Sunday, October 30, 2005

Music: Current count 11182 [11157] rated (+25), 900 [919] unrated (-19). Had to break off my jazz prospecting to wrap up November's Recycled Goods. Didn't get much new, which leads to the unrateds dip. Actually having a lot of trouble getting backlog for Recycled, and getting tired of the grind each month.

• Bill Bruford: Feels Good to Me (1977 [2005], Winterfold): the prog rock drummer par excellence (Yes, King Crimson, Genesis), like many Bruford eventually gravitated toward jazz; his first solo album is neither fish nor fowl, with Dave Stewart and Allan Holdsworth engaging in light, swishy instrumental rock, while avant-gardist Kenny Wheeler adds a dollop of flugelhorn and vocalist Annette Peacock sings or raps on four tracks; most interesting for Peacock, whose own records (with Bruford drumming) are highly recommended. B
• Bill Bruford: One of a Kind (1979 [2005], Winterfold): second album, the group reduced to a quartet -- Holdsworth's guitars, Stewart's keyboards, Jeff Berlin's bass -- for the simple pleasures of prog fusion. B-
• Bill Bruford's Earthworks (1986 [2005], Winterfold): this was Bruford's official debut as a jazz artist, although there are still minor additions of electric keybs and drums, and at least one piece ("Bridge of Inhibition") sounds like it fell off King Crimson's oxcart; Bruford's partners here are Iain Ballamy (saxes) and Django Bates (piano), both notable players in their own right, and acoustic bassist Mick Hutton, with Ballamy and Bates contributing writing; the two bonus cuts are the most pleasing jazz pieces here. B+
• Bill Bruford's Earthworks: Dig? (1989 [2005], Summerfold): new bassist, but the core Bruford-Ballamy-Bates group remains intact, and they've continued to move toward the loose, slinky, semi-avant jazz favored especially by Bates, dropping the prog rock artifacts of Bruford's past -- still some electric keyb, but Bates keeps it interesting, avoiding the usual clichés. B+
• Choubi Choubi! Folk & Pop Sounds From Iraq (1970s-2002 [2005], Sublime Frequencies): Scrounged from old cassettes and LPs found in Syria, Europe, and Detroit, this provides a short course in the music of secular, socialist, Baathist Iraq, starting with three cuts from Ja'afar Hassan sometime in the '70s through the Saddam era. As with most records on this label, this was assembled on the cheap, with hit and miss scholarship -- good to know that Basta, Bezikh, Choubi, and Hecha are distinct styles, since otherwise our ears aren't tuned that fine. What we do notice is that the sound is usually cranked up to the point of distortion, which resonance to music powered by squelchy strings, hard beats, and harsh voices. Half of the artists are "unknown" -- the anonymity adds to the primal allure. One might hope that the whiff of freedom would unleash a renaissance in Iraqi music, but more likely that's been scotched by the tin-eared Texas oilmen and their shortsighted deals with the Islamic clergy. Compiler Mark Gergis worries about such things, his booklet including a picture of an oud smashed in the post-invasion looting. Looking forward from the wreckage, you have to wonder what sort of madness it takes to make a golden age out of Saddam's reign of horror. A-
• Elton Dean: Moorsong (1998-99 [2001], Cuneiform): The Soft Machine's saxophonist has put together a long and evidently notable career without me ever paying much attention. This is one of many points along the way -- hard to judge in itself. Strikes me as a bit overcomplex, but saxophonist holds up well. B+
• Mutant Disco #3 (1979-1992 [2004], ZE): leftovers following the 2CD Mutant Disco that inaugurated the reincarnation of Michael Zilkha and Michel Esteban's quintessential underground label, concentrating on their connection to Larry Levan's Paradise Garage, ground zero for the subduction of disco into the underground; too random and weird to work on the dancefloor, so random and weird you might want to listen to it anyway; recommended to historians: "Read My Lips" -- the dyslexic wit and wisdom of George H.W. Bush. B+
• Ol' Dirty Bastard: The Definitive Ol' Dirty Bastard Story (1995-99, Elektra/Rhino): two albums, three low chart singles, no real hits, but famous enough for his Wu-Tang connection, rap sheet, and death two days short of his 36th birthday that this is his second best-of, complete with DVD of his three crappy videos; he was a comic, a scam artist, an attitude with no superego, such a fuckup his death came as a relief, but the pieces here are solid popwise, and not just when RZA or the Neptunes were on hand to bait his hook. B+
• Bobby Pinson: Man Like Me (2005, RCA): I've had people ask me if this is Steve Earle. Pinson's got the voice, and he's got a lot more structure to his songwriting than you get with most country singers -- for that matter, more than Earle too. A-
• Putumayo Presents: Asian Lounge (1978-2005 [2005], Putumayo World Music): it takes extreme heat to fuse two elements into something new; short of that you just get a mixture, and here the mix is very cool indeed; Asia is a big place for such a thin selection -- India, Japan, Bali, not much in between -- with the synth beats and lounge singers further diluting the quaint strings. B
• Putumayo Presents: Celtic Crossroads (1998-2005 [2005], Putumayo World Music): the Scots-Irish brought celtic music to Appalachia, where it hybridized with Afro-America to form the backbone of bluegrass, so its appeal to me has always been in its primitiveness; this comp goes zip for eleven on any such scale, its mild, prim progressivism even blander than Ireland's cuisine. C
• Radio Pyongyang: Commie Funk and Agit Pop From the Hermit Kingdom (1995-2005 [2005], Sublime Frequencies): The Korean War ended in stalemate in 1953: Kim Il Sung failed in his effort to unify the peninsula under his rule, and the U.S. failed to purge Korea of communism. The shooting stopped then, but the cold war continued. The U.S. in victory had been gracious to defeated Japan and Germany, but the stalemate left both sides nurturing grudges -- even half a century later, when Bush accorded North Korea charter membership in an Axis of Evil. During that period, the U.S. worked to isolate North Korea, and North Korea in turn morphed into the Hermit Kingdom, far and away the strangest corner in the world: the only technologically advanced country untouched by globalization. Along the way Kim Il Sung's Stalinism evolved into a neopagan cult of "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, a strange mix of Stalin's self-fetishism and the ancient emperor cults of China and Japan. Still, background can't prepares you for the shock of this sampling of North Korea's music. Christiaan Virant taped most of this listening to Pyongyang radio from Beijing in 1995-98: bright pop, light opera, kiddie choruses, other things I can't begin to identify. Propaganda, of course, but the edit doesn't go overboard, and the cuts avoid the jarring juxtapositions of this label's other radio mixes. Like nothing else. B+
• Marion Williams: Remember Me (1968-92 [2005], Shanachie): an amazing gospel voice -- if anyone could wake God from the dead it would be her -- but she can be so overpowering I often feel battered and bruised rather than uplifted; this is Shanachie's third selection from her career, with twelve tracks previously unreleased, so this feels a bit picked over; but its predecessor, The Gospel Soul of Marion Williams, is no better or worse. B+
• ZE Records Presents: Undercover (1979-2004 [2004], ZE): all covers, mostly from ZE's 1979-83 heyday when the label encompassed no waver Alan Vega, postmodernist Don Was, zoot suiter August Darnell, mutant saxist James Chance, and various art-damaged poseurs like the marvelous Cristina; there's no common style other than a high level of outrage or in-joking or both, applied to a canon as diverse as "You Go to My Head," "Money," "Lili Marlene," and "Tropical Hot Dog Night." B+
• ZE Xmas Record Reloaded 2004 (1981-2004 [2004], ZE): like Phil Spector's Xmas album, Michael Zilkha's was a joke showcase for his label artists, but whereas Philles was all Phil, ZE's stable was stocked mostly with bomb throwing anarchists; the three new cuts are by far the most conventional, giving creedence to the notion that we've grown far less adventurous than we were a quarter century ago, but the balance, inconsistent and unruly, is unlike any other Xmas album ever; choice cut: James White, "Christmas With Satan." B

This continues last week's log of Jazz Consumer Guide prospecting. These aren't all first spins, but increasingly so. I have at least another week's queue to sort through, plus plenty to go back to and listen again. Grades in brackets are tentative. Came up short this week due to the Recycled Goods deadline. Should be converging on a column, but it hasn't come together yet.

Erik Truffaz: Saloua (2004 [2005], Blue Note): Don't know his earlier work, just that he's carved out a niche for himself in jazztronica, a latterday fusion project that typically uses regular synth beats. There's some of that here, including a soaring piece of fusion I don't find terribly appealing ("Spirale") and several, both hard/fast and soft/airy, that I do. But the album is front-loaded with vocals: four in Arabic from Tunisian Mounir Troudi and two (one overlap) in English from Swiss rapper Nya. Choice cut: "Yabous," with Mounir's wail setting up Nya's peace proposal: "Israelites and Ishaelites have to have equal rights and justice." Not inconceivable I could upgrade this. [B+(**)]

Uri Caine/Bedrock: Shelf-Life (2004 [2005], Winter & Winter): A very accomplished left-of-mainstream pianist, Caine's side projects have ranged from improvising on Schumann and Mahler to his very old school take on Tin Pan Alley to joining Questlove for The Philadelphia Project and his jazztronica group Bedrock -- a trio with Tim Lefebvre's bass and guitar and Zach Danziger's beats, but most importantly, Caine's electric keyboards. Important acoustic pianists from Chick Corea to Cyrus Chestnut always seem to lose touch when they dabble in electronics, but Caine somehow makes it work -- perhaps because he sticks to the instrument's range, supplementing the beats rather than trying to conquer them. This goes beyond the original 2001 Bedrock album by adding guests, including beat programmers Luke Vibert and DJ Olive, occasional horns, a couple of vocalists even. Closes with Bunny Sigler singing "Sweat" in a rare Philly soul moment that's both classic and futurist. A-

Ben Monder: Oceania (2004 [2005], Sunnyside): A guitarist I run across frequently in side roles, where he is often a notable asset. This shows the range of skills that makes him so useful on the side, but doesn't cohere into much. Two solo cuts, some with bass-drums, some with Theo Bleckmann, whose sounds more like a theremin than a vocalist. The common denominator is an icy coloration, joining the electric beat-heavy "Rooms of Light" and the Fripp-and-Eno-ambient "Spectre." B+(*)

Craig Harris: Souls Within the Veil (2003 [2005], Aquastra, 2CD): Composed to commemorate the 100th anniversary of W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk, a book so forward thinking we ain't got there yet. With three brass and four reeds there's a lot of wind in these sails. But the extra percussion Kahil El'Zabar adds to Billy Hart's drums and Cecil McBee's bass helps on the bottom. No piano. Most pieces follow a series of superb solos -- Steve Coleman, Hamiet Bluiett, Don Byron, Hugh Ragin, Graham Haynes, Oliver Lake, and the leader all have spots on the highlight reel. Likely to be upgraded when I get to spend more time with it. Unlikely to be in JCG, this time anyway, given that Francis Davis already praised it to the skies. Otherwise it would be a strong Pick Hit prospect, and may wind up in the year end list. A-

Warren Hill: Pop Jazz (2005, Native Language): The first cut is about as good a riff as you get in pop jazz. The second is "Come Together," a pretty safe change of pace. After that the ideas run thin. I mean, "Play That Funky Music (White Boy)" has been done already. B-

Dominic Frasca: Deviations (2003 [2005], Cantaloupe/Serious Music): Frasca plays guitar. Not sure if there's anything else on here -- percussion or treatments, but it at least sounds overdubbed. The music is close to minimalism -- tightly spaced rhythms, modulated here and there, but because it's guitar it has more angular momentum. I was into this kind of music -- its progenitors, that is, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, et al. -- back in the late-'70s, but haven't followed it in a long time. This is very appealing. Will take some further play to sort out, and it could get bumped a notch. [B+(***)]

Adam Simmons Toy Band: Happy Jacket (2002, Dr. Jim's): Simmons plays saxophones from bass to sopranino, plus a little bass clarinet and shakuhachi. In that mode this is good, clean avant fun. But the band's name reflects another dimension: all members also dabble in toy instruments. Don't do it enough that it takes over the album, but it does toss in the occasional oddball sound. B+(**)

Bill Charlap/Sandy Stewart: Love Is Here to Stay (2004 [2005], Blue Note): A very subdued make-out album, modelled perhaps on the Bill Evans/Tony Bennett album, but less so -- far less. Credit Charlap's lead billing to the marketing folks -- he barely plays, but then Stewart sings so measuredly that she leaves him little to work with. Stewart has a touch of opera in her voice, an instant turn-off for me, but your mileage may vary. As usual, a great song, like the title tune or "It Might As Well Be Spring," lifts the interpretation, but anything less reduces to affect. B-

Dave Douglas: Keystone (2005, Greenleaf Music): This is a set of music Douglas wrote to score a 1916 film by Roscoe Arbuckle called Fatty & Mabel Adrift. The package includes a DVD with the film and music, plus a CD with the music worked out into finished pieces. The music is mostly upbeat, scaled large with DJ Olive pushing the beats, and Marcus Strickland's saxophones filling in behind Douglas. After dismaying me at first, this sounds better with each play. Guess I need to look at that DVD. [B+(**)]

Rich Halley Trio: Mountains and Plains (2004 [2005], Louie): I'm so attuned to the sax-bass-drums trio format that I tend to practice reverse discrimination, lest these rather common records take over the CG. Hence, I've been resisting this one, even though, or precisely because, it's right down my alley. Halley is based in Oregon. Has a half-dozen or so well-regarded albums, none of which have crossed my path before. Plays tenor and soprano, mostly tenor. Penguin Guide describes his work as "freebop" -- it's close enough to the tradition for that description to fit. Pieces run fast and slow, and Halley's distinctive both ways. Bassist Clyde Reed and drummer-percussionist Dave Storrs help out -- I especially like a stretch with hand drums. Could hold out for another spin, but this time I think I'll go with my druthers. A-

Steve Lehman: Demian as Posthuman (2005, Pi): Twelve pieces run 36:30, not much more than an LP from the era when singles were king. Three are group pieces with Vijay Iyer on piano and Meshell Ndegeocello on bass. Most are duos with Tyshawn Sorey on drums, and a couple are solos. Lehman plays alto sax, or sopranino sax on one cut. Electronics happen, so the solo cuts are usually Lehman playing against his own programming. Short, sharp, eloquent. Don't quite have a handle on this yet, but he's certainly turning into an interesting figure. [A-]

Jabbo Ware/The Me We & Them Orchestra + Strings & Horns: Vignettes in the Spirit of Ellington (2001 [2005], Y'all of New York): Huge band, twenty-three pieces not counting Ware, who composed and conducts. The strings are limited to two each -- violins, violas, cellos, basses -- but they are secondary to the horns. The pieces show real muscle and sharp edges, slightly reminiscent of Ellington circa 1950 when he was hard-pressed to reassert himself in the face of bebop progressivism, but also this flows out of later Ellington-inspired groups like Vienna Art and Either/Orchestra. B+(***)

Gregg August: Late August (2003 [2005], Iacuessa): Bass player, writes all the pieces, plays one as a solo, one as a duo, one with guitar and drums, the rest with a crack quintet, joined once by Frank Wess. Mainstream with a latin twist; the group swings, the spotlight pieces less so. Good stuff, as far as it goes. B+(**)

Harris Eisenstadt: The Soul and Gone (2004 [2005], 482 Music): Sextet led by drummer Eisenstadt, with several familiar Chicago players: Jeb Bishop (trombone), Jeff Parker (guitar), Jason Roebke (bass). Also a couple of Jasons I'm unfamiliar with: Adasiewicz (vibes) and Mears (alto sax, clarinet). It may be that Eisenstadt's got too many resources here for his rather abstract music -- lots of little sounds pop out of nowhere and vanish as quickly. Interesting stuff, in principle, and listenable as well, but I suspect he could have done more with less. B+(*)

Nels Cline/Wally Shoup/Chris Corsano: Immolation/Immersion (2005, Strange Attractors): Starts out sounding absolutely hideous, and periodically returns to that state. The noisemakers are electric guitar, alto sax, and drums. Each can be interesting when not flailing insanely against the other, and there are some quieter moments when they're merely edgy. Moreover, not all of the noise bursts are unlistenable. But most are. For what it's worth, Cline is the biggest offender. C+

Thelonious Monk Quartet With John Coltrane: At Carnegie Hall (1957 [2005], Blue Note): Small world it was back in 1957. The program for Carnegie Hall's Thanksgiving Jazz concert -- two shows, top-priced tickets going for $3.95 -- lists a few other folks you might like to hear: Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Chet Baker with Zoot Sims, Sonny Rollins ("introducing in concert the brilliant"), and "special attraction" Ray Charles. But Monk's two sets add up to 51:35, and satisfy our craving to hear something more substantial from his short-lived, rarely recorded Coltrane quartet than that cruddy-sounding Five Spot tape that was acclaimed as Discovery! back in 1993. It turns out that the concert was recorded by Voice of America for overseas broadcast, but the tapes have languished ever since in the Library of Congress vaults until Larry Appelbaum made his discovery. The sound is fine. Monk engages quickly, but Coltrane is revelatory, especially on the one non-Monk tune where he kicks everything up a gear, then sustains that level to the end. A

Friday, October 28, 2005

The Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination collapsed even faster than I had predicted. The ultra-right is howling with glee today, but it's possible that their victory will come as some cost. For instance, the Wichita Eagle's mild mannered editorial cartoonist was moved to depict them in rather unfavorable light:

Beyond the public's perception of these ghouls, the next question is who will Bush nominate next. This is not the only time Bush has withdrawn a nomination -- Bernard Kerik for one -- but this one hits unusually close to home. Bush's loss here is not just personal -- it shows that he's lost control over his base. If he appeases them he surrenders his role as leader and loses his ability to appeal beyond his base. On the other hand, with his popularity imploding and the media and even some Democrats smelling blood, he desperately needs the right's attack dogs guarding his ass instead of chewing on it.

Meanwhile, Lewis Libby has been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice -- the spin word is "technicalities," but that could still add up to 30 years in the slammer. Sure, it's a rather minimalist conclusion to an investigation that could have gone much deeper, but it also sounds like a slam dunk case. The case reminds me of three things: when first asked about the Plame leak, Bush went into a long, ambling discourse on how leaks in Washington are so ubiquitous it's usually impossible to identify who may have been responsible and we're unlikely to ever find out; that Josh Marshall countered by arguing that if the President actually wanted to find out who was responsible he could do so in minutes; that the first reports of who was responsible, well over a year ago, named Libby. In his news conference today, Fitzgerald as much as said that had Libby not lied the investigation would have ended a year ago. What he didn't say was that the time that Libby kept the investigation from concluding includes Bush's election. Libby's payoff will presumably be a pardon before Bush leaves office, which will allow Libby, like Elliott Abrams, to get out of jail and hold another highly placed job in some future neocon cabal. In the meantime, one has to wonder whether Bush knew the culprit when he made his own contribution to the cover-up.

Until recently, Bush somehow managed to walk a tightrope between the loony right and the gullible middle, but he's getting wobbly -- even if he's not back on the sauce. Of course, between the two he's always feared the right much more. Crowson's cartoon reminds you why.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

I've read a letter issued by "Friends of John Kerry, Inc." that points to excerpts from Kerry's Oct. 26 speech at Georgetown U. and proposes that we all sign a petition "to insist that President Bush puts forward a detailed plan with target dates to bring our troops home and stabilize Iraq." The gist of all this is that Kerry finally admits that the losing position he insisted on holding through the 2004 presidential election was wrong, but now he's figured it out and wants us to get behind him as he leads the antiwar movement. As the old saying goes, that's mighty white of him.

Kerry's newfound position might have done him some good a year ago, when he had a mandate to present himself as a real alternative to Bush. He has no such mandate now, having blown the election and clammed up for nearly a year while Bush's policies self-destructed. (Maybe the Bush people had a point last year about Kerry's leadership skills.) But even though the situation in Iraq is grimmer now than it was a year ago, back then there was ample evidence available that Bush's efforts to quell the resistance and establish a compliant pro-American would fail. Kerry's choice at the time was to accept the Bush program but quibble with its management. In doing so, he missed a golden opportunity to attack the clear political issues of how and why Bush led America into a disastrous war.

What Kerry should have said during the campaign was this: Yes, I voted to authorize force against Iraq because I was convinced that the President would only use that authorization to leverage Saddam Hussein into allowing UN weapons inspectors to return to Iraq, because I knew that the only way to settle the question of Iraq's WMD programs would be through the inspections process. At the time I expected that the US would go to war only if Hussein refused inspections and if the UN Security Council agreed that war was the only solution. I voted as I did because I believed that the President would only go to war as a last resort. This, as facts have proved, turned out to be a severe misjudgment of this particular President. As we saw, the resolution that I voted for did in fact convince Saddam Hussein to permit the UN weapons inspectors to return, but President Bush actively subverted their work, forcing them to quit when they were on the verge of showing what we now know to be true: that Iraq had no WMD. Moreover, Bush launched a pre-emptive war against Iraq, without the sanction of the UN Security Council, without further consultation by Congress, with only the barest ad hoc international coalition, with no clear plans for Iraq's future beyond decapitating the existing regime. As we also know now, the results of this hasty drive to war, which President Bush did mostly on his own authority, have been disastrous: they've ensnared us in the occupation of Iraq, they've cost us vital resources we needed for the war on Al Qaeda while creating a brand new training ground for anti-American terrorists. Yes, I made a grievous mistake in voting to authorize war against Iraq. But be clear just what my mistake was: My mistake was in trusting George W. Bush to defend and pursue America's best interests. As we now know, Bush cannot and should not be trusted to lead this country in matters of war. As we now know, the Bush Administration mislead Congress and the country with faulty or phony intelligence about Iraq's WMD programs. As we now know, the Bush Administration rushed to war, without adequate preparation, without due dilligence, without any freaking clue what they were getting us into. . . .

Kerry could then go on and point out that the mess that Bush got us into is a mess that the next President will inherit, and there's likely to be no easy solution to that. But the question that America has to face is not what we do next in Iraq, but whether we as a country continue to make the mistake that I made in voting to authorize this war, which is to trust the people who got us into this mess to somehow get us back out again. This is the sort of argument that Kerry could and should have made during the 2004 election campaign, when those arguments would make a meaningful distinction between his candidacy and Bush's re-election. But he didn't make any such argument. And while most of us voted for him anyway, it's easy to see why many Americans didn't see the basic difference between the two candidates. They were both, after all, spouting the same nonsense about training Iraqis to stand up so we can stand down.

Looking at Kerry's speech he's still rather befuddled about what's going on in Iraq. In particular, he describes the conflict there as being between Sunni and Shi'a. The plain fact is that the conflict is between Iraq and the United States, which we've disguised somewhat by promoting some Shi'a as a quasi-government while systematically excluding Sunnis, giving them no hope but to join the insurgency. Where Kerry is right is that the only way out is a political solution between all parties in Iraq, but he sorely underestimates the difficulty of such a solution, because he doesn't recognize how the Bush Administration's actions have poisoned that prospect. Even today Kerry places far too much trust in Bush. And that's why he is still, as Bush's propagandists put it, unfit for command.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

The count of US soldiers who met their maker in Iraq has topped two thousand. Round numbers still get respect these days, so the "milestone" is being noted in various ways by those who care, which mostly means the peace (aka antiwar) movement. Billmon marked the event by constructing a graphic with ten flag-draped coffins per row, two hundred rows long. (A little more cut and paste and he'll be ready for next year.) Here in Wichita, and many other places, there have been or will be vigils. Of course, two thousand doesn't begin to count the real costs of this war. Hell, it doesn't even count all the dead Americans: it omits contractors and journalists and stray civilians, and it omits the other "theatres" of the War on Terror, like Afghanistan and that helicopter full of "advisors" that crashed in the Philippines. Nor does it count the Coalition of the Suckers, or their fellow travelers in the UN or the NGOs -- all those who poured into Iraq in the wake of invasion, some trying to help out, some out for a quick buck, some curious, some foolish, but who knows how many turned up dead? Nor does it count the other foreign fighters, the jihadis, and most of all it doesn't count the Iraqis, killed by one side or the other or no side at all. It's not that we have no concern for all those other deaths. It's just that no one is able or willing to count everyone. So we're stuck with the deaths of American soldiers as a metric of the costs of the war. It's a piss poor metric, but it's likely to correlate strongly with the overall costs. The question is leaves unanswered is what factor do you multiply US soldiers' deaths by to get to the big picture.

But when we look back on this war it's likely that US soldier deaths will be a small fraction of the real costs, even if we limit our concerns to America. Compared to past wars, two thousand isn't a very big number. The military works very hard at keeping those numbers as low as possible, at least relative to the intensity of the war. That's partly because those are the numbers that count, and partly because each one of those numbers maps back to someone known in our communities. But for every US soldier who dies in Iraq, many more are physically wounded or mentally scarred. The scariest statistic to come out of the war is the estimate that 25% of the US soldiers who come home from Iraq suffer physical and/or mental trauma. Do the math on that and you're looking at the better part of a hundred thousand. And remember that those soldiers are going to be returning to a country fast dismantling its safety nets. You think the Bush people are going to sacrifice their tax cuts to pay for the lives they wasted in Iraq?

Two thousand dead soldiers is one of those events that became inevitable once Bush learned to mouth the "stay the course" words. The course is a steady drip drip drip of blood. How much progress the US has made was demonstrated by three car bombs exploded around the plaza where Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled. I don't see any way to find hope in the news out of Iraq. The constitution was yet another ethnic identity plebiscite, all but unanimously opposed by the Sunni Arab minority, who have little political hopes except through the insurgency. America's divide-and-conquer strategy has backfired as we now find ourselves stuck defending factions that we foolishly legitimized in the first place. The new Iraqi military, where it exists at all, is little more than a veneer over factional militias. Liberating Iraq from the Baath has helped ally it with Iran. In frustration, the US is now lashing out at Syria -- if the goal there is to bring down the Baath the most likely beneficiary will be the Muslim Brotherhood. The worst case scenario there is the scenario that happened last time the US got into this sort of pickle: when Nixon's "incursion" destabilized Cambodia, leading to Pol Pot's murderous rampage.

Of course, one reason why we do count the deaths of US soldiers is that the warmongers view those deaths as investments. They argue that pulling out would deprecate the sacrifices of the dead -- that anything short of victory would signify that those Americans had died in vain. That's the ultimate dead end argument, a desperation ploy by politicians so wrongheaded they can't own up to their own folly. But the ruin is all around us, for all to see. Hell, even John Kerry, who stayed the course all the way to breaking our hearts, has started to recognize the hopelessness of the Iraq war cause. But Bush keeps pounding out the same old line. Any deviation there and his whole game falls apart. But no amount of resolve can stave off the real world forever.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

My 55th birthday today. Stuck in an extended midlife rut that feels more and more like old age. I work at home, listening to records and sometimes writing about them, not making any money. I think about that philosophy book I've been thinking about for twenty years now -- as opposed to a whole string of books I've thought about all my adult life without ever tackling -- but make no progress. Every once in a while I spit out something into the blog, where it sits unnoticed. Read a lot -- but still am haunted by the notion that everything I've tried all my life to learn will vanish when I die (or maybe earlier). Unlike everyone around me, I grew up with delusions of greatness, and never achieved anything approaching that. Most likely I've been my own worst enemy, and now I feel stuck. On the other hand, I've been lucky a few times. And on a personal scale I feel like I've lived an honorable life -- have been blessed by friendship and love, have had opportunities to share and be helpful. So it's not so bad.

Fixed birthday feast again, scaled back considerably from previous years, but had eleven people show up, and food left over. Theme was Brazilian: a huge pot/platter of feijoada, sauteed collard greens, rice with a little onion and tomato, chayote salad. That's it -- don't know much about Brazilian food, but I've long wanted to tackle the national dish, basically a big pot of pork and black beans. For desert, fixed a double layer spice cake with maple meringue icing and a batch of vanilla ice cream.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Music: Current count 11157 [11127] rated (+30), 919 [920] unrated (-1). Did nothing this past week except play new jazz records. I'll post notes on 45 or so such records sometime today. Most were rated on the spot; others were put back in the queue for further review. I have enough records rated now to do a Jazz CG, but I also and have enough records unheard to spend another whole week prospecting, and enough awaiting further replies to fill up yet another week. Meanwhile, I will need to interrupt next week to finish off November's Recycled Goods. So it goes.

• Anthony Braxton Quartet: 8 Standards (Wesleyan) 2001 (2001, Barking Hoop, 2CD): Same quartet as appears on two 4-CD Leo boxes, but two years earlier, and just one date. The superb boxes have been cherry picked from a number of concerts, and the later pieces tend to run longer. The eight standards here barely top the 80-minute mark, forcing a second disc (under 30 minutes). The rough promise certainly exists, and again Kevin O'Neil deserves exceptional praise. B+
• Lena Horne: Seasons of a Life (1994-2000 [2005], Blue Note): My advance says "in stores April 12, 2005," but I never got a final copy, and doubt that it was ever released. As I understand it, these were outtakes from her '90s albums for Blue Note. Ten songs, four by Billy Strayhorn, "Stormy Weather" to close; Rodney Jones listed as producer, various musicians. She sounds fine. No surprises, no gaffes, alas not much point. It's not like she's never done "Stormy Weather" before. B

This continues last week's log of Jazz Consumer Guide prospecting. These aren't all first spins, but increasingly so. I have at least another week's queue to sort through, plus plenty to go back to and listen again. Grades in brackets are tentative.

Herb Robertson NY Downtown Allstars: Elaboration (2004 [2005], Clean Feed): Since they're "allstars" we might as well start by listing them: Robertson (trumpet, cornet), Tim Berne (alto sax), Sylvie Courvoisier (piano), Mark Dresser (bass), Tom Rainey (drums). Courvoisier is a new one to me, but a quick check reveals my bad. AMG lists six albums plus ten more credits, and she's mostly worked with people I do recognize. Album contains one 48:28 piece. Starts slow, builds to something quite impressive, fades out, just like it should. I'm duly impressed, but I doubt that this would make much sense to a neophyte. Will make a note to pay more attention for Courvoisier. B+(**)

Jean-Marc Foltz/Bruno Chevillon: Cette Opacité (2003 [2005], Clean Feed): Ten duets. Foltz plays clarinet or bass clarinet, Chevillon bass. Don't know these people, but the action pins your ears from the start. Dark, abstract, difficult listening, but deeply moving. Interesting record; could move up a notch. [B+(**)]

Roundtrip: Two Way Street (2004 [2005], Jazzaway): Sax trio, from Norway, led by Klaus Ellerhusen Holm on alto and baritone, with Ole Morten Vågan on bass and Ole Thomas Kolberg on drums. Fiercely energetic avant group with a rockish flair -- not sure whether Vandermark influenced this scene or he merely found a second home among like-minded players. In any case, add Kolberg to the list of Scandinavian drummers who can really pound the skins. Fredrik Ljungkvist (of Atomic) wrote the liner notes. I like this mode a lot. This is a good, but not extraordinary, example. B+(***)

The Onus: Triphony (2003 [2005], Hipnotic): Trio led by clarinetist Darryl Harper, with Matthew Parrish on bass and Butch Reed on drums. The Onus has also appeared as a quintet with guitarist Jeff Ray, in what's been described as a Benny Goodman-Charlie Christian lineup. But Harper doesn't sound at all like Goodman: more like a cross between Don Byron and Jimmy Giuffre, but also factor in a more direct influence from Yusef Lateef. Like Lateef, he works in a little exotica, but he also manages to push postbop into territory that is inventive but clear and accessible. Sounds terrific at first, but at 78 minutes it gets to be pretty long. [B+(**)]

Anthony Braxton: 20 Standards (Quartet) 2003 (2003 [2005], Leo, 4CD): Four more CDs from the same tour that yielded last year's 4-CD 23 Standards (Quartet) 2003. The bounty comes from Braxton picking fresh songs each show -- jazz pieces more often than the usual chestnuts, with old favorites Brubeck and Desmond most prominent. The pieces stretch out leisurely, with Kevin O'Neil's deft guitarwork often the highlight, and Braxton's saxes favoring the high registers. Smart and cool, the most accessible and simply pleasurable set he's done. (That I'm aware of, anyway. Braxton's catalog is probably the largest of working saxophonist -- Lee Konitz, with a two-decade head start, might come close; younger players like David Murray and Ken Vandermark have approached Braxton's pace, but not for nearly so long.) A

Anders Aarum Trio: Absence in Mind (2002-03 [2004], Jazzaway): Piano trio, slightly left of mainstream, smart and tasty with a little edge especially in the drums, but too subtle for me to grasp in one somewhat distracted pass. [B+(*)]

Morthana (2004, Jazzaway): Group name appears to come from drummer Morten Olsen and guitarist Anders Hana, leaving little acknowledgment of Andrew D'Angelo's reeds (bass clarinet, alto sax). Judging from the sound that probably is the pecking order, although the back cover credits are alphabetical and/or front-to-back. Mostly a noise group -- bracing at best, annoying otherwise. B

Jazzmob: Pathfinder (2003, Jazzaway): Norwegian quintet led by alto saxist Jon Klette. Hard to pigeonhole, since avant-trad-fusion doesn't clarify much of anything. Except perhaps by suggesting a cosmic wormhole to the similarly named Sexmob, who do a better job of keeping what they're spoofing straight. B

Mats Gustafsson & David Stackenås: Blues (2003 [2005], Atavistic): In his liner notes, Ken Vandermark argues that the main difference between American and European jazz musicians is that the former string time together whereas the latter deconstruct it. What makes these blues unrecognizable as blues is that they have no rhythm at all. That leaves us with sounds that erupt rather than flow: electronics from Stackenås' guitar, faint approximations of bass and drums from Gustafsson's bari sax. As an American I find it all rather peculiar, but as a low-key, swingless noise album it's not without interest. B+(*)

Triptych Myth: The Beautiful (2005, AUM Fidelity). Another second album where a first album title has mutated into a band name. The real artists are Cooper-Moore, Tom Abbs and Chad Taylor. Their previous album on Hopscotch was a coming out party for reclusive pianist Cooper-Moore, especially combined with his mostly piano-less duo album with Assif Tsahar, America. Until then, the only prospect one had of recognizing Cooper-Moore was by checking the fine print on William Parker's In Order to Survive group, or more lately his work with Tsahar's wife, drummer Susie Ibarra. He's a remarkable pianist, roughly similar to Horace Tapscott, who also developed a uniquely expansive style in similar obscurity on the opposite coast. This one is less explosive than its predecessor, so it takes longer to settle in, but it does. A-

Billy Childs Ensemble: Lyric: Jazz-Chamber Music Vol. 1 (2004 [2005], Lunacy Music): This is so far away from anything that interests me that I have to punt. More specifically, this has all the hated accoutrements of euroclassical music: a string section, the minor wind instruments of classical orchestrae (oboe, bassoon, french horn, flutes up the wazzoo), harp even. Childs' piano fits right in, without a trace of swing or stride or even bebop. On the other hand, I have to admit that it doesn't churn my stomach like ye olde classics so often do, and when the orchestra melts away to reveal the piano it can be quite pretty. Note that the longest piece, called "Hope, in the Face of Despair," was inspired by Art Spiegelman's Maus. B

Charlie Peacock: Love Press Ex-Curio (2005, Runway): I don't really know anything about Peacock. AMG lists him under CCM, and most of his records on gospel label Sparrow, but this one sez "File Under: Jazz." On hearing it, I don't see why not. Musically it straddles smooth and mainstream, maybe even a bit left of mainstream. Guests range from Kirk Whallum to Ravi Coltrane, with Ralph Alessi on most cuts, and James Genus and Joey Baron on some. Synth beats appear, and are reasonably well integrated. Peacock plays piano, and rarely fails to impress. It's all a little slick and fancy for my taste, but it tries to do a lot, and mostly succeeds. [B+(*)]

Niacin: Organik (2005, Magna Carta): Upbeat organ trio. Irrepressibly upbeat, tediously upbeat even. John Novello's occasional insertions of piano into the mix occasionally add a bit of welcome crunch, but they don't last, so it's back to Hammond B3. Read the song titles ("Barbarian @ the Gate," "Nemesis," "Blisterine," "Hair of the Dog") and it comes clear what they're after: heavy metal soul jazz. B-

Red Mitchell/George Cables: Live at Port Townsend (1992 [2005], Challenge): Seems like an odd little piece to dig up these days, but bassist Mitchell and pianist Cables make a fine pair. But perhaps it's meant as a memorial -- Mitchell died shortly after, so it may be his last recording. Mitchell's vocal is a throwaway, and that's its charm. B+(**)

Nnenna Freelon: Blueprint of a Lady: Sketches of Billie Holiday (2005, Concord): Holiday has become so iconic that she's everyone's choice target, but looking at the booklet photos I get the sense Freelon's aiming more at Diana Ross. Her voice is closer to Ross too, but she doesn't want to concede even that -- she wants to show how different, hip, unique she is. In the cases of "God Bless the Child" and "Strange Fruit" -- two songs never associated with anyone else -- her risks pay off. But on covers there's nothing to tie her performances to Holiday's, which makes for a weird kind of tribute. Especially unsettling is her take on "All of Me" -- latin beats, emphasis shifted, no swing. And just to show there's no center here, "Balm in Gilead" goes off over the other deep end. B-

Nils Wogram & Simon Nabatov: The Move (2002 [2005], Between the Lines): Duets between trombone (Wogram) and piano (Nabatov), some loose and free, some snap to a beat and pick up speed. Both are players I've never heard before, but they come with strong reputations, and they flesh these pieces out in interesting and unexpected ways. I've heard a lot of stripped down avant duos, but few as consistently intriguing as this. B+(***)

Gerry Hemingway Quintet: Double Blues Crossing (2002 [2005], Between the Lines): Interesting sounds here and there, but after two plays I'm still confused. The sound mix comes from Frank Gratkowski's reeds (clarinet, bass clarinet, alto sax), Wolter Wierbos' trombone, and Amit Sen's cello. Hemingway's compositions, including the five-part title suite and three more pieces, are less clear. Been distracted while listening to this, and need to move on. Later. (The closer, "Slowly Rising" is a terrific piece, built around an elementary vamp beat which the gang plays off of.) [B+(**)]

Jazzanova: Blue Note Trip (1949-75 [2005], Blue Note, 2CD): The mixes don't change the original sources much, so this is almost an oldies compilation, selected by DJs according to DJ logic. This suggests two review approaches: one for its historical (i.e., educational) value, the other utilitarian. In either case, the mix favors early '70s Mizell Brothers fusion material -- i.e., the stuff they put out on their way down after Alfred Lion retired and the founders faded. Then the next layer back comes from hard boppers, especially Horace Silver. Finally, there are a few oddities -- Sam Rivers, Sheila Jordan, Charlie Rouse, the most interesting stuff here. But overall it looks too random for historians, if not for history. Utility is harder to gauge, but it doesn't do much for me. B-

Gini Wilson/The San Francisco ChamberJazz Quartet (2005, Music Wizards): Alternate title, SFCJQ -- sometimes it's hard to tell, and sometimes you wonder whether the artists know either. The ChamberJazz name is fitting: the group projects a polite and cozy intimacy. Wilson plays piano and wrote most of the pieces. Steve Heckman plays soprano and tenor sax, clarinet, and flute. Both are appealing, but the framework feels rather constrained. Several pieces with guest vocalist Jackie Ryan are neither here nor there. B

Alexander Schimmeroth Trio: Arrival (2004 [2005], Fresh Sound New Talent): First album by the German pianist, relocated to New York, which is where Jordi Pugol finds most of the new talent he showcases on his Spanish label. He is quite good. His trio-mates, Matt Penman and Jeff Ballard, are quite good. And this is a very nice album. B+(**)

Peter Kenagy: Little Machines (2003 [2005], Fresh Sound New Talent): Young (b. 1977) trumpet player from Seattle, based in Boston. This is his first album, a sextet with two saxes, guitar, bass and drums, on a thoughtful but slow moving program. B+(*)

Wayne Horvitz/Ron Samworth/Peggy Lee/Bill Clark/Dylan van der Schyff: Intersection Poems (2003 [2004], Spool/Line): Four musicians from Vancouver, one from Seattle, meet for free form improvisation, with no one much in control, and no real direction in mind. Sometimes it sounds like something might come of it, then it wanders off again. I certainly haven't paid it the attention it might deserve, but then I expect records to tell me when they're important, and this one didn't. B

Rutherford/Vandermark/Müller/van der Schyff: Hoxha (2004 [2005], Spool/Line): Van der Schyff recorded this international summit in Oregon, then passed the tape on to his Canadian label. The idea of pairing Vandermark with England's avant trombone legend is enticing, but it doesn't quite come off. Rutherford is spotty and chaotic, never on long enough to pull his thing together. Vandermark plays as much clarinet as tenor sax, perhaps looking for an Evan Parker vibe, but willing to settle for Brötzmann, Gustafsson, or whomever. The bassist is mostly lost in the mix, so the drummer is the only one who really impresses. But the chaos does come together now and then, especially in "Dagahra" (with Vandermark on tenor sax). B+(**)

Gold Sparkle Trio With Ken Vandermark: Brooklyn Cantos (2002 [2004], Squealer): Gold Sparkle is Andrew Barker (drums), Adam Roberts (bass), and Charles Waters (reeds, mostly alto sax with some clarinet), with Barker and Waters splitting the writing chores. The addition of Vandermark here adds a second set of reeds (tenor sax, clarinet, bass clarinet) -- I'm reminded of an old gum jingle that goes, "double your pleasure, double your fun." Free shenanigans open, but the record closes with a straight and lovely ballad ("Autumn Ever") and a New Orleans-style party romp ("Carpet Quarterbagger"). B+(***)

John Butcher/Mike Hansen/Tomasz Krakowiak: Equation (2002 [2003], Spool/Field): Hansen's credit is "record players" -- presumably he's the one who laid down the static noise that forms the backbone of two suites based on physics equations. Butcher's saxophones and Krakowiak's percussion never change the texture of the material -- any way you slice it, this remains high concept/low yield noise. Not my thing, really, and even less likely to be yours, but this is one of the few such albums that holds my attention. Not sure whether that makes it a success for its type, or a failure. B+(*)

James Carter/Cyrus Chestnut/Ali Jackson/Reginald Veal: Gold Sounds (2004 [2005], Brown Brothers): The idea of doing a jazz album based on Pavement songs is interesting enough. And, of course, anything that lets Carter blow is cause for celebration. Still, there's something off about this record. Not sure whether it's the fragility of the songs or the slapdash approach to them -- probably both. Handicapped by rock's most uncharismatic singer, that Pavement's best songs held together at all seemed miraculous. Here they lose both their framework and their surprise, in other words their integrity -- instead, they are reduced to fodder for the postbop changes machine. Chestnut flops between piano, organ and synth, but he's so old school he never seems comfortable on the electronic keyboards. Meanwhile, Carter swaps tenor and soprano sax -- the former deep and dirty, the latter nondescript. Most interesting player here is drummer Ali Jackson, probably because he sticks closest to the texts, doing things you don't expect in a jazz drummer. Of course, Carter's blowing is impressive enough to occasionally make me suspend my reservations, but they keep coming back. I'll keep this open: could rise up, but also could sink into the Duds list. [B]

James Carter Organ Trio: Out of Nowhere (2004 [2005], Half Note): On reading first reports that Carter was working with an organ trio I imagined a postmodern synthesis of Gene Ammons, Willis Jackson and Stanley Turrentine, able to go hard or soft, fast or slow, d and to throw in more than a few of his tradmeark pops and clicks along the way. This doesn't deliver on my expectations, but it makes amends when guests James "Blood" Ulmer and Hamiett Bluiett show up. Ulmer sings "Little Red Rooster," but his guitar is even more welcome. Bluiett caps the show. B+(**)

Will Calhoun: Native Lands (2005, Half Note): Don't know when these cuts were recorded, but the constantly shifting cast suggests not all at once. Comes with a DVD which I haven't viewed, but that might explain more. Meanwhile, hope it doesn't cost you extra. (Looks like it doesn't.) My problem with this album is that it spends much time showing you all the things Calhoun can do instead of building on a few things that really work. But maybe that means I just wish he had kept Pharoah Sanders around for more than five cuts -- Sanders leads off the first four cuts, and the album never hits that level again. The rest are mostly stripped down beat pieces, with Wallace Roney playing Miles on a couple; Antoine Roney's soprano sax and Gregg Marret's harmonica are the only other lead voices. Fascinating album. Maybe I should look at that DVD. B+(***)

Mary Stallings: Remember Love (2004 [2005], Half Note): Without stopping to count them, there must be at least six distinct types or niches of jazz singers. Like Billie Holiday (but not Ella Fitzgerald), Dinah Washington (but not Sarah Vaughan), and Carmen McRae (but not Betty Carter), Stallings is a classic black pop singer, her jazz credentials limited to interpretive grace, ye olde American songbook, and good taste in musicians. She opens and closes with one of Washington's signature songs, and sparkles on everything mid-tempo, while keeping a respectful distance from the slow ones. Geri Allen herds the musicians, and she can call on a choice horn anytime she wants the effect -- Frank Wess, Vincent Herring, Wallace Roney. As neatly done as I've heard in years by this particular type of jazz singer. A-

Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey: The Sameness of Difference (2005, Hyena): Reed Mathis' weird bass effects take a back seat this time, turning this group into a more conventional piano trio. This record is anchored in two jazz standards, one by Mingus, the other by Brubeck. More numerous are the rock songs -- Hendrix, Björk, Neil Young, Brian Wilson, Lennon & McCartney -- but they are neatly tucked into the flow, bound together by five originals. B+(**)

The Vandermark 5: Alchemia (2004 [2005], Not Two, 12CD): Five nights in Krakow, two sets each night, plus a couple of jam sessions, every note preserved. In theory one can plot out the variations in multiple takes of songs, or pick up the first performances of three new pieces that reappeared later in The Color of Memory, much like critics claimed you could do with Miles Davis' Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel. But more likely you'll just pick discs at random and savor the rough and ready excitement each one brings. A-

The Vandermark 5: The Color of Memory (2004 [2005], Atavistic, 2CD): It's tempting to assert that this could have been edited down to a superior single disc release, but harder to figure out where to cut. Certainly not the longer pieces on the second disc, which start and end with muscular sax, while the longest piece spreads out. The first disc is harder to get a handle on. The ballad pieces feel unfinished, and the idea of jamming the late greats -- Ray Charles, Elvin Jones, Steve Lacy -- into one is a bit of a rush job. Part of the reason may be the announced departure of trombonist Jeb Bishop, a charter member, and replacement by cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm -- a different cat altogether. This album may be shaded more toward Bishop, although it's hard to be sure. More certain is that this one doesn't have the tight, spin-on-a-dime snap of the previous two -- largely made possible by the growth of Dave Rempis. Which makes this one more ordinary, but in the end there's something impressive in every piece. A-

FME: Cuts (2004 [2005], Okka Disk): Ken Vandermark's configurations each have their own name, but the names don't always map well to the music. Free Music Ensemble sounds like a chamber group, with someone like Paul Lovens on drums and a bassist -- well, Kent Kessler would do. But Vandermark went punk instead, with Spaceways Inc./Tripleplay bassist Nate McBride and School Days/Free Fall/Atomic drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. Most pieces have both hard and soft parts. The soft ones are free fragments, often with Vandermark on clarinet with minimal counterpoint. But the hard ones burst into some of Vandermark's most roughhouse blowing. Possible pick hit. A-

John Coltrane: One Down, One Up: Live at the Half Note (1965 [2005], Impulse, 2CD): Radio broadcast tapes, long circulated as bootlegs, finally cleaned up for an official release. Sound is still a bit thin. The group is Coltrane's famous quartet -- McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones -- near the end of their run. Only four songs (plus announcements), the closer a 22:47 "My Favorite Things." Welcome, of course, but I doubt that this will settle out in the forefront of live Coltrane, of which there is quite a bit available. [B+(**)]

