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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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Blog Entries [750 - 759]Thursday, August 30, 2018 Music Week
Music: current count 30033 [30010] rated (+23), 344 [345] unrated (-1). Week didn't start until Wednesday, after we got the air conditioning fixed, or probably later given how sleep-deprived I was by then. Returned to the Silkheart catalog, figuring that might be easiest, although by the end of the week, trying to move quickly through so much avant-squawk made it hard to distinguish. Generally speaking, the Sun Ra veterans came out on top, probably because they still swung some. The Ernest Dawkins record is probably the best of the B+(***), although they're all pretty good. And, of course, I strayed off-label for a few things that caught my eye. Unfortunately, Napster only had one cut from Dawkins' Jo'burg Blues, so that remains unreviewed. New music, mostly picked from Napster's lamentably short "featured" lists, didn't yield much of interest, although I started playing the digital-only reissue of a 1992 collection of A Tribe Called Quest remixes before I knew what I was getting into. Most of the songs originated on their debut album, and I was surprised how many I recalled, especially given that at the time I only gave the album a B -- sure, probably from their 1999 best-of The Anthology. Seemed pretty likely that I had underrated their debut. I was tempted to quietly nudge the grade up to B+, but wound up re-checking the album, and decided A- would be more appropriate. Biggest caveat I had was their paean to veganism, but (on principle at least) that's not something I either credit or begrudge. One background note is that I've been reading the questions sent into Robert Christgau's Xgau Sez, and one of the most common threads there is to ask about records he rated low at the time but has since come to regard more highly. I can think of a couple dozen for him, a few more for me, but realistically we only find such shifts (or errors) when there is some current reason to revisit. I'll also note that Christgau feels even less compulsion than I do to match his graded list to his current taste, partly because he's more disciplined at spending his listening time on paying projects, partly because he puts a higher value on the authority of his grades. On the other hand, I'm almost never certain of my grades, figuring they're never more than my latest impression, worth jotting down because I figure any small bit of information is better than none. At one point, I even thought about adding a parameter to the grades: a second number which would indicate an estimate of certainty. For instance, I might add [1] to indicate a single play, [2] for two, maybe even [∞] for the Pet Shop Boys' Very -- the last record I can remember playing at least once a day for more than three months. That might help, but it's just another wild ass guess, and would be a lot of extra hassle. My big project last week was to update Robert Christgau's website to prepare for the release of his new book, Is It Still Good to Ya? Fifty Years of Rock Criticism 1967-2017, to be published October 26 by Duke University Press. One stipulation of the contract is that most of the previously published pieces be embargoed from the website for three months before and two years after publication date, so most of the work involved tucking those pieces away, so they'll reappear on the proper date. I did some further work sprucing up the book pages and the Xgau Sez feature, and started the task of converting old pages as I ran into them into proper validated HTML5. The latter wasn't terribly hard, but frustrating in two respects: one had to do with warnings about nesting CSS styles inside tables, which I temporarily fixed by moving the CSS but a better fix would be to get rid of the tables used for page layout; the other was that in most cases I was left with one or two warnings about a squib of non-conforming javascript code I picked up from Twitter. I decided to let that go, but at some point would like to rewrite the code myself, without the warning (and probably a lot of other shit). Sure, you'd think that a state-of-the-art outfit like Twitter could write valid code, but then I accidentally ran a simple Google search result page through the validator, and results there were shocking indeed: 36 errors, 315 warnings. Turns out that despite my best efforts some of the book pieces weren't even on the website. I did find two in a "nyet" directory that I had forgotten about, and the Chuck Berry obit over on Billboard's website. Not sure offhand what else is missing, but I couldn't find mention of "Sticking It in Their Ear: Bob Dylan" anywhere on the web. I also managed to add this year's Expert Witness posts to the monthly CG columns (although some are time-locked). They're not in the CG database yet. I still have technical problems reconciling the changed database access code and, until I figure out the UTF-8 requirement I'm reluctant to make an database changes. I'll make another push on this once the dust settles. Thus far I've gotten zero feedback on the update, so I guess that means that I didn't screw it up too bad. One more project milestone last week: I've been collecting the political posts from my notebook/blog, starting from 2001, initially under the title The Last Days of the American Empire. Sheer verbiage made me split this project into two volumes, one for the Bush era (2001-08), a second from 2009 on (or maybe just for Obama, as Trump is already getting out of hand, and has a different feel. I made it through 2008 a while back, but decided to make a second pass and stick things into a separate personal file, which I call Notes on Everyday Life: family and friends, cooking, house work, computers and blog maintenance, notes on movies and TV, some bits on music (but not the stuff already collected in the jazz guides). I had initially put some of that stuff (mostly movies) into a 2001-09 volume appendix. The 2001-08 tome wound up at 1590 pages (766k words), while Notes has 316 pages (130k words). I doubt the latter has any but personal interest, although I could refer to it if I ever get around to writing that memoir, and I'm happy to have it better organized. I'd like to think my political writings might have some more general appeal. The most straightforward thing would be to keep the chronicle organization, trim lots of fluff and redundancy, flesh out the framework with historical notes and asides, and add some post-facto commentary. One thing I'm struck by is much of Trump's agenda was introduced by Bush, in many cases implemented much more efficiently. Had Trump not been elected, we should be closing the door on the Bush years -- something Obama should have worked much more dilligently at doing -- but with Trump it's all the more urgent. I've also kicked around three other book ideas that could pick up words from this journal. One is a dictionary of terms and concepts -- I started working on such a thing a long time ago, and it will take some digging to see if I can find what I actually did. A second is a collection of slightly longer essays on various topics, especially those related to free software and related concepts. My working title here is borrowed from an old Paul Goodman book: Utopian Essays & Practical Proposals. A third possible carve out would be material on Israel-Palestine. I wrote a lot more about that than would make sense for a US-oriented political chronicle. I came up with an outline for such a book a while back, and tried pitching it to a friend to co-write. She didn't bite, but if enough good material already exists, it might be worth reconsidering. (And, of course, the second volume will add to this base. Whereas Bush-Obama-Trump make for clearly differentiated epochs, Sharon-Olmert-Netanyahu is a single piece. I've started moving on to 2009. Did a lot of work on the house in January, while Israel was smashing up Gaza, and Bush and Obama were keeping their heads down. One last note: Polish trumpet player Tomasz Stanko has just died, age 76. He played with Krzysztof Komeda in the 1960s, gravitated to free jazz. He somehow managed to straddle the Iron Curtain, playing in Western Europe in groups like Globe Unity while maintaining his ties to Poland. He recorded primarily for ECM from 1994 on, with Leosia and Litania early masterpieces -- you can find my grade list here. Poland continues to be an exceptionally strong and vibrant jazz venue, with dozens of superb musicians emerging in the last decade or two. Stanko was their pioneering giant. PS: Will try to get Streamnotes out tomorrow (last day of July). New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Old music rated this week:
Grade (or other) changes:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Sunday, July 29, 2018 Weekend RoundupI've been wanting to write something about the liberal hawk rants over Trump's summits with Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin, his snubs of "traditional allies" like the EU, his denigration of NATO, and other acts (or just tweets) crossing the line of politically correct dogma, in some cases even eliciting the word "treason" (the one word I'd most like to vanish from the language). Still, as I ran out of time, I decided to do a quickie Weekend Roundup instead, then found myself sucked into that very same rabbit hole. I don't know why it's so hard to explain this. (Well, I do know that everywhere I turn I run into new examples of well-meaning idiocy -- the Stephen Cohen piece below has a bunch of examples. A couple more, by Michael H Fuchs and Simon Tisdall, just showed up in the Guardian. There's that piece by Jessica Matthews on "His Korean 'Deal'" over at NYRB. The Yglesias pieces I do cite below are nowhere near the worst.) After all, a key point was written up by the late Chalmers Johnson nearly years ago and recently republished at TomDispatch as Three Good Reasons to Liquidate Our Empire. Another key point is the cardinal rule of democracy: trust your own people to mind their own business, and trust others to mind theirs. It used to be that many Americans (including most Democrats) believed that disputes and conflicts were best handled through international law and institutions, but that notion doesn't even seem to be conceivable any more.The fact that I missed writing up a Weekend Roundup last week no doubt adds to the eclectic and arbitrary mix below. It's been real hard to sort out what's important., especially when everywhere you look turns up new heaps of horror. But I also neglected the one bright spot I'm aware of from the last two weeks: we had a rally here in Wichita where Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders spoke and some 4,000 people showed up. This was an event for James Thompson's campaign for Congress (the seat previously held by Mike Pompeo and, before that, Todd Tiahrt). Thompson ran for the vacant seat after Trump nominated Pompeo to run the CIA, losing by a 6% margin a district that Trump won by 28% despite getting zero outside support from the national or state Democratic Parties. Thompson vowed to keep running, and we're hopeful. Kansas has a primary on Tuesday. Thompson has an opponent, who may have gotten a lucky break with a newspaper article today that claims the only issue separating the candidates is guns: Thompson, a former Army vet, is regarded as more "pro gun" -- not that he has a chance in hell of wrangling an NRA endorsement. Actually, I suspect there's a lot more at stake: Thompson has established himself as a dedicated civil rights attorney, while his opponent worked as a corporate lobbyist. The Democratic gubernatorial race is a mixed bag, where all of the candidates have blemishes, but any would be better than any of the Republicans (or rich "independent" Greg Orman). Jim Barnett got the Wichita Eagle endorsement for Republican governor, but the actual race seems to be a toss-up between Jeff Colyer (former Lt. Governor who took over when Sam Brownback returned to Washington, and a virtual Brownback clone) and Kris Kobach (current Secretary of State, freelance author of unconstitutional laws, and a big Trump booster). Polls seem to be split, with a vast number of undecideds. Kobach would turn Kansas (even more) into a national laughing stock, which doesn't mean he can't win. Orman came very close to beating Sen. Pat Roberts four years ago, after the Democrat ducked out of the race, but I don't see that happening this time, making him a mere spoiler. Some scattered links this week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Wednesday, July 25, 2018 Music Week
Music: current count 30010 [29979] rated (+31), 345 [340] unrated (+5). Week was short, for all practical purposes ended Friday or Saturday, when I figured out that the insufferable heat was due to a failed air conditioner compressor. It would have to be replaced, which took until Tuesday. By Saturday afternoon I was so miserable that I decided not to do any writing or even web surfing for the duration -- certainly no Weekend Roundup, although I figured I'd just postpone Music Week. Went to bed relatively early Sunday but only managed about four hours sleep, with a little nap Monday afternoon. Monday night was worse: went to bed at 4:30, and woke up at 7:00, so got up to wait for the service tech, and was up all day. Was so worn out last night I spent an hour staring at a jigsaw puzzle without being able to add a single piece. But by then the house had cooled, and I slept last night. Not enough to catch up, but I'm at least I'm functional today. The one piece of work I did manage to do was to post the first batch of questions and answers on Robert Christgau's website. Joe Levy suggested that Christgau do this to help promote his new book, Is It Still Good to Ya? Fifty Years of Rock Criticism 1967-2017. The obvious model is Ask Greil, where Greil Marcus fields readers' questions. That feature was put together by using the WordPress blog tool, but I thought it would work better with some custom coding. I had this pretty much worked out before the weekend catastrophe, but had trouble with the final edits, and couldn't respond to some style issues under the circumstances. We should have a page intro and a link to the question form. I'd like to have a banner instead of the usual H2 title. Joe wanted to insert some links, but I lost them (as well as a couple edits), and didn't feel up to tracking them down. Current plan is to publish a batch of these every other Tuesday -- which, as long as I'm in the loop probably means early AM (or as I prefer to think of it, late Monday). Currently have 160 questions, so demand has already way outpaced supply. My scheme will present the most recent dozen or so, letting you scroll back through the rest (like the news file). But I've thought a bit about making it easier to search back through the archive, possibly using keywords or simple text search, maybe more complex queries. It also should be possible to develop some sort of FAQ, but that would involve moving the q&a into the database, and that would complicate the still unsettled work flow. Meanwhile I'm trying to manage three sets of work involving the Christgau website. The first problem is that after my computer crash, I had to rebuild my local copy of the website from the server copy, and that revealed a fairly substantial amount of code breakage: PHP 7 dropped support for a number of functions, including literally all of the MySQL database interface. Until I fix that (in a way that remains compatible with the PHP 5 the server is running) I can't do a general website update. I got about a third of the way through that before I got distracted by a bunch of other things several weeks ago. Second, I need to update files to enforce a contractual embargo on various articles that are going into the new book. That's supposed to be done this week (three months before publications date), so has the tightest deadline. I was working on that before the air conditioning went out, and need to get right back to it after I post this. Instead of doing a general update, I figure I can do that by just updating a select subset of files, but they still have to be changed in ways that work on both platforms. Also, I'm trying to change them in ways that will also work in the future. That introduces the third set of work: the website is overdue for a comprehensive redesign. When I originally built it back in 2001, I wrote it to conform to "HTML 4.01 Transitional," using ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) character set encoding (which works for all Western European languages), implemented using PHP 3 and whatever MySQL was then (I think also 3). Some newer features have been incorporated piecemeal, but I've been fighting a rearguard battle to keep what I have working for more than a decade (I found a 2008 notebook entry about codeset problems). I'm not sure what all this entails, but a good start is to make the files conform to HTML5, and that's what I'm trying to do now, in a piecemeal framework. However, some changes will have to be applied globally -- the viewport change to better support phones, replacing table layout with CSS, and (most traumatically, I'm sure) converting to UTF-8. I hope to have the book support and enough of the code breaks fixed to do a partial update by the end of the weekend. After that, I think the next step is to build a separate beta website, first locally then on the server, to work out the kinks in the redesign. I'd be curious if anyone has ideas to incorporate -- technology, of course, and graphics (obviously something I'm weak in) but perhaps more importantly matters of usability. The other thing to note here is that my rated count passed a pretty major round number this week: 30,000. I suppose I should go back through the notebook and plot the rise. I'm not even sure when I started keeping a rated list. I bought my first computer -- and last Apple, an Apple II -- in 1979, but didn't do a very good job of carrying data forward until I set up my first Linux machine in 1998, which if memory serves was my sixth or seventh generation machine. (I still have that machine, and only shut it down a year ago, when I replaced it with an appliance router.) Sometime before 1998 I had a file called "records.txt" which was an alphabetized list with letter grades as a crib sheet (an aide de memoire in case I got confused over "which was the good one" of some poorly remembered artist). But in its early days, the list didn't capture everything I owned, much less had heard. I had very few LPs before I went to college -- maybe three dozen bought in the 1960s -- and didn't grow much until I left college and finally got a job, setting type in St. Louis. At that point, I started driving all over town, shopping every week, sometimes buying things simply because the cover enticed me. (Not always successfully, but that's how I got into Roxy Music and Ducks Deluxe.) When I moved to New York in 1976, I had a plywood filing cabinet with six drawers, each of which could hold over one hundred albums (you could thumb through them, cover facing), plus a shelf on top with two dividers that could hold a couple hundred more. Not sure when I filled them up and moved on to industrial shelving -- probably after I moved to New Jersey in 1980. I didn't write about music in the 1980s, so I probably slowed down, but my income went up, so maybe I didn't. I think I had somewhere between 2000 and 3000 LPs when I started buying CDs, rather late in that game. The CD numbers exploded in the mid-1990s as I got seriously into jazz (and had a private office where I could play music while I worked), and exploded again for a few years after moving back to Kansas in 1999 (and worked at home, before I became freer still). And from 2003 on, especially after the Voice started publishing my Jazz Consumer Guide, I started getting promos. The rated count jumped further once I started streaming Rhapsody. I started writing Streamnotes in 2007, figuring that as long as I was listening, I should take notes, and the grade is the simplest, most gut level form of note. The earliest rated count I can find in the notebook is from February 2003, when the count passed 8,000, so I've averaged about 1,420 per year since then (or 118 per month, or 27 per week). Perhaps we should divide this stretch into two periods, before and after streaming. February 2008 is a fair dividing line, I averaged 1230/year (101/month, or 24/week), which with streaming rose to 1510/year (125/month, 29/week). This confirms my subjective feeling that 30-count weeks are very common, and that 10-year average still seems to be the case. This year seems to be on track: counting 133 records in July's Streamnotes file, I have 912 graded records for the year-to-date (130/month, 30/week). That would put me on track to hit 40,000 in seven years (August 2025), and 50,000 seven years later (2032), but it's unlikely I'll be able to sustain that pace for anything close to that long -- I'd be close to 75 for the former, 82 for the latter. And every year, with well over 50,000 new records coming out, I'd fall ever further behind -- my list shrinking into an ever smaller sampling. I'm sorry but the more I do this, the more insignificant it feels. As for this week's haul, I noticed new vault tapes from Dexter Gordon and Woody Shaw, so I thought I'd see what else Napster had that I hadn't heard. Turns out there was very little by Shaw, but quite a bit of Gordon -- hence this week's "old music." One album in particular I wanted to listen to was Homecoming, since I had wrangled myself a ticket to one of Gordon's Village Vanguard shows (the only time I saw him, or for that matter the famous club). Also turns out that Shaw was on stage with Gordon there -- something I didn't recall, probably because I wasn't aware of him at the time. Still more Gordon I didn't get to (mostly on European labels, especially the one named for his tune: SteepleChase). New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Old music rated this week:
Grade (or other) changes:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, July 16, 2018 Music Week
Music: current count 29979 [29939] rated (+40), 340 [342] unrated (-2). Easiest way for me to scrounge for new music is to bring up the "featured" lists on Napster, descending into my dozen or so "favorite" genre lists. (Not most useful, but sometimes easy trumps.) One surprise record on their jazz list was 5 x Monk 5 x Lacy, a Penguin Guide 4-star album that had eluded me, so I jumped on it. It had been released on the Swedish Silkheart label back in 1997, and it turns out that a whole passel of old Silkheart releases have just appeared on Napster (and probably other streaming services, as well as Bandcamp -- unfortunately only limited cuts on the latter, so they're useless for me to review). I scanned through my database and came up with a list of 24 Silkheart records I had noted but hadn't heard, and listened to 18 of them last week. Before this bonanza appeared, I had several Silkheart albums at A-:
I'll probably hit some more of them up in the coming week(s). Another album I picked out of the Napster featured lists is the Millie Jackson remix. It raised my hopes that label Ace's compilations would also be available, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Tempted me to go and take a dive through her back catalog, but I held back. Very likely my database picks will stand: the 1974 concept album Caught Up, the 1979 Live and Uncensored, and to mop up the rest, Rhino's 2-CD compilation Totally Unrestricted. The remix album frames her in disco strings with occasional but weak horns. Pretty useless, although not even Levine can suffocate "Never Change Lovers in the Middle of the Night." Some hip-hop too. Robert Christgau did an Expert Witness on a batch of six recent EPs, including four of Kanye West's 7-cut productions. I listened to four of them in previous weeks: Pusha T: Daytona [***], Kids See Ghosts [*], Gift of Gab: Rejoice! [A-], Kanye West: Ye [*]. I should revisit the first two; good chance both could be nudged up a notch. (Ye is more likely to drop one.) I did bump my initial Tierra Whack grade up after seeing her video: Welcome to Whack World: A Visual and Auditory Project by Tierra Whack. I still have reservations about musical flow, but it doesn't feel too short or incomplete when you keep your eyes glued to the screen. I've never been a fan of EPs. Always thought one needs more time to develop a statement or even a feel, but the recent vogue for mini-albums looks to be unstoppable. Probably ties to shorter attention spans and a huge explosion of digital product. On the other hand, Christgau has always been a big fan of EPs. Probably relates back to his early preference for singles over albums, and his complaints when CDs were introduced about them being too long. Last Friday we announced a new feature on Christgau's website, Xgau Sez, where Christgau will answer readers' questions. Here's a form for submitting questions. The idea came from Greil Marcus's Ask Greil posts. The timing has something to do with promoting Christgau's new (October 2018) essay collection, Is It Still Good to Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2017. The initial plan is to answer questions in batches of a half-dozen or so, every other week. I've counted 73 submissions to date (not counting 2 spam). I imagine he'll pick and choose the questions that pique his interest, and adjust the quantity and frequency accordingly, depending on how much other work he has (quite a bit at the moment) and his other commitments. Meanwhile, I need to do a fair amount of work to support this new feature, and also to promote the new book. In particular, the book contract requires that most of the essays and reviews in the book be removed from the website for an extended period (if memory serves, five years), so I have to identify and flag all of those. Also write up a new book page. I hope to get most of this work done by the end of the week, but I'm still hampered by the crash and its attendant conversion issues. I'm only about half way through rewriting the PHP files that access the database. (The database interface library was rewritten between PHP 5 and PHP 7 with new function names.) Until that work is done, I won't be able to do a comprehensive update of the server, so I'll have to poke selected files. Complicating this is the longer-term need to convert the website character set from ISO-8859-1 (which handled Western European languages) to UTF-8 (which handles all languages), and to upgrade the HTML markup from 4.1 (Transitional) to 5.0. The former is simple in principle -- just run the program iconv on everything -- but has to be done all at once, upsetting the whole apple cart. The latter is complex, but may be done somewhat incrementally -- I don't have a real good handle on it. It would also be a good time to do some re-design, especially to make the website easier to use from smart phones. I'm far behind the learning curve there. Would appreciate any suggestions on this sort of thing. One big problem from last week appears to have been solved. I was experiencing sudden garbage screen updates, where pieces of previously rendered windows would pop up suddenly on top of things I was working on. I suspected the problem was the video card. Those things have much more memory than is needed for a simple screen buffer, so the computer can offload window manager display lists and buffers. Anyhow, problem has vanished since I installed a new video card (an ASUS R7240-2GD3-L 2GB, cost $75). One more (important) news item: Mike Hull has released a short video on Sacred Space, a collaborative art project that my sister, Kathy Hull, took a leading role in conceiving and executing back in 2002. It consists of eight portals: doorways from around the world, each opening to landscapes featuring endangered wildlife, viewed through the prism of the world's major religions. The portals are 7-8 feet high, 5-6 feet wide. The exhibition includes a labyrinth in the middle of the room, and origami cranes hanging from the ceiling. It is currently exhibited at Wichita State University, and will be up until August 31, 2018. However, the longer-term future of the exhibit is up for grabs. We are looking for a future home for the artwork. Anyone interested should get in touch with Mike (contact details in video). Special thanks to Joanna Pinkerton, who designed three of the portals, and appears in the video. Kathy was very excited about this showing before her death in March this year. PS: One thing that must mark me as an old-fashioned UNIX hand is a fondness for obsolete tools like the classic spell program. (Newbies seem to prefer the interactive ispell, which steps you interactively through a file, giving you alternative choices to toggle in; spell just lists possible misspelled words one per line, leaving it to you to figure out what to do about them.) I had to explicitly download spell to even get it. But when I run it on HTML files, it routinely flags lots of markup, especially URLs, as possible errors. Some while back I had written a shell script to sift the HTML tags out before piping a file through spell, but that got lost in the crash. Finally took a few moments to rewrite the script, and came up with this:
First line throws out some meta-markup I use in my faux blog files. Second is a perhaps over-simplistic way of deleting HTML tags (without deleting HTML comments or PHP markup, which often span multiple lines, but rarely occur in things I need to spellcheck). I could add code to strip HTML entities, but again they very rarely show up. A more useful enhancement would be to add a post-filter to weed out complaints about non-dictionary words that are commonly used (e.g., Silkheart, ECM, Interscope, remix). One way to do this would be to figure out how to add books to ispell's dictionary. Another would be to pipe the output through fgrep -vw and the "good word" list. PPS: Played Daytona three more times, and it didn't budge, but Kids See Ghosts picked up a notch. New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Old music rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Sunday, July 15, 2018 Weekend RoundupGot a late start. Hadn't been paying much attention to the news, least of all Trump's European trip. Indeed, the pattern on domestic issues is pretty well set, with only a few details changing, so few things hold any real surprises. Disgust and outrage, sure, but none of that is surprising any more. So I mostly just went through the motions, grabbing a few links from the usual places, occasionally adding a brief comment. Some scattered links this week:
PS: I finished this Sunday night, but didn't post until Monday, by which time the Helsinki summit between Trump and Putin had taken place, with predictable blood curdling howls of outrage from liberal pundits -- as trapped within their militant anti-Russian prejudices as those South Korean conservatives mentioned above. I might as well go ahead and link to Matthew Yglesias: It's time to take Trump both seriously and literally on Russia, just to get the nonsense out of the way before next Weekend Roundup. Yglesias starts by faulting Trump for not raising a stink over a long list of Putin sins (some real, some likely, some unclear and/or distorted), as if the sole point of the meeting is to see who can claim moral high ground. (That is, by the way, a fool's errand for any American president: you seriously want to talk about invading other countries? shooting down airliners? assassinating critics in foreign lands? how many people you've incarcerated? how badly you treat them? efforts to subvert democratic choice? I don't deny that Russia, and Putin in particular, has a checkered record on those counts, but so does Trump and America.) The point of diplomacy is to find common ground to solve mutual problems. To do that, you need to be realistic, to show respect, to see past differences. It's actually very refreshing when Trump says that both sides have made mistakes. It's also completely clear that if you want to, say, reduce the threat of nuclear war, these are the two leaders you need to get together, to find common ground, even if you don't approve of the common traits of both. There are currently a lot of issues where constructive agreement between Russia and the US would benefit everyone. Demonizing the other simply doesn't help. Of course, one has little hope that Trump will see his way to solving any of those disputes. He simply seems too incoherent, not to mention too morally skewed. Nonetheless, he brings something to the table that his predecessors lacked: flexibility. As with Korea, it's just possible that clear thinking on the other side(s) of the table could steer him into a breakthrough that someone like Obama or Clinton couldn't conceive of. It would be a terrible shame if Democrats scuttled worthwhile deals just to spite him. (In fact, it would be a godawful Mitch McConnell-like thing to do.) Also, note that it isn't as if Trump hasn't been giving Democrats plenty of reasons this trip to tear him apart. The problem with Trump's disparaging of the EU, characterizing Europe as a "foe," championing Brexit in the UK, etc., is that he is deliberately, at the highest levels, attempting to interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries -- the same thing Democrats accuse Putin of (just more shamelessly). Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, July 9, 2018 Music Week
Music: current count 29939 [29896] rated (+43), 342 [348] unrated (-6). New video card arrived today, but I figured I should post this before I risked installation. No guarantee it will fix my screen problem, and no guarantee it won't wreck everything. High rated count this week. Got off to a fast start last Monday as I was collecting data on mid-year best-of lists, and checking out things I had missed. Probably also helped in that more than a few of them turned out to be EPs (or "mini-albums"). Only one of those albums made this week's A-list (Seun Kuti's), but I was pleasantly surprised by Shawn Mendes, and at least understand the interest in the Carters' Everything Is Love and Against All Logic's 2012-2017. Meanwhile, after something of a drought, three good jazz albums -- one from my queue, the other two from Bandcamp. (Actually, pretty sure Again is also on Bandcamp.) The computer problem has kept me from doing much updating of the mid-year aggregate, but Janelle Monae managed to slip ahead of Kacey Musgraves for the top spot. I haven't factored Robert Christgau's grades in yet, but doing so would help (among the top 25): Monae (A-), Cardi B (A), Courtney Barnett (A-), Black Panther (A), Superchunk (A), Superorganism (A-), and Parquet Courts (A). My grades are listed in the file, but also not counted. I have those same records at B+(***) or above, plus Kali Uchis at A- and Saba at B+(***). Latter was hard to find a streaming source for, and I'm not sure how well I heard it. New records rated this week:
Old music rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Sunday, July 8, 2018 Weekend RoundupI've been hampered by another, quite maddening, computer problem this week. It helps to understand that every program has its own private piece of screen buffer memory, updating the entire image whenever it wishes to change what you see. Whether you actually see the changes depends on the layering of the windows. You usually see all of the current (active focus) window, but other windows may be partially or wholly covered by the top window, or by other windows in an overlay stack. This means that every possible view of every window is stored in memory somewhere -- either the main computer memory, or dedicated screen memory on a video controller card. The computer (or the video card) keep a display list of everything that is to be shown. What's happening on my computer is that this display list is getting corrupted, so all of a sudden I'll see some screen chunk appear when it shouldn't. The result is very disorienting. For instance, while I've been writing this in an emacs editor window, the screen to my window's left has decided to show a big chunk of a Pitchfork review that I closed from my browser a couple of days ago. I can make it go away by moving the mouse over it and using the wheel to scroll whatever the proper window there has in it (a Wikipedia page). I'm able to work around the problem by using little tricks like that to force proper screen updates, but it's a trial, a real nuisance. This started happening a week ago when I was experiencing heavy load problems. I cut down on the loads by installing an ad blocker and rebooting. That did indeed help on performance, but within a day I started experiencing this phantom screen ghosting (not a technical term, but that's what the screen fragments feel like; just happened again). I'm guessing that the problem is in the video card, and hoping it will go away when I replace the card (new one on order). Before I installed the ad blocker, I ran into another serious problem: I kept hearing random pops from Napster (although not from Bandcamp, which also plays through the browser, or from VLC, which is a separate ap). No such problem with the ad blocker installed, so that problem was clearly due to the added overhead of processing all those annoying ads. Good riddance to the visual distraction, as well. I've been working on a side project this past week. I started this last year, spent a couple of days on it, and let it sit, moving on to other, seemingly more urgent, tasks. The idea is to collect all of the political notes from my online notebook. This starts back in 2001, before I started my blog, and continues to archive all of my blog posts from 2005 on. Originally I was thinking of one file for the whole roll, but as I got into 2006, I realized I need to split it into multiple volumes: one for the Bush years, a second for Obama, and probably one for Trump as long as is necessary. Prime determinant was length, but it also makes more sense subject-wise. Of course, the writing will need a lot of editing to turn it into anything useful. And it's not clear even how it should be organized: day-by-day, or sorted out into subject areas. Good news is that compared to the jazz guides, this one is going pretty fast. Unless the computer situation deteriorates further, I should finish the first pass compilation up to 2008 this coming week. Currently have 465,000 words, up to Feb. 2007 (930 pages of 12 pt. type). I'd like to say a few things about the material I've been reviewing, but don't have much time and the circumstances aren't conducive. Suffice it to say that the one clearest lesson is that nearly everything we've found so galling and appalling about Trump had previously appeared as a big problem under GW Bush. For instance, I have a lot of material in 2006-07 on North Korea. I have a report on a mass demonstration against ICE excesses. I even have a disgusting story about the president and the Boy Scouts. It's not that nothing never changes, but it is very much the case that Trump's agenda is a direct continuation of the shit Bush tried to pull until he flamed out in 2008, leaving the economy in shambles. Some scattered links this week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, July 2, 2018 Music Week
Music: current count 29896 [29859] rated (+37), 348 [348] unrated (-0). Nothing monumental below that I didn't get to before posting June Streamnotes on Saturday, although the Grupo Mono Blanco records are pretty nice if you're interested in Mexican folk music that doesn't veer into Mariachi or more generally Norteño. I spent a fair amount of time in the EOM crunch pouring over Phil Overeem's We're Halfway There -- But to Where? midterm list. Still 27 records in his main list (out of "damn near 100") that I haven't heard, as well as 12 title under "Old Music Nicely Repackaged." I'll try to knock a few more off that list next week. Since it's midway through 2018, I figured there would be some "So Far" album lists to look at. I thought it might not be too hard to adapt my EOY Aggregate architecture to collecting data from mid-year lists. (I've done minimal editing, so I can purge the mid-year data and reuse the program files come November.) I collected 21 lists, mostly from Album of the Year, which netted 240 albums (three are new releases of archival music so they're in separate files; two are new works by various artists, which I kept with the new music in large part because Black Panther: The Album is likely to show up on a competitive number of lists). The data is here. The top albums (my grades in brackets, but not counted):
The first number in braces is points, followed by number of lists the album appears on (I used that as a tiebreaker). Main caveat here is that most of the lists were unranked, so each album listed there got one point. Numbered lists were counted on my standard scale -- 5 for number one, 4 for 2-5, 3 for 6-10, 2 for 11-20, 1 for everything else -- although only 6 ranked lists had more than 20 albums (the max was 50, by Stereogum and Uproxx). That scale works better for longer year-end lists, especially more of them, but with such a small sample expect some distortion. I expected Janelle Monae and Cardi B to dominate the list, but not much else was obvious. I didn't like the Kacey Musgraves album at all. I'm not surprised that it has fans, but so many? The Pusha T EP was produced by Kanye West, and seems to have gotten a perverse boost as West's fortunes faded (1 mention; his Kid Cudi collaboration, Kids See Ghosts, got 2). Lot of women in the top 10 (if memory serves, 9 of 10, though only 2 of the next 8, or 4 of 20). Kali Uchis and Saba have high metacritic scores, but so do Confidence Man and Rolo Tomassi (1 mention each). Kamasi Washington's Heaven & Earth broke late (4 mentions, 4 points, tied for 54th), between Mount Eerie/Tracey Thorn and Car Seat Headrest/Ezra Furman. I played a bunch of these today while compiling the list. Unfortunately, Napster is performing poorly in the new computer, with audible glitches every 15-30 seconds. Pretty sure it's a problem with Firefox, which has split up its content handlers into multiple processes. At the moment, with music off, one of those processes is chewing up 70-78% of CPU, which probably means that some JavaScript somewhere is spinning in an infinite loop. I don't know of any way to profile individual tabs, so I'm hard pressed to map the performance loss back to specific web pages. I do find it striking, though, that Google search windows are among the slowest pages to refresh, and Wikipedia is also surprisingly sluggish. I've killed off the two most likely suspects -- Facebook and Twitter -- to little avail. One positive bit of computer news is that I bought a new keyboard -- a Logitech K740 Illuminated -- that I'm pretty happy with. Not sure what you'd call the switches, but they have a better than usual tactile feedback without being as clunky (clicky?) as the mechanical keyboards. Plus it has LED backlighting on the key legends, so I can find whatever key I'm looking for in the dark. (I am a competent touch typist, but that doesn't help if you can't find the right starting keys.) New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Old music rated this week:
Grade (or other) changes:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Sunday, July 1, 2018 Weekend RoundupBusy day yesterday for the anti-Trump left in Wichita. I made it to the Ice Cream Social at the Wichita Peace Center, along with about forty other people, including two candidates -- James Thompson, running for Congress, somehow escaped my attention, but I couldn't miss Lacey Cruse, running for the Sedgwick County Commission, as she was the featured entertainment. Coming at the end of a long day wrapping up my June Streamnotes, I wasn't in the mood for a folkie singalong, so repaired to a quieter nook of the Peace House. However, she mentioned two demonstrations that day: one on inequality, the other on refugee rights. My wife went to the latter, and guessed about 300 people showed up. The former seemed to be the work of DSA. About a half-dozen people in DSA tee-shirts showed up for ice cream -- only one previously known to me. I mention this because I've been in a deep, disgusted funk all week, and expected to just go through the motions in this post today. So while my commitment and even interest are flagging, note at least that there are still others who are getting more engaged -- especially much younger ones. That is as it should be. While there are terrible things that the current regime can do to what's left of my life, it's young people today who face the real horrors of America's current political nihilism, and it's their futures that hang in the balance. I've never been comfortable thinking in generational terms, but there are massive differences from the world I grew up in to the one young people inhabit today. We saw that there were inequities that needed work and issues that needed new attention, but we still believed that America's political legacy pointed toward a fairer and more equitable world. We made some real progress on many fronts, but left the door open which allowed moneyed interests and right-wing ideologues to creep back into control. That, in turn, led to the impoverished, disempowered, manipulated, and embittered world young people today inhabit. That world took a turn for the worse in November 2016 when Trump won the presidency and both houses of Congress. I was literally sickened by the thought. If my capacity to be shocked has since waned, it's not because Republicans have failed to deliver on their threats. It's just because what's come to pass already seemed so inevitable 20 months ago. One such prospect was that right-wing activists would strengthen their grip on the Supreme Court and increasingly use that power to advance their agenda. This week that threat became suddenly real for a lot of people, thanks first to a series of rulings where Kennedy sided with the right, then with Kennedy's retirement, allowing Trump to install yet another right-wing movement judge. But actually that movement on the court has been growing slowly, at least since Nixon nominated Rehnquist, whose opposition to civil rights was somehow deemed less threatening without a Southern drawl. (Nixon had previously had two nominees rejected, precisely for that reason.) It hasn't gone as smoothly as conservatives wanted, but their game plan has been relentless, and focused on the branch of government that is slowest moving and least responsive to popular political opinion. Actually, until Roosevelt prevailed by outlasting the judges, the Supreme Court had always been a bastion of elite privilege. We are very fortunate to have lived during the one period in American history when the Court regularly stood up for the civil rights of individuals and minorities. Thanks to the 2016 election, the Supreme Court will be a millstone on any recovery of democracy we manage to achieve in the 2018, 2020, etc. elections -- probably for decades to come. I don't have a citation, but I have a pretty clear memory of Lindsey Graham, back when he was in the House before he became a Senator in 2003, explaining that Republicans have to use whatever power they have to lock in long-term, hard-to-repeal changes whenever and wherever they can, precisely because they realize that they can't expect to hold power indefinitely (and possibly because they fear demographic trends might undermine their standing). The courts, with their lifetime terms, are merely the most obvious example. Indeed, for decades now they've come up with novel approaches to frustrate democracy, including feeding a steady erosion in the confidence people have that they can change lives for the better through political action. This week has been a banner week for their cynical manipulations. The lesson Democrats should learn is that they need to defeat the Republicans so big that such schemes are overwhelmed. Some scattered links this week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Saturday, June 30, 2018 Streamnotes (June 2018)One last chore to do and I can forget about June 2018, hopefully forever -- it's beginning to make sense why dementia victims forget the most recent shit first. I haven't run the stats, but looks like a pretty average month. The big problem has been working around my major computer crash, but so many things have been going so badly that's a mere highlight. The reviews below mostly speak for themselves. Nothing systematic in the Old Music section. The Rolling Stones came up almost by accident shortly after the computer crash. I needed to test my Grade List script, and the Rolling Stones were my first test case. I noticed that I had never graded my copy of Black and Blue, so figured that would be an easy unrated record to knock off -- certainly much easier to find on Napster than in the vast disarray of my shelves and bins. I noticed a few other later albums I'd been warned off of, and some more live albums I had missed. Finally, I went back through the separate UK releases of their 1960s albums -- I had all of the US releases already in my database. As you may recall, when the Beatles appeared on CD, they decided to treat the UK releases as canonical, which made a lot of technical and aesthetic sense. (In particular, the UK Help! was a full album of songs, where the US version just included the songs from the movie, separated with stretches of background music.) So when Abkco did a major Stones remaster job, they decided to offer both UK and US versions of common titles. The main difference there was that the US label (London) didn't want to leave any hit singles off the albums (as UK labels often did in the 1960s), and that generally made for better albums. Perhaps had I understood that before I started, I wouldn't have bothered. As it was, I decided not to bother working up cover images for the A/A- UK releases, seeing them as basically inferior to my previosuly graded US versions. (Possible exception there is Between the Buttons, as explained below.) Among the new music, the album that gave me fits was the new Lily Allen (No Shame). As Michael Tatum wrote to me, "wow, what a falloff." I didn't care for the early single leaks, nor did I enjoy a performance on one of the late night shows. Had I given it a single play -- as I did, e.g., Chvrches (which Tatum likes) -- I probably would have dismissed it with a B. However, her previous album (Sheezus topped my 2014 list) and its predecessor, It's Not Me, It's You is easily my favorite record of this century, so I gave it more chances -- eventually a lot of chances. I found a few things I liked, and gradually set aside several reservations. With my deadline approaching, I gave it one more spin, and wrote it up at B+(**). Next morning, I added a third star. However, over the last few days, I kept running two or three melodies through my head, before eventually realizing they were hers. And that, I figured, was remarkable enough that I should nudge it over the cusp to A-. Closest analogy I can think of is Steely Dan, who started with three brilliant albums, turned in a troubled fourth that was still terrific, then fell unaccountably flat on their fifth (The Royal Scam). In retrospect they were looking to change their stripes, which they managed on their two later albums (Aja more so than Gaucho; one of those has the line "so sue me if I play too long"). Anyhow, I put a lot of effort into trying to like The Royal Scam, and at least partly succeeded, in large part because they always managed to sound much like themselves. Another record that benefitted this time from extra plays was the Dave Alvin/Jimmie Dale Gilmore one: clicked on the third or fourth play. But most of the A-list records get 2-3 plays -- two that satisfied me with a single play were Anthony Braxton's Arista Years and the new John Coltrane vault gem. Usually when I get to B+(***) on the first play, I'll give the record another chance to see if it gets any better. The main exception this time was Kamasi Washington, who created something bigger and better than The Epic without convincing me that it's something I'm ever going to care about. It's currently one of the top-rated records of the year at Metacritic and AOTY, and may well deserve to be. But I figure I've already cut it enough slack, and will let that be. Most of these are short notes/reviews based on streaming records from Napster (formerly Rhapsody; other sources are noted in brackets). They are snap judgments, usually based on one or two plays, accumulated since my last post along these lines, back on May 31. Past reviews and more information are available here (11306 records). Recent Releases
700 Bliss: Spa 700 (2018, Halcyon Veil/Don Giovanni, EP): Philadelphia hip-hop experiment: lyrics by Moor Mother, production by Haram, mixed by Hprism, mastered by Ase Manual. Five cuts, 13:48. B+(**) [bc] JD Allen: Love Stone (2018, Savant): Tenor saxophonist, originally from Detroit, has mostly recorded trios with Gregg August (bass) and Rudy Royston (drums), adding guitarist Liberty Ellman here. Has a huge, remarkably clear sound, obvious from the start, but slides into a ballad on the second track and never really returns. B+(**) Lily Allen: No Shame (2018, Parlophone): Change of pace record after three aces -- the last two tops on my 2009 and 2014 annual lists -- eschewing the "euphoric choruses and monstrous drops" that put Sheezus over the top, aiming for more of "an audio diary." Three singles I sampled early on Napster were underwhelming, but the first official one, "Trigger Bang," is just fine. But she got help there, and indeed two other songs with feat. guests stand out. Elsewhere, takes a while to sink in that the voice in "Three" is her daughter's. And while the last two songs are catchy enough, they're vamps built on obvious clichés. I've given this a lot of time, and I'm disappointed, but I still adore her. And lately I've found myself with a couple of her songs wedged in my cranium. Only other record this month I can say that for is Between the Buttons, and it had a 50 year head start. A- Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore: Downey to Lubbock (2018, Yep Roc): Two aging and never more than marginal stars in the alt-Americana niche -- though from my vantage point each has a half-dozen essential albums, especially if you factor in former groups, the Blasters and the Flatlanders -- trying to prop each other up, stretching two new Alvin songs out with mostly obscure covers -- the few you readily recognize seem most desperate, but great songs out in the end. Especially when sung by great voices, and bolstered by a lot of guitar. A- Rodrigo Amado: A History of Nothing (2017 [2018], Trost): Tenor saxophonist, from Portugal, led a group called Lisbon Improvisation Players around 2000, emerging as one of the top avant-saxophonists of the young century. With Joe McPhee (pocket trumpet/soprano sax), Kent Kessler (bass), and Chris Corsano (drums) bringing the noise, he holds this set together, while having a little fun. A- [cd] Angles 3: Parede (2016 [2018], Clean Feed): Swedish saxophonist Martin Küchen (tenor/soprano), recorded his first Angles group in 2007, a sextet, later expanding it to Angles 8 and Angles 9, here cut back to a trio -- different from his 2007 Trio and later Trespass Trio. This one has Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (bass) and Kjell Nordeson (drums), with the saxophonist straining and wailing, even turning free jazz into something catchy. A- Courtney Barnett: Tell Me How You Really Feel (2018, Mom + Pop Music): Australian singer-songwriter, started folkie but distinguished herself on guitar last album. Strong guitar here, too. B+(***) Jamie Baum Septet+: Bridges (2018, Sunnyside): Flute player, based in New York, sixth album, formed her original septet in 1999, website lists eight members -- most notably Amir ElSaffar (trumpet), Sam Sadigursky (alto sax/bass clarinet), Brad Shepik (guitar), and John Escreet (piano) -- album credits ten (adding two extra percussionists). Explores "deep connections" between Jewish, Arabic, and South Indian music, the flute blending in while the trumpet stands out. B+(*) Bombino: Deran (2018, Partisan): Omara Moctar, a Tuareg from northeast Niger, plays guitar-driven Saharan rock, an easily mesmerizing groove music. B+(***) Craig Brann: Lineage (2017 [2018], SteepleChase): Guitarist, originally from Maine, based in New York since 1996, fourth album, quintet with John Raymond (trumpet), Ethan Herr (piano), bass, and drums. B+(**) Toni Braxton: Sex & Cigarettes (2018, Def Jam): R&B singer, an ingenue on her 1993 eponymous debut, maturing into a powerful voice and personality. B+(**) Busdriver: Electricity Is on Our Side (2018, Temporary Forever): Rapper-beatmaker Regan Farquhar, more than a dozen albums since 1999, very erratic, as the weird shit often escapes me (or just doesn't seem worth the trouble). B- Lynn Cassiers: Imaginary Band (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): Born in Antwerp, Belgium, 1984; vocalist-composer, also credited with electronics. Discography lists a couple dozen items since 2008, but this seems to be the first album under her own name. Group is a septet with violin, soprano/tenor sax, euphonium, piano, double bass, drums. Rather abstract and arty. B+(*) Chrome Hill: The Explorer (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): Norwegian quartet, all pieces composed by Asbjørn Lerheim (baritone guitar), with Atle Nymo (tenor sax), Roger Antzen (double bass), Torstein Lofthus (drums). B+(*) Chromeo: Head Over Heels (2018, Big Beat/WEA): Dance pop duo, David Macklovitch ("Dave 1") and Patrick Gemayel (P-Thugg), from Montreal, "the only Arab/Jewish partnership since the dawn of human culture," fifth album since 2004. Not sure why so many critics dismiss this as retro. I find their big beat dance grooves more fun than bubblegum. A- Chvrches: Love Is Dead (2018, Glassnote): Scottish synth-pop band, upbeat and flashy despite the title, as Pitchfork put it: "uncomplicated, unsurprising." B+(*) Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba: Routes (2018, Twelve/Eight): Senegalese kora master, based in North Carolina, plus his American band, which does a pretty fair rendering of the deep Mande roots while adding to the leader's cosmopolitanism. He, in turn, approximates into a kinder, gentler Youssou N'Dour. A- [dl] Scott Clark: ToNow (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): Drummer, from Virginia, second album, quintet with Bob Miller (trumpet), Jason Scott (sax), Toby Summerfield (guitar), and Cameron Ralston (bass). Four tracks. Interesting when the guitar riffs against the horn backdrop, more so when they all kick in ("Red, White, Yellow"). B+(*) Sean Conly: Hard Knocks (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): Bassist, has a couple albums, this one a trio with Michaël Attias on alto sax and Satoshi Takeishi on drums. Lovely work from Attias, never straying far from or crowding out the bass melodies. B+(***) Ronnie Cuber: Ronnie's Trio (2017 [2018], SteepleChase): Baritone saxophonist, born 1941, worked in big bands, with George Benson, with Lee Konitz, with Billy Joel, plus sixteen (or so) albums as leader, his best title still his debut, Cuber Libre. Trio with Jay Anderson (bass) and Adam Nussbaum (drums), 72:45 of jazz standards -- Ellington, Waller, Porter, Kern, two Silvers, "St. Thomas," a Jobim. B+(*) Benje Daneman Searchparty: Light in the Darkness (2017 [2018], ACI): Trumpet player, at least one previous album, group includes Greg Ward on alto sax, Rob Clearfield on piano, plus bass, drums, and voice (Ashley Daneman). Don't care for the latter, not so much due to the voice itself but the dramatic airs that arrive with it. C+ [cd] Daphne & Celeste: Daphne & Celeste Save the World (2018, Balatonic): Electropop duo, Karen ("Daphne") DiConcetto and Celeste Cruz, originally formed when they were teens for a 2000 album (a couple of singles charted in UK and NZ), regrouped in 2015 leading to this second effort. Upbeat but wears thin, making you wonder: saves the world from what? B Detroit Bop Quintet: Two Birds (2014 [2018], TQM, EP): Hard bop quintet with Dwight Adams on trumpet and Pete Mills on sax. Not even an EP: just two songs, both by Charlie Parker, "Bluebird" and "Another Hairdo." Play like their models, although no one here is going to be mistaken for Parker, Gillespie, or for that matter a real Detroit legend like Hank Jones. B [cd] Fatoumata Diawara: Fenfo: Something to Say (2018, Shanachie): Singer, born in Côte d'Ivoire, parents Wassoulou from Mali, moved on to France, where she also acts. Nice groove here, grabbed me from the start, gradually let me go. b+(**) Olegario Diaz: I Remember Chet (2017 [2018], SteepleChase): Pianist, from Venezuela, based in New York, fifth album on this label, has written at least that many books -- titles like Latin Jazz Piano Technique, Herbie Hancock: The Blue Note Years, 240 Chromatic Exercises + 1165 Jazz Lines Phrases for Bass Clef Instrument Players. Title song and "Rise and Fall Baker" are his only originals here; the covers not things I particularly associate with Baker, although I wouldn't be surprised to find some links. Quintet, with the horns -- Alex Sipiagin on trumpet/flugelhorn and Seamus Blake on tenor sax -- trying to keep cool, Scott Colley on bass and Bill Stewart drums. B+(***) Pierre Dørge: Soundscapes (2017 [2018], SteepleChase): Danish guitarist, now past 70, usually leads a large band called the New Jungle Orchestra, inspired by most Ellington and Johnny Dyani. Sextet here, most with label associations: Kirk Knuffke (cornet), Stephen Riley (tenor sax), Conrad Herwig (trombone), Jay Anderson (bass), and Adam Nussbaum (drums). All originals, opening with pieces that namecheck Mingus and Sun Ra, plus one for Dyani. Dørge usually blends into the rhythm, but offers some tasty leads here. B+(***) Elina Duni: Partir (2017 [2018], ECM): Albanian jazz/folk singer, based in Switzerland, accompanies herself on piano, uitar, and percussion. B+(*) Marty Ehrlich: Trio Exaltation (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): Mostly plays alto sax, but also clarinet, bass clarinet, and wooden flute. With John Hebert on bass and Nasheet Waits on drums. Original pieces, one dedicated to Ornette Coleman. B+(***) Enemy: Enemy (2016 [2018], Edition): British piano trio, with Frans Petter Eldh (bass), Kit Downes (piano), and James Maddren (drums). Bright, sharp, tuneful, a slightly more energetic E.S.T. B+(**) The English Beat [Dave Wakeling]: Here We Go Love (2018, Here We Go): A great ska band for three albums 1980-82, known as The Beat in the UK, the English Beat in the US. The two singers, Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger going on to uneventful solo careers (including a second joint group, General Public) before recently returning to their old brand name in two separate incarnations, Roger releasing an album in 2016, and now this one "starring Dave Wakeling." Tries to rekindle the old excitement, but feels off, not least because the ska groove has become domesticated beyond recognition. B- Román Filiú: Quarteria (2018, Sunnyside): Alto saxophonist from Cuba, based in New York since 2011, plays in Henry Threadgill's recent groups. Group here is a septet: Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Dayna Stephens (tenor sax), David Virelles (piano), Matt Brewer (bass), Craig Weinrib (drums), Yusnier Sanchez (percussion). Has a curious abstractness to it, all sharp edges, zigs and zags. B+(*) Erik Friedlander: Artemisia (2017 [2018], Skipstone): Cellist, calls this quartet Throw a Glass, "sparked by a viewing of Pablo Picasso's mysterious absinthe glass sculptures": Uri Caine (piano), Mark Helias (bass), Ches Smith (drums). The pianist is most impressive here, sparkling amidst the dense swirl of cello and bass. B+(**) Satoko Fujii/Joe Fonda/Gianni Mimmo: Triad (2017 [2018], Long Song): Continuing the pianist's 60th birthday celebration, a trio with bass and soprano saxophone, the latter getting a slow start but ultimately carrying the record. B+(***) [cd] Tia Fuller: Diamond Cut (2018, Mack Avenue): Alto saxophonist, from Colorado, fifth album since 2005, teaches at Berklee, tours with Beyoncé. Produced by Terri Lyne Carrington, split between two rhythm sections (Dave Holland/Jack DeJohnette and James Genus/Bill Stewart), with occasional guitar and/or organ. Strong, boppish sax -- impresses but doesn't surprise. B+(*) Gift of Gab: Rejoice! Rappers Are Rapping Again! (2018, Giftstribution Unlimited, EP): Blackalicious rapper Timothy Parker, has solo projects going back to 1994. Six cuts, 21:16, most superb (especially "The Gentrification Song", "Aspire"). A- Ginkgoa: One Time (2018, self-released, EP): Electropop duo from Paris, with New York-born singer Nicolle Rochelle and producer Antoine Chatenet. Five cuts (time?), dance beats with a soupçon of swing. First three cuts hooked me, last two let me sit down. B+(**) [dl] Vinny Golia/Steph Richards/Bert Turetzky: Trio Music (2017 [2018], PfMentum): Golia's credit reads "woodwinds and ethnic aerophones"; Richards (elsewhere known as Stephanie) trumpet/flugelhorn; Turetzky, who has a long association with Golia: contrabass. B+(*) [bc] Jon Hassell: Listening to Pictures (Pentimento Volume One) (2018, Ndeya): Trumpet player, but that's always taken a backseat role to his intricately layered electronics, guitar, and percussion -- a formula Brian Eno helped him market as "Fourth World: Possible Musics." He's released little since 2000, but following his 80th birthday he's come up with a new album on his own label, and promises more coming both new and old. This one wobbles a bit, but is cooly entrancing. A- Phil Haynes & Free Country: 60/69: My Favorite Things (2014 [2018], Corner Store Jazz, 2CD): Drummer, born in 1961 so he doesn't remember the 1960s the same way I do. For one thing, his over picks skew to the end of the decade, starting with three Jimi Hendrix songs -- "Surfer Girl" and "Walk On By" go back to 1963, only one of six Beatles songs predates 1968 (1964's "And I Love Her"). Two standards date from earlier ("Somewhere" and "My Favorite Things," though it's instantly clear that the model is John Coltrane's 1960 version). Group includes Jim Yanda (guitar), Drew Gress (bass), and Hank Roberts (cello), with Roberts singing on close to half of the songs (not very well). Roberts also arranged "People Are Strange," trying to make it as strange as possible, but his cello is lovely on "Both Sides Now." Haynes arranged all but one of the others, seemingly confused over whether he wants pop nostalgia or new jazz standards, and not quite getting either. B+(*) [cd] Honest John w/ Ab Baars: Treem (2016 [2018], Clean Feed): Norwegian quintet, Klaus Ellerhusen Holm (alto sax/clarinet) leads, with violin, guitar/banjo, bass, and drums, joined here by the Dutch avant saxophonist. B+(*) Imarhan: Temet (2018, City Slang): Yet another Tuareg guitar band, this one from Algeria, which seems to mean they're not related to the Imarhan Timbuktu group I noticed in 2014. Christgau argues that this is "faster" than the norm, danceable even, but I don't hear that at all. Rather, a mild groove that charms more with its ease and comfort. B+(***) Gene Jackson Trio NuYorx: Power of Love (2017 [2018], Whirlwind): Drummer-led piano trio, Gabriel Guerrero on piano, Carlo De Rosa on bass. All three wrote pieces, plus two Monks and one from Cole Porter. B+(*) [cd] Wilko Johnson: Blow Your Mind (2018, Chess): British singer-songwriter, led Dr. Feelgood, a 1975-77 pub rock band that seemed poised to be the next big thing but got blind-sided by punk. (Johnson wrote most of the songs but Lee Brilleaux was the singer. The band carried on after Johnson's departure, and still does, but Brilleaux died in 1994.) Played out his string, helming his eponymous band until diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2011, but improbably beat that and cut a 2014 comeback album co-headlined by fellow has-been Roger Daltrey. Four-square blues-rock with harmonica and keyboards, as unspectacular but indelible as ever. B+(***) Vic Juris: Eye Contact (2016 [2018], SteepleChase): Guitarist, from New Jersey, simplified his name from Jurusz, has a tone that is metallic but silky smooth -- of the list of influences Jim Hall and Jimmy Rainey strike me as closest. Trio with Jay Anderson and Adam Nussbaum, with three originals, a Monk, an Evans, two Shorters, and standards like "Sweet and Lovely." B+(**) Lana Trio: Lana Trio With Sofia Jernberg (2016 [2018], Clean Feed): Norwegian free jazz trio, eponymous debut had two girls on the cover but group consists of Kjetil Jerve (piano), Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø (trombone), and Andreas Wildhagen (drums). Jernberg is a singer, born in Ethiopia but based in Sweden. She makes things difficult, but the band treats that as a challenge. b+(**) Allegra Levy: Looking at the Moon (2018, SteepleChase): Website declares: "Most jazz vocalists sing standards. Allegra Levy writes her oen." Still, most of these moon songs are familiar: "Moon River," "Harvest Moon," "Blue Moon," "Moonlight in Vermont," "No Moon at All," "Polkadots and Moonbeams," "It's Only a Paper Moon," "I'll Be Seeing You." Latter is the charm. Backed by piano trio featuring Carmen Staaf. B+(**) Lykke Li: So Sad So Sexy (2018, RCA): Singer-songwriter, born in Sweden but not blonde, full name Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson, mother a photographer, father played in a punk-reggae band, lived while growing up in Portugal, Morocco, Nepal, India, Brooklyn. Fourth album, synthpop but that's just her medium. Sad? Sure. Sexy? That's the easy part. B+(*) Low Cut Connie: "Dirty Pictures" (Part 2) (2018, Contender): Adam Weiner's Philadelphia bar band, fifth album, last year's Part 1 was the first to disappoint me. While I like this one better, they do seem to be going through the motions. B+(**) Joe Magnarelli: Magic Trick (2017 [2018], SteepleChase): Mainstream trumpet player, co-founded New York Hard Bop Quintet in 1991, ninth album since 1995: a quintet with Andy Fusco (alto sax), John Hart (guitar), Ben Wolfe (bass), and Byron Landon (drums). Four originals, six standards, nice mix. B+(**) Nellie McKay: Sister Orchid (2018, Palmetto): Seems to have given up on writing with her third straight covers album, this the first on a jazz label, and the dustiest set of standards. She takes them slow, giving me pause even before recognizing songs as familiar as "Where or When" and "The Nearness of You." Two takes of "My Romance," the second even woozier than the first. B+(**) Brad Mehldau: After Bach (2017 [2018], Nonesuch): Solo piano, five pieces from Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier," interleaved with often longer originals in the same vein. I don't doubt his craft or dedication, but not my thing, even if pleasant enough. B Brad Mehldau: Seymour Reads the Constitution! (2018, Nonesuch): Piano trio, only one I can recall him with: Larry Grenadier (bass) and Jeff Ballard (drums). Starts with two originals, winds up with six covers from all over the place, which all sound more like his After Bach than the originals. B+(*) Melody's Echo Chamber: Bon Voyage (2018, Fat Possum): French singer-songwriter Melody Prochet, released a debut album in 2012, with this her second. Dreamy synthpop, some in French, some in English, with scattered snippets of spoken word which occasionally had me wondering whether my computer was mixing audio streams. B Marieann Meringolo: Between Yesterday and Tomorrow: The Songs of Alan & Marilyn Bergman (2017 [2018], Blujazz): Standards singer, based in New York, at least two previous albums. The Bermans wrote lyrics to melodies, most often from Michel Legrand or Marvin Hamlisch. I can't particularly recommend any of them. C+ [cd] MIKE: Black Soap (2018, Lex, EP): Name doesn't make it easy to search, but seems to be "Mike (408)" at Discogs: Michael Bonema, "a 19-year-old rapper living in Brooklyn," "childhood hometown of London," I recall his 2017 record May God Bless Your Hustle but evidently didn't play it. Seven track, 21:18, very experimental, first track sounds like Japanese with almost no rhythm. Can't confirm his age, but if true they sure don't make teens like they used to. B+(*) MIKE: Renaissance Man (2018, Lex): Second full-length album, although the twelve cuts merge into a blur, and total only 33:04. Still having trouble getting a handle on him. B+(*) Mdou Moctar/Elite Beat: Mdou Moctar Meets Elite Beat in a Budget Dancehall (2017 [2018], Boomarm Nation): Only thing I know about Elite Beat is that he/it involves Jesse Munro Johnson, who also does business as Gulls. No band credits, although the sharp metallic guitar is certainly Moctar's (a Tuareg from Niger), cutting a swath through the extended keyb/drum vamps. Three "raw, unedited, live recordings" (38:12), no voices to speak of. A- [bc] Molly Tigre: Molly Tigre (2018, Very Special): Brooklyn band, saxophonists Mitch Marcus and Chris Hiatt up front, bassist Ezra Gale the prime writer (along with Marcus), various presumably African percussionists -- Ethiopia, maybe also Mali, with a nod toward Bollywood. B+(***) No Fast Food: Settings for Three (2016 [2018], Corner Store Jazz): Trio, names listed alphabetically -- Drew Gress (bass), Phil Haynes (drums), Dave Liebman (woodwinds) -- but Haynes is the leader and composer. Still, a tour de force for Liebman, whose Coltrane-ish freebop has rarely sounded better. Dedicated to the late avant trumpet player Paul Smoker. Haynes played on his last records, and they're dandies. A- [cd] Jason Palmer: At Wally's: Volume 1 (2016 [2018], SteepleChase): Postbop trumpet player, originally from North Carolina, based in Boston. Mostly quintet (plus Fender Rhodes on one cut), with Noah Preminger (tenor sax) and Max Light (guitar). All Palmer pieces, impressive chops. B+(*) Jason Palmer: At Wally's: Volume 2 (2016 [2018], SteepleChase): More from same group, probably same date -- pianist Chris McCarthy seems to play more, not that he makes much difference. B Parliament: Medicaid Fraud Dogg (2018, C Kunspyruhzy): So George Clinton revives his most popular front group 38 years after he mothballed it, promising this last tour "after which the Parliament-Funkadelic legendary juggernaut will continue on its own without Clinton." I'd say he'll be missed, but he hasn't been present: his last "solo" album in my database came out in 1996 (looks like I missed George Clinton and His Gangsters of Love in 2008), but I did notice a Funkadelic revival in 2014. Some trademark funk here, in his later mode when not even slinkier: "Kool Aid" would be filler on Motor Booty Affair (or the single on Trombipulation), but the singer on the single "I'm Gon Make U Sick O'Me" makes me think of Bill Cosby, and that after a fat-shaming song that would have been the first of several songs I would have cut. B Alberto Pinton Noi Siamo: Opus Facere (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): Italian baritone saxophonist (also alto sax, clarinet, and bass clarinet), based in Sweden, two-horn quartet with Niklas Barnö on trumpet, Torbjörn Zetterberg on bass, and KonradAgnas on drums. He's used this group name before, on Resiliency (2016), highly recommended. This one runs hots and cold, impressive but not consistently so. B+(**) Jure Pukl: Doubtless (2017 [2018], Whirlwind): Tenor saxophonist, from Slovenia, based in New York, several previous albums, this one a quartet with Melissa Aldana also on tenor sax, plus Joe Sanders on bass and Gregory Hutchinson on drums. Mainstream postbop, the second sax adding a curious shadowing. B+(**) [cd] Jure Pukl/Matija Dedic: Hybrid (2016 [2017], Whirlwind): Last year's record, Pukl playing soprano sax and bass clarinet as well as tenor sax, with Croatian pianist Dedic, Matt Brewer on bass, and Johnathan Blake on drums, with Melissa Aldana on tenor sax on two tracks. B+(***) [bc] Pusha T: Daytona (2018, GOOD/Def Jam, EP): First of five planned seven-cut mini-albums to be produced by Kanye West this year, runs 21:08, gangsta converging on business, as always. B+(**) Joshua Redman/Ron Miles/Scott Colley/Brian Blade: Still Dreaming (2018, Nonesuch): Postbop quartet, no piano or guitar, which should make the horns more freewheeling. I'm more impressed by the cornet than by the tenor sax. B+(**) Bebe Rexha: Expectations (2018. Warner Brothers): Singer-songwriter born in Brooklyn, of Albanian heritage, has had some success songwriting for artists from G-Eazy to Florida-Georgia Line. Still, odd flow appending latter to an otherwise pretty fair pop album. Doesn't say much for the role of marketing in art. B+(*) Stephanie Richards: Fullmoon (2018, Relative Pitch): Trumpet player, from Canada, based in New York, first album, close to solo (only other credit is Dino J.A. Deane: sampler). She also appears in Henry Threadgill's Kestra and on Trio Music with Vinny Golia. Dense, dark, deliberate. B+(**) [bc] Rolling Blackouts C.F.: Hope Downs (2018, Sub Pop): Australian guitar band, from Melbourne, released a couple of widely praised EPs, picked up by influential alt/indie label Sub Pop, with this their first LP. Their guitar jangle is mesmerizing, with faint echoes of the Go-Betweens, and the lyrics I notice smart (though not as touching). Still, impressive. A- J. Peter Schwalm: How We Fall (2017 [2018], RareNoise): German composer, plays guitar, piano, electronics, started "experimental electro-jazz" Projekt Slop Shop in 1990s, two co-credited albums with Brian Eno 2000-01. Fourth solo album since 2006, with Eivind Aarset (guitar) and/or Tim Harries (bass) joining in on most cuts. Somewhat industrial. B+(*) [cdr] Elza Soares: Deus É Mulher (2018, Deckdisc): Brazilian samba singer, discography goes back to 1960 although I didn't notice her until 2016's A Mulher Do Fim Do Mundo). The back catalog may be worth a trawl, but moving forward, at 80 she's clearly not intent on fitting into anyone else's genre. Raps some, rocks more. A- Mark Soskin: Upper West Side Stories (2017 [2018], SteepleChase): New York pianist, one I hadn't noticed much despite a discography going back to 1976. Trio with Jay Anderson (bass) and Adam Nussbaum (drums), who've been showing up a lot on SteepleChase records recently. Only two originals, counting his extension to Billy Strayhorn's "UMMG" -- covers range from the Frank Loesser opener to "Ugly Beauty" and "Un Poco Loco." B+(**) Ebo Taylor: Yen Ara (2018, Mr. Bongo): Highlife bandleader from Ghana, had a collection of his 1973-80 hits compiled by Strut in 2012, which brought him back to the studio, even as he turned 80 -- still upbeat, often joyous. B+(**) Chris Thile/Brad Mehldau: Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau (2017, Nonesuch): Mandolin-piano duets, both also credited with vocals. Thile started out in bluegrass, joining Nickel Creek as a pre-teen -- his father played bass at the time -- recording five albums 1993-2005 plus a sixth for a 2014 reunion. All the time he also recorded solo albums, duets with Mike Marshall and Edgar Meyer, and a set with Yo-Yo Ma. Half originals, the covers include Dylan and Mitchell songs, plus an "I Cover the Waterfront" that puts the singer in especially harsh light. The pianist is a dutiful accompanist, the mandolin fragile, the voices not even that. B- This Is It!: 1538 (2018, Libra): Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii, with Natsuki Tamura (trumpet) and Takashi Itani (drums), her basic trio, and a fair showing of her range and dynamics as a pianist. That should be welcome after a series of large-scale works that sidelined her instrument, and often is, but maybe fatigue is setting in as her album every month grind starts to wear down. B+(***) [cd] Thumbscrew: Ours (2017 [2018], Cuneiform): Trio adopting the title of their 2014 album -- Mary Halvorson (guitar), Michael Formanek (bass), Tomas Fujiwara (drums) -- developed this music during a residency in Pittsburgh last year. My copy came shrinkwrapped with a second album, Theirs, but looks more like two separate albums now -- the distinction original pieces here, covers there. Would have been easier to grade as a single item, as the second is pretty much more of the same. I'm not one of Halvorson's more complete fans, but this is the combo I find her most interesting in. A- Thumbscrew: Theirs (2017 [2018], Cuneiform): Maybe a bit catchier, which may make it a bit less fascinating to follow, or just more simply pleasurable. A- Rafael Toral/Hugo Antunes/João Pais Filipe/Ricardo Webbens: Space Quartet (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): Bassist Antunes is the only name I recognize here. Filipe plays drums/percussion, the others various electronics -- Toral the big name with 27 albums since 1994. Interesting squiggles over basic free rhythm. B+(**) Sidi Touré: Toubalbero (2018, Thrill Jockey): Singer-songwriter from northern Mali, started in Songhaï Stars in 1976, released first solo album in 1996, at least four since then. On the folk/blues end of the pop spectrum. B+(**) Joshua Trinidad: In November (2015 [2018], RareNoise): Trumpeter player, based in Denver, went to Norway for this dose of Nordic cool, a trio with Jacob Young (guitar) and Stale Liavik Solberg (drums). B+(*) [cdr] Will Vinson: It's Alright With Three (2017 [2018], Criss Cross): Alto saxophonist, also soprano, half-dozen albums since 2008, strips down to a trio here with Gilad Hekselman (guitar) and Antonio Sanchez (drums). Three originals, five covers -- one from Marc Johnson, the others from the trad songbook. B+(**) Jerry Vivino: Coast to Coast (2005-17 [2018], Blujazz): Alto saxophonist, mainstreamer, stitched this together from four sessions, with two cuts dating back to 2005, one from 2014. Mostly originals, but he takes a vocal on "Honeysuckle Rose," and offers a shout out to Bucky Pizzarelli before a solo that couldn't possibly be by anyone else. B+(**) [cd] Tim Warfield: Jazzland (2017 [2018], Criss Cross): Tenor saxophonist, also soprano, impressed me hugely when he first appeared in the late 1990s but has appeared erratically since. Looks for a hybrid here, part hard bop, bigger part soul jazz. With Terrell Stafford trumpet, Pat Bianchi organ, drums and extra percussion. B+(*) Kamasi Washington: Heaven and Earth (2018, Young Turks, 2CD): Tenor saxophonist, big, deep tone, seemed on his way to becoming a very respectable jazz musician before he took a Flying Lotus turn on The Epic in 2015 and became a crossover pop star -- while managing to retain a good deal of jazz respect. Not sure where he lands after this effort, which is no less epic: if anything, more diverse, more pop, more richly textured, maybe even danceable. I can't say as I feel the need for anything so grandiose, but it's here if you want it. B+(***) Kanye West: Ye (2018, Def Jam/GOOD Music, EP): Seven tracks, 23:41, thus far digital only. Initially I wondered if this was a publicity stunt to cash in on the rapper's recent inroads with the Trump base, but I doubt they'll get it any more than I do, or even care. If you think he's a genius, you might be impressed by his production savvy. If you think he's a fool, well, there's evidence for that too. He starts off talking about committing murder, justifying it because he thinks about suicide, "and I love myself much more than I love you." Later on: "That's why I fuck with you . . . that's my superpower." B+(*) WorldService Project: Serve (2017 [2018], Rare Noise): British quintet, bills itself as "jazz-punk," not really either, with two horns (tenor sax and trombone) merely adding to the synth noise, the pompous riffs and bellowing vocals the antithesis of punk. C- [cdr] Recent Reissues, Compilations, Vault Discoveries
Anthony Braxton: The Essential Anthony Braxton: The Arista Years (1974-80 [2018], Arista/Legacy, 2CD): A surprise add to Sony/Legacy's long-running (mostly) 2-CD sampler series -- launched in 2001 with Columbia artists like Bob Dylan and Miles Davis (also illy Joel and Neil Diamond), eventually picking up other labels like RCA and Arista as they were acquired by Sony. Arista, founded by ex-Columbia honcho Clive Davis, made a couple of interesting forays into jazz in the 1970s, including signing a hot young AACM saxophonist named Anthony Braxton. Those records went out of print long before Arista sold out to RCA, until Mosaic reissued them in an 8-CD box in 2008, and unavailable separately until Legacy offered them digital-only last year. This, too, is only on digital. More a wide-ranging sampler than a best-of, the highlights are still amazing, the explorations daring, the faux pas -- well, that happens. A- Gene Clark: Gene Clark Sings for You (1967 [2018], Omnivore): Byrds founder (guitar/vocals), left to pursue a solo career, releasing Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers in 1967, followed by two Dillard & Clark albums, and various reunions with Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman. Not sure if this "acetate" has appeared before -- a couple songs appear on Echoes, released after his death at age 46 in 1991. Not much more than folkie demos here, the voice familiar, the songs unmemorable. B John Coltrane: Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album (1963 [2018], Impulse, 2CD): Recorded March 8, 1963 with his famous quartet, unreleased, the master destroyed in some senseless housekeeping. However, a second copy recently surfaced among his first wife's (Naima's) things, and is organized here with multiple takes, including four of "Impressions" (the title track, recorded earlier, of an album released later in 1963). Nothing here markedly different from the year's major releases -- certainly no reason to prioritize this over Live at Birdland or Crescent or the live Afro Blue Impressions, although I would rank it above John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman and Impressions itself. A- Lee Konitz: Prisma: By Guenter Buhles (2000 [2018], QFTF): "Concerto for alto saxophone and orchestra," composed by Buhles at Konitz's request, runs through four parts in 17:01 backed by the strings of the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt -- awful, of course, but the saxophone is lovely, even when stuck in Buhles' melodies. The album is filled out with three standards (16:57), in a duo with pianist Frank Wunsch. B Ernie Krivda and Swing City: A Bright and Shining Moment (1998-2002 [2018], Capri): Tenor saxophonist, cut these pieces -- five originals and eleven standards arranged by the leader -- in three sessions with near-identical septets: trumpet (Steve Enos), trombone (Chris Anderson or Gary Carney), piano (James Hunter), guitar, bass, and drums. As advertised, they swing. B+(**) [cd] Professor Rhythm: Professor 3 ([2018], Awesome Tapes From Africa): From South Africa, Thami Mduli's third album, six very rhythmic tracks (28:40), reminds me of pennywhistle or township jive, some catchy instrumentals, some adding even catchier vocals. Somewhat earlier than last year's Awesome find, Bafana Bafana. A- The Rough Guide to the Best Country Blues You've Never Heard (1927-36 [2018], World Music Network): Twenty-five tracks, suitably primitive, and sufficiently obscure: I was able to locate every song, thanks to the Austrian Document label, but I think only two artists managed to fill up a complete CD: J.T. "Funny Paper" Smith and Charlie McCoy. Maybe a third of the songs show up on various Yazoo compilations, including at least one I own. I don't own Allen Lowe's 36-CD blues set, but he must have heard a bunch of them. B+(***) The Savory Collection, Vol. 4: Embraceable You: Bobby Hackett and Friends (1938-40 [2018], National Jazz Museum of Harlem): Three previous volumes are well regarded by critics who've heard them -- featuring Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie/Lester Young, and Fats Waller, I can well believe their rep, but can't confirm it. Unfortunately, they're only available on Apple Music, although I've seen promise of an expensive 5-CD box on Mosaic later this year. I'm working off a download from the publicist, who ignored my request for the previous volumes, and I'm more than a little aggravated, given that it took a couple of hours to unpack the archive and rename and reorganize the files so I could finally play all fifteen tracks in order. Also note that Hackett (trumpet) only appears on seven tracks, only one under his own name -- the others are by a group led by clarinetist Joe Marsala, plus you get three tracks by Teddy Wilson, two by Jack Teagarden, and three by Glenn Miller. The Wilson tracks, with Ben Webster on tenor sax, are the real prizes, but everything else is first-rate traditional jazz, and Miller's "The Mood" is a rousing finish. The tracks were recorded by Bill Savory from ballrooms and broadcasts. He's evidently a legend among audio engineers, and everything here is sharp and clear. I'm tempted to slam the (lack of) packaging, but love the music too much. A- [dl] Esbjörn Svensson Trio: E.S.T. Live in London (2005 [2018], ACT, 2CD): Swedish piano trio, with Dan Berglund on bass and Magnus Öström on drums, formed in 1993 and until the pianist's death in 2008 probably the world's most popular jazz group, at least in Europe -- the Bad Plus attempted to fill a similar niche in the US. Nothing spectacular