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Music: Current count 26420 [26400] rated (+20), 410 [411] unrated (-1).
Another short week, but at least I found a few recommendables this week, thanks, I must admit, to slipstreaming other critics. You can read more substantive reviews of Kendrick Lamar's 2010 mixtape and Anderson Paak's new one (also HM Kyle) by Robert Christgau, of Bonnie Raitt (and BJ the Chicago Kid -- a tip he fed me a couple weeks ago) by Michael Tatum, and Audio One by Tim Niland. Tatum also has an excellent review of Hamilton (a record he likes a lot and I rather admire, although I'll mention that I was blown away by Daveed Diggs' Small Things to a Giant), a Willie Nelson review I don't buy at all (his awkward avoidance of any hint of swing couldn't keep other versions -- I've heard thousands -- from crowding my mind; above all Ella and Louis Again), and a cursory HM for Lyrics Born's Real People, my (and Laura's) favorite album of 2015.
I suppose I need to revisit Rihanna's Anti, which I gave two stars to a couple weeks back, before Tatum's A- and Christgau's A. (I had Erykah Badu's You Caint Use My Phone, A- by Tatum and two stars by Christgau, as an A- back in December. Tatum also reviews Archy Marshall's A New Place 2 Drown, an A- for me in February.) Hopefully by the time I post Rhapsody Streamnotes, no later than the end of the month.
Aside from two advances from the Swiss label Intakt, one of the worst weeks for the new jazz queue ever. One problem is that the queue got down to one record before I added in this week's haul. (Audio One was sampled from Bandcamp, as were the Borah Bergman and Paal Nilssen-Love albums.) Got email from the publicist today that the Vijay Iyer-Wadada Leo Smith album A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke is "out NOW." Not a high water mark in either catalog, but the only ECM record I've been able to play in my CD player for several years now, so I suppose it's worth a mention. Reminds me I have more ECM links to download -- most promising is a new record by Nik Bärtsch.
Thought I'd go back and catch up on the old Bonnie Raitt records I had missed (including three Christgau A-). Her debut was pretty good, but it seemed somewhat less than several contemporary groups she evoked -- e.g., Delaney & Bonnie, Joy of Cooking -- and for that matter the two albums she followed it with (Give It Up and Takin' My Time). I didn't get much out of the others, although with Longing in Their Hearts (1994) still missing I decided to give The Best of the Capitol Years a chance, and it makes a pretty good case for her MOR period.
I'm not sure why I've never cared much for Raitt, given how pivotal my one brief encounter with her had been (this would have been in 1973, or maybe 1972). Carl Boggs was a Poli Sci professor at Washington University, a lefty and a big fan. He came up with the idea of hiring Raitt to do a concert meant to be a benefit for paying down legal bills of one of the guys arrested for burning down the Wash U ROTC building before I got there. I was in a student group called Notes on Everyday Life -- we published a very underground tabloid -- so he used us to get the concert staged on campus. I had little to do with this other than filing the paper work, and almost missed the concert: I hooked up with my first girl the night before (or was it two?) and we only got out of bed to make the show, so I was pretty dazed that night. But I'm pretty sure it was the first concert I ever went to, not that I remember any of it. We went to the the party at Boggs' house afterwards. I saw Raitt there -- in fact, almost smashed into her -- but was far too shy to even say hello. (She was probably the first celebrity I had ever gotten that close to. What I remember was her looking very tired, and short.) That may also have been the first time I smoked pot -- I was very late getting to any of these milestones. When the party pooped out, we wound up getting breakfast with eight or ten others. Then my girlfriend and I went back to her house, to bed. Had these events played out in different order I might have credited Raitt for turning me into a human being. As it was, she was at most a distraction. I only listened to her albums much after the fact.
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Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Old music rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week: