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An occasional blog about populist politics and popular music, not necessarily at the same time. LinksLocal Links Social Media My Other Websites Music Politics Others Networking Music DatabaseArtist Search: Website SearchGoogle: Recent Reading
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Music Week [520 - 529]Wednesday, June 15, 2016 Music WeekMusic: Current count 26674 [26674] rated (+0), 447 [424] unrated (+23). That is, nothing new rated in the last 15 days, while I've been busy driving around half of the the eastern half of the United States (KS, MO, IL, IN, KY, WV, MD, DE, NJ, NY, CT, MA, PA, OH, AR -- twice missed OK by only 1 mile). Took me a couple extra days to get this post together, so I can report the unpacking, way down below. Also didn't manage to buy a single CD -- I remember past trips of similar length where I brought back a hundred or more. As it was, the only record store I even saw was CDepot in College Park, Maryland: drove by and meant to return but didn't manage it. (I don't think I've ever been there without spending at least $200, so it would have been the one store to go to if I managed to go to one.) Still, I hardly ever buy things these days, so that streak would likely have fallen. I got a rude awakening when I got back: All Music Guide has added some programming to prevent you (or at least me) from seeing any of their pages. Their gripe is that they've detected that I'm using Add Blocker, and they're insisting that either I disable it or "continue with a paid subscription." The $12 annual "ad-free" subscription is actually pretty modest considering how much I've used their website in the past, but the way they're going about this is pretty nasty. I also wonder what happens when they realize I'm also running NoScript and have 11 of their 15 JavaScript domains blocked -- all sorts of hideous, annoying, possibly dangerous shit. So I balked, then turned to All About Jazz to at least get the musician lineup and song list on the album I was streaming, only to find that they want "$20 and we'll hide those six pesky Google ads that appear on every page for a full year!" That doesn't sound like nearly as good a deal. (OK, review-wise AAJ is a cut above AMG, but it's less useful discographically, harder to search, more confusing, and it's only jazz.) They also have a "sign up and become a member" feature, like (or unlike, I'm not sure) AMG introduced a while back. AAJ doesn't charge for membership -- looks like it mostly lets them spam you, and lets you contribute free data to them. But then I'm only allowing 6/12 AAJ script domains, and fear that funding their "website expansion" will add more to the clutter than to content or accessibility (I understand there are some cases where JavaScript might be useful, but all this promiscuous script cross-referencing is a plague on the web). AMG and AAJ are valuable websites, and it can't be easy funding them. But they're also profit-making companies, and they are at least partly built on contributed content (no idea how much if anything they pay writers -- M. Ricci has offered to publish me but hasn't offered to pay me anything). So it's hard to say that adding new revenue streams will offer anything in return to anyone but the owners. And while some websites may be worth paying for, as a practical matter most people cannot afford or justify more than a few such subscriptions. I expect that the effect there is that those sites that succeed at subscriptions will crowd out any others. That may indeed be part of the rationale. But it should also make those sites less popular, and ultimately less valuable. I don't know what the answer is (other than the currently utopian one of publicly supported democratic sites; free markets work OK for rivalrous goods, but are pretty much impossible for non-rivalrous ones). One thing I haven't tried yet is an "anti-adblock killer" like Reek. For one thing, it adds to the arms race between between sites that try to seize control of your browser running on your computer and your basic right to defend yourself against their attacks. For another, it seems to depend on Greasemonkey, a piece of possibly invidious technology that I've never gotten the hang of. (Basically, it allows you to write or use scripts that change the way your browser works, for better or perhaps more often worse.) Two more bits of news on returning:
Lots of ideas pop into my head while I'm driving. I met John Chacona in Erie, PA, and one thing he was interested in was what I was my music cases and what I was listening to on the road. I have two cases with 80 CDs each, plus one more with 40, so I usually take 200 with me. I used to load these things for each trip, but had gotten lazy and had only shuttled a few discs in and out each trip: the first things to go were current jazz I was working on, then I generally cut back on jazz and hip-hop, often in favor of old rhythm & blues, rock & roll, and country -- those seem to work best for driving, although I preferred jazz in the motel room back when I thought to bring a boombox along. (My wife's iPod would eliminate the need for the boombox, but she doesn't always come along.) So I resolved two things: one is to jot down a list of the CDs for this trip; the other is to unpack the cases when I get back, so I can start fresh next time. What follows is the list, with date/label data from the database (which doesn't always match the disc, especially in cases where the CD replaced an LP). Multiple disc sets are noted, and something like "1/3CD" means I only had one of three CDs.
Not necessarily the best 200 CDs I could have taken. There's some amount of accident and drift here, but they're all A- or better (often much better). I probably played a little more than half of these on this trip. I can't say as I was ever disappointed. Unpacking: Found in the mail last couple of weeks:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, May 30, 2016 Music Week
Music: Current count 26674 [26660] rated (+14), 424 [428] unrated (-4). Right. Week cut short on Friday, after I posted Rhapsody Streamnotes on Wednesday. Missed the Festen album there -- you always miss something. RED Trio is pretty good too. The other Clean Feeds will have to await my return, in a couple weeks or so. I'll be checking email, but not much more. Hopefully get some reading done. Maybe even figure out what the fuck I'm doing with my retired, reclusive life. New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, May 23, 2016 Music Week
Music: Current count 26660 [26641] rated (+19), 428 [428] unrated (+0). Another low rated count this past week. Been busy with other stuff, and took my own sweet time with several of these items. Next week promises to be even more distracting, then I'll drive east, making the rounds (DC, NY, parts of New England which may or may not touch Boston, Buffalo, then back through Arkansas and Oklahoma). No real schedule other than June 1-5 in New York City, the main event my nephew's wedding. I haven't driven out of town since October, so I figure I'm overdue for a break from the humdrum. Just not sure how much longer I'll be able to do this sort of thing, so it's also something of a test. Before I leave, I'll post a Rhapsody Streamnotes. Draft file has about 108 records in it, but only 48 are new -- most of the body count came from my Merle Haggard mop up nearly a month back. Very little new non-jazz in the draft file -- nothing A-list (vs. five A-list jazz albums), only three B+(***) (Open Mike Eagle, Homeboy Sandman, Linda Gail Lewis). Actually, until this month the year-in-progress list wasn't so imbalanced: it's currently 18 jazz, 13 non-jazz (counting Gary Lucas as jazz), so a month ago it must have been 13-13. I admit to not having looked very hard, with nearly all of those 13 non-jazz albums recommended by trusted sources: seven A- or higher from Robert Christgau, four more from Michael Tatum (counting Pet Shop Boys, which he wound up dropping to B+, and Gwen Stefani, which I got to first). That leaves Gambari Band and Margo Price (both on Jason Gubbels' First Quarter list. Tatum published his second Downloader's Diary last week, which includes plaudits for two records not yet on Rhapsody: Beyoncé Lemonade and Robbie Fulks' Upland Stories. I'll get to them when I find them, but for now will only note that they are also Christgau-approved -- also haven't heard Kevin Gates' Islah, which Christgau likes (A-) and Tatum doesn't (B-). Only other quibble I have is the pan on Margo Price. Reminds me of the gripes some people had about Gillian Welch, complaining that her "authenticity" was fake because she hadn't earned it. Of course, could be that I have the record overrated -- I'm not terribly picky about clichés, and when I saw her on some late night show she came off quite dull. Should give it another spin at some point. Christgau's column on Beyoncé and Kevin Gates is here. Hope to get an update done on his website by the time I drive off. Maybe he'll finally offer us a 2015 Dean's List? Clifford Ocheltree and Phil Overeem both wrote in to assure me that the remastered sound on Dust-to-Digital's Blind Alfred Reed's book/CD, Appalachian Visionary. I had given a somewhat qualified A- to Document's old Reed compilation, the prosaically titled Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order (1927-1929), so I took the unprecedented step of writing up an A- entry on the new comp in May's Rhapsody Streamnotes. That way it will show up on my year-end list, which is always hurting for reissues. I should, however, offer two warnings here: one is that the $30 list price is stiff, not that the fancy book won't be interesting; the other is that Reed is not for anyone who is the least bit squeamish about political correctness: he's probably a racist, and definitely a misogynist, and if you can't laugh at his absurdities, you shouldn't bother. New records rated this week:
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Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, May 16, 2016 Music Week
Music: Current count 26641 [26610] rated (+31), 428 [425] unrated (+3). Rated count rebounded last week from a low 16 the previous week. Most of the gain came from delving into the back catalog of soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom and drummer Matt Wilson. Both have good new records -- Wilson's Beginning of a Memory was a B+(***) last week, Bloom's Early Americans an A- below -- and sizable back catalogs going back to 1982 (Bloom) and 1996 (Wilson). I didn't find anything I didn't like, and did find a couple of albums that demanded A- grades. For 2016 releases I've been working off several recent "so far" lists from redoubtable sources like Jason Gubbels and Phil Overeem. One recommendation there was a Dust-to-Digital compilation of Blind Alfred Reed called Appalachian Visionary. I couldn't find it but Rhapsody has Document's compilation of Reed's Complete Works, so I gave that a try. (The new compilation contains the same twenty songs plus two more attributed to the West Virginia Night Owls, and is packaged in an 84-page book.) I was conflicted on the grade: on the one hand, it features some of the worst misogynistic lyrics ever, and there's also that line about "we'll all be white in that heavenly light"; on the other the music grabs you even while it's obviously so primitive. And there's something to be said for its historical value. The other old record that came up A- was a new compilation of Coleman Hawkins' European recordings. I didn't bother to check how redundant it is with other compilations I've heard -- I do know that it doesn't include the "Crazy Rhythm" sessions with Benny Carter and Django Reinhardt (one of the great moments in 1930s jazz). The Commodore sessions popped up in a search for something else. I'm pretty sure the Chu Berry sessions previously appeared on CD with some Lucky Thompson recordings: they're not enough to fill out a CD, and not great enough to validate Berry's legend. On the other hand, Hawkins' half could have been rated higher. I hedged because pretty much everything he recorded during the 1940s is brilliant. I should also note that Paul Smoker died last week, age 75. Born 1941, played trumpet on various obscure avant-garde labels. I can't say as I've heard much of his early work, but Michael McNeill sent me his last two albums -- Landings and (with Phil Haynes) It Might Be Spring -- and they both came up A- for me. I'll look around for more -- probably won't find the CIMP albums, but maybe his Joint Venture with Ellery Eskelin? New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
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Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, May 9, 2016 Music Week
Music: Current count 26610 [26594] rated (+16), 425 [422] unrated (+3). Huge drop in rated count this week, from +53 to +16. The explanation of the big count was that I was working through a deep catalog of old (and generally short) Merle Haggard albums on Rhapsody. Indeed, four of this week's sixteen were from the tail end of that project. I don't have a good explanation for the drop, although I did spend much more time working on my sister's house, where we've been playing vintage gold from one of my travel cases. Also seems like I had Claudia Quintet in my changer for two (or maybe three) days before I admitted I wasn't getting much out of it. The Ivo Perelman full house also got anywhere from three to six plays each. Other items that popped up came from a Phil Overeem best-of-so-far list (Charles Bradley, Dälek) and from an Expert Witness post (Homeboy Sandman, Lyrics Born). That didn't leave much time for the new jazz queue. No time for a Weekend Roundup either. I was tempted by a piece in the Wichita Eagle (in the recycle now, can't find the link) about how negatively presumptive candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are viewed (you can find similar data here). The article predicted exceptionally nasty campaigning ahead. After all, you don't have to like your candidate -- just loathe him or her a bit less than the other one. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if the parties and their dark money backers weren't planning on spending upwards of a billion dollars amplifying their hate speech. Makes a good case for draining the money out of political campaigns. One reason for taking a break is that I'm rather disgusted that both Cruz and Kasich quit after the Indiana primary, leaving Trump -- who was by no means a cinch to win on the first ballot, and almost certain to degrade on later ballots -- unopposed. Cruz is somewhat easier to take: his Indiana campaign was one of the worst I've seen, especially after the almost mechanical precision of his caucus wins and dominance of the Wisconsin primary. But Kasich had no expectations from Indiana, and should have gotten a big bump as the last anti-Trump candidate left. The reason they both dropped is likely the standard one: their money dried up as soon as they were seen as lost causes -- and that mattered to a donor class more interested in influence than ideology (which is pretty much uniform among Republicans, including Trump; Sanders, on the other hand, continues to raise money despite far worse odds, because he stands for something different than Clinton). Another article that caught my eye was one predicting that this summer will be exceptionally hot here in Wichita. We've caught a break the last couple years, after heat waves in 2011-12 that broke dust bowl records from 1936. Also predicting an upsurge in severe thunderstorms, including tornados. Hasn't been bad so far, although we had a tornado watch yesterday, and