here, but a fine example of what made they so appealing. B+(**) Old MusicRodrigo Amado/Carlos Zíngaro/Ken Filiano: The Space Between (2002 [2003], Clean Feed): Tenor sax, violin, and bass, Zíngaro the senior and most distinctive member, the others early into distinguished careers. The concept was "real-time composition," one way to view their edgy music, but sometimes one wishes for a drummer to hurry them along a bit. B+(**) [bc] Gene Clark: Gene Clark With the Gosdin Brothers (1967, Columbia): Clark's first post-Byrds album. Vern and Rex Gosdin were unknown at the time -- their only other album appeared in 1968, but Vern had played with Chris Hillman in the Hillmen and went on to chart 41 singles on Billboard's country charts 1976-93 (3 at number one, 10 more top-ten). The Gosdins only add backing vocals to Clark's leads, but the studio band includes Hillman, Glen Campbell, Leon Russell, Van Dyke Parks, Jim Gordon, and Michael Clarke, with spots for Doug Dillard and Clarence White. Aside from a strings faux pas, the band impresses, and the Gosdins blend in so neatly you hardly notice they're here. B+(*) Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen: We've Got a Live One Here (1976, Warner Brothers): George Frayne's pioneering good-timey country-rock band, formed in 1967 in Ann Arbor, scored a novelty hit off their 1971 debut, followed that up with a collection of Trucker's Favorites that remains a personal favorite. In 1976 Geoffrey Stokes wrote a fine book about their ill-fated struggle for stardom (Star Making Machinery), but the band was winding down, releasing their second live album in two year as they broke up. Long set, pretty much sums up their career, although not as exciting as they could be. B+(**) Pierre Dørge Quartet: Ballad Round the Left Corner (1979 [1980], SteepleChase): Danish guitarist, early album before his long-running New Jungle Orchestra, with John Tchicai on alto sax, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on bass, and Billy Hart on drums. Free jazz with bop elements, nice balance between guitar and sax. B+(**) Pierre Dørge/Harry Beckett/Marilyn Mazur/Klavs Hovman: Echoez Of . . . (1990, Olufsen): Discogs lists Beckett, a trumpet player from Barbados who moved to the UK as a teenager in 1954, first, but I copied the top-to-bottom from the cover, where they were listed below the title. The song credits are split 4-4. Mazur plays drums, Hovman bass (they are, by the way, married). B+(**) Pierre Dørge & New Jungle Orchestra: Zim Zag Zimfoni (2000 [2001], Stunt): Danish guitarist-led ten piece group (plus a few guests), see the world as their oyster, ripe for the picking, with one title exemplifying their roots ("Ellingtonian Space Is the Place") and others evoking Arab and African lands ("Arab Klap" is a rousing intro). [6/11 tracks] B+(**) Pierre Dørge: Blui (2014 [2015], SteepleChase): The Danish guitarist and New Jungle Band leader drops back to a quartet here -- a format he hadn't used since 36 years before -- with Kirk Knuffke (cornet), Thommy Andersson (bass), and Hamid Drake (drums). Faintly exotic but fairly minimal, the cornet a bright spot. B+(**) Lisbon Improvisation Players: Live_LxMeskla (2000 [2002], Clean Feed): Portuguese free jazz group, three saxophonists -- Rodrigo Amado (alto/baritone), Paulo Curado (alto/soprano), and Marco Franco (soprano) -- plus bass and drums. The first of three albums to 2006, with Amado going on to an especially distinguished solo career. B+(**) MIKE: May God Bless Your Hustle (2017, self-released): Promising debut mixtape, beats very underground, has some flow but not obvious, draws "feat." spots on 7/16 but no one I've heard of. B+(**) The Rolling Stones: The Rolling Stones [UK] (1964, Decca): Like the Beatles, the Stones' early albums were released in different configurations in the UK and US. Their debut landed in the US as The Rolling Stones (England's Newest Hitmakers) six weeks later, the only change swapping in the Buddy Holly cover Not Fade Away" for a terrific version of Bo Diddley's "Mona." Nine covers, three originals (including a Phil Spector co-credit), no actual hits (although "Not Fade Away" went to 3 in UK). Remarkable touch for r&b covers, but the one Jagger-Richard credit points to the future ("Tell Me"). A- The Rolling Stones: The Rolling Stones No. 2 [UK] (1965, Decca): Starts to get messy here, as London rushed a second US album out in October 1964 before this second UK album came out in January 1965 -- followed a month later by a third US release, The Rolling Stones, Now! Again, nine covers and three new originals, all sharp but no classics. The two US releases are, if anything, both a shade better. B+(***) The Rolling Stones: Out of Our Heads [UK] (1965, Decca): US release came first, on July 30, followed by UK on September 24, then the US-only December's Children (And Everybody's) (with the UK Out of Our Heads cover pic). Eschewing singles (aside from the US hit "Heart of Stone"), the UK version contains four originals and eight covers, while the US version split six-to-six, adding "The Last Time," "Play With Fire" and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." A- The Rolling Stones: Aftermath [UK] (1966, Decca): First album with nothing but Jagger-Richards songs, the 14-cut, 53:20 UK edition appeared on April 15, 1966. That must have seemed overly generous to the US label: for their June 20 release, they dropped four songs (including the singles "Mother's Little Helper" and "Out of Time"), then added the latest hit, "Paint It Black." A- The Rolling Stones: Between the Buttons [UK] (1967, Decca): The last of the UK albums reshuffled by the US label, dropping two songs ("Back Street Girl" and "Please Go Home") in favor of two hit singles ("Let's Spend the Night Together" and "Ruby Tuesday" -- both reappeared on the US-only Flowers later in 1967, along with the missing songs, a couple other singles, two US-dropped songs from Aftermath, and a couple of previously unreleased tunes). That should favor the US version, but this was the first Stones album I bought (after a bunch of singles and the Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass compilation) and I wound up playing it to death, reveling in every nuance (of which there were many). Also, the two missing songs, equally familiar through Flowers, fit better. Whoever dropped "Please Go Home" needs their head examined. A The Rolling Stones: Got Live if You Want It! (1963-66 [1966], Abkco): Short (33:25) live album, filled a marketing gap but was later disowned by the band. Mostly from their post-Aftermath tour, plus a couple of older tracks (the earliest a cover of "Fortune Teller." All but their change-of-pace hit "Lady Jane" are hard and sharp, including a couple of my favorites from the day. Lots of audience noise to remind you how popular they were. B+(***) The Rolling Stones: The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (1968 [1996], Abkco): Soundtrack to an "ill-fated 1968 TV special," meant to promote Beggars Banquet by staging a circus with various guest acts, including Jethro Tull, the Who, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithfull, and the Dirty Mac (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, John Lennon, Eric Clapton, and Mitch Mitchell, joined with an amusing Yoko Ono screech on one cut). The Stones open in circus spirit with a bit of "Entry of the Gladiators," followed by their guests mostly for one song each, winding up with a six recent/new Stones songs -- which tower over everything else. B+(**) The Rolling Stones: Made in the Shade (1969-74 [1975], Rolling Stones): Not quite "the best of the Mick Taylor years" -- the guitarist, formerly of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, joined the band for Let It Bleed. But Decca owned it, so it got slotted into Abkco's Hot Rocks 1971-72 compilations, and this picks up from there: three songs each from two of their greatest albums (Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street), two each trying to salvage singles from the group's first descent into mediocre self-parody (Goat's Head Soup and It's Only Rock 'n' Roll) -- not especially interesting picks in either case, just conventionally canonical. B+(**) The Rolling Stones: Black and Blue (1976, Rolling Stones): After 1972's Exile on Main Street, the Stones seemed to be stuck in a mid-life crisis. Ron Wood replaced Mick Taylor here, and that seems to have put them more into a partying mood. Still, just eight tracks including a cover of "Cherry Oh Baby" to lend a whiff of Jamaica, and two decent but minor singles ("Hot Stuff," which won't dislodge Donna Summer from your brain, and "Fool to Cry"), one pleasant surprise ("Hand of Fate"), and one called "Memory Motel" which suggests early-onset dementia. B+(**) The Rolling Stones: Still Life (American Concert 1981) (1981 [1982], Rolling Stones/Virgin): Amusing nod to America to use "Take the A Train" as intro and Hendrix's arrangement of "Star Spangled Banner" as outro, but both are very brief. Four newish (1978-81) songs, including a very energetic "Start Me Up" (from Tattoo You), with old songs from the mid-1960s ("Satisfaction" through "Under My Thumb") plus a Motown remake they could have done then, but nothing from their elf-proclaimed "greatest" era. Sounds about right. B+(***) The Rolling Stones: Undercover (1983, Rolling Stones): Still an impressive sounding band, but not a single song stuck with me (even the single, full title: "Undercover of the Night"), except for the one about chainsaws, which was unwelcome. B The Rolling Stones: Flashpoint (1989-90 [1991], Rolling Stones/Virgin): Another live one, a full 76 minutes including two new studio tracks at the end. The tour (Bill Wyman's last) was in support of Steel Wheels, which landed three (of 14) songs, the others fairly evenly distributed from "Satisfaction" to "Start Me Up." Dense and hard -- probably what gets the best response in the arenas they habituate, but the new songs are hard and dense too. B+(*) The Rolling Stones: Voodoo Lounge (1994, Virgin): The five-year studio album gap since Steel Wheels was their longest yet -- note that Jagger and Richards both released solo albums during the hiatus -- although their later gaps were 3, 8, and 11 years (and the latter was a blues cover album). Feels like they're just going through the motions, but it's not like they don't know how to do this. B+(*) The Rolling Stones: Bridges to Babylon (1997, Virgin): As the live albums show, from the mid-1970s on their arena act has only gotten harder, denser, and ultimately more brittle, especially on new songs which you've never heard any other way, and most likely won't remember anyway. Here they finally seem to be developing a sense of nuance -- something they've never had much interest in before, or for that matter much need of. Does help a bit. Actually, pretty good: Already Over Me." B+(**) The Rolling Stones: Live Licks (2002-03 [2004], Virgin, 2CD): Another of their periodic live releases: previous ones came out in 1966, 1970, 1977, 1982, 1991, 1995 (the acoustic Stripped), and 1998, with another in 2008 before they started dumping out bootlegs (14 from 2011-17). Not having a new album, the tour was packaged around the compilation 40 Licks, with the live album split between one disc of perennials and one of relative rarities (though second-tier songs from Some Girls aren't my idea of rarities, nor is "Rocks Off" second-tier, even on Exile). B+(**) Skadedyr: Kongekrabbe (2013, Hubro): Norwegian jazz band, twelve-pieces, self-described as "democratic-anarchistic," first album. Leaders play tuba and keyboards. I don't get much out of the vocals, but the eclectic music has its intriguing moments. B Skadedyr: Culturen (2016, Hubro): Second album, same group -- although Ina Sagstuen's vocals are much reduced, leaving a much more atmospheric form of anarchism. B+(*) John Tchicai & Pierre Dørge: Ball at Louisiana (1981 [1983], SteepleChase): Duo, alto sax and guitar, both also credited with voice and percussion, recorded live at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark. B+(*) Sidi Touré: Hoga (1996, Sterns Africa): First album -- at least the first noticed this far from Mali, a fairly classic slice of Sahel blues, or something like that. B+(***) Sidi Touré: Alafia (2013, Thrill Jockey): More, goes down easy but hard to make worthwhile distinctions. B+(**) Whirl: Revolving Rapidly Around an Axis (2014 [2015], Den): Tenor sax/clarinet (Tobias Delius), double bass (Adrian Fiskum Myhr), trombone (Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø). Avant, difficult, but not lacking the intended momentum. B+(**) [bc] NotesEverything streamed from Napster (ex Rhapsody), except as noted in brackets following the grade:
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