out."

My 23rd Jazz Consumer Guide is in the Village Voice this week. Seems like ancient history here, given that the draft was done more than a month ago, and some reviews (e.g., Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra) have been languishing in the files for over a year. On the other hand, the distance helps me appreciate the results. As I read back through these short reviews, I find myself thinking, "wow, did I write that?" Editing helps, also concentration. I write so much off-the-cuff crap in Jazz Prospecting that I sometimes wonder if I can write at all -- at least write about music, a rather alien subject for mere words.

The other sensation I get from re-reading this is pleasure, as I recall the records -- many I haven't replayed since I wrote them up. That extends well down into the HMs: the top three are A-list but I cut them short for space, and while they decline slightly from there -- you can find better from Bergonzi, Ware, and Person, but not much better from Bowen. Tribecastan isn't as satisfying as the concept suggests, and Minasi doesn't quite live up to his title, but those are minor cavils. At that point, lots of other comparable records went into the surplus, so those may have survived because they were printworthy. While I'm unhappy with my Jazz Prospecting writing, it fills its functional role.

One good thing is that everything in the draft made it to print -- except, I think, for a couple words on Frisell that got rid of an extra line. So nothing more gets pushed back even further. The two pick hits, Stanko, the two duds, and a few HMs (Allison, Asherie, Bergonzi, Healey, Ibrahim, and Ware) are 2010 releases; the rest are 2009 (except carried over from 2008: Blink, New Jazz Composers Octet, and Stapp). So lead times remain long, but the music doesn't go away or depreciate (much), and the notion that everything that matters happens on release day is contemptible.

Next one is essentially done, although I'm still sorting through the incoming mail and have no idea where the pick hits and duds will fall -- just scads of good records deserving mention sooner or later.

Don't have all of the associated paperwork done yet, but I should post two links for context:

• Jazz Prospecting (23): All of the Jazz Prospecting notes that went into this round, 207 records from February 8 through May 31, plus a list of 125 records carried over from previous rounds.
• Jazz Surplus (23): The list of records I considered and decided not to review in Jazz CG, including 35 "consolation reviews" I posted a while back.

PS: Added cover images, lifted from the Voice scans, a bit larger than my normal source. Moved my working notes from the print/flush files into the notebook, which probably does you no good but makes it easier for me to search for them. (Better solutions are still on the drawing board.) Send out my "publicist's letter" -- if you didn't get one and think you should (i.e., if you send me music) email me and I'll add you to the list. (I do a very poor job of maintaining this list. Again, better solutions are on the drawing board. Also, if you're a fan and follow this site regularly, you really aren't missing anything not being on the list.) Updated the chronological index and the artist index files. The latter tells me that I've reviewed 820 records thus far. (The most commonly reviewed artist is Ken Vandermark with 16 records, 12 A-listed, although there are actually more since I'm only sorting by the first name -- you probably knew that already.)

Gail Collins: General McChrystal's Twitters. Satire, presumably, but rings true, especially in the casual dismissal of the writer: "In Paris with my Kabul posse -- Bluto, Otter, Boon, Pinto, Flounder. Plus some newbie. Guys call him Scribbles." "Team America is partying! Bluto's doing his impression of Joe Biden. Scribbles taped the whole thing -- get ready for laughs when we get home." "Scribbles wants to come, too. Told him only if he buys the next two cases."

Ray McGovern: Obama Misses the Afghan Exit Ramp. Opening lines: "Has it occurred to President Barack Obama that Gen. Stanley McChrystal might actually have wanted to be fired -- and, thus, rescued from the current march of folly in Afghanistan, a mess much of his own making?" I can't say as it occurred to me -- seems to me that McChrystal's nature is more like the one Gail Collins painted above, one that didn't take a Rolling Stone reporter seriously until the ink dried. If you want clandestine motives, it seems just as likely that Obama or someone close to him wanted McChrystal out of the way and told him it'd be good PR to plant an in-depth profile in a hip magazine. We'll know more when McChrystal, relieved of his command and now on his way to a comfy early retirement, writes his inevitable book. If he stays in character, he'll be whining about how folks back in Washington backstabbed him on the verge of success. On the other hand, he could write something actually interesting: about how clear the answers seemed back when he was scheming in the Pentagon, yet how impossible they turned out in the real Afghanistan.

