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Wednesday, March 28, 2007
The Myths of Superpowerdom
Tom Engelhart has an interesting and rather disturbing
piece
on the latest polls on the Iraq war. At this point, opposition to the
Iraq war is, at least in terms of polls, as strong as opposition ever
was to the Vietnam war, but the antiwar mobilization is far weaker.
Here's his summary:
The Iraq demobilization, then, is certainly part of a larger
demobilization, a deeper belief that, as Bill Moyers made vividly
clear in a recent speech, your vote doesn't matter; that democracy is
a-functional; that none of this has anything to do with you, or your
ballot, or your feet, or your sign, or your shout.
Our world has changed radically since the Vietnam era. Today, an
increasing part of what matters in public life (and work life) has
been "privatized" and subcontracted out, or simply outsourced. The
U.S. military has essentially been subcontracted out to small-town and
immigrant or green-card America -- to, that is, the forgotten or
ignored places in our land; as a result, for most people in draft-less
America, the war is not part of our lives or that of our
children. (The draft itself has been carefully kept off the table by
the Bush administration, despite the desperation of a body-hungry,
overstretched military.) In addition, war-fighting has been outsourced
to private corporate contractors who deliver the mail and the fuel, do
KP, wash the laundry, build the bases, and, in the case of tens of
thousands of rent-a-cop mercenaries, do some of the guarding,
fighting, and interrogating in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And yes, the political system has increasingly been subcontracted
out, with malice aforethought, to thieves, looters, cronies, and
absolute dopes. Little wonder that Americans, living through the Age
of Enron, scanning the horizon from Iraq to New Orleans to Walter Reed
Army Medical Center, and watching Halliburton head for Dubai,
generally believe their system no longer works; that those high-school
civics texts are a raging joke (that, in fact, fierce joking, à la Jon
Stewart, is the only reasonable response to the extreme, roiling
absurdity of this administration as well as our world); and that, if
you took to the streets of the capital, no one in either party would
be paying the slightest attention.
No wonder Americans have arrived at a series of striking
conclusions on Iraq, but haven't done much about them.
Of course, this goes further than demobilization. This is part
and parcel of a disengagement from politics at all levels -- or at
least from progressive politics, by which I mean politics aiming
at advancing the spread of equal rights throughout the populace.
For a couple of centuries one could see that advance as inevitable
progress, but something happened to it. Coincidentally, one started
talking about postmodernism, as if modernity had hit a brick wall
and could progress no more.
In many ways that brick wall was the Vietnam war. The problem
there wasn't that the US lost the war, let alone deserved to lose
the war. The problem was that the war's promoters managed to hang
on to power -- not in Vietnam, but in Washington, where they would
eventually turn the war into myths that led directly to Iraq. In
classic shoot-the-messenger mode, they sought to pin their defeat
on on the antiwar movement: to characterize the loss in Vietnam
as a loss of will in America. To do that they had to turn against
democracy: they needed to show us that protest doesn't work, that
they can hold onto power regardless of the polls. They could do
that in large part because the anti-communist consensus dominated
both parties, allowing no opposition. Eventually, their efforts
jelled into mythology, which had the remarkable effect of moving
politics out of the real world and into fantasy. Just in the nick
of time, too, given that US power in the world was slipping, as
was the lot of most working Americans.
Ultimately that leads to the current state, where the problems
are obvious and even the solutions are obvious but no politicians
can face up to the obvious because they've all been selected for
their skills in navigating the mythic world of US superpowerdom.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Music: Current count 13000 [12975] rated (+25), 834 [834] unrated (+0).
Hit a major round number milestone this week. Actually surprised to have
pulled in +25 this week -- didn't seem all that productive. Working on
Recycled Goods. Having replaced March's column with a greatest hits stop
gap, I had quite a bit of backlog going into April, and that's grown to
80 at this point. Almost two column's worth, so I can hold back a bunch
and not get pinched by May. I could use a couple of relatively slack
months to get some long-postponed work done.
- Introducing Nat Adderley (1955 [2001], Verve):
Fine introduction, in a quintet with older brother Julian, Horace
Silver, Paul Chambers, and Roy Haynes. Appealing hard bop, bright
trumpet. B+
- Count Basie: Kansas City Powerhouse (Bluebird's Best)
(1929-49 [2002], Bluebird): The label goes with what it's got, which
in this case means Benny Moten's Kansas City Orchestra in 1929-32 with
Basie on piano and pretty much in the driver's seat plus some 1947-49
sessions. The former were formerly available in a full CD called Basie
Beginnings, worth searching for. The latter is transitional, with
some great solos like the '30s band and some sharp arranging -- final
track, "Blee Blop Blues," sounds downright New Testament. One Jimmy
Rushing track.
B+
- Georg Graewe, Ernst Reijseger, Gerry Hemingway: The View
From Points West (1991 [1994], Music & Arts): Interesting
group -- a later album, Saturn Cycle, by the same trio is a
personal favorite -- but this one is hard to hear. Long stretches
of quiet, or faint squeaks of cello, and generally not enough piano,
although the leads are captivating. Hemingway, too. B+(*)
- Billie Holiday: The Commodore Master Takes (1939-44
[2000], Polygram): Four sessions, four cuts each, starting with "Strange
Fruit" and ending "On the Sunny Side of the Street." Extraordinary
singer, but you know that. On the other hand, the bands didn't offer
much, especially compared to the earlier sessions with Teddy Wilson
and a plethora of stars, or the later ones under Norman Granz. Is
Lem Davis your idea of an alto saxophonist? So this isn't essential,
and not for completists either, given the alternative of the 2-CD
The Complete Commodore Recordings padded out with all the
scraps. B+
- Matisyahu: Youth (2006, JDub/Epic): Your basic
Hasidic reggae-copping hip-hopper: a concept more intriguing in
theory than in fact, mostly because the standard issue beats
marshall the words past you before they have a chance to sink
in -- or maybe they just lack the weight, given that G-d can
be trivial as well as profound. B
- John Phillips (John the Wolfking of L.A.) (1970
[2006], Varèse Sarabande): The Mamas and the Papas go solo, down
to one papa, shorn of the pomp and fluff the group ran on when
the hits thinned out, with a bit of roots to match the stubble
of his beard; more promising than the his non-career delivered,
padded with eight bonus tracks. B+(**)
- Jill Scott: Beautifully Human (2004, Hidden Beach):
Been playing Mary J. Blige and thinking about whatever it is that
makes post-1990 soul music sound so much less appealing than the
older stuff -- even stuff from the '80s which is oft transitional.
For a while I was thinking that Scott is significantly better than
that, but further listening reveals some of the tics that turn me
off Blige and others. Scott's edge, like Macy Gray's, is that she's
more of an auteur -- she pushes her stories harder. Also, she's
not out to impress you with church roots. B+(***)
- Zoot Sims: That Old Feeling (1956 [1995], Chess):
Two sessions recorded late in 1956, released originally as Zoot
on Argo and Zoot Sims Plays Alto, Tenor, and Baritone on ABC,
omitting two tracks from the latter. Both are quartets with John
Williams (piano), Knobby Totah (bass), and Gus Johnson (drums), with
Sims overdubbing horn section parts on the latter. As a young player,
Sims managed to stradle bop and swing without ever getting rutted in
either. That may not have qualified him as an innovator, but he was
a damn impeccable craftsman, as even the overdubs show. A-
- Tierney Sutton: Something Cool (2002, Telarc):
Jazz singer with a piano trio for backup and an interesting mix
of standards. Two Patsy Cline songs and a latin-tinged "Comes Love"
are the most immediately appealing. The title song takes more work,
but comes out acceptably. B+(*)
- Teddybears: Soft Machine (2006, Big Beat/Atlantic):
Three Swedes craft catchy beats behind guest vocalists, the best
known/most obvious being Iggy Pop and Neneh Cherry -- the latter
has the choice cut, the former the odd song out, but it holds up
anyway. Other cuts are subtler. A-
- Vieux Farka Toure (2006 [2007], World Village):
Don't know if the name is given -- who in their right mind would name
a son "old man"? -- but judging from the music it is well earned: the
second coming of Ali Farka Toure's desert blues, moderated by the
more intricate sound of Toumani Diabaté's kora, with a bit of the
father's last guitar patched in as if passing a baton. B+(***)
- Lucinda Williams: West (2007, Lost Highway): Doesn't
sound like she's enjoying herself. Still one helluva songwriter. A-
Jazz Prospecting (CG #13, Part 3)
Jazz Consumer Guide #12 came out last week, under the title
"No Training Wheels Necessary" -- thanks to Rob Harvilla for
that, and for taking a light hand during what could have been
a very arduous editing period. I felt a little frustration in
featuring long-time faves Molvaer and Vandermark as Pick Hits,
but none of the others managed to beat them out. The rest of
the A-list is more varied, as are the Honorable Mentions. I
have so much stuff left over that I should be able to push a
good case for a two-month cycle, but this week has gone into
the more pressing Recycled Goods deadline. Accordingly, what
follows as Jazz Prospecting was really fallout from Recycled
Goods. The latter is in pretty good shape now -- should be
done in a couple of days, and posted nearly on schedule.
I've done all the requisite website cleanup for ending JCG
moved to the notebook. I'm carrying 12 reviews over from JCG
file has another 135 records -- 53 prospected but put back for
further listening, 82 unheard (or at least unprospected). Of
course, those numbers were already obsoleted by today's mail,
but that gives you a rough idea of the starting point.
I should also note that the
ratings database has hit
the 13000 album mark.
Funky Organ: B3 Jazz Grooves (1997-2006 [2007],
High Note): The packaging and the concept reminds me of those
compilations Joel Dorn threw out to expedite the recycling of
the Muse catalog on his later, now defunct 32 Jazz label. They
represented recycling at its crassest -- arbitrary compilations
sold purely as mood music, but they sold well enough (and were
profitable enough) that Savoy Jazz has kept many (most?) of the
titles in print. The connection is all the more obvious given
that Dorn bought Muse from Joe Fields, who went on to start the
catalogues plundered here. At least there's no attempt to pump
up the historical significance: these records aren't meant for
people who hope to learn something, even on a subject as trivial
as late-'90s soul jazz. The Hammond was funkier in the late '50s
and '60s when soul jazz developed out of r&b, and it's been
increasingly rote ever since -- a staple crop of minor interest.
Even within its limits High Note doesn't exactly have a command
of the market: past-prime Charles Earland and Reuben Wilson,
minor newcomers Bill Heid and Mike LeDonne, two generations of
DeFrancescos.
B
Jazz After Midnight (1998-2006 [2007], High Note):
Well, no, this is recycling at its crassest. I suppose it's
inevitable that "after midnight" translates to ballads, but that
doesn't explain the choice of flute (James Spaulding) and organ
(Mike LeDonne, Joey DeFrancesco). Indeed, the organ pieces will
never be taken for funky. Aside from those low points, there are
worthwhile cuts -- especially the opener by Houston Person and
the closer by Fathead Newman. Note that both came from better
albums, even though neither made my A-list.
B-
Ornette Coleman: To Whom Who Keeps a Record (1959-60
[2007], Water): Odds and sods, released Japan-only in 1975 but not in
the US until boxed for Beauty Is a Rare Thing: The Complete Atlantic
Recordings. Starts with an outtake from Change of the Century
with Don Cherry on pocke trumpet, Charlie Haden on bass, Billy Higgins
on drums; filled out with leftovers from This Is Our Music with
Ed Blackwell replacing Higgins. At this point this sounds so typical
of the classic Coleman quartet that it's hard to wax ecstatic and
impossible to fault. Art of the Improvisers and Twins
picked over the same sessions first; it's hard to figure why these
cuts were passed over, unless it's the relative prominence of Cherry.
A-
Ray Charles/The Count Basie Orchestra: Ray Sings, Basie
Swings (2006, Concord/Hear Music): First, let's clear this
gripe away: Concord has dropped or fumbled me off their mailing
list. I don't know whether that's accidental or deliberate. Don't
know whether citing Chick Corea and Taylor Eigsti as duds has a
thing to do with it, or they just don't care that Scott Hamilton
has two A- albums and an Honorable Mention to his credit. Maybe
it's both malevolence and incompetence, as suggested by one of the
company's exes who described Concord as "the Bush Administration
of the record industry." So, despite asking for this several times,
and having been promised it at least once, I'm listening to it
courtesy of the Wichita Public Library. As for the record, the
first thing to point out is that it is a case of fraud: Charles
never recorded with Count Basie; Charles's vocals were lifted
from an undated live tape, most likely from the late '70s; the
arrangements were newly recorded by the Basie ghost band, now
directed by Bill Hughes, 22 years after the Count passed away,
and for that matter two years after the singer died. The second
thing is that it sounds pretty near-great, passably realizing
its "what if" concept. Two reasons for this: first, Charles
himself sounds great, even if pieces like "The Long and Winding
Road" and "Look What They've Done to My Song" aren't up snuff;
second, the Basie-trademarked arrangements were fit to the vocals
with a smartness that never would have occurred to them live. It
also helps that originating as a live concert Charles recycles
some dependable warhorses. Docked a couple of stars for fraud.
I could have gone deeper, but don't want you to think I prefer
Genius Loves Company.
B+(*)
Jaki Byard: Sunshine of My Soul (1978 [2007], High
Note): Solo piano, recorded live at Keystone Korner in San Francisco.
Nothing strikes me as new or particularly interesting here, but I'm
not much of a fan of solo anything. That said, Byard has a strong
presence, and he expertly works his way around a broad songbook --
including a Mingus medley, "Spinning Wheel," "Besame Mucho," a bit
of boogie woogie. Don't know how this compares to his other solo
albums, like the early Blues for Smoke (1960) or the later
At Maybeck (1991), both well regarded.
B+(*)
Zoot Sims: Zoot Suite (1973 [2007], High Note):
Grew up in a vaudeville family, picked up the tenor sax, and made
a name for himself with Benny Goodman and Woody Herman, emerging
as one of the latter's legendary "four brothers" sax section. On
his own, his discography splits into two chunks: he recorded a lot
in the late '50s, with 1956 a bellweather year (cf. Zoot!),
but he faded in the '60s, with nothing between 1966-72. Norman
Granz brought him back in 1975 for Zoot Sims and the Gershwin
Brothers, where his distinct tone and innate sense of swing
reinvigorated the whole songbook, and kicked off a marvelous run
until he succumbed to cancer a decade later. This poorly recorded
archival tape leads into the latter period, one of the few great
second acts in jazz history. The quartet with pianist Jimmy Rowles,
bassist George Mraz, and drummer Mousey Alexander is in gear. The
songbook looks back to Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, and Sims' main
influence, Lester Young. Sims even unveils his soprano sax "Rocking
in Rhythm." Not exactly history being made; more like one of those
faint tremors the significance of which emerges later.
B+(**)
And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further
listening the first time around.
The Microscopic Septet: Seven Men in Neckties: History
of the Micros Volume One (1982-90 [2006], Cuneiform, 2CD):
Long before Sex Mob, this was the sound of New York's avant-garde
yearning to be popular. The Micros matched a sax quartet led by
Philip Johnston on alto and soprano with a rhythm section led by
pianist Joel Forrester. Both leaders were clever, writing a little
and appropriating a lot. Johnston trod on after the Micros' demise
with groups like Big Trouble, the Transparent Quartet, and Fast 'N'
Bulbous, while making ends meet by hacking film scores. The Penguin
Guide sums him up aptly: "the perfect Tzadik artist: intellectual,
playful, perverse and generically undefinable." That could also
describe Tzadik honcho John Zorn, but Francis Davis adds that
Johnston's is "a kinder, gentler postmodernism." Unfortunately,
the abundant good humor lacks a killer punch line.
B+(*)
The Microscopic Septet: Surrealistic Swing: History of
the Micros Volume Two (1981-90 [2006], Cuneiform, 2CD):
Comparisons to the Lounge Lizards were inevitable, but Philip
Johnston points out: "When the Lounge Lizards wore suits and
ties they looked cool and hip and aloof; when the Micros wore
suits and ties, we looked like a bunch of unemployed vacuum
cleaner salesmen." Volume One's Seven Men in Neckties
title reflects the dissheveled eclecticism of their first two
albums. Volume Two's title, referring to the music rather than
the musicians, suggests that they found themselves, and indeed
they finally hit their stride in 1986's Off Beat Glory.
Postmodernism can mean distance from the past, as with the
Lounge Lizards, or it can take a playfully perverse turn by
diving back into a past shorn of its historical bindings and
context. Still, their limits are literal: you can conjure up
a pretty good idea of what surrealistic swing might sound like
even before you play this fine example.
B+(**)
Friday, March 23, 2007
The Meritocracy
Before we were so rudely interrupted, I had a Tony Karon quote
flagged that I meant to turn into a posting. I finally got back to
digging through his blog and
recovered it.
Like so much having to do with Iraq, it hasn't lost any relevancy:
The U.S. media with very few exceptions enabled the catastrophic
war in Iraq by its failure to challenge the core assumptions on which
the march to war was based -- assumptions which were patently false --
patently, that is, for anyone daring to break with a nationalist
consensus fueled by demagogues in the Administration and among the
neocon and "liberal hawk" talking heads (Yes, folks, the Tom Friedmans
and Peter Beinarts and George Packers are every bit as responsible for
enabling this moral and political disaster as were the Kristols,
Krauthammers and O'Reillys -- not that having been wrong about Iraq
has harmed anyone's infotainment
career . . . )
At that point Karon links to a
piece
by Jebediah Reed on the track record of war advocate and meritocracy
advocate David Brooks:
A few years ago, David Brooks, New York Times columnist and media
pundit extraordinaire, penned a love letter to the idea of
meritocracy. It is "a way of life that emphasizes
. . . perpetual improvement, and permanent exertion," he
effused, and is essential to America's dynamism and character. Fellow
glorifiers of meritocracy have noted that our society is superior to
nepotistic backwaters like Krygystan or France because we assign the
most important jobs based on excellence. This makes us less prone to
stagnancy or, worse yet, hideous national clusterfucks like fighting
unwinnable wars for reasons nobody understands.
Reed then goes on to review the words and fates of four pro-war
pundits: Thomas Friedman, Peter Beinart, Fareed Zakaria, and Jeffrey
Goldberg. (Reed chose not to dwell on Brooks on the theory that the
conservatives run in packs following the party line, while pundits
with liberal or moderate or centrist reputations should have been
less predictable -- they carried more weight precisely because their
prowar stance was not taken for granted.) Reed's main point is how
well businesswise these disastrously wrong pundits have fared -- a
point he underscores by bringing up Robert Scheer (fired in 2005
by the LA Times), William S. Lind (a marginal arch-conservative),
Jonathan Schell (author of The Unconquerable World, now
without even his Nation column), and Scott Ritter (the only one
I can think of who actually argued that the US could be beaten
militarily in Iraq).
I've had a low opinion of liberals since the late '60s when
they were the leading figures at rationalizing the Vietnam war.
Some of those liberals, starting with Norman Podhoretz, have
since mutated into the neoconservatives who marched the country
into Iraq. Those people are power-mad fanatics, but they couldn't
have succeeded had they not been able to persuade large numbers
of more sober conservatives and moderates of the desirability
and plausibility of their project. What made this possible was
the marginalization of genuine critics and the promotion of the
muddle-headed liberal pundits, who effectively legitimized the
neocon stories even when they expressed doubts. The main agent in
this was the media, which has likewise yet to be held accountable
for their own gross errors.
Perhaps thinking of this long-pending post, I've finally started
reading George Packer's The Assassin's Gate, which -- at least
early on -- is largely concerned with the romantic liberal path to
war. It takes an extraordinary amount of self-deception to imagine
that a government led by someone like Bush could catalyze a sudden
re-ordering of civil society in a nation ravaged by more than two
decades of war and privation over which most of its people had no
say and no representation. It takes vast ignorance of Iraq and the
whole area. It takes a completely clueless self-regard on the part
of Americans. It takes the conviction that war can be a constructive
force. On some level even Packer has come to the point of realizing
that there's something wrong with this fantasy. And there is some
evidence that most Americans have grown at least suspicious. But
when you listen to the mainstream debate -- e.g., the Congressional
debates on war funding -- it's clear that we're still a long ways
from understanding what went wrong in Iraq.
The sign to look for to tell when/if we finally turn the corner
is when the media start seeking out those who were right all along
on Iraq and shunning those who were wrong. It may be possible to
push meritocracy too far, but in the present when merit has such
low regard we are lost and subject to manipulations. Unfortunately,
the media have no motivation to lead the way -- except citizenship,
perhaps; what a quaint concept.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Jazz Consumer Guide #12: No Training Wheels Necessary
The long-awaited Jazz Consumer Guide (#12) has finally appeared at the
Village
Voice. It had been scheduled for two weeks ago, then got bumped at the
last minute. The previous one was published on Dec. 13, 2006, so this is
actually just a week more than the three months that has been the normal
period since the column's inception. Still, it feels longer -- for one
thing, Jazz Prospecting for
this cycle went on the fourteen weeks and 247 records. In the end, 33
made the cut.
As usual, I wrote about 600 words more than the Voice was able to
fit in. The excess will be held back for next time, but I'll go ahead
and list the holds here -- check the prospecting notes for more info.
The following records, all A-, were held back from the main section:
- Club D'Elf: Now I Understand (Accurate)
- Satoko Fujii Four: When We Were There (Libra)
- Gato Libre: Nomad (No Man's Land)
- Rudresh Mahanthappa: Codebook (Pi)
- Bob Reynolds: Can't Wait for Perfect (Fresh Sound New Talent)
- Sound in Action Trio: Gate (Atavistic)
- Frank Wright: Unity (1974, ESP-Disk)
And the following were held back from the Honorable Mentions list:
- Carneyball Johnson (Akron Cracker)
- BassDrumBone: The Line Up (Clean Feed)
- Satoko Fujii/Natsuki Tamura: In Krakow in November (Not Two)
- Dave Liebman: Back on the Corner (Tone Center)
- Russell Malone: Live at Jazz Standard: Volume One (MaxJazz)
Other records have been noted and graded but not yet written up for
Jazz CG. This sort of foot-dragging is normal -- part of the reason it
all seems to take so long. As readers of the prospecting notes know,
there are good records not mentioned above but in the pipeline by Fred
Anderson, Steve Lacy, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Vittor Santos, and Sonic
Liberation Front, and promising ones by others. I've started to do
the pruning that happens every cycle as I realize that there are some
records I'm never going to be able to squeeze in. These go into the
surplus file. Most of that
file just lists records that have been covered in prospecting notes,
but I've written a few extra notes where I feel further explanation
is warranted:
Omer Avital Group: Room to Grow (1997 [2007], Smalls):
The second volume of archival tapes from the Israeli bassist's long
residence at Smalls, a legendary NYC afterhours club, where he held
a long residence riding herd over a bunch of tough young saxophonists:
Greg Tardy, Grant Stewart, Charles Owens, Myron Walden, names worth
looking out for.
B+(***)
Serge Chaloff: Boston Blow-Up! (1955 [2006], Capitol
Jazz): The ill-fated baritone saxophonist's masterpiece was Blue
Serge (1956), an elegant quartet where everything goes right.
This earlier sextet is much sloppier but nearly as impressive --
the three horns achieving a balance of raw power and feather light
touch that producer Stan Kenton often aimed for and rarely achieved.
A-
Conjure: Bad Mouth (2005 [2006], American Clavé,
2CD): Long after two '80s albums, another helping of Ishmael Reed
texts, read by the man over Kip Hanrahan's music. The first was
called Conjure: Music for the Texts of Ishmael Reed, the
title becoming a virtual group of sorts. I dig the concept, admire
the man, only wish the music was a bit better -- especially from
what looks on paper to be a Latin percussion dream team. Only
David Murray truly rises to the occasion.
B+(**)
Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid: The Exchange Session Vol.
2 (2005 [2006], Domino): Enough of a fall-off this didn't
quite merit an Honorable Mention to go along with Vol. 1's
A-. Same ideas, but some experiments works better than others.
B+(**)
Jay McShann: Hootie Blues (2006, Stony Plain):
Last album by the Kansas City bandleader, who lasted way beyond
his standard 15 minutes of fame, reinventing himself as one of
the last whorehouse piano players and surviving Ralph Sutton to
claim the title. Seems like a typical album, but worth a spin
when you read his obit.
B+(**)
Harry Miller's Isipingo: Which Way Now (1975 [2006],
Cuneiform): A sextet, half South African exiles, half English avants,
roaring through a 75-minute Radio Bremen air shot. Trombonist Nick
Evans is especially noteworthy, and Keith Tippett's piano get a good
airing out, but most of the interest focuses on two South Africans
who died tragically young, leaving us with little: trumpeter Mongezi
Feza and leader-bassist Miller.
A-
Nils Petter Molvaer: Live: Streamer (2002 [2006],
Thirsty Ear): I gave this an Honorable Mention when it originally
came out on Molvaer's own Sula label, and liked it even more when
I heard the reissue. But not as much as my Pick Hit ER, a
review that at least mentions this. Live electronica always seems
like an oxymoron, but the chance to revisit older material often
points up some interesting new twists, and perhaps more importantly
lets you choose stronger pieces.
A-
Odyssey the Band: Back in Town (2005 [2006], Pi):
Third time around for James Blood Ulmer, Charles Burnham, and Warren
Wenbow, whose original Odyssey tour de force is still striking
enough to knock our ears. Francis Davis praised this. Robert Christgau
Consumer Guided it. I had it in my top ten list, and revisited it in
Recycled Goods. Seems redundant to keep plugging it at this point,
unless I find myself hard up for a Pick Hit.
A-
I should also note that I've weeded out another handful of records
that Francis Davis praised in the Voice. As the grades indicate, I'm
quite fond of most of these. It's just that given the space squeeze
I have little to add (see the prospecting notes) and too many others
to try to squeeze in:
- Fred Anderson: Timeless: Live at the Velvet Lounge (2005 [2006], Delmark) A-
- Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra: MTO Volume 1 (2005 [2006], Sunnyside) A-
- The Andy Biskin Quartet: Early American: The Melodies of Stephen Foster (2000 [2006], Strudelmedia) B+(***)
- Houston Person/Bill Charlap: You Taught My Heart to Sing (2004 [2006], High Note) B+(***)
- The Source (2005 [2006], ECM) B+(***)
- Steve Swallow With Robert Creeley: So There (2001-05 [2006], ECM/XtraWatt) B+(***)
- The David S. Ware Quartet: BalladWare (1999 [2006], Thirsty Ear) A-
Some of those I've written about elsewhere, such as in Recycled Goods.
If I had more space, it would be nice to make Jazz Consumer Guide more
comprehensive. But, alas, that would also take more time and resources,
and I'm somewhat at wit's end as it is.
Publicist letter:
The Village Voice has published my 12th Jazz Consumer Guide column:
http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0712,hull,76137,22.html
I've also posted an announcement on my blog, which has more info,
including info on space effects: what got held back, some things
I'm skipping entirely. I've also updated my website to reflect
this column and manage the next column cycle: here's hoping that
You're receiving this mail because I have you on a hacked up list
of folks who have sent me jazz records. I don't have a good way
of managing this list -- in particular, no way for interested
parties to just sign up for it. If you're on the list mistakenly
please let me know.
I figure that thanks to you I get a chance to listen to something
like 30% of the new jazz released each year. That means I wind up
hearing something like 700 records a year. The columns come up
more/less quarterly -- we've never been good at scheduling, and
the Voice has had some turmoil lately, but we're still only a
couple of weeks late. I cram as much in as possible, but that
still winds up with something like the 33 records listed this
time. Obviously, most of what I hear doesn't make it into the
column, but I do manage to write up brief Jazz Prospecting Notes
on everything I get, and post them in weekly installments each
Monday on my blog. The prospecting notes are then archived per
cycle. Other lists and tables are used to keep track of things:
what comes in, what gets rated, what's under consideration, and
what's not. And, of course, some stuff gets shunted off to my
Recycled Goods column -- especially old music and world stuff.
It all winds up in a database which sometime in the next week
or two should number more than 13,000 albums.
For more info, see: http://tomhull.com/ocston/music.php
Thanks.
The following are the notes from bk-print for Jazz CG #12:
- Omer Avital: The Ancient Art of Giving (2006, Smalls):
After Frank Hewitt, Israeli bassist Avital is the second
little-known Smalls regular Luke Kaven has set out to document.
Volume 1 was compiled from 1996 tapes and released earlier this
year as Asking No Permission. It featured a long list of
post-Branford saxophonists -- the best known being Mark Turner.
I found it hard to sort the compositions out from the clutter,
but a decade later he's got it nailed down. The quintet features
Turner on tenor sax, Avishai Cohen on trumpet, Aaron Goldberg on
piano, and Ali Jackson on drums. Avital's pieces set the horns
free -- neither Turner nor Cohen have pronounced avant leanings,
but they enjoy the freedom. Jackson avoids the hard bop clichés,
playing light and letting the rhythm slosh around a bit. Piano
gets a few nice runs too. Recorded live on two nights at Fat Cat.
Seems like I've been complaining about applause a lot recently,
so I should note that there is some here, but unlike the Jarrett
record, it's proportional, often coming at opportune moments --
always a good sign when the audience swings with the band.
A-
- Sathima Bea Benjamin: Song Spirit (1963-2002 [2006],
Ekapa):
Forty years and an extraordinary run of pianists for the South
African singer, more at home in the jazz tradition -- "Lush Life" and
"Careless Love" are choice cuts -- than in her Africa-themed originals,
which tend to be anthemic. Anyone tempted by Madeleine Peyroux should
give her a chance.
B+(***)
- Cheryl Bentyne: The Book of Love (2006, Telarc):
She's enough of a pro that she delivers a perfectly good rendition
of perfectly good songs -- a "You Don't Know Me," a "Cry Me a
River," anything by Cole Porter. But she's not great enough to
get anything out of a song that isn't already there, and the
musicians aren't any help at all -- least of all the City of
Prague Symphony Orchestra Strings, who might as well serenade
Brezhnev. And the title cut gets turned to ethereal fluff by
Take 6. Twice. Concepts aren't a strong suit either.
C-
- Ignacio Berroa: Codes (2005 [2006], Blue Note):
Following in Chano Pozo's footsteps, Berroa moved to New York in 1980
and found a job in Dizzy Gillespie's band. But his Afro-Cuban roots
were attenuated -- he blames Castro for suppressing Yoruba religion
and restricting his schooling to the Euroclassics. Even here, the
most characteristic Cuban rhythms come not from trad percussion but
from Gonzalo Rubalcaba's piano and Felipe LaMoglia's saxophones. He
plays traps, but has mastered the coding to produce an effective
pan-American synthesis.
A-
- Regina Carter: I'll Be Seeing You: A Sentimental Journey
(2006, Verve):
She describes this project as "a life saver for me. After
my mother made her transition last year, it was the darkest period of my
life." The songs Carter opts for here point back to the '40s, affections
presumably handed down to her through her mother. The Grieg piece leading
off comes from a John Kirby arrangement. Afterwards, the pieces range
from "St. Louis Blues" to "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" to "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön"
to "I'll Be Seeing You," with one original called "How Ruth Felt." Five
songs have vocals -- three by Carla Cook, two by Dee Dee Bridgewater,
the latter choice cuts. Paquito D'Rivera plays clarinet on five; Gil
Goodstein accordion on three of those plus two others. The swing era
songs bring out the Grappelli in Carter's violin -- a big improvement
after that awful Paganini album. No doubt her mother would have loved
this. Come to think of it, mine would have, too.
B+(***)
- Maurice El Médioni Meets Roberto Rodriguez: Descarga Oriental:
The New York Sessions (2005 [2006], Piranha):
Superficially,
this is Cuban music sung in French and maybe a little Arabic, the
meeting of an Algerian pianist (Jewish, based in France, a figure of
some importance in the development of raï) and a Cuban percussionist
(Judeophile, passed through Miami to New York, where he records for
Tzadik's Radical Jewish Culture series). El Médioni traces his family
tree back to al-Andalus, where Jews and Arabs created Spanish music,
roots that not even Torquemada could stamp out. That Arab-Sephardic
music lay at the base of Cuban music, augmented by much from Africa,
waiting to be unpacked in meetings such as this inspired jam session.
A-
- Ellery Eskelin: Quiet Music (2006, Prime Source, 2CD):
Still working on him. I've played five background records several times
each without writing prospecting notes. Two are likely to wind up A-,
with the others high B+, the preference going to the ones most wholly
dependent on his sax. This new one is relatively more varied, both in
his efforts at containing the title's irony and in the addition of
vocalist Jessica Constable to his long-term trio -- Andrea Parkins on
piano (or organ or accordion) and Jim Black on drums. The voice can be
dramatic, obscure, merely instrumental, or absent, adding complication
that is not always unwelcome but something of a distraction. But the
sprawling music keeps growing on me.
B+(***)
- Kali Z. Fasteau/Kidd Jordan: People of the Ninth: New Orleans
and the Hurricane 2005 (2005 [2006], Flying Note):
Presumably Jordan makes his living trad jazz back home in New
Orleans, but driven away by the flood, he's become the Crescent
City's unofficial ambassador to New York's jazz underground. A
good record with familiar faces William Parker and Hamid Drake
resulted -- the Kidd was on his best behavior and the tag team
was typically brilliant. Here Jordan helps to steady Kali Z's
inveterate eclecticism, providing a consistent sonic center for
her piano, cello, and soprano sax. Drummer Michael T.A. Thompson's
name didn't fit the spine, but he referees here, and switches to
balafon for a duet with Kali's nai flute -- the most attractive
cut here.
B+(**)
- Von Freeman: Good Forever (2006, Premonition):
He's always had a distinctively thin, fragile sound, so the surprise
here is how well he keeps it hidden. At 84, he may have slowed down, but
that's possibly because this mainstream quartet never pushes him. Even
so, sometimes he does reach for notes that aren't there, slipping into
a muffled screech. Only then does his sax balladry reverts to form.
B+(***)
- Dennis González Boston Project: No Photograph Available
(2003 [2006], Clean Feed):
Recorded live in Boston on a sidetrip with
a quickly assembled group of locals: Either/Or Orchestra saxophonist
Charlie Kohlhase, bassists Nate McBride and Joe Morris, and a teenaged
Morris student named Croix Galipault on drums. The basses are central,
slipping into scratchy duets when the horns back off, or more often
setting up a pulse which the horns mimic and amplify. González had
largely slipped off the radar playing with his Dallas band Yells at
Eels, but this started an outreach that led to a remarkable series
of albums: NY Midnight Suite, Nile River Suite, and
especially Idle Wild. Compared to them, this is rough and a
bit tentative.
B+(**)
- Scott Hamilton: Nocturnes & Serenades
(2005 [2006], Concord):
A set of slow standards, with "Autumn Nocturne"
and "Serenade in Blue" tying into the title, "You Go to My Head"
and "Chelsea Bridge" more instantly recognizable, and "Man With
a Horn" his definitive statement. In other words, pretty much
his typical record. The English quartet doesn't have the snap of
Back in New York, but sometimes sax is best when you take
it nice and easy.
A-
- Hat: Hi Ha (2005 [2006], Fresh Sound New Talent):
Sergi Sirvent is an up and coming Spanish jazz pianist with a
handful of impressive records over the last few years. Here he
adds guitarist Jordi Matas to his trio and finds the perfect
balance. At first it sounds like a mistake when he tries to
sing one, but even that he puts over on pure emotion.
A-
- Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid: The Exchange Session Vol. 1
(2005 [2006], Domino):
Hebden usually does business as
Four Tet, with a couple of the better electronica albums I've heard
in the last few years. Reid is a drummer who can list James Brown,
Fela Kuti, and Martha and the Vandellas on his resume, but I know
him best for a self-released 1976 album with Arthur Blythe called
Rhythmatism (reissued in 2004 on Universal Sound). The
purported model here was a 1972 sax-drums album called Duo
Exchange with Rashied Ali and Frank Lowe (reissued in 1999
by Knitting Factory, and well worth searching out), but the match
isn't all that close. Reid enjoys a good beat more than Ali, while
Hebden's electronics are more diffuse than the solitary point of
Lowe's sax. Three pieces, just 36:45 long, recorded live with no
overdubs or edits -- about right for an early '70s vintage Impulse,
but they keep their spiritual concerns wrapped up in dense layers
of sound.
A-
- Mark Helias' Open Loose: Atomic Clock (2004 [2006],
Radio Legs Music):
Bassist-led sax trio, with Tony Malaby taking
charge, and Tom Rainey on the drums. Not sure how much to credit
the composition here, since the hard chargers are the ones that
work best.
B+(***)
- Frank Hewitt: Fresh From the Cooler (1996 [2006],
Smalls):
Hewitt was a bebop pianist who almost slipped through 66 years of
life without leaving a trace. But he built a cult during an eight
year residency at Smalls jazz club, inspiring a label to no small
degree dedicated to his legacy. This makes four posthumous albums,
with more on the shelf -- at least one more from this date, a trio
with Ari Roland and Jimmy Lovelace. The songs are jazz standards,
but there's nothing overly familiar about them -- even "Cherokee"
and "Monk's Mood" skirt the melodies for hidden nuances.
A-
- John Hicks: Sweet Love of Mine (2006, High Note):
Table scraps, including snatches of Ray Mantilla percussion, Elise
Wood flutes, Javon Jackson sax, and three pieces of solo piano,
as if no one had the slightest idea what they were doing or what
the future might hold. As it was, Hicks died a month later, so
take this cockeyed mess as a memorial, note that his improbable
helpers looked up to him -- and like he's done throughout his
career, he makes them better -- and enjoy the piano, poignant
alone, playful together.
B+(**)
- Andrew Hill: Pax (1965 [2006], Blue Note):
Now that Hill's lived long enough to have become a legend, his old
(and now new) label is finally bringing his old catalog back in
print. This session has always had problems seeing the light of
day: the original was shelved until 1975 when it finally came
out as part of a garbage collection project. It isn't garbage.
It should have sold fine just on names -- Joe Henderson, Freddie
Hubbard, Richard Davis, Joe Chambers -- but it's actually better
than that. Hill's piano is always into something surprising,
and the horns take the hint and play much further out than
expected.
A-
- Maurice Hines: To Nat "King" Cole With Love (2005
[2006], Arbors):
Gregory's big brother comes close enough to the mark
to beg the question, why pick this over originals that still sound
as great as ever. Hines is a smooth, agile singer, but can't touch
Cole's voice. But the band consistently spans Cole's career, with
more muscle than the Trio and none of the dross of Cole's orchestras.
And the songs live on: Cole was the hippest of the pre-rock pop stars,
by a margin that has only grown since.
A-
- Wayne Horvitz Gravitas Quartet: Way Out East (2005
[2006], Songlines):
Horvitz has been gravitating toward
classical music for a while now, and this comes close without
going over the deep end line his string quartets. The pieces
exhibit swingless chamber music, often with sudden shifts of
time -- "Ladies and Gentleman" is an extreme example -- or with
simple rhythmic motifs that provide a backdrop for shmears of
sound -- see "Berlin 1914," which is the piece that ultimately
won me over. The instrumentation is unusual: bassoon for the
bottom, trumpet for the top, cello for the meat, piano for the
dressing, electronics for the hell of it. It's not the sort of
thing I normally like, which may mean it's even better than I
think.
B+(***)
- Kidd Jordan/Hamid Drake/William Parker: Palm of Soul
(2005 [2006], AUM Fidelity):
Homeless after Katrina, Jordan fled to
Brooklyn and networked with his old chums. Drake and Parker do their
usual thing, and then some: not content to be the world's best at
bass and drums, they drag out the tablas, guimbri, and miscellaneous
percussion exotica. Drake even chants, reducing Jordan to comping.
I'm not sure whether Jordan is mellowing, as septuagenerians often
do, or is just delighted to be there.
A-
- Diana Krall: From This Moment On (2006, Verve):
The Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra doesn't split the difference
between Billy May and Nelson Riddle so much as they aggregate the
virtues of each. That wouldn't mean a thing without a commanding
singer, but Krall fills that bill. She sings the title song, "It
Could Happen to You," "Come Dance With Me," even the often hoary
"Willow Weep for Me" as authoritatively as they've ever been sung,
and each come with long, illustrious histories. And while the
Orchestra is capable of overkill, it's remarkable how seamlessly
she slips in four songs without them.
A-
- Nils Petter Molvaer: ER (2005 [2006], Thirsty Ear):
Molvaer matches Miles Davis's fusion breakthrough in two
respects: he's a master at getting the rhythm tight, and his
trumpet adds a bare minimum of human voice without detracting
from the machines. His programmed beats grow more complex and
varied each time out, opening up new paths ranging from chill
out to a striking Sidsel Endresen vocal. This was originally
released by Universal as Europe-only, like its predecessor
the still hard-to-find NP3. When Thirsty Ear noticed
the market gap and the affinity between Molvaer's jazztronica
and their homegrown Blue Series, they licensed this and the
Live: Streamer from Molvaer's own Sula label, then
mixed some of those, a little NP3, and some remix bait
into An American Compilation. So three cuts here are
redundant. Consumers will have to judge the redundancies and
bait, but this is where the others were heading.
A
- Frank Morgan: Reflections (2005 [2006], High Note):
I suppose if I was real conscientious about this, I'd revisit his
discography and try to ascertain whether this is an exceptionally
good record for him or a merely typically good one. But I don't
have either the records or the time for that. In the pecking order
of Bird's children, Morgan ranks somewhere above Lou Donaldson but
way below Jackie McLean, and very likely below Phil Woods as well.
Where that puts him viz. Gigi Gryce is a question that requires
more precision than I can muster. But on its own terms, this is
an exceptionally elegant and mature slice of the bop -- not frantic
like in the '50s, but Morgan's past 70 now, more than entitled to
slow down and smell them roses. Nice, brisk start on "Walkin'";
two Monk songs that he wouldn't have tackled in the old days;
gorgeous closer on "Out of Nowhere." Quartet with Ronnie Mathews
on piano, Essiet Essiet on bass, and Billy Hart on drums. Lovely
tone throughout.
B+(***)
- David 'Fathead' Newman: Life (2006 [2007], High Note):
Dedicated to the late John Hicks, who write the title song. Fathead's
feeling light-headed here, his tenor sax so mellowed out as to render
Doug Ramsey's Texas Tenor-themed liner notes nonsensical; his alto is
even creamier, while his flute, sugared up with Steve Nelson vibes and
Peter Bernstein guitar, floats aimlessly into space. Which is where
his "What a Beautiful World" belongs -- I'd rather hear Kenny G's,
with or without the Armstrong sample. Closes with a nice "Naima."
C+
- Bucky Pizzarelli: 5 for Freddie: Bucky's Tribute to Freddie
Green (2006 [2007], Arbors):
Check out this "cast of
characters": Pizzarelli as Green, John Bunch as Count Basie,
Warren Vaché as Sweets Edison, Jay Leonhart as Walter Page,
Mickey Roker as Jo Jones. Green was famous for never taking
a solo, which doesn't open up a lot of space for Pizzarelli
to show off, but Basie's rhythm section redefined swing, and
these understudies are competent revivalists. Still, the guy
who lifts this above the normal run of tributes is Vaché,
whose cornet is a spare, tart reminder of Sweets' trumpet
and a whole lot more.
A-
- Samo Salamon Quartet: Two Hours (2004 [2006], Fresh
Sound New Talent):
Easily the best of a fairly sizable crop
of guitarist-sax quartets this year, and it's easy to explain
why: the other three players work regularly as Mark Helias' Open
Loose trio. They're more avant than the norm for this label --
rougher, more muscular, but then so is the Slovenian guitarist,
who has an edge here he couldn't have learned from mentors John
Scofield or Bill Frisell.
B+(***)
- Sonny Simmons: I'll See You When You Get There
(2004-05 [2006], Jazzaway):
Minimal Sonny, not solo but in duets
that only marginally frame his solos -- six with bassist Mats
Eilertsen, two with pianist Anders Aarum, two with drummer Ole
Thomas Kolberg. The drums hold up best because they clearly add
something, whereas the bass and piano are more like admiring
reflections. Solo sax tends to slow down because nothing else
pushes it along. That can be a plus for an ex-Firebird.
B+(**)
- Sergi Sirvent & Xavi Maureta: Lines Over Rhythm
(2005 [2006], Fresh Sound New Talent):
Piano-drums duets, starting
with a run of six Charlie Parker tunes, then originals along similar
lines, although these guys don't steal melody lines the way Parker
did. Not familiar with Maureta, but his deconstruction of "My Little
Suede Shoes" is irresistible. Sirvent continues to impress.
B+(***)
- Tomasz Stanko Quartet: Lontano (2005 [2006], ECM):
I'm not if I've ever seen an ECM album cover look so bleak and
featureless, even though such landscapes seem to be the art
director's default. The music is neither bleak nor featureless,
but it is slow and subtly arranged -- haunting and lovely, but
it does take its toll in attention. Pianist Marcin Wasilewski
is a master of understatement, one more trait he's picked up
from the leader.
B+(***)
- Billy Stein Trio: Hybrids (2005 [2006], Barking Hoop):
He's a guitarist no one would have ever heard of had Kevin
Norton not urged him into the studio. He played with Norton and
Sam Furnace back in the '70s, but with endless refinement this is
his debut. He works in subtle harmonic shadings rather than the
melodic lines that dominate the craft, so this tends to vanish in
its subtleties. But he gets exceptionally sympathetic support from
drummer Rashid Bakr and bassist Reuben Radding -- the latter a
near-perfect match.
B+(***)
- Charles Tolliver Big Band: With Love (2006 [2007],
Blue Note/Mosaic):
I reckon that Tolliver's reemergence is a dividend
of Andrew Hill's accession to living legend status, given the trumpeter's
prominence on Hill records old and new. Tolliver appeared on numerous
avant-leaning Blue Note recordings in the late '60s, but his own work
was limited to his own very limited Strata East label -- The Ringer
(1969) is a personal favorite, but it's about the only one I know. (I
haven't heard the recent 3-CD Mosaic Select box, which picks up
live tracks from 1970 and 1973.) Tolliver's discography shows little
after 1975, at least until he reappeared on Hill's Time Lines.
Unfortunately, his new record is a loud and brassy big band thang. I
don't much care for it: the high energy parts don't move me even when
they're bruising, the solos lack finesse, and there's no groove to
hang things on. It will be interesting to see how this is received.
B
- Warren Vaché and the Scottish Ensemble: Don't Look Back
(2005 [2006], Arbors):
The Scottish Ensemble is a string group, 12 in
number. Three arrangements were by 87-year-old Bill Finegan, "the dean
of arranging" -- means nothing to me. The others were by James Chirillo,
who conducted and plays a little guitar. Vaché's cornet is frequently
lovely, but the strings turn me off. Could be a dud, especially if I
wanted to do something on the deadly seduction strings hold for horn
players. The last two Vaché records I've heard were A-listed, so this
is no more personal than Waltz Again was for David Murray.
B-
- The Vandermark 5: Free Jazz Classics Vols. 3 & 4
(2003-04 [2006], Atavistic, 2CD):
All the maybes at the end of Ken
Vandermark's liner notes might make you think he's giving up on this
series of explorations into the free jazz tradition, which would be
a shame. Originally released as bonus discs in early runs of four
Vandermark 5 albums from Acoustic Machine to Elements of
Style, Vols. 1 & 2 (2000-01 [2002], Atavistic, 2CD)
essayed pioneer pieces from Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry to Joe
McPhee and Julius Hemphill, while Vols. 3 & 4 focus on
two saxophonist-composers not of the movement but so creative they
couldn't help but parallel it: Sonny Rollins and Rahsaan Roland
Kirk. The recognizable themes give you a more accessible framework
than usual -- with free jazz every clue helps -- but in the end
the band makes all the difference. With two great saxophonists
and a trombonist who loves to get down and dirty, they can spin
on a dime, punch the chords up, or blow them apart.
A
The following are the notes from bk-flush for Jazz CG #12:
- Muhal Richard Abrams/George Lewis/Roscoe Mitchell:
Streaming (2005 [2006], Pi):
This starts to pay dividends
in the end, but it takes time getting there, with much of the early
going shuffling seemingly random sounds about. The latter most likely
come from Lewis's laptop, but he plays a fair amount of trombone as
well. Wish I had the patience to sort this out, but everyone involved
has made records in the past that make sense sooner, so maybe it's
just not meant to be.
B+(*)
- Cannonball Adderley: Riverside Profiles (1958-62 [2006],
Riverside):
A useful, typically breezy selection of cuts
from a series of uneventful albums, distinguished by the warm tone
and ingratiating dynamics of the leader's alto sax. Also by guests
like Milt Jackson, and songs like "This Here" and "Work Song" by
band members -- the latter by brother Nat, who often stands out.
Bonus sampler is the same for all records in this series, so I'll
be charitable, ignore it, and won't mention it again.
B+(**)
- Mario Adnet: Jobim Jazz (2006 [2007], Adventure Music):
A Brazilian guitarist, most notable for his large and
intricate arrangements, e.g. of Moacir Santos's works. On the
80th anniversary of Jobim's birth, here he takes on Brazil's
most famous composer. A bit ornate for my taste, but I find this
growing on me as little details come to attention, not to mention
the seductive melodies.
B+(*)
- All Ones: Bloom (2006, Number):
I suppose you could
call this an organ trio, but the sound is less consistent -- Matt
Cunitz employs a wide range of electronic keyboards -- and there's
no real trace of soul jazz formula. Partly this is because the trio
lacks a real lead instrument -- the keyboards comp and doodle, the
others are electric bass and drums. Partly it's all improv. But it's
also the case that the musicians work more frequently on the rock
side, so this draws from lines going back to Kraut rock. All of
which make it interesting, but none all that compelling.
B+(*)
- Among 3 (2004-06 [2006], Fresh Sound New Talent):
Barcelona-based piano trio, with Roger Mas [Giménez] on piano, Bori
Albero on bass, Juanma Mielo, plus guests on two tracks. Never heard
of these guys, and found out very little. (A Spanish singer-songwriter
named Roger Mas is evidently someone else.) The piano trio is fine,
although not especially inspiring. The extras add little.
B
- Fred Anderson: Timeless: Live at the Velvet Lounge
(2005 [2006], Delmark):
The weak spot here is Hamid Drake's vocal,
but that's just something you put up with to hear his drumming. I
can't say as I ever got into Anderson before Back at the Velvet
Lounge (2002 [2003], Delmark), but he's been on a streak ever
since then: Back Together Again, a duo with Hamid Drake;
Blue Winter, a trio with Drake and William Parker; and now
this trio with Drake and Harrison Bankhead. I resisted at first,
figuring the records have little differentiation, and I shouldn't
keep pushing the same thing over and over. But critical consensus
seems to be that this is the winner, and I can hear that. Bankhead
helps fill things out like a good bassist should but isn't tempted
to crowd in like Parker. Also this one is a single.
A-
- Bill Anschell: More to the Ear Than Meets the Eye
(2006, Origin):
Seattle-based pianist, worked with Nnenna Freelon for several years,
has several albums under his own name, dating back to 1994. This
one, a mix of five standards and six originals, is built around two
trios, with sax or trumpet added on half. Elegant postbop, flowing
piano, horns a mixed blessing.
B+(*)
- Bruce Arkin Quartet: Wake Up! (2006, Fresh Sound New Talent):
Arkin plays tenor and soprano sax. Don't know anything
more about him. Record was recorded in Barcelona with Albert Bover
on piano, Chris Higgins bass, Jorge Rossy drums. Mostly indifferent
postbop, but he does pick up some steam on a "bittersweet love song"
called "All I Wanted Was You (Bitch)," so maybe he just needs to be
slapped around a bit. A meditation on Tookie Williams, executed in
California recently, is also worthwhile.
B
- Nanny Assis: Double Rainbow (2006, Blue Toucan):
Brazilian percussionist from Bahia; sings a couple of originals,
a range of soft sambas and such like -- one from Carlhinos Brown
is described as "Brazilian rap," but you could have fooled me --
and one piece by Seal. The cover and most of the booklet photos
feature him with guitar, but the credits only list him once on
acoustic guitar. Hard for me to pin down whatever it is that may
separate this from the norm.
B
- Omer Avital Group: Room to Grow (1997 [2007], Smalls):
Israeli bassist, evidently a fixture at Smalls in the
late '90s. A 1996 tape released last year as Asking No
Permission was subtitled The Smalls Years: Volume One.
That suggests more volumes to come, and this, recorded live a
year later, certainly fits the bill, but there's no indication
on the cover or booklet here. Same basic lineup, with bass,
drums, and four saxes, but a couple of personnel changes: Mark
Turner and Ali Jackson have left, replaced by Grant Stewart
and Joe Strasser. None of the remaining saxophonists are a
match for Turner, which is just as well: their scrawny tones
and free dynamics keep anyone from dominating, leaving even
the bass some space.
B+(***)
- Chet Baker: Riverside Profiles (1958-59 [2006], Riverside):
A narrow slice of Baker's discography, transitional
between his important Pacific Jazz 1952-57 recordings, where is
made his name as a cool trumpeter and wan vocalist, and his long
exile in Europe -- one cut here stands him up against "fifty
Italian strings," and another features a pick-up band in Milan.
Only two easy-going vocals, lots of lovely trumpet. I like this
mix better than Riverside's previous The Best of Chet Baker,
which shares five songs.
A-
- Jeff Baker: Shopping for Your Heart (2006 [2007],
OA2):
Jazz singer. Third album, starting with Baker Sings Chet
in 2003. He works the gamut of olde standards and bebop sprints.
I tend to enjoy the former and chafe at the latter, and that's
pretty much how this breaks. The band could call themselves the
Origin All-Stars: Bill Anschell, Jeff Johnson, John Bishop, and
especially Brent Jensen, whose sax especially warms up attractive
moderate fare like "Time After Time."
B
- David Berger and the Sultans of Swing: The Harlem
Nutcracker (1996 [1999], Such Sweet Thunder):
Don't know
why this decade-old item popped up in my mailbox. Certainly not
because I've shown much enthusiasm about Berger's later records.
On the other hand, I find little to complain about here. I'm not
overly familiar either with the Ellington-Strayhorn score or the
Tchaikovsky model, so I find this concise and lively version
useful. Enjoyable, too.
B+(*)
- The Benevento Russo Duo: Play Pause Stop (2006,
Butter Problems/Reincarnate Music):
Just have an advance and a hype sheet,
but this has been sitting around a while -- albeit not as long as the
advance to their previous album. I dislike advances, especially when
they don't grow up to be real records -- although if they're not very
good that's just as well. As far as I've been able to figure out, the
names are Marco Benevento and Joe Russo. Don't know what they do, but
it sounds like keyboards and drums. They keep a beat, add some texture,
but it all seems skeletal, undeveloped, not all that danceable, let
alone jazzworthy. I don't dislike it, but they don't offer much, and
when they try to muscle up toward the end, they just get messy.
B-
- Gorka Benítez: Bilbao (2003 [2006], Fresh Sound New Talent):
Spanish tenor saxophonist, born in Bilbao, based in
Barcelona. I've been impressed by him every time out so far, and
this has some strong moments, especially the soaring "Y dale!,"
but it does stumble along early on. Quartet, with Dani Pérez on
guitar, mostly keeping pace to shimmering harmonic effect.
B+(*)
- Jordi Berni Trio/Santi de la Rubia: Afinke
(2005 [2006], Fresh Sound New Talent):
Berni's a young pianist based in
Barcelona. His trio plays above average but unexceptional postbop,
securely in the middle of the mainstream. De La Rubia plays tenor
sax in the same vein, although he doesn't have an especially
distinctive sound. The record develops nicely, expertly even.
Too good to complain about, but I'm not sure what else to do
with it.
B+(*)
- Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra: MTO
Volume 1 (2005 [2006], Sunnyside):
Robert Altman's film Kansas City
made you want to know more about the city's jazz and less about its
mobsters. The featured music stars got a package tour out of the deal
before returning to contemporary postbop, but lowly associate music
producer Bernstein actually put his research to work. He takes the
idea of barnstorming territory bands and time travels to and from
his home base in downtown New York, treating Prince and Stevie Wonder
songs to 1928-style arrangements, while adding postmodern quirks to
Count Basie staples. It works not because the transformations are
clever, but because he's one of the few who believe that jazz can
become popular again by making it fun rather without dumbing it down.
The first album by a group that has been playing regularly since 1999,
an incubation period that roughly matches Basie in Kansas City.
A-
- Tyrone Birkett: In the Fullness of Time (2006
[2007], Convergence):
This takes
off like a rocket but soon comes crashing back to earth with an
overload of holy spirit. He's a PK with a rafters-raising alto
saxophone, fronting a bunch of anonymous keyb-guitar-bass-drums
players. She sings every other song, and she can air them out
too. Both are talented, but their material is pretty dreadful.
It seems that someone with more stomach for the stuff than I have
could do a study on the dumbing down of Christian music, which
presumably correlates with the dumbing down of Christians. I can
still handle the gospel, and for that matter the Christians, I
grew up with, but whenever I tune in to the words here, they
scare me.
C+
- The Andy Biskin Quartet: Early American: The Melodies of Stephen
Foster (2000 [2006], Strudelmedia):
The old melodies
benefit from oldish instrumentation -- despite its recent comeback,
Biskin's clarinet still sounds like a refugee from the depression,
especially when paired with trombone or tuba; guitarist Pete McCann
resorts to banjo on occasion, and drummer John Hollenbeck takes the
most diehard Foster melody on jingly bells. Still, everything here
is more than a little bent. No point making a jazz record unless
you take some liberties.
B+(***)
- Janice Borla: From Every Angle (2006, Blujazz):
Jazz singer from Chicago. Her website lists three albums over the
last ten years, but also mentions a first album (Whatever We
Imagine) that dates back at least 20, as does her "leading
role in vocal jazz education." She's not a cabaret singer -- the
songs here come from the bop era with assists from Jon Hendricks
and Bobby McFerrin. She can scat. She gets respectful, tasteful
backup. In fact, this is expert enough that I feel kind of bad
that I don't respond to it more. Professionalism doesn't come
easy. Nor does reviewing it.
B
- Bridge 61: Journal (2005 [2006], Atavistic):
You know about Ken Vandermark, Nate McBride, and Tim Daisy by now.
The fourth wheel here is Jason Stein on bass clarinet -- Vandermark
plays tenor sax, baritone sax, and clarinet. He was born 1976,
grew up on Long Island, bounced around through Central America
and Montana and Vermont and Michigan and wound up in Chicago.
I'm not so sure what he's doing here. This is advertised as an
evenly balanced cooperative, but the distribution of compositions
is: Vandermark 4, McBride 2, Daisy 2, Stein 0. I don't hear much
that sounds like bass clarinet either -- a couple of muffled solos,
a fair amount of comping. As for the others, Daisy and McBride
continue to develop, and Vandermark closes with a very strong
piece for Sonny Sharrock.
B+(*)
- Peter Brötzmann/Albert Mangelsdorff/Günter Sommer: Pica
Pica (1982 [2006], Atavistic):
A meeting of two major
figures of the German avant-garde -- almost two generations,
as trombonist Mangelsdorff was 13 years older than saxophonist
Brötzmann. Sommer plays drums and "horns," whatever that is,
and is basically a substitute for Han Bennink -- an inferior
one, if you accept the authority of the Penguin Guide (first
edition, back when the LP was available). I find the encounter
generally gratifying all around.
B+(*)
- John Bunch: At the Nola Penthouse: Salutes Jimmy Van
Heusen (2006, Arbors):
The label likes to do these double titles. I'm following
the spine, except for adding a colon. Doesn't read right to me, but don't
know what else to do. The subject for both clauses is pianist Bunch, who
will turn 85 later this year. He's been a dependable name for a long time
now. Follows in Teddy Wilson's footsteps, and doesn't wander far from
there. Dave Green and Steve Brown complete the trio, neither making much
of an impression. Nor does Bunch, really -- this is quiet and respectful,
lovely when you focus, but a bit too modest to listen to.
B
- John Butcher/Paal Nilssen-Love: Concentric
(2001 [2006], Clean Feed):
Another improv duo, this one sax (tenor or
soprano) and drums. Butcher is highly touted in the Penguin Guide,
but I have little experience with him, and no firm picture. The
drummer I know much better, and not just from his work with Ken
Vandermark in groups like School Days, FME, Free Fall, and the
Territory Band. This is intense, rough going, hard to grab hold
of. Butcher starts to make more sense only toward the end, first
with a splotch of soprano. Nilssen-Love seems to get his best
shots in early. Not inconceivable that the pleasures might make
up for the pain, but it's bound to be tough.
B
- The Paul Carlon Octet: Other Tongues (2005-06
[2006], Deep Tone):
Carlon's a New York-based saxophonist --
also plays flute and mbira here -- with a substantial interest
in Latin jazz. His group is largish, with a couple of uncounted
guests -- Ileana Santamaria sings on three songs, Max Pollak's
"rumbatap" (presumably tap dancing to rumba rhythms) surfaces
on two. Some fancy stuff, consistently listenable, sometimes
interesting.
B+(*)
- The Serge Chaloff Sextet: Boston Blow-Up! (1955 [2006],
Capitol Jazz):
A hard swinging baritone saxophonist with a bop edge, Chaloff cut
his teeth in Woody Herman's Second Herd, then moved on -- actually, was
thrown out, for following Charlie Parker's habits too literally --
to cut a handful of memorable albums before he succumbed to a spinal
tumor and died at age 33. Blue Serge (1956) is his masterpiece,
a tight, elegant quartet where everything goes right, in part because
the other three players -- Sonny Clark, Leroy Vinnegar, Philly Joe
Jones -- are so dependable. This album is much sloppier but nearly
as impressive. Produced by Stan Kenton, this is a sextet with three
horns storming -- at its best the balance of raw power and feather
light touch Kenton often aimed for and rarely achieved.
A-
- Thomas Chapin Trio: Ride (1995 [2006], Playscape):
Wish he had kept to the alto sax, as the warbly stuff -- flute and
sopranino sax -- tones down what otherwise is a vigorous live set,
from the North Sea Jazz Festival. Chapin died young in 1998, and
is so revered that his live scraps have become a cottage industry.
More often than not, this one shows you why. Title comes from a
Beatles song, and he's definitely got the ticket there -- a choice
cut.
B+(***)
- Christmas Break: Relaxing Jazz for the Holidays
(1992-98 [2006], Telarc):
Selected from the label's Christmases past, avoiding
any hint of merriment, joy, or, heaven forbid, excitement. Nonetheless,
this order is mostly filled by thoughtful solo piano (Oscar Peterson,
Dave Brubeck, George Shearing) and guitar (Jim Hall, Al Di Meola --
the latter is unexpectedly lovely on "Ave Maria"), all of whom have
something to add to the melody. Better still is Jeanie Bryson cooing
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" over Kenny Barron's piano.
Still doesn't break my tinsel ceiling, but comes close.
B
- Fay Claassen: Sings Two Portraits of Chet Baker
(2005 [2006], Jazz 'N Pulz, 2CD):
First disc is a look back at
the music of the Gerry Mulligan-Chet Baker Quartet, with Claassen's
scat vocals adding little to a set where Jan Menu's baritone sax
dominates Jan Wessels' trumpet. Second disc has Claassen singing
the songs that Baker sung -- "My Funny Valentine," "Let's Get
Lost," "Blame It on My Youth," etc., with a samba and a piece of
bebop vocalese the odd songs out. I'm tempted to say she sings them
better, but Baker's fragility has only rarely touched me, so that
may not be fair. Given how she approaches the songs, it may not
even be appropriate.
B+(*)
- Billy Cobham's Glassmenagerie: Stratus (1981 [2006],
Inak):
Fusion group, with electric keyboards, bass and
guitar. Mike Stern plays the latter, but the tone that really
dominates is Michal Urbaniak's violin -- electric too, natch.
B
- George Colligan Trio: Blood Pressure (2006, Ultimatum):
Trio suggests a group with a fixed lineup, which isn't the case here.
Josh Ginsberg is replaced or joined on bass by Boris Kozlov. Jonathan
Blake yields the drumset to EJ Strickland and Vanderlai Pereira. Two
more cuts have extras: Jamie Baum's flute on one, Meg Okura's violin
on the other. Colligan plays synths as well as piano, so there are
various electronic blips as well as the usual soft tones. I find it
all very confusing, although the straight acoustic piano trio is
superb, as usual, and the other stuff is interesting. One thing
that is clear is the message to "Mr. Cheney" in the tray photo.
B+(*)
- Conjure: Bad Mouth (2005 [2006], American Clavé, 2CD):
Long after two '80s albums, this is a third installment of
Ishmael Reed texts channeled through Kip Hanrahan's music played
by an impressive roster of musicians. The first, Music for the
Texts of Ishmael Reed is highly recommended; the second, Cab
Calloway Stands in the for Moon much less so. This one comes
in between. Reed's spoken pieces hold your interest more than the
more song-like ones, which suggests that the music isn't quite up
to snuff. What should be an all-star set of Latino percussionists --
Robby Ameen, Horacio El Negro Hernandez, Dafnis Prieto, Richie Flores,
Pedro Martinez -- don't kick up much of a fuss, and I'm still not
sure what Billy Bang does here. But the only holdover from the '80s
group does loom large, and when he breaks David Murray steals the
album.
B+(**)
- Corbett Vs. Dempsey: Eye & Ear (1943-2004 [2006],
Atavistic):
Corbett vs. Dempsey is actually an art gallery
in Chicago, named for principals Jon Corbett and Jim Dempsey. The
record is Corbett's arrangement of old jazz, avant jazz, and divers
sound effects for a show dubbed "Artist <-> Musician." The
soundtrack was originally released for sale at the show, and has
been picked up by Atavistic -- Corbett produces their invaluable
Unheard Music Series. Interesting scholarship, as always, but it's
less clear what we're listening to, let alone why. Pee Wee Russell
and Dave Coleman are old meant to sound older; Sun Ra offers a
pathetic little vocal; Han Bennink adds silence as much as divers
percussion; Hal Rommel's random noise tape weaves and dazes, as
advertised.
B
- François Couturier: Nostalgia: Song for Tarkovsky
(2005 [2006], ECM):
Released in October. I only got an advance with
a photocopy of the booklet, which is good enough for current purposes,
although it took me a while to recognize as much. Dedicated to filmmaker
Andrei Tarkovsky, which doesn't mean much to me, although the booklet
has some striking stills. Don't know how the music relates to the films,
but the credits are to group members -- cellist Anja Lechner has two,
soprano saxophonist Jean-Marc Larché one, Couturier the rest. Also in
the group is Jean-Louis Matinier on accordion. The instrumentation
can lean folk or classical, with moods shifting between light and
dark.
B+(*)
- Greg Davis/Steven Hess: Decisions (2003 [2005],
Longbox):
Davis does laptop improvs. Hess adds drums/percussion.
Mostly minor electronica, noises rather than beats, although
thump is an important part of the mix. I like it more so than
most similar things I've heard, but I have doubts about its
universal appeal.
B+(*)
- Mel Davis: It's About Time! (2006 [2007], TomTom):
Davis plays Hammond B3, runs through a mess of shoogity boogity
pieces, with guitar, drums, sometimes a little extra percussion
and/or horns. Davis also sings four pieces, improving none of them.
C+
- Eli Degibri: Emotionally Available (2005 [2006],
Fresh Sound New Talent):
Israeli tenor saxophonist, "with Bulgarian
and Persian roots," as his fancy website puts it, in a quartet with
New Yorkers Aaron Goldberg, Ben Street, and Jeff Ballard. This has
some good spots, particularly the cut with guest Ze Mauricio on
pandeiro, although that's mostly because the sax perks up there.
But more often his tone is a bit dull, and his play indistinct.
B
- Diane Delin: Offerings for a Peaceable Season
(2005 [2006], Blujazz):
Violinist with five albums going back
to 1997. Don't know anything more, but clearly she's fond of
Grappelli. Starts off with "My Favorite Things" and "Baby It's
Cold Outside" before toppling into unavoidable Xmas songs,
recasting the meaning of those not normally so tainted. By
the end of the year this rant is likely to get old, but I
have no interest whatsoever in holiday music. Didn't even
like it before I read the factoid that it outsells jazz.
This one snuck in on the peace train, so I'll let it off
with a mild reprimand. The others I'm saving for a real bah
humbug day.
B-
- Whit Dickey: Sacred Ground (2004 [2006], Clean Feed):
Best known as one of the series of drummers in the David
S. Ware Quartet, Dickey has emerged as an interesting free jazz
leader. But regardless of what he writes, or how he centers his
drums, the fireworks come from the horns, with Rob Brown's alto
sax fleet and rough, and Roy Campbell's trumpet his perfect foil.
The fourth member of the quartet is Joe Morris, playing double
bass instead of his usual guitar -- although there's at least
one spot where he sure fooled me.
B+(***)
- Al Di Meola: Consequence of Chaos (2006, Telarc):
Fusion guitarist from New Jersey. Made his reputation in Chick
Corea's Return to Forever, with Corea returning the favor here.
Some of this is pleasantly grooveful. Some is sparely elegant.
Some of it is Corea-style fusion.
B
- Kenny Dorham: Trompeta Toccata (1964 [2006], Blue Note):
A hard bop trumpeter very fond of Latin rhythms, something
he explored in 1955's Afro-Cuban (Blue Note) and returned
to frequently, including this his last album; Joe Henderson is a
tower of strength on tenor sax, and Tootie Heath's cymbals suffice
for the clave.
B+(*)
- Dominique Eade/Jed Wilson: Open (2004-05 [2006],
Jazz Project):
Jazz singer, teamed here in minimal duets with
pianist Wilson. She has a USAF father, Swiss mother, born London,
grew up mostly in Germany; attended Vassar, Berklee, New England
Conservatory, the latter keeping her on to teach. Five albums,
including a tribute to June Christy and Chris Connor. Writes
most of the songs here, although Leonard Cohen's "In My Secret
Life" is the one that stands out. Way too spartan for my taste,
but striking nonetheless.
B+(*)
- Ellery Eskelin/Andrea Parkins/Jim Black: One Great Day
(1996 [1997], Hatology):
I've made extended discography lists of some
musicians whose import extends far beyond their own records -- like
Paul Motian, Dave Holland, and William Parker. I haven't gotten around
to Jim Black yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to find him on the same
track, if not quite yet in the same league. Parkins is the odd one out
here: she's credited with accordion and sampler. Seems to me there's
a small bit of piano here, so maybe that was sampled? The accordion
functions like an organ -- Eskelin's mother played organ, so that may
have something to do with his thinking here -- similar in tone, a bit
slower dynamics, harmonizes better with the sax, while covering the
hole left by no bassist. None of which matters all that much: above
all else, this is a great tenor sax album, with a singular voice
working difficult material.
A-
- Ellery Eskelin: Five Other Pieces (+2) (1998 [1998],
Hatology):
Same trio with Andrea Parkins and Jim Black. The five
pieces by others come from John McLaughlin, Lennie Tristano, John
Coltrane, Charlie Haden, and George Gershwin. The "+2" are Eskelin
originals. The most immediate effect of working with "other folks'
music" -- a Roland Kirk phrase Eseklin quotes in his remarkably
useful liner notes -- is to bring Parkins' accordion much to the
fore. As usual, covers mean stronger themes -- why else bother with
them? -- and in the case of Coltrane's "India" set up an unusual
degree of repetition, which underscores the group's sound. The
"(+2)" are two Eseklin originals.
B+(***)
- Ellery Eskelin: Ramifications (1999 [2000], Hatology):
Eskelin expands his trio to quintet here, making unorthodox choices.
Is Joe Daley's tuba the brass alongside Eskelin's tenor sax, or is
it the missing bass? Or is Erik Friedlander's cello the missing bass,
or the second lead instrument. Actually, there is no second lead --
the group mostly provides a somber backdrop for Eskelin's pained,
powerful sax maneuvers. This is especially true on the title cut,
which is dirgelike except for the sax's mighty struggles.
B+(***)
- Ellery Eskelin: Vanishing Point (2000 [2001], Hatology):
One of the more interesting sax-with-strings records,
but not a surprise given that the strings are Mat Maneri on viola,
Erik Friedlander on cello, and Mark Dresser on bass. You could
think of it as a string quartet with tenor sax subbing for violin,
but it is an exceptionally unruly one. The classical string sound
that so often turns my stomach comes from the sonic seasickness of
the section playing in unison, but that can't happen in unscripted
improv like this, where each player responds to the others. Fifth
wheel is Matt Moran on vibes, an occasional tinkle of percussion
that pops out orthogonally to the sonic mix. The pieces have an
odd, ambling quality. I've played this a number of times, and it
remains obscure, a puzzle with no obvious solution.
B+(**)
- Ellery Eskelin/Andrea Parkins/Jim Black: 12 (+1) Imaginary
Views (2001 [2002], Hatology):
I got a note from Eskelin
back in October offering to send me a copy of his latest, Quiet
Music. I wrote back and mentioned that I had heard very little
of his music -- mostly an early record, Figure of Speech
(1991, Soul Note), that I admired greatly. He then offered to send
a batch of his Hatology records, saying "If you haven't heard those
you really haven't heard my music." So that's where this batch of
catchup notes comes from. The new record is a high HM, and might
have gone higher had I more appreciation or tolerance for voice.
Eskelin's point is certainly well taken. I don't really have the
skills to explain how his music works in any technical sense, but
at least I've heard it. This album returns to the trio that made
One Great Day five years earlier and has been his core working
group all along. Parkins has developed into a more imposing force on
accordion, and finally plays some piano as well. The "12" are rough
ideas developed through improvisation into dense patterns that build
on the previous records. The "+1" is an obscure Monk piece at the
end.
A-
- Bill Evans: Riverside Profiles (1958-63 [2006], Riverside):
Like Thelonious Monk, Evans did his major work for
Riverside, his Complete Riverside Recordings amassing 12
discs, just shy of Monk's 15. Monk was by far the more radical
player, which in retrospect makes him much easier to grasp. He
had a knack for putting notes in wrong places, arguing his case
obstreperously, eventually winning. Evans, on the other hand,
seemed to always work within the lines, finding right notes no
one could doubt. So while I recommend going straight to the
original albums for Monk, this survey strikes me as a useful
primer. The first eight cuts are trios, so they flow evenly even
though Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian -- already the sneakiest
drummer in jazz -- stand out. The last two cuts are a group
with Freddie Hubbard and Jim Hall and a solo piece -- a good
one-two punch to close this out.
A
- Explorations: Classic Picante Regrooved, Vol. 1
(2006, Concord Picante):
Better than the usual back catalog remix
project, probably because most of the originals are so awash in
beats they hardly need remixing. Surprising because Picante had
turned into something of a retirement home for salseros, so maybe
we should hand it to the A-list remixers, who evidently know how
to juice up the clave.
B+(**)
- Miguel Fdez-Vallejo Meets Miguel Villar: El Perro
(2005 [2006], Fresh Sound New Talent):
Two Spanish tenor saxophonists,
names I've run across in the past but don't know much about -- nor do
they have the web presence that helps make up for obscurity. Formally,
this promises to be a joust, but is pretty subtle, the two sax lines
tracking each other closely over bass and drums. One cut adds guests:
vibes by Marc Miralta, with Gorka Benítez taking the lead on flute.
I've played this several times, and like it as haunting, poignant
background music, but don't have much more to say.
B+(**)
- Michael Felberbaum: Sweetsalt (2005 [2006],
Fresh Sound New Talent):
Guitarist, based in Paris since 1991, before that
in US from 1985, before that not sure -- website says he played in
"Roman clubs" when he was 15. Has a previous album. This one is a
quartet with piano-bass-drums. Another solid postbop exercise, with
some urgency which can either be driven by the guitarist or Pierre
de Ethmann on piano or Fender Rhodes.
B+(*)
- Frank Foster: Well Water (1977 [2007], Piadrum):
Big band. Huge. Monstrous. Foster calls this 20-member aggregate
the Loud Minority Band: five trumpets, four trombones, seven reeds,
most of the latter with flutes in their kits. This previously
unreleased tape is a good deal more unruly than Foster's Basie
work, but I don't find the overkill invigorating or interesting.
On the other hand, the "bonus track" breaks down to a Mickey
Tucker piano trio that rocks and rolls, then further dissolves
into a drum solo, which is pure Elvin Jones.
B
- The Frankenstein Consort: Classical A-Go-Go (2006, Sfz):
Subtitled "invigorating musical novelties for woodwinds, piano,
and percussion." Featuring Erik Lindgren, the piano player, who is
best known from one of the first landmark experimental rock groups,
Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. Don't really know what to make of this
one, which seems neither classical not go-go, but rather something
that works within a closed system of humor I'm not really privy to.
Includes pieces from usual suspects Erik Satie and Raymond Scott,
a gloss on Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein," and originals, including
one close to "Tomorrow Never Comes." Not without interesting bits,
but too clever by some factor beyond my powers of calculation.
B
- The Free Zen Society (2003 [2007], Thirsty Ear):
This started as a session with Matthew Shipp, William Parker, and
harpist Zeena Parkins. Musically it's dominated by Shipp's piano,
and is typical of his slower improv work, forceful chords wrapped
in bass-harp-electronics gossamer. The latter, indeed the whole
project, is largely the work of Thirsty Ear head honcho Peter
Gordon, who took the shelved tape and doctored it into present
form. I find it rather new agey, although it clearly has more
muscle under the soft skin.
B
- Janice Friedman Trio: Swingin' for the Ride (2006,
Janika Music):
Pianist-singer, hasn't recorded a lot,
but judging from her website keeps busy and upbeat, including
a teaching job at Rutgers. I appreciate the info, including
birth date and her characterization of growing up in "lily
white" Livingston NJ, as well as the schedule that puts her
in my old stomping grounds out in Bernardsville for a couple
of nights this month. Record has five originals vs. seven
standards. Trio has a guest percussionist, which comes in
handy on the Brazilian fare. Aside from a "Summertime" she
rides too hard, it's hard to fault anything here.
B+(*)
- Tia Fuller: Healing Space (2006 [2007], Mack Avenue):
It seems likely that sooner or later she'll be lured to the smooth
side -- indeed, two tracks with guest vocalists point that way, and
her resumé-topping tour with Beyoncé gives her a taste of the star
life -- but for how she has too much chops and spunk not to enjoy
herself. Good tone and plenty of grit on alto sax. Also plays soprano
and flute, but why bother? Very mainstream, with two pieces inspired
by Katrina. Sean Jones plays trumpet on four, a good match. Ron Blake
plays tenor on one, no big deal.
B+(*)
- Christoph Gallio/Urs Voerkel/Peter K Frey: Tiegel
(1981 [2006], Atavistic):
Soprano sax, piano, bass, respectively,
although there are bits of drums (Voerkel) and trombone (Frey).
Recorded in Zurich. Seems to be a previously unreleased work tape,
with thirteen compositions each called "Improvisation" followed
by a number. Gallio went on to form a group named Day & Taxi,
where he has a substantial body of work I'm unfamiliar with. AMG
only lists one album for Voerkel, but a web search reveals a half
dozen or so. Voerkel and Frey reportedly lived in a house with
Irène Schweizer and other luminaries -- Mal Waldron was another
on the list. The music is delicate, articulate, sharply drawn,
with each member contributing memorable moments.
B+(**)
- Charles Gayle Trio: Consider the Lilies . . .
(2005 [2006], Clean Feed):
Gayle sounds like no one else. But
he sounds so much like himself that his albums melt together
into an indistinguishable mass. It makes little difference
whether he plays alto sax, as he does here and on Live at
Glenn Miller Café (Ayler; released earlier but recorded
later), or tenor, as on Shout! (his previous Clean Feed
release). Only his solo piano album Time Zones is off in
a different world -- he's a distinctive and rather remarkable
pianist, but not even Cecil Taylor can pound a piano with the
fury and urgency of Gayle blowing sax. As his trio albums go,
this one strikes me as better than average: more in control,
perhaps because the alto is easier to handle; his one cut
piano break fits in nicely, without losing much of the energy
level; and Jay Rosen makes a heroic contribution on drums.
B+(**)
- Charles Gayle Trio: Live at Glenn Miller Café
(2006, Ayler):
After all his attempts at diversification -- piano,
violin, solo piano album, can Gayle with strings be far behind? --
it's a pleasure just to hear him blow and his trio-mates, Gerald
Benson and Michael Wimberly, bang. Doesn't hurt that he sticks
with his more moderate alto instead of unleashing his full fury
tenor. Helps that he mostly goes with standards -- gives you an
easy frame of reference, even if his "Cherokee" is pretty far
afield.
B+(***)
- Ned Goold: March of the Malcontents (2005 [2007],
Smalls):
Tenor saxophonist, has a rather muted sound that seems
to belong in dark, smoky clubs, where his modest, MOR postbop
sounds like you figure jazz should sound these days. This is a
quartet with pianist Sacha Perry, who fits in unobtrusively.
B+(*)
- J.A. Granelli and Mr. Lucky: Homing (2005 [2006],
Love Slave):
AMG lists him as J. Anthony Granelli. Son of drummer
Jerry Granelli. Plays electric and acoustic bass. Calls his group
Mr. Lucky. This is their third album, but the personnel has turned
over, with Brad Shepik on guitar (replacing David Tronzo), Nate
Shaw on organ (Jamie Saft), Mike Sarin on drums (Kenny Wolleson
or Diego Voglino), and Gerald Menke joining on steel guitar. So
this bears some resemblance to organ-based soul jazz, but it's
subtler and slinkier than that, with Shepik most frequently taking
the lead, and the steel guitar adding lustre.
B+(**)
- Lou Grassi's PoBand: Infinite POtential (2005 [2006],
CIMP):
Perry Robinson's clarinet loses out in the three-horn
attack here, pummelled to a pulp by Herb Robertson's trumpet and
David Taylor's bass trombone. Would like to have heard more from
him after the Anat Fort album, but this is, after all, the drummer's
album. His play is central, setting the standard for the roughness
all around him. Not that Taylor, Robertson, and bassist Adam Lane
don't have their moments, but this doesn't strike me as wise use
of such resources.
B+(*)
- Johnny Griffin: The Congregation (1957 [2006], Blue Note):
A bebop tenor saxophonist given to heavy blowing
sessions, this quartet layers his big bold sound over Sonny
Clark's free-flowing piano, a simple formula that pays off
handsomely.
A-
- Brian Groder: Torque (2006, Latham):
An attractive,
vigorous brass-reeds-bass-drums quartet, with the leader on trumpet
and flugelhorn, Sam Rivers on flute and saxophones. Groder gets
more play and makes more of an impression, with Rivers tending to
slip into the background.
B+(**)
- Groundtruther: Longitude (2004 [2005], Thirsty Ear).
Still not as consistent as I'd like, but this is a pretty
impressive showcase for Charlie Hunter's guitar fusion. Bobby
Previte is the other hand of Groundtruther, a fine drummer well
suited for this kind of music. As with their previous album, this
one has a guest star. DJ Logic inserts some turntable twists, but
they complement rather than compete with the lead.
B+(***)
- Russell Gunn: Plays Miles (2006 [2007], High Note):
Cover shows a trumpet, an electric power line plug, and a butterfly,
signifying the Elektrik Butterfly Band and pointing towards Miles
Davis's fusion period. Keyboards, bass, drums, percussion, but no
guitar or sax. Not all that interesting, at least compared to Yo
Miles!, but fun in its own right.
B+(*)
- Gypsy Schaeffer: Portamental (2005 [2006], PeaceTime):
Second album by a Boston quartet -- Andy Voelker on saxophones, Joel
Yennior trombone, Jef Charland bass, Chris Punis drums -- with a
Dixieland-associated name but variously characterized as modern jazz,
post-bop, and/or "mildly avant-garde." I can more or less hear all
that, but I can't figure out why I should be impressed. Or maybe I'm
just suspicious when the avant-garde goes mild?
B
- Lafayette Harris Jr.: In the Middle of the Night
(2003-04 [2007], Airmen):
Likable, albeit lightweight, smooth jazz
outing from a pianist who started out on Muse and could have stuck
in out in soul jazz territory. Which means that for all the soft,
slinky, synthy slickness, there are occasional moments of class:
a workmanlike "Work Song," guest spots from Donald Harrison and
Terrell Stafford, flashes of Ben Butler guitar, and a closer ("A
Little Feel Thing") that slips over the Afro-Cuban line. The guest
vocalists don't fare so well.
B
- Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid: The Exchange Session Vol. 2
(2005 [2006], Domino):
Three more pieces from the same
sessions, slightly longer (53:30). Not as compelling, not because
they're longer but because the initial ideas just didn't work out
as well. That happens sometimes -- more often than not -- when
you try live improv. Not superfluous either, but check out Vol.
1 before you spring for the leftovers. That's why they packaged
them this way.
B+(**)
- Mike Holober: Wish List (2004-05 [2006], Sons of Sound):
I don't get the sense that Holober is an exceptional pianist,
but I have noticed that he often shows up in good places, and that
he is one of the main factors in that success. That may mean he's
a better follower than leader. That this record makes such a soft
impression may be that his lead players never take charge. Tim
Rees adds little more than color with his saxophones; Wolfgang
Muthspiel is even more evanescent on guitar.
B
- Honolulu Jazz Quartet: Tenacity (2006 [2007], HJQ):
I dunno. A squall line just blew through in the middle of
playing this, so I assume that the thunder and crashing trees
and such were unscripted. Was trying to read Nat Hentoff's
purple-on-black liner notes -- name-dropping about shit told
to him back in the day by Coleman Hawkins and Duke Ellington --
and was having trouble with that, too. Group is a quartet, based
in Honolulu. Leader is bassist John Kolivas. Tim Tsukiyama plays
tenor and soprano sax, mostly tenor; Dan Del Negro piano; Adam
Baron drums. Very mainstream stuff, with the only non-original
from local legend, slack key guitarist Keola Beamer, not that
it stands out. Actually, the distractions don't matter much.
Either this is exemplary competency or it's a work of marginal
distinction. Think I'll give it a pass and go with the latter,
since for my triage purposes it doesn't much matter.
B+(*)
- Freddie Hubbard: Here to Stay (1962 [2006], Blue Note):
The younger generation of hard boppers hard at work, with
Wayne Shorter, Cedar Walton and Reggie Workman, with Philly Joe
Jones the only over-30, offering a sleekly modern take, even of
standard fare like "Body and Soul." Cut between Impulse albums
at a time when it seemed he could do no wrong, this sat on the
shelf until 1976.
B+(***)
- Bruno Hubert Trio/B3 Kings: A Cellar Live Christmas
(2005 [2006], Cellar Live):
Hubert plays piano. The B3 Kings have
Cory Weeds on alto sax, Bill Coon on guitar, Chris Gestrin on the
famous organ, and Denzal Sinclaire on drums. My impression is that
the two groups alternate rather than play together, excepting that
Sinclaire sings one song with each. There's some good news here.
One is that they're serious enough about jazz that sometimes they
deconstruct these songs until you forget what they're playing.
Another is Coon's guitar, although the others, notably Hubert,
strike me favorably. Still useless.
B-
- Bobby Hutcherson: Happenings (1966 [2006], Blue Note):
A quartet matching the leader's vibes with Herbie Hancock's
piano, the latter taking the lead on a pair of lovely slow pieces,
while the vibes run off with the fast ones; Hancock's "Maiden
Voyage" gets an especially sensitive reading.
A-
- Incognito: Beer + Things + Flowers (2006, Narada Jazz):
Niche marketing, but what can you do with a rather old-fashioned straight
soul group these days? In their natural classification they'd be second
rate, but smooth jazz is so lame they come off as consummate pros. Still,
they should be advised to disguise their limits a bit. The two best
sounding things here are "Tin Man" (which should belong to the Isley
Brothers) and "That's the Way of the World" (which does belong to Earth
Wind & Fire).
C+
- Jazz Yule Love II (2006, Mack Avenue):
If Christmas
music really outsells jazz, as I've seen reports claiming, I guess
this is one way to help pay the bills. Seems useless to me, but I've
heard far worse down at the local mall. The roster includes familiar
names from the label's recent releases, plus two I hadn't noticed:
Oscar Brown Jr. and Bud Shank. No dates provided. Brown died in 2005,
with his last album in 1998. Shank is 80 now, still active, with a
good live record last year joined by Phil Woods. Here he makes the
best case I've heard in years for letting it snow.
B-
- JC and the Jazz Hoppers: Chillin' at Home (2004 [2006],
Jazz-Hop):
JC is Jason Campbell, guitarist. The Jazz Hoppers are Colin
Nolan and Andrew Dickeson, who play organ and drums, respectively. Don't
know anything about Campbell -- his website has Flash but no substance --
but the record was recorded in Australia, which isn't what you'd call
an international jazz destination. So, guitar-organ-drums: been done.
Chillin'? That too. Sounds like Grant Green? Sort of, in which case:
not enough.
B-
- Kayhan Kalhor/Erdal Erzincan: The Wind (2004 [2006],
ECM):
Kalhor plays kamancheh, a four-string spiked fiddle or bowed
lute from Iran: a violin sound, although pitched a bit lower. Erzincan
plays baglama, a long-necked oud from Turkey. Unlisted on the cover
is a third musician, Ulas Ozdemir, on divan (bass) bagalama. One long
improv based on Iranian and Turkish traditional music, indexed for
twelve parts. Fascinating, but a bit thin at this considerable length.
B+(*)
- Phil Kelly & the SW Santa Ana Winds: My Museum
(2006, Origin):
Los Angeles-based big band, including a bank of strings
and some featured soloists of note -- Wayne Begeron, Pete Christlieb,
Bill Cunliffe, Grant Geissman, Jay Thomas are names I recognize. Kelly
wrote five of nine pieces and arranged the rest, including "Body &
Soul" and "Daydream." Kelly has also worked with a Seattle-based group
called the Northwest Prevailing Winds. Nicely done, with some inspired
moments, but sometimes I wonder why anyone puts so much effort into
projects of such limited potential.
B
- Nancy King: Live at Jazz Standard With Fred Hersch
(2004 [2006], MaxJazz):
This won the Voice Critics' jazz poll as best
vocal album of 2006, so I figured I should check it out. Vocal jazz
is many things, and this is one of them: a standards singer with a
lone pianist for support. Hersch is in pure support mode here -- if
he takes a single solo it slipped past me. His patterns have little
interest in themselves; they merely serve as foils for King. She too
keeps this low key: it took a while before I noticed her subtleties
rising to the surface -- the emergence of "Day by Day," the details
to "Everything Happens to Me," little bits of inconspicuous scat.
Didn't have this when the poll closed, not that it would have made
any difference to me. It's the sort of thing that could slowly grow
on you, but Diana Krall blew me away from the start, as did Maurice
Hines, and there's maybe a dozen more jazz vocal albums higher on
my 2006 list. But that's just my take: of the many things comprising
vocal jazz, each has its own distinct appeal, defying easy comparison.
B+(*)
- Norm Kubrin: I Thought About You (2006, Arbors):
About what you'd expect from the backgrounder: "Since 1993 Kubrin
has resided in Palm Beach and has been the resident artist at the
Leopard Room in the Chesterfield Hotel, the music director of the
Colony Hotel, and the resident pianist-singer at Donald Trump's
Mar-A-Lago Club. For the last few years he has been the resident
artist at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Palm Beach and performs
regularly on the Florida concert scene." In other words, Shmoozy
piano balladry, in a trio with bass and guitar, singing ye Great
American Songbook. Good as far as that goes. I was particularly
touched by "Where Do You Start," the breakup song closing the set.
B
- Pete Levin: Deacon Blues (2007, Motema):
Veteran keyboard player, mostly synths in the past, but organ
here. Worked with Gil Evans from 1973, Jimmy Giuffre from 1983,
plus a long list of pop, jazz, and in-between session work.
With guitar (Joe Beck or Mike DeMicco), bass (his brother,
Tony Levin), drums/percussion (Danny Gottlieb, Ken Lovelett,
Carlos Valdez, in various combos). Steers clear of soul jazz
clichés -- maybe having a bassist on board keeps him out of
the grits range. Steely Dan title cut and Beach Boys' "Sail
on Sailor" are tastefully underplayed.
B+(*)
- Jacques Loussier Trio: Bach: The Brandenburgs
(2006, Telarc):
I have him rather stuffily filed under classical,
since that's what a quick glance at discography, at least since
1987's Reflections on Bach, reads like. Bach represents
about half the list, but I also note Handel, Mozart, Chopin, Satie,
and Ravel. But there's nothing stuffy about this record. I don't
know the classical readings, so it's hard for me to tell where the
texts end and the jazz begins, but surely the walking bass wasn't
in the original.
B+(*)
- Joe Lovano Ensemble: Streams of Expression
(2005 [2006], Blue Note):
Gunther Schuller is only credited
with the three-piece-long "Birth of the Cool Suite," but the
big band assembled there carries on for two chunks of Lovano's
own "Streams of Expression" and a Tim Hagans piece "Buckeyes."
As such, this resembles the widely admired (albeit not by me)
Schuller-arranged Rush Hour. Lovano cut his teeth in
big bands, and he's comfortable here. But I get squirmish,
admiring one section for its slick intensity, getting annoyed
by others, and eventually not caring which is which.
B+(*)
- Mike Marshall/Hamilton de Holanda: New Worlds/Novas Palavras
(2005 [2006], Adventure Music):
Mandolins aren't exactly choice
dueling instruments, but the point here is more likely to see what can
come together than how American and Brazilian mandolinists stack up. The
match isn't exactly equal: de Holanda plays 10-string bandolim and Irish
bouzouki, both close matches to Marshall's mandolin. Marshall also drops
down a bit with mandocello and tenor guitar. This struck me as the label
owner's indulgence at first, but it works better than expected. Sounds
to my ears somewhat like one of those plucky mediaeval dance things, but
more tightly wound -- a plus. DVD has three songs: that's the owner's
indulgence, but he wants you to see how happy he is.
