Tom Hull

Past Tense, Present Tense

webmaster@tomhull.com (Tom Hull) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:39:29 -0700

Juan Cole: The Map: More background on the map series that Andrew Sullivan cited, linked to yesterday. (Sullivan originally cited Cole.) There are two basic ways to approach the Israel/Palestine conflict. One is to work your way through the history. The other is to screw the history and just look at the current situation. The latter is much simpler and much more clear cut, which is probably why we spend so much time arguing about history. Actually, the history is pretty clear cut too. From early on the Zionists intended to take over as much Palestinian land as possible, eventually erecting a Jewish State -- that was, after all, the title of Theodor Herzl's clarion book -- and drive the Palestinians out or reduce them to "an utterly defeated people." That the Zionists have come so close is an achievement rooted in remarkable discipline and steadfastness, but also in a number of fortuitous turns of history: the Balfour Declaration and the early British administration gave them a strong imperialist sponsor; the Russian Revolution helped separate Jewish nationalists out from both religious and internationalist Jews; the closing of US emigration in 1923 severely reduced options for Jewish emigrés; the rise of Nazism triggered a substantial wave of German Jewish emigrants; WWII and the Holocaust destroyed the fabric of Jewish social life, especially in eastern Europe, and produced a backlash of sympathy the Zionists could (and did) exploit; the Palestinian independence movement was decimated by the British in suppressing the 1937-39 revolt, and neighboring Arab countries were likewise under more/less tight British/French control until well after Israel's 1948 "War of Independence"; Israel was able to parlay a series of foreign sponsors -- the Soviet Union, France, then the United States -- to build up massive military superiority, including nuclear weapons. Going into 1948 Jews were outnumbered 70-30 in Palestine, yet they managed to more than reverse those demographics through a combination of ethnic cleansing and deals to cede limited territories to Transjordan and Egypt. Nonetheless, they were unable to reconcile their quest for land with their loathing of non-Jews in their midst, nor were they finally able to break the Palestinians.

That history leaves us with the current stalemate: a vastly inequal situation where Jewish dominance exposes the utter moral bankruptcy at the root of the whole project. For how that has worked out, skip past the history and look at the current status: who is entitled to do basic things, like travel or build a house or run a business, and who isn't; who is likely to get thrown in jail or assassinated, and who isn't; who is free to vote, has access to the courts for redress of grievances, can demonstrate, and who cannot; who benefits from the social services provided by the state, and who is excluded. There is no justification these days for one group lording it over another group -- not even history excuses such inhumanity.

Juan Cole: Cpl. Jeffrey Goldberg, Guarding the Prison of the Nationalist Mind: OK, Cole gets a bit shrill here. And he's wrong that David Horowitz was as "insufferable" as a leftist way back when as he is as a rightwinger now -- maybe he wasn't the brightest bulb at Ramparts, and his celebration of burning down that Bank of America building was a bad omen (as well as a failed attempt at sarcasm). But he's mostly right here. Still, the thing I find unsettling about Goldberg is that he seems willing to settle the conflict on the two state terms that have been on the table since UNSC Resolution 235 and long since accepted by virtually every Palestinian and Arab party -- in fact, by virtually everyone except Israel -- yet he cannot bring himself to criticize Israel for being the last intransigent holdout. Worse, he uses his own diplomatic stand to shield Israelis who clearly disagree with him from any form of criticism. Moreover, Goldberg's tactic is not at all unusual for US supporters of Israel: most profess their personal desire for a "two-state solution" yet strive to deflect any responsibility for its failure from Israel -- the one country that could make it happen at the drop of a hat.

Sullivan's Travails

webmaster@tomhull.com (Tom Hull) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:44:00 -0700

Trolling through Andrew Sullivan's blog today -- something I don't do all that often -- and found a few items of some interest:

Blaming America First: First up to attack Obama for getting insulted by Netanyahu are Senators McCain and Lieberman. After the jump, Eric Cantor chimes in, calling the suggestion that Israel should stop its illegal settlement building "beyond irresponsible."
Chart of the Day: Top (black) line is national health expenditures as percentage of GDP, from 5.2% in 1960 to 17.7% today. Peeling off are projections had previous health care reform plans been passed -- one each for Nixon, Carter, and Clinton. Also shown is the OECD median, which tracks the slope of the reform plots. One thing that's worth noting is that the growth rate was slower for terms of presidents who tried (and failed) to implement reforms, and much faster under presidents (Reagan and the Bushes) who made no effort at all.
From the Annals of Chutzpah: Quotes Karl Rove on Biden-Netanyahu and other foreign policy matters (he cites Honduras), where he depicts Obama as: "a cowboy president try[ing] to act in an extra-constitutional way to violate a fundamental principle in the Constitution, all without having done their homework in advance."
Why Beijing and Washington Don't See Eye to Eye on Security: Quotes Evan A Feigenbaum: Why Is U.S.-China Strategic Coordination So Hard?, specifically on how China doesn't feel threatened by situations that scare us silly -- specifically mentioned: Iran, Pakistan, North Korea. I'll add two more reasons: one is that China is less judgmental (and therefore less hypocritical) of other countries; another is that China doesn't have soldiers scattered all over the world. In both respects, the US would be better off learning to chill out, and letting broadly representative international organizations like the WTO and the World Court take over the task of scolding countries that stray from norms. On the other hand, China can get awfully sensitive where its borders are concerned, as we've seen recently in their flap over the Dalai Lama, or with Taiwan.
The Sanctions Debate: Quotes Lara Friedman: Getting over the sanctions delusion, on why US sanctions hardly ever work -- they punish people without power for the supposed sins of those who have power. Needless to say, further sanctions against Iran fit that same pattern. On the other hand, this argument doesn't mean that sanctions aren't appropriate in cases where they appear to support, and are in turn welcomed and supported by, masses who are oppressed by those in power. South Africa is the classic case where sanctions worked. These arguments don't disqualify Israel as another case. On the other hand, I suspect that the turning point won't be implementing sanctions; it should be sufficient just to tilt the US and Europe against propping up Israel's colonial occupation. The US was very late on South Africa, and never officially implemented any sort of sanctions, but the Afrikaner elites moved quickly once the wind changed. As for Iran, sanctions seem to be a stall tactic for lack of any willingness to actually try to bridge differences.
Goldblog Splutters: Starts with a series of maps on Palestinian land loss: the first showing actual land ownership split between Palestinians and Jews in 1946; the second the UN Partition Plan split; the third the armistice lines from 1949-67; the fourth only the parts with more/less limited Palestinian Authority are shown. The maps don't quite track the same thing, but the sense of loss is matched in reality. The actual population split in 1946 was about 32% Jewish, but most Jews lived in cities, and the major Zionist effort to purchase lands and establish kibbutzim had run into a wall at about 7% of the total land in Mandatory Palestine. Presumably there are still some splotches of Palestinian-owned land in Israel, especially in the West Galilee which saw relatively few expulsions during the 1948-49 war. The PA has also picked up some former settlement areas in Gaza since 2000. On the other hand, Palestinian control of "Palestinian land" in 2000 was weak under the PA and significantly weakened since 2000 as Sharon and his followers worked to undermine the Oslo accords and with them any vestige of Palestinian sovereignty. Sullivan picked up these maps from Juan Cole and used them in an earlier post, which Jeffrey Goldberg attacked.
The Much-Delayed Response to Goldblog: An earlier rebuttal of an earlier Jeffrey Goldberg attack.

More pieces here and there on Israel, including a link to a relatively sane one by Goldberg arguing that Obama's plan is to realign Israel's government to produce a more moderate Kadima-Likud coalition instead of the current ultraright Likud-Beiteinu-Shas alignment -- my guess is that the government would fail first, and that Netanyahu is unwilling to join any coalition that would give Obama the satisfaction of even a lame solution. Also lots of pieces on the Vatican's sex crime cover-ups.

Jazz Prospecting (CG #23, Part 5)

webmaster@tomhull.com (Tom Hull) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:28:19 -0700

Another interim week, waiting for the latest Jazz Consumer Guide to drop -- no news on that, which means this week is out -- moving deliberately on to the next one. Having a tough time writing about jazz these days, especially warming to anything I'm hearing -- and not for lack of time, as most of the following took three spins before I settled on something. The one new A- is marginal: I could just as easily have slid it down a notch, but grading on a curve implies that something should come up on top.

Marius Nordal: Boomer Jazz (2005 [2009], Origin): Pianist, third album since 1996, don't know much more about him but he's probably a boomer, especially since he defines the period as 15 years after WWII, encompassing 76 million kids. Having been born in 1950, I'm less certain that I should be included. Those born 1946-48 were the leading edge of the population explosion, and as such got a jump on a rapidly expanding economy. Just one example was that they got quickly hired into academia, whereas the tail end of the generation found far fewer opportunities. Another, of course, was that they caught the 1960s when everything seemed to be possible, whereas my sub-generation (and I was a bit slow in this regard, for personal reasons I won't bore you with) rattled around in their wake. So mashing all these short time sequences never made much sense to me -- I recall that at one point generations were held to cycle every three years. As for this record, Nordal plays solo piano on 10 songs from the 1960s, ending with one he wrote (presumably much later). These were, of course, songs that I grew up with, but even in the 1960s most were songs I associated with an older sub-generation, one that was more condescending to rock and roll. Three Beatles songs were from McCartney's arty-nostalgic phase; Simon & Garfunkel were even stuffier (well, "Scarborough Fair" was; "Mrs. Robinson" had a beat); and Roberta Flack, Jack Jones, and Bread were anything but hip. I favored the Rolling Stones over the Beatles at the time, and read Allen Ginsberg instead of Simon's Robert Frost. So the only thing here that much impresses me is Chuck Berry's "School Days," done up cleverly as boogie-woogie -- a choice cut. B

Dan Weiss Trio: Timshel (2008 [2010], Sunnyside): Drummer-led piano trio, with Jacob Sacks on piano and Thomas Morgan on bass -- Morgan seems to be everywhere these days. Second album for Weiss, plus a list of 30 or so side credits since 1999, including impressive work on tabla for Rudresh Mahanthappa and Rez Abbasi. Wrote all the pieces, including ones called "Prelude," "Interlude" and "Postlude." I like the bits where the piano reduces to a rocking rhythm instrument. Less impressive is the slow stuff influenced by the 'ludes. B+(**)

Greg Burk: Many Worlds (2007 [2009], 482 Music): Pianist, b. 1969, originally from Lansing, MI; studied at New England Conservatory, taught at Berklee, played in Either/Orchestra; after 10 years in Boston relocated to Italy (Rome). Ninth album since 2000, a quartet with Henry Cook on sax (alto, soprano) and flute, Ron Seguin on bass (contrabass and something he calls "electric acoustic bass"), and Michel Lambert on drums/percussion. This struck me as overly ornate at first, with Cook's reeds wispy and Burk's piano wrapped up in long exploratory runs, but the more I listen the more it coheres -- especially the physics-inspired six-part "Many Worlds Suite," which ends in a discordance that surely isn't mere chaos. B+(***)

Jerry Bergonzi: Three for All (2008 [2010], Savant): Tenor saxophonist, plays some soprano, also get a piano credit here, which suggests some overdubbing. With Dave Santoro on bass and Andrea Michelutti on drums. Bergonzi has been on a terrific run lately, with two straight A- albums (Tenor Talk and Simply Put), and nothing very far off the mark. This has a couple of blemishes which I blame on the soprano. Terrific tenor player, deep tone, has all the moves; group lets him play. B+(***)

