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Saturday, September 26, 2015

Elizabeth Fink was an attorney who spent her entire career defending and fighting politically-charged cases, especially against the abuse of power by state and federal authorities. She never suffered any delusions about the innocence and/or righteousness of her clients -- not that some weren't innocent and/or justified -- but she fully recognized how stacked the system is against them, and struggled relentlessly to tilt that system back toward justice. As she said, "justice is what everyone deserves and no one gets." And it should be noted that she was exceptionally effective in the courtroom: as Laura Stevens put it, "Liz had outstanding results in her work, winning case after case that was a loser for almost anyone else." Persistent too: "This applies to Attica not on the facts, which were compelling, but on the process, which would have defeated most people before the first 20 years expired."

Liz died on Tuesday, September 22, at age 70, in Brooklyn. She had increasingly dire kidney and heart problems, which forced her to give up her practice a couple years ago. In her last week she was approaching renal failure, and had a hemodialysis shunt installed. She took a short walk on Sunday and fell, possibly breaking her hip. In the hospital, her heart stopped. Laura Stevens, a dear friend ever since college, had spent the previous week with Liz (this is from a personal letter):

Through the whole week we were together, we had a good time with each other, talked for many hours, but her condition was awful. She had the beginning of renal failure . . . Her heart condition also exhausted her, so she couldn't walk any distance. Across the street was the maximum. She had a few comfortable hours a day in the later afternoon.

She didn't want to die, still being interested in "what comes next." She didn't want to live this way either, and was facing medical care she didn't want and didn't have confidence in. They can leave you worse off; we've all seen that, and she was truly wary. She still read voraciously, and listened to music with relish. She played it very loud, being very hard of hearing, but it gave her great pleasure. . . . I was always impressed with how much she took away from it, insights she'd have about the music and things that had been said on the program.

She is survived by her brother, photographer Larry Fink, and by numerous friends who miss her dearly.

The following pieces will give you a quick guide to her career (although each misses much):

• Her Wikipedia entry.
• Gary Craig: Elizabeth Fink, lawyer who fought for Attica inmates, dies [USA Today obituary]
• Sam Roberts: Elizabeth M. Fink, a Lawyer for Attica Inmates and Radicals, Dies at 70: Some errors here: Her middle name was Marcia, not Marsha; her father, Bernie Fink, was an insurance agent, not a lawyer; Frank Smith was universally known as Big Black, but "B. B." weren't his middle initials; the $4 million Smith won in a jury trial wasn't reduced to $125,000 -- it was overturned by a judge who decided that Smith's case shouldn't be separated from the group case, which was settled in 2000 (after being dragged out for 26 years) for a relative pittance. For more on Smith, see this .
• Elizabeth Fink, lawyer who helped Attica inmates win settlement, dies at 70 [Washington Post obituary]
• Michael Virtanen: Elizabeth Fink, Lawyer for Attica Inmates, Dies at 70 [AP obituary, via ABC News]
• Still Fighting [Reed College alumni profile, from 2007]
• The Attica Prison Uprising: Forty Years Later [YouTube video]

Liz grew up in a left-wing family in Brooklyn, keeping a equally committed but less doctrinaire version of her family's politics. (I know little about her father, who died before I met her, but her mother -- I knew her as Sylvia Kleinman -- was always involved in something political, notably the Gray Panthers. She once walked off Charlie Rose's show because she didn't think he was taking her seriously.) Liz went to Reed College and graduated in 1967. That's where she met "the two Lauras" and they remained lifelong friends -- Laura Stevens, introduced above, and Laura Tillem, who later met and married me. In 1971, the Attica prison revolt was murderously put down on orders from NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller. The state's first instinct there was to prosecute prisoners, among other things charging them with the deaths of the nine prison guards who had been held hostage and were shot and killed by the invading troops. When Liz graduated from Brooklyn Law School, she joined the defense team, helped get the charges dropped, and filed suit against the state, resulting in several trials and the settlement in 2000. She stuck through the entire ordeal. Even in her last days she was working on organizing her archives and trying to force New York to release still-secret documents.

I first met Liz shortly after Laura Tillem and I got together. We were living in Boston, and Liz came up frequently -- the "Ohio 7" sedition case was tried in Springfield, so Liz stayed there for the duration of the trial. (Some info here: "the longest and most expensive trial in the history of Massachusetts, . . . When the trial ended with no convictions, it also turned out to be one of the most controversial -- and highly criticized -- trials . . ." -- I remember that we talked at great length about what a staggering waste of public resources the trial was. As I recall the amount of money the government wasted was about five times the capitalization of the start-up company I was working for at the time.) After the trial, she came to Boston less, but we went to New York more. We met up once at her mother's house in New Jersey. On a couple occasions Liz and her mother rented a house way out on Long Island and invited lots of their friends out. Once we flew to Portland for a Reed Reunion -- that was the first time I met Laura Stevens. When Sylvia died we dropped everything and drove to Brooklyn. (A few months earlier Sylvia closed up the NJ home and moved into an assisted living apartment in Brooklyn.) When we moved to NJ, Liz came out many times, including to one of my notorious birthday dinners. After we moved to Wichita, Liz and Laura Stevens stopped on a cross-country drive. We were staying at Liz's when 9/11 happened, and I wound up staying there a month. As Liz's health declined, Laura made several trips to New York to help out. I only made one, in May 2014, at a point when she was doing relatively well.

In listing all these encounters, I can't help but feel like I'm bragging, but really I count myself as incredibly lucky. I've heard that when Laura and I first got together, Liz's only question was whether I was "smart enough" for her. I'm pretty sure I passed muster, but really, the most imposing intellect I've ever encountered was Liz's. She read more than anyone I've ever known, comprehended it all, was always incisive in her critiques, and could speak eloquently and poignantly without ever losing your interest. She was, in short, dazzling. One regret I have is that I never saw her in a courtroom, one of the few places where such rigor may prove decisive. A greater regret is that she always resisted my pleas to write. I would have been satisfied had she found a scribe to follow her around and jot down stories (like Ralph Leighton did for Richard Feynman). Terrific stories, thousands of them. If we're lucky, her friends will recall many of them, but too many are already lost. She may have been right that she could never write as well as her favorite writers, but her voice deserves an oral legacy as rich as, well, the other bard who passed this week, Lawrence Peter Berra.

But that was just one of many facets to this remarkable person. I'd like to close by quoting several memories that people have written to her Facebook timeline.

Gideon Oliver [Sept. 22 at 11:04pm]:

I loved Elizabeth Fink very much and was lucky to have her as a mentor and friend. Beyond that, I don't have words about this yet.

Gideon Oliver [Sept. 22 at 11:35pm]:

Starting at :45 - Elizabeth Fink on the courthouse steps, spitting fire and speaking truth to power: Woman linked to Al-Qaida won't answer attempted murder charges in US.

Lamis Deek [Sept. 23 at 2:11am]:

She was also more beautiful than she knew, more beautiful than the world wanted her to be. Good night dear Elizabeth Fink.

Nancy Alisberg [Sept. 23 at 8:02am]:

So sad to hear of the death of Elizabeth Fink. Friend, mentor, neighbor.

Cynthia Skow [Sept. 23 at 9:07am]:

The world lost a true warrior for justice yesterday and I lost a hero. Elizabeth Fink, rest in power!

Lamis Deek [Sept. 23 at 11:53am]:

Few, far too few, people lived with the integrity Elizabeth Fink did . . . her love was active, full and given to those who need it most in ways that really count. Her life, her practice was ruled by the most important rules "if you're OK, I'm OK" and "Dare to struggle dare to win." She was a school unto herself.

Farewell fallen comrade and teacher.

Fahd Ahmed [Sept. 23 at 1:14pm]:

I'm not big on hero-izing people.

But Elizabeth Fink was one of those people who changed me forever within a few minutes.

I was lucky to have been trained to be a lawyer "on your own terms" (ie. don't let the system define who you are and what you do). But I really learned what it meant within a few minutes of meeting Liz, and definitely the first time I saw her in court. From how she walked about, where she scattered (very intentionally) her belongings, how she talked to court officers and judges, etc. Absolutely outrageous woman. And I absolutely loved it.

It was a measured "fuck you and your whole damn system" approach, while making sure to keep the client at center. Tremendous fierceness against the system and tremendous love and care for the people.

A genuine peoples lawyer who understood the nexus of her work with mass movements.

It was an honor to know you, and to work with you. And I forever take what I learned into all of my work beyond lawyering.

You and your fire will be missed.

Pat Rowbotton [Sept. 23 at 2:53pm]:

Liz fought hard with brilliance and creativity. Saw the Ohio 7 to freedom - no one ever fought as hard or won as much.

Meg Handler [Sept. 24 at 10:06am]:

'Dare to struggle; dare to win.' - Elizabeth Fink

This week, we lost one fierce lady. Liz was tough, brilliant and funny and she committed her life to fighting social injustice. I knew Liz thru her brother Larry. She was like family to me. When 800 of us were wrongfully arrested during the RNC in 2004, and I was asked if I had a lawyer who could be called, I said Liz Fink. It turned out Liz and a few other civil rights lawyers were already down in the courtroom arguing for our release. At that moment I knew I was in good shape, that myself and the other wrongfully arrested, would be taken care of. It took 10 years . . . and in the end, it did get taken care of. 10 years was nothing for the likes of Liz, she fought for the Attica inmates for 25 years. She always fought the good fight. She will be missed by many.

Susan Slovak [Sept. 24 at 11:28am]:

She was always gutsy and brave, even in high school. I so admired her integrity and intelligence, even then. She will be so very very missed.

Gideon Oliver [Sept. 24 at 5:27pm]:

Elizabeth Fink accepting the proclamation and a key to the city of Venice, Italy, for the return of Silvia Baraldini. From Michael Deutsch's article "Frank and Liz" published in the National Lawyers Guild - NYC Chapter 2006 Spring Fling Journal. PRESENTE.

Gideon Oliver [Sept. 24 at 5:35pm]:

Elizabeth Fink talking about the Ohio 7 trial and a whole lot more - "Hundreds of law enforcement personnel from across the Northeast came to campus and protested the event the evening it took place. . . ." - h/t Michael Deutsch: Part 4 "The Great Sedition Trial" issues from the trial 11.12.09.

Rachel J-s [Sept. 25 at 12:41am]:

My mom's best friend Elizabeth Fink died this week. I knew her my whole life, from vivid memories of her not letting me win at monopoly when I was 6, to giving me the keys to her apartment when I moved to New York City when I was 20. She was insanely generous with me and many other people, a wealth of historical knowledge about the American left, and taught me about serious, delicious food, before foodie was a term. I really can't quite believe she won't be opening her apartment door, suggesting something amazing for lunch and telling me to take her dog for a walk, the next time I'm in Brooklyn.

Debbie Hrbek [Sept. 25 at 7:10am]:

Please watch, and share, this powerful presentation by my mentor, the wonderful Elizabeth Fink, who died on Tuesday. Such an inspiration to young lawyers about the importance of fighting the good fight. [Second link to Part 4 "The Great Sedition Trial" issues from the trial 11.12.09.]

Gideon Oliver [Sept. 25 at 3:54pm]:

Long, amazing, and worthwhile interview w/ Elizabeth Fink from Black Panther doc "What We Want, What We Believe" posted to Robert Boyle's page - It's amazing to hear Liz talk about Dhoruba Bin-Wahad - this is history everyone should know, and just a ton of Liz being Liz - YouTube.

Carmen Jeannette Levasseur [Sept. 25 at 9:30pm]:

Liz Elizabeth Fink drove my sisters and I to and from family visits for years. She was a grounded force in a time of chaos. She always let me sit in front.

Bobby Quackenbush [Sept. 25 at 9:45pm]:

"Jeopardizing the Republic. I think I'd like that on my tombstone." - Elizabeth Fink

Ben Feinberg-Gerner [Sept. 25 at 11:35pm]:

Elizabeth Fink at her finest: fiery, passionate, deeply funny. Ever the watchwoman for the Constitutional protections we all have -- even when our government would rather overlook them in the name of policy or expedience.

The details of the case in question make her speech a bit tricky to follow, but what matters here in the underlying message and Liz's passion for justice. [Third link to Part 4 "The Great Sedition Trial" issues from the trial 11.12.09].

Edward Hershey [Sept. 26 at 2:05am]:

Usually glad to see The New York Times quote a passage of mine but not this time because it is at the end of Elizabeth Fink's obituary. I met Liz in Buffalo in 1974 when I covered the trial of 2 inmates charged with inciting the Attica Prison insurrection. She was on the defense team. She returned for her 40th Reed College reunion and I profiled her in the alumni magazine Still Fighting]. She was true to her principles every step of the way.

Finally, here's a recent photo, from an interview Mike Hull filmed:

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, September 21, 2015

Music: Current count 25544 [25500] rated (+44), 434 [436] unrated (-2).

I haven't played any Hatology records since last week's Rhapsody Streamnotes, although I expect I will before October's installment -- I'm still updating my checklist, and there's still lots to do (plus I'm finding a few older Hat Art releases). The only Hat A this week (and it's a full A) is Horace Tapscott's The Dark Tree, the latest reissue of a pair of albums I've long treasured.

My latest tangent as been 1970s pop/rock. As I was checking out the new Giorgio Moroder Michael Tatum recommended, I noticed that Moroder's 1977 album From Here to Eternity was on a list Pitchfork had assembled of The Top 100 Albums of the 1970s. As usual, I was tempted to fill in all the holes, and doubly so for Moroder -- as background for the new one, and because it's an album I used to own but somehow hadn't listed in the database. (I was on Casablanca's mailing list for a while in the late 1970s.)

Turns out that I had previously graded 85/100 albums -- the '70s were my decade, after all. My homework: Nick Drake, T. Rex, Neu!, Can, Saturday Night Fever, Pop Group, Suicide, Specials, Tim Buckley, Cluster, Faust, Van Halen, Nilsson, Throbbing Gristle, King Crimson -- someone at Pitchfork is really into Krautrock. I knocked about half of those off this week. Their list exhibits some unsurprising biases -- among pop/rock entries, 42 Brits but only 8 Afro-Americans, same as the number of Krautrock albums -- but did include 5 jazz albums (4 Miles Davis + 1 Herbie Hancock). There was a severe dry spell in the mid-1970s: only 9 albums for 1974-76. Unlike many lists, they weren't shy about picking 2nd, 3rd, or 4th albums by favorites: 4 each for David Bowie, Miles Davis, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd; 3 for Can, Brian Eno, Iggy and/or the Stooges; 2 for The Clash, Elvis Costello, Nick Drake, King Crimson, Kraftwerk, Fela Kuti, Ramones, Talking Heads, Neil Young. Still, I can't complain about the overall quality (unlike many recent lists): they picked 10 A+ albums, another 25 A albums, 25 more A-, and only 7 albums B or lower (only Van Halen much lower).

On the other hand, some missing artists: Captain Beefheart, Ornette Coleman, Derek and the Dominos, Nick Lowe, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bob Marley, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Van Morrison, Mott the Hoople, New York Dolls, Parliament, Pere Ubu, John Prine, Bonnie Raitt, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Steely Dan, Donna Summer, Bill Withers. I was tempted to offer an alternative list, but it could easily be as long.

By the way, the new Moroder album is unique in his catalog: it's like a compilation of productions for other singers as opposed to the robotized disco albums he released under his own name. At least Moroder's old Casablanca records are on Rhapsody (but not, alas, his 1969 That's Bubblegum). I tried assembling a playlist to match Casablanca's disco sampler Get Up and Boogie, but came up short by half.

All the new jazz I had this week was three high-B+ HMs until I gave Ochion Jewell a couple extra spins. Although he may be more impressed that he got Lionel Loueke to play on two tracks, the secret ingredient is the pianist and drummer from Dawn of Midi, offering many surprises. Preoccupied as I've been elsewhere, there's quite a bit of new jazz in the queue.

New records rated this week:

• The Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Sextet: 10 (2015, Zoho): [cd]: B+(***)
• Animation: Machine Language (2014 [2015], Rare Noise): [cdr]: B
• John Fedchock Quartet: Live: Fluidity (2014 [2015], Summit): [cd]: B+(**)
• Ochion Jewell Quartet: Volk (2015, self-released): [cd]: A-
• Keith Kelly Ask Not: A Grand Apparatus, Discarded (2014 [2015], Edgetone): [cd]: B+(**)
• Maddie & Tae: Start Here (2015, Dot): [r]: B+(*)
• Josh Maxey: Celebration of Soul (2015, Miles High): [cd]: B
• Bob Merrill: Cheerin' Up the Universe (2013 [2015], Accurate): [cd]: B+(**)
• Giorgio Moroder: Deja-Vu (2015, RCA): [r]: A-
• Pere Ubu: Carnival of Souls (2014, Fire): [r]: B+(***)
• Cecile McLorin Salvant: For One to Love (2015, Mack Avenue): [r]: B+(*)
• Aram Shelton/Fred Lonberg-Holm/Frank Rosaly: Resounder (2014 [2015], Singlespeed Music): [cd]: B+(***)
• Rotem Sivan Trio: A New Dance (2015, Fresh Sound New Talent): [cd]: B+(*)
• The Weeknd: Beauty Behind the Madness (2015, Republic): [r]: B+(*)

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

• Horace Tapscott: The Dark Tree (1989 [2014], Hatology, 2CD): [r]: A
• Amara Touré: 1973-1980 (1973-80 [2015], Analog Africa): [r]: B+(***)

Old records rated this week:

• Can: Tago Mago (1971, United Artists): [r]: B+(***)
• Ornette Coleman: The Empty Foxhole (1966 [1967], Blue Note): [r]: B+(***)
• Nick Drake: Pink Moon (1972, Island): [r]: B+(*)
• Faust: Faust IV (1973, Virgin): [r]: B+(**)
• Faust: Something Dirty (2011, Bureau B): [r]: B+(**)
• The Pandelis Karayorgis Trio: Heart and Sack (1998, Leo Lab): [r]: A-
• Pandelis Karayorgis: Seventeen Pieces: Solo Piano (2004, Leo): [r]: B+(***)
• Franz Koglmann: O Moon My Pin-Up (1997 [2001], Hatology): [r]: B
• Franz Koglmann: An Affair With Strauss (1999, Between the Lines): [r]: B+(**)
• Franz Koglmann: Venus in Transit (2001, Between the Lines): [r]: B+(**)
• Franz Koglmann: Fear Death by Water (2003, Between the Lines): [r]: B
• Urs Leimgruber/Joëlle Léandre/Fritz Hauser: No Try No Fail (1996 [1997], Hatology): [r]: B+(*)
• Giorgio Moroder: Knights in White Statin (1976, Oasis): [r]: B+(*)
• Giorgio Moroder: From Here to Eternity (1977, Casablanca): [r]: B
• Neu!: Neu! (1972, Brain): [r]: A-
• Harry Nilsson: Nilsson Sings Newman (1970, Buddha): [r]: B-
• Harry Nilsson: Nilsson Schmilsson (1971, RCA): [r]: B+(***)
• Harry Nilsson: Pussy Cats (1974, RCA): [r]: B
• T. Rex: Electric Warrior (1971, Reprise): [r]: B+(**)
• T. Rex: The Slider (1972, Reprise): [r]: B+(*)
• Horace Tapscott/Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra: The Call (1978 [2012], Nimbus West): [bc]: B+(**)
• Horace Tapscott with the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra: Live at I.U.C.C. (1979 [2006], Nimbus West, 2CD): [bc]: A-
• Horace Tapscott: Lighthouse 79, Vol. 1 (1979 [2009], Nimbus West): [r]: B+(**)
• Horace Tapscott: Lighthouse 79, Vol. 2 (1979 [2009], Nimbus West): [r]: B+(**)
• Horace Tapscott: The Tapscott Sessions Vol. 8 (1984 [1997], Nimbus West): [r]: B+(***)
• Van Halen: Val Halen (1978, Warner Brothers): [r]: C+

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Rodrigo Amado: This Is Our Language (Not Two)
• Randy Bernsen: Grace Notes (Jericho Jams)
• Marcelo Dos Reis/Angélica V. Salvi: Concentric Rinds (Cipsela)
• Bill Kirchner: An Evening of Indigos (Jazzheads, 2CD): October 16
• Frank Kohl Quartet: Invisible Man (Pony Boy): October 2
• Adam Larson: Selective Amnesia (Inner Circle Music): November 3
• Daniel Levin/Rob Brown: Divergent Paths (Cipsela)
• Mostly Other People Do the Killing: Maucha Chunk (Hot Cup): October 27
• Oscar Perez: Prepare a Place for Me (Myna): October 13
• Michael Sarian & the Chabones: The Escape Suite (self-released): November 3
• Ike Sturm + Evergreen: Shelter of Trees (Kilde): November 10
• Bastian Weinhold: Cityscape (Frame Music): November 3

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Short post this week. Got a late start, and didn't get beyond the usual US political campaign grist. Rest assured though that the Middle East remains as fucked as ever, that Europe is struggling with a refugee crisis, that Greece is stuck with a choice between two defeatist parties, that the rich still aren't satisfied, and environmental disasters are still multiplying. Meanwhile, our "best and brightest" reporters are mired in what Matt Taibbi calls "the stupid season."

• David Atkins: Why Does the Press Continue to Get It So Wrong on Donald Trump?: Why do pundits, and for that matter pretty much all of the mainstream press, keep getting popular political opinions wrong?

  Conservatives will claim that journalists are liberal and don't understand Republican politics. Perhaps, but progressives have made equally scathing critiques of the press for years in their underestimation of progressive populist sentiment and elevation of centrist candidates. It's less that the political press is liberal, and more that it is trapped' in a bubble inhabited by the wealthy and powerful. [ . . . ]

  But more importantly, there is a bias in the press toward political neutrality and the perception of balance. After a debate in which Republican candidates peddled an endless string of falsehoods and fantasies, the political press has a crisis on its hands: let it all slide and simply transcribe the lies without challenge, or contribute to a perception of "liberal bias" by actually calling out the falsehoods and holding the candidates accountable?

  Trump presents a similar problem. Trump's extremist positions on immigration and foreign policy, combined with his vulgar, racist and sexist remarks, are so obviously appalling that for him to continuously lead the GOP field not only proves the Mann/Ornstein thesis that the Republican Party has grown uniquely extreme, but also shows that problem extends beyond Republican Party leadership to the actual voters themselves. Even more, the fact that Trump's apostasy on taxes and healthcare has not significantly damaged him is a demonstration that GOP voters are not actually so committed to the libertarian supply-side economics of the Republican Party as they are to using the power of government to benefit traditionally powerful whites at the expense of women and minorities.

  This a problem for the press. As long as Trump leads, it's impossible to maintain the fiction of equally extreme "both sides do it" partisanship. As long as Trump rules (and, to a lesser extent, that Bernie Sanders continues to rise on the left) it's also increasingly difficult to pretend that "moderates" in either party are actually the center of public opinion, rather than caterers to a unique brand of corporate-friendly upper-class comfort that labels itself as moderate without holding any legitimate claim to the title.

  Acknowledging those realities would force the press to start reporting the fundamentals of American politics as they stand today:

  First, that the Republican base wants a rebel leader to take their country back from the inconvenience of being nice to women, gays and minorities;

  Second, that the wealthy Republican establishment and its center-right Third Way Democratic counterparts don't actually have a legitimate base of voters, but rather illegitimate institutional capture of government via legalized bribery; and

  Third, that the rest of the country wants liberal public policies that would resemble a Scandinavian government, but most of them are so turned off by the futility of the American political process that not enough of them turn out to vote to make a real difference outside of the bluest states.

  The first two of these points could be phrased better but are pretty self-evident. The Republican Party is an uneasy coalition of leaders and followers: the former that segment of the wealthy that seeks to gain through zero-sum strategies (reducing taxes, suppressing wages, growing monopolies, exchanging wealth for debt, arbitrage); the latter various segments of gullible single-issue voters (racists, religious bigots, anti-abortion, pro-gun, flag wavers, anything that distracts one from class). The appeal to the latter is a combination of flattery (you're the real Americans) and demagoguery (they're hell-bent on destroying your life). That coalition is unstable because the leaders are actively undermining the followers' material basis, and this fracturing only increases as the leaders gain power. It may be possible for a politician to crack this coalition by running against the elites, but I don't see any reason to expect Trump will do that. Rather, as his own billionaire sponsor, his potential independence worries the elites and offers some hope to the gullible followers. Still, I don't see it panning out: even if his understanding of class never extends beyond his own bottom line, you know where he's going to land on every significant issue.

  The third point is the controversial one, because the main obstacle a significant extension of social democratic policies faces comes not from the Republicans -- who would cut their base's throats to achieve their goal of reducing government -- as from the mainstream Democrats, who chase after campaign money with the avarice of Republicans but at least have some scruples against wrecking the status quo (not that they always have the wisdom, as shown by their support for wrecking Carter-Glass banking regulation). The public may very well want more than the Democrats are offering, but without unions or other groups pressuring the Democrats to deliver, they'll keep playing defense (with the occasional fumble).

• Josh Marshall: The War Party: Responding to the Republican dog and pony show, Marshall points out that when foreign policy issues came up, "Trump may have been silent because he just doesn't know enough details or doesn't care enough about them to engage," while the others "turned not so much to foreign policy as to each candidate trying to outdo the other in embracing the sort of petulant unilateralism that made the aughts such a disaster for the United States. It was, to put it simply, a race to embrace Bush foreign policy on steroids." I wouldn't give Trump much of a pass here -- he has, after all, claimed he's "the most militaristic person there is" (see Scott Eric Kaufman and Glen Healy -- the latter defending Trump by arguing that his boast is the "biggest lie" of a pathological braggart). Still, Marshall is right to focus on Rubio and Fiorina, who pundits like to praise for their ability to spew this shit with a straight face.

  Let's start with Marco Rubio, who has tried to carve out a space as the candidate of the neoconservatives in exile. Joe Klein saw him as the clear winner of the debate with a crisp and incisive command of national defense policy. "To my mind, Marco Rubio won that debate with his obvious fluency on a range of topics . . . Marco Rubio is becoming a force to be reckoned with -- on the debate stage. He is fluent, smart and bold."

  That is not what I saw at all.

  I agree that Rubio continues to come off as likable and he makes no obvious mistakes in these encounters. I actually think that just by dint of process of elimination he has a substantial better shot at the nomination that most people realize. But in his recitations on foreign policy he doesn't come off as knowledgable or seasoned. He comes off as someone who has obligingly internalized, in a kind of rote manner, the wisdom of Bill Kristol to get the money of Sheldon Adelson. There is a strong DC insider appetite for these nostrums. So it's not just the money. But these are dangerous, discredited ideas that were tried and failed miserably under the last Republican President. Indeed, they failed so miserably that even in President Bush's second term the standard-bearers were largely ushered aside in favor of a slightly more realist approach to cleaning up the messes created in the first term.

  If there is one thing the country does not need it is another impressionable foreign policy neophyte who comes under the influence of this war-addicted DC coven.

  Next is Carly Fiorina. I entirely agree that she had a strong, commanding debate. She seemed particularly focused and knowledgable on national security questions as she rattled off a number of things she would do to take a more aggressive posture toward America's adversaries and rivals.

  Unless of course you actually have any idea what you're talking about. In which case, the things she said seemed quite different. At a broad level, it's the same kind of confrontational and dangerous foreign policy that got the country into trouble a decade ago. But as Ezra Klein explains here, Fiorina's list of proposed actions were a mix of things that were irrelevant to the questions at hand, are already happening, or things that operate on a time scale such that they can't have any real affect on the challenges she suggests they're aimed at countering. The dangerous ground of half-knowledge. Or policies as puzzle pieces with no larger picture or understanding.

  I think the appeal the necons have among Republicans now is tied up with the right's obsession with condemning all things Obama. It is, after all, an extremist doctrine, one that takes common assumptions of the cold war security state and through a combination of logical rigor and macho posturing drives them to seductive but untenable extremes. It's worth recalling that the neocons' original nemesis was none other than Henry Kissinger, no minor war criminal himself, so casting Obama as cowardly and unpatriotic was easy. (Lazy and shameless too: after all, the crime they wailed about in Benghazi! wasn't Obama's running an illegal CIA operation there or getting it blown up but not spouting the correct anti-Islamic bigotry afterwards -- i.e., the one that would justify further disastrous intervention.)

  The neocon parlor game of rhetoric is hard to beat in the salons of Washington, even though it has never been shown to work in the real world -- where America isn't omnipotent, where American efforts to "shock and awe" other into submission merely publicize the moral rot that somes with superpower hubris. The neocons always have the excuse that their principles were compromised by weaklings who didn't believe and didn't try hard enough. The real antidote to neoconism is to question the assumptions -- something Obama and Clinton never had the guts to do, because the institutional power of the security state is too entrenched. Some of the leading dimwits of the Tea Party movement were tempted in that direction, but Michelle Bachmann fizzled before she could articulate much, and Rand Paul let himself be convinced that only by prevaricating could he win the nomination -- leaving himself no principle to stand on.

  Marshall's conclusion:

  The attitude of embattlement and grievance that currently animates the Republican party is something we're quite familiar with in the domestic sphere but it's even more present in the outlook abroad. It is a dangerous thing to take a coalition which feels embattled, victimized and disempowered and put them in charge of the most powerful military in the world. A coalition like that, with an untrained hand at the helm, guided by terrible advisors is a recipe for disaster.

• Philip Weiss: Coulter's point is that Republicans pander on Israel to win donors, not voters: I referred to the Republican presidential debate above as a "dog and pony show" -- a phrase that back in my corporate days we used to refer to any staged presentation (to customers, to investors, or to anyone else you hoped to deal with). I was looking for an alternative turn of phrase, but also I was a bit uncomfortable with "debate" -- that suggests a high-minded collegiate contest being scored by experts, and while many pundits are conceited enough to think of themselves that way, that wasn't necessarily the judgment the candidates were looking for. Some were mostly intent on selling themselves to potential voters, while some were no doubt more concerned with donors. It now occurs to me that the latter may have been the main focus, one that resonates with my "dog and pony show" quip: after all, who bothers to watch a dog or horse race unless they have some money riding on the result?

  Coulter is a thoroughly obnoxious pundit, one who built her entire career by heaping hateful invective on liberals, a torrent so vile it's consumed her, turning her into such a fount of hatred that she's lost the ability to distinguish between former friends and foes. It wouldn't surprise me if her "fucking Jews" tweet reveals anti-semitism because her hate has become so universal, although it sounds as much like her usual stock in trade. Still, the sequence of her tweets shows she's at least trying to think through what she's seeing. She quickly figures out that Republican appeals on Israel aren't meant to curry favor with Jewish voters, because there aren't that many of them, and most vote Democratic anyway. She considers whether it's "to suck up to the Evangelicals" -- they are more numerous, and they're a key target constituency for Republicans: many see Israel as an essential step toward the second coming of Jesus, the "end times" and all that. (I've known people obsessed with that, although you don't read much about them as it's considered impolite to talk about such delusions.) But in the end Coulter decides the candidates are pitching their donors, and she comes up with this tweet, which despite everything is pretty much on target:

  How to get applause from GOP donors: 1) Pledge to start a war 2) Talk about job creators 3) Denounce abortion 4) Cite Reagan 5) Cite Israel.

  Worth noting that (1) is an implicit case of (5), not that war with Iran isn't the only pledge, but if it wasn't Iran it'd be someone else on Israel's "existential threat" list -- ISIS, for one, is looming. Coulter's hot button issue at the moment seems to be nativism, which whenever it has erupted in American history has been rooted in racism (and often linked to anti-semitism, although these days the semites are much more often Muslim). Nativism has also tended to be associated with autarky and isolationism, and Coulter seems to be leaning that way -- if you don't want foreigners coming to America, you shouldn't go around the world starting wars and stirring up distress, like America's liberal interventionists have been doing ever since FDR. One could build a coherent conservative argument around such notions, but I have yet to hear one from Trump or Coulter or even Rand Paul. Part of the problem there is that Fascists in the 1930s discredited those notions for generations. Part is that capital -- the money of the superrich who think they run the GOP -- has become so globalized that any real autarky has become unimaginable. And while it's not clear that global capital really requires America's military sprawl, no Republican has come around to asking that question.

  In a sense, (3) has become the core point: not so much that the money Republicans hate abortion, but abortion has become a litmus test issue, something no Republican can question without being drummed out of the tribe. But then all the points are increasingly like that: litmus tests, articles of faith, self-commitments. They draw applause because Republicans love to applaud themselves. But they're increasingly self-selecting themselves into a power-losing minority.

  By the way, we can thank Netanyahu for moving Israel out of the realm of bipartisan consensus and into the Republican column. That will eventually free the Democrats of a terrible burden. As Weiss puts it:

  One good result of this conversation will be more Jews condemning Sheldon Adelson and Norman Braman and the Republican Jewish Coalition moneybags for trying to have a war with Iran, more Jews declaring that they aren't Zionists.

  As for Coulter's (4) point, see: Jon Schwarz: Seven Things About Ronald Reagan You Won't Hear at the Reagan Library GOP Debate: "And maybe that's appropriate -- since if Reagan stood for anything as president, it was creating a completely fictionalized version of the past."

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

August ended in Kansas this year, atypically, without a single 100 degree day, then we had two in a row a week into September, and it's still up in the 90s as I write this. Two days short of a month since last time, with the biggest haul of albums all year (179 -- in fact since November 30, 2013; although, like then, the bulk is down in the Old Music section, as today's 60 new records is the second skimpiest selection this year).

Last month I wasn't sure where I would go in Old Music since I had ran out of items from Spin's 1985-2015 list. This month I started out picking up old records from Dee Dee Bridgewater and Sleaford Mods -- two artists with new records this month -- then I found some listings from Werner Uehlinger's legendary Hat label -- one of the key European labels that kept avant-jazz in business since the late 1970s. Over the years I had picked up 76 of their releases, and had 26 (36.1%) listed at A- or above. But I had missed a couple hundred albums, so the prospect that most would now be accessible was too good to pass up. Eighty-six more Hat albums are reviewed below (only 85 graded, 24.7% A- or A: in one case -- also for a non-Hat album by Horace Tapscott -- I wrote a bit but decided I hadn't heard enough to firm up a grade). That still leaves unheard 70 albums from my Hatology checklist, plus an undetermined number from Hat's "new music" (i.e., avant-classical) label Hat[new]Art and Hat's pre-Hatology labels (Hat Musics LPs and Hat Art LPs/CDs). So expect more next month, but probably not as many.

Reissues from the last couple years have been slotted in with the Recent Reissues/Compilations/Vault Music, which only seems right. I wouldn't normally have bothered with The Dark Tree, since I've long owned the original CDs, and I usually skip over old music that I've previously graded, even if the packaging it new. In this case two separately-released CDs have been combined, making it a distinct (if not very different) title. Also note that when the combined set was released -- actually as The Dark Tree 1 & 2 in 2000; the new one is a retitled reissue of a reissue -- Penguin Guide gave the set a crown, so it's resided in my database as one of very few crown albums I hadn't graded. Besides, if you weren't aware of it, you should be.

I'll note here that I didn't do the same thing with Steve Lacy's finest album, which I have as Morning Joy: Live at Sunset Paris, credited to Steve Lacy Four, recorded in 1986, released on Hat Art in 1989; subsequently reissued as Morning Joy by Hatology in 2001, and again as Morning Joy . . . Paris Live in 2014. The 2001 edition added the 7:38 "Work," same for the 2014 reissue. So not a distinct recording, nor a new one for me, but a great album, a very solid A.

For Tapscott, I wound up digging a bit further. Most of his work was privately recorded and ultimately released on Nimbus West. Some of that is on Rhapsody, and some more is on Bandcamp. I didn't get very far into the latter -- certainly not deep enough to make any real sense out of his solo discs. I also got stymied looking up Tapscott's Flying Dutchman debut from 1969, The Giant Is Awakened. I found something that looked like it on YouTube, and started to write a bit on it, but it stopped after the first cut/side. Not enough to grade, but if what I heard is indication, very likely an A-. YouTube played the same trick on me with Live at I.U.C.C., but Bandcamp had the whole thing.

Last few months I've been listing previously graded records by artists reviewed in Old Music. That made sense given that I was mostly chasing down the Spin list, filling in holes where it seemed worthwhile in my coverage of mostly rock artists. This time I'm mostly just filling in one label, often in jazz artists I've covered rather extensively before. If I listed everything in my database for all of these artists, this post would get way too long, so for the most part I just give you previously rated Hat albums, plus a raw count of everything else. For what it's worth, including reviews here, these are the top artists (counting first artist listed in credits): Steve Lacy: 58; Anthony Braxton: 54; Sun Ra: 45; Cecil Taylor: 38; Lee Konitz: 37; Peter Brötzmann, Ornette Coleman, Matthew Shipp: 36; David Liebman: 26; Paul Bley: 25; Joe McPhee: 23; Mal Waldron: 22; Billy Bang, Ellery Eskelin: 18; Albert Ayler, Ran Blake: 17.

Only one non-jazz record in the Recent Releases: Sleaford Mods, a major group as far as I'm concerned. Probably just a numbers thing -- only 14 of 60 new records are non-jazz. Also may have given up too easy: five B+(***) albums there (Bobby Bare Jr, Carly Rae Jepsen, Lindi Ortega, Rod Picott, Yo La Tengo). I gave the Ezra Furman album a spin -- Tatum gave it an A -- last night and decided not to commit one way or another. On the other hand, good month for new jazz, even if I'm playing catch up on Allen and Bergonzi. Also note that I've caught up with most of ECM's releases (at least those released from March to September -- I missed some earlier ones, including one by Jack DeJohnette that my friends all love). They're marked as downloads [dl], but were actually streamed using MPE Player. Not a great interface, but enough to tell they're not great records either.

Most of these are short notes/reviews based on streaming records from Rhapsody. They are snap judgments based on one or two plays, accumulated since my last post along these lines, back on August 18. Past reviews and more information are available here (6976 records).

Recent Releases

John Adams/San Francisco Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas: Absolute Jest/Grand Pianola Music (2013 [2015], SFS): Adams caught my interest with his early minimalism, then lost it as he veered into more conventionally classical music (not that I've listened to much of the latter). But this looked like it might be amusing. The former piece (25:38) is symphonic but airy, parts reportedly cribbed from Beethoven, in jest no doubt, but the jokes are too subtle for me. The latter (31:56) combines minimalist tinkle with choral uplift, hitting a crescendo that is quite wonderful, then settling for the merely grand. B+(**)

JD Allen: Graffiti (2015, Savant): Tenor saxophonist from Detroit, has ten or so albums since 1999. Always an impressive stylist, goes with a basic trio here -- Gregg August on bass, Rudy Royston on drums -- which opens him up. A- [cd]

Barry Altschul & 3Dom Factor: Tales of the Unforeseen (2014 [2015], TUM): Drummer, achieved some prominence in the 1970s as part of Anthony Braxton's quartet, faded away, finally appearing as a venerable elder guest star on tenor saxophonist Jon Irabagon's 2010 Foxy. Irabagon returned on Altschul's 2013 The 3Dom Factor, and again here, although the focus here is more on the drums. Joe Fonda helps out on bass. A- [cd]

Animation: Machine Language (2014 [2015], Rare Noise): Group sometimes referred to as Bob Belden's Animation, and this is billed as the late saxophonist's last album. AMG lists about a dozen albums under Animation, but only three belong to this group (all on this label). Fairly elementary jazztronica, nice beat, doesn't strain any of the talent (which includes Bill Laswell on bass). Enjoyable enough, but the spoken word story line -- something about "human machines" and "perfect machines" and "children's dreams" and such -- didn't interest me at all. The narrator, by the way, is Kurt Elling. B [cdr]

Bobby Bare Jr.: Don't Follow Me (I'm Lost) [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack] (2015, Bloodshot): Looks like the movie, which went straight to DVD, is a documentary following Bare around on some tour. Much of this sounds like "live in concert" and the rest comes off as even more informal. The offhandedness suits him, not least when it brings out his natural weirdness. B+(***)

Stefano Battaglia Trio: In the Morning: Music of Alec Wilder (2014 [2015], ECM): Italian pianist, has close to 40 albums since 1989 (per Discogs). This is a trio with Salvatore Maiore (bass) and Roberto Dani (drums), playing seven tunes from Alec Wilder. Very thoughtful, a bit more zip than the label norm, probably because the melodies are proven, even if none too recognizable. B+(***) [dl]

Beat Funktion: Olympus (2015, DO Music): Swedish acid jazz group, more like disco, pick up some themes from Greek mythology and swish and swizzle them around the dance floor. B [cd]

Jerry Bergonzi: Rigamaroll (2012 [2015], Savant): Tenor saxophonist, mainstream guy who uses phrases like Tenor Talk and Simply Put for titles (to pick two records I especially like). Quintet with Phil Grenadier (trumpet), Bruce Barth (piano), his usual bassist and drummer, a hard bop set that kicks out the jams. A- [cd]

Dee Dee Bridgewater: Dee Dee's Feathers (2014 [2015], Okeh): Veteran jazz singer, came up in bop but ten years after Katrina she's doing a New Orleans theme album. Irvin Mayfield gets second credit on trumpet, and they're backed by the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra -- I don't have the credits, but they sound more like a conventional big band than a New Orleans trad outfit. Of course, the usual guests drop in, and they work in the "Treme Theme Song" -- anything to please the tourists. Lots of brass and swagger. B+(**)

Dheepa Chari: Patchwork (2015, self-released): Singer, originally from Vancouver but grew up in Dallas, second album, mostly standards but co-wrote three songs with keyboard player Lars Potteiger. Bio compares herself to Betty Carter ("in the spirit of"), Sarah Vaughan ("the dulcet sultriness of"), Billie Holiday ("the emotional depth and sinuous lyricism of"), and Ella Fitzgerald ("the impeccable phrasing and effortless control of"). Shows she can keep her models straight, even if she can't emulate any of them. B- [cd]

Darts & Arrows: Altamira (2015, Ears & Eyes): Guitarist Bill MacKay, has a couple more albums under his and/or his group's name, started thinking of this guitar-keybs-bass-drums quartet as a folk group but somewhere along the way it veered into fusion, the tight grooves punctuated by a dip in the guitar. B+(*) [cd]

Dave Douglas Quintet: Brazen Heart (2015, Greenleaf Music): New saxophonist this time, Jon Irabagon, adding to the string of imposing young tenors recruited by Douglas for his Quintets (Chris Potter, Donny McCaslin, Marcus Strickland). Unfortunately, Irabagon doesn't help out much, for this is one of those Douglas discs where the composition -- "a commission from the Ecstatic Music Festival for a program to be performed at the World Trade Center site in downtown New York" -- swamps the musicianship, always potent in Douglas groups (here: Matt Mitchell, Linda Oh, Rudy Royston). B+(**) [cd]

Elina Duni Quartet: Dallëndyshe (2014 [2015], ECM): Singer from Albania, left for Switzerland at age 10, second ECM album, mostly trad Albanian folk songs, but she has a first-rate jazz piano trio -- Colin Vallon, Patrice Moret, Norbert Pfammatter -- and she's a memorable stylist. B+(***) [dl]

Mathias Eick: Midwest (2014 [2015], ECM): Norwegian trumpet player, third ECM album, with piano (Jon Balke), violin (Gjermund Larsen), and bass (Mats Eilertsen). B+(**) [dl]

Electric Squeezebox Orchestra: Cheap Rent (2014 [2015], OA2): Led by trumpeter Erik Jekabson, a pretty conventional big band based in San Francisco -- they have a weekly Sunday night gig at Doc's Lab with a shifting membership (two lineups split this disc). I don't see where the "electric" or "squeezebox" comes in, but they are snappier than the average postbop orchestra. B+(*) [cd]

Liberty Ellman: Radiate (2014 [2015], Pi): Guitarist, fourth album since 1998, close to thirty side-credits (not counting the mixing and mastering he's done on at least that many records). Sextet, with three horns giving wide-ranging looks -- Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet), Steve Lehman (alto sax), and Jose Davila (tuba, trombone) -- plus Stephan Crump (bass) and Damion Reid (drums). A- [cd]

Ellery Eskelin: Solo Live at Snugs (2013 [2015], Hatology): Solo tenor sax, twenty years after his first solo effort (Premonition: Solo Tenor Saxophone). Four long pieces, deliberately paced and methodical with no real rough spots. B+(**)

Daniel Fortin: Brinks (2015, Fresh Sound New Talent): Bassist, from Ontario, first album under his own name but he also co-leads the EST-ish piano trio Myriad 3. Postbop quartet with David French (tenor sax), Michael Davidson (vibes), and Fabio Ragnelli (drums). B+(**) [cd]

Funkadelic: First Ya Gotta Shake the Gate (2014, The C Kunspyruzhy, 3CD): Thirty-three years after George Clinton and company hung it up with The Electric Spanking of War Babies, so why not three discs, thirty-three tracks, 3:27:34? (Works out to just one track per year, nothing to break a sweat over.) A couple tracks sound promising, but they don't seem quite up to snuff, and by the time they start covering "Bernadette" you realize they're not going to pull it out. Maybe you can edit this down to something you'd want to play again. B+(*)

Michael Gallant Trio: Live Plus One (2014 [2015], Gallant Music): Piano trio, the leader also playing electric keyboard and melodica, with Rob Mitzner on drums and either/both of Dmitry Ishenko/Pepe Gonzalez on bass (former electric, latter acoustic). Gallant has several previous albums. This one is upbeat, sparkling even. B+(*) [cd]

Clay Giberson: Minga Minga (2013 [2015], Origin): Pianist, fifth album since 2001, solo, so what? B+(*) [cd]

Girlpool: Before the World Was Big (2015, Wichita): Two LA girls, still in their teens but feeling adult to reflect back, get by without a drummer by never running very fast, and get by with slow by having something to say. B+(**)

Girlpool: Girlpool (2014, Wichita, EP): Last year's 7-cut, 15:15 debut. A bit riskier lyrically, as if they feel they have to put out, although they never get in too deep. B+(**)

Chris Golinski/Tim McNally/Boaz Roberts: Rodeo (2015, Edgetone): Drums-bass-guitar trio, order is probably alphabetical as the guitar is the main thing here, to the extent anything is. The net effect is rather atmospheric, an unlikely goal for suc difficult music. B+(*) [cd]

Giovanni Guidi Trio: This Is the Day (2014 [2015], ECM): Young Italian pianist -- turns 30 this year -- already with a stack of records and side credits (especially with Enrico Rava), back for another trio, with Thomas Morgan on bass and João Lobo on drums. One of those delicate, understated piano records producer Manfred Eicher so favors. B+(**) [dl]

Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell: The Traveling Kind (2015, Nonesuch): Second album together, mostly Crowell's songs (even, I suspect, when Harris shares a credit, about half the time), but aside from a Cajun piece at the end, the covers top them (Amy Allison and Lucinda Williams, of course you know the latter). B+(*)

Will Herrington: Solace (2015, self-released): Pianist, based in LA, first album, mostly trio, bright post-bop, two tracks add trumpet (Ambrose Akinmusire), one of those extra percussion, filling out the sound impressively. B+(*) [cd]

Hommage à Eberhard Weber (2015, ECM): The German bassist was one of the labels stars from his first album, 1973's The Colours of Chloë until a 2007 stroke left him unable to play bass. Since then he has hung on to release a couple of albums built around older bass solos, and contributes in that ghostly manner to this 75th birthday tribute, recorded live at Theaterhaus Stuttgart with the SWR Big Band and various stars listed on the cover: Pat Metheny, Jan Garbarek, Gary Burton, Scott Colley, Danny Gottlieb, Paul McCandless, Michael Gibbs, Helge Sunde. The album begins with Garbarek's soprano sax circling around the bass tapes, then plunges into ambitious Metheny's 31:33 "Hommage." McCandless and Burton finish up less decisively. B+(*) [dl]

Hop Along: Painted Shut (2015, Saddle Creek): From Philadelphia, Frances Quinlan has some impressive guitar chops and a voice I doubt I'll ever acquire a taste for. She called her first album's band "Hop Along, Queen Ansleis" and has since shortened the name while beefing up the group. B+(*)

Jon Irabagon: Behind the Sky (2014 [2015], Irabbagast): Tenor saxophonist, made his first (avant) impression with Mostly Other People Do the Killing, then won a Monk Prize which included a record on Concord, so he did something suitably mainstream for them (The Observer -- widely panned but I thought it was pretty good). Since then he's been all over the map, including a fusion thing (Unhinged) I didn't enjoy, some squawky "blues" I didn't get, and key roles in new projects by Barry Altschul and Dave Douglas, plus two of his own records. This one, which he describes as "written with the grieving process," is simultaneously conventional and eclectic, "featuring" Tom Harrell (who often sounds grieving), with Luis Perdomo sneaking in a little clavé. And, of course, some marvelous saxophone. B+(**) [cd]

Jon Irabagon: Inaction Is an Action (2015, Irabbagast): Solo sopranino saxophone, wonder if that's ever been done before? The main guy I associate with sopranino is Anthony Braxton, so I wouldn't lay long odds against it. Like Braxton's notorious For Alto, he starts with a piece way below the horn's normal range, and returns there painfully often (not that the high end can't be painful too). It's not all like that -- if you want something to appall your friends (or impress them with how tough you are), stick with For Alto. But this is mostly a novelty. B [cd]

Keith Jarrett: Creation (2014 [2015], ECM): Solo piano, selected and sequenced from "improvised solo concerts in Japan, Canada and Europe in April-July" 2014. Unlike his early solo work, you never get the sense he might skid off the rails -- all very deliberate and carefully reasoned. B+(**)

Carly Rae Jepsen: E-MO-TION (2015, Interscope/Schoolboy/Silent): A very appealing pop singer, trades on a certain romantic ambivalence perfected last time in "Call Me Maybe," approximated again in "I Really Like You." Nothing else quite so good here, and I'm not quite tempted enough to play it enough to convince myself otherwise. B+(***)

Joanna Gruesome: Peanut Butter (2015, Slumberland): Welsh "fuzz-pop" group, Alanna McArdle was the main singer although that's hard to tell here -- reports are she's left now that all the band members have adopted "Gruesome" as surnames (cf. the Ramones, but note no Joanna). Previous album, Weird Sister, ran 28:27, which seemed close enough for ten cuts. This time they squeeze their ten cuts into 21:35. Still hard to call it an EP, given how short their official EPs are. B+(*)

Darius Jones Quartet: Le Bébé de Brigitte (Lost in Translation) (2015, AUM Fidelity): Alto saxophonist, has a huge sound and an expansive vision, both of which are as prone to blowing up as growing into something special. He builds this set around vocalist Emillie Lesbros, who wrote the lyrics on four (of six) songs and the music on one. Quartet includes Matt Mitchell (piano, keyboards), Sean Conly (bass), and Ches Smith (drums). B+(**)

Anders Jormin/Lena Willemark/Karin Nakagawa: Trees of Light (2013 [2015], ECM): Swedish bassist, more than a dozen albums since 1984, four on ECM, where he had established himself as a sideman with Bobo Stenson, Don Cherry, Charles Lloyd, and Tomasz Stanko. Nakagawa plays 25-string koto, and Willemark, who wrote most of the songs, plays violin and viola and sings. B+(*) [dl]

Keith Kelly Ask Not: A Grand Apparatus, Discarded (2014 [2015], Edgetone): Keith Kelly plays saxophones, bass clarinet, and flute; from Bay Area, has a previous record. Ask Not is a group he leads, adding guitar, bass, drums, and vibes. I can't quite say that what they do is ambient -- too dense, but hazy, featureless, background music that doesn't quite stay there. B+(**) [cd]

