The Chester Records picks of the week - a soundcheck for revolution and a superb set of standards (Nation of Ulysses and Thelonious Monk)

Nation of Ulysses

for reviews click here

Monk

The Chester Records picks of the week - Sun gods and beer hounds (Guided by Voices and Sun Ra)

t-shirt by Jason Baldwin, available for purchase here

for my picks click here

Ra circa 1950

The Chester Records picks of the week - the contrasting qualities of Christmas albums and Guitar Evangelists (John Zorn/The Dreamers and Blind Willie Johnson)

Saft, Wollesen, Dunn, Baron, Ribot, Bapista and Zorn live at the Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville May 15 2008

words here

by Robert Crumb

The Chester Records picks of the week - a muddy modern psychester going pop and a masterful visit from the Long Tall One (Ducktails and Dexter Gordon)

Ducktails is Mike Mondanile

go here

Overflowing buckets of suave

The Chester Records picks of the week - free-form and far freakin' out (Ornette Coleman and The Grateful Dead)

well looky here



The Chester Records picks of the week - A double bass duo (electric, with vocals) and a good old fashioned punk band (an excellent contradiction in terms?) (Dos and Black Market Baby)

Kira + Watt = Dos

It's all here, people.



Black Market Baby



Folk-rock moderne and some 'blues-based folk-jazz' - The Chester Records picks of the week (Vic Chesnutt and The Jimmy Giuffre 3)

Vic Chesnutt. Photo by Carolyn Berk

the words are here

Jimmy Giuffre, Jim Hall and Ralph Pena

Ten from the '90s Part Eight (1997) - Myra Melford & Han Bennink ELEVEN GHOSTS CD (HatOLOGY)

Pianist Myra Melford has been on the scene for quite some time, but due to a limited amount of hours conflicting with countless other activities, some desired and others unwanted, I mostly know her by reputation and not by ear. A Windy City gal, she’s also identifiable as an element in the long march of post-Downtown NYC goings-on (working with Dave Douglas, Cuong Vu and others) as well as professor at UC Berkeley. It can certainly be daunting when a musician amasses a large body of unheard work, but the best thing to do when that situation arises is to simply open the lobes and jump on in, and ELEVEN GHOSTS, her 1997 duo release on HatOLOGY with drummer Han Bennink is a great place to start. On the disc’s opener “The First Mess”, Melford plays around with a tense, dark melodic line, adjusting the speed and tone of her playing while Bennink indulges in a spacious progression of blustery clatter. It’s a fine racket and one that’s not initially recognizable as jazz: slip this track into a long playlist of early ‘80s avant/industrial splut and I’m uncertain if it would raise an eyebrow, since it simmers like a soundtrack snippet from an under seen arts-grant-funded black and white film that concerns a woman in a log cabin who dreams she’s being pursued through the woods by an ominous Jean-Claude Brialy lookalike - a bit scary, but also rather swank. The pair doesn’t hover for long in this territory, however. “How Long Blues”, a classic tune of 1920s vintage from the masterful blues pianist Leroy Carr is celebrated, examined, deconstructed and then briefly brought back into something resembling its initial form. Along the way Melford flirts around and finally hits a groove that gets right up close to the sound that Roland Kirk goosed out of Horace Parlan in the mid ‘60s. And just as quickly she diverts from that cozy agreeability and dives headfirst into hot flurries of Taylor-esque energy runs. But where some post-Cecil keyboard maulers are uncomfortable or unable to redirect the explosiveness of their playing into quieter, more reflective places, Melford shows her Chicago roots and reins the music back to a calm abstraction that subtly nudges into a culmination of overt bluesy business. And of course she interacting with Bennink as well, who’s thundering along like a champ. Anybody who digs the Art Ensemble’s playful and loving shake-ups of tradition should welcome this warm and soothing lozenge. “Frank Goes To” is credited to Melford but is very much a showcase for Bennink’s ability to combine an abstract sensitivity with an almost haywire thunderous approach, essentially integrating Gene Krupa, Max Roach and Sunny Murray into one manic yet disciplined sensibility. He does lay-out though, and Melford’s playing is reminiscent of Don Pullen at his most angular.  Jazz duos are quite often engaged with space, placing the players in a silent field where the connection to their respective instruments is greatly magnified and deep listening can occur.



