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Monday, February 24, 2003
Caught some of the Grammys last night on TV. Nice to be reassured that
the music industry isn't, contrary to reports, dead; too bad it looks
so torpid. Most pathetic moment: Herbie Hancock swooning over the Dixie
Chicks. Most surreal: Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello lip-synching
to "London Calling". Best dressed: Fred Durst.
The upshot of all this was to remind me of something Eric Weisbard said
in Pazz & Jop:
Amazon.com spent 2002 discarding editors and switching its programming
emphasis from reviews to automated recommendations. A friend there
told me something uncanny: whether the customer liked roots, rock,
r&b, or "alternative," virtually anything, those grinding servers
always came up with the same suggestion--try Norah Jones!
I downloaded and installed the current Macromedia Flash web browser module,
having run into too many websites that were too bitchy about the version.
I was also hoping that it would have some controls that would let me shut
it off. After all, it's my browser, my screen, my cpu, my time, and while
once in a while Flash might be used for something worth watching, vast
experience indicates that once in a while doesn't come around all that
often. No such luck. Instead, it includes even more intrusive controls,
such as allowing remote sites to store data on your machine (kind of
like cookies, but less manageable) and to suck data out of a local
camera and/or microphone. Ugh. I hate Flash! Hate it! Hate it!
Sunday, February 23, 2003
Music: Starting this week, I have 8014 rated records, and 801 unrated.
The latter is no doubt short (in particular, I have a box of CDs from
Table of the Elements that I haven't logged much less listened to. I
need to write the second reissues column this week, and to round up
all those missing records for the Rolling Stone Record Guide project.
- King Sunny Ade: The Best of the Classic Years (1967-74,
Shanachie). The most striking thing about these early cuts from the
future King of Juju is how open and spacious they are -- the complex
rhythms, the sweet guitar. A
- Daniel Bedingfield: Gotta Get Thru This (2002, Universal).
Reminds me of Matthew Sweet for the obvious topical reasons, otherwise
it could be teen pop or something like that. B+
- John Coltrane: A Love Supreme: Deluxe Edition (1964-65,
Impulse, 2CD). This combines Coltrane's classic with a second live
version (listed as "previously unissued," but probably the same as
has appeared on French issues) and alternate takes. The latter are
rougher, and the live take is much further out: at the time Coltrane
was moving quickly toward his own personal apocalypse, and the tension
in the original is the source of much of its greatness. I'm very
skeptical about these "Deluxe Editions," but the word on this one
is "Amen." A
- Cuisine Non-Stop: An Introduction to the French Nouvelle
Generation (1996-2000, Luaka Bop). I've been chewing on
this for a while, forcing myself to write a CG (that I won't
dupe here). But I'll add one more question: if the secret of the
new generation is accordions, what does the future hold? B+
- Finger Poppin' and Stompin' Feet: 20 Classic Allen Toussaint
Productions for Minit Records 1960-1962 (Capitol). Some of
the greatest music that ever came out of New Orleans. A
- Coleman Hawkins: The Bebop Years (1939-49, Proper, 4CD).
Hawkins invented jazz saxophone back in the '20s, and pushed the tenor
sax to the front of the horn section in the '30s, but these were the
years when he really hit his stride. One magnificent performance after
another. A+
- Howlin' Wolf: Moanin' at Midnight: The Memphis Recordings
(1951-52, Fuel 2000). Even in his first recordings, Wolf emerged
full-formed, a commanding vocal presence. A-
- The Keystone Quartet: A Love Story (2000, 32 Jazz).
Two changes from the Keystone Trio: the addition of saxophonist
Eric Alexander is obvious, the substitution of Cyrus Chestnut for
pianist John Hicks less so. (George Mraz and Lewis Nash are the
constants.) The effect is to soften things up, to make it purty,
to turn this into one of those quietstorm records. A nice one,
of course. B+
- New Order: Retro (1981-2002, London, 4CD). This reshuffles
their anonymous-sounding dance tracks into four more sets, endlessly
listenable, danceable even. A-
- The Rough Guide to Salsa Dance (1964-99, World Music
Network). I'm way behind the learning curve here: even though I've
heard of at least half of these artists, the only one I actually own
an album by is Celia Cruz. Big bands, lots of horns and congas, hard
to say much more. This shows signs of being assembled on the cheap,
and the dates are wild guesses -- most of these cuts cite as sources
other anthologies. B+
- Jimmy Rushing: Cat Meets Chick/The Jazz Oddysey of James Rushing
Esq. (1955-56, Collectables).
A-
- Wayne Shorter: The Classic Blue Note Recordings (1960-89,
Blue Note, 2CD). The first disc distills Shorter's solo albums into
something stronger and more coherent than any of its sources; the
second disc collects sideman performances, mostly from the Blakey
years. I always thought he was overrated, but this impresses the
hell out of me. A
- Cecil Taylor: The Willisau Concert (2000, Intakt). This
one's solo, so explosive and effusive it would be madness to insist
on anyone else trying to keep pace. It would take quite a while to
check, but I don't think I've ever rated a Taylor solo album quite
this high. But long-time fan Gary Giddins wrote that he thought this
to be Taylor's best ever. I can't verify that, but I will say that
it makes me want to pay attention, wheras a couple of other Taylor
CDs are languishing in my unrated pile. A-
- Cecil Taylor: Qu'a: Live at the Iridium Vol. 1 (1998,
Cadence). This is much closer to par for the course regarding Taylor:
one long piece of free jazz meanderings, in a quartet setting but with
all ears on the piano, just in case the master does something amazing.
B
- Chris Tyle's Silver Leaf Jazz Band of New Orleans: New Orleans
Wiggle (1999, GHB). A rousing set of New Orleans-style classic
jazz. A Penguin Guide crown record. A-
- Warren Vaché/Bill Charlap: 2Gether (2000, Nagel-Heyer).
A very intimate piano/trumpet duo, with Vaché and Charlap squarely
in the mainstream, making purty music. Penguin Guide gave it
a crown. A-
- David S. Ware Quartet: Freedom Suite (2002, Aum Fidelity).
Can't do this record justice at this point, but the only doubt about
the grade is that it might be too low. The music starts off from Sonny
Rollins, the length almost doubled because Ware is as voluble as ever.
And the Quartet is well on its way to becoming legendary: Parker and
Shipp have anchored, checked, and increasingly driven Ware since 1991.
A-
Friday, February 21, 2003
In the last 24 hours I've been hit with the same thing from virtually
all sides: America's new enemy is Saudi Arabia. First I read Nicholas
Lemann's post-Iraq fantasy piece in The New Yorker (more on that
in a bit). Then I get a piece of viral (pass-it-along) email that urges
everyone to boycott gas stations that get their oil from middle eastern
countries, with a list of 4-5 companies that are OK, and 4-5 companies
that are not. The argument is that oil money goes to support terrorists.
Then I go to the bookstore and find a new book called Hatred's
Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism, by
an Israeli diplomat named Dore Gold, published by right-wing Henry
Regnery, with back-cover praise by Richard Perle (the DOD "advisor"
who has been pushing Iraq invasion for years, who recently has been
quoted to the effect that the US should also occupy Saudia Arabia's
oil fields). Now I see that Mark Fiore has an
anti-SUV
animation which ends on the note, "America: You
can do your part to get Saudi Arabia moving again".
So that's two shots from the left, and two shots from the right, both
not merely aimed at Saudi Arabia but capitalizing on a pent-up well
of anti-Saudi hatred. The left, of course, has long detested the
Saudis -- royalty, theocracy, misogynists, puppets of US imperialism,
and filthy rich to boot, what's not to dislike? -- and they're mostly
thinking along anti-oil lines, which may not be realistic but at least
has some long-term logic behind it. However, by playing on anti-Saudi
prejudices they're playing into the right wing's hands. The real
question is why has the right wing, which has always been so fond of
royalty, theocracy, misogynists, and imperialist puppets, not to
mention the filthy rich, so soured on the Saudis? I'll hazzard three
guesses here:
- The right wing in America is no longer merely reactionary: it has
become activist, aggressive, offensive; it speaks of revolution, of
effecting profound changes in society, culture, and the political
order. It has, in short, overstepped the line that separates mere
conservatives from Fascists, Nazis, etc.
- The right wing in America has fallen in love with the right wing in
Israel -- in fact, guys like Dore Gold and Richard Perle are almost
completely interchangeable -- with both convinced that their security
and other goals can only be achieved by relentless expessions of raw
power and brute force.
- And then there is old fashioned racism, broken down into simple
us-versus-them so the simple minds that the right wing appeals to
can follow it: the Saudis may be filthy rich, but they're not our
filthy rich, they're Arabs, they're Muslims, they're people who
in the long run we can't trust and will ultimately work against
us. But the new twist is that the right wing has learned to usurp
left wing rhetoric -- think of the anti-abortionists' use of the
civil rights movement model -- which here shows up as our moral
duty to liberate the poor Arabs from their rulers' tyranny and
hatred. (Not that this is all that new-fangled, as anyone familiar
with the phrase "white man's burden" should know.)
The Lemann article interviews a couple of DOD "thinkers" and works
through a couple of documents. One is called "A Clean Break: A New
Strategy for Securing the Realm," which was written in 1996 by a
committee headed by Richard Perle as advice for Benjamin Netanyahu.
This was followed up by a book by David Wurmser (also on Perle's
committee) called Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat
Saddam Hussein. These document spin out a fantasy about how
removing Saddam will spark a series of events which will reshape
the entire political climate of the middle east. This is, of course,
sheer fantasy. For example (from Lemann, p. 76):
One can easily derive from Wurmser's book a crisp series of
post-Saddam moves across the chessboard of the Middle East. The regime
in Iran would either fall or be eased out of power by an alliance of
the radical students and the more moderate mullahs, with the United
States doing what it could to encourage the process. After regime
change, the United States would persuade Iran to end its
nuclear-weapons program and its support for terrorists elsewhere in
the Middle East, especially Hezbollah. Syria, now surrounded by the
pro-American powers of Turkey, the reconfigured Iraq, Jordan, and
Israel, and no longer dependent on Saddam for oil, could be pressured
to coöperate with efforts to clean out Hamas, islamic Jihad, and
Hezbollah. As Syria moved to a more pro-American stand, so would its
client state, Lebanon. That would leave Hezbollah, which has its
headquarters in Lebanon, without state support. The Palestinian
Authority, with most of its regional allies stripped away, would have
no choice but to renounce terrorism categorically. Saudi Arabia would
have much less sway over the United States because it would no longer
be America's only major source of oil and base of military operations
in the region, and so it might finally be persuaded to stop funding
Hamas and Al Qaeda through Islamic charities.
The first thing to note here is that the end-goal of these machinations
is that Israel will be delivered from all violent opposition. Still,
it is naive to think that this might just happen -- since when have
radical students in Iran been pro-American? (I even missed the part
where the mullahs became moderate; my impression is that civil society
in Iran has been inching away from the mullahs as people more and more
just go about their everyday business, in the absence of war and
domestic oppression that can easily be blamed on foreigners, as was
the case when the Shah was in power.) Rather, the probable steps that
this scenario has conveniently left out are: when the US destroys
Iraq this will lead to an increase in anti-American activity all over
the middle east, which runs the risk of pushing one or more Arab states
into the "state sponsors of terrorism" category, which combined with
the universal anti-Arab/anti-Muslim hatred that the right wing is
generating could drive the US into destroying them, until all that
is left in the wake of this destruction is rubble. It's hard not to
suspect that the real goal of this strategy is not the promulgation
of democracy (never more than a codeword for the right) but the
reduction of Arab political power to something below the current
fate of Palestinians under Israeli occupation.
The question arises, then, is this really US policy, or just some
right wing wet dream? Well, the latest word from George W. Bush is,
"For the oppressed people of Iraq, people whose lives we care about,
the day of freedom is drawing near. A free Iraq can be a source of
hope for all the Middle East." Sounds like he's with the program.
I'm reading Joan Didion's Political Fictions while all this
shit is coming down, where she writes (p. 271):
[Robert H.] Bork is worth some study, since it is to him that we owe
the most forthright statements of what might be required to effect "a
moral and spiritual regeneration," the necessity for which has since
entered the talk-show and op-ed ether. Such a regeneration could be
produced, Bork speculated in Slouching Towards Gomorrah, by one
of four events: "a religious revival; the revival of public discourse
about morality; a cataclysmic war; or a deep economic depression."
As this discussion was about Monica Lewinsky and the Clinton
impeachment, we now know that Bork's first two options didn't go far
enough to satisfy the right. So is "cataclysmic war" really the next
card up the right's sleeve? ("Deep economic depression" would surely
follow from such war, but there are other dynamics working on that
front as well. Most immediately, someone should look into what would
happen if the Saudis move their investments from the US to Europe,
etc.; I suspect that the US is more dependent on Saudi Arabia and
the Persian Gulf states for capital returns than for oil.)
I think we really have to start calling into question the putative
morality of people who would throw us into war and depression just
to make a point about religion.
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
Here's a little quote from The Wichita Eagle, under the title
"Electric, gas rate boosts may remain state secrets":
In the name of homeland security, legislators are proposing to keep secret
increases in electric and natural gas rates to pay for utility security
improvements.
A bill expected to pass the state House Utilities Committee this week would
prohibit the Kansas Corporation Commission from telling utility customers
how much they're paying when rates are raised to coverthe cost of the war
on terrorism.
The bill requirse the extra charges "to be unidentifiable on customers'
bills."
Backers of the bill say releasing information on utility security, even
the cost the public will bear for it, would be like giving away secrets
to the enemy.
This goes a step further than the usual scam, which is to inflate costs
to try to ratchet up regulated utility rates. Homeland security is a
marvelous excuse for conflating costs, and the ability to hide them
from public scrutiny is a surefire formula for abuse. The notion that
terrorists would select their targets by analyzing utility rate filings
is in the realm of the absurd: grated, the CIA may have the resources
to think that way, but most crooks would just case the joint, plant a
mole, bribe or blackmail a guard, etc.
But it does go to show that the self-inflicted costs of terrorism keep
growing and growing. One thing that's happening here is that homeland
security has entered into an expensive arms race with its own paranoia,
which is, of course, aided and abetted by anyone who smells a buck in
the deal. Certainly it would be a lot cheaper to just pretend that
terrorism isn't even a problem. It would also make for a more honest
and respectable society. And the evidence that we'd be any less safe
is far from indisputable.
I got a copy of a letter that someone from the Peace and Justice
Kansas group wrote to the Eagle, following a particularly dumb
and nasty set of editorials in the yesterday (including a comment from
Senator John McCain comparing France to a washed-up, wrinkled actress,
a pretty ignorant comment even by McCain's standards). So I started
thinking about making a more succinct point. Here's my letter:
While all the hotheads are complaining about France and Germany
spoiling Bush's war party in Iraq, has anyone stopped to consider
that the aerospace company that so many are pinning their hopes
on to help Wichita recover from this war-induced recession is
Airbus, owned by France and Germany? Or that a big part of the
reason that France and Germany are doing so much better than the
U.S. in this recession is that they haven't been squandering
their wealth on war toys and that they don't have leaders who
start bombing things every time they get piqued.
Maybe Wichitans should start warming up to France and Germany.
I mean, Bombardier and Raytheon don't think we're poor enough
yet to keep working for them, and the more they cut their "costs"
(as in jobs) the more anxious we're going to be for Airbus
to expand here.
By the way, Wichita is in the midst of a mayoral compaign, where
basically everyone is talking about the need to get more businesses
to come to Wichita, while Bombardier (formerly LearJet) threatens
to close their plant here, and Raytheon (formerly Beech) plots to
outsource their work.
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
I heard this from Laura; don't know where she got it, but it may have
been a march chant, but it sounds like a rap couplet to me:
George Bush has lost his mind
Talks about killing all the time
Monday, February 17, 2003
Movie: The Hours. Presumably it would help to actually
know something about Mrs. Dalloway -- what little I know was
gleaned from the movie, and mostly forgotten. Presumably the book
itself fleshes this story out considerably -- again, I haven't read
the book. But it does tighten up a bit in the end; in the meantime
it is mostly marked by stellar acting from a rich and varied cast.
Still, the emptiness and dependence and despondency in the lives of
the three principal characters seems forced, subjected to a thread
of narrative that the evidence doesn't really support. So while we
can applaud the ingenuity of the author(s) and the virtuosity of the
performers, what it has to do with anything is another story. To my
mind, it is just one more proof that whatever life is, it isn't a
work of art. A-
Sunday, February 16, 2003
Music: Starting this week I have 8001 records graded, but the Unrated
list has crept back to 800, a deluge of new acquisitions (not all in
the database yet).
- Craig Armstrong: As If to Nothing (2002, Astralwerks).
Not sure which sect of electronica this piece of orchestral synth
belongs to -- AMG says "trip-hop," but it sounds more like new age
to me. Except when he introduces a beat like industrial, but in the
end the glop prevails: it's not even new age industrial? C
- Art Blakey and the Afro-Drum Ensemble: The African Beat
(1962, Blue Note). The dominant drum, of course, is still Blakey's.
And the other notable voices are two American ringers with Islamic
names, bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik and multireedist Yusef Lateef. By
contrast the Africans are scattered and relatively tame. But there's
nothing really wrong with the experiment, and Blakey and Lateef, in
particular, are having a good day. B+
- Cody Chesnutt: The Headphone Masterpiece (2002, Ready Set
Go!, 2CD). As a soul singer, he's as unique as Swamp Dogg. If the goal
of an artist is to be distinct, he's there. But the record here is at
best a glorious mess: sure, you might be able to reconfigure it as an
A-rated single CD, but you could also reconfigure it as a C-rated
single CD, and it's likely that some of the same songs would be on
both. I presume that the songs with hooks are covers, but I can't
confirm that: the booklet is so full of "I'm giving thanks to be
blessed Creator" and "The Lord is my Shepherd" that it gives me
cooties, and the lack of songwriting credits suggests that it's
all divinely inspired. If so, God's got quite a thing about dick,
the subject of six or eight or a dozen of these pieces. B+
- Marty Ehrlich/Ben Goldberg: Light at the Crossroads
(1996, Songlines). Two clarinets, bass and drums, an intimate set
of mild-mannered avant-jazz. Takes a while to negotiate, but nice.
B+
- Ricky Nelson: The Legendary Masters Series, Volume 1
(1957-60, EMI America). Nelson grew up on TV, in a showbiz family
that went back further than even people in the '50s could recall.
He was well tended to, in some sense as synthetic as Fabian and
Frankie Avalon and all those other teen idols who looked and sang
like clones. But he was better than them, better than Pat Boone,
better than, well, not Buddy Holly, but we're getting closer. The
most striking thing about Nelson was how easy he made it all look;
he was a natural, a guy who could make rockabilly look effortless,
who could put a winsome ballad over, who could make the girls swoon
and not let it go to his head. A
- Rick Nelson: The Best of Rick Nelson, Volume 2
(1956-62, EMI America). Less consistent -- "Summertime" isn't his
kind of song -- but this adds a couple of big hits missing on
Vol. 1, but the obscurities just show off his technique.
In a better world -- i.e., one where we let rock critics program
reissues -- someone could take the better half of this one and
add it to the better two-thirds of Vol. 1 and come up
with a definitive showcase. A-
- Pretenders: Loose Screw (2002, Artemis). I've never
gotten close to a Chrissie Hynde album, never found her easy to
listen to or to care about; she doesn't have a lot of range that
I can discern, the music very consistent from 1980 to present.
And this one has been languishing on the shelf long enough that
I can't claim any great excitement here either, but every time
I notice this record I'm noticing something smart, focused, well
crafted, and sustained effort reveals subtler joys. A-
- Django Reinhardt: Bruxelles 1947/Paris 1951 1952 1953
(1947-53, Musidisc). A rather inconsistent set of late sessions,
most of which venture into be-bop territory, with the customary
sonic degradation. Not uninteresting, but not top of the game
either. B
- Amy Rigby: 18 Again: An Anthology (1996-2000, Koch).
Condensed from three albums that are worth owning whole, this adds
nothing but reminds me just how sharp her songwriting is, and how
tough and resilient a smart woman has to be to keep engaging a world
that damn well ought to appreciate her more. A
- The Rough Guide to Scottish Folk (1978-99, World Music
Network). Seems like a good enough survey, but there's nothing good
enough to seriously tempt me into further exploration. Part of this
may be that they just didn't dig deep enough to find any roots,
which is a shame because you'd think this would be the compilers'
home turf. B
- Steinski: Nothing to Fear: A Rough Mix (2002, Soul Ting).
Not an easy album to get hold of, especially out here in the wheat
chaff. Steinski is a legend I had long heard of but never actually
heard before now: his "The Payoff Mix" was suppressed for lack of
copyright clearances, and the same is/will be likely for this one.
What he does is fairly simple: he lays down fairly straightforward
dance tracks, sometimes constructed with samples (a start-stop-repeat
stutter from "Duke of Earl" kicks things off), topped with speech
fragments (most funny, some odd, all striking). This rolls along
for an hour and is pretty amazing. A-
- Linda Thompson: Fashionably Late (2002, Rounder).
Ex-husband Richard has never been the same without her (although
he put on a heroic front for a few albums); what Linda misses
without him is a little musical muscle and a lot of aggravation.
She refers to this as "Weary Life," and seems at last satisfied
by it, although one senses that lethargy is what made her second
solo album so late. Anglo folk-rock, carefully measured, beautifully
sung, not quite special enough. B+
- Justin Timberlake: Justified (2002, Jive). This is a
confident contempo-soul album, soft, slick, slightly funky, a little
too long not to wear thin, but quite pleasant. Not really a soul man,
but definitely more than a boy toy.B+
Saturday, February 15, 2003
Got a letter from Don Malcolm: having looked over my recent writings,
he requested more movie reviews. The fact is that these days I doubt
that I'd ever see a movie were it not for Laura's persistent lobbying.
But we saw one today, which I wouldn't mind seeing again. So here
goes:
Movie: Talk to Her. The latest by Pedro Almodovar, the
look alone is enough to wow me, and to remind me that aside from Alan
Rudolph he's the only director in recent history who can induce me to
watch his movies more than once. This one reminds me why fiction is
fiction, and why that matters. As a strictly non-fiction guy, I tend
to equate fiction with false, a license to fabricate, to orchestrate,
to hype, to hack; but it's also a way to think about life in a way
that not only breathes life into concept but gives them the autonomy
to go their own way. The set-up here is extraordinarily improbable--two
young women in comas, one attended by a sentimental lover who feels
detached, the other attended by an admirer who becomes more and more
involved. But the set-up is irrelevant, because the movie isn't about
that -- the movie is about caring. And it's not a concept of caring,
nor a metaphor: there's no reason to think that the women, nor the
men, are anything more than the humans they obviously are. A
Later in the day we went to a "flashlight" antiwar demonstration,
downtown on the Douglas Ave. bridge, is nasty frigid weather. I'd
say at least a hundred (probably closer to 150) people showed up,
and we got extra credit on the evening news for the weather. Earlier
in the day there was a larger march in Newton, a town 20+ miles
north of Wichita, with a substantial Mennonite presence. There
seems to be some debate as to whether the march in Newton or one
in Lawrence today was the largest antiwar demonstration in all of
Kansas history.
Friday, February 14, 2003
Every now and then I think of someone who I'd like to build a website
for, to put that person's works into easily accessible order. Today I
pulled out a slim volume of columns by George P. Brockway, Economists
Can Be Bad for Your Health. Then I searched for him on the internet,
as I had several times in the past. I'm shocked and saddened to find
out that Brockway passed away, back on Oct. 9, 2001. Here's a web page
In
Memoriam. As the page says, "We have lost a good man."
The big headine in the paper today reads "Awaiting U.N.'s word", above
which it says "WAR WITH IRAQ APPEARS INEVITABLE", and below "Bush asks
nations to stand firm against Iraq in decision today." Bush is pictured
holding court on a warship (admittedly near Jacksonville, FL). Below
is a second major article, headlined "U.S. troops are already in Iraq".
I find the latter disconcerting, even though Laura tells me that this
is old news. Still, the fact that it's being rolled out today in
advance of the latest Blix disarmament report looks like intimidation
by fait accompli. Even if some U.N. countries buckle under pressure,
this is certain to leave a bitter taste. In fact, the only similar
case of using such threats to gain a diplomatic pass to allow a big
country to invade a small country was Hitler vs. Czechoslovakia in
1937 (i.e., Munich).
Of course, there are differences: that the U.S. does not intend to
permanently occupy Iraq; that there will almost certainly be military
and civilian resistance to U.S. occupation, including the strong
likelihood of a long guerrilla struggle that will ultimately wear
down U.S. resolve to occupy; that the countries who are expected
to knuckle under are not themselves risking war, but that those
same countries are being bullied to become complicit in a war that
threatens vast destruction and many years to come of hatred and
retribution. I've long hated Nazi analogies, but Nazi Germany is
one vivid example of what happens when a supposedly civilized
nation goes over the brink and becomes insatiably hateful and
vengeful. Another example might be Britain's 19th century Opium
Wars against China, which is a classic case of one country forcing
another into a capitulation which ultimately tore Chinese civil
and political society apart. The U.S. "opening" of Japan is yet
another example -- a more "benign" one, apparently, but one which
started Japan down the path to its destruction in WWII. What all
three of these examples in common is the threat (and in two cases
use) of war to intimidate and destabilize other countries, with
complete and callow disregard for the people who live in those
countries.
Sure, it's not hard to convince me that the U.S. is not Nazi Germany --
in particular, we lack and recoil at the everday brutality that the
Nazi SA wrought before and shortly after Hitler's rise to power. But
this does make me wonder how ordinary citizens can tell when and how
their country actually slips over the brink and descends from
civilization to barbarity.
Thursday, February 13, 2003
An item from the Wichita Eagle (Feb. 13, 2003, p. 3C):
A federal judge set a Feb. 23, 2004 trial date for a lawsuit the
[Chicago] Cubs filed. The team contends the rooftop owners violate
copyright laws and directly compete with the club for ticket sales.
The lawsuit seeks compensatory damages and some of the defendant's
profits. The suit also wants the rooftop owners banned from marketing
the Cubs without the team's permission.
The article suggests that there's more to this story, something
having to do with a proposed expansion of the ballpark, which I
suppose could damage the sightlines of the rooftop owners, and
I wouldn't be surprised if there's another frivolous lawsuit to
that effect. Still, this raises a bunch of questions. Most
obviously, how can copyright law apply if there is no copying
involved -- i.e., the rooftop people are seeing the original
performance, not a copy.
What bothers the Cubs seems to be what economists call the "free
rider" problem, which occurs when someone gets something for free
that other people pay for. This happens a lot. A typical example
might be that someone buys a newspaper, reads it for a while, then
leaves it in a public place (e.g., a bus or subway seat) where
someone else can pick it up, read it for a while, then leave it
or discard it. Most businesses just live with such inefficiencies --
publications even factor free riders into their advertising sales
pitch -- but more and more we see businesses thinking of free riders
as negative revenue, and becoming apoplectic over the losses.
One thing that gets lost in this clash of interests is that copyright
law exists in the first place in order to promote copying,
and thereby to promote the creation and dissemination of works of
art. And that the underlying reason is that we as a society and a
culture and a polity are better off having an abundance of publicly
accessible art. However, what we're seeing more and more of is the
use of copyright law to restrict copying and to prevent public use
of art. The music industry is notorious in this regard, a fact that
I am reminded of on hearing Steinski's Nothing to Fear: A Rough
Cut, which is an hour's worth of uncleared beats, samples, and
talk that has been fashioned into a unique listening experience.
That this record is original and creative is abundantly clear, as
is the fact that its previously copyrighted components are owed
no more responsibility for the final product than the wood and
nails and other artifacts Rauschenberg used to compose his pieces.
Speaking of the music industry, a fragment from my
Pazz & Jop Comments has
been published in the Village Voice Pazz & Jop Critics Poll
under the title
Loss
Leaders. One might be tempted to draw the conclusion from this that
I'm full of contempt for the music industry, but actually the feeling
is more like pity. Not pity that they're losing their shirts, but pity
that so many of them lost their souls first. My old-fashioned viewpoint
is that the reason you have an industry is to produce something useful,
which is just a general way of saying that the music industry should
first and foremost be concerned with producing music. (I'm even tempted
to say the obvious, to produce good music.) The same thing is
true of every other industry: you need people who care about the actual
products, not just the bottom line.
However, what's happening across the board is that businesses are
becoming controlled by people whose passionate interest is money
(and perhaps the power that goes with it), and they have been getting
better and better at tuning the system to their own peculiar interests.
The problem with that is that their actions are bleeding the real
industries of their real reason-for-being. I don't mean this as the
usual rant against capitalism. The fact is that there are lots of
forces at work in unfettered capitalism, and finance is just one of
them -- others include customers (consumers), workers (producers),
and various intermediaries -- but power and control is becoming ever
more concentrated in the hands of the money people. Somehow I feel
that we have to start nudging that power back into the hands of the
people who care most about the products, otherwise we all wind up
suffering.
Speaking of MBAs, that's what George W. Bush's degree is in, right?
You'd think we'd start seeing a major backlash against the MBA, based
on Bush's performance. The thing is, much of what is peculiar about Bush
is typical of modern business thinking: he has enormous self-confidence
(the trait that looks like arrogance to outsiders), bordering on sheer
wrecklessness; he's very goal-oriented, and he's rigorous (I'm tempted
to say ruthless) in pursuit of those goals; yet those goals are very
short-term things, and often run substantial long-term risks. This is
quite a departure from presidential norms: politicians instinctively
seek solid ground, rooted in consensus and wary of conflict, but Bush
has managed to take the tiniest political edge and turn it into a
bludgeon. It's hard to believe that his level of political activism
will sit well with a polity that actually seemed to enjoy the stalemate
of the Clinton/Gingrich years.
The other association that Bush has working against himself is sports.
Sports metaphors are rife in business, from the teamwork that subordinates
are expected to show to the hardened determination of champions and the
notion that winning is all that matters. There are lots of problems with
this beyond the obvious excess of testosterone: most basically, that
civilization is not a zero-sum game.
I read a couple of days ago that the U.S. had sent a high level envoy
to the Vatican to get the Pope's support for war against Iraq. Last
time the Pope indulged such fantasies was the Crusades, an event still
remembered in Bin Laden's ugly "Crusaders and Jews" comment. One would
think that Bush would be as leery of the Pope's blessing as he is of
Sharon's assistance, but thus far Bush's main offensive in his war on
Iraq has been against domestic (and European) opposition to his war,
many of whom are Roman Catholic, and his shortsightedness is such that
he can't see how winning this battle might undermine him in the next.
The Pope's blessing might assuage a few Catholics, but it would be a
red carpet invitation to Jihad.
Monday, February 10, 2003
Pazz & Jop Critics Poll is out. One of the main attractions here
is to find things that I didn't know about. Two lists here. The first
are the top-40 finishers that I haven't heard.
- The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
- Missy Elliott: Under Construction
- Queens of the Stone Age: Songs for the Deaf
- Solomon Burke: Don't Give Up on Me
- Elvis Costello: When I Was Cruel
- Interpol: Turn on the Bright Lights
- Norah Jones: Come Away With Me
- Neko Case: Blacklisted
- Sigur Ros: ( )
- 2 Many DJ's: As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2
- Andrew W.K.: I Get Wet
- Super Furry Animals: Rings Around the World
- Scarface: The Fix
- The Doves: The Last Broadcast
- Clinic: Walking With Thee
- Soundtrack of Our Lives: Behind the Music
- Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Those were all among the 108 albums in my "Hyped" list (although I
may have cheated once or twice -- the evidence is pretty much destroyed
at this point). The second list starts from #41 but only includes records
not listed in my "Hyped" list: these are the real marginal surprises
(and I won't bother with the positions, since that's extra and increasingly
uninteresting typing, but I'll add the labels):
- And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead: Source Tags & Codes (Interscope)
- Black Dice: Beaches and Canyons (DFA)
- Nas: God's Son (Columbia)
- Johnny Cash: American IV: The Man Comes Around (American)
- Felix da Housecatt: Kitten and Thee Glitz (Emperor Norton)
- Cassandra Wilson: Belly of the Sun (Blue Note)
- Paul Westerberg/Grandpaboy: Stereo/Mono (Vagrant)
- Caitlin Cary: While You Weren't Looking (Yep Roc)
- Notwist: Neon Golden (City Slang)
- Out Hud: S.T.R.E.E.T. D.A.D. (Kranky)
- Rilo Kiley: The Execution of All Things (Saddle Creek)
- Jurassic 5: Power in Numbers (Interscope)
- Low: Trust (Kranky)
- Donnie: The Colored Section (Giant Step)
- Iron and Wine: The Creek Drank the Cradle (Sub Pop)
- Wire: Read & Burn 01 (Pinkflag)
- Ryan Adams: Demolition (Lost Highway)
- Audioslave (Epic)
- Peter Gabriel: Up (Geffen)
- Lambchop: Is a Woman (Merge)
- Walkmen: Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone (Star Time)
- Radio 4: Gotham! (Gern Blandsten)
- Eels: SoulJacker (DreamWorks)
- Kronos Quartet: Nuevo (Nonesuch)
- Neil Halstead: Sleeping on Roads (4AD)
- Mirah: Advisory Committee (K)
- Hot Hot Heat: Make Up the Breakdown (Sub Pop)
- Bryan Ferry: Frantic (Virgin)
- David Bowie: Heathen (ISO-Columbia)
- Devendra Banhart: Oh Me, Oh My . . . (Young God)
- McLusky: McLusky Do Dallas (Too Pure)
- Tweet: Southern Hummingbird (Elektra)
- Josh Rouse: Under Cold Blue Stars (Rykodisc)
- Soft Boys: Nextdoorland (Matador)
- Nas: The Lost Tapes (Ill Will/Columbia)
- Destroyer: This Night (Merge)
- Hot Snakes: Suicide Invoice (Swaami)
- Nina Nastasia: The Blackened Air (Touch and Go)
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling (Rounder)
- Bobby Bare Jr.: Young Criminals Starvation League (Bloodshot)
- Recloose: Cardiology (Planet E)
- Rush: Vapor Trails (Atlantic)
- Mooney Suzuki: Electric Sweat (Gammon)
- High on Fire: Surrounded by Thieves (Relapse)
- Robert Plant: Dreamland (Universal)
- Chuck Prophet: No Other Love (New West)
- Cornelius: Point (Matador)
- Amon Tobin: Out From Out Where (Ninja Tune)
- Tom Petty: The Last DJ (Warner Bros.)
- Brendon Benson: Lapalco (StarTime International)
- Pere Ubu: St Arkansas (SpinArt)
- Sahara Hotnights: Jennie Bomb (Jetset)
- Elbow: Asleep in the Back (V2)
- Phantom Planet: The Guest (Sony)
- Division of Laura Lee: Black City (Burning Heart/Epitaph)
- Mudhoney: Since We've Beocme Translucent (Sub Pop)
- Oneida: Each One, Teach One (Jagjaguwar)
- Aluminum Group: Happyness (Wishing Tree)
- Guy Clark: The Dark (Sugar Hill)
- Guided by Voices: Universal Truths & Cycles (Matador)
- Underworld: A Hundred Days Off (V2)
- Ruben Blades: Mundo (Sony Latin)
- Hem: Rabbit Songs (Bar/None)
- Mike Ireland: Try Again (Ashmont)
- Negro Problem: Welcome Back (Smile)
- Reigning Sound: Timb Bomb High School (In the Red)
- Blind Boys of Alabama: Higher Ground (RealWorld)
- Kinky: Kinky (Nettwerk)
- Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man: Out of Season (Go! Beat)
- Jazzanova: In Between (Ropeadope)
- Ralph Stanley (DMZ/Columbia)
- Black Heart Procession: Amore del Tropico (Touch and Go)
- Patti Griffin: 1000 Kisses (ATO)
- Primal Scream: Evil Heat (Epic)
- Future Bible Heroes: Eternal Youth (Instinct)
- Coral: The Coral (Sony International)
- Thievery Corporation: The Richest Man in Babylon (ESL)
- Pulp: We Love Life (Koch)
- Tangent 2002: Disco Nouveau (Ghostly International)
- Dalek: From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots (Ipecac)
- Delgados: Hate (Mantra)
- Porcupine Tree: In Absentia (Lava)
- Gomez: In Our Gun (Virgin)
- Michael Mayer: Immer (Kompakt)
- System of a Down: Steal This Album! (Sony/Columbia)
- Dolly Parton: Halos & Horns (Sugar Hill)
- Buddy Miller: Midnight and Lonesome (High Tone)
- Nappy Roots: Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz (Atlantic)
- The Figgs: Slow Charm (Hearbox)
- Christina Aguilera: Stripped (RCA)
- Comet Gain: Réalistes (Kill Rock Stars)
- The Mendoza Line: Lost in Revelry (Misra)
- Saint Etienne: Finistere (Mantra)
- Radar Brothers: And the Surrounding Mountains (Merge)
- Nickel Creek: This Side (Sugar Hill)
- 8 Mile (Interscope)
- Floetry: Floetic (DreamWorks)
- Immortal: Sons of Northern Darkness (Nuclear Blast)
- Quix*o*tic: Mortal Mirror (Kill Rock Stars)
- Lone Pigeon: Concubine Rice (Domino)
- Snoop Dogg: Paid Tha Cost to Be Da Boss (Priority)
- Boom Selection_Issue 01 (Boom Selection)
- Consonant (Fenway)
- Joi: Star Kitty's Revenge (Universal)
- Bad Religion: The Process of Belief (Epitaph)
- David Cross: Shut Up You Fucking Baby! (Sub Pop)
- David Gray: A New Day at Midnight (ATO/RCA)
- Godspeed You Black Emperor: Yanqui UXO (Constellation)
- Rasputina: Cabin Fever! (Instinct)
- Comets on Fire: Field Recordings From the Sun (Ba Da Bing)
- Richard Buckner: Impasse (Overcoat)
- Morelenbaum/Sakamoto 2: Casa (Sony)
- Faith Hill: Cry (Warner Bros.)
- Isis: Oceanic (Ipecac)
- Pearl Jam: Riot Act (Epic)
- Susan Tedeschi: Wait for Me (Tone-Cool)
- Billy Joe Shaver: Freedom's Child (Compadre)
- Gogol Bordello: Multi Kontra Culti Vs. Irony (Rubric)
- Woven Hand: S/T (Glitterhouse)
- Angelique Kidjo: Black Ivory Soul (Columbia)
- Santana: Shaman (Arista)
- 25 Suaves: 1938 (Bulb)
- The Distillers: Sing Sing Death House (Hellcat)
- Playgroup (Astralwerks)
- Robert Randolph & the Family Band: Live at the Wetlands (Warner Bros.)
- The Hives: Your New Favorite Band (Poptones)
- Lifter Puller: Soft Rock (Self-Starter Foundation)
- Roman Candle: Says Pop (Outlook)
- Starsailor: Love Is Here ()
- ESG: Step Off (Soul Jazz)
- Mark Timony: The Golden Dove (Matador)
- Orthrelm: 2nd18/04 Norildivoth Crallos-Lomrixth Urthiln (Three.One.G)
- 90 Day Men: To Everyone (Southern)
- Jorma Kaukonen: Blue Country Heart (Columbia)
- Casino Vs. Japan: Whole Numbers Play the Basics (Carpark)
- The Tragically Hip: In Violet Light (Zoe/Rounder)
- The Greenhornes: Dual Mono (Telstar)
- Bigger Lovers: Honey in the Hive (Yep Roc)
- Idlewild: The Remote Part (Parlophone)
- Koop: Waltz for Koop (Quango/Palm)
- Six Organs of Admittance: Dark Noontide (Holy Mountain)
- Sparta: Wiretap Scars (DreamWorks)
This gets us down through #280. The next 40 have three records that
I have (Apples in Stereo, Elvis Presley, Alan Jackson) and two on
the "Hyped" list (William Parker, Playgroup). #321-#360 has two in
hand (Neil Young, Kimya Dawson) and three "Hyped" (Patricia Barber,
Chemical Brothers, Paulina Rubio); #361-#400 has two in hand (Hank
Williams III, Warren Zevon), one "Hyped" (Ms. Dynamite). So from
here on out we'd basically be retyping the list.
Sunday, February 09, 2003
Music: Closing in on 8000 records rated.
- The Howard Alden Trio: Your Story -- The Music of Bill Evans
(1994, Concord). I don't have any sense for the Bill Evans songbook --
clearly he was a major figure, but it's never been all that clear to me
just what he did or why it matters, and I certainly couldn't recognize
any of these eleven Evans compositions. Still, Alden's guitar has much
of the charm and intricacy of Evans' piano, and "special guest" Frank
West warms the trio up with tenor sax and flute. Alden's easy swing has
always made him one of the best of the Concord guitarists, but this has
an engaging intimacy and good cheer that sets it apart. A-
- Beck: Sea Change (2002, Interscope). I liked Beck's
ersatz soul album Midnite Vulture better than many critics,
and I thought his layered synth on the Hank Williams Timeless
tribute was just find, but this set of sub-Hank sad songs under
layered synth is rarely more than pretty, and usually a lot less
than poignant. B-
- Colombia (1981-2000, Putumayo World Music). I give this
a slight edge over Rough Guide to Cumbia, mostly on sonic
brightness and the abundance of hooks, which I understand is because
this is not strictly a cumbia compilation. Some day I'll figure out
what that means. A-
- Kimya Dawson: I'm Sorry That Sometimes I'm Mean (2002,
Rough Trade). Neoteny is a theory that species can evolve by
systematically retarding the transformation to adulthood in many
respects. Human beings are a good example: juvenile human beings
resemble juvenile apes much more closely than do their adult versions,
and the extension and retention of juvenile characteristics, such as
play and learning, goes far toward explaining the evolutionary leap
from ape to human being. But neoteny cannot work across the board:
sexual reproduction is still necessary to survival, so the corrolary
to neoteny is the juvenilization of sex. If there is a unifying theme
to this album, it might as well be neoteny: how else do you make sense
of what is essentially a children's album with a "Parental Advisory"
sticker? Ever since I first played this, I've found it uncomfortable:
she sings as plain as Moe Tucker, with backing vocals from tuneless
kids and their even more monotonic toys; the songs are devoid of wit
or innuendo or anything even remotely smacking of sophistication;
the music is barely even there. But what's really unsettling is its
juvenility -- the sense that everything is new and fresh. I've never
bought the notion that good rock & roll should (let alone has to)
be dangerous, but this is. A-
- Christy Doran/John Wolf Brennan: Henceforward (1989,
Leo Lab). Doran plays guitar; Brennan plays piano. Both are well-regarded
in the Penguin Guide, and this was just a record that I ran across
in a used store, and figured why not check 'em out. Turns out it's quite
a record, the major revelation being how complementary Doran's guitar
sound is to Brennan's piano and "prepared strings." Indeed, I wouldn't
be surprised if Doran hasn't done something funny to his strings, but
the odd tunings work because the music has so much rhythmic force.
A-
- Kahil El'Zabar/Billy Bang: Spirits Entering (2001,
Delmark). El'Zabar is a Chicago-based percussionist who tries to
bridge between AACM jazz and transafrican world music: his records
are invariably interesting but how good they are depends much on
his guests du jour. David Murray elevated my favorite-to-date, but
here Billy Bang comes in a respectable second. A-
- Tift Merritt: Bramble Rose (2002, Lost Highway). She
sounds great: finely twanged voice, nice guitar, deft country that
is just a bit trad. Unfortunately, when I notice her songs (which
is sort of the point in this music) I'm more likely to smirk or
scoff than smile bemusedly. I've always said that writers can
learn to play, but players can't learn to write. I'm not sure
that she's hopeless, but I am sure that she's not there yet. At
least when I don't pay too much attention, she sounds great. B
- George Mraz: Morava (2000, Milestone). Mraz is one of
the world's great bassists, and perhaps the greatest pleasure of
this album is listening to him solo. But not even Mingus made albums
out of his own bass playing, and so the focus here is on Moravian
songs, played by pianist Emil Viklicky and sung by Zuzana Lapcikova.
They are slow, stately, plaintive, thoughtfully played, beautifully
rendered. B+
- Elvis Presley: 30 #1 Hits (1956-76, RCA). This album
features UK as well as US chart positions: the first 10 were #1 US,
12 of the remaining 20 were #1 UK but not #1 US, including a song
partly in German that didn't chart (was it even released?) here.
(Although also note that only 5 songs were cut after 1963; Elvis
the rocker was doomed from the moment Frank Sinatra welcomed him
back from Germany.) Thus the balance shifts from '50s rockabilly to
'60s schlock, and in turn the focus changes: this Elvis is really
just a singer, a pretty great singer, who takes arbitrary songs and
molds them into consummate performances. Oh, and I think the bonus
remix is terrific: the king is dead, long live the king! A
- Public Enemy: Revolverlution (1989-2002, Koch). Hard
beats, hard agitprop. Some of this is old, some new, some just dated.
"Son of a Bush" fits the latter category: not that it's been diminished
by events, just that it's now too short. After all, he's not just "the
son of a bad man" anymore. A-
- The Rough Guide to Cumbia (World Music Network). This
has a couple of dull spots, but is another good cumbia collection.
B+
- Tomasz Stanko: From the Green Hill (1998, ECM). Too
atmospheric, perhaps. It takes a while to sort out the textures,
and it takes patience to just let it envelop you, but there is a
payoff in the end. The textures themselves are mostly the work of
Dino Saluzzi's banoneon, which John Surman elaborates and Stanko
embellishes. B+
- Toots & the Maytals: 54-46 Was My Number: Anthology
1964-2000 (Sanctuary/Trojan, 2CD). This isn't career-spanning:
the one 2000 remake that closes is the only thing cut after 1974. So
properly this predates Island's fine Time Tough anthology,
with duplication from the classic singles that Island rounded up
for Toots' US debut in 1973, Funky Kingston -- redundancy
you can always deal with. This also misses the earliest 1963-64
singles (although the notes provide an extensive 1963-74 singles
discography). The early cuts are cloudy soundwise, and it took a
while for Toots to emerge from and dominate the trio (these records
were credited to "The Maytals"), but by the start of the second
disc (the title cut) this is clearly Toots' show. While the first
disc is rough, the second is classic. A-
- Tuck & Patti: Paradise Found (1998, Windham Hill).
A first, and by no means definitive, taste: a duo, husband/wife,
guitar/vocal, white/black, filed under jazz, from a label better
known for new age, but both artists tout classical training. The
music is as intimate as their cover art, and I rather fancy Tuck's
melt-in-your-mouth guitar, but Patti's voice varies between Joni
Mitchell (without anguish) and Nine Simone (without gravitas),
leaving an overall impression of empty and mannered. Or maybe
they just look too happy? B-
- Paul Whiteman: Greatest Hits (1920-28, Collector's Choice).
The first time I heard of him I figured him for a joke; now I wonder
whether at the time his audience even caught the irony. One of the
biggest names of the Jazz Age, yet he bears little resemblance to any '20s
jazz musician that we actually still listen to today, nor does he do much
for his most famous singer, Bing Crosby (who sings on two cuts here, in
what is mostly an instrumental album). But what we have here is rather
carefully constructed big band music, with a dab of jazz coloring and
a slight ambition toward classicism (only fully indulged in his famous
Gershwin piece). Even in a world unswung by Count Basie, this hardly
qualifies as hot, or even danceable, but in its middlebrow ambitions
you can see that what made it popular wasn't that it was made by the
white guy -- it was what white America naively aspired to. B
Sunday, February 02, 2003
Music:
- Nat Adderley: That's Right! (1960, Riverside OJC). The
group here backs Nat with five saxophones (Yusef Lateef also brought
his flute and oboe along), but (aside from Lateef's atmospherics)
none distinguish themselves: the whole thing is awash in section
play and harmonic overtones, which distract from Nat's own fine
playing. Busy, busy. B
- Nat Adderley: Little Big Horn (1963, Riverside OJC).
Co-credited to the Junior Mance Trio and guest guitarists Kenny
Burrell and Jim Hall (who play on alternate tracks, not together):
pretty easy to put together a first class group with so much talent
around. The flavor is hard bop, but the pianist and the guitarists
like to show off their considerable chops, and Nat can take a slow
one with Jim Hall (the slower and prettier of the guitarists) and
wax eloquent. A-
- Paul Bley / Jimmy Giuffre / Steve Swallow: The Life of a Trio:
Saturday (1989, Owl). This music isn't difficult so much as
it just takes patience: it seems in fact unnaturally slow, but it's
also spacious, with Bley and Giuffre feeling their way around vast
spaces with nothing particularly memorable to mark their way. B+
- Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis: Light and Lovely (1977, Black
& Blue). A fine mainstream session -- Davis was always a solid
player, and the presence of Sweets Edison here is an added treat.
B+
- Franco: The Very Best of the Rumba Giant of Zaire
(1956-87, Manteca). Sorting through the half-dozen or so almost
random Franco discs in my library isn't easy -- comparisons to
James Brown suggests that differentiation isn't his strong point,
but also that repetition just makes him all the more irresistible.
The only thing this career-spanning compilation shares with Rough
Guide's career-spanning compilation is the ineluctable finale,
"Attention Na SIDA," a stern warning against the disease that did
him in recited over a piece of music as lovely as anything on
Omona Wapi. This comp has a slight edge: for one thing
it's longer. A+
- Franco: 1972 / 1973 / 1974 (Sonodisc). One of a dozen
or more slices of Franco's career that Sonodisc has released. I
find them all uniformly good, frequently borderline great. Wish
I could discriminate better, but considering that the compilers
probably cut 6-8 albums down for this selection, maybe they're
pretty good at discriminating. Or maybe it doesn't matter. But
the more time I spend with this one, the more extraordinary it
sounds. A
- Clifford Hayes and the Dixieland Jug Blowers (1927-28,
Yazoo). Hayes played violin, while Earl McDonald played jug, Cal
Smith banjo/guitar, and Hense Grundy trombone -- that's the core
lineup for fourteen scratchy tunes that sound more jazz than blues,
but come out of a primitive interstice where the distinction hardly
matters. Unlike the Memphis Jug Band, there's not consistent vocal
feel here (five vocals, three singers). And the primitivism doesn't
stop when the piano is taken over by one Earl Hines. Tough call.
B+
- Steve Kuhn: Years Later (1992, Concord). Pretty good
piano trio. B+
- Peter Leitch: Trio / Quartet '91 (1991, Concord). This
seems about par for Leitch, Concord, and post-Montgomery jazz guitarists
the world over. John Swana plays trumpet/flugelhorn on occasion, but
even there the guitar runs dominate. B
- Furry Lewis: Shake 'Em on Down (1961, Fantasy). Delta
bluesman with guitar. Cut a few sides in the '20s, then was rediscovered
around 1960. Like Mississippi John Hurt, who he resembles a bit, and
Son House, who he doesn't resemble at all. Like Hurt, what makes him
(or at least this set) compelling is a certain inner calmness, although
he never manages the clarity that Hurt achieves so effortlessly. Still,
a good set. B+
- Kirk Lightsey: Everything Is Changed (1986, Sunnyside).
This is the only thing I have in Lightsey's name, although he shows
up on many fine records in the avant-garde-meets-the-tradition spectrum.
These are mostly bop-era pieces -- Parker, Monk, J.J. Johnson -- and
the take on "Billie's Bounce" is revelatory: Jerry Gonzalez plays the
riff and improvs on thin (muted?) trumpet, much in the Parker mold,
but Lightsey is working something different on piano -- more abstract,
free even. The following piece is a change-of-pace ballad, but the
juxtaposition (as opposed to the interplay) of Gonzalez and Lightsey
sets the pace. A very engaging little record. A-
- The Mountain Goats: Tallahassee (2002, 4AD). Today's
generation of singer-songwriters are shier than their predecessors
back in the '70s, or at least they take pains to make their auteurship
more inscrutable. This guy reminds me whoever that guy behind the
Magnetic Fields is: here we have fourteen more love songs (more or
less), minimal rock in the service of words that don't wear out.
Just when I was thinking that auteurs were so depassé. A-
- Charlie Poole: The Legend of Charlie Poole, Vol. 3
(1926-30, County). I'm coming to view Poole as the great white
songster of the period -- maybe not as interesting as Jimmie
Rodgers, but he does a better job of framing and performing a
song, and that says quite a bit. County has three volumns of
his work, and if anything they get better. A
- The Rough Guide to the Music of Hawaii (World Music
Network). I've never thought of myself as being particularly fond
of Hawaiian music. (Two Raymond Kane albums in the database, the
better one a B+.) But few of these twenty cuts come short of delighting
me, even the stuff that sounds a little like Peter Paul & Mary,
even the most unswinging "St. Louis Blues" ever recorded. The latter
was recorded c. 1927, and most of this is on the old side (why can't
they provide the discography?). A-
- Radio Tarifa: Cruzando el Rio (2001, World Circuit/Nonesuch).
This is a folk-pop group from the south of Spain, with a strong interest
in Moroccan roots dating back to pre-Inquisition Andalusia. It's a mixed
bag, and I can't claim that I particularly understand it. But on the
whole it is a listenable record, with moments that command attention.
A subject for further research: maybe someday they'll make an album
that forces the issue. B+
- Wayne Shorter: Footprints Live! (2002, Verve). This
emerged as the consensus jazz album of the year, yet it seems rather
slight, at least in concept: old Shorter compositions, young acoustic
band, live performance. Shorter's sound, which has always tended to
come off light, seems strained, tortured, fragile. Yet the effect
is one of constantly building and releasing tension, spread out over
the broad spaces carved up by the rhythm section, especially Danilo
Perez's piano. Which is indeed impressive, albeit not the jazz album
of the year. A-
- Robert Wilkins: The Original Rolling Stone (1928-35,
Yazoo). Another easy-rolling delta bluesman, neither as light nor
as grave as John Hurt or Furry Lewis, more in the songster tradition.
B+
Saturday, February 01, 2003
Movie: The Pianist. Based on a true story -- no point trying
to make up stuff like this. The history is familiar; what's unique is how
individuals try to navigate it. A-
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Jan 2003 |
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