Michael Kocour: Wherever You Go, There You Are (2014 [2015], OA2): Solo piano (some Fender Rhodes), second album, also has a group called Unhinged Sextet. B+(*) [cd]

Lona Kozik/Chris Golinski: Spelaeology (2015, Edgetone): Piano and drums, respectively. Only album I can find for Kozik, although Golinski has another new album out, and at least one other shared credit. Title has something to do with caves. Free jazz, three pieces, two longish, not without interest but much of it sails under my ears. B+(*)

Shelby Lynne: I Can't Imagine (2015, New Rounder): Country singer, about 15 albums since 1989, moved to the west coast and tries to write soul ballads. Verdict: unclear. B

Roberto Magris: Enigmatix (2013 [2015], JMood): Pianist, from Trieste, Italy, leads a trio-plus-percussion through a set of lively originals, closing with two pop/rock covers that are sure to wind up in the jazz canon: "My Cherie Amour" and "Do It Again" (although the latter probably started as a jazz melody I can't quite place). Monique Danielle sings one of the originals. B+(**) [cd]

Dave McDonnell Group: The Time Inside a Year (2014 [2015], Delmark): Alto saxophonist, second album, group includes some fairly well known Chicago names -- Joshua Abrams (bass), Frank Rosaly (drums), Jason Adasiewicz (vibes on 2 cuts), Tomeka Reid (cello on on 3), none of which are as critical here as guitarist Welcome, let alone the leader, who favor a rocksteady flavor of postbop. B+(*) [cd]

Merzbow/Balasz Pandi/Mats Gustafsson/Thurston Moore: Cuts of Guilt/Cuts Deeper (2014 [2015], Rare Noise, 2CD): Masama Akita (aka Merzbow) is credited with "noise, power electronics." He has well over 100 albums, and the only one I had heard before he started working with this crew was one I hated so much I graded D+ -- Dharma (2001, 2XHNI) if you're curious. Drummer Pandi and saxophonist Gustafsson joined him on a tolerable 2003 album (Cuts: B -- so this title plays off that record). Gustafsson has always enjoyed a long, hard squawkfest, and the famous Sonic Youth guitarist has joined a few. All jointly-credited improv. Still, they don't overdo it, and Pandi is terrific throughout. B+(***) [cdr]

Stephan Micus: Nomad Songs (2012-14 [2015], ECM): German musician, plays all sorts of exotic instruments (wind instruments, especially flutes; string instruments, percussion) and sings some (in his own language). AMG files him under New Age, others under World. I find it more otherworldly, something beyond normal experience which doesn't suggest elsewhere so much as the arcanum of one's own mind. B+(*) [dl]

Nicole Mitchell/Tomeka Reid/Mike Reed: Artifacts (2015, 482 Music): Flute, cello, drums. It was clear from the very beginning that Mitchell would be the poll-domineering flute player of her generation, but less clear whether we should care. This, however, is terrific on any terms. On the 50th anniversary of the founding of the AACM, she's recorded their songbook -- the Mitchell credit is Roscoe, sandwiched between Braxton and Fred Anderson, with Abrams, McCall (twice), and Wilkerson to come. The cello fits better than a bass would, and the drummer's studied this music all his life. A-

The Montgomery Hermann Quinlan Sextet: Hear, Here (2015, Summit): I sometimes see this with slashes separating the names -- Bob Montgomery (trumpet), Al Hermann (trombone), Josh Quinlan (alto/tenor sax) -- which would be clearer. The others who didn't get their names factored into the group: Dave Hanson (piano), Ken Walker (bass), Todd Reid (drums). B [cd]

Richard Nelson/Aardvark Jazz Orchestra: Deep River (2015, Heliotrope): Nelson is a guitarist, composer, arranger, and teaches at University of Maine. He mostly goes with trad fare here -- "Deep River Blues," "Old Country Stomp," "Wake Up Jacob," "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor" -- sung by Marcia Gallagher and Timothy Johnson, played by Mark Harvey's swing-oriented big band. B+(*) [cd]

Olavi Trio: Oh, La Vie! (2013 [2015], TUM): Trombone-bass-drums trio from Finland, bear with me while I try to retype these names: Jari Olavi Hongisto, Teppo Olavi Hauta-aho, Niilo Olavi Louhivuori, the middle names adopted in honor of Finnish tango singer Olavi Virta (1915-72) and not used elsewhere (Hauta-aho is one of those bassists who gets around. The trombone isn't an especially strong lead instrument here, so the bass and drums stand out. B+(**) [cd]

Lindi Ortega: Faded Gloryville (2015, Last Gang): Country singer-songwriter from Toronto -- the one up in Canada, which I guess makes her alt by definition. Fourth album, has a remarkable voice, and the songs are getting steadily better. B+(***)

Gary Peacock Trio: Now This (2014 [2015], ECM): Bassist-led piano trio, with Marc Copland and Joey Baron, released as the bassist -- and author of 7 (of 11) songs -- turns 80. Well established all around: Copland has 35 albums since 1988, eight with Peacock on bass. He has a lovely touch here, but the mix favors the bass. B+(***)

Rod Picott: Fortune (2015, Welding Rod): Country singer-songwriter from New Hampshire, moved on to Maine (I think), described his last album as "love songs for the broken-hearted and work songs for the unemployed," and doubles down on that, noting that soldiers don't come home. Mostly lean and slow. B+(***)

Enrico Rava Quartet/Gianluca Petrella: Wild Dance (2015, ECM): Italian trumpet player, in his 70s now with at least 70 albums since 1972. Nearly everyone in Italian jazz has passed through his bands, so I'm not surprised I don't know his quartet (Francesco Diodati on guitar, Gabriele Evangelista on bass, and Enrico Morello on drums). The trombonist got some exposure when EMI signed him and Blue Note released a couple of his albums. I wouldn't characterize this as "wild," but it is nimble and artful. B+(**) [dl]

Mike Reed's People Places & Things: A New Kind of Dance (2015, 482 Music): Drummer, runs a couple of groups, this one rooted in a golden age of local jazz, which in Chicago means Sun Ra and the AACM. He aims for dance here, not so much dance rhythms as shots of euphoric melody -- in his liner notes, he cites the late Ornette Coleman's Dancing in Your Head. Quartet has two saxes (Greg Ward and Tim Haldeman) plus bass (Jason Roebke), and Marquis Hill and Matthew Shipp drop in for 3-4 tracks each. The kwela cinches it. A- [cd]

Andy Sheppard Quartet: Surrounded by Sea (2014 [2015], ECM): British saxophonist (tenor, quite a bit of soprano), formed the impressive Trio Libero in 2011 with Michel Benita (bass) and Sebastian Rochford (drums, adding Eivind Aarset (guitar) here. But rather than plunging forward, they seem to have retreated into a kind of tuneful ambiance. B+(**)

Sleaford Mods: Key Markets (2015, Harbinger Sound): Brit post-punks play minimal beats that are to hip-hop as punk is to Springsteen, only less frenzied because Jason Williamson wants his raps to be heard and understood. He has what my mother would have described as "a mouth on him." A-

David Torn: Only Sky (2014 [2015], ECM): Solo guitar, some loops but mostly in the minute, some ambient but most not, striving to keep your interest even though it runs rather long (76:10). B+(**) [dl]

Mort Weiss: Mort Weiss Is a Jazz Reality Show (2015, SMS Jazz): A clarinet player, Weiss retired from his day job around 2000 and returned to his instrument, recording seven albums 2003-13, swing-bop I found charming and delightful. If anything, the records got better as he approached 80. They even started getting noticed, with Weiss emerging as a "Rising Star Clarinet" in Downbeat's polls. Then I got a letter he was hanging it all up, but two years later he's back. The "Dedication" explains a year of bad health, losing his wife of forty-some years, even losing his dog, then finding someone named "Donna." He also found pianist Don Friedman, whose trio anchors these thirteen tunes, mostly indelible standards. Everything works: the Carmela Rappozzo vocal slot, even his own blues vocal. A- [cd]

Juli Wood Quartet: Synnkä Metsä (Dark Forest) (2015, OA2): Tenor saxophonist, from Chicago, fourth album, a collection of Finnish folk songs -- her grandparents' heritage -- with guitarist Alejandro Urzagaste doing most of the arranging, the quartet filled out with bass (Clark Sommers) and drums (Mike Schlick). B+(**) [cd]

Savina Yannatou/Primavera en Salonico: Songs of Thessaloniki (2014 [2015], ECM): Greek folk singer backed by a group that includes oud, qanun, and nay, all very solemn but surprisingly alluring. The songs, nearly all trad, reflect the melting pot that Salonica was before the Greek Nationalists and German Nazis purged the city -- Sephardic, of course; Greek, Turkish, Armenian, Bulgarian, "Kosovo Serbian," "Slav-Macedonian," even an Irish ditty called "Salonika." B+(**) [dl]

Yo La Tengo: Stuff Like That There (2015, Matador): A Fakebook sequel 25-years-removed, like its predecessor a look back at older songs not excluding their own. Only one track here is overly familiar -- an unconvincing, almost unaffected "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" -- I'm sure I've heard their old tunes before, plus covers from the Parliaments and the Lovin' Spoonful and Great Plains though maybe not the closer which nearly makes the album, from "the Cosmic Rays with Le Sun Ra and Arkestra." B+(***)

Recent Reissues, Compilations, Vault Discoveries

Tad Britton: Cicada (1992-93 [2015], Origin): Drummer, moved to Seattle in 1990 and shortly after cut these two sessions with Hans Teuber (saxes, keyboards, flute, cowbell), Jeff Johnson (basses), and Pete Fogle (guitar). Slippery postbop, sliding off on various tangents. B+(*) [cd]

Peter Brötzmann/Joe McPhee/Kent Kessler/Michael Zerang: Tales Out of Time (2002 [2015], Hatology): Recorded in Chicago, home base for the bassist and drummer, and increasingly a second home for the German saxophonist, what with Ken Vandermark sponsoring Brötzmann's Chicago Tentet -- a group which also includes McPhee (tenor sax, pocket cornet, trumpet). Brötzmann's records are always vigorous and harsh, but this one is exceptionally coherent. A-

The Continental Drifters: Drifted: In the Beginning & Beyond (1992-2001 [2015], Omnivore, 2CD): Roots/Americana band from the 1990s, formed as a second act by several non-stars -- Vicki Peterson (Bangles), Susan Cowsill (Cowsills), Peter Holsapple (dBs), Mark Walton (Dream Syndicate) -- cut a 1999 album Christgau liked (Vermillion). This gathers up an early Germany-only LP, a 2001 EP Sandy Denny/Richard Thompson tribute, live cuts, other stuff from I know not where. I'm impressed by the sound, not always by the selection (especially on the second disc). B+(*)

Diplo: Random White Dude Be Everywhere (2012-14 [2014], Mad Decent): DJ, rapper, producer, has been cranking out mostly singles since 2004. This set of seven songs and five remixes of said songs is considered a compilation, though I'm not sure how much was issued before the album dropped -- I'm only finding two songs dated before 2014. "Freak" especially reminds me of Diplo's Jack Ü collaborator, Skrillex: too much of a good thing. B+(***)

Keith Jarrett: Barber/Bartók (1984-85 [2015], ECM New Series): One of the pianist's occasional turns to classical music, playing Samuel Barber's "Piano Concerto op. 38" (backed by Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken), plus Béla Bartók's "Piano Concerto No. 3) and Jarrett's "Tokyo Encore" (with New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra). B- [dl]

Manu Katché: Touchstone for Manu (2004-12 [2015], ECM): French drummer, has a half-dozen albums, side credits notably with Peter Gabriel, Joni Mitchell, Sting, and Jan Garbarek. Two to four tracks from each of four ECM albums, shorting the best (2006's Neighbourhood with Garbarek and Tomasz Stanko), then going long on ambient groove. B+(**) [dl]

Steve Lacy: Shots (1977 [2015], Hatology): Reissues a 1977 album, originally on Musica Records, of Lacy duets with Japanese percussionist Masa Kawate, although the song order is changed (sensibly moving the one cut with Irène Aëbi (violin, voice) to the end). The percussion helps, but doesn't move this far from being a solo album. [Rhapsody: 6/8 cuts] B+(**)

Joe McPhee: As Serious as Your Life (1996 [2014], Hatology): Solo with some overdubs, McPhee credited with "reeds, pocket cornet, piano & electronics" -- I figure him for a saxophonist (mostly tenor), but he's played trumpet (most often pocket trumpet) regularly for most of his career, one of the few jazz musicians to double up like that. Add to that his swirling, crashing piano ("Conlon in the Land of Ra") and the electronic rhythm track to "The Man I Love" sets off a stunning solo. A-

Horace Tapscott: The Dark Tree (1989 [2014], Hatology, 2CD): One of the all-time great pianists, moved to Los Angeles when he was nine and pretty much built the jazz scene there, or at least an important subset. This is doubtless his masterpiece, recognized by Penguin Guide with a crown, but owning the two original discs separately I favored the first. Still, running the whole thing in one fell swoop it's hard to pick out the divide. John Carter's clarinet is magnificent, and Cecil McBee on bass and Andrew Cyrille on drums are perfect. A

Cecil Taylor: Garden 1st Set (1981 [2015], Hatology): Solo piano, recorded at a concert in Basel, Switzerland but not released until 1993 (as Garden: Part One; a Part Two was released in 1994 and still awaits reissue on Hatology). Taylor cut his first solo album in 1968 (Praxis), a couple more in the 1970s (Indent, Silent Tongues, Air Above Mountains), For Olim in 1986 -- seems like there must have been more, but I've reacted variously and never really tried to sort them out. Takes a while finding himself here, but ultimately builds a suitably complex structure, never quite breaking loose like he does in so many of his group albums. B+(***)

Old Music

Albert Ayler: Lörrach, Paris 1966 (1966 [2013], Hatology): Five live tracks from a radio shot in Lörrach, Germany (41:45), plus three tracks from Salle Playel in Paris a week later. Group includes Donald Ayler (trumpet), Michael Sampson (violin), William Folwell (bass), and Beaver Harris (drums). Mostly standard Ayler fare (including two takes of "Ghosts") with the violin most active at building a circus atmosphere. Originally released in 1982. B+(**)

Billy Bang & Dennis Charles: Bangception, Willisau 1982 (1982 [1998], Hatology): Violin and drums duo, about five years after Bang started recording, a live set that was planned for LP release in 1988 then shelved a decade until this CD came out. Five cuts, including covers of Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk. Rougher, sketchier than his later work. B+(**)

Burkhard Beins, Martin Pfleiderer & Peter Niklas Wilson: Yarbles (1996 [1997], Hatology): Sax trio, drummer listed first (Discogs credits him with 13 albums, this his first), bassist last. Pfleiderer plays soprano and tenor. Scratchy inside avant, well done but not that unusual. B+(*)

Ran Blake: Plays Solo Piano (1965 [2013], ESP-Disk): Pianist, the first of a great many solo albums. He was at the time regarded as a "third stream" artist -- I've never really made the connection, although he later called one album Third Stream Recompositions and recorded at least one album with a symphony orchestra, and he has a distinugished career as an educator. From the beginning his piano style was utterly distinct: oblique and, I often find, utterly impenetrable, which is what you get here. B

Ran Blake: Painted Rhythms: The Compleat Ran Blake Volume II (1985 [1988], GM): The second of a pair of solo piano discs from one 1985 session: short, cryptic takes of standards ranging from Joplin and Blake rags to Sephardic folk tunes and contemporary Spanish art songs. B

Ran Blake & Anthony Braxton: A Memory of Vienna (1988 [2009], Hatology): Piano-alto sax duets, eight standards, starting with 11:06 of both avoiding "'Round Midnight," followed by "Yardbird Suite" to pick up the pace. Braxton is often delightful, and Blake has some interesting approaches to running interference. B+(**)

Ran Blake: Something to Live For (1998 [1999], Hatology): Plays like solo piano even though a bare majority (10 of 19) tracks have a duet partner, either Guillermo Gregorio (clarinet) or David "Knife" Fabris (guitar), five tracks each. B+(*)

Ran Blake: Horace Is Blue: A Silver Noir (1999 [2000], Hatology): Mostly Horace Silver songs, with help from David Fabris on guitar and James Merenda on alto sax, but aside from Fabris opening with the refrain from "Song for My Father" they're mostly consigned to lurking in the corners as the pianist does his thing: no wonder Silver is blue. B+(*)

Paul Bley/Gary Peacock: Partners (1989 [1991], Owl): Piano-bass duets (or in a couple cases solos). Both very articulate players, well suited for the intimate space. B+(***)

Paul Bley/Jimmy Giuffre/Steve Swallow: The Life of a Trio: Sunday (1989 [1990], Owl): One of several reunions of Jimmy Giuffre's trio from 1961-62, best known for Free Fall (1962), a Penguin Guide crown record and the source name for a Ken Vandermark clarinet-piano-bass group. This follows a Saturday set, and finds Giuffre shadowing Bley more than the other way around. B+(***)

Paul Bley: 12 (+6) in a Row (1990 [2008], Hatology): By my count, eight solo piano pieces, three duo, and seven trio, the other players Franz Koglmann (flugelhorn) and Hans Koch (clarinet, sax). Bley's solo improvisations are bone-shaking, so it's nice to mix them up with the horns, even when the latter roughhouse. B+(***)

Bobby Bradford-John Carter Quintet: Comin' On (1988 [2011], Hatology): Leaders play trumpet and clarinet, and most of their (mostly quartet) albums together list Carter first. Bradford composed two (of five) tunes here, including the title romp. Still, Carter runs away with the album, playing some of the most energetic clarinet of his career. Rhythm section is superb too: Don Preston earns his keep on piano (and synth), even in a group that usually does without, and Richard Davis and Andrew Cyrille drive hard. A-

Anthony Braxton: Quintet (Basel) 1977 (1977 [2000], Hatology): With George Lewis (trombone) as energized as I've ever heard him, Muhal Richard Abrams furiously fast when he gets some solo room, Mark Helias on bass and Charles Shaw on drums. Braxton (alto and sopranino sax, clarinet) is frenzied too, perhaps a bit too much so. B+(***)

Anthony Braxton: Performance (Quartet) 1979 (1979 [2007], Hatology): With Ray Anderson (trombone, little instruments), John Lindberg (bass), and Thurman Barker (percussion, xylophone, gong). Anderson is even faster than Lewis, dominating the early going until Braxton makes his big splash. Then it really gets unruly, aside from the silly rhythmic stuff near the end. A-

Anthony Braxton: Open Aspects (Duo) 1982 (1982 [1993], Hat Art): Alto and sopranino sax, the duo partner (unnamed on the cover) is Richard Teitelbaum, credited with Moog synth and micro computer -- back when proto-laptops were dubbed "lugables." The electronics have a playful, toy-like appeal, and Braxton is down with that. B+(**)

Anthony Braxton: Seven Compositions (Trio) 1989 (1989 [2008], Hatology): Recorded in Amiens, France, with Adelhard Roidinger on bass and Tony Oxley on drums, and the leader playing four saxes (alto, soprano, sopranino, C-melody), clarinet and flute. A tour de force, on the saxes anyway, as is Oxley's kitchen sink clinkering. A-

Anthony Braxton: Wesleyan (12 Alto Solos) 1992 (1992 [1995], Hat Art): Twenty-four years after For Alto, another solo outing, a relatively sensible and sedate affair done live where Braxton teaches, with a couple cover pieces (one from Charlie Parker) and polite applause. B+(*)

Anthony Braxton: Quartet (Santa Cruz) 1993 (1993 [1997], Hat Art, 2CD): One of the last recordings by one of the greatest quartets in jazz history, with Marilyn Crispell (piano), Mark Dresser (bass), and Gerry Hemingway (drums) -- together since 1985 (John Lindberg was bassist 1983-85; Crispell's association goes back to 1978). Like David S. Ware's later quartet, by the time they were done the rhythm section had blossomed into such an extraordinary machine that they were threatening to eclipse the leader, and that's much of what you hear here. A-

Dee Dee Bridgewater: Dee Dee Bridgewater (1976, Atlantic): Born 1950 in Memphis as Denise Eileen Garrett, picked up her surname when she married trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater. Her 1974 debut was a jazz vocal, but she soon went to Broadway and won the 1975 Tony for her role in The Wiz, and cut a few disco albums before returning to jazz c. 1990 -- this is the first, and the first of two eponymous records (the other on Elektra in 1980). No doubt she had all the tools to be a great disco diva -- except a brilliant producer and better songs. B

Dee Dee Bridgewater: Dee Dee Bridgewater (1980, Elektra): The fourth/last album of her 1976-80 disco period, with Thom Bell credited on 4 (of 8) songs and Don Renaldo synthesizing the strings and horns. Opens with "Lonely Disco Dancer" -- a hint she's losing interest. Closes slow, already lost. B-

Dee Dee Bridgewater: Live in Paris (1986 [1987], Impulse): Post-disco, she continued to act/sing in shows like Sophisticated Ladies and Lady Day, touring France and in 1986 moving to Paris, where she returned to jazz. Backed here by Herve Sellin on piano, Antoine Bonfils on bass, and André Ceccarelli on drums, she opens with "All Blues," works through some standards, closes on "Cherokee" -- all perfectly respectable. B+(*)

Dee Dee Bridgewater: In Montreux (1990 [1991], Verve): Again backed by piano trio, drummer Ceccarelli remains with Bert Van Den Brink on piano and Hein Van de Geyn on bass. Has some high spots but seems to falter midway -- "A Child Is Born" and "Strange Fruit" (don't feel like rechecking) -- but the "Horace Silver Medley" turns out to be a good idea. B

Dee Dee Bridgewater: Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver (1994 [1995], Verve): Recorded in France with a local band, although in a couple cases you'll notice the piano or organ jumps to a higher level -- guest spots for Jimmy Smith and Silver himself. Evidently Silver wrote the lyrics as well as the fabulous melodies, the singer brings tremendous energy to the proceedings, and tenor saxophonist Lionel Belmondo is always on target. A-

Clusone 3: An Hour With . . . (1998 [2000], Hatology): Michael Moore (alto sax, clarinet, melodica), Ernst Reijseger (cello), Han Bennink (drums) -- their names are on the cover, beneath the ellipsis so could be parsed into the title. A radio shot recorded in Stockholm, five (of seven) pieces are medleys, a witty example "Duck/O Pato/Duck/Turkey in the Straw" (Steve Lacy, Jobim, Moore, trad.). B+(***)

Tony Coe: Some Other Autumn (1971 [1983], Hep): British clarinet/sax player, started out in Humphrey Lyttelton's trad jazz band, basically a mainstream player but has worked on soundtracks, in big bands, with Pierere Boulez, Paul McCartney, Derek Bailey, and Tony Oxley: I found this album on trad-oriented Hep while looking to see if they had any of his avant-leaning Hat albums. Quartet with Brian Lemon (piano), Dave Green (bass), and Phil Seamen (drums), with Coe on alto sax and clarinet, live at Ronnie Scott's in London. Neither trad nor avant, but they swing "In a Mellotone" pretty hard. A-

Ornette Coleman: The Empty Foxhole (1966 [1967], Blue Note): One of the few items in the late great's catalogue I missed, there is some suggestion that it's been reissued but all I can find are some digital dumps and a possible Japanese import. In any case, aside from remastering (in 1973 and/or 1994 when it finally appeared on CD) this is the same six-cut album, with the leader dabbling in trumpet and violin as well as blowing you away on alto sax, Charlie Haden on bass, and a not-ready-for-prime-time drummer named Ornette Denardo Coleman. B+(***)

Marc Copland Trio: Haunted Heart (2001 [2010], Hatology): Piano trio, with Drew Gress on bass and Jochen Rueckert on drums. One original, the rest standards including three short takes of "My Favorite Things." [Originally released 2002 on Hatology as Haunted Heart & Other Ballads; Rhapsody offers both, but they are really the same.] B+(**)

Marc Copland/David Liebman Quartet: Lunar (2001 [2002], Hatology): Piano-sax quartet, Liebman credited with soprano over tenor, with Mike McQuirk on bass and Tony Martucci on drums. Copland is a fine postbop pianist with twenty-some records since 1992, and makes the stronger impression here. B+(**)

Marc Copland/David Liebman Duo: Impressions (2002 [2011], Hatology): Piano-sax duo, soprano as well as tenor. Mostly jazz standards (Giuffre, Hancock, Coltrane, Evans/Davis, Prez), "When You're Smiling," one original each. Nice fit together. B+(**)

Marc Copland: Marc Copland And . . . (2002 [2003], Hatology): Piano trio plus John Abercrombie (5 tracks) or Michael Brecker (2 tracks) -- the three non-guest tracks are all short refrains of Paul Simon's "Old Friends," scattered {1, 5, 10}. Fine work by the guitarist, strong sax bits, the pianist holds it all together. B+(***)

Marc Copland: Solo: Time Within Time (2004 [2005], Hatology): If "Duo" and "Trio" designate a group name, why shouldn't "Solo"? That's clearly the label's intent, both typographically on the cover and on their website, but after a moment's reflection I moved Solo into the title, as I've done many times before. Four originals, six covers (not counting the three extra takes of "Some Other Time," scattered {1, 5, 9, 12}.) I've always enjoyed and never particularly loved Copland's piano, so his records have tended to rise or fall marginally on his collaborators (notably John Abercrombie). B+(**)

Daniele D'Agaro/Ernst Glerum/Han Bennink: Strandjutters (2002 [2003], Hatology): D'Agaro plays tenor sax and clarinet, was born in Italy but is based in the Netherlands, home of the bassist and drummer in this trio. D'Agaro's clarinet flies off on avant tangents evoking a spirited response from the rhythm section, but he prefers a ballad tone on tenor, especially on a lovely "Old Folks" and the Mercer Ellington closer. B+(***)

Daniele D'Agaro/Jeb Bishop/Kent Kessler/Robert Barry: Chicago Overtones (2004 [2005], Hatology): A trip to Chicago, where D'Agaro picked up an avant-ready band -- the trombonist and bassist were in the Vandermark 5 at the time, and the drummer (who's also worked with Vandermark) started out in Sun Ra's Arkestra. D'Agaro still likes to blunt the edges, mixing in a Leadbelly holler and two Ellington's. Bishop sounds especially fine. B+(***)

Paul Dunmall/John Adams/Mark Sanders: Ghostly Thoughts (1996 [1997], Hatology): Dunmall plays tenor and baritone sax, has a huge discography since 1986 (AMG lists 46 albums, Discogs 128), some wonderful, some hideous. Adams is a British guitarist (not the American composer or the American bassist) who shows up on at least ten Dunmall albums, and he's very prickly, the real star here. A-

Ellery Eskelin/Andrea Parkins/Jim Black: Kulak 29 & 30 (1997 [1998], Hatology): One of my favorite tenor saxophonists in his long-running trio, a second album after the appropriately titled One Great Day. Parkins plays accordion and piano, Black is credited with percussion. Sometimes the accordion threatens to gum up the works, but the tenor blows past all obstacles. B+(***)

Ellery Eskelin & Han Bennink: Dissonant Characters (1998 [1999], Hatology): Tenor sax-percussion duo, joint improv pieces plus three Monk tunes (on two tracks). Eskelin is in inspired form throughout. Bennink is good company for anyone willing to really get into it. A-

Ellery Eskelin/Andrea Parkins/Jim Black: The Secret Museum (1999 [2000], Hatology): Starts with Parkins' accordion in a dark mood, and never really recovers, although there are certainly fine moments. One Monk tune, two by Eugene Chadbourne. B+(**)

Ellery Eskelin: Forms (1990 [2004], Hatology): Tenor sax trio with Drew Gress on bass and Phil Haynes on drums, originally released in 1991 on Open Minds and reissued here. Not as developed as later discs, but an impressive debut as a leader. I especially love the way he tears through "Bebop." A-

Ellery Eskelin With Andrea Parkins and Jim Black: One Great Night . . . Live (2007 [2009], Hatology): Sequel, a decade later, to the trio's first album, One Great Day. B+(***)

Pierre Favre Singing Drums: Souffles (1997 [1998], Intakt): Swiss drummer, recorded an album called Singing Drums in 1984 and has used that as a group name a couple times since. This cuts the original four percussionists down to two (Favre and Lucas Niggli) and adds two horns -- Roberto Ottaviano (sax) and Michel Godard (tuba) -- a nice touch. B+(***)

Pierre Favre: European Chamber Ensemble (1999 [2000], Intakt): Adds some strings -- violin, viola, bass, and most notably Philipp Schaufelberger on guitar -- to the Singing Drums lineup (Ottaviano on sax, Godard on tuba, Niggli and Favre on percussion). B+(***)

Jimmy Giuffre 3: Emphasis, Stuttgart 1961 (1961 [1993], Hat Art): Came up as a saxophonist in swing bands, perhaps most famous for writing "Four Brothers," the anthem of the Woody Herman reed section, where he played alongside Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, and Al Cohn. But he soon switched to clarinet and formed a series of trios, notably this most avant 1961-62 edition with Paul Bley on piano and Steve Swallow on electric bass (revived several times later and attributed variously as the side men became more famous). I've always had difficulty with this group, but this is getting interesting. B+(***)

Jimmy Giuffre 3: Flight, Bremen 1961 (1961 [1993], Hat Art): Two weeks after the Stuttgart set. Repeats three songs, introducing "Stretching Out" as "Suite for Germany," struggling a bit on the title cut, although the Swallow feature is terrific ("That's True, That's True"). B+(**)

Jimmy Giuffre/Paul Bley/Steve Swallow: Emphasis & Flight 1961 (1961 [2003], Hatology, 2CD): Reissued verbatim in more compact packaging. B+(***)

Jimmy Giuffre/André Jaume: Momentum, Willisau 1988 (1988 [1997], Hatology): I wonder how many readers even recognize Jaume, a French saxophonist/clarinetist with a couple dozen albums since 1978 -- he only has a French Wikipedia page, no AAJ biography, a brief mention at AMG. I'm no expert with only two (Cinoche at A-), plus he appears on Joe McPhee's Oleo & a Future Retrospective (another A-). He plays tenor sax and bass clarinet here, with Giuffre on clarinet and soprano sax. This, unfortunately, doesn't develop any real, uh, momentum, with the two alternating on solo pieces, only joining on two duets, plus chatter and applause. B+(*)

Guillermo Gregorio: Ellipsis (1997, Hatology): Clarinet/alto sax player, originally from Argentina, has lived in the US and Austria, currently in Chicago. Some shuffling, but group mostly includes bass clarinet (Gene Coleman), guitar/accordion (Jim O'Rourke), vibes (Carrie Biolo) and bass but no drums -- a rather irregular chamber music concept. B+(**)

Guillermo Gregorio/Mats Gustafsson/Kjell Nordeson: Background Music (1998, Hatology): Two tenor saxes -- Gregorio also plays alto and clarinet, Gustafsson fluteophone -- plus a drummer, no one here particularly known for fading into the background. Still, they do try awfully hard to make nice. B+(**)

Guillermo Gregorio Trio: Red Cube(d) (1998 [1999], Hatology): Leader plays clarinet and tenor sax, backed unconventionally by Mat Maneri on electric violin and Pandelis Karayorgis on piano. Call it chamber jazz at your own peril. B+(*)

Richard Grossman Trio: Even Your Ears (1990-92 [1998], Hatology): Little-known free jazz pianist (1937-92), from Philadelphia, moved to Los Angeles in 1978, left only a handful of albums -- two 1989-90 albums on Nine Winds are Penguin Guide 4-stars. This is a trio with Ken Filiano (bass) and Alex Cline (percussion). B+(**)

Richard Grossman Trio: Where the Sky Ended (1989-92 [2000], Hatology): With Ken Filiano and Alex Cline, again, cobbled together posthumously from three sessions -- more fragmented and inconsistent than the previous set, but that somehow adds to its mystery, and ultimately to its power. B+(***)

Mary Halvorson/Reuben Radding/Nate Wooley: Crackleknob (2006 [2009], Hatology): Guitar-bass-trumpet, a relatively early recording by Halvorson. Prickly, scattered. B+(**)

ICP Orchestra: Jubilee Varia (1997 [1999], Hatology): Dutch big band, or nearly big (9 pieces), the cover listing out all the member names, most stars in their own right: Misha Mengelberg, Michael Moore, Ab Baars, Thomas Heberer, Wolter Wierbos, Ernst Reijseger, Tristan Honsinger, Ernst Glerum, Han Bennink -- piano, two saxes, trumpet, trombone, two cellos, bass, drums. Two three-part suites, the more avant title jointly composed around the cellos; Mengelberg's "Jealousy Suite" tango-inflected. B+(***)

Isotope 217: Utonian_Automatic (1999, Thrill Jockey): Chicago group, a joint venture with members from post-rock Tortoise and avant-jazz Chicago Underground (Rob Mazurek and Jeff Parker), pursuing a vision of "future jazz" or maybe just farting around. B+(***)

Isotope 217: The Unstable Molecule (1997, Thrill Jockey): Debut, could be considered an EP at six cuts, 31:03. They find their groove on "Phonometrics" then throw it away on the following cut. B+(*)

Pandelis Karayorgis/Nate McBride/Curt Newton: Betwixt (2007 [2008], Hatology): Fender Rhodes-bass-drums trio, from Boston, the latter two were in a trio with Ken Vandermark before the saxophonist moved to Chicago (they later recorded a couple albums as Tripleplay, and cut a very good album with Karayorgis on piano as Mi3). They flirt with funk grooves for a while, a little further out. Later the keyboard sounds more like a horn. B+(**)

Pandelis Karayorgis Quintet: System of 5 (2008 [2011], Hatology): Plays piano this time for a sharper, more percussive sound, a big part of his kit. With Matt Langley (tenor/soprano sax), Jeff Galindo (trombone), Jef Charland (bass), and Luther Gray (drums). B+(***)

Franz Koglmann: Orte Der Geometrie (1989 [1990], Hat Art): Austrian trumpet player stradling avant with third stream, cut a couple albums in the 1970s, the prime of his career for Hat 1984-97 but hasn't been a reissue priority since he founded Between the Lines in 1999. Most tracks are backed by a 13-piece orchestra conducted by Martin Schelling with French horn, oboe, tuba, and a second pianist, Ran Blake (listed as "guest artist" on the cover), and Koglmann playing flugelhorn. Rather ornate. B

Franz Koglmann: O Moon My Pin-Up (1997 [2001], Hatology): Much to dislike here, most obviously that this is opera, with the whole range of high sopranos and melodramatic basso profundos, backed by an orchestra with the requisite oboes and bassoons. The text is from the notorious fascist Ezra Pound, in English so we can't ignore the words. Still, I can't hate it. The music has subtle wit with touches of Weill, and the words are sometimes jarring enough to overcome their awkwardness. B

Franz Koglmann: An Affair With Strauss (1999, Between the Lines): But not a very steamy one: reviewers liken the leader's trumpet/flugelhorn to Chet Baker's cool, but if anything he's frostier, although Tony Coe's clarinet/tenor sax and Burkhard Stangl's guitar can break the chill. In fact, they don't get that close to the old waltzes -- the closest is some Rodgers & Hart, or "Goodbye Vienna." B+(**)

Franz Koglmann: Venus in Transit (2001, Between the Lines): More arty jazz, or maybe you'd call it jazzy art music, but for once the feel is definitely jazz, especially when Chris Speed plays his clarinet. Less so with Mat Maneri's viola, of course, but nothing guitar and drums can't fix. B+(**)

Franz Koglmann: Fear Death by Water (2003, Between the Lines): Another opera, the libretto here from Christian Baier nearly all in German (4 of 17 song titles in English, generously counting "Introduction" and "Hey"). I count thirteen musicians, conducted by Peter Berwick, including violin, French horn, tuba, oboe, and flute. B

Lee Konitz/Martial Solal: Star Eyes 1983 (1983 [2009], Hatology): Alto sax/piano duets, recorded in Hamburg, a fact that was included in the title in previous editions. Both artists were born in 1927 and had recorded since the early 1950s. A little deferential from the pianist, but Konitz is in fine form. A-

Lee Konitz/Don Friedman/Attila Zoller: Thingin' (1995 [2010], Hatology): Alto sax-piano-guitar. Zoller is a Hungarian, left for Austria in 1948, then Germany, and eventually settled in Vermont. B+(***)

Steve Lacy: Clinkers (1977 [2000], Hatology): Solo soprano sax, recorded live at a restaurant in Switzerland. The opener, "Trickles," is especially remarkable. B+(***)

Steve Lacy Three: N.Y. Capers & Quirks (1979 [2000], Hatology): Soprano sax trio, with Ronnie Boykins on bass and Dennis Charles on drums -- picked up for an impromptu visit after Lacy had relocated to Paris (Charles had played with Lacy on 1957's Soprano Sax and in Cecil Taylor's early group; Boykins rarely ventured outside of Sun Ra's Arkestra, and this seems to have been his only set with Lacy). The rhythm section is aggressive and boisterous here, which suits Lacy fine. A-

Steve Lacy: New Jazz Meeting Baden-Baden 2002 (2002 [2006], Hatology): Tracks pairing Lacy's soprano sax with electronics by Christof Kurzmann or Bernhard Lang, or turntablist Philip Jeck, some also backed by bass and drums, all the titles suggest some sort of remix. No beats in the electronics, mostly darkening, although Lacy remains interesting. B+(*)

Jeanne Lee/Ran Blake: The Newest Sound Around (1961 [1962], RCA Victor): Piano-voice duets (plus bass on a couple cuts), first album for either. Blake went on to a remarkably prolific career, marked by many similar duets with female singers, though I suspect none more remarkable than Lee. She died in 2000 having appeared on thirty-some records -- few under her own name, most with avant-jazz notables. Mostly standards, she has a stern voice while the pianist is spare and elegant. B+(**)

Urs Leimgruber: Statement of an Antirider (1988 [1989], Hat Art): Swiss saxophonist, second album, a solo affair playing soprano, tenor, and bass sax, plus flute. One of the most successful solo sax albums ever, I think because he recognizes the inherent limitations in the form -- a limited color range, the lack of a faster element to pace him, the absence of dialog -- and makes a virtue of them, mostly tooting out minor rhythmic figures, never overplaying. Still not exhilarating enough to make the grade, but unique among the several dozen solo sax records I've heard. B+(***) [cd]

Urs Leimgruber/Adelhard Roidinger/Fritz Hauser: Lines (1990 [1994], Hat Art): Sax-bass-drums trio, the leader playing tenor and soprano -- probably more of the latter. B+(*) [cd]

Urs Leimgruber/Joëlle Léandre/Fritz Hauser: No Try No Fail (1996 [1997], Hatology): Sax-bass-drums trio, again more soprano than tenor. Prickly free jazz, probably all improv, something they call a "triologue" as each kicks out terse little statements. B+(*)

David Liebman: Colors (2002 [2003], Hatology): Solo tenor sax album, something I've heard too much of lately. Not as deep down ugly as Joe McPhee's Tenor, nor as cleverly thought out as Ellery Eskelin's new one. Still, the high notes get on my nerves, and nothing else makes up for that. A 4-star Penguin Guide record, if you want a second opinion. B-

David Liebman: The Distance Runner (2004 [2005], Hatology): Yet another solo sax album, this one a bit more varied with soprano sax and wooden flute in addition to tenor. But it's not just variety: he paces himself, never gets out of sorts, even plays some Sidney Bechet. B+(**)

David Liebman/Ellery Eskelin/Tony Marino/Jim Black: Different but the Same (2004 [2005], Hatology): The first of several two-tenor albums Eskelin did with Liebman. I expected some kind of joust, but they mostly play in unison, phat tones that redirect your attention to the marvelous drummer. [Just after writing that, they broke form, but only momentarily.] B+(*)

David Liebman/Ellery Eskelin/Tony Marino/Jim Black: Renewal (2007 [2008], Hatology): Now this is more like it: the saxophonist spread out more and hit each other hard. Marino and Black contribute a song apiece, the leaders two, and they cover two burners from Eric Dolphy. A-

David Liebman/Ellery Eskelin/Tony Marino/Jim Black: Non Sequiturs (2011, Hatology): First set has two pieces by Liebman plus "Ghosts" by Albert Ayler. Second set is the title "suite in 8 parts" by Eskelin. Much more dynamic than their first album, but less fun than the second. B+(**)

Jimmy Lyons & Sunny Murray Trio: Jump Up (1980 [2012], Hatology): Alto sax-bass-drums trio, Murray best known as the drummer who pushed Coltrane over the edge of the avant-garde and out into the cosmos. Lyons was Cecil Taylor's saxophonist all through the 1970s. The bassist was John Lindberg, 21 at the time, having already played with Anthony Braxton and founded String Trio of New York with Billy Bang and James Emery. All three are terrific here. A-

Joe Maneri Quartet: Coming Down the Mountain (1993 [1997], Hatology): Credited with "reeds & piano" here, Maneri developed his own very distinct avant strain, one I always found rather stiff and distant. Quartet includes son Mat Maneri on violin, Ed Schuller on bass, and Randy Peterson on drums. Ben Ratliff notes they are "alternatively quiet and piercing," an approach that I find rarely works for recorded music, but here at least the quiet never fades into nothing. B+(**)

Joe Maneri Quartet: Tenderly (1993 [1999], Hatology): Same group, the leader just credited with tenor and alto sax. Not what you'd call a ballad album, but they slow down some, and hang two standards ("What's New," "Tenderly") out to dry. B+(*)

Joe McPhee: Tenor & Fallen Angels (1976-77 [2000], Hatology): Reissue adds the track "Fallen Angels" to McPhee's solo tenor sax album with its 23:26 title track ("Tenor"). I find myself vacillating here, finding much of this brilliant, but way too often unsettlingly ugly, especially when he pulls a high whine out of what's basically a low-pitched instrument. B-

Myra Melford Trio: Alive in the House of Saints (1993, Hat Art): Piano trio, with Lindsey Horner on bass and Reggie Nicholson on drums, recorded live in Germany. Many astonishing runs, but even the more conventional parts are authoritative. Her third album, all trios, but so much to proove. A-

Myra Melford Trio: Alive in the House of Saints (1993 [2001], Hatology, 2CD): Reissue adds a second disc, another hour of music, proving so much more. A-

Myra Melford & Han Bennink: Eleven Ghosts (1994 [1996], Hatology): Piano-percussion duo, both very explosive players although Melford seems overawed at first, laying out on her partner's solos as if she's unaware that she wields her own powerful percussion instrument. When she does figure that out, she more than holds her own. And I'd love to hear more boogie along the lines of "Some Relief" -- or, yes, "Maple Leaf Rag." A-

Misha Mengelberg: The Root of the Problem (1996 [1997], Hatology): Dutch pianist, longtime leader of ICP Orchestra (Instant Composers Pool), the nine pieces here all numbered variants on "IC Root," all duos or trios with Michel Godard (tuba), Thomas Heberer (trumpet), Steve Potts (alto/soprano sax), and/or Achim Kremer (percussion). B+(***)

Manuel Mengis Gruppe 6: The Pond (2007 [2008], Hatology): Swiss trumpet player, second sextet album, a group which mixes two sax/clarinet players (Adrian Pflugshaupt and Roland von Flüe) with electric bass and guitar -- gives them a rhythmic pulse that can set Mengis up to play Electric Miles, but the saxes never let him get too comfortable. Worked better, I'd say, on the previous album, Into the Barn. B+(**)

Manuel Mengis Gruppe 6: Dulcet Crush (2008 [2010], Hatology): Third album, latest at least on this label, moves toward a denser sound, which is to say more horns playing at once, often in unison. Doesn't seem like an improvement, but they're still a long ways from homogeneity. B+(*)

Max Nagl: Daily Bullet (1996 [1998], Leo Lab): Austrian saxophonist, leads a sextet including Berkhard Stangl on guitar and bass, Josef Novotny on piano and keyboards, and Jonathan Bepler on guitar and vocals -- some kind of spoken word, in English (lyrics by Maria Maturana), hard to follow. Rockish lineup but jazz when it coheres. Thom Jurek dubs it "deep no wave art damage." That aspect comes and goes. B+(*)

Max Nagl Ensemble: Ramasuri (2000 [2001], Hatology): Ten-piece group, more strings (guitar, violin, cello, two basses, I guest you can count piano) than horns (the leader on sax, Thomas Gansch on trumpet, one of the bassists plays some tuba). Sure, the horns get most of the leads (aside from Noël Akchote's guitar, but this is most impressive when the rhythm gets moving. B+(***)

Max Nagl/Steven Bernstein/Noël Akchoté/Bradley Jones: Big Four (2001 [2002], Hatology): Alto sax, trumpet, guitar, bass. The group name refers back to an earlier Big 4 led by Muggsy Spanier (cornet) and Sidney Bechet (soprano sax, clarinet) in 1940 with Carmen Maestren (guitar) and Wellman Braud (bass), but the tones are off, the tunes are new, and the interplay (if not the rhythm) is avant. B+(***)

Max Nagl/Otto Lechner/Bradley Jones: Flamingos (2003 [2004], Hatology): Jones is the Big Four bassist. Lechner plays accordion and piano, while Nagl plays alto, baritone, and soprano sax, and composed eight pieces, the other two Mingus tunes. B+(***)

Max Nagl Ensemble: Quartier Du Faisan (2004 [2005], Hatology): Down to eight pieces (or nine on the 3/9 with piano), trading most of the strings off for horns (two saxes, two trumpets, trombone). Recorded live, has some scratchy moments but also some remarkable details, and swings like hell -- not unlike Sun Ra's Arkestra or ICP Orchestra. A-

Max Nagl/Steven Bernstein/Noël Akchoté/Bradley Jones: Big Four Live (2005 [2007], Hatology): Recorded as Jazzfestival Willisau, as advertised. B+(**)

Lauren Newton: Filigree (1982 [1998], Hatology): Avant-vocalist, born in America but based in Europe, reissue (plus one cut) of her first album, called Timbre in 1983 but not to be confused with a 2001 album of that name on Leo. Idiosyncratic, shrill in spots, backed by bass-drums and most prominently vibes. B+(*)

Anthony Ortega: New Dance (1966-67 [2003], Hatology): Alto saxophonist from Los Angeles, played with Lionel Hampton and Nat Pierce in the 1950s, cut an album in 1959 called Jazz for Young Moderns (as Tony Ortega), moved toward the avant-garde with this record, a sax trio originally released by Revelation in 1967 (the reissue adds four earlier bass duets). After two plays, he doesn't really remind me of anyone else -- maybe Giuffre (with a dash of Konitz), working in a personal space with little to tie him down, least of all stress. A-

Anthony Ortega: Earth Dance (1955-56 [2004], Fresh Sound): Some of the alto saxophonist's earliest tracks, mostly standards, don't have full credits but the first two tracks have some of the worst strings of an era known for sappy strings; the next two cuts favor the trumpet player (Art Farmer?), but Ortega comes into his own after that, and the final set includes pieces where he's almost where he would be ten yers hence. B

Anthony Ortega: Afternoon in Paris (1966-2005 [2007], Hatology): Discographies are inconsistent, but I doubt if Ortega recorded more than a dozen albums over 50 years -- Discogs lists eight, the years {1957, 1967-68, 1978, 1992, 1996, 2007}. This one looks like the career capstone, with three solo tracks from 2002, five duos (with Kash Killion on bass or cello) from 2005, and a bass duo from 1966 ("Ornithology"). Ortega himself plays flute and piano as well as alto sax. B+(**)

Michel Portal/Léon Francioli/Pierre Favre: Arrivederci Le Chouartse (1980 [2002], Hatology): Portal, a major figure in French jazz with forty-some albums to his credit, plays bass clarinet, alto and tenor sax here; the others bass and drums. Three long pieces, more avant than I'm used to with him, constantly challenging you. Real good drummer, too. A-

Max Roach/Anthony Braxton: One in Two -- Two in One (1979 [2004], Hatology): One of the founding drummers of bebop in the 1940s, Roach took a sudden nod toward the avant-garde in 1979 by recording duos with Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, and Braxton -- actually his second with the latter after 1978's Birth and Rebirth (on Black Saint). Both musicians stay in character, a curious contrast which gives Braxton some leeway to veer toward bop but loose and free. B+(***)

Matthew Shipp Trio: Prism (1993 [2000], Hatology): Avant-piano trio with William Parker (bass) and Whit Dickey (drums), the rhythm section to David S. Ware's early quartet. Shipp's favorite move is the deep rumble, and this threatens to roar all over you. Much of the roar comes from the bass and drums, reinforcing the idea. B+(**)

Matthew Shipp String Trio: By the Law of Music (1996 [2002], Hatology): I guess he can count piano among the strings -- the other two being Mat Maneri's violin and William Parker's bass. B+(***)

Sleaford Mods: Wank (2012, Deadly Beefburger): Wikipedia and Discogs list four 2007-11 albums, so this isn't their first, but so far it's the earliest I've found. First thing you notice is that the beats are relatively basic, especially when the vocalist tries to sing. Picks up a bit later when he finds his swagger. B+(**) [bc]

Sun Ra Arkestra: Sunrise in Different Dimensions (1980 [2010], Hatology): Recorded live at Gasthof Mohren in Willisau, Switzerland. Strong piano intro, three originals, and the rowdier they get the more they dig into their trad songbook -- "Big John's Special," "Yeah Man!," "Queer Notions," "King Porter Stomp," "Take the A Train," "Lightning." Not that they play any of them trad. B+(**)

Horace Tapscott Quintet: The Giant Is Awakened (1969, Flying Dutchman): Only one horn, alto saxophonist Arthur Blythe, not yet 30, due to become a major player in the late 1970s and deserving of notice here. The extra slot filled by a second bassist, beefing up the sound but not at much as the pianist, a rhythmic powerhouse and a counter-lead, often at the same time. Aside from The Dark Tree for Hat in 1979, Tapscott didn't record on a well-known label again until 1995-97 when he cut two records for Arabesque. [heard first cut only, on YouTube: "The Giant Is Awakened" (17:23)]

Horace Tapscott/Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra: The Call (1978 [2012], Nimbus West): Cover describes Tapscott as "conducting" the group (16 pieces, including saxophonist Jesse Sharps -- credited as "leader" -- and a second pianist, Linda Hill). Some impressive runs here, and some spots where they lose thrust. B+(**)

Horace Tapscott with the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra: Live at I.U.C.C. (1979 [2006], Nimbus West, 2CD): Large orchestra (24 pieces, including three bassists and four percussionists), playing less like a big band than a community trying to channel that pan-Afrikan groove. This satisfies on many levels: the rich interplay of horns (even the flutes), the vibrant groove, even bits of spoken word, most of all the piano. A- [bc]

Horace Tapscott: Lighthouse 79, Vol. 1 (1979 [2009], Nimbus West): Quintet with no one I've ever heard of -- Reggie Bullen (trumpet), Gary Bias (alto sax), David Bryant (bass), George Goldsmith (drums) -- with a live set at Ruby Onderwyzer's Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, CA. Impressive piano, but not much else. Runs 71:58. B+(**)

Horace Tapscott: Lighthouse 79, Vol. 2 (1979 [2009], Nimbus West): Next night, same quintet (aside from Roberto Miranda taking over at bass). Only one original, not that the 21:48 "Stella by Starlight" is overly familiar, nor that the Monk-ish closer was penned by Monk. B+(**)

Horace Tapscott: The Tapscott Sessions Vol. 8 (1984 [1997], Nimbus West): Tapscott rarely dealt with labels, but Tom Albach bought some tapes off him in 1979 and went on to record quite a bit of solo Tapscott, especially from 1982-84. The first seven volumes were released in a box set of as many LPs, and several more volumes have since come out on CD, starting with this one. Four 9-14 minute pieces from as many piano masters (Monk, Waldron, Weston, and Tapscott). B+(***)

Cecil Taylor Unit: The Eighth (1981 [2006], Hatology): This particular group, with Jimmy Lyons' alto sax contending with the leader's explosive piano, dates from their landmark 1965 Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come and extends past Lyons' death in 1986 with Carlos Ward, not that Lyons was really replaceable, but is close to peak form here, with Rashid Bakr on drums and William Parker on bass. A-

Mal Waldron & Steve Lacy: Live at Dreher Paris 1981 (1981 [2003], Hatology, 4CD): Rhapsody only has three cuts of this, all takes of "Round Midnight." Pretty impressive but not enough to grade. This material had been previously released (1996) on two 2-CD sets: Vol. 1: Round Midnight, and Vol. 2: The Peak.

Additional Consumer News:

Previous grades on artists in the old music section. For Hatology artists I've generally only listed previously graded Hat albums, otherwise the lists would get ridiculously long. I've added a few albums that seemed especially relevant (like the first volumes by Ran Blake and Jimmy Giuffre where I reviewed Volume 2 above, and I didn't see point in writing "+1 album" for Richard Grossman when I could just list it.

• Albert Ayler: 16 other albums
• Billy Bang: 17 other albums
• Ran Blake: Painted Rhythms: The Compleat Ran Blake Volume 1 (1985 [1987], GM): B
• Ran Blake: That Certain Feeling (George Gershwin Songbook) (1990 [1991], Hat Art): B -- reissued 2010, Hatology 699
• Ran Blake: +10 other albums (including duos with singers Christine Correa, Dominique Eade, and Sara Serpa)
• Paul Bley/Jimmy Giuffre/Steve Swallow: The Life of a Trio: Saturday (1989 [1990], Owl): B+
• Paul Bley/Franz Koglmann/Gary Peacock: Annette (1992, Hat Art): B- -- reissued 2001, Hatology 564
• Paul Bley: +20 other albums
• Bobby Bradford: 3 other albums
• Anthony Braxton: Town Hall (Trio & Quintet) 1972 (1972 [1992], Hat Art): B+
• Anthony Braxton/George Lewis: Donaueschingen (Duo) 1976 (1976 [1994], Hat Art): B+
• Anthony Braxton: Dortmund (Quartet) 1976 (1976 [1991], Hat Art): A-
• Anthony Braxton: Creative Orchestra (Köln) 1978 (1978 [1995], Hat Art, 2CD): B+
• Anthony Braxton: Eight (+3) Tristano Compositions 1989 (1989 [1990], Hat Art): A-
• Anthony Braxton: Willisau (Quartet) 1991 (1991, Hat Art, 4CD): A-
• Anthony Braxton: Charlie Parker Project 1993 (1993 [1995], Hat Art, 2CD): A-
• Anthony Braxton: +41 other albums
• Dee Dee Bridgewater: Dear Ella (1997, Verve): B+
• Dee Dee Bridgewater: Live at Yoshi's (2000, Verve): B+
• Dee Dee Bridgewater: This Is New (2001 [2002], Verve): B
• Dee Dee Bridgewater: Red Earth (2006 [2007], Emarcy): B+(*)
• Dee Dee Bridgewater: Eleanora Fagan (1915-59): To Billie With Love From Dee Dee Bridgewater (2009 [2010], Emarcy): B+(*)
• Peter Brötzmann: 35 other albums
• John Carter-Bobby Bradford Quartet: Seeking (1969 [2006], Hatology): B+(***)
• John Carter: +6 other albums
• Clusone 3: Soft Lights and Sweet Music (1993 [1994], Hat Art): A-
• Clusone 3: 2 other albums (as Clusone Trio)
• Tony Coe/Bob Brookmeyer: Captain Coe's Famous Racearound (1995, Storyville): B-
• Tony Coe/Alan Barnes: Days of Wine and Roses (1997, Zephyr): B+
• Ornette Coleman: 35 other albums
• Marc Copland: 10 other albums
• Paul Dunmall: 6 other albums, plus 2 as Mujician
• Ellery Eskelin/Andrea Parkins/Jim Black: A Great Day (1996 [1997], Hatology): A-
• Ellery Eskelin/Andrea Parkins/Jim Black: Five Other Pieces (+2) (1998 [1999], Hatology): B+(***)
• Ellery Eskelin: Ramifications (1999 [2000], Hatology): B+(***)
• Ellery Eskelin: Vanishing Point (2000 [2001], Hatology): B+(**)
• Ellery Eskelin/Andrea Parkins/Jim Black: 12 (+1) Imaginary Views (2001 [2002], Hatology): A-
• Ellery Eskelin: Ten (2004, Hatology): A-
• Ellery Eskelin: +6 other albums
• Pierre Favre: 3 other albums
• Jimmy Giuffre: 8 other albums
• Richard Grossman: In the Air (1989, Nine Winds): B+
• Mary Halvorson: 12 other albums
• ICP Orchestra: 5 other albums
• Pandelis Karayorgis: 6 other albums
• Franz Koglmann: The Use of Memory (1990, Hat Art): B
• Franz Koglmann: L'Heure Bleu (1991 [2003], Hatology): B+(***)
• Franz Koglmann: Cantos I-IV (1992, Hat Art): B
• Franz Koglmann: We Thought About Duke (1994 [1995], Hat Art)
• Lee Konitz: 35 other albums
• Steve Lacy/Roswell Rudd Quartet: School Days (1963 [1994], Hat Art): A-
• Steve Lacy: Futurities Part I (1984-85, Hat Art): B-
• Steve Lacy: Futurities Part II (1984-85, Hat Art): B
• Steve Lacy Four: Morning Joy: Live at Sunset Paris (1986, Hat Art): A
• Steve Lacy: Clangs (1992 [1993], Hat Art): B+(**)
• Steve Lacy 6: We See (1992 [1993], Hat Art): B+
• Steve Lacy: +48 other albums
• Urs Leimgruber: 2 other albums
• David Liebman: 21 other albums
• Joe Maneri: 5 other albums
• Joe McPhee/Survival Unit II with Clifford Thornton: N.Y. N.Y. 1971 (1971 [2006], Hatology): B+(***)
• Joe McPhee: Oleo and a Future Retrospective (1982 [1992], Hat Art): A-
• Joe McPhee: Linear B (1990 [1991], Hat Art): A-
• Joe McPhee/Lisle Ellis/Paul Plimley: Sweet Freedom -- Now What? (1994 [2008], Hatology): B+(**)
• Joe McPhee: +17 other albums
• Myra Melford Extended Ensemble: Even the Sounds Shine (1994 [1995], Hat Art): B+
• Myra Melford: +10 other albums
• Misha Mengelberg: Two Days in Chicago (1998, Hatology, 2CD): B+
• Misha Mengelberg: +7 other albums
• Manuel Mengis Gruppe 6: Into the Barn (2004 [2005], Hatology): A-
• Michel Portal: 2 other albums
• Max Roach/Archie Shepp: The Long March, Part 1 (1979 [1990], Hat Art): B+
• Max Roach: +6 other albums
• Matthew Shipp/Joe Morris: Thesis (1997, Hatology): B
• Matthew Shipp Horn Quartet: Strata (1997 [1998], Hatology): B+
• Matthew Shipp Trio: The Multiplication Table (1998 [2008], Hatology): A-
• Matthew Shipp/Mat Maneri: Gravitational Systems (1998, Hatology): B
• Matthew Shipp String Trio: Expansion, Power, Release (1999 [2001], Hatology): A-
• Matthew Shipp: +29 other albums
• Sleaford Mods: Austerity Dogs (2013 [2014], Harbinger Sound): A-
• Sleaford Mods: Divide and Exit (2014, Harbinger Sound): A-
• Sleaford Mods: Chubbed Up (2013-14, Ipecac): B+(***)
• Sun Ra: 44 other albums
• Horace Tapscott: The Dark Tree: 1 (1989 [1990], Hat Art): A
• Horace Tapscott: The Dark Tree: 2 (1989 [1991], Hat Art): A-
• Horace Tapscott: 3 other albums
• Cecil Taylor Unit: One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye (1978 [1980], Hat Art, 2CD): A-
• Cecil Taylor Unit: It Is in the Brewing Luminous (1980 [1990], Hat Art): B+
• Cecil Taylor: +34 other albums
• Mal Waldron: 21 other albums

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Music: Current count 25500 [25453] rated (+47), 436 [426] unrated (+10).

Once again I spent most of the week trawling through the Hatology releases on Rhapsody. The A- rate, which had been declining the last two weeks, even got a bump to 32% (8/25, counting one older Hat Art release; last week was 20.6% [6/29], previous 28.5% [6/21]; previous database was 36.1% [26/72]). I had previously reported on the Myra Melford title (Alive in the House of Saints), but further research revealed that the 2001 Hatology reissue had been expanded to 2CD from the 1993 Hat Art release I previously listened to (then, erroneously, substituted the later cover for). It's one of those "more is more" records, never flagging for a moment.

Among the others, the biggest surprise was Austrian saxophonist Max Nagl. His earlier Ensemble album is pretty much as good as the one I picked, and the Big Four records are more than interesting. The Konitz-Solal duo is the most marginal of the picks, probably because I expected more than just support from the pianist, but it is a lovely outing for Konitz, and sometimes that's enough. Jimmy Lyons shows up on two terrific albums: one an oddly named trio, the other soaring over ane specially energetic pianist named Cecil Taylor. I had some trouble playing Taylor's solo disc: a third cut that played long after I thought the album finished should have prodded me to give it another spin, but I let it go. It's a little annoying that Hat only reissued the first of two Garden sets. Sometimes their latest reissues have combined pairs of separate discs (e.g., Horace Tapscott's The Dark Tree), and now we're starting to see them splitting 2-CD sets up (as with Anthony Braxton's Quartet (Santa Cruz) 1993). Strange company.

What helped me sort this out was the compilation of a complete Hatology Checklist file, based on the label's own discography plus a lot of checking into Discogs. This shows that I still have yet to get to 73 records (although there may be some redundancies there, plus there are a couple of rejiggered reissues of records I've previously heard -- the 2-CD The Dark Tree is bound to be as great as the older separate CDs). I also haven't dealt with their "contemporary composition and new music" label, Hat[now]Art, but it appears that most of their albums are also on Rhapsody now. Right now, I'm more tempted to add the older Hat Musics and Hat Art labels, as some of the latter's titles have also appeared on Rhapsody.

I may take a break from Hat this week as I try to wrap up a Rhapsody Streamnotes column: something like 167 records in the draft file already, but perhaps a little short on new music. I did add three new jazz albums to the 2005 A-list this week -- two with drummer Mike Reed (whom I expect good things from, but not necessarily flute albums). Also good to hear that Mort Weiss is working again.

Still, I doubt if I'll find much more new music soon enough for this month's column. Robert Christgau's revived Expert Witness hasn't been offering much I agree with so far -- second A- we agree on in four weeks is Shamir's Ratchet (first was Boz Scaggs' A Fool to Care), although I'll note that I did only give Jamie XX's In Colour a single cursory spin. (The only one I hadn't heard this week, Diplo's Random White Dude Be Everywhere, got two plays. The massive Funkadelic HM, another 2014 album, just got one, and had settled into its grade slot an hour before it expired.)

More to check out in Michael Tatum's latest, A Downloader's Diary (42): Ezra Furman, Freedy Johnston, Giorgio Moroder. He had already tipped me off to Songhoy Blues (which I had, along with Bassekou Kouyate, Ashley Monroe, and Mountain Goats, at A-, with Tal National and Yo La Tengo just short at high B+ (I'm not as pleased or amused or whatever the verb should be with Nellie McKay's trawl through '60s pop). Also, can the duds (Iris DeMent, Neil Young) really be so bad? If I don't get to them this week, I will next time. (Or maybe not: I've looked for DeMent but her record isn't yet on Rhapsody.)

For those of us who count things, note that Tatum has logged his first thousand Downloader's Diary albums (current count = 1001). See his Archive, in particular the Index. By the way, if someone wants to contribute a banner and suggest a revised color scheme (or a whole new skin) let us know.

New records rated this week:

• Beat Funktion: Olympus (2015, DO Music): [cd]: B
• Dheepa Chari: Patchwork (2015, self-released): [cd]; B-
• Funkadelic: First Ya Gotta Shake the Gate (2014, The C Kunspyruzhy, 3CD): [r]; B+(*)
• Michael Gallant Trio: Live Plus One (2015, Gallant Music): [cd]: B+(*)
• Chris Golinski/Tim McNally/Boaz Roberts: Rodeo (2015, Edgetone): [cd]: B+(*)
• Darius Jones Quartet: Le Bébé de Brigitte (Lost in Translation) (AUM Fidelity): [r]; B+(**)
• Michael Kocour: Wherever You Go, There You Are (2014 [2015], OA2): [r]; B+(*)
• Lona Kozik/Chris Golinski: Spelaeology (2015, Edgetone): [r]; B+(*)
• Nicole Mitchell/Tomeka Reid/Mike Reed: Artifacts (2015, 482 Music): [cd]: A-
• Mike Reed's People Places & Things: A New Kind of Dance (2015, 482 Music): [cd]: A-
• Mort Weiss: Mort Weiss Is a Jazz Reality Show (2015, SMS Jazz): [cd]: A-

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

• Peter Brötzmann/Joe McPhee/Kent Kessler/Michael Zerang: Tales Out of Time (2002 [2015], Hatology): [r]; A-
• Diplo: Random White Dude Be Everywhere (2012-14 [2014], Mad Decent): [r]; B+(***)
• Cecil Taylor: Garden 1st Set (1981 [2015], Hatology): [r]; B+(***)

Old records rated this week:

• Bobby Bradford-John Carter Quintet: Comin' On (1988 [2011], Hatology): [r]; A-
• Clusone 3: An Hour With . . . (1998 [2000], Hatology): [r]; B+(***)
• Marc Copland Trio: Haunted Heart (2001 [2010], Hatology): [r]; B+(**)
• Marc Copland: Marc Copland And . . . (2002 [2003], Hatology): [r]; B+(***)
• Marc Copland: Solo: Time Within Time (2004 [2005], Hatology): [r]; B+(**)
• Pierre Favre Singing Horns: Souffles (1997 [1998], Intakt): [r]; B+(***)
• Pierre Favre: European Chamber Ensemble (1999 [2000], Intakt): [r]; B+(***)
• Guillermo Gregorio/Mats Gustafsson/Kjell Nordeson: Background Music (1998, Hatology): [r]; B+(**)
• ICP Orchestra: Jubilee Varia (1997 [1999], Hatology): [r]; B+(***)
• Isotope 217: The Unstable Molecule (1997, Thrill Jockey): [r]; B+(*)
• Isotope 217: Utonian_Automatic (1999, Thrill Jockey): [r]: B+(***)
• Pandelis Karayorgis/Nate McBride/Curt Newton: Betwixt (2007 [2008], Hatology): [r]; B+(**)
• Pandelis Karayorgis: System of 5 (2008 [2011], Hatology): [r]; B+(***)
• Pandelis Karayorgis Quintet: System of 5 (2008 [2011], Hatology): [r]; B+(***)
• Franz Koglmann: Orte Der Geometrie (1989 [1990], Hat Art): [r]; B
• Lee Konitz/Martial Solal: Star Eyes 1983 (1983 [2009], Hatology): [r]; A-
• Lee Konitz/Don Friedman/Attilla Zoller: Thingin' (1995 [2010], Hatology): [r]; B+(***)
• Jimmy Lyons & Sunny Murray Trio: Jump Up (1980 [2012], Hatology): [r]; A-
• Myra Melford: Alive in the House of Saints (1993 [2001], Hatology, 2CD): [r]; A-
• Max Nagl: Daily Bullet (1996 [1998], Leo Lab): [r]; B+(*)
• Max Nagl Ensemble: Ramasuri (2000 [2001], Hatology): [r]; B+(***)
• Max Nagl/Steven Bernstein/Noël Akchoté/Bradley Jones: Big Four (2001 [2002], Hatology): [r]; B+(***)
• Max Nagl/Steven Bernstein/Noël Akchoté/Bradley Jones: Big Four Live (2005 [2007], Hatology): [r]; B+(**)
• Max Nagl Ensemble: Quartier Du Faisan (2004 [2005], Hatology): [r]; A-
• Lauren Newton: Filigree (1982 [1008], Hatology): [r]; B+(*)
• Michel Portal/Léon Francioli/Pierre Favre: Arrivederci Le Chouartse (1980 [2002], Hatology): [r]; A-
• Sun Ra Arkestra: Sunrise in Different Dimensions (1980 [2010], Hatology): [r]; B+(**)
• Cecil Taylor Unit: The Eighth (1981 [2006], Hatology): [r]; A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Gonçalo Almeida/Tobias Klein/Martin van Duynhoven: Vibrate in Sympathy (Clean Feed)
• Art "Turk" Burton and Congo Square: Spirits: Then & Now (ATB): October 2
• De Beren Gieren: One Mirrors Many (Clean Feed)
• Benoit Delbecq/Miles Perkin/Emile Biayenda: Ink (Clean Feed)
• East West Quintet: Anthem (self-released): October 13
• Expansions: The Dave Liebman Group: The Puzzle (Whaling City Sound)
• Gerry Gibbs Thrasher Dream Trio: Live in Studio (Whaling City Sound)
• Ulrich Gumpert Quartett: A New One (Intakt)
• Dale Head: Swing Straight Up (Blujazz)
• Left Exit: Mr K (Clean Feed)
• The Liberation Music Collective: Siglo XXI (self-released)
• Hans Luchs: Time Never Pauses (OA2): September 18
• Whitney Marchelle: Dig Dis (Blujazz)
• Joe McPhee/Jamie Saft/Joe Morris/Charles Downs: Ticonderoga (Clean Feed)
• Ben Patterson: For Once in My Life (Origin): September 18
• Noah Preminger: Pivot: Live at the 55 Bar (self-released): October 6
• Tom Rainey Trio: Motel Grief (Intakt)
• Scottish National Jazz Orchestra/Makoto Ozone: Jeunehomme: Mozart Piano Concerto No 9 K-271 (Spartacus): advance, September 4
• Susana Santos Silva/Torbjörn Zetterberg/Hampus Lindwall: If Nothing Else (Clean Feed)
• Snik: Metasediment Rock (Clean Feed)
• Ben Winkelman Trio: The Knife (OA2): September 18
• John Wojciechowski: Focus (Origin): September 18

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Friday was the 14th anniversary of the 2001 Al-Qaeda "attack" against America, when nineteen Arabs (mostly Saudis) hijacked four airliners and committed suicide by flying those planes into iconic buildings in New York City and Virginia (and a Pennsylvania corn field). The media went berserk, describing all of America as "under attack." The political class decided this was war, and vowed to return the fight back to foreign lands -- which, after all, is the only experience any of them had ever had of war. Within days the intelligentsia, including way too many who had identified with the left, launched a pre-emptive attack on pacifists and anyone else who tried to talk reason -- especially anyone who expressed doubts that America was wholly innocent of wrong-doing.

I experienced those "attacks" from a barely comfortable distance, visting a friend, staying in her apartment above Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. I could stick my head out the window and see the smoking (still-standing) towers, and could watch masses of people trudging home on foot as the subways were stopped. One of my first thoughts was that I knew it wasn't an atomic bomb because the pedestrians' panic had subsisted a mere three miles into Brooklyn. I tried to imagine what it must be like to be under siege in Sarajevo -- the most graphic experience of war from the 1990s -- and concluded that this wasn't at all like that. War wasn't something that ordinary people in New York felt that day. War was just a concept in the fevered minds of the people who talk on TV. For people who were in lower Manhattan that morning, of course, it was immediate: a disaster on a scale no one had experienced or was prepared for. But just a few miles away from "ground zero" more than anything else it was damn inconvenient. Like the Con Ed blackout I lived through in the 1970s. Well, in some ways worse, but on that order.

Of course, if you knew someone who was killed that day, it also had a tragic dimension. I knew one such person, a niece (the wife of my first wife's nephew), and I spent a fair amount of time the next two weeks with the family, so I did feel something other than inconvenienced. But I didn't experience that as war, but as random, sudden, violent, shattering -- like when my uncle was killed by a drunk driver, leaving his wife and three pre-teen children to fend for themselves. My niece had two children, one so young he'd never remember her. The manner of her death was obscenely worse, giving us days of uncertainty and months before they identified some of her DNA in the megatons of rubble. And something like that happened to nearly 3,000 other people, their families and friends, in not much more than an instant. Still, that's only about one in 2700 New Yorkers (or one in 94000 Americans, just barely one-thousandth of 1%). No one else I knew in New York in those weeks had such bad luck.

I wish someone would sift through the new coverage and punditry we saw on TV those first few days and edit a fair sampling of the insanity we saw. I clearly remember Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu smiling and cackling about how this was "very good" for Israel, and John Major lecturing on how much the Uk could teach America about how to handle terrorism. I remember a bit of fuzzy nighttime footage of a rocket explosion near Kabul being aired over the presumptive banner line "America Strikes Back." I remember the junior senator from New York, Hillary Clinton, standing on the Capitol steps and daring Al-Qaeda to take their best shot at her. I spent much of the day thumbing through a book of photographs called Century, looking at images of the real wars that plagued the past century while the phony warriors nattered on TV. It helped to keep it all in perspective, something almost everyone was losing.

For me, it wasn't hard to see that no good would come of such war fever. But how much bad would come was always hard to grasp, or even imagine. One might cite the nominal costs of 14 years of non-stop war, of endless war, of war with no prospect of victory or redemption -- over 6,700 US soldiers dead, many more maimed (physically and/or psychologically), trillions of dollars spent, and many times that much death, destruction, and destabilization that those wars have inflicted abroad -- but I'm ever more worried about the cognitive toll those wars have taken on American society, indeed on the ability of Americans to think clearly and to engage the world constructively.

Another thought I had on 9/11 was even rarer, and I think more profound: it occurred to me that the "attacks" were a "wake up call" -- a reminder to look into your own self to see whether anything you've done might have contributed to this tragedy. Needless to say, no notion was more unwelcome in post-9/11 America. The idea isn't to partition blame. Rather, it is to make certain that we do not spread the blame with future acts. Within a few months the United States had done just that: protected against self-awareness, obsessed by a sense of self-righteous victimhood, Bush marshaled the full force of American military power not against the individuals who plotted 9/11 but against whole nations of people who had nothing to do with the "attacks." He thereby greatly compounded the crime many times over, something he could do because so few Americans questioned the assumptions he made: that America's fortunes depended on the world's fear of America's military power; that the "attacks" had been an affront to that power, which could only be restored by reassertion; and that the United States, due to its unique virtue, was uniquely entitled to project that power over the rest of the world; and that the American people would continue to support a bold leader (like Bush) who would restore America to its rightful greatness.

It is difficult to overstate the amount of hubris, let alone ignorance, that feeds this worldview. Fourteen years later, by any objective measure, the stance has failed. Yet when Obama, recognizing that America's power to impose its will on Iran's leaders and people was limited, resorted to negotiating a framework that would at least ensure that Iran could not develop nuclear weapons -- the same "hot button" issue that Bush had used to provoke his ill-fated war in Iraq -- every single Republican senator and presidential candidate rose in opposition. Their objections have nothing to do with what Iran may or may not do. They object to the deal because it represents a retreat from their belief that American might (American greatness) is the answer to all problems in the world.

Nonetheless, it is not just the Republicans who continue to cling to these core assumptions. You'd be hard pressed to find any example where Obama has rethought why America is involved in the Middle East, or reconsidered what effect that involvement has had. The Iran deal is merely a change of tactics: he continues to assume that Iran is America's (and Israel's) mortal enemy, and that it meant to escape the omnipresent threat of American (and Israeli) attack by developing its own nuclear deterrence. The difference is that Obama chose a more realistic, more effective, and less risky method of preserving nuclear monopoly than, say, Bush did while allegedly pursuing the same goals viz. Iraq.

Of course, realism, effectiveness, and risk-limits are among the things Republicans hate about the deal. They suggest that Obama is not a true believer in America's greatness. Perhaps they even recall the Bush-era neocon mantra, "anyone can go to Baghdad; real men go to Tehran." Obama isn't their idea of a real man. Simple as that.

Some scattered links this week:

• Josh Marshall: You'll Want to Read This: Marshall, in his intro and outro, shows he doesn't really known what to make of "TMP Reader JB" -- "no one bats 1000% at this" [presumably he means a batting average of 1.000, which means 100% of at bats turned into base hits] -- but it's helpful that he published it last year and reminded us of it this year.

  Could an attack happen tomorrow? Of course. But once every 13 years would still be an anomalous event, not a systemic threat. Remember the talk as the rubble smoldered of hundreds, maybe thousands, of "sleeper cells" lurking out there, waiting to strike? Well, we now know there were none at the time, and apparently none were formed even after we have fought two wars and killed thousands of innocent civilians since 9/11. One would think our actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etcetera would spawn at least a few motivated and effective enemies bent on revenge through domestic attacks. Apparently not.

  So, ironically, if we had done absolutely nothing in response to 9/11 aside from hold funerals and shake our heads in disbelief, we would have been no less safe than we are now after two useless wars, trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost, and a decade of taking off our shoes for domestic flights. I'm not saying this was obvious when 9/11 happened. Far from it. I was just as freaked out as anyone else at the time and I think it would have been foolish to ignore the threat. But the fact is if we had we would have been far better off, because as it turns out there were not hundreds of other Mohammed Attas out there in the wings. In fact, there were none, at least not with any meaningful capabilities (which would exclude folks like the shoe bomber and the Tsarnaev brothers). We know this to be the case because if such people did exist we would have been hit 100 times over by now. It is too damn easy to sow terror and chaos with motivation and even a below average IQ. Think Newtown or D.C. sniper.

  A few sad teenagers have committed far, far more domestic terror attacks than all the Islamic militants in the world over the past decade, and that is an outcome I think very few would have predicted, myself included, in the aftermath of 9/11. I'm sure the Rudy Giuliani set would love to take credit for the lack of attacks, but I think any serious expert on stopping domestic terrorism attacks would agree that the only way to bat as close to 1000 as we have is if your enemy is fictional.

  This is a little confused, but the basic point is surely correct: that the long-term incidence of terror attacks is extremely marginal and doesn't justify such major expense as wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover, while those wars generated a lot of resistance locally, they don't appear to have generated any blowback inside the homeland. This suggests that Bin Laden's focus on the "far enemy" hasn't found any further adherents. (This may be changing in that ISIS has started to encourage sympathetic "lone wolf" attacks against hostile countries like the US and France, but that appears to be secondary to their recruitment campaigns, and it's not clear that they are organizing such attacks.)

  I would stress three points: (1) that the current and future incidence of terror attacks would go way down if the US wasn't intervening and otherwise supporting violence in the Middle East; (2) that continued US support for violence, including support for repressive measures by corrupt and reactionary regimes in the region, will build up a reservoir of ill will that will be increasingly difficult to defuse over time; and (3) the longer we engage in wars in the Middle East, the more Islamophobic our domestic population becomes, and that prejudice is likely to generate more jihadi recruitment and/or "lone wolf" incidents. So while I agree with "JD" that the actual incidence of domestic terror events doesn't justify the outsized response, I would also argue that the "war on terror" generates a lot more terror than would otherwise happen.

  This doesn't mean I'm against TSA security efforts (I can think of a half-dozen things about airlines that bother me worse), or that I object to the government keeping track of who's buying fertilizer or AK-47s (not that anyone's doing the latter). I do think some of the law enforcement efforts go too far. Like so much wartime hysteria in the nation's history, they are less intended to protect the public than to drive a wedge between the war agenda and people who might question it. From the Alien and Sedition Acts of the 1790s to the PATRIOT Act in the wake of 9/11, war fever has repeatedly tarnished the democracy and freedom allegedly being fought for, often in ways that once peace returned would be looked back on with embarrassment. (The one exception, by the way, was the War of 1812, scrupulously managed by the one president who understood the constitution above all others, James Madison.)

• Mark Z Barabak: Republican voters turn their rage against party establishment: Front page article in Wichita Eagle this morning, but I can't find it on their website:

  After years of raging against President Obama, unhappy conservatives have a new target for their anger and disgust: the Republicans in Congress.

  The GOP seized control of the House in 2010 and four years later took the Senate. Yet even with those majorities, Republican lawmakers have failed to achieve such conservative priorities as rolling back Obamacare, their derisive name for the national health care law, or cracking down harder on illegal immigration.

  The controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline is no closer to being built -- indeed, it may soon be dead -- tough anti-abortion legislation has languished in the Senate, and a fiercely disputed nuclear deal with Iran seems virtually certain to take effect, despite near-unanimous opposition from Republicans in Congress.

  In short, as many see it, the promise of the 2010 tea party movement and its 2014 echo have been dashed on the marble steps of the Capitol.

  "People feel betrayed," said Greg Mueller, a longtime conservative activist and campaign strategist. "They feel like they keep working and fighting to elect Republicans to get us back to a limited-government approach to life, and all they get is more spending, more taxes and people who are afraid to fight liberal Democrats."

  What a bunch of conceited, whiny, self-important, ignorant assholes! In 2008, after nearly eight years of the most inept and corrupt Republican Administration in history, 69,498,516 Americans voted for change, for Barack Obama as president, 9.55 million more than voted for his Republican opponent, and they elected a heavily Democratic Congress with a supposedly "fillibuster-proof" Senate, and what did we get for all that effort? Not much. Then a few thousand bitter enders hold a few rallies, wave flags and spout Revolutionary War slogans, and the media goes crazy for them, and the Kochs write them checks, and all of a sudden they feel entitled to run the country their Party had just spent eight years driving to ruin. (Remember the bit about how Obama was running ruinous deficits? During the middle of a recession the Republicans created and were doing everything they could to extend?) And even after all that Tea Party enthusiasm, Obama was easily reelected in 2012 -- no longer promising change, just sanity relative to the parched earth obstructionism of the Republicans.

  I'm pretty sure no one on the right feels more disappointment in their elected partisan leaders than I do. Obama spent most of his presidency unwilling to even speak up for the promises he made in his 2008 campaign, much less to act to stand up for the people who voted for him (a big part of why so many didn't vote in 2010 -- turnout dropped from 129 to 82 million -- and 2014, handing Congress to the big money-backed Republican minority). But though I complain, I'm too used to losing to whine. My first political efforts, after all, opposed the Vietnam War. The rule of thumb is that politicians may appeal to the voters during a campaign, but once the ballots are counted they have to operate in a world dominated by moneyed (and other hidden) interests, a world of obstacles for anyone marginally on the left. Conservatives should rationally see such unelected power as their final bulwark against change, and indeed that's what happened to Obama. On the other hand, the whiners aren't rational. They expect their favored politicians to serve their every whim, no matter how dumb and debilitating: why not shut down the government in order to prevent women from choosing Planned Parenthood as their health care provider? Who needs Social Security checks anyway? And if it wasn't Planned Parenthood, it would be something else -- shutting down the government has become an annual ritual with them, anything "to get us back to a limited-government approach to life." (Anything, that is, but defunding the military, the government's most bloated and inefficient and, nonetheless, counterproductive bureaucracy.)

• Paul Krugman: Charlatans, Cranks, and Apparatchiks:

  The Jeb! tax plan confirms, if anyone had doubts, that the takeover of the Republican Party by charlatans and cranks is complete. This is what the supposedly thoughtful, wonkish candidate of the establishment can come up with? And notice that the ludicrous claim that most of the revenue effects of huge tax cuts would be offset by higher growth comes from economists who, like Jeb!, are very much establishment figures -- but who evidently find that the partisan requirement that they support voodoo outweighs any fear of damage to their professional reputations.

  While the intellectual implosion of the GOP is obvious, however, it's less obvious what is driving it. Or to be more specific, stories that explain why one set of crank ideas flourish don't seem to work well for other sets of crank ideas.

  Krugman examines two cases of crank economic ideas -- opposition to expansionary economic policy and claims that cutting taxes on the rich will grow the economy -- and finds their rationales are different, but doesn't go much beyond that. I think the former case is more cynical: Republicans only oppose expansionary monetary policy when Democrats are in office and might get credit for growing the economy; otherwise, well, Cheney said "deficits don't matter" and Nixon said "we're all Keynesians now." Sure, there's some residual Gold-buggery in the Ron Paul camp, but that's marginal.

  As for reducing taxes on the rich, that's a policy constant that has been served by every conceivable rationale -- Lafferism is only one such ploy for the exceptionally gullible. And while rank and file Republicans may not get excited about creating a more inequal society, they'll usually buy the notion that tax cuts should be matched by spending cuts, especially subsidies to "those people." But if Krugman is having trouble finding "a general theory of crankification," that's because he's looking at economics, not politics. Once Republicans decided that any argument that sounded remotely plausible could be used to support their favored policies, validity ceased to be one of their concerns. Then they found that by cultivating the ignorance and illogic of their followers they could greatly expand their crackpot arguments and, well, the rest is show biz.

• Middle East links: Seems like more war all the time. Perhaps unfair to blame all that on the region's number one arms supplier. Kind of like blaming junkies on pushers.

  • Yousef Munayyer: Gaza is already unlivable:

    The United Nations said on Sept. 1 that the Gaza Strip could become unlivable by 2020 without critical access to reconstruction and humanitarian supplies.

    For Gaza's beleaguered residents, none of this is surprising. Gaza is already uninhabitable and has been on a fast track to a complete collapse. The U.N. issued similar warnings three years ago, even before last summer's 50-day war, which left more than 2,200 Palestinians dead and countless others injured -- most of them civilians.

    "Three Israeli military operations in the past six years, in addition to eight years of economic blockade, have ravaged the already debilitated infrastructure of Gaza," the latest U.N. report said. "The most recent military operation compounded already dire socioeconomic conditions and accelerated de-development in the occupied Palestinian territory, a process by which development is not merely hindered but reversed."

    Actually, what's needed isn't humanitarian aid but a political agreement that splits Gaza free from the isolation and deprivation imposed by Israel (and, for that matter, Egypt's dictatorship).

  • Sara Yael Hirschhorn: Israeli Terrorists, Born in the USA: Did you ever wonder why so many of the illegal settlers in the West Bank, especially the ones most notorious for acts of violence, originally came from the United States? This piece doesn't delve very deeply into why, aside from mentioning the model of Meir Kahane, but I can think of several factors that might predispose Americans to seek out a situation where they can lord it over others with impunity. Israel is one such place. For a current example of such impunity, see Palestinians in Duma are angry that no one has been charged for murders, after 38 days.

    By the way, but I don't see much fundamental difference between these young Americans to go to Israel to join the settler movement, or for that matter to serve in the IDF, and those who go to Syria to fight for ISIS. Both derive from mistaken senses of identity. Both get to mistreat people and feel superior for doing so. Sure, the US government tolerates one case while pushing the other -- even when the other doesn't happen (see Adam Goldman: An American family saved their son from joining the Islamic State. Now he might go to prison.)

  • Nima Shirazi: Slaughtering the Truth and the False Choice of a War With Iran: Anne-Marie Slaughter supports the Iran Deal, for bad reasons, because she's a bad thinker:

    Five years after supporting the invasion of Iraq, Slaughter was annoyed by the "gotcha politics" of being held accountable for her bad judgment, grousing in The Huffington Post that "debate is still far too much about who was right and who was wrong on the initial invasion."

    In 2011, after leaving the State Department, Slaughter lent her full-throated support to the NATO bombing campaign in Libya, extolling herself as a champion of humanitarianism and democracy and then hailing the operation as an unmitigated success. It's been anything but.

    A year later, she was calling for US allies to arm rebel forces against the Assad government in Syria, writing in The New York Times, "Foreign military intervention in Syria offers the best hope for curtailing a long, bloody and destabilizing civil war."

    In 2013, Slaughter openly lamented her support for the invasion of Iraq a decade earlier. "Looking back, it is hard to remember just how convinced many of us were that weapons of mass destruction would be found," she wrote in The New Republic. "Had I not believed that, I would never have countenanced any kind of intervention on purely humanitarian terms."

  • Nicola Abé: The Vanishing: Why Are Young Egyptian Activists Disappearing? Back around 1970 I read a book by Egyptian Marxist Anouar Abdel-Malek (1924-2012) called Egypt: Military Society which argued that the military in Egypt was the sometimes hidden/often not backbone power in the nation. I was reminded of this in 2011 when Mubarak was moved out of power in response to mass demonstrations, and shortly later when the democratically elected Mohammed Morsi was deposed by a military coup. Arguably, Morsi overshot his mandate and abused his power, but the same is true of the new dictator, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

    More than four years after the Egyptian revolution, the government headed by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is cracking down on unwelcome journalists, former revolutionaries and, most of all, Islamists. In the name of fighting terror, laws are enacted that limit freedom of the press and freedom of expression. In some cases, government forces are breaking the country's laws, in what sometimes feels like a retaliation campaign against those who drove out former dictator Hosni Mubarak and believed in democracy.

    Young people are being detained -- on the street, at work and at home. They are interrogated without arrest warrants or access to an attorney, and their family members are kept in the dark about their whereabouts. There were occasional cases like these already under Mubarak, but since Interior Minister Magdy Abdul Ghaffar came into office in March, the police are disappearing scores of people, especially members and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the new regime collectively treats as terrorists. Human rights activists believe there are up to around 800 such cases in Egypt today.

  • Eric Schmitt/Ben Hubbard: US Revamping Rebel Force Fighting ISIS in Syria: The American decision to fight both Assad and ISIS (and possibly other anti-Assad and/or anti-ISIS forces) with hired local proxies continues to be plagued by . . . well, everything. It is one measure of the blind faith Americans put in armed force that they are stuck in this schizophrenic nightmare.

    The Pentagon effort to salvage its flailing training program in Turkey and Jordan comes as the world is fixated on the plight of thousands of refugees seeking safety in Europe from strife in the Middle East, including many fleeing violence of the Syrian civil war and oppression in areas under the control of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Officials in Washington and European capitals acknowledge that halting this mass migration requires a comprehensive international effort to bring peace and stability to areas that those refugees are now fleeing.

    The 54 Syrian fighters supplied by the Syrian opposition group Division 30 were the first group of rebels deployed under a $500 million train-and-equip program authorized by Congress last year. It is an overt program run by United States Special Forces, with help from other allied military trainers, and is separate from a parallel covert program run by the CIA.

    After a year of trying, however, the Pentagon is still struggling to find recruits to fight the Islamic State without also battling the forces of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, their original adversary.

  • A Downward Spiral: The Saudi war in Yemen, where the Saudi attack on the local Houthi tribe has been joined by Qatar, UAE, Egypt, and (soon) Sudan, in one of the most naked examples of belligerent aggression the world has seen recently:

    The action certainly has the whiff of revenge. Onlookers have already been questioning what the coalition's campaign, now in its sixth month, hopes to achieve. It is unclear how much support Iran has given to the Houthis, which is one of the main justifications for the coalition's action. Quashing the Shia Houthis is nigh on impossible. Gulf officials and media talk bombastically of preparations to take back Sana'a from them and reinstall Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi as president (the Houthis drove him out of the country in March). But Yemen has long been treacherous territory for foreign invaders, and Gulf armies are relatively inexperienced.

    Since committing ground troops in August, the coalition has taken control of Aden, the southern port city, and is advancing on Taiz. But it is struggling in Maarib, the gateway to Sana'a, where the extra troops, backed by armoured vehicles and missile launchers, are said to be massing. The fighting will only get harder since the Houthis' remaining strongholds are in mountainous redoubts.

    The high toll exacted on civilians may be losing the coalition the support of allied fighters on the ground, a mixture of tribesmen, units of the fractured army and Islamist types including al-Qaeda fighters. "Everyone has now lost someone," says Mr Boucenine. He says civilians make up an increasing proportion of the dead, now approaching 5,000.

  • Amanda Marcotte: Conservatives' Freakout Over Iran Has Absolutely Nothing to Do With Iran: Picture is from the Trump-Cruz rally against the Iran Deal. I saw a bit of Trump talking there and it was the first time he really scared me.

    Obama's plan looks like a done deal, but now the clowns are spilling out, honking their noses and trying to get attention by screaming about how we're all going to die now. As Nick Corasanti of the New York Times reports, a veritable who's-who of unserious but self-important demagogues, led by known foreign policy experts Donald Trump and Sarah Palin, have descended on DC to impart their collective wisdom about diplomacy, which appears to amount to implying that the president's testicles aren't big enough.

    Ted Cruz in particular seems to think that this is his moment to prove to the doubters that he is a big tough guy who gets things done because he's tough and that's what tough guys do. He, along with other House conservatives, is leading a plan to derail the deal by harping on legal technicalities, with Rep. Peter Roskam fully admitting it's a "process argument."

    Now we have Rep. Louie Gohmert threatening to resign over all this. Clearly, Congress will be bereft of this leading luminary who graces this country with conspiracy theories about Jade Helm, how ISIS is being snuck in by Mexican drug dealers, and how God will destroy the country for legalizing same-sex marriage.

    In other words, two of the worst Republican traits of the past 20 years -- pointless obstructionism for the sole purpose of sticking it to the Democrats and mindless demagoguery about the nefarious Middle Eastern threat to convince voters of your manhood -- are joining together to create a massive, misshapen beast that represents everything that's gone wrong with politics in the 21st century.

  • "Jimmy Carter's cancer is God's punishment for his behavior toward Jews," says leading Israeli newspaper: Stuff like this make you think God's some kind of jerk, or maybe I just mean people who presume to speak for Him? Carter's negotiation of the 1979 peace treaty between Sadat and Begin was a great gift of peace for Israel, one that has lasted to this day, even though Begin reneged on the promise of "autonomy" for Palestinians, and three years later squandered the blessing of peace by invading Lebanon.

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Monday, September 7, 2015

Music: Current count 25453 [25408] rated (+45), 426 [429] unrated (-3).

Spent nearly the whole week listening to old jazz from Werner Uehlinger's Hatology label (or hatOLOGY, as he prefers), knocking off another 29 albums this week. As expected, the quality (at least as reflected in my grades) is dropping a bit: 6 A- records this week, so 20.6%, down from 28.5% (6/21) last week and 36.1% (26/72) from the previous database. Three of those six were from Anthony Braxton, so that won't happen again, and one of the others featured Ellery Eskelin -- I'm only aware of one more record by him that I haven't heard, something called Arcanum Moderne. Still, the next few weeks -- I have a list of 55 more Hatology albums I haven't heard yet, and I'm only up to about 2006 in Discogs' listings -- are bound to reveal some surprises.

As the rated count shows, I've been working very fast. Two Braxton albums fell just short, mostly because at the time I didn't feel like giving either a second spin (the one with Max Roach was most deserving of further attention). I pulled the earlier Urs Leimgruber albums off my unplayed shelf. The first (Statement of an Antirider) was by far the best solo sax album I've heard in the last two weeks, out of way too many. I played it twice, wrote it up as an A-, then dialed it back a notch. I took a couple flings on related non-Hat albums (Ran Blake, Anthony Ortega) but they didn't turn up much.

Not much new jazz this week, but I did manage to check out three new albums with saxophonist Jon Irabagon. I was surprised to note that I had only given one of his own albums an A- in the past -- 2010's Foxy -- because he must have more than a dozen side credits rated that or higher (mostly MOPDTK, but most recently Barry Altschul & 3Dom Factor: Tales of the Unforeseen). I took a look at his website calendar for July-August and he was working virtually every day, with almost as many different groups. He may be spreading himself thin, but he sure gets around.

I expected better things from the Dave Douglas (with Irabagon) and Irabagon (with Tom Harrell) and gave them plenty of line. Nice things on both, but neither managed to break out of the postbop mold. Still, I came up with one superb album for the week, from guitarist Liberty Ellman. He writes good parts for all three of his horns, and I love Jose Davila's thumping tuba, but the solo that always grabs my attention is by alto saxophonist Steve Lehman. Ellman gets a lot of side credits for mixing, including the last several albums by Lehman and almost everything else on the label they share, Pi. This is the third A-list album of four releases on Pi, the highest batting average of any label (pretty much year after year, by the way, so don't let the small sample size fool you). The others are Henry Threadgill's In for a Penny, In for a Pound and Amir ElSaffar's Crisis are the others; I have Steve Coleman's Synovial Joints way down at B+(***), and a fifth release, Jen Shyu's Sounds and Cries of the World just arrived and in the queue.

Probably have enough for a Rhapsody Streamnotes column, but I feel like I'm in the middle of all this Hat stuff. (I do: 128 records; but just 48 new, only 5 A-.) Also, I don't know how useful this file is (even to myself), but I fixed some typos in Music Tracking 2015 so now at least it's viewable. I also added everything in AMG's weekly "featured releases" up through last Friday, although I haven't gone through the other "review sources" in at least three months.

Having an absolutely miserable day today -- perhaps a cold on top of the worst allergies I can remember since moving west. Comes on the second straight 100-degree day here, although only the seventh such day this year. (It may be a record hot year for the world world, but not for Kansas.)

Happy Labor Day: a good day to remember that working people, and not profits or property, built everything you hold dear in America.

New records rated this week:

• Dave Douglas Quintet: Brazen Heart (2015, Greenleaf Music): [cd]: B+(**)
• Ellery Eskelin: Solo Live at Snugs (2013 [2015], Hatology): [r]: B+(**)
• Liberty Ellman: Radiate (2014 [2015], Pi): [cd]: A-
• Jon Irabagon: Behind the Sky (2014 [2015], Irabbagast): [cd]: B+(**)
• Jon Irabagon: Inaction Is an Action (2015, Irabbagast): [cd]: B
• Dave McDonnell Group: The Time Inside a Year (2014 [2015], Delmark): [cd]: B+(*)

Old records rated this week:

• Albert Ayler: Lörrach, Paris 1966 (1966 [2002], Hatology): [r]: B+(**)
• Billy Bang & Dennis Charles: Bangception, Willisau 1982 (1982 [1998], Hatology): [r]; B+(**)
• Burkhard Beins, Martin Pfleiderer & Peter Niklas Wilson: Yarbles (1996 [1997], Hatology): [r]: B+(*)
• Ran Blake: Plays Solo Piano (1965 [2013], ESP-Disk): [r]: B
• Ran Blake: Painted Rhythms: The Compleat Ran Blake Volume II (1985 [1988], GM): [r]; B
• Ran Blake & Anthony Braxton: A Memory of Vienna (1988 [2009], Hatology): [r]: B+(**)
• Ran Blake: Something to Live For (1998 [1999], Hatology): [r]: B+(*)
• Ran Blake: Horace Is Blue: A Silver Noir (1999 [2000], Hatology): [r]: B+(*)
• Anthony Braxton: Quintet (Basel) 1977 (1977 [2001], Hatology): [r]: B+(***)
• Anthony Braxton: Performance (Quartet) 1979 (1979 [2007], Hatology): [r]: A-
• Anthony Braxton: Open Aspects (Duo) 1982 (1982 [1993], Hat Art): [r]: B+(**)
• Anthony Braxton: Seven Compositions (Trio) 1989 (1989 [2008], Hatology): [r]: A-
• Anthony Braxton: Wesleyan (12 Alto Solos) 1992 (1992 [1995], Hat Art): [r]: B+(*)
• Anthony Braxton: Quartet (Santa Cruz) 1993 (1993 [1997], Hat Art, 2CD): [r]: A-
• Daniele D'Agaro/Ernest Glerum/Han Bennink: Strandjutters (2002 [2003], Hatology): [r]: B+(***)
• Daniele D'Agaro/Jeb Bishop/Kent Kessler/Robert Barry: Chicago Overtones (2004 [2005], Hatology): [r]: B+(***)
• Paul Dunmall/John Adams/Mark Sanders: Ghostly Thoughts (1996 [1997], Hatology): [r]: A-
• Ellery Eskelin With Andrea Parkins and Jim Black: One Great Night . . . Live (2007 [2009], Hatology): [r]: B+(***)
• Guillermo Gregorio: Ellipsis (1997, Hatology): [r]; B+(**)
• Guillermo Gregorio Trio: Red Cube(d) (1998 [1999], Hatology): [r]; B+(*)
• Richard Grossman Trio: Even Your Ears (1990-92 [1998], Hatology): [r]: B+(**)
• Richard Grossman Trio: Where the Sky Ended (1989-92 [2000], Hatology): [r]: B+(***)
• Jeanne Lee/Ran Blake: The Newest Sound Around (1961 [1962], RCA Victor): [r]: B+(**)
• Urs Leimgruber: Statement of an Antirider (1988 [1989], Hat Art): [cd]: B+(***)
• Urs Leimgruber/Adelhard Roidinger/Fritz Hauser: Lines (1990 [1994], Hat Art): B+(*)
• David Liebman: Colors (2002 [2003], Hatology): [r]: B-
• Dave Liebman: The Distance Runner (2004 [2005], Hatology): [r]: B+(**)
• David Liebman/Ellery Eskelin/Tony Marino/Jim Black: Renewal (2007 [2008], Hatology): [r]; A-
• David Liebman/Ellery Eskelin/Tony Marino/Jim Black: Non Sequiturs (2011, Hatology): [r]: B+(**)
• Manuel Mengis Gruppe 6: The Pond (2007 [2008], Hatology): [r]: B+(**)
• Manuel Mengis Gruppe 6: Dulcet Crush (2008 [2010], Hatology): [r]: B+(*)
• Anthony Ortega: Earth Dance (1955-56 [2004], Fresh Sound): [r]: B
• Anthony Ortega: New Dance (1966-67 [2003], Hatology): [r]: A-
• Anthony Ortega: Afternoon in Paris (1966-2005 [2007], Hatology): [r]: B+(**)
• Max Roach/Anthony Braxton: One in Two -- Two in One (1979 [2004], Hatology): [r]: B+(***)
• Matthew Shipp Trio: Prism (1993 [2000], Hatology): [r]: B+(**)
• Matthew Shipp String Trio: By the Law of Music (1996 [2002], Hatology): [r]: B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Laurie Antonioli & Richie Beirach: Varuna (Origin): September 18
• Randy Brecker: Randy Pop: Live (Piloo): September 18
• Willem Breuker Kollektief: Angoulême 18 Mai 1980 (Fou, 2CD)
• Nicole Mitchell/Tomeka Reid/Mike Reed: Artifacts (482 Music): October 30
• Jen Shyu & Jade Tongue: Sounds and Cries of the World (Pi): September 18
• Rotem Sivan Trio: A New Dance (Fresh Sound New Talent)

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, September 6, 2015

This week's scattered links:

• Billmon: Once the best political blogger in the country, he gave that up only to return as an excessively prolific tweeter, often spewing out cryptic numbered series of 140-charactertudes that could be collected and polished up into respectable blog posts. Consider this transcribed (and slightly edited) example:

  If GOP was hoping party's enraged wingnuts would calm down, tug forelocks and vote for approved establishment candidates, today's dual Senate defeats on Iran deal, Planned Parenthood will be about as helpful as a couple of snorts of pure crystal meth. Endless frustration of GOP's BS promises of sweeping victories -- "We'll END Obamacare! We'll STOP the baby killers!" -- that can't be kept is a big part of what's whipped the lumpen GOP into such a frenzy of hate and rage. But instead of becoming more skeptical of BS promises of "final victory," lumpen GOP is becoming even more passionate about demanding it. And so a fraud like Trump or a laid back fanatic like Carson can still be seen as the saviors who will make good on the BS promises.

  This reminds me that the most persistent character trait of Republicans ever since Reagan has been their sense of being entitled to lord it over America -- a sense so deeply felt that they are gobsmacked by every shred of evidence to the contrary. And I'm talking less about the elites, who actually do exercise considerable power whenever they can buy or rent it, than the rank and file, the chumps who loyally vote Republican, who think they alone are the country and that everyone who disagrees with them is alien scum. Only exaggerated egos can sustain their sense of entitlement despite perceptions of victimhood. They get that way through flattery, by constantly being reminded by politicians and pundits that they are the true Americans, the source of the nation's greatness and, if only they can regain power, redemption.

  Billmon's also been bothering to post poll results, like:

  Trump favorables:
  All adults: 37/59
  Whites: 48/49
  Hispanics: 15/82
  Blacks: 15/81
  ABC/Post poll
  Ain't Ronny Reagan's America any more, Donald

  "70% of 18-29-year-olds see Trump unfavorably, +12 points since July." His base is white equivalent of Last of the Mohicans

  More evidence that America is slipping away from the self-anointed chosen people.

• Ed Kilgore: The Ultimate Jerking Knee of Anti-Obamaism: Obama used his executive powers to order the federal government to change the designated name of a large heap of rock in the middle of Alaska from Mt. McKinley to Denali. I was surprised because I thought the deal had been done in 1980 when Denali National Park and Reserve was established, but evidently some dolt at the US Board on Geographic Names didn't get (or honor) the memo. Indeed, the official name in Alaska has long been Denali, as Julia O'Malley explains here. Still, Republicans -- especially those trotting around the country campaigning for president -- blew a gasket. Kilgore sees this as one more example of knee-jerk anti-Obamaism:

  Yet here we have Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee -- so far -- attacking the move and promising (Trump) or demanding (Huck) that it be stopped. There is zero plausible rationale other than hostility to Obama and all his infernal works. If it spreads, that will be incontestable.

  When I first heard about this, I found Ohio politicians like Bob Portman complaining, making me think they should find a mountain in Ohio to name after McKinley (and, while they're at it, a slightly smaller one for Harding)? But I can think of at least two other reasons for their agita. One is that having totally sandbagged Obama's legislative agenda, they've long been primed to cry foul any and every time he uses the routine executive powers of an office that he was popularly elected to twice -- even on something this innocuous. But the other is that Republicans have become obsessed with naming things after themselves, so this seems like backsliding. Their campaign kicked into high gear when they formed a full-time lobby to get things named after Ronald Reagan, figuring that if they could plaster his name everywhere he might achieve exalted Washington-Lincoln status. We've seen fruits of this campaign locally with the VA Hospital named for Robert Dole and the airport named for Eisenhower. (Koch Arena, of course, wasn't a political decision; its naming was bought the old-fashioned way.)

• Ed Kilgore: Defending the God-Given Liberty of County Clerks to Ignore Duties They Don't Like: Evidently there's a county clerk in Kentucky who's gotten attention by refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples -- something recently established as "the law of the land." She regards her refusal to be a matter of religious conscience, but doesn't feel strongly enough to resign her position, which would be the principled thing to do. Rather, she feels entitled to keep her job and use it to discriminate against people she doesn't like, to prevent them from one of their legal rights. She has no legal basis to stand on, although there are a few politicians -- including a "Tea Party dude" named Matt Bevin who's running for governor in Kentucky -- who would like to invent a legal right for at least some people to impose their bigotry on others according to some definition of religious conscience. They key word in that last line is "some" because there are way too many weird tenets in way too many religions to generalize any such "right" -- it doesn't take much imagination to see that the result would be chaos. On the other hand, respect for religious conscience isn't a bad principle. But the way to honor it isn't to turn it into a way to obstruct and frustrate justice. It's to allow the conscientious objector to step back and be replaced by someone amenable to the situation. For the clerk, that means resign and find some new job that doesn't present her with such moral qualms. For a pharmacist, say, who objects to filling prescriptions for birth control, that may even mean finding a new profession. (No business can afford to keep extra staff on hand to compensate for the "religious convictions" of staff that refuse to do their job.) Still, none of these recent examples compel people to do things against their principles like the military draft did, and which military enlistment contracts still do. I strongly believe that any soldier should be able to resign at any moment when faced with an understanding that one's task may be illegal, unethical, and/or immoral. However, even given how much I hate war, I wouldn't go so far as to insist that conscientious objectors be retained in military posts so they can undermine the operation. Rather, I'd hope that enough people would object to bring the whole operation into question.

  Admittedly, resigning a position, possibly even changing a career path, involves an economic cost. If politicians wish to support more people exercising conscientious objection, they could help cushion those costs -- e.g., by providing unemployment compensation for anyone who resigns on principle. But that's not what Bevin, et al., want. All they want is to undermine civil rights by allowing self-righteous cranks to muck up the system. That's why this clerk is their poster child.

• Norman Pollack: The Trump Phenomenon: This Is Getting Serious: News coverage of US presidential campaigns has been abysmal for a long time, and seems to get worse as a function of how long the campaigns last and how much money is spent on them. One problem this year is having to slog through so much rubbish about Donald Trump's "populism" -- the word they're looking for is "popularity," itself a highly circumscribed property when the only people you're sampling are those who show up for Republican campaign events. I figured the writer most likely to debunk this nonsense is the one who introduced me to the history of the People's Party -- checking back, the book I recall was The Populist Mind (1967), which he edited; he also wrote The Populist Response to Industrial America: Midwestern Populist Thought (1962); The Just Polity: Populism, Law, and Human Welfare (1987), and The Humane Economy: Populism, Capitalism, and Democracy (1990). And he makes a clear distinction between populism and the gruff Trump is peddling. The latter is what he calls "neo-fascism," something he doesn't see Trump pushing so much as pandering:

  Yet Trump is less important than the American people, who, thirsting for strong leadership, pathetic in their wallowing in contrived fear, brought on by decades of gut redbaiting and subliminally-wrought and manipulative anticommunism, place him on a political-ideological pedestal tokening authoritarian submissiveness. America, not Trump himself, is the primary explanation for his standing.

  The political culture is one of uncritical acceptance of war, business, militarism (in truth neo-fascism corrected for eroding Constitutional principles still in place), a long-term historical process in the shaping of a hierarchical capitalist structure, value system, and class relationships. Old Glory is self-immolating, its fabric torn asunder by unreasoning fear (an inflexible societal framework, in essence, counterrevolutionary in scope and substance, because opposed to social change in recognition that property, class, privilege might be questioned if critical judgment were encouraged and allowed to operate freely), and by frustration over obstacles to US unilateral global hegemony. This is not something new, fear being a weapon in the elites' arsenal, permanent, yet trotted out, intensified, when they sense a mass awakening and/or restiveness usually associated with war and its aftermath.

  This neo-fascist impulse is summed up in the mass craving for a strong leader -- the word that expresses it perfectly is Führerprinzip (this is one of those cases where a German word is clearer than anything I could say in English). They can only hope Trump is the Führer of their dreams -- clearly most other Republican candidates aren't, being mere puppets of their billionaire sponsors (most obviously, I'd say, Walker and Rubio). It's safe to say that Trump will ultimately disappoint, if not as Hitler did then at some lower level of catastrophe and/or corruption. Given Trump's track record I'd bet on the latter. Few figures in our time have more consistently pursued fame as a means to fortune. Give him "the most powerful office in the world" and you can be sure he won't rule as the humble servant of the people who voted for him. He will only have his own self-interest to guide him.

  I've never seen anyone mention this, but the obvious model for Trump as a politician is Silvio Berlusconi, the media mogul who became prime minister of Italy three times between 1994 and 2011. Forbes pegs Berlusconi's net worth at $7.7 billion, almost double the $4 billion Trump is supposedly worth, although Berlusconi was certainly worth less before he became prime minister. As it happens, there is a new book out: Being Berlusconi: The Rise and Fall From Cosa Nostra to Bunga Bunga, where we find that along with his great fortune and political triumphs, he also "became bogged down by his hubris, egotism, sexual obsessions, as well as his flagrant disregard for the law."

  His followers say America wants and needs a Great Leader, but the more I look at Trump, the more he looks like a cheap knock off of Silvio Berlusconi.

  Still, otherwise intelligent reporters keep buying at least part of the Trump = populism meme (like Pollack, they're usually people who don't have a very high opinion of most white Americans. E.g., Matt Taibbi: The Republicans Are Now Officially the Party of White Paranoia. Taibbi follows up a quick rundown of how oligarchy works followed by a dubious example of Trump breaking rank:

  They donate heavily to both parties, essentially hiring two different sets of politicians to market their needs to the population. The Republicans give them everything that they want, while the Democrats only give them mostly everything.

  They get everything from the Republicans because you don't have to make a single concession to a Republican voter.

  All you have to do to secure a Republican vote is show lots of pictures of gay people kissing or black kids with their pants pulled down or Mexican babies at an emergency room. Then you push forward some dingbat like Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin to reassure everyone that the Republican Party knows who the real Americans are. [ . . . ]

  Trump has pulled all of those previously irrelevant voters completely out of pocket. In a development that has to horrify the donors who run the GOP, the candidate Trump espouses some truly populist policy beliefs, including stern warnings about the dire consequences companies will face under a Trump presidency if they ship American jobs to Mexico and China.

  All that energy the party devoted for decades telling middle American voters that protectionism was invented by Satan and Karl Marx during a poker game in Brussels in the mid-1840s, that just disappeared in a puff of smoke.

  And all that money the Republican kingmakers funneled into Fox and Clear Channel over the years, making sure that their voters stayed focused on ACORN and immigrant-transmitted measles and the New Black Panthers (has anyone ever actually seen a New Black Panther? Ever?) instead of, say, the complete disappearance of the manufacturing sector or the mass theft of their retirement income, all of that's now backing up on them.

  What fakes people out, I think, is that the more ideologically rigorous Republican moneymen (starting with the Kochs) are so wary of Trump, not so much because they think he's not on their side as because he's not (yet) in their pocket. That'll change soon enough when they realize his shtick is just shtick.

  For another piece that takes Trump populism seriously, see David Atkins: Why Donald Trump Will Defeat the Koch Brothers for the Soul of the GOP:

  In order to understand how Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican field despite openly promoting tax hikes on wealthy hedge fund managers, hinting support for universal healthcare and other wildly iconoclastic positions hostile to decades of Republican dogma, it's important to note the that the Republican Party was teetering on the edge of a dramatic change no matter whether Trump had entered the race or not. [ . . . ]

  As for Wall Street? Most Republican voters can't stand them. The majority of the Republican base sees the financial sector as crony capitalist, corrupt liberal New Yorkers who got a bailout. Most GOP voters won't shed a tear if Trump raises taxes on the hedge fund crowd.

  Donald Trump reassures these voters that the "wrong kind of people" won't be getting any freebies on his watch. That's all they really care about -- so if Trump supports universal healthcare it's simply not that big a deal.

  And this ultimately is what the real GOP realignment is going to look like: less racially diverse corporatism, and more socialism for white people. It stands to reason. Blue-collar white GOP voters aren't about to forget decades of fear-based propaganda, and their economic position remains precarious enough that they still need the welfare state help.

  The first point to remember is that no politician can, and many don't even want to, deliver on all campaign promises. Second, it's especially far fetched to think that Trump will, not least because there's scant evidence he really believes in any of this -- especially the "socialism for white people" planks Atkins touts. If/when he gets elected, he'll have to work with a Republican party that has been leaning the other way hard for years -- especially on taxes and benefits, but also on things like trade and capital flows. He could try to push some things through with Democratic support, but that runs the risk of losing not the base so much as the media machine that has kept the GOP so united of late. If I had to guess, I'd expect him to demagogue anti-immigrant positions -- that, after all, is his trademark issue -- but he'll accommodate all the usual interest groups, notably the banks, oil, and the military, and I doubt he'll do anything to undermine the predatory nature of the health care industry (though he'll preserve some form of rebranded, "fixed" Obamacare). But he won't do anything to slow down much less reverse the increasing inequality that is undoing the white middle class. He may get a short term blip because a lot of voters are gullible, but he can't build a realignment on delivering nothing but hot air.

  Trump's slogan is to Make America Great Again, but he can't deliver on that because nothing he knows how to do will work. He is popular now because his jingoism resonates with a certain type of mainstream Republican, but you shouldn't confuse popularity with populism. The latter is a set of principled beliefs. The former is fleeting, most of all for frauds and crooks, and every experience we've had suggests that's all he is.

  PS: It will be interesting to see whether Trump support manages to break off some of the odder chinks in the conservative worldview. The most likely candidates are schemes like the flat tax and the various privatization schemes for Social Security/Medicare -- programs that are very popular among the GOP base but under attack from the libertarian-oriented (i.e., Koch-financed) think tanks. Right now the groups that seem to be most upset by Trump are Koch fronts: having entered this election cycle planning on spending $900 million to finally take control of the whole nation, they've suddenly found themselves on the defensive, in a fight over the mindset of the Republican Party. And they're liable to find that a lot of their pet issues are deeply unpopular even among the party faithful: for instance, their rabid anti-wind push couldn't even pass the neanderthal Kansas legislature, and the exemption that businessmen get from state income tax was only saved by Brownback's unwillingness to compromise on the point.

  There's probably a formal model for this somewhere, but just thinking off the top of my head, let me try to sketch one out. In any political party, there are some stances that are widely held by the masses, and multiple others that are held by the elites. The elites control the media, the think tanks, and in normal times the discussion -- a mix of their own concerns plus a little red meat to keep the masses riled up. Until Trump came along, the race was between a bunch of whores sucking up to the party's top money men, the cream of the elites. Any of those guys would have been acceptable to the masses, but none of them really satisfied their craving for a strong charismatic leader, a Führer. Trump changed all that, mostly by appealing directly to the masses (bypassing the elites) by seizing on a mass hot-button issue, immigration. (The elites are generally pro-immigration, correctly seeing it as good for business and bad for labor, although they often bite their tongue so as not to stir up the shit storm Trump raised.)

  My sense of the Republican masses is: people who basically feel economically secure (unless they own small business); are cynical about government but less so about business; regard wealth and self-sufficiency as signs of virtue, and poverty as a personal failing; regard hierarchies as normal, and tend to defer to strong male figures; strongly identify with like groups, especially the nation. You can probably tune this further. The GOP has been very effective at cultivating single-issue voters, like gun nuts (I added "self-sufficiency" thinking of them), anti-abortion zealots (male-dominated hierarchies has a lot to do with this), and the military (ditto). I could add something about people who aspire to be rich and vote their dreams, but such people mostly fall into hierarchies, and that's sort of a self-serving cliché -- besides, most of the mass base know they'll never get rich (many are already on Social Security), they're just satisfied with their lot. Obviously, most are white and native-born over at least a couple generations -- but there are exceptions, including such over-compensating strivers as Rubio, Cruz, Jindal, Santorum (and I suppose I should add Carson). I didn't include religion in part because I'm not convinced that Republicans have any edge there (let alone monopoly), although they may be more clannish, dogmatic, and bigoted about their religion.

  I also didn't include prejudice or stupidity in this list, mostly because I think they are effects of the way Republican elites manipulate their mass base rather than defining factors of membership. The unavoidable fact is that the mass base is incredibly misinformed about just about everything -- something easy to blame on the right-wing media and their knack for spinning facts and spicing them up with "dog whistle" nuance, something the mass base doesn't just buy into but gobbles up with disturbing relish. Still, this ignorance is a weak spot for the mass base, one that's likely to fracture whenever contrary facts break through -- which happens regularly as Republican programs inevitably blow up.

• Iran Deal links:

  • Celestine Bohlen: Europe Doesn't Share US Concerns on Iran Deal:

    Given the sound, fury and millions of dollars swirling around the debate in Washington over the Iranian nuclear deal, the silence in Europe is striking. It's particularly noticeable in Britain, France and Germany, which were among the seven countries that signed the deal on July 14.

    Here in France, which took the toughest stance during the last years of negotiation, the matter is settled, according to Camille Grand, director of the Strategic Research Foundation in Paris and an expert on nuclear nonproliferation.

    "In Europe, you don't have a constituency against the deal," he said. "In France, I can't think of a single politician or member of the expert community who has spoken against it, including some of us who were critical during the negotiations."

    Mr. Grand said the final agreement was better than he had expected. "I was surprised by the depth and the quality of the deal," he said. "The hawks are satisfied, and the doves don't have an argument."

  • Grace Cason/Jim Lobe: Committee for the Liberation of Iraq Members on Iran Deal: As you've probably noticed by now, most of the people who brought you the Iraq War are opposed to Obama's Iran Deal. This article provides an exhaustive rundown:

    Virtually all of the political appointees who held foreign-policy posts under George W. Bush -- from Elliott Abrams to Dov Zakheim, not to mention such leading lights as Dick Cheney, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, Eric Edelman, and "Scooter" Libby -- have all assailed the agreement as a sell-out and/or appeasement with varying degrees of vehemence, if not vituperation.

    The piece especially covers the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), which was set up in November 2002 to sell the war -- "a classic letterhead organization (LHO), a collection of individuals with widely varying degrees of knowledge about Iraq gathered together by the Bush White House, PNAC, and Chalabi." Of that group, Chalabi seems to be the only one to favor the deal. Many others are quoted, the most flamboyant being Bernard Lewis, who said that "for Iran's leadership, mutually assured destruction is 'not a deterrent, it's an inducement.'" They did find four CLI members who supported the deal, and several others, ranging from James P. Hoffa to Donald Rumsfeld, who have yet to weigh in.

  • Fred Kaplan: How the Iran Deal Will Pass -- and Why It Should: This runs through a lot of opposition arguments and knocks them down. Then ponders the politics, which is subject to a different form of reasoning:

    The biggest source of uncertainty, among some vote counters, is that the whole exercise is a bit theatrical. Because Obama has said he would veto a rejection, all the Republicans and a few Democrats feel that they have leave to succumb to political pressures. They can vote "no," and satisfy their party whips or constituents, without shouldering any responsibility for their actions.

    The irony and danger of this is that, the safer Obama's margins seem, the more Democrats might defect, believing that the deal will pass without their support. But if enough Democrats act on that calculation, the outcome could shift -- maybe enough to override a veto, even though none of the swing voters has that intention.

    This can happen in a political system, such as ours today, that encourages legislators to take their jobs less than seriously.

  • Paul R Pillar: The Iran Issue and the Exploitation of Ignorance: Most of this is on public polling, which confirms here, as it has on many other occasions, that most Americans are ignorant and/or stupid. He then moves on to cases where opponents have sought to exploit this ignorance by spinning minor details into supposed problems -- the "24 day" issue is an example -- but he also points out that supporters can use the issue as an opportunity for educating the public (e.g., Congressman Jerrold Nadler Statement on the P5+1 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

  • Stephen M Walt: The Myth of a Better Deal:

    The most obvious example of magical thinking in contemporary policy discourse, of course, is the myth of a "better deal" with Iran. Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, opponents of the JCPOA keep insisting additional sanctions, more threats to use force, another round of Stuxnet, or if necessary, dropping a few bombs, would have convinced Iran to run up the white flag and give the United States everything it ever demanded for the past 15 years. The latest example of such dubious reasoning is the New York Times's David Brooks, who thinks an agreement where Iran makes most of the concessions is a Vietnam-style defeat for the United States and imagines that tougher US negotiators (or maybe war) would have produced a clear and decisive victory.

    Never mind that while the United States ramped up sanctions, Iran went from zero centrifuges to 19,000. Never mind that there was no international support for harsher sanctions and that unilateral US sanctions wouldn't increase the pressure in any meaningful way. Never mind that attacking Iran with military force would not end its nuclear program and only increase Iran's interest in having an actual weapon. Never mind that the deal blocks every path to a bomb for at least a decade. And never mind that the myth of a "better deal" ignores Diplomacy 101: To get any sort of lasting agreement, it has to provide something for all of the parties.

    The next paragraph has another good line but I wanted to stop on the "Diplomacy 101" point. Deals shouldn't turn into contests of power, in part because they're never really zero-sum games. When both sides are equal in power, their deals can be expected to find mutual benefits that exceed either party's losses. But when power is inequal, when one side has to make concessions to the other, it becomes essential that the more powerful side limit those concessions to what will be viewed as just. Failure to do so breeds resentment, both against the unjust treaty and the powerlessness it demonstrates. The classic example, of course, was Versailles, where the reparations Germany was forced to pay fueled a revolt that led to an even deadlier war. I'd worry more that the deal was stacked too much against Iran than that the US negotiators could have held out for something more punitive. The US did not enter these negotiations with a much of a reputation for justice, at least in Iranian eyes, and reneging on the deal (as the Republicans propose) will only sully America's reputation further.

    Needless to say, no nation has a worse reputation for turning negotiations into contests of power than Israel (the main reason the power-crazed neocons so love and envy it).

  • Gareth Porter: Barak's tales of Israel's near war with Iran conceal with real story: A tale of frantic sabre-rattling, designed more for show than as a real military action (kind of like Nixon's "Madman" feint).

    The latest episode in the seemingly endless story of Israel's threat of war followed the broadcast in Israel of interviews by Barak for a new biography. The New York Times' Jodi Rudoren reported that, in those interviews, Barak "revealed new details to his biographers about how close Israel came to striking Iran." Barak "said that he and Mr Netanyahu were ready to attack Iran each year," but claimed that something always went wrong. Barak referred to three distinct episodes from 2010 through 2012 in which the he and Netanyahu were supposedly manoeuvering to bring about an air attack on Iran's nuclear programme.

    The bulk of the article show how Obama used Israel's threats to gain UN agreement on harsher sanctions against Iran.

  • Trita Parsi/Reza Marashi: Obama's Real Achievement With the Iran Deal:

    In his speech at American University on August 5, Obama made clear that the Iran nuclear deal is a product of him leading America away from the damaging over-militarization of America's foreign and national security policies following the September 11th attacks. "When I ran for President eight years ago as a candidate who had opposed the decision to go to war in Iraq, I said that America didn't just have to end that war -- we had to end the mindset that got us there in the first place," Obama said. "It was a mindset characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy."

    But a single foreign-policy achievement, however historic and momentous, a mindset does not change. Particularly if the debate surrounding the deal remains deeply rooted in the old, militaristic mindset. Herein lies the Obama administration's own shortcomings in the debate. While the president made clear his aim to shift America's security mindset, most of the arguments employed to convince lawmakers to support to deal are rooted in the mindset that led America into Iraq, not in the mindset that enabled the diplomatic victory with Iran.

    The Iraq war mindset is one where strength above all else produces security. An attitude that, in the words of Obama, "equates security with a perpetual war footing." This mindset, in turn, produces a fear of not projecting strength; of looking weak. As the president pointed out in his speech, "Those calling for war labeled themselves strong and decisive, while dismissing those who disagreed as weak -- even appeasers of a malevolent adversary."

    This desire to look strong, borne out of this mindset, continues to define the debate over the Iran deal. It has led some supporters of the deal to highlight the military justifications behind their support, even though this defeats the larger purpose of the deal itself: To shift the paradigm from militarism to diplomacy.

    But Obama's line about wanting to change the way we think about war had turned into a joke long ago by the man himself. Whatever doubts he may have had before, they evaporated pretty quickly once his minions started calling him "commander in chief," as he started racking up his own personal body count -- as I recall, the first person he directly, personally ordered assassinated was a Somali pirate, and the list has grown much longer since then. Obama didn't change the way we think about war; war changed the way we think about Obama (not, of course, that the Republicans can be accused of thinking here).

    Even Obama's great diplomatic breakthrough has all the marks of a military campaign, deftly executed to line up a broad front of allies whose combined leverage was so great that Iran saw no alternative but to surrender its Ayatollahs' dreams of nuclear apocalypse. Admittedly, Obama did (at least for the moment) effect a change within American military strategy, preferring a clean surrender signed by Iran's leaders, who remain in place to enforce it, to the usual American military clusterfuck -- you know, invade a country, kill people indiscriminately, destroy the infrastructure to commit mass mayhem, buy off the most corruptible elements and turn them into the face of occupation, then spend eternity putting down guerrilla insurrections. Nonetheless, Obama reserved the latter option in case the deal doesn't work out. You'd think his opponents would at least take heart in that. But then you'd also think that anyone who grasped the alleged problem would recognize that an agreement with positive incentives for compliance will be much more effective than disagreement with random punishments and unpredictable reprisals, which is all that Netanyahu, Lieberman (take your pick), and their ilk have to offer.

    As the debate over the Iran deal concludes and the next policy crisis comes to the fore, both Obama's friends and foes would be wise to take his advice: "Resist the conventional wisdom and the drumbeat of war. Worry less about being labeled weak; worry more about getting it right."

    Indeed, if the Iran nuclear deal solely prevents an Iranian bomb but fails to shift the security paradigm in America towards peace building through diplomacy rather than the militarism of perpetual warfare, then truly a historic opportunity will have been lost.

    Changing the way we think about war will take some leadership who's already changed the way they think, but when it happens we'll look back on this debate and wonder how both sides could have been so drunk on force.

  • Noam Chomsky: On the Iran Deal: I might say he's a little long-winded, but he makes so many solid points the piece comes off as a breath of fresh air. For instance:

    Turning to the next obvious question, what in fact is the Iranian threat? Why, for example, are Israel and Saudi Arabia trembling in fear over that country? Whatever the threat is, it can hardly be military. Years ago, US intelligence informed Congress that Iran has very low military expenditures by the standards of the region and that its strategic doctrines are defensive -- designed, that is, to deter aggression. The US intelligence community has also reported that it has no evidence Iran is pursuing an actual nuclear weapons program and that "Iran's nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy."

    The authoritative SIPRI review of global armaments ranks the US, as usual, way in the lead in military expenditures. China comes in second with about one-third of US expenditures. Far below are Russia and Saudi Arabia, which are nonetheless well above any western European state. Iran is scarcely mentioned. Full details are provided in an April report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which finds "a conclusive case that the Arab Gulf states have . . . an overwhelming advantage of Iran in both military spending and access to modern arms."

    Iran's military spending, for instance, is a fraction of Saudi Arabia's and far below even the spending of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Altogether, the Gulf Cooperation Council states -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE -- outspend Iran on arms by a factor of eight, an imbalance that goes back decades.

    Next up is the "existential threat" that Iran is said to present to nuclear-armed Israel. And of course Chomsky brings up the 1953 coup, American arms sales to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, etc. I suspect he goes a little too far in belittling Iran's efforts to recruit allies around the Middle East -- their interventionism pales in comparison to what the US and even Saudi Arabia has done, but that doesn't make it constructive. Also, their human rights record, including religious intolerance (particularly against the Baha'i) leaves a lot to be desired -- although, again, maybe not in comparison to our great ally, Saudi Arabia.

• Also noted:

  • Jason Diltz: Four US Troops Among Six Injured in Sinai IED Blasts: I can't say I was aware of any US troops anywhere in Egypt, but here you go, in harm's way. Evidently they are part of an observer group demanded by Israel to monitor Egyptian forces in Sinai, but Egyptian forces there are mostly fighting other Egyptians, some allegedly affiliated with ISIS. Rather than admitting that their presence has become a complicating factor, doing neither Egypt nor Israel any good, the sensible thing would be to move those troops out, lest they become an excuse for sending more in. But it seems like that's just what the military wants to do: to send more firepower in and escalate the conflict.

  • Jason Diltz: 45 UAE Troops, 10 Saudis, and 5 Bahrainis Killed in Yemen War: Saudi Arabia's intervention in Yemen has mostly involved killing Yemenis from the air, but as you can see here the Saudis and their Gulf allies actually have "boots on the ground," as 60 deaths in a two-day span clearly shows. Not clear whether the US is actively or merely passively supporting the Saudi effort, but as the Saudis' main arms supplier this is effectively yet another American proxy war effort.

  • DR Tucker: Everything in Moderation: Part II: Starts with a quote from a Rachel Maddow monologue back in 2010, but relevant to much of the above:

    At the top of the show today, we talked about the myth of bipartisanship, the futility of Democrats, including the president, wasting time trying to persuade Republicans to go along with them on policies that are good for the country. [ . . . ]

    None of this is a secret, which is the most important thing to understand about it. Republicans right now do not care about policy. By which I mean, they will not vote for things that even they admit are good policies . . .

    And they are unembarrassed about this fact. They are not embarrassed. Charging them with hypocrisy, appealing to their better, more practical, more what's-best-for-the-country patriotic angels is like trying to teach your dog to drive.

    It wastes a lot of time. It won't work. And ultimately the dog comes out of the exercise less embarrassed for failing than you do for trying.

  The bulk of the piece has to do with climate change, but it could just as well be the Iran Deal or pretty much anything else. Republicans can't imagine a better outcome to the "manufactured crisis" than the one Obama handed them, but they've negotiated a deal which lets them sputter on about the deal, secure that nothing they do will undermine the deal, and confident that no one will remember their pig-headedness come next election.

  This feeling Republicans have that nothing can stick to them was hugely reinforced when they took control of Congress in 2010, only four years after Iraq and Katrina wiped them out in 2006, only two years after they caused the largest recession since the 1930s. This sense that no matter what they do they'll never have to pay for it is about the only thing that explains their intransigence on global warming and health care.

  By the way, Tucker is also saying very laudatory things about Barack Obama's Arctic Blast speech. I haven't read or seen the speech, so will take his word (with the usual grain of salt). However, I have been saying all along that even if Obama can't legislate solutions he should be using his pulpit to speak about problems, so this seems to be a step in the right direction. I just wish his convictions on war/peace and economic equality were more laudable.

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Monday, August 31, 2015

Music: Current count 25408 [25368] rated (+40), 429 [426] unrated (+3).

Christgau makes a big point about never writing about an album until he is sure what he thinks about it, including a firm grade. I've never been so certain about anything, or at least about music, so I've always regarded my grades as provisional approximations. That doesn't mean that I don't take due diligence. I very rarely grade an album A- on one play, although I also rarely give a second play to a B+(*) to give it a chance to rise of fall a notch, or a B- to see how bad it really is. Still, it seems like the line between B+(***) and A- is unusually cloudy this week. The Barry Altschul album and a couple of the old Hat discs are pretty solid, but all the rest of the A- records are borderline. Some of the B+(***) come close, too -- in particular, it's tempting to bump up everything Ellery Eskelin does, while on the other hand, I rarely get excited enough by Paul Bley and/or Jimmy Giuffre.

I finished digging through the ECM records on MPE. They only go back to March (or maybe later, as the label's German and US release dates aren't always the same), so there are still some 2015 ECM releases I missed -- notably everyone's favorite, Jack De Johnette's Made in Chicago. Despite the "[dl]" notation below, everything I rated was based on streaming, and the user interface requires me to login again every time I finish an album, so there's a built-in bias against second plays. The only ECM record I downloaded was Elina Duni's, and I haven't tried burning a copy yet, but it struck me as something I'd be willing to do a little work to hear again. (She's an Albanian folk singer, but works with a first-rate Swiss jazz group, Colin Vallon's piano trio.) Falling just short of that are two other B+(***) albums by Gary Peacock and Stefano Battaglia -- good records, but not as exceptional.

Jerry Bergonzi's new record is probably the most borderline of all. I must have played it six, maybe as many as eight, times, and every time I was ready to file it as a high B+ I'd hear something special -- always from the tenor saxophonist. The problem is he get diluted with a second horn -- no knock on Phil Grenadier, whose trumpet sparkles throughout, but I prefer Bergonzi's trios and quartets, albums like Tenor Talk and Simply Put.

After Christgau declared Stuff Like That There Yo La Tengo's "loveliest album ever," I almost reflexively considered it an A-, but then I looked up Fakebook in my database and was reminded that I had only given it a B+(*) -- the best thing about their covers album was that it showed that they owned some of the same esoteric records I did. Aside from the Hank Williams, this new batch of covers is even more esoteric, sometimes a plus, sometimes not. And while it is lovely -- it reminded me of one of those later, hitless Everly Brothers albums -- much of the middle wasn't especially distinguished. But it ends on a song so good I started having second thoughts. Just didn't follow up on them.

Going into the week, it wasn't clear what I would do down in the old music section, but last week I had followed the new Gary Peacock album with an older Paul Bley duet, Partners -- a 4-star from the Penguin Guide list, and that got me to looking at what else Rhapsody had from Bley that I hadn't heard before. That's when I discovered that Rhapsody had added a sizable chunk of the Hatology (aka Hat Hut and Hat Art and Hat Now) catalogue. Hat was one of a handful of European labels that rescued avant-jazz in the late 1970s -- the only more important label, at least for American avant-gardists, was Black Saint/Soul Note (in Italy), with DIW (Japan) coming a bit later, and Leo (UK) and FMP (Germany) focusing more on European artists.

Checking back through my database, I had previously rated 72 Hat albums, and had another 109 in the "shopping" list. To give you a taste, all of the following are rated A- or higher ([A] so marked):

• Ray Anderson/Han Bennink/Christy Doran: Cheer Up (1995, Hat Art)
• Anthony Braxton: Dortmund (Quartet) 1976 (1976, Hat Art)
• Anthony Braxton: Eight (+3) Tristano Compositions 1989 (1989, Hat Art)
• Anthony Braxton: Willisau (Quartet) 1991 (1991, Hat Art, 4CD)
• Anthony Braxton: Charlie Parker Project 1993 (1993, Hat Art, 2CD)
• Dave Burrell: Windward Passages (1979 [1994], Hat Art)
• Clusone Trio: Soft Lights and Sweet Music (1993, Hat Art)
• Dave Douglas: Constellations (1995, Hat Art)
• Ellery Eskelin/Andrea Parkins/Jim Black: One Great Day (1996 [1997], Hatology)
• Ellery Eskelin/Andrea Parkins/Jim Black: 12 (+1) Imaginary Views (2001 [2002], Hatology)
• Ellery Eskelin: Ten (2004, Hatology)
• Steve Lacy/Roswell Rudd: School Days (1963 [1994], Hat Art)
• Steve Lacy: Morning Joy: Live at Sunset Paris (1986, Hat Art) [A]
• Jon Lloyd: Four and Five (1998, Hatology)
• Joe McPhee: Oleo and A Future Retrospective (1982 [1992], Hat Art)
• Joe McPhee: Linear B (1990 [1991], Hat Art)
• Manuel Mengis: Into the Barn (2004 [2005], Hatology)
• David Murray: 3D Family (1978 [2006], Hatology)
• Matthew Shipp: The Multiplication Table (1998, Hatology)
• Matthew Shipp: Expansion, Power, Release (1999 [2001], Hatology)
• Horace Tapscott: The Dark Tree: 1 (1989, Hat Art) [A]
• Horace Tapscott: The Dark Tree: 2 (1989, Hat Art)
• Cecil Taylor: One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye (1978 [1980], Hat Art, 2CD)
• Vienna Art Orchestra: From No Time to Rag Time (1982 [1983], Hat Art) [A]
• Vienna Art Orchestra: The Minimalism of Erik Satie (1983-84, Hat Art)
• John Zorn: News for Lulu (1987, Hat Art)

So that's 26 A/A- records, before I added six this week (plus one more after the cutoff, so next week). Possible I'm loosening up the curve: I'd expect the percentage of A-/A records to decline over time, having cherry-picked the best prospects early on. Indeed, it has: the legacy share is 36.1% (26/72), whereas this week's haul is down to 28.5% (6/21). I expect it will drop further as I keep tapping into this resource. By the way, I've run across a couple cases where cuts are missing. If that seems minor, I may just hedge, but Mal Waldron & Steve Lacy: Live at Dreher Paris 1981 was reduced from 4CD to three cuts (all takes of "Round Midnight"), so there's nothing a critic can do about that.

Also, I haven't found much here that predates the launch of the Hatology (or as they prefer to style it, "hatOLOGY") label. There are several weird things about Hat's business model. One is that they tout their releases as "limited editions" -- usually that means a run of 3000 units -- so their most popular titles tend to run out of print, while they periodically binge and put the rest on deeply discounted sales (I've picked up a lot of titles for $5 or less over the years). Currently Hatology is used both for new releases and reissues of out-of-print titles.

One pair of grades is worth breaking down. The two Joe McPhee discs are both solo, one coming in at A-, the other B-. As near as I can figure it, McPhee's 1976 album Tenor was his answer to Anthony Braxton's 1969 For Alto, an album often held to be brilliant as well as uncompromising -- Penguin Guide awarded it one of their crowns -- but which I've always found to be plug ugly (I gave it a D based on an LP I no longer own). Tenor takes the same approach and, given the larger horn, digs even deeper. If I were to revisit For Alto (and I do have the CD somewhere) I would probably bump it up some, but I found myself anxious for Tenor & Fallen Angels to end long before it did. On the other hand, As Serious as Your Life varies the instruments -- McPhee is also a superb trumpet player (actually, pocket cornet here), and will astonish you on crashing piano, and he adds some electronics to a couple cuts so he actually has a beat to bounce off, so it winds up being a very different album.

The Tony Coe album is another Penguin Guide 4-star that I found while looking for Hat releases -- he has a couple of them, a long association with Derek Bailey and/or Tony Oxley, an avant side far removed from his roots with Humphrey Lyttelton in Britain's trad jazz movement. Could be this swing album sounded even better as a break from all the avant-jazz. At any rate, I found it delightful.

One more thing to note: with the author's permission, I've revamped the Michael Tatum archive. Hopefully in the future we'll add some more old pieces, but for now it has all of the A Downloader's Diary columns (including his latest), all properly indexed, a total of 978 albums.

New records rated this week:

• John Adams/San Francisco Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas: Absolute Jest/Grand Pianola Music (2013 [2015], SFS): [r]: B+(**)
• Barry Altschul & 3Dom Factor: Tales of the Unforeseen (2014 [2015], TUM): [cd]: A-
• Stefano Battaglia Trio: In the Morning: Music of Alec Wilder (2014 [2015], ECM): [dl]; B+(***)
• Jerry Bergonzi: Rigamaroll (2012 [2015], Savant): [cd]: A-
• Elina Duni Quartet: Dallëndyshe (2014 [2015], ECM): [dl]: B+(***)
• Daniel Fortin: Brinks (2015, Fresh Sound New Talent): [cd]: B+(**)
• Roberto Magris: Enigmatix (2013 [2015], JMood): [cd]: B+(**)
• Stephan Micus: Nomad Songs (2012-14 [2015], ECM): [dl]: B+(*)
• Olavi Trio: Oh, La Vie! (2013 [2015], TUM): [cd]: B+(**)
• Enrico Rava Quartet/Gianluca Petrella: Wild Dance (2015, ECM): [dl]: B+(**)
• Andy Sheppard: Surrounded by Sea (2014 [2015], ECM): [dl]: B+(**)
• Savina Yannatou/Primavera en Salonico: Songs of Thessaloniki (2014 [2015], ECM): [dl]: B+(**)
• Yo La Tengo: Stuff Like That There (2015, Matador): [r]: B+(***)

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

• Manu Katché: Touchstone for Manu (2004-12 [2015], ECM): [dl]: B+(**)
• Steve Lacy: Shots (1977 [2015], Hatology): [r]: B+(**)
• Joe McPhee: As Serious as Your Life (1996 [2014], Hatology): [r]: A-

Old records rated this week:

• Paul Bley/Jimmy Giuffre/Steve Swallow: The Life of a Trio: Sunday (1989 [1990], Owl: [r]: B+(***)
• Paul Bley: 12 (+6) in a Row (1990 [2008], Hatology): [r]: B+(***)
• Tony Coe: Some Other Autumn (1971 [1983], Hep): [r]: A-
• Ellery Eskelin: Forms (1990 [2004], Hatology): [r]: A-
• Ellery Eskelin/Andrea Parkins/Jim Black: Kulak 29 & 30 (1997 [1998], Hatology): [r]: B+(***)
• Ellery Eskelin & Han Bennink: Dissonant Characters (1998 [1999], Hatology): [r]: A-
• Ellery Eskelin/Andrea Parkins/Jim Black: The Secret Museum (1999 [2000], Hatology): [r]: B+(**)
• Jimmy Giuffre 3: Emphasis, Stuttgart 1961 (1961 [1993], Hat Art): [r]: B+(***)
• Jimmy Giuffre 3: Flight, Bremen 1961 (1961 [1993], Hat Art): [r]: B+(**)
• Jimmy Giuffre/Paul Bley/Steve Swallow: Emphasis & Flight 1961 (1961 [2003], Hatology, 2CD): [r]: B+(***)
• Mary Halvorson/Reuben Radding/Nate Wooley: Crackleknob (2006 [2009], Hatology): [r]: B+(**)
• Steve Lacy: Clinkers (1977 [2000], Hatology): [r]: B+(***)
• Steve Lacy: N.Y. Capers & Quirks (1979 [2000], Hatology): [r]: A-
• Steve Lacy: New Jazz Meeting Baden-Baden 2002 (2002 [2006], Hatology): [r]: B+(*)
• David Liebman/Ellery Eskelin/Tony Marino/Jim Black: Different but the Same (2004 [2005], Hatology): [r]; B+(*)
• Joe Maneri Quartet: Coming Down the Mountain (1993 [1997], Hatology): [r]: B+(**)
• Joe Maneri Quartet: Tenderly (1993 [1999], Hatology): [r]: B+(*)
• Joe McPhee: Tenor & Fallen Angels (1976-77 [2000], Hatology): [r]: B-
• Myra Melford Trio: Alive in the House of Saints (1993, Hat Art): [r]: A-
• Myra Melford & Han Bennink: Eleven Ghosts (1994 [1996], Hatology): [r]: A-
• Misha Mengelberg: The Root of the Problem (1996 [1997], Hatology): [r]: B+(***)
• Sleaford Mods: Wank (2012, Deadly Beefburger): [bc]: B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Bob Albanese: Time Remembered (Mayimba): October 2
• Bob Belden's Animation: Machine Language (Rare Noise): September 25
• Marcelo dos Reis/Luis Vicente/Theo Ceccaldi/Valentin Ceccaldi: Chamber 4 (FMR)
• Michael Gallant Trio: Live Plus One (Gallant Music): October 9
• Ochion Jewell Quartet: Volk (self-released): September 29
• Bob Merrill: Cheerin' Up the Universe (Accurate): September 4
• Mike Reed's People Places & Things: A New Kind of Dance (482 Music)
• Aram Shelton/Fred Lonberg-Holm/Frank Rosaly: Resounder (Singlespeed Music)

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, August 30, 2015

I want to start with the text of a short speech that Laura Tillem gave at a demonstration at the office of Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Koch). It does a nice job of summarizing the basic points in favor of the Iran Deal, which Pompeo, in typically kneejerk fashion, opposes.

One thing the opponents of this deal are not doing is listen to the experts. . . . for example The Israeli experts who say "Iran capitulated," who say "every path to a bomb we know of is blocked," who say "on balance, not a bad deal," who say "we can live with it." They are not listening to the UN inspectors, who got it exactly right before the Iraq War, they say that this inspection regime is more thorough than any ever have been. Why would they say these things if they were not sure? Why would they risk their reputations?

And why are the European countries already eagerly investing in Iran because of this agreement? They sure don't seem worried that this will destabilize the Middle East, as the opponents of the deal say. If they are investing it means they expect More stability after this agreement, not less. If this deal was so bad as to let Iran bomb and terrorize everywhere, as the politicians claim, why would these business people risk their money, any more than the experts would risk their reputations? No, in fact, the deal is better for the Middle East, better for the Iranian people, and better for us, (because you know, not a war) better than any alternative by a mile. Only the politicians will not admit it, they not only can't accept the idea that the US might come to an agreement with Iran; they can't stand that the US would even meet with Iranians in person.

The opponents of this deal say the ruling mullahs are bad, but by rejecting this deal they are hurting only the reform movement there, the people who will ultimately change that system for the better, the people who elected a more reform-minded president to replace the hostile Ahmadinejad. What a smack in the face it would be to the millions of Iranian young people who are excited and hopeful about this agreement. Which also points to what is so good about this agreement: it will mean more access to and from other countries, more access to more ideas, more opportunities for students to study here, etc.

And finally, as an American Jew, it is beyond infuriating to see Netanyahu speak for "the Jews." As a Newton resident said recently, "Does the Westboro Baptist Church speak for "the Christians"? In fact, more US Jews support the agreement than oppose it.

We wish there were a brave Republican, and what better place than Kansas, where they all claim to be "independent" and "open-minded," a brave one who would step up and say Yes to peace.

Of course, this is tailored a bit for the Wichita, Kansas audience. The appeal to "open-minded" and "independent" Republicans is partly because the Republicans have such a stranglehold on elective office in Kansas, but such people have been scarce since the Great 2010 Purge. Still, but Sens. Roberts and Moran embraced Obama's normalization efforts with Cuba (as well as his TPP nonsense), and both opposed Obama's request for authorization to use force against Syria (although they didn't object when Obama didn't ask, as in Libya or later in Syria once ISIS clouded the issue). On the other hand, Pompeo, like Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, never saw a war he didn't want to jump into (he's a West Point grad, has run aerospace and oil businesses, rushed to the head of the NSA fan club, and did yeoman service as one of the Republicans' Benghazi! clowns -- he's so intransigent he made Bill Kristol's dream list of "October Surprise" presidential candidates).

The case for supporting the Iran Deal is so overwhelming you have to question the sanity (and/or ethics) of anyone opposing it. Netanyahu opposes it, as far as I can discern, for three reasons: (1) because he is in principle opposed to anything that reduces the usefulness of a marketable enemy (Iran is the prime example, because Americans remain prejudiced against the people who overthrew their beloved Shah, and because Israeli leaders need foreign distractions to avoid talking about the Palestinians); (2) because the internal political dynamics of Israel favors right-wing leader who prove their toughness by never compromising with anyone (even though Israelis negotiated in private with the PLO pre-Oslo, when they refused to agree on a shape of a table for public meetings, and are reportedly negotiating in secret with Hamas now -- if/when such negotiations bear fruit, you can be sure that right-wing leaders like Netanyahu will condemn and undermine them); and (3) Netanyahu has made a personal ploy to bind his party to the Republicans in some sort of grand anti-Obama coalition, which thus far the Republicans are playing along with (among other things, this makes Netanyahu look to his homies like a big player in American politics, and encourages Americans to view Likud as the unified face of Israel). None of these reasons have to do with the effectiveness of the Deal at curbing the Iranian nuclear weapons threat, suggesting Netanyahu never took the threat seriously in the first place. (Gareth Porter wrote a whole book to that effect: Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare [2014]. Trita Parsi wrote an earlier [2007] book, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, on the relationship of Iran and Israel over time, pointing out that Israel discovered an existential threat in Iran not when the Ayatollahs came to power but when a new enemy was required after Iraq was disarmed in 1991.)

Obama, on the other hand, seems to have taken the Iranian threat seriously, inasmuch as he bothered to build a coalition with Russia and China that put serious teeth into sanctions, then used that leverage to negotiate a strictly verifiable Deal that ensures that Iranian nuclear technology cannot for many years, if indeed ever, be used to build nuclear weapons. Anyone who took the Iranian threat seriously should be delighted by the Deal, and anyone who isn't -- that is, anyone who claims the previous regime of harsh sanctions, clandestine warfare, and periodic threats of Israel and/or the US bombing select targets would be more effective than inspections based on official agreements -- cannot be taken seriously.

That means Netanyahu and his AIPAC cronies, and it also means the Republicans. The latter's rejection of the Deal is little more than an effort to tarnish one of Obama's signature accomplishments, built on the casual prejudice that Obama and the Democrats are intrinsically weak on security, and the even more casual assumption that Republicans, by snarling more, are tougher. (I won't bother demolishing this, in large part because I think Obama is already way too belligerent for the nation's good.) So most Republicans see this as a game, one they've been playing without much evident downside (forgetting Bush-Cheney), so they don't expect anyone to call them on their warmongering. On the other hand, it's interesting that they agreed to a process they cannot possibly win -- Obama only needs to sustain a veto, which can be done by the Democratic minorities in either house -- so no matter how much they rant and rave the deal will go through. And if, say, Ronald Reagan's demagogic attacks on Jimmy Carter's Panama Canal Deal in 1980 are any indication, they'll never act on what they're threatening now. (Indeed, even when Reagan's VP became president and invaded Panama, he didn't make any effort to renege on ceding the Canal to Panama.)

Still, the Republicans' hot air campaign isn't harmless. Nor should it be painless for them. Every Republican who votes against the Deal should have to account for their stance in the next elections. They should be painted as warmongers: a party that so loathes the idea of diplomacy that they'd rather shoot first, and a party that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, believes that a quick show of force is the answer to all of America's problems in the world. In particular, their opposition to the Iran Deal shows the hollowness of their now common regrets over the Iraq War -- one that was started by Bush in 2003 over the same "WMD" charges, where Bush not only refused to negotiate but insisted that UN inspectors, which had not shown any evidence that Iraq had the alleged WMD, stop their work. What Obama has done is diametrically opposite to what Bush did with Iraq. It very predictably ensures that: (1) Iran will not be able to develop nuclear weapons for the duration of the deal, well beyond 10 years; (2) Iran will continue to be ruled by a stable government, and will not collapse into chaos as Iraq has done; (3) America will not earn new legions of enemies due to attacking another country. In doing this deal, it's hard to see any real cost to the US. Maybe some US defense contractors might lose some Persian Gulf business if Iran seems to be less of a threat. And oil prices may dip as Iran's oil enters the world market. But is that the platform Republicans want to run on in 2016: more arms jobs and higher gas prices? You can see the attraction for someone like Pompeo, but how many Americans actually live in the pockets of the defense and oil industries? -- as compared to, say, how many only pay the bills?

(Lest you object that letting Iranian oil out into the world market would accelerate global warming, that's attacking the problem at the wrong end, with the wrong solution. Right now the main cause of cheap oil is conservation, and the main effect is to make particularly nasty oil, such as the Alberta Tar Sands, uneconomical.)

On the other hand, the cost of a war to topple and replace Iran's regime would run into trillions of dollars (first approximation: Iraq + Afghanistan + another 50%) -- given the GOP's tax lock that adds to a national debt they already deem insupportable (although they won't say that if there's a Republican deficit -- most of the run up came under Reagan and "deficits don't matter" Cheney). The side-effects of such a war are incalculable, but one is that it will validate the argument that the only defense against American/Israeli aggression is to develop nuclear deterrence. Republicans might try to argue that harsher sanctions would suffice to contain Iran, but the only example of such they can point to is nuclear-armed North Korea, probably the most dangerously deranged state in the world today (unless you count Israel and the US -- i.e., the countries which actually do attack other countries with no thought to the consequences).

The biggest problem I see with the deal is that it shows Obama and the Democrats to be not only smart and shrewd but rigorous and tough. The latter trait allows them to sell the deal on the grounds that it will be effective at ending a threat, burying the fact that Iran has never actually threatened to develop, let alone use, nuclear weapons. It allows the Democrats to continue portraying Iran as an international scourge, when in fact the balance of wrongs between the US and Iran is tilted the other way. And by continuing to demonize Iran, we give up opportunities to align with Iran to help stabilize the Middle East. Not that Iran's interests naturally align with America's, but mutual engagement might help both countries move towards peace, stability, democracy with respect for minority rights, open trade -- the sort of things that are mutually agreeable precisely because they are universally aspired to.

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