As a solo turn for Bennink, “Another Mess” illustrates this quite well, and he percussively skitters anxiously all over his instrument, his sonic rumination including what sounds like the bowing of probable cymbals. Along the way he’s inspired to vocalize a very pertinent question, addressing the notion that avant-garde music is created in an intellectual vacuum, an idea that Bennink’s dynamic and engaging personality easily frustrates. “Which Way Is That?” begins with more solo meditating from Han, but when Melford enters a sound is conjured that reminds me very strongly of the stripped down advanced studies of Cecil’s Feel Trio or even his very great 1989 A&M CD IN FLORESCENCE with William Parker and Greg Bendian. It’s not long before Melford is resembling something like a very charged up and enthusiastically free version of mid-‘60s McCoy Tyner, but then she shifts gears into very melodic and approachable territory, recalling the very underrated and knowledgeably inside work of John Hicks. She returns seamlessly to more Taylor-esque explosiveness, and it’s readily apparent that Melford’s intense mastery of styles is devoted to examining the beauty inherent in the long history of jazz while keeping it focused on the future. Indeed, this is the concern of most avant-gardists, but Melford’s approach is quite individualistic and as such is worthy of deep salutation. It’s admittedly really difficult for the discourse on her pianistic ability to not almost continually reference Taylor, who along with Ornette simply looms like a giant as one of the last remaining free masters of the original wave and an obvious deep influence on Melford’s playing. But there were other players approaching the instrument in a free context in the ‘60s and ‘70s: curiously her hometown predecessor Muhal Richard Abrams doesn’t immediately spring to mind except in their shared non-coastal approach to tradition. Frankly, I hear more Pullen and Dave Burrell, and “Three Ghosts” does sound like a passage from a fictitious Actuel due session between Burrell and Andrew Cyrille. Much of this is due to Bennink’s shift into identifiably late-‘60s American free drum mode, which isn’t surprising since as mentioned elsewhere on this blog he contributed to Marion Brown’s rip-roaring expatriate masterpiece PORTO NOVO. The track is one of the few on ELEVEN GHOSTS that’s entirely outside, and it contrasts well with “Some Relief”, which is just the opposite in its brief nod back at Jelly Roll/stride/boogie-woogie exaltedness. It’d work great as a moldy-fig fake-out. But watch it, for those cats are fierce. “And Now Some Blues”, even though it opens with a burst of drumming in line with vintage Blakey, is quite abstracted for most of its duration, only showing a short glimpse of high barrelhouse atmosphere as it nears the end. It’s enough though, showing that the idea of “inside/outside” can prove incredibly successful beyond just the context of free-bop. It’s tempting to credit Melford as the one woman realization of the goals attempted by the late ‘70s summit meeting of Mary Lou Williams and Taylor (see what I mean about how he dominates the discourse?). The fruitful results of ELEVEN GHOSTS show that unlike many duos, the results of which present contrasting styles mingling into new sonic ventures, Melford and Bennink are likeminded collaborators with a combined eye on the past that develops extremely well as a study in contrasts since they often express themselves in different ways. “Now” is a great example of Han’s individuality. In the course of its two minutes the drumming never overtly references precedent, the spirit of Baby Dodds remaining implicit. Did I say spirit? These two really know how to title a CD. Like a commentary on Bennink’s work on that piece, “And Now” is packed with full on Taylor tilting, building with dense intensity toward an abrupt end that gives way to the record’s excellent coda, a lovely rumination on Scott Joplin’s timeless “Maple Leaf Rag”. This points her firmly back to Chicago, but not in the expected way, recalling Anthony Braxton’s DUETS 1976 with none other than Muhal Richard Abrams. So Abrams and Melford appear close than I thought. How shifty. ELEVEN GHOSTS is eleven tracks of expertly delivered improvisation and is a fantastic doorway into the work of this world class composer/pianist.

Seems like every other week it's hardcores and jazzbos up in here- The Chester Records picks of the week

reviews of Government Issue and the Miles Davis Quintet here

unlikely developments and greatness long-established - The Chester Records Picks of the Week

thoughts on OFF! and Charles Mingus here



Happy face/Stern face - The Chester Records Picks of the Week.



words on Robert Pollard & Ray Charles here



Pass the jellybeans, I think I'm Jobriath: The Chester Records Picks Of The Week

Reviews of Circle Pit and Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane here



The BYG/Actuel Series Part Five: Steve Lacy- MOON (Actuel 52)

Facts are facts, but we all have our individual realities, bent and shaped by ever evolving perceptions and awareness impacted largely by experience. It’s inarguable that BYG/Actuel was one of the many labels dedicated to releasing avant-garde jazz during its initial explosion, but the solidity of this fact leads to wildly differing realities. For Steve Lacy and Sunny Murray, the men behind BYG were crooks and gangsters, but Gong’s Daevid Allen felt that Jean Georgakarakos and Jean Luc Young were leaders in the advancement of the counter-culture. You might quibble that I’m confusing reality with opinion, but it’s my impression (my reality, if you’ll indulge me) that opinions are easily formed (and changed) while our individual realities are often impossible to shake. Again, experience. Lacy, Murray and Allen held their above positions into the new millennium, a very long time after Actuel ceased to function as a thriving entity. Even when operating far outside conventional norms, jazzmen are still jazzmen (and women, yes), and the reality for Lacy and Murray is that they were ripped off. Allen arrived at the label from the burgeoning Hippie Movement and still feels the founders were prime instigators of cultural change. Getting paid vs. revolutionary intent: Oil and water, yes, but in the case of BYG/Actuel these perhaps contradictory sensibilities were equally essential to what has ultimately proven to be the label’s enduring relevance. What are my personal thoughts on the issue?



To begin, I can understand Allen’s way of thinking, but find it naïve in a very hippy/radically lefty sort of way. Now, I’m quite friendly with much of the radical left and some of my best pals are hippies. But in this instance celebrating the effects to the exclusion of all else leaves the cause off the hook and misses a big part of the picture. I’d like to think that deep down Allen knows Georgakarakos and Young (to say nothing of Jacques Bisceglia, the B in the BYG triumvirate) were engaging in predatory behavior toward artists existing on the margins. But maybe he doesn’t. Maybe Allen feels to his core that what I consider exploitation or even robbery is really an outmoded and malignant idea, that property is theft to beat an abused old drum, even the artistic property of Lacy and Murray’s vast imaginations. If so, I think he’s wrong, but rampant greed has played such a huge part of current events that I’ll stop short of any antagonistic digs at Daevid Allen, whose music I really like and who seems like a gentle, positive sort. And here I am calling Allen naïve, but it’s just as pudding-headed to not acknowledge that the very discography this series of blog-posts celebrates is the inseparable byproduct of foul behavior. So let me go ahead and acknowledge that I find this specific reality to be quite unshakable. The road to hell might be paved with good intentions, but it’s just as reliable that the path to an amazing body of music can be built on nefarious scheming. It’s been reported that Steve Lacy’s MOON was the result of notably egregious behavior, with tapes made in Italy being acquired by BYG and then released without any form of payment, and as the penultimate entry in the Actuel catalog, it stands to reason that its release was the byproduct of a blatant money grab as the company’s operations wound to a close.

