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Monday, March 24, 2025

March archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 43902 [43856) rated (+46), 24 [25] unrated (-1).

I'm stuck in some sort of limbo, and expect to be for some time. For now, I'm waiting for an appointment with the eye surgeon, later this month, where he will evaluate the operated-on left eye, and probably schedule surgery on the right. After the surgery, I was hopeful that this would clear up quickly. I'm less optimistic now. The left eye is somewhat better for distance, but still far from clear. There's a fairly significant color shift between the eyes, which suggests I'm getting more light through the left eye. I can see well enough to drive, watch TV, etc. Reading is a bit more difficult, but not impossible.

Surgery will make the right eye worse before it gets better. Right now I have doubts that the left eye will be able to compensate for the right as well as the right has for the left. In the long run, of course, it should be better, but in the really long run we're all dead. It's not like I'm looking forward to decades of improved vision. On the other hand, I've lasted much longer than I imagined at 20, when my life was a total wreck, or even at 30, or 50 (when I started looking forward to retirement). Looks like I just have to get through another 6-8 weeks. After which it will be summer, and I can complain about the heat, instead of the cold.

If I weren't in limbo, what I should be doing is working on my planning documents, to figure out what I want to do for the next year or two, so I can get on with it. I have plenty of vague ideas -- too many, really, so a big part of the process of articulating them is to help weed out those that are impracticable or just not worth the trouble.

Lacking that, I sometimes pick out some little chore and take a shot at it. For instance, my wife was worried about the dog digging under the shed -- it's a dachshund mix, and seems especially inclined to dig -- while I've been bothered by rot and displacement of the ramp I built up to the doors. We had a couple of relatively warm days early last week, so I worked on that. I treated the ramp with linseed oil to stop the rot, and replaced the rusted nails with deck screws, finally attaching the ramp to the shed so it can't get shifted any more. For defense against digging, I got one side wrapped with 1/2-inch square hardware cloth. I still have three more sides to do, plus I need to do some caulking and other repairs, but that can wait until it warms up again.

Another chore weighing on my mind was the need to update the database for Robert Chrisgau's Consumer Guide. Since he started buckraking on Substack, he's delayed his Consumer Guides from his website for nine months, so there's little pressure for me to keep them updated. I do add the monthly columns each month a day or two after they appear, but some code checks timestamps and hides them until the release date. Same thing with the database: if you try to access a CG entry less than nine months old, you'll get a link to the Substack page where, if you're a subscriber, you can read the review. With that setup, I should be updating the database regularly, but I've tended to let it slide -- in this case, well over a year.

Another thing I did last week with no planning or foresight was Loose Tabs. Although I gave up spending much of my life reading news the 2024 election, when I terminated my Speaking of Which columns, I found myself with a couple dozen browser tabs open to various articles that had caught and kept my attention. I've been noting some of those under my notebook's Daily Log headings, but I wanted to clean up, and there were so many of them that I found it easier just to dump them into a blog post. Then, of course, I wound up writing (just added the counter, so 95 links, 7389 words). Note that counter includes a greatly expanded note on Robert Christgau's March Xgau Sez Q&A, some extra Dean Baker links, and a second thought on turning minds to slop. I have no plans to do this again, but it might not be a bad idea to keep an open file to collect scraps like this (like I have, but don't use often enough, for Books). In this, I was encouraged by the reader who wrote in:

Really appreciated your latest post, your eloquence always clarifies my thinking even though I have empathized fully with the need to step away from current events. Thank you.

In looking up the X follower numbers in the Loose Tabs piece, I found myself unable to imagine what having many thousands let alone millions of followers might be like, but at my level they feel like personal friends. My Bluesky account is up to 76 followers, with 50 posts. Most of this week's posts have been Pick Hit record links. I thought that was one thing Bluesky might be good for, as (unlike X) their links to files work, and there's no real reason to hoard references to build up suspense for this post. And this week I have a huge number of good records to recommend -- possibly because it's the first week in 2025 where most of my reviews are of 2025 releases.

The Pick Hit posts have at most throwaway notes, but they include links, mostly to Bandcamp pages where you can listen to the music. The only A- record below I didn't tweet about was Saba, which I couldn't find a good link for. I've used a few other link sources in recent weeks, but I'm looking for somewhere you can actually sample the music, without having to go to a streaming service. My format have changed several times as I think about how to package this service, and it will no doubt continue to evolve. If/when I do start dipping under the A- line, I can go to "HM" for Honorable Mention. I can't imagine adding "Duds" to the mix, as I'm a pretty tolerant guy, and nothing much really offends me -- the worst I hear these days is more like a waste of time.

I expect to do more non-music posts, but the one such tweet I want to reiterate here is my response to a widely circulated (at least 1.4M Views+; I picked it up second or third hand) by Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), who wrote:

If you were raised in the U.S., you've been subjected to a relentless bombardment of Marxist propaganda throughout your entire life—at least since you started kindergarten (probably sooner).

How old were you when you first realized that?

First response I saw was from Doug Henwood, who wrote something like: "As an actual Marxist, I can assure you that isn't true." My own response reached back into memory. I started kindergarten in 1955 (there was no pre-school then, at least in working class neighborhoods in Wichita), back when the Pledge of Allegiance (with its newly-inserted "under God") was obligatory, before the Supreme Court ruled against prayers in school, and didn't exit high school until after I read the required Animal Farm, with its teacher guide dictates of which pig meant what. During that entire time, I was never given -- in school, in church, in the Boy Scouts, or on the only three TV channels that existed back then -- even the slightest hint that communists might be anything but sheer evil. Later on, I came to recognize much of what I had been told as propaganda, but none of it was Marxist. The effect was first of all to make me a true believer in "the American way of life," then as I recognized what America's leaders were actually doing, most obviously in Vietnam but all around the world, I started having doubts, and in fairly short order flipped. I started reading actual Marxists, and found deep insight into the modern world, compassion for its victims, and hope for the future. That didn't necessarily make me a Marxist. It certainly didn't make me a fanboy of Stalin or Mao, whom Marxists could critique as savagely as they did Hitler or Churchill. But, as I put it in my response:

I was 16 when I dropped out of high school. By then I suspected that everything I had been taught was wrong. Only later, after I started reading Marxists, did I come to understand how and why, and develop the tools to find truth and fend off nonsense. We need more critical theory, not less.

I probably should have said "critical thinking" instead of "theory," but the key word there is "tools." And to be fair, it wasn't just Marxists who opened my eyes. After I quit school, I tried to figure out what had gone so terribly wrong, so I read a lot of books about education. The best one was by Neil Postman & Charles Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity, where they argued that the most important thing anyone can obtain from education is a sensitive "bullshit detector." I got mine the hard way.

While Lee's argument is utter nonsense, it is not unprecedented. Back in the 1950s, unbeknownst to me, the John Birch Society was saying that same thing, trying to double down on the McCarthyism that had fallen into disgrace. But the idea is the same: they want the power to dictate what is taught, by by whom, and "Marxist" or more lately "left-wing" is just their name for whatever it is they want to ban. The right has never had any qualms about resorting to force, but often they hope that intimidation will do the trick, and that's the real intent of Lee's messaging.

As for the real effect, we'll see. People like Lee and Trump and Musk give "Marxist" and "left-wing" a lot of good publicity, because they admit that there is an alternative to their own crude, cruel, dysfunctional worldview. The left can't buy or finagle this kind of publicity. Nothing, least of all any kind of conspiracy, is pushing Americans leftward more effectively than the "irritable mental gestures" and malfeasance of the Republican Right.

But, where was I? Impulsive projects, I think. One worth mentioning is that instead of continuing to get marginal returns from adding to my 2024 Metacritic/EOY Aggregate, I created a new one for 2025. I started by plugging all of my own paltry 2025 list (and its tracking file), then I went to AOTY and picked up their 125 highest rated albums of 2025. I've also started looking at select publications, so that at this point the list is up to 256 albums -- way short of 3616 from 2024, but it's enough of a start that I've come up with a huge and varied crop of A-list albums this week, most of which I wasn't aware of a week ago. On the other hand, I did throttle back on my jazz promo queue, as I was getting into future release territory. And I haven't looked at many non-promo jazz records yet, because AOTY doesn't do a good job of tracking them. (I'll add some stuff from jazz sites later; also from sites like HHGA and SCM, which have already contributed a couple albums below.)

I'm skeptical that I'll do a very good job of keeping this up to date, but it is useful in providing answers to the question of what to play next? (As this week goes to show.)

I did finally finish with Eric Hobsbawm's Interesting Times this morning. Coming after his tour de force four-volume history of the world 1789-1991, this has been a really extraordinary experience, doing much to help me frame my own understanding of the world. I've written up two posts based on quotes from the book (Hobsbawm Today and Hobsbawm Again), and will probably do another one soon based on a very insightful section on America. I have a lot of things I should read, but the one I'm inclined to check out first is Christiopher Lasch: The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (1995, but seems like a pretty good title for 2024).

PS: Overheard from the news room (i.e., my wife's den): Q: "Are you making the same mistake that Biden made?" A: "No, of course not." No fucking idea what they're talking about, yet people can talk like this on TV and think we should take them seriously. Reminds me of a "Get Fuzzy" comic strip, where Rob asks "do you smell something?" and Satchel (the dog, and not normally the sharpest tool in the shed) gives a real answer: "About 857 things. Can you be more specific?"

New records reviewed this week:

Nils Agnas: Köper Sig Ur En Kris (2023 [2025], Moserobie): Swedish drummer, leads a quartet with Max Agnas (on two pianos) and Mauritz Agnas (bass) -- relationship unspecified but likely [cousins; they, but not Nils, are in a group called Agnas Bros.] -- and saxophonist Jonas Kullhammar, in his usual very fine form, playing four jazz tunes (Ornette Coleman, Joe Henderson, two from Carla Bley) and "Over the Rainbow." Quaint line on the hype sheet: "The only foreign musician he has performed so far with is the great Zoh Amba" (who's all of 24 now). A- [cd]

Yazz Ahmed: A Paradise in the Hold (2025, Night Time Stories): British trumpet player, born in London, father from Bahrain, fourth album since 2011, billed as "spiritual jazz," draws on Arabic elements, has many vocals, is hugely ambitious. I like parts of it (especially the trumpet), but have little interest in others (vocals, of course, but also ponderous instrumental sweeps). B [sp]

Annie & the Caldwells: Can't Lose My (Soul) (2023 [2025], Luaka Bop): Singer Annie Brown Caldwell and her family band, from West Point, Mississippi, no previous records I can find, but they've playing and shouting this gospel/blues revival for a long time -- "twenty years" is suggested, which makes sense because the shot of disco is fully incorporated into their legacy. A- [sp]

Ichiko Aoba: Luminiscent Creatures (2025, Hermine): Japanese folk singer-songwriter, Discogs lists 15 albums since 2010. She plays guitar, electric piano, chimes and shells, with various backing including piano/guitar (Taro Umebayashi), strings, bits of harp and flute. B+(*) [sp]

Willow Avalon: Southern Belle Raisin' Hell (2025, Assemble Sound/Atlantic): Country singer, presumably writes her own songs, second album. B+(**) [sp]

Jarod Bufe: Brighter Days (2024 [2025[, Calligram): Tenor saxophonist, has a previous (2018) album on OA2, label seems to have taken over the Chicago department of Seattle-based Origin (Calligram founders Geof Bradfield and Chad McCullough both had records on Origin/OA2). Mainstream/postbop quartet, with Tim Stine (electric guitar), Matt Ulery (bass), and Jon Deitemyer (drums). All originals, rich tone, sinuous groove, nicely done. B+(***) [cd]

Ethel Cain: Perverts (2025, Daughters of Cain): Alias -- or maybe fictional personage is better? -- for Hayden Anhedönia, who released three EPs 2019-21 and a 2022 album, Preacher's Daughter, and announced this as an EP, but at 89:20 (9 tracks) that's one bit of confusion we can avoid. Although this wouldn't lose much but tedium if it were edited much shorter. Little happens. There are few words. The drone is mild enough for background, but doesn't offer much. B [sp]

Clipping.: Dead Channel Sky (2025, Sub Pop): Hip-hop group from Los Angeles, fifth album since 2014, Daveed Diggs is the rapper (he has a couple solo albums, as well as an acting career, but is probably best known as Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton). Guitar and drums, as well as electronics, amp up the noise level, which sounds terrific as the words fly by. A- [sp]

Cymande: Renascence (2025, BMG): British funk band, mostly musicians with Afro-Caribbean roots, released several albums 1972-74, was revived in 2006 and again in 2012, this their sixth album overall (first since 2015, second since 1981). Protest songs over sinuous grooves, something that never seems to go out of style. B+(**) [sp]

Marie Davidson: City of Clowns (2025, Deewee): Canadian electronica producer, from Montreal, half dozen albums since 2014. Mostly spoken vocals over sharp beats with synth frills, gaining momentum as you go. A- [sp]

The Devil Makes Three: Spirits (2025, New West): Bluegrass trio with roots in Vermont, formed in Santa Cruz with their debut album in 2002, singer-songwriter Pete Bernhard moved back to Vermont while banjo player Cooper McBean moved to Ausin, but they kept working together, picking up bassist Morganve Swain for this album. B+(*) [sp]

Ex-Vöid: In Love Again (2025, Tapete): British power pop band, second album, principally Lan McArdle and Owen Williams, previously in the band Joanna Gruesome (2013-15). B+(*) [sp]

Lorraine Feather: The Green World (2022-24 [2025], Relation): Jazz singer, father was famous jazz journalist (and more) Leonard Feather (1914-94), recorded her first albums in 1978 but didn't really get her career going until after 2000. She wrote lyrics here, mostly to music by co-producer Eddie Arkin (guitar) or Russell Ferrante (piano), with strings prominent (Charlie Bisharat on violin), and a bit of Marcus Strickland saxophone. It took me a little while to let this develop. B+(***) [cd] [03-28]

FKA Twigs: Eusexua (2025, Young/Atlantic): British electropop singer-songwriter Tahliah Barnett, third album since 2014, all sizable hits, also has a mixtape and three EPs. B+(*) [sp]

John Glacier: Like a Ribbon (2025, Young): British rapper, second album, has an underground vibe that slips past you a bit too easily. B+(*) [sp]

Tim Hecker: Shards (2020-22 [2025], Kranky): Electronica (mostly ambient?) producer from Canada, 20+ albums since 2001, presents this one as a stopgap compilation, "all material written 2020-22 for the Projects Infinity Pool, The North Water, Luzifer and La Tour" -- i.e., soundtrack work. Seven pieces, 31:09, some sparkly, some subdued, nice enough. B+(**) [sp]

Lady Blackbird: Slang Spirituals (2024, Foundation Music Productions/BMG): Jazz singer-songwriter Marley Munroe, based in Los Angeles, second album, has muscled up the production to the point where it's no longer recognizable as jazz, but so far she's making the power work. B+(***) [sp]

Jeffrey Lewis: The Even More Freewheelin' Jeffrey Lewis (2023 [2024], Don Giovanni/Blang): Folkie singer-songwriter from New York, or "anti-folk," probably not a distinction that needs existence, started 20+ years ago drawing comics and singing "crass songs," has much more of a bond with Peter Stampfel than with Dylan, so the title and album cover here seem like misdirection, or maybe just a temporary lapse of ideas. Good thing the songs come with a surplus. Also that the band rocks harder than Dylan ever did, but the two soft/slow ones at the end ("100 Good Things" and "The Endless Unknown" are if anything better. A- [sp]

Damon Locks: List of Demands (2024 [2025], International Anthem): Sound and visual artist, vocalist for post-hardcore Trenchmouth, joined Exploding Star Orchestra and founded Black Monument Ensemble, spoken word and electronics here on his fourth album (first as solo leader). I can't say that I've followed the words close enough for them to really speak to me, but I get the gist, and the music may bring me back for more. A- [sp]

Brandon Lopez: Nada Sagrada (2023 [2025], Relative Pitch): Bassist, has been very busy since 2017 or so, rounded up an unruly septet of various strings (including electric harp and gayageum), electronics, and two drummers (Gerald Cleaver and Tom Rainey) for one 39:12 piece. B+(***) [sp]

Tate McRae: So Close to What (2025, RCA): Pop singer-songwriter from Canada, third album, started as a dancer, winning awards and a ballet scholarship. Mostly upbeat dance fare. Sounds fine to me, as far as that goes. B+(***) [sp]

Mogwai: The Bad Fire (2025, Rock Action): Scottish post-rock band, 11th album since 1995, last 4 cracked top-10 in UK but little chart action in US. Mostly instrumental, a bit of shoegaze lustre but not too heavy, some vocals, pleasant enough, but for what? B+(*) [sp]

Panda Bear: Sinister Grift (2025, Domino): Noah Lennox, a co-founder of Animal Collective, eighth solo album since 1999. I've often had trouble with their records, but this one is too easy-going not to just enjoy. I've seen it tagged as "tropical rock," and other references to beaches. This time I get the vibe. B+(*) [sp]

Saba & No I.D.: From the Private Collection of Saba and No I.D. (2025, From the Private Collection): Chicago rapper Tahj Malik Chandler, four albums 2014-22, working with Chicago producer Ernest Wilson, who started in 1992 with Common Sense, moving on to Nas, Jay-Z, Kanye West, and stray cuts with Ghostface Killah, Rihanna, and Beyoncé. Title is very offhand, suggesting there's so much more behind it they can't bother with real titles. Beats are super, flow is terrific, lots of ideas. A- [sp]

Moonchild Sanelly: Full Moon (2025, Transgressive): South African (Xhosa) dance-pop singer, touches kwaito and amapiano but in her long list of genres -- her own preference seems to be "future ghetto funk" -- reminds me most of dancehall. I ascribe no import to her "trademark teal hair" or garish makeup, but as dance pop this is pretty otherworldly. A- [sp]

Shygirl: Club Shy Room 2 (2025, Because Music, EP): British electropop singer-rapper Blane Muise, has a 2022 album and a bunch of EPs, including 2024's Club Shy, a remix thereof, and now this 6-song sequel (14:46), all but the first with its own "Feat." -- Bambii, Jorga Smith, and PinkPantheress are the ones I recognize (although Yseult is one I should check out). B+(***) [sp]

Skaiwater: #gigi (2024, GoodTalk/Capitol): British rapper, Jamaican descent, non-binary, based in Los Angeles, first album, 34:23, stutter-step beats that stumble here and there. B+(**) [sp]

Skaiwater: #mia (2025, GoodTalk/Capitol, EP): Eight track, 22:42 sequel to debut album #gigi. B+(*) [sp]

Songhoy Blues: Héritage (2025, Transgressive): Saharan blues band from Timbuktu in Mali, moved to Bamako when a jihadi group took power there, and wound up recording Music in Exile in 2015. Fourth album. Steady going. B+(***) [sp]

Squid: Cowards (2025, Warp): British band, Ollie Judge the lead singer/drummer, third album, says "post-punk" or "experimental rock" but is pretty eccentric, in ways that alternately attract or repel me. B+(*) [sp]

Sharon Van Etten: Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory (2025, Jagjaguwar): Singer-songwriter, guitarist, from New Jersey, based in Los Angeles after a stretch in New York, seventh studio album since 2009, first to name a band. B+(*) [sp]

Chris Varga: Breathe (2024 [2025], Calligram): Vibraphonist, from Chicago but moved to Seoul in the 1990s, recording this, his second album, on a return visit, a postbop quintet with Geof Bradfield (tenor sax), Dave Miller (guitar), Clark Sommers (bass), and Neil Hemphill (drums), playing eight of his own pieces. B+(*) [cd]

Sunny War: Armageddon in a Summer Dress (2025, New West): Singer-songwriter Sydney Ward, born in Nashville, grew up in Los Angeles but returned to hawk her unique Afro-Americana. Fifth album since 2014, second on the label. B+(*) [sp]

Reggie Watkins: Rivers (2024 [2025], BYNK): Trombonist, from Pittsburgh, debut album 2004, only a few more since, including tributes to Maynard Ferguson and Jimmy Knepper. Thirteen original pieces, backed by piano-bass-drums, for a very nice presentation of his horn. B+(***) [cd] [03-28]

Michael Wollny Trio: Living Ghosts (2024 [2025], ACT): German pianist, 30+ albums since 2002, ninth trio album, live from Saarländischer Rundfunk, four 12-20 minute sets, with Tim Lefebvre (bass) and Eric Schaefer (drums). Varied, but very present. B+(***) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Plastikman: Musik (1994 [2024], Nova Mute): British techno producer Richie Hawtin, third album under this moniker (his most common alias, preceded by F.U.S.E. and his own name). Space vibes, with a couple of false finishes. B+(**) [sp]

Studio: West Coast (2006 [2025], Ghostly International): Swedish electronica duo, Dan Lissvik and Rasmus Hägg, reissue of their only album, although they had singles 2001-07 and a couple of compilations. Album proper has six very strong songs (57:45), on CD or vinyl, with the digital tacking on six bonus tracks -- mostly redundant versions. Just judging the former. A- [sp]

Yo La Tengo: Old Joy (2006 [2025], Mississippi, EP): Short soundtrack (6 songs, 25:56) for a 2006 film by Kelly Reichardt, although there is some suggestion that this is a new recording, with Smokey Hormel playing guitar, pretty much solo. Nice, as far as it goes. [PS: Moved to reissues, as it appears this music was released in 2008 as part of They Shoot, We Score.] B+(*) [sp]

Old music:

Bantou Mentale: Bantou Mentale (2019, Glitterbeat): Liam Farrell, born in Dublin, based in Paris, started out as a rock drummer, moved toward hip-hop in the 1990s, and later to African music, mostly plays bass and guitar synth here, a group with three expats from Kinshasa, including a vocalist identified as Apocalypse. First of two group albums. Electroclash seems the right word here. B+(**) [sp]

Bantou Mentale: Congo Animal (2020, Glitterbeat): Less clash here, that disorienting sense of glass and metal crashing against walls to form sheets of sound. That allows the rhythm tracks to come to the fore, where they belong, a steadiness that holds all the other sounds in balance. A- [sp]

Paul Dunmall Sun Ship Quartet/Alan Skidmore/Julie Kjær/Ståle Liavik Solberg/Mark Wastell: John Coltrane 50th Memorial Concert at Cafe OTO (2017 [2019], Confront): English tenor saxophonist, not generally known as a Coltrane afficionado, but he did release two tribute albums in 2012-13, so had some prep going into this live set, recorded on the 50th anniversary of his death. Opens with the trio of Kjær (flute), Solberg (bass), and Wastell (drums) on a long 21:22 title, followed by Dunmall's Quartet (with Howard Cottle on tenor sax, Olie Brice on bass), and Tony Blanco on drums) playing the album Sun Ship (37:07; recorded 1965, released 1971). Finally, the two groups merge, with Skidmore (a third tenor sax) piling on for three more tracks (44:16), ending with a bit of "Ascension." I should admit that late Coltrane gave me a lot of discomfort when I first heard his records -- Sun Ship is still a C+ in my database, and while Ascension is an A-, that was certainly a much later regrade. These days this music is still not quite easy listening, but for me at least it does go down much smoother. My caveats have more to do with sound, but I can't fault the sentiment. B+(***) [bc]

The Dunmall album led me to reexamine:

John Coltrane: Sun Ship (1965 [1971], Impulse!): The great, and hugely influential, saxophonist -- tenor, but his soprano on "My Favorite Things" led most later tenor saxophonists to double up -- led what was quite possibly the most acclaimed quartet of all time from 1961-66, making stars out of McCoy Tyner (piano), Jimmy Garrison (bass), and Elvin Jones (drums). They reached a pinnacle with 1964's A Love Supreme, after which Coltrane's searches wandered deep into the avant-garde and beyond: a year later to the mass ecstasy of Ascension, and just before his death in 1967 (he was 40) to his duo with Rashied Ali. When I first encountered this music, I intensely disliked like what often registered as cacophony, but over time I've grown to tolerate and occasionally to enjoy the legacy he created. This was one of many albums that only appeared after his death. For better or worse, this is one of his last quartet sessions: better because Tyner's solos are often brilliant, and the bass and drums follow him perfectly; worse because they don't seem all that much in sync with the leader, who seems to want to go places the group isn't ready for. Still, they're good enough, and he's great enough, that this almost works. [was: C+] B+(***) [sp]

John Coltrane: Sun Ship: The Complete Session (1965 [2013], Impulse!, 2CD): Probably not a good idea checking this out after two spins of the original album -- the outtakes aren't necessarily inferior, but the false starts are bound to be annoying, and there isn't that much really great stuff in the first place (written as I'm listening to some, which I'm pretty sure was in the first release). B+(**) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Kenny Dorham: Blue Bossa in the Bronx: Live From the Blue Morocco (1957, Resonance) [04-12]
• Adrian Galante: Introducing Adrian Galante (Zoho) [04-25]
• Freddie Hubbard: On Fire: Live From the Blue Morocco (1967, Resonance) [04-12]
• Charles Mingus: In Argentina: The Buenos Aires Concerts (1977, Resonance) [04-12]
• Salsa de la Bahia Vol. 3: A Colection of SF Bay Area Salsa and Latin Jazz: Renegade Queens (Patois) [03-21]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Thursday, March 20, 2025

I spent most of Monday and Tuesday working outside on my shed. I got the screening done on the door side, and got the ramp treated with linseed oil and firmly attached to the shed -- it had been loose all these years, slid out of place, and was rotting around the edges, so work I've long been meaning to do. I expected a cold front on Wednesday to disrupt my work. We got some rain when it came through, and a tiny bit of snow when it settled down towards freezing.

I was plenty sore from the work, and wanted no part of the cold, so I resolved to stay inside and fiddle with trivial computer tasks. I updated software, which involved rebooting and restarting Firefox. I found I had a bunch of extra tabs open to various articles that looked promising, so I thought, why not just plug them into one of my Daily Log notebook entries, so I can close them. Then it occurred to me that it would be a bit easier just to create a blog post for them. It wouldn't be part of a series, just a scattered one-shot, like my recent Hobsbawm posts. I didn't finish in one day, so took a second. So this is it.

Pieces are sorted by date, with some clusters underneath a lead article. The tabs were mostly opened based on links from X or Bluesky, or sometimes from mail. I've made very little effort to sort through my usual array of sources. I've rarely looked for further articles, and haven't singled out any topics I wanted to pick on. I don't have any real agenda here. I'm just seeing where the wind blows me.

Select internal links:

• Stephen Semler on how Trump got elected
• Eric Levitz on Trump and Ukraine
• John Ganz on the Fascism (non-)debate
• Joel Swanson on "what are we allowed to say?"
• Robert Christgau on politics: Section in original, but I expanded on a part my wife found confusing, then expanded it again.
• Vijay Prashad on Israel

Ryan Cooper: [01-06] Bluesky Proves Stagnant Monopolies Are Strangling the Internet: I kept this open, and eventually followed its advice and signed up to Bluesky, although I have to admit I'm not hugely impressed by Cooper's case.

David Dayen: [01-17] The Essential Incoherence of the End of the Biden Presidency: "One reason the president goes out with low approval ratings is that his agenda was internally contradictory."

Stephen Semler: [01-24] How the most unpopular US president got reelected. Picky editor that I am, I would have changed that to "elected a second time." Let's start with a quote:

Winning wasn't Harris's primary concern; winning without the left and anti-war movement was. At first glance, this might not seem like a big deal -- the left's numbers aren't overwhelming, and the anti-war movement's numbers are depressingly underwhelming. However, this overlooks the widespread appeal of their core ideas, particularly among working-class voters.

And it's no wonder: working-class well-being is acutely compromised when an administration prioritizes warfare over promoting the general welfare. In contrast, those in the top income brackets are far more insulated from such trade-offs. If your goal is to win as many votes as possible, compromising on policy with leftists and peace activists is essential, even if you find them annoying.

If there was ever a time for a Democratic candidate to invite those groups to the table, it was 2024. But Harris shut them out, ignoring an abundance of polling and well-being data practically begging her not to. Her choice ultimately led millions of would-be Democratic voters to stay home on Election Day, sealing her fate and, by extension, the rest of ours.

Semler focuses more than I would on economic effects of war -- coming out of WWII, many Americans (especially Democrats) saw guns and butter not as exclusive but as linked, although the effect has steadily reduced over time, especially participation. On the other hand, the risks associated with foreign wars have grown, and support for politicians who have blundered into wars has dwindled. Even if Biden wasn't in his 80s, his inability (or unwillingness) to end wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine cast doubts on his competency.

Semler does make points about the end of pandemic relief measures as a contributor to widespread economic hardship. Democrats did a very poor messaging job around them: first in not taking adequate credit for the measures -- which Trump only agreed to because the stock market was tanking -- and in not blaming Republicans for loss. Granted, they were meant to be temporary, but most worked well enough they should have been refashioned into more permanent programs. Had Democrats campaigned on them in 2022, they might have gotten a more favorable Congress, and extended them further, leading to a better story for 2024. A better Congress (including ending the filibuster) could also have implemented measures for limiting price gouging and excessive interest rates -- failing to do so, which one could blame squarely on Republicans (and a couple lobbyist-owned "Democrats"), had a big impact on the 2024 election. Instead, Democrats campaigned on the status quo as their big accomplishment, instead of as a work in progress where the big obstacle is too many Republicans in power.