B+(*)
- Martirio & Chano Domínguez: Acoplados (2004
[2006], Sunnyside):
Martirio sings Spanish copla, a traditional
pop song laced with flamenco and dolled up here for dramatic
effect. Domínguez supports her with a tight little piano trio,
but the RTVE big band and orchestra bathe the proceedings in
strings and horns. It's hard to know what's traditional and
what's progressive here, which limits are prodded and which
are dutifully adhered to.
B
- Jackie McLean: Demon's Dance (1967 [2006], Blue Note):
The last of McLean's Blue Notes is a bright, breezy, bop
quintet with newcomers Woody Shaw and Jack DeJohnette standing
out -- the sort of quickie he made routinely a decade earlier at
Prestige, but with his mastery all the more evident.
B+(***)
- Jay McShann: Hootie Blues (2006, Stony Plain).
A live set from the Montréal Bistro, in Toronto, and a
plain delight. McShann was never a great singer, but at 85 his
throwaway lines have developed a beguiling slyness. But his piano
still has more than a hint of boogie woogie, which loosens up
this set of blues-tinged standards. With sax, bass and drums.
I haven't listened to much of his post-Parker output, which I
imagine is much in this vein. Ends with a 24-minute interview;
worth hearing. Among other things, he remembers when Wichita
had its big jazz scene.
B+(**)
- Nando Michelin Trio: Duende (2006, Fresh Sound New Talent):
Pianist. Don't know any biographical details, but AMG lists
six albums going back to 1996, and that doesn't include this one.
Only two side-credits. This one was recorded in Boston. Richie
Barshay plays drums and percussion. Esperanza Spalding plays bass
and contributes scat vocals to most songs. I'm fairly neutral about
the latter, which is to say they're unannoying and less disruptive
than I'd expect. Piano is attractive, and bass and drums provide
solid support.
B+(*)
- Harry Miller's Isipingo: Which Way Now (1975 [2006],
Cuneiform):
A sextet, half South African exiles including the leader-bassist,
half English avant-gardists, with neither half playing to type on
this 75-minute Radio Bremen air shot. Rather, they play like a
more mainstream jazz band, but uncommonly full of fire and spirit
as they stretch out on four long tracks. Trombinist Nick Evans is
especially noteworthy: he comes first in the alphabetical credits,
but earns top billing throughout, frequently battling number two
man, trumpeter Mongezi Feza. Keith Tippett's piano also gets a
good hearing. But most of the interest here will be focused on
Miller and Feza -- both died tragically young, leaving only a
few intriguing recordings. This is a significant discovery for
both.
A-
- Bob Mintzer Quartet: In the Moment (2004 [2007],
Art of Life):
Yellowjackets tenor saxophonist in a straight acoustic
piano-bass-drums quartet. Plays bass clarinet too. Away from the
big bands, pop groups, and fusioneers, he's a solid, respectable
mainstreamer.
B+(*)
- Nils Petter Molvaer: Live: Streamer (2002 [2006],
Thirsty Ear):
Originally released on Molvaer's own Sula label,
I gave the original an Honorable Mention without giving it much
thought, figuring it to be a second helping of the fine studio
albums that preceded it. Same record, I think, in a shinier box.
A-
- Thelonious Monk: Riverside Profiles (1955-59 [2006],
Riverside):
From Brilliant Corners to Town Hall, Monk's
Riversides were his growth period, in many cases taking early songs
and finding new ways of orchestrating them -- most notably aided by
saxophonists named Hawkins, Coltrane, Rollins, Griffin, and Rouse.
Ten cuts from ten albums, most deserving to be heard at far greater
length. Come with a generic Riverside bonus disc, including "Bemsha
Swing" -- which I would have preferred here to the solo pieces, or
the Ellington.
A-
- Wes Montgomery: Riverside Profiles (1959-63 [2006],
Riverside):
His soft metallic tone, intricate lines, and irrepressible
groove made him the premier jazz guitarist of his times and immensely
influential ever since. His Complete Riverside Recordings box
totals 12 discs at the peak of a shortened career -- he died in 1968
at age 43 -- so this should be prime, but it's also rather spotty,
with organ grinds and strings, and others frequently stealing the
spotlight.
B+(***)
- Stanton Moore: III (2006, Telarc):
Not sure
what you'd call Moore's strain of jazz-funk fusion. It shares
some ground with MM&W, looking back to soul jazz organ
(Robert Walter is the guy here), guitar (Will Bernard), and
sax (Skerik). Garage A Trois's Outre Mer, which Moore
had a big hand in, is my favorite example -- it just seems
to click together right. This is spottier, especially on the
more straightforward funk toons. Two slower pieces toward the
end -- Abdullah Ibrahim's "Water From an Ancient Well" and
trad.'s "I Shall Not Be Moved" -- are exceptional, curiously
sandwiched around a Led Zep blues, "When the Levee Breaks."
Outre Mer ranks as
my favorite pop-jazz-fusion album of the Jazz CG era - not that
it has a lot of competition. The key there was that they kept the
mix lean and the groove sharp. This is even leaner, a bare bones
organ trio, at least when the two guests - Skerik on tenor sax,
Mark Mullins on trombone - don't weigh in. It no doubt helps
that Moore's two bandmates have produced memorable albums on
their own - specifically, ones that impressed me more for their
instrumental prowess than their overall achievement. The Hammond
guy is Robert Walter. The guitarist is Will Bernard. First cut
is just the three of them, something called "Poison Pushy," and
it clicks. Beyond that I'm less certain, but for now it's worth
noting that Skerik earns his keep. He's carved out a niche for
himself as a postmodern honker - a Joe Houston for Coltrane's
kiddies.
Personnel:
Robert Walter: hammond b3 organ
Will Bernard: guitar
Stanton Moore: drums
* Guests:
Skerik: tenor sax
Mark Mullins: trombone
Songs:
1. "Poison Pushy"
2. "Licorice"
3. "Big 'Uns Get the Ball Rolling"
4. "Chilcock"
5. "(Don't Be Comin' With No) Weak Sauce"
6. "Dunkin' in the Deep"
7. "Maple Plank"
8. "Water From an Ancient Well"
9. "When the Levee Breaks"
10. "I Shall Not Be Moved"
--> B+(*)
- Nick Moran Trio: The Messenger (2006, CAP):
Guitarist-led organ trio, with clean lines, gentle swing, and
Ed Withrington's light touch on the organ. First album, quite
likable. Credits George Benson as an influence.
B+(*)
- Lee Morgan: The Cooker (1957 [2006], Blue Note):
Relatively early, in fact still in his teens, but Morgan's trumpet
sound is loud and clear, contrasting brilliantly with Pepper Adams'
baritone sax, with a young Bobby Timmons on piano.
B+(**)
- Andy Narell: Tatoom (2007, Heads Up):
Subtitled
Music for Steel Orchestra, the steel drums are Narell's
expansive kit, photographed in the booklet. The "orchestra" adds
drums, percussion (congas, timbales), and guests on three cuts:
two with guitarist Mike Stern, one with tenor saxophonist David
Sanchez. The latter cut is worthwhile. The rest leaves me slightly
queasy, even though it sounds like one of the most straightforward
jazz albums he's made. Not sure just why, nor all that interested
in figuring it out.
B
- New Ghost: Live Upstairs at Nick's (1998 [2006],
ESP-Disk):
After some digging, I filed this one-shot group under
Philadelphia saxophonist Elliott Levin. His resume ranges from
Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes to Cecil Taylor. This particular
group, as you could probably figure out, is dedicated to Albert
Ayler. Both Levin and guitarist Rick Iannacone are credited with
vocals, which gravitate toward Beefheart, but mostly they haunt
and squawk, sometimes to hair-raising effect.
B+(*)
- Odyssey the Band: Back in Time (2005 [2006], Pi).
I would have been happier without the two vocals here, which break
the flow of the music -- a vibrant tension between James Blood
Ulmer's guitar, Charles Burnham's violin, and Warren Benbow's
drums which somehow flows with the improbability of harmolodics.
On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with the vocals per sé --
how they would have fit into Ulmer's Hyena albums is hard to say,
but that's because the music is so much looser here. Francis Davis
has already plugged this in the Voice as the first A-plus record
of the year. I'm inclined to be a bit more cautious, and for now
doubt that I have two more cents worth the Jazz CG space. Unless
I find myself shy a Pick Hit when the next deadline comes around.
This could fill that bill.
A-
- Steve Oliver: Snowfall (2006, Koch):
First snow
of the season here in Cowtown, so I figured that must be what I've
been saving this for. Oliver plays guitar and synths, and he makes
tolerable background music out of trifles like "Carol of the Bells"
and his own "Crystals in the Snow." Unfortunately, he also sings,
or in one case is credited with "vocal sounds." It's not that he's
awful (although he is), but these songs don't deserve the sort of
attention that voice commands.
C
- Oscar Peñas Group: The Return of Astronautus (2005
[2006], Fresh Sound New Talent):
Don't know much about Peñas, and
never heard of anyone in his group except perhaps -- rings a bell,
anyway -- keyboardist José A. Medina. Barcelona group, Peñas plays
guitar. Evidently Javier Vercher played sax in an earlier edition
of the group, but the current saxophonist goes by the name Guim G.
Balasch. The other band members are D-Beat Gonzalez on bass and
Mariano Steimberg on drums. Peñas has a thick, metallic tone,
which melts into the fender rhodes and electric bass. Postbop,
more or less. The ballads are lovely. The faster pieces don't
make much of an impression.
B
- Alain Pérez: En El Aire (2005 [2007], AYVA):
Cuban bassist, lives in Madrid, has worked with Chucho Valdés,
Paco de Lucia, Jerry Gonzalez. Busts some interesting rhythmic
moves, shuffles his musicians around for variety, and reaches
a bit too high on occasion, especially when he tries to sing.
In a better world I'd give this more than two plays and try
to sort out what I do and don't like about it -- there's no
shortage of both. It's even possible that he'll come back with
something that encourages me to do so. But until then:
B
- Houston Person/Bill Charlap: You Taught My Heart to Sing
(2004 [2006], High Note):
Lovely, of course, with scant room for nitpicking,
but perhaps a bit too much of a mutual admiration society, especially where
the saxophonist makes way for the pianist. I keep wishing a bass would enter
and scurry them along a bit.
B+(***)
- Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown and Milt Jackson: What's Up?
The Very Tall Band (1998 [2007], Telarc):
Leftovers from
the three day stand that produced The Very Tall Band Live at
the Blue Note (Telarc). Nothing all that special at the time,
but it's great to hear Bags again. One of the first things I ever
read about Jackson described him as "always swinging"; Peterson
and Brown aren't the sort who'd moderate that tendency.
B+(**)
- John Pisano's Guitar Night (1997-2006 [2007], Mel Bay, 2CD):
Guitar Night is every Tuesday at Spazio's in Sherman
Oaks CA -- at least that's where all the recordings from 2001 on
come from. Pisano hosts one or more guest guitarists, usually
with a revolving set of bassists and drummers. Pisano's first
Guitar Night was in 1997 at Papashon, with George Van Eps and
Herb Ellis early guests. Picking 16 cuts from a decade, Guitar
Night features 12 guitarists plus Pisano on roughly half of the
cuts. Pisano's own credits include work with Chico Hamilton in
1956-58 and a current duo with vocalist-wife Jeanne dba the
Flying Pisanos. I'm not familiar with most of the guitarists
here -- Peter Bernstein, Joe Diorio, and Larry Koonse are the
exceptions, aside from Ellis and Van Eps -- and they sort of
flow together. A good thing, I'd say, a delight for anyone
into the intricate inner workings of postbop jazz guitar.
B+(*)
- Jonathan Poretz: A Lot of Livin' to Do (2006 [2007],
Pacific Coast Jazz):
Actually, not sure of the recording date, but
clearly it can't be the same year as the official release date.
Poretz is an unabashed admirer of the cardinal male vocal lineage.
Down in the "Special Thanks" he says, "Thanks to Frank, Tony, Mel
and Bobby for showing me the way." If you have to ask for surnames,
this record isn't for you. In my case, "Bobby" gave me pause -- I
always thought of Darin as a rocker until I started listening to
him lately. Anyhow, we're not talking McFerrin. Of the four, the
closest match is Bennett. Actually, I like Poretz better, but I
can't claim he adds anything new. Probably wouldn't want to, even
if he could.
B+(**)
- Peter Primamore: Grancia (2006 [2007], Blue Apples Music):
Pianist from New Jersey, probably in his 40s, first record,
background includes: Neil Young tribute band on Jersey shore, a
gamelan ensemble at Cornell, lounge piano in Atlantic City. AMG
classified this as easy listening. On listening to it, I shuttled
it off to my new age file. In fairness, he does rock a bit, on a
piece called "Free Western." This is composed and neatly layered
instrumental music -- mostly strings (including Chieli Minucci's
guitars, a quartet, and harp), soft reeds (clarinets, flutes, oboe),
percussion -- with no jazz feel. Often pleasant, at times lovely.
B-
- Puttanesca (2006, Catasonic):
Sauce, usually served
with spaghetti. Brown 4 halved cloves garlic in 3 tbs. olive oil. Add
4-5 anchovy fillets, crush with fork. Add 28 oz. crushed tomatoes, 10-12
coarsely chopped black olives, 2 tbs. capers, 2 tbs. flat parsley, a
small red chili or equivalent. Stirring occasionally, cook over medium
heat until reduced to sauce (about 10 minutes). Pasta alla puttanesca
translates as whore's pasta. It has a loud, noisy taste, one that grabs
your buds and beats them around. Group tries to do the same thing, but
less successfully. Their obligatory inspirational cover is Beefheart's
"Lick My Decals Off, Baby," and throughout the guitar-bass-drums exhibit
a similar skew. The vocalist is Weba Garretson, who's also done business
as Weba World. Given that nobody knows what a jazz vocal is these days,
she's probably close enough -- certainly too kinky for alt-rock.
B+(*)
- Ike Quebec: It Might as Well Be Spring (1961 [2006],
Blue Note):
Great name, but a spotty career, cutting r&b 78s for
Blue Note and Savoy in the late '40s, then reappearing from 1958-62,
specializing in soul jazz 45s, before dying of lung cancer in 1963,
age 44. All along he may have been more notable as Blue Note's a&r
guy, recruiting Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Dexter Gordon, and many
more. He played on Monk's early "genius" recordings, sounding confused.
But by 1960 he developed a rich, lustrous tone to his tenor sax, and
his blues and ballads bring out the joyous warmth of the instrument.
This quartet with Freddie Roach on organ and Milt Hinton on bass has
two originals that go down easy, but it's the well-worn standards
that shine: "Lover Man," "Ol' Man River," "Willow Weep for Me," and
the title track.
A-
- Tad Robinson: A New Point of View (2006 [2007],
Severn):
White blues singer, also plays harmonica, although I wouldn't
swear to the race without a photo. Actually, the notes refer to
him as a "soul-blues singer," but I find this so firmly locked
into the modern blues paradigm that his hard-earned soulfulness
is secondary.
B
- Luis Rodríguez: U-Turn (2006, Fresh Sound New Talent):
Young tenor saxophonist (owns a soprano too) from Puerto Rico. Got a
scholarship to Berklee 1998; moved back to Puerto Rico in 2003. First
album, mostly a quartet with bass, drums, and Luis Perdomo on piano,
but Miguel Zenón joins in on two tracks, and really heats things up
on "On the Road." Music does not have a pronounced Latin influence,
although the possibility that Perdomo, in particular, is slipping in
something over my head is very real; rather, it's postbop of a high
order, easy to enjoy, hard to fault.
B+(**)
- Saborit: Que Linda Es Mi Cuba (2006, Tumi):
I suppose it's pure coincidence that the guitars in this East
Cuban group remind me of nothing so much as Guitar Paradise
of East Africa. Cuba's Oriente is typically less Afro and
more Spanish than the urban jungle of Havana, but for country
music this builds on pretty complex riddims. Modestly named for
guaracha legend Eduardo Saborit, they've played together for
twenty-plus years before piling onto a tractor and heading
cross-country for their first studio date. That may make them
hicks, but they were right to take the chance.
A-
- Hironobu Saito: The Sea (2005 [2006], Fresh Sound
New Talent):
Japanese guitarist, won a scholarship to Berklee, seems
to be based in Kyoto now, but he does get around. Second album, more
ambitious than The Remaining 2%. Most of it oscillates in
big waves of groove, with Walter Smith's sax keeping him company,
and Eric Harland accentuating the beat. In this mode he reminds me
of John Scofield or maybe Pat Metheny -- guitar's never been my
strong suit, and anyway the reaction he evokes is that I've always
distrusted those guys. Aside from Harland's drums, I find that part
of the album devoid of interest. Some bits fare better. The title
track is a simple thing with ocean sounds fading into a recitation
by Gretchen Parlato that's both atmospheric and sultry.
B-
- The Source (2005 [2006], ECM):
Norwegian quartet,
led by saxophonist Trygve Seim, with Øyvind Braekke's trombone as
the second horn. I'm reminded of an argument that Ken Vandermark
made in introducing Mats Gustafsson's Blues record: that
American and European players have a fundamental disconnect in
their sense of what blues is, the Americans tuned to the sonic
signatures, the Europeans more formal, more abstract. Same sort
of thing happens here, only viz. swing. This doesn't swing, but
it does everything else you expect of a swing record -- while
staying what seems to me at least unnaturally upright. Francis
Davis wrote about this in the Voice already, which sort of gets
me off the hook. A fascinating record I haven't managed to figure
out. I do think that Seim will wind up regarded as important, and
this won't be the last time I revisit this.
B+(***)
- Kendra Shank: A Spirit Free: Abbey Lincoln Songbook
(2005 [2007], Challenge):
Jazz singer, fourth album, plays guitar
elsewhere but not here. Not sure what the relationship to Abbey
Lincoln is, other than mutual admiration, but she does 11 Lincoln
songs here. Lincoln may be my least favorite female jazz singer
ever, so I'm not at all sure where to start here. Maybe that the
music has a distinctly modern jazz flair to it, and that Shank's
relatively moderate voice -- that is, compared to Lincoln's; it's
still arch compared to most cabaret singers, but that may be a
function of the music -- never trips up or grates. I should give
this more time, but after three plays I doubt that will be
cost-effective. I should give Lincoln another chance at some
point, which this makes me dread a bit less. Gary Giddins wrote
the liner notes.
B+(*)
- Elliott Sharp's Terraplane: Secret Life (2005, Intuition):
Not sure why this showed up at this late date. New
York guitarist, with many records since 1977: AMG lists 50 under
his own name, 175 under credits. Still, this is only the second
I have filed under his name, although I've surely heard more of
his work with others. AMG lists him under "Avant-Garde Music" --
most likely they mean eclectic + obscure. His website divides
his recordings into: the beginning; orchestral; strings; carbon;
guitar; blues; electro-acoustic; soundtracks; duos; groups;
producer; guest. Terraplane would mean blues: it was the title
of a 1994 album with David Hofstra and Joseph Trump and group
name for at least four more albums. The group here is a quintet
with Hofstra on bass, Lance Carter on drums, Curtis Fowlkes on
trombone, and Alex Harding on baritone sax. Eric Mingus sings
or shouts four songs, and Tracie Morris walks one more. Oh yeah,
Hubert Sumlin guests on two cuts. I'm finding the instrumentals
powerful and bent in interesting ways, but the vocals (Mingus,
anyway) much less so.
B+(*)
- Brad Shepik Trio: Places You Go (2005-06 [2007], Songlines):
Guitarist-led organ trio, with Gary Versace on the B-3
and Tom Rainey on drums. As such, the group leans more avant and
more exotic than most such, but inevitably the organ takes center
stage, which brings out its limited range but deep well of church
and funk. The result is awkward and rather unsatisfying, although
it's hard to pin this on the guitar or drums, or for that matter
even the tastefully restrained organ.
B
- Daryl Sherman: Guess Who's in Town (2006, Arbors):
Plays piano, sings standards, has ten albums now. Her voice is
similar to Mildred Bailey -- perhaps a bit lighter, but she can
surprise you with nuance. The rhythm section, including Jon
Wheatley's guitar but no drums, swings nicely, which helps most
on the fast ones. Harry Allen and Vince Giordano add sax on three
cuts each -- one in common, so five total.
B+(*)
- Liam Sillery With the David Sills Quartet: On the Fly
(2005 [2006], OA2):
Sills is a mainstream tenor saxophonist, who did
an album earlier this year that I rather liked (Down the Line).
His quartet includes organ and guitar, so it takes off from soul jazz
mainstream. Sillery plays trumpet and flugelhorn. Sax-trumpet quintets
normally spell hard bop, but the bottom is weak here, and the top is
rather flighty, the horns harmonizing more than dicing. The result is
a sort of elegant postbop I find almost totally uninteresting.
B-
- Grant Stewart: In the Still of the Night (2006 [2007],
Sharp Nine):
Tenor saxophonist; big, broad sound, straight
down main street, with a handful of albums since 1992, including
a group with Eric Alexander called Reeds and Deeds that's released
titles like Cookin' and Wailin'. Standards, with
"Autumn in New York" and "Lush Life" most memorable. First-rate
quartet, with Tardo Hammer, Peter Washington, and Joe Farnsworth.
Marc Edelman gets his usual brilliant sound.
B+(*)
- Sonny Stitt: Stitt's Bits: The Bebop Recordings
(1949-52 [2006], Prestige, 3CD):
Stitt always claimed
that he developed his style independently of Charlie Parker, sort
of like Alfred Russel Wallace's discovery of Charles Darwin's
theory of natural selection. But Parker was four years older, got
his records out first, and established his case more persuasively.
Stitt's early records on Prestige came out when bebop was in full
swing -- indeed, Jay Jay Johnson headlined the first set here,
and Bud Powell co-led the second. And as he moved from tenor sax
to alto, he almost begged comparison to Bird. More than anything
else, Stitt was a working musician -- a guy who cranked
out hundreds of albums, often on the flimsiest of premises. Most
of the sessions here were jousts with Gene Ammons, and the best
are when they're both flying high. But including everything drags
their faint r&b vocal sides in.
B+(**)
- Melissa Stylianou: Sliding Down (2006, Festival):
Canadian jazz singer, based in Brooklyn. Third album, although this
one is listed as Canada-only. Makes nice work of a couple of old
standards ("Them There Eyes," "All of You") and offers a refreshing
take on the Beatles' "Blackbird." The early going benefits from
light latin percussion, but she doesn't hold our interest when she
slows down, and the originals don't give her a lot to work with.
B
- Yma Sumac: Recital (1961 [2006], ESP-Disk):
The Incan diva, famed for her crystalline voice, was an exotic novelty
in the '50s, but here takes her folklore on the road, recording this
in Bucharest with an orchestra that frequently mistakes her for an
opera star. Not knowing her earlier work I'm not sure how this fits
in, or what it might be good for.
B-
- Steve Swallow With Robert Creeley: So There (2001-05
[2006], ECM/XtraWatt):
Only got the advance here -- same for
a bunch of ECM releases, which have been languishing on my
pile in the hopes that the real thing might come along, but
the release date here is Nov. 7, 2006, so I guess I have to
make do. I went through a poetry phase in the late '60s before
getting to a point after which I found the stuff unreadable.
Creeley was a name I recall from then, but not a particular
interest. He has been a favorite of jazz musicians: Steve
Lacy tried adapting his poems to song, and Swallow did the
same on a much earlier album. But here he just speaks, which
works much better, providing the skeleton and cadence for
Swallow's music. The latter is mostly the work of pianist
Steve Kuhn and the Cikada String Quartet. Kuhn's work is
very attractive here: light and uplifting without turning
to fluff. The strings are more of a down, tearful even, but
they don't spoil the experience. Interesting combination of
effects. (Francis Davis wrote about this in the Voice.)
B+(***)
- Natsuki Tamura Quartet: Exit (2003 [2004], Libra):
I've had this for a couple of years, but misplaced it. Noticed it
was in my unrated list, and looked around furiously for it, finding
it only after giving up. The packaging is like an LP jacket, but
CD-size, with a nice little soft paper inner sleeve for the disc.
The music has an industrial fusion feel to it, with Satoko Fujii
playing synth, Takayuki Kato guitar, and Ryojiro Furusawa drums.
Some of the noises resemble vocals, but could be coming from
anywhere, and don't resolve into much. In fact, only the drums
are particularly recognizable as themselves.
B
- David Taylor-Steve Swell Quintet: Not Just . . .
(2005 [2006], CIMP):
Looks interesting on paper. The leaders play
trombone, with Taylor on the bass version. The rest of the quintet
is a string trio, with Billy Bang, Thomas Ulrich, and Ken Filiano
from top to bottom. The problem may just be the sound, which they
expect you to play louder than is my norm, on more expensive stereo
gear, and with rapt attention. Failing that, there are dull spots
where nothing much seems to be happening. In any case, Bang never
really catches fire, although the trombone interplay is worthwhile.
B
- Ximo Tebar & Fourlights: Eclipse (2005 [2006],
Omix/Sunnyside):
Fast, slick bebop guitar, coming out of the Wes
Montgomery school, with a tribute to Pat Martino tossed in. The
fleet lightness is accented by Dave Samuels on vibes and marimba,
a nice touch, which at best sweeps you away. Less effective are
Tebar's scat vocals.
B+(*)
- Thirsty Ear Blue Series Sampler (2002-06 [2006],
Thirsty Ear):
The website lists this as The Blue Series Sampler: The
30th Year, but I find no evidence of that title here. The 30th
anniversary shtick is a stretch. They did some publicity in the
late '70s, but didn't release any records until 1990, and mostly
picked up others' productions until they hired Matthew Shipp and
launched the Blue Series in 2000. Even then, they had no idea they
were going to found a whole school of avant-jazztronica, let alone
open their tent wide enough to make a home for DJ Spooky, Charlie
Hunter, Nils Petter Molvaer, Carl Hancock Rux, Mike Ladd, and
numerous others. This is the third, and least satisfying, of their
samplers -- all that tent-opening has led to some sprawl. Still,
at $2.98 list, it is a bargain, not just to explore but because
it actually flows.
B+(**)
- Steve Turre: Keep Searchin' (2006, High Note):
After tributes to JJ Johnson and Roland Kirk, this has been viewed
as a re-exploration of Turre's own work. He is one of the more
remarkable trombonists of the last two decades, so he has plenty
to work with. The other main figure here is vibraphonist Stefon
Harris. I've never been much of a fan, but his light rhythmic tap
dance makes a nice contrast to Turre and Akua Dixon's baritone
violin (featured on three tracks), so I can't fault him here.
B+(**)
- Dave Valentin: Come Fly With Me (2006, High Note):
Plays flute, with 20 or so albums, mostly on pop-oriented GRP from
1980-93. Since then, one on RMM, one on Concord, two on High Note.
This is the first I've heard. It's mostly Latin, with Robby Ameen
on drums, Milton Cardona and Richie Flores on percussion -- Latin
jazz has always been a niche for flute players. I don't have much
feel for this sort of thing, but my impression is that Latin jazz
helps the flute more than the other way around. Choice cut here is
"Tu Pañuelo," where the rhythm gets so chopped up flow is impossible,
and the flute is mostly out of the picture, or panting hoarsely on
the sidelines.
B-
- Wayne Wallace: Dedication (2006 [2007], Patois):
San Francisco
trombonist, born 1952, teaches, mostly plays Latin, although some of
this is in a straighter jazz vein. Actually, he provides a thumbnail
breakdown: jazz (4), latin (2), ballad (1), tone poem (1, a Coltrane
piece Wallace doesn't play on; it's done with Asian flutes), bossa
nova (1), afro/jazz (1). The groups run large, often with trumpet,
two trombones (Jeff Cressman is the other), flute, three saxes, bass,
piano, drums, congas, timbales, and/or other percussion. I find all
this layered complexity often just cancels itself out, although I
do enjoy the trombone when I can make it out.
B
- Wayne Wallace: The Reckless Search for Beauty
(2006 [2007], Patois):
Trombonist-led Latin jazz record. Hard to
argue with the flow or spirit, but there's nothing much out of the
ordinary either. Lots of percussion. Six songs with vocals by Alexa
Weber-Morales, including a memorable version of Bill Withers' "Use
Me."
B+(**)
- The David S. Ware Quartet: BalladWare (1999 [2006],
Thirsty Ear):
Not exactly a standards album, given
that four of seven songs come from Ware's own songbook. The
others are "Yesterdays," "Autumn Leaves," and "Tenderly" --
they qualify, and the other pieces fit nicely around them.
This reminds Francis Davis of Coltrane's Ballads, but
it isn't nearly as conventional, nor as pretty. For one thing,
Matthew Shipp does some tricky work on the chassis -- not raw,
but nothing expected either. And while Ware holds back from
getting rough, he does work the pieces around quite a bit.
A-
- Weather Report: Forecast: Tomorrow (1969-85 [2006],
Columbia/Legacy, 3CD+DVD): The jazz-rock fusion of the early '70s was
less a movement than a family franchise. It started with Miles Davis,
then spread with his departing employees: most importantly, John
McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and this Wayne Shorter-Joe
Zawinul joint venture. Hardly anyone without a connection to Davis
mattered, but the preponderance of keyboards set the music adrift --
the rhythms and textures thickening, the atmosphere clouding up. At
least that's what I always thought, but this box had me wondering
for a while. The first disc gets a running start by including three
pre-group cuts, starting with the Davis take of Zawinul's "In a
Silent Way." Then it leans heavily on the first album and live cuts
where the jazz whiskers come out. But it gets spottier as they go
on, especially when Shorter tries to fit in rather than stand out.
The DVD offers a 1978 concert at the band's popular peak with Jaco
Pastorius and Peter Erskine going shirtless in what must be a Cheap
Trick homage.
B+(**)
- Larry Willis: Blue Fable (2006 [2007], High Note):
Four cuts feature alto sax and trombone. The others are just piano
trio. All are sharp, thoughtful, engaged. None are spectacular. In
short, this is an even match for his previous album (The Big
Push, also High Note), and for that matter, almost everything
else he's done.
B+(**)
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Music: Current count 12975 [12958] rated (+17), 834 [835] unrated (-1).
Not much to report. Spent most of the week playing new jazz, then picked
up some old jazz at the end since the rated count seemed a little low.
Still waiting for Jazz CG to come out. Should step over and work on
Recycled Goods, since April is coming up. Possible that the rated count
will top 13000 next week.
- Harry "Sweets" Edison: For My Pals (1988, Pablo):
Friendly little sessions, mostly with players I don't recognize:
Curtis Peagler on tenor and alto sax, Buster Cooper on trombone,
Art Hillery on piano and organ, Andy Simpkins on bass, Tootie Heath
on drums -- well, sure, I know who Tootie is. Nothing special, once
you compensate for Sweets, who is always special. B+
- Giants of Small Band Swing: Volume 1 (1946 [1990],
Riverside/OJC): Odds and ends recorded for 78, totalling twelve cuts
in 36 minutes: two cuts from Billy Kyle's Big Eight, four from Russell
Procope's Big Six, two from Sandy Williams' Big Eight, two from Dicky
Wells' Big Seven, and two from Jimmy Jones' Big Four. All of these
were thrown together on the spot, so it's not unusual to see Kyle
playing in Procope's group, or Cecil Scott or Bud Johnson repeating.
Nothing essential, although I'd never turn down the chance to hear
Bud Johnson. B
- Jerry Granelli and Badlands: Enter, a Dragon (1997
[1998], Songlines): Six of fifteen pieces are called "Haiku," with
others pointing east, possibly including the title piece. Four horns,
with Chris Speed, Peter Epstein, and Briggan Krauss on reeds, Curtis
Hasselbring on trombone. Jamie Saft plays piano, clavinet, accordion,
and slide guitar. Granelli plays drums, and his brother J. Anthony
plays bass. Oddly paced, squeaky, hard to focus on, possibly of some
interest if you're able to get over the degree of difficulty. B
- Benny Green: Greens (1991, Blue Note): Piano trio,
with Christian McBride and Carl Allen. Good sense of jazz tradition,
blues, even a bit of gospel. B+
- Lee Konitz/Paul Bley: Out of Nowhere (1997, Steeplechase):
A quartet with Jay Anderson and Billy Drummond, but the headliners are
clearly the show. Elegant, especially Konitz. B+
- London Jazz Composers Orchestra: Three Pieces for Orchestra
(1996, Intakt): Barry Guy's big group, huge favorites of the Penguin
Guide folks. I've heard very little, and never made much sense out of
the highly recommended Ode. Guests are Maggie Nicols (voice)
and Marilyn Crispell (piano). Howard Riley is the regular pianist, so
Crispell's contribution is less clear, but I figure her for the explosive
stuff. Nicols, on the other hand, is prominent and way over the top --
so much so that I find her almost comic. Could very well be that this
might benefit from more exposure, but I think with Guy in general that's
a SFFR. B
Jazz Prospecting (CG #13, Part 2)
I don't have any new information on when the Jazz Consumer Guide
will run in the Village Voice, so I'll be as surprised as you if it
does (or does not) run this week. Should know in a day or two.
Meanwhile, new stuff comes in, and I've been playing some of it,
rather indecisively. Still need to do the post-JCG#12 purge, which
may depend on the question of whether we can tighten the schedule
a bit -- a two-month cycle would mean I should keep more candidates
in play than the usual three-month cycle, let alone the four-plus
months this one has consumed. On the other hand, I'm also feeling
like some spring cleaning.
Still under a lot of personal stress. I'm working on antiquated
equipment with annoying and somewhat ominous sounds, and I'm way
behind in many projects both large and small. I did update the
website last night to get the Crowson cartoon and a couple of new
book images up, and most importantly to feature the Tanya Reinhart
pages. I'm gradually pulling my book comments/quotes from the blog
and organizing them in the books
section. I have 15 such pages up now, and probably three times
that many waiting to be unearthed. Eventually I hope to start
pulling familiar books off the shelves. And in my wildest dreams
I hope to get past the stench of politics and pull out some music
guides and cookbooks.
MB3: Jazz Hits Volume 1 (2006, Mel Bay):
MB presumably stands for Mel Bay, as in Records, a Missouri label
with nothing but guitarists (classical as well as jazz). The "3"
are guitarists Jimmy Bruno, Vic Juris, and Corey Christiansen --
three generations that hardly skip a beat. The "jazz hits" lean
most heavily on Miles Davis, with Horace Silver, John Coltrane,
Benny Golson, and Herbie Hancock also contributing. Jay Anderson
plays bass; Danny Gottlieb drums. Easy going, relatively surefire
material. Mel Bay's website has a news item about this topping
some jazz airplay chart. You might not notice, but wouldn't mind.
B+(*)
The Brooklyn Repertory Ensemble: Pragmatic Optimism
(2006, 360 Degree): The label, with its bullseye logo around the
number 360 and "from rag time to no time" slogan, reminds me of
Beaver Harris, who had a group called 360 Degree Music Experience.
Don't know that there's any link here, although the director here,
Wade Barnes, is another drummer. Nothing avant here. Just a big
band that goes for heavy brass -- James Zollar is the only trumpet,
but he's complemented by French horn, mellophone, euphonium, bass
trombone, and tuba. The horns tend to undulate with no one breaking
loose or doing anything especially distinctive. The rhythm -- Bill
Ware III on vibes as well as drummer Barnes -- have more going on.
Don't much care for vocalist Tulivu-Donna Cumberbatch, who seems
to have missed Rafters Raising 101 in Sunday School.
B-
Jane Stuart: Beginning to See the Light (2006 [2007],
Jane Stuart Music): Ellington, not Reed. She's a singer with a nice,
moderate voice; first record, but she has a bunch of stage credits,
including a turn as Joan Baez in Richard Farina's "Long Time Comin'
A Long Time Gone." I like her quite a bit mid-tempo and faster, much
less so on the ballads. The band supports her fine, but doesn't demand
much attention on their own.
B
Harry Connick Jr.: Chanson du Vieux Carré (2003 [2007],
Marsalis Music/Rounder): Connick's deal with Columbia is that he can
make non-vocal albums on the side. Until now these have concentrated
on his serviceable-plus piano. Here he takes a hand at arranging for
big band a mix of old New Orleans songs and three originals. The album
doesn't forego vocals alltogether: Rodney Jones sings "Bourbon Street
Parade" and Lucien Barbarin sings a Connick original called "Luscious."
There's some indication that this was a rough experiment, cut in 2003
in a studio scheduled for Harry for the Holidays and Only
You, and only pulled off the shelf as a complement to Connick's
new, post-Katrina New Orleans tribute, Oh, My NOLA. Haven't
heard the latter yet, so I'll hold back here -- in any case, won't
mind hearing this again.
[B+(*)]
Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake: From the River to the
Ocean (2007, Thrill Jockey): With all due respect, the
principal artist here is Drake. His steady, even-tempered drums
are the central thread everything else connects to. He sets up
such a comforting groove that he finally coaxes Anderson into a
new level of his game -- I think the word, strange as it may sound,
is serene. The artist credit reminds us that Anderson and Drake
have recorded duets before, but these aren't duets. Jeff Parker
plays guitar, taking solo space and setting a sonic level that
Anderson tries to match. Harrison Bankhead and/or Josh Abrams
play bass, with Bankhead switching to cello and piano for one
cut each, Abrams playing guimbri on two. Drake doesn't get a
credit for the last cut, but he's there anyway. Drake doesn't
claim vocal credit either, but he's audible. No session info on
this. For the record, this makes five straight A- records for
Anderson. When he turned 70, I didn't expect we'd see even one.
A-
Soweto Kinch: A Life in the Day of B19: Tales of the
Tower Block (2006 [2007], Dune): Part one (of two) of
a concept album about a normal day in the life of three blokes
in a Birmingham (UK) housing project (B19) -- Adrian, Marcus,
and S -- with the usual hopes and dreams and dreads and ennui.
Probably means more if you've been there or at least can grok
the accents -- I recall an English (err, Welsh) businessman I
used to work with as describing Birmingham as "three million
people with a common speech defect." I find it takes an awful
lot of effort to follow what on paper appears as 15 skits in
a matrix of 15 pieces -- even on paper the organization isn't
that neat, with "Opening Theme" and "Everybody Raps" among the
pieces. As hip-hop, I'm more impressed by its ambition than by
the accomplishment. As jazz it isn't much clearer. Kinch has a
plastic take on alto sax -- his tone playful, almost toyish,
his lines bent in odd ways -- but he tends to fall back into
soundtrack mode here, so only occasional patches suggest that
he may be up to something interesting. I don't hate the idea
of hip-hop-era jazz, but this one's a long way from sorting
out the kinks.
[B]
Abram Wilson: Ride! Ferris Wheel to the Modern Day Delta
(2007, Dune): Another concept album, based on a character named Albert
Jenkins who, like Wilson, plays trumpet. Works better, partly because
the story line is confined to a few songs, which are straightforwardly
blues-based. Like the other Dune artists, Wilson is based in London,
but he was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and grew up in New Orleans.
That explains his references to Delta blues and New Orleans polyphony,
the yin and yang of his music. Fits him much, much better than the
soul man moves on his previous Jazz Warrior.
[B+(***)]
Bobby Broom: Song and Dance (2005 [2007], Origin):
Guitar-bass-drums trio, with Broom the guitarist. Got off on the
wrong foot (with me, at least) by starting with a Beatles song.
Actually, it's very tasteful, not bad at all: "Little Rascals
Theme" isn't too cute, and "Wichita Lineman" isn't too cloying.
B
Beatle Jazz: All You Need (2006 [2007], Lightyear):
Fifth album, with David Kikoski (piano, synthesizer) and Brian
Melvin (drums, tabla) the mainstays. The Beatles' songs are so
indelibly ingrained in my mind that I instinctively reject all
variations -- I suppose if I really racked my brain I might be
able to come up with a tolerable mix tape of exceptions, but I'm
not optimistic. Bass duties are split between Larry Grenadier
and Richard Bona; the latter sings one, a risky move that best
comes off rather odd. Toots Thielemans (3 cuts) and Joe Lovano
(2 cuts) also guest. The core group is smart enough I can't pan
them severely. The two Lovano cuts ("The continuing Story of
Bungalow Bill" and "Look at Me") are choice.
B
Wally Shoup/Gust Burns/Reuben Radding/Greg Campbell: The
Levitation Shuffle (2003 [2007], Clean Feed): Cover doesn't
have first names, so this is probably not how I'll wind up attributing
the album, but I might as well spell them out up front. They play alto
sax, piano, bass, and drums, respectively. The pieces are all group
improvs, free and open and more than a little scattershot. Shoup and
Burns are based in Seattle, and they make an interesting pair: the
former's saxophone seems about par for the style, but Burns makes a
fascinating accompanist in repeatedly crashing his piano against the
grain.
B+(*)
Ethan Winogrand: Tangled Tango (2005 [2007], Clean
Feed): Drummer, originally from New York, now based in Spain where
his wife's family comes from, has one previous album. This is a
quintet, more or less, with Gorka Benitez on tenor/soprano sax or
flute and Steven Bernstein on trumpet for the horns, Ross Bonadonna
on guitar, Carlos Barretto on bass (with help from Eric Mingus on
two cuts). Straightforward stuff, lovely tone on the horns, not
much tango, tangled or otherwise, to justify the title.
B+(**)
Carlos Barretto Trio: Radio Song (2002 [2007],
Clean Feed): Portuguese bassist; also works in Bernardo Sassetti's
trio, and has shown up on several other Clean Feed albums. His own
trio includes Mario Delgado on guitar and Jose Salgueiro on drums
and percussion. Three cuts add guest Louis Sclavis (clarinet, bass
clarinet, soprano sax), whose feel for European folk musics lines
up nicely with Barretto's. Even without Sclavis, this ranges wide
and moves smartly.
[B+(***)]
Alvin Fielder Trio: A Measure of Vision (2005-06
[2007], Clean Feed): Drummer, first album under his own name, but
he's been around a long time. Born in 1935 in Mississippi, passed
through New Orleans on his way to Chicago, where he was a founder
of the AACM in 1963. Played with Roscoe Mitchell on Sound
in 1966, and has slogged his way through the back waters of the
avant-garde ever since, most frequently in the company of Joel
Futterman, Kidd Jordan, and/or Dennis González. This could easily
be seen as the latter's album: González plays the lead instrument
(trumpet), wrote a good chunk of it, recorded it on his home turf
in Texas, brought in two sons for extra bass and vibes, and passed
it on to his business associates in Lisbon. The other trio member
is pianist Chris Parker, a bright contrast to the trumpet. Fielder
himself doesn't make much of a splash.
[B+(**)]
Scott Fields Ensemble: Beckett (2005 [2007],
Clean Feed): Chicago guitarist, born 1957 (AMG says 1952) way out
on the avant-garde, has recorded a lot since 1995, of which I've
heard little. Eschews labels, but when pressed has described his
work as post-free jazz, neo-revisionist improvisation, transparent
music, exploratory music. Website includes a photo of him bowing
guitar. This record includes a cellist, so not all the bowed sounds
are guitar, but most likely some are. Aside from the dreamy arco
sections, most of this is built from jerky little splotches, with
cello and tenor sax following suit, while John Hollenbeck accents.
B+(**)
Jerome Sabbagh: Pogo (2006 [2007], Sunnyside):
Good young mainstream saxophonist, born in Paris, educated in
Boston, lives in New York. Writes all his own material. Plays
tenor and soprano, and is adept enough at the latter that it
doesn't mess up his game -- unlike most of the post-Coltrane,
post-Shorter generation who take the combination as de rigeur.
This is a quartet with Ben Monder on guitar, Joe Martin on bass,
Ted Poor on drums. Quiet spots are beguiling; louder stretches
flow smoothly. A little more polished than North, cut
by the same group on Fresh Sound New Talent a couple of years
back.
B+(**)
Billy Fox: The Uncle Wiggly Suite (2004 [2007],
Clean Feed): Don't know much about percussionist-composer Fox
other than that he was a student of Jane Ira Bloom and has a
couple of credits as "drum technician" on Bobby Sanabria albums.
These compositions come out of an assignment for Bloom, building
on bits of "atonal music, Sixties modal jazz, New Orleans brass
bands, Cuban rhythms, Pakistani ghazals, and much more" -- as
the label catalogs it. It's also a big band record, utilizing
13 musicians, although there's little of the section bashing
that expresses power in such groups. Rather, the pieces seem
to grow organically into diversified details.
[B+(**)]
Russ Lossing/Mat Maneri/Mark Dresser: Metal Rat
(2006 [2007], Clean Feed): Pianist Lossing is the presumed leader
here, but Maneri's viola dominates the sound and pushes this so
far into abstract chamber music territory that the others can
only tag along. Lossing in particular makes an interesting go
of it. Dresser is harder to gauge because his bass contrasts
less with the viola and tends to get drowned out, but I suspect
closer focus will reveal more. Not what you'd call accessible.
Nor something I'm inclined to readily dismiss.
[B+(*)]
Didn't get to the replay shelves this week, so no final grades/notes
on records tentatively graded the first time around.
The State of the Mission
Richard Crowson's editorial cartoon in the Wichita Eagle today
pretty much sums up the current state of Bush's Iraq misadventure:
The Eagle today had a front page story on the 4th anniversary of
the war today, starting with a conservative tally of the costs. They
also ran a 4th page story on the antiwar march in Washington DC. The
New York Times had no news on either. The only thing close there was
a Frank Rich column recounting the days of March 2003 when the war
was just emerging from fantasy. Of course, for its proponents the
war is still shrouded in fantasy.
Tanya Reinhart
Tanya Reinhart died yesterday. She was a professor of linguistics --
her thesis supervisor was none other than Noam Chomsky -- but I know her
mostly from two slim books that provide an indispensibly succinct record
of Israel/Palestine since the breakdown of the Oslo process talks in 2000.
The first is
Israel/Palestine: How to End
the War of 1948 (2002, 2005 second edition, Seven Stories Press),
and the follow-up is
The Road Map to Nowhere:
Israel/Palestine Since 2003 (2006, Verso). I've posted quotes
from both. Her work is second-hand journalism, based on published
sources, but pulled together with exceptional clarity. Over the last
few years, she's the first person I'd check out to find out what was
actually going on in Israel. That's going to be even tougher without
her.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Hostages of War
Tom Engelhart has a long
post on
the way the Bush warriors use "support the troops" as a shield to
promote their Iraq war policy. The payoff quote is:
This is hot-button blackmail. Little could be more painful than a
parent, any parent, outliving a child, or believing that a child had
his or her life cut off at a young age and in vain. To use such
natural parental emotions, as well as those that come from having your
children (or siblings or wife or husband) away at war and in constant
danger of injury or death, is the last refuge of a political
scoundrel. It amounts to mobilizing the prestige of anxious or
grieving parents in a program of national emotional blackmail. It
effectively musters support for the President's ongoing Iraq policy by
separating the military from the war it is fighting and by declaring
non-support for the war taboo, if you act on it.
It's not clear to me why or how the Bush flacks get away with this.
The traditional view is that the troops are instruments of policy, not
reasons for it. If the policy dictates sacrificing troops, then you
sacrifice them -- at most you factor their lives into some sort of
cost-benefit analysis that says the policy benefits are worth the
costs. But nobody does this with Iraq, and by nobody I especially
mean the people who promoted this war. To analyze the war policy you
first have to specify what the benefits of success are: i.e., why
did Bush et al. want to start this war in the first place? As I'm
sure you'll recall, every reason they offered before launching the
war has turned out to be invalid. Either it was based on misguided
information (e.g., WMD) or was insincere (e.g., democratization) or
was otherwise obscured (e.g., oil). Since the war bogged down, the
only real reason for continuing it seems to be that it would look
bad politically for the people who started it to pull out without
some sort of credible measure of success.
But even if Bush has made that analysis and decided, according
to his own peculiar value system, that the benefits -- not having
to admit you screwed up -- outweigh the costs -- the yearly run is
about 1000 dead Americans, 5000 maimed, $100 billion or more if you
factor in debt and long-term effects -- it reveals a lot that he
can't just come out and say so. For starters, it's a very selfish
analysis: it equates the national interest with Bush's own political
interests; while we're used to the idea that troops will sacrifice
themselves for the national interest, the idea that they should do
so for Bush's poll numbers is a tough sell.
But it also elevates the soldiers to some status well above
being mere instruments of policy. That this seems plausible at
all should be taken as evidence that we have grown to the point
that we are no longer so willing to sacrifice lives for policy.
We have seen just that trend historically, and we can measure
it by our willingness to spend more and more money to protect
and preserve the lives of American soldiers in combat. But the
logical conclusion of those trends is that we should take even
greater pains to avoid combat -- precisely the opposite of the
Bush case. Curiously, this contradiction has kept the Busheviks
ahead of the argument: they hide their policy behind the troops,
daring the antiwar side to embrace the troops and give the policy
a pass -- the result is a squabble over who speaks for the troops,
an argument that naturally favors whoever's Commander in Chief.
Ultimately we have to get back to square one in the debate,
which is what (if anything) can we reasonably hope to achieve
in Iraq, how much will that cost (if indeed we can specify that
to a reasonable degree of risk), and is that benefit worth the
expected cost. Among other things, that debate would have to
raise the major question of whether we as a people really want
to act like the sort of empire the US has inadvertently become.
To some extent even those who willingly argue about who loves
the troops the most understand that to be a proxy debate. The
problem is that by failing to have the right debate, we run the
risk of further confusing ourselves. As indeed happened with
the right's post-Vietnam revisionism -- one-sided forgetting
and mythmaking that made a recurrence of past mistakes possible.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
How Everyday Scandals Sink in the News
News item in the Wichita Eagle today, written by Cain Burdeau of
Associated Press, titled "New Orleans levee pumps at risk.":
The Army Corps of Engineers, rushing to meet President Bush's
promise to protect New Orleans by the start of the 2006 hurricane
season, installed defective flood-control pumps last year despite
warnings from its own expert that the equipment would fail during a
storm, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.
The 2006 hurricane season turned out to be mild, and the new pumps
were never pressed into action. But the Corps and the politically
connected manufacturer of the equipment are still struggling to get
the 34 heavy-duty pumps working properly.
This strikes me as one of your basic everyday Bush-era scandals,
of which there must be hundreds or maybe even thousands by now. The
causes are fundamental:
- The job was passed out to a "politically connected manufacturer,"
making it part of the Bush patronage system. Even if the company had
credibility to do the job, it wasn't held to any real standard of
competency.
- When it became evident that the company had failed to deliver,
the Bush administration preferred creating a false appearance over
holding the vendor responsible.
The Bush administration is very good at making announcements.
They promise things on paper, and when possible they deliver them
on paper. The only problem they have is reality. This particular
scandal didn't turn into a major disaster because no storm like
Katrina hit to show the full extent of their failure. As such,
this scandal will probably fade before long. After all, there
are so many more conspicuous scandals to keep things like this
in the public focus.
Two such scandals dominated the news today. The thing about
these scandals is not just that they are major but that their
discovery was inevitable. The first is the Walter Reed veterans
fiasco. The Bush hawks have been wrapping their Iraq war policy
up in loud proclamations of "support the troops" for four years
now, while it's been abundantly clear that those troops were
suffering devastating injuries. Bush has enjoyed virtual carte
blanche in military appropriations for the war, and even those
opposed to the war would have had no objections whatsoever to
providing extra appropriations to do whatever was needed to help
out returning casualties. But Bush never asked for such help --
mostly because he's been privatizing Veterans services to feed
his patronage (crony capitalism) system. Besides, providing real
services to returning veterans would have smacked of the dreaded
welfare state -- the very idea that government could actually be
put to good use for folks who merely pay taxes as opposed to
kickbacks.
The other scandal is the firing of DOJ prosecutors, especially
the ones who prosecuted the scandals that contributed so much to
the Republicans losing Congress in 2006. There's an element here
of locking the barn door after the cows have escaped, unless you
suspect that there may be more such prosecutions to come. Given
the way the Republicans have run Congress from 1995-2007 and the
way Bush has run the White House since 2001, it's pretty plausible
that they have a lot more to be worried about. On the other hand,
the act of purging potentially dangerous (i.e., honest) prosecutors
sure looks like a desperate power grab. The Bush argument that the
prosecutors can be dismissed "at the pleasure of the President" runs
contrary to the fact that the President took an oath to uphold the
constitution and the laws of the land, which he himself is subject
to. This strikes me as more than a bad omen: it's precisely the
sort of abuse of power that demands impeachment.
Curiously, Gonzalez appeared before the press today and "took
responsibility for mistakes made" in this matter. It's not clear
how he's doing so. Robert Mueller offered a similar mea culpa a
few days ago for FBI abuses, again without consequence. It seems
like responsibility doesn't mean much to Republicans after all.
If it did, you'd think Mueller and Gonzalez would have resigned
and made arrangements to spend the next few years in jail.
The Health Care Mess
Julius B. Richmond is a M.D. with vast government experience -- a
founder of Head Start, the former Surgeon-General under President
Jimmy Carter (who wrote the introduction here); currently Professor
Emeritus of Health Policy at Harvard. Rashi Fein is Professor
Emeritus of Medical Economics at Harvard Medical School. Their
book is called The Health Care Mess: How We Got Into It and
What It Will Take to Get Out (2005, Harvard University Press).
I picked it up at the library along with David Mechanic's The
Truth About Health Care. The main difference between the two
books is that most of The Health Care Mess details the
history behind the current state, whereas Mechanic's book is
more of a current snapshot.
The final quarter of the book makes two proposals: a pitch for
a single-payer national health system, which the authors prefer,
and a series of piecemeal approaches mostly based on the Federal
Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program -- the latter is pretty
much what Kerry ran on, or at least namechecked, in 2004. Neither
proposal comes close to sizing up the whole problem described in
the early parts of the book. For that matter, the "mess" of the
title strikes me as a good deal tidier than reality.
On the development of modern medicine (p. 9):
Scientific advances taking place in the early twentieth century
were destined to have a significant impact on diagnostic and
therapeutic interventions available to physicians, the understanding
of disease patterns, and the nature of medical education and physician
preparation for the emerging modes of practice. Discoveries in the
natural sciences and the increasing availability and applications of
the compound microscope fostered the development of pathology,
bacteriology, physiology, pharmacology, and biochemistry as sciences
basic to the study of medicine. The development of x-ray examinations,
electrocardiography, and laboratory examinations of body fluids, based
on new knowledge in phsyics and chemistry, were beginning to change
the nature of medical practice.
It has been said that, at the turn of the last century, if a
randomly selected patient with a random illness met a randomly
selected physician, the patient had only a fifty-fifty chance of
benefiting from the encounter. Those odds increased remarkably over
the century, and that increase began in the early decades.
On the accidental development of employment-based health insurance
(pp. 37-39):
Because the most common group arrangement and linkage involved
employment, this pattern had many administrative and enrollment
advantages, especially so during the Second World War when America
bounced back from the depths of the depression. Between 1939 and 1944
the unemployment rate dropped from 17.2 percent to 1.2 percent, and
the Gross National Product grew by almost 75 percent in real
(corrected for inflation) terms. In an effort to control inflationary
pressures on the prices for consumer goods in short supply and on
wages in a full-employment economy, the federal government instituted
price and wage controls. Nevertheless, it did permit additions (within
limits) to fringe benefits, including health insurance. Given the high
levels of taxation on wartime increases in profits, employers were
willing to augment their contribution for health care coverage (or to
offer such coverage if they had not previously done so). The costs of
insurance, after all, were being paid by dollars that in large measure
would otherwise have been paid in taxes.
And there was more: the amount that the employer paid for health
insurance was considered a "cost of doing business." It was a cost,
akin to wages and other items that were legitimate expenses and
deductions from what otherwise would have been profits. Yet at the
same time the value to the individual of the premium dollars paid on
his or her behalf was not considered as income on which the worker
would have to pay income and (perhaps) Social Security taxes. The
consequent decrease in government revenues provided a substantial
subsidy toward the purchase of health insurance. It should be pointed
out that the failure to tax the value of the premiums as income meant
that the subsidy was greater and worth more the higher the
individual's income and the greater the individual's marginal tax
rate. The CEO received a larger tax benefit subsidy than did the
secretary. [ . . . ]
At the entry of the United States into the war at the beginning of
1942, Blue Cross covered 6 million subscribers; by 1946 enrollment had
exploded to 18.9 million. Commercial insurance covered some 3.7
million persons in 1941 and 10.5 million by 1946. Further rapid growth
followed; from a 1946 total of 32 million persons covered by Blue
Cross, commercial plans, PGPs, and independent plans, to 53 million in
1948, and to 77 million in 1951. As a consequence of changing patterns
of medical care, in particular the utilization of hospital services,
much of this increase in coverage was for hospital care, creating a
not-so-subtle perverse incentive to hospitalize individuals. This was
the case even for diagnostic tests that could have bene performed on a
less costly outpatient basis. Over time the hospital thus became all
the more important and central to the delivery of health care
services, a phenomenon not unrelated to the expansion in the number of
hospitals and of beds following the 1946 enactment of the Hospital
Survey and Construction Act (the Hill-Burton Act). In a reciprocal
manner, since medical care became more costly, insurance became more
useful (indeed, necessary). In turn, the presence of insurance helped
underwrite a buildup of resources and an upgrading of technology that
added to costs and made insurance even more valuable.
It strikes me that we can file this as yet another unanticipated
consequence of WWII -- a triumphal "victory culture" that validated
and reinforced everything America did during the war, regardless of
its merits.
On the growth of health care expenses (pp. 73-74):
The concern about rising costs and expenditures was a matter of top
priority. After all, national health expenditures (NHE) constituted an
increasingly larger proportion of the GDP, and there were no signs of
a slowdown in their rate of growth. In 1960 NHE accounted for 5.1
percent of GDP; by 1965 (even before the implementation of Medicare
and Medicaid) the share had risen to 5.7 percent. By 1970 the
proportion had increased to 7.1 percent; by 1985 it had reached 10.3
percent.
Nor was this growth accounted for solely by increases in that part
of national health expenditures that went to administration, research,
and construction (matters that at least in theory were amenable to
control through the appropriation process). Expenditures for personal
health care services (roughly 90 percent of national health
expenditures) were also growing rapidly, both in absdolute terms and
as a share of GDP. In 1960 personal health care service costs totaled
nearly $24 billion. By 1965 the total rose to $35 billion, and by 1985
to $376 billion (all in current dollars). Per-capita expenditures rose
more than twelvefold, from $124 in 1960 to $1,523 in 1985. These
increases affected all Americans and, not surprisingly, were accorded
a higher priority than the issue of the uninsured and underinsured,
which directly impacted a much smaller number (around 15 percent) of
Americans. The uninsured were a minority. Furthermore, they were
"others": the poor, black, Hispanic, the unemployed, low-wage earners,
those too old to work and too young for Medicare.
Another quote on progress, i.e. forgetting where you came from
(pp. 98-99):
Physicians and patients who have grown up in what some consider
the golden age of medicine would most probably be shocked to discover
that prior to World War II physicians had little by way of specific
therapies for their patients. The general public and even today's
younger health professionals would surely be astonished to learn that
a review of medical textbooks of the 1930s, when one of us was a
medical student, indicates that the only specific medical therapies
then available were liver extract for pernicious anemia, insulin for
diabetes, quinine for malaria, arsenicals and heavy metals for
syphilis, and digitalis for heart failure. Today's sophisticated
imaging and diagnostic techniques, pharmaceutical interventions,
transplantation, and microsurgery techniques did not exist. The
medical and surgical resources were extremely limited.
The availability of antimicrobial medications, initially that of
sulfonamides, just prior to World War II, transformed the treatment of
the infectious diseases. It also created a hopeful climate for
intensifying and expanding medical research during and after the
war. The time was ripe, therefore, for the rapid growth of the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the creation of a remarkably
inventive partnership between the federally funded NIH and the private
and state universities and research institutions of the nation. As a
consequence of the increased complexity of medical care and expansion
in the flow of research funds, academic medical centers that could
deal with that complexity and that were equipped to respond to the
research opportunitites and to the availability of funds with which to
undertake them, underwent rapid expansion.
A rather good definition of schizophrenia, by no means limited to
the immediate subject here (p. 119):
The American dilemma, on the one hand, of wanting to rely on market
forces yet nevertheless being skeptical about their efficacy, and on
the other hand, wanting something akin to the results of rational
planning while rejecting planners and planning mechanisms -- that is,
the dilemma of wanting lower expenditures while rejecting control and
budgeting mechanisms -- shaped how we dealt, and did not deal, with
graduate medical education.
How the AMA's anti-government stance let doctors be blindsided by
for-profit entrepreneurs (p. 130):
Concomitant with the growth of these for-profit sectors was the
corporatization of much of medical practice. In retrospect it is
surprising tha tthe medical profession did not offer significant
resistance to this trend. Part of the explanation lay in the fact that
the largest organization of physicians, the American Medical
Assocation (AMA), had long opposed any systematic planning for the
delivery of medical care services. Consequently, financial flows and
organizational arrangements were left to the marketplace. Physicians
were now reaping what AMA ideology had sown.
The irony was that organized medicine in the form of the AMA had
focused its attention on government as the threat to physician
independence, power, and control, and did not recognize that the
marketplace and the behavior of employers who were large purchasers of
insurance and of investors who were "medical care entrepreneurs" would
represent an even larger threat. While organized medicine could lobby
government, it could not identify a locus for exerting pressure
against employers who were more actively questioning the costs of and
expenditures for medical care. Nor could it identify a locus for
resisting the forces of Wall Street that were seeking new
opportunities to increase profits by constraining physician behavior
and cutting costs.
It's worth noting that the AMA's line fit nicely with the general
Cold War ideology, which is part of the reason why conservatives have
locked themselves into a private-profit health care system even though
it winds up being predatory on all other forms of business.
In the early '90s price increases temporarily abated (p. 142):
Nevertheless, cost increases appeared to ease. Much of the easing
could be attributed to the lower utilization of expensive hospital
days. Some of the relative stability was associated with a decline in
the overall rate of inflation, and some was the result of HMO
(temporary) "underpricing" policies designed to improve market
share. Still, whatever the explanation, in the short run employers and
employees benefited from the stabilization of premiums. Between 1991
and 1998 the annual rate of increase in health expenditures slowed to
a low of 5 percent. Regrettably, it started to rsie again in 1998,
reaching 9.3 percent in 2002. Basing the Consumer Price Index (CPI) at
100 for average prices in 1982-1984, the CPI for all nonmedical care
items was 128.8 in 1990, while the CPI for medical care was 162.8, or
26.4 percent higher. By 1999 the CPI for nonmedical care items stood
at 162.0, while that for medical care was 250.6, or 54.7 percent
higher. The disparity continued to grow, and by 2002 the CPI for
nonmedical items was 174.3, while medical care was 285.6, or 63.9
percent higher.
Of course, the other reason for holding the line on prices was
that until Clinton's plan was killed the industry needed to prove
that it could regulate and moderate its appetites without government
intervention. Prices started rising again once the Clinton plan was
dead and the Republicans took control of Congress. The rate increased
further when Bush entered the White House, even though the high tech
bubble had largely collapsed. As such, there is public value in the
mere possible threat of political reform, even if it doesn't lead to
legislation.
On health care economics (pp. 229-230):
None of this should have come as a surprise. The marke tis not a
redistributive device, and many of the health problems required some,
and in a number of cases much, redistribution. The market responds to
disparities in income and allocates resources to meet market demand
(the exercise of which requires income) rather than to meet needs (a
concept with which economists, as economists, have difficulty). Yet
health issues are about "need," not about the economic concept of
"demand." The latter can be measured; the former is a matter of
opinion. Nevertheless, that does not make "need" any less
real. Although Americans seemed to agree that health care was a
"right," and did not embrace the counter-formulation that health care
is a "privilege," the laissez-faire market still repeated, "follow the
money."
Furthermore, the delivery of health care services constituted a
special market that did not meet the various criteria usually cited by
economists for a fully competitive market. Resources could not be
moved freely. New firms did not have the ease of entry that, through
competition, would help constrain prices and profits. The symmetry
between buyer and seller was absent since the patient (buyer) had much
less knowledge than the physician (seller). Indeed, as already
discussed, the real buyer often was not the consumer/patient but the
employer; the managed care entity, not the physician/hospital, was the
seller. In addition, there had to be many sellers, no single one large
or powerful enough to influence market supply significantly, as well
as many purchasers, no single one large or powerful enough to
influence demand significantly. True, in the nation overall and in the
various states individually there were many hospitals, many HMOs, and
many insurers, all together presumably making for
competititon. Nevertheless, the health care market that most of us
faced and in which mnost health care was produced and delivered was in
fact a local market. Many local markets had a very limitd number of
health institutions and of organized delivery systems. Thus those who
sought and received medical care in their localities (and that, of
course, meant most of us most of the time) did not necessarily face
conditions that rendered a competitive market possible.
On public control of reform (pp. 259-260):
We recognize that such debates are not only about what might be
considered "technical" matters. Nevertheless, we believe that it would
be useful to insulate, insofar as possible, the boards from the heavy
dose of partisanship that could jeopardize their activities. To that
end we would urge that the terms of office, selection, and approval of
board members and regional administrators should follow procedures
designed to maximize the nonpartisan character of their various
supervisory and policy responsibilities. Furthermore, we believe that
there must be significant representation and input from the general
public, and therefore recommend that a substantial proportion of
central and regional board members be nonprofessionals in the health
field, tha tthey be selected as individuals who represent the public,
and that mechanisms be developed to facilitate substantial public
input.
The book includes a fair discussion of malpractice issues, but
doesn't go very far with it. There is no real discussion of moving
away from private patenting of pharmaceuticals and other innovations.
The present system is not just costly -- it compromises quality by
limiting transparency of information, distorts the market through
massive advertising promotion, and limits research by allocating
capital according to potential returns rather than need.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
The Truth About Health Care
This is the first of two posts on recent books on health care.
The other, tomorrow, is The Health Care Mess by Julius B.
Richmond and Rashi Fein. Neither book covers the subject all that
well, and both come up short on solutions, but their partial views
do help to illuminate some of the problems. I'll be looking for
other views, and plan to develop my own ideas further -- one is
to build on open source to extend transparency and promote science
over business.
David Mechanic is director of the Institute for Health, Health Care
Policy, and Aging Research and René Dubos University Professor of
Behavioral Sciences at Rutgers University. I've been looking to get
a better grasp on health care politics and economics, and his book
The Truth About Health Care: Why Reform Is Not Working in America
(2006, Rutgers University Press) caught my eye. It's relatively short
(228 pages), but actually a rather slow, tedious read. He writes in
cautious assertions like thin paint strokes, only gradually circling
in on larger truths. I was surprised at the end of the book that I
had marked so much of it as quotable.
(pp. 35-36):
Given the required trade-offs and the many uncertainties as we try
to achieve a more coherent system of care, it is important to have
credible spokespersons who can help the public understand its
options. In earlier times the medical profession had the public's
confidence, but it no longer speaks with one voice or has high
credibility. Nor has government much credibility, and the public's
respect for authority and expertise has generally very much
eroded. This is a worldwide phenomenon across all sectors including
medicine, which for much of the twentieth century was insulated from
distrust because of the reverence that many had for their personal
physicians. While trust in one's personal physician is still quite
strong, distrust in medical leadership is now on par with distrust in
other institutional leadership in government and the private
sector. The majority of the public do not necessarily anticipate that
their medical leaders will work in their interests.
The loss of confidence in leadership is characteristic of a mass
society with many channels of information and communication. News
reaches people immediately from all over the world, and the media
focus on disagreement and conflict, betrayals of trust, and competing
points of view. Thus, people gain the impression that the morals and
trustworthiness of their leaders are less than in past times. More
specifically, in the case of medical care, the media expose the
population to disagreements about treatment and care, conflicts among
specialists, the uncertainty of medical evidence, and stories about
medical errors and poor-quality care. Thus, much of the public is
skeptical about leaving health care decisiosn to medical leaders. They
trust their chosen personal physicians, but that trust diminishes when
they see their physicians constrained by larger institutional
controls. Although it has been documented repeatedly that
fee-for-service medicine contributes to overutilization, patients seem
less concerned about unnecessary treatment than the possibility that
something of value may be withheld. Patients are reluctant to accept
that treatments they have learned about from direct-to-consumer
advertising or from friends are unneeded, and physicians are faced by
time pressures that make detailed explanations difficult. Unwilling to
alienate their patients, doctors often give them what they wish. The
media are an important part of this process and contribute to raising
patients' insecurities and demands.
(p. 45):
When patients paid directly for their care the issue of who sought
varying types of care was of limited social importance. In American
society persons are free to spend their disposable income as they
wish, and those who preferred more medical care to alternative
expenditures did little harm. Under contemporary conditions, however,
most people have health insurance coverage and excessive use affects
everyone's premiums. Also, taxpayers in one way or another pay much of
the bill, so frivolous and unnecessary uses have social
relevance. Moreover, medical technologies can be harmful, so misuse of
care, whether by patients' choices or physicians' decisions, has
important consequences. It is no longer viable to support whatever
patients demand and whatever physicians are willing to provide, if it
ever was. We need more sophisticated ways of determining need and
appropriate care. We probably would not want to be restrictive for
less expensive visits that are important to patients in providing
information, support, and reassurance, but we have to think carefully
about the expensive and invasive technologies and treatments that some
patients demand and that may involve serious risks.
(p. 80):
The criminalization of persons with mental illness is commonly
noted, and we now have many more persons with mental illness in jails
and prisons than in mental hospitals. These correctional institutions
typically have poor mental health services, and persons with mental
illness are commonly victimized by other inmates and sometimes
staff. The large number of persons with mental illness in prisons is
due to many factors, including poor community mental health
services. But many patients are jailed for substance offenses that are
by definition associated with DSM
disorders. [ . . . ] It is also fair to say that
these patients do not fall high on the average person's hierarchy of
compassion or high on political agendas. But the criminalization of
the mentally ill represents perhaps the greatest scandal of our health
care system, and a situation that should embarrass all thoughtful
citizens.
(pp. 81-82):
The pharmaceutical industry is a major player on the mental health
scene. As it has expanded the markets for psychiatric drugs, the
industry has an increased stake in framing how mental disorders are
seen and how they are treated. Through its direct-to-consumer
advertising, sponsorship of psychiatric meetings, research,
publications, educational activities and other events, and sponsorship
of mental health advocacy groups, it seeks to expand markets and
definitiosn of treatable mental disorders. The industry forms
coalitions with advocacy groups and supports activities to extend
insurance coverage for new drugs, lobbies against formularies that
restrict the availability of some drugs, and seeks to persuade
physicians to use its drugs "off-label," that is, for uses not
specifically approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It has
encouraged treatment of more people, expanding and medicalizing the
mental health arena for many ordinary problems of
living. Increasingly, it is apparent that the published literature on
the efficacy of many new drugs is biased, since
drug-company-controlled studies with less positive results may not be
published and disseminated. As evidence of this has become more
apparent, the editors of major medical journals have made it clear
that they will not publish papers from clinical trials that have not
been publicly recorded prior to initiation, so it becomes possible to
minotor biased reporting of the results of drug trials. The role of
the pharmaceutical companies in the research process has raised
troublesome questions, and this area now is receiving more attention
as costs of pharmaceuticals grow much faster than other areas of
medical and mental health care.
(pp. 89-90):
Consumerism takes place in an entrepreneurial
context. Pharmaceutical companies, health plans, technology companies
and hospitals among others seek to influence how consumers view
disease and medical treatments. In the year 2001, for example, the
pharmaceutical industry reported that it spent $19.1 billion dollars
on marketing, most of it targeting physicians directly, but also
including $2.7 billion for direct-to-consumer (DTC)
advertising. Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England
Journal of Medicine, has analyzed these data and argues that a
more accurate estimate is $54 billion constituting 30 percent of
members of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America's
(PhRMA) $179 billion in revenues in 2001. Expenditures on DTC almost
tripled between 1997 and 2001, with television ads accounting for
almost two-thirds of such advertising. This vast DTC expenditure is
relatively small compared with the massive funds spent on direct
promotion to physicians by sales representatives, and through a
variety of techniques from providing free drug samples and knickknacks
to promoting drugs through sponsorship of continuing education. The
Industry Profile reports that companies employ far more people
for marketing (86,226) than for research and development (51,589).
The efforts to influence consumers and their physician agents is
very big business. Pharmaceutical companies fund consumer groups and
team up with them in efforts to lobby state Medicaid programs and
others to add new expensive drugs that have not been shown to be
superior to less expensive generic drugs to drug formularies. In its
quest to gain brand allegiance and increased sales, the pharmaceutical
industry is a major presence at meetings of almost every medical
professional organization as a significant sponsor of their
activities, happily providing gifts small and large, and lucrative
consultancies for major figures. Thus it seeks to influence not only
the drugs patients ask for but, even more, the inclinations of
physicians to provide those drugs. Much is at stake in the choices
physicians make under ordinary prescribing circumstances, which
explains why so much marketing is directed at physicians. Drug
expenditures are larger than necessary as physicians prescribe
expensive new drugs that are often no better, and sometimes less
effective and more dangerous, than inexpensive generic
alternatives. There is some case to be made that DTC advertising may
alert people to treatments from which they could benefit and make it
less stigmatizing to seek assistance, but the overall influence of
pharmaceutical industry advertising has added vast expense with little
demonstrated advantage. As editors of major medical journals have
learned, it is increasingly difficult to identify persons who have
appropriate expertise to review pharmaceuticals who do not have
significant potential conflicts of interest because of consultancies
with the industry.
(pp. 96-97):
Consider some of the issues already discussed. Consistent
implementation is impossible when each health plan has its own
preferences and guidlelines and no one can speak for the
profession. In some locations, plans come together to agree on a
common format, but this is more the exception than the
norm. Pharmaceutical companies spend massive amounts to influence
(they say educate) physicians about drugs and consumers about
treatments. It would be sensible to tax all pharmaceuticals and have
this informational function performed by an agency that reviews the
evidence objectively and disseminates accurate information to doctors
and patients. Such public "detailing" has been advocated for decades
and has been proven to work successfully, but it is hard to imagine
the politics that could make it a reality in the United States. Other
health systems, like the English National Health Service, have
agencies such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical
Excellence (NICE) whose role is to provide advice to the NHS and
encourage doctors to use medications in a more evidence-based way, and
the NHS uses its large buying power to bargain over price of
pharmaceuticals. In contrast, the recent Medicare bill that extended
pharmaceutical coverage explicitly forbade the government fromusing
its purchasing power to keep drug prices down.
(p. 116):
The Institute of Medicine's (IOM) estimate that between forty-four
thousand and ninety-eight thousand deaths and hundreds of thousands of
injuries each year are dur to medical error has been widely
disseminated. Some experts who work in the medical-error field believe
this range to be an underestimate, while others see it as
inflated. Nevertheless, there is no disagreement that we have a
profound problem that requirse major interventions. Since the first
IOM report in 2000, many corrective efforts have gone forward, but
progress has been slow. It is difficult to change complex systems and
the cultures and values they embody and get individuals to modify
habitual work patterns. Improving quality of care is a
multidimensional challenge that invovles technology, economic
incentives, organizational coordination, and individual
behavior-change strategies.
(p. 127):
As I repeatedly note, and it can't be overstated, the key to
quality improvement is the implementation of an electronic medical
record, the ability of systems to communicate, the capacity to
identify high-risk situations and take preventive action, and the use
of well-organized feedback to provide information about best
practices, alerts, and opportunities to assess and correct
performance. Many vendors offer a bewildering variety of informational
systems and disease-management programs. Understanding and choosing
wisely among them is challenging. CMS has a program to help physicians
in small- to medium-sized practices adopt high-quality information
technology, but it refuses, for understandable reasons, to endorse any
particular vendor product or service, and this is often the kind of
assistance doctors most need as they confront bewildering
choices. Research on choice suggests that while people want choices,
too many choices become bewildering, leading individuals to opt
out.
(pp. 141-142):
We pay an extraordinarily high price for our reluctance to
allocate care more thoughtfully and fairly. The inequities in access
and provision of high-quality care contribute to our embarrassingly
poor performance on morbidity and motality indicators compared with
countries that are much less affluent. People lose not only by having
too little care but also by receiving too much unneeded care, with the
risk of injuries resulting from health care itself. Demand on
government for more unrestricted health care provision and the rapid
growth of health care expenditures compete with other important
priorities and make it less likely that those priorities will be
adequately financed. The need to pay more for health care requirse
employers to limit wages and makes it difficult for individuals and
families to balance their budgets. And despite the trade-offs between
wages and salaries, total compensation packages, particularly in
companies with aging workforces and many retirees receiving health
benefits, make companies less competitive in global markets and more
motivated to outsource work. Beyond the failure to get value for
money, the willingness of our society to tolerate the health
disenfranchisement of much of the population and the maldistribution
of services in relation to need undermine a sense of community and
furthers divisions between socioeconomic groups, races, age groups,
and geographic areas.
From a section titled "Why Is Trust Important?" (pp. 145-146):
Life would be quite impossible if we couldn't trust that most
people we deal with on a daily basis behave as we expect consistent
with their roles, responsibilities, and relationships to
us. Similarly, life would be very difficult if the less personal
organizations and institutions we must deal with commonly failed to
meet our expectations. We all understand that deviance and betrayal
occasionally occur in personal relationships, and organizational
malfeasance is not rare, but we hope and anticipate that these
patterns are disruptions from normal states and not the usual state of
affairs. In most activities -- whether driving in traffic, banking,
purchasing stocks, filling prescriptions, or using public
transportation -- where we have transactions with people we don't
personally know, in order to get along reasonably we must assume that
the norms and regulations in place to ensure order and responsible
behavior will protect us from exploitation and harm. We know it is
quite possible that another driver might disregard red lights and
potentially threaten our lives, but we can't reasonably stop at every
intersection to make sure that doesn't happen. We have to trust that
the rules of the road are in place.
Trust involves expectations of how individuals and institutions
will behave in their transactions with us, and it always involves
risk, because there is no certainty. In many interactions the stakes
are trivial and we can trust easily and not be much harmed if we are
wrong. But the stakes also can be high and involve our fortunes,
reputations, self-esteem, and even our lives. Being treated badly, and
even lied to by an occasional storekeeper, may be no big deal; being
lied to or betrayed by a lover, spouse, or dear friend is. Putting up
with an incompetent and unresponsive telephone company, airline
office, or automobile dealership may be frustrating and even a bit
costly, but depending when one is seriously ill on an incompetent and
unresponsive doctor or dysfunctional hospital involves bigger
stakes.
Medical care is an aggregation of both small- and big-stake
transactions, but trust is particularly important in patient-doctor
relationships because of the intimate nature of aspects of taking
medical history, physical examinations, and treatment; the
effectiveness of the relationship may depend on the patient revealing
intimate and privileged information. Also, successful treatment often
depends on patients' cooperation and willingness to adhere to medical
advice. Patients who distrust are less likely to share important
information or follow the doctor's advice. Distrustful patients are
also less likely to attain value such as encouragement, emotional
support, and realistic optimism from the relationship. Misplaced trust
can be costly, but to get the advantages of trust one has to assume
some of the risks.
(pp. 147-148):
In the mid-1960s confidence in the federal government and most
other institutions began to fall precipitously for many reasons;
perhaps the most important was the war in Vietnam. It was in this
period that public distrust of experts mounted and willingness to
express dissent over government policy grew impressively. In the 1950s
and early 1960s, approximately three-quarters of those surveyed said
they trusted government, but by the mid-1970s it was approximately
one-third. Among the attitudes associated with loss in confidence was
the belief that government was run by big interests looking out for
themselves, that public officials don't care what people like me
think, and that quite a few people running government are crooked.
Many othe rinstitutions suffered a similar fate in loss of public
confidence; by 2002, only about one-third of the public had confidence
in major institutions such as government, business, labor, and the
press. Confidence in medical leaders suffered a similar fate, falling
sharply between 1966 and 1976 and continuing to fall, although more
slowly, since then. Medicine retained some advantage over other
institutions, since it had a larger distance to fall, but by the late
1990s medical leaders shared low standing with leaders of other major
institutions. Social trust has much eroded in modern society, but
personal trust in agents of at least some institutions has eroded much
less. While most people have a low opinion of the American Congress,
most people trust their specific member of Congress. Similarly, while
people hold many negative beliefs about medical leaders and medicine
as an institution, most trust their personal physicians. During the
approximate period when trust in medical leaders was falling, surveys
found little loss in patient faith in their doctors or in their
satisfaction with care. Studies of patients noted increased
questioning of doctors an dsome erosion of confidence in the doctor's
authority, but the more significant pattern was the large gap between
what people thought about medical leaders and doctors in the abstract
and what they said about their own doctors and experiences.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Music: Current count 12958 [12930] rated (+28), 835 [846] unrated (-11).
Started the week off with low-impact records, mostly jazz from the unrated
shelves going back several years, when I still used to be able to find an
occasional used record store. I found these records coming in invariably
in the B+ range -- some I refined to stars, others I left vague, figuring
that further listening might nudge them up or down a bit, but not out of
the broad grade range. I wondered whether this was some atrophy of my
critical sense, but the records were almost always highly rated by the
Penguin Guide -- that's why they made my shopping list. Later in the
week I turned to the new jazz piles, which slowed me down a bit.
- Afro-Cuban All Stars: A Toda Cuba Le Gusta (1996
[1997], World Circuit/Nonesuch): Buena Vista Social Club spinoff,
with the usual old guys and a little Ry Cooder on the side. Classic
type stuff, suitable as an introduction. B+(***)
- Azimuth: How It Was Then . . . Never Again (1994
[1995], ECM): Norma Winstone's vocals have a peculiarly European
air, so far removed from swing and pop that one suspects classical
interests. They are a minor part of the mix here, although the two
musicians that complete the group seem dedicated to framing her even
when she isn't singing. Those musicians are John Taylor on piano and
Kenny Wheeler on trumpet/flugelhorn. They've worked together a great
many times over the years, often converging in something like this
elegant art music. B+
- Don Braden: The Voice of the Saxophone (1997, RCA):
"A collection of great songs of saxophonists" -- Mobley, Shorter,
Coltrane, Golson, Rivers, Heath, three by Braden, someone named
William Eaton, whose "Winelight" belongs to Grover Washington Jr.
The group is an octet, with Vincent Herring and Hamiet Bluiett
adding to the reeds, Randy Brecker and Frank Lacy on brass, Darrell
Grant or George Colligan on piano. Kind of fancy for my taste, but
well done. B+(*)
- Eastern Rebellion: Simple Pleasures (1992 [1993],
Musicmasters): Cedar Walton's sax quartet, made a great album (or
two -- haven't heard the second) in 1975, then reappeared in the
early '90s with Ralph Moore on sax for another run. Moore is one
of those guys who makes you fall in love with tenor sax. The group
is a bit prim, proper, and pristine, none of which are damning
complaints. B+
- The Flying Luttenbachers: Revenge of the Flying
Luttenbachers (1996, Skin Graft): I see that AMG has
finally moved this group from rock to jazz. Styles listed are:
math rock, experimental rock, grindcore, death metal/black
metal, avant-garde, avant-garde jazz. That roughly puts them
on the noisy end of fusion. This group is basically a guitar,
bass, drums trio, although they switch off to sax, clarinet,
and violin on occasion. I don't normally have such a negative
reaction to noise; maybe my nerves aren't in good condition,
as I found it a bit much, although not devoid of redeeming
spirit. They have some sort of connection to Hal Russell, and
did at least one album with Ken Vandermark, but this is the
only one I've heard. B
- Ricky Ford: Hot Brass (1991 [1992], Candid):
Two Ellington pieces and a bunch of originals that tilt towards
bebop. The hot brass consists of Lew Soloff and Claudio Roditi
on trumpet, Steve Turre on trombone. The rhythm section is Danilo
Perez on piano, Christian McBride on bass, Carl Allen on drums.
Ford's working temperatures are hot and hotter. The brass works
as a section, particularly punchy on the Ellington, which no
doubt came with better charts. B+
- Von Freeman: Live at the Dakota (1996 [2001],
Premonition): Chico's less famous father didn't record much in his
first seventy years, but he came on strong from that point, with
Never Let Me Go (1992, Steeplechase) a personal favorite.
A unique, pinched, almost strangled sound on tenor sax. This is
minor, but his sound is so unusual, as is his approach, that it's
worth having. B+(*)
- Paul Gonsalves: Tell It the Way It Is! (1963 [1999],
Impulse): Two 1963 albums, packaged on a single disc with a 7-inch
single cut added. The first is an Ellingtonian group with Johnny
Hodges and Ray Nance, much in the way of Hodges' own albums. The
second, originally released as Cleopatra -- Feelin' Jazzy,
includes Kenny Burrell and Hank Jones, but no extra horns. Good
chance to focus on the tenor saxman, a distinctive player who
recorded little under his own name. [This based on a slightly
damaged library copy.] B+
- Paul Gonsalves: Ellingtonia Moods and Blues (1960
[1999], RCA Victor): One of many Ellington spinoffs, with Johnny
Hodges and Ray Nance filling in, and Jimmy Jones on piano. Usual
stuff -- not a great showcase for Gonsalves, but Hodges cannot
be denied. B+(*)
- Earl Hines: Plays George Gershwin (1973 [1993],
Musidisc): Solo piano, something Hines had been doing a lot of at
the time. He's long been my favorite pianist -- Tom Piazza once
argued that 9 out of 10 jazz critics will tell you that Art Tatum
was the greatest jazz pianist ever, and the other one's wrong,
but I still say Hines is the guy. Still, this one strikes me as
a shade rougher and less certain than his Ellingtons, let alone
his aptly named Tour de Force. B+
- Iron Butterfly: Metamorphosis (1970 [1993], Rhino):
Dinosaur rock. Before metal consolidated into heavy it had a tendency
to outgas. C+
- Duke Jordan: Solo Masterpieces Vol. 1 (1979 [1992],
Steeplechase): The title, of course, is reminiscent of Art Tatum --
seems like everything Tatum recorded was deemed a masterpiece, most
of all his solo work. For the record, nothing here is Tatumesque.
Most of it is so disarmingly simple I'm surprised I find it so
fetching, but I do. A-
- Eddy Louiss: Sentimental Feeling (1999, Dreyfus):
Organ player, in a trio and with a big band called Fanfare. He keeps
the latter in check, and powers the former. B+(*)
- Frank Lowe Quintet: Live From Soundscape (1982
[1994], DIW): Sound is somewhat lacking here, but Butch Morris on
cornet and Amina Claudia Myers on piano contribute strongly, and
Lowe is a distinctive stylist who rises impressively from the murk.
B+(**)
- Luna: Pup Tent (1997, Elektra): Playing Best of Luna
too many times, I notice that the best of Pup Tent is already there,
making the rest look a bit rough. Surprisingly, some of it is even hard.
B+(**)
- Mulgrew Miller: Hand in Hand (1992 [1993], Novus):
If Miller didn't look so much like McCoy Tyner it might have taken
more than a moment to make the connection, but the sheer fluidity of
their playing is uncanny. Miller graduated from Betty Carter's boot
camp, then moved on to Art Blakey, who may have seemed like a soft
touch only in comparison. This album puts him in the middle of an
impressive mainstream lineup, offering too many options but handled
expertly. The names: Eddie Henderson, Kenny Garrett, Joe Henderson,
Steve Nelson, Christian McBride, Lewis Nash. B+
Jazz Prospecting (CG #13, Part 1)
I still don't know the Voice's schedule for Jazz Consumer Guide #12.
It got cut at the last minute from last week's issue. Could be this
week; more likely next. We'll see, and given how far I am out of town
these days, you'll probably notice it before I do. Started off last
week with some self-doubts about my critical instincts, so I started
with a stack of pre-JCG jazz records that have been gathering dust
for 3-5 years. They're items I picked up in used stores -- back when
I could find such stores, not to mention had the time and money --
mostly based on favorable Penguin Guide ratings. Almost all came in
as low B+: good records that didn't particularly excite me. Finally
I inched into the new jazz section, so this is the first prospecting
for next round. It was slow going at first -- I must have played
Rubalcaba and Wallace 4-5 times for my "first pass" notes, but they
got easier (or more obvious) after that.
Gonzalo Rubalcaba: Solo (2005 [2006], Blue Note):
Inevitable, although you expect something more upbeat, with a more
pronounced Afro-Cuban rhythm to it. This is pensive, detailed; just
sort of eases its way along.
B+(*)
Bennie Wallace: Disorder at the Border: The Music of Coleman
Hawkins (2004 [2007], Enja/Justin Time): When I first heard
about this, I was expecting something more intimate. At nine pieces
(four reeds, two brass), the opportunity to compare and contrast
Wallace to Hawkins is much diminished. But this was staged live on
Hawkins' 100th anniversary, so you can imagine the clamor to get in
on the act. Six pieces: two Hawkins originals, "Honeysuckle Rose,"
"Body and Soul," "La Rosita," and a 16:40 "Joshua Fit the Battle of
Jericho" to close. What it lacks in revelation it makes up for with
good cheer.
B+(**)
Ethnic Heritage Ensemble: Hot 'N' Heavy (2006 [2007],
Delmark): The first EHE album dates from 1981 and was called Three
Gentlemen From Chicago, the three being saxophonists Henry Huff
and Edward Wilkerson and earth drummer/percussionist Kahil El'Zabar.
The "earth drums" are homemade congas, hand drums with less snap and
a rather hollow sound. El'Zabar has been the constant for 10 more
EHE albums: with Wilkerson and trombonist Joseph Bowie up to 1997,
when Ernest Dawkins replaced Wilkerson; percussionist Atu Harold
Murray came and went; guitarist Fareed Haque appeared in 1999's
Freedom Jazz Dance, left, and returned. On this album,
trumpeter Corey Wilkes replaces Bowie, joining El'Zabar, Dawkins,
and Haque. The present lineup is as satisfying as any: the drums
provide a subtly shifty foundation, the guitar lays out sheets of
sound mostly as a backdrop, the two horns free to move and lead.
El'Zabar sings a bit toward the end -- never a plus, but not much
of a minus this time.
[B+(***)]
Thomas Marriott: Both Sides of the Fence (2006
[2007], Origin): Seattle-based trumpeter. Has a brother, David,
who plays trombone in a joint group, the Marriott Brothers Quintet
or Marriott Jazz Quintet, but is absent here. Background includes
work with Maynard Ferguson, Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Rosemary
Clooney. Mainstream chops, exceptionally fine tone. The sort of
album I have no special interest in, but so well done I hate to
slough it off. Two cuts with Joe Locke on vibes are a plus.
B
Michael Marcus/Ted Daniel: Duology (2006 [2007],
Boxholder): One thing I look for in avant jazz is accessibility:
the chance that a record might cross over and find some kind of
receptive audience beyond those firmly committed to the genre.
Actually, that's true of my approach to all genres; it's just
that so many people have a strong gag reflex with avant jazz.
This fails the test, perhaps inevitably. Free jazz duos on evenly
weighted instruments -- Marcus on clarinet, Daniel on "brass"
(trumpet, flugelhorn, Moroccan bugle, cornet) -- rarely flows
and often clashes. That said, this comes off better than most
such records. Marcus has paired off against other horns often,
and few (if any) get more mileage out of it -- cf. his work with
Sonny Simmons, albeit with the aid of a drummer. Daniel has a
slim discography going back to 1973 -- credits with Dewey Redman,
Andrew Cyrille, Henry Threadgill, Archie Shepp, Billy Bang. One
piece is dedicated to Frank Lowe. A lot of history and art goes
into something like this. Too bad it's so tough to grasp.
B
Bernardo Sassetti: Unreal: Sidewalk Cartoon (2005-06
[2007], Clean Feed): Among my earliest musical experiences was an
extreme distaste for Euroclassical music, which has attenuated only
slightly over the years. This makes me suspicious of the classical
backgrounds inevitable in the university programs that produce most
young jazz musicians these days, not to mention all those "third
stream" projects that first appeared when the academy discovered
jazz back in the '50s. In bring this up because my first impression
of this record was that it sounds like classical music only better.
It even crossed my mind that this is what Mozart might sound like
if he was really as good as everyone seems to think. Obviously, I
need to listen some more. Sassetti's previous records have been
small piano groups -- Ascent impressed me enough to make
it a Pick Hit. This one has dozens of extra musicians, including
a large percussion group, a saxophone quartet, something called
Cromeleque Quinteto (clarinet, flute, oboe, bassoon, french horn),
and so forth, all deployed with the precision and taste Sassetti
exhibits in his piano.
[B+(***)]
Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos: Invites Chris Cheek
(2006, Fresh Sound New Talent): Group aka OJM. Also on cover:
Music by Carlos Azevedo and Pedro Guedes. Credits also cite
Azevedo and Guedes for musical direction, piano, Fender Rhodes.
The Orquestra is full scale: four trumpets, four trombones,
five reeds (six counting Cheek), bass, drums. Strikes me as
quite ordinary as big band productions go: lots of layer and
polish on the brass, forgettable solos, not much going on in
the rhythm. Cheek may be the star, but he doesn't stand out.
C+
Nacho Arimany World-Flamenco Septet: Silence-Light
(2006, Fresh Sound World Jazz): Most cuts have vocals, mostly from
Antonio Campos, whose high-pressured melodrama fits the flamenco
mold, without quite winning me over like Dieguito El Cigala did.
Stretches without vocals are easier to handle and more interesting.
Arimany sets the pace with his percussion, trying to bridge jazz
and flamenco. Pianist Pablo Suárez and guitarist Lionel Loueke
have some good moments, and saxophonist Javier Vercher tops them
all. Harder to gauge Concha Jareño's contribution -- credits read
"flamenco dance footsteps, clapping." Hard to gauge the flamenco,
but minus vocals this makes for interesting jazz.