What really sticks in the craw is MOON’s level of quality. This was Lacy’s second recording after returning to Europe from the extended stay in Argentina that resulted in the amazing ESP-Disk THE FOREST AND THE ZOO (with Enrico Rava and South African expats Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo) and it’s obvious he was massively fired up to be back on the Continent. As previously reported in this site, Lacy is one of the avant-garde’s fiercest vessels of deep tradition, so even when he’s engaged in furious flights of abstract expressionism he’s also forging ahead with an extended nay infinite dialogue with past masters. But MOON attains levels of scorching density where the uninitiated might find it difficult to detect the complex weave of old and new. There are further curiosities and points of significance, starting with the unusual instrumentation of this group and the members that fuel its fire.

Irene Aebi

His future wife, Swiss cellist and vocalist Irene Aebi is here as is notable French weird-meat Jacques Thollot on drums (whose QUAND LE SON DEVIENT AIGU - JETER LA GIRAFE A LA MER release from ’71 is a very fine case of agreeably proggy experimental strangeness). The remaining members are unheralded yet worthy Italians, namely Marcello Melis on bass, Claudio Volonte on clarinet and Italo Toni on trombone. Melis has a handful of dates (two on Black Saint) that I need to catch up with, but other than playing on Lacy’s ROBA LP on Saravah (recorded three months before this one), Volonte and Toni are unfortunate ciphers. I might just be looking in the wrong places, though.

Marcello Melis

MOON is roughly equally comprised of breath, clatter and ache, which makes sense since the band is divided between horns and rhythm with Aebi’s cello serving as a subtle adhesive. The brawny bluster of Toni’s trombone naturally works to counterbalance the thinner, more serpentine tones of the clarinet and soprano. Lacy and Volonte entangle the ‘bone’s authoritative skronk like electric vines. It’s not all aggressive heaviness, however. Along with angular detours there is swaying lyricism, rhythmic dexterity and maybe most importantly compositional brilliance. Made up of five Lacy originals, MOON might just be the toughest, rawest expression of the man’s tunes that I’ve heard. My favorite moments are probably the ecstatic stabbing of Aebi’s vocals on the raucous “Note” and the loose, shifting momentum of the album’s closer and Thollot showcase “The Breath’, but there’s nothing here that’s not in the very top tier of advanced improvisation.

Jacques Thollot

With that said, MOON is just a small part of Steve Lacy’s huge discography, and it stands as only a fraction of the Actuel story. It also has the burden of relative scarcity working against it, so it’s no surprise this record is seldom more than fleetingly discussed in relation to Lacy’s oeuvre or to the avant-jazz scene of the time. And maybe that’s completely appropriate given the dubious circumstances of the record’s origin. The late Steve Lacy probably would’ve preferred the discussion of his work to be focused on recordings made and released in good faith, and while there are plenty of those, MOON is simply too great to be left out of the dialogue.

Music, y'know? The Chester Records' Picks Of The Week

Words of praise for Weekend (the band) and Sonny Rollins (the living legend) here



Longhairs and hepcats (additional writings)





More thoughts from the keyboard of yrs truly here

A tribute to three departed masters: Solomon Burke, Marion Brown & Ari Up

While it’s certain that Solomon Burke is permanently ensconced in the annals of deep soul, it’s also true that his legacy has suffered a bit over the decades due to his lack of any truly chartbusting pop hits. An association with Atlantic Records certainly worked in his favor, as did the partisanship of acts like The Rolling Stones, but Burke somehow never managed to invade the Pop Top 20, and that fact means many casual listeners are familiar with the man by name rather than through his music. Of course, the curious could’ve picked up Rhino’s excellent 2CD overview of his Atlantic period titled HOME IN YOUR HEART and been well versed in the power and range inherent in his selected work. And since Burke was first and foremost a singles artist, the wide inclusiveness of HOME is useful to more than just newbies. It really deserves space on the shelves of soul fans of any perceptible magnitude, but it’s also a fairly intensive study: you can cue up the set, make out with yr squeeze, get it on nice and slow, have a little tiff that develops into a full blown argument, break up, make up and make out again before the 41 tracks have completed their course. Yes, I’m exaggerating, but am in no way criticizing. I always prefer collections to be exhaustive in their documentary zeal, but it’s also very hard to fault the more digestible oomph found in a couple of his prime LPs from early in his Atlantic tenure. The first is 1963’s IF YOU NEED ME, and it finds Burke carving out territory that’s at times quite similar to Sam Cooke’s gospel drenched innovations.

There is a powerful current of southern grit and sweat in Burke’s delivery, and his extension of Cooke’s malleable template is sometimes comparable to Otis Redding. But just as often he’s onto something different. Much of this is due to how his gutbucket belting and captivating restraint interacted with the Atlantic production team’s slicker, more finesse oriented approach. Factor in the desire of his label to dabble in experimentation against the safety-net of formula (in the hopes of both breaking new ground and also landing chart success) and the stylistic diversity of this record shouldn’t be at all surprising. That Burke feels natural in such a wide variety of circumstances is testament to his talent, IF YOU NEED ME never feeling unfocused, and for material that wasn’t largely conceived for inclusion on a long playing record, that’s quite an achievement. It’s true that the man is most natural when he’s solidly in his wheelhouse below the Mason-Dixon Line, particularly on the Wilson Pickett penned title track and the infectiously boisterous faux-dance ditty “Stupidity”, but it’s maybe most impressive how he’s able to successfully interpret styles that seem outside his comfort range, namely ‘50s style Platters R&B, Brook Benton-esque pop-soul, and even some flashes of Presley-ite hip-swagger. If this LP makes a statement for the scope of Burke’s talent, then the following year’s ROCK AND SOUL soundly expands upon it and also amplifies many of the singer’s strengths.

While Burke could make honey with a horn section just fine, he’s even better at interacting with strong backing vocalists while the band cooks up a tough mid-tempo groove. His work never really displays the sonic density that paved the way for funk, instead opting for spaciousness that casts a wide net over so many differing styles. ROCK AND SOUL adds an unlikely wrinkle to the equation with two cuts which display his interpretive skill with country & western material, namely “Just Out of Reach Of My Two Empty Arms” (recorded by Patsy Cline) and “He’ll Have To Go” (a smash hit for Jim Reeves). This gesture toward C&W is very likely directly related to Ray Charles’ crossover recordings for ABC, and Burke’s proclivity for the genre is readily apparent. ROCK AND SOUL also deepens his gospel sensibility without sacrificing anything in terms of diversity, and coupling these two records on yr personal box while spending a smart night at home with a warm and willing partner makes a whole lot of sense, romantic and otherwise. Uncork the bottle, cue up the tunes and slow dance, Casanova. Solomon Burke’s importance far exceeds the assured majesty of these two LPs (both available for download, by the way), so further investigation will be required for all but the skimpiest or stingiest of listeners. His most influential tune “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love” is absent from both records, for instance. Again, HOME IN YOUR HEART is about as necessary as a two disc single artist soul comp gets. But HOME lacks a slew of cuts from both of these albums, and absorbing to them over the last month makes it clear they shouldn’t be neglected. The crossroads of soul, R&B and the fertile garden of ‘60s pop unfolds beautifully on IF YOU NEED ME and ROCK AND SOUL, presenting something close to what it was like to hear this stuff at the time, sitting in a bedroom or a basement or a den as a needle traveled groove and time hurdled forward yet somehow stood exasperatingly still. Something offhand and everyday yet in retrospect voluminous and undying. Something infused with the enduring power of art.


I guess my two favorite Marion Brown records are AFTERNOON OF A GEORGIA FAUN (ECM 1970) and GEECHEE RECOLLECTIONS (Impulse! 1973), but I don’t think either of those gems are really the best place to start if you’re just getting acquainted with the discography of this avant-jazz master. In 1965 he appeared on both Archie Shepp’s FIRE MUSIC and John Coltrane’s ASCENSION, two indispensible documents of the New Thing in all its fervent glory, so if you don’t know those classics it’s best to take care of that bit of business first. From there, any of Brown’s records as a leader from ’65-‘68 qualify as a suitable entry into his considerable body of work, particularly the Impulse! date THREE FOR SHEPP and his pair of titles in the ESP-Disk saga MARION BROWN QUARTET and WHY NOT? Easily overlooked however, primarily because they’re harder to find, are a couple of electrifying sessions titled JUBA LEE and PORTO NOVO, the former a studio septet featuring a key collection of players, the later a high flying live trio summit meeting with two Dutch avant giants.

JUBA LEE finds Brown’s soaring, searching alto joined by future Miles tenor man Bennie Maupin, the huge trombone voice of Grachan Moncur III and the fascinating trumpeter/flugelhornist Alan Shorter. Throw in Dave Burrell’s sturdy piano, Reggie Johnson’s tough, supple bass and drummer Beaver Harris’s flowing approach to implied swing and you’ve got a roster that’s capable of burning and boiling with the very best of ‘em. And while they certainly attain moments in full-on torch the barn mode, JUBA LEE is far more than just furious blowing and racket, offering depth that’s thick with the undertones of jazz tradition. “512e12” begins with a short bit of disjointed fanfare before shifting into territory that combines the grand swoosh of Fire Music’s energetic rawness with a loose approach to compositional improv which recalls the wilder end of Ornette’s early Harmolodic advancements. The extended bout of solos that ensues, all fifteen and a half minutes worth, portrays a well developed interweaving of complimentary voices. The saxophones of Brown and Maupin adroitly blend together to skronk with an undercurrent of thorny bluesiness, and the sliding moans and agitated gusts of notes from Moncur’s trombone is well matched with Shorter’s idiosyncratic approach, his abstract fluidity feeling at times like a mixture of Don Cherry and early Bill Dixon. Burrell’s versatile piano blends irritated choppiness and clamor with an expert melodiousness and mingles shrewdly with the rhythm team. To me Harris is a bit like the free jazz answer to Billy Higgins or Roy Haynes in how his abstractions seem tied to a forward motion that feels descended from post-bop, and he works exceptionally well in the backfield with the Garrison-esque Johnson, who’s one of the more neglected New Thing players (along with FIRE MUSIC and Brown’s ESP debut, he’s on Dixon’s INTENTS AND PURPOSES, The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra’s COMMUNICATIONS, Shorter’s ORGASM, Valdo Williams’ fascinating obscurity NEW ADVANCED JAZZ and a bunch of vibist Bobby Hutcherson’s swell late-‘60s albums. The man clearly deserves some more recognition). As “512e12” progresses, its initial anarchic qualities coalesce into an exceptional pattern of back-and-forth trade-offs that manage to navigate to a fine conclusion. From there, JUBA-LEE’s additional three tracks display an admirable sonic range, with the title cut’s forceful and quite pretty melody perhaps influenced by Albert Ayler’s approach to emphatic hummability. Its playfulness is welcome, and is in sharp contrast to the creeping darkness of the album’s closer “Iditus”, a Shorter composition that gives Burrell the responsibility of ruminating on a simple haunting line for twelve minutes while the horns build an increasingly tense atmosphere and the rhythm team adds to the thickening pulse. It’d make a great soundtrack to somebody’s B&W Super-8 horror project: A full moon, a broken down engine, a rickety old barn, something ominous off in the distance. No words, but a helluva lot of worry. JUBA-LEE compares well with recordings of the same era from groups like The New York Art Quartet and The New York Contemporary Five, due to leader Brown’s desire to examine collective equality as a vehicle for individualist expression, allowing the members to effectively communicate with their solo voices. Too bad it’s only been fleetingly in print on CD over the years. I’ve never seen a copy, only owning purloined downloads, and it would be nice if somehow this (and the whole Fontana free-jazz catalog, for that matter) could be restored to legit availability. It would be a big step in showing the creative depth of Brown in his earliest years, where he’s sometimes painted as just a Coltrane/Shepp acolyte. An easier way of getting to the core of Brown’s power is to cop PORTO NOVO, which IS in print, and delight in its stripped-down, spacious magnificence.

A trio that features stalwart Euro-jazz figures Han Bennink on drums and Maarten Altena on bass playing live in ’67 in the city of Soest, it finds them working, at least in spirit, in the inexhaustible tradition of Sonny Rollins’ WAY OUT WEST. A more appropriate sonic comparison might be Coleman’s mid ‘60s trio with David Izenzon and Charles Moffett that produced both volumes of AT THE GOLDEN CIRCLE, though this muscular triangle doesn’t favor any particular strand of influence other than the tradition of jumping on the bandstand and blowing yr top. Those familiar and simpatico with Bennink’s unique style will not be disappointed, and chronologically this appears to be Altena’s recording debut (edging out Nedley Elstak’s ESP-Disk THE MACHINE by a few months), so it holds much import. The original LP featured five tracks that spotlight some of Brown’s most aggressive yet lyrical playing as the Dutchmen hold their own and lend valuable commentary and interaction. The currently available Black Lion CD/download deal adds two tracks from a 1970 duo recording on Freedom by Brown and trumpeter Leo Smith titled CREATIVE IMPROVISATION ENSEMBLE that finds the saxophonist successfully working in a roughly AACM-like context. This is conceptually much different than the trio stuff, but it’s not at all unwelcome. It’s what some folks call “added value”, but I’d never use such gauche terminology (By the way, the full 1970 recording with Smith was also part of a 2LP set on Freedom titled DUETS that held a separate session with electronic musician Elliot Schwartz. It’s out of print but not hard to locate on the net). Marion Brown’s status as an integral part of the ‘60s avant-jazz landscape has suffered somewhat over the years, and it seemed the longer many of his key recordings remained out of print the less likely they were to be reissued. But I find that complaining about an artist’s notoriety is something I do far too often in this space, and that Brown, while surely underrated, hasn’t endured anything approximate to the neglect suffered by legions of jazz players, many of whom hardly had the opportunity to record at all. Marion Brown has a sizeable discography and it’s around if you want to find it.

I first heard The Slits upon purchasing a cherry used copy of the amazing Rough Trade comp WANNA BUY A BRIDGE?, with their track “Man Next Door” providing a slinky, dubby, hissy mess of UK post-punk that stood out in the midst of some serious company. Shortly thereafter, I located the band’s 1979 album CUT and quickly understood that my thoughts concerning late-‘70s Brit post-punk were due for reappraisal. You see, up to that point, I was a solid Raincoats man. My admiration for the ‘coats is still high as a junky kite, but upon dishing CUT onto my platter it quickly became obvious I simply had to make room for The Slits. They were a personal revelation in numerous ways, first being how they so successfully integrated such a heavy Jamaican influence into their music. Up to that point, I was quite suspicious of non-island musicians playing island sounds, and while I’ve surely lightened up a bit with age, I’ll still say there was a high historical level of suspect skankin’ going on, particularly in Merry Old England. What helped The Slits succeed was a blunt attraction to the screwy weirdness of the best dub. Many of their punky peers were instead attempting to replicate the much trickier tradition of smooth and soulful Jamaican stuff, and while I’ll admit to developing an appreciation for certain examples of brittle Brit-ska, I’ll also add that precious little from this style is much more than passable. But The Slits were experimenters, and that’s how their music crossed an ocean and spanned a decade to help influence a slew of wound up mostly female musicians that sparked the explosion of Riot Grrl. Vocalist Ari Up, guitarist Viv Albertine, drummer Palmolive and bassist Tessa Pollitt were the lineup that led to the recording of CUT, though Palmolive bailed before the session to join those aforementioned Raincoats, where she made a huge contribution to their debut LP.

She was replaced by future Banshee Budgie, and it was at this point that Ari really became the prism through which The Slits’ creativity was refracted. As vocalist, this shouldn’t be a surprise, but it must be stressed that Ari Up’s flamboyant, confrontational, aggressively fun-loving personality, when combined with her immense talent, basically elevated her to the pantheonic level in punk’s twisted history, and her status as inspired gadfly continues to stick in the craw of assorted grumps and chumps to this very day. Initially, the naysayers derided The Slits as being a prankish lark instead of a “real” “band”, the nattering nabobs apparently missing how that argument was often leveled against punk as an entire genre. The more measured dismissals were likely due to a lack of any obvious musical precedent for the band. Plus, to this very moment many observers admire punk more in theory than in actual practice, so they naturally often unconsciously gravitate toward the conventional. The more hostile detractors of The Slits surely recognized them as the disrupters they were and felt threatened by their upset to the (essentially male) hegemony. The early, Palmolive-era Slits are prominently documented through their first two sessions for the John Peel program, and they can be found in numerous packages, though the best bang for the buck would be the remastered two-CD set CUT DELUXE EDITION from last year. Those tracks present a raw and ragged prototype for Riot Grrl’s righteous and vociferous defiance. In a blindfold test, folks only familiar with CUT’s deep production (via Dennis Bovell) and advanced aesthetic just might peg these 1977 air checks as originating from the early ‘90s Pacific Northwest via the Kill Rock Stars or K labels. The vast difference between the Peel and CUT recordings of “New Town” and “Instant Hit” really emphasizes post-punk’s rapid fire growth and innovation while lending proof to The Slits’ lasting worth. The DELUXE release includes, in addition to the original LP and the radio sessions, an embarrassment of bonus cuts that while largely different mixes and versions of album tracks still do a great job of avoiding the redundancy that expanded editions often engender. It bookends incredibly well with what I consider The Slits’ other essential document, Y3LP – THE OFFICIAL BOOTLEG, a deliberately low-budget/street-level slab that refuses to give up its status as fascinatingly confounding.

The low fidelity murk of “A Boring Life” and “Or What Is It?” could easily pass for the double A-sides of a limited and long gone late-‘90s 7” of prime non-retro garage-punk. From there everything feels fed through a Dadaist auto-splicer. The most prominent theme is a strung-out and twisted approach to rhythm. One extended passage wiggles around like a wonky tribal ritual enacted in an airport parking lot, and there’s some aggressive acoustic strum and holler that could’ve been taped in either Calvin Johnson’s modest backyard or Greil Marcus’s vast study. Cake-walks or Kurt Schwitters, you decide. It ends with a wonderful snippet of a very choice live performance where The Slits collided with The Subway Sect and The Prefects to throttle “Sister Ray” but good. Y3LP unravels like a fever dream remembrance of punk at its most uncompromising and non-commercial, and as such is a fine testament to the band, the era and the spirit and ingenuity of Ari Up. Like Solomon and Marion, it’s doubtful we’ll ever see her like again.

 

Viv Albertine, Palmolive, Tessa Pollitt, and Ari Up

Three recent listens: Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Angles, Sharon Van Etten

Back in the day, if a smart set of ears wanted a comp of vintage Screamin’ Jay Hawkins material, the best bet was FRENZY, which the Edsel label lovingly kicked out around ’81 or so. During the tail end of the LP era, if you stumbled onto a Screamin’ Jay section in a particularly happening indie record shop, it was almost guaranteed it would be fortified with at least one copy of that fine 14-track collection. Well, roughly a decade later, in a rare display of corporate smarts, Epic corralled 19 of this demented behemoth’s cuts onto compact disc, titled it COW FINGERS AND MOSQUITO PIE, adorned it with a swell cover courtesy of artist Kathy Staico Schorr, and offered it up for those who can’t resist a good time. And while the worthiness of FRENZY is still intact since three tracks from the former remain unique to that edition, COW FINGERS is assuredly stuffed to the maximum with this magnificently twisted gent’s overwrought strangeness. Jay Hawkins is often denigrated by the stingy and the stodgy as an early rock ‘n’ roll novelty act, but actually listening to the guy shows just how much weird depth was in his grasp before the nose-bone shtick totally took over. A man of legitimate operatic talent and aspiration whose booming voice just happened to be perfect for the echo laden production values of R&B-spiked mid-‘50s jukebox junk, Hawkins occasionally approached the booming stately presence of Paul Robeson, one of his early influences. The majority of the time his stuff was infused with a screwball humor that revealed him to be in stylistic cahoots with another neglected ‘50s act, The Coasters. Look down on this stuff if you must, but kids (of all ages) wanted to laugh, y’know? And while he’s no Bo Diddley in the undercover diversity department, those who are only familiar with his still immaculate “I Put a Spell On You” (as grand a testament to the powers of excess booze on the artistic process as has ever been documented) might be surprised by the breadth of what’s here. Tracks like “Little Demon” and “You Ain’t Foolin’ Me” prove that he could really sizzle in an essentially straight up R&B context and his stern goof on Cole Porter’s “I Love Paris” feels like a legit antecedent to the kind of inspired tomfoolery that Biz Markie bestowed upon the early rap scene. Sadly, it’s undeniable that “Hong Kong” is as racist a relic as Mickey Rooney’s unfortunate turn in Blake Edwards’ BREAKFAST AT TIFFANYS; Warren Smith’s “Ubangi Stomp” simply pales in comparison. But hey, those were less enlightened times. The naked truth is that tunes like “Yellow Dress” and “There’s Something Wrong With You” have inspired across generational divides and continue to be crucial to this day. Just ask Poison Ivy of the Cramps or (of course) Jim Jarmusch. Hell, I bet a couple of relative new-jacks like King Khan and Mark Sultan would tell you the same. The essence of this stuff simply won’t die.

Nothing contempo is kicking my ass quite like Angles’ EPILEPTICAL WEST- LIVE IN COIMBRA CD from the excellent Clean Feed label. I’d stupidly overlooked the debut of this Scandinavian jazz sextet, 2008’s EVERY WOMAN IS A TREE, but I’ll be remedying that slight on my next Emusic roundup. Their first release was dedicated to the women of Iraq, and that boldly humanist statement sheds much light on the incendiary mixture of music and message leader Martin Küchen is compelled to blast into the stratosphere. This sophomore effort finds an excellent improvising collective successfully navigating a longstanding tradition of political music; specifically, they stick relatively close to a generally accessible center in an obvious attempt to relate to a potentially larger audience. Frankly, for most this is a hazardous trap. While Phil Ochs or Archie Shepp shrewdly married art and ideology, thousands of well intentioned individuals and groups weren’t so lucky. This was the heart of John Fahey’s beef with Pete Seeger, and I know many who don’t really cotton to Dylan until after he went electric and started getting lyrically obscure. As an erudite gent one told me, the poster remains the best avenue for political discourse. Yeah, certainly, but occasionally some person(s) slip(s) in a righteous haymaker. And this release by Angles is one of those, largely because it’s political without being polemical or rife with sung/shouted slogans (which only ever really works in hard folk or punk rock contexts). This is instrumental music, conceived with conviction but simultaneously existing simply as inspired sound. When you hear the sheer power of the playing and then marry it to Küchen and company’s civic minded sensibility, never is there a worry over the potential obnoxiousness (the bluntness, the naivety) of words sullying the atmosphere. So, enough about this aspect of Angles, and onward into the sonic sweet spot at which they so expertly excel. To be blunt, this is some fine jazz. While it’s surely a product of the avant/free continuum, please keep in mind what I typed above about accessibility. Much like some of the more recent efforts to feature the fingers of bassist extraordinaire William Parker, the focus is stridently on hitting a perfect balance of heaviness, abstraction and brutal, beautiful groove/swing. A striking group made up of bass, drums, three horns (trumpet, trombone, and alto) and vibes, Angles marry rhythm to throat/wind dexterity to produce an often joyous equality, so you really shouldn’t be a bit surprised when I impart how the heft of this stuff isn’t incongruous with dancing. And I’m talking the swaying, get lose and loose yrself type of physical celebration. Also in evidence is a generous helping of the sharp, tough gnaw that the post ‘60s free Euros basically perfected, sustained tightness that I can’t help but equate with the more outré wing of the pre-boogaloo/fusion Blue Note stable, and a wonderful indebtedness to the grandeur of rhythmic Africa that wraps back around to the classic Euro-free jazz blast via Peter Brötzmann Group’s FUCK DE BOERE: DEDICATED TO JOHNNY DYANI, a three-way combination that forms a concentric path of undiluted brilliance. Mattias Ståhl’s vibes really stick out in this fantastic equation. There hasn’t been much (or enough, I guess) serious progressive action on the mallets post Bobby Hutcherson and Karl Berger. Ståhl’s work is somewhat comparable to Hutcherson in its lack of virtuosic busyness. He doesn’t want to show, he just wants to tell. Magnus Broo’s trumpet is as strong as when I saw him live with Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet, and Küchen’s sax integrates hints of Dolphy and Ayler with the sort of well-conceived “inside” attack that I associate with great names like Cannonball Adderley and Joe Henderson. Mats Äleklint's trombone is fluid and huge. Along with holding down the bottom, bassist Johan Berthling can play arco like nobody’s business, and Kjell Nordeson’s drums smartly gravitate toward a mixture of force and restraint. These six are firing on full creative cylinders, and it feels like they’re just getting warmed up. What Angles ultimately produce is roughly approximate to the grandeur of Brotherhood of Breath, and this’ll be one of the year’s best, for sure. If you have any interest in the current state of improvisation, you should definitely snap it up.

Speaking of hot new ones, Sharon Van Etten’s second record EPIC finds her smartly developing her already potent sound into welcome new directions. There is a great picture of her currently making the internet rounds that finds her just candidly sitting at some modest table in a thick dark bathrobe while smoking a cigarette, and the no-bullshit honesty of that snap really gets to the heart of what makes her music so refreshingly special. I’ve reported before in this very place how Van Etten’s debut BECAUSE I WAS IN LOVE is an amazing dose of lonely late night folk. I think that record has the legs to last for decades, but it was also in a style that doesn’t lend itself to sustainability. EPIC finds her branching into the daylight without sacrificing any of the stuff that made her so initially intriguing. It’s always hard to not play the name-check the influence game, and in this case, when the references are as top-notch as Cat Power, Jeff/Tim Buckley and the Cali-nexus of Hope Sandoval and Kendra Smith, there is no use in not mentioning them. The seven tracks offered on this long EP haven’t abandoned the enthrallingly achy quality that made her work such an attention getter. Instead, she smartly shifted that bruised feel into a less overtly autobiographical context, and I for one feel that’s a sound decision. It’s far less a matter of her getting more “pro” and much more a development of sensible maturity. EPIC is a major step for an artist that could move into any number of solid directions. Based on the full band arrangements presented here, she seems well suited for collaboration, for instance. And her harmonium playing is a joy. I recommend both of her records to anyone that digs the ‘60s femme folkies (either American or Brit), the vital solo work of Skip Spence or Nick Drake and any of the above mentioned reference points. Play this in between SHE HANGS BRIGHTLY and THE GUILD OF TEMPORAL ADVENTURES and I think you’ll find it’s quite up to snuff. Sharon Van Etten is one of the small handfuls of current musicians that appear refreshingly unsaddled by the burden of career building maneuvers. If her new label Ba Da Bing could somehow arrange a three way tour with Beirut and Dead C I’d be there faster than you could say “I’ll chip in on gas”. This is very happening stuff. Jump on it now or play ketchup.

