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 December 15, 2008 Seasonal Goodies The record industry is coughing up dust, or so I hear, as downloads and music servers take the place of any format you can hold in your hands and file away. Nonetheless, I still find in my mailbox each week a few discs awaiting my attention. And, fool or addict that I am, I still buy new and used CDs and LPs. So, with a few days left till Christmas, here are some music suggestions, plus, at the end, a book that fans of Miles Davis should check out. HeyBale!: The Last Country Album
Britain’s Decca Records created its Deram subsidiary in 1967, when it realized it couldn’t promote Moody Blues or Genesis records the same way it did Engelbert Humperdinck’s. One would assume that having the Rolling Stones on Decca’s roster would have given it some hip cred, but Deram gave the recording giant some indie-label gloss backed up by major-label promotional influence. Strange Pleasures: Further Sounds of the Decca Underground is a follow-up to Legend of a Mind: The Underground Anthology (2003), and, like the earlier set, this UK anthology collects psychedelic and progressive-rock tracks from the late 1960s and early ’70s. One Decca executive’s observation about the Moody Blues’ breakthrough 1967 album, Days of Future Passed, captures the confusion record labels must have felt about what was happening in rock in the late ’60s, as well as what set the music apart: "You can’t dance to it and you can’t play this record at a party." It turned out that the music on Strange Pleasures was played at parties, but no one was dancing. In addition to the aforementioned bands, Deram’s roster included Caravan, Curved Air, Ten Years After, and the Keef Hartley Band. Not every act on this set was known for prog rock, but most of the tracks lean in that direction. Some of the bands are perhaps best enjoyed in small doses (I feel that way about the Moodies), but others, such as Caravan, might bear closer examination. For American ears, obscurities abound: Denny Gerrard, T2, Egg, Tintern Abbey, World of Oz, all of them drenched in Mellotron and echo chambers. The music on Strange Pleasures is ambitious, sonically playful, exciting, and at times pretentious. It includes two tracks by cult favorite Bill Fay, as well as early work by Al Stewart and Thin Lizzy. Strange Pleasures is as compelling and, in its own odd way, as essential as any of the Nuggets collections. Pick it up quickly, though. Legend of a Mind is already out of print, and used copies command $150 and up. Excellent annotation and packaging. The Grip Weeds: Infinite Soul: The Best of the Grip Weeds
Industrial Jazz Group: Leef
Durkin’s humor and brains let him juxtapose styles and sounds to create unusual, highly entertaining effects. Challenging, slightly dissonant lines play over an R&B riff in "What’s in Anne’s Icebox," a Motown pop opening leads into a bit of Stan Kenton-ish grandeur in "Bongo Non Troppo," and vocals à la Brecht-Weil in "The Job Song" give way to a small-group swing arrangement. Durkin likes to put things together to see what happens; the excitement comes from hearing how seamlessly he constructs his compositions, and he’s lucky enough to be assisted by a band of 17 accomplished players and singers. "Big Ass Truck" is a clear homage to Zappa, but Durkin pays his greatest tribute to the maestro by grabbing musical ideas as they come along and following them, without fear, wherever they lead him. Greg Chako: Everybody’s Got a Name
Little Willie John: Nineteen Sixty Six: The David Axelrod & HB Barnum Sessions
Miles on Miles reflects some of the many complex facets of this brilliant, difficult musician. In a 1968 interview with drummer Art Taylor, he shares some serious observations about music, but also this gem in response to Taylor’s question about his favorite hobbies: "Making fun of white folks on television." Throughout the book, Davis is by turns combative, abusive, charming, and insightful. He treats Kishur Manwar, a college jazz DJ, with disdain, but could be unexpectedly cooperative with journalists who expected the worst. The editors were unable to include the transcript of Davis’s November 1989 interview with Harry Reasoner for 60 Minutes, or his interviews for Downbeat. The pieces they’ve chosen, however, provide a clear portrait of one of the 20th century’s great musicians, who was brutally honest, even about himself: "But me, I ain’t nice. I don’t care if you don’t like me -- as long as you can play." . . . Joseph Taylor
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I’m a relatively recent convert to
real country music. In the last 15 years, two of my friends have introduced me to the
glories of the best of the stuff, although since I was already a fan of Western Swing, it
didn’t take much to convince me. HeyBale! is as far from what passes for country
music on today’s radio as smooth jazz is from bebop. The band’s songs are fresh,
yet deeply rooted in the great songcraft of Merle Haggard, Lefty Frizzell, and other
masters of the genre. The three singers pull their emotions straight from the heart, and
their voices carry with them years of country tradition. With Earle Poole Ball (who also
plays piano for the band) and Redd Volkaert (a knockout guitarist), that sense of history
comes from working with country greats Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, and many others. Gary
Claxton, the youngest of the three, is also the most technically accomplished singer, and
in a better world his songwriting would have already made him a household word. Of course,
in a better world, HeyBale! would be at the top of the country charts.
Various Artists: Strange
Pleasures: Further Sounds of the Decca Underground
One of my favorite discs of 2007 was
the Grip Weeds’ House of Vibes Revisited, a reissue of the band’s
1994 debut. E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt started giving the band some airplay
on his syndicated radio show, Little Steven’s Underground Garage, and
he signed them to Wicked Cool Records, his ultra-hip label dedicated to garage rock and
power pop. He helped choose the 16 tracks on Infinite Soul, culled from all
four of the Grip Weeds’ defiantly melodic, beautifully crafted CDs. The Grip Weeds
seem to have absorbed something from every great band of the 1960s, especially the British
Invasion bands, but their music is no mere exercise in nostalgia. It sounds fresh and
vital, as if they’d rediscovered what made rock’n’roll so exciting in the
first place. Kristin Pinell’s ripping guitar solos ring out clearly, and they’re
short and carefully crafted. Kurt Reil, one of the great drummers in rock, hits the snare
hard, and his kickdrum is the band’s lifeblood. Each song on Infinite Soul is
a multitracked gem, with more subtle details coming to the surface with each listen. Buy
it, start setting aside money for all four of the band’s albums, and pray that they
release a new one soon.
I’ve been a fan of the
Industrial Jazz Group since Andrew Durkin, the band’s leader and composer of all its
material, sent me the group’s first album, Hardcore, in 2001. My
wife and I made a several-hours trip a few years ago to see them in a small club in New
Jersey (the IJG is based on the West Coast), and it was worth the drive. Leef is
the group’s fifth offering and, like the previous discs, it uses the language and
some of the feeling of jazz while being, ultimately, unclassifiable. Durkin’s writing
and arranging owe something to Charles Mingus and Frank Zappa, with a bit of Spike Jones
thrown in (come to think of it, Zappa had some Spike Jones in him), but the result is
wholly his own. The biggest lesson he learned from Zappa is how to make seemingly
disparate elements fit together in a way that makes the result sound logical and
inevitable. "Don’t Let ’Em Getcha" opens with a sax vamp that sounds a
little like "Night Train," but it soon veers off, shifting in rhythm and
harmony, grabbing Archie Shepp along the way, and continuing to transform and subvert
itself.
Guitarist Greg Chako has lived and
worked in Asia since 1992, and in the last two years has successfully established himself
as a jazz musician in Japan. Everybody’s Got a Name features Chako with
another American based in Japan, drummer Mark DeRose, and two Japanese players Chako has
often played with: pianist Hiroshi Takaka and bassist Yahuhiro Hasegawa. The title is
Chako’s humorous reaction to the suggestion that, to gain exposure, he should play
with well-known musicians. The musicians on this disc are accomplished and distinctive
players who can easily handle anything the leader throws at them, such as the odd time
changes in the bossa nova-flavored title track. Chako wrote seven of the 11 tracks,
creating memorable tunes that give the other players plenty to chew on. It’s
Chako’s show, however, and he’s a confident, resourceful guitarist with a warm,
inviting tone and a sure command of the fingerboard. He’s so self-assured that he
never shows off, instead using his skills to search for meaning and beauty in the music. Everybody’s
Got a Name was wonderfully recorded by John Herbert at Lion Studios, in Singapore.
This is the second recording I’ve heard by