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Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Two days short of a month since April's column. As I approach the end of each column, I think I should hustle around and round up something special I haven't publicized before, but I've only added six albums since the latest Music Week, and it's just as possible that the most timely adds (Rhett Miller, Best Coast) got rushed. Playing Kamasi Washington as I write this, at least partly to forestall adding anything else late -- it's a 3-CD debut called The Epic which is sure to try my patience, but that can wait for later.

I won't bother repeating my comments from the last four Music Week columns, but check them for more info on, e.g., why I bothered with all those old Charles Lloyd albums. I will remind you that reviews with no bracketed source (e.g., "[cd]") are things I found on Rhapsody (hence the column name). As of Jan. 2014 I folded what was previously Jazz Prospecting into here, figuring that my share of jazz promos was declining and would continue to diminish. Still, I have 45 [cd] tags in the following, 4 more [cdr], but no [dl] -- a tag indicating a download link, usually something publicists prepare and send out. There should be more of the latter -- Lord knows I get 5-10 in emails per day, but the extra hassle rarely seems worth the trouble. (Actually, I do have quite a bit of new ECM piled up. But for me at least, the hassle is not just in the downloading but also in the playing. And I still don't have that Jack DeJohnette that everyone likes so much.)

These are short notes/reviews based on streaming records from Rhapsody. They are snap judgments based on one or two plays, accumulated since my last post along these lines, back on April 14. Past reviews and more information are available here (6396 records).

Recent Releases

Tony Adamo: Tony Adamo & the New York Crew (2015, Urban Zone): Does something he calls "hipspokenword" -- a fast-paced narration-commentary set against a fast swing rhythm, with trumpet (Tim Ouimette) and alto sax (Donald Harrison) for accents and swirls. You get a capsule history of several decades of jazz, plus some Pablo Picasso stories. Four previous albums, so maybe this isn't sui generis, but it's close. B+(***) [cd]

Alabama Shakes: Sound & Color (2015, ATO): Alabama group with a black female singer-guitarist who does a remarkable Otis Redding impression, originally a covers band and not far beyond that on their debut, but this album makes a strong move toward finding their own sound. I'm duly impressed, especially on the title song, but not consistently so, and sometimes they get on my nerves. B+(*)

Harry Allen: For George, Cole and Duke (2015, Blue Heron): A batch of Gershwin, Porter, and Ellington standards, played by the tenor saxophonist, backed by Ehud Asherie (piano), Nicki Parrott (bass), and Chuck Redd (drums and vibes), and Little Johnny Rivero (percussion, three cuts), with the seductive Parrott singing three tunes. Lovely, but perhaps a little too easy. B+(***)

Dmitry Baevsky: Over and Out (2014 [2015], Jazz Family): Alto saxophonist, mainstream guy, from St. Petersburg in Russia, based in New York, fourth album -- only other one I've heard was his second, Down With It (2010), superb. Three originals, most of the rest shows a jazz pedigree -- a Jobim, a Monk, two Ellingtons. Very facile with a lovely tone, he continues to impress. A- [cd]

Juan Pablo Balcazar: Reversible (2013 [2015], Fresh Sound New Talent): Spanish bassist, sets up attractive rhythms for piano trio with Marco Mezquida and Carlos Falanga, then adds tenor saxophonist Miguel "Pintxo" Villar for some added color. B+(**)

Perry Beekman: S'Wonderful: Perry Beekman Sings and Plays Gershwin (2015, self-released): Guitarist-singer, based in the old Borscht Belt, third album of standards (pecking order was Cole Porter, then Rodgers & Hart). Great songs. Not so great singer. Accompanied by Peter Tomlinson (piano) and Lou Pappas (bass). B [cd]

Thomas Bergeron: Sacred Feast (2015, self-released): Trumpet player, don't know if he's related to big band specialist Wayne Bergeron but after this record I should be able to tell them apart. "Inspired by the music of Olivier Messiaen" -- his previous album did something similar with Debussy -- who like most classical composers is mostly a namecheck to me. Melodies have some promise, and the trumpet is neatly woven in, but Becca Stevens' diva act is a huge turnoff. C+ [cd]

David Berkman: Old Friends and New Friends (2014 [2015], Palmetto): Pianist, ten albums since 1995 although he seems to have stalled after 2004. Three saxes here -- Dayna Stephens, Billy Drewes, Adam Kolker -- plus bass (Linda Oh) and drums (Brian Blade). B+(**)

Best Coast: California Nights (2015, Harvest): California duo, Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno, third album as they try to update, or just slog behind, LA's pop legacy. Too much wall of sound for me to hear anything clearly or sort any of it out. If they've gotten deeper, tell me. If they've just gotten louder, forget it. B+(*)

Pat Bianchi Trio: A Higher Standard (2015, 21-H): Organ, guitar (Craig Ebner), drums (Byron Landham) trio. Standards are mostly jazz fare, but start with "Without a Song" and end with Stevie Wonder, sneaking in two Bianchi originals. B+(*) [cd]

Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers: Loved Wild Lost (2015, Little Sur): When a review suggested a back-to-the-country '70s hippie sound, I flashed on Joy of Cooking which isn't off by much. Real attractive sound, but the songs still need some sorting -- may just be that Joy was lead by two distinctive women whereas the Gramblers are led by the singer's husband. B+(**)

Joshua Breakstone: 2nd Avenue (2014 [2015], Capri): Guitarist, has close to twenty albums since 1983, subtitles this one "The Return of the Cello Quartet" -- meaning Mike Richmond on cello, Lisle Atkinson on bass, and Andy Watson on drums. Mostly jazz standards, with one original each from Breakstone and Atkinson -- the former include an "I'm an Old Cowhand" cribbed from Sonny Rollins. B+(*)

Chicago Reed Quartet: Western Automatic (2014 [2015], Aerophonic): Saxophone quartet with the occasional clarinet thrown in: Nick Mazzarella (alto), Dave Rempis (alto, tenor, baritone), Mars Williams (sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor), and Ken Vandermark (tenor, baritone, clarinet, bass clarinet). Lot of action especially on the baritone. B+(**) [cd]

Christine and the Queens: Saint Claude (2015, Neon Gold, EP): French group, or duo, or maybe just Héloïse Létissier, debut album (Chaleur Humaine) popped up on French EOY lists last year. Five cuts, 18:38. B+(**)

Ciara: Jackie (2015, Epic): Soul singer, still under 30 but she's been around more than a decade and this, named after her mother, shows signs of advance and maturity, not to mention tighter songwriting and stiffer resolve. She's not always a "bad motherfucker," but can rise to the occasion. B+(***)

Steve Coleman and the Council of Balance: Synovial Joints (2014 [2015], Pi): Alto saxophonist, former M-Base impressario, comes up with a 21-piece orchestra (counting vocalist Jen Shyu, fair because she just blends in) that feels rather smaller, often playing a unison line that rarely shakes the idiosyncratic beat. Remarkable stuff, although I'm not that much of a fan. B+(***) [cd]

Marilyn Crispell/Gerry Hemingway: Table of Changes (2013 [2015], Intakt): Piano-drums duo, recorded live at various spots in Europe. Third album by the Duo since 1992, although they go back further to Anthony Braxton's famed 1980s Quartet (with Mark Dresser). The knockabout opener is as remarkable as anything the format gets -- cf. Cecil Taylor and Irène Schweizer with various drummers -- and while they don't sustain that intensity, they serve up plenty of interesting variations. A- [cd]

Dead Sara: Pleasure to Meet You (2015, Pocket Kid): Hard rock band from LA, singer is Emily Armstrong (also on rhythm guitar), lead guitarist is Siouxsie Medley, with males filling in on bass and drums. Pretty good tune sense and a no shit attitude, but hard rock remains the opposite of nimble, and I'm not a volume person. B+(*)

Death Grips: The Powers That B (2014-15 [2015], Electro Magnetic/Harvest, 2CD): From Sacramento, sort of a trash metal group lead by math rock drummer Zach Hill plus a rapper, Stefan Burnett nudging them into hip-hop or plain old brutality. I've never cared for them, still don't, but their noise attack is not without interest. Album incorporates last year's downloadable, Niggas on the Moon, with its Björk samples, not that I noticed much difference. The second disc is Jenny Death. B+(*)

Michael Dees: The Dream I Dreamed (2014 [2015], Jazzed Media): Classic crooner, has been hired to fill in where Frank Sinatra was called for but unavailable (e.g., for HBO's The Rat Pack documentary, and for a Simpsons episide. Past 70, but doesn't seem to have much recorded. Surprise here is that he's doing all originals, while keeping the sound down pat. Mostly backed by Terry Trotter's piano trio, with a little sax from Doug Webb (aka Lisa Simpson). B+(***) [cd]

Roberta Donnay & the Prohibition Mob Band: Bathtub Gin (2015, Motéma Music): Former singer for Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks does another batch of 1920s standards. B+(*)

Dave Douglas: High Risk (2014 [2015], Greenleaf Music): There was a buzz in jazz circles a decade or so ago over something called jazztronica. The main source was Thirsty Ear's (or should I say Matthew Shipp's) Blue Series, but many others dabbled, especially trumpet players (who could look back to Miles Davis, or forward to Nils Petter Molvaer), including Douglas, who resumes his interest with this quartet: Jonathan Maron (electric and synth basses), Mark Guiliana (acoustic and electric drums), and Shigeto (electronics). Still, I don't think I've ever heard electronics employed with such restraint, so what you get is elegiac trumpet, often quite lovely, over an indecipherable haze. B+(**) [cd]

Harris Eisenstadt: Golden State II (2014 [2015], Songlines): Drummer-composer, originally formed this as a sort of chamber jazz group around his wife's bassoon (Sara Schoenbeck), with Nicole Mitchell on flute and Mark Dresser on bass. Second album was recorded live in Vancouver, with clarinet (Michael Moore) instead of the flute. B+(***) [cd]

Lorenzo Feliciati: Koi (2015, Rare Noise): Electric bassist, sometimes fretless, also plays guitar, keyboards, and does some programming here. Core group is a bass-keyb-drums trio, but there's also a horn section and various guests. Fusion, but much more going on. B+(***) [cdr]

Hugo Fernandez: Cosmogram (2014 [2015], Origin): Guitarist, not sure where he's originally from (more specifically than "the American continent") but studied in New Orleans and at Berklee, moved to Madrid in 2006. Second album, quartet with tenor and soprano sax (Ariel Bringuez), bass (Antonio Miguel), and drums (Antonio Sanchez). Straight postbop, a little grit in the sax. B+(**) [cd]

Oleg Frish: Duets With My American Idols (2014 [2015], Time Out Media): Russian singer, entertainer, TV personality, member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, moved to New York in 1992, reputed to sing in 24 languages. American idols? Connie Francis introduces, followed by Peggy March, Ben E. King, B.J. Thomas, Chris Montez, Lainie Kazan, Tony Orlando, Melissa Manchester, Lou Christie, Bobby Rydell ("Volare") -- it's hard to doubt a foreigner whose taste in Americana runs to such kitsch. B+(***) [cd]

Ghost Train Orchestra: Hot Town (2013 [2015], Accurate): Trumpeter Brian Carpenter's third dive into "music from 1920's Chicago and Harlem, with a group more postmodernist than antiquarian: Dennis Lichtman, Andy Laster, and Petr Cancura on reeds, Curtis Hasselbring on trombone, Cynthia Sayer on bajo, Ron Caswell on tuba, and when they want to break out the train sounds Colin Stetson drops in on bass sax. Mazz Swift's two vocals aren't high points, but her violin adds something beyond trad. B+(***) [cd]

Ben Goldberg: Orphic Machine (2015, BAG): Clarinetist, has a substantial discography since 1991, describes this as his "most ambitious project" -- seems a fair assessment. The nine-piece band is intricate and precise, more tightly controlled than you'd expect with improvisers like Myra Melford and Nels Cline. Only three horns -- Rob Sudduth's tenor sax adds depth and Ron Miles' trumpet shine -- with violin and vibes in the mix. Violinist Carla Kihlstedt also sings, the lyrics from the late poet/critic Allen Grossman (1932-2014), a mentor of Goldberg's. B+(***)

Ayelet Rose Gottlieb: Roadsides (2014, Arogole Music): Canada-based Israeli vocalist offers this "possible peaceful vision of the Middle-East through a wise arrangement of Israeli and Palestinian poetry" (quote from Eyal Hareuveni's review), sung in Hebrew (with English trots in the package I don't have), so much of that I'll have to take on faith. Anat Fort's piano is delicate and precise, Ihab Nimer adds oud and violin, and the band includes guitar-bass-drums. B+(***)

Rich Halley 4: Creating Structure (2014 [2015], Pine Eagle): Tenor saxophonist from Portland, has created an impressive body of work since he retired from his day job. Quartet with Michael Vlatkovich on trombone, Clyde Reed on bass, and son Carson Halley on drums. His sax intro is as impressive as ever, and when the trombone enters they bat things around at a furious pace. I wondered whether the ending was too much -- reportedly this is all free improv, by-product from another session -- but after many plays it fit right in. A- [cd]

Lauren Henderson: A La Madrugada (2015, self-released): Latin-tinged jazz singer from Massachusetts, has Latin roots and sings several songs in Spanish, wrote more than half the bunch (including the four Spanish titles). Jazz combo includes two trumpets and alto sax, but doesn't have much more than the usual Latin tinge. B+(**) [cd]

Hu Vibrational: Presents the Epic Botanical Beat Suite (2014 [2015], MOD Technologies): A group of seven drummers, principally Adam Rudolph, credited with "compositions and organic arrangements" -- the only other name I recognize is Brahim Fribgane, whose favored drum is cajon (none of the seven use a trap set). The rhythm is as pleasant as one could imagine, and "special guests" (most famously Eivind Aarset on guitar and Bill Laswell on electric bass) add some tinsel. B+(***) [cd]

José James: Yesterday I Had the Blues: The Music of Billie Holiday (2015, Blue Note): Nine songs well remembered from Holiday's songbook, saving "God Bless the Child" and "Strange Fruit" for last. James is sauve and tasteful, and the band is far more understated than you'd expect from Jason Moran, John Patitucci, and Eric Harland. B+(*)

Tyler Kaneshiro & the Highlands: Amber of the Moment (2013 [2015], self-released): Trumpet player, based in New York, first album, intricately (and sometimes lushly) layered postbop, with Chad Lefkowitz-Brown on tenor sax, both guitar and piano, bass and drums. Stefon Harris produced. B+(**) [cd]

Kirk Knuffke: Arms & Hands (2015, Royal Potato Family): Cornet player, has been very prolific since 2007, especially in group or supporting roles -- his website lists 11 "upcoming in 2015" albums, three under his own name, and notes four more recorded but not yet scheduled. This is a trio with Mark Helias on bass and Bill Goodwin on drums, with guest spots for Brian Drye (trombone), Daniel Carter (alto sax), and Jeff Lederer (soprano/tenor sax). The Ernest Tubb closer "Thanks a Lot" is a delight. B+(***)

Heikki Koskinen/Teppo Hauta-Aho/Mikko Innanen: Kellari Trio (2011 [2015], Edgetone): Finish group, translates as Cellar Trio (founded in Hauta-Aho's cellar), trumpet-bass-alto sax respectively although all play related instruments (trombone-cello-bari sax/flute) and get credits for percussion. Still, short on beat, feel close to chamber jazz but less classical than horror soundtrack. B+(*) [cd]

Urs Leimgruber/Jacques Demierre/Barre Phillips: 1 - 3 - 2 - 1 (2012 [2015], Jazzwerkstatt): Avant sax trio, with Demierre on piano and Phillips on bass, the leader playing tenor and soprano. Fifth group album since 2001, the leader having a couple dozen since 1983. Title simplified above -- it actually includes various symbols and arrows. RAther abstract and not particularly gripping. B

Charles Lloyd: Wild Man Dance (2013 [2015], Blue Note): Six-part suite commissioned by Jazzlopad Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, where this was recorded live. The saxophonist brought a piano trio for backup -- Gerald Clayton, Joe Sanders, Eric Harland -- and picked up Sokratis Sinopoulos on lyra and Miklos Lukacs on cimbalom, who set up the eerie opening texture. Builds powerfully when the old man gets on his horn, but you get a lot of set up before much happens. B+(**)

Joe Locke: Love Is a Pendulum (2014 [2015], Motéma Music): Vibraphonist, prolific since 1990, supplements his piano-bass-drums quartet (Robert Rodriguez, Ricky Rodriguez, co-producer Terreon Gully) with guests -- notably Rosario Giuliani on alto sax and Donny McCaslin on tenor, but also bits of guitar and steel pans and a Theo Bleckmann vocal -- for some sprightly and exceptionally complex postbop, most interesting when the timing gets slippery. B+(***) [cd]

LoneLady: Hinterland (2015, Warp): Julie Campbell's second album, her early work described as "art-punk," perhaps moderated by working on an electronica label although her song craft remains sharp and pointed. B+(***)

Lord Huron: Strange Trails (2015, Iamsound): Originally from Michigan, now based in LA where their indie folk shtick has picked up resonances from the Byrds to the Eagles. B+(**)

Joe Lovano & Dave Douglas: Sound Prints: Live at Monterey Jazz Festival (2013 [2015], Blue Note): This comes down to chops, which is what you'd expect from two of the very top musicians on their instruments, tenor sax and trumpet, respectively. They're backed by Lawrence Fields (piano), Linda Oh (bass), and Joey Baron (drums): your basic hard bop lineup. Six pieces, two each from the leaders, plus two from Wayne Shorter to evoke the heyday of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. A-

Low Cut Connie: Hi Honey (2015, Ardent Music/Contender): From Philadelphia, third album, AMG classifies them as "retro-rock" but I don't see them as going back so much as plundering the past with postmodernist glee. Basically a guitar band until you notice the Jerry Lee piano -- where most groups are advised to find their own distinct sound, this one revels in all of them. A-

Harold Mabern: Afro Blue (2015, Smoke Sessions): Mainstream pianist, will turn 80 next year, backed by John Webber on bass and Joe Farnsworth on drums, with Eric Alexander's tenor sax on ten (of 14) tracks, Jeremy Pelt's trumpet on six, Steve Turre's trombone on four, and Peter Bernstein's guitar on one. So far, so good, but they decided to fill the album up with guest singers -- Gregory Porter, Norah Jones, Jane Monheit, Kurt Elling, Alexis Cole. The only one of those I would have kept was Jones, and maybe just on "Fools Rush In." B

The Magic Words: The Day We Ran Away (Magic Words Demos) (2015, self-released): Lisa Walker (of Wussy fame) side project, released a very limited edition album (Junk Train in 2006, recycled as a digital album last year. No info on when these demos were done, but only one song ("Watch Yer Back" in two takes) reappears. Demo-quality sound, rather down in the dumps. B+(*) [bc]

Phil Maturano: At Home Everywhere (2015, self-released): Drummer-led piano trio -- actually two, one with Matthew Fries and Phil Palombi, the other with Christian Torkewitz and Michael O'Brien or Irio O'Farril -- four (of nine) pieces by the drummer, one by Fries, others from jazz sources (Shorter, Gillespie, Carrisi). First album. Leader pushes them hard. B+(*) [cd]

Donny McCaslin: Fast Future (2014 [2015], Greenleaf Music): Terrific tenor saxophonist, at least when he gets to blast through a solo on someone else's record. His own albums tend toward fancy postbop, but keyboardist Jason Lindner steers this toward dance grooves, which sort of confuses everyone. B+(*)

Barney McClure: Show Me! (2014 [2015], OA2): Organ player, has a handful of albums since 1998, this one exceptional in that he's backed by a full big band (Central Western University Jazz Band, conducted by Chris Druya), mostly Phil Kelly arrangements. They breathe some fresh life into the old humdrum. B+(*) [cd]

Metallic Taste of Blood: Doctoring the Dead (2015, Rare Noise): Led by Eraldo Bernocchi (guitars, electronics), second group (bass-drums-keybs) album since 2012. Bass-heavy lead riffs, far short of heavy metal in intensity, which is to say more bearable, some kind of fusion form. B+(**) [cdr]

Marcus Miller: Afrodeezia (2015, Blue Note): Funk bassist, has a couple dozen albums since 1983, nothing I've paid much attention to but this one has some prestige due to the label and his recent "work as a UNESCO artist for peace." Core group with sax, trumpet, piano, guitar and drums, plus a long list of guests climaxing with Chuck D. Album has its moments: "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" is one tune which holds up to the minimal bass fuzz technique, Ben Hong's Bizet feature is lovely, and Mocean Worker creats a soft cell for D's short rap. B+(*)

Rhett Miller: The Traveler (2015, ATO): Leads a pretty decent alt-rock band called Old 97's since 1992 but has a half-dozen solo albums, some pretty good (too), most with titles like this (The Instigator, The Believer, The Dreamer, a covers album The Interpreter). The solos are a bit lighter, more keyb than guitar. This starts off remarkably jaunty, but my one-spin intuition is that the songs won't stick. B+(**)

Allison Moorer: Down to Believing (2015, E1): Country singer/songwriter, ninth album since 1998, has a credit in all the songs here except for the John Fogerty cover. Recently divorced from Steve Earle -- never struck me as a match but this one is much stronger than her last few (e.g., "Mama Let the Wolf In"). B+(**)

The Mowgli's: Kids in Love (2015, Republic): L.A. pop group, named after a dog named after a Kipling Jungle Book character, with a gratuitous apostrophe noted on Wikipedia as "sic." Seven players, boy and girl lead singers and everyone joining in the crowd choruses. When I was growing up irony provided a refuge for art, but these days you're more likely to hear that irony is dead, so maybe it's time someone made something out of such earnestness. I might have hated them forty years ago -- indeed, I recall groups like them then -- but they're one of the few things that make me feel good about kids today. Wonder if they know Kipling's a notorious racist? I'm sure they'd be appalled. A-

Brad Myers: Prime Numbers (2014-15 [2015], Colloquy): Guitarist, second album (at least), in a quintet with tenor sax (Ben Walkenhauer), vibes (Chris Barrick), bass and drums. Has a background playing funk, but this is straight up postbop, with nice little accents. B+(*) [cd]

Pascal Niggenkemper: Look With Thine Ears: Solo (2014 [2015], Clean Feed): Bassist, describes himself as German-French, based in New York, has a few records under his own name, more as PNTrio and Baloni. This is solo, bass and "preparations" which set loose a wide range of industrial klang, some quite captivating. B+(**) [cd]

Michael Oien: And Now (2014 [2015], Fresh Sound New Talent): Bassist-composer, first album, postbop quintet leads with guitar (Matthew Stevens), layering the piano (Jamie Reynolds) and alto sax (Nick Videen), adding an extra tenor sax (Travis Laplante) on the third song for a high point. Three "Dreamer" parts follow, where the bass comes back into focus. B+(***) [cdr]

Opus: Definition (2014 [2015], BluJazz): Jazz quintet from Wisconsin, look like they've been around a while but first album I can find. Electric guitar, bass, and keybs, plus Curt Hanrahan on woodwinds (four saxes and quite a bit of flute). B [cd]

Mario Pavone: Blue Dialect (2014 [2015], Clean Feed): Bassist, has a couple dozen albums since 1982. This is a piano trio, with Billy Mitchell and Tyshawn Sorey, and it's lively, inventive, what you'd hope for in a piano trio. Still, after four or five plays, this never did more than impress me. I wondered if maybe it's that "problem" I have with piano trios, but I looked it up and found I gave Pavone's previous piano trio, 2013's Arc Trio, an A-. That one was with Craig Taborn and Gerald Cleaver. B+(***) [cd]

Peach Kelli Pop: Peach Kelli Pop III (2015, Burger, EP): Third short album (10 songs, 20:24) for Allie Hanlon's lo-fi punk/pop project, this one assembled as a band. B+(*)

Plunge: In for the Out (2014 [2015], Immersion): Third group album I've been filing under trombonist Mark McGrain, who dominates even with two saxophones, aided no doubt by Kirk Joseph on sousaphone. Robert Walter moves things along with a funk groove on organ. B+(*) [cd]

Protoje: Ancient Future (2015, Indiggnation Collective/Overstand): A young reggae artist, gets something of the traditional sound with a more contemporary sheen. Interesting how something so basic still sounds so compelling. A-

Jure Pukl: The Life Sound Pictures of Jure Pukl (2014, Fresh Sound New Talent): Saxophonist (tenor, soprano) from Slovenia, has a couple albums, this one recorded in New York with Sam Harris (piano), Adam Rogers (guitar), Joe Sanders (bass), and Rudy Royston (drums). Strong driving originals, a solo (tenor) take on "Lush Life," a guest vocal by Sachal Vasandani. B+(**)

Billie Rainbird: Deep Blue (2015, Phantom): Canadian singer-songwriter, also does some modeling and acting, figures this her "major album" debut, produced by drummer Simon Phillips who keeps it rocking hard. B+(*) [cd]

The Rempis Percussion Quartet: Cash and Carry (2014 [2015], Aerophonic): Dave Rempis, first noticed on alto sax when he replaced Mars Williams in the Vandermark 5, where he was so impressive he started crowding Vandermark out of the tenor sax slot (plays some impressive baritone here too). Fifth album by his two drummer (Tim Daisy and Frank Rosaly) quartet, with Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass. Basically a blowing session, recorded live at the Hungry Brain in Chicago -- what more could you ask for? A- [cd]

Gloria Reuben: Perchance to Dream (2014 [2015], MCG Jazz): Canadian actress, from Toronto, parents from Jamaica (mother black, father Jewish), had a role on ER for six years. Wikipedia lists 19 films and 14 television series she appeared in, but no records. Standards (but not very), arranged by trombonist Jay Ashby, her voice grows on you. B+(**) [cd]

Eve Risser: Des Pas Sur La Neige (2013 [2015], Clean Feed): Solo piano, mostly prepared, but goes for long stretches at a barely audible level -- makes it hard to focus or say anything, although the plucked strings and klang are not without interest. First album, after a half-dozen side credits since 2009. B [cd]

Claire Ritter: Soho Solo (2014 [2015], Zoning): Solo piano, mostly original pieces plus one by Ran Blake and one by Harold Arlen. Takes some time to settle in, but I particularly liked her The Stream of Pearls Project (2011), so gave it the extra spins. B+(***) [cd]

Harvie S/Sheryl Bailey: Plucky Strum (2014 [2015], Whaling City Sound): Bass-guitar duets, the former, oft-misspelled Mr. Swartz well established even under his adopted name, the latter a guitarist with eight (or so) albums since 1995. Not as amusing, or as light, as the cover suggests. B+(*) [cd]

Marta Sánchez Quintet: Partenika (2014 [2015], Fresh Sound New Talent): Pianist from Madrid, Spain, debuts with a "New York Quintet" including two saxes (Jerome Sabbagh and Román Filiú), bass and drums. Postbop, the saxes adding to the pervasive sense of flow. B+(**) [cd]

Nisse Sandström Quintet: Live at Crescendo (2014 [2015], Moserobie): Swedish tenor saxophonist, b. 1942, not as well known as Bernt Rosengren but their 1984 album together was titled Summit Meeting. Quintet includes a second tenor, the much younger Jonas Kullhammar, an avant player with respect for his elders -- his superb Gentlemen from last year included a few cuts with Rosengren. Mainstream, a friendly pairing, reminds me of those Al Cohn-Zoot Sims soirées. B+(***) [cd]

Elliott Sharp: Octal: Book Three (2013 [2015], Clean Feed): Solo guitar, third in this series but there must be dozens in Sharp's vast catalogue. Manages both to coax unusual sounds from the instrument and to marshall them in unexpected ways, but they feel like sketches, almost as if he were presenting assignments for his I Never Meta Guitar series colleagues to follow up on. B+(***) [cd]

Shlohmo: Dark Red (2015, True Panther Sounds): Henry Laufer, LA beatmaker, goes for shrill synths to open but soon finds one of the more compelling rhythm runs of recent times. B+(***)

Adam Shulman Sextet: Here/There (2014 [2015], OA2): Pianist, has a few records, Sextet includes trumpet and two saxes, good enough for the usual range of postbop sonorities. B [cd]

Skrillex/Diplo: Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü (2015, Mad Decent/OWSLA): I've seen the artists listed both ways, in and out of the title. Skrillex provides his usual outlandish sonic fireworks, but at least they have some content to support -- presumably thanks to Diplo, although all but the intro have feat. credits -- Justin Bieber, Bunji Garlin, 2 Chainz, etc. Tatum says this is a "nonstop pleasure machine." B+(***)

Steve Smith and Vital Information NYC Edition: Viewpoint (2011 [2015], BFM Jazz): Fusion/crossover drummer, called his 1983 debut Vital Information and has enjoyed that as a band name ever since -- the qualification suggesting some recent personnel juggling. Indeed, only bassist Baron Browne and guitarist Vinny Valentino return from previous albums; the newcomers are Mark Soskin (keybs) and Andy Fusco (alto sax), with tenor saxophonist Walt Weiskopf joining for a couple cuts. Aims less for pop jazz than for its own classic status, including covers of "Bemsha Swing," "Take Five," and "Oleo." B+(*) [cd]

Mavis Staples: Your Good Fortune (2015, Anti, EP): Produced by Jeff Tweedy, four songs, 14:05: a first-rate protest anthem in "Fight," one on luck, one on death, one on God, each brought with the conviction of one of the great gospel singers. B+(***)

Sult: Svimmelhed (2014, Humbler/Conrad Sound): Norwegian group, two contrabasses, acoustic guitar, percussion -- third album, more like experimental noise than jazz although I don't doubt an improvisational element. B+(**) [cd]

Tal National: Zoy Zoy (2015, Fat Cat): Group from Niger, second album (at least outside of Niger), brings the Sahara's spare desert aesthetic to more sophisticated sources, triangulating between Senegal's ever-shifting Afro-Cuban rhythms and Kinshasa's junkyard percussion -- fancy and crude at once, and overpowering. B+(***)

Toro y Moi: What For? (2015, Carpark): Chez Bundick, from South Carolina, cranks up the Beatles-ish harmonies for his fuzzy electropop. B+(*)

Boubacar Traoré: Mbalimaou (2014 [2015], Lusafrica): Guitar and vocals from a Malian (and Parisian) singer-songwriter, with a soft touch and reassuring but resonant voice, about as basic as desert blues can get. B+(**)

John Tropea: Gotcha Rhythm Right Here (2014 [2015], STP): Guitarist, cut his first album in 1975 after side credits with Deodato and Billy Cobham, may explain the heavy disco vibe to his "gotcha rhythm" here. B- [cd]

Tyler, the Creator: Cherry Bomb (2015, Odd Future): After two records where Tyler Okonma seemed intent on establishing his own peculiar twist on juvenilia, he's growing up a bit. Still not ready to emerge clearly from the murk, but now he's wondering if murk isn't its own reward. B+(*)

Viet Cong: Viet Cong (2015, Jagjaguwar): Guitar band from Calgary, had an EP last year that got some attention but I thought undistinguished. On their debut album here, however, they have a coherent sound, a fast-paced metallic clang and drone, just one that has yet to generate substantial songs. B+(**)

Eli Wallace/Jon Arkin/Karl Evangelista: Cabbages, Captain, & King (2014 [2015], Edgetone): Cover just has title, so a good case can be made for that as the group name, but I cribbed the artist name off the hype sheet and prefer the extra information. Besides, this is very much Wallace's album, all compositions his, his piano much more prominent than Evangelista's guitar or Arkin's drums. Eloquent, too, and develops some edge. B+(***) [cd]

Katharina Weber/Fred Frith/Fredy Studer: It Rolls (2014 [2015], Intakt): Piano-guitar-drums trio, although it's less than obvious that Frith's unexpected sounds come from a guitar. Weber is Swiss, from Bern, with a couple previous albums. Her piano provides a solid center here; less sure what to make of Frith. B+(**) [cd]

Daniel Weltlinger: Koblenz (2012-13 [2015], Rectify): Violinist, from Australia with "French-Hungarian-Israeli" roots, goes for a gypsy jazz vibe, rotating many guest-collaborators in and out, including a guitarist named Lulo Reinhardt. B+(**) [cd]

Ben Williams: Coming of Age (2014 [2015], Concord Jazz): Bassist, second album, won one of those Monk prizes which condemns you to record for Concord. Group includes both guitar and piano aiming at their least common denominator, middleground melodic mush, and he gets surprisingly little out of Marcus Strickland. The guests, including vocalist Goapele, add little, not that I didn't enjoy W. Ellington Felton's "Toy Soldies" rap. B-

Dwight Yoakam: Second Hand Heart (2015, Warner Brothers): Strikes not one but two rockabilly poses on the cover, and truth is he rocks this album harder than ever before, while his voice still has enough twang to hold his audience -- and if that doesn't work, he covers "Man of Constant Sorrow." I should be pleased, but mostly I'm just annoyed. B

Young Fathers: White Men Are Black Men Too (2015, Big Dada): Not really fair to judge this on one spin, but I don't feel like giving it another, even hearing things that are new and pathbreaking. Nominally a hip-hop trio from Edinburgh, there is little rap here -- murk more like Black Messiah done up by Death Grips. Title song, by the way, is more qualified: "some white men" which strikes me as something else. [OK, gave it a second spin, and nudged it up a little.] B+(**)

Young Guv: Ripe 4 Luv (2015, Slumberland): Solo project from Fucked Up guitarist Ben Cook, eschews the group's post-hardcore sound for a sprightly beat and some guitar jangle while kicking the vocals into a much sweeter register. B+(***)

Zubatto Syndicate: Zubatto Syndicate 2 (2015, Boscology): Fourteen-piece big band from Seattle led by guitarist Andrew Boscardin, group includes two brass, three saxes, five other reeds including oboe and two bassoons, electric keybs -- instrumental prog rock more than anything else, not that I feel like dissecting it. C+ [cdr]

Zun Zun Egui: Shackles' Gift (2015, Bella Union): UK funk-metal-worldbeat-pop group from Bristol, led by Mauritian singer-guitarist Kushal Gaya and Japanese keyboardist Yoshino Shigihara. B+(*)

Recent Reissues, Compilations, Vault Discoveries

Art-i-facts: Great Performances From 40 Years of Jazz at NEC (1973-2008 [2010], New England Conservatory): A little scattered, but they must have had tons of material to pick from, so eclecticism is diplomacy. The lineup reads like a hall of fame of jazz education -- George Russell, George Garzone, Gunther Schuller, Bob Brookmeyer, Jimmy Giuffre, Steve Lacy, Rakalam Bob Moses, Ran Blake -- with the fine print filled by students (probably some famous names there too). Highlights include Garzone showing us how to play Coltrane, and Schuller dredging up old ragtime. B+(***) [cd]

James Booker: Gonzo: Live 1976 (1976 [2014], Rockbeat, 2CD): The fanciest of New Orleans pianists, dead young at 43 in 1983, his thin catalog mostly recorded live with these sets from Germany adding a couple hours -- redundant in some cases, remarkable in most. A-

Wild Bill Davison: The Jazz Giants (1968 [2015], Delmark/Sackville): Cornet player, came up in Eddie Condon's group, his first recordings under his own name in 1943 for Commodore (cf. The Commodore Master Takes, collected in 1997 by GRP and highly recommended). Standard trad fare here, a sextet with Herb Hall on clarinet, Benny Morton on trombone, and Claude Hopkins on piano, his own tone towering and shining. A- [cd]

Dion: Recorded Live at the Bitter End August 1971 (1971 [2015], Omnivore): Author of many doo wop hits in the late-1950s, Dion DiMucci had a notable second act as a folksinger -- see Bronx Blues: The Columbia Recordings (1962-1965) -- and a couple not completely unsuccessful comeback years later (2012's Tank Full of Blues is one of the better ones). Tempting to say this is where he hit bottom, but that's the inevitable thinness of solo performance, with just his acoustic guitar for comfort. Only reprises two of his hits far down the set list, but finds something in "Too Much Monkey Business" much weightier than what Chuck Berry had in mind. B

The Kingbees: The Kingbees (1980 [2015], Omnivore): Rockabilly revival band led by Canadian-born Jamie James, who went on to release a couple solo albums after two group albums. This is the first, the original ten cuts (two covers, Don Gibson and Ahmet Ertegun) expanded to eighteen cuts -- the last three show them to be a first-rate cover band ("Bo Diddley," "Not Fade Away," and a "Somethin' Else" uncannily echoing the Flaming Groovies version from a decade earlier). B+(**)

Bob Marley & the Wailers: Easy Skanking in Boston '78 (1978 [2015], Island/Tuff Gong): Possibly the beginning of a flood of live Marley on top of the two live albums released in his lifetime -- the magnificent Live (1976) and the tedious Babylon by Bus (1978) -- this at least delivers greatest hits with a little extra heat, and reminds me that while they yearned for peace they didn't expect it to come easy. Probably packaged with a DVD, which I haven't seen (and probably never will). A-

Next Stop Soweto, Vol. 4: Zulu Rock, Afro-Disco and Mbaqanga 1975-1985 (1975-85 [2015], Strut): This series has generally tried to stay off the beaten path that produced such classic compilations as The Indestructible Beat of Soweto (five volumes), The Kings and Queens of Township Jive, and Soweto Never Sleeps, the result being second-rate trivia. Same here, but the rock and disco here is deliriously derivative, transposing familiar riffs into an alternate universe where they become iconic. Fun, too. A-

PC Music Volume 1 (2013-15 [2015], PC Music): Sampler from a UK label, ten short songs (29:46) by seven artists (two each by Hannah Diamond, A.G. Cook, and GFOTY), mostly cartoonish dance-pop with "high-pitched, cutesy female vocals." B+(**)

Punk 45: Burn Rubber City, Burn! Akron, Ohio: Punk and the Decline of the Mid West 1975-80 (1975-80 [2015], Soul Jazz): A relatively small scene, but it produced Chris Butler and Ralph Carney and their bands (Tin Huey, the Waitresses), Devo, the Bizarros, Rubber City Rebels, Jane Aire, Chi Pig, a few more -- nice to see them rounded up like this. B+(***)

Punk 45: Extermination Nights in the Sixth City: Cleveland, Ohio: Punk and the Decline of the Mid West 1975-82 (1975-82 [2015], Soul Jazz): My recollection was that Cleveland was always a bit less populous than Baltimore, and by 1975 Houston (and possibly others) were larger, but Cleveland's bona fides were such that they built a Rock & Roll Museum there. The obscure punk bands archived here were sharp as tacks, and Pere Ubu was brilliant (for some reason Rhapsody omits two Pere Ubu cuts plus one from the related Rocket From the Tombs -- songs I know so well I can fill them in from memory; beware they're also missing from the MP3 release). A-

Leroy Smart: The Don Tells It Like It Is . . . (1972-77 [2013], Kingston Sounds): Prolific reggae musician -- Discogs credits him with 39 albums and 368 singles, and lists this as a compilation, with Bunny Lee as producer, Jackie Mittoo on piano, Sly & Robbie the rhythm. Still, I was only able to track down half the songs, some (like "Pride and Ambition") appearing several times, some with variant titles (e.g., "Man Is Great" vs. "Man Is So Great"), so my dates are little more than a guess -- the main clue being that Smart started producing himself in 1977. B+(***)

Old Music

James Booker: Junco Partner (1976, Rounder): First record by the New Orleans "piano wizard," shows his classical pedigree by opening with a Chopin waltz, then moves on to "Goodnight Irene," "On the Sunny Side of the Street," "Make a Better World," and a medley that wraps it all up and throws in the kitchen sink. Sings some, too, which isn't his forte. B+(**)

Jaki Byard and the Apollo Stompers: Phantasies II (1988 [1991], Soul Note): A cutting-edge postbop pianist usually heard in small groups, surprisingly comes up with a retro-flavored big band, complete with singers Vincent Lewis ("June Night") and Diane Byard ("Send in the Clowns"). B+(**)

King Curtis & Champion Jack Dupree: Blues at Montreux (1971 [2005], Atlantic/Rhino): Basically, the New Orleans piano blues master's standard set, something he started working out in the 1940s -- see New Orleans Barrelhouse Boogie (1940-41 [1993], Columbia/Legacy) -- and aged like fine wine up to 1991's Forever and Ever (Bullseye). But the tenor saxophonist was built to play blues riffs, and he not only answers every line Dupree feeds him, he elicits some spectacular piano. A-

Ben Goldberg: Eight Phrases for Jefferson Rubin (1996 [1998], Victo): In memory of Jefferson Darrow Rubin (1959-95), a sculptor and childhood friend of Goldberg's. Clarinet, with Larry Ochs (tenor/soprano sax), John Schott (guitar), bass and drums. A little flighty at first, but Ochs pushes it over to the free side. B+(**)

Coleman Hawkins/Henry "Red" Allen: Reunion in Hi-Fi: The Complete Classic Sessions (1957-58 [2009], Lone Hill Jazz, 2CD): Rhapsody has a different cover and subtitle (Complete 1950s Studio Recordings), drops Allen from the credit, and lists the label as Plenty Jazz, but it looks to match this set from the Fresh Sound subsidiary. Hawkins and Allen met in Fletcher Henderson's orchestra and recorded together in 1934, hence the reunion. Hawkins moved on through bebop in the 1940s, so this is one of his few later trad-oriented recordings: indeed, the first disc is a session that was originally released under Allen's name as Ride, Red, Ride (1957) and reissued as World on a String (1991, RCA -- I gave it a full A). The second disc includes three sessions, released on two LPs and collected as Standards and Warhorses (1987, Jass). I gave the latter a B, but no longer hear much drop off. For Allen's classic work, see his 1929-30 New York Orchestra (two volumes on JSP), his 1930s recordings on Collector's Classics (four volumes, especially the first), and his 1933 with Hawkins, but he never sounded better than on the first disc here. Hawkins was always great. A-

Charles Lloyd: Discovery! (1964, Columbia): After associations with Chico Hamilton and Cannonball Adderley, the tenor saxophonist's first album, a quartet with Don Friedman on piano, Eddie Kahn or Richard Davis on bass, J.C. Moses or Roy Haynes on drums. Reveals an impressive new "voice" on tenor sax. Also a guy who plays more flute than is warranted. B+(**)

Charles Lloyd: Nirvana (1962-65 [1968], Columbia): Skipping past Of Course, Of Course (I have the 2006 Mosaic reissue, a very solid A-), Lloyd's third (and last) Columbia album didn't appear until his Atlantic success. Album is split: Side A is attributed to "Charles Lloyd & His Quintet" but sources credit Gabor Szabo, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams (or Pete LaRoca); Side B is an older 14:38 track from Lloyd's tenure with the Chico Hamilton Quintet (also with Szabo). B+(**)

The Charles Lloyd Quartet: Dream Weaver (1966, Atlantic): The saxophonist had already cut three albums for Columbia (including the excellent Of Course, Of Course), but this was the first on Atlantic and his first with these young future all-stars -- Keith Jarrett (21), Cecil McBee (31), and Jack DeJohnette (24). My main quibble is that Lloyd opens and closes on flute. B+(***)

Charles Lloyd: Forest Flower: Charles Lloyd at Monterey (1966 [1968], Atlantic): Lloyd's early tenor sax style was often dismissed as "Coltrane light" but he takes that as a badge of courage here, and even shows a nice ballad style. Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette are rarely short of brilliant, and Cecil McBee's bass ties it all together. A-

The Charles Lloyd Quartet: The Flowering of the Original Charles Lloyd Quartet (1966 [1971], Atlantic): Drawn from two live dates in France and Norway (the latter also the source for Charles Lloyd in Europe). Seems like a lot of flute here: one plus is that it doesn't overwhelm the very bright rhythm section. B+(**)

The Charles Lloyd Quartet: Charles Lloyd in Europe (1966 [1968], Atlantic): Live set, recorded Oct. 29 in Oslo, Norway, again with Jarrett-McBee-DeJohnette. All Lloyd originals this time, starting with two name-checking India ("Tagore" and "Karma"). B+(**)

The Charles Lloyd Quartet: Love-In (1967, Atlantic): Recorded live at the Fillmore in San Francisco, the cover wrapped in day-glo, a plunge into the hippie market with pieces like "Tribal Dance" and "Temple Bells," a Beatles cover, two pieces by enfant terrible pianist Keith Jarrett, and a blues jam. Sounds a little thin, but a credible attempt to sell avant-jazz to the masses. Ron McClure replaces Cecil McBee on bass. B+(***)

The Charles Lloyd Quartet: Journey Within (1967, Atlantic): More from the Fillmore, and more scattered, with some upbeat boogie/blues, more avant edge, especially on the cut where Jarrett jumps in on soprano sax -- always a scary proposition. B+(*)

The Charles Lloyd Quartet: Charles Lloyd in the Soviet Union (1967 [1970], Atlantic): Recorded live in Tallinn in the Estonian SSR, four longish cuts totalling 47:54 -- by all reports a very successful tour by one of the period's most successful jazz groups. All of Lloyd's 1960s albums have leaned avant, but he's rarely come out as aggressively as here. And when he does back off (actually, switch to flute) Jarrett is quick to pick up the slack. B+(***)

Charles Lloyd: Soundtrack (1968 [1969], Atlantic): Actually, another live quartet album, this one from Town Hall in New York City. Four pieces, a Latin groove on the 10:26 opener and a rockish one on the 16:51 closer, both busting open by Jarrett and DeJohnette -- soon to leave Lloyd for Miles Davis, then go on to major careers as leaders (although DeJohnette wound up playing in Jarrett's Standards Trio for more than thirty years). B+(***)

Paul Motian: The Story of Maryam (1983 [1984], Soul Note): Rhapsody, which has a habit of misfiling records on Black Saint and Soul Note, lists this under Joe Lovano. Motian led a long-term trio with Lovano and Bill Frisell, expanded here to quintet with Jim Pepper on tenor/soprano sax and Ed Shuller on bass. B+(**)

Paul Motian Quintet: Jack of Clubs (1984 [1985], Soul Note): Same group, better balance, which is to say Frisell's guitar and Pepper's soprano sax are more evident, amplifying the warped indeterminacy of Motian's zen beat. But wanders more too. B+(**)

Manfred Schulze Bläser Quintett: Nummer 12 (1985 [1986], FMP): German baritone saxophonist (1934-2010), only led a handful of records. For this one he assembled a sax choir (two sopranos and a tenor) plus Johannes Bauer on trombone, a wild card as usual. One 40-minute piece, split on the original LP. B+(**) [bc]

Leroy Smart: Superstar (1977, Justice): First proper album after a number of singles, produced by Bunny Lee, engineered by King Tubby and Prince Jammy, effectively the confluence of all those sources with due respect to Jah. But for a singles artist he doesn't seem to have a well developed feel for the hook. B+(**)

Stooges Brass Band: It's About Time (2003, The Gruve Label): New Orleans brass band, formed by Walter Ramsey in 1996 after seeing Rebirth Brass Band and thinking he could do the same thing only hipper and more raucous. Group's still kicking around, with some recent live albums I've looked for but haven't found. Stumbled on this debut. Horns owe more to Fred Wesley than to Kid Ory, the polyrhythms run amok, the raps fall short of state of the art. B+(**)

Cecil Taylor Workshop Ensemble: Legba Crossing (1988 [1989], FMP): One of eleven CDs released from the avant-jazz pianist's big month in Berlin, a ten piece orchestra with flute, oboe, three saxes, trombone, violin, piano (Paul Plimley, not Taylor), bass, and drums, plus Trudy Morse's voice, with Taylor directing the controled chaos. B+(***) [bc]

Additional Consumer News:

I went with the original LP lineups for Charles Lloyd's Atlantics above. They have been much reissued on CD, often in "twofer" (2-on-1) formats. I have one combining Journey Within with In Europe (1966-67 [1998], Collectables), and a 2-CD combination of Dream Weaver and Love-In released as Just Before Sunrise (1966-67 [1999], 32 Jazz, 2CD). Collectables also released twofers of Soundtrack/Charles Lloyd in the Soviet Union (1999), and The Flowering of the Original Charles Lloyd Quartet/Warne Marsh (1999), the latter having nothing to do with Lloyd. A better deal is Forest Flower/Soundtrack ([1994], Rhino/Atlantic) -- currently the easiest way to find the former, and the latter drops off very little.

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Monday, May 11, 2015

Music: Current count 24940 [24909] rated (+31), 402 [407] unrated (-5).

Did a count check late last night and was at 29 -- tempting to cut off there since that seems to be my number, but I filed two more discs before getting around to reshuffling the bits this afternoon. I made some progress sorting through the CDs in my work area, finding a lot of things I haven't seen in years -- even some CDs that I never managed to list in the database. Still have five baskets on the floor for sorting, but that should reduce to one for the incoming queue, or I might even manage to slip them into a mostly empty shelf right in front of me. Next step after that will be to clear off the desktop clutter. When I was working, I used to regard anyone with a clear desk as unproductive (to say the least), but it is nice to periodically get to the bottom of it all and clear out the most useless crud.

This week's new jazz mostly confirms old favorites, although I should note that five former A-list artists fell a bit short (David Berkman, Steve Coleman, Dave Douglas, Claire Ritter, Elliott Sharp; I haven't heard anything previous by Nisse Sandström, but Jonas Kullhammar is on the record). The Coleman and Douglas records will certainly have their fans, and will fare better in year-end polls than Crispell/Hemingway or Rempis.

As for old jazz, Red Allen's World on a String (RCA) is an old favorite, and accounts for the first half of the Hawkins/Allen compilation. Turns out I had heard, and almost certainly underrated, nearly all of the rest. I've often shied away from playing Fresh Sound's reissues -- often things like 4 LPs on 2 CDs -- on Rhapsody because it's hard to focus over such length. (At least with real CDs it's normal to absorb box sets piecemeal, but the extra work that demands when streaming usually defeats me.) Otherwise, they have a lot of recent releases that would tempt me (that I might even buy if the dollar was stronger and I was in an acquisitive mood): especially the 4-CD Lars Gullin: Portrait of the Legendary Baritone Saxophonist: Complete 1956-1960 Studio Recordings -- based on what I've heard, quite possibly a solid A. They also have two collections of George Russell's early work: the 2-CD Complete 1956-1960 Smalltet & Orchestra Recordings and the 4-CD Sextet & Septet: The Complete 1960-1962 Decca & Riverside Album Collection. You can find grades for most of the constituent LPs in my database, starting with the solid A (and long out-of-print) 1956 Jazz Workshop.

Most of the non-jazz below was suggested by Spin's Overlooked Albums Report. I didn't A-list anything there, but Ciara and LoneLady came real close, followed by Shlohmo and Young Guv. Nothing bad on Spin's list. I've started to include some limited grade info in the 2015 Music Tracking file, although there's little chance that I'll keep it up to date. Does help to give me hints as to what to look for.

Expect a Rhapsody Streamnotes tomorrow (or something like that). Draft file currently has 118 records, so if anything it's overdue. Note that I'm probably two (maybe three) weeks away from crossing the 25,000 rated albums mark.

New records rated this week:

• Thomas Bergeron: Sacred Feast (2015, self-released): [cd]: C+
• David Berkman: Old Friends and New Friends (2014 [2015], Palmetto): [cd]: B+(**)
• Joshua Breakstone: 2nd Avenue (2014 [2015], Capri): [cd]: B+(*)
• Chicago Reed Quartet: Western Automatic (2014 [2015], Aerophonic): [cd]: B+(**)
• Christine and the Queens: Saint Claude (2015, Neon Gold, EP): [r]: B+(**)
• Ciara: Jackie (2015, Epic): [r]: B+(***)
• Steve Coleman and the Council of Balance: Synovial Joints (2014 [2015], Pi): [cd]: B+(***)
• Marilyn Crispell/Gerry Hemingway: Table of Changes (2013 [2015], Intakt): [cd]: A-
• Death Grips: The Powers That B (2015, Electro Magnetic/Harvest, 2CD): [r]: B+(*)
• Dave Douglas: High Risk (2014 [2015], Greenleaf Music): [cd]: B+(**)
• Lauren Henderson: A La Madrugada (2015, self-released): [cd]: B+(**)
• LoneLady: Hinterland (2015, Warp): [r]: B+(***)
• Lord Huron: Strange Trails (2015, Iamsound): [r]: B+(**)
• Phil Maturano: At Home Everywhere (2015, self-released): [r]: B+(*)
• Jure Pukl: The Life Sound Pictures of Jure Pukl (2014, Fresh Sound New Talent): [r]: B+(**)
• Billie Rainbird: Deep Blue (2015, Phantom): [cd]: B+(*)
• The Rempis Percussion Quartet: Cash and Carry (2014 [2015], Aerophonic): [cd]: A-
• Claire Ritter: Soho Solo (2014 [2015], Zoning): [cd]: B+(***)
• Harvie S/Sheryl Bailey: Plucky Strum (2014 [2015], Whaling City Sound): [cd]: B+(*)
• Marta Sánchez Quintet: Partenika (2014 [2015], Fresh Sound New Talent): [cd]: B+(**)
• Nisse Sandström Quintet: Live at Crescendo (2014 [2015], Moserobie): [cd]: B+(***)
• Elliott Sharp: Octal: Book Three (2013 [2015], Clean Feed): [cd]: B+(***)
• Shlohmo: Dark Red (2015, True Panther Sounds): [r]: B+(***)
• Steve Smith and Vital Information NYC Edition: Viewpoint (2011 [2015], BFM Jazz): [cd]: B+(*)
• Toro y Moi: What For? (2015, Carpark): [r]: B+(*)
• Viet Cong: Viet Cong (2015, Jagjaguwar): [r]: B+(**)
• Katharina Weber/Fred Frith/Fredy Studer: It Rolls (2014 [2015], Intakt): [cd]: B+(**)
• Young Guv: Ripe 4 Luv (2015, Slumberland): [r]: B+(***)
• Zun Zun Egui: Shackles' Gift (2015, Bella Union): [r]: B+(*)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

• PC Music Volume 1 (2013-15 [2015], PC Music): [r]: B+(**)

Old records rated this week:

• Coleman Hawkins/Henry "Red" Allen: Reunion in Hi-Fi: The Complete Classic Sessions (1957-58 [2009], Lone Hill Jazz, 2CD): [r]: A-
• Manfred Schulze Bläser Quintett: Nummer 12 (1985 [1986], FMP): [bc]: B+(**)
• Stooges Brass Band: It's About Time (2003, The Gruve Label): [r]: B+(**)
• Cecil Taylor Workshop Ensemble: Legba Crossing (1988 [1989], FPM): [bc]: B+(***)

Grade changes:

• Coleman Hawkins/Henry "Red" Allen: Standards and Warhorses (1957-58 [1987], Jass): Playing Lone Hill Jazz's reissue of these sessions convinces me I underrated the record. Still, until I recheck the actual CD -- maybe there's something bad in the mastering? -- I'll upgrade cautiously. [was B] B+

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Alessio Alberghini: Inverso (Floating Forest): June 1
• Aimée Allen: Matter of Time (Azuline)
• Priscilla Badhwar: Mademoiselle (self-released): May 26
• Lorin Cohen: Home (Origin)
• Eugenie Jones: Come Out Swingin' (Openmic): May 12
• Enoch Smith Jr.: Misfits II (Misfitme Music): May 19
• Jeff Richman: Hotwire (Nefer): May 19
• Henry Threadgill Zooid: In for a Penny, In for a Pound (Pi, 2CD): May 26

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Sunday, May 10, 2015

We had four or five straight days this week of "elevated" severe weather threats. Most of the real damage took place in Oklahoma and north Texas, but we did have one EF-3 tornado on the ground for 15 miles near Rose Hill, about ten miles west of here. Rain itself has been spotty, and most likely we're still below average year-to-date. More surprising to me is Tropical Storm Ana appearing a month ahead of the Atlantic hurricane season -- the earliest such storm since 2003. Wikipedia says the forecast for hurricanes this year is about 20% below the 1950-2014 average, but such an early storm strikes me as ominous.

This week's scattered links:

• Mark Bittman: Obama and Republicans Agree on the Trans-Pacific Partnership . . . Unfortunately: I gather from Twitter (err, TPM) that Obama dismissed Elizabeth Warren's opposition to TPP by saying, "The truth of the matter is that Elizabeth is, you know, a politician like everybody else." Obama, on the other hand, is so far above the political fray that he's got George Will applauding TPP as "Obama's best idea." Of course, it's easy for Obama to dismiss the concerns of Democrats as "speculation" because he's spent the last five years negotiating TPP in secret. [Yves Smith: "There would be no reason to keep it so secret if it was in the public interest."] Indeed, it's only come up now because he wants Congress to write him a blank check to negotiate whatever without allowing future amendments. You'd think folks as paranoid as the Republicans in Congress would never go for that, but evidently the fix is in. Bittman normally writes about food -- I can recommend his cookbooks How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food and The Best Recipes in the World: More Than 1,000 International Dishes to Cook at Home -- so it's surprising to see him wander into political waters, but he points out:

  Even if you look "only" at food and the environment, the TPP should be ripped apart and put back together with public and congressional input. The pact would threaten local food, diminish labeling laws, likely keep environmentally destructive industrial meat production high (despite the fact that as a nation we're eating less meat) and probably maintain high yields of commodity crops while causing price cuts.

  It would certainly weaken food safety. For example, more than 90 percent of our seafood is imported, a figure that includes fish that were caught domestically and sent overseas for processing before coming back in, which makes the inspection process even more complicated. All told, that's more than five billion pounds of imports annually, and according to the Center for Food Safety, just 90 federal inspectors guarantee its safety. (The Food and Drug Administration inspects less than 2 percent of imported seafood.) By reducing restrictions on Southeast Asian imports, the TPP would allow more fish containing chemicals that are illegal in domestic aquaculture to reach our shores; by making inspections less effective, it would virtually guarantee that those chemicals make it to our tables.

  The agreement would even allow countries to challenge one another's laws, so that "equivalency" may simply mean that the least powerful regulations become the norm. The United States would have no special standing: If our laws are seen as restraining trade or limiting profits, they could be challenged in special courts, per the TPP's "investor state" clause. Philip Morris is suing Uruguay over that country's antismoking laws under just such circumstances; there are several examples of American companies' flouting local laws and citing trade agreements as an excuse; and Mexico has been sued repeatedly for theoretically diminishing investor profits.

  When individual governments have little say, corporate "efficiency" amounts to the global economy's being run as an ill-regulated business model (an equally egregious trans-Atlantic agreement is currently being negotiated). The projected benefits to the public -- as usual, "job creation" leads the list -- are mythical, and you don't have to take my word for it.

  Some other relevant links:

  • Peter Baker: Obama Scolds Democrats on Trade Pact Stance: Obama gave his TPP speech at Nike corporate headquarters. Baker wrote, "Nike was a risky choice for Mr. Obama to make his case for trade. For years, the multibillion-dollar company has been cited as a case study by opponents of trade liberalization for its reliance on low-wage workers in Asia."
  • Robert Reich: Nike is everything that's wrong with the U.S. economy: OK as a gut reaction to Obama's choice of venue, but it's really not just Nike that's a problm -- Boeing, Comcast, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, Walmart, and many others have made their own unique contributions to the problem.
  • Josh Bivens: The Trans-Pacific Partnership Is Unlikely to Be a Good Deal for American Workers [Economic Policy Institute].
  • Jeff Faux: TPP: Obama's Folly.
  • Glenn Kessler: The Obama administration's illusionary job gains from the Trans-Pacific Partnership: linked to by Bittman under "and you don't have to take my word for it."
  • Lori Wallach: NAFTA on Steroids.
  • Electronic Frontier Foundation: What Is TPP: Brief summary of leaked "intellectual property" (IP) provisions. The US has consistently been very aggressive about protecting and extending the monopoly rents of IP owners, presumably because the net balance of rents favors American (or more often multinational) companies but in fact those rents only benefit a tiny share of the very rich, at great cost to most Americans.

• Paul Krugman: Race, Class and Neglect:

  Every time you're tempted to say that America is moving forward on race -- that prejudice is no longer as important as it used to be -- along comes an atrocity to puncture your complacency. Almost everyone realizes, I hope, that the Freddie Gray affair wasn't an isolated incident, that it's unique only to the extent that for once there seems to be a real possibility that justice may be done.

  And the riots in Baltimore, destructive as they are, have served at least one useful purpose: drawing attention to the grotesque inequalities that poison the lives of too many Americans.

  Yet I do worry that the centrality of race and racism to this particular story may convey the false impression that debilitating poverty and alienation from society are uniquely black experiences. In fact, much though by no means all of the horror one sees in Baltimore and many other places is really about class, about the devastating effects of extreme and rising inequality.

  Take, for example, issues of health and mortality. Many people have pointed out that there are a number of black neighborhoods in Baltimore where life expectancy compares unfavorably with impoverished Third World nations. But what's really striking on a national basis is the way class disparities in death rates have been soaring even among whites.

  Most notably, mortality among white women has increased sharply since the 1990s, with the rise surely concentrated among the poor and poorly educated; life expectancy among less educated whites has been falling at rates reminiscent of the collapse of life expectancy in post-Communist Russia.

  And yes, these excess deaths are the result of inequality and lack of opportunity, even in those cases where their direct cause lies in self-destructive behavior. Overuse of prescription drugs, smoking, and obesity account for a lot of early deaths, but there's a reason such behaviors are so widespread, and that reason has to do with an economy that leaves tens of millions behind.

  Actually, the adverse effects of inequality have been well documented (see, e.g., Ichiro Kawachi/Bruce P Kennedy: The Health of Nations: Why Inequality Is Harmful to Your Health and Richard Wilkinson: The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier). Still, the Russian analogy is shocking (if I recall correctly, life expectancy for males dropped from close to 70 to 49 in a decade, which probably hasn't happened anywhere else since WWII). It's hard to believe that the US economy and safety net have sunk that far, but the sheer indifference of many political figures borders on cruelty, and the cult of austerity has convinced many people that public action is impossible. It's curious that one effort no one has lined up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of is the War on Poverty: even the heirs of its supporters don't seem to have the energy or vision (or memory) to recall that it actually was working until sabotaged by political indifference (Nixon) and contempt (Reagan) and cowardice (Clinton).

  Also see Jeff Madrick: The Cost of Child Poverty.

• Dean Obeidallah: Muslim-Bashing Can Be Very Lucrative: Geller got more than the usual press this week when her "Draw Muhammad" cartooning event in Texas provoked a couple of overly sensitive American muslims to commit martyrdom-by-cop trying to shoot their way into the event. That may have seemed like a PR coup, but I haven't seen anyone -- even muslimphobes like Bill Maher -- stand up to identify with her. Author looks at the money trail, such as it is, citing a "Fear, Inc. report that found that certain key foundations have donated close to $60 million in recent years to these anti-Muslim advocates." Geller's only getting a small slice of that, but she's more than making ends meet.

Also, a few links for further study:

• Dean Baker: The Reconnection Agenda: The Fun and Easy Route to Broadly Shared Prosperity: Review of Jared Bernstein's new book, The Reconnection Agenda: Reuniting Growth and Prosperity -- available as a free PDF, a cheap Kindle book, or a moderately priced paperback. Bernstein was briefly famous when VP Joe Biden hired him as economic advisor in 2009, although I ran into him earlier when I read his 2008 book Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries). As the Biden appointment shows, obviously not a flaming radical, but much of what he argues for -- like full employment -- proved unthinkable even within Obama's circle of "confidence men." Bernstein's book looks to be heavy on policy wonkery -- i.e., he describes what could be done if we wanted to do it, rather than exploring why such political will doesn't exist (at least at the level of practical politicians). Baker adds some quibbles, notably pointing out that the persistent trade deficit (and overvaluation of the dollar) is something that exists because certain US interest groups favor it.

• Andrew Cockburn: The Kingpin Strategy: Subhed: "Assassination as Policy in Washington and How It Failed, 1990-2015." I've been inclined to attribute Washington's jones for targeted assassination to a case of neocon Israel envy, but Cockburn finds earlier roots in the War on Drugs' "kingpin strategy": a program to put faces on various "drug cartels" and mark progress by knocking off their heads -- Pablo Escobar, of the Medellin cartel in Colombia, was an early target. (Of course, now that I think of it, this is the Vietnam Phoenix Program all over again.) Of course, it turns out that killing drug kingpins actually resulted in more drugs at lower prices -- the cartels, after all, were just that, so breaking them up only increased competition. With the War on Terror, drug kingpins gave way to HVIs ("high-value individuals"). Turns out that didn't work so well either:

  The results, [Rivolo] discovered when he graphed them out, offered a simple, unequivocal message: the strategy was indeed making a difference, just not the one intended. It was, however, the very same message that the kingpin strategy had offered in the drug wars of the 1990s. Hitting HVIs did not reduce attacks and save American lives; it increased them. Each killing quickly prompted mayhem. Within three kilometers of the target's base of operation, attacks over the following 30 days shot up by 40%. Within a radius of five kilometers, a typical area of operations for an insurgent cell, they were still up 20%. Summarizing his findings for Odierno, Rivolo added an emphatic punch line: "Conclusion: HVI Strategy, our principal strategy in Iraq, is counter-productive and needs to be re-evaluated."

  As with the kingpin strategy, the causes of this apparently counter-intuitive result became obvious upon reflection. Dead commanders were immediately replaced, and the newcomers were almost always younger and more aggressive than their predecessors, eager to "make their bones" and prove their worth.

  Cockburn, by the way, has a new book: Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins. Article also at TomDispatch.

• Seymour Hersh: The Killing of Osama bin Laden: Much new detail here, if you're into that sort of thing -- I didn't bother with any of the Seal memoirs, although I wonder how clear they were that Bin Laden was an ISI prisoner, or that the raid was arranged with collaboration and consent of Pakistani officials. For instance:

  One lie that has endured is that the Seals had to fight their way to their target. Only two Seals have made any public statement: No Easy Day, a first-hand account of the raid by Matt Bissonnette, was published in September 2012; and two years later Rob O'Neill was interviewed by Fox News. Both men had resigned from the navy; both had fired at bin Laden. Their accounts contradicted each other on many details, but their stories generally supported the White House version, especially when it came to the need to kill or be killed as the Seals fought their way to bin Laden. O'Neill even told Fox News that he and his fellow Seals thought 'We were going to die.' 'The more we trained on it, the more we realised . . . this is going to be a one-way mission.'

  But the retired official told me that in their initial debriefings the Seals made no mention of a firefight, or indeed of any opposition. The drama and danger portrayed by Bissonnette and O'Neill met a deep-seated need, the retired official said: 'Seals cannot live with the fact that they killed bin Laden totally unopposed, and so there has to be an account of their courage in the face of danger. The guys are going to sit around the bar and say it was an easy day? That's not going to happen.'

  They did make the operation more dramatic by crashing a helicopter, which they then had to blow up while ordering in a replacement. Hersh's final lines:

  High-level lying nevertheless remains the modus operandi of US policy, along with secret prisons, drone attacks, Special Forces night raids, bypassing the chain of command, and cutting out those who might say no.

• Costas Lapavitsas: The Syriza strategy has come to an end: An interview with the Greek economist, author of Profiting Without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All (2014, Verso), on the various differences in Europe, especially between Germany and Greece, and how they're tearing the Eurozone apart.

• Nomi Prins: The Clintons and Their Banker Friends: Adapted from her book, All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power, recently reprinted in paperback. Although Bush and Obama did more to bail out bankrupt banks, no one made them more money, through generous legislation and hands off regulation, than Bill Clinton.

• Sandy Tolan: The One-State Conundrum: What makes Tolan's The Lemon Tree one of the most accessible books on Israel-Palestine is how he uses a couple very real individuals as a prism for the big picture story. His new book, Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land, picks another such example, a Palestinian violinist who founded a music school in the Occupied Territories. Example:

  I have spent the last five years documenting both the harsh realities of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Ramzi Aburedwan's dream of building a music school that could provide Palestinian children with an alternative to the violence and humiliation that is their everyday lives. I sat with children in the South Hebron hills, who had been stoned by Israeli settlers and set upon by German shepherds as they walked two miles to school. I met a 14-year-old girl who was forced to play a song for a soldier at a checkpoint, supposedly to prove her flute was not a weapon.

  Farmers in villages shared their anguish with me over their lost livelihoods, because the 430-mile-long separation barrier Israel has built on Palestinian land, essentially confiscating nearly 10% of the West Bank, cuts them off from their beloved olive groves. I've seen men crammed into metal holding pens before being taken to minimum-wage jobs in Israel, and women squeezed between seven-foot-high concrete blocks, waiting to pray at Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque. I've spoken with countless families who have been subject to night raids by the Israeli military, including one young mother, home alone with her one-year-old boy, who woke up to the sight of 10 Israeli soldiers breaking down her door and pointing guns at her. They had, it turned out, raided the wrong apartment. The baby slept through it all.

  Ramzi and the teachers at his school, Al Kamandjati (Arabic for "The Violinist"), see it as an antidote to the sense of oppression and confinement that pervades Palestinian life. And it's true that the students I talked to there regularly reported that playing music gave them a transformative sense of calm and protection -- and not only in the moments when they picked up their instruments and disappeared into Bach, Beethoven, or Fairuz.

  Hope they play some Ellington too.

• Philip Weiss: 'NY Review of Books' says Tony Judt didn't really mean it when he called for the end of a Jewish state: A rebuttal to assertions made in a review of Judt's essay collection When the Facts Change: Essays, 1995-2010 by Jonathan Freedland (paywalled). The late historian's piece, included in the book, dated from 2003, and as Weiss points out included a number of predictions which have held up rather well. Weiss writes:

  I don't think I've seen anything like this before: such a retraction, issued after the author's death, of a signature portion of his beliefs. And I understand why; it anguished liberal Zionists to hear anyone thoughtful come out against the idea of a Jewish state, won so heroically over 80 years of battle in the chambers of western officials. It was a betrayal of an article of faith, by someone who had previously been a Zionist.

  The New York Review of Books has done all it can to bury Judt's essay. It never asked Judt to expand on his views in the years that followed, let alone ask Ali Abunimah or Ghada Karmi or any other Palestinian who can pick up a pencil to respond. No, this was an all-Jewish event. And the retraction here is being performed by a man who wrote a year back that Ari Shavit is a "liberal" and the right person to talk to American Jews about the conflict (Shavit who "opposed the Oslo Agreement, calling it 'a collective act of messianic drunkenness' and defending its most prominent opponent, Netanyahu, against charges that he was partly to blame for its failure . . . [who] during the Second Intifada, . . . praised Sharon for having 'conducted the military campaign patiently, wisely and calmly' and 'the diplomatic campaign with impressive talent' [, who in] the final week of the war in Gaza this summer that took the lives of 72 Israelis and more than 2100 Palestinians, . . . wrote that strong objection to Israeli conduct was illegitimate and amounted to anti-Semitic bigotry").

  As he's explained in his memoirs, Judt was very attached to Israel, even working on a kibbutz there, so his 2003 essay had the impact of a jilted believer -- Judt was a huge fan of a collection of essays by disenchanted ex-Communists, The God That Failed, so he would have appreciated that a comparable book could collect key essays by ex-Zionists.

• Some links on the UK (and other) elections: I still have enough residual sense of international solidarity to at least root for left-leaning parties all around the world, although UK "New Labour" leader Tony Blair's "Bush's Poodle" act sorely tried those sympathies, and it seems like France's Socialists have long tended to be more enthusiastic about French imperialism than the competing Gaullists were. On the other hand, I keep favoring the Democratic Party here in the USA, even though they have the worst record of all, so I'm not unaware of how these travesties happen. My sense of solidarity even extends to Israel's Labor Party (if indeed it still exists). But beyond oft-frustrated sympathies, I haven't tried to sort out what's just happened in the UK. I'll just note some links for future reference:

  • Five Thirty Eight Live: UK General Election 2015.
  • Shaun Lawson: The polls (and all but one of) the forecasts WERE wrong. Ed Miliband was nowhere near becoming Prime Minister.
  • Peter Jukes: The British press has lost it: "Rarely have the economic interests of the handful of wealthy men who own most the press (nine men own 90 percent of all national and regional titles) appeared so brutally transparent."
  • Allison Dreger: Netanyahu's coalition: Who's in, who's out: After Likud's surprisingly strong showing in Israel's Knesset elections, Netanyahu got first crack at forming a coalition government. As the deadline ticked down, he managed to scrounge up a bare minimum of 61 votes in a deal with Naftali Bennett's "hardline pro-settler group Bayit Yehudi" as former allies like Avigdor Lieberman opted for the opposition. Bennett becomes education minister, and Ayelet Shaked is the new "justice" minister.
  • Richard Silverstein: Israel's New Government: the Power of One.

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Monday, May 4, 2015

Music: Current count 24909 [24889] rated (+20), 407 [404] unrated (+3).

Rated count fell significantly this week. I'd like to blame it on Rhapsody, which did one of those redesign things "to give you a better experience" and got rid of the "Browse" option. My modus operandi of late has been to play a new CD when I'm not at the computer -- the stereo is set up to play in the kitchen/dining room and basement as well as in my office space -- then look on Rhapsody when I know I'm going to be on the computer for a while. Sometimes I have something I've searched for there, but often I just browse to see what pops up. Except I can't do that any more. I've written two angry letters. Maybe it's time to drop them and pick up Spotify? My experiments with the latter were far from satisfactory, but that was with their "free" account. I've never found much difference in what's available, so it's mostly a choice between one sucky/piggy UI and another.

But there's another reason for the rated count drop. I've spent several days on a woodworking project: building a wheeled cabinet on which I'll mount my cheapo Ryobi router table (basically designed as a table-top unit, although it's really too high on top of a full workbench). Got it assembled and a first coat of paint on it. Should take another coat plus some touch-up and a handle, so a couple days (depending on weather). I've never done much with it (or any of my routers), although it should be a sweet setup. Does at least get it off my floor, and adds a storage drawer which should be more than enough to hold all my router bits. Organization of the tools areas is if anything a more pressing need than clean up of books or CDs.

Probably a week away from May's Rhapsody Streamnotes (tempted to drop the brand name there). Currently have 75 records in the draft file. Four (of six) A-list records this week come from scrounging through the Expert Witness notices -- Booker from Christgau, Protoje from Gubbels, Marley and King Curtis/Champion Jack Dupree from Phil Overeem. I got hep to Rich Halley many years ago. I don't think the new one is his best, but it may be the hardest, and after six or seven plays I gave up my reservations. As for Davison, I still hold that the old jazz is the real jazz. A cornet player, he's a name I'm familiar with but haven't listened to much -- shows up mostly on Eddie Condon records -- but he sounds brilliant here, even way past his prime. Someone to look into deeper.

No time for Weekend Roundup yesterday. No telling when the tweet reviews will resume.

New records rated this week:

• Tony Adamo: Tony Adamo & the New York Crew (2015, Urban Zone): [cd]: B+(***)
• Harry Allen: For George, Cole and Duke (2015, Blue Heron): [r]: B+(***)
• Roberta Donnay & the Prohibition Mob Band: Bathtub Gin (2015, Motéma Music): [r]: B+(*)
• Lorenzo Feliciati: Koi (2015, Rare Noise): [cdr]: B+(***)
• Rich Halley 4: Creating Structure (2014 [2015], Pine Eagle): [cd]: A-
• Heikki Koskinen/Teppo Hauta-Aho/Mikko Innanen: Kellari Trio (2011 [2015], Edgetone): [cd]: B+(*)
• Urs Leimgruber/Jacques Demierre/Barre Phillips: 1 - 3 - 2 - 1 (2012 [2015], Jazzwerkstatt): [r]: B
• Joe Locke: Love Is a Pendulum (2014 [2015], Motéma Music): [cd]: B+(***)
• Metallic Taste of Blood: Doctoring the Dead (2015, Rare Noise): [cdr]: B+(**)
• Allison Moorer: Down to Believing (2015, E1): [r]: B+(**)
• Protoje: Ancient Future (2015, Indiggnation Collective/Overstand): A-
• Eli Wallace/Jon Arkin/Karl Evangelista: Cabbages, Captain, & King (2014 [2015], Edgetone): [cd]: B+(***)
• Zubatto Syndicate: Zubatto Syndicate 2 (2015, Boscology): [cdr]: C+

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

• James Booker: Gonzo: Live 1976 (1976 [2014], Rockbeat, 2CD): [r]: A-
• Wild Bill Davison: The Jazz Giants (1968 [2015], Delmark/Sackville): [cd]: A-
• The Kingbees: The Kingbees (1980 [2015], Omnivore): [r]: B+(**)
• Bob Marley & the Wailers: Easy Skanking in Boston '78 (1978 [2015], Island/Tuff Gong): [r]: A-
• Leroy Smart: The Don Tells It Like It Is . . . (1972-77 [2013], Kingston Sounds): [r]: B+(***)

Old records rated this week:

• Jaki Byard and the Apollo Stompers: Phantasies II (1988 [1991], Soul Note): [r]: B+(**)
• King Curtis & Champion Jack Dupree: Blues at Montreux (1971 [2005], Atlantic/Rhino): [r]: A-
• Leroy Smart: Superstar (1977, Justice): [r]: B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Dmitry Baevsky: Over and Out (Jazz Family)
• Thomas Bergeron: Sacred Feast (self-released): May 12
• Joshua Breakstone: 2nd Avenue (Capri): May 21
• Chicago Reed Quartet: Western Automatic (Aerophonic): June 23
• Brian Landrus Trio: The Deep Below (BlueLand/Palmetto): June 16
• Opus: Definition (BluJazz)
• Billie Rainbird: Deep Blue (Phantom): May 29
• The Rempis Percussion Quartet: Cash and Carry (Aerophonic): June 23
• Marta Sánchez Quintet: Partenika (Fresh Sound New Talent)
• Nisse Sandström Quintet: Live at Crescendo (Moserobie)
• Steve Smith and Vital Information NYC Edition: Viewpoint (BFM Jazz): May 26

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Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Some items I pulled out of the Wichita Eagle today -- working off the hard copy, so I'll leave it to you to find online versions at their website. The common theme is corruption and/or stupidity in high places, which in these parts means Republicans. There's always some of this evident, but today's load is particularly pungent:

• Uber hires former Brownback campaign manager: Front page article. Back story is that the KS legislature passed a bill this session to insist on more restrictive (i.e., expensive) standards of insurance for anyone who participates in Uber's ride sharing business than the standards that Uber has been pushing state legislatures to adopt. Uber declared that they would boycott Kansas if the bill became law. Governor Sam Brownback vetoed the bill -- I think that's the only bill he's vetoed this term, although there have been dozens that should have been blocked. Uber then announced they would expand their business in Kansas. Now we see who got the check.

• Earthquake shakes Kansas, Oklahoma: Only measured 4.1, with center 9 miles northeast of Guthrie, OK, a little more than 60 miles south of the KS state line, a little more than 20 miles west of the major pipeline center of Cushing. Cause is almost certainly wastewater injection into oil wells, which is necessary because oil wells in the region are so depleted they pump out more water than oil. Since the practice started, the number of earthquakes ranging from 4.0 up to about 5.8 has increased from zero to a couple hundred per year.

• Former U.S. Rep. Tiahrt takes job with D.C. lobbying firm: Tiahrt was a Boeing employee before he ran for Congress in 1994, and during his sixteen years in the House he was for all practial purposes a full-time Boeing lobbyist -- so identified with the company that G.W. Bush nicknamed him "Tanker Todd." He left to run for the Senate, losing the Republican primary to Jerry Moran, then tried to regain his old House seat, only to loose again (this time to the Kochs' guy). Meanwhile he's run his own consulting firm, notably advising Boeing on abandoning sixty years in Wichita for even more anti-labor states (first to go was his beloved tanker program). We always figured he'd wind up with a posh DC lobbying firm, and now it's happened.

• Brownback to re-enact signing of abortion bill: The bill in question is "the nation's first ban on an abortion procedure that is used in the second trimester of pregnancy." Brownback signed the bill when it was passed, but he's so excited it he's going to travel to four corners of the state and re-enact his signing. Three of the locations are Catholic high schools (Pittsburg, Wichita, and Hays). The fourth is a Catholic church in Lenexa (near Kansas City). Catholics are a small minority in Kansas. Brownback converted to Catholicism as he became ever more bizarrely obsessed with anti-abortion ideology.

• George W. Bush to visit Garden City on Tuesday: "to attend a private luncheon, according to several local officials." Garden City is about 200 miles west of Wichita. It is home to a number of feed lots and the main meatpacking center in west Kansas. The last time I drove through, I noted that there were no clouds in the sky, but there was a layer of white fog 4-8 feet above the ground, mostly the result of trucks that drive around town spraying perfume to counter the stench of cattle manure. The majority of the working population there is of Mexican descent, but it's unlikely that they will be lunching with Bush. More likely the local plant and yard owners, who are most likely to recall fondly Bush's "guest worker" program.

• Brownback vs. the Topeka board of education? Well, it's Brownback (and the Republical state legislature) against every local school board, but this quotes the superintendant in Topeka.

• Man to plead guilty in Jewish site shootings: The man is white supremacist Glenn Miller, who shot and killed three people at a Jewish Community Center and a Jewish retirement home in Overland Park. Miller, 74, is ill and unlikely to live much longer anyway. Reportedly, he's willing to plead guilty so he can make a racist speech in court: one final gesture to inspire the white race.

Seems like there was another story about the county commissioners and a real estate boondoggle -- maybe in the part of the paper we've already recycled.

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Monday, April 27, 2015

Music: Current count 24889 [24855] rated (+34), 404 [408] unrated (-4).

Another very frustrating week, leaving me very little to say here. The two A- compilations are marginal, but scratched particular itches. The Cleveland comp should be even better with the missing Pere Ubu and Rocket From the Tombs cuts restored (the latter was "Life Stinks," which later appeared on Pere Ubu's The Modern Dance -- a good candidate for my all-time top ten). Soul Jazz generally has excellent booklets, but I haven't seen this one. The three previous Next Stop Soweto comps got various shades of B+. They nibble around the edges of South African pop, but what made the difference here wasn't better songs so much as a trashier, more amusing (and more upbeat) vibe.

Lots of Christgauvians will go for the Low Cut Connie (see Jason Gubbels) but I fear that no one I know will like the Mowgli's. First thing I read about them talked about Beach Boys-Byrds L.A. pop, but they're closer in spirit and feel to the Fifth Dimension -- stuff that I thought was hopelessly square back in the day, but gives me hope today. Best jazz record this week is probably Kirk Knuffke (again, see Gubbels; also for the Mavis Staples EP, which has a couple of the week's best songs). Or maybe Ben Goldberg -- in both cases I'm working off Rhapsody, while letting my own queue of promo CDs age a bit.

I ordered a copy of Michaelangelo Matos' new book, The Underground Is Massive: How Electronic Dance Music Conquered America, expected to arrive on its release date, tomorrow. I don't have much time to read about music these days, but this is one combination of author and subject I couldn't miss.

New records rated this week:

• Alabama Shakes: Sound & Color (2015, ATO): [r]: B+(*)
• Juan Pablo Balcazar: Reversible (2013 [2015], Fresh Sound New Talent): [r]: B+(**)
• Pat Bianchi Trio: A Higher Standard (2015, 21-H): [cd]: B+(*)
• Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers: Loved Wild Lost (2015, Little Sur): [r]: B+(**)
• Michael Dees: The Dream I Dreamed (2014 [2015], Jazzed Media): [cd]: B+(***)
• Hugo Fernandez: Cosmogram (2014 [2015], Origin): [cd]: B+(**)
• Ben Goldberg: Orphic Machine (2015, BAG): [r]: B+(***)
• José James: Yesterday I Had the Blues: The Music of Billie Holiday (2015, Blue Note): [r]: B+(*)
• Kirk Knuffke: Arms & Hands (2015, Royal Potato Family): [r]: B+(***)
• Low Cut Connie: Hi Honey (2015, Ardent Music/Contender): [r]: A-
• Harold Mabern: Afro Blue (2015, Smoke Sessions): [r]: B
• Donny McCaslin: Fast Future (2014 [2015], Greenleaf Music): [r]: B+(*)
• Marcus Miller: Afrodeezia (2015, Blue Note): [r]: B+(*)
• The Mowgli's: Kids in Love (2015, Republic): [r]: A-
• Peach Kelli Pop: Peach Kelli Pop III (2015, Burger, EP): [r]: B+(*)
• Pascal Niggenkemper: Look With Thine Ears: Solo (2014 [2015], Clean Feed): [cd]: B+(**)
• Mario Pavone: Blue Dialect (2014 [2015], Clean Feed): [cd]: B+(***)
• Gloria Reuben: Perchance to Dream (2014 [2015], MCG Jazz): [cd]: B+(**)
• Eve Risser: Des Pas Sur La Neige (2013 [2015], Clean Feed): [cd]: B
• Mavis Staples: Your Good Fortune (2015, Anti, EP): [r]: B+(***)
• Sult: Svimmelhed (2014, Humbler/Conrad Sound): [cd]: B+(**)
• Boubacar Traoré: Mbalimaou (2014 [2015], Lusafrica): [r]: B+(**)
• Daniel Weltlinger: Koblenz (2012-13 [2015], Rectify): [cd]: B+(**)
• Ben Williams: Coming of Age (2014 [2015], Concord Jazz): [r]: B-
• Young Fathers: White Men Are Black Men Too (2015, Big Dada): [r]: B+(*)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

• Next Stop Soweto, Vol. 4: Zulu Rock, Afro-Disco and Mbaqanga 1975-1985 (1975-85 [2015], Strut): [r]: A-
• Punk 45: Burn Rubber City, Burn! Akron, Ohio: Punk and the Decline of the Mid West 1975-80 (1975-80 [2015], Soul Jazz): [r]: B+(***)
• Punk 45: Extermination Nights in the Sixth City: Cleveland, Ohio: Punk and the Decline of the Mid-West 1975-82 (1975-82 [2015], Soul Jazz): [r]: A-

Old records rated this week:

• Ben Goldberg: Eight Phrases for Jefferson Rubin (1996 [1998], Victo): [r]: B+(**)
• Paul Motian: The Story of Maryam (1983 [1984], Soul Note): [r]: B+(**)
• Paul Motian Quintet: Jack of Clubs (1984 [1985], Soul Note): [r]: B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Randy Brecker/Bobby Shew/Jan Hasenöhrl: Trumpet Summit Prague (Summit): May 12
• Cuir: Chez Ackenbush (Fou)
• Marilyn Crispell/Gerry Hemingway: Table of Changes (Intakt)
• Dave Douglas: High Risk (Greenleaf Music): June 23
• Claire Ritter: Soho Solo (Zoning): May 26
• Harvie S/Sheryl Bailey: Plucky Strum (Whaling City Sound)
• Katharina Weber/Fred Frith/Fredy Studer: It Rolls (Intakt)

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Geology trumped the news twice this week: first with a volcanic eruption in Chile, then a massive earthquake in Nepal. Worth noting that bad things can still happen that can't be attributed to bad policies of the political right. Also in the news: anniversaries keep happening, including this week the 100th anniversary of one of Winston Churchill's most immediately obvious blunders, the Battle of Gallipoli in Turkey. Churchill got his first taste of battle at Omduran in the Sudan and found it totally exhilarating. Had he been present at Gallipoli he would have gotten a taste of what the Sudanese experienced. Also 100 years ago, the Ottomans started their genocide against the Armenians, ultimately killing up to 1.5 million of them. Turkey has refused to acknowledge what Taner Akcam termed A Shameful Act, which has the accidental benefit of letting Britain and Russia -- who tried to cultivate the Christian Armenians as a "fifth column" against the Ottomans -- off the hook.

Some scattered links this week:

• Brendan James: Michele Bachmann: Thanks Obama for Bringing On the Apocalypse: As Bachmann explains:

  "Barack Obama is intent, it is his number one goal, to ensure that Iran has a nuclear weapon," she said. "Why? Why would you put the nuclear weapon in the hands of madmen who are Islamic radicals?"

  Bachmann, however, then seemed to approve of the President moving mankind into "the midnight hour."

  "We get to be living in the most exciting time in history," she said, urging fellow Christians to "rejoice."

  "Jesus Christ is coming back. We, in our lifetimes potentially, could see Jesus Christ returning to Earth, the Rapture of the Church."

  "These are wonderful times," she concluded.

  Now, I come from a long line of "Revelations scholars" -- I can still recall (and I was less than ten at the time) my grandfather asking me whether I thought Israel's founding was a sign that the rapture was near. My father, too, spent a lifetime studying "Revelations" -- mostly, as best I could figure out, to prove that his father had understood it all wrong. (My own theory was that the "book" was tacked onto the end just to discredit the whole Bible, as if the other "books" weren't proof enough of some sick hoax.) So I do have a little trouble treating the people who believe in the rapture as batshit crazy, but there is at least one difference between Bachmann and my forefathers: the latter didn't go around acting like it's going to happen any day now.

• Paul Krugman: The Fiscal Future I: The Hyperbolic Case for Bigger Government: Turns out Clinton threw the baby out with the bath water when he declared that "the age of big government is over." Back in the 1990s some conservatives were arguing that the ideal size of government relative to GDP was set during the Coolidge administration and we should lock that into law. Others preferred to idealize the McKinley administration, and Grover Norquist just wanted to shrink the whole thing so small he could drown it in the bathtub. It's taken a while for someone like Brad DeLong to come along and argue that the opposite is the case: that government should grow even larger.

  So, how big should the government be? The answer, broadly speaking, is surely that government should do those things it does better than the private sector. But what are these things?

  The standard, textbook answer is that we should look at public goods -- goods that are non rival and non excludable, so that the private sector won't provide them. National defense, weather satellites, disease control, etc. And in the 19th century that was arguably what governments mainly did.

  Nowadays, however, governments are involved in a lot more -- education, retirement, health care. You can make the case that there are some aspects of education that are a public good, but that's not really why we rely on the government to provide most education, and not at all why the government is so involved in retirement and health. Instead, experience shows that these are all areas where the government does a (much) better job than the private sector. And Brad argues that the changing structure of the economy will mean that we want more of these goods, hence bigger government.

  He also suggests -- or at least that's how I read him -- the common thread among these activities that makes the government a better provider than the market; namely, they all involve individuals making very-long-term decisions. Your decision to stay in school or go out and work will shape your lifetime career; your ability to afford medical treatment or food and rent at age 75 has a lot to do with decisions you made when that stage of life was decades ahead, and impossible to imagine.

  Now, the fact is that people make decisions like these badly. Bad choices in education are the norm where choice is free; voluntary, self-invested retirement savings are a disaster. Human beings just don't handle the very long run well -- call it hyperbolic discounting, call it bounded rationality, whatever, our brains are designed to cope with the ancestral savannah and not late-stage capitalist finance.

  When you say things like this, libertarians tend to retort that if people mess up on such decisions, it's their own fault. But the usual argument for free markets is that they lead to good results -- not that they would lead to good results if people were more virtuous than they are, so we should rely on them despite the bad results they yield in practice. And the truth is that paternalism in these areas has led to pretty good results -- mandatory K-12 education, Social Security, and Medicare make our lives more productive as well as more secure.

  I'm not wild about calling this stuff "paternalism" -- one of the things that has made government spending objectionable is how often it is subject to political propriety. (For instance, art is generally a public good, especially when it can be reproduced at zero marginal cost. It would be a good public investment to pay lots of artists to produce lots of art, but not such a good idea if every piece had to be approved by a local board of prudes.)

  I think there's also a macroeconomic argument. For a variety of reasons, it strikes me that the private sector economy has become increasingly incapable of sustaining full employment, and as such needs permanent, possibly increasing, stimulus. (It could be that the deficit is the result of increasing inequality, which depresses demand while producing a savings glut. And/or it could be due to technology which keeps reducing the number of work hours needed to produce a constant amount of goods and services. Most likely both.)

  Krugman followed up with The Fiscal Future II: Not Enough Debt?. This is more technical, so I won't bother quoting it here. The upshot is that you can grow government without having to pay for all of it through increased taxes.

• Caitlin MacNeal: White House: Two Hostages Killed in US Counterterrorism Attack: Quotes the White House statement disclosing that the CIA had killed two Al-Qaida hostages with a drone strike "in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan" (evidently doesn't matter which side of the border was struck). Also that two US citizens involved with Al-Qaida were killed (but not targeted) in drone strikes "in the same region." Of the hostages, "No words can fully express our regret over this terrible tragedy." Of the other two, well, stuff happens. The statement goes on: "The President . . . takes full responsibility for these operations." The statement doesn't explain how Obama intends to "take responsibility": Will he turn himself over to the ICC or local authorities to be tried? Will he change US policy to prevent any repeat of these tragedies? Or is he just enjoying one of those "the buck stops here" moments? What should be clear is that the CIA has no fucking idea who they're killing and maiming with their Hellfire missiles. Lacking such "intelligence" all they're doing is embarrassing themselves (and Obama and the nation) and aggravating and escalating animosities. Indeed, by going into their back yards to kill anonymous people with no hint of due process they're conceding the moral high ground as surely as Al-Qaida did on Sept. 11, 2001 when they launched attacks on American soil.

  For more on the drone strikes, see Spencer Ackerman: Inside Obama's drone panopticon: a secret machine with no accountability:

  Thanks to Obama's rare admission on Thursday, the realities of what are commonly known as "signature strikes" are belatedly and partially on display. Signature strikes, a key aspect for years of what the administration likes to call its "targeted killing" program, permit the CIA and JSOC to kill without requiring them to know who they kill.

  The "signatures" at issue are indicators that intelligence analysts associate with terrorist behavior -- in practice, a gathering of men, teenaged to middle-aged, traveling in convoys or carrying weapons. In 2012, an unnamed senior official memorably quipped that the CIA considers "three guys doing jumping jacks" a signature of terrorist training.

  Civilian deaths in signature strikes, accordingly, are not accidental. They are, as Schiff framed it, more like a cost of doing business -- only the real cost is shielded from the public.

  An apparatus of official secrecy, built over decades and zealously enforced by Obama, prevents meaningful open scrutiny of the strikes. No one outside the administration knows how many drone strikes are signature strikes. There is no requirement that the CIA or JSOC account for their strikes, nor to provide an estimate of how many people they kill, nor even how they define legally critical terms like "combatant," terrorist "affiliate" or "leader." The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing an obstinate administration to compel disclosure of some of the most basic information there is about a program that has killed thousands of people. [ . . . ]

  Schiff's reaction condensed the root argument of the administration's drone advocates: it's this or nothing. The Obama administration considers the real alternatives to drone strikes to be the unpalatable options of grueling ground wars or passive acceptance of terrorism. Then it congratulates itself for picking the wise, ethical and responsible choice of killing people without knowing who they are. [ . . . ]

  No Obama official involved in drone strikes has ever been disciplined: not only are Brennan and director of national intelligence James Clapper entrenched in their jobs, David Barron, one of the lawyers who told Obama he could kill a US citizen without trial as a first resort, now has a federal judgeship.

  Beyond the question of when the US ought to launch drone strikes lie deeper geostrategic concerns. Obama's overwhelming focus on counter-terrorism, inherited and embraced from his predecessor, subordinated all other considerations for the drone battlefield of Yemen, which he described as a model for future efforts.

  The result is the total collapse of the US Yemeni proxy, a regional war Obama appears powerless to influence, the abandonment of US citizens trapped in Yemen and the likely expansion of al-Qaida's local affiliate. A generation of Yemeni civilians, meanwhile, is growing up afraid of the machines loitering overhead that might kill them without notice.

• Sinéad O'Shea: Mediterranean migrant crisis: Why is no one talking about Eritrea?:

  Horror has been expressed at the latest catastrophe in the Mediterranean. Little has been said, however, about Eritrea. Yet 22% of all people entering Italy by boat in 2014 were from Eritrea, according to the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR. After Syrians, they are the second most common nationality to undertake these journeys. Many who died this week were from the former Italian colony.

  So why is it so rarely discussed? The answer is essentially the problem. Eritrea is without western allies and far away. It is also in the grip of a highly repressive regime. This week, it was named the most censored country in the world by the Committee to Protect Journalists, beating North Korea, which is in second place. Reporters without Borders has called it the world's most dangerous country for journalists.

  Nobody talks about Eritrea because nobody (ie westerners) goes there. In 2009, I travelled there undercover with cameraman Scott Corben. We remain the only independent journalists to have visited in more than 10 years. There we witnessed a system that was exerting total control over its citizens. It was difficult to engage anybody in conversation. Everyone believed they were under surveillance, creating a state of constant anxiety. Communications were tightly controlled. Just three roads were in use and extensive documentation was required to travel. There were constant military checks. It is one of the most expensive countries in the world to buy petrol. Even maps are largely prohibited. At the time, Eritreans had to seek permission from a committee to obtain a mobile phone.

  Dissent is forbidden. It is thought there are more than 800 prisons dispersed across the country. Some take the form of shipping containers in the desert. Torture is widespread. [ . . . ]

  Eritreans are thus faced with a terrible choice. They must either live in misery or risk death by leaving. I met a number of people who were preparing to go. Despite a shoot-to-kill policy on the border, thousands still leave each month.

  Of course, one reason some of us don't talk much about bad countries is that we don't want the US to attack, invade, and "fix" them.

Also, a few links for further study:

• Christian Appy: From the Fall of Saigon to Our Fallen Empire: Appy has a new book out, American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity, which I've just started reading. This piece is written for the 40th anniversary of the "fall of Saigon" (or the end of Vietnam's American War). Subtitle: "How to Turn a Nightmare into a Fairy Tale."

  Oddly enough, however, we've since found ways to reimagine that denouement which miraculously transformed a failed and brutal war of American aggression into a tragic humanitarian rescue mission. Our most popular Vietnam end-stories bury the long, ghastly history that preceded the "fall," while managing to absolve us of our primary responsibility for creating the disaster. Think of them as silver-lining tributes to good intentions and last-ditch heroism that may come in handy in the years ahead.

  The trick, it turned out, was to separate the final act from the rest of the play. To be sure, the ending in Vietnam was not a happy one, at least not for many Americans and their South Vietnamese allies. This week we mark the 40th anniversary of those final days of the war. We will once again surely see the searing images of terrified refugees, desperate evacuations, and final defeat. But even that grim tale offers a lesson to those who will someday memorialize our present round of disastrous wars: toss out the historical background and you can recast any U.S. mission as a flawed but honorable, if not noble, effort by good-guy rescuers to save innocents from the rampaging forces of aggression.

  The worst thing about the Vietnam War wasn't losing it, nor even not learning anything from the experience. It was the lies we told ourselves to keep from facing what actually happened, including how much responsibility the US bore for making the whole debacle far more horrendous than it was bound to be. We wouldn't, for instance, have wound up with any more of a loss had we allowed democratic elections in 1956, as agreed to in Geneva in 1954. Instead, we escalated again and again, unleashing new horrors for no practical gain. I've always thought the worst of those escalations was Nixon's "incursion" in Cambodia, which soon destabilized the neutral Prince Sihanouk and delivered the country to "the killing fields" of Pol Pot. Millions died because Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon couldn't face losing the war, and while they clearly cared nothing at all about the Vietnamese, the damage they did to their own country may have seemed relatively trivial -- 58,000 Americans dead, many billions of dollars wasted -- it went far deeper and lasted much longer. The war was founded on lies, even well before the fake "Gulf of Tonkin Incident," and in the end that lying became a way of life. Nixon himself must have set some record for mendacity, but it was Ronald Reagan who recast American politics on a basis of sheer narcissistic fantasy, and no American politician has ever looked at reality squarely again. The Vietnam War was the worst thing that ever happened to America, not because we lost it but because we were wrong in the first place and never learned better. That in turn led to the recapitulation in Iraq and Afghanistan: the main differences there were that the latter wars had less effect on everyday life so they generated less anti-war movement, while the undrafted army proved somewhat more resilient, allowing the propagandists more leeway to cover up the debacle. Appy himself concludes:

  The time may come, if it hasn't already, when many of us will forget, Vietnam-style, that our leaders sent us to war in Iraq falsely claiming that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction he intended to use against us; that he had a "sinister nexus" with the al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked on 9/11; that the war would essentially pay for itself; that it would be over in "weeks rather than months"; that the Iraqis would greet us as liberators; or that we would build an Iraqi democracy that would be a model for the entire region. And will we also forget that in the process nearly 4,500 Americans were killed along with perhaps 500,000 Iraqis, that millions of Iraqis were displaced from their homes into internal exile or forced from the country itself, and that by almost every measure civil society has failed to return to pre-war levels of stability and security?

  The picture is no less grim in Afghanistan. What silver linings can possibly emerge from our endless wars? If history is any guide, I'm sure we'll think of something.

• Ben Branstetter: 7 whistle-blowers facing more jail time than David Petraeus: OK, that's a low bar, given that Petraeus avoided all jail time, punished with two years of probation after pleading guilty to passing classified secrets to his mistress-hagiographer Paula Broadwell. But then his intent was never to help Americans understand that their government is doing in secret. It was just self-promotion, business-as-usual for the ambitious general. On the other hand, Chelsea Manning has been sentenced to 35 years in prison -- nearly twice as long as Albert Speer was sentenced for running Nazi Germany's armaments industry.

• Chris Wright: Always Historicize!: Chews on the old Leninist bone of what-is-to-be-done, the perennial of those who think of themselves as activists, as opposed to us normal folk who only occasionally get swept up in the tides of history. Wright starts with the pitiful state of the Left, concluding that to be unsurprising given that the Left is, by nature of its constituency, always starved of resources, and "one needs resources to get things done." Yet this does nothing to explain the few cases when everything suddenly lurches toward the Left. That happens not when the balance of resources shifts from Right to Left, but when the Establishment collapses in chaos, opening up opportunity for the Left to save the day, provided some combination of ideas and organization. Wright sort of understands this. He is skeptical of the notion that "radical social change is a matter mainly of will and competence . . . pushing back against reactionary institutions so as, hopefully, to reverse systemic trends." He argues, instead, that "the proper way for radicals to conceive of their activism, on a broad scale, is in terms of the speeding up of current historical trends, not their interruption or reversal."

  I suppose that all depends on what trends you're talking about, but the notion that historical trends are for the better hasn't been born out by history: I can think of a few that turned rotten after initial promise, and others that were rotten from the start. The trend Wright identifies is "the protracted collapse of corporate capitalism and the nation-state system itself." I'm not so sure of that myself -- not that I don't see some problems there, but they mostly come from overreach, something not all that far removed from panic. (The Right's massive attempt to corner the political system, which has much to do with the resource imbalance cited above, seems more rooted in fear than in greed, not that its sponsors can ever free themselves of the latter. Sometimes it looks like the Right is winning, but their successes rarely go beyond the most corruptible of institutions, and when they do seize power they often crash and burn.)

  I keep coming back to ideas and organization. While there are a lot of the former floating around, it's proven remarkably difficult to get them into common circulation -- the point, I would say, of Philip Mirowski's Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, showing how a prison of constantly reiterated neoliberal ideology kept politicians from even considering alternatives after an economic collapse caused by precisely that thinking. That suggests to me that ideas have to be channeled through organization -- a role that unions filled during the industrial revolution but are unlikely to recover and repeat in the future. Figure that out and the Left won't look so lame. Don't and we run the risk that no one will be able to pick up the pieces after the Right fucks everything up.

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Saturday, April 25, 2015

Earlier this week I filled out my ballot for Downbeat's 2015 Critics Poll. I took my usual copious notes, but I'll just give you the highlights here -- follow the link for more details. The poll is very time-consuming: I've never finished it in a single day (took two this time, at least ten hours). The big problem is that they ask about fifty questions: mostly to identify the best (or most important or something like that) musicians by instrument (or some other category like composer or arranger), and for each question they have a second ballot slot for "rising star." They used to call the latter TDWR, an acronym for "talent deserving wider recognition," which makes much more sense to me. Even if I wanted to, I'm not sure what sense it would make to try to rank musicians. So all I can try to do is to mention a few people I think we should be aware of.

Sometimes those people are obvious -- until their deaths, Steve Lacy on soprano sax and Billy Bang on violin were automatic choices. Often they aren't, in some cases because there's so much competition -- piano, bass, and drums are the top tier; trumpet, alto sax, tenor sax, and increasingly guitar the second -- and sometimes because there is so little (flute, baritone sax -- a special case here is an instrument mostly played by non-specialists, like soprano sax, electric bass, and electric keyboards). Still, in all cases, the picks I made were spur of the moment, subject to the limited information I could think of and whatever whims occurred to me. More often than not, I limited my picks to names listed on the ballot form. This was especially so in nebulous categories like "Jazz Artist" or things I don't keep good mental tabs on (like "Arranger," "Composer," and "Producer").

I have fewer qualms about ranking albums. It's all too true that it is often impossible to weigh the relative merits -- even on such a subjective basis as personal pleasure -- of any pair of albums. The only consistent criteria I can think of would be the order in which I'd buy albums. Of course, that is the most subjective scale of all, which makes it pretty arbitrary when anyone else looks at it. Such rank lists should be easy for me give that I've already spent much effort at constructing them -- e.g., see my 2014 EOY Jazz List. (I haven't assembled a 2015 Jazz List yet, but the list-in-progress can be sorted out from my 2015 List.) One complication is that Downbeat insists on skewing the eligibility list to run from April 1, 2014 through March 31, 2015 release dates instead of using the previous (2014) calendar year. I don't generally keep track of release dates below year granularity, so it would be a huge effort at this point to research 2014 release dates. (Actually, I can't even trust 2015 release dates: I already have several April releases in my 2015 file. So I can save myself some work by limiting my vote to Downbeat's ballot. The problem here is that Downbeat only lists 10-12 albums I consider A-list, out of 60-70 albums I grade that high. Writing in a name sometimes encourages Downbeat to include that name on future ballots, but writing in an album won't have any future effect. So I tried to apply my rank list (interpolating early 2015 releases in place of early 2014 releases) to their ballot, with the result that I voted for my number 1 and 24 2014 albums plus one 2015 album that will probably wind up close to number 20. I took the same approach to Historical Album, Blues Album, and Beyond Album (surprised that Wussy got nominated in the latter). The notes file provides the full breakdowns for the album votes. One reason I make a point of jotting down all of the records I haven't heard is that they give me a reference for future listening (although, frankly, they put a lot of albums on these lists I know better than to bother with).

Each category allowed me to split 10 points among three candidates. I followed their earlier convention of spliting those points 5-3-2 for the two three picks. Write-ins are italicized below. So, without further ado, my votes:

• Hall of Fame: Lee Konitz (5), George Russell (3), Don Byas (2).
• Jazz Artist: Anthony Braxton (5), William Parker (3), Ken Vandermark (2).
• Rising Star -- Jazz Artist: Steve Lehman (5), Mary Halvorson (3), Craig Taborn (2).
• Jazz Album of the Year (April 1, 2014-March 31, 2015): Steve Lehman Octet, Mis En Abime (Pi) (5); Charles McPherson, The Journey (Capri -15) (3); Bobby Avey, Authority Melts From Me (Whirlwind) (2).
• Historical Album (April 1, 2014-March 31, 2015): Sun Ra, In the Orbit of Ra (Strut) (5); Charles Lloyd, Manhattan Stories (Resonance) (3); Charlie Haden/Jim Hall, Charlie Haden -- Jim Hall (Impulse!) (2).
• Jazz Group: Microscopic Septet (5), Mostly Other People Do the Killing (3), Rova (2).
• Rising Star Jazz Group: Revolutionary Snake Ensemble (5), Mostly Other People Do the Killing (3), Digital Primitives (2).
• Big Band: Steven Bernstein Millennial Territory Orchestra (5), ICP Orchestra (3), Ken Vandermark's Resonance Ensemble (2).
• Rising Star Big Band: Ken Vandermark's Resonance Ensemble (5), Ghost Train Orchestra (3), Howard Wiley and the Angola Project (2).
• Trumpet: Dave Douglas (5), Wadada Leo Smith (3), Steven Bernstein (2).
• Rising Star Trumpet: Peter Evans (5), Taylor Ho Bynum (3), Darren Johnston (2).
• Trombone: Roswell Rudd (5), Steve Swell (3), Joe Fiedler (2).
• Rising Star Trombone: Joe Fiedler (5), Samuel Blaser (3), Jacob Garchik (2).
• Soprano Saxophone: Sam Newsome (5), Bob Wilber (3), Vinny Golia (2).
• Rising Star Soprano Saxophone: Mike Ellis (5), Jason Robinson (3), Jasmine Lovell-Smith (2).
• Alto Saxophone: Oliver Lake (5), François Carrier (3), Anthony Braxton (2).
• Rising Star Alto Saxophone: Steve Lehman (5), Dave Rempis (3), Mike DiRubbo (2).
• Tenor Saxophone: David Murray (5), Ivo Perelman (3), Ken Vandermark (2).
• Rising Star Tenor Saxophone: Ellery Eskelin (5), Assif Tsahar (3), Rodrigo Amado (2)
• Baritone Saxophone: Mats Gustafsson (5), Scott Robinson (3), Gebhard Ullmann (2).
• Rising Star Baritone Saxophone: Gebhard Ullmann (5), Brian Landrus (3), Josh Sinton (2).
• Clarinet: Ben Goldberg (5), Marty Ehrlich (3), Michael Moore (2).
• Rising Star Clarinet: Avram Fefer (5), Rudi Mahall (3), Gebhard Ullmann (2).
• Flute: Juhani Aaltonen (5), Henry Threadgill (3), Lew Tabackin (2).
• Rising Star Flute: Kali Z. Fasteau (5), Idan Santhaus (3).
• Piano: Irène Schweizer (5), Myra Melford (3), Marilyn Crispell (2).
• Rising Star Piano: Kris Davis (5), Nik Bärtsch (3), Russ Lossing (2).
• Electronic Keyboard: Matthew Shipp (5), Uri Caine (3), Craig Taborn (2).
• Rising Star Electronic Keyboard: Nik Bärtsch (5), George Colligan (3), Rob Mazurek (2).
• Organ: Gary Versace (5), John Medeski (3), Brian Charette (2).
• Rising Star Organ: Alexander Hawkins (5), Vince Seneri (3), Wayne Peet (2).
• Violin: Jason Kao Hwang (5), Jenny Scheinman (3), Carlos Zingaro (2).
• Rising Star Violin: Szilard Mezei (5), Jesse Zubot (3), Aaron Weinstein (2).
• Guitar: Marc Ribot (5), Bill Frisell (3), Marty Grosz (2).
• Rising Star Guitar: Raoul Björkenheim (5), Samo Salamon (3), Anders Nilsson (2),
• Bass: William Parker (5), Reggie Workman (3), Peter Washington (2).
• Rising Star Bass: Adam Lane (5), Ken Filiano (3), Moppa Elliott (2).
• Electric Bass: Steve Swallow (5), Bob Cranshaw (3), Ingebrigt Haker Flaten (2).
• Rising Star Electric Bass: Chris Morrissey (5), Stomu Takeishi (3), Nate McBride (2).
• Drums: Andrew Cyrille (5), Gerry Hemingway (3), Lewis Nash (2).
• Rising Star Drums: Tom Rainey (5), Tyshawn Sorey (3), Paal Nilssen-Love (2).
• Vibes: Jason Adasiewicz (5), Kenny Wolleson (3), Warren Smith (2).
• Rising Star Vibes: Mulatu Astatke (5), Kevin Norton (3), Bryan Carrott (2).
• Percussion: Han Bennink (5), Adam Rudolph (3), Kahil El'Zabar (2).
• Rising Star Percussion: Kevin Diehl (5), Lukas Ligeti (3), Ravish Momin (2).
• Miscellaneous Instrument: Bob Stewart (tuba) (5), Richard Galliano (accordion) (3), Rabih Abou Khalil (oud) (2).
• Rising Star Miscellaneous Instrument: Colin Stetson (bass sax) (5), Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello) (3), Cooper-Moore (diddley-bow) (2).
• Male Vocalist: Freddy Cole (5), James Blood Ulmer (3), Mose Allison (2).
• Rising Star Male Vocalist: Jamie Davis (5), Mark Winkler (3), Ku-umba Frank Lacy (2).
• Female Vocalist: Sheila Jordan (5), Barbara Morrison (3), Marlene VerPlanck (2).
• Rising Star Female Vocalist: Fay Victor (5), Catherine Russell (3), Lisa Sokolov (2).
• Composer: Carla Bley (5), Wayne Shorter (3), John Zorn (2).
• Rising Star Composer: Steve Lehman (5), Adam Lane (3), Anthony Branker (2).
• Arranger: Steven Bernstein (5), Misha Mengelberg (3), Carla Bley (2).
• Rising Star Arranger: David Weiss (5), Michael Bates (3), Marcus Shelby (2).
• Record Label: Clean Feed (5), Intakt (3), No Business (2).
• Producer: Joe Fields (5), John Zorn (3), Don Was (2).
• Rising Star Producer: John Corbett (5), Taylor Ho Bynum (3), Leo Feigin (2).
• Blues Artist or Group: Maria Muldaur (5), James Blood Ulmer (3), Duke Robillard (2).
• Blues Album (April 1, 2014 to March 31, 2015): Dave Alvin and Phil Alvin, Common Ground: Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin Play the Songs of Big Bill Broonzy (Yep Roc) (5); Leo Welch: Sabougla Voices (Big Legal Mess) (3); John Hiatt, Terms of My Surrender (New West) (2).
• Beyond Artist of Group: The Roots (5), Merle Haggard (3), Aretha Franklin (2).
• Beyond Album (April 1, 2014 to March 31, 2015): Wussy, Attica! (Shake It) (5); Jason Derulo, Talk Dirty (Beluga Heights/Warner Bros.) (3); D'Angelo, Black Messiah (RCA) (2). This is limited to their ballot. For a more expansive list (just 2014) look here.

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Monday, April 20, 2015

Music: Current count 24855 [24826] rated (+29), 408 [398] unrated (+10).

Third straight week at 29, so I guess that's the new 30. Wouldn't have hit that but for a lark decision to check out the early Charles Lloyd records on Rhapsody after the new one underwhelmed me. They, at least, were relatively short, but ultimately merged into a solid, indistinguishable mass -- aside from Keith Jarrett's outstanding rhythm work. Very little of Lloyd's post-1970 work is on Rhapsody, so it's hard to say anything definitive about his now obscure 1970s and 1980s records. In 1989 he joined ECM and patiently rebuilt his career, hitting a peak when he started working with another amazing pianist, Jason Moran. Make what you will that the new one marks his move from ECM to Blue Note, and that Moran is out, replaced by a pianist whose name I've already forgotten. On the other hand, Blue Note's pairing of Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas works as expected.

I spent a good deal of time this past week sorting through old shelves of jazz CDs. Currently the work area is still quite some mess, but I expect to make some progress this week. I had planned on keeping all of the Jazz CG-era B+(***) and A-list albums in a set of six modular shelf units, but it now looks like the number needed is eight. I have the extra two nearby, but their contents need to be moved elsewhere, and I'm cleaning out that elsewhere. The next space likely to be exhausted is the basement hell where the most unwanted items go to linger. Those I need to start to cull -- although the general high quality of jazz these days has led me to consign more than a few good records by obscure artists or interesting failures by better known musicians there. Could be a neverending struggle. For some reason the incoming mail picked up this week.

Not so many A-list records this week, although eight high-B+ records came close. Milo Miles put Ayelet Rose Gottlieb at the top of his 1st Quarter 2015: Jazz list and, if memory recalls, had previously touted Tal National. Michael Tatum is a big fan of the Skrillex/Diplo record. My own favorites among the three-stars are Sergi Sirvent's Unexpected piano trio and Oleg Frish's kitschy standards duets, although Hu Vibrational got the most spins (five, I think).

Incoming mail included unsolicited copies of all three albums by Damien Wilkins' New Zealand group, The Close Readers. Christgau reviewed their latest and I concurred in last week's Rhapsody Streamnotes. I was tempted to check out the earlier titles -- they're here (via bandcamp) -- but let my mind wander elsewhere. Now I feel obligated to go back. As a down payment, we'll include the album cover and note the known grade in unpacking.

I need to get cracking on my Downbeat Critics Poll ballot. Expect a report later this week.

New records rated this week:

• Perry Beekman: S'Wonderful: Perry Beekman Sings and Plays Gershwin (2015, self-released): [cd]: B
• Oleg Frish: Duets With My American Idols (2014 [2015], Time Out Media): [cd]: B+(***)
• Ghost Train Orchestra: Hot Town (2013 [2015], Accurate): [cd]: B+(***)
• Ayelet Rose Gottlieb: Roadsides (2014, Arogole Music): [r]: B+(***)
• Hu Vibrational: The Epic Botanical Beat Suite (2014 [2015], MOD Technologies): [cd]: B+(***)
• Steve Johns: Family (2014 [2015], Strikezone): [cd]: B+(**)
• Tyler Kaneshiro & the Highlands: Amber of the Moment (2013 [2015], self-released): [cd]: B+(**)
• Charles Lloyd: Wild Man Dance (2013 [2015], Blue Note): [r]: B+(**)
• Joe Lovano & Dave Douglas: Sound Prints: Live at Monterey Jazz Festival (2013 [2015], Blue Note): [r]: A-
• The Magic Words: The Day We Ran Away (Magic Words Demos) (2015, self-released): [bc]: B+(*)
• Barney McClure: Show Me! (2014 [2015], OA2): [cd]: B+(*)
• Michael Oien: And Now (2014 [2015], Fresh Sound New Talent): [cdr]: B+(***)
• Plunge: In for the Out (2014 [2015], Immersion): [cd]: B+(*)
• Adam Shulman Sextet: Here/There (2014 [2015], OA2): [cd]: B
• Skrillex/Diplo: Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü (2015, Mad Decent/OWSLA): [r]: B+(***)
• Tal National: Zoy Zoy (2015, Fat Cat): [r]: B+(***)
• John Tropea: Gotcha Rhythm Right Here (2014 [2015], STP): [cd]: B-
• Tyler, the Creator: Cherry Bomb (2015, Odd Future): [r]: B+(*)
• Unexpected: Munchies (2013 [2014], Fresh Sound New Talent): [r]: B+(***)
• Dwight Yoakam: Second Hand Heart (2015, Warner Brothers): [r]: B

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

• Dion: Recorded Live at the Bitter End August 1971 (1971 [2015], Omnivore): [r]: B

Old records rated this week:

• Charles Lloyd: Discovery! (1964, Columbia): [r]: B+(**)
• Charles Lloyd: Nirvana (1962-65 [1968], Columbia): [r]: B+(**)
• The Charles Lloyd Quartet: Dream Weaver (1966, Atlantic): [r]: B+(***)
• Charles Lloyd: Forest Flower: Charles Lloyd at Monterey (1966 [1968], Atlantic): [r]: A-
• The Charles Lloyd Quartet: The Flowering of the Original Charles Lloyd Quartet (1966 [1971], Atlantic): [r]: B+(**)
• The Charles Lloyd Quartet: Charles Lloyd in Europe (1966 [1968], Atlantic): [r]: B+(**)
• The Charles Lloyd Quartet: Love-In (1967, Atlantic): [r]: B+(***)
• The Charles Lloyd Quartet: Journey Within (1967, Atlantic): [r]: B+(*)
• The Charles Lloyd Quartet: Charles Lloyd in the Soviet Union (1967 [1970], Atlantic): [r]: B+(***)
• Charles Lloyd: Soundtrack (1968 [1969], Atlantic): [r]: B+(***)

Grade changes:

• Gorka Benitez: Solo La Verdad Es Sexy (2003 [2004], Fresh Sound New Talent): [was B+] B+(***)
• Eddie Gale: Afro-Fire (2004, Black Beauty): [was B+]: B+(***)
• Lafayette Gilchrist: The Music According to Lafayette Gilchrist (2004, Hyena/Shantytone): [was B+]: B+(***)
• The Great Jazz Trio: Someday My Prince Will Come (2002-03 [2004], Eighty-Eights/Columbia): [was B+]: B+(***)
• Charles Lloyd: Just Before Sunrise (1966-67 [1999], 32 Jazz, 2CD): reissue combines Dream Weaver and Love-In: [was B]: B+(**)
• Paradigm Shift: Shifting Times (2004, Nagel Heyer): [was B+]: B+(***)
• Randy Sandke: Cliffhanger (1999 [2003], Nagel Heyer): [was B+]: B+(***)
• Ignasi Terraza Trio: IT's Coming (2004, TCB): [was B+]: B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• David Berkman: Old Friends and New Friends (Palmetto): May 5
• The Dan Brubeck Quartet: Celebrating the Music and Lyrics of Dave & Iola Brubeck (Blue Forest, 2CD): April 28
• The Close Readers: Group Hug (2011, Austin)
• The Close Readers: New Spirit (2012, Austin)
• The Close Readers: The Lines Are Open (2014, Austin) [A-]
• Wild Bill Davison: The Jazz Giants (1968, Delmark/Sackville)
• Lorenzo Feliciati: Koi (Rare Noise): advance, May 26
• Rich Halley 4: Creating Structure (Pine Eagle)
• Lauren Henderson: A La Madrugada (self-released): May 19
• Heikki Koskinen/Teppo Hauta-Aho/Mikko Innanen: Kellari Trio (Edgetone)
• Joe Locke: Love Is a Pendulum (Motéma): May 26
• Phil Maturano: At Home Everywhere (self-released): May 19
• Metallic Taste of Blood: Doctoring the Dead (Rare Noise): advance, May 26
• Pascal Niggenkemper: Look With Thine Ears: Solo (Clean Feed)
• Mario Pavone: Blue Dialect (Clean Feed)
• Eve Risser: Des Pas Sur La Neige (Clean Feed)
• Elliott Sharp: Octal: Book Three (Clean Feed)
• Eli Wallace/Jon Arkin/Karl Evangelista: Cabbages, Captain, & King (Edgetone)
• Zubatto Syndicate: Zubatto Syndicate 2 (Boscology): advance, June 9

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Monday, April 20, 2015

Late start but I had the Civil War links, and added a couple more. Plus, for local color, let's start with Crowson's cartoon today:

By the way, babyfaced State Senator O'Donnell (R) happens to represent my district. You can read more about his bill in, well, The Guardian, or The Chicago Tribune. Jordan Weissmann looks at what welfare recipients actually spend money on here. One thing I haven't seen much discussion of is how this law is to be enforced. Will the state be assigning accountants to go over welfare recipients' books? Or will we expect movie ticket takers to rat out customers they suspect of being on welfare?

• Gregory P Downs: The Dangerous Myth of Appomattox: When I was 10 years old the centennial of the Civil War seemed like such a big deal, whereas I hadn't noticed any 150th anniversaries until someone wrote that Lee's surrender at Appomattox should be a national holiday. Back in 1960 you could still practically taste the gunpowder residue. I knew, for instance, that my great-great-grandfathers had fought in that war -- on my father's side from Pennsylvania, a man who after the war homesteaded in western Kansas and named his first son Abraham Lincoln Hull; on my mother's side from Ohio, a man who then moved to northern Arkansas and became sheriff of Baxter County (in other words, one of those oft-villified "carpetbaggers"). Back then Kansas still identified with the North, and I saw enough of the South to reinforce my belief in civil rights, because by then the South had reconstituted its racist caste system as if their "war for independence" had won out. (Downs quotes Albion Tourgée saying that the South "surrendered at Appomattox, the North has been surrendering ever since.")

  Over the course of the Civil War's Centennial the tide of surrender had shifted with the passage of landmark civil rights acts. Fifty years later we're more inclined to memorialize the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march than the 150th of Lee's surrender. Not that we shouldn't worry about erosion of voting rights. But one thing we don't worry about over is that the South will secede again -- indeed, when various Texans spout off to that effect, the usual reaction is "good riddance." But celebration of Appomattox has always been something of a ruse. As Downs points out, the war didn't really end there, nor has the reunification of the country gone smoothly. Indeed, one of the great ironies of American history is that the party of Lincoln -- the party my great-greats fought for -- has lately been captured by the sons of the Confederacy (often, amusingly enough, in the guise of adopted sons with names like Jindal, Cruz, Rubio, and Bush).

  Meanwhile, Downs is more concerned with the problems the postwar occupation (aka reconstruction) ran into:

  Grant himself recognized that he had celebrated the war's end far too soon. Even as he met Lee, Grant rejected the rebel general's plea for "peace" and insisted that only politicians, not officers, could end the war. Then Grant skipped the fabled laying-down-of-arms ceremony to plan the Army's occupation of the South.

  To enforce its might over a largely rural population, the Army marched across the South after Appomattox, occupying more than 750 towns and proclaiming emancipation by military order. This little-known occupation by tens of thousands of federal troops remade the South in ways that Washington proclamations alone could not.

  And yet as late as 1869, President Grant's attorney general argued that some rebel states remained in the "grasp of war." When white Georgia politicians expelled every black member of the State Legislature and began a murderous campaign of intimidation, Congress and Grant extended military rule there until 1871.

  Meanwhile, Southern soldiers continued to fight as insurgents, terrorizing blacks across the region. One congressman estimated that 50,000 African-Americans were murdered by white Southerners in the first quarter-century after emancipation. "It is a fatal mistake, nay a wicked misery to talk of peace or the institutions of peace," a federal attorney wrote almost two years after Appomattox. "We are in the very vortex of war."

  Downs has a book that sounds interesting: After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War. It is inevitable that any such book written these days will reflect the manifest failures of the US occupation of Iraq. One recalls that in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, Bush's intellectuals studied up on the post-WWII occupations of Germany and Japan -- held to be a model of enlightened reconstruction, although that conceit took a good deal of misreading both of history and of the current state of Bush politics to come to that cheery conclusion. But in all cases, the fiasco is the consequence both of poorly understood goals and corrupt practices.

  Also worth reading: Christopher Dickey: The Civil War's Dirty Secret: It Was Always About Slavery. A sequel could be written on how racism went from being a rationale for slavery to becoming a proxy. In any case, the two are so inextricably linked that the iconography for one, like the continuing cult of the Confederacy, supports the other. That's why if you don't like the one, you shouldn't make excuses for the other.

• Mark Mazzetti/Helene Cooper: Sale of US Arms Fuels the Wars of Arab States: Even if we overlook Israel, the most intensely militarized nation in the world, the Middle East has long been a bonanza for arms dealers -- and not just for American ones, although the US remains by far the largest purveyor of lethal hardware. And to paraphrase Madeleine Albright, what's the point of having this magnificent military technology if you never use it? That's been a conundrum for many years, but more and more nominal US allies like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, even Egypt, are discovering targets they can safely attack: the ad hoc militias of destabilized neighbors like Yemen, Libya, and Syria. All they have to do is to pin a label like Al-Qaeda, ISIS, or Iran, and the US blesses them with further supplies. For example:

  Saudi Arabia spent more than $80 billion on weaponry last year -- the most ever, and more than either France or Britain -- and has become the world's fourth-largest defense market, according to figures released last week by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks global military spending. The Emirates spent nearly $23 billion last year, more than three times what they spent in 2006.

  Qatar, another gulf country with bulging coffers and a desire to assert its influence around the Middle East, is on a shopping spree. Last year, Qatar signed an $11 billion deal with the Pentagon to purchase Apache attack helicopters and Patriot and Javelin air-defense systems. Now the tiny nation is hoping to make a large purchase of Boeing F-15 fighters to replace its aging fleet of French Mirage jets. Qatari officials are expected to present the Obama administration with a wish list of advanced weapons before they come to Washington next month for meetings with other gulf nations.

  American defense firms are following the money. Boeing opened an office in Doha, Qatar, in 2011, and Lockheed Martin set up an office there this year. Lockheed created a division in 2013 devoted solely to foreign military sales, and the company's chief executive, Marillyn Hewson, has said that Lockheed needs to increase foreign business -- with a goal of global arms sales' becoming 25 percent to 30 percent of its revenue -- in part to offset the shrinking of the Pentagon budget after the post-Sept. 11 boom. [ . . . ]

  Meanwhile, the deal to sell Predator drones to the Emirates is nearing final approval. The drones will be unarmed, but they will be equipped with lasers to allow them to better identify targets on the ground.

  If the sale goes through, it will be the first time that the drones will go to an American ally outside of NATO.

  There's very little here to keep these wars from spinning out of control. The US has allied itself with dictatorial oligarchs, and enabled them to suppress all manner of popular movements, including peaceful demonstrations for democracy. And when the most violent of those movements blowback against the US, that just reinforces the war mentality. Sure, some worry about putting US troops in harm's way, but we're pretty cavalier about getting Arabs to kill other Arabs, especially when Arabs are paying us for the gear -- think of all those "good jobs" proxy wars will create. Invading Iraq in 2003 was still a hard sell, but spinning up ISIS as an enemy was a breeze. Also see Richard Silverstein's comment on this article, War is America's Business.

• Justin Logan: Iraq 2.0: The REAL Reason Hawks Oppose the Iran Deal:

  Let's be honest for a second: 90-plus percent of supporters of the Iran framework would have supported any framework the Obama administration produced (this author included). Close to 100 percent of the opponents of the framework would have opposed any framework it produced.

  What's going on here? Why are we having this kabuki debate about a deal whose battle lines were established before it even existed? At Brookings, Jeremy Shapiro suggests that "the Iranian nuclear program is not really what opponents and proponents of the recent deal are arguing about."

  Shapiro says the bigger question is about what to do regarding "Iran's challenge to U.S. leadership" in the countries surrounding Iran and whether to "integrate Iran into the regional order."

  One could put this more baldly: anti-agreement hawks want to preserve a state of belligerency (non-cooperation at the very least) between the US and Iran; agreement supporters want to defuse the state of belligerency, ultimately by normalizing relations between the two countries. One reason the hawks have is the profits from arms sales generated through the Middle East's growing set of proxy wars (see the Mazzetti/Cooper article above). It's also likely that oil profits would skyrocket if there was any disruption of Persian Gulf exports -- something which may matter more than usual given how invested US oil companies are in expensive sources (like shale and offshore oil). But there's also a more basic ideological reason: right-wingers believe in a world where conflict, like hierarchy, is inevitable and brutal, whereas left-wingers believe that conflicts can be resolved and people can cooperate to level up everyone's standard of living.

• After torching Palestinian cafe and painting 'Revenge' on its door, 4 Israeli teens get community service; Before prayers finished Friday, Israeli military began firing teargas canisters and rubber-coated bullets; A 22-year-old Palestinian dies after imprisonment, then his cousin, 27, is killed at his funeral: 'Passover siege' in Hebron: Palestinians endure military lockdown so Israelis can enjoy holiday in occupied West Bank: more of Kate's remarkable compilations of Israeli news reports. Also see Alice Rothchild: The most massive child abuse int he world: "Not a single house has been rebuilt in Gaza since the end of the devastating war 9 months ago, UNRWA reports."

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