more storms are forecast today (officially just a "severe thunderstorm watch" -- upgraded to "severe thunderstorm warning" as one passed through town around 6pm). I haven't found much good information on the Fort McMurray wildfire, which has caused immense devastation in northeast Alberta, an area that was sparsely populated until recent expansion of tar sands operations. At 490,000 acres the burn area is somewhat larger than the 397,420 acres burned in the Anderson Creek wildfire southwest of Wichita, and the photos are more dramatic -- probably because Alberta is more forested (although I wonder whether all that tar, including waste tailings that have made the area such an environmental disaster, hasn't contributed something to the fire). One last note on the music this week: although I picture two Merle Haggard best-ofs among the A/A- records on the right, the best single-disc Haggard collection remains 2007's Hag: The Best of Merle Haggard. It actually matches the 19 cuts of Best of the Capitol Years and adds six more later cuts. Haggard's post-Capitol stretch at MCA isn't all that good, but he did enough quality work for Epic (1981-87) to make The Essential Merle Haggard: The Epic Years worth having, and his post-2000 work is generally quite solid (no compilation yet). Still, his most famous songs came out on Capitol, mostly in the 1966-72 period. One more note: I got email from a sysadmin today saying that my website (presumably tomhull.com) has been put on a "block list" by OpenDNS for malware. OpenDNS is some kind of commercial service, and all I'm seeing on their website is advertising, so I haven't been able to confirm that this is true, let alone find out why. If anyone can enlighten me, please do. New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
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Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, May 2, 2016 Music Week
Music: Current count 26594 [26541] rated (+53), 422 [413] unrated (+9). Spent first half of last week wrapping up the April Rhapsody Streamnotes column. One thing I did there was to compile a list of A/A- records in my database by the recently departed Merle Haggard and Prince. I noted that I was unable to use Rhapsody to fill in holes in my listings. Indeed, it appears that Rhapsody has none of Prince's albums online. However, I spoke too hastily regarding Haggard. Rhapsody's store is badly organized, and the old Capitol albums have reissue dates so it's not immediately clear what the chronological order is. But I finally went back and sorted that out, and blitzed through as much back catalog as I could find. The result is that the rated count this week exploded. Old country LPs are short, and I worked fast, rarely bothering with a second spin. Also helped the record count that various aches and pains kept me from working on my sister's house all week. Not sure how much more Haggard there is to find -- none of the 1990s Curb albums are online, and I'm still missing Sing Me Back Home (1968), I Love Dixie Blues (1973), I'm Always on a Mountain When I Fall (1978), The Epic Collection (Recorded Live) (1983), duets with Bonnie Owens (1966) and Leona Williams (1983), the Strangers' instrumental albums (1969-73), scattered compilations, and bootlegs I don't care to get into. Still, this trawl doubled the number of Haggard albums in my database. I also added Haggard's Songs I'll Always Sing (1965-74 [1977], Capitol) to my A-list. The 2-LP compilation was one of the first tastes I had of Haggard, and I thought it was definitive until the 1990 CDs came out (Capitol Collectors' Series, Rhino's More of the Best). Sometimes I'm reminded of an album that should have been in my LP-era database but I somehow missed -- I don't recall when I started keeping the list, but it was just a memory aid before 2000 or so when I started to take it more seriously. Recommended music links: For some reason, Mikal Gilmore's excellent Rolling Stone piece on Merle Haggard, "The Outlaw," doesn't appear to be online. Some recommended pieces I did find:
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Grade changes:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, April 25, 2016 Music Week
Music: Current count 26541 [26515] rated (+26), 413 [418] unrated (-5). Rated count back down. Still probably would have hit thirty had I not spent Thursday cooking dinner from China Moon Cookbook and listen to Prince's The Hits/The B-Sides instead. As you're no doubt aware, Prince died last week -- Papa Wemba too. I hadn't gotten around to looking up Prince's two records last year (turns out they're not on Rhapsody), but his two 2014 albums weren't bad, and I credit him with two A- albums in the previous decade (Musicology in 2004, 3121 in 2006). And, of course, much more earlier. Some links follow. Expect Rhapsody Streamnotes later this week. Not a huge amount in the file, but I haven't been all that lazy either. Still, don't feel much like writing tonight, or much of anything else either. Guess that means a lazy evening of TV. What isn't self-explanatory below will be revealed soon enough. Recommended music links:
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Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
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Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, April 18, 2016 Music Week
Music: Current count 26515 [26475] rated (+40), 418 [425] unrated (-7). Big bump in the rated count this week -- first time in well over a month to top 30 and did so by a bunch. Had a replenished jazz queue to work through, and until I got to the Clean Feeds they didn't require a lot of attention. Also noticed on Rhapsody a clutch of new records by artists I recognize as worth checking out (Hayes Carll, The Coathangers, Mayer Hawthorne, Parquet Courts, Sturgill Simpson, plus Kanye West finally appeared). Also had Jason Gubbels' list, and a couple Christgau Expert Witness columns (one on blues and another on alt-rock -- I had already written up Parquet Courts but not Coathangers or the new Tacocat, and my endorsement of Full Communism isn't just political). Of the eight B+(***) records below, two were Christgau A- records (Tacocat, Kanye West). I gave up on them after two or three plays, without being certain more plays wouldn't help. Same thing for the Sturgill Simpson album, possibly an even better prospect. I'm having similar indecision with the new PJ Harvey, but save that for next week. I voted in Downbeat's annual critics poll last week. I'm not going to do a separate post on this -- I was exhausted after it took more than 24 hours to I finish the 16 pages of ballots (with 50-some questions), on top of the usual aggravations and frustrations. Still, you can scan through my worksheet if you like. I suppose I should mention that I build each year's worksheet on the last, which helps with consistency (and jogs my increasingly damaged memory) but lets me get by without giving many questions much fresh thought. And this all the more true in categories I don't have any real thoughts -- fresh or received -- on, like Composer, Arranger, or various minor instruments (e.g., I almost never notice electric bass or keyboards, so trying to come up with three names there is even harder than trying to whittle down thirty or more luminaries on acoustic bass or piano). I will mention that my HOF pick was George Russell. Downbeat's Hall is excessively restrictive and therefore woefully underpopulated, so there is a long list of worthies to pick from (and many more not even on Downbeat's prospect list). (By contrast, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is too large, not that the judges there have picked up all who deserve a slot.) Still, Russell is a giant among the uninducted, but he never has gotten the credit he deserves. For instance, when you think of Latin-Bebop, you recall Dizzy Gillespie (not the writer of "Cubana Be Cubana Bop"). When you think of modal jazz, you come up with Miles Davis and John Coltrane (not the guy who wrote the big book that showed how it is done). When you think of jazz workshops, you get Mingus (not Russell). Most likely you can't think of anyone who pioneered electronics in jazz. Or recall that Russell was the mentor of nearly a dozen important Scandinavian (mostly Norwegian) jazz musicians who started out in the early 1970s. When Russell returned from Norway, got a job at New England Conservatory where he was one of the architects of modern jazz education. The people who vote in Downbeat's Readers Poll are never going to put all that together, but you'd think that jazz critics would know at least this much. Of course, many do, but they have other concerns, and the competition is stiff. It took Lee Konitz 65 years to get in last year, after finishing in the top three for nearly a decade -- leapfrogged many times recently by guys who finally got voters' attention the year before by dying (2006: Jackie McLean, 2007: Andrew Hill, 2009: Freddie Hubbard, 2011: Abbey Lincoln, 2012: Paul Motian, 2013: Charlie Haden, 2014: Jim Hall; Hank Jones won in 2008 then died in 2010; the only other living musician in this stretch was Muhal Richard Abrams in 2010; Russell died in 2009, got a boost then, but not enough). I have no idea who will win this year, but Paul Bley is probably the top choice among the recently deceased, and Anthony Braxton is the obvious pick among the living (and still very active). I decided to write two names in, not so much because they were my next picks -- these rank lists are nowhere near that precise -- as hoping that they'll be picked up in future ballots: Mal Waldron and Jimmy Rushing. Waldron (1926-2002) is most famous as Billie Holiday's pianist, but he had a brilliant career as a leader and composer, made a remarkable move from postbop to avant-garde with his later group records like The Git Go and Crowd Scene, but perhaps his best records were duos with Steve Lacy, Marion Brown, and Jackie McLean (Left Alone '86). Rushing (1901-72) was the greatest of the Kansas City blues shouters, starting with Walter Page and Bennie Moten and following Count Basie to New York, where he cut many great albums -- a personal favorite from the year before he died is the out-of-print The You and Me That Used to Be. This has nothing to do with music, but I should note and lament the passing of Dewane Hixon (1933-2016). He was a cousin, the oldest son of my mother's slightly older sister Edith. They moved from Oklahoma to Modesto, California in 1952, so we didn't see them much -- we drove to California in 1956; Edith, with two other sons (but I think not Dewane) came through Wichita around 1958. Dewane had a job working for an aircraft dealer and came to Wichita once for some training. He had a story about beating a traffic ticket when the cop stopped him and asked to see his pilot's license -- he whipped one out. I don't remember his father, Otis Hixon, who died from something heart-related in 1967, but relatives often said that Dewane reminded them of Otis, particularly as a practical joker. Dewane settled near Phoenix, and Edith moved there. After my mother died in 2000, we drove to Phoenix to see Edith, and spent quite a bit of time with Dewane. Edith died that December, at 89, the last of eight siblings. I went back to Phoenix two more times in the next few years. Always stopped to see Dewane, tell jokes, argue politics, and reminisce. He had a delivery service business, and was still working it last I heard last year. About half my cousins on my mother's side have passed now: all are older than me, the oldest survivor 90. Even stranger to lose that generation than my aunts and uncles before them. Let me also note that I continue to be learn things from Thomas Frank's Listen, Liberal, which I quoted from in yesterday's post. The next few pages after yesterday's quote add to the list of Bill Clinton's "counter-scheduling" practices -- the crime bill, welfare reform, the "grand bargain" he was working on with Newt Gingrich to privatize a big chunk of Social Security. Frank focuses on how these acts reflect a deeper shift in the Democratic Party from a working-class base to one based on well-to-do professionals, one that may be socially liberal but cares little about inequality. Thus far -- I've gotten to be a shamefully slow reader, as well as one who can only focus for a few pages at a time, so I'm only about half-way through a short book -- he hasn't drawn out the political conclusions: e.g., how by undermining traditional Democratic groups Clinton was able to capture the party for his own personal purposes, which include fronting his wife's candidacy. But given what Frank shows, that part is pretty obvious. In some ways I find Frank's book even more shocking than Jane Mayer's Dark Money. If it was just the Kochs and their ilk that had set out to undermine American democracy, there would be plenty of popular reaction. But when you turn the opposition over to "leaders" like the Clintons, there's no telling what they won't surrender (supposedly to defend you). Recommended music links:
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Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, April 11, 2016 Music Week
Music: Current count 26475 [26446] rated (+29), 425 [414] unrated (+11). Count up a bit, but that's mostly because I got into a run of listening to the legendary Dutch anarcho-punk group Ex, finding virtually all of their catalog easily accessible on Bandcamp. I discovered this cache when Ethiopian saxophonist Getatchew Merkuria (or Merkurya) died and I went off looking for his old Éthiopiques volume -- one I had long hoped to listen to. I also recalled that he had done a live album with the Ex (one I thought I had heard, but evidently not), as well as an A- record with Either/Orchestra (Éthiopiques 20: Live in Addis). I've long been interested in Ex, but it hasn't been easy coming across their records. Before this binge, my ratings were:
Perhaps I should also include some jazz-oriented records that guitarist Terrie Hessels (aka Terrie Ex) has done:
This preoccupation with the Ex has taken up so much time (and I'm still a few records short of done) that I haven't done anything in recognition of the recent deaths of Merle Haggard and Tony Conrad. The one thought I have on Haggard is that I'll always be grateful to my old friend Harold Karabell for prodding me to look beyond Hag's "Fightin' Side" jingoism. I have 25 of his records graded in my database, which leaves me far short, especially on the early LPs, but that's still quite a few. As for Conrad, I'm looking at his Early Minimalism box still sitting on my unplayed shelf over a decade after a publicist generously sent it to me. Safe to say, he's due. I also want to note the recent death of a non-musician here, Manfred Menking. Born in Germany (East Prussia) in 1934, he survived bombing in WWII, fled west in advance of the Soviet army in 1944. He studied to become a doctor, was offered a Fulbright scholarship to complete his pediatric residency in Ohio. In 1973 he moved to Wichita, where one of his patients was my nephew. He was devoted to peace, working with Physicians for Social Responsibility and Wichita's Peace and Social Justice Center -- where we met him shortly after moving here in 1999. He was charming, delightful, very kind. It was a pleasure to have known him. There was an uptick of incoming mail last week. Most importantly the long-awaited package from Portugal arrived -- probably a replacement after I complained last week. Probably just a temporary blip, but with my general slowdown this is the first time in a long time I've felt behind. I commented on a Tom Carson tweet a couple days ago. Carson responded in an email that Robert Christgau forwarded to me, part of which noted that I don't allow comments on the blog. I've been using a piece of blog software called Serendipity. It has a reasonably nice feature set, but having used it for more than a decade, I'm stuck with an older version (which I've hacked on a bit), and more importantly I've been stuck on a server that isn't up to handling the now large (and somewhat bloated) database. I tried turning comments on for a while, but I didn't get much valuable feedback, partly because people had trouble with the interface. Spambots, on the other hand, seemed to sail through, and the maintenance got to be too much. Then I ran into database performance problems, so I hacked what I called a "faux blog" in parallel to the Serendipity one, and I've been updating both for some time now. I use the latter for links I post, because it's more likely you'll be served the page, but it doesn't have some nice features, like RSS, of comments. However, because the "faux blog" is just a collection of hand-edited web pages, I can insert comments into those pages. The only thing is that you have to email them to me, and I have to decide it's worth the trouble, and we all have to wait until I update the site (which usually happens when I have something new to post, or sometimes when I've screwed up and need to fix something fast). So I've added Carson's letter and a rather long-winded response to my Candidate Analogies post. Not sure whether this will become standard practice or is just a one-shot. I should note that I've bumped into Carson numerous times over the years. Back in the 1970s, he submitted an unassigned review of Brian Eno's Another Green World which Voice music editor Christgau liked enough to consider running alongside the review he had assigned me to write. Carson was one of the organizers of the Christgau 60th birthday Festschrift, Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough, and he edited my piece there (A Rock & Roll Critic Is Something to Be). He also offered invaluable editing advice when I wrote a "mass letter" as the 2004 election approached -- let's see, where is that thing? Oh, here. I've only read him erratically -- a big compilation of his writings would be most welcome, or maybe several as his political writings are matched by his culture critique (he long did a TV column for Esquire) -- and he's usually not only a sharp thinker but has retained a rock critic's ear for hook lines: possibly the most radical thing I've ever read was his conclusion to an essay (which I can't find now) on 1945 pointing out that winning WWII was the worst thing that ever happened to the United States. I should also mention his novel, Gilligan's Wake -- perhaps the only novel I've read since 2001, partly because I could imagine him writing it just for me -- or more precisely because he presented a vision of 20th century America in myriad dazzling details that I was uniquely prepared to appreciate. Perhaps too much Alger Hiss, and too kind to Bob Dole, but brilliance abounds -- one bit that seems perfect is Mary Ann's self-healing hymen, maintaining her virginity no matter how much she screws around, a knack shared with America, the only country in the world that can fuck you over while remaining as pure and innocent as ever. I've been struggling to get anything read recently, only finishing Jane Mayer's invaluable Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right a couple days ago. I should write something about the book, which updates and deepens Max Blumenthal's 2009 book Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party while paying particular attention to the Kochs and their financial and political networks, but no telling when I'll get around to it. Meanwhile, I came across Carson's review of Daniel Schulman's Koch family bio, Sons of Wichita, so thought I'd pass it along: The Brothers Koch: Family Drama and Disdain for Democracy. New records rated this week:
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Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, April 4, 2016 Music Week
Music: Current count 26446 [26420] rated (+26), 414 [410] unrated (+4). Rated count up a bit this week, probably because I only spent one day and a couple nights working on my sister's house. Also because I wrapped up a Rhapsody Streamnotes. Still, short of the 30-milestone that constitutes a productive week. On the other hand, seasonal allergies hit with force, and I barely sleepwalked my way through yesterday's abbreviated Weekend Roundup. But at least I had Jason Gubbels' unranked list of 40 recommendations, New Music 2016: First Quarter, to start wading through. Thus far everything I've checked out has been pretty good, although I've mostly left them at B+(***) -- aside from the Margo Price find, the closest of the HMs was the Heliocentrics album, where I talked myself out of an A- by re-reading my review. (An edit of my Willie Nelson review also resulted in downgrading Summertime. The Rihanna upgrade occurred after at least five replays.) Not much new jazz coming in, and not much good among what does show up. I usually start the day with a CD from the queue, and several days I haven't had anything to follow it up with. Only seven actual CDs in the list below (and, OK, they're better than I remembered: 3 ***, 3 **, 1 *; as I recall, the previous week's CDs left a lot more to be desired, and today's mail doesn't look very promising). One big disappointment is that a month after I got the promo material by email I still haven't received the March package from Clean Feed. Mail is often slow from Portugal, but it would hugely bum me out if they drop me. (Not that I wouldn't look up what I could on Rhapsody.) I did get an invite to vote in Downbeat's annual Critics Poll today. I've also gotten a record number of personal pleas to vote for them, something I'm pretty good at forgetting instantly. (I mind less when I get past-year lists from publicists because they help me identify things that fell through the cracks -- I don't think I've gotten any of them this year, but have in the past, and they're a regular year-end ritual.) I'll take the time to vote later this week -- I've never managed to plod through the ballot in just one day, so it's a big commitment -- and I'll publish an annotated ballot once I do. Aside from albums, which follow that aggravating April-March annual skew, this year's should be much like last year's ballot. I'd argue that having an extra three months to let the old calendar year (2015 in this case) settle down would be worth more than pretending we're already on top of the first quarter of 2016. (For that matter, the Readers Poll, which skews three months later, could also benefit from a settling-down period.) Well, one ballot change is that since last year's HOF pick, Lee Konitz, finally won, George Russell will move up as my top pick. A second big annoyance about the poll is the HOF bottleneck. Downbeat has 141 inductees into its Hall of Fame (starting with Louis Armstrong in 1952). Compare this with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which has 312 inductees (749 people) since 1986. Now, you can argue that that's too many, and make a pretty good case by pointing to the 2016 crop (Cheap Trick, Chicago, Deep Purple, Steve Miller, and NWA). But fewer than five of the names in the Downbeat HOF (which basically expands at 2 per year, plus they've recently added a Veterans Committee which helps a bit) raise an eyebrow (rockers Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix, although I can't begrudge the latter; some others I wouldn't have voted for but can (sort of) understand -- Glenn Miller, Red Rodney, Maynard Ferguson, Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, Michael Brecker, Pat Metheny), maybe a "veteran" who seems a bit obscure (Jimmy Blanton, Paul Chambers, Baby Dodds). On the other hand, just working from last year's ballot, the list of non-inductees includes: Han Bennink, Paul Bley, Anthony Braxton, Jaki Byard, Don Byas, Don Cherry, Jack DeJohnette, Jimmy Giuffre, Benny Golson, Grant Green, Dave Holland, Abdullah Ibrahim, Illinois Jacquet, John McLauglin, Tito Puente, Sam Rivers, Pharoah Sanders, Tomasz Stanko, Cedar Walton, Randy Weston, Phil Woods. And that must mean that the following didn't even qualify for the ballot (and this list could grow much longer): Rashied Ali, Henry "Red" Allen, Mildred Bailey, Billy Bang, Chris Barber, Gato Barbieri, Chu Berry, Carla Bley, Ruby Braff, Cab Calloway, Sid Catlett, June Christy, Buck Clayton, Arnett Cobb, Cozy Cole, Vic Dickenson, Harry "Sweets" Eddison, Art Farmer, Tommy Flanagan, Bud Freeman, Slim Gaillard, Herb Geller, Lars Gullin, Al Haig, John Hicks, Budd Johnson, Leroy Jenkins, Wynton Kelly, Louis Jordan, Sheila Jordan, Eddie Lang, George Lewis (either/both), Albert Mangelsdorff, Misha Mengelberg, David Murray, Herbie Nichols, Anita O'Day, Evan Parker, William Parker, Houston Person, Louis Prima, Don Pullen, Don Redman, Charlie Rouse, Jimmy Rushing, Luis Russell, Alex von Schlippenbach, Irène Schweizer, Bud Shank, Sonny Sharrock, Archie Shepp, Stuff Smith, Horace Tapscott, Lucky Thompson, Stanley Turrentine, Mal Waldron, David S. Ware, Barney Wilen, Gerald Wilson. Just saying, a lot of (to use an old Downbeat phrase) talent deserving wider recognition. RIP: Argentine saxophonist Gato Barbieri (1934-2016), and Ethiopian saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya (1935-2016). New records rated this week:
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