Semler's big thing is making charts ("visualizing politics through a class lens"). Some more recent posts:

• How Biden set the stage for GOP budget cuts
• Why the "DOGE dividend" polls well -- and why it shouldn't
• Where DOGE isn't cutting [03-13]

Rhoda Feng: [01-28] Pulled in All Directions: Review of Chris Hayes: The Siren's Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource. I don't watch his TV show, but I have read his two previous books -- Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy (2012) and A Colony in a Nation (2017) -- and in both cases was impressed by his ability to take big subjects and focus them into tight arguments. This could be another one, but the topic risks being too amorphous to focus on -- I'm reminded of James Gleick's Faster, another great idea that the author, coming off a series of brilliant books, couldn't quite handle. Unclear from the review how much he made out of it, but picking Apple as a villain was a start I can relate to.

Thomas Frank: [02-19] Why the Democrats Fear Populism: Interview by Nathan J Robinson, of the author of What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (2004), which taunted Republicans for never delivering on their promises (and inadvertently turned them into a more more dangerous party), and Listen, Liberal: What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (2016), which chided Democrats for their own failures to deliver promised change (much less successfully), and which tried to remind Democrats that populism was originally a party of the left. Like Frank, I'm a history-minded Kansan, so I know the Populist Party, and have deep sympathies for them -- unlike your fancy elites (including Hofstadter), who tried to write the people off as bigots and fools.

Eric Levitz: [03-01] The twisted appeal of Trump's humiliation of Zelenskyy: "Why some conservatives took pride in a national disgrace." I don't think there is any issue where mainstream Democrats think they have a bigger popular advantage over Trump than Ukraine/Russia -- and are more wrong about it. Most Americans want to see the war end, either because they understand that war is bad for everyone or because they realize that a prolonged stalemate is all risk with no possible reward. But Ukraine has become an issue that the so-called Defense Democrats are very passionate about, and not just because many of them blame Putin for Hillary Clinton's 2016 loss. They had already pivoted against Putin from back when Clinton was Secretary of State, seeing the vilification of Putin as their meal ticket to another profitable Cold War, but with Putin's "election interference" and Trump's surprise win, they increasingly came to see Trump and Putin in each other's image. While Republicans had few problems with using Russia as a threat to sow fear and sell arms to Europe, they started to react when Democrats made Zelenskyy out to be their hero in impeaching Trump.

While Biden and Zelenskyy generally escaped blame for Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and Biden had little trouble getting Republican votes to funnel massive amounts of arms to Ukraine, Biden's nonchalance about ending the war eventually trademarked the Democrats as the war party, paving the way for Trump's 2024 comeback win. Although there was no reason to think that Trump would be anything but worse than Harris on Israel/Palestine -- anyone who voted against Harris on that count did so from sheer spite, in total disregard for what was well known by then about Trump and his backers -- it wasn't unreasonable to hope that Trump would be able to put the Russia/Ukraine war to rest. That he hasn't done so shows us that he's as deluded in his own way about the war as Biden is in his. But also that he'd rather play the conflict for his fans than to do anything serious about it.

By the way, I think Levitz's explanations for Trump's "twisted appeal" are off base. Trump's performance -- and let's face it, the whole thing was staged as such -- appealed to his base because they want to see Trump in full bully mode. That's big part of why they voted for him. And Trump knows that his berating of Zelenskyy will drive Democrats crazy, reinforcing their commitment as the war party. (Which, needless to add, has once again worked like a charm, as when Slotkin spent a big part of her Trump rebuttal speech on Ukraine when she could have attacked Trump on firmer grounds.) I really doubt that Trump cares one whit about Bannon's Putin-friendly International Brotherhood of Fascists. (Bannon may well make good money off his hustle, but the autocrats themselves are mostly content to rule their own roosts: after all, their real enemies are their own people.)

Needless to say, just because Levitz misunderstands Trump doesn't make Trump right. (The right doesn't love Putin or Modi or Millei, not like they love Trump; at most, they envy that they are able to do things to their enemies that Americans cannot. They probably don't love Netanyahu either, but the envy there is really severe.) As diplomacy, Trump's performance was a complete disaster. He could have worked Zelenskyy over in private, then took a deal to Putin that could have let everyone come off smelling, well, not great but a good deal less rotten. As it is, he's squandered a big part of his influence with Zelenskyy, while exposing himself to the argument -- which admittedly doesn't bother him, because it's central to his Trump Derangement Syndrome defense -- that he's in Putin's pocket. Not only has he blown his chance to act as the great mediator -- and probably pick up a Nobel Peace Prize, like Teddy Roosevelt did for brokering the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 -- he's given both Zelenskyy and Putin fresh angles to break up NATO, or at least to cut the US out of the equation. (Which would be a big deal, as the whole reason for NATO these days is to sell overpriced US arms to countries that don't need them. And arms sales was a major focus of Trump I, although Biden far exceeded him in that regard.)

Some more articles from Vox, which used to be my primary go-to source, but often these days I can't read at all:

• Eric Levitz: [03-18] This is why Kamala Harris really lost: "TikTok is making young voters more Republican?" I read this in the newsletter, but can't read it as a link, so we'll skip it for now. The gist of it is that the higher the voter turnout, the more dumb, uninformed, and often just careless or even contemptible people vote, and the latter favor Trump by large margins. I noticed this some time ago, but now there is more data to back it up. I'll write more about this, and possibly much more of Levitz's "The Rebuild" newsletter series, which is an important subject, even if he often mangles it. PS: Levitz's main source is David Shor, interviewed by Ezra Klein here: [03-18] Democrats Need to Face Why Trump Won. Also see [03-18] "Angry Moderate" Sounds Okay to Me. I don't want to get carried away with quoting, but here's a teaser: "How hard is it for moderate and progressive Democrats to find common ground when the Trump administration is doing things like this?" [Linked article title: Proposal would force millions to file Social Security claims in person]
• Zack Beauchamp: [03-19] The Trump right's pro-Israel antisemitism: "The MAGA movement loves Israel -- but is increasingly hostile to Jews."
• Eric Levitz: [03-20] The left's misguided critique of abundance liberalism: "Cutting red tape is a social justice issue."

Kenny Stancil: [03-05] The Case for a Shadow Cabinet: "High-energy progressives can provide a compelling daily account of everything going wrong and coordinate opposition to the Trump-Musk nightmare." I've mentioned this before -- I loved the idea first time I heard of it as regular practice in the UK -- and endorse it once again. One thing I would do is instead of staffing it with Congressional office holders, I'd set up non-profit foundation (which, sure, one would have to guard against donor capture) and hire experts and staff for each position. Democrats need a go-to person on each issue, all the more so as Trump "floods the zone" with his bullshit.

• Kim Phillips-Fein: [2019-03] The Bitter Origins of the Fight Over Big Government: "What the battle between Herbert Hoover and FDR can teach us." Stancil offered this piece as an example of how a president-elect used that position against a lame duck.

• An Impeachment Drive Would End in Failure. It Might Be Worthwhile Anyway. Argues "Yes, there should be a well-maintained web page listing all of Trump's impeachable offenses since January 20, and it should be the basis for a House effort to impeach Trump that, ideally, would be sponsored by every Democrat in the House." Actually, I don't care whether anyone in the House sponsors the articles, as past experience suggests not only that they have no chance of conviction but that they can be weaponized against Democrats. But it would be good to have a website with all the proper legalese and supporting documents that anyone can link to. You could set up a court with judges, moving cases through various stages with prosecutors and defenders filing briefs, as some cases are likely to be stronger than others. Of course, no need to limit it to Trump, although his entire administration reflects back on him.

Stephen Prager: [03-05] You Really Can Just Do Things: "When Republicans take power, they abuse it. When Democrats take power, they refuse it." I've probably see a hundred pieces urging Biden to use executive powers to just sign an order, which he failed to do out of some respect or fear for some "norm" somewhere. One thing we're likely to see more and more of is arguments that Democrats should be willing to do any arbitrary crap that Republicans try, but the brands are so asymmetric that it's not even clear that's a good idea, let alone that it would work. Much will now depend on whether the Republican-packed courts will side with Trump, especially on cases where there is no precedent that they should. Democrats don't have that margin for error. Even though Biden did less than many Democrats wanted, much of what he did do didn't get past the courts.

Scarlet: [03-06] Party of None: How Democrats Lost the Working Class: Part One: A Brief History of the Democratic Party; and [03-14] Part Two: The Well Funded Road to Hell.

Jeffrey St. Clair: [03-07] Roaming Charges: Political Personality Crisis in America: He's the one "pundit" I have been reading consistently during the long winter of discontent. Here he starts with a Max Horkheimer quote, after a title that recalls the late David Johansen.

John Ganz: [03-07] The Juggler: "Understanding Trump's Economic Moves." Title comes from a line from Marx, about Louis Napoleon III, also the subject of his "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce":

Driven by the contradictory demands of his situation, and being at the same time, like a juggler, under the necessity of keeping the public gaze on himself, as Napoleon's successor, by springing constant surprises -- that is to say, under the necessity of arranging a coup d'état in miniature every day -- Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois economy into confusion . . . produces anarchy in the name of order, while at the same time stripping the entire state machinery of its halo, profaning it and making it at once loathsome and ridiculous.

Dean Baker: [03-14] Trump Tariffs and the Dollar as the World Reserve Currency. This is a bit wonkish, but good if you're interested. Also [03-20] The Masses Were Saying Things Were Good, Not the Democrats, a title which confused me, but the first paragraph got me interested (with the last line after the ellipsis):

The best way to get published in an elite media outlet is to say that the people were right in thinking things were bad in 2024, and the Democrats were wrong in trying to tell people things were good. Both parts of that line are wrong, but hey, when did outlets like the New York Times ever care about accuracy? . . .

It would be good if news outlets showed a little more skepticism towards people who claim to know about people's well-being, but have no data to support their claims.

Kayla Gogarty: [03-14] The right dominates the online media ecosystem, seeping into sports, comedy, and other supposedly nonpolitical spaces: "A new Media Matters analysis found 9 out of the top 10 online shows assessed are right-leaning." That supposedly was a big part of Trump's success, but Trump would be the natural beneficiary of rage-fueled pitches to folks with little grasp of issues and little concern for their effects on others. I've seen arguments that we need to create our own counterprogramming to fill this space without own bullshit. On the other hand, consider:

• John Ross/Nathan J Robinson: [03-17] MeidasTouch Turns Democrats' Minds to Slop: I don't have time or interest in podcasts or videos (or whatever this is), but I did watch a couple episodes, and they don't seem nearly a dumbed down as what I've run across on the right[*]. (One was aimed at Fox, but mostly to quote Trump officials, so not exactly head-to-head comparisons.) One thing I don't doubt that that there's an untapped market for anti-Trump snark. What's questionable is whether it helps, or like most partisan programming, just fortifies the base.

  [*] Rereading this, I'm tempted to ask how could they be? If you know and care about the real world, as anyone on the left by definition does, you cannot help but be more coherent and accurate than the insane drivel that is routinely spouted by the right. The notion that there is any left media approach that "turns Democrats' minds to slop" assumes a false symmetry between left and right that anyone on the left should realize is not just wrong but fundamentally so. (Not to say that there are no Democrats with minds full of slop.)

John Ganz: [03-17] There Was Never Any "Fascism Debate". Maybe not a debate in the proper sense, but there certainly was a lot of blathering, with lots of people spouting their pet theories while talking past one another. Even this article, which is subtitled "They Refused to Engage," manages to slip past its supposed opponents without landing even glancing blows. I don't know why I keep being drawn into this question, but after kicking this article around, I finally broke down and ordered Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America, a 2024 book edited by Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, even though it's missing as much as it includes. (I ordered the cheaper pre-election hardcover as it appeared to be identical to the post-election paperback, although the post-election case has gotten much more compelling.) So I'll probably write more about this in the future -- indeed, I probably already have elsewhere.

One side comment here for now: after Scott Lemieux mentioned "professional anti-anti-Trump pundits," I recalled Dan Nexon's comment here on "the anti-anti-Trump left," I started wondering what the hell (or more specifically, who) they were talking about. I don't have a good answer (although I made some notebook notes in researching). Provisional conclusion is that no such people exist, as least in significant quantity. It's possible that some confusion is caused by two other groups: right-wing trolls who react to criticism of Trump by belittling the critics (e.g., by diagnosing them with Trump Derangement Syndrome), possibly because they can't think of any credible defense of Trump; and those who are so focused on the evils of US foreign policy that they ignore or (naively, I suspect) defend Trump's schizophrenic posturing. The trolls may be "professional pundits" (in the sense of getting paid to spout nonsense), but they are not from the left. I have doubts about the others, too, but the solution is not to simply counterattack but to respond with clear thinking.

Of course, you don't have to be a leftist to oppose Trump. Pretty much everyone has plentiful reasons if only they can cut through the thicket of propaganda and bullshit to see them. We leftists are just much quicker to seeing Trump and his followers for the danger they present, because we sense immediately that they want to kill us, while non-leftists are often in denial until it's too late. There only was one Hitler in history, and he set an impossible standard for other would-be Führers to live up to, but once you allow that there can be a current generalization beyond the historical specifics of his club with Mussolini, you can start to discern the type, and to see analogies take shape, evolve, and permutate. And within that framework, you can anticipate actions, ask questions, consider how best to stop him (and realize how important it is to do so). Nobody is going to change their mind about Trump just because you -- or for that matter, John Kelly -- call him a name. But you might decide that he's crossed some line and become so dangerous that you need to overcome your reluctance to form a Common Front to stop him. And you might recall that even that sacrifice isn't guaranteed to work.

Part of the problem is that very little (if any) of what we grasp of current events can be perceived as such. It is filtered through our memory and far-from-perfect understanding of history. Here one big problem is that most people don't remember much, and much of what they've been told is wrong. Even the history of Nazi Germany, which is about as famous and notorious as anything 80-90 years old can be, is recalled by very few people, and most who have even an inkling do so through distorted clichés -- like the oft-repeated capitulation at Munich. But those of us who do know some history are likely to start wondering whether Jan. 6 wasn't Trump's Beer Hall Putsch -- an unlikely thought at the time, but where else have we seen the coddling of criminality by the courts, leading to installation in power arranged by rich elites and the abuse of that power not just to "violate norms" but to run roughshod over law and order? Maybe you can find some better-fitting obscurity, but no other analogy gets the blood pumping faster than fascism.

PS: I also ran across this (partly because Bessner seemed to be tagged as an anti-anti-Trump leftist):

• Daniel Bessner/Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins: [2024-04-18] Liberals' Heated Fascism Rhetoric Sidesteps Self-Reflection.

  The fascism framework is inherently backward-facing, always either relying on historical comparisons to validate its analogy or fixating on a return to the alleged "norms" that existed before Trump's presidency. In other words, the single-minded identification of fascism prevents liberals from developing an attractive vision for the United States' future. Even if Biden defeats Trump in November, absent such a vision the Democratic Party will be stuck in the rut of cosplaying apocalyptic scenarios every time a Trump-esque candidate runs for office, with little extra energy to devote to hammering out a compelling political alternative.

• Daniel Bessner: [02-20] Donald Trump Is Dismantling Liberal Internationalism: Bessner is interviewed by John-Baptiste Oduor, following Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference. It's hard for anyone who has long been critical of US foreign policy not to have mixed feelings about the "America First" retrenchment that Trump and Vance are presenting. America's ability to direct the world has long been diminishing, its good sense even faster, so some sort of retreat has long been in the cards, but Trump's preference for bluster and erratic bullying and his lack of skill let alone interest in diplomacy are likely to add danger to any change.

Connor Echols: [03-18] Oligarchy in overdrive: "Two months into his second Term, Trump is making mere plutocracy seem quaint." There's a chart here where 48% of "likely voters" say the US is moving toward oligarchy.

Matt K Lewis: [03-17] Democrats have four theories to beat Trump. Wish them luck: Actually, wish them better theories. I'm a sucker for clickbait like this because I've thought a lot about tactics over the past year, both upside and downside of November 5. And while I don't claim to have the answers, it's pretty clear to me that these aren't them:

1. Cross your fingers and wait for Trump to self-destruct
2. Work hard
3. Stop being culturally out of touch
4. Pray you can find a rock star

Eventually, rather than picking one, he throws his hands into the air and calls for a combination of all four. But read the fine print and watch them disintegrate: "This is the Tik Tok era, baby." "If they want to win, they need to talk like normal human beings again." "Politics is now show business, and Trump understands this. He's not a candidate -- he's a spectacle." Democrats need "someone like The Rock, Mark Cuban or Stephen A. Smith." (Link added for Smith, because I had to look him up, which in itself makes me doubt he's a "rock star.") And remind me again how effective Cuban was on the campaign trail with Harris?

Joel Swanson: [03-18] What Are We Allowed to Say? "How Trump's Department of Education has made it harder for me to teach Jewish Studies." The idea, of course, is to make it difficult to teach anything that goes against the Trump party line. The campaign against anything or anyone that remotely smacks of Woke or DEI is just the first front of attack, an easy way to show who's the boss now, without having to split many hairs. I didn't say "any" here, because as this article points out:

This directive, however, came with a large asterisk: We are still permitted to educate students about antisemitism. Antisemitism education, in other words, receives a special carve-out from broader anti-DEI policies. Jews get to be the special minority group receiving temporary protection from the government.

This is problematic for both obvious and subtler reasons. (Designating Jews as a privileged class sets them up for further backlash, as the author notes in his discussion of "the court Jew," although I can think of further examples; doing so to deflect criticism of genocide is disingenuous and even more likely to backfire.) Among other things, this article pointed me to several other pieces worth noting:

• "They see an administration cutting funding for necessary academic research to make examples of universities, even when that will hurt Jewish students": Sharon Otterman/Liam Stack: [03-07] White House Cancels $400 Million in Grants and Contracts to Columbia: "The Trump administration blamed the university's failure to protect Jewish students from harassment during protests last year over the war in Gaza."

• "When the Trump administration is telling German politicians to abandon their post-Holocaust commitment to keeping far-right extremists out of government": Jim Tankersley: [02-15] Trump Officials Attack a German Consensus on Nazis and Speech: "Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk have challenged decades-long approaches to political extremism that were designed to prevent another Hitler."

• "and appointing officials with long histories of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories to high office": Konstantin Toropin: [03-06] Pentagon's No. 2 Spokesperson Has Long History of Antisemitic, Bigoted Social Media Posts: About Kingsley Wilson. This also led to more Military.com news items:

  • Navajo Code Talker Videos, Photos, Stories Removed to Comply with Trump Diversity Purge [03-18]
  • Highest-Ranking Black Medal of Honor Recipient Erased in Pentagon DEI Purge [03-17]
  • Pentagon Pushes Ahead on Cutting 60,000 Civilian Workers Using Firings, Resignations and Hiring Freeze [03-18]
  • William D Hartung: [03-18] A Manhattan Project for AI Weaponry? I was surprised to read in the introduction that Trump in his first days replaced the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the top officers in the Navy and Coast Guard. The former is black; the other two women. It's customary for high-ranking civilian jobs to turn over when a new administration arrives, but how often do presidents get rid of top military officers?

Kenny Stancil: [03-19] DOGE Is Going to Kill a Lot of Americans: I haven't been following news and/or opinion site for months now, but based on rare sampling it's possible that The American Prospect has been the most reliable source of solid news about the extraordinary damage the Trump administration is inflicting on the American people. Some headlines:

• Hannah Story Brown: Trump's Energy Czar Is All In on AI: "Doug Burgum is the perfect conduit for Big Tech and Big Oil's joint agenda."
• Ryan Cooper: Musk and Trump Are Causing the Dumbest Imperial Collapse in History; Also: Donald Trump Is Going to Destroy American Manufacturing
• David Dayen: The Government Funding Law Damages the Legal Pushback on Trump: "Here's why Chuck Schumer's cave-in was beneficial to Trump's legally shaky slashing of spending and the federal workforce." Also: How Social Security Administration Cuts Affect You
• Suzanne Gordon/Steve Early: Doug Collins's Cancel Culture: "The VA secretary is targeting the wrong contracts to eliminate waste and inefficiency."
• Hassan Ali Kanu: Conservatives Have Big Plans for D.C. Public Schools
• Robert Kuttner: The Coherence in Trump's Incoherence: "Let's look a little deeper."
• Harold Meyerson: The Musk-Bezos War on Collective Bargaining; also Trump Rips Up the Government's Agreement With Its Workers: Trump trashed the contract with airport security screeners
• Toni Aguilar Rosenthal: The Texas Model: "Wealthy oil and gas interests getting politicians to do their bidding: coming to a federal government near you." Also: The Clean Air Act Is Under Attack
• Kenny Stancil: Trump's Attack on Government Capacity Will Fan the Flames of the Home Insurance Crisis

James K Galbraith: [03-19] Trump's Economics -- and America's Economy: "You can't make America great again by wrecking the government."

Jasmine Mooney: [03-19] I'm the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped: "I was stuck in a freezing cell without explanation despite eventually having lawyers and media attention. Yet, compared with others, I was lucky." I have no idea how many stories like this are coming to light -- Mahmoud Khalil's is by far the most publicized one, probably because the Trump goons figure that targeting a Palestinian gives them the best possible spin on a policy they intend to target far more broadly, and indiscriminately. The Wikipedia page on Khalil notes: "Several journalists and human rights organizations have noted similarities between this law and McCarthyism." No doubt, but this is much more similar to the CIA "renditions" of suspected terrorists on foreign soil -- except that it's being done here in America to legal residents. McCarthyism, as far as I know, never involved kidnapping. It was a systematic program of slander, meant to bully people into "naming names," encouraging discrimination against those named, and thereby spreading the slander, aiming at isolating and marginalizing the entire political left, solidifying support for the anti-communist Cold War, and dividing and demoralizing the labor movement. The Trumpist campaign against DEI and other signs of "wokeness" has more in common with McCarthyism, at least as concerns its individual targets, although the political agenda is much the same. Related here:

• Alan MacLeod: [03-11] Professor at Center of Columbia University Deportation Scandal is Former Israeli Spy: Keren Yarhi-Milo, in photo with Hillary Clinton.

• Anna Betts: [03-14] Pro-Israel group says it has 'deportation list' and has sent 'thousands' of names to Trump officials: "Betar US is among far-right groups supporting Trump effort to deport students involved in pro-Palestine protests." I didn't realize that Jabotinsky's fascist mob from the 1930s is still extant, although I do know that Netanyahu is directly descended from it (through his father, who was Jabotinsky's secretary).

• Eli Clifton: [03-18] The Israeli-American Trump mega-donor behind speech crackdowns: "Miriam Adelson is more than a funder of the Maccabee Task Force, she's also its president."

Vijay Prashad: [03-20] Israel's Hellish Attack on the Palestinians on 18 March: Opening paragraph:

On 18 March 2025, Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire agreement and bombed several sites in Gaza. It is estimated that at least 400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, died by Israeli bombs. Journalists in Gaza report that of those dead, 174 are children. Once more, entire families have been wiped out. The head of the United Nations organisation for Palestine (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said that the Israelis have fuelled 'hell on earth'. Amnesty International's Secretary General Agnès Callamard described the situation as 'the hellish nightmare of intense bombardment'. The word 'hell' is on everyone's lips. It defines the situation in Gaza at present.

Within days of the Gaza uprising of Oct. 11, 2023, I concluded that Israel has crossed whatever line separates genocide from whatever it is you call the state of menace and siege that existed in Gaza from the 2006 withdrawal until then: "occupation" didn't seem right, with no ground presence, and no semblance of control, but the barriers Israel erected between Gaza and the world, along with the threat of instant death always present (and periodically illustrated, lest anyone doubt Israel's resolve). Baruch Kimmerling got the concept right in his 2003 book, Politicide: Ariel Sharon's War Against the Palestinians, but it takes some effort to realize just how thin the line is between stripping a people of all political rights and killing them. It now seems clear that as soon as Sharon sealed the border Gaza was fated to end this way. The only question was timing. When would some small group of Palestinians to flip their switch from patient cruelty to frenzied slaughter? Or when would the pervasive racism of Israelis finally erode their inhibitions against committing genocide? The Oct. 11 revolt was marginally larger and more invasive than previous acts of desperation, but that hardly explains the qualitative shift in Israel's behavior. Under Netanyahu, Israel was already aching to take it all, to finish Gaza off once and for all. They hardly debated at all.

Since the uprising I wrote about the genocide every week until I shut down Speaking of Which after the November election. (By the way, my original term was the more literal "prison break," but the desperation behind it reminded me more of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1944, when doomed Jews finally fought back against Nazis -- I won't even claim any irony to the sides, as that had flipped 20, 40, possibly 60 years ago.) Since then, I haven't even checked out my most reliable source, Mondoweiss. I knew what to expect, including that the nominal ceasefire of Biden's last days in office wouldn't last once Trump returned. In particular, I predicted that Trump would approve of the eventual forced transfer of the last Palestinians in Gaza to somewhere. (Ok, I wasn't thinking of Uganda, but sure, I get the joke, even if I don't laugh.) And yes, even on this, his absolute worst issue, I already miss Biden. So this article just explains one small bit. I don't feel any need to search out more, although I did have one open tab, so I might as well slot it here:

• Sondos Asem: [03-05] How a future Gaza would look under Egypt's $53bn plan: "The scheme, endorsed by the Arab League, seeks to reshape the urban landscape of the Palestinian enclave and achieve 'sustainable development.'"
• Sean Matthews: [03-04] US silent as Israel heaps scorn on Arab League's Gaza ceasefire plan: "Egyptian official says Cairo crafted plan with Trump in mind and that Cairo could take lead in destroying Hamas's missile stock."

Current count: 95 links, 7389 words (8661 total)

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Monday, March 17, 2025

March archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 43856 [43814) rated (+42), 25 [34] unrated (-9).

I wrote a fairly long political post over the weekend, only very indirectly occasioned by recent events, although it's impossible to totally block out Trumpism and its discontents. The actual stimulus was reading Eric Hobsbawm's 2003 autobiography, Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life, specifically the part where he offers a leftist's observations on the Thatcher demolition of civil society, and the hollow Blair response. With Reagan and Clinton, that all seems pretty familiar. And while in many ways Trump is the linear descendent of Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes -- even his utter contempt for legalities isn't unprecedented -- he now seems to be breaking things just to show that he can.

Probably thanks to reading Hobsbawm, I've been revisiting the Trump/Fascist arguments, so I wound up spending way too much time today on a John Ganz post, There Was Never Any "Fascism Debate". As I recall, there was, but the academic end was mired in arbitrary definitions, and the popular end was if anything counterproductive. After the election, I was convinced that it was a waste of time. I still think it has no potential to influence anyone's politics, and mostly serves people like me as a chance to flaunt one's historical knowledge, it is very hard for people to understand the present except via historical analogy, and there are very few antecedents who come close to Trump's extraordinary impact. While there are still quite many variations, and we're still nearer the beginning than the end of Trump's reign of terror, it's the shoe that comes closest to fitting.

The question then is what can one learn from the analogy? Very little, I suspect, about the Führer himself, but if you look at his deputies, his active and passive supporters, his mass of fans you will find unnerving similarities. Even more worrisome is how ineffectual anti-Nazi resistance was, both from the liberals and social democrats who underestimated him and even more so from the leftists who understood the threat perfectly yet were powerless to stop him. There is, as yet, little reason to be that pessimistic, or to surrender even if one were, but it is clear that Trump is doing not just the bad things we expected, but more that we didn't (or couldn't without exposing ourselves as fantasists). And that Trump's acts will not only get worse, but will leave a lasting print that may never be excised.

My post goes into some of that, but obviously much more is still kicking around in my head. I still have no plans to write about this, or much of anything else. My only addition so far to my planning documents has been to open a still-empty file on house projects. I've spent three days so far on one, which initially seemed too simple to bother writing up (although, somewhat less formally, I did mention it in the notebook): fixing up the ramp into the shed -- something I've wanted to do for years, which now merged with my wife's request to do something to keep the dog from digging under the shed. It's going very slow, and I'm exhausted today, but at least I've started to feel like I have it under control.

Recovery from eye surgery is also going slowly, and hard to gauge, with more erratic or just uncertain moments. Makes it hard to get on with life, so I've tended to let everything slip. I still haven't done the frozen file thing, and I have very little idea what new albums are coming up. The only reason I have much new jazz to report is that it's easier to pick an album out of my promo queue than it is to figure out some good prospect from the media. But I did get a boost this week from Robert Christgau's March Consumer Guide, which netted four A- records, four high B+(***), and one more B+(**), none of which were particularly on my radar. I have the three records I had previously heard -- Mdou Moctar: Funeral for Justice, GloRilla: Glorious, and Marshall Allen: New Dawn -- graded somewhat lower, after brief encounters. Incidentally, I have GloRilla's 2024 mixtape, Ehhthang Ehhthang, a notch high, and two recent Allen features -- Sun Ra Arkestra: Lights on a Satellite and John Blum: Deep Space -- at A-.

Four of the Christgau picks, plus one of my jazz albums, led me to dig into unheard back catalog, so there's quite a bit of Old Music this week. I was at one point tempted to start up a 2025 Metacritic file, as an aid in prospecting, but I wound up making little if any further changes to the 2024 file, despite my expectation of doing so. (One reason I didn't was that it was straining my eyes.) Still, like much else, up in the air for now. I have few (if any) expectations for next week. (Although I do want to get more done on the shed Tuesday, before the next cold front blows through on Wednesday. By the way, in local news last week: A highway pileup in western Kansas shows how dust storms can turn deadly; also numerous reports of fires around Kansas last week. The weather is keeping pace with all the other Trumpian weirdness, and there's no reason not to blame him for that too. Campaigning to promote disasters isn't exactly causality but is close enough to count.

By the way, I added the Chills album after the initial cutover, so it's not counted in the weekly census. It is tempting to add the reissue of Studio's 2006 album West Coast, but I'm just nearing the end of a first play. I've been posting preview notes on the week's A- records on Bluesky. Initially I was able to link to Bandcamp pages, but I've run into a few snags lately, where I try to offer the best links I can find. I'm up to 35 posts and 68 followers there now. I commented on Lemieux's tweet:

I'd never heard the term before, but this is the 2nd time today I've run across "anti-anti-Trump pundits." What or who are they? The phrase suggests something different from pro-Trump pundits, or pundits who are naive, overly generous, or simply deluded about Trump. But what? And why?

Lemieux was kind enough to reply:

It generally refers to people on the left (or ostensible left) who often criticize Trump's opponents and rarely criticize Trump. But evidently at some point it becomes a distinction without a difference.

That sounds more like a troll than a pundit. I formulated a reply:

I'm well familiar with trolls who claim to be left but only appear to attack other lefties (e.g. on Israel), but "professional pundit" implies some kind of position, not just function. Still, I guess I can think of some NYT/WaPo pundits where the distinction scarcely matters.

I'm also familiar with leftists who are so focused on US sins they ignore or even get a bit myopic about the likes of Putin and Trump, but they rarely reduce to pro-Putin/Trump, so I don't mind them. But they do generate an anti-anti- dynamic, which I find unhelpful. If you have a principle, better to use it.

I thought of Matt Taibbi when writing this, but couldn't work him in under the limit. He's not really a leftist: he presents as some kind of iconoclast, balancing his left and right targets, although until 2016 his "left" targets were pretty silly (like 9/11 Truthers). After 2016, he got obsessed with the Clinton camp's anti-Russia rationalizations, which he considered a worse outrage than Trump's election. I haven't followed him since he left Rolling Stone, so I don't know where he's gone with his snark. He wasn't wrong when debunking "Russiagate," but had problems keeping the bigger picture in focus.

I did google "anti-anti-Trump": without quotes I got nothing of significance (mostly pieces about Never Trumpers), but with quotes some pieces do show up. Some titles, dates, and possibly quotes (but links only if I followed them, which mostly I did not; sorted by year from early to now):

• The unbearable lameness of the anti-anti-Trump . . . [Week, 2015]
• Against Anti-Anti-Trumpism [National Review, 2016]
• The Anti-Anti-Trump Right [Atlantic, 2017]
• David Harsanyi*: Why the resistance is the best thing that's happened to Trump [2017] [*] author of a book subtitled The Case Against Democracy.
• Charles J Sykes: If Liberals Hate Him, Then Trump Must Be Doing Something Right [NYT, 2017]: "anti-anti-Trumpism has become the new safe space for the right." "In many ways anti-anti-Trumpism mirrors Donald Trump himself, because at its core there are no fixed values, no respect for constitutional government or ideas of personal character, only a free-floating nihilism cloaked in insult, mockery and bombast." For a "conservative" reply to Sykes, see Dan McLaughlin: Anti-Anti-Anti-Anti-Trump [National Review, 2017]; alternate title: It's OK To Be Against Trump's Critics.
• The cowardly spectacle of the anti-anti-Trump movement [Week, 2017]
• Anti-Anti-Trumpism is the Glue Holding Together . . . [New Republic, 2017]
• Steve Helmoff: The anti-anti-Trump movement gather steam [HoffPost, 2017]
• Strange Bedfellows [Crooked Media, 2017: "It is this propaganda trick that has powered the anti-anti Trump posture most of my fellow Trump-skeptical Republicans have adopted."
• Charlie Sykes: The Agony of the Anti-Anti-Trumpers [Bulwark, 2020]
• National Review's Biden Profile Is Anti-Anti-Trumpism as Art [NYM, 2020]
• Andrew O'Hehir: Waterloo for the anti-anti-Trump left (and all other normalizers) [Salon, 2020]: "Those who made their peace with Trump all made the same fatal mistake: Believing that he believed in anything."
• Why the Anti-Anti-Trumpers Need DeSantis [Bulwark, 2023]
• The Dilemma of the Anti-Trump Conservatives [Mother Jones, 2024]: "I almost feel sorry for the anti-Trump-but-more-anti-anti-Trump conservatives."
• Anti-Anti-Trump Conservatives Are Paving the Way for Authoritarianism [Democracy Americana, 2024]

One obvious point here is that most of these references are old (mostly from 2017), and most come from or relate to Never Trumpers (e.g., Sykes, who wrote a book, How the Right Lost Its Mind), many of whom have a major stake on maintaining their conservative bona fides. (Sure, a few have moved closer to Democrats, especially to ones they find congenial on issues of empire and economy.) Few even mention anti-anti-Trump sentiments on the the actual left, let alone name names. I suspect that if one did, they'd turn out to be sham leftists and/or simple fools.

New records reviewed this week:

Bad Bunny: Debí Tirar Más Fotos (2025, Rimas Entertainment): Puerto Rican rapper/singer, big star in his niche ("Spotify's most streamed artist of the year, 2020-2022"), sixth studio album. I've listened to, and enjoyed, most of them, without ever quite graduating to fan, which may be chalked up to my incomprehension of the language, or could suggest that the rhythm falls just short of making such concerns academic. B+(***) [sp]

Bag of Bones: No One Gets Saved (2023 [2024], 577): British avant-jazz quartet: Riley Stone-Lonergan (tenor sax, from QOW Trio), Rick Simpson (piano), Oli Hayhurst (bass), Will Glaser (drums), first group album. B+(**) [sp]

Towa Bird: American Hero (2024, Interscope): British pop/rock singer-songwriter, born in Hong Kong, "half-Filipino, half-English" started on Tik Tok playing "guitar riffs over other artists' songs," first album. B+(***) [sp]

Robert Sarazin Blake: Let the Longing Run Wild & Free (2025, Same Room): Singer-songwriter, dozen-plus albums since 1996. B+(**) [sp]

Charly Bliss: Forever (2024, Lucky Number): Power pop group from New York, Eva Hendricks the singer, third album, the others from 2017 and 2019 -- long enough ago that I had forgotten how much I liked Young Enough (about as much as I like this one). A- [sp]

The Chills: Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs (2025, Fire): The late Martin Phillipps wrote the songs in the early 1980s, probably before the New Zealand group's 1988-92 breakthrough albums. No recording dates given, but Phillipps, who died at 61 in 2024, is credited with electric guitar and vocals on all songs, along with four others who joined the 2021 edition of the band, so these versions are not old demos. At 20 songs, they arguably went overboard, but half are remarkable, and we're unlikely to get more. A- [sp]

Helene Cronin: Maybe New Mexico (2025, self-released): Previously unknown country singer-songwriter from Texas, fourth album since 2013 (per Discogs; website has the first of those as an EP, along with a couple more). "We're story tellers and ocean walkers," striking ones about wastes of people and land, from a war-addled rifleman to a stripped mine. A- [sp]

Jonah David: Waltz for Eli (2024 [2025], Swish Tap): Drummer, first album as leader, side credits back to 2004 but mostly with Matisyahu. Varied lineups, most with sax, piano (or organ), and bass, guitar on three tracks, vocals (Anna Perkins) on two, trumpet (Jeremy Pelt) on one. B+(*) [cd]

FACS: Wish Defense (2025, Trouble in Mind): Chicago post-punk band, name a tribute to Factory Records, so think Joy Division/New Order with edges less honed, or if you remember them (as I do) the 2007-15 band Disappears, where all members of this trio -- Brian Case (guitar/vocals/keybs), Jonathan van Herik (bass), and Noah Leger (drums) -- got their start. My main caveat is that their sound is so consistent it's hard to pick the better albums out from the also-rans, not that I'm sure there really are any. A- [sp]

Satoko Fujii Tokyo Trio: Dream a Dream (2024 [2025], Libra): Super-prolific Japanese pianist, this one a trio with bass (Takashi Sugawa) and drums (Ittetsu Takemura), drags a bit in spots, but is brilliant often enough. A- [cd]

Funkrust Brass Band: Make a Little Spark (2024, self-released): New York band, 20-piece group (at least at one point), "mixes post punk, disco, EDM, metal, funk, Balkan brass and New Orleans second line, with snazzy uniforms, choreography, megaphone vocals, and all-original music." Two earlier (2017-19) albums fall short of LP-length, and their collection of demos and remixes isn't much longer, but this one counts, and I'm a sucker for a good tuba section. A- [sp]

Future: Mixtape Pluto (2024, Freebandz/Epic): Atlanta rapper Nayvidius Wilburn, 17 mixtapes since 2010, first studio album was Pluto in 2012. I've never quite understood the difference, nor can I tell you what distinguishes trap from hip-hop, but if you set up a 2x2 plot on those two axes even I could assign this to the trap/mixtape quadrant. B+(**) [sp]

Freddie Gibbs: You Only Die 1nce (2024, ESGN): Rapper, actual last name Tipton, debut 2013, sixth solo studio album. Title refers back to his 2017 album, You Only Live 2wice. B+(**) [sp]

Muriel Grossmann: MGQ Live in King Georg, Köln (2022 [2025], Powerhouse): Austrian saxophonist (tenor, soprano, alto here), a "spiritual jazz legend" -- which mostly means she's moved by the holy spirit of John Coltrane -- with her quartet: Radomir Milojkovic (guitar), Abel Boquera (organ), and Uros Stamenkovic (drums). B+(***) [sp]

Patterson Hood: Exploding Trees and Airplane Screams (2025, ATO): Drive-By Truckers singer-songwriter, released three solo albums 2004-12 along with group albums, this his fourth (not counting the pandemic-filler Heathen Songs). Too quiet to keep my attention, but interesting enough when I do notice. B+(***) [sp]

Lady Blackbird: Slang Spirituals (2024, Foundation Music Productions/BMG): Jazz singer-songwriter Marley Munroe, based in Los Angeles, second album, has muscled up the production to the point where it's no longer recognizable as jazz, but so far she's making the power work. B+(***) [sp]

Ben Markley: Tell the Truth (2024 [2025], OA2): Discogs credits him with three 1976-81 albums, but another source has him born in 1981, and when you click on "Credits" those three albums vanish (replaced by two others from 1975-77), with his plausible credits starting in 2007, and own albums in 2009. He has six of the latter, including a couple big band efforts, plus one by Live Edge Trio. He's a pianist, and composed all originals, for this postbop quintet with Wil Swindler (alto sax) and Steve Kovalcheck (guitar), plus bass and drums. B+(*) [cd]

Mdou Moctar: Tears of Injustice (2025, Matador): Tuareg singer-guitarist from Niger, steady stream of albums since 2013, started getting some notice after Matador signed him/them in 2021, especially for the 2024 album Funeral for Justice. This is an acoustic remake, recorded after a coup made return problematical for touring musicians. I've made no effort to decipher the words or politics -- the coup itself was notable here for sending US troops in Niger packing, which I took to be good news all around, but I have no idea what the actual impacts there are. In any case, the words mean nothing to me, but slowing them down and quieting the guitars seems as valid as ever. B+(***) [sp]

Isabelle Olivier: Impressions (2024 [2025], Rewound Echoes): French harpist, a dozen albums since 1997, takes title and inspiration from Coltrane, but her "genre melding" touches on folk themes filtered through euroclassical. B+(**) [cd] [03-21]

Juan Perea: Lightkeeper (2022-24 [2025], Zoho): Pianist, based in Chicago, seems to be his debut at 68, kicks off with "Oye Como Va," followed by seven originals and a reprise. Eric Marienthal plays notable alto sax on three cuts. B+(*) [cd]

Jim Snidero: Bird Feathers (2024 [2025], Savant): Alto saxophonist, 28th album over 40 years, decided to mark the occasion with a collection of Charlie Parker tunes, although he slipped four standards into the mix: "These Foolish Things," "Embraceable You," "The Nearness of You," "Lover Man" -- not songs I associate with Parker, but the liner notes explain the connections. Trio with Peter Washington and Joe Farnsworth, an exemplary mainstream rhythm section, as rooted in swing as in bop. Very nicely done, without a hint of danger or irony. B+(***) [cd]

Mitch Towne: Refuge (2024 [2025], Cross Towne): Organ player, Discogs lists 8 side credits back to 1999, but this seems to be his first album as leader, a trio recorded in Omaha with Tetsuya Nishiyama (guitar) and Jeffery Johnson (drums), playing six originals and a piece by Kenny Kirkland. B+(*) [cd] [04-04]

University of Nevada Las Vegas Jazz Ensemble 1: Let the Good Times Roll (2024 [2025], Vegas): Chances are pretty much any music school in the country could assemble a band like this (I've run across similar efforts from UNT and Toronto). No real reason to search them out, or to get snippy about talented students playing repertory (or their first stabs at originals). But this one is pretty enjoyable, thanks largely to song selection (starting with the title). I wouldn't even mind hearing more vocals, at least from ringer guest Laura Taylor, whose "Alright, Okay You Win" is a highlight. B+(**) [cd]

Wavy Bagels With Driveby: A Carfull (2024, Break All): Queens rapper Jackie Mitchell and producer Oscar Torres Jr., each with one other recent album. B+(**) [sp]

WDR Big Band: Bluegrass (2025, MCG Jazz): Westdeutscher Rundfunk, founded 1956 when the Köln radio station split off from Hamburg's NDR (Norddeutscher Rundfunk) and pivoted to jazz, where they've proven a ready source for big band backing. Discogs credits them -- usually as WDR Big Band Köln (or Cologne) -- with 104 albums since 1981, many under the names of guest directors (most prominently: Lalo Schifrin, Vince Mendoza, and Bob Mintzer -- at the helm here) or guest stars. Mintzer arranged ten more or less recognizable bluegrass tunes here, and solos on tenor sax and EWI, with Darol Anger (violin) and Mike Marshall (mandolin) guest stars. A nice exercise unlikely to have any lasting impact in either world. B+(*) [cd]

Rodney Whitaker: Mosaic: The Music of Gregg Hill (2024 [2025], Origin): Mainstram bassist, from Detroit, many side credits since 1985 (Roy Hargrove, Orrin Evans, Wynton Marsalis), over a dozen own albums, in 2019 he kicked off a now extensive series of albums of the compositions of Gregg Hill, back here with what may be the best one yet, largely thanks to stellar performances by Terell Stafford (trumpet/flugelhorn) and Tim Warfield (tenor/soprano sax), with Rick Roe (piano) and Dana Hall (drums). Also four vocals by Rockelle Whitaker, which I'm less enthusiastic about but they do add another dimension to Hill's work. B+(***) [cd]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

None

Old music:

Helene Cronin: Restless Heart (2014, self-released, EP): First album, six songs, 22:28. Sounds nice enough, but no songs really stand out. B+(*) [sp]

Helene Cronin: Belong to the River (2015, self-released, EP): Second album, just a bit longer (7 songs, 24:43), but her sound is striking from the start, as are several of the songs -- including a couple I might object to on politico-philosophical grounds but are too observed to get upset over ("Dangerous," on hazards as childhood learning experiences, and "Lucky Me," on how soldiers make you free). B+(**) [sp]

Helene Cronin: Old Ghosts & Lost Causes (2019, self-released): First full album, 11 songs, 42:23. Good songwriter, but tends to stay understated. B+(*) [sp]

Helene Cronin: Landmarks (2023, self-released): Second full album, 12 songs, put extra effort into the songs, and developed a real band sound. B+(***) [sp]

FACS: Negative Houses (2018, Trouble in Mind): After a pretty impressive 2010-16 run, Disappears bassist Damon Carruesco departed, breaking up the band. But the other three musicians regrouped, with second guitarist Jonathan van Herik moving over to bass, adopting this new name connected to Factory Records -- UK home of Joy Division, which rather more dramatically turned into New Order. This first album preserves their sound, but it's mired in trauma. B+(*) [sp]

FACS: Lifelike (2019, Trouble in Mind): Second album, unless 6 songs, 29:22 demotes it to EP status (as Spotify thinks). A bit slow off the mark, but the last song holds up for 8:21. B+(*) [sp]

FACS: Void Moments (2020, Trouble in Mind): Third album, 7 tracks, 30:34. Solid sound, doesn't develop much. B+(*) [sp]

FACS: Present Tense (2021, Trouble in Mind): Fourth album, 7 tracks, 35:14. Having commented above on how consistent the appeal of Disappears was, and noting the continuity of their latest album, I now have to admit that they fell into a sustained rut -- although their previously heard fifth proper album, Still Life in Decay (2023) did start to step back up. B+(*) [sp]

FACS: Maggot Brain 020324 (2024, self-released): Back cover reads: "Smashed Plastic Anniversary 20192024." Live set as dated, celebrating their 5th anniversary, released as a "Bandcamp exclusive," which included a limited vinyl run. I found this first when looking up "Wish Defense" -- the title song of their 2025 album, which first appeared here. Good dry run for the new album. B+(***) [bc]

Funkrust Brass Band: Dark City (2017, self-released): First album, or EP if you're bothered by the 26:57 run time for seven songs. Not sure how many musicians are in this edition, but the concept is fully evolved, backed with ample brass. B+(***) [sp]

Funkrust Brass Band: Bones and Burning (2019, self-released, EP): Second outing for the "20-piece post-apocalyptic disco-punk brass band playing all original music with megaphone vocals, heavy tuba bass lines, thundering percussion and searing brass melodies." But with just four songs, 18:10, we'll count it as an EP. B+(***) [sp]

Patterson Hood: Killers and Stars (2004, New West): Drive-By Truckers singer-songwriter since 1998, they were just taking off when he released this modest solo effort. B+(*) [sp]

Laura Taylor: Cry Me a River: A Tribute to Julie London (2000 [2001], Quicksilver): Standards singer, based in Las Vegas, details scarce, but after hearing her as an emeritus guest on the UNLV big band album I wanted to hear more. Discogs lists backing vocal credits back to 1978 (mostly with Diana Ross), but no jazz until 1989-90 with Steve Kuhn. AMG co-credits this to guitarist Joe Lano, but his name doesn't appear on the cover. Back cover has him under "featuring," along with Tom Warrington (bass). The songs are taken at a crawl, which suits them all. B+(**) [sp]

Laura Taylor: My Funny Valentine: Memories of Chet Baker (2002, Staying Power): Not as memorable a songbook, but enough to work with, especially with Steve Kuhn (piano), Eddie Gomez (bass), and Lewis Nash (drums). She makes no effort to match Baker's voice or phrasing, other than by taking even the slightest songs slow, which she can do because her own voice is so exquisite. B+(***) [sp]

Laura Taylor: Mountain Greenery (2006, Staying Power): I'm not finding any credits for this (even the duet partner in "Straighten Up and Fly Right") but the arrangements are varied, including drenching strings for the "Porgy and Bess Medley" -- one suggestion is that she picked out instrumentals for her Vegas act, making this some kind of ritzy karaoke. I didn't recognize the title song, but Rodgers & Hart wrote it, with Mel Tormé and Ella Fitzgerald covers. Nothing else, least of all "One Note Samba," got past me. B+(**) [sp]

Laura Taylor: Have Mercer on Me: Laura Taylor Sings Johnny Mercer (2010, Staying Power): A great and varied song book, which she handles with considerable aplomb. No idea who plays on this, but there is some nice sax, as well as piano trio. B+(***) [sp]

Laura Taylor: Dancing in My Feet (1979, Good Sounds): Evidently she did start off as a disco singer, with the title single the theme song for a TV show, Disco Magic. This was produced by T.K. Productions in Florida, presumably related to Terry Kane's TK Records label -- best known for KC & the Sunshine Band and George McRae's "Rock Your Baby" -- although this came out on another Miami-based label. This is a better-than-expected disco obscurity, with the title song recommended for anthologistsm, but I'm also impressed with the ballad "Sad Is the Song." B+(**) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Samo Salamon/Ra Kalam Bob Moses Orchestra: Dream Suites Vol. 1 (Samo) [04-10]
• Reggie Watkins: Rivers (BYNK) [03-28]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, March 16, 2025

I want to share a fairly long quote, which has some relevance to the present situation (as well as being interesting on its own) from Eric Hobsbawm's 2003 memoir, Interesting Times (pp. 274-277, although I'm going to break this up by paragraphs, so I can add some notes):

What made the triumph of Thatcherism so bitter was that, after 1979, it was not based on any massive conversion of opinion in the country, but primarily, though not exclusively, on the deep division of its opponents. There was no wave of Thatcherite voting in the 1980s like that which lifted Ronald Reagan in the USA. It consistently remained a minority of the electorate. My own calls for some electoral arrangement between Labour and the Liberal-Social Democratic Alliance or, at the very least, systematic 'tactical voting' by anti-Conservative electors, were (naturally) dismissed by both, although in the end the voters had more sense than the parties and voted tactically in large numbers and to good effect. What made the situation so frustrating was that neither Labour nor the Liberal-Social Democratic Alliance had an alternative to offer. Thatcherism remained the only strategy in town. In the end all we had to rely on was that it would eventually become so unpopular that it would lose against any opposition, which is indeed what happened -- but only after eighteen years. We warned that much of the Thatcherite revolution might prove irreversible. In this we were also right.

Hobsbawm, whose father was British and employed in the colonial empire (making him British), was born 1917 in Alexandria, and grew up in Vienna (home to his mother) and Berlin. He joined the Communist Party in Berlin c. 1930, and moved to England in 1933 to live with relatives, and remained a party member until his death in 2012, despite various misgivings, especially after 1956. So he always identified as a member of the left, effectively outside, but not disinterested in, the fray of British electoral politics. The chapter is called "A Watcher in Politics," and the pages leading up to this quote touch on a number of prominent figures in the post-Wilson, pre-Blair Labour Party: names I only vaguely recognize (Tony Benn, Denis Healey, Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock, Arthur Scargill), and events (strikes, schisms), I have little knowledge of. But my sense from this is that Labour didn't just duck for cover, as most Democrats did instead of facing up to Reagan, but strong left resistance didn't work any better than the cowardice and/or indifference of the moderates.

More about why anti-Thatcher resistance failed below, although far short of all that can or should be said. One thing to note here is that while the US left was as strongly anti-Reagan, it was much smaller and more marginalized, partly because the Red Scare purges ran much deeper here (especially in the unions, which were further weakened by 30 yers of Taft-Hartley), and the mass energy of the old left had largely been harnessed and diverted by the New Deal, which had replaced socialism as a quasi-utopian ideal. (We don't need to accept the argument that socialism was impossible in the US due to frontier individualism. The drive toward socialism was effectively blunted all over the west through fairly basic reforms, although the word was most strenuously decried in the US.)

On paper it was easy to analyse the situation realistically, dismissing the 'crisis of betrayal against those who insist on looking at the world the way it is'. In practice it was hard, since many of those against whom I wrote were comrades (or at least former comrades) and friends. Apart from myself and Stuart Hall, Marxism Today could not rely on the steady support of any established intellectuals of the old and the original (post-1956) new left. Most of the socialist and Marxist intellectuals outside the Marxism Today milieu were hostile, including such prestigious figures as Raymond Williams, Ralph Miliband and the eminences of the New Left Review. I was denounced at trade union meetings. This is not surprising. For many of them the line of Marxism Today meant the betrayal of the traditional hopes and policies of socialists, not to mention the proletarian revolution which the Trotskyites still looked forward to. It could even look like disloyalty to the organized working class, battered with the full force of state power by a government waging class war, especially during the great national coalminers' strike of 1984-5, which mobilized the full force of the left's (and only the left's) emotional sympathy. Mine too, although it was patent that the delusions of an extremist leadership of the union, relying on the rhetoric of militancy and the traditional unionist refusal to break ranks in the middle of battle, were leading the union and the coalfield communities to certain disaster. Even we were not immune to the sheer force of the movement's rhetorical self-delusion. Marxism Today, surveying the wreckage after the strike with a degree of realism, could not bring itself to admit the scale of the defeat.

This is basically about the political tactics of people who never had enough power to need tactics. Given that nothing was likely to work, why kick yourself (or others in some sense comrades) for failed choices? Of course, I've seen many debates like this on the American left, where the track record is no better.

This, indeed, was the general predicament of socialists in Britain from the middle 1970s on. Things fell apart for moderate reformist social democrats as well as for communists and other revolutionaries. For Marxists and non-Marxists, revolutionaries and reformists, we had in the last analysis believed that capitalism could not produce the conditions of a good life for humanity. It was neither just nor in the long run viable. An alternative socialist economic system, or at least its forerunner, a society dedicated to social justice and universal welfare, could take its place, if not now then at some future time, and the movement of history was plainly bringing this nearer through the agency of state or public action in the interest of the mass of the wage-earning classes, implicitly or explicitly anti-capitalist. Probably never did this look more plausible than in the years immediately following the Second World War, when even European conservative parties were careful to declare themselves anti-capitalist and US statesmen praised public planning. None of these assumptions looked convincing in the 1970s. After the 1980s the defeat of the traditional left, both political and intellectual, was undeniable. Its literature was dominated by variations on the theme 'What's Left?' I contributed to it myself. Paradoxically, the problem was far more urgent in the non-communist countries. In almost all the communist regimes the collapse of a widely discredited 'really existing socialism', the only socialism officially extant, had eliminated any other kind from the political scene. Moreover, it was reasonable enough for people there to place their hopes, even sometimes their utopian hopes, in an unknown western capitalism, so obviously more prosperous and efficient than their own broken-down systems. It was in the west and south that the case against capitalism remained convincing, especially that against the increasingly dominant ultra-laissez-faire capitalism favoured by transnational corporations, backed by economic theologians and governments.

While the left suffered political defeats in the 1980s, at least in the US and UK, the notion that it was eclipsed intellectually was never more than a hideous con job, bought mostly by liberals who never made the effort, not least because they never cared. What I will grant is that two fairly big residual notions had to be discarded: one is that the Soviet state had failed, both relative to the west and in its own terms, which led not just to collapse but to a deep well of cynicism; the other, related, was that we lost faith in the regenerative power of revolution, which actually dates back beyond 1917 to 1776 and 1789, and had been replenished as late as Vietnam and Cuba. A third problem should also be mentioned: the increasing immiseration of the masses ebbed and started to retreat after WWII, at least in the "advanced" world, which made it harder to see the proletariat as the political vanguard driving socialism -- an idea which itself was fading into utopian dreams.

Those were scarcely problems for leftists like myself, who always saw the history of the left as subject to the exigencies of its times and the limits of subversive imagination. In my view, Marx was -- as Benjamin said of Baudelaire -- a secret agent: of the bourgeoisie's secret discontent with its own rule. Modernist art and science were just other facets of a single drive that could only achieve equilibrium through equality and universality, yet didn't fully trust either. So socialism was really just a mirage: something the brain concocts to fill in the void of an unseeable, and possibly unattainable, future. It doesn't matter that Marx got side-tracked by Hegelian dialectics, or that Lenin and Mao siezed political opportunities and tried to pass them off as revelations. Sooner or later, the flaws would become clear.

Marxism Today could see that the simple refusal to acknowledge that things had changed dramatically ("Let cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we'll keep the red flag flying here'), however emotionally attractive, was not on the cards. Indeed, that is why the traditional Labour left, always present and significant in the party's history, though rarely decisive, disappeared from sight after 1983. It no longer exists. On the other hand, we could not accept -- until Tony Blair became leader in 1994 we could barely even envisage -- the alternative of 'New Labour', which accepted the logic as well as the practical results of Thatcherism, and deliberately abandoned everything that might remind the decisive middle-class voters of workers, trade unions, publicly owned industries, social justice, equality, let alone socialism. We wanted a reformed Labour, not Thatcher in trousers. The narrow failure of Labour to win the 1992 election eliminated this prospect. I am not alone in recalling that election night as the saddest and most desperate in my political experience.

More on the 1992 United Kingdom general election, where John Major's Conservative Party won a landslide over Neil Kinnock's Labour, after extensive polling showed the race close.

The logic of electoral politics as perceived by politicians whose programme consisted of permanent re-election, and after 1997 the logic of government, drove us out of 'real' politics. Some of the Young Turks of Marxism Today went where the power was. When, eighteen months after Labour had returned to power, Martin Jacques revived the journal for a single issue to survey the new era of Blair, one of them looked down on us -- myself and Stuart Hall, specifically -- from the heights of 10 Downing Street, as people viewing society from the seminar room, 'as if from the outside, without any sense of membership and responsibility', unlike 'intellectuals who are able to combine critique, vision and practical policy'. In short, academic or not, 'critique was no longer enough'. The time had come for the political realists and the technicians of government. And both must operate in a market economy and fit in with its requirements.

True enough. But our point -- certainly mine -- was and is that if critique is no longer enough, it is more essential than ever. We criticized New Labour not because it had accepted the realities of living in a capitalist society, but for accepting too much of the ideological assumptions of the prevailing free market economic theology.

The problem, of course, is that Blair's Labour Party, having won power, no longer needed any kind of critique about what was wrong with capitalism, and opposed any effort to rock their boat. After all, hadn't they just won? But in adopting so much Thatcherism, they too were bound to collapse under the dead weight of bad ideas and corrupt practices, as indeed they eventually did. But even out of power, they still saw no need for critique, as they had simple faith that the Conservative would fail again, letting them back in. (Which is basically all you need to know about Neil Starmer, whose recent win was inevitable and underwhelming.)

In America, Bill Clinton played the same role as Blair, with Obama and Biden stuck in his ruts, free of analysis or principles, and blessed with opponents so odious they can make you think you have no alternative. Still, aside from the rich donors who fund them -- and who often as not work both sides of the party divide -- the neoliberals have no real political base, except in the minds of actual liberals, who are so terrified by the right, and so willing to settle for next-to-nothing, that they're willing to follow the anointed nouveaux riches who spout the right verities while doing nothing to inhibit the slide into oligarchy. Worst still, their pandering to right-wing talking points only encouraged the right to make more extreme demands, secure in their understanding that "centrist" Democrats would at most offer the the sort of lame opposition that could easily be lampooned, and which would offer them to claim the high ground of strong and decisive leadership.

Not that I enjoy flogging a dead horse, but it might be useful to recap Clinton's legacy: his adoption of Greenspan's austerity, anti-government program, which he took so seriously he declared "the era of big government is over," launched a program (led by Al Gore) for "reinventing government," and eventually reached the holy grail of a balanced budget (a feat curtly discarded by Dick "deficits don't matter" Cheney); his campaign for NAFTA and other anti-union trade agreements, which not only wiped out manufacturing jobs but by decimating Mexican agriculture triggered the "illegal" immigration that fueled the rise of Trumpism; his lame surrender to Powell on civil rights for homosexual soldiers, and ultimately on every other "defense" budget demand, as well as his "Defense of Marriage" act; persistent bungling on every foreign policy front, from inept incoherence in Somalia and Haiti to the reduction and rape of Russia and the rearmament of NATO, to the commitment to regime change in Iraq, the sham peace process in Israel, and the first volleys in what Bush later christened as the Global War on Terror (bombing Afghanistan and Sudan to provoke reprisals from Al-Qaeda); the "end of welfare as we know it"; the "Washington Consensus" which pushed the "developing world" ever deeper into debt, triggering financial crises for which the only acceptable solution was imposing greater austerity; his repeal of Carter-Glass and hasty deregulation of financial markets (especially derivatives), which led directly to the crash of 2008; his demolition of the Democratic Party into his own personal political machine, which was largely accomplished by destroying Democratic majorities in Congress and at state and local levels, ensuring that regardless of what he might say to the party base, he would only be able to pass laws permitted by the Republican opposition (which, thanks to Newt Gingrich, preferred to gain credibility by fighting him over cutting deal that would bind them to his disasters); and which over all set standards for cant, mendaciousness, and corruption which cut deep enough into the American psyche that even someone as obviously defective as Trump could campaign against.

The Hobsbawm quote was written in 2003, so it doesn't follow further analogies between US and UK politics, the most interesting of which was the emergence of renewed left leadership with Corbyn in the UK and Sanders in the US, and the nearly fanatic efforts of moneyed elites in the "left-center" parties to quash any signs of principled rebellion, while the right has been left free to stray into increasingly extremist policies (Brexit in UK, Trump in US). But it mostly interests me as an example of how real leftists think and maneuver in a political system which allows them no genuine representation. In a proportional representation system, one could imagine building a small but like-minded party and gaining a toe hold which could grow and maybe even be bartered into a coalition. But the UK's "first-past-the-post" system militates against third parties (although for some reason the Liberal Dems have survived, often with disproportionately low representation, and districts have allowed sectional parties to prosper), and the US system is even harder to break into.

Central to Hobsbawm's analysis is his conclusion that not just revolution but any sort of system-changing socialism hasn't been possible in the the western democracies, at least since the "Golden Age" of 1945-1973, which made up a major section of his The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991. I think he's right, but we needn't go into why right here, let alone the many things this implies, let alone the various permutations among countries where the path to affluence and democracy was more checkered. Although we should note that the orchestration of the Cold War had repercussions in domestic relations, especially in the US and UK, which weakened labor and gave license to finance capital's predatory instincts, ultimately bringing us back to a degree of class polarization we haven't experienced since before WWII.

The first thing to note is that in the last 80 years there have been many left variants in the US/UK -- from here on we'll simply ignore the rest of the world, and probably blur some of the US/UK differences[*] -- with varying grievances, prospects, and hopes. But what they all have in common is extreme political marginalization, which was the point of the Red Scare. Hobsbawm notes that the anti-left hysteria was much worse in the US than in the UK, but he still has many stories of how his membership in the CP was held against him. I never had any CP interest, partly because: I was born 33 years after him, missing the Great Depression, the Nazi rise to power, WWII, and memory of the Korean War, McCarthy, the death of Stalin, and the tumult of 1956; partly because I was far removed from its milieu, unlike some friends I only met much later; and partly because the CPUSA never seemed to be anything more than a joke.

But while the left has often suffered setbacks, it never really vanished, because it's based on the eternal faith that ethically reasoned solutions are always possible, a belief that resurfaces after every disruption and disaster: during and after WWII; in the 1960s with the new left issues (civil rights, war in Vietnam and elsewhere, women's liberation, ecology and environment, the cultural revolution); and in the as-yet-unnamed now, which has started to look perilous enough to send folks back to their 1930s history books (part of the reason I'm reading Hobsbawm).

I've been a pretty diligent observer of American politics since the mid-1960s, and I became a fairly serious student of the Marxian intellectual tradition at least by 1970, so I've been in a ideal position to note any correspondence between Democratic politics and leftist political thought. So believe me when I tell you that there is none. The Democratic politicians who have been most damned for being too far left -- Adlai Stevenson, George McGovern, Edward Kennedy, Howard Dean, Elizabeth Warren -- were nothing of the sort. The closest you come is with mild-mannered reformers who picked up bits of framing from the older left and can play can play them as rhetoric, like Jesse Jackson and Bernie Sanders. I don't mind -- I'm pretty mild-mannered myself -- but I still think that when you shortchange the critique, you have trouble coming up with the best solutions.

What attracted me to Marxism in the late 1960s was the depth of insight and understanding as well as the idea that proper answers to problems would lead to a more just society. I discovered reason and enlightenment there, and in many ways doing so saved my life, allowing me to dispense with all sorts of kneejerk reactions and prejudices (e.g., grudges I had built up as defensive mechanisms against my schooling). After a few years, I stopped reading Marxism, because I understood the analysis so well that I could read anything and find what I needed. So I no longer counted myself as a Marxist, but I never lost the notion that people who understood Marx were much smarter than those who didn't, or that people who identified with the left, even if their understanding was suspect, were simply better people (not superior, which would be anti-left, but better).

It's quite possible that I had already internalized the insight that revolutionary change in America was impossible and not even desirable. I was, after all, inclined to flip Marx's maxim, to say that the real point wasn't to change the world but to understand it. Hobsbawm's motivation thirty years earlier was the opposite: he joined the KPD for the politics -- not just the goal of changing the world for the better, but the dire immediate need to fight the fascists -- then wound up reading Marx on the side. Later on in the book, he apologizes:

Had it been the life I had in mind when I was young? No. It would be pointless, even stupid, to regret that it has turned out this way, butg somewhere inside me there is a small ghost who whispers: 'One should not be at ease in a world such as ours.' As the man said when I read him in my youth: 'The point is to change it.'

The last 40-45 years has been a disaster for the left, both in the UK and the US, and not because our heads and/or our hearts were in the wrong. The UK history in the Hobsbawm quote is just the start of this ordeal. So whose fault has that been? I don't doubt that we've made mistakes. I could imagine compiling a catalog of fallacies that have popped up here, there, and everywhere. Still, I've never noticed most of what I hear other people complain about, and what I have noticed is often blown way out of proportion. Perhaps more helpfully, I could also imagine writing a guidebook, which starts with principles and develops them through practical exercises. The key definition is that you're on the left if you favor more equality, more freedom, and more mutual support -- which the right opposes, because they seek an order that is hierarchical, privileged, and enforced (preferably by concent, but often resorting to violence and intimidation, enveloped in a web of deceit and pretension). Given this definition, right and left have fundamentally different views of justice.

And since both see government as a means for securing justice, they contend over its direction. That's where politics comes into play. In a democratic framework, the left should have a huge advantage, in that many more people stand to benefit from equality, freedom, and mutual support than the right can muster in favor of elite-imposed order. So the right does whatever it can to disparage and discredit the left, ascribing false motives, hidden agendas, any whiff they can come up with of unsavory behavior, and/or simply denying the possibility of left policies ever working. Left thinkers can easily see through these tactics, but left politicians spend most of their time fending off the barrage of attacks and innuendo. That rarely works, but the patrons of the right have one more trick up their sleeves: capture the opposition party, and seed it with ineffectual candidates who, even if they win, can accomplish little if anything. Clinton, Blair, and Obama were all ruling class wannabes. In power, they consistently chose their own gilded futures over the needs of the people who voted for them. No wonder the masses turn cynical and hopeless.

It's quite clear now that Trump is going to self-destruct, most likely fairly quickly, and that some Democrat will return to power with a mandate to undo, or at least patch over, much of the damage. What Democrats need to do right away is to establilsh a loud and vigorous opposition, not just to slow down the destruction, but to make people understand that it's the Republicans who are responsible for the damage, and that what they're doing is intrinsic to their nature -- their commitment to various aspects of the right-wing playbook. You don't have to be a leftist to get screwed over by Trump, so we should be happy to support opponents from every angle. In particular, people in the center should learn to appreciate leftists when they can be effective. Leftists, too, need to defer to others when they're more effective. Evils as bad as Trump need broad coalitions to back them down.

What Democrats need to do for the next election is slightly different: they need to find effective ways to talk about what Republicans are doing, who they are hurting in the process, and why they're hell bent on doing such damaging things. As part of this, they need to listen to what people are saying, figure out what problems concern them, and come back with realistic solutions: there is no single answer, so you have to figure out what makes sense, and what you can do within your own principled framework. I suspect that most of the principles and many of the policies that prove most promising will come from the left. The left exists because problems need solutions, and in most cases real solutions come from the left. But to make any meaningful changes, they need to appeal to a significant majority of voters, not just squeak through into a divided, do-nothing government.

To do that, they need to rebuild the party from the ground up. And to do that, they need to come up with a coherent and realstic plan for addressing real problems: not just the usual laundry list of favors for lobbies. Republicans have huge advantages with their massive propaganda network, the pernicious interests of business lobbies, their gerrymanders and dominance in the courts. On the other hand, their policies are unpopular and/or dysfunctional. And while they are very good at inciting rage against government, that's less useful when they are the government. Their "Trump will fix it" slogan fooled many people, but for how long?

While I appreciate the serious work of practical politicians to oppose and counter Trumpism, as well as the efforts of activists to keep their issues active, I agree with Hobsbawm that "critique is more important than ever."

[*] The most obvious one is that the left/center party in the UK is called the Labour Party, so is conscious of its original ties to working class unions, going back to a time when those unions were self-consciously anti-capitalist. Hence there once was a left tradition there which Hobsbawm argues as lately died off. The Democratic Party in the US fills the same ecological niche, but goes all the way back to the plantation slaveholder class and such later paleo-conservatives as Grover Cleveland. It only became the party of labor in the 1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt co-opted the unions as part of his plan to rescue and stabilize capitalism by consolidating large organizations limited by countervaling powers. Hence, unions were never dominant in the Democratic Party, but were generally satisfied by New Deal policies and the collective WWII effort, and when they started to lose favor, they found they had no alternatives (the Republicans were even worse, and third party efforts were quixotic, especially with the US deindustrializing and shedding union jobs even faster). Also worth mentioning is the distinct role of racism in the US, the various effects of the closing and reopening of immigration, and massive technological changes -- factors which also affected the UK, although perhaps less radically than the US.

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Monday, March 10, 2025

March archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 43814 [43769) rated (+45), 34 [38] unrated (-4).

Added a postscript below.

Supposedly on the mend, although the left eye feels a bit worse than it did a week ago, or maybe I just expected better, so I'm more troubled by the twitches and flashes. I have discontinued the 7-day eye drops, leaving me with just the prednislone. Still a couple weeks before I see the doctor again. Until then, no schedule for the right eye.

It's hard to say that anything personal is back to normal in what is evidently an extremely abnormal period in American history. I'm not back to following the political world in any detail, but I have signed up for a Bluesky account, where I am following 25 and have 33 followers. I salted my following list by looking at Robert Christgau's, which gave me a couple of political sources and more friends and music critic colleagues. My wife's list yielded some more of both, but she's only following 31, with 23 followers (but pretty inactive with just 2 posts).

For whatever it's worth, my current list of political oracles is: Ryan Cooper, David A. Graham, Doug Henwood, Kevin M. Kruse, Scott Lemieux, Adam Serwer, Astra Taylor, and NonZero. There's a good chance that I would add any of the people I currently follow on X if I ran across their handles (especially if you let me know who you are; I've searched for a couple, but thus far to little avail).

For my own part, I've made 22 posts to Bluesky, which includes 18 original posts, 2 self-replies, and 2 more replies, so I'd like to think there is some value in following me there. Since setting up my account there on Feb. 13, I've made 8 posts on X, and 2 replies. My current thinking is that I'll continue to post blog announcements and make occasional replies on X, but will make a bit more effort on Bluesky. In particular, I've started posting notices when I come up with A/A- grades, as opposed to making you wait for Music Week. I may at some point extend this to a few lower-graded albums, but this week the pick hits have been coming so fast I haven't been tempted.

Of course, I don't mean to discourage you from following me on X: I have 625 followers there, but my last five posts have view counts in the 76-88 range (with 1-3 likes per post, and 1 total reply), so that number doesn't seem to mean much. I do find that even when I use their algorithmic "For You" feed, most of what I find there is still useful. It's only when I wander into the replies lane that I see any indication that it's become a cess pool of rage and inchoate thought. For instance, at the moment, I'm seeing in my "For You" feed: Nathan J Robinson, Eric Levitz, Rick Perlstein, Keith Gessen, Yanis Varoufakis, Samuel Moyn, Ian Millhiser, Kate Willett, Jeremy Scahill, and a half-dozen names I don't recognize but welcome. (I cut the list short at Max Blumenthal and Jeet Heer, who are less reliable but sometimes interesting.)

The big advantage I see Bluesky having over X is readers can follow links instead of having to separately google titles. My first idea there was to use it to recommend thoughtful articles, as I have done for years in Speaking of Which. I did a couple of those, and expect I will do more, but I haven't read much worth reporting after the first two. (Probably my oversight, as bad times tend to write themselves.) So much of what I know I pick up from X and Bluesky. And while I'm nowhere near reviving weekly political reviews, I've written Daily Log bits in my notebook every day from March 5 through yesterday. Nothing terribly important there, but I am thinking about a few things.

The one "normal" thing I did last week was listen to a lot of music. I'm not really done with 2024 yet, but I found it easier to pick 2025 CDs out of the promo queue than look for 2024 stragglers, so just went with it until I accidentally played a couple that aren't out yet. After I caught up, I finally opened my mail, and fell way back behind again. So the 2025 list is finally real, even though I haven't frozen the 2024 list yet. (Maybe next week. I figure I'm best off kicking this post out first.)

Also advancing, but not absolutely finished, is the 2024 EOY Aggregate list. Main thing I did last week was to add a bunch of Uproxx Music Critics Poll voters, which pushed the Metafile Legend list up to 610 sources. My first pass was to just pick out all of the names I had counted in previous years, but then I decided to explore a bit, so I picked out a few albums that struck me as underrated, then checked the voter list for each, and added some (or all) of them. Main thing I wanted to do was to nudge the totals toward more hip-hop. The biggest list I focused on was Doechii's 10th place Alligator Bites Never Heal -- only a B+(***) album for me, so not a big favorite of mine, but I thought it might reveal a little more underground interest than Kendrick Lamar and Tyler, the Creator (both same grade for me) -- which for now at least pushed the album from 7th to 4th place (behind Charli XCX, Lamar, and Beyoncé, passing MJ Lenderman, The Cure, and Waxahatchee). I also did a bit with Sabrina Carpenter (still in 13th, but -4 now vs. -27 last week).

I just checked, and see I'm no longer blocked from Facebook (but had to jump through some hoops to login). I'm still upset, and not likely to be posting anything there in the near future, but it was nice to see some updates from true friends. I logged in from a different machine than the one I'm writing on, which should also cut down on my activity.

I've made next to no progress on my planning documents. It's hard to develop any enthusiasm for attempting much of anything. Which may be a good thing if all you're interested in is music reviews, because that seems to be the path of least effort.

New records reviewed this week:

Ambrose Akinmusire: Honey From a Winter Stone (2023 [2025], Nonesuch): Trumpet player, from Oakland, debut 2008, landed on Blue Note in 2011 and quickly emerged as a top-rated player, his fame further extended by a guest spots with Kendrick Lamar. Second album since his move to Nonesuch, ambitious in his use of strings and vocals (notably Kokayi's freestyles). B+(**) [sp]

Steve Allee Big Band: Naptown Sound (2024 [2025], Jazzville): Pianist, released his first album in 1979, not a lot since then (aside from his The Bob and Tom Show work). I know him mostly through trios, but he co-led a big band in the late 1990s, and is back with another one here. Or maybe the same one? Sounds very run of the mill. B [cd] [03-15]

Marshall Allen: Red Dawn (2024 [2025], Mexican Summer): Alto saxophonist, joined Sun Ra's Arkestra in 1958, has led the ghost band since 1995, started work on this shortly after his 100th birthday, also playing kora and EWI, leading a large band with a string section and guest vocalist Neneh Cherry. I'm seeing hype for this as his "debut" album, although I have eight previous albums under his name in my database, not all co-credited to Sun Ra Arkestra. B+(*) [sp]

Russ Anixter's Hippie Big Band: What Is? (2024 [2025], self-released): Arranger and conductor, started playing bass in a Grateful Dead tribute band, leads a scraggly commune of 11 musicians -- 3 reeds, 4 brass (including French horn), vibes/xylo/congas, guitar, bass, drums -- through what will pass for hippie standards, including "Dixie Chicken," "Free Man in Paris" (segueing into "Freedom Jazz Dance"), "She Said She Said," "Saint Stephen" (paired with what I recognize as the theme music to Treme), "Uncle John's Band" (which slides into some James Bond movie music), "Into the Mystic," "Whipping Post," "What Is Hip?" This music is less recent than the Berlin, Porter, and Arlen show tunes were in the 1950s when they became jazz staples, so why not have fun with them now? Note guest spots for Stephen Bernstein and Oz Noy. A- [cd]

Barry Can't Swim: When Will We Land? (2023, Ninja Tune): Scottish electronica producer Joshua Mainnie, first album after several EPs (starting 2021). Half is really terrific. Made the Mercury Prize short list. B+(***) [sp]

Tim Berne/Tom Rainey/Gregg Belisle-Chi: Yikes Too (2024 [2025], Screwgun/Out of Your Head, 2CD): Alto sax, drums, and guitar trio, one studio album from April, following a live set a month earlier in Seattle. Some fine stretches here, but slips and slides a bit. Slight edge to the live disc (which I accidentally played first). B+(***) [cd]

Benjamin Booker: Lower (2025, Fire Next Time/Thirty Tigers): Singer-songwriter from New Orleans, third album since 2014, defies categorization. B+(**) [sp]

Alan Chaubert: Just the Three of Us: Me, the Trumpet and the Piano (2021-23 [2025], Pacific Coast Jazz): Swiss trumpet/piano player (video shows him playing left-hand piano while fingering the trumpet with his right), studied at Berklee, recorded this trio -- seems to be his first album -- in NJ, backed with bass (Belden Bullock) and drums (Jon Di Fiore), playing jazz standards, where Monk and Evans figure prominently. B+(**) [cd]

Chlöe: Trouble in Paradise (2024, Parkwood/Columbia): Last name Bailey, started at 11 in the sister duo Chloe x Halle (two albums 2018-20), second solo album. [sp]

Alex Coke & Carl Michel Sextet: Situation (2024 [2025], PlayOn): Third group album, leaders play flute/sax and guitar, filling out the group with harp, pedal steel, bass, and vibes, so let's call this "chamber jazz," and file it away. B [cd]

Liz Cole: I Want to Be Happy (2024 [2025], self-released): Standards singer, from Los Angeles, first album, doesn't spoil indelible standards nor redeem Brazilian pieces (although faster beats slower), wrote a bit of lyric to an Errol Garner composition, ends with Tom Waits. B [cd]

Sylvie Courvoisier/Mary Halvorson: Bone Bells (2024 [2025], Pyroclastic): Swiss pianist, albums since 1997, this a duo with the famous guitarist. Engages slowly, but pays off in the end. A- [cd] [03-14]

Ermelinda Cuellar: Under a Lavender Sky (2024 [2025], self-released): "Texan-Peruvian" vocalist (Houston-based, of Peruvian descent, sings mostly in Spanish), wrote a couple songs, covers more -- including "Poinciana," "Song for My Father," and some Jobim -- quite ably. B+(*) [cd]

Deepstaria Enigmatica: The Eternal Now Is the Heart of a New Tomorrow (2022 [2025], ESP-Disk): Quintet from Memphis named for a rare deep-sea jellyfish, listing Chad Fowler (sax), David Collins (guitar), Alex Greene (keyboards), Khari Wynn (bass, credited as Misterioso Africano), and Jon Scott Harrison (drums). I found another group that latched onto the same name, with somewhat similar cosmic speculation (If Life on Earth Is to Abscise Than I Have Forever Been Quantized), but this one adds a bit of Memphis boogie to the free jazz fusion. A- [cd]

Jorrit Dijkstra: PorchBone (2023 [2024], Driff): Dutch alto saxophonist, based in Boston, debut 1992, was a leader in the Steve Lacy tribute band Whammies, seems to mean this title as a group name (per Discogs; Bandcamp credit is Jorrit Dijkstra's PorchBone). Only group album, preceded by Porch Trio -- with Nate McBride (acoustic/electric bass) and Eric Rosenthal (drums) -- joined here by a trombone trio (Jeb Bishop, Michael Prentky, Bill Lowe). B+(***) [bc]

Kenyon Dixon: The R&B You Love (2023, self-released): R&B singer-songwriter from Watts, seems to have been lurking in the background at least since 2015, although Discogs doesn't have most of what's in Wikipedia, and even Google doesn't shed much light on the shift from this 17-track, 44:24 digital album to two evidently related EPs released in 2024. B+(**) [sp]

Doseone/Steel Tipped Dove: All Portrait, No Chorus (2025, Backwoodz Studioz): Rapper Adam Drucker, from Idaho, got some notice recently for an album with Buck 65, but has a long history with Anticon (Buck 65's first label). Steel Tipped Dove is producer Joseph Fusaro, who has close to 20 albums since 2014. B+(**) [sp]

Paul Dunmall: Red Hot Ice (2024, Discus): British avant-saxophonist, has over 200 albums since 1986, impossible for me to keep up with, but often worth the efforth. He plays tenor and C soprano here, in a nonet -- with trumpet, trombone, baritone sax, guitar, two keyboardists, bass, and drums -- plus a few more for handclaps and electronics. B+(**) [sp]

Paul Dunmall/Kevin Figes: Duos (2022 [2024], Discus): Saxophone duets, both also playing a range of clarinets and flutes. Figes, also British, has many fewer albums as leader, but has side credits back to 1994. Interesting within its limits. B+(*) [sp]

Joe Elefante: Joe Elefante's Wheel of Dharma (2024 [2025], self-released): Pianist, Discogs only has a couple side-credits, Google thinks he's a singer, website shows five albums, including a big band and The Elefante Family Just in Time for Christmas. This is basically a hard bop album, with trumpet (Freddie Hendrix), sax (Erena Terakubo), bass, and drums. B+(*) [cd]

Ensemble C: Every Journey (2024 [2025], Adhyâropa): British pianist Claire Cope, second album, features vocalist Brigitte Beraha, the group expanded from 7 to 11 members. While there is much to be impressed with here, I find myself enjoying very little of it. [PS: Cites Maria Schneider, Pat Metheny, and "Michael Brecker's Grammy-winning 2004 Quindectet album" as inspirations.] B [cd]

Satoko Fujii GEN: Altitude 1100 Meters (2024 [2025], Libra): Japanese pianist, tons of albums since 1995, this a sextet with two violins, viola, bass, and drums (also some electronics from the violist), which lands it near the heavy end of the scale. B+(***) [cd]

Daniel Garbin: Rising (2023 [2025], 6x20): Guitarist, also plays sitar, from Romania, teaches at CUNY (Queensborough Community College), website has sections on mathematics and photography as well as music, seems to be his first album, originals (some co-written by Simona Pop), groove pieces I was perhaps too readily inclined to dismiss. B+(*) [cd]

LP Giobbi: Garcia (Remixed) (2024, Round): Jerry Garcia remixes, Discogs gives him co-credit, some vocals I could or should recognize, revived with hopping new rhythm tracks. B+(**) [bc]

Philip Glass: Philip Glass Solo (2021 [2024], Orange Mountain Music): Major minimalist composer, b. 1937, range includes soundtracks and operas, some relatively popular. This is solo piano, as was his 1989 Solo Piano. Very nice. B+(***) [sp]

Keiji Haino/Natsuki Tamura: What Happened There? (2024 [2025], Libra): Guitar and trumpet duo, the former gets top billing, possibly for raw vocal power, and possibly for pushing this over the edge, and scraping it bloody in the process. Most often I shy away from records this harsh, but here I'm convinced. Probably helped that it's just one 35:43 piece, so not only didn't wear out its welcome, but got a couple extra plays. A- [cd]

Jon Irabagon: Server Farm (2023 [2025], Irabbagast): Saxophonist (tenor and sopranino here), got big here, leading a 10-piece group with only one member -- Levy Lorenzo (kulintang, laptop, electronics, vibraphone) -- not previously well-known to me. Big and bold, although I don't care for the vocal. B+(***) [cd]

Rodney Jordan: Memphis Blue (2020 [2025], Baxter Music): Bassist, one previous album in my database, side credits from 1999, especially with Marcus Roberts and René Marie. Quintet with trumpet (Melvin Jones), sax (Mark Sterbank), piano (Louis Hervieaux), and drums (Quentin E. Baxter), mostly blues, a mix of jazz tunes (Gigi Gryce, Mulgrew Miller, "Autumn Leaves") and originals (last one is called "The Art of Blakey"). B+(***) [cd]

Laura Jurd & Paul Dunmall: Fanfares & Freedom (2023 [2024], Discus): Trumpet player, best known for her group Dinosaur, and long-established avant saxophonist, both British, leading a nonet through a piece commissioned by the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. B+(***) [sp]

Karl Latham: Living Standards II (2024 [2025], Dropzone Jazz): Jazz and rock drummer, side credits back to 1988, album title refers back to a 2016 album (which Discogs probably has the label wrong on), a guitar-bass-drums trio covering rock tunes like "Day Tripper," "Low Rider," "White Rabbit," and "White Room." Same concept here, the group expanded to include keyboards, extra percussion, and vibes ("special guest" Wolfgang Lackerschmid -- much of Latham's jazz discography is on his albums). The songs strike me as more obscure, but I've never paid much attention to Stephen Stills or Adrian Belew (of course, I do still recognize the Doors, Led Zeppelin, and Steppenwolf). B+(*) [cd]

Steve Lehman Trio + Mark Turner: The Music of Anthony Braxton (2024 [2025], Pi): While I've rated 69 Braxton albums -- looking at the list suggests I still have a lot of work to do -- I've never gotten a good sense of him as a composer, while having no doubts as to his chops, especially on his marvelous standards albums. On the other hand, several of his students have made superb albums from his compositions, and Lehman's own work, both as alto saxophonist and composer, over the last 20+ years has few peers. He wrote two pieces here, to go with five Braxtons and one Monk, and added the tenor saxophonist to his trio with Matt Brewer (bass) and Damon Reid (drums). A- [cd]

John Mailander's Forecast: Let the World In (2024 [2025], self-released): Nashville-based fiddle/mandolin player, seems to have started in bluegrass (Molly Tuttle, Billy Strings, Bruce Hornsby) but "moved beyond." Group name from a 2019 album, reused in 2021. Stringed instruments, drums, some sax, one vocal, feels rural but nothing that yells hoedown. B+(**) [cdr]

Michi: Dirty Talk (2025, Stones Throw): Pop/r&b singer from Los Angeles, first album. B+(*) [sp]

Jackson Potter: Small Things (2024 [2025], Shifting Paradigm): Guitarist, from Minnesota, debug album in 2021 seems to have vanished, new one is a quintet with dueling horns -- Alex Ridout (trumpet) and Troy Roberts (tenor sax) -- plus bass and drums, with voice and extra alto sax (Jaleel Shaw) on one track. B+(**) [cd]

Noah Preminger: Ballades (2024 [2025], Chill Tone): Tenor saxophonist, from Brooklyn, debut 2011, hype sheet suggests a connection to John Coltrane's 1963 Ballads, but unclear what that is, beyond the piano-bass-drums backing, and the slow, gorgeous crawl through a different set of songs. B+(***) [cd]

Redman: Muddy Waters Too (2024, Gilla House): Rapper Reginald Noble, from New Jersey, debut 1992 went gold, as did next four albums through 2001 (or six with collaborations, including one with Method Man). Fifth album since (including another with Method Man), this first since 2015 runs 32 songs, 81 minutes. B+(**) [sp]

Rick Roe: Tribute: The Music of Gregg Hill (2024 [2025], Cold Plunge): Pianist, has albums from 1994 and 2005, both Monk-themed, has side credits on a couple other tribute albums to Hill, a composer based in Michigan with no real discogrpahy of his own, but nearing a dozen tribute albums of late. Trio with Robert Hurst (bass) and Nate Winn (drums). B+(**) [cd]

Gina Saputo: Daydream (2024 [2025], GSJQ Productions): Standards singer, based in Los Angeles, several albums since 2003, backed by piano/bass/drums, with guest horns on several tracks. Opens with "You're No Good," but everything else is more standard (give or take a Monk). B+(**) [cd] [04-18]

Mark Scott III: Soft Light (2024 [2025], Miller Three Publishing): Guitarist, studied at UNT, based in Austin, first album, trio backed by bass (Ben Triesch) and drums (Mike Gordon). Has a light, steady touch. B+(**) [cd]

Sentient Beings: Truth Is Not the Enemy (2024, Discus): Quartet, album title from a 2023 album originally filed under John Butcher, replaced here by John O'Gallagher (alto sax), joining Faith Brackenbury (violin/viola), John Pope (bass), and Tony Bianco (drums). B+(***) [sp]

Stress Eater: Everybody Eats! (2024, Silver Age): Czarface spinoff, from 7L & Esoteric with Kool Keith in lieu of Inspectah Deck, longtime denizens of a comic/cosmic underground, this time with a focus on food. A- [sp]

Omar Thomas Large Ensemble: Griot Songs (2024 [2025], Omar Thomas Music, 2CD): Composer/arranger, Brooklyn born, parents Guyanese, studied at NEC, Maria Schneider protégé, third album (none I can find on Discogs, although they have one credit from 2013). My eyes can't decipher the print I have, so I'll just let this one run. Big for sure, or is grandiose the word? B+(*) [cd]

Warmdüscher: Too Cold to Hold (2024, Strap Originals): British post-punk group, name is German for "warm showerer" ("a derogatory term referring to somebody who is perceived as a wimp, or as not tough enough for life"), fifth album since 2015. B+(*) {sp]

Simón Willson: Bet: Live at Ornithology (2024 [2025], Endectomorph Music): Bassist from Chile, based in New York, side-credits since 2016, second album as leader, quartet with Neta Raanan (tenor sax), Evan Main (piano), and Kayvon Gordon (drums), recorded live. Raanan got some Debut notice in the 2024 FDJCP, and gets pushed even harder here. B+(***) [cd]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Paul Dunmall/Paul Rogers/Tony Orrell: That's My Life (1989 [2023], 577): British saxophonist, plays soprano here, Discogs credits him with 201 albums since 1986 (325 credits), so this is a fairly early set, a live tape from Albert Inn in Bristol, backed by bass and drums. I've only sampled him lightly (18 albums, 4 A-), so don't have much sense of how consistent he is, but this one sizzles all the way. A- [sp]

The Laws of William Bonney Saxophone Quartet: 1993-2007 (1993-2007 [2023], Acheulian Handwave): Saxophone quartet of Jeffrey Morgan (alto), Martin Speicher (sopranino/alto), Stefan Keune (sopranino/tenor), and Joachim Zoepf (soprano/baritone) -- each with fairly substantial discograpies (Morgan's possibly longest, but least known to me; Zoepf was in Kölner Saxophon Mafia, long on my shopping list but never found). Eleven tracks from four dates, no group records released. (Their namesake was better known as Billy the Kid, 1859-81). B+(***) [sp]

Old music:

Jorrit Dijkstra/François Houle/Karlis Silins/Kenton Loewen: Coastlines: Music of Steve Lacy, Volume I - Quartets (2022 [2023], Afterday): The alto saxophonist previously recorded three volumes of Lacy tunes in the Whammies, returns here with a Canadian clarinetist who also has a long history with Lacy, who recruited the bassist and drummer (mostly associated with Gordon Grdina, but like Houle based in Vancouver). B+(***) [bc]

Jorrit Dijkstra/François Houle: Coastlines: Music of Steve Lacy: Volume II - Duos (2022 [2023], Afterday): Same idea, but loses a critical step without the rhythm section. B+(*) [bc]

Kölner Saxophon Mafia: Die Saxuelle Befreiung (1984, Jazz Haus Musik): German saxophone sextet (at least at this point), founded 1981, so a few years after World Saxophone Quartet (1977) and ROVA (also 1977). First studio album, after 1982's Live. They seem less focused on harmonics, and more on the intricacies of composition and flow, although results are mixed. B+(**) [sp]

Kölner Saxophon Mafia: Unerhört - Stadtklänge (1984 [1985], Jazz Haus Musik): Third album, the second side a 4-part suite. More ambitious, but also more refined. B+(***) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Nils Agnas: Köper Sig Ur En Kris (Moserobie) [03-14]
• Archer: Sudden Dusk (Aerophonic) [04-18]
• Jarod Bufe: Brighter Days (Calligram) [03-07]
• Geoffrey Dean Quartet: Conceptions (Cellar Music) [04-04]
• Lorraine Feather: The Green World (Relation) [03-28]
• Nnenna Freelon: Beneath the Skin (Origin) [03-31]
• Dave Hanson: Blues Sky (Origin) [03-31]
• Jake Hertzog: Ozark Concerto (Zoho) [03-21]
• Marilyn Kleinberg: Let Your Heart Lead the Way (Waking Up Music) [05-01]
• Silvano Monasterios Venezuelan Nonet: The River (self-released) [04-04]
• Matthew Muñesses/Riza Printup: Pag-Ibig Ko Vol. 1 (Irabbagast) [04-04]
• Ben Patterson Jazz Orchestra: Mad Scientist Music (Origin) [03-31]
• Juan Perea: Lightkeeper (Zoho) [02-07]
• University of Nevada Las Vegas Jazz Ensemble 1: Let the Good Times Roll (Vegas) [03-01]
• Chris Varga: Breathe (Calligram) [03-07]
• WDR Big Band: Bluegrass (MCG Jazz) [03-01]
• Rodney Whitaker: Mosaic: The Music of Gregg Hill (Origin) [02-28]
• James Zito: Zito's Jump (self-released) [04-15]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, March 3, 2025

March archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 43769 [43749) rated (+20), 38 [46] unrated (-8).

This will be another perfunctory installment, just noting the few albums I've managed to check out, with minimal embellishment or commentary. I'm effectively stalled, a state unlikely to change any time soon. I've had a rough week, although perhaps not as bad as I had feared. I expect more of the same, although I suppose I should be cheered that the arctic chill has retreated into usual Winter gloom. Also that two minor surgeries have moved to done from looming, and while I can't say I've recovered, I've survived no worse than expected.

I had the root canal last Monday, and go back to dentist for a crown on Wednesday, which should be uneventful. I had cataract surgery on my left eye on Thursday, and went back for post-op exam on Friday. I've written about it at more length in my notebook, but no need linking much less reiterating all that here. Both of these events seemed rather ominous coming out of the anaesthetic, but improved significantly the day after. The eye is still blurry, but I'm told that a day later my vision with it had improved from 20/80 to 20/50. I was cleared to drive home, and did confidently. Since then, it's hard to gauge further improvement. It is still not as good looking at computer or reading as the also-not-very-good right eye, but I'm fairly functional with the combination.

Still, "functional" does not mean I have much if any ambition to work on anything, including figuring out my future writing life. Aside from the paltry few records below, the only things I've written in recent days were the surgery write-up, a list of highly-rated television shows, and a post-dream tweet:

Starting to reimagine my "Weird" book idea as a three-act play, one act for each Trump campaign, starting out as farce and ending up as tragedy, with more corpses on stage at the end than "Hamlet." Meanwhile, reading Hobsbawm on Berlin 1932.

I didn't initially cross-post this on Bluesky, figuring I'd keep my powder dry there until I figured out what I wanted to do, but seeing as I had 27 notifications there this morning (vs. 2 on X), I let it rip (adding the book title).

I couldn't very well excerpt, much less explicate, Hobsbawm in that format, but the gist was that by 1932, the Weimar Republic parties had lost their credibility and their ability to govern, but the left had nowhere near the power to initiate a revolution, despite seeing the obvious need for one. As for the Nazis, they too were unable to seize power on their own, but were ultimately gifted it by aristocratic conservatives who deluded themselves into thinking they could control Hitler as a tool. Hitler offered them a degree of popularity they could never muster on their own. They, in turn, gave Hitler the power to destroy the whole nation.

But their decision to do so wasn't driven by necessity. The KPD, while growing as the SPD lost credibility through ineffectiveness, was far from being able to rise to power, and if sensible people just managed to keep their heads and smooth out the kinks in a badly shaken economy, both the Communists and the Nazis would have faded back into the Weimar muddle. The right picked the Nazis not because they had to, but because they relished the idea of using Nazi stormtroopers to impose their will on an unruly public.

A few months ago, I was thinking that the mainstreaming of the "Trump is a fascist" meme was simply bad tactics: the few people who even remotely understood it had already made up their minds on Trump — most against, but there are some people who like that aspect of Trump — while everyone else was simply confused. But now I'm beginning to realize that there are very few historical analogies, especially well known ones, that capture the present moment with such resonance and depth. And also that the real problem isn't the right fringe that Trump has rallied to power, and certainly not the leftists who see catastrophe unfolding so clearly, but the emboldened "center-right" who see Trump as their ticket to growing their already ridiculous oligarchy, and the cowardly "center-left" who have dissolved into nothingness.

Historical analogies are almost by definition always wrong, but we have few other techniques to clarify out thinking. But rather than start with "is Trump Hitler?" perhaps we should start with "is American Weimar?" Very few Americans know anything significant about Weimar Germany (or any other period of German history, even the Nazi period), but among the few that do, some on the left and more on the right could make a few connections. To the extent that you do, Trump and Hitler, regardless of their differences, are too unique to map to anyone else. The real question is who, in Trump's world, plays the role of Papen, Hindenburg, Krupp, Schleicher, et alem? (Thälmann is irrelevant to the handover of power, as are the more famous minions Hitler promoted and/or eliminated.)

I wouldn't expect much precision in such personal analogies, but general types keep returning in various guises — much as Napoleon III reinvented his namesake as farce. I'd also point out that much of Weimar was unique and specific to its time and place, while contemporary America is no less so. (A good background reference here is Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, which includes several more comparative studies.)

Perhaps the quote I was looking for was this one (pp. 57):

We were on the Titanic, and everyone knew it was hitting the iceberg. The only uncertainty was about what would happen when it did. Who would provide a new ship? It was impossible to remain outside politics. But how could one support the parties of the Weimar Republic who no longer even knew how to man the lifeboats? They were entirely absent from the presidential elections of 1932, which were fought between Hitler and the communist candidate Ernst Thälmann and old imperial Field Marshal Hindenburg, supported by all non-communists as the only way of holding up the rise of Hitler. (Within a few months he was to call Hitler to power.)

Initially I retyped a promising piece from the following page (p. 58), which didn't quite get to where I recalled it going, but since it's typed, I'll offer it anyway:

As I entered the school year 1932-3, the sense that we were living in some sort of final crisis, or at least a crisis destined for some cataclysmic resolution, became overpowering. The presidential election of May 1932, the first of several in that ominous year, hd already eliminated the parties of the Weimar Republic. The last of its governments, under Brüning, had fallen shortly after and given way to a clique of aristocratic reactionaries governing entirely by presidential decree, for the administration of Franz von Papen had virtually no support in the Reichstag, let alone even the makings of a majority. The new government immediately sent a small detail of soldiers to dismiss the government of the largest German state, Prussia, where a Social-Democratic-Centre Party coalition had maintained something like democratic rule. The ministers went like lambs, as Papen, trying to bring Hitler into his government, revoked a recent ban on the wearing of their uniforms by Nazi stormtroopers. Their deliberately provocative parades now became part of the protection squads of the various parties. In July alone eighty-six were killed, mainly in clashes between Nazis and communists, and the number of those seriously injured ran into hundreds. Hitler, playing for higher stakes, forced a general election in July. The Nazis were returned with almost 14 million votes (37.5 per cent) and 230 seats — barely fewer than the combined strength of the Weimar parties (Social Democrats, Catholics and the now virtually invisible Democrats) and the communists with over 5 million and eighty-nine seats. For practical purposes the Weimar Republic was dead. Only the form of the funeral remained to be determined. But until there was agreement between the President, the army, the reactionaries and Hitler (who insisted on the Chancellorship or nothing), its corpse could not be buried.

This reminds me that I long ago broke the habit of marking up books. (I was taken aback some months ago when I opened up my old copy of Dialectic of Enlightenment and found that it was more underlined than not, mostly in ink.) The Hobsbawm books are full of bits I can imagine wanting to refer back to. (I found the quote above only by looking Papen up in the index.)

As my tweet suggests, I now think one has to look at all three Trump presidential campaigns to get a coherent picture of how he works, what his appeal is, and how badly Democrats have bungled the "assignment" of talking about him. (Chait's term in quotes, which despite its inherently snide air is useful for focusing on the one essential asked of every Democrat who's run against him, which is to beat him. Any other compromise is forgivable, but letting him win is not.) We also have to pay considerable heed to the Sanders campaigns, and the intense preoccupation of centrist Democrats with stopping Sanders even at their own expense.

Such ideas continue to percolate in my head while I'm otherwise doing next to nothing. Sorry about that, but I'm not ready to "face the music" (even when it's just music). I spent a lot of time last week fiddling with the jigsaw puzzle — which requires eyesight, but not so critically — and watching TV. I didn't get much of the latter done, but did finish Feud: Capote vs. the Swans — L gave up after 2-3 episodes, but I hung on and watched the 4th — picking up with the 5th (easily the best, with Chris Chalk as James Baldwin; way too much drinking himself to death after that, while the aging "swans" hardly seemed worth the trouble, although Jessica Lange's ghost of a mother added some value). I also watched Get Millie Black (which L had started without me, but we finished up together).

It's her TV, so unless I get impose, I only get to watch what she wants when she wants, and mostly this week she wanted to watch Oscar movies. To that end, we watched Anora, which milked 10 minutes of plot for 139 minutes of overkill editing, and The Substance, which was horrible — although both had a fair amount of what one friend calls "redeeming social value." With that, I've seen 3 (of 9) Best Picture nominees (the other is Conclave; L went ahead and saw Emilia Pérez without me, as well as 3 animation nominees — although I did catch the end of Memoirs of a Snail).

I watched the first 30-40 minutes of the Oscars, and found myself irritated or worse by virtually everything starting with the host change to Conan O'Brien — another reminder that elections have consequences? Sure, I haven't watched Jimmy Kimmel since the election, but not because I want to live in a world devoid of humor and meaning, where "the times" are only whispered about in hushed, ominous tones. While I took comfort from Kimmel's ridicule of Trump, I came away thinking that we have to find new ways of talking about Trump and his posse to his base. Still, that's no reason to back off when you're right.

Only thing to note on this week's music is that I finally dipped into the 2025 demo queue. I can't say I felt the need to move on, but found it took minimal thought to pull the next item from the queue, especially compared to searching out more 2024 prospects. Of the latter, note that the two A- albums came from Chuck Eddy's 150 Best Albums of 2024, which I belatedly added to my EOY Aggregate.

I suppose I should also note that I've added a fair number of individual top-10 lists, drawing mostly from the Uproxx Music Critics Poll. I originally went through the critics list and picked up names I recognized (pretty much anyone I had picked up in a previous EOY Aggregate). But at some point, I decided it would be ok to skew the results a bit toward hip-hop, so I grabbed the voter lists for several well-regarded albums, especially Doechii's Alligator Bites Never Heal -- now in 7th place, which also helped lift Kendrick Lamar's GNX to 2nd, Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter to 3rd, and Tyler, the Creator's Chromakopia to 11th. (I didn't go through their voter lists, but those three albums picked up more than other contenders, especially the Cure's Songs of a Lost World (drop from 2nd to 5th) and Adrianne Lenker's Bright Future (4th, I think, to 8th).

Quite possible I'll do a bit more of that sort of thing, and look for a few more lists, although at this point the utility of putting more work into this project is dwindling.

New records reviewed this week:

Frank Carlberg: Dream Machine (2023 [2025], Red Piano): Finnish pianist, has a couple dozen albums since 1992, was inspired by a 1959 sci-fi gadget to compose four "Dream" suites (13 pieces in all), with complementary keyboards from Leo Genovese (organ, farfisa, synths), outstanding tenor sax from Hery Paz, backed with bass (John Hébert) and drums (Dan Weiss). A- [cd]

Cumgirl8: The 8th Cumming (2024, 4AD): New York post-punk band and "multi-media collective," "their style and artistic practice are shaped by an opposition to patriarchy and capitalism," debut album 2020, this their second (although I've seen it billed as their first). B+(*) [sp]

Dengue Dengue Dengue!: Agita2 (2024, Club Romantico, EP): Peruvian DJ duo, Felipe Salmon and Rafael Pereira, a couple albums but mostly singles/EPs since 2012. Discogs abbreviates the group name here as "DNGDNGDNG," which in lower case seems to be top slugline on the Bandcamp page. Five tracks (20:40). B+(**) [sp]

Peter Erskine & the Jam Music Lab All-Stars: Vienna to Hollywood: Impressions of E.W. Korngold & Max Steiner (2024 [2025], Origin): Drummer, best known for Weather Report but he has a lot more range than that, with his most memorable early albums as leader being piano trios, and considerable side-work in big bands. Large group here, short of a big band on horns but long on strings, playing hackneyed movie themes arranged by Erskine and Danny Grissett. B+(*) [cd]

Flagboy Giz and the Wild Tchoupitoulas: Live From the French Quarter Fest 2023 (2023 [2024], Injun Money): New Orleans MC, took over the venerable New Orleans Indian group, best known for their Meters-backed 1976 eponymous LP. B+(**) [sp]

Andreas Gerth & Carl Oesterheit: Music for Unknown Rituals (2023 [2024], Umor Rex): German musicians, have fairly substantial credits since early 1990s, but not much more than their two duo albums as leaders. One of the best albums I've heard in the Hassell-Eno "4th world" domain. A- [sp]

Glorygirl2950: Queen of the Land (2024, self-released): Not much on her, some suggestion that her self-released label is UK-based, but Pitchfork review pegs this as "a welcome blast of rowdy Atlanta rap." Accent favors Atlanta. B+(*) [sp]

Brad Goode Polytonal Big Band: The Snake Charmer (2023 [2025], Origin): Trumpet player, called his first (1988) album Shock of the New, recorded four albums (2001-03) with Von Freeman titled Inside Chicago, career since has been vigorously eclectic, including a 2008 anticipation of this group called Polytonal Dance Party. Conventional big band, conducted by John Davis, playing six original compositions and two new arrangements ("Ornithology" is one) by Goode. B+(**) [cd]

Hieroglyphic Being: Quadric Surfaces (2024, Viernulvier): Chicago electronica producer Jamal Ross, prolific since 2008, soundtrack bits for "an abstract animation film by visual artist Gabriela González Rondon," pleasantly bleepy. B+(***) [sp]

Erik Jekabson: Breakthrough (2024 [2025], Wide Hive): Trumpet/flugelhorn player, from Bay Area, side credits from 1996, debut album 2003, eighth own album, has a long list of supporting musicians on most tracks here, including strings, flute, oboe, and some vocals (two tracks). Quite lovely, for the most part, as far as that goes. B+(**) [cd]

Jessica Jones Quartet: Edible Flowers (2020 [2025], Reva): Tenor saxophonist, actually two in the group as husband Tony Jones also plays, as well as sharing most writing/arranging credits, backed here by Stomu Takeishi (bass) and Deszon Claiborne (drums). Free jazz, solid and poised. B+(***) [cd]

Jupiter & Okwess: Ekoya (2025, Airfono): Congolese group led by Jean-Pierre (Jupiter) Bokondji, who grew up as a diplomat's son in East Berlin before returning to Kinshasa to organize his band, which lately has been big in Europe. B+(*) [sp]

Doug MacDonald: Santa Monica Session (2024 [2025], DMAC Music): Guitarist, many albums since 1981, quartet with piano, bass, and drums; three originals, five covers, closing with "Perdido." B+(*) [cd]

Polyfillas: Rude Boys of England E.P. (2024, self-released, EP): Brit band from Sunderland (on the North Sea, near Newcastle), Ava and Jamie Dangerous sing, play guitar, wrote the songs, backed with bass and drums: two old-fashioned punk anthems, the "reggae-tinged" 8:30 title track, and "two acoustic numbers" -- total 21:37. Experiments, I figure, each with a small measure of promise. B+(*) [bc]

Praktika: Balani Factory (2023 [2024], Blanc Manioc): Electronica duo from Finland, Heikki Rinkinen and Risto Eskolin, debut album 2016, impresses with a cornucopia of beats. A- [sp]

Valknee: Ordinary (2024, TuneCore): Japanese rapper, released an album in 2019, not sure what else. Jumps pretty hard to start with. Still, short as it is (10 songs, 26:42) it doesn't quite sustain. B+(**) [sp]

Vincenzo Virgillito: Precondition (2017 [2025], self-released): Italian bassist, born in Sicily, based in London, side credits since 1994 but this is his first as leader, and for that matter his first solo album. B [cd]

Jeong Lim Yang: Synchronicity (2023 [2025], Sunnyside): Bassist-composer, from South Korea, based in New York since 2011, has a previous (2017) album. Quartet here, focus on viola (Mat Maneri) and piano (Jacob Sacks), with Randy Peterson on drums. Enchanting. B+(***) [cd]

Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad: azz Is Dead 22: Ebo Taylor (2025, Jazz Is Dead): Hip-hop producers back with another installment (7 songs, 26:06) in their anti-jazz series, each new volume featuring someone semi-famous from way back when (usually the 1970s), in this case the now 86-year-old Ghanaian highlife star (who also appeared on last year's various artists sampler, JID 21). B+(*) [sp]

ZA!/Tomás De Perrate: Jolifanto (2024, Lovemonk): Barcelona band, active singe 2006, combines "African beats, noise, thick distortions, vocal loops, free jazz, sounds from the shepherds of Tuva, Balinese polyrhythms, math rock, dadaism, drones," etc. De Perrate is a flamenco singer of some note. Sounds, indeed, like all that got dumped into the blender. B+(**) [bc]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

None

Old music:

Andreas Gerth & Carl Oesterhelt: The Aporias of Futurism (2021, Umor Rex): I was so struck by Music for Unknown Rituals, I went back to the previous album, which more clearly shows their roots in avant-electronica, minus the acoustic touches and rhythmic quirks that made the later album so appealing. This has its own, more somber, appeal, almost industrial. B+(*) [sp]

Unpacking: I have a half-dozen still-unopened packages on my desk. Check back next week.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, February 24, 2025

February archive (closed).

Music: Current count 43749 [43700) rated (+49), 46 [44] unrated (+2).

I've had a very rough week, or at least the last couple of days, and at the moment I'm so depressed I have nothing to say on this or any other subject. The only rationale I could come up with for posting this at all is that this way I won't have to give it another thought for the rest of the week.

This is the last Monday in February, so I've marked the archive file closed, and opened a new one for March, but I haven't done any bookkeeping (probably for months, but certainly not this month). I haven't forked off a frozen copy of my 2024 List, which is usually an end-of-February thing. I did review a few 2025 promos below, on a particularly miserable day when the Internet couldn't be trusted, but since then I've gone back to sifting crumbs from 2024. Neither pursuit netted much.

The one thing I should mention is that I answered some questions. Also that I'm on Bluesky (link to left), and not on Facebook. No more news to speak of.

New records reviewed this week:

Ab-Soul: Soul Burger (2024, Top Dawg): Los Angeles rapper Herbert Stevens IV, sixth album since 2011. B+(***) [sp]

Beatenberg: The Great Fire of Beatenberg (2024, Leafy Outlook): South African pop/rock band, out of Cape Town, fourth album since 2011, as African bands go, they sound a lot like Vampire Weekend, but more consistently African. B+(***) [sp]

BigXthaPlug: Take Care (2024, United Masters): Rapper Xavier Landrum, from Dallas, second album. B+(**) [sp]

Fashion Club: A Love You Cannot Shake (2024, Felte): Alias for Pascal Stevenson, from Los Angeles, who plays most instruments and sings, although the credits include a dozen guest spots. Second album. Has a shoegaze fuzz I like, but I don't know what it means. B+(**) [sp]

Foxing: Foxing (2024, Grand Paradise): Rock band from St. Louis, fifth album since 2013, must have been confused in my mind with someone else, as they're way too hyperbolic for my taste. B- [sp]

Friko: Where We've Been, Where We Go From Here (2024, ATO): Indie band from Chicago, or duo -- Niko Kapetan (guitar/vocals) and Bailey Minzenberger (drums) -- first album, I'm only a bit impressed, and have no idea what genres like "chamber pop" and "noise pop" might mean. B+(*) [sp]

David Gilmour: Luck and Strange (2024, Sony): Famed Pink Floyd guitarist, did a nondescript solo album in 1978, returned with another roughly every decade since, this his fifth (not counting a couple live albums). Some signature guitar, plus keyboards recorded before Rick Wright died in 2008. B [sp]

Girl Ultra: Blush (2024, Big Dada, EP): Pop singer Mariana de Miguel, from Mexico City, released an LP in 2019, and has several EPs since 2017, this one 7 songs, 14:37. B+(*) [sp]

Groovology: Almost Home (2024 [2025], Sugartown): Mainstream jazz quartet from Honolulu, Aaron Aranita (woodwinds, piano) wrote five songs, David Yamasaki (guitar) two more (one reprised), Scott Shafer (drums) two, Ernie Provender (bass) one). B [cd]

Muriel Grossmann: The Light of the Mind (2024, RR Gems): Saxophonist, mostly tenor but plays them all, born in Paris, grew up in Vienna, wound up in Ibiza, 16th album since 2007, quartet with guitar, keyboards, and drums, strong whiff of Coltrane throughout. B+(***) [sp]

Tim Heidecker: Slipping Away (2024, Bloodshot): Folkie singer-songwriter, albums go back to 2000, has a rep for comedy. B [sp]

Eugenie Jones: Eugenie (2024 [2025], Open Mic): Jazz singer, fourth album since 2013, writes about half of her material, with covers like "Natural Woman," "Work Song," "Trouble Man," and "It Don't Mean a Thing." B+(**) [cd]

Justice: Hyperdrama (2024, Ed Banger/Because Music): French electronica duo, Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspare Augé, fourth studio album since 2007, they also have three live albums, six EPs, singles back to 2004. Grammy seems to like them. B [sp]

Jerry Kalaf: Safe Travels (2024, self-released): Drummer, composed this for piano-bass-drums trio plus string quartet (two violins, viola, cello), which gives it classical airs I rarely enjoy. Tolerable enough. B [cd]

Kehlani: Crash (2024, Atlantic): R&B singer-songwriter, last name Parrish, fourth studio album since 2017, along with as many mixtapes. B+(**) [sp]

b>Kehlani: While We Wait 2 (2024, Atlantic): Mixtape, came out a couple months after the studio album Crash, title refers back to a 2019 mixtape. I can't tell much difference. B+(**) [sp]

Khruangbin: A La Sala (2024, Dead Oceans): Psych-surf-dub-funk instrumental rock band, started at St. John's Methodist Church in Houston, name is the Thai word for airplane, first album 2015, after an album with Vieux Farka Touré and two EPs backing Leon Bridges, back on their own, and not totally vocal-free. B+(**) [sp]

Ravyn Lenae: Bird's Eye (2024, Atlantic): R&B singer-songwriter from Chicago, dropped last name Washington, second album after a couple EPs, has a nice groove it but never jumps out of it. B+(**) [sp]

Los Campesinos!: All Hell (2024, Heart Swells): Indie rock band from Wales, name from Spanish translates as "the peasants," released five albums 2008-13, only their second album since. B+(*) [sp]

Nobro: Set Your Pussy Free (2023, Dine Alone): Girl-punk band from Montreal, founded and led by bassist-singer Kathryn McCaughey, first studio album after EPs going back to 2016. Same attitude/vibe as the earlier EPs, but the songs hold up better. A- [sp]

Nobro: Live Your Truth Shred Some Gnar (2021 [2022], Dine Alone): Seven track EP, 20:43, at least on Spotify. Discogs shows 5 releases, all with 11 songs (31:47), most LPs with the title EP on the first side, and the 2020 EP Sick Hustle on the other. B+(**) [sp]

Nobro: Sick Hustle (2020, Dine Alone, EP): Four songs, 11:04. B+(*) [sp]

NxWorries: Why Lawd? (2024, Stones Throw): Duo of rapper Anderson .Paak and producer Knxwledge, released an album in 2016, Yes Lawd!, followed by remixes, and now this second album. B+(***) [sp]

Noel Okimoto: Hō'ihi (2024 [2025], Noel Okimoto Music): Drummer, from Hawaii, title translates to "respect, reverance," leads an octet with trumpet and sax, but neither as prominent as the vibes. B [cd]

Pearl Jam: Dark Matter (2024, Republic): Grunge rock band from Seattle, went multi-platinum with their debut in 1991, I've always credited grunge and gangsta with my turn away from rock/pop in the 1990s toward jazz/roots, and it's safe to say I've never had the slightest interest in this band. (Disliking Nirvana, as I did, at least took some will power.) This one I only bothered with once it hit the top of my unheard metacritic list, and I doubt I'll give it a second spin, but as background goes, I've enjoyed virtually every moment of this one, which I'm pretty sure has never happened before. B+(**) [sp]

Benjie Porecki: All That Matters (2024 [2025], Funklove Productions): Pianist, also plays organ, hype sheet says he has many previous sessions but this is first in my database. Trio with bass and drums. Six originals, four covers (notably Hampton Hawes, and organ for Sam Cooke). Nice album. B+(**) [cd]

Shellac: To All Trains (2017-22 [2024], Touch and Go): Noise rock band founded by Steve Albini (guitar, formerly of Big Black, but better known as a producer), Bob Weston (bass), and Todd Trainer (drums), all credited with vocals, debut album 1994. Sixth studio album, first in a decade, the last sessions recorded shortly before Albini's death. Short (10 songs, 28:13), which is probably just as well. B+(*) [sp]

Jae Sinnett: The Blur the Lines Project (2024 [2025], J-Nett Music): Drummer, I had him filed under vocals but just one here, has a dozen-plus albums back to 1986, runs a fairly hot fusion quintet with Ada Rovatti (tenor sax) and Allen Farnham (keybs), jacking up oldies from Edgar Winter, Steppenwolf, and Led Zeppelin. B+(*) [cd]

Steve Smith and Vital Information: New Perspective (2024 [2025], Drum Legacy): Drummer, fusion group, been around a long time, trio with keyboards (Manuel Valera) and bass (Janek Gwizdala). Fusion, two plays leaving little impression. B [cd]

Dave Stryker: Stryker With Strings Goes to the Movies (2024 [2025], Strikezone): Guitarist, originally from Omaha, came up in soul jazz groups (Jack McDuff, Stanley Turrentine), had a long-running group co-led by Steve Slagle, has been releasing a new album every January for as long as I can remember. This one is different, with a string orchestra arranged and conducted by Brent Wallarab, includes some horns (especially trombones), with the occasional guest soloist. Eleven movie themes. I swear I don't automatically hate every album with strings, but this is a good example of why I enjoy so few. B- [cd]

Rose Tang & Patrick Golden: A White Horse Is Not a Horse (2024, ESP-Disk'): Tang, who "plays in about 30 bands and ensembles in New York and Seattle," wrote the lyrics, and plays guitar, keyboards, and small percussion, improvising with Golden on drums. Earlier in life, she was a "prize-winning journalist," who had studied in China and Australia, and was dubbed by one "high school politics (Maoist/Marxist) teacher" as "Wild Horse Running off the Reins." Motto: "Learn through play. Play by ear. Fuck the rest." Impressive, even on piano, but miffed me a bit when the words lost coherence and the singer tried to compensate with volume. B+(***) [cd]

Leon Thomas: Mutt (2024, EZMNY/Motown): Second album, first singles (2012) released as Leon Thomas III, doesn't seem to be related to the jazz singer (1937-99), although the dates (III was b. 1993) aren't impossible. B+(**) [sp]

Richard Thompson: Ship to Shore (2024, New West): English folk singer-songwriter, goes way back, starting in the 1960s with Fairport Convention. B+(**) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

None.

Old music:

Louis Armstrong: Satchmo Sings (1955, Decca): Credited as "with Orchestra," musicians unnamed. Brunswick, in 1961, reordered and cycled this as Sincerely Satchmo: Louis Armstrong Sings Standards, citing Sonny Burke, Sy Oliver, and The Commanders. Recording dates could be earlier, with this LP cobbled together from singles. Sounds like standards now, but Armstrong wrote one ("Someday You'll Be Sorry") and most of the others were relatively recent ("I Wonder," "Pledging My Love," "Your Cheating Heart," "Sincerely," "The Gypsy"). I tend to think of his later sessions with Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington as where he matured as a singer, but he was clearly ready here. A- [sp]

Louis Armstrong: Louis and the Angels (1957 [2001], Verve): In the mid-1950s, Armstrong recorded several key albums for Columbia, and in 1957 he recorded at least three albums for Verve -- collected as Pops Is Tops: The Verve Studio Albums and More -- but he doesn't seem to have been done with Decca, his main label for the 1930s and 1940s. Adding to the confusion is that Verve reissued this and a couple more late Decca albums. Ten (of 12) songs here either have "angel" or "heaven" in the title, and the others drop in a lyric. Sy Oliver produced, heavy on the strings and chorus. B- [sp]

Louis Armstrong: Satchmo Plays King Oliver (1959 [1960], Audio Fidelity): He got his start with Oliver in 1923, and followed him from New Orleans to Chicago, quickly outshining his mentor. A big part of the idea here seems to be to revive the old songs in state-of-the-art stereo -- at a time when reproductions of the originals were decidedly scratchy (they have since much improved) -- but the intervening decades have taken a bit of lustre off the music, while Armstrong has developed into a more skilled singer. Twelve songs, backed by "his Orch." (per the label; cover just has the title and a pic of star with trumpet, not cornet). They were his All-Stars at the time: Peanuts Hucko (clarinet), Trummy Young (trombone), Billy Kyle (piano), Mort Herbert (bass), and Danny Barcelona (drums). They were well schooled in this music, but not all that excited. [PS: Discogs lists a number of reissues of this album under various titles, including: Ain't Gonna Give Nobody None of My Jelly Roll (1964, Audio Fidelity); The Best of Louis Armstrong (1964 & 1970, Audio Fidelity; 1970, Camden, Bellaphon, Musidisc; 1993, Exit); Louis Armstrong and the All-Stars (1967, Concert Hall); With Love From . . . (1974, Capri); Louis Armstrong (1980, Impacto); Los Grandes Del Jazz 68 (1981, Sarpe); I Giganti Del Jazz Vol. 68 (1982, Curcio); plus a few more, undated. These are all literal reissues, but there is also an expanded edition, below.] B+(***) [r]

Louis Armstrong & the All-Stars: Satchmo Plays King Oliver (1959 [2000], Fuel 2000/Varèse Sarabande): A CD reissue of the 1960 LP, with a new cover, more credit for the band, and two extra songs, plus eight alternate takes, arrayed inline so you hear most songs twice before moving on. I never cared for that arrangement, and while it seems fairly harmless here, that one scarcely notices it suggests that the original music wasn't all that riveting. [PS: In 2018, Essential Jazz came out with The Complete Satchmo Plays King Oliver, which moved the alternate takes to a second CD, added various 1955-57 tracks of relevant material to the 76:29 "Master Takes" disc, and more 1926-50 tracks to "The Alternate Takes."] B+(**) [sp]

Louis Armstrong/Dukes of Dixieland: Louie and the Dukes of Dixieland (1960, Audio Fidelity): The Dukes were a New Orleans trad jazz band founded by Frank and Fred Assunto in 1948, up to 1974 when another group claimed the name. It's a bit shocking to note that as late as 1957 they recorded an album called Minstrel Time (but the cover shows no evidence of blackface, and I'm more bothered by the Confederate flag on the cover of their 1967 album, On Parade). I don't doubt that they were delighted to have Armstrong join them here, but they made few if any concessions in the song list, which not only includes "South" and "Dixie" but also "Washington and Lee Swing." Armstrong is most in control on the slow "Just a Closer Walk With Thee." [PS: This album was reissued as Louis Armstrong: Yeah! (1965, Fontana).] B [r]

Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington: The Great Summit: Complete Sessions (1961 [2000], Roulette, 2CD): I've long been confused on this release, probably because the title of my 1990 single CD is The Complete Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington Sessions, which has exactly the same 17 songs that were reissued in 2000 as The Great Summit: The Master Takes. Those 17 tracks were originally issued on two LPs: Recording Together for the First Time (1961, same artwork but different title as my CD) and The Great Reunion (1963). Ellington wrote (or co-wrote) the songs, and plays piano, but not orchestra: the rest of the band is Armstrong's combo, aside from clarinetist Barney Bigard, who did considerable work with both leaders (but not recently). The band works perfectly: Duke keeps them swinging, while the others support but don't crowd Armstrong, who has never sounded so cool. The first disc always has been a rock solid A. The second, titled "The Making of the Great Summit," goes beyond "complete" with nine alternate takes and a 1:09 "Band Discussion on Cottontail." The music is at best redundant, but the false starts and blown notes are annoying, and the disc as a whole is worthless. Only question is how much to devalue this given that you're unlikely ever to give the second disc a second spin. B+(**) [sp]

Louis Armstrong: Let's Do It: Best of the Verve Years (1957-65 [1995], Verve, 2CD): An entry in Verve's Take 2 series of 2-CD compilations, a mixed bag series which picked up many of Verve's major 1950s artists, sometimes reissuing larger albums (like The Audience With Betty Carter), or combining 3-LPs on 2-CD (e.g., two Ben Webster sets, Music for Loving and Soul of Ben Webster), or sometimes compiling pieces from scattered LPs (like here). Armstrong didn't record a lot for Verve, and only the first duets with Ella Fitzgerald really panned out. They get a fair amount of space here, along with his lesser 1957 albums, and a couple of much later tracks (originally released on Fontana and Mercury). B+(*) [r]

Louis Armstrong: Disney Songs the Satchmo Way (1968 [1996], Walt Disney): Ten songs from Disney entertainments, a minor addition to the his song book efforts, done with a light touch and good humor, which is all you can hope for. Disney's own Tutti Camarata produced, with Maxwell Davies arranging, the strings mostly kept in check. Originally released in 1968 on Buena Vista. CD has new artwork, but no extra music. B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Loves Cole: New Interpretations by Ella Fitzgerald of the Great Cole Porter Songs (1972, Atlantic): With her interlude at Capitol dead-ended, and Pablo not yet open for business, Granz produced this back-to-basics project, reuniting her with Nelson Riddle to recycle 13 songs from the first of her great Song Books. Unavailable as such on streaming, as Granz repossessed it in 1978 and reissued it as Dream Dancing. B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Dream Dancing: Ella Fitzgerald & Cole Porter (1972-78 [1978], Pablo): Here Granz reclaims and recycles 1972's Ella Loves Cole, adding two newly recorded songs -- "Dream Dancing" and "After You, Who?" -- with Nelson Riddle arranging and conducting. While the new cuts don't add much, let's give this package a slight edge. But in both cases, the combination of singer, songwriter, and orchestra is a comforting delight. A- [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald/Joe Pass: Take Love Easy (1973 [1974], Pablo): Pass (1929-94, name shortened from Passalaqua), was a guitarist from New Jersey, started recording for Pacific Jazz in 1962, in Gerald Wilson's big band and small soul jazz groups (Richard Holmes, Les McCann) and cool (Bud Shank), but he quite literally came into his own when Norman Granz signed him to Pablo in 1973 and had him record a solo album, revealing enough to be called Virtuoso. Granz recorded him often -- Wikipedia credits him with 50 Pablo albums -- including this first duo with Fitzgerald. My first reaction here is that they take it way too easy, but after a career of dazzling us with speed, she amazes with how slow she can go without stalling. Pass takes it even easier, but adds just enough they return for more albums. B+(**) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: "Fine and Mellow" (1974 [1979], Pablo): Subtitle is Ella Fitzgerald Jams with a long list of named stars: Harry Edison and Clark Terry (trumpet), Zoot Sims and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis (tenor sax), Joe Pass (guitar), Tommy Flanagan (piano), Ray Brown (bass), and Louie Bellson (drums). Lots of good things here, including a stretch where Terry slings even more scat than Ella. B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Fitzgerald at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1975 [1975 [1993], Pablo/OJC): With his new label, Granz seemed to be in a hurry to fill out the catalog, and the venue was famous enough to justify a live set. Nine songs, starting with "Caravan" and "Satin Doll," peaking with "It's All Right With Me," closing with "The Girl From Ipanema" and "T'aint Nobody's Bizness If I Do." Backed by Tommy Flanagan, Keter Betts, and Bobby Durham -- their names added to the 1993 CD cover. B+(***) [r]

Ella Fitzgerald/Joe Pass: Fitzgerald and Pass . . . Again (1976, Pablo): Fourteen more standards, sung expertly, with solo guitar accompaniment, artful but demure enough one can be excused for missing much of it. B+(*) [r]

Ella Fitzgerald With the Tommy Flanagan Trio: Montreux '77 (1977 [1989], Pablo/OJC): Different songs from 1975, but same group, with Keter Betts (bass) and Bobby Durham (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Ella: Lady Time (1978, Pablo): Cover just has her first name, an understated minimalism reflected in the band: just organ (Jackie Davis) and drums (Louie Bellson). Standards, most songs she's done before (like "Mack the Knife") although the Fats Domino opener is one I don't recall hearing before. B+(***) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Ludovica Bertone: Migration Tales (Endectomorph Music) [04-18]
• Frank Carlberg: Dream Machine (Red Piano) [02-21]
• Daniel Garbin: Rising (6x20) [03-10]
• Rodney Jordan: Memphis Blue (Baxter Music) [03-14]
• Steve Lehman Trio + Mark Turner: The Music of Anthony Braxton (Pi) [02-28]
• Tobias Meinhart: Sonic River (Sonic River) [04-18]
• Patricio Morales: La Tierra Canta (Northsound) [04-01]
• Isabelle Olivier: Impressions (Rewound Echoes) [03-21]
• Mitch Towne: Refuge (Cross Towne) [04-04]
• Simón Willson: Bet: Live at Ornithology (Endectomorph Music) [02-28]
• Jeong Lim Yang: Synchronicity (Sunnyside) [01-31]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, February 17, 2025

February archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 43700 [43642) rated (+58), 44 [30] unrated (+14).

When I left you two weeks ago, I vowed to do nothing else until I resolved my server problem. I wrote about it at some length then, and if you're really curious, you can follow the whole saga in gory detail through my server notes file. I still seemed to be nowhere near finding a solution last Monday, nor had I written much the previous week, so it was easy to scratch any thought of Music Week last week. By then I had sent out an initial round of letters, which generally got fast but not very satisfying responses. Last Monday I found myself again searching for more vendors -- especially ones offering DirectAdmin as an alternative to cPanel, as the latter appears to be a company one is best off not depending on. But I found a few positive reviews of a company that was still offering cPanel at reasonable prices, so I also dashed off a letter to Shock Hosting. While their prices seemed to be too good to be true, their reputation appeared solid, and I liked their reply: it got quickly to the important points, didn't get distracted with by details, and exuded confidence, especially on the thorny email problem. I slept on it, and woke up thinking it might be the best answer. In particular, I could hope that they could handle the migration quickly and expertly.

So I made sure I had my backups in order, signed up, and put them to work. After a few hours, they had moved five accounts, and were ready to serve web pages. That left me with the task of redirecting DNS to the new server, which I finally managed after some initial bungling. Also with shutting down the old server, and keeping them from billing me for another month, a task which was excessively fraught as they had made themselves virtually incommunicado of late: phone calls went to answering machine or simply rang endlessly; email to every known address that had worked previously bounced; a contact form on their still-running (but obviously dated) website accepting input but in no way acknowledging it. As the bill was scheduled for the day after I moved, I prepared to challenge the charges, but my card wasn't billed, so a sigh of relief there.

DNS normally takes 24-48 hours to propagate, so I took that as a sign to relax. When I did finally check later that evening, I was going to the new server, and getting web pages as expected. I notified all of the people I host websites for, and didn't get any alarms back. I had previously set up a second email address to collect the torrent of mail the old server's WHM put out. I deleted several thousand messages from the old server, but got nothing to replace them. I did test that the email addresses are working. But I let my service ticket expire without getting to the bottom of where the new server is sending notices. Most likely it is to a local mailbox. If so, they're waiting for me. If not, it's nice to know I have a vendor with a working support ticket system.

So so far, so good. I've logged in to the new WHM, and started taking notes on how it works, what's new, and what's no longer available (hopefully, just a lot of security headaches, as much of that is now buried underneath a layer of Cloud Linux). More thorough testing is in order -- among other things, there is always a good chance that running on a newer operating system will break old code (and yes, I'm looking at you, PHP) -- so if you do run across anything amiss, please let me know.

I still have some cleanup to do on the server planning files, although it would be easier just to declare them done and walk away leaving all the loose ends that way. In theory, they may help someone else navigate those waters. More likely, some AI robot will suck them up and blow a fuse. But for personal use, the planning files were useful as a means of organizing and sorting a fairly large amount of research.

My spreadsheet was much less useful, and given that most of my time was spent on the learning curve, much more frustrating. What I wanted was a somewhat simpler tool, which would allow me to construct a table with all the data, then limit my view to side-by-side comparison of selected columns. Experts will probably tell me that spreadsheets can do exactly that, and that my inability to do so was pure ignorance, and possibly stubbornness, on my part. While admitting the charges, I'd still counter that the UI sucks, then perhaps cite my authority in designing ones that don't suck.

Still, I have some more projects where a spreadsheet might be useful, so I'll admit to learning a few things that might come in handy. I'll also be moving on to more planning files, as I try to figure out what to do, and how to do it, before the political apocalypse hits me personally. The big one is where to focus my writing: too big to start here, or even speculate about. Others will cover more mundane topics, like how the music and books are organized around the house, and a few will involve shopping. One relatively easy one there is specing out a new computer for my wife: her old one is 6+ years old, and while the main complaint right now is a noisy CPU fan, it should be easy to do better. The more daunting one is buying a new car: that old one has 18 years on it, and something mysterious wrong with it (but it does have a CD player, which doesn't seem to be a thing these days).

The one file I already have opened is called Subscriptions. After Robert Christgau made his move to Bluesky, I figured I should follow suit, if only just to keep track of things. So when I finally had a bit of free time last week, I made my move and set up an account. My understanding at this point is very rudimentary, hence the planning file.

One reason practically no one knows about my Bluesky account is that I've been "permanently blocked" from Facebook, with my account scheduled for demolition. I wrote a bit about this in the Subscriptions file, so I won't repeat that here, other than to reiterate that I'm so disgusted with them I don't have any present intention of coming back. That said, don't think that I won't miss Clifford Ocheltree, among a few others. Maybe I'll sign up for a few Substacks. Maybe I'll create one of my own.

I spent most of the first week just listening to oldies, which definitely included Louis Armstrong's 16 Most Requested Songs. That got me thinking about Christgau's review of Ella & Louis, so I wrote a fairly long bit on that below. I don't own this particular edition, but I own and/or can stream all of it (and then some). I also noticed that I never reviewed What a Wonderful World, and that led me to consider a few more gaps in my Ella Fitzgerald. There, the obvious gap was that while I had long ago given The Complete Ella Fitzgerald Song Books a curt A-, I hadn't broken out the constituent sets -- all of which had been released as separate CDs, many with secondary "Best Ofs." I own the box, but haven't played in ages, so that seemed like something pleasant I could do while sweating over server details. That, of course, led to more missed albums (with more of the Pablos yet to come). I'm rather surprised at how much I wound up writing. Perhaps there is a lesson there for the future?

Last couple days I picked up a couple new-ish albums from Christgau's February Consumer Guide, just to avoid coming up empty in those slots. Meanwhile, the new jazz demo queue is growing. I'll tend to it when I open up some desk space, but right now I'm in no hurry. Since the election, I've buried myself first in the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll, and then in the server shopping. It's cold and miserable outside, and at 74 it's bothering me like never before. I've let lots of everyday things fall to the wayside. I'm finally getting a breather, and don't feel guilty about taking it a bit easy for a while. Especially as I can see the next big thing coming: I'm scheduled for cataract surgery on the 27th, with the other eye a month or so later. Most people I know got good results that way, but I'm a worrier and expect it to be a lot of trouble before it gets better. We'll see about that, but I don't want to take much on until we do.

As for the rest of the world, I realize that ignoring it won't make any difference, but paying close attention and speaking as loud and clear as I could didn't do much good either. Today I got a letter from a hitherto unknown reader:

You railed about Trump and the GOP forever and now with things spinning out of control on a daily basis you have nothing to say. I'm sure you have something to say??

I'm going to treat this as part of my Q&A and try to come up with a more thoughtful answer, but sure, I have things to say. While I've made very little effort to follow the news, and especially to let myself get involved in subjects like Democratic political strategy, I can't live in the same house as my wife and stay unaware of what's happening. And while I'm tempted to just point back to my post-election essay and add a heaping of "I told you so," some things I posited as possibilities then have evaporated, while I didn't anticipate a few things that have happened, or at least marginally shifted beyond my expectations. At some point I'll look into things like this and that more closely. But I'm also painfully aware that whatever I do come up with go nowhere and amount to nothing, at least as long as I'm operating the way I have the last few years.

I'm not oblivious to the fact that there are people, some known and others unknown, who appreciate my writing. I'm just trying to figure out what path makes the most sense for me at this particular time. I can't go into that here, but will write more about it in the near future. What I can do here is leave you with three thoughts:

1. The more radical Trumpism becomes, the harder it's going to break up, because it is based on fundamentally unsound precepts, both about power and people.

2. Opposition to Trumpism is going to be generated from among the people directly affected by it -- which for one thing means not by people like me -- and its form is yet to be determined.

3. When Trumpism ultimately fails, we are going to need to replace it with better ideas as well as morals, so perhaps those of us who cannot fight but can still think would be more useful doing the latter.

I'm not unaware of or insensitive to the very real damage that Trump and Musk -- and it's probably good tactics to treat them as inseparable, with Musk by far the dominant personality -- are doing and will continue to do until they're stopped. I'm also no less opposed to genocide than I've been since I first used the word on October 9, 2023. But as I noted in my post-election piece, the Trump election definitively quashes the notion, which persisted very faintly as long as Biden was president, that anyone involved might develop a bit of conscience and stop the killing short of complete destruction.

One thing I put great emphasis on in my assessment of how bad a Trump election would be is opportunity costs. Trump's election ensure that the US will do nothing to address the very real problems that Democrats spent way too much time pretending to have finessed for at least the next four years -- plus whatever extra time it takes to undo what they do manage to do. Given the speed with which they are wrecking things, I may have underestimated those opportunity costs. One more thing that I likely underestimated was the extent to which Trumpist power is going to brutalize everyone, even those who resist it. Genocide in Gaza is not just a tragedy befallen a mostly helpless people, but a monument to the notion of "might makes right," which will encourage its use elsewhere, while numbing our response. As proverbs attest, such brutality is almost certain to return to haunt us.

Minor tech note: Long boxes look out of place in my album covers totem pole, I had two of them this week, and dealt with them inconsistently. I skipped Louis Armstrong's The Complete Hot Five and Seven Recordings, and went with the very similar (but properly cropped) The Best Of cover. However, for The Brill Building Sound, I went with a scan of Disc 1 instead of the whole long box (which could have been cropped to something very similar -- you'll have trouble making out the volume number, anyway).

Don't expect much from me in coming weeks. I have much else to do, and limited time and abilities. One thing I will promise to make an effort at is to respond to my questions. I have two in the queue now, and hope to field more.

New records reviewed this week:

Kasey Chambers: Backbone (2024, Metropolitan Groove Merchants/Essence Music Group): Singer-songwriter from Australia, 1999 debut was a pretty credible country album, released an album every 2-3 years up to 2018, then a gap until this one. She's still credible in country, except for the live closer, where she's a rock star. B+(**) [sp]

Jax: Dear Joe, (2024, Atlantic): Singer-songwriter Jacqueline Miskanic, or Gregg since she got married, first album after nearly a decade of singles, in a career that includes American Idol and thyroid cancer and a RIAA Gold hit that probably got this released, but not pressed. Christgau describes this as "utterly original," but didn't review it until after the Dean's List deadline, possibly because it got zero tracked reviews (but AOTY has 573 user ratings, but the User Score is 11, which raises more questions than it answers -- I can't recall ever having seen a rating that low). First play just annoyed me until the song "Zombieland" got my attention. Two (maybe three) more songs could register as pop, which got this a much needed second play -- much of the album is barely sketched out, easily obscured by outbursts of anthemizing. That's all I can afford, or perhaps stand, at the moment, but enough bits signify to make wonder if this might not just be smart ("spicy is better than bland") but prophetic ("we'll be laughin' when the Walmarts hit the fan"). A- [sp]

Ella Langley: Hungover (2024, Sawgod/Columbia): Country singer-songwriter from Alabama, first album after a 2023 EP. Heavy on the drinking songs, but "Nicotine" too. [Later reissued with five extra tracks I haven't heard, as Still Hungover.] B+(**) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Amadou & Mariam: La Vie Est Belle (1998-2022 [2024], Because Music): Duo from Mali, Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia, 1989 debut translates as The Blind Couple of Mali. Dates are iffy here: this draws on six 2004-17 albums on Because Music (including Remixes), while reviews suggest a start date of 1998 (their first European album), and mention that the last cut was a single from 2022, although "Mogolu" appears to be new here, if not necessarily a new song. Not sure this improves on their better albums, but the beats -- even the remix ones -- eventually won me over. A- [sp]

Old music:

Amadou & Mariam: La Confusion (2017, Because Music): The famed "blind couple of Mali," met in the 1970s, started recording in the 1980s, moved to Paris in 1996, where they were signed by EmArcy, breakthrough was Dimanche à Bamako (2004), their first on this label. Not counting Remixes, this is their fourth -- and not counting the 2024 compilation, their most recent. I don't have the patience to fully sort this out, but so far it's not clear this doesn't rank with their better albums. B+(***) [sp]

Louis Armstrong: What a Wonderful World (1967 [1988], MCA): With all the Armstrong I've heard -- 61 albums, a dozen or more multiple CDs -- I was surprised to find I had missed this item, released in Europe and Canada in 1968 but evidently not in the US until the CD era, to cash in on the last and probably the best remembered of his iconic 1960s pop hits. Bob Thiele claims six song credits (mostly with George Weiss), and he produced, laying the schmaltz on so thick that only the unique and still masterful Armstrong can cut through it. Several more gems here -- "Cabaret" you must know, "Dream a Little Dream of Me" you really should; "The Home Fire" and "Give Me Your Kisses" and "I Guess I'll Get the Papers and Go Home," too. He proved his genius in the 1920s, and spread it far and wide in the 1950s. In his waning days, all he needs is an occasional flicker to remind us he's incomparable. A- [r]

Louis Armstrong: Rhythm Saved the World [The Original Decca Recordings: Volume 1] (1935-36 [1991], MCA): You know him: trumpet player from New Orleans, started out with King Oliver and almost immediately eclipsed him, joined Fletcher Henderson to invent big band jazz -- in a group that also, and for much longer, featured Coleman Hawkins -- moving on to his landmark Hot Five and Hot Seven groups, not to mention backing some of the most brilliant singers of the 1920s, and becoming one himself, and by the time he turned 30, he was leading and starting in his own big band. Still, his records in the 1930s rarely matched expectations: the band never really challenged the star, and the label threw pretty much anything at him -- "La Cucaracha," "Red Sails in the Sunset," "Old Man Mose," "Solitude," "Shoe Shine Boy," "The Music Goes Round and Round," "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket" -- hoping something would hit. Indeed, some things do. B+(***) [sp]

Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra: Heart Full of Rhythm [The Original Decca Recordings: Volume 2] (1936-38 [1993], MCA): His Orchestra gets cover credit, but the really hot stretch from 8-10, including a "Swing That Music" that really does, put Armstrong in front of Jimmy Dorsey's Orchestra. Armstrong's own crew seem less distinguished, with Luis Russell (piano) and Paul Barbarin (drums) the only names I recognize -- at least until J.C. Higginbotham shows up with his trombone, and is joined for "Struttin' With Some Barbecue" by Albert Nicholas, Wilbur de Paris, and Red Allen. A- [sp]

Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra: Vol. III: Pocketful of Dreams (1935-38 [1995], Decca Jazz): They switched up the title here, but this is all 1938 except for two takes of "Got a Bran' New Suit" from 1935 tacked onto the end, with several unreleased tracks -- mostly alternate takes -- slipped in. The beefed up band opens strong, but they thin out after 8 tracks, and Higginbotham and Russell depart after 16, but Armstrong is such a delight they're hardly missed. A- [sp]

Louis Armstrong: The Complete Town Hall Concert 1947 (1947 [2004], Fresh Sound): Released on 2-LP in the RCA Tribune series in 1983, copied to 2-CD a few years later (1992), all 21 tracks fit comfortably on a single CD (78:56). The set opened with Dick Cary (piano), Bob Haggart (bass), and Sid Catlett (drums), joined six tracks in by Peanuts Hucko (clarinet/tenor sax), Bobby Hackett (trumpet), and Jack Teagarden (trombone, a couple vocals plus his bit in "Rockin' Chair"), with drum relief from George Wettling (the encore?). This set the template for his later live albums, but you get an extra helping of old New Orleans classics. Not ideal sound. [NB: Napster fucked up and skipped every other song, so I had to play this twice to get everything. Christgau says this "is the Armstrong I play when I want the whole package." For that, I advise any of the four discs from The California Concerts, which offer peak performances -- the first from when "All Stars" meant Earl Hines and Barney Bigard; the last from when he had fully worked out his schtick with Velma Middleton -- although the "whole package" kept evolving up through the more subdued (and poignant) Louis in London in 1968.] A- [r]

Louis Armstrong: The Best Live Concert (1965 [1976], Disques Festival): Live set in Paris, with Armstrong coming off his big pop hit "Hello Dolly" -- the set list also includes "Cabaret," which he released as a single later, and "Mack the Knife," his biggest chart hit of the previous decade, as well as a broad selection of his standards, and a couple tunes I don't recall elsewhere ("Volare," "I Left My Heart in San Francisco"). Band is his standard hot five, but only Billy Kyle remains from even the later editions of the All Stars, and Jewell Brown won't make you forget Velma Middleton. Still comes close to justifying the hyperbolic title. [Later reissued on two separate CDs, even though it would fit on one. Seems like only a matter of time and copyright law before this gets resurrected on a single CD, like Fresh Sound did for Town Hall 1947.] A- [sp]

Louis Armstrong: The Best Live Concert Vol. 1 [Jazz in Paris] (1965 [2000], Gitanes Jazz/EmArcy): First half, 11 tracks, 39:32, I give it a slight edge, but dock it for being incomplete. B+(***) [sp]

Louis Armstrong: The Best Live Concert Vol. 2 [Jazz in Paris] (1965 [2000], Gitanes Jazz/EmArcy): Second half, 10 tracks, 39:07, a bit less exciting when the star takes his breaks, but those are part of the package; also docked for being incomplete. B+(***) [sp]

Louis Armstrong and Friends [Jazz in Paris] (1933-39 [2001], Gitanes Jazz/EmArcy): Everything here was recorded in Paris during the 1930s, but Armstrong is only present on the first seven tracks (1934), followed by other scattered sessions by long-forgotten bandleaders (Freddy Johnson, Arthur Briggs, Danny Polo) or singers (Greta Keller and Marlene Dietrich later made their way to greater fame in America, the latter more in movies). The Armstrong cuts are brilliant, but redundant to US recordings. The others are credible, especially on songs as catchy as "I Got Rhythm" and "Sweet Georgia Brown." B+(***) [sp]

Louis Armstrong: The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings (1925-30 [2000], Columbia/Legacy, 4CD): Discogs has the whole package scanned, so you can see the care that went into compiling "the most important recordings in the history of jazz." I didn't buy this when it came out, because I already had multiple copies of most of it: JSP's 4-CD Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, which improved on the sound quality of Legacy's first Armstrong releases (1989-93, starting with The Hot Fives and extending into the big bands of 1931, as well as the superb 4-CD selection of early Armstrong on Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1994): roughly speaking, it gives you the better half of this more focused set, mixed in with truly extraordinary highlights from earlier and slightly later -- including select cuts from his sessions with blues singers (and Jimmie Rodgers -- I also own Affinity's 6-CD box of The Complete Recordings of Louis Armstrong and the Blues Singers, which isn't all great but is valuable history). One pass through all 255 minutes here is no way to listen, especially with expectations so high that anything not instantly recognized is likely to seem a bit off. But I have no doubt that further listening would sustain the expected grade. [PS: The first three CDs have also been released separately, in 2003, as Vol. 1 through Vol. 3. I had them listed in my database with their 4-star Penguin Guide grades, so I rather arbitrarily assigned them minimal A- grades: aside from the covers, I have no idea what the packaging looks like, but it is almost certainly a downgrade from the box. Still, I wouldn't be surprised to upgrade any/all of them should I have the opportunity to give them more time. There is also a sampler. Given that Complete was released in long-box format, I'll use the sampler for the cover gallery.] A [sp]

Louis Armstrong: The Best of the Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings (1925-29, [2000], Columbia/Legacy): Sometimes the label would offer a cheap single-disc sampler to promote its more lavish box sets, and they did that here, with a generous 20 tracks (54:48), most stone cold classics -- even today "West End Blues" turned my head -- although they slipped in an alternate take to remind you that even as the copyrights have expired in Europe, they still have the originals. Mostly instrumentals, with only the first stirrings of the singer he would become. If, say, the only Armstrong you own is a later collection like 16 Most Requested Songs (1954-66 [1994], Columbia), you might look for this. [PS: I was going to offer Legacy's 2005 Jazz Moods: Hot as an alternative, as it draws from the same period, but the song count drops to 14, and the omissions include "West End Blues. On the other hand, it does deliver the hot.] A [sp]

Dingonek Street Band: Primal Economics (2018, Accurate): One-shot jazz band, led by trumpet player Bobby Spellman, who has a later nonet album under his own name, but all other credits since 2009 are group efforts. This group includes tenor sax (Greg Blair), baritone sax (Tyler Burchfield), soprano sax/clarinet (Emily Pecoraro), tuba (Josiah Reibstein, and drums (Buddy Bigboy). Touches of klezmer as well as New Orleans. B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong: Ella & Louis (1956-57 [2021], Ober Entertainment/20th Century Masterworks): In Europe, copyrights expire after a very generous 50 years, whereas in America they can be extended as long as Disney thinks they can make money by monopolizing Mickey Mouse (and as long as US pols are willing to take some of that money to extend the favor). The longer copyrights have done little to keep American music in print -- even something as obvious as the Armstrong box above (and much more) is out of print (well, in this case the bits are still available, just not the bobs) -- while creating obstacles for importers and, more important right now, streaming companies. I have mixed views on Europe's post-copyright compilations: on the one hand, it generates a lot of opportunistic, redundant, and often slipshod product, but it also makes it possible for devoted fans and serious producers and compilers to keep the history alive, and keep it available (at least somewhere, somehow), and the best sets (which include JSP's and Proper's boxes, Fresh Sound's 1950s jazz, the deep blues and country catalogs of Document and Bear Family, Allen Lowe's book supplements, and the recent "revisits" by Ezz-Thetics) are real treasures. This is all preface to this particular album, which I'm only listening to by proxy -- I can stream the song list, just not attached to this particular artwork -- and only bothering with because Christgau gave it an A+, and I know that carries some weight with my readers. Why he picked this particular product I have no idea: my guess is that he's grown increasingly sentimental over Armstrong of late -- he picked Live in London as his favorite album of 2024 -- and this is music he's always loved but never written about; then he somehow stumbled on this particular CD, saw it as something new he could write about, that has some added value. Two problems here: one is that you can't buy (or stream) this in the US (at least it's not on Amazon); the other has to do with the selection and sessions. One of Christgau's best lines was when he described Norman Granz's "get rich slow" schemes. One of the most fruitful ones was getting Ella Fitzgerald to sing nearly everything in "the great American songbook." Pairing her with Armstrong was a side-project (their sessions aren't included in The Complete Ella Fitzgerald Song Books -- the 16-CD box of 1956-64 studio sessions released in 1993) but it was perfectly in character. They recorded three albums (1956-57) together: Ella and Louis, Ella and Louis Again, and Porgy and Bess. The big revelation here was how adroitly Armstrong, who had a reputation for gravel-voiced crude comedy, adapted to such sophisticated fare, but he is every bit as note-perfect as Ella, and arguably even sexier. Their first album -- the first 11 songs here -- still feels a bit tentative, as if two consummate professionals (and their overthinking producer) were trying to find the fit. It was remarkable enough, but their reunion on More Ella & Louis far surpassed it, as both artists are less reserved, even willing to flirt a little. The CD helps itself to five fine songs from the second album, but any compilation that omits "Let's Do It," "They All Laughed," "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You," "I Won't Dance," "Our Love Is Here to Stay," and "A Fine Romance" is cheating you. By the way, the label here, Ober Entertainment, has been operating since 2020, making a specialty of picking up some famous album, then tacking on a few extra songs to create a bargain CD. The albums in their catalog are mostly obvious -- Monk's Music, Time Out, Mingus Ah Um, Concert by the Sea, At the Pershing, Jazz in Silhouette, and also a few non-jazz entries, like Moanin' in the Moonlight and Elvis Presley (the Dylan is renamed Debut Album) -- so any you pick up are likely to be enjoyed, but for me they mostly just muddy up the history. A- [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong: The Complete Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong on Verve (1956-57 [1997], Verve, 3CD): Useful if you want to put all your eggs in one basket, with the first disc giving you all of Ella & Louis plus five tracks from More Ella & Louis, the second completing the album -- it was originally a double-LP which also required 2-CD -- with space for two bonus live tracks. The third disc gives you Porgy & Bess, where the stars are backed by (up against?) Russell Garcia's Orchestra and the Judd Conlon Singers, with a 10:50 "Overture" delaying their entrance for a surprisingly unmemorable "Summertime" -- beyond which Gershwin has never seemed whiter -- at least until Armstrong gets a more congenial band toward the end. It's unlikely you'll ever play the third disc a second time, but the first two may be the best available configuration for this wonderful pairing. B+(***) [sp]

PS: This music has been endlessly repackaged. I also have ratings for:

• Best of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong on Verve (1957-57 [1997], Verve): A-
• Our Love Is Here to Stay: Ella and Louis Sing Gershwin (1956-59 [1998], Verve): B+
• For Lovers (1956-57 [2005], Verve): B

Fitzgerald has also sung a lot of Gershwin on her own. I gave The Complete Ella Fitzgerald Song Books (1956-64 [1993], Verve, 16CD) an A-, but didn't break out most of the component sets, which were also reissued on CD around then (based on earlier LPs, issued as they were recorded). The George and Ira Gershwin Songbook was released in 1998 on 4-CD, where all but 2 tracks on the 4th CD were alternate takes and remixes. There was an earlier Ella Sings Gershwin on Decca from 1950, with just Ellis Larkins on piano. This was reissued with some extra tracks from 1954 as Pure Ella, in 1994, and widely hailed, but I thought it "sounds thin and arch," and disposed of it with a B-.

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book (1956 [1997], Verve, 2CD): Her first two singles were in 1936, with Teddy Wilson, better known for his work with Billie Holiday (now mostly remembered as her work with him), but she rose to prominence with Chick Webb, and took over his Orchestra when he died in 1939. She recorded with Decca until 1956, when Norman Granz picked her up, with the idea of her remaking the "great American songbook," which starts here, with eight classic songs per side for the 2-LP, plus three alternate takes for the CD reissue. Granz only wanted "hints of jazz," so he entrusted the music to Buddy Bregman, who added "rudimental strings" to a disciplined near-big band. Many fabulous songs, which she nails perfectly. The band never gets carried away, and the strings rarely help -- probably just what Granz wanted. [PS: I'm listening to the 1993 box set, but the component albums were later released separately, so I'll go with those release dates.] A- [cd]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Song Book (1956 [1997], Verve, 2CD): Recorded a few months later, another batch of prime show tunes, although fewer I recognize as brilliant or at least clever. Buddy Bregman returns with orchestra, probably the same musicians but leaning a bit harder on the strings. This works fine when the songs are so good the arrangements hardly matter. The vocals are impeccable. B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald With Duke Ellington and His Orchestra: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book (1957 [1999], Verve, 3CD): Next in sequence, I reviewed this back in 2020, so as a placeholder I'll just recycle that review (with a couple minor edits): Key thing here is the band: Ellington and His Orchestra. They got co-credit on the original 1957 4-LP set, before "songbook" became a single word and a Fitzgerald trademark. She is, of course, miles ahead of any singer Ellington ever hired, adding import and sass to lyrics that were often just an afterthought -- but that may be because the band never really needed them. Two real solid CDs here, although I like some of their later live recordings, where she is less inhibited by Granz's songbook concept, even more. Third disc bogs down a lot, and not just the alternate takes and chatter (but you never have to play it). B+(**) [cd]

PS: Also previously rated:

• Day Dream: Best of the Duke Ellington Songbook (1956-57 [1995], Verve): B+ [cd]
• Ella Fitzgerald: The Very Best of the Duke Ellington Song Book (1956-57 [2007], Verve): B+(***) [r]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Song Book (1958 [2000], Verve, 2CD): Back to formula here, this time with Paul Weston arranging and conducting, some of the same musicians but less notable and more strings (except on items like "Alexander's Ragtime Band," where they would be ridiculous). The formula seems designed to raise the singer's respectability -- something she took pains to demolish on her best live recordings -- the net effect of all this professionalism is to focus attention on the songwriters. This one excels because Berlin not only wrote great songs you all know, but more great songs you don't, so Ella can go 32 deep with him and never hint at scraping the barrel (although a couple sink under the arrangements). You may also discover that he can be as witty as Porter (e.g., "Tropical Heatwave"). A- [cd]

PS: There's also a live version, recorded a couple weeks later but unreleased until 2022:

• Ella Fitzgerald: Ella at the Hollywood Bowl (1958 [2022], Verve): B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Books (1959 [1998], Verve, 4CD): Nelson Riddle arranged and conducted, with a big band that included several stars (Benny Carter, Pete Candoli, Plas Johnson, Herb Ellis or Barney Kessel, Lou Levy or Paul Smith) plus a large string section. The first 1959 LP was Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Gershwin Song Book "recorded under the supervision of Norman Granz," which was quickly followed by Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book "music arranged and conducted by Nelson Riddle," but by the end of 1959 (and again in 1964) the whole set was reissued on 5-LP with Book changed to Books. It appeared on 3-CD in 1987 (back to singular Book), even before the 1993 box, which packages it as a box-inside-the-box, including its own miniature book and a packet of supplementary artwork. That's the edition I'm listening to, although the post-box separate release in 1997 tacked on a 4th CD of alternate takes and remixes (probably best ignored). Some great songs, of course, though not as consistent as the Berlin or Porter. [PS: I listened to disc 4 on Spotify. It's functionally a very listenable sampler, maybe even a bit better than the others, as the repeats tend to focus on the better songs.] B+(***) [cd]

Ella Fitzgerald: The Very Best of the Gershwin Song Book (1959 [2007], Verve): A tight 12-song, 44:50 sampler. While there are more string-laden ballads than I would have picked, even they are done with impeccable taste -- you can count on Nelson Riddle for that much, and Ella is superb, even breaking out a bit of scat on "I Got Rhythm." A- [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Song Book (1960-61 [1993], Verve, 2CD): Less famous than the earlier songwriters in this series, the obvious compensations are to cut the book back to six songs per side, and punch them up by bringing Billy May in. Perhaps Arlen's fame got diluted by working with so many lyricists -- serially with Ted Koehler, Yip Harburg, and Johnny Mercer, with further bits by Leo Robin, Ira Gershwin, and Billy Rose -- but the roster of songs is extraordinary, making this perhaps the most satisfying set in the series. A [cd]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jerome Kern Song Book (1963 [2005], Verve): Winding down, they dialed this back to 1-LP, 12 songs composed by Kern, with various lyricists (Otto Harbach, Dorothy Fields, Oscar Hammerstein II, Bernard Dougall, Johnny Mercer) -- still, only "A Fine Romance" is as indelibly etched in my mind as the top 6-10 songs from previous volumes. Nelson Riddle returns to the helm, so you can expect a smooth and steady ride. The lesser known songs -- a couple more I do recognize -- are interesting, and Ella is supreme, as usual. [was: B+] B+(**) [cd]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Johnny Mercer Song Book (1964 [1997], Verve): Last volume in The Complete Ella Fitzgerald Song Books, a 13-song LP, again with Nelson Riddle arranging and conducting. Mercer was most often a lyricist, often with Harold Arlen, but claims two sole credits here. (This repeats one of seven titles from the Arlen songbook, "This Time the Dream's on Me," so omits some of his most famous songs, like "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" (no way Riddle could have competed with Billy May on that one.) B+(***) [cd]

Ella Fitzgerald: Like Someone in Love (1957, Verve): Not in the Song Book series, but a more scattered set of standards given the same basic treatment, here by Frank De Vol and His Orchestra, mostly strings, the only musicians explicitly credited were Stan Getz (tenor sax) and Ted Nash (alto sax). [PS: A 1991 CD reissue added four tracks, but the current digital is back to the original 15.] B+(**) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Fitzgerald at the Opera House (1957 [1986], Verve): Title reminded me of other At the Opera House albums, one by Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge, another by Stan Getz and J.J. Johnson. It turns out that all three come from a Jazz at the Philharmonic show on Sept. 29 in Chicago's Civic Opera House, where her set is backed by Oscar Peterson (piano), Herb Ellis (guitar), Ray Brown (bass), and Jo Jones (drums), with the others (also Lester Young, Illinois Jacquet, Flip Phillips, and Sonny Stitt) joining in for the finale ("Stompin' at the Savoy"). The CD reissue adds a second set from Oct. 7 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Same songs (minus "Them There Eyes," but with "Oh, Lady Be Good!" added to the encore bash. I don't see any point in docking this for redundancy. It's good enough to play twice. A- [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella in Rome: The Birthday Concert (1958 [1988], Verve): More live albums than anyone needs, but this one is at least as good as At the Opera House, and offers a broader selection of key songs. She's just backed with a trio -- Lou Levy (piano), Max Bennett (bass), and Gus Johnson (drums) -- at least until the "Stompin' at the Savoy" finale, when Oscar Peterson's trio takes charge. A- [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Get Happy! (1957-59 [1998], Verve): This, including two extra tracks added to the CD, was cobbled together from seven sessions with five big bands, with Frank DeVol handling six tracks -- probably spare parts from other albums, shelved because they were too upbeat, with too much scat. We all know she's a great ballad singer, but I love it when she kicks up her heels on things like "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar" and "Like Young." And I'll never turn down another "Blue Skies." Still, where's the title song? A- [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Fitzgerald Sings Sweet Songs for Swingers (1958-59 [2003], Verve): "Sweet and Lovely," "Let's Fall in Love," "Makin' Whoopee," "Moonlight Serenade," "Can't We Be Friends," on down to "Lullaby of Broadway." Frank DeVol arranged and conducted. He's probably the least famous of her conductors, but he hits his mark as consistently as she does, although she's on a higher plane. Still, I'm afraid we're getting used to this excellence. [PS: CD reissue from 2003 has same 12 songs as the original 1959 album, but does credit Harry "Sweets" Edison on most tracks, along with "others unknown."] B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Hello, Love (1957-59 [2004], Verve): Scraps from three sessions, all with Frank DeVol arranging and conducting. More standards, but show ones this time, which means lots of strings and orchestral woodwinds, although you can hear a bit of tenor sax, credited to Ben Webster. B+(*) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas (1959-60 [2002], Verve): Even as much as I loathe Xmas music, I'm surprised to find that I never checked out this inevitable product. Frank DeVol arranged and conducted 12 relatively secular ditties, from "Jingle Bells" to "White Christmas," the only surprise "Good Morning Blues" (Count Basie/Eddie Durham/Jimmy Rushing). CD picks up an earlier single with Russ Garcia, and some alternate takes, expanding 34:00 to 52:14, and dropping the grade a notch. B+(*) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie! (1961 [1989], Verve): Session recorded in Los Angeles, 14 scattered standards, backed by Lou Levy (piano), Herb Ellis (guitar), Joe Mondragon (bass), and Gus Johnson (drums). More classic song book fare from scattered sources, with "Cry Me a River" a standout (as it always is). B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Swings Gently With Nelson (1961-62 [1993], Verve): More with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, following Ella Swings Brightly With Nelson (1962) -- 1958's similarly titled Ella Swings Lightly was done with Marty Paich's Dek-Tette, but Riddle appears on several of the Song Books. Standards like "Sweet and Slow," "The Very Thought of You," "My One and Only Love," and "Body and Soul." CD adds two spare tracks, one far from gentle. B+(**) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Rhythm Is My Business (1962 [1999], Verve): Mostly standards -- Ella gets a co-credit for "Rough Ridin'" -- and mostly upbeat, only a couple I associate with her. Bill Doggett plays organ, arranges and conducts a slightly short big band (3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 4 reeds, Hank Jones on piano, Mundell Lowe on guitar, two bass players, drums, but no string section. Ella, as usual, is up for anything. CD adds two extra tracks. B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Sings Broadway (1962 [2001], Verve): Twelve songs from eight Broadway musicals dating from 1947-56, the CD adding nothing to the trim 34:05 LP. Frank DeVol arranged and conducted. As usual, this turns on the songs, some really excellent. B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald/Count Basie: Ella and Basie! (1963 [1997], Verve): The late 1950s saw the emergence of Basie's "New Testament" band, which reached maximum power on an album that fully earned the title The Complete Atomic Basie. One thing the band did a lot of from 1956 on was to hook up with various singers, which included 1957 album with Ella and Joe Williams, followed by sessions with Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Sammy Davis Jr., and many more. Here they reunite on what is basically another Song Book album -- only "Shiny Stockings" is really specific to Basie (or actually Frank Foster) -- although Basie puts a bit more oomph into Ellington and Waller than Riddle or DeVol would. CD adds some unnecessary alternate takes. B+(**) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: These Are the Blues (1963, Verve): Ten songs, from Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey via Leroy Carr and "Trouble in Mind" to Louis Armstrong, with "St. Louis Blues" the only base she's previously touched. Small group, keyed by Wild Bill Davis on organ, with Herb Ellis (guitar), Ray Brown (bass), Gus Johnson (drums), and Roy Eldridge (trumpet). B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Hello, Dolly! (1964 [2005], Verve): This makes me wonder if the idea behind the Song Books wasn't some kind of "world's greatest singer" competition, where she does all the standards just to prove that no one else does them better, or at least consistently as well. At some point you enter the phase where people start challenging you with new songs, which about sums up the first three here: "Hello, Dolly!" (a hit for Louis Armstrong), "People" (Barbra Streisand), and "Can't Buy Me Love" (the Beatles). Frank DeVol arranges and conducts, so beaucoup strings on "People" and a lot of brass on "Can't Buy Me Love" -- Big Band Beatles is still something I doubt we need, but this is proof of concept (much better than Count Basie or Ray Charles with the moptops). After that, she goes back to familiar territory -- "Volare" is the closest thing to a challenge, but it isn't that new, and she's done it before -- where she and they are faultless but also unexciting. B+(**) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella in Japan: 'S Wonderful (1964 [2011], Verve, 2CD): Two live sets, recorded three days apart in Tokyo, the first in Hibiya Kokaido Public Hall, the second in Hotel Okura. The Roy Eldridge Quartet backs, with Tommy Flanagan (piano), Bill Yancy (bass), and Gus Johnson (drums), and both discs add local musicians toward the end -- the first ends with a 10:53 "Jam Session." Two songs appear on both sets ("Cheek to Cheek" and "Bill Bailey" -- she does a lot of ad-libbing on the latter). Another good live album (or two). B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Whisper Not (1966 [2002], Verve): A dozen standards, ranging as far as "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" but some old favorites, arranged and conducted by Marty Paich. B+(**) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Brighten the Corner (1967, Capitol): Norman Granz sold Verve in 1961 to MGM, but he continued to produce Ella there through 1966, and again after 1973 when he founded his new label, Pablo. Verve declined as a jazz label over the 1960s, although producer Creed Taylor and arrangers like Claude Ogerman and Oliver Nelson had some success, until they moved on in the 1970s -- indeed, Verve's most memorable release of the late 1960s was The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967). After 1970, it virtually disappeared, as MGM went to PolyGram, which had picked up its own jazz label, EmArcy, from Philips, and ultimately to Universal Music Group, which revived Verve as its jazz label in 1999. Granz also managed Ella, but without his own label, he sent her to Capitol, and later to Atlantic, but a brief series of albums that under any other name would be long forgotten. This was her first post-Verve album, a collection of hymns -- one hesitates to use the word "gospel" as that suggests a measure of enthusiasm and joy that producer Dave Dexter Jr. has thoroughly precluded, not just through utterly bland arrangements but by hemming her in with the sedate backing vocals of the Ralph Carmichael Choir. Still, the cliché about singing the phone book comes to mind: even the most demure songs here are quite lovely, and few have ever been done this expertly. Then there's "I Shall Not Be Moved," where she stifles the temptation to sub "Stilled" for "Moved," but reminds you she could just as easily have aimed to raise the rafters. B+(*) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Fitzgerald's Christmas (1967, Capitol): From the same team that brought you the Brighten the Corner hymnal -- Dave Dexter Jr. (producer), Ralph Carmichael (choirmaster), Robert Black and Grace Price (arrangers) -- a very staid, pious, definitely not swinging Christmas. This reminds me of trying to sing these same songs when I was a child. And while she's much better at it than we were, I can still hear our voices in the penumbra here, and feel our (or maybe just my) embarrassment. PS: Streamers have a "Deluxe Edition" which merely appends Brighten the Corner. I think there is also a reissue combining this with Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas, which must produce cognitive dissonance as well as seasonal nausea. B- [r]

Ella Fitzgerald: Misty Blue (1967 [1968], Capitol): Capitol Records is famously located in Hollywood, and we're used to the cliché of Hollywood producers spitballing X-meets-Y-with-Z concepts and turning them into projects. To some extent, Capitol did that with Sinatra and Cole, but they never got this simplistic. Concept here is Ella sings recent country hits, but with big band orchestration, like Ray Charles, so they brought in Sid Feller to arrange and conduct. It doesn't work, although a couple light spots were pleasant enough ("Walking in the Sunshine," "Don't Let That Doorknob Hit You"). "Born to Lose" reminded me enough of Charles I looked it up and found out why. If you have the 4-CD Charles box, you may understand that the formula rarely worked for him either, the exceptions coming early and taking us by surprise. Granz made us feel like Ella could sing anything and make it her own. Dave Dexter Jr. makes us realize that she shouldn't sing everything, even if she's really good at it. B [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: 30 by Ella (1968 [2000], Capitol): Concept here is explained below the title: "All-Time Favorite Songs in the Fantastic Fitzgerald Fashion With Benny Carter's Backing." It's fairly common for veteran singers to squeeze bits of their hits into medleys, and Ella certainly has way more songs fans want to hear than could ever be fit into a set, but this is surprisingly formalized: six medleys of six songs each adding up to 53:29 (per the original LP back cover) -- the CD adds "Hawaiian War Chant" as a 2:18 bonus, because why the hell not? I don't know how that adds up to 30 -- maybe producer Dave Dexter Jr. dozed off and lost count? The song choices and transitions are clever, and Ella is as dexterous as you'd expect in maneuvering through Carter's maze, but most of the songs slip by unnoticed -- isn't recognition the sole point of medleys? -- and the band billed as "Benny Carter's Magnificent 7" seems to be lacking something -- swing, I think. B+(*) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Sunshine of Your Love (1968 [1969], MPS/Prestige): Live album, produced by Norman Granz, recorded in San Francisco, the first side with Ernie Hecksher's big band, leading off with recent pop songs ("Hey Jude," "Sunshine of Your Love," "This Girl's in Love With You"), the second side with Tommy Flanagan's trio doing older standards (slipping in a Jobim). B+(*) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella (1969, Reprise): New label, new songs, produced by by Richard Perry -- opens with two by Smokey Robinson, includes two by Randy Newman, first side ends with "Got to Get You Into My Life," second side ends with "Knock on Wood." A young (26) Richard Perry produced: at this point his resume was thin and scattered (Captain Beefheart, Tiny Tim, Fats Domino), but became famous in the 1970s, especially with Barbra Streisand and Carly Simon. A respectable soul album at a time when songwriters were rising over interpretative singers (Dionne Warwick being the obvious comparison here). B+(*) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Things Ain't What They Used to Be (And You Better Believe It) (1969 [1970], Reprise): Norman Granz is back as producer, and he's brought in Gerald Wilson to arrange and conduct a star-laden very big band. Song selection falls short of ideal, but this is probably the most potent big band she's had in nearly a decade. B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Fitzgerald in Budapest (1970 [1999], Pablo): Norman Granz sold Verve in 1961, but continued to produce her until she left Verve in 1967, after which he managed her, and gets credit for producing her live albums. When he launched his Pablo label in 1973, he rounded up the old gang and started producing new studio sets, while also releasing some of his store of live tapes. One of the best compilations of her live work was The Concert Years, a 4-CD Pablo box released in 1994, where the first disc combines a 1953 performance in Japan with two sets from 1966-67, and the later discs track her from 1971-83. This is another fine concert, backed by Tommy Flanagan's trio, long set at 78:17, hits many of her later high points, ending with "Mack the Knife" and "People." B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella à Nice (1971 [1982], Pablo): She was still managed by Granz in the years separating her Verve and Pablo records, so it's likely that her live act -- as opposed to her studio albums at Capitol -- never changed much. But this set offers one innovation: medleys. She starts with "Night and Day," followed by more Porter, then a "Ballad Medley" from "Body and Soul" to Gershwin, and "The Bossa Scene" (mostly Jobim), and later "Aspects of Duke," although she limits her Beatles bag to "Something" -- followed by "St. Louis Blues," closing out with "Close to You" and "Put a Little Love in Your Heart." Backed by Tommy Flanagan's trio. B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald/Count Basie/Oscar Peterson/Stan Getz/Roy Eldridge/Eddie Lockjaw Davis/Ray Brown/Harry Edison/Al Grey/Tommy Flanagan/Ed Thigpen/Keeter Betts: Jazz at the Santa Monica Civic '72 (1972 [1991], Pablo, 3CD): I filed this under Jazz at the Philharmonic, and some sources credit the JATP All Stars, the nominal group that takes over after Basie's opening set. This show is regarded as the founding event of Norman Granz's Pablo label, much as the original 1944 Jazz at the Philharmonic First Concert led to Granz's Norgran, Clef, and Verve labels. But I figured I'd just go with the artist names on the front cover, in the order given, especially as that fits neatly in the series of Fitzgerald albums. The concert was originally released as four separate LPs, but by 1974 had been consolidated into a 3-LP box, which was converted to 3-CD in 1991. The first CD is mostly Basie, plus one track from the JATP All Stars (Getz, Davis, Eldridge, etc.), who fill the second CD except for an Oscar Peterson/Ray Brown duet. Ella headlines the third CD, backed by Flanagan's trio and, aside from a 4 song intermission, the Basie big band, with everyone piling on "C Jam Blues" for the finale. The word most often associated with Granz is "impressario," as his JATP shows were his labels were at least initially just a sideline to merchandise and promote his shows. The First Concert is especially notable, not just because "Blues #2" there has been nominated as the first rock and roll record but because the rhythm section was such a revelation (especially Les Paul on guitar and Nat King Cole on piano). The shows went on to generate dozens of albums, some with headline artist credits and many more just under the corporate logo. None of those, at least the dozen-plus I've heard, are essential, but most of them are jam sessions packed with loads of fun. If this seems less star-laden than the 1950s shows, it's because they're all getting older, not least Granz. His big three stars -- Basie, Fitzgerald, and Peterson -- got major revivals on Pablo (as did Eldridge and Edison, and others not present here, like Zoot Sims). The first two sets are fun as you'd expect, but Ella really earns her headline credit, and not just with her standards but also with a couple of outstanding then-new songs ("You've Got a Friend" and "What's Going On?"). B+(***) [sp]

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella in London (1974, Pablo): Norman Granz sold Verve in 1961, but continued to produce Ella there through 1966. In 1973, he started a new label, Pablo, and he quickly rounded up several of his 1950s stars, starting with Ella. This one is a live set from Ronnie Scott's, backed by Tommy Flanagan (piano), Joe Pass (guitar), Keter Betts (bass), and Bobby Durham (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Greta Keller: Greta Keller Sings Kurt Weill (1953, Atlantic): Cabaret singer and actress (1903-77) from Vienna, moved to Berlin c. 1929, appearing in her first film in 1931, then on to Paris, New York and Hollywood, before eventually returning to Vienna. If her voice and mannerisms seem familiar, that's because she was the archetypal model others (including Marlene Dietrich) drew on -- Cabaret, for instance, kicks off with one of her recordings. This 10-inch LP (28:50) kicks off with with six Kurt Weill songs in English (three with Ogden Nash lyrics), and closes with one more, after a medley in German from Threepenny Opera -- some of my favorite music ever. Perhaps a bit too somber, but a remarkable voice. B+(***) [sp]

Ella Mae Morse: Capitol Collectors Series (1942-57 [1992], Capitol): Jazz/pop singer (1924-99), started in 1942 with a hit of "Cow-Cow Boogie" backed by Freddie Slack and His Orchestra, followed with several more hits (all collected here; doesn't seem to have recorded much of anything later, but continued to tour). B+(**) [sp]

PS: This appears to be identical to The Very Best of Ella Mae Morse (1942-57 [1998], Collectables), which I previously graded B and should now upgrade to match.

Bobby Vee: Legendary Masters (1959-68 [1973], United Artists): One of those "teen idol" singers who appeared in the early 1960s, born in North Dakota, last name Velline, had a couple memorable hits early on -- "Devil or Angel" (1960), "Take Good Care of My Baby" (1961), "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" (1962) -- and hung on for a long career, touring until he got Alzheimer's in 2011 and died in 2016, but few albums after 1969. This has much more than anyone needs, including enough of I Remember Buddy Holly (1963) to quell my curiosity. B [r]

Grade (or other) changes:

The Brill Building Sound (1957-67 [1993], ERA, 4CD): 1619 Broadway, corner of 49th Street, 11 floors, built 1931, became a center for songwriters and publishers in the 1930s, at first focusing on big bands and musical theater. In the late 1950s some of their tenants to cash in on the rock and roll market, with considerable success during the 1961-64 period, which produced 52 songs collected here (vs. 10 for 1957-60, and 12 for 1965-67). Along with a similar operation at 1650 Broadway, their product has been designated a "sound," but unless you lived through this period, nearly everything here sounds like something else from someone more famous. If you didn't, among artists here, you really should have single-artist compilations of the Drifters and the Shirelles (who have much more, and even better, work elsewhere, as do Dion and the Everly Brothers, with one stray song each). The next tier is probably Bobby Darin and the Shangri-Las, or maybe Neil Sedaka, although their songs, plus a dozen more fluke hits, are likely to show up on other compilations (e.g., "girl groups") from the period. But I started listening to a lot of AM radio around 1961, so most of this music is not just familiar but deeply embedded. From 1964 on, my own interest moved pretty hard to the British Invasion. The Brill Building songwriters tried to cash in on that too, and had a few more big hits with what are not little-remembered bands (Manfred Mann, Paul Revere & the Raiders), and they still resonate with me. I don't really know what the afterstory was: immediate competition came from other song factories, especially Motown, but after Dylan, Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richard, et al., artists who didn't write their own songs went out of style, and in the 1970s FM eclipsed AM, focusing on longer album cuts at the expense of punchy little novelty singles. Meanwhile, the most famous Brill Building alumnus, Carole King, became a big star, singing her own songs. So this box works for me as nostalgic time capsule, although it misses at least as much of 1961-64 as it captures (a period quickly deprecated as obsolete as soon as the Beatles hit, perhaps even more quickly than the new wave/punks bemoaned the mid-1970s). For the later 1960s, I may have to crack open that 4-CD Nuggets box, but it won't be as cheerfully integrated at this sampler is. [was: A-] A [cd]

Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic Era (1965-68 [1998], Rhino, 4CD): Back in 1972, rock critic and future Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye compiled a 2-LP collection of late-1960s "psychedelic" rock, about half minor hits and the rest perfectly fitted: median chart position was 55, with "Psychotic Reaction" at 5, 5 more top-20 songs, 4 below 100, and 5 that didn't chart at all. I picked up the Sire reissue in 1976, and it immediately became a favorite. Rhino picked up on the idea, and starting in 1984 released a series of 12 LPs under the Nuggets name, with Volume 1: The Hits repeating 6 songs from the 2-LP, which they followed up with a CD series called Nuggets: Psychedelic Sixties (3 separate CDs, released 1986-89). In 1998, they reconceived the franchise, with this box set: Volume 1 completely reissues the original 2-LP, with 3 more CDs adding 91 more tracks (116 total, compare to 168 in the 12-LP series). Hard to say whether (or how much) the quality declines as the quantity piles on. I listened to a pretty average amount of rock in 1961-65, but cut way back during my asocial years (1966-72), so only a few of the scattered hits here -- "Wooly Bully" obviously, plus some things like "Louie Louie," "Laugh Laugh," and "She's About a Mover" -- hit a nostalgic nerve. Sure, this sounds very white, male, and American compared to at least 80% of the 1955-75 music I've been enjoying so much of late. But the sound is consistent and coherent, with its heavy guitar din, and resonates with a period I lived through, even if I wasn't very connected to it. B+(***) [cd]

PS: Rhino followed this box with Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts From the British Empire and Beyond (1964-69 [2001], Rhino, 4CD), which mostly focused on similar music from UK groups (most famously the Pretty Things, Small Faces, and the Move), with the Guess Who from Canada, and "beyond" extending as far as Os Mutantes.

Rechecked with no grade change:

Swamp Dogg: Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St (2024, Oh Boy): B+(***) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Steve Allee Big Band: Naptown Sound (Jazzville) [03-15]
• Deepstaria Enigmatica: The Eternal Now Is the Heart of a New Tomorrow (ESP-Disk) [02-25]
• Sylvie Courvoisier/Mary Halvorson: Bone Bells (Pyroclastic) [03-25]
• Ensemble C: Every Journey (Adhyâropa) [03-08]
• Jonah David: Waltz for Eli (Swish Tap) [02-28]
• Satoko Fujii Tokyo Trio: Dream a Dream (Libra) [02-28]
• The Haas Company Featuring Samuel Hällkvist: Vol. 3: Song for Mimi (Psychiatric) [05-01]
• Jon Irabagon: Server Farm (Irabbagast) [02-21]
• Ben Markley: Tell the Truth (OA2) [02-28]
• Gina Saputo: Daydream (GSJQ Productions) [04-18]
• Jim Snidero: Bird Feathers (Savant) [02-21]
• Rose Tang & Patrick Golden: A White Horse Is Not a Horse (ESP-Disk') [12-20]
• Rodney Whitaker: Mosaic: The Music of Gregg Hill (Origin) [02-28]
• Clay Wulbrecht: The Clockmaster (Instru Dash Mental) [05-02]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

February archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 43642 [43611) rated (+31), 30 [30] unrated (+0).

I saw the eye doctor yesterday, which left me in no shape to do any work whatsoever. We picked up some food on the way home, and I spent the rest of the day watching TV, which seems to be my lowest energy setting. We started watching season one of Funny Woman, which hit the spot nicely -- not least for exceptional music. Upshot of the appointment is that I have cataract surgery scheduled for Feb. 27, with the other eye a month or so later, so I'm expecting much more similar disruption and despair.

Before my appointment, I had decided not to publish Music Week until I got my server mess sorted out. I had expected to figure that out last week, but wasted a couple days blogging, and didn't make much progress until Friday, by which point I figured I had the weekend to write some letters, and Monday-Tuesday to gauge responses. But I didn't get any letters written, and Monday was a wash. But it takes a while for me to get going, so I thought I might as well go ahead and post what I have, and get it out of the way. So that's all this will be.

I suppose I can point to my server notes, if you have any technical curiosity. I've pretty much given up on replacing my current dedicated server with another: the low-end hardware is as expensive as ever, and cPanel's software prices have been jacked way up. (DirectAdmin is a cheaper alternative, and may well be as good, but it still adds a $30/month premium.) VPS deals are somewhat more affordable, and can be expanded pretty much on demand, but they're harder to evaluate.

So for the moment, I'm looking for a "reseller hosting" deal, which is a shared server slice that can support multiple domains, each with its own account interface. Some of these plans are quite cheap (suspiciously so), but they seem to fill my basic needs: hosting 10-15 websites, most hand-coded or WordPress, with email the only other real consideration. I'd be giving up some measure of detailed control over the server configuration and software, but I also could be saving myself headaches, as server management these days is mostly a matter of defending against external attacks and internal defects -- skills I find myself increasingly lacking.

Still, I'm going to be looking for deals that seem to come with decent support, and that don't lock me into something if it turns out to be a mistake. I've identified at least 60 vendors. While many of them look dubious -- especially the ones with long terms and/or automatic price hikes -- even the most expensive plans are about half what I've been paying. While the resource quotes often look paltry to me, they're probably more realistic for my needs. The big advantage of having a dedicated server is having all the resources to yourself, but my load levels are actually very light, on hardware that is six years old. So while it's hard to be certain, it's likely that the new deal will come out cheaper, faster, and less demanding of my management time. It also looks like most vendors will jump in and do the migration work, so once I make a decision, this could move very fast.

I finished that last paragraph six hours ago, and spent the time since tacking more notes onto the server file. As I still need to put up the news notice (although probably not the archive file) for Robert Christgau's Dean's List: 2024 -- "The 74 best albums of the past year (or so)", emphasis on "or so" -- I probably won't get around to writing my first letters until tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll have these things sorted by next week. If not, I can't imagine how depressed I'm going to be.

New records reviewed this week:

_thesmoothcat & Wino Willy: Ready, Set (2024, Sinking City): New Orleans rapper Josh Henderson, with beatmaker Charles Corpening. B+(*) [bc]

Being Dead: Eels (2024, Bayonet): Garage rock band from Austin, second album, title usually capitalized -- no idea why, perhaps to distance themselves from the group Eels, which I initially assumed was responsible for this album. This got enough praise to his 82 in my EOY Aggregate, but all I hear is tuneless and senseless. B- [sp]

Kimmi Bitter: Old School (2024, self-released): Discogs says that's her real name. Country singer-songwriter, from San Diego, second album, aims for retro, which means Patsy Cline and Wanda Jackson. B+(**) [sp]

Body Count: Merciless (2024, Century Media): Gangsta rapper Ice-T's metal band, eighth album since their eponymous 1992 debut, back cover promises: "Start to finish, with Merciless, Body Count is back for an even bloodier murder spree than anything they've done before." Fourth of that series I've heard, which I've generally found tolerable, perhaps because the fusion seems even more comic than their unadulterated roots. B+(***) [sp]

Kaitlin Butts: Roadrunner! (2024, Soundly Music): Country singer-songwriter from Oklahoma, based in Nashville, third album. Some high concept here, which doesn't always work. B+(*) [sp]

Luke Combs: Fathers & Sons (2024, Columbia Nashville): Country singer-songwriter, from North Carolina, fifth album since 2017, all charted 1-2 country, 1-6 pop. Super voice, songs themed to the title are sensitive and considered enough my personal indifference must be just that. B+(**) [sp]

Ernest: Nashville, Tennessee (2024, Big Loud): Last name Smith, had some success as a songwriter before he got his own contract, third album since 2019. B+(**) [sp]

Jake Xerxes Fussell: When I'm Called (2024, Fat Possum): Folksinger from North Carolina, fifth album since 2015, built from music "that holds lifelong sentimental meaning, contemplating the passage of time and procession of life's unexpected offerings." James Elkington produced, adding bits that still feel pretty minimal. B+(**) [sp]

Homeboy Sandman: Nor Can These Be Sold (At Least by Me) (2024, self-released): Brooklyn underground rapper, many albums, third variation on this title, presumably for uncleared samples, but on Bandcamp with a "name your price." B+(**) [sp]

Ale Hop & Titi Bakorta: Mapambazuko (2025, Nyege Nyege Tapes): Peruvian composer Alejandra Luciana Cárdenas, based in Berlin, half-dozen albums since 2017, first one I've heards, so I have little sense of how this collaboration with a Congolese guitarist fits in. Actually, he seems dominant. B+(***) [sp]

Inert: 2Inert (2024, self-released): Rock singer-songwriter from Cincinnati, Mark Messerly, almost all of his previous credits are with the band Wussy, where he's played bass since 2005. Second album on his own, plays guitar here, in a group with violin, cello, and pedal steel guitar. Has a bit of Dylan in his voice. B+(**) [sp]

Sarah Jarosz: Polaroid Lovers (2024, Rounder): Singer-songwriter, originally from Austin, based in Nashville, plays guitar/banjo/mandolin, seventh album since 2009, has some Grammy awards, and seems less and less like a niche artist. B+(**) [sp]

Cody Jinks: Cody Jinks Sings Lefty Frizzell (2024, Late August): Singer-songwriter from Texas, started in a thrash metal band called Unchecked Aggression before switching to outlaw country, where he has a dozen-plus albums since 2006, and moderate success since 2016. Needless to say, no one sings Frizzell like Lefty, but this is pleasant enough on its own terms. B+(*) [sp]

Merce Lemon: Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild (2024, Darling): Singer-songwriter, from Pittsburgh, second album, shows up on my country list but why isn't obvious. B+(*) [sp]

Post Malone: F-1 Trillion (2024, Mercury/Republic): Actual name Austin Post, stage name adopted at 15 reportedly came out of "rap name generator," his first albums got him slotted in my "rap" file, but here at least he sings much more than he raps, and gets tagged as country, which may or may not include his Super Bowl duet with Beyoncé. Or maybe it's just this album, his sixth, all big hits, which with fifteen certified all-star duets crashed the country charts harder than Beyoncé did. Some decent stuff here, but runs long. B [sp]

MC Lyte: 1 of 1 (2024, Sunni Gyrl/My Block/Vydia): Rapper Lana Moorer, her 1988 debut is remembered as the first by a female rapper, released five more albums through 1998, only three since. B+(**) [sp]

Scotty McCreery: Rise & Fall (2024, Triple Tigers): Country singer-songwriter, started by winning American Idol season, quickly cashing in with a 2011 album. This is his sixth, his songwriting and voice above average without ever suggesting he might ever break out of the mold. Sample line: "done a lot of good living, just sitting on the porch." B+(*) [sp]

Lizzie No: Halfsies (2024, Miss Freedomland/Thirty Tigers): Singer-songwriter, last name Quinlan, second album, plays guitar and harp, slotted folk, shows up in some country lists, but I'm not hearing why -- she doesn't even have a Nashville connection, having grown up in NJ and moved to NYC. Well, if not the sound, maybe the songs? B+(**) [sp]

Joy Oladokun: Observations From a Crowded Room (2024, Amigo): Singer-songwriter from Arizona, parents Nigerian, moved to Los Angeles, then to Nashville. Several albums, the last two quite good. B+(***) [sp]

PyPy: Sacred Times (2024, Goner): "Psych-punk garage pop band from Montreal," which is nichey enough for their densely hooked crunch. Third album, the others from 2007 and 2014. B+(***) [sp]

Red Clay Strays: Made by These Moments (2024, RCA): Country rock band from Alabama, second studio album. B+(*) [sp]

Reyna Tropical: Malegría (2024, Psychic Hotline): Band from McAllen, Texas, principally singer-songwriter Fabi Reyna with miniaturist beats by Neclail Diaz. The value of the spoken word is hard to discern (and not just the Spanish), but I love the musical stretches, even when the whispers seem too insignificant to credit. B+(***) [sp]

Chase Rice: Go Down Singin' (2024, Broken Bow): Country singer-songwriter from Florida, fifth album since 2012. Sometimes seems like the perfect country singer, but more when he eases back than when he pushes hard. Includes a duet with Lori McKenna. B+(***) [sp]

Serengeti: Palookaville (2024, CC King): Underground rapper from Chicago, dropped this late December, dispenses with his usual characters, who I never cared that much about anyway, for a deeper focus on vibe and nuance, which is where he's always shined. A- [sp]

Brittney Spencer: My Stupid Life (2024, Elektra): Singer-songwriter from Baltimore, started singing in church but moved to Nashville to try her hand at country music. First album after a couple of EPs. B+(**) [sp]

St. Lenox: Ten Modern American Work Songs: In Honor of the 10-Year Reunion of the NYU Law Class of 2014 (2024, Don Giovanni/Anyway): Folk singer-songwriter Andrew Choi, day job attorney, has four previous Ten Songs albums (back to 2015), starting with more generic themes (e.g., Memory and Hope, Young Ambition and Passionate Love), but eventually the work grind gets you down. B+(***) [sp]

Billy Strings: Highway Prayers (2024, Reprse): Bluegrass singer-songwriter, actual name Apostol, dozen-plus albums since 2013. B+(*) [sp]

Jesse Terry: Arcadia (2024, Wander): A singer-songwriter I hadn't noticed before, seventh album since 2009. Gets some guitar help, which often saves you from having to pay attention, but sometimes it's better when you have to. B+(***) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Homeboy Sandman: Rich 2.5 (2023-24 [2025], self-released): Brooklyn rapper Angel Del Villar II, lots of records since 2007, this appears to be a compilation of two recent albums -- Rich (2023) and Rich II (2024) -- "Plus Four Butters Remixes!" B+(***) [sp]

My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall (2024, Oh Boy): Randall was born in Detroit, grew up in DC, graduated from Harvard, has written six novels starting with a "reinterpretation and parody' of Gone With the Wind, got a job teaching writing at Vanderbilt (in Nashville), where she ran into Steve Earle, who pointed her toward songwriting. This tribute offers 11 of her songs, by as many artists -- most (possibly all) roots-oriented black women. Doesn't grab hard, but impresses with staying power. B+(***) [sp]

Super Disco Pirata: De Tepito Para El Mundo 1965-1980 (1965-80 [2024], Analog Africa): Seems to be mostly Colombian cumbia, bootlegged and reprocessed in Mexico. Starts with some cheesy disco keyboards, but goes hard on the rhythm. B+(***) [sp]

Old music:

None.

Grade (or other) changes:

Loud, Fast & Out of Control: The Wild Sounds of '50s Rock (1951-59 [1999], Rhino, 4CD): I rescued this from my long-ignored archival shelves a couple weeks ago, and it's been my staple for the last 2-3 weeks, both as a morning pick me up and in the car. Structured as a randomized jukebox, draws on three main components: a core of rockabilly classics -- the big names (including Elvis, right after "My Boy Elvis"), some strategic covers (like Ronnie Hawkins' "Forty Days" and Johnny Burnette's "Honey Hush"), and less-famous novelties (like "Red Hot" and "Action Packed"); major rockers (Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Bo Diddley, the Coasters, and Eddie Cochran -- who leads off two discs); and older jump blues that fit in seamlessly (like "Jump, Jive and Wail" and "Rocket 88"). Sure, anyone could score high with such obvious picks, but close to a quarter of these were under my radar, and few if any feel out of place -- e.g., the sequence of "Frenzy," "Koko Joe," and "King Kong" before the more familiar "Ubangi Stomp" and "Flying Saucers Rock & Roll." [was: B+] A

Corb Lund: El Viejo (2024, New West): Canadian country singer-songwriter, twelfth album since 1995, last year's reservations about "hit and miss" songs hard to recall after a revisit, where I found a "Deluxe Edition" with three extra songs (two new) finishing strong. [was: B+(***)] A- [sp]

Megan Moroney: Am I Okay? (2024, Columbia Nashville): Country singer-songwriter, second album, seemed consistently good when I first sampled this, qualities I appreciate even more now. [was: B+(***)] A- [sp]

Unpacking: Two packages, still unopened.

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Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Every morning, I wake up with big thoughts about the state of the world (usually intercut with fragments of a catchy song I've played recently). My self-imposed news embargo has helped to sideline many major irritants, but I remain cognizant of deeper problems, and I'm able to come up with some fairly novel solutions. Just to note one example, I have a very rough scheme for war insurance, which could operate in the absence of any sort of world governing authority. Or another concept from a year or two back: a scheme for representative democracy which would end such perversions as gerrymandering, and significantly disincentivize the import of money in politics. Those are just examples, possibly worth exploring in long essays, but that's not where I want to go with this. I just want to introduce something I read with a description of how I got there.

Mornings are very routine for me. I become conscious, in thought and (often) tune. If it seems too early, I turn over and try to go back to sleep, but that rarely works. After some shifting around, I disconnect the CPAP machine, take a couple free breaths, take two pain pills, pick up my book, stumble to the bathroom, turn on the space heater, sit to give my body a chance to purge itself, and as I'm trying to focus my eyes, I read a few pages. After a while, I'll get up, maybe take a shower and/or weigh myself, get dressed, head downstairs, take some pills, put some music on, check email, see if I have any social media, possibly work on the jigsaw puzzle, and eventually eat some breakfast: a cup of yogurt with raisins, washed down with Diet Coke.

Since the election, I've mostly been reading old books from my Marxist heritage. I read such material quite deeply from 1967 up to about 1973, as I was searching to understand and develop some rational command of a world that deeply disturbed me, one that shook my confidence in everything I had been taught, and all that I once believed in. I stopped when I rather accidentally slipped out of academia and into the so-called real world, where I finally found jobs I could do, people I could care for, and the prospect of an ordinary life, as I have indeed enjoyed in my own peculiar fashion over the past forty years.

I've read steadily during those forty years, but very little from the Marxists, whose insights I had internalized to the point they seemed reflexive, and whose rhetoric seemed superfluous and sometimes petty. But mostly I went where my curiosity led me, which included rock criticism in the 1970s, followed by science and technology in the 1980s, business management and antitrust in the 1990s, with a return to political matters with the "war on terror": it's easy to cite 9/11 as the turning point, and for my attention it was, but it is clear now that it was just a skirmish, not a cause, and that the real story started with the desperate defense of American hegemony, leading inexorably to the genocide in Gaza. (If you don't understand this, you must have missed the clue that PNAC, the original neocon lobby, was originally formed to fight against the Oslo Accords.)

Along the way, I did pick up a few Marxian tomes that struck me as particularly close to my earlier interests, but I never got into them. One was Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (1983). Another was Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes (1994). I suspect that the November election will eventually be regarded as a fateful pivot date, comparable to 9/11, 12/7 (1941), 10/24 (1929), and 6/28 (1914). But the one big thing that Marxists know is that such fractures result from much deeper tectonic stresses, and are incomprehensible apart from understanding the forces that drive them. I can't say that was instantly clear to me on Nov. 6, but certainly I had that intuition. Since then, I read Berman and have slowly worked my way into the fourth of Hobsbawm's Age Of volumes (Revolution, read earlier in 2024, followed by Capital and Empire since the election). And I've met with profound insights nearly every day.

I've often felt like I should post these bits as I've read them, but rarely get around to doing so. But today's choice quote, from The Age of Extremes (pp. 102-103), is worth the trouble. I'm giving you the whole paragraph below, but my first thought was just the first bit in bold, with the second bold line there to drive the point home (so you might read the bold first, then go back for the elaboration):

The Great Slump confirmed intellectuals, activists and ordinary citizens in the belief that something was fundamentally wrong with the world they lived in. Who knew what could be done about it? Certainly few of those in authority over their countries, and certainly not those who tried to steer a course by the traditional navigational instruments of secular liberalism or traditional faith, and by the charts of the nineteenth century seas which were plainly no longer to be trusted. How much confidence did economists deserve, however brilliant, who demonstrated, with great lucidity, that the Slump in which even they lived, could not happen in a properly conducted free-market society, since (according to an economic law named after an early nineteenth century Frenchman) no overproduction was possible which did not very soon correct itself? In 1933, it was not easy to believe, for instance, that where consumer demand, and therefore consumption, fell in a depression, the rate of interest would fall by just as much as was needed to stimulate investment, so that the increased investment demand would exactly fill the gap left by the smaller consumer demand. As unemployment soared, it did not seem plausible to believe (as the British Treasury apparently did) that public works would not increase employment at all, because the money spent on them would merely be diverted from the private sector, which would otherwise have generated just as much employment. Economists who simply advised leaving the economy alone, governments whose first instincts, apart from protecting the gold standard by deflationary policies, was to stick to financial orthodoxy, balance budgets and cut costs, were visibly not making the situation better. Indeed, as the depression continued, it was argued with considerable force not least by J.M. Keynes who consequently became the most influential economist of the next forty years -- that they were making the depression worse. Those of us who lived through the years of the Great Slump still find it almost impossible to understand how the orthodoxies of the pure free market, then so obviously discredited, once again came to preside over a global period of depression in the late 1980s and 1990s, which once again, they were equally unable to understand or to deal with. Still, this strange phenomenon should remind us of the major characteristic of history which it exemplifies: the incredible shortness of memory of both the theorists and practitioners of economics. It also provides a vivid illustration of society's need for historians, who are the professional remembrancers of what their fellow-citizens wish to forget.

This may look like tough reading, but even if you can't identify Say's Law, you should recognize the recurring economist-logic -- what Paul Krugman and John Quiggin have enjoyed debunking as "zombie economics" -- if not from the 1930s or 1980s, at least from its revival in the 2000s, immortalized in yet another major slump. (Since 2008, a lot of books have been written on the failures of neoliberal economic doctrine -- Quiggin's Zombie Economics (2010) and Economics in Two Lessons (2019) are good primers, but Philip Mirowski's Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown is a sober assessment of how those in power avoided learning the obvious lessons of the meltdown. There is much less literature on the 2020 pandemic recession, probably because it differs in several significant ways, and the political response remains in radical flux. Quiggin promised a post-pandemic book, and posted parts of it, but he seems to have held it back, possibly because the inflationary recovery now seems to matter more than the short but largely controlled collapse.)

The note about forgetting is also freshly relevant right now, applicable as it is not just to convenient economic theories but to all matters political, where public discourse is marked both by dementia and schizophrenia. The amount of forgetting it takes for Trump to be elected to a second term is really staggering. On the other hand, our ability to reason by historical analogy is increasingly suspect. We wasted a ridiculous amount of time and energy last year debating how fascism fits into the Trump campaign, while overlooking its novel features, which while less ominous than Hitler's are likely to harm us in ways we can hardly imagine. Indeed, our historical models seem likely to keep us from seeing, much less effectively countering, many of their threats -- a task made even harder by the clouds of nonsense they spew as camouflage.

I have one more Hobsbawm quote (p. 78) I wanted to share (again, the key bit in bold, but less context here, because I need neither Napoleon nor Mao for my point):

The road to revolution through long guerrilla war was discovered rather late by twentieth-century social revolutionaries; perhaps this was because historically this form of essentially rural activity had been overwhelmingly associated with movements of archaic ideologies easily confused by sceptical city observers with conservatism, or even with reaction and counter-revolution.

My point, of course, is that "sceptical city observers" continue to make the same mistake today. I could write tons unpacking this line, but for now just focus on the double-edged sword of "easily confused." The bottom line is that the viability of opposition to Trumpism -- which for the moment seems like a fair label, given that all alternatives theories of G.O.P.-ness have been obliterated -- depends on us learning not to be so easily confused, not just on this point but on many more.

And now, having said my small piece, I return to everyday life: a lunch with a bit of salt-cured salmon and onion on a poor excuse for a half-slice of bread; a bundle up to walk the dog; more music; back to my computer problems, and my silly lists; a few more pages when I find the moment; and some prefab frozen thing for dinner, possibly livened up with a dab of chutney or some extra cheese; more music and more computer; an hour or two of mystery on TV; and back to bed, only to wake up thinking again.

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