The article has some other gaffes -- like speculation that Petraeus and/or Clinton might run against Obama if he falters as a hawk -- but the title is spot on, pointing out that Obama could have used this moment to start untangling us from Afghanistan, but instead used it to reiterate his failed policies and dashed hopes:

The likely results of the White House shuffle of generals are, in fact, dangerous. The change makes the prospects dimmer for Obama executing a rapid -- or even a measured -- withdrawal from Afghanistan beginning in July 2011, as some in his administration had hoped. And the president may not yet realize how scandalized his political base has been at his penchant for Bush-like policies, rather than change anyone can still believe in.

We've seen this already in how the huzzahs for Obama's embrace of Petraeus have almost invariably been accompanied by pleas to forget about the July 2011 withdrawal "start." Indeed, if he misses the next exit ramp, it seems likely that Obama will be running for reëlection in 2012, campaigning exclusively at VFW conventions and military bases, hounded by protesters kept at a safe distance -- pretty much a rerun of Bush in 2004, or LBJ in 1968.

Gareth Porter: Why Petraeus won't salvage this war. Well, because it's unsalvageable -- even Petraeus knows that, even if he can't say as much. Porter argues that Petraeus isn't inflexibly wedded to any strategy, and was willing to pull the plug on the Iraq Surge until he figured he could bluff his way politically. Also that he remains committed to one goal: salvaging his own reputation.

Andrew J Bacevich: Endless war, a recipe for four-star arrogance. Recalls America's traditional antipathy to standing armies and their corrosive effects on democracy, something which had seen axiomatic from George Washington to George Marshall. Yet now we have one, increasingly estranged from most of America:

For a time, the creation of this so-called all-volunteer force, only tenuously linked to American society, appeared to be a master stroke. Washington got superbly trained soldiers and Republicans and Democrats took turns putting them to work. The result, once the Cold War ended, was greater willingness to intervene abroad. As Americans followed news reports of U.S. troops going into action everywhere from the Persian Gulf to the Balkans, from the Caribbean to the Horn of Africa, they found little to complain about: The costs appeared negligible. Their role was simply to cheer.

This happy arrangement now shows signs of unraveling, a victim of what the Pentagon has all too appropriately been calling its Long War.

The Long War is not America's war. It belongs exclusively to "the troops," lashed to a treadmill that finds soldiers and Marines either serving in a combat zone or preparing to deploy.

To be an American soldier today is to serve a people who find nothing amiss in the prospect of armed conflict without end. Once begun, wars continue, persisting regardless of whether they receive public support. President Obama's insistence to the contrary notwithstanding, this nation is not even remotely "at" war. In explaining his decision to change commanders without changing course in Afghanistan, the president offered this rhetorical flourish: "Americans don't flinch in the face of difficult truths." In fact, when it comes to war, the American people avert their eyes from difficult truths. Largely unaffected by events in Afghanistan and Iraq and preoccupied with problems much closer to home, they have demonstrated a fine ability to tune out war. Soldiers (and their families) are left holding the bag.

Throughout history, circumstances such as these have bred praetorianism, warriors becoming enamored with their moral superiority and impatient with the failings of those they are charged to defend. The smug disdain for high-ranking civilians casually expressed by McChrystal and his chief lieutenants -- along with the conviction that "Team America," as these officers style themselves, was bravely holding out against a sea of stupidity and corruption -- suggests that the officer corps of the United States is not immune to this affliction.

To imagine that replacing McChrystal with Gen. David H. Petraeus will fix the problem is wishful thinking. [ . . . ] The day the McChrystal story broke, an active-duty soldier who has served multiple combat tours offered me his perspective on the unfolding spectacle. The dismissive attitude expressed by Team America, he wrote, "has really become a pandemic in the Army." Among his peers, a belief that "it is OK to condescend to civilian leaders" has become common, ranking officers permitting or even endorsing "a culture of contempt" for those not in uniform. Once the previously forbidden becomes acceptable, it soon becomes the norm.

Of course, it's not just the military. There's a huge posse of self-serving experts and flacks dedicated to keeping the money flowing, and politicians find them irresistible, even when they march headlong into a foolish fiasco like Afghanistan. For years and years now we've debated how to "save" Afghanistan, when the only thing the military cult really wanted to save in Afghanistan is their own raison d'être -- 9/11 raised the question of why do we spend $500 billion a year on a military that utterly failed to defend us, but rather than answer that question we've let them con us into $1 trillion a year. Start cutting back there and who knows where it might lead? You might find that cutting back to nothing solves everything, not least this praetorian cult that has eaten away our democracy and left us hopeless, confused, and stupid.

If Porter is right, Petraeus (and with his cover Obama) will try to extricate us from Afghanistan, mostly to try to salvage an army that is being proven worse than useless there. Bacevich wants to go further and unwind the military cult that got us there in the first place.

Rob Harvilla confirms that Jazz Consumer Guide will run in The Village Voice this week. Should be on the streets in New York on Wednesday. They wanted to slightly truncate one review, but it sounds like all the records made it in.

Working through my various trays, even pulling one record from the bottom priority set, and a couple of vocals. Was prepared to consign the new old Art Pepper to superfluous high-B+ status but the last two cuts were impossible to deny. Mail deliveries seem to be erratic, but a lot of uncatalogued stuff showed up today.

The Jim Baker/Mars Williams album was an anomaly: something I played/rated long ago, misfiled, forgot about, rediscovered, accidentally gave a second chance. I get letters now and then urging me to listen further to records, and they are almost always fruitless. I don't doubt that there are records I'd move up on if I gave them more time, but I'm surprised by how far I moved this time. Only similar case I can think of was a John Butcher album that went the other direction.

Steve Davis: Images (2009 [2010], Posi-Tone): Trombonist, b. 1967 in Binghampton, NY, studied with Jackie McLean, who steered him to Art Blakey. Looks like he has about 18 records since 1996 (mostly for Criss Cross; his MySpace page says 13, AMG lists 17 and misses this), more than 100 side credits. This is a sextet, three horns (Josh Evans on trumpet/flugelhorn, Mike DiRubbo on alto sax) with piano, bass, and drums. Big, brash postbop outing, a lot of bounce to it. Not sure why I don't find it more appealing: too bright? not enough trombone? Don't think the problem is DiRubbo, who's choice for an album dedicated to Jackie McLean. B+(*)

Vincent Herring & Earth Jazz: Morning Star (2010, Challenge): No recording date. Credited with "saxophone" -- both alto and soprano are pictured in booklet, and that's his basic kit. Has a steady stream of records since 1990, when he broke in and seemed likely to be a major force, but I haven't heard much since then. Group includes Anthony Wonsey on piano, Richie Goods on bass, Joris Dudli on drums, with Danny Sadownick adding percussion on 6 of 10 tracks. After initial misdirection on "Naima," this soon settles into a funk groove album, with Goods the prime mover, Wonsey playing what sounds like electric piano. Wonsey wrote three songs, Dudli two, Goods one, Herring only one -- the one he sounds most eloquent on. B+(**)

John Fedchock NY Sextet: Live at the Red Sea Jazz Festival (2008 [2010], Capri): Trombonist, b. 1957, based in New York, mostly identified with his New York Big Band which first appeared on record in 1992, and appears to still be active. Same basic sextet lineup as Steve Davis uses: trumpet-trombone-sax horn line, piano, bass, drums. Scott Wendholt plays trumpet, Walt Weiskopf tenor sax, Allen Farnham piano, David Finck bass, Dave Ratajczak drums (all but Weiskopf and Finck from the Big Band). More of a swing player than Davis, especially with Farnham, which may be why he can run the horns in unison without cloying. B+(***)

3ology: With Ron Miles (2008 [2010], Tapestry): Longmont, CO-based trio: Doug Carmichael on saxophones, Tim Carmichael on basses, Jon Powers on drums. Looks like they have two previous albums (or CDRs), an eponymous one in 2007 and Out of the Depths in 2008, but they had nothing to do with a 1995 Konnex album called 3-Ology (Santi Debriano, Billy Hart, Arthur Blythe). Miles plays cornet and has a substantial discography that far transcends his Colorado base. He adds an extra dimension here, but the group really hums even when he lays out. Doug Carmichael plays interesting, aggressive freebop sax, while Tim Carmichael keeps a steady rhythmic buzz going on bass. A-

Aldo Romano: Origine (2009 [2010], Dreyfus Jazz): Drummer, b. 1941 in Belluno, Italy, but moved to France in 1950s and has been long based in Paris. Has a couple dozen albums under his own name since 1977, and a lot of credits -- AMG, which misses a lot in Europe, has a long page starting with Gato Barbieri and Don Cherry in 1965, Steve Lacy in 1966, Rolf Kuhn in 1967, Joachim Kuhn and Steve Kuhn in 1969. Romano composed these pieces, probably over the course of his career, with Yves Simon adding lyrics to "Jazz Messengers" which Romano sings in a touchingly offhand way. Lionel Belmondo arranged the pieces for a large orchestra -- no strings but flutes, English and French horns, bassoon, and tuba, along with the usual reeds, limited brass, piano, bass, and drums -- which the notes fairly describe as "sumptuous." B+(**)