B+(*)
Miles Okazaki: Mirror (2006 [2007], CDBaby):
Guitarist, from Washington state, based in NYC now. Father taught
photography; he studied math, literature, and visual arts, and
provides four very attractive graphic panels in this package. Has
an association with Jane Monheit, which has no discernible effect
here. I'm tempted to group this under fusion, the main rationales
being that electric guitar leans that way, he uses some electronics,
and postbop isn't all that satisfactory an alternative. But arguing
for the latter is the fact that most cuts feature two reeds. Christof
Knoche is Okazaki's steady mate on bass clarinet, soprano sax, alto
sax, and harmonica. The other spot is mostly held by David Binney
(7 cuts on alto sax), but Miguel Zenon (3 cuts on alto) and Chris
Potter (1 on tenor) also appear. Impressive, promising debut.
[B+(**)]
John Fedchock New York Big Band: Up & Running
(2006 [2007], Reservoir): Trombonist, well schooled in big band
practice and theory by Woody Herman and Gerry Mulligan, debuting
his own New York Big Band to much acclaim in 1992. This is the
first I've heard of five albums -- four big band, a smaller group
for Hit the Bricks (2000). One thing about the concentration
of jazz musicians in New York is that an ambitious arranger can
recruit a name band there -- e.g., anchoring the sax section, Rich
Perry, Rick Margitza, Gary Smulyan. This has moments when the band
sounds great, but it has many more when I don't care, and some of
them are the same. May just be a funk I'm going through, but I
always figured the proof of a great big band is that it snaps you
out of any such thing. This doesn't, although I do dig the trombone
solos.
B
Allan Vaché: With Benny in Mind (2006 [2007], Arbors):
They don't list roles here like they did on Bucky Pizzarelli's tribute
to Freddie Green, but the casting is obvious: John Sheridan as Teddy
Wilson, Vincent Corrao as Charlie Christian, and Christian Tamburr as
Lionel Hampton. Phil Flanigan plays bass, Ed Metz Jr. drums, Vaché
clarinet. The songs are as expected, as are the performances, which
is the only possible critique. Goodman's sextet could surprise you
now and then, even today. Tamburr strikes me as someone worth keeping
an eye on.
B+(*)
The Ray Kennedy Trio: Plays the Music of Arthur Schwartz
(2006 [2007], Arbors): Quartet, actually, with guitarist Joe Cohn also
listed as "special guest" on the front cover, although not on the spine.
Kennedy is a pianist. Don't know much about him: his website proclaims
"coming soon." This looks to be his second album -- the first is called
The Sound of St. Louis -- but he has a bunch of credits going
back to 1990, most frequently with John Pizzarelli. Schwartz (1900-84)
composed for Broadway and film, mostly in the '30s and '40s, mostly
with lyricists Howard Dietz, Dorothy Fields, and Frank Loesser -- at
least those are the credits whose words don't actually appear here.
The music is none too familiar, but never quite out of mind. Kennedy
brings a light touch and easy swing to the pieces, and Cohn builds on
that.
B+(***)
And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further
listening the first time around.
Peter Brötzmann Group: Alarm (1981 [2006],
Atavistic): A radio shot from an exceptional nine-piece band of
troublemakers, cut short by a bomb threat. The two-part title
piece is punctuated by siren blasts, clipped down so firmly they
hardly rise above the saxophones (Brötzmann, Willem Breuker, Frank
Wright) and brass (Toshinori Kondo, Hannes Bauer, Alan Tomlinson).
While the noise level is about average -- i.e., a couple notches
below Machine Gun -- the rhythm section stands out: South
Africans Harry Miller and Louis Moholo keep it all moving, while
Alexander Von Schlippenbach's piano crashes against the waves.
Wright sings a bit at the end, giving the whole thing a revival
flair.
B+(***)
Duo Baars-Henneman: Stof (2006, Wig): All the
usual caveats about avant-garde duos apply here: this takes a lot
of patience, including a willingness to let not much happen for
way too long. But I've come to enjoy Ig Henneman's viola scratches
and Ab Baars splotches of clarinet, tenor sax, and Japanese flutes
as discreet sounds and quaint dances.
B+(*)
Building Red America
This is the latest of several books on the rise of conservative power in
the US by Thomas B Edsall. Building Red America: The New Conservative
Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power (2006, Basic Books).
Whereas Robert Brent Toplin's Radical Conservatism concentrates
on ideology and propaganda, this one is more brass tacks politics,
including some detailed research on demographics, economic strata,
etc.
The arguments are summarized in the Preface (pp. ix-x):
Some of the major points that Building Red America explores
and develops are:
More than in the past, the Republican Party has become a
coalition of the dominant, while the Democratic Party has become, in
large part, an alliance of the socially and economically subdominant
and those who identify with them.
While there has been a growing recognition of the role of civil
rights and of issues directly related to race in shaping partisan
identity and voting behavior, much less thought has been given to the
pivotal role in American politics of the sexual and women's rights
revolutions and the effective use by the Republican Party of reaction
to these insurgencies.
The conservative movement has successfully merged explicit and
concealed biases against minorities, homosexuals, "illegal"
immigrants, and "radical" feminists with ideological opposition to
interventionist government and higher taxes.
Insufficient attention has been paid by supporters of the
Democratic Party to the business and money revolutions of the past
quarter century and to the impact on the American progressive movement
of the failure of non-market economies in Europe and
elsewhere.
The Democratic Party has substantial vulnerabilities. It is no
longer a populist coalition but is now controlled by a well-educated,
relatively affluent, socially liberal elite that sets much of the
party's program. At the same time, the rank and file of the party --
the majority of its voters -- are women and men from the bottom half
of the economic order. There is a wide gulf separating the culturally
liberal agenda of the party's leadership elite and the pressing
material needs of the party's disadvantaged, disproportionately
African American and Hispanic constituents. This disconnect has led to
short-lived and transient Democratic victories while seriously
obstructing the ability of the party to forge and maintain a powerful,
resilient biracial, multiethnic coalition.
Although the Republican Party has dominated American politics
over the past forty years, it has not achieved a political
realignment. Instead, the GOP has developed the capacity to eke out
victory by slim margins in a majority of closely contested elections,
losing intermittently but winning more than half the time. It is
likely to continue this pattern for the forseeable
future. Conservatives have, furthermore, created a political arena in
which winning Democrats are likely to find themselves forced to move
to the right.
When contemporary Republicans win office, their agenda is not
moderate. Their effort has been to dismantle the welfare state, a
structure built up over the last two-thirds of the twentieth
century.
The GOP has succeeded in institutionalizing a powerful,
well-funded, durable infrastructure protecting conservative
legislation and regulatory policies to secure ground it has gained,
even when Democrats intermittently wrest control of one or more of the
branches of government. To quote directly from the first chapter of
the book: "In victory and defeat, the conservative Republican Party is
certain to continue to press its agenda of weaning individuals from
'dependency' on the state. When out of power, the conservative
movement has the resources and the managerial expertise to protect and
preserve its ideological and institutional edifice intact. When the
movement regains a base of elected power, conservatism is primed and
ready to capitalize on prior successes, its agenda ever more
aggressive and far reaching."
The main structural weakness Edsall sees in the Democratic Party
is the split between a mass majority of the poor and an elite minority
of cultural liberals, who are effectively able to control the party
platform despite lack of common interests and affinities with the
majority poor. Edsall provides some interesting numbers, so much so
that the liberal caricature appears to have some statistical
significance (p. 18):
From 1960 to the present, the percentage of Democratic presidential
voters employed in the professions has doubled. Democratic
professionals include academics, artists, designers, editors, human
relations managers, lawyers, librarians, mathematicians, nurses,
personnel specialists, psychologists, scientists, social workers,
teachers, and therapists. While this upscale group, according to Pew
Research Center, makes up almost 40 percent of all Democratic voters,
it makes up only 19 percent of all registered voters.
A solid 83 percent of these better-off Democratic voters are
white. Upper-income Democratic voters have the highest education level
of any Pew typology group -- Democrat or Republican. Females make up
54 percent, 41 percent are college graduates, and 26 percent have some
postgraduate education. They stand apart from the rest of the
population in that 43 percent seldom or never attend religious
services. More than one-third have never married (36 percent), 42
percent reside in urban areas, 41 percent earn at least $75,000 a
year, and 77 percent do not have a gun in the home. Only 6 percent
watch FOX television, whereas 37 percent go online for news. A
striking 92 percent believe homosexuality should be accepted as a way
of life by society, and 80 percent support gay marriage. Only 7
percent believe peace is achieved through a strong military. Fully 88
percent are persuaded that it is not necessary to believe in God to
have good values.
Although this well-educated, culturally libertarian, relatively
affluent progressive elite forms a minority of the Democratic
electorate and a substantially smaller minority of the national
electorate, it is this activist stratum that sets the agenda for the
Democratic Party and that provides the majority of delegates to the
national Democratic conventions, where party platforms and party rules
are written.
Edsall doesn't say this, but it's almost as if the Republican
strategy was to split the opposition, driving a wedge between the
poor and the liberal. Actually, that may have been instinctive,
given that the New Deal coalition was built when liberal elites
offered politically effective leadership for the poor, who in
turn provided the numbers for a Democratic majority. The context
for that coalition was the Great Depression, when enlightened
leadership was seen as necessary to head off more radical change.
On the Republican attack (pp. 28-29):
The conservative attack on the core beliefs of the left has been
paralleled by an assault on the institutions that underpin them. These
associations include labor unions -- with a special emphasis on public
employee and teachers' unions -- the plaintiffs' or trial lawyers'
bar, the media, mainstream liberal churches and religious
organizations -- especially those that permit the ordination of gay
clergy -- the traditional philanthropic community -- notably
foundations such as Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, and MacArthur that
have underwritten much of the socially progressive agenda of the past
half-century -- major research universities, and the rights movements,
including organizations that uphold and protect women's rights, civil
rights, criminal defendants' rights, and the rights of the
deinstitutionalized mentally ill, and so on.
Leaders of the Republican Party used the 9/11 terrorist attack, for
example, to justify an assault on public employee unions, weakening or
eliminating bargained protections of government employees by arguing
that, in times of danger, management requires the ability to exercise
authority over a flexible workforce. Command of congressional
majorities empowered Republicans to pass tort reform legislation in
2005, weakening the ability of trial lawyers to bring class action
suits -- suits that, in their broadest form, have brought significant
protection to consumers, patients, employees, investors, victims of
discrimination, and others.
On the partnership between GOP, business, and cultural conservatives
(p. 45):
The conservative movement has created a powerful, synergistic
system that rewards supporters and expands the base of those whose
futures are irrevocably tied to its agenda. Corporate America and the
Republican Party, exercising the power of the state, have been fused
in a mutually rewarding partnership. The corporate side of the
partnership provides the money to win elections and receives the
economic fruits of victory through lessened oversight, tax cuts, and
other beneficial legislation and regulation. The political party is
guaranteed a reliable source of campaign money, a powerful network of
corporate-financed lobbyists and "grassroots" activists to produce
legislative victories, and a supply of well-paid lobbying and trade
association jobs after a politician's service as an elected official,
a campaign operative, or a congressional aide has been completed.
For social conservatives, the rewards are far less lavish but not
without significance. The Republican Party has expressed platform
support for the drive to end abortion and has backed the effort to
pass a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage. The GOP and
the conservative movement have opposed race-based affirmative action,
winning a number of key court cases. The Bush administration has put
government money into abstinence education, has begun efforts, by
increasing fines and threatening to impose FCC rules and "persuading"
the entertainment industry, to regulate "indecent content" on cable
television, and has opened the federal grant process to religious
organizations. More broadly, the Republican Party has avidly recruited
white, born-again Protestants and conservative Catholics into its
ranks and into positions of policymaking authority, granting
conservative Christian voters the recognition and legitimacy often
denied them by liberal America.
Edsall cites a study by pollster Matt Dowd following the 2000
election as decisive in refocusing the Bush campaign from centrist
votes to wedge issues (pp. 51-52):
While running for president in 1999-2000, Bush had explicitly
reached out to the center-left, a strategy antithetical to that of his
2004 campaign. On September 29, 1999, for example, Bush had sharply
criticized the Republican Congress for reducing tax credits for the
working poor: "I'm concerned about the earned income-tax credit. I'm
concerned for someone who is moving from near-poverty to middle
class. I don't think they [House Republican leaders] ought to balance
their budget on the backs of the poor." [ . . . ]
After examining the election results and survey data gathered in
the immediate aftermath of the 2000 election, Dowd reached the
conclusion that the center was literally disappearing and that
strategies based on winning the center were no longer
optimal. Self-described "independent" voters "are independent in name
only," Dowd noted. "Seventy-five percent of independents vote straight
ticket" for one party or the other. Once these "false" independents
were correctly classified as Democratic or Republican, a very
different trend emerged: in the twenty years from 1980 to 2000, the
percentage of true swing voters -- those who were not virtually
certain to vote Democratic or Republican -- had fallen from a very
substantial 24 percent of the electorate to just 6 percent.
The Dowd memo allowed Republican leaders and strategists to return
to the kinds of wedge issues and polarizing tactics that had worked so
effectively in the decades following the 1960s, once again tapping the
party's genius in developing themes that create coherence among angry
constituencies on the right. "There are twice as many angry
conservatives in this country as there are angry liberals," notes
Democratic direct mail specialist Hal Malchow. "Liberals by their very
nature don't get as angry as conservatives do."
It seems likely to me that Dowd's survey wasn't a new discovery
in late 2000 -- that Bush's moderating tone in 2000 was just window
dressing for the hard-right conservative agenda that became evident
the day he took office. There are various strategic reasons for the
tactic, but one thing that made it possible was that the right and
the left were already cognitively isolated (p. 63):
Truth and falsehood, right and wrong, good and bad, are now judged
differently depending on the partisanship of the person making the
judgment and the credibility he or she is willing to grant to the
source of information. This makes it much easier for a Republican, for
example, to discount as purely partisan unfavorable news coming from
the New York Times, NPR, or CBS. A Democrat can similarly
discount a negative story from FOX News, members of the
National Association of Religious Broadcasters, or Rush Limbaugh. Each
side is prone to distort reality, rejecting information that is out of
line with prior ideological commitments -- a development that makes
the possibility of reaching agreement or consensus in a dispute highly
unlikely.
On the Republican spoils of victory (p. 116):
The changing flow of money as power shifted was striking. In
1993-1994, the last session of Congress when Democrats were in
control, defense industry PACs gave Democrats $2,937,459 and
$2,138,388 to Republicans, a 57 percent to 43 percent split; as soon
as the GOP took over in 1995-1996, the industry switched to a 72
percent to 28 percent margin favoring the Republicans, $4,051,907 to
$1,564,640. The energy and natural resources industries went from a
slight 53 to 47 tilt to the GOP, $6,604,225 to $5,637,728 prior to the
GOP takeover, to an overwhelming 77 to 27 split favoring the GOP in
1995-1996, $10,207,407 to $3,065,220. The pattern was almost universal
as business leapt on the opportunity to join forces with a party that
explicitly supported its goals.
The shift of financial resources to House and Senate Republicans as
the Democrats lost their half-century hold on the levers of power was
the backdrop to what became known as the "K Street Project," a
concerted and highly successful effort to convert basic political
resources such as top-paying lobbying jobs, the money donated by
business PACs, and the muscle of the Washington trade association and
lobbying communities to the Republican cause. While presidential
fundraising changed dramatically under Bush 43, at the congressional
level what had been the shadowy underbelly of the money culture in
Washington became its public face. The secretiveness and the element
of shame that accompanied Washington special interest fundraising in
the past have by now virtually disappeared.
On business spoils of victory (pp. 125-126):
For business interests, liability reform is all about money. That
the issue in addition has recruited racial and cultural conservatives,
opposed to the use of the courts to advance a liberal rights agenda by
means of lawsuits, is profoundly advantageous. It allows corporate
powers within the GOP coalition ever greater leeway in Washington
while being solidly backed by loyal social-issue voting
constituencies. The Republican battle for "tort reform" thus captures
almost every aspect of the fundamental Republican partisan electoral
strategy, simultaneously uniting, in a perceived common cause, the
major wings of the GOP -- social and racial conservatives on the one
hand and corporate America on the other.
Much of the book details how white males have shifted to the
Republican Party, especially in reaction to advances by non-whites
and women, although one could also point to the decline of unions
and manufacturing jobs. Edsall argues that white male opposition
to affirmative action represents rational self-interest. However,
he also points out that males have problems assessing risk (pp.
205-206):
One of the most Republican demographic groups -- affluent white men
-- is the demographic with the highest number of confident risk
takers. Among academic researchers, this phenomenon is known as "the
white male effect." A 1992 study reported in the journal Risk
Analysis found that, in a survey of 1,512 people, men saw less
risk than women from each of twenty-five potential health hazards
including nuclear waste, pesticides, blood transfusions, radon, and
X-rays: "Sizeable differences between risk perceptions of men and
women have been documented in dozens of studies. Men tend to judge
risks as smaller and less problematic than do women."
[ . . . ]
This group of risk takers is made up of men included toward the
Republican Party. Not only are conservative white men risk takers, but
they are, on the whole, relatively successful risk managers, as shown
by their high incomes and net worth.
There is another group of risk-tolerant males: criminals. These men
are majority nonwhite -- 64 percent of prison inmates in 2001 were
members of racial or ethnic minority groups -- and have failed to
manage risk effectively, as evidenced by their high incarceration
rates.
More on risk and self-perception (p. 207):
A strikingly high percentage of young people in the United States
today, 63 percent, say there is a "good chance" they will be rich
someday. In terms of voters judging their own capacity to manage risk,
among all Americans fully 69 percent believe they are "above average"
in their overall personality and character, and 86 percent say their
intelligence is above average. And it can make such voters angry (tap
their "anger points") to be told that the government they view as
wasteful, spendthrift, and unwisely redistributive can do a better job
of allocating their dollars than they can.
Wonder how this correlates with the subset that vacations in
Las Vegas.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Radical Conservatism
Perhaps the ugliest piece of research in my book outline is to look
into the evolution -- a term that properly understood entails mutation
and selection -- of conservative political ideology in post-WWII America.
This would then set up a following section on conservative practice: how
things go terribly wrong when bad people get free reign to implement bad
ideas. So I slogged through two recent books on the subject -- this one
and Thomas Edsall's Building Red America, which I'll post my notes
on tomorrow. At this point I have a fairly sizable stack of books that
I've read and marked up. I'm working my way forwards and backwards to
try to get them recorded, not just in the blog but in a more permanently
accessible books section. Following these
two books on the right are two recent books I've read on health care.
Robert Brent Toplin's Radical Conservatism: The Right's Political
Religion (2006, University Press of Kansas) is a general survey
of recent conservative political ideology in America. His perspective
is what I'd call moderate: he spends a lot of time distinguishing
between liberals and leftists, appreciating the former's willingness
to entertain all sides of issues, and he would like to defend some
strain of conservatism distinct from the fanatics and extremists who
have taken over the movement. His is not an especially insightful
book, but I expect to survey much of the same ground in my book, so
I found this a fairly useful general survey.
For all his insistence that radcons (radical conservatives) have
turned their politics into a form of religion -- at least that they
pursue it with the conviction of true believers -- there isn't very
much here on the religious phalanx of the Republican Party. Rather,
he discerns three major strains, which he calls: stealth libertarians,
culture warriors, and hawkish nationalists. The first group is the
most problematical: he concentrates on a laissez-faire economics as
it has developed to rationalize stripping government, especially of
its ability to tax and regulate business. My own view is that right's
relationship to business is far less ideological: they back business
both to reduce government impositions (taxes, regulation, antitrust,
torts) and to increase government support (procurement, subsidies).
Basically, whatever business wants is OK with them, because they
recognize that business puts the money in their pockets that lets
them pursue their other ideological goals -- which do not include
anything that real libertarians believe in other than laissez-faire
when it's economically convenient.
The culture warriors are basically displaced bigots who believe
in using government to coerce good behavior from unruly citizens.
The hawkish nationalists are into coercion on even grander scales,
and are rooted in a state-planned economy with no market values
whatsoever. That these three factions form a coalition is itself
somewhat improbable, but the military is a residual from WWII and
the the culture warriors idealize the same period, both reinforced
by the holy war against godless communism -- itself an issue that
the rich actually did have a stake in.
I didn't mark many quotes. In a section called "Undisturbed by Doubts"
Toplin cites David Brock on the true believers (pp. 61-62):
Conservatives behave as people in cults do, says Brock. They
denounce nonbelievers as heretics (as they did emphatically in his
case, when he broke from the movement and later published sharply
critical revelations about its activities). Brock succinctly
identified this mentality by citing a confession by a leading
neoconservative, Bill Kristol (son of Irving Kristol): "There is a
type of thinking on the right that if you don't agree with
everything," said Kristol, "you're a traitor to the movement."
Authors who have analyzed the ideas of major conservative leaders
have often identified these characteristics. They point to an attitude
of intolerance for dissenting opinions and note that leaders on the
right frequently express a desire to purge the movement of individuals
whose thinking appears to be compromised. Journalist Nina J. Easton
notes, for instance, that Grover Norquist, the hard-core champion of
tax reduction and limitd government, scorns conservatives who
compromise with liberals. He calls them "yellow-bellied conservatives"
and "squishes" i.e. people who cave in to the enemy rather than
standing up for their convictions. Norquist has worked relentlessly
(and often successfully) to replace "squishes" in Congress with
committed radcons. David Alan Crawford describes similar attitudes in
Thunder on the Right: The 'New Right' and the Politics of
Resentment (1980). He says many conservative leaders treat people
who make deals with the liberal enemy as scoundrels who have lost
their integrity. Those who compromise are soft. "The good guys are
those individuals who are untainted by liberalism or moderation," says
Crawford. Right-wingers applaud heroic figures who oppose the left "to
the last corral, shooting it out like some Wild West sheriff, holding
off the outlaws of liberalism."
On the usefulness of religion, particularly by neoconservatives
(pp. 134-135):
Quite a few neoconservatives are agnostics in terms of their
personal religious views yet express strong respect for religious
values in their public statements, believing that support for
spiritual teachings has helped greatly to promote social cohesion and
moral behavior. Many Straussians among the neoconservatives have
viewed religion in this manner. Some of these intellectuals, disciples
of University of Chicago philosopher Leo Strauss, have not personally
accepted organized religion's deistic and theocratic teachings, but
they sense that people who believe in religion are likely to behave as
virtuous citizens. Religious piety does not appear necessary for their
individual perspective on life, these neocons conclude, but it
provides a useful service to the masses. Religion offers a "noble
myth."
Marx came to the same conclusion when he called religion the opiate
of the masses. The virtue that the Straussians most treasure is the
quiescent acceptance of the class hierarchy.
A particularly annoying quote is where Toplin chastises anyone who
would criticize US history in the wake of 9/11 (pp. 212-213):
Politically savvy commentators on the 9/11 tragedy appreciate the
Biblical message that suggests there is a proper time and a place for
everything. They understand that the first days following the
destruction in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania were
less appropriate times for engaging in critical discourse about
controversial aspects of U.S. foreign policy than later periods. The
individuals who raised these complaints immediately after the tragedy
seemed clueless about human psychology and American politics. Many
Americans thought their critique of U.S. relations with the world in
the aftermath of such heinous crimes sounded like attempts to diminish
the guilt of the terrorists. Understandably, irate citizens and
pundits lambasted the commentators for suggesting
U.S. culpability.
Toplin is writing about William J. Bennett's Why We Fight,
which took pains to single out anyone who said anything critical of
US policy. The fact is that people like Bennett were using 9/11 to
push us into war, and their exploitation of "human psychology" was
part of that push. There was never a time when it was more important
to stop and take a deep breath and examine how we got to be in that
situation, before we let a few hot heads fly us off the cliff into
the abyss of war -- events that in coming years we have increasingly
come to regret. Critical self-examination failed in this case because
very few people have any clue as to what the US has done in its foreign
policy over the last 50-60 years, even in frequently troubled areas of
the Middle East.
Then there are times when the right puts the shoe on the wrong foot
(p. 229):
Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal's highly partisan
approach to the Iraq issue led the editors to make some foolish
statements that appeared badly mistaken with the passage of time. In
mid-April 2003, for instance, at a moment when military victory over
Iraq seemed secure, the editors spoke condescendingly about those who
had questioned the propriety of President George W. Bush's war
policy. They particularly targeted "liberals," a broad term that
included, in their terms, the staff of CNN and the major television
networks, most academic experts, and editors of the New York
Times. The WSJ editors wrote, "Liberal elites continue to
wallow in pessimism about this liberation." Liberals worried about the
difficulty of achieving democracy and reconstruction in Iraq, the
editors noted. Liberals also feared a national uprising against
U.S. troops similar to America's Vietnam experience, and they expected
that Arabs would become enraged against Americans because of the
occupation. Furthermore, liberals thought the war would produce
thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties and refugees, and they believed
the occupation would arouse saboteurs to strike at Iraq's petroleum
fields, causing global oil prices to rise. These anticipated disasters
had not come true, the editors noted. Thus, liberals were wrong in
making pessimistic judgments. "They are flummoxed if not embarrassed
by America's Iraqi victory," the editors concluded. They failed to
understand the situation in Iraq because it had become a
"self-insulated elite convinced of its own virtue." Liberals thought
of themselves as "the anointed," and they operated "in an echo chamber
that listens to and rewards one another to the point that they refuse
to admit contrary evidence."
Finally, the radcons have had trouble translating their ideas into
viable practice (pp. 272-273):
Many of the problems that dragged down the popularity of President
Bush and the GOP-led Congress were directly related to the application
of conservative ideas rather than to departures from them. Large tax
cuts (a favorite goal of the radcons) along with gigantic defense
budgets (another favorite) and ambitious war-making in Iraq (defended
through radcon jingoism) swelled the federal defecit and badly damaged
the United States' global image. FEMA, a model of efficiency in the
Clinton era, looked like a striking example of bureaucratic
incompetence after radcons privatized some of its programs and filled
its top ranks with right-wing cronies. The Medicare drug program
promoted by the GOP delighted the pharmaceutical industry, because its
costly arrangements promised large profits to corporations. The
Republican plan did not allow the government to negotiate
aggressively in order to reduce drug prices. In these programs and
several other examples of conservative governance, the handling of
public affairs was problematic.
A fundamental reason for this disappointing leadership was that key
people in charge of federal programs were hostile toward the basic
idea of activist government in America's nonmilitary
affairs. Libertarian-minded politicians proved to be poor planners and
agency heads in Washington. They were uncomfortable with their basic
task of creating broadly effective public agencies of the national
government. As devotees of the private sector, these Stealth
Libertarians looked suspiciously on programs designed to give the
state substantial influence in American society. "Conservatives cannot
govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a
world-class boeuf bourguignon," suggests Alan Wolfe. "If you believe
that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do
it very well."
Toplin then concludes with Ron Suskind's famous "reality-based
community" quote.
Friday, March 09, 2007
River of Lost Notes
I've had the Dec. 11, 2006 isssue of the New Yorker sitting on my
desk since sometime around the issue date, originally thinking that
I wanted to keep a quote from a book review. The book is about the
history of Burma/Myanmar, The River of Lost Footsteps, by
Thant Myint-U, the grandson of UN Secretary U Thant. The review is
by John Lanchester. Unfortunately, I didn't mark the quote I wanted
to keep, so I'm floundering through a fascinating piece on a subject
I know very little about. Something to do with the pernicious follies
of imperialism, as I recall. Maybe this one, on how the British took
over:
By the summer of 1885, [Burmese King] Thibaw was a famous ogre,
Burma was a famous potential market, and [Lord Randolph, father of
Winston] Churchill, running as the self-proclaimed advocate of
"progressive conservatism," was contesting a parliamentary seat in the
radical hotbed of Birmingham, a city with a large industrial vote. All
that he needed was a strategic reason for an invasion, and this was
soon provided by a rumor of French involvement in Burma. A casus belli
was cooked up, over a fine that Burmese officials -- probably corrupt
ones -- had imposed on a Scottish company. War was declared. General
Sir Harry North Dalrymple Prendergast and his troops made short work
of deposing Thibaw, and very hard work of suppressing the guerrilla
resistance that followed. British officials had assumed, Thant says,
that "a swift and simple change at the top would lead to quick
submission and the rapid return of normal government." It didn't. In
the end, the suppression of the rebellion took three times as many
troops as the initial invasion, and succeeded partly because of the
enervating effects of a brutal famine.
More than a century later, it's clear that the aftermath of this
particular imperial adventure has been catastrophic. There are regimes
that attract more negative attention than the Burmese dictatorship of
today, but there are few that are as universally condemned, or that
have shown such a consistent talent for immiserating their own
people. [ . . . ] There is no liberty and no
democracy in Burma, where the winner of a 1990 election, Aung San Suu
Kyi, is still living under house arrest. The dictatorship has an
almost unrivalled record of economic incompetence, at one point
managing to make Burma, which is rich in natural resources, one of the
ten poorest countries in the world. The "Burmese Way to Socialism," as
the junta's official ideology is called, is a mixture of isolationism,
nationalism, self-proclaimed Buddhism, and outright fantasy.
[ . . . ] One of the subtlest things in The
River of Lost Footsteps is the connection Thant charts between
Burma's current predicament and its colonial past. A deep sense of
humiliation gave rise to a curdled nationalism that eventually made
the military dictatorship possible. The great British experiment in
regime change created a Burma that was, in Thant's words, "entirely
different from anything before, a break with the ideas and
institutions that had underpinned society in the Irrawaddy valley
since before medieval times" -- a Burma "adrift, suddenly pushed into
the modern world without an anchor to the past."
Also worth noting is Thant's critique of the world's efforts to
pressure or punish Burma/Myanmar:
But Thant thinks that Aung San Suu Kyi -- "the Lady," as she is
generally known in Burma -- relies too much on her father's
example. Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace PRize in 1991, has
her father's intensity, courage, and charisma, and perhaps also his
sense of destiny; but, for Thant, that is not all that needs to be
said. To assume that the same single-mindedness that won Burma's
independence in 1947 will gain its freedom now is to confuse the
colonial past and the postcolonial present. "Britain's withdrawal from
Burma was part of its withdrawal from India; the question was one of
the nature and timing of the postcolonial transition," Thant
observes. "Unlike the British, Burma's generals were never going to
quit Burma." Aung San Suu Kyi's valiant opposition to the military
regime has become much better known, he observes, than the reasons
that the regime arose in the first place, and the result is policy
that rests on an incurious, ahistorical simplicity. "The paradigm is
one of regime change, and the assumption is that sanctions, boycotts,
more isolation will somehow pressure those in charge ot mend their
ways," he writes. "The assumption is that Burma's military government
couldn't survive further isolation when precisely the opposite is
true: Much more than any other part of Burmese society, the army will
weather another forty years of isolation just fine.
[ . . . ]
Instead of the current policy, Thant argues, what is needed is a
policy of engagement with Burma, one of ethical trade and ethical
tourism, coupled with a gradual process of economic reform, a
rebuilding of institutions, "and a slow opening up of space for civil
society." Given all these things, "perhaps the conditions for
political change would emerge over the next decade or two." This is
not a simple policy of regime change -- or not regime change as we
have come to know it.