Kevin Norton's Bauhaus Quartet: Time-Space Modulator (2003-04 [2004], Barking Hoop): The title's a play on Lazlo Moholy-Nagy's light-space modulator, a gadget built of clear plastic and light bulbs that splashes a room with complexly patterned light. How this translates through sound into time isn't obvious, but the key is probably to focus on drummer Norton and bassist John Lindberg, while letting Dave Ballou's trumpet/cornet and Tony Malaby's tenor/soprano sax fall where they may. At least that's a theory. Not quite there yet. [B+(**)]

Paal Nilssen-Love: Townorchestrahouse (2002 [2005], Clean Feed): The Norwegian is fast becoming one of the most notable drummers around. Still, it's unclear why he gets top billing here: the three pieces -- two approaching the half-hour mark -- are group improvs attributed to all four players, and the guy with the lead instrument, Evan Parker, is far better known than Nilssen-Love, if not pianist Sten Standell or bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten. The pieces strike me as typical for Parker, with the first (long) and third (short) on tenor sax, the second (long) on soprano. Everyone else makes solid contributions, with Standell's piano making the most of his space. [B+(**)]

Abbey Rader/Dave Liebman: Cosmos (2001 [2003], Cadence Jazz): Rader is a drummer who came to my attention while researching Billy Bang. He more than held up his end of Echoes, a duo with Bang, and he holds up his end here as well. The bigger surprise is how adroitly Liebman handles these duets. His little used tenor sax is gruff and puckish, but even the soprano, which has become his main axe of late, retains its tartness. B+(**)

Nicola Stilo/Toninho Horta: Duets (1999 [2005], Adventure Music): Horta plays guitar and sings in Brazil's chanson lite. Stilo plays flute, inevitably more lite. The result has some appeal, in large part because it seems so unpolished, but it's still awful lite. B

Antonio Arnedo: Colombia (2000 [2005], Adventure Music): Arnedo is a Colombian saxophone player. Doesn't specify what kind(s) of saxophone, but my ears and one booklet picture lean toward soprano. There's also a picture of him playing a long skinny instrument, presumably the gaita (different from the Spanish bagpipe of the same name). Recorded in Brooklyn, the rest of the musicians are US-based, with guitarist Ben Monder and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi most prominent here. Rough and exotic, with the first half-plus just bubbling up from the percussion -- every time I hear Takeishi I'm more impressed. B+(***)

Modern Traditions Ensemble: New Old Music (2003 [2005], Adventure Music): New versions of Brazilian choro classics, done by a five piece group led by pianist Benjamin Taubkin, with guitar, mandolin, soprano sax/clarinet, and percussion. Nice. B+(**)

Mike Marshall: Brazil Duets (2005, Adventure Music): Not as egregious as most duets albums these days -- no singers, just a choice of second instrumentalists to go with Marshall's mandolin or guitar. Marshall initially established himself in bluegrass, but took such an interest in Brazilian choro that he founded Adventure Music, a label that has done a fine job of connecting the dots between Brazil (and other parts of Latin America) and the U.S. He manages to do some interesting stuff here, but the common problem is that the music winds up thin with just two players -- and none of the seconds add to the percussion -- and from song to song the feel shifts strangely. Maybe he took duets too literally. B

String Trio of New York With Oliver Lake: Frozen Ropes (2004 [2005], Barking Hoop): This approaches the 25th anniversary of the John Lindberg-James Emery group, with Rob Thomas the current holder of the violin chair. The trio is in typically resplendent form, but the extra attraction here is Lake, who's been popping up in surprising places over the last year or two and always making a splash. Still on the cusp here; could go higher. [B+(***)]

Moutin Reunion Quartet: Something Like Now (2005, Nocturne): Bright, bouncy mainstream jazz from France, led by Moutin brothers François and Louis on bass and drums, with a fine pianist in Piere de Bethmann and the wonderful Rick Margitza on tenor sax. First rate, but unexceptional. Good to hear Margitza again. B+(*)

Amina Figarova: September Suite (2004 [2005], Munich): September, as in September 11, you know what, you know where, you know why. Song titles march through the emotions: "Numb," "Emptyness," "Denial," "Photo Album," "Rage," "Trying to Focus," "When the Lights Goes Down," "Dawn," "For Laura" -- the latter unexplained, the rest pretty easy to guess at. "Numb" is repeated again as a "bonus track." The slow pieces are powerfully moving. The fast pieces -- "Denial," "Rage" -- are less certain of their emotion. The group is tight, with little individuality -- this is plainly a composer's record. As theme, this may have come too late, or too early. Figarova grew up in Baku, but her notes speak of waking up in Brooklyn with the plume of smoke in the air. Been there, done that too. It's not something one forgets easily, and there's something to be said for bringing back one's first impressions, before the posturing took over and the politicos made a perfectly awful tragedy even worse. [B+(**)]

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Back in September-October 2001 I was opposed to the US going to war in Afghanistan, and I've never had second thoughts about my position there. For starters, I never bought the idea that Al Qaeda's terrorist acts constituted a real war, and never doubted that unleashing the US military would constitute a real war -- one which we would soon lose control of. I've never been much for revenge, especially when we're talking about the revenge of the rich upon the poor, or the powerful upon the weak -- cases where proportionality is impossible because the starting points are so unequal. But also because I'm well aware of how self-consuming and self-damaging the desire for revenge can become. (Indeed, is there any more heavily worked theme in literature?) Also, I don't regard the connections -- from the terrorists to Bin Laden to the Taliban -- as so solid as to be actionable. I also recognized that when the US shifted its attention from Bin Laden to the Taliban the mission would creep and unfocus, leaving American soldiers in a land where they were likely to be shot at (and certain to return fire in excess of provocation) without clear and achievable goals. I also worried about the people running the US then and now. But mostly I just didn't see how anything good could come out of more warfare -- even if I didn't clearly understand that what would ensue would be at terrible as what's happened in Iraq.

All that said -- and it should be clear from that list why I still think I was right -- I don't often worry much about what America is doing inside Afghanistan. Admittedly, the rationale for going in -- to capture Bin Laden and break up Al Qaeda -- has been a bust, while the mission morphed into something completely different: a rather pathetic attempt at nation building combined with a generally inept counterinsurgency task. But neither of those efforts is anyway near as destructive and hopeless as what the US has done in Iraq. There are several reasons why the situation in Afghanistan is relatively benign, including: greater international participation and support; a genuine effort to install a consensus caretaker government, built around but not limited to a pre-existing coalition with substantial local and neighboring support; a poor, war-weary population that is not strongly disposed to view the US as its enemy. It may also help that Afghanistan doesn't sit on any "sea of oil," and that the US moved most of its firepower and concentration on to Iraq -- neglect by Bush and Rumsfeld can't help but help. On the other hand, civil war does trudge on in Afghanistan, poverty is extreme, education and the resources to build a civil society are scarce. But those things were also true under the Taliban, and bad as the new government has been it's really tough not to rate as an improvement.

Still, every now and then the US manages to do something really stupid over there: bombing a caravan of tribal leaders, torturing and killing a stray taxi driver, scoring a decisive firefight with the Canadians, killing a NFL star wearing their own uniform. Last week they pulled off another doozy: they burned a couple of killed Taliban fighters, hoping to taunt their comrades into coming out to be slaughtered. Even if such an act wasn't sacrilege to Muslims, you'd think they'd remember how they felt when American contractors were strung up and burned in Fallujah. Maybe if the whole thing hadn't been videotaped they could have contained the outrage, but unlike all those good old wars it's hard to hide what you're doing these days. But the bigger problem lies in the mixed messages that emanate from Bush, Rumsfeld, et al. (You'll remember the concept of mixed messages from the 2004 presidential campaign -- it was what Bush accused Kerry of propagating.) On the one hand, they tell us that we're in Afghanistan and Iraq to help people achieve their legitimate democratic aspirations with freedom and prosperity and all the good things that go with it. On the other hand, they tell us that our goal there is to kill or capture the enemy, which is everyone who opposes us, an ever-increasing population. Soldiers have a tough time reconciling these contradictions, but many of them joined up out of blanket hatred of Arabs and Muslims, and most have come to realize that shooting first is a policy that the brass almost never comes down on -- even when it gets taped and broadcast, as is the case this time.

Juan Cole, whose reluctance to insist that US troops get the hell out of Iraq has been painful to witness, came out after this incident urging the US troops (but not NATO) to leave Afghanistan. Sounds right to me. Without foreign support the Taliban aren't a serious threat -- Pakistan and Saudi Arabia bankrolled them the first time. And it's not like the US is hot on Bin Laden's tail: he's still a fugitive; if he pops up anywhere in the area he'll be busted. Of course, some real economic development would do wonders to help stabilize friendly governments on both sides of the Khyber Pass. But America's damn near broke, so we wouldn't be much help there anyway -- even if we wanted to, which of course we don't.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

One thing I meant to write yesterday in the comment on Tim Dickenson's "War Over Peace" essay was that the war over peace -- that is, the assault against the very idea of peace -- cranked up almost immediately on Sept. 11, 2001. And this was done by liberals as well as conservatives, even by people I knew and generally considered dependable allies. At the time I remember cautioning people that they shouldn't be hard on pacifists because sooner or later we were going to need them. The worst of this is probably over, but still we read people attacking the antiwar movement in their frustration and disappointment over the vile fruits of war. Gary Kamiya's, in his Salon review of George Packer's The Assassin's Gate, writes:

Packer's support for the war is inseparable from his critique of the antiwar movement, and contemporary liberalism in general. He dismisses antiwar protests as naive: "The protesters saw themselves as defending Iraqis from the terrible fate that the United States was prepared to inflict on them. Why would Iraqis want war? The movement's assumptions were based on moral innocence -- on an ability to imagine the horror in which Iraqis lived, and a desire for all good things to go together, for total vindication. War is evil; therefore, the prevention of war must be good."

Packer has many blind spots here, but the most telling is that he thinks this is only about Iraq -- that both prowar and antiwar forces are performing some kind of equations based on Iraqi suffering caused vs. prevented by a US intervention. This ignores the obvious need to factor in Iraqi responses to US invasion and occupation -- you can argue that the anti-US resistance didn't have to make matters worse, but that's a bit like arguing that a rape victim would be better off relaxing and enjoying it. But even more central is the fact that this is an American war -- it's about us, how we view the world, and how we treat others. It shouldn't have taken a lot of introspection to recognize that we are unfit to judge matters of life and death in Iraq, or that trying to do so would compromise us further. Not that war judges -- it's far to indiscriminate for that. To characterize war as evil is to simplify unconscionably. War is far worse than evil -- it not only intends harm, it generates destruction beyond our intentions, it invites retribution. Those who opt for war play god, becoming the ultimate blasphemers. The truly naive are the ones who don't see this -- more invidious still are the ones who see it in general but think they can make it work. You don't have to be an inveterate America-hater to recognize that we're not good judges of what's best for others. Indeed, our cult of self-interest confounds our own domestic affairs so frequently that it's a shame to inflict it on anyone else.

Kamiya picks at Packer's position while trying to preserve his own illusions about what war's good for:

Packer is not completely wrong about the moral innocence, and political naiveté, of much of the antiwar movement. But his characterization of it is surprisingly reductive. In his haste to reject liberal realist arguments as "cautious" and "soft-headed," Packer never engages with the robust body of morally engaged liberals and leftists who opposed both Saddam and the war on powerful realist grounds. . . . A corollary is that he fails to grasp the importance of historical context. About Arab or Muslim grievances, in particular the U.S. support for despotic Arab regimes and the crucial Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he has almost nothing to say.

The truth is that many opponents of the war knew perfectly well how dreadful Saddam was, but opposed the war not out of moral innocence but because it was too risky for the United States and for the Iraqi people, because it was illegal, and because it was being waged by George W. Bush.

And also because war is evil. Yes, sometimes wars must be fought. The battle for the freedom of humankind against the Axis, the humanitarian interventions in Kosovo and Bosnia, the self-defensive strike against the Taliban -- those were all justified wars. But Kosovo is not Iraq, and Saddam Hussein was no Hitler. The pages of the newspapers for the last two and a half years prove it: War itself is a terrible thing, and making war is almost always a sign of total failure.