Salvatore Bonafede Trio: Sicilian Opening (2009 [2010], Jazz Eyes): Pianist, b. 1962 in Palermo, in Sicily. Has a dozen, maybe more albums, since 1990. Piano trio with Marco Panascia on bass, Marcello Pellitteri on drums. Light touch, even temper. Does a Beatles piece, which I always dread, but acquits it nicely. B+(**)

Graham Decter: Right on Time (2008 [2009], Capri): Guitarist, from and based in Los Angeles; studied at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY; plays in Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. Debut album, a quartet, backed by the Clayton-Hamilton trio: John Clayton on bass, Jeff Hamilton on drums, Tamir Hendelman on piano. Needless to say, they swing. Program includes one original, two Ellingtons, Johnny Hodges' "Squatty Roo," pieces by Ray Brown and Thad Jones, a Jobim, other standards. Decter's guitar complements the trio, adding texture and pushing them a bit. B+(**)

Kelley Suttenfield: Where Is Love? (2007 [2009], Rhombus): Standards singer, based in New York, probably young, debut album, backed by piano-guitar-bass-drums, nobody I've heard of. Has an exceptionally nice voice, measured delivery with nothing terribly idiosyncratic about it. I don't care much for the song selection, with "And I Love Her" and "Ode to Billy Joe" the sore points, but she covered Veloso instead of Jobim, tried on a Betty Carter piece, sashayed into vocalese on "West Coast Blues," and did well by "Nature Boy." Most effective was "My One and Only Love" -- probably because it was the simplest. B+(*)

Emilio Solla & the Tango Jazz Conspiracy: Bien Sur! (2009 [2010], Fresh Sound World Jazz): Argentine pianist, based in New York, second album I'm aware of, probably has more. Tango forms, but mostly jazz musicians, notably Chris Cheek on soprano, tenor, and baritone sax, and Richie Barshay on drums and percussion. In his liner notes, feels a bit uncomfortable taking jazz liberties with his national music, but the record splits the difference nicely. B+(**)

Rufus Reid: Out Front (2008 [2010], Motema): Bassist-led piano trio, with Steve Allee on piano and Duduka Da Fonseca on drums. Reid has nine albums under his own name, plus a vast number of side credits going back to a 1970 gig with Gene Ammons and Dexter Gordon. Allee, a fine mainstream pianist with four albums since 1995, has yet to break out of the pack. Da Fonseca is a Brazilian drummer/percussionist with several albums of his own. All three contribute songs, plus there are covers from Marcos Silva, Tadd Dameron, and Eddie Harris (another former Reid employer). "Out Front" means more bass solos. With Reid that's nothing to complain about. B+(*)

Marc Mommaas: Landmarc (2009 [2010], Sunnyside): Tenor saxophonist, b. 1969 in Netherlands, grew up in Amsterdam, moved to New York in 1997. Third album. Basically a trio with Nate Radley on guitar and Tony Moreno on drums, plus an extra guitarist on 5 of 9 pieces -- two with Rez Abbasi, three with Vic Juris. The guitars are sweet and slinky; the sax tends to be atmospheric. B+(**)

Zora Young: The French Connection (2007-08 [2009], Delmark): Blues singer, b. 1948, fifth album since 1991 -- third on Delmark -- cut with three different French bands. Uneven sound -- sometimes seems a bit distant, although she has that basic Bessie Smith projection that doesn't need a microphone, and that carries a record that is strongest at its most retro. B+(*)

Juhani Aaltonen Quartet: Conclusions (2009 [2010], Tum): Finnish tenor saxophonist, b. 1935, not well known here but should be recognized as a major figure -- I have yet to track down his well-regarded 1970s recordings, but I can highly recommend two relatively recent ones, Mother Tongue and Reflections. Quartet includes Iro Haarla (piano and harp), Ulf Krokfors (double bass), and Reino Laine (drums), with Haarla and Krokfors contributing four and two songs respectively -- Aaltonen the other four. He has a marvelous sound on tenor, more lyrical here than in the past, but I especially enjoy it when he roughs things up a bit. My main reservations at first were the two flute and one alto flute pieces. I never cared much for the sound, but he's as expert at it as any saxophonist I can think of -- Lew Tabackin, or perhaps Vinny Golia, someone not overly smitten by the Pied Piper notion, nor squarely centered on bop (James Moody) and/or swing (Frank Wess). A-

Kalle Kalima & K-18: Some Kubricks of Blood (2007 [2010], Tum): Guitarist, from Finland, b. 1973, studied in Germany with Raoul Björkenheim among others; has a couple albums, maybe two dozen side credits, many with Jazzanova. Unusual group sound here, with Ville Kujala's quarter-tone accordion, Mikko Innanen's saxes (alto, soprano, baritone), and Teppo Hauta-aho on double bass -- no drummer, which helps explain why this gets stuck in weird eddies. Compositions are keyed to various Stanley Kubrick films. Packaging, liner notes, and artwork are superb, as usual for this label. Despite the disconnects, interesting in various spots. B+(*)

Mort Weiss: Raising the Bar (2009 [2010], SMS Jazz): Clarinetist, started his musical career after he retired from a bread-and-butter career, and has put together a string of engaging albums ever since, with a mix of swing and bop moves. This one is solo clarinet, two originals, a bunch of well worn covers, the better known the better. Normally I would complain about the lack of balance/momentum/something that is inevitable with solo efforts, but he more than makes up for that in charm. Closes with "My Way" -- and earns it. B+(***)

Ambrose Field/John Potter: Being Dufay (2007 [2009], ECM New Series): Field is credited with "live and studio electronics"; Potter as "tenor," meaning a vocalist with classical standing. Record is "based on vocal fragments by Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474)," a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. The electronics separate this from any baggage I associate with classical music. The voice wends through the words without excessive drama or disruption. Lovely, actually. 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:

Tony Allen: Secret Agent (World Circuit/Nonesuch): advance, Apr. 13
Correction: Two Nights in April (Ayler)
Erika: Obsession (Erika)
Tia Fuller: Decisive Steps (Mack Avenue)
Gaida: Levantine Indulgence (Palymra): Mar. 21
Garaj Mahal: More Mr. Nice Guy (Owl Studios)
Garaj Mahal & Fareed Haque: Discovery (Moog Music)
Grupo Fantasma: El Existential (Nat Geo): advance, May 11
Brian Landrus: Foward (Cadence Jazz
Joëlle Léandre/François Houle/Raymond Strid: Last Seen Headed: Live at Sons D'Hiver (Ayler)
John McLaughlin and the 4th Dimension: To the One (Abstract Logix): Apr. 20
Dan Pratt Organ Quartet: Toe the Line (Posi-Tone): Mar. 30
3ology With Ron Miles (Tapestry)
Gabriele Tranchina: A Song of Love's Color (Jazzheads): Apr. 13
Petra van Nuis & Andy Brown: Far Away Places (String Damper): Mar. 30

School Days

webmaster@tomhull.com (Tom Hull) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 19:29:18 -0700

Justin Elliott: Conservative Bloc Prevails in Latest TX Textbooks Standards Vote: I take two positives away from this news item. One is that Kansas is no longer in the running for dumbest state school board in the country. The other is that it will be all the more obvious to Texas schoolchildren that their teachers are lying to them -- an insight that will prepare them for a lifetime of political flacks and businessfolk of all stripes. Neil Postman once wrote that the most important thing a student can learn is to develop a fine-tuned bullshit detector. Texas students are sure going to get a lot of practice. Of course, in the long run ignorance only gets you so far. Sooner or later you need to learn something, and it's actually easier when you're young, so in that regard this is a tragic waste of youth, as well as a self-defeating assertion of mindless authority.

Quicksand

webmaster@tomhull.com (Tom Hull) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:11:19 -0700

It's always tempting to read too little into the recent contretemps between VP Joe Biden and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel timed its announcement of additional settlement building in East Jerusalem to coincide with Biden's arrival to try to force engagement in some sort of back-channel talks with rump PA president Mahmoud Abbas. The least Abbas could insist on was a settlement freeze, so Netanyahu's government's action was a deliberate attempt to undermine whatever scant chance the talks might have had. The Obama administration had also insisted on freezing settlements over a year ago, but had yet to push back when Netanyahu failed to restrain the settler movement. Still, this timing was shock enough to force Biden to "condemn" the plans -- a position that was reiterated by usually compliant state secretary Hillary Clinton. In widely reported "private" talks, Biden lectured Netanyahu on how failure to make progress on Palestine was endangering US troops in "Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan." To my knowledge, that is the first time any official US source, at least since 2001, has identified Israel-Palestine as a liability, hence as a strategic interest, to US interests in the region. All of this suggests that Obama is finally trying to get back in charge of the diplomatic initiative he started over a year ago with appointment of George Mitchell. Obama has become widely viewed as an ineffective leader, mostly due to his inability to lead Congress, but he has more effective power to direct foreign affairs, so this would be one way to burnish his credentials as a world leader -- a long shot, given Israel's past performance, but also a huge win if he can only pull it off.

For his part, Netanyahu has more experience than any other Israeli leader at thwarting American wishes for a peace agreement with the Palestinians, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he is very good at it. It mostly means that the Americans have never been serious enough persistently enough to overcome Israeli resistance -- even though there have been clear instances where Israel has bent to US will: the Madrid talks forced by Bush I (which, by the way, resulted not in agreement but in Shamir's loss to Rabin, which in turn led to the Oslo agreement), and Bush II's embargo of military aid which held Sharon to go through with his Gaza disengagement plan. If he wanted to, there are lots of ways Obama can apply pressure on Israel -- both behind the scenes and out front. He could even give Israeli voters reason to change their government, which would not be hard to do given Netanyahu's rickety coalition.

As always, the question is American willpower. Before Biden left, he conceded that, "the United States has no better friend in the community of nations than Israel." As Paul Woodward pointed out, this is on its face ridiculous. Israel may have no better friend than the US, but the US has plenty of friends who cause us no trouble and don't require the constant stroking that Israel does:

Is it because Israel is the most ill-mannered among America's friends that it has to be flattered with this "best friend" status? Is it because Israel remains perpetually on the verge of throwing a tantrum that its wet nurse feels compelled to constantly sing sweet words to this troublesome infant?

Early on, you should recall, Netanyahu's game plan was to pump up the Iranian threat and insist that the US solve that before getting engaged with the Palestinian issue. Unfortunately, Obama obliged, instead of pointing out the obvious: that the two are separate and independent fronts, connected only in the sense that a Palestinian settlement would make Iran much less threatening even without Iranian agreement.

Woodward has another update here. Also see Stephen M. Walt: Welcome to Israel, Mr. Vice-President. The most interesting paragraph here came as an aside:

Lastly, my FP colleague Dan Drezner asked a good question the other day: Why has Israeli diplomacy committed so many obvious gaffes recently? Part of the blame undoubtedly lies with particular individuals, but I think there are also structural (or even structural realist) factors at work. Realist theory argues that the pressures of international competition impose a certain discipline on a country's diplomatic conduct: when actions have real consequences, you need to think things through carefully and act with prudence and restraint. But when any country is insulated from the short-term consequences of its own blunders, you can expect it to act in a less careful or disciplined way. Domestic politics will exert greater weight, ideological fantasies get pursued, and personal whims are more easily indulged.

Just as America's dominant position allowed it to pursue a lot of ill-advised excesses over the past fifteen years (see under: Iraq), America's "special relationship" with Israel has insulated the latter from the consequences of its own follies. We see the results in the entire settlement enterprise -- which threatens to turn Israel into an apartheid state and jeopardizes its long-term future -- and in ham-fisted diplomatic kerfluffles like the Biden visit or the deliberate humiliation of the Turkish Ambassador by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon. The original Zionists faced a more challenging environment and usually acted with great adroitness, consistency of purpose and imagination, while their successors in recent decades have been able to misbehave in part because Uncle Sam was always there to provide support and diplomatic cover.

One way to look at this is to imagine Israel as being caught in quicksand: the more they struggle, the quicker they sink, but they have to struggle, because they're sinking anyway. The quicksand is the fundamental contradictions at the root of their power: the idea that they can fight the entire world forever to establish a Jewish State that can lord it over everyone else who happens to be in the way. In this they are struggling against history: against the main thrust of the last century toward equal and individual rights, and against the declining power and influence of their imperial sponsors, who are themselves ever more conscious of how Israel stands apart.

Israel exists to a large extent because of David Ben-Gurion: in particular because of his cunning in playing off the various angles of world opinion. Regardless of which angle he was playing, he was always consistent in his endgame: that Israel should emerge as a respected member of the world community. Israel has lost that aim, and with it any hope for living peacefully in a world which really, deep down, is ever more disenchanted by war. The turning point was the 1967 war, which the retired Ben-Gurion opposed, at least until he got a glimpse of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and blinked. (Of course, there were other turning points, as he built up Israel's military juggernaut, as he played up the trauma of the Holocaust in the Eichmann trial, as he compromised his secular-socialist ideals in deals with the religious right and any white colonial power that would work with him.) But in his quest for respect, it's hard to imagine him turning down the Arab League proposal of recognition in exchange for return to the pre-1967 borders: that very deal would have been the vindication of everything he stood for.

On the other hand, Netanyahu can't make that deal, because Israel has swallowed the poison pill of the settler movement. To do so would tear the right apart in Israel, and there is no left anymore (cf. the Gideon Levy quote in There has never been an Israeli peace camp). As such, there is no Israeli political force that can extract the country from the quicksand of its delusions. That leaves the US, which isn't much hope given that we're stuck in our own quicksand, but at least it's easier to recognize someone else's problems. And it's certainly positive that Obama, Biden, and Clinton even, have begun to see that this quicksand is something we share -- that may even justify all this talk about there being "no space" between Israel and the US.

PS: Some more info on why the above took place is in Paul Woodward: Isreal is putting American lives at risk and the article quoted/linked to: Mark Perry: The Petraeus briefing: Biden's embarrassment is not the whole story:

[T]he briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus's instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. "Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling," a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. "America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding." But Petraeus wasn't finished: two days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command -- or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. Petraeus's reason was straightforward: with U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged in the region's most troublesome conflict.

The Mullen briefing and Petraeus's request hit the White House like a bombshell. While Petraeus's request that CENTCOM be expanded to include the Palestinians was denied ("it was dead on arrival," a Pentagon officer confirms), the Obama Administration decided it would redouble its efforts -- pressing Israel once again on the settlements issue, sending Mitchell on a visit to a number of Arab capitals and dispatching Mullen for a carefully arranged meeting with Chief of the Israeli General Staff, Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi. While the American press speculated that Mullen's trip focused on Iran, the JCS Chairman actually carried a blunt, and tough, message on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: that Israel had to see its conflict with the Palestinians "in a larger, regional, context" -- as having a direct impact on America's status in the region.

Israel's reaction to Biden's visit was to announce that it was building more settlements, explicitly contrary to US policy (not to mention a couple of UN Security Council resolutions). Then:

But no one was more outraged than Biden who, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, engaged in a private, and angry, exchange with the Israeli Prime Minister. Not surprisingly, what Biden told Netanyahu reflected the importance the administration attached to Petraeus's Mullen briefing: "This is starting to get dangerous for us," Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. "What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace." Yedioth Ahronoth went on to report: "The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel's actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism." The message couldn't be plainer: Israel's intransigence could cost American lives.

Also: Dmitry Reider: Israel Punks Itself: A little something on Israel's latest PR campaign. The author sums up:

Thus, while ostensibly making every effort to reach out, Israel is instead curling deeper and deeper into itself, engaging not so much in public diplomacy as in navel-gazing. Rather than changing the policies that are rapidly turning it into an international pariah, or even honestly arguing its viewpoints, the state is inoculating its citizens against realistic and very real outside criticism. In the long run, this means it will become even more difficult to persuade Israel to change its course -- and to save it from the damage it inflicts upon itself.

Rhapsody Stream Notes

webmaster@tomhull.com (Tom Hull) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:23:57 -0800

These seem to be running about once a month, which lets me pick up the Recycled Goods entries for the archive file. Fewer this month than the last couple, as I didn't go on any binges. (Well, I went on one, looking up lots of old Ravi Shankar albums, but that's withheld for now, to be worked into a future Recycled Goods.)

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 February 5. Past reviews and more information are available here.

Freedy Johnston: Rain on the City (2010, None): Singer-songwriter from Kinsley, KS -- actually a farm south of town. I asked my aunt, who taught grade school for many ears in Kinsley, if she knew him. Small town, after all, the sort of place where everyone knows everyone. She said she never taught him, but was aware of the family. Kinsley is now one of the hardest-hit towns in western Kansas, but while I was growing up I spent more time there than anywhere outside of Wichita. Not sure that means anything here. B+(**)

Four Tet: There Is Love in You (2010, Domino): After various ventures with jazz drummer Steve Reid, Kieran Hebden returns to pure laptronica -- nice, simple, warm, clean, right up my alley, even if it doesn't seem all that exceptional. B+(***)

The Magnetic Fields: Realism (2010, Nonesuch): I've never been a big fan of Stephin Merritt's pseudo-group, or at least I was never as smitten with 69 Love Songs as everyone else evidently is, and that leaves me a bit uncertain here. But "You Must Be Out of Your Mind" grabbed me right away, both with wit and a hook even if both were a little arch. "We Are Having a Hootenanny" suggests fake cheer, which is probably right. Elsewhere I hear Beach Boys echoes, dried out, of course. I could wind up souring on it all, but second play solidified the first. A-

Tea Cozies: Hot Probs (2009, Tea Cozies): Girl group, or maybe not -- Brady Harvey and especially Jeff Anderson strike me as suspicious names, but Jessi Reed sings and plays guitar. The sort of old-fashioned rock formalism that kicks in every time -- MySpace page lists Talking Heads, T Rex, Velvet Underground, My Bloody Valentine, and Wire as influences, with the Kinks first -- and carries some possibly interesting songs with it. B+(***)

I See Hawks in L.A.: Hallowed Ground (2008, Big Books): Fourth album by a California country band, influenced or inspired by Gram Parsons -- a standard they don't reach, but they have the basic sound, plus some song-sense, which is more than Hillman, Souther, et al. can claim. I originally went looking for their new career-spanning compilation, Shoulda Been Gold, which is probably the place to start, but this is pretty solid, and includes "When the Grid Goes Down" -- harder-edged than usual, and didn't make the comp cut. B+(**)

Spoon: Transference (2010, Merge): Austin group, indie-rock running on guitar edge, been around since the mid-1990s with one real good album and a lot of respectably consistent ones. This is another of the latter, once you get past the wobbly starter and just let them hack it out. B+(***)

Los Campesinos: Romance Is Boring (2010, Arts & Crafts): Welsh group. Third album, not counting an EP (or more). Not something I'm readily inclined to like: the multiple voices track operatically (or maybe more like Gilbert and Sullivan; at any case with a lot of gusto, not to mention sturm und drang), the music itself built from grand gestures (plus glockenspiel). On the other hand, the words are often sharper than the music, and they suggest such broad interests that their title song makes its case. Could go up (or down), but even if I had a copy I doubt that I'd play it much. B+(***)

Strong Arm Steady: In Search of Stoney Jackson (2009 [2010], Stones Throw): L.A. hip-hop collective, working with Madlib, with a lot of featured guests on tap -- none all that distinct or impressive, although the beats and flow are up to snuff, and there's plenty of shit worth following. B+(**)

Yeasayer: Odd Blood (2010, Secretly Canadian): Fairly arty Brooklyn indie-rock group, second album, shows a penchant for complex rhythms that may include Middle Eastern and African, jumpy synth sounds, and quite a bit of vocal excess. Much of that sounds promising, but I found myself distressed by the closer ("Grizelda") and that's not the only point where it gets a bit much. B

The Watson Twins: Talking to You, Talking to Me (2010, Vanguard): Second album, not counting their credited backup role on Jenny Lewis's debut. From Louisville via Los Angeles. Nice voice(s). Write all their own songs, which would be more impressive if any were memorable, but a bigger problem is that they really don't have anything that counts as a sound -- the closest I came was one song that echoed Carole King. On the other hand, not much downside. Not much of anything. B-

Charlotte Gainsbourg: IRM (2010, Elektra): Singer, non-songwriter, perhaps better known as an actress, or as the daughter of French chansonnier Serge Gainsbourg. Fourth album. Has a cool -- I'd even say frosty -- feel to it. Two songs in French; one with a lyric by Apollinaire. One song co-credited to Gainsbourg, but that's most likely Serge. The rest is credited to Beck, who plays spookily with the disguise. B+(**)

Manu Chao: Radio Bemba: Baionarena Live (2008 [2010], Nacional/Because, 2CD): Chao's basic live strategy is to crank up the volume and push the pedal to the metal. He did this before on Radio Bemba Sound System, where the effect cut into the charm and wit of his early songs. Same here, but the party is such a consistent up that it hardly matters. Fast you just have to pay more attention, or let yourself go -- either way works. Looks like some packages include an extra DVD with the 2.5 hour concert. Costs an extra $5, and as much as I hate DVDs I have to admit I'm tempted. Not sure of the title, which most sources reduce to Baionarena. A-

Lindstrøm & Christabelle: Real Life Is No Cool (2010, Smalltown Supersound): That sould be Hans-Peter Lindstrøm, who had a well-regarded album last year under his solo last name that I didn't get around to checking out, and an earlier collab simply called Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas. Norwegian beat mixer. Christabelle also goes as Isabelle Sandoo. She sings, of course, but also shares writing credits (except for one track credited to Vangelis). Varied dance pop, with some horns and a little tease. B+(***)

Lindstrøm: Where You Go I Go Too (2008, Smalltown Supersound): Starts ambient, then finds a pulse which the title track works for 28:58, with occasional synth swooshes flying in and out. B+(**)

Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love (2010, Nonesuch): I usually get Nonesuch's world music, but somehow missed out on this. I gather that this is a soundtrack to the title film by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhely, possibly a documentary about N'Dour, and the songs on it are old but in new versions, possibly live. That may make it redundant, but it's impossible for someone who can't fathom his language(s) to get overfamiliar with his songs, or even to make fine distinctions. At a gross level these are (mostly) great songs in (mostly) great performances. It's hard to overpraise him as a singer, and the sonic envelope and rhythmic flow is hard to resist. Will consider this further if/when I get a copy. A-

Gucci Mane: The State vs. Radric Davis (2009, Warner Bros.): Dirty South rapper, b. 1980, given name Radric Davis, as in the title. AMG credits him with 25 albums since 2005 but only bothered to rate three, most recently this one. Can't follow this lyrically, not even to give a rough sense how much is dirty and how much is gangsta, but it doesn't feel like much of either. Rather, it runs on big, happy beats, and keeps the nonsense in check. Probably lots of guests, too. Certainly, lots of pros. B+(**)