Of course, we've seen how grossly ineffective, and ultimately cruel,
pressure by tough sanctions has repeatedly proven to be. Such strategies
fall under the rubric of "war by other means," which means they wind up
sharing the moral faults of war. In particular, they demonize the other,
rendering the dispute ever more rigid and irresolvable. But they also
tend to be significantly asymmetrical: US sanctions against relatively
small nations like Cuba, North Korea, Myanmar, Iraq, or even Iran, cost
us very little, while potentially doing much harm to the other. The fact
that we see and feel so little pain makes it so easy to continue such
strategies. It's only when they blow back that we notice them at all.
(North Korea's nuclear weapons seem to have finally gotten attention by
the Bush regime.)
It seems to me that even so vast a conflict as the Cold War might
have been significantly ameliorated by appealing to the highest ideals
of the Communists rather than attacking their worst practices, provoking
their greatest fears. The same thing could be true for numerous other
smaller scale conflicts.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Marriage and Values
The Wichita Eagle published an article Tuesday by Blaine Harden of
the Washington Post. It was titled "Marriage a symbol of affluence"
and is worth quoting whole:
Punctuating a fundamental change in American family life, married
couples with children now occupy fewer than one in every four
households -- a share that has been slashed in half since 1960 and is
the lowest ever recorded by the census.
As marriage with children becomes an exception rather than the
norm, social scientists say it is also becoming the self-selected
province of the college-educated and the affluent. The working class
and the poor, meanwhile, increasingly steer away from marriage while
living together and bearing children.
"The culture is shifting, and marriage has almost become a luxury
item, one that only the well educated and well paid are interested
in," said Isabel Sawhill, an expert on marriage and a senior fellow at
the Brookings Institution.
Marriage has declined across all income groups, but it has declined
far less among couples who make the most money and have the best
education. These couples are also less likely to divorce. Many
demographers peg the rise of a class-based marriage gap to the erosion
since 1970 of the broad-based economic prosperity that followed World
War II.
"We seem to be reverting to a much older pattern, when elites marry
and a great many others live together and have kids," said Peter
Francese, a demographic trends analyst.
In recent years, the marrying kind have been empowered by college
degrees and bankrolled by dual incomes. They are also older and
choosier.
As cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births increase among the
broader population, social scientists predict that marriage with
children will continue its decades-long retreat into relatively
high-income exclusivity.
One reason this article impressed me is that I recently read Thomas
Edsall's Building Red America, where he makes a big point about
how married couples are economically much better off than singles and
unmarrieds, which gives them a view of economic dominance that fits so
nicely into Republican Party strategizing. Most figures indicate that
real wages have been stagnant or declining in the US since circa 1970,
but those figures are based on individual wage earners. But married
couples can buck that trend with a second paycheck, which increasingly
is the case.
I guess what's surprising about the article is that it provides
a surprising twist on the "family values" spiel that has been such
a prominent piece of the Republican sales pitch. We don't readily
think of marriage as an economic issue, even though it is easy to
see that it is one. (E.g., would there be such a push by gays to be
able to marry if doing so had no economic advantages?) And when we
do connect it to economics we tend to assume that marriage is part
of a cluster of virtues that incidentally net economic rewards. The
idea that marriage is something the privileged do to cement their
advantages isn't obvious, but it appears to hold up.
Especially interesting is the argument that the prevalence of
marriage is a measure of economic equality. We know, for instance,
that the 1950s, which we recall as a sort of family values golden
age, was most significantly the period in US history when we came
closest to economic equality. Not real close, of course, but much
more so than in the robber baron era before the 1930s depression,
and more so than the Reagan-Bush greed-for-all. One thing this
suggests is that if you really wanted to promote marriage and
family values, the way to do so would be to pursue egalitarian
economic policies.
On the other hand, the Republicans' harping on values isolated
from economics works nicely as a piece of class bigotry, providing
a self-flattering rationale for well-to-do marrieds to look down
on the less fortunate, and to blame the latter for their fate.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Jazz CG Status
I expected my Jazz Consumer Guide to appear in this week's
(March 7) issue of the Village Voice. I've received reports that
it didn't appear. Voice music editor Rob Harvilla confirms that
"late into the night a bunch of space was cut and they had to
pull it from the 3-7 issue." He also reports that "this next
issue i think is also mashed with other stuff, so my plan was
to run it 3-21." So that means week after next, a two-week
delay, and doesn't sounds like even that is locked in.
The Voice has long had trouble slotting full-page pieces,
and I've often come out on the short end of that stick. The
first real date we talked about this time was Mar. 14, which
then got moved up to Mar. 7 in a last-minute crush which I
managed to pull off with some much appreciated help on the
editing end. So this is disappointing, but I still feel good
that it is done and will be published in the not-too-distant
future.
I also still don't know the exact layout -- what fit and
what got held back, although presumably the latter all come
from my prioritized lists. Meanwhile, you can get a rough
idea by sifting through the
prospecting file.
I've started to set up the framework for next round. I guess
the good news is that I have a bit of breathing room to go
over the usual clean up and compaction.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Recycled Goods #41: March 2007
Given the circumstances, I couldn't quite pull myself together to
wrap up the planned Recycled Goods for March. But I didn't want to
disappear for a month either. Then it occurred to me that an easy way
to hold my place would be to do some recycling myself. I first thought
of pulling one review from each of the 40 columns, starting in February
2003. Then I figured full main-section reviews would be too long-winded,
so I should pick from Briefly Noted as well. Since those only started
four columns into 2003, I rather arbitrarily decided to limit the main
reviews to 2003 and run Brief Notes from 2004 to last month. Nabbed
one per column, then threw in a few more for good measure: two up top,
four down below. Didn't necessarily take the best records per column,
but stuck with good ones, things worth knowing about. Got a James Brown
Pick Hit out of it too.
I flagged each one by date. My original thought was to link them
back to my
archives, but I skipped that for the
version posted at
Static
Multimedia. I actually had almost a full column written, but it
had run late, and I wasn't in the mood to clean up the rough edges.
Some of this is long-term fatigue. While the record counts haven't
dropped much over the past year, I've put less effort into chasing
down interesting records. Not sure how that will play out in the
months to come, but I didn't want to dig too deep a hole for myself.
By the way, I want to thank all my readers who wrote to me recently,
especially those -- probably most -- who I won't manage to respond to
personally. Especially when bad things happen, it's reassuring to see
some evidence that better reactions are possible, and that my work has
not been in vain. Thank you.
Here's the publicists letter:
Recycled Goods #41, March 2007, is up at Static Multimedia:
link
I got ambushed this month -- unfortunately not figuratively,
but fortunately something that I might recover from. One result
was that my March 2007 Recycled Goods column missed its deadline.
So I did some last-minute recycling of my own to fill the gap.
I picked 46 reviews from my 40 previous columns, using the 2003
columns for the top section and the later columns for Briefly
Noted. Good records, all worth further consideration, even a
bit of nagging. Next month should be back to normal.
Index by label:
Archeophone: Stomp and Swerve
Atavistic: Vandermark 5, Per Henrik Wallin
Buda Musique: Mahmoud Ahmed
Collector's Choice: John Fahey
ECM: Jan Garbarek
EMI (Capitol, Blue Note): Finger Poppin' and Stompin' Feet, Tina Brooks,
Cabaret Voltaire, Don Cherry, Bobby Darin, Andrew Hill, John Lee
Hooker, Thelonious Monk, Les Paul & Mary Ford, Bud Powell
Heartbeat: Freddie McGregor
HighNote: Sheila Jordan
Koch: Amy Rigby
New West: Sir Douglas Quintet
Reboot Stereophonic: Irving Fields
RetroAfric: Gaby Lita Bembo
Sanctuary (Trojan, Castle): Niney and Friends, X-Ray Spex
Shanachie: Augustus Pablo
Smalls: Frank Hewitt
Sony/BMG: Poor Man's Heaven, Gato Barbieri, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington,
Flatt & Scruggs, Dizzy Gillespie, Merle Haggard, Perez Prado, Rockpile,
Run-DMC
Stern's: Guitar and Gun
Stones Throw: Funky 16 Corners
Timber: Perfect Beats
Universal: James Brown, Ernest Tubb
WEA (Rhino): Buck 65, Buck Owens, Warren Zevon
World Music Network: Rough Guide to Boogaloo
ZE: Cristina
One thing I noticed in compiling this index is how many of these
are from labels I've lost track of. I started the column in 2003,
partly in response to Michael Tatum's nagging, and partly because
I saw a need to cover more reissues and compilations than Robert
Christgau could or would in his year-end Consumer Guide. At first
I scrounged around for releases, but after a few months I came up
with Briefly Noted to keep up with everything. Soon I found I
wasn't getting as much world music as I wanted, so I loosened up
the requirements to allow for new releases. We decided to do a
year-end new music summary for January 2006, and repeated that in
2007. For a while I juggled Recycled Goods and a spin-off column
in Seattle Weekly called Rearview Mirror. Static Multimedia was
having its own problems then, and the combination resulted in
skipping several months, but everything settled down in 2005.
Until this blip, I've published columns with 40-60 records for
26 straight months. That adds up to 40 columns and a total of
1733 records. The complete archives are available at:
http://tomhull.com/ocston/arch/cg/
I still mean to eventually put them into a reference like the one
I built for Robert Christgau. I send notices like this out each
month, usually just to the publicists immediately covered. But
this unusual one may serve as a reminder of who I am and what
I've been doing. Maybe we'll renew some acquaintances. The fact
is that I haven't been as proactive lately as I was early on --
the column would be better if I looked harder and dug deeper.
But I have been gratified by the widespread interest in it, and
that helps keep me going. As, of course, does your continued
support. Thanks.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Music: Current count 12930 [12917] rated (+13), 846 [841] unrated (+5).
This has been the week from hell. Should have finished Recycled Goods,
but haven't done much of anything.
- The Life Pursuit by Belle and Sebastian (2006,
Matador): Maybe the title should be spun around the other way. Quaint
little songs, although "For the Price of a Cup of Tea" has a hook.
B+(**)
- Tony Bennett: Duets: An American Classic (2006,
RPM/Columbia): Phil Ramone produced, with an average mediocre
orchestra, so don't expect anything there other than competence.
The songbook is firmly planted on home turf -- Stevie Wonder
brings "For Once in My Life," but Bennett's made that a staple,
and controls the pace. Duets albums have become a ritual for
aging crooners, offering nothing new from the principal party,
rising and falling on the guests. Any surprise that Diana Krall
is great, that James Taylor isn't, and that George Michael sucks?
B
- Bob Seger: Face the Promise (2006, Capitol):
First new album in eleven years. Complex feelings may have their
place, as one song concedes, but complex chords are someone else's
aesthetic. For Seger simplicity is everything, and he picks up
his career with the same sledgehammer he wielded in the '70s.
His philosophizing hasn't changed much either, and songs like
"No Matter Who You Are" ring true. And his political manifesto
isn't far off the mark: "It's time to join with the iving, time
to understand/We're all in this together, we've got to have a
plan/We're facing an extinction every other day/There's got to
be an answer, we've got to find a way/Between what is dead and
what is green/We learn what to keep and what to burn/Between
what is fair and what's obscene." Patty Loveless drops in for
a duet. B+(***)
- Tropicália (1968-73 [2006], Soul Jazz):
Mark Kurlansky's otherwise remarkable book 1968: The Year That
Rocked the World offers only one sentence on Brazil: "In Brazil,
armed violence that killed three protesters in the opening months
of 1968 failed to keep students from protesting the four-year-old
military dictatorship." The unreported revolt in Brazil included
the tropicálistas, whose "Brazilian revolution in sound" is rooted
more in late-'60s psychedelic rock than in the bossa nova and samba
that seduced us in the early '60s. The movement involved more than
music, but is best known through founders Gilberto Gil and Caetano
Veloso, who survived arrest and exile to achieve international fame,
and Tom Zé, who remained obscure until David Byrne's Luaka Bop label
gave him some exposure. Odd, messy, unexpected -- revolutions are
like that -- but his compilation for once is select and documented
extensively. A-
- Thom Yorke: The Eraser (2006, XL): Solo album by
Radiohead's singer. Don't know whether that means they're done --
not surprising given how little attention I paid them when they were.
Attractive album, especially in the rhythm which runs soft and synthy.
Don't ask me about lyrics. B+(**)
Jazz Prospecting (CG #12, Part 14)
A week later my life is still pretty disrupted, but the afterlife
bears some continuity and occasional resemblance to the ordinary life
that preceded it. I'm trying to get back to some sort of normalcy, of
which this post is a first step -- something that I do damn near every
Monday. This week's post provides closure for Jazz Consumer Guide #12,
which is scheduled to appear in the Village Voice later this week.
More when that happens.
This has been the longest Jazz CG cycle ever. Not sure why. It may
just be that under the new regime we just haven't worked very hard to
overcome the distance and distraction. Next one should be much quicker,
unless fatigue really weighs me down. I really haven't felt like rating
anything in the last week -- the week's tally in the notebook is 13,
about half a normal week's work, so that's not a complete washout. In
the past I've tried to push for two-month frequency. Not sure now, but
the case is pretty straightforward. I've prospected 247 albums in this
cycle, while carrying 83 over from the previous cycle. At this point
I still don't know the final cuts from the column, but a 10% selection
(33 out of 330) is quite possible, with less more likely than more.
One probable casualty of the events is March's Recycled Goods. I
have enough stuff written, but haven't felt up to cleaning it up and
editing it, while the calendar keeps turning. Probably best to skip
a month and return in April, but that's still not official. I hope
to get back to "normal" blogging by the end of the week. Have some
book quotes backed up. Beyond that, we'll see.
Juan Carlos Quintero: Las Cumbias . . . Las Guitarras
(1997-2006 [2006], Inner Knot): Colombian guitarist, from Medellin,
although he's been in the US since studying at Berklee and New England
Conservatory in the early '80s. Selected from a decade's work, the
pieces offer a remarkably uniform flow -- all instrumental, most with
bass, accordion, and drums/percussion, a couple with piano. Just a
slightly folkie groove that never lets up.
B+(**)
Puttanesca (2006, Catasonic): Sauce, usually served
with spaghetti. Brown 4 halved cloves garlic in 3 tbs. olive oil. Add
4-5 anchovy fillets, crush with fork. Add 28 oz. crushed tomatoes, 10-12
coarsely chopped black olives, 2 tbs. capers, 2 tbs. flat parsley, a
small red chili or equivalent. Stirring occasionally, cook over medium
heat until reduced to sauce (about 10 minutes). Pasta alla puttanesca
translates as whore's pasta. It has a loud, noisy taste, one that grabs
your buds and beats them around. Group tries to do the same thing, but
less successfully. Their obligatory inspirational cover is Beefheart's
"Lick My Decals Off, Baby," and throughout the guitar-bass-drums exhibit
a similar skew. The vocalist is Weba Garretson, who's also done business
as Weba World. Given that nobody knows what a jazz vocal is these days,
she's probably close enough -- certainly too kinky for alt-rock.
B+(*)
Logan Richardson: Cerebral Flow (2006, Fresh Sound
New Talent): Young (b. 1980) alto/soprano saxophonist from Kansas City,
educated at Berklee and the New School, based in NYC. Runs a quintet
here with vibes-guitar-bass-drums. Runs on the wild side, with fast,
complex runs, leaps, and the occasional squawk, against mostly free
rhythm. Not inconceivable he has Charlie Parker in mind, but he's a
completely contemporary player. Mike Pinto's vibes make interesting
contrast here. Also impressed with bassist Matt Brewer, even younger,
who's worked with Greg Osby -- who, by the way, offers praise in the
booklet. Could go higher; impressive debut.
[B+(***)]
Michael Felberbaum: SweetSalt (2005 [2006], Fresh
Sound New Talent): Guitarist, based in Paris since 1991, before that
in US from 1985, before that not sure -- website says he played in
"Roman clubs" when he was 15. Has a previous album. This one is a
quartet with piano-bass-drums. Another solid postbop exercise, with
some urgency which can either be driven by the guitarist or Pierre
de Ethmann on piano or Fender Rhodes.
B+(*)
Miguel Fdez-Vallejo Meets Miguel Villar: El Perro
(2005 [2006], Fresh Sound New Talent): Two Spanish tenor saxophonists,
names I've run across in the past but don't know much about -- nor do
they have the web presence that helps make up for obscurity. Formally,
this promises to be a joust, but is pretty subtle, the two sax lines
tracking each other closely over bass and drums. One cut adds guests:
vibes by Marc Miralta, with Gorka Benítez taking the lead on flute.
I've played this several times, and like it as haunting, poignant
background music, but don't have much more to say.
B+(**)
Nando Michelin Trio: Duende (2006, Fresh Sound New
Talent): Pianist. Don't know any biographical details, but AMG lists
six albums going back to 1996, and that doesn't include this one.
Only two side-credits. This one was recorded in Boston. Richie
Barshay plays drums and percussion. Esperanza Spalding plays bass
and contributes scat vocals to most songs. I'm fairly neutral about
the latter, which is to say they're unannoying and less disruptive
than I'd expect. Piano is attractive, and bass and drums provide
solid support.
B+(*)
Among 3 (2004-06 [2006], Fresh Sound New Talent):
Barcelona-based piano trio, with Roger Mas [Giménez] on piano, Bori
Albero on bass, Juanma Mielo, plus guests on two tracks. Never heard
of these guys, and found out very little. (A Spanish singer-songwriter
named Roger Mas is evidently someone else.) The piano trio is fine,
although not especially inspiring. The extras add little.
B
Robert Glasper: In My Element (2006 [2007], Blue
Note): Obviously the jump from his debut on Fresh Sound New Talent
to a second album on Blue Note was considered a big deal: it put
the young pianist squarely in the footsteps of Jason Moran and
Bill Charlap, who are big deals. Glasper got a lot of plaudits
come year-end, but I didn't think much of the album, and not just
because his hip-hop connection (Bilal, Mos Def) didn't register.
In fact, I toyed with the idea of listing it as a dud, but let it
slip quietly by instead. I doubt this one will pan out either.
Very mild-mannered acoustic stuff at first, including a soft gospel
medley, then he feels a strange need to break out of his rut. So
he starts with a Radiohead/Herbie Hancock mashup, then channels
some J Dilla samples, both of which are better on paper than in
sound. Then he tosses off a pretty good free piece called "Silly
Rabbit," but chops it up at the end with a sample and some junk.
Then he reverts to form with a tribute to Mulgrew Miller. Finally,
a piece called "Tribute" with excerpts from a eulogy.
[B] [Mar 20]
Honolulu Jazz Quartet: Tenacity (2006 [2007],
HJQ): I dunno. A squall line just blew through in the middle of
playing this, so I assume that the thunder and crashing trees
and such were unscripted. Was trying to read Nat Hentoff's
purple-on-black liner notes -- name-dropping about shit told
to him back in the day by Coleman Hawkins and Duke Ellington --
and was having trouble with that, too. Group is a quartet, based
in Honolulu. Leader is bassist John Kolivas. Tim Tsukiyama plays
tenor and soprano sax, mostly tenor; Dan Del Negro piano; Adam
Baron drums. Very mainstream stuff, with the only non-original
from local legend, slack key guitarist Keola Beamer, not that
it stands out. Actually, the distractions don't matter much.
Either this is exemplary competency or it's a work of marginal
distinction. Think I'll give it a pass and go with the latter,
since for my triage purposes it doesn't much matter.
B+(*) [Mar 20]
Tad Robinson: A New Point of View (2007, Severn):
White blues singer, also plays harmonica, although I wouldn't
swear to the race without a photo. Actually, the notes refer to
him as a "soul-blues singer," but I find this so firmly locked
into the modern blues paradigm that his hard-earned soulfulness
is secondary.
B
Jeff Baker: Shopping for Your Heart (2006 [2007],
OA2): Jazz singer. Third album, starting with Baker Sings Chet
in 2003. He works the gamut of olde standards and bebop sprints.
I tend to enjoy the former and chafe at the latter, and that's
pretty much how this breaks. The band could call themselves the
Origin All-Stars: Bill Anschell, Jeff Johnson, John Bishop, and
especially Brent Jensen, whose sax especially warms up attractive
moderate fare like "Time After Time."
B
Dean Schmidt: I Know Nothing (2006 [2007], OA2):
Bassist, from Seattle or thereabouts, first album, composed 10
of 13 cuts -- the others from his pianists Julio Jauregui and
Steve Rice. Eclectic, but leans toward Latin things, starting
off with a piece including steel pans and guiro. I find the
simplest pieces most attractive, like "Harry Whodeanie's Magic
Impromptu Blues" -- just bass and bongos. Good title: "The Days
of Guns and Roses."
B
Ellery Eskelin/Andrea Parkins/Jim Black: One Great Day
(1996 [1997], Hatology): I've made extended discography lists of some
musicians whose import extends far beyond their own records -- like
Paul Motian, Dave Holland, and William Parker. I haven't gotten around
to Jim Black yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to find him on the same
track, if not quite yet in the same league. Parkins is the odd one out
here: she's credited with accordion and sampler. Seems to me there's
a small bit of piano here, so maybe that was sampled? The accordion
functions like an organ -- Eskelin's mother played organ, so that may
have something to do with his thinking here -- similar in tone, a bit
slower dynamics, harmonizes better with the sax, while covering the
hole left by no bassist. None of which matters all that much: above
all else, this is a great tenor sax album, with a singular voice
working difficult material.
A-
Ellery Eskelin: Five Other Pieces (+2) (1998,
Hatology): Same trio with Andrea Parkins and Jim Black. The five
pieces by others come from John McLaughlin, Lennie Tristano, John
Coltrane, Charlie Haden, and George Gershwin. The "+2" are Eskelin
originals. The most immediate effect of working with "other folks'
music" -- a Roland Kirk phrase Eseklin quotes in his remarkably
useful liner notes -- is to bring Parkins' accordion much to the
fore. As usual, covers mean stronger themes -- why else bother with
them? -- and in the case of Coltrane's "India" set up an unusual
degree of repetition, which underscores the group's sound. The
"(+2)" are two Eseklin originals.
B+(***)
Ellery Eskelin: Ramifications (1999 [2000], Hatology):
Eskelin expands his trio to quintet here, making unorthodox choices.
Is Joe Daley's tuba the brass alongside Eskelin's tenor sax, or is
it the missing bass? Or is Erik Friedlander's cello the missing bass,
or the second lead instrument. Actually, there is no second lead --
the group mostly provides a somber backdrop for Eskelin's pained,
powerful sax maneuvers. This is especially true on the title cut,
which is dirgelike except for the sax's mighty struggles.
B+(***)
Ellery Eskelin: Vanishing Point (2000 [2001],
Hatology): One of the more interesting sax-with-strings records,
but not a surprise given that the strings are Mat Maneri on viola,
Erik Friedlander on cello, and Mark Dresser on bass. You could
think of it as a string quartet with tenor sax subbing for violin,
but it is an exceptionally unruly one. The classical string sound
that so often turns my stomach comes from the sonic seasickness of
the section playing in unison, but that can't happen in unscripted
improv like this, where each player responds to the others. Fifth
wheel is Matt Moran on vibes, an occasional tinkle of percussion
that pops out orthogonally to the sonic mix. The pieces have an
odd, ambling quality. I've played this a number of times, and it
remains obscure, a puzzle with no obvious solution.
B+(**)
Ellery Eskelin/Andrea Parkins/Jim Black: 12 (+1) Imaginary
Views (2001 [2002], Hatology): I got a note from Eskelin
back in October offering to send me a copy of his latest, Quiet
Music. I wrote back and mentioned that I had heard very little
of his music -- mostly an early record, Figure of Speech
(1991, Soul Note), that I admired greatly. He then offered to send
a batch of his Hatology records, saying "If you haven't heard those
you really haven't heard my music." So that's where this batch of
catchup notes comes from. The new record is a high HM, and might
have gone higher had I more appreciation or tolerance for voice.
Eskelin's point is certainly well taken. I don't really have the
skills to explain how his music works in any technical sense, but
at least I've heard it. This album returns to the trio that made
One Great Day five years earlier and has been his core working
group all along. Parkins has developed into a more imposing force on
accordion, and finally plays some piano as well. The "12" are rough
ideas developed through improvisation into dense patterns that build
on the previous records. The "+1" is an obscure Monk piece at the
end.
A-
John Lindberg/Karl Berger: Duets 1 (2004 [2007],
Between the Lines): Bassist Lindberg first met Berger in 1975 when
the latter was director and the former student at Creative Music
Studio in Woodstock NY. Berger was 40 then, originally from Germany,
strongly influenced by Ornette Coleman. He plays piano and vibes, the
latter more often, and more distinctively, with both contrasting well
with Lindberg's bass.
B+(**)
Ralph Alessi & This Against That: Look (2005
[2007], Between the Lines): Trumpet player, based in NYC since 1991.
Only three previous albums, including one called This Against
That, but his is a name that pops up frequently on other folks'
albums -- Carola Grey, Steve Coleman, Sam Rivers, Ravi Coltrane,
Uri Caine, Michael Cain, Fred Hersch, Don Byron, Bobby Previte,
Drew Gress, Jason Moran, Scott Colley -- and he always makes a
strong impression. This one is a quartet with Andy Milne on piano,
Drew Gress on bass, and Mark Ferber on drums, with Ravi Coltrane
guesting on four cuts. Don't have much to say at this point --
I've been on a critical hiatus the last several days, during which
few if any albums have pleased me this much.
[A-]
And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further
listening the first time around.
Dave Liebman/Anthony Jackson/Mike Stern/Tony Marino/Marko
Marcinko/Vic Juris: Back on the Corner (2006 [2007],
Tone Center): How this stacks up against the oft-maligned On
the Corner remains to be seen, but with no trumpet weighing
in the saxophonist works all that much harder, which is good for
him, and with no keyboards, the rhythm people focus on their
mission. I have this slotted as HM, but will list it only under
Liebman's name. He makes it work, and after half a dozen or more
disappointments during the span of Jazz CG, it's good to be able
to give him some credit.
B+(***)
Mimi Fox: Perpetually Hip (2005 [2006], Favored
Nations, 2CD): One disc with a small group, the other solo. $15.98
list, so you can figure the solo disc as some sort of bonus, maybe
for educational purposes. The group, with Xavier Davis on piano,
Harvie S on bass, and Billy Hart on drums, and a little extra
percusion on two tracks, moves right along. While the solo doesn't
have the same zip, it is thoughtful and well crafted. If I wasn't
already up to my ears in guitarists, I'd be tempted to give her
extra attention. As it is, a solid mainstream album.
B+(**)
Russell Malone: Live at the Jazz Standard: Volume One
(2005 [2006], MaxJazz): I've noticed myself complaining about Wes
Montgomery a lot lately, and indeed I don't see much value in his
school, or even in much of his own work. Still, when he was on, he
did amaze, as on Smokin' at the Half Note -- which I first
heard embedded in Impressions: The Verve Jazz Sides along
with a lot of Jimmy Smith. Malone is so squarely in Montgomery's
wake that until now he's always struck me as redundant or worse.
Score this one as redundant at best, in part because he pulls more
than sweetness out of the blues. Also because pianist Martin Bejerano
had me thinking of Wynton Kelly for a while. In a different venue,
this could be called Smolderin' at the Half Note.
B+(***)
Ellery Eskelin: Quiet Music (2006, Prime Source, 2CD):
Still working on him. I've played five background records several times
each without writing prospecting notes. Two are likely to wind up A-,
with the others high B+, the preference going to the ones most wholly
dependent on his sax. This new one is relatively more varied, both in
his efforts at containing the title's irony and in the addition of
vocalist Jessica Constable to his long-term trio -- Andrea Parkins on
piano (or organ or accordion) and Jim Black on drums. The voice can be
dramatic, obscure, merely instrumental, or absent, adding complication
that is not always unwelcome but something of a distraction. But the
sprawling music keeps growing on me.
B+(***)
Mikkel Ploug Group (2006, Fresh Sound New Talent):
Danish guitarist, aka Mikkel Ploug Petersen, born 1978. Wrote all
the pieces here. Postbop, nice movement. Seems like a decent enough
guitarist, but he's overshadowed in this quartet by tenor saxophonist
Mark Turner. Not sure whether this is near the top of Turner's game,
but anyone with a serious interest in him should like this. Ploug's
website sucks. When I accessed it with the browser he insists on,
I got a bit further, but with further aggravation.
B+(**)
Wayne Wallace: The Reckless Search for Beauty
(2006 [2007], Patois): Trombonist-led Latin jazz record. Hard to
argue with the flow or spirit, but there's nothing much out of the
ordinary either. Lots of percussion. Six songs with vocals by Alexa
Weber-Morales, including a memorable version of Bill Withers' "Use
Me."
B+(**)
Steve Turre: Keep Searchin' (2006, High Note):
After tributes to JJ Johnson and Roland Kirk, this has been viewed
as a re-exploration of Turre's own work. He is one of the more
remarkable trombonists of the last two decades, so he has plenty
to work with. The other main figure here is vibraphonist Stefon
Harris. I've never been much of a fan, but his light rhythmic tap
dance makes a nice contrast to Turre and Akua Dixon's baritone
violin (featured on three tracks), so I can't fault him here.
B+(**)
Russell Gunn: Plays Miles (2006 [2007], High Note):
Cover shows a trumpet, an electric power line plug, and a butterfly,
signifying the Elektrik Butterfly Band and pointing towards Miles
Davis's fusion period. Keyboards, bass, drums, percussion, but no
guitar or sax. Not all that interesting, at least compared to Yo
Miles!, but fun in its own right.
B+(*)
Florian Ross Trio: Big Fish & Small Pond
(2005 [2006], Intuition): In a period when I haven't been able
to do much critical listening, I've played this piano trio a
lot and found it always pleasurable although rarely demanding.
But I do need to move on.
B+(**)
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Hidden Heat
Saw this letter in the Wichita Eagle Saturday, written by Gary Temple
from Valley Center:
So you want to carry a concealed weapon? Well, I'm 65 years old,
and except for when I was in Vietnam, I've never had to pack heat. I
flew around South Vietnam in a little Cessna 337 airplane. At first,
the Air Force had us carrying an M-16 rifle in the airplane just in
case we went down in an unfriendly area. After some serious thinking,
the decision makers realized that an M-16 very probably would have
gotten us killed. They took away our Rambo guns and issued us pistols
-- with holsters permanently attached in the back of our survival
vests so we would have to just about dislocate a shoulder to get the
gun out. The point was that if a gun were readily available, some fool
just might haul off and try to use it against some Viet Cong who were
accustomed to using their weapons against well-trained soldiers.
You probably imagine yourself being the hero by going against some
bank robber with your little concealed weapon, right? You'll be in all
the papers and maybe even have a parade in your honor. More
realistically, you'll be in the obituary section of the papers and
your place in the parade will be in the hearse. You don't stand a
chance. If a thug in the street ever confronts you and you try to pull
your hidden gun on him, you are more than likely going to get your gun
taken away and used on you. Even if you do get the drop on him, you're
not going to pull the trigger.
Do you know what's better than that concealed gun? That little
sissy-looking cell phone in your pocket. Call in the well-trained
pros. The number's 911. Do your family a favor and leave your gun at
home.
I've talked to several people in the last few days who are quite
certain that had they been in my shoes they would have shot and
killed our assailants. I'm pretty skeptical. I've seen enough on
big and small screens that I can mentally run through all sorts of
scenarios, but realistically I couldn't see any of them working in
my case. And in the end, what got us through this ordeal wasn't
heroics. It was a well reasoned assessment of the risks, and some
skill in keeping the situation from getting even more out of hand.
Luck too, of course.
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Feb 2007 |
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