Actually, I chopped that last sentence off while he was ahead: war is failure. As for war sometimes being necessary, the further back you go in time the fewer peaceable options you find, and the stronger martial traditions become. But in the past fifty years no nation has built its economy on plunder, and few have engaged in any sort of war, even by proxy. (That this has gone unnoticed by most in the US says much about how exceptionally belligerent we have become.) Meanwhile, we've built a standard of living, unprecedented in human history, that depends on peace. (True for the US as well: we haven't suffered a war on our own turf for more than a century, and built our economic dominance during WWII when much of Europe and Asia were destroyed.) The fad idea that war can be humanitarian is only held by the overarmed, and only maintained by ignoring much evidence to the contrary.

Kamiya's examples aren't very convincing. The interventions in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan came after prolonged hostilities -- in the latter case, over 25 years of active external promotion of local warring factions, much sponsored by the US and USSR in their global tryst, whereas Yugoslavia bears similar scars somewhat more obliquely. And both nations limp along with crippled economies and continued strife, so much so that it's hard to see just where the benefits from being on the wrong end of US bombing runs are. As for Hitler and/or Saddam Hussein, the less said the better. The real question here isn't how evil the enemy is, but what can be done about it. The US was in a relatively good position at the start of WWII -- attacked by Japan, whose allies Germany and Italy were already engaged in a war to conquer most or all of Europe, we provided a unique combination of innocence and clout to end those wars in rather quick fashion. But even there the long-term psychic damage was considerable, with our triumph egging us into the long "cold war" that followed, that set the stage for further tragic wars (including Yugoslavia and Afghanistan). Conversely, in Iraq we have no such innocence, and not enough clout to quell even a small scale uprising. The result has been a war that compounds itself into further wars, with no real prospect of a resolution.

Most people have some trigger point where they resolve to fight back. For isolationist America in 1941 that point was tripped by Pearl Harbor. Anyone who calls that "the good war" has a pretty selective memory, but the conclusion of that war presented us with two optional paths. One was to build a fair-minded international framework of laws and institutions to prevent further wars from happening. The other was to use America's tremendous economic and political power to police an international Pax Americana. Both paths were approached, but with typical faith in self-interest, the Pax Americana approach prevailed. Post WWII struggles pitted capitalism vs. communism, imperialism vs. national liberation, and ultimately rich vs. poor. As this progressed, the US became hopelessly corrupt, ultimately succumbing to George W. Bush, the very face of corruption. Along the way, those international laws and institutions either fell under America's thumb or were rendered dysfunctional. The result is that we don't have what it takes to prevent the failure of war -- a result so dire that liberals like Packer, and sometimes Kamiya, have turned to the US war machine for hope. That they've become disenchanted is hardly surprising. They'd be monsters otherwise.

Maybe someone should have stood up to Saddam Hussein long before the US did. But to do so you first need to build a framework that can do so without making matters worse. The US alone cannot do so, and given its history since WWII the US has become so punch drunk it should not even try. The US cannot escape the self-interests of its rulers, and the world cannot forget the dirty deals the US made along the way. Anyone who seriously wants to grapple with the many wrongs around the world needs to hold his fire and rebuild first. And that system needs to develop positive results, to help achieve a fairer world, not just to punish wrongdoers. That will be hard. But the easy temptation to sick the US war machine on people you dislike doesn't work at all. The US may once have been a beacon of freedom and progress for the world, but increasingly we are seen as arrogant, self-righteous, malevolent agents of exploitation and dominance. Before we can right ourselves we must first stop wronging others. And that means we have to swear off war.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Tim Dickinson has a piece in Rolling Stone called "The War Over Peace," where he asks the question: "While vets march against the war and gold-star mothers mourn their sons killed in action, leftists rant about global colonialism. Is the anti-war movement too fractured to be effective?" He then spends the whole article dumping on the left for tainting the antiwar movement. In a highlight box, he declares, "Bashing Bush is hardly a blueprint for bringing the troops home quickly." Evidently we're not supposed to acknowledge that Bush was the one who put them there, and that Bush is the one who keeps them there. Dickinson quotes one antiwar veteran complaing that groups like ANSWER "hijacked" the antiwar protest, then quotes Todd Gitlin on how ANSWER spells "easy marginalization."

The truth is that the left got to the antiwar movement before anyone else. And the reason that happened is that the left had already made the connections to see how badly the war would turn out. ANSWER's edge was that they had already organized to oppose neoliberal globalization, so they were ready when the Iraq war leaped to the top of their priority list. Same thing can be said for the pacifists (not the same as the left), who again got the the right connections before the wheels fell off. One really should credit both groups for their prescience and at least consider what else they have to offer. But more often than not, even those who came around to oppose the war insist on reasserting their anti-left, anti-pacifist prejudices.

The net effect of this carping about the peace movement is to turn the tables, accepting some or all of war movement's premises. Dickinson illustrates this when he writes:

President Bush and his men certainly aren't worried about the opposition. "There is no real anti-war movement," Karl Rove reportedly declared before the September rally. "No serious politician, with anything to do with anything, would show his face at an anti-war rally." Rove knows that beyond its simplistic sloganeering about "Out now," the peace movement has failed to develop a pragmatic exit strategy -- one that mainstream Democrats can embrace without being blasted as part of Cut and Run. Opponents of the war have to do more than pillory the president's policy -- they must bring a serious alternative to the table.

The first faulty assumption here is the notion that only "serious politicians" count. If that were true Bush's people could afford to be blasé about public opinion on the war, but most evidence suggests that they suffer from periodic panic attacks, especially as polls show a majority of voters concluding that the whole war was a big, stupid mistake. Even if the war defenders score points attacking the antiwar movement as leftist and/or pacifist, the erosion of popular support for the war tracks the war itself, not the spin.

The second faulty assumption is the assertion that lack of "a pragmatic exit strategy" disqualifies the antiwar movement from serious consideration. This weasel wording seeks to obscure the real issue, which is that the war defenders have no exit strategy (pragmatic or otherwise). "Out Now" may not be an optimal solution, but it's a clear alternative to their "Out Never" -- perhaps the point of disagreement would be clearer if we just said "Out!" But there are two main problems with trying to articulate an alternate strategy: one is that we don't have the power to implement it; the other is that it divides the movement, since war opponents range from pacifists and isolationists to internationalists and flat-out anti-imperialist revolution symps. To do as Dickinson suggests and purge the antiwar movement of its non-mainstream elements doesn't cut our numbers so much as it deflects the focus away from where it should be: the war, and the people who led us into it and keep us there.

The unwillingness of the Democrats to oppose the war just shows how effective people like Rove have been at shaping the mainstream political dialogue in America. The only conclusion we can draw from that fact is that the political system in America, as practiced by both parties, is based not on popular will but on the ability of the partisan elites to manipulate elections. As such, one thing the antiwar movement does is to show up the undemocratic nature of the system. That doesn't guarantee change, but it focuses attention, and we know from experience that without attention change will never come.

We should thank God for the antiwar movement. Without it, we would be lost.

Monday, October 17, 2005

A couple more news notes, while I'm thinking of them.

• It seems likely to me that the Harriet Miers nomination will collapse and disappear. If so, it won't be the Democrats' doing, and it won't even be the ultra-right who feel cheated out of their just desserts. It will be because of two things:

  1. For starters, she's a profoundly mediocre choice. At least one could make a case that Roberts understands and recognizes the law. That may make him no more than Scalia to Miers' Thomas, but if you're a US Senator that may be all the difference you need. (And personality-wise, Roberts doesn't appear to have Scalia's Napoleonic complex, another plus -- or more properly, another avoidance of a huge minus.) Even if Miers has as much hidden intelligence as she claims Bush has, nobody on earth is going to think that she got the job for any reason other than Bush's favoritism. What will do Miers in is when someone in the middle of the Republican spectrum turns on her -- especially someone like Orrin Hatch, but there are other Republicans who could profit by showing some independence on this issue, including Chairman Specter.

  2. The reason any crack in the Republican wall will tear down the whole nomination is that Bush is in a whole heap of trouble. The more mediocre Miers looks, the more arrogant Bush looks for nominating her. His next nominee is going to be much the same politically as Miers, so ideology isn't an issue. Which means that this is the one opportunity Republicans will have to show they're not totally under Bush's thumb -- and given Bush's polls that's one place they won't want to be.

  Of course, if Bush went to the wall for Miers he'd probably squeeze out the needed votes -- making up for his Republican losses with spare Democrats, but even the latter are likely to be shamed into opposition. Bush has a record of fighting to win regardless of the consequences, but one consequence he can ill afford is to lose leadership face over the Republican party -- compared to which screwing Miers is small potatoes. This is all reminiscent of LBJ's Abe Fortas nomination -- cronyism on a similar scale by another president dogged by another disastrous war. LBJ not only lost the nomination; he lost his party as well.

  The Miers nomination is one more instance of David Ogilvy's old adage: "first rate people hire first rate people; second rate people hire third rate people." Bush not only hires them. Once they've proven their incompetence, he gives them medals and/or promotes them.

• It looks like Iraq's "constitution" passed its arcane hurdles, although the early reports from Mosul smell pretty bad, and the sunni non-vote may exceed the sunni no-vote. That it passed means the sham can continue; otherwise, the shame would merely have been recycled. None of these elections broach the real issue, which is getting the US out of Iraq. At least in this regard, our experience is the same as Iraq's: Americans didn't get to vote on getting in or getting out either. Makes you wonder what kind of democracy we live in.

• Saddam Hussein will be tried this week on one very narrowly circumscribed issue, where 100+ shiites were killed in response to an assassination attempt. This suggests what we've long suspected: that it will be hard to prosecute Saddam's grosser crimes without raising questions about his relationship to the US.

• The sudden interest of high Republican politicos in avian flu intrigues me. First hint I had was when Sen. Pat Roberts wrote an op ed in the Eagle about how important the threat was. Given that the only problem that Roberts has ever been clear-headed enough to recognize on his own was the threat to agribusiness posed by any drop in wheat price supports, it was reasonable to surmise that someone else was pulling his strings. Then the Bush regime got worked up. Probably searching for a crisis they can look like they're on top of, at least until it happens. Also little doubt there's money for the pharmaceuticals in the deal. Mike Davis argues that avian flu is "the monster at the door" -- but I doubt that they came up with this from reading him.

• Saw a news story tonight on how Americans are feeling all tapped out donating for disaster relief lately. The death toll in Pakistan's earthquake has passed 50,000, but as Stalin might say, that's just a statistic. Hurricane Stan killed more than a thousand in Central America, but that's just a hurricane that missed the US -- someone else's problem. (Unlike the remnants of Tropical Storm Tammy, which have caused extensive flooding along the US East Coast. And while we're at it, note that Hurricane Vince, the first V-name storm ever in the Atlantic, was also the first hurricane on record to hit Spain. The world's disaster zones are spreading.) There are so many lessons buried in this story that it's hard even to list them. One is that disasters are not just nature -- they are compounded by human developments. One aspect of that is that disasters in areas of widespread poverty take a much higher toll in lives. (On the other hand, disasters in areas of wealth ring up higher insurance claims.) Another is that private charity doesn't work very well. Even in the best of circumstances it isn't very efficient, and over time generosity wanes. But even governments are hard pressed to respond to large disasters -- especially when they shunt much of their spending off into military adventures, as the US and Pakistan have done.

Yesterday's TV reports on the Iraq constitution referendum bought the spin, specifically that increased sunni voter turnout shows that the sunnis are abandoning the resistance and buying into the system. That pretty blithely ignores the fact that those who showed up to vote voted against the system, and got screwed for the effort. That only reinforces the insurgents' position. We shouldn't lose sight of the basic fact that democracies work only when all but the most marginal of criminals participate. The war will only win when the insurgency -- not just a few sunnis -- joins the government, and that can only happen when the US withdraws. Anything short of that just fuels further war, which makes reconciliation all the harder.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Music: Current count 11127 [11101] rated (+26), 920 [935] unrated (-15). A week with very little but prospecting for Jazz Consumer Guide. The task was so daunting that I started with marginal prospects mostly to move them out of the way. The few surprises got refiled for further listening, and their numbers swelled as the week wore on, so my rating pace slowed. Still haven't done the most basic cleanup -- presumably that happens this coming week.

• Living Things: Resight Your Rights EP (2003, DreamWorks, EP): Four songs, bit more than thirteen minutes. Three of the songs appear on Black Skies in Broad Daylight, their import-only LP, belatedly remixed with three replacements for US release as Ahead of the Lions. The band consists of three brothers from St. Louis with girl names. They sound like late-'80s hard alt-rock, like the Replacements, but with more politics, and probably more intellectual baggage. The song not everywhere else goes: "Where's the future? Where's the Future? Everybody thought we had a future." B+
• Derrick Morgan: Moon Hop: Best of the Early Years (1960-69 [2003], Trojan/Sanctuary, 2CD): these days the ska star is known for two songs: "Forward March," which should be Jamaica's national anthem, and "Tougher Than Tough," which leant its name to the canonical anthology of Jamaican music; nothing else here matches either, but you get plenty of context and choice filler. B+
• The Red Krayola: God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It (1968 [1993], Collectables): Mayo Thompson's group recorded two albums in the late '60s, then re-emerged in the late '70s with or without Art & Language. The latter projects fit into the general mold of post-punk British agit-rock (e.g., "A Portrait of V.I. Lenin in the Style of Jackson Pollock"), but reports are that the first Red Krayola (or Crayola) album was in the vein of Texas psychedelia (cf. the 13th Floor Elevators). If so, I suppose this could be viewed as transitional, but it may just be weird. I've never been able to decide. Lots of very short pieces, some interesting. B
• Tricky With DJ Muggs and Grease: Juxtapose (1999, Island): Featuring Mad Dog, D'NA, Kioka, Bob Khaleel. Usual grooves, couple of good songs. Short. B+

What follows is one week's worth of notes on listening for the next Jazz Consumer Guide. These were written on my first play in this cycle, although I've played some of these records before. Grades in brackets are tentative: I figure I need at least one more play before I can be certain of my rating. The B+ grades also have 1-3 stars. In practice, the 3-star records will probably turn up as Honorable Mentions, and the 1-star records won't. All B+ records are good records, consistently enjoyable or sporadically brilliant, but probably not both. The ratings help me sort out what to write about. The notes are just stops on the way to writing the reviews. Some words may survive, especially if I come up with a catchy phrase, but at this stage I don't worry much about phrasing and conciseness. I'm putting this into the blog partly to document how I work, and partly because I feel guilty that most of these records won't eventually show up in a published Jazz CG.

Eric Alexander & Vincent Herring: The Battle: Live at Smoke (2005, HighNote): Presumably the model is Jug and Sonny, but Herring's alto is short of weight and tends to slip into the tenor's harmonics. Surprisingly, Alexander doesn't seem to be up for the challenge either. The semi-slow one doesn't develop much juice. Pianist Mike LeDonne plays fast, taking several leads. B

Alexander McCabe: The Round (2005, Wamco): First album for a journeyman alto saxist (credits include Ray Charles and Chico O'Farrill big bands, Harold Mabern and Clifford Jordan). Nice tone and use of space on opener, "Floating." Pianist Joe Barbato switches to accordion for the title track, an interesting harmonic effect. The rest ranges from straight bebop to post-bop, somewhat more relaxed and generally quite pleasant. B+(**)

Tim Coffman: Crossroads (2004 [2005], BluJazz): Three horns (piano, bass and drums) is typically an arranger's lineup, not something I normally look forward to, but it does improve the odds a bit that the leader plays trombone. Songlist mostly comes from the hard bop era, with Juan Tizol's "Caravan" the only throwback -- and one of the nicer things here, although the arrangement breaks no new ground. Nothing here excites me, but it's all tastefully crafted, the horns interlocking smoothly, with generous solo space for the trombone. B+(*)

Donald Harrison/Ron Carter/Billy Cobham: New York Cool: Live at the Blue Note (2005, Half Note): Same lineup as Heroes, an album recorded in 2002 that challenged Harrison to work in a tight trio context, but helped him out with an extraordinary rhythm section. But this reprise has the easy structure of a concert performance, with traditional fare, long pieces, even a healthy-sized drum solo. In other words, nothing so challenging -- even if much is enjoyable, including the drum solo. B

Cinzia Spata: 93-03 (2003 [2005], Azzurra Music): She's a Sicilian vocalist who loves to scat, or just let her voice float around melodic curves. I feel rather indifferent about what she does -- for pure texture, give me Donny McCaslin's soprano sax. But the hidden gem here is Marc Copland's piano, which impresses even when he's just filling in cracks. B+(*)

Rebecca Shrimpton and Eric Hofbauer: Madman's Moon (2005, CNM): Hofbauer's a guitarist who has done good work in the past, but is so low key here it's hard to notice him. Shrimpton is a dusky vocalist who never gets out of second gear. B-

Andrea Wolper: The Small Hours (2002 [2005], Varis One Jazz): Another slow vocalist. Her voice is more flexible than Shrimpton's, and in this context Ron Affif's swing-influenced guitar works better. Bassist Ken Filiano is also a plus, and Frank London makes a tasteful appearance on trumpet. All of which add up, but not to much of a margin. B

Joan Crowe: Bird on the Wire (2004, Evensongmusic): Her background as an actress, and maybe her summers spent on her grandparents' dairy farm in Deutschland, led her to cabaret. Don't know about her much touted comic skills, but she's a keen interpreter and runs a band that's always there for her without ever intruding, let alone tripping her up. A wide range of songs, with one original, called "Petite Southern Woman," certainly not autobiographical. She even tackles "Twisted," which she slows down and inches into, like trying out an especially weird costume. Title song from Leonard Cohen. Closing "Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss" straight out of Marlene Dietrich. B+(**)

John Sheridan's Dream Band: Easy As It Gets (2005, Arbors): Sheridan is a fine stride pianist, rooted in the old swing styles he encountered as a child on Benny Goodman records. He calls his band "the dream band" -- you would too if you stepped into his shoes. The seven instrumental cuts swing lightly but definitively, with the title piece the choicest of cuts. Ron Hockett's clarinet stands out, but everyone contributes, and the band hangs together to properly sum up its parts. The other eight cuts feature singer Rebecca Kilgore, who fits nicely into the swing, but is almost a distraction in this company. But she does ace the closer, "I'm Sitting on Top of the World." B+(***)

The Kenny Davern Quartet: In Concert, Albuquerque, 2004 (2004 [2005], Arbors): The veteran clarinetist with guitar (James Chirillo), bass and drums. About what you'd expect. W.C. Handy's "Ole Miss" sounds quite archaic these days, "Careless Love" only slightly less so. "Summertime" and "These Foolish Things" are hardly innovative let alone needed, but not unwelcome. "Somebody Stole My Gal" and "Royal Garden Blues" soar. So, about what you'd expect. B+(**)

Sara Caswell: But Beautiful (2004 [2005], Arbors): Caswell is a young violinist, well schooled both in classical and jazz -- her parents are both musicologists, and her sister Rachel sings on three cuts here, plays cello (but not here), etc. Songlist doesn't fit Arbors' usual return-to-swing curriculum -- "The Way You Look Tonight" starts out there, but Monk, Shorter, Ron Carter, Billy Joel, and someone named Mihanovich also make the list, plus a couple by good ol' "traditional" and one original. The point, I suppose, is to showcase her versatility, but I can't discern any other. Good pianist in Lynne Arriale, underused. "Shenandoah" is a nice closer, even with the vocal scat. B

The Deborah Weisz Quintet: Grace (For Will) (2004 [2005], Va Wah): Rather complicated free-based music, with the leader's trombone, Andrew Sterman's tenor sax, and "special guest" Olivier Ker Ourio's chromatic harmonica making for a spotty but exacting front line, and Sheryl Bailey's guitar supplementing bass-drums. Sometimes vigorous, often interesting, but rarely all that compelling. B+(*)

Sonido Isleño: ¡Vive Jazz! (2005, Tresero): Interesting mix of Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican elements, simmered in the melting pot of "New York, the largest Caribbean City in the world." The chef is Benjamin Lapidus, who signs his liner notes "Ph.D." without saying what in. Lapidus plays guitar and various percussion instruments, and is joined by 17 others on one or more tracks -- most credited with percussion, but also tenor sax (Paul Carlon), piano (Matt Ray), vocals (Pedro Pablo Martínez). Don't quite know what to make of it yet. [B+(**)]

Peggy Lee Band: Worlds Apart (2004, Spool/Line): The jazz cellist from Vancouver -- I suppose it's one measure that she's established herself that AMG answers a search for her with the choice "Peggy Lee [Cello]" in the same bold type as "Peggy Lee [Vocals]." AMG now credits her with 5 albums and 48 appearances, although a half-dozen or more of those look like mistaken links to the singer's work. This record doesn't parse readily, I suspect because the cello is relatively inconspicuous in a sextet led by trumpet (Brad Turner) and trombone (Jeremy Berkman), whose dithering enhances the abstract expressionism. [B+(**)]

Sarah DeLeo: The Nearness of You (2005, Sweet Sassy Music): Young vocalist, identifies with singer Peggy Lee, not cellist Peggy Lee; a passel of standards, mostly backed with guitar (Chris Bergson), bass and drums, sometimes with keybs, two cuts with trumpet. So competent, and so likeable, the ups and downs merely mirror the songlist. B+(*)

Lizz Wright: Dreaming Wide Awake (2004 [2005], Verve Forecast): Only three originals (counting two co-credits), so she's still not much of a singer-songwriter. The only recognizable covers are by Neil Young and Chester Powers ("Get Together" -- Youngbloods hit, also Chad Mitchell, We Five, Carpenters, Ray Stevens, Indigo Girls), so it's not clear that she's an interpretive singer either. Interesting voice, but with the guitar leading the slow, unsexy grooves she sounds much like Tracy Chapman -- more cosmopolitan than folkie, to be sure, but maybe that's just her producers? Several songs caught my interest, but didn't sustain it. Probably an improvement over Salt. B

Jamie Cullum: Catching Tales (2005, Verve Forecast): I can think of a half-dozen definitions of what it means to be a jazz singer at this date, but this doesn't fit any of them. Maybe there's a historical explanation -- I didn't bother chasing down his previous album, let alone its obscure predecessors. But what I hear here is: that his vocal chops are genuine and impressive, and adaptable like an actor; this his guitar, keyboards and drum programming are nothing special; that his songwriting is rock-based and prematurely geriatric; that his gimmick for covers is to slow them down, often by breaking their kneecaps; that his arrangements aim for smooth jazz filigree, but rarely achieve it. Covers like "Our Day Will Come" and "I Only Have Eyes for You" play to his strengths, plus they have indelible melodies. His own songs don't, even when Allen Toussaint and Dan Nakamura try to help out. Probable Dud. C+

Either/Orchestra: Éthiopiques 20: Live in Addis (2004 [2005], Buda Musique, 2CD): Francis Falceto's Éthiopiques series provided a comprehensive survey of Ethiopia's short-lived pop music flowering in the early '70s, a period soon choked off by infertile war and revolution. Now Falceto has come full circle with new recordings, both of Etiopians and of western musicians who discovered Ethiopia through his unique series. A few years back, Russ Gershon rearranged several pieces from Éthiopiques 13 for his big band. That led to Gershon's Either/Orchestra playing an extended program of Ethiopian music at a festival in Addis Ababa, recorded here. The session starts with five west-meets-east pieces where the orchestra's discipline doesn't tame the source material so much as muscles it up. But it keeps its African roots, especially thanks to guest percussionist Mulatu Astatqé. After that start, more Ethiopian guests join in -- several singers, and explosive saxophonist Gétatchèw Mèkurya. A-

Lars-Göran Ulander Trio: Live at Glenn Miller Café (2004 [2005], Ayler): The booklet includes Ulander's discography: seventeen records, all on tiny Swedish labels, most from 1963-77, all sideman roles even though he plays alto sax, only two leaders I've heard of (Phil Minton, Per Henrik Wallin). Jan Ström has made a specialty out of releasing albums under the names of semi-legendary musicians who have rarely (if ever) led groups before -- Arthur Rhames and Mongezi Feza from old tapes, more opportunistically Henry Grimes on a recent visit with Hamid Drake and David Murray in tow -- and he insists that Ulander deserves a little spotlight too. Sure does. The trio features veteran bassist Palle Danielsson and hot shot drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, both superb. Ulander is less spectacular, but he picks his way through the free improvs with considerable aplomb. B+(***)

Aaron Weinstein: A Handful of Stars (2005, Arbors): Most of the teenage prodigies who've turned to jazz recently have come out of the euroclassical straightjacket, flashing technique but little sense of jazz. This 19-year-old fiddler looks the part, but in taking Joe Venuti as his muse he's slipped into a surlier crowd. The booklet says he picked the musicians here, and he did right. Joe Ascione's keeps this lively with his light swing touch on drums, plus a little djembe for a change. Even more important is Bucky Pizzarelli in the critical Eddie Lang role -- he hasn't sounded so focused in years, which lets Weinstein off the hook. Cameos by Houston Person and John Pizzarelli don't hurt, even when the latter apes Chet Baker on the only vocal, the sublime "Let's Get Lost." The kid plays fine, too. If, when he grows up, he turns into the new Johnny Frigo, we all should be happy. B+(***)

Richie Hart: Greasy Street (2005, Zoho): Hart's last one, Blues in the Alley, was such a straightforward blues romp I was reluctant to file it under jazz. This one is certainly jazzier, with a preference for shimmering notes. Not dislikeable, not even when Dr. Lonnie guests. Sweet even, but weren't they aiming for greasy? B

Hilary Noble & Rebecca Cline: Enclave (2004 [2005], Zoho): Noble is a Boston-based saxist-percussionist with one previous album (good title, Noble Savage). Cline's a pianist I know nothing about, except that on this evidence she sounds like the young Joanne Brackeen. They play latin jazz with a lot of edge -- sharp corners even. Don't have a good sense of Noble yet, as a saxophonist anyway -- his percussion array is pretty impressive. Not sure how well this will hold up, but for now it goes back into the queue for further study. [B+(***)]

Tim Ries: The Rolling Stones Project (2002-04 [2005], Concord): Nine Rolling Stones songs (or ten -- "Honky Tonk Women" gets two takes) followed by a chilldown piece by Ries. Each gets a distinct studio treatment, with 25 guest musicians weaving in and out of the lineup, including Ron Wood for one cut, Keith Richards for two, and Charlie Watts for five -- the most appearances of any guest. Most tracks have vocals, with Lisa Fischer up three times, Sheryl Crow, Norah Jones and Claudia Acuña onc each. Guitarists include Bill Frisell, Ben Monder, and John Scofield, as well as the aforementioned Stones. Ries plays tenor and soprano sax. He put this together over a couple of years, and the care and patience shows. This struck me as a bad idea from the start, mostly because tributes with guests tend toward crass commercial opportunism -- John Scofield's Ray Charles album is a recent example. Indeed, the industry's so desperate for sales that the temptation's unavoidable. Moreover, even when a promising idea does emerge, it gets abandoned with the next guest star. And vocals skew close enough to the originals that they often beg comparison. Still, this doesn't come off so badly. For starters, the songbook holds up, especially less obvious songs like "Slippin' Away" and "Waiting on a Friend." Frisell is interesting everywhere he appears, especially so on his near-solo "Ruby Tuesday." Norah Jones' "Wild Horses" is a choice cut. The ravers have more problems, but at least they have a first-rate drummer. B+(**)

Stich Wynston's Modern Surfaces: Transparent Horizons (2004 [2005], TCB): Guitarist Geoff Young wrote six songs to drummer (and to a lesser extent, pianist) Wynston's four. The quartet fills out with saxophonist Mike Murley and bassist Jim Vivian. Recorded in Canada, the group maintains affinities to Paul Bley and Kenny Wheeler, a soft and spacious strain of avant abstraction. Pleasant enough as wallpaper, but hard to tell where it's going. B+(*)

Euge Groove: Just Feels Right (2005, Narada Jazz): Born Steve Grove, the moniker wishful thinking, or maybe a sly joke. Relentlessly pleasant smooth jazz. B-

Charlie Hunter and Bobby Previte as Groundtruther + DJ Logic: Longitude (2005, Thirsty Ear): More fusion than anything else, Hunter works on his power guitar moves, Previte complements on drums. DJ Logic adds some electro-murk, reinforcing the guitar more than anything else. Not as consistent as I'd like, and nothing really compelling, but I'm not sure another spin won't make some sort of difference. [B+(**)]

Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra: Not in Our Name (2004 [2005], Verve): The front cover reprises the first LMO album, recorded way back in 1969. The picture on the back cover of the booklet is modelled after an old Soviet poster, with a man and a woman locked shoulder to shoulder, gazing off into the bright future of the new world. Carla Bley, her face mostly bone, her hair straw, still fits, but Haden, slouching behind sunglasses, looks lost, and soft. It's an ambivalent picture, as is the cover -- between the two veterans all we see are the usual motley crew of musicians, all relatively young, some younger than the first LMO album. I've had a tough time sorting this record out, in no small part because at first blush it's a rehash of Bley's Looking for America. The arrangements could hardly be the work of anyone else, and the tactic of weaving bits of old patriotic songs into the tapestry is repeated. Still, the opening bars of this "America the Beautiful" fills me with sadness -- even though the musicians can't help but rejoin the song's climax. It's been a long, sad retreat from "Song for Ché" to "Not in Our Name" and "This Is Not America" as the positive strengths that once were our assumed baseline we now hopefully cling to like life preservers. In the end we're left with the sheer beauty of the music, and sadness. A-

Kenny Barron Trio: The Perfect Set: Live at Bradley's II (1996 [2005], Sunnyside): The title overreaches, but this is a trio with a lot of snap (Ray Drummond, Ben Riley). A standard, two Barron originals, two Monk tunes. Nothing they couldn't have done any day of the week. Will have to play it again to see if it overcomes my skepticism, but it might. [B+(**)]

George Russell and the Living Time Orchestra: The 80th Birthday Concert (2003 [2005], Concept Publishing, 2CD): This is a little oversimplistic, but the original emergence of a jazz avant-garde in the latter half of the '50s -- i.e., before Ayler, before Coltrane flipped out, before all that other '60s revoltion -- can be traced to four singular musicians: Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and George Russell. (In retrospect, Steve Lacy might have been a fifth, but at the time he was associated with Taylor.) Russell is the least well known of the four (or five): more composer than pianist, more theorist than composer, he moved to Europe and only sporadically appeared with recordings bearing little resemblance to anyone else's jazz. But he made it to age eighty, and here finds himself fêted by a superb big band as they work through two of his longer pieces, plus fragments of two more, plus his arrangement of Miles Davis' "So What" that turns into the perfect vamp for introducing the band. Marvelous music, breathtaking sweep. Need more time to absorb it all, so grade could improve. Possible pick hit. A-

Michaël Attias: Renku (2004 [2005], Playscape): Saxophone trio with John Hebert (bass) and Satoshi Takeishi (drums). All three are players I've noticed working on records I admire and enjoy, but this is Attias' first album as a leader. Studiously avant, thoughtful yet open-ended. Not a real distinctive sound, especially with Attias dividing his time between soprano, alto and baritone saxes, but first-rate group interaction. [B+(**)]

Rake-Star: Some Ra (2003 [2004], Spool/Line): The booklet has pictures but no excuses. Funny to watch a bunch of white guys who look like they just came down from Saturn. Impressive how much they sound like their models, too. B+(***)

Pat Metheny/Ornette Coleman: Song X: Twentieth Anniversary (1985 [2005], Nonesuch): Anyone even roughly familiar with Coleman's evolution from Science Fiction in 1971 up through Virgin Beauty in 1988 will instantly recognize the real author here. Metheny got top billing because he made the deal that got the album released. Likewise, the reissue is part of Metheny's deal with his latest label. This makes for some interesting contrasts that have little to do with music. Metheny has enjoyed rare commercial favor thoughout his career, receiving major label support everywhere he's gone. Coleman, on the other hand, never worked consistently with a label after his early Atlantics and Blue Notes, and often has opted not to record rather than to feed the exploiters. One result of this is that only two Coleman albums from the '70s and '80s are still in print -- making him far and away the most obscure genius in jazz. So maybe you don't know those albums? In the '70s Coleman started working with electric guitar and bass, producing albums that were true fusion -- in the sense that fusion produces new elements plus copious energy, not just a mix of the old compounds. Metheny had early on recorded an album of Coleman pieces, and had worked quite a bit with Coleman bassist Charlie Haden, so however strange Song X may seem within Metheny's crossover-dominated catalog, he clearly knew what he was doing here, and plays with exceptional skill. Haden and Jack DeJohnette also work to steady the platform, letting Metheny and Coleman cut loose. The result is a satisfying mix of old-and-new Ornette, an interesting contrast to Coleman's own 1985 album, In All Languages, where he kept his new and reformed old groups separate. The new issue adds six scraps that didn't fit the original LP length, putting them seemlessly up front where they warm up the themes the album proper extends. A

Randy Reinhart: At the Mill Hill Playhouse: As Long As I Live (2004 [2005], Arbors): I'll have to play this again to be sure, but on first play this sounds like the perfect storm of the Arbors set. John Sheridan, Dan Barrett, and especially Kenny Davern play even more impressively than on their own recent Arbors albums, with frequent collaborator James Chirillo making comparable moves on guitar. Reinhart plays cornet on this, his first album, and has a blast. Given the instrumentation, this is more trad than swing. [A-]

Poncho Sanchez: Do It! (2005, Concord Picante): Veteran conga player, apprenticed in Cal Tjader's band, then set out on his own around 1980. This is my first taste of his work, and I have damn little idea how to evaluate it. The percussion is slicker than the Afro-Cuban things I've been liking. The brass is tight and punchy. Two vocals aren't awful. Overall sounds pretty good, but I can't begin to quantify that. [B+(*)]

Herbie Hancock: Possibilities (2005, Hear Music): I hate the game that dismisses unorthodox variants as "not jazz," but this isn't any kind of jazz that I can recognize. Hancock plays piano behind singers -- ten songs, each song with its own singer, none of whom have any sort of jazz rep, nor do the songs have any repertory standing. Hancock has a couple of nice moments on piano, but they hardly qualify as solos. The singers are an odd mix of has-beens (Sting, Paul Simon, Annie Lennox) and wannabes (Jonny Lang, Joss Stone, John Mayer, Damien Rice, Raul Midon) -- Christina Aguilera singing Leon Russell may qualify for both simultaneously. Nothing here is awful -- well, Trey Anastasio comes close, and three or four others are on rather shaky footing -- but from any sort of artistic standpoint it is a complete waste. Most likely the business plan is a lot more interesting than the record. The main idea here is to trigger impulse buys at Starbucks, so the range of singers are really cross-marketing vectors. Given that songs sells records, think of each one as a trap -- if Aguilera jailbait doesn't attract you, maybe Sting will. Or maybe they do just sell you the song. But in the end the real value in the deal isn't the music at all -- it's the tiny patch of counter-space at Starbucks. Given the relative values, I wouldn't be surprised to find that the guests had to pay to get their names on the cover. [C+]

Peter Epstein/Brad Shepik/Matt Kilmer: Lingua Franca (2003-04 [2005], Songlines): The back cover suggests to file this under "jazz/world fusion" -- a new genre or category to me. There are hints of divers world beats here and there. Epstein studied with Charlie Haden, James Newton and John Carter, which in turn led him to west African, Indian and Balkan musics -- all evident here in miniscule quantities. Shepik worked with Dave Douglas' Tiny Bell Trio, which explored Balkan motifs. The album is lovely but feels slight, like the idea was to suggest much while revealing little. Kilmer is modestly credited with "percussion" but must be using a wide range of hand drums and other devices. Shepik is credited with "guitars" although some of what he plays is sitar-like. Epstein's alto and soprano sax are more straightforward, adding a light voice and bright tone on top of the shuffle. I've played this a lot; wish I understood it better. A-

More next week. (Especially more avant-garde.) I'm also working on a clean-up from last time's leftovers. I'll post that when I'm done. Sure, I should have done it first, but that's just the way it's worked out.

Friday, October 14, 2005

News items:

• NBC News' lead story on Thursday wasn't Bush's clumsy, down-homey interview with a set of ordinary American soldiers in Iraq. No, it was how the event had been staged, the so