Aruán Ortiz Quartet: Alameda (2006 [2009], Fresh Sound New Talent): Pianist, b. 1973, from Santiago de Cuba, passed through Spain and France before moving to US in 2003, to study at Berklee and wind up in New York. Cut an album of Cuban standards in 1996, a trio in 2005, and now this augmented quartet. The extra is tenor saxophonist Antoine Roney, who joins in on three cuts and gets a "featuring" shout out on the cover. The quartet includes Eric McPherson on drums, Peter Slavov on bass, and Abraham Burton on alto sax. Roney's the better known name, and I like him well enough, but Burton carries this record, as he has regularly done throughout his career. Ortiz plays some electric. Doesn't make much of his Cuban roots, but I don't doubt he could. B+(**)

Rosario Giuliani: Lennie's Pennies (2009 [2010], Dreyfus Jazz): Alto saxophonist, b. 1967 in Terracina, Italy. Tenth album since 1997. Mainstream piano-bass-drums quartet, with Pierre de Bethmann also playing electric piano. Bright, bouncy, beautiful tone especially on classics like "How Deep the Ocean," some fast bebop turns. B+(**)

Trichotomy: Variations (2007 [2010], Naim Jazz): Piano trio, from Australia: Sean Foran on piano, Pat Marchisella on bass, John Parker on drums. First album, or third if you count two released in Australia under the name Misinterprotato. One track adds violin-viola-alto sax; another adds trumpet-electronics. Foran composed 5 pieces, Parker 4, and one was a joint improv. They have a brash, beatwise, populist feel, not unlike EST or Neil Cowley, and it suits them well. B+(***) [July 13]

Prime Picks: The Virtuoso Guitar of Larry Coryell (1998-2003 [2010], High Note): Robert Christgau once wrote: "Larry Coryell is the greatest thing to happen to the guitar since stretched gut." But looking through his Consumer Guides, I don't see any Coryell albums that Christgau actually liked much -- unlike John McLaughlin, Sonny Sharrock, and James Ulmer -- and he seems to have given up listening shortly after 1979. This samples five 1998-2003 albums, with two solo cuts and several small groups that hop around randomly -- two with trumpet, two with vibes, four with John Hicks on piano, two "Power Trio" cuts with bass and drums. Best thing is the guitar, as silvery as Coryell's hair. B+(*)

Corey Christiansen Quartet: Outlaw Tractor (2008 [2010], Origin): Guitarist, b. 1971, father taught guitar at Utah State for many years; moved to St. Louis where he was AR director at guitar-oriented Mel Bay for seven years, then eventually moved back to Utah, where he is Director of Curriculum for The Music School. Third album since 2004. Guitar-sax-organ-drums quartet. I run across a dozen-plus such albums every year and usually have little trouble dismissing them, but this is one of the better ones, and surprisingly it's not David Halliday's sax that stands out but Pat Bianchi's organ -- by now, surely the most clichéd of all instruments. Guitar grooves too. B+(**)

Peter Epstein & Idée Fixe: Abstract Realism (2008 [2010], Origin): Alto saxophonist here, plays soprano elsewhere. Had a 2005 album, Lingua Franca, which made JCG A-list, and another album this year, The Dark, by EEA, which made the dud list. This isn't a return to form so much as yet another bold move in some other direction. There are points of electronic drone where this sounds industrial -- Andy Barbera's guitar, and possibly Sam Minaie's bass, are suspects, along with the also unknown drummer Matt Mayhall. But mostly Epstein labors mightily against dark tableaus. This wallows a bit, but when he's working he makes a strong impression. Two "special guests" also play reeds: Brian Walsh on bass clarinet, Gavin Templeton on alto and soprano sax. No idea what they're doing here. B+(***)

Wellstone Conspiracy: Motives (2009 [2010], Origin): Quartet, new group name but familiar components: Brent Jensen on soprano sax, Bill Anschell on piano, Jeff Johnson on bass, John Bishop on drums. Anschell and Jensen each wrote three of seven originals; Johnson wrote one, and Anschell arranged Billy Strayhorn's "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing" for the closer. Jensen has developed into the finest mainstream soprano sax specialist around, so normal here you'd hardly guess what he's playing. The others are solid pros, a reputation the album consolidates without adding much to. B+(**)

Mark O'Connor: Jam Session (2000-04 [2010], OMAC): Whiz-kid bluegrass fiddler, b. 1961, won some prizes when he was young, one result being that Country Music Foundation's compilation of his 1975-84 work is called The Championship Years. Gradually gravitated toward jazz, where he seems stuck on Stephane Grappelli. These cuts actually come from four sessions, two with mandolinist Chris Thile and guitarist Bryan Sutton, one of those plus the other two with guitarist Frank Vignola, with either Jon Burr or Byron House on bass. Informal fun, but doesn't impress me much one way or the other. B

Art Pepper: Unreleased Art, Vol. V: Stuttgart May 25, 1981 (1981 [2010], Widow's Taste, 2CD): Yet another installment in Laurie Pepper's catalog of late Pepper bootlegs, eleven days after The Croydon Concert which appeared as Vol. III in 2008, eight days before Art Pepper With Duke Jordan in Copenhagen 1981 (released by Galaxy in 1996 and a favorite of mine ever since), then there is the Nov. 22, 1981 Abashiri Concert (Vol. 1 in this series). With Milcho Leviev on piano, Bob Magnuson on bass, and Carl Burnett on drums: a common tour group for Pepper, although only Burnett was a frequent player on Pepper's Galaxy albums of the period -- George Cables was his most common pianist. I'm not sure you need all of these, but after a while one starts looking for idiosyncrasies, and this one has plenty. Leviev is much rougher than Cables and tends to run on, but he is explosive here. Pepper has his ordinary moments, but "Landscape" on the first disc is magnificent; on the second he tears at "Over the Rainbow" trying to come up with something new after thirty years of playing the song, and he succeeds, then celebrates by burning through "Cherokee." A-

Tide Tables [Paul Kikuchi/Alexander Vittum]: Lost Birdsongs (2005 [2009], Prefecture): Both Kikuchi and Vittum are credited with compositions, percussion, and electronics. Kikuchi is from Seattle, drummer for Empty Cage Quartet, has another collaborative record -- with Jese Olsen as Open Graves -- in my unplayed box. Vittum is based in/near San Francisco. Doesn't seem to have any other credits. This was recorded live in Seattle with a group of musicians: Daniel Carter (alto sax, flute, trumpet), Brian Drye (trombone), Matt Goeke (cello), Matt Crane (percussion), Sam Weng (percussion). CDBaby page describes this as "Milford Graves meets Aphex Twin meets Konono #1." Graves is wishful thinking, but the other two bracket the percussion range, and from the "Recommended if you like" list we can throw in Harry Partch for orientation. Package I got is a clear plastic sleeve with a folded print insert. I'm tempted to treat it as an advance, but if you pay cash you'll probably get the same. B+(**)

Open Graves [Paul Kikuchi/Jesse Olsen]: Hollow Lake (2009, Prefecture): Bay Area-based Olsen is "founder and director of Deconstruct My House, an organization dedicated to presenting and fostering experimental music in socially conscious ways"; also "half of the experimental folk duo Ramon & Jessica." Sounds like a noble calling. For Kikuchi, see above [Tide Tables]. Not sure what Olsen does -- uncredited instruments here are "guitar, voice, slit drum, trombone, bells, walkie-talkies, and Kikuchi and Keplinger instruments" -- but he manages to ground whatever percussion Kikuchi attempts. This "seeks resonant spaces and uncommon environments," which means it is ambient and droney, not uninteresting, but demands attention it doesn't entice. B

Jamie Cullum: The Pursuit (2009 [2010], Verve): Released Mar. 2. Never got a real copy, just this "watermarked" advance with my name ominously stamped onto it, and no info on credits -- big band, string orchestra, banks of backup singers, no doubt a cast of thousands. Maybe then got confused about the packaging -- AMG lists eight editions, including packages with bonus tracks, a "deluxe edition," variants with DVDs, and the "Barnes & Noble Exclusive." With so much marketing, you'd might think he was popular, but as far as I can tell he remains a Harry Connick wannabe, handicapped by writing slightly over half of his songs. On the plus side, he's managed to shed most of the tics that made Catching Tales so annoying. That leaves him with . . . uh, nothing. C [advance]