photo by Kristianna Smith

Ten from the '90s Part Seven (1997): The Joel Futterman/'Kidd' Jordan Trio with Alvin Fielder - SOUTHERN EXTREME CD (Drimala)

Pianist Joel Futterman was originally a Chicagoan, but he’s been a Virginia guy for a long time now. His roots are in the Windy City’s AACM (the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), and it certainly shows, though the immediate influence that impresses through his improvisational attack would be Cecil Taylor. The biggest noticeable difference between Futterman and many of the other Taylor-ite players on the scene is that he feels less like an exponent of a conservatory environment and more rooted in a classic jazzic “live-music” tradition: the club/rehearsal space as sound lab. This isn’t to infer that Futterman’s playing isn’t academically challenging (and rewarding), it just feels more descended from the hotspot that produced Taylor’s masterpiece NEFERTITI, THE BEAUTIFUL ONE HAS COME than the perhaps safer shelter of the accelerated learning atmosphere that’s aided the work of Anthony Braxton and the late Bill Dixon. I’m not proposing that the academy is inferior to the club stage (especially since there isn’t a player that ranks higher for me personally than Brax), I’m just observing. Futterman’s great gush is very much in the grand stream of “excellence through performance”, which is where the AACM influence really comes into focus. Having a founding AACM member to join the proceedings on SOUTHERN EXTREME gets those fine roots showing even more. Alvin Fielder is one of the lynchpin names in the history of the ‘60s Chicago avant-garde movement. He played on SOUND, Roscoe Mitchell’s essential Delmark release and then disappeared from the recording scene for a couple decades, moving to Mississippi and working as a pharmacist. In the ‘80s he reappeared through the indie-label jazz renaissance, hooking up with Futterman and others and thankfully insuring that his legacy would be something other than another lost name. Fielder is one of many underappreciated guys from the original avant-wave that learned and played extensively in an “inside” context” before satisfying the urge to head into fresh territory. He’s quite an expert on the subtleties of assorted modern jazz masters that proceeded and inspired him in the drum seat, and the deep effect that his knowledge and influence of history has on his playing makes him a fine partner not only for Futterman, but especially saxophonist Edward “Kidd” Jordan, a New Orleans legend whose profile has risen over the last few decades due to his deep connections with some long standing greats like William Parker, Hamid Drake and the late Fred Anderson. Jordan’s recorded pedigree is notable for its R&B sessions, including backing the great Professor Longhair, so it should be no surprise that his playing is infused with a sharp bluesy edge that could surely be described as Coltranian. Certainly Jordan was touched by the influence of John, and that certainty is quite pronounced at times in his work on SOUTHERN EXTREME, but it’ll probably be a bit more useful to describe his playing on this disc as remindful of the late Taylor collaborator Jimmy Lyons. Some may consider that a stretch since Lyons played alto and Jordan, a multi-instrumentalist, sticks to tenor on this date. A few of Futterman’s earliest recordings included work with Lyons (stuff I REALLY want to hear), so I’ll admit to that knowledge possibly influencing the above comparison. But only a little bit. Because there are long passages on this live recording that boil like a smaller group version of Taylor’s amazing UNIT STRUCTURES. There are also extended spots that don’t sound like that at all, including the end of track two, where Jordan works himself into a scorching lower-register frenzy that collides with Futterman, who appears to be channeling McCoy Tyner under the influence of trucker speed. When the pianist really connects with Fielder’s percussive abilities he can briefly summon a similarity to the great Muhal Richard Abrams (more Chicago), and furthermore occasionally tosses out ideas that seem inspired by players as diverse as Paul Bley, Andrew Hill and even Jaki Byard. He has a wide ranging conversational strength in his fingertips, but doesn’t stop there, also blowing a couple of fine horns, namely the soprano sax and Indian wood flute, and when he steps away from the keyboard to flex his lungs the sparks do indeed fly. The segments where wood flute and drums mingle and stretch out are a bit like falling through a time-hole to find Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell playing on a Copenhagen street corner for the sheer love of it on a cool overcast day in 1970 (or thereabouts). And the fine saxophone tussles with Jordan are some of the disc’s highlights.

In comparison to the late Richard Grossman or John Blum, Futterman’s done a whole lot of recording, appearing on over sixty releases. In spite of his prolific output, he remains terribly underappreciated as a top-rank post-Taylor improviser as vital to the continuing progress of the music as Marilyn Crispell, Matthew Shipp, or Myra Melford. Where Grossman’s neglect is comparable to the master pianist Herbie Nichols and Blum’s relative lack of opportunity thus far feels similar to the early portion of fellow piano great Horace Tapscott’s career (this of course is subject to change), Futterman’s lack of recognition seems to stem in part from his geographic circumstances, and the artist that I can’t seem to shake in relation to his work isn’t a pianist but a writer. Objectivist poet Lorine Niedecker spent the majority of her life in rural Wisconsin, and the largely posthumous interest in her outstanding work has revealed that her lifestyle was inextricably linked to her creativity. It seems incorrect to opine that the factors necessary for artists like Niedecker and Futterman to flourish also works against their best interests somehow. One surefire obstacle for creative minds is recognizing the environment that best suits their endeavors, and the notion that artists thrive on the often erratic pulse of the urban milieu is true for many, but obviously not for all. Joel Futterman is proof of that, as are Jordan and Fielder. If the trio on SOUTHERN EXTREME suffers a lack of recognition, the fault lies not with them or their outstanding work but with their potential audience’s lack of diligence. Seek and ye shall find, you know?

 

Along the river
      wild sunflowers
over my head
       the dead
who gave me life
      give me this
our relative the air
      floods
our rich friend
      silt
          -Lorine Niedecker