OK Go: Of the Blue Colour of the Sky (2010, Capitol): Chicago group, third album, rhythm guitar dominant -- I've seen comparisons to Cars and Pixies, and there's something to that. B+(***)

Beach House: Teen Dream (2010, Sub Pop): Rhapsody calls this "slo-core" which underrates the dreamy, creamy lightness of it. A couple of songs up front promise to make it all work, with looping melodies and a frizz of metallic guitar strum the only thing approaching an edge. Gets a bit twee later on, which may just take time to reconcile. B+(**)

The Whitefield Brothers: Earthology (2010, Now-Again): Not counting the occasional rapper, like Mr. Lif, this is basic exotica, with mallet instruments and flutes riding technoized Afro beats. A-

Dyan Valdés/Eddie Argos: Fixin' the Charts, Vol. 1: Everybody Was in the French Resistance . . . Now! (2010, Cooking Vinyl): Most sources give "Everybody . . . Now!" as the artist name, but Valdés and Argos get their names in the front cover, and "Everybody . . . Now!" is just a line from a song ("Creeque Allies"), unlikely to remain usable on future albums, so my version makes more sense. Maybe Art Brut's Argos should get top billing, but he's in gentleman mode, almost an old-fashioned song and dance man. Found melodies, found concepts, clever enough that it's all a tribute to pop literacy. A-

Dessa: A Badly Broken Code (2010, Doomtree): Female rapper, actually teaches the stuff at some music college. I was most impressed the first play when I actually focused better on the words; less so two more plays while I was trying to write something else, which may mean that her beats are less than exceptional. Still, one reason they slipped past me is that they do what they need to do. A-

Annie: Don't Stop (2009, Smalltown Supersound): Disco singer, I guess you could say, from Norway, full name Anne Lilia Berge-Strand. Has a lot of up-beat fizz and bounce, nothing deep, certainly not the radio-ready song about listening to the radio. B+(**)

Little Boots: Hands (2009 [2010], Elektra): English pop singer, aka Victoria Hesketh, got some year-end votes for last year's UK release. Mostly electropop, but richer than usual melodically, and some of the songs stick. Ends with a piece just backed by piano, and that works too. B+(***)

Cornershop: Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast (2009 [2010], Ample Play): This album appeared in UK last year, but didn't show up on Rhapsody until February, and it's not clear how available it actually is -- most retailers I've checked don't have it. Fourth album; first since 2002, a long stretch although it's almost exactly a chip off the old block. Ready for their best-of: "The Roll Off Characteristics"; maybe "The Turned On Truth" too. And amuse your friends with their one cover: "The Mighty Quinn." A-

Madlib: Madlib Medicine Show No. 1: Before the Verdict (2010, Now Again): Reportedly the first of a 12-CD monthly series. You can tell he's pacing himself, padding the usual beats with bits from comedy sketches, and occasional depth: "Ask not what you can do for your country, but what in the fuck has it done for you?" And "To be a drug dealer is the American dream." B+(*)

Hot Chip: One Life Stand (2010, EMI): A couple years ago had a growing reputation as a sharp electro-pop band, but they seem to have softened up quite a bit, wandering into soft prog territory. Haven't lost their songcraft. B(*)

Full archive file here.

My Year in the Dark

webmaster@tomhull.com (Tom Hull) — Tue, 9 Mar 2010 15:19:37 -0800

Last time I decided to write up notes/grades on movies as I saw them, then I promptly failed to do so. This should catch me up:

Movie: The Road: Bleak post-apocalypse movie, in a world where virtually all plant and animal life have been decimated, with a man and his son trekking cross-country to find the shore and hopefully something better. Lots of rough spots, some with cannibals. Viggo Mortensen literally carries the movie. B+

Movie: Avatar: Tends to get by on its impressive technical achievements, but I actually enjoyed the human sequences, even with their mechanical overkill, more than the computer-generated stuff, which among other things scaled the sets way too vertically. Way too much in almost every way, not least the constant fighting both as law of the jungle and battle for the planet. Story line has been compared to Pocahontas, but note one big difference: these natives had a good share of domesticated animals. Shows someone has read Jared Diamond. B+

Movie: The Last Station: The last year of Leo Tolstoy, with his political interest, his cult followers, his estranged but not invisible wife -- the latter role most likely puffed up for the film, which is only fair for Helen Mirren. Seems awkward and troubling at first, with nobody really living up to their roles, but this has grown fonder over time, so maybe I have it underrated. B+

Movie: Coraline: Caught on TV. Animated feature, Oscar-nominated, mostly left me dumbfounded, although there's some brilliantly inventive visual gags, and the bacon frying sure looked tasty. B

Movie: Lemon Tree: We also saw this 2008 Israeli movie (on DVD), directed by Eran Riklis. The setup is an Israeli Defense Minister moves to a big new house adjacent to a lemon grove owned by a widowed Palestinian woman. The lemon trees are soon perceived to be a security threat, so the DM muscles his way into the grove, setting up a guard post, fencing the trees in where the owner can no longer take care of them or live off them, at one point sending troops in to steal lemons, and eventually pruning the trees to bare stumps beyond a huge concrete wall. The DM's wife observes all this with some disease but little resolve. The Palestinian woman recruits a lawyer to challenge the encroachment, and the case works its way to Israel's supreme kangaroo court. As the lawyer points out, happy endings only occur in American films. The conflict is contained in relatively simple terms: the impact of custom on both sides, the construction of barriers that cannot be broken down by neighbors, the omnipresent threat of Israeli force. In the end the Palestinian resource is destroyed and the DM's house is estranged from the world. For Israel this is what success looks like. A-

Watched the Oscars, which must mean that historically it has more credibility than the Grammys (which I never watch). Watched it with less interest than in many years, probably because I had seen so few movies this past year, maybe even because the few nominees that I had seen were so underwhelming.

Capitalism: A Love Story [A]
Cheri [A-]
An Education [A-]
Up [A-]
Lemon Tree [A-]
Julie & Julia [A-]
A Serious Man [B+]
The Last Station [B+]
The Soloist [B+]
Inglourious Basterds [B+]
Invictus [B+]
State of Play [B+]
Avatar [B+]
Public Enemies [B]
Where the Wild Things Are [B]
Sherlock Holmes [B]
Star Trek [B]
Coraline [B]

Of course, Michael Moore's film isn't fair competition here. The best movie I saw this year was Cheri -- totally missed in the Oscar process even though Michelle Pfeiffer and Kathy Bates made the show as presenters.

I wound up dropping The Soloist a notch from my previous note; I may have A Serious Man and The Last Station a bit underrated. Lots of things we meant to see and didn't get to -- (500) Days of Summer, Broken Embraces, Coco Before Chanel, Crazy Heart, District 9, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Hurt Locker, The Informant, The Messenger, Nine, Precious, Sin Nombre, A Single Man, Up in the Air, The Young Victoria -- partly endless demands on weekends, partly the sad state of Wichita theatres (meaning local monopolist Warren Theatres).

Bad Reviews

webmaster@tomhull.com (Tom Hull) — Tue, 9 Mar 2010 14:27:03 -0800

Jason Gross: Why We Need Bad Reviews: From July 9 last year, just stumbled on this accidentally, mostly because I'm held up as an example of a critic who's too soft on bad jazz albums. Starts with a tweet: "Do bad reviews of jazz CDs help or hurt the art form? Why do you think jazz critics and bloggers are so hesitant to trash?" My short answer is that there's not much to trash: most jazz albums are conceived around interesting enough ideas and are more than competently executed. The few that aren't are best forgotten because, unlike other pop music forms, few stand any chance of becoming public nuissances. If I was covering other kinds of popular music -- country, rap, alt-to-metal rock bands, folk, soft soul, or new age come to mind -- the ratio would shift substantially. (I could add pop jazz to that list. I hardly get any of it anymore, but I cover what I get and it mostly ranges from innocuous to dreadful.) But the place to judge how critical I am isn't Jazz CG, which at 30-40 records per column and 4 columns per year only lets me address 20-25% of the jazz records that come my way. The other 75-80% show up in my lists, database, and above all in my Jazz Prospecting blog posts, and most of the duds and nonentities (as well as a lot of merely good albums) get buried there -- but not without a trace: I track everything I hear -- some 600 jazz albums per year, all sorted out in a list from top to bottom. Even when I'm polite in my notes, the rank list is necessarily brutal. Maybe the grade scale could be slid down a bit -- I find that it's pretty consistent with what I've been doing for many years -- but the relative ordering is inescapable.

As for whether more negative reviews would be good for jazz, I can't say. I do find that most of the jazz reviews I glance at are so positive as to not be useful or even credible. Everyone liking everything doesn't help much, but the problem is not so much that a few slams would make a critic more credible as that I keep reading critics fawning over records I know not to be in any way exceptional. I don't get enough feedback from readers to have a good sense of how my reviews are taken -- probably one reason I latched onto this piece, given more import because I know Jason Gross and know that his listening habits and range of interests are rather analogous to my own (e.g., he produces some of the longest year-end lists I'm aware of). I get roughly one complaint a month from someone who thinks I should listen to their record again (and more closely), and I get a similar number of compliments for finding things or (more often than I would expect) slamming some dud. If I had more space, I might list more duds, but I figure the limited space I do have is better used to recommend something worthwhile. At the margins you can argue that either way -- is it more useful to praise the 35th best album of the column or to disparage the 4th or 5th worst? -- so I may be letting my druthers win out. I don't particularly like dumping on a record, especially an artist I respect, given that anyone producing serious jazz is having a tough go of it. But I do recognize the need to be honest and consistent across the whole range of my listening, even when it drags me into uncomfortable territory -- both personally and aesthetically. And while words sometimes fail me, grades make their point brusquely.

PS: Worth reading the exceptionally high-grade comments. Especially good to hear from Ed Ward. I can say that his point about fear of being denied access for bad reviews -- at least affordable access; hardly any critic has the freedom of a budget to explore -- is valid on occasion, although it has only rarely happened to me.

Charley Colbert

webmaster@tomhull.com (Tom Hull) — Mon, 8 Mar 2010 15:02:03 -0800

I heard last night that Charley Colbert died, in Philadelphia, following a lengthy and, I gather, rather gruesome illness. Hadn't thought about him in many years, but we worked together in the early 1980s at Varityper in NJ -- an AM International division that made typesetting equipment. A year or two before they hired me, Varityper set up its software engineering department to use a DEC PDP-11/70 and UNIX 7 as its development platform. This was back when UNIX was a research project, available from Bell Labs as unsupported source code. My career as a software engineer was to no small extent based on what I learned from reading the UNIX source code -- I learned a lot about how to structure programs, as well as a fair amount about the personalities of the various researchers who contributed the code. Charley was the shop's top UNIX guru: he built the system, kept it running, and was the guy everyone went to for answers -- at least everyone who could deal with a manner that was, uh, abrasive and haughty. My basic tactic at that stage in my career was to seek out the smartest people I could find and glom onto them, and Charley was one of those people. And once you got past the initial intimidation, he turned out to have a wicked sense of humor -- not to mention a vocabulary he chalked up to his time in the navy. I never saw him again after I left Varityper -- or was it after he left?

Seems like a lot of people passed through or by my life over the years, mostly in brief time slices at various jobs where they are very familiar for a while but quickly disconnected. Every now and then you wonder whatever happened to them. It turns out that it's surprisingly hard even to track them down on the web. There are about 25 Charles Colberts hooked into LinkedIn, but none of them look right. I found an obit, but it was for a Colbert who died in Indianapolis early this year. About the only one I've tried who shows up first on a Google search is Tom Hull, so I guess I have to wait until they search me out (as a few have done). Meanwhile, here's a post for the real, as far as I'm concerned the one and only, Charley Colbert.

Jazz Prospecting (CG #23, Part 4)

webmaster@tomhull.com (Tom Hull) — Mon, 8 Mar 2010 12:15:07 -0800

Still in limbo between filing a Jazz CG column and waiting for it to appear. I suppose if I was publishing monthly I wouldn't have such stretches, but I can't say as I mind a break. Pulling stuff somewhat at random below. Also checked out a few of Christgau's Consumer Guide March picks on Rhapsody: Eddie Argos/Dyan Valdés, Dessa, and Whitefield Brothers strike me as keepers, along with Youssou N'Dour and Vampire Weekend which I got to earlier -- will have a batch of Rhapsody stream notes sometime this week. Also started listening to old Ravi Shankar to try to find a context for the new Rare and Glorious comp, which thus far is holding up as well as any. That'll go into Recycled Goods. Still, not finding much jazz that impresses me: only one 2010 A-list record so far, vs. 9 non-jazz releases. Got a letter from one artist complaining that I had missed his masterpiece. No doubt many more think that, but I'm probably as consistent as ever, and we're just going through a minor slump stretch, which happens now and then.

Pablo Held: Music (2009 [2010], Pirouet): Pianist, quite young (b. 1986), from Germany, leading a trio with Robert Landfermann on bass and Jonas Burgwinkel on drums on his second album. Covers from Olivier Messaien and Herbie Hancock, plus eight originals. Starts quiet and cautious, but gradually opens up. B+(**)

Free Unfold Trio: Ballades (2009 [2010], Ayler): Piano trio, led by Jobic Le Masson, with Benjamin Duboc on bass and Didier Lasserre on drums. Two (or four) pieces, composed (or improvised) by the group, totalling a scant 28:39. French group, has one previous album together, and Le Masson has a trio album under his own name. Ballade means slow here, a untethered set of ambient abstractions, interesting but likely to slip past without much notice. B+(*)

Ehud Asherie: Modern Life (2009 [2010], Posi-Tone): Pianist, b. 1979 in Israel, based in New York, third album -- after a trio and a quintet with Grant Stewart and Ryan Kisor. Mainstream player, crosses bop and swing, cites Errol Garner as an influence. Two originals; eight covers, the bop side drawing on Hank Jones and Tadd Dameron, the standards songbook more dominant. One reason this quartet is a tad more retro is that it features tenor saxophonist Harry Allen, and he pretty neatly turns it into a Harry Allen album, which is fine by me. B+(***)

Sam Weiser: Sam I Am (2009 [2010], Disappear): Violinist, 15 years old (so that's 1994?), New Yorker, Mets fan, studied with Mark O'Connor, won some prize named for martyred journalist Daniel Pearl. Advance copy, no musician or session credits, a puke-yellow hype sheet with nothing I want to know. Main vocalist (6 cuts) is presumably Sonia Rutstein of folkie duo Disappear Fear who also does business as SONiA -- somebody else leads on Eddie Palmieri's "Azucar," a token piece of Latin jazz that gets away from everyone. Otherwise the catholic song selection works reasonably well, with Rutstein's three songs guarding against over-familiarity. The violin leads are rich and plush, the band swings; I wouldn't say anyone's improvising or even trying anything novel, but it's pretty listenable. Some day maybe Weiser will grow up and hire a real publicist. B+(*) [advance]

Mark Egan: Truth Be Told (2009 [2010], Wavetone): Electric bassist -- "fretted and fretless" is how he puts it -- b. 1951, has eight or so records since 1985, plus a large number of side credits going back to 1977 -- Pat Metheny, Bill Evans (the saxophonist, who plays here), Gil Evans, Mark Murphy, Jason Miles, Joe Beck. Basically a funk-fusion quintet, like Weather Report at their most homogenized, with less distinctive players at every slot: Egan, Evans, Vinnie Colaiuta (drums), Roger Squitero (percussion), and especially Mitch Forman (keyboards). C+

Paul Meyers Quartet: Featuring Frank Wess (2007 [2010], Miles High): Nylon string guitarist. I screwed up his biographical data last time, and I'm not totally clear now, but looks like he was b. 1956 in New York, attended SUNY Potsdam and New England Conservatory. Fifth album since 2004, but side credits go back to 1989 or 1981 or even 1974. Has an interest in Brazilian music -- not evident here. Wess, on flute as well as tenor sax, is counted in the Quartet, along with Martin Wind on bass and Tony Jefferson on drums. Andy Bey is "special guest" on "Lazy Afternoon" -- quite enough, I'd say, as he's even more mannered than usual. Guitar has a soft, sweet twang, tasty alongside Wess's tenor sax (caveat emptor on the flute). B+(**)

The Trio [Peter Erskine/Chuck Berghofer/Terry Trotter]: Live @ Charlie O's (2009 [2010], Fuzzy Music): No idea how many groups have called themselves The Trio over the years. Certainly enough to have made my pet peeve list. Seems like an exercise in ego, but pianist Terry Trotter has done a remarkable job of avoiding the spotlight since when? The 1960s? AMG credits him with two albums, having overlooked a ouple of Trotter Trio outings. AMG and All About Jazz have no biographies, and Trotter has no web page, let alone MySpace. Wikipedia has two lines: "studio pianist living in Los Angeles." Bassist Berghofer, by comparison, is widely known, and drummer Erskine even more so -- even if you're not a Weather Report fan. No song credits, but looks like standard fare, done with polish and aplomb. B+(**)

Mitch Marcus Quintet: Countdown 2 Meltdown (2009 [2010], Porto Franco): Tenor saxophonist; put his group together in Indiana then moved to Berkeley. Third album. Despite the reinforcement of a second saxophonist -- Sylvain Carton on alto -- the dominant player, and possibly major talent, here is guitarist Mike Abraham, knocking out a hard fusion-funk groove and dressing it up on his solos. At best this reminds me of Anders Nilsson. B+(*)

Soren Moller & Dick Oatts: The Clouds Above (2007 [2010], Audial): Moller is a Danish pianist, 34 (b. 1976?), based in New York where he is part of NYNDK. Second duo album with Oatts, credited here with "saxophones and flute" -- usually plays alto. Oatts has eight albums since 1998 on the Danish label Steeplechase (which I don't get), plus quite a few side credits going back to 1978 (with Mel Lewis). I wasn't much aware of him until I saw him doing a teaching session at Wichita State. (David Berkman had been advertised, but limited his contribution to heckling from the audience.) I figure him for a high quality journeyman, able to fit into most contexts. Moller wrote all of the pieces except for something from Prokofiev, and takes the lead here, but Oatts does a lovely job of coloring -- can't even complain about the flute near the end. B+(***)

Ken Peplowski: Noir Blue (2009 [2010], Capri): Plays clarinet and tenor sax. I prefer the latter, but he prefers the former. Basically a "young fogey" -- part of the postbop generation of swing-oriented players like Scott Hamilton and the Vaché brothers -- with an extensive discography of good but rarely outstanding records. Compatible quartet here: Shelley Berg on piano, Jay Leonhart on bass, Joe LaBarbera on drums. Nice tenor work. Wish there was more of it. B+(*)

Ralph Bowen: Due Reverence (2009 [2010], Posi-Tone): Tenor saxophonist, mainstream player, consistently impressive. Last record rated an HM. This has comparable strengths when he's on, but I've played it a lot and keep losing the thread. Strong quintet, with Sean Jones (trumpet), Adam Rogers (guitar), John Patitucci (bass), Antonio Sanchez (drums). B+(*)

Sean Bergin's New Mob: Chicken Feet: Live at the Bimhuis (2007 [2010], Pingo): Dutch saxophonist, also on the line here for flute, ukulele, and vocals, although most of the vocals belong to Una Bergin and Felicity Provan. They are sometimes distracting, sometimes surreal, which underscores the comic vein in the Dutch avant-garde. Not all that easy to follow, but sneaky clever when you let it go. B+(*)

Bill Cunliffe/Holly Hofmann: Three's Company (2009 [2010], Capri): Piano and flute respectively. Hofmann's in the upper ranks of Downbeat's poll because there's hardly anyone else, and Cunliffe doesn't place because there are jillions of good pianists (though somewhat less that are better than him). Most tracks add a guest, which usually helps -- the contrast with Terrell Stafford's trumpet yields a choice cut (the title track), where the three contributors abstractly lean against each other. The other guests spots: Regina Carter (violin), Ken Peplowski (clarinet), Alvester Garnett (drums). 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:

Abraham Inc.: Tweet Tweet (Dot Dot Dot Music): advance
Aida Severo (Slam -09)
Tommy Babin's Benzene: Your Body Is Your Prison (Drip Audio)
Jerry Bergonzi: Three for All (Savant)
Anat Cohen: Clarinetwork: Live at the Village Vanguard (Anzic): advance, Apr. 13
Stephan Crump with Rosetta Trio: Reclamation (Sunnyside): Apr. 20
The Dominant 7 and The Jazz Arts Messengers: Fourteen Channels (Tapestry)
Damian Erskine: To Speak (DE)
Ben Goldberg: Go Home (BAG -09)
The Inhabitants: A Vacant Lot (Drip Audio)
Nomore Shapes: Creesus Crisis (Drip Audio)
Jeremy Pelt: Men of Honor (High Note)
Tin Hat: Foreign Legion (BAG)

Universe Politics

webmaster@tomhull.com (Tom Hull) — Sun, 7 Mar 2010 12:41:33 -0800

Kate Zernike: Democrats Need a Rally Monkey. Since I wrote my Latte? piece Friday, it's come to my attention that there is a burgeoning Coffee Party movement out to rally the Democratic Party faithful. Not exactly what I had in mind. I was looking for something to push the left's ideas and proposals onto a Democratic administration that is more inclined to look right toward the corporate establishment than left toward its own rank and file. That's different than rallying the base to support the party leadership against the much worse Republicans. Nothing really wrong with that, but after Bush and Cheney and DeLay and Gingrich and Dole and Bush and Reagan, not to mention Nixon, it's not like we have to be reminded to hold our noses and vote for whatever numbskull Democrat stands between sanity and Republican rule. It's just that until you start putting some real alternative ideas into discussion we won't actually be able to solve much of anything.

I'm not much worried about the 2010 elections; even less so about Obama's reelection prospects in 2012. For all the Tea Party hysteria, it's a marginal and mostly incoherent movement, and can easily be painted as such: Nixon's Silent Majority spin seems especially ripe for the taking here, even though the bigot subtext then is on the other foot now. Moreover, there's no reason to think that voters primarily concerned with the sad state of the economy, and their own slack job prospects, should start trusting the Republicans now when the Democrats have always scored better on those issues. And as much as I regret Obama's failure to end Bush's wide-ranging wars of terror, he hasn't opened himself up to stab-in-the-back charges of defeatism, nor has he exhibited Bush's recklessness. Plus the economy is on at least a modest upturn. The only big risk I see is the chance of a nasty ethics blow-up, which could occur if anyone looked real close at the administration's inside dealing -- e.g., on banking and health care, but also on defense and nuclear power and who knows what else. Obama should have done more to clean up the possibility of such corruption -- starting with exposing the extent of it under Bush, and going on to attacking the corrosive role of money in elections -- but by playing it so close to the vest he may be minimizing the chance of something exploding.

Of course, the Republicans will continue to harp on the debt, which would be less damaging if Obama fought them head on rather than throwing out concessions like his mini spending cuts and commission. The short-term problem would go away quickly with higher taxes on the superrich, and the long-term problem requires significant health care reform. Both of these things are valuable in themselves, and no discussion of public debt should take place without bringing them up. Still, Obama's wiggling on debt shows his political calculation, as does nearly every other retreat and compromise. He's angling for control of sane middle ground: incremental solutions which help a little while leaving the whole established order looking pretty much as before -- a world where there are many small winners and few big losers. No reason to think this won't work, at least for him, at least for the next few election cycles. The problem is that necessary change gets swept under the rug or barred from the door. That's what you need a grassroots movement, apart from the Democratic Party establishment, to advance.

Paul Krugman: Senator Bunning's Universe: Bunning managed to fillibuster an extension of unemployment benefits long enough to disrupt the flow of funds to chronically unemployed workers. John Kyl defends Bunning, arguing that unemployment benefits disincentivizes workers from seeking employment opportunities (as if this matters when such opportunities don't even exist). As Krugman points out, Bunning and Kyl inhabit a different universe from that of the Democrats who pushed the bill through: a universe different both intellectually and morally. Kyl, for instance, is frantically concerned about the 0.25 percent of estates not sheltered from the estate tax. Doesn't he understand that the purpose of the estate tax is to disincentivize the superrich from dying? (Or being killed off by their heirs?)

One thing about this vast chasm between political universes is that the boundaries are relatively fixed. There's virtually nothing that Obama can do to get Republican votes short of escalating the war in Afghanistan, pumping up the defense budget, or surrendering a key post like Chairman of the Fed to someone like Ben Bernanke. Why bother? We should be broadening the discussion in the real universe to include proposals that might make a real difference. That other universe is so far removed from reality it's unlikely to matter anyway, especially if we stop flattering it by paying it so much attention.

Latte?

webmaster@tomhull.com (Tom Hull) — Fri, 5 Mar 2010 20:11:46 -0800

I was reading a front-page Wichita Eagle article today about a local Tea Party organizer, and it got me to thinking. A small fraction of the Tea Party gripes are well-founded: especially how the political influence of large companies -- especially investment banks -- corrupts government into granting them outrageous favors. On the other hand, the notion that the answer here is disabling the government -- shrinking it and drowning it in the bathtub, in Grover Norquist's phrase -- is self-defeating. I don't doubt that government bureaucracies, like all bureaucracies, are self-perpetuating, but the government, in principle at least, belongs to the people, and provides a means for acting in the public interest in straightforward ways that private interests are incapable of. If you really do care about problems like bank racketeering you need to pry the government away from being subservient to the banks and return it to the rightful role as the people's agent. To do that involves shaking up several mindsets, but one step that would help a lot would be to publicly fund election campaigns, and to ban (or at least castigate) private and group "contributions" (bribes, really).

I don't much understand the Tea Party platform, which seems to be full of contradictions, and I've never credited their claims of nonpartisanship, which strike me as nothing more than a cynical effort to dispose of the memory of Bush and his Republican claque while doubling down on his most disastrous policies. What makes them so incredible is how their opposition to Obama is so unhinged from Obama's uninspired and unthreatening policies. The people who really do have bones to pick with Obama are the people who elected him: the wars and America's megalomaniacal imperial posture, the insider deals on the banks, the insider deals on health care, the inadequate stimulus, disinterest in a fairer tax system (even the modest step of undoing the Bush tax favors), the whitewashing of the Bush administration's contempt for democracy, the lack of any effort whatsoever to secure democracy from the influence of money. There's more space separating Obama from the left than there is between Obama and the bipartisan elites he works so hard to suck up to.

The main thing that prevents such a movement from forming is the fear that splitting the Democrats will tilt the country back into the hands of the right-wing nutters. I've never been one to split up the united front, but we desperately need some way to get issues back into discussion. It's not like there's any bunch of enlightened elites working in the background to solve these problems, nor that there are a bunch of rich guys anxious to make sure that public interest concerns get a fair hearing.

Not sure what to call such a movement, but one way to discredit a stereotype is to embrace it: maybe we need Latte Parties?

Krugman

webmaster@tomhull.com (Tom Hull) — Thu, 4 Mar 2010 23:59:48 -0800

Larissa MacFarquhar: The Deflationist. Profile, with picture of the wife and cats, and more than you really need to know about the condo in St. Croix. Subtitle is "How Paul Krugman found politics." Answer has a lot to do with wife Robin Wells, who as far as I can tell is sharper and more passionate about it.

During the eighties, he thought that supply-side economics was stupid, but he didn't think that much about it. Unlike Wells, who was so upset when Reagan was elected that she moved to England, Krugman found Reagan comical rather than evil. "I had very little sense of what was at stake in the tax issues," he says. "I was into career-building at that point and not that concerned." He worked for Reagan on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers for a year, but even that didn't get him thinking about politics. [ . . . ]

For the first twenty years of Krugman's adult life, his world was divided not into left and right but into smart and stupid. "The great lesson was the low level of discussion," he says of his time in Washington. "The then Secretary of the Treasury" -- Donald Regan -- "was not that bright, and you could have angry exchanges where neither side understood the policy."

The first book I read by Krugman was Peddling Prosperity: Sense and Nonsense in an Age of Diminished Expectations (1995), a Clinton-era book that was remarkably even-handed in dumping on liberal Democrats as well as conservative Republicans. (I missed his earlier popular book The Age of Diminished Expectations: US Economic Policy in the 1990s, which is more likely to have taken aim at Reagan's economic policies.) MacFarquhar sums up:

Krugman's tribe was academic economists, and insofar as he paid any attention to people outside that tribe, his enemy was stupid pseudo-economists who didn't understand what they were talking about but who, with attention-grabbing titles and simplistic ideas, persuaded lots of powerful people to listen to them. He called these types "policy entrepreneurs" -- a term that, by differentiating them from the academic economists he respected, was meant to be horribly biting. He was driven mad by Lester Thurow and Robert Reich in particular, both of whom had written books touting a theory that he believed to be nonsense: that America was competing in a global marketplace with other countries in much the same way that corporations competed with one another. In fact, Krugman argued, in a series of contemptuous articles in Foreign Affairs and elsewhere, countries were not at all like corporations.

That's an important point, one that a lot of things flow out of. For starters, corporations can fire workers, but countries cannot. Corporations are hierarchical, authoritarian, streamlined, purposely disciplined, and secretive in ways that would be intolerable in a country. Given these disparities you have to wonder why anyone would think that corporate leadership in any way qualified one for leading a country.

One thing you have to give Krugman credit for is that he didn't waste any time trying to be fair and balanced about George W. Bush: he published his attack on Bush's tax plans -- Fuzzy Math: The Essential Guide to the Bush Tax Plan -- before the ink was dry. In a world where politics was filled with calculated bullshit, he bought none of it. He hasn't cut Obama much slack either:

In fact, the change came faster than either of them had anticipated, because during the primary campaign Krugman was very critical of Barack Obama. He was critical chiefly because, of the three main candidates, Obama seemed to him the most conservative (his health plan, for instance, didn't mandate universal coverage), but it wasn't just his policies that Krugman objected to. He couldn't stand all the feel-good stuff about hope and dialogue and reconciliation. He hated that Obama was out there saying nice things about Reagan when what Democrats needed to do most was debunk the persistent myth that Reaganomics had been good for America. He thought Obama was completely wrong to believe that the country's problems were due largely to partisan nastiness, and ridiculously naïve to imagine that he could bring together Republicans and insurance companies to reform health care. "Anyone who thinks that the next president can achieve real change without bitter confrontation is living in a fantasy world," he wrote in 2007.

I suspect now that Krugman's initial antipathy to Obama had more to do with his freshwater/saltwater economic dichotomy: while you can't paint Obama as a purebred Chicago-school economist, he does seem to have picked up pieces of the attitude, especially Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's subtly manipulative "nudge" framework. Krugman may be right that Obama was more conservative than Clinton or Edwards, but he was free of some of their baggage -- not least their Iraq War votes. Since Obama took office some things are clearer and some are not. His cautious, conservative instincts have come out front, way ahead of his clear reasoning and even his inspirational oratory. He has repeatedly not just pulled his punches but refused to throw them. He unaccountably, inexcusably kept much of Bush's security and treasury teams, adding a few Clinton people (including dependably hawkish Hillary Clinton), and they have continued to operate much as they did under Bush (or at least under Clinton). Krugman has yet to criticize such policies in personal terms (as I just did), but he's held tight to the issues, cutting Obama slack as a practicing politician but not as a policy theorist (e.g., on stimulus size).

A lot of background info here, including a good summary of the academic work that Krugman built his Nobel Prize rep on. More currently:

Why was it so politically difficult to reregulate the banks? he wondered. Why couldn't the Administration harness the populist outrage? What good had Wall Street ever done for America? "There must be something useful in there, but it is really hard to see what," he says. "That's everybody's challenge: come up with a clearly beneficial example of financial innovation without mentioning A.T.M.s, and no one can do it. If there are arbitrage opportunities and you're able to spot them a few seconds before anybody else, you can make a lot of money, but there's no actual social gain from doing that. We've tried talking to our friends in finance, and they say, 'Liquidity, liquidity, liquidity.' Well, there is some social loss if people are hanging on to a lot of idle cash, so the financial system, by providing liquid assets that provide a pretty good yield, is supposed to deal with that. But it turns out that, just when you need it most, that liquidity froze." [ . . . ]

The crisis should have been a lesson to people not to rush into investments that they didn't understand, but Krugman suspects that it wasn't. "It hasn't been the searing experience," he says. "A lot of people got burned, but I'm not sure that they'll remember. You really have to have a Depression mentality to say, 'I'd rather have cash or Treasury bills that yield almost nothing, rather than this product that my banker assures me is perfectly safe and yields two per cent.' So, unless there's a lot more regulation, we could do this again." Krugman had been getting more and more pessimistic about the possibilities for recovery. Already, incredibly, people seemed to be forgetting that America's economy had nearly collapsed, and the usual critics of deficit spending and those who did not share his sanguine attitude toward inflation were speaking up again.

Part of the problem is that there are lots of variant notions of what constitutes a recovery, starting with Goldman Sachs' profit/loss sheet, which has already recovered (without so much as a "thank you very much"). Part of the problem is that it's harder than ever to connect the dots, especially when people in a position of authority like Obama are reluctant to do so. I basically bought the argument that it was necessary to bail the banks out in order to prevent further destruction of the real economy, but we should have gotten the necessary reforms as part of the quid pro quo back when the banks were facing the abyss. That didn't happen -- in part because Bush and Obama didn't want to further undermine confidence in the system; in part because the banks had so much inside clout the regulators were tripping over themselves trying to do them favors -- and as the moment has passed, the metaphor has lost its impact (if indeed anyone outside of the financial sector understood it anyway).

Ask the Author Live: Larissa MacFarquhar with Paul Krugman: An interview (no longer live) following up on the article.

Loudon Wainwright III: The Paul Krugman Blues: Not up to "Kings and Queens" or "Rufus Is a Tit Man" but germane enough for a link.

Paul Krugman: The Bankruptcy Boys: The best of his recent columns, maybe because the target is as easy to hit as an elephant. Republicans have been pursuing this "starve the beast" strategy for years. (I first ran into it when a friend insisted on tipping in cash for credit card-charged meals so that the tip might escape the taxman's net, thereby depriving the government of a tiny bit of money to waste.) The most extreme version of this is the Republican vote against raising the federal debt limit -- a ploy to force the government into default, which will presumably make borrowing any more money more expensive. Such a move would be nothing short of insane, but there it is. And really, drowning the government in the bathtub is just as insane.

But there is a kind of logic to the current Republican position: in effect, the party is doubling down on starve-the-beast. Depriving the government of revenue, it turns out, wasn't enough to push politicians into dismantling the welfare state. So now the de facto strategy is to oppose any responsible action until we are in the midst of a fiscal catastrophe.

Why anyone would trust the Republicans to manage the government they hate through a catastrophe is beyond me. Masochism? Stupidity? Death wish?

Recycled Goods (71): February 2010

webmaster@tomhull.com (Tom Hull) — Tue, 2 Mar 2010 22:26:22 -0800

I've been having a tough time finding appropriate and interesting reissues. Fewer find me than at any time since I started this column. And while I've somewhat made up for the shortfall by searching out things on Rhapsody, the lack of documentation makes many otherwise interesting items less worthwhile. I still don't see much point in seeking out a reissue without some useful history on how the record came to be.

That leaves world music, which has been slowly accumulating on my shelves. Most of these records are more/less new, but I found long ago that it's hard to draw a sharp line between new and old world music, and there may be no real value in doing so. I keep going back and forth on how best to handle it, but this month it came to the rescue of an otherwise thin list. February is short, and this one has been pretty unpleasant. Glad it's over.

Afghan Star (2009, Silva Screen): Original soundtrack recording to a documentary which won a couple of Sundance awards. The subject is an Afghan TV show, a talent search show, sort of Afghanistan's answer to American Idol, most likely without the smarmy judges. About the only thing I (or hardly anyone) knows about Afghani music is that the Taliban did their damnedest to suppress it. But an educated guess would be that it absorbs Iranian classical music and Pakistani Qawwali, with dashes of Arabic improvisation and Bollywood schmaltz, and that's about right -- except for the closer, which picks up bits of rock and what sounds like Scottish bagpipes. Still a place where tradition runs strong, but if the Obama can keep from serving the country up to the Taliban on a silver platter, in a decade I figure the tide will turn toward hip-hop and baila funk. B+(**)

Goran Bregovic: Welcome to Goran Bregovic (Best Of) ([2009], Wrasse): Don't know when these widely scattered tracks were recorded: could be as early as his 1974 group Bijelo Dugme or as late as the title cut to his recent live party album Alkohol, or any time in between. A Serb from Bosnia, based in Belgrade, best known for soundtracks which may or may not exploit Gypsy music. Some cuts are pure soundtrack, some are trad wedding music, some deep Balkan, some borrowed from elsewhere, including a "Ya Ya" segment wrapped up as "Ya Ya Ringe Ringe Raja." B+(*) [R]

Betty Davis (1973 [2008], Light in the Attic): Born Betty Mabry, 1945, Durham, NC. Picked up her surname by marrying Miles Davis, which lasted about a year but featured her pic on the cover of Filles de Kilimanjaro. Skinny legs, big afro, not much of a voice but plenty of attitude and grit. Cut four funk albums 1973-76. None very successful, but these days obscure soul records have a certain vogue, enough so that she's become a cult star. Her first album is in thrall to the rhythm -- no surprise given Larry Graham and Greg Errico on bass with Merl Saunders on keyboards. She hangs tough too, with songs like "Game Is My Middle Name" and "Anti Love Song." B+(***) [R]

Boban i Marko Markovic Orkestar: Devla: Blown Away to Dancefloor Heaven (2009, Piranha): Balkan brass band, handed down from old lead trumpet Boban Markovic to new lead trumpet Marko Markovic, the transition effectively complete here -- the dancefloor more generalized and more welcoming than was the case with the old wedding band. Brass may be toned down a bit too, but that's only because the pace has picked up. A-

Tinariwen: Imidiwan: Companions (2009, World Village): Tuaregs from the north of Mali, which is to say the Sahara, where the residual calm of an individual guitarist like Ali Farka Touré can be likened to American blues, and where a full-fledged multi-guitar, multi-vocal group averages out into something that transcends blues individuality into collective trance. Fourth album, all pretty much the same, this one even more elemental, which for once beats idiosyncratic. A-

Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté: Ali and Toumani (2005 [2010], World Circuit/Nonesuch): Touré, Mali's quintessential blues guitarist passed away in 2006, shortly after these gently seductive sessions were cut. Diabaté may or may not be Mali's greatest kora player, but he is certainly the most effectively networked one, showing up on everyone's album, including 2005's In the Heart of the Moon, a previous duo with Touré. This isn't quite bare: the late Orlando "Cachaito" Lopez plays bass on five cuts, young Vieux Farka Touré plays congas, and several others add backing vocals and percussion, but nothing much roughs up the gentle roll. B+(***)

Briefly Noted

Albert Ammons/Henry Brown/Meade Lux Lewis/"Cripple" Clarence Lofton/Pete Johnson/Speckled Red: Boogie Woogie Kings (1938-71 [2009], Delmark): Your basic boogie woogie piano sampler with some vocals; Lofton's six cuts are the oldest; Red, with four cuts including a previously unreleased (and relatively mild) "Dirty Dozens" is the most recent; Lewis gets three sharply played cuts, plus one with the Ammons-Johnson-Lewis triumvirate. B+(**)

Mulatu Astatke: New York-Addis-London: The Story of Ethio Jazz 1965-1975 (1965-75 [2009], Strut): Broader than the overlapping Addis-only Éthiopiques 4 collection, mostly with swipes at Latin jazz, but the globetrotting Ethiopian percussionist never found a groove he couldn't incorporate, or spice up with the flavor of his homeland. A-

Anouar Brahem: The Astounding Eyes of Rita (2008 [2009], ECM): Dedicated to the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, whose poem posits a rifle between him and his love; the music itself flows in a gentle groove, oud over bass and darbouka or bendir, under a gentle breeze of bass clarinet. B+(***)

Goran Bregovic: Alkohol (2008 [2009], Wrasse): A live album which serves as a better intro (or maybe I just mean a more consistently enjoyable album) than his best-of, mostly because it's louder and rowdier, traits to look for in Serbian music -- in this case guitar-driven. A- [R]

Betty Davis: They Say I'm Different (1974 [2008], Light in the Attic): Cover pic shows her with a huge collar framing her afro like a lizard puffed up in a bold display, but her lower half is long and leggy -- but scrunched up, insect-like; the album has the usual sophomore faults -- less distinctive songs, less starpower in the band -- but the bonus cuts reiterate four songs that become more iconic the second time around, maybe because they're stretched a bit. B+(**) [R]

Betty Davis: Is It Love or Desire (1976 [2009], Light in the Attic): Fourth album, or would have been had it been released; easy to see why it wasn't, with the funk splayed wide and not all that tight on the one, and Davis's voice more croak than coo; holding it back for 33 years elevates it from inept to idiosyncratic, not that you have to indulge her. B+(*) [R]

Scott LaFaro: Pieces of Jade (1961-85 [2009], Resonance): A belated souvenir of the legendary bassist, dead in a car crash at age 25 shortly after blossoming on Bill Evans' remarkable 1961 Village Vanguard sets; five fine piano trio cuts with Don Friedman and Pete LaRoca, a 22:44 practice tape with Evans, an Evans interview from 1966, and a Friedman solo from 1985, appropriately called "Memories for Scotty." B

Memphis Nighthawks: Jazz Lips (1976-77 [2009], Delmark): University of Illinois students formed a trad jazz group, recycling the name of an obscure 1920s group, cut an long-forgotten album for a Chicago label, and disbanded; in some ways this is like every other trad jazz revival project, but the horn layering -- clarinet, trumpet, trombone, bass sax -- is subtle and powerful, and the guitar-drums rhythm cooks. B+(***)

Nneka: Concrete Jungle (2005-08 [2010], Decon): German mother, Nigerian father, splits her time between Lagos and Hamburg, gets a US debut by recycling cuts from two German albums; less Afro-Pop than Neo-Soul, although individual cuts fold in funk or reggae or hip-hop and start to get interesting as they pick up speed. B+(*) [R]

Tierra Negra & Muriel Anderson: New World Flamenco (2009 [2010], Tierra Negra): German group specializes in dueling flamenco guitars, while the American strums along on classic and harp guitar, with a dash of percussion to keep everything moving along at a nice pace. 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.

Jazz Prospecting (CG #23, Part 3)

webmaster@tomhull.com (Tom Hull) — Mon, 1 Mar 2010 09:54:53 -0800

Jazz Consumer Guide is out of my hands but still a few weeks away from publication. Good time to Just pick my way through the backlog. Finding some good records, but no great ones. Lots more to go.

Jerry Leake: Cubist (2009 [2010], Rhombus Publishing): Percussionist employing almost every instrument from around the world, graduated from Berklee, teaches at New England Conservatory and Tufts, has published eight books, released four records. This one marks a move towards assembling a band -- nominally an octet, but only guitarist-producer Randy Roos joins Leake on a majority of cuts. Some cuts develop an impressive African vibe; others add Turkish and Indian flavors. B+(**)

Babatunde Lea: Umbo Weti: A Tribute to Leon Thomas (2008 [2009], Motéma, 2CD): Drummer, I'm finding very little useful biography: grew up in New York and Englewood, NJ; now based in San Francisco, evidently since the late 1960s. ("In the late 1960s the youthful 49 year old percussionist migrated westward to the Bay Area": when was he 49? If in the late 1960s he'd be 90 now, which he sure doesn't look; if now he would have left NY/NJ by the time he was 10, hardly grown up.) Released an album in 1979, then nothing until 1996, a half-dozen (more/less) since. Leon Thomas (1937-99) might have been a blues shouter but he ran into the avant-garde, cutting six 1969-73 albums, plus appearing on albums by Pharoah Sanders, Oliver Nelson, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Archie Shepp, Mary Lou Williams, and Santana. His discography is spotty after that -- a 1988 Blues Band album I rather like, a 1998 duet with Jeri Brown, not much more. This was cut live at Yoshi, with Dwight Trible carrying the vocal burden, Ernie Watts waxing eloquent on tenor sax where Sanders and Shepp turned shrill, Patrice Rushen on piano and Gary Brown on bass. B+(***)

Maria Neckam: Deeper (2009 [2010], Sunnyside): Singer-songwriter, born in Austria, lived in Netherlands before winding up in Brooklyn. First record. Mostly backed by a slinky, slippery group consisting of Aaron Goldberg on piano, Thomas Morgan on double bass, and Colin Stranahan on drums, with a horn or two added on 5 of 10 songs. Peter Eldridge also sings on one song. Lyrics are buried in a PDF on the extended CD, but 90% of "Missing You" is rote repetition of "missing you," and I didn't notice anything else much, uh, deeper. C+

John Ellis & Double-Wide: Puppet Mischief (2009 [2010], ObliqSound): Tenor saxophonist, also plays bass clarinet here, b. 1974, sixth album since 1996. Seems that he has been aiming at some sort of a popular mainstream synthesis -- past album titles emphasize a common touch ("Roots Branches and Leaves," "One Foot in the Swamp"), and his Double-Wide aims low even when the shot drifts high. Blues are part, but also this veers toward circus music -- maybe it's Matt Perrine's sousaphone in lieu of bass, or Brian Coogan's organ (also in lieu of bass). The fourth group member is Jason Marsalis on drums, but things are made more complex with two guests: Alan Ferber on trombone and Gregoire Maret on harmonica, both quality additions. B+(*)

Tineke Postma: The Traveller (2009 [2010], Etcetera Now): Alto saxophonist, some soprano, b. 1978, Netherlands. Fourth album, this one fronting a quality American quartet: Geri Allen on piano, Scott Colley on bass, Terri Lyne Carrington on drums. Pushes hard on the edges of postbop, but doesn't make much of a breakthrough. B+(*)

Liam Sillery: Phenomenology (2008 [2010], OA2): Trumpeter, b. 1972, from New Jersey, fourth album since 2005, a hard bop quintet with name players -- at least in my book: Matt Blostein (alto sax), Jesse Stacken (piano), Thomas Morgan (bass), Vinnie Sperrazza (drums) -- and postbop airs but also rough edges. Best when they pick up the pace. B+(**)

Pablo Aslan: Tango Grill (2010, Zoho): Bassist, born in Argentina, based in New York, has several records based on tango themes -- 2007's Buenos Aires Tango Standards is one I particularly recommend. New one is more of the same -- an assortment of old tango tunes given a jolt of jazz improv, with piano and trumpet kicking in as well as the usual bandoneon and violin. B+(***)

David S. Ware: Saturnian (Solo Saxophones, Volume 1) (2009 [2010], AUM Fidelity): Practice as slow-motion performance: the inevitable solo album, tenor sax (of course), also stritch and saxello which are a bit funkier, perhaps because they're hard to play without thinking of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. But Ware, always a methodical guy, only plays one at a time. B+(***)

Sebastiano Meloni/Adriano Orrù/Tony Oxley: Improvised Pieces for Trio (2008 [2010], Big Round): Piano-bass-drums trio, respectively. Meloni and Orrù live in Cagliari, Italy; they have a short discography which hasn't come to AMG's attention yet. Credits are split 7 for Meloni, 7 for the group (one is just an Orrù-Oxley duo). Meloni plays sharp and percussive, able to take the lead when he sees fit. Oxley is relatively famous: a major drummer of Europe's avant-garde, past 70 now, with a Penguin Guide crown album to his credit (1969's The Baptised Traveler). B+(***)

Dan Dean: 251 (2009 [2010], Origin): Bassist; credits don't specify, but pictures show him playing electric. First album, although AMG lists about 50 credits going back to 1976. The songs here are covers, most well known standards ("'S Wonderful," "One Note Samba," "All the Things You Are," "In Walked Bud," "Body and Soul," etc.) done as duets with various keyboard players: George Duke, Larry Goldings (organ), Gil Goldstein (also plays accordion), Kenny Werner. Werner's cuts are brightly pianistic; Goldings is Goldings, and there's not much a bassist can do about that. B

Phil Kelly & the Northwest Prevailing Winds: Ballet of the Bouncing Beagles (2009, Origin): Big big band -- 22 pieces, plus string programming -- from Seattle, with a couple of recognized names but not many -- Jerry Dodgion, Pete Christlieb, Grant Geissman, Jay Thomas are the names I know. Third album for composer-arranger Kelly, who came out of Texas, where he was arranger for the Fort Worth Symphony Pops for 25 years. Reminds me of Kenton, sometimes even at his best, hardly ever at his worst. B+(*)

Scenes: Rinnova (2009 [2010], Origin): Guitarist John Stowell, leading a trio with Seattle stalwarts Jeff Johnson (bass) and John Bishop (drums). Second album as Scenes, plus an earlier quartet album titled Scenes. Stowell's credits go back to the mid-1970s. AMG credits him with 13 albums and a few more credits, mostly since 2000. Has an engagingly subtle style, calmly picking his way through intricate sequences. Need more time to decide just how substantial this is. [B+(***)]

Aaron Immanuel Wright: Eleven Daughters (2009 [2010], Origin): Bassist, b. 1979, from Oregon, studied in California, got a BA in philosophy, based now in New York. Wrote (or co-wrote with drummer Brian Menendez) 6 of 7 songs, with a cover of "Laura." Group is a quartet with Tim Willcox on tenor sax and Darrell Grant on piano. I suppose one way you can tell it's the bassist's record is that neither sax nor piano ever break loose. Such balance may be admirable, but it doesn't do much to get your attention. B

Tord Gustavsen Ensemble: Restored, Returned (2009 [2010], ECM): Pianist, b. 1970, from Norway, has three previous trio albums on ECM, slyly simple and elegant things that put him in the upper tier of ECM's ambience. This is a slightly bigger production, in which he plays slightly less. Several pieces are built around W.H. Auden poetry, sung by Kristin Asbjørnsen, who gives them a sultry musicality far removed from the archness that most found poetry results in. Tore Brunborg plays tenor and soprano sax, gently caressing the melodies and filling them out. B+(***)

Pete Lockett's Network of Sparks: One (1999 [2010], Summerfold): Percussion ensemble, released on Bill Bruford's label, as Bruford joins in and gets a "featuring" credit. Reissue of first album, released on Melt 2000 in 1999 or 2000, with same cover plus the legend across the bottom: "Rhythms and pulses from around the world." Lockett has five or more later albums, most or all with Nana Tsiboe (from Ghana, plays congas and djembe) and Simon Limbrick (mostly plays marimba and vibes), who are spotted here on about half of the cuts, along with Bruford (5 tracks, mostly drum set), Pam Chowhan and Johnny Kaisi (one track each). Lockett is credited with dozens of things, including samplers and sound treatments. Two pieces by other drum ensemble pioneers (Max Roach, Pierre Favre), the rest originals. B+(*)

Maxfield Gast: Eat Your Beats (2009 [2010], Militia Hill): Saxophonist (alto, soprano, EWI; also trumpet, synth, and drum programming) from Philadelphia. First album. Occasionally adds keybs, bass, and/or drums, but sometimes just does it all himself. One of his web pages describes this as "a combination of old-school instrumental hip hop, drum & bass, soul, and funk." I wound up refiling it as pop jazz, which isn't quite fair: it isn't slick or smooth or catchy, and it doesn't make you feel like wretching. On the other hand, it doesn't do much else either. Minor grooves, nothing to get your attention (least of all the saxophone), yet it doesn't slip into ambience either. B-

Carl Fischer & Organic Groove Ensemble: Adverse Times (2009 [2010], Fischmusic): Trumpet player (also flugelhorn and valve trombone here), second album. Played with Maynard Ferguson Big Bop Nouveau Band 1993-98, winding up as music director, and returning for spots up to 2004. Otherwise, resume mostly features performances (but I don't see any recording credits) with pop stars: Dianne Schuur, Mary Wilson, Blood Sweat & Tears, Dells, Four Tops, Will Smith, Shakira, Sam Moore, Sophie B. Hawkins, Mariah Carey, Billy Joel. Organic Groove seems to mean Hammond B3, guitar, tabla, and Latin percussion. Two vocals by Brent Carter are definite downers. The trumpet does remind a bit of Ferguson, to whom the album is dedicated. B

Orrin Evans: Faith in Action (2009 [2010], Posi-Tone): Pianist, b. 1975 or 1976 (seen both cited) in Trenton, NJ; raised in Philadelphia, studied at Rutgers (e.g., Kenny Barron), based in Philadelphia. Tenth album since 1994, most on Criss Cross. First one I've heard, partially plugging one of the larger gaps in my listening. Piano trio with Luques Curtis on bass, various drummers (Nasheet Waits, Rocky Bryant, Gene Jackson). Mostly Bobby Watson songs (5 of 10) -- Evans has appeared on a couple Watson albums, and Watson wrote an appreciative note on the inside, something about finding the portal and unlocking the compositions. That's too technical for me: what I hear is a first-rate postbop pianist picking his way through intricate material, impressive enough but nothing quite grabs me. Need to listen to him more, but that's true of a lot of more/less equivalent pianists. B+(**)

Roberto Fonseca: Akokan (2008 [2010], Enja/Justin Time): Cuban pianist, b. 1975, has six or so albums since 2001. Has a light touch, speed, and sophistication when out in the lead. His accoutrements are less impressive. Javier Zalba plays flute, clarinet, and baritone sax, none particularly apt. Several vocals also produce mixed effects. Few Afro-Cuban trademarks, which is neither here nor there. 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.

Terry Riley: Autodreamographical Tales (2010, Tzadik): Two multipart series, the title piece spoken word over ambient sounds, "The Hook Lecture" built around piano pieces (with some spoken word) that are somewhat more than minimalist. The spoken word isn't without interest, although it can be slow going. The piano is richly textured. I suppose there's a classical analogue, but don't know enough to pin it down, partly because I've never heard classical piano I liked quite this much. B+(*) [Rhapsody]

John Zorn: Femina (2008 [2009], Tzadik): A tribute to the ladies. The CD is organized as Parts 1-4, but the website notes that Zorn composed (doesn't play) this using his "file card technique," and the granularity includes references to: Hildegard von Bingen, Meredith Monk, Simone de Beauvoir, Frida Kahlo, Madame Blavatsky, Isadora Duncan, Hélène Cixous, Gertrude Stein, Abe Sada, Sylvia Plath, Louise Bourgeois, Margaret Mead, Loie Fuller, Dorothy Parker, Yoko Ono, moon goddess En Hedu'Anna, and others. Players are: Jennifer Choi (violin), Okkyung Lee (cello), Carl Emanuel (harp), Sylvie Courvoisier (piano), Ikue Mori (electronics), and Shayna Dunkelman (percussion), with Laurie Anderson offering some words at the beginning. While the action can shift dramatically, it mostly meanders unimpressively. 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:

Jason Adasiewicz's Rolldown: Varmint (Cuneiform)
Ehud Asherie: Modern Life (Posi-Tone)
Stefano Battaglia/Michele Rabbia: Pastorale (ECM): advance, Mar. 30
François Couturier: Un Jour Si Blanc (ECM): advance, Mar. 30
Ergo: Multitude, Solitude (Cuneiform)
First Meeting: Cut the Rope (Libra): Mar. 23
Satoko Fujii Ma-Do: Desert Ship (Not Two): Mar. 23
Satoko Fujii Orchestra Tokyo: Zakopane (Libra): Mar. 23
Gato Libre: Shiro (Libra): Mar. 23
Aaron Goldberg: Home (Sunnyside): Apr. 13
Helge Lien Trio: Hello Troll (Ozella)
Little Women: Throat (AUM Fidelity): Apr. 13
New York Art Quartet: Old Stuff (1965, Cuneiform)
Mark O'Connor: Jam Session (OMAC)
Ken Peplowski: Noir Blue (Capri)
Jean-Michel Pilc: True Story (Dreyfus)
Karl Seglem: NORSKjazz.no (Ozella)
Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars: Rise & Shine (Cumbancha): Mar. 23
The Vinson Valega Group: Biophilia (Consilience Productions): Mar. 16
VW Brothers [Paul van Wageningen/Marc van Wageningen]: Muziek (Patois)
The Wee Trio: Capitol Diner Vol. 2 Animal Style (Bionic)