Carmen Souza: Protegid (2010, Galileo Music): Cape Verdean singer, b. 1981, third album since 2006, backed by an international band with Portuguese bassist-percussionist Theo Pas'cal especially prominent, but Cuban pianist Victor Zamora reminds me of the herky-jerky rhythms unusual in post-Portuguese music (although Tom Zé is an exception -- maybe psychedelic tropicalia has something going here). Her vocals are heavily mannered, sometimes so Sprachgesang I expect to grasp some German words, but the lyrics look to be all Portuguese, with a thick booklet of trots I haven't bothered with (and in any case would find arduous to read). Played it enough to detect that there is something highly unusual going on here, but still too far out for me to get. B+(*)

Domenic Landolf: New Brighton (2009 [2010], Pirouet): Swiss tenor saxophonist, b. 1969, also plays bass clarinet and quite a bit of alto flute here. Third album since 2004. Trio backed by Patrice Moret on bass and Dejan Terzic on drums, who keep it simple, straightforward, and thoughtful. Mix of Landolf, Moret, and group pieces, with a lovely cover of "My Old Flame" to close. B+(**)

Beat Kaestli: Invitation (2009 [2010], Chesky): Standards singer, from Switzerland, based in New York. Fourth album since 2002. Subtitled his last one A Tribute to European Song, but this one is All American -- spine inset refers to it as "The New York Sessions" -- standards you know played by pros who keeps discreetly to the background: Kenny Rampton (trumpet), Joel Frahm (tenor sax), Paul Meyers (guitar), Jay Leonhart (bass), Billy Drummond (drums). Soft, pliable voice. Horns don't have much to do, but Meyers sets a nice tone. B+(**)

Sarah Partridge: Perspective (2009 [2010], Peartree): Singer, based in NJ, fourth album since 1998. Did some acting 1983-93. Duet with pianist Daniel May. Two originals, the rest standards. Never breaks out of a rather bland rut. B-

The Waitiki 7: New Sounds of Exotica (2009 [2010], Pass Out): Sounds like the old sounds of exotica, as far as I can bother to recall, except maybe louder. Group is led by bassist Ray Wong, with soprano sax/flutes, violin, piano, vibes/xylophone, drums, and a percussion guy who doubles on bird/animal calls. Some old Martin Denny pieces; some new ones. Packaging includes a Chee Hoo Fizz recipe which I'm not about to mix up. 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.

Steve Davis Quintet: Live at Smalls (2009 [2010], Smalls Live): Similar to Davis's Images studio disc -- bright, energetic, straightforward hard bop -- but cut down a bit with just trombone and Mike DiRubbo's alto sax up front, and an upgrade on piano to Larry Willis. The live album artifacts help out, like the short playlist (four songs) padded out with more improv, or don't much hurt, like the extended bass solo and the patter. DiRubbo takes at least one song at Parker speeds -- he's always impressive -- and I like Davis's slow intro to "Day Dream." B+(**) [Rhapsody]

No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further listening the first time around.

Re-grades trying to sort out the surplus:

Jim Baker/Steve Hunt/Brian Sandstrom/Mars Williams: Extraordinary Popular Delusions (2005 [2007], Okka Disk): Couldn't recall playing this before, so put it on by accident. Played it twice before I went to write it up, then found that I had already (mis)rated it. Baker is a Chicago pianist who works in an avant-garde scene that doesn't find much use for pianists. Hunt plays drums, and Sandstrom plays bass and electric guitar. They each make interesting noise, helping out in all sorts of ways. Still, this is mostly about Williams, who initially emerged as Hal Russell's heir apparent, played second sax in the original Vandermark 5, then took his chances with acid jazz. He's back in full bloom here, fierce, rough, raunchy. Played it a third time thinking I should dial back toward my original grade. Nah. [was B+(*)] A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail this week:

• Amabutho: Sikelela (Alma)
• Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet + 1: 3 Nights in Oslo (Smalltown Superjazz, 5CD)
• Freddy Cole: Freddy Cole Sings Mr. B (High Note): Aug. 3
• Hilario Duran Trio: Motion (Alma)
• Johnny Griffin: Live at Ronnie Scott's (In+Out)
• Adrian Iaies Trio: A Child's Smile (Sunnyside): July 20
• Kristy: My Romance (Alma)
• Dave Mihaly's Shimmering Leaves Ensemble: Eastern Accents in the Far West (Porto Franco): July 20
• Roberto Occhipinti: A Bend in the River (Alma)
• Sun Ra Arkestra [under the direction of Marshall Allen]: Live at the Paradox (In+Out)
• Steve Turre: Delicious and Delightful (High Note): Aug. 3
• Ratko Zjaca/John Patitucci/Steve Gadd/Stanislav Mitrovic/Randy Brecker: Continental Talk (In+Out)

Bill Phillips posted a link to my Exit McChrystal post, and got the following comment from his nephew, a captain in the US Army:

In all candor, I am not in a position to refute any other part of Mr. Hull's article. The following however is beneath contempt: "most are simply pursuing limited career opportunities, and the rest have a simple craving to blow shit up". Really uncle, would you honestly put me in that category? If so, you do me a terrible disservice. And in my 16 years in uniform, I can probably count those I've met that actually fit that bill on my fingers and have some to spare. Mr. Hull can analyze a strategy, but he is completely ignorant about the character and professional excellence of those in military service.

Any generalization is bound to produce some exceptions, even the commonplace ones that claim that US military personnel are dedicated, principled, public-spirited, competent, or just plain decent. Back when the draft board was so eager to ship me off to Vietnam, and earlier when my father, his brothers, and numerous relatives were swept up in WWII, the military was an unremarkable cross-section of America, but since the Army went pro in the late 1970s it has largely separated from the rest of the country and turned into a self-promoting cult where "professional excellence in military service" is repeated so often you'd think it's their trademark. We're usually more skeptical of PR hype, but various powerful political and business forces find it useful to pander to the military, and they've managed to wrap the military in the flag so securely that others just shy away for fear of appearing unpatriotic.

I have doubts about the entire enterprise. In 1948 the Truman administration decided to rebuild the military and launch an aggressive worldwide defense not of the American people but of capitalists everywhere. Imperialism, depression, fascism, and war had done much to discredit capital and foment revolution around the world. Businesses were eager for more war profits, and with nuclear weapons it was easy to terrify the public, especially to back a "cold war" strategy that didn't require much of a personal commitment -- Korea and especially Vietnam proved to be unpopular exceptions. In doing so they created a permanent war state, an empire of self-importance that survived the collapse of the Soviet Union to find ever more desperate enemies. This permanent war has haunted the sixty years of my life and shows no signs of abating, even as the costs pile up to unsustainable levels and the returns aren't even negligible -- more like sad, pathetic, tragic.

I don't blame the soldiers for this, but I don't feel like flattering them either. When I was growing up, we had a slogan: "suppose they gave a war and nobody came." I took it to heart and did everything I could to avoid the draft and steer clear of a war machine that I regarded as unjust and unwise, so at some level I don't see why anyone else can't do the same -- especially now that the draft is gone and the consequences of not joining are benign. Back in the 1990s joining the military may have seemed like a riskless, harmless career move, but since 9/11 it has enabled a series of wars that have wreaked havoc around the world while in no way making us safer or a better country. I offered two reasons above why they did so. You might nominate some others -- misguided patriotism, family tradition, boredom, not sure what else.

I'm not in a position to run a survey, but the two reasons I gave certainly loom large in the promo pitch. The career angle shows up in almost every profile of enlisted personnel, as it has for twenty-some years. It's common enough you have to wonder if one reason conservatives have tried to squeeze college support is to drive people through the military. As for "blowing shit up" that may be a glib way of putting it, but I run across that repeatedly in soldier profiles -- Evan Wright's Generation Kill is about one company full of it, and Thomas Ricks's Fiasco covers the same story and mores at the level of upper brass selected for their aggressiveness, even when it mostly yields blowback. My post was occasioned by Gen. McChrystal, who is himself a prime example, yet much of the piece is about soldiers in Afghanistan complaining that McChrystal has set the rules of engagement too restrictively to, as one soldier puts it, "get their gun on."

These two traits are not just prevalent in the US military. They practically define it: the careerism leads to extreme risk aversion, which the aggression masks with bursts of "shock and awe" firepower. The two traits merge perfectly in the ever-increasing use of drones -- riskless slaughter.

Examples of these things abound. For instance, today's New York Times has an article by James Dao, "Gone for a Soldier," profiling a number of soldiers on their way to an Afghanistan deployment. The first one's