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Jazz Consumer Guide (15):
Surplus

This is the surplus file for Jazz Consumer Guide #15. These are short reviews of records that for one reason or another have been dropped from active consideration while working on this column. These reviews will be published in the blog when the column comes out.

Ralph Alessi & This Against That: Look (2005 [2007], Between the Lines): I hate pulling the plug on this, but it's one high HM I did go back and play again and again, but never managed to get anything written about it. Alessi has repeatedly distinguished himself as a sideman, and that has some relevance here. His leads are as tight and tasteful as his support work, only here they're supposed to stand out front. Complex, difficult postbop -- I can't begin to enumerate the interesting ideas. Only a couple of minor flat spots kept it from the A-list, and in any case it deserves a listen. I'm only kicking it off because I'm not up to it, and I'm getting tired of the pressure. B+(***)

Richie Barshay: Homework (2004-05 [2007], AYVA): Picked this up on the rebound along with Francisco Mela (q.v.). Both guys are drummers who can do a lot of different things, and stuff their debut albums so full of it they wind up feeling like recitals or clinics. I like this one a shade more, but never found much to say about it. He's a talent to keep an eye on. B+(***)

Tony DeSare: Last First Kiss (2006 [2007], Telarc): Slick, handsome, he's my favorite Sinatra wannabe. Young enough he may figure Prince and Carole King were part of Tin Pan Alley. Two good albums down. I'll catch him one of these days. B+(***)

Steve Lacy-Roswell Rudd Quartet: Early and Late (1962-2002 [2007], Cuneiform, 2CD): Previously unreleased work from the 1962 quartet that recorded School Days, an album that much later provided Ken Vandermark with a group name, and from the 1999-2002 reunion that recorded Monk's Dream. Both were major figures in the intervening decades, although Rudd had a rougher time, for a while making ends meet playing nostalgia bands in the Catskills. This only loses out to the space crunch: Francis Davis covered it in the Voice, I wrote it up in Recycled Goods, and it's been sitting a while. A-

Francisco Mela: Melao (2005 [2006], AYVA): I only found out about this Boston-based Cuban drummer after his album won the Village Voice Jazz Poll's debut category. One reason it won was that for a debut album it had a lot of star power: Joe Lovano, George Garzone, Anat Cohen, Lionel Loueke. Getting to it so late I never spent enough time sorting it out -- "an embarrassment of riches," I called it. Haven't touched it in a long time since. B+(***)

Golda Solomon: Word Riffs (2006, JazzJaunts): Spoken word poet with jazz accompaniment. I tracked this down looking for background after I heard her on saxophonist Saco Yasuma's Another Rain, and it's more of what intrigued me in the first place. B+(**)

Abram Wilson: Ride! Ferris Wheel to the Modern Day Delta (2007, Dune): Dune is an English label trying to break a peculiarly English form of Contemporary Jazz -- one based on hip-hop, reggae, maybe some African pop, something far hipper than any American label of similar ambitions would risk. I applaud the idea, but the realization has been more miss than hit thus far. A couple of years back saxophonist Soweto Kinch released a pretty good but deeply flawed album, while trumpeter Abram Wilson dropped a really bad one. Last year they traded places, with Kinch going deeper into hip-hop and getting lost, while Wilson rediscovered his footing in New Orleans. I wrote up Kinch as a dud. Figured I'd soften the blow with this as an HM, but didn't get it done. Sorry about that. B+(**)

Yerba Buena Stompers: Dawn Club Favorites (2001, Stomp Off): The first of five Stomp Off albums I got as background on this fine trad jazz group. Their model is Lou Watters' Yerba Buena Jazz Band, formed in 1939 at the beginning of the first great trad jazz revival, and largely responsible for it. Watters' played in San Francisco's Dawn Club, and this is what he played: same lineup, same arrangements, better sound (of course). In my review of the new The Yama-Yama Man, I singled out this and the following New Orleans Favorites as the best of the back catalog. Makes sense that if you're doing repertoire, you'd start from the top. A-

Yerba Buena Stompers: Duff Campbell's Revenge (2005, Diamondstack): Beyond from the five studio releases on Stomp Off, John Gill sent me two live sets on Diamondstack. They are scruffier sounding, a bit looser, not as articulate, but this one in particular is pretty good anyway, a nice little digest of their first four studio albums, with some stories thrown in about someone named Duff Campbell, a notable patron of San Francisco's trad jazz scene. B+(***)

Other Drops

Also dropping the following. Don't have anything to add to what was previously said in the prospecting notes (for this or some previous Jazz CG cycle).

Finally, the following appeared (or soon will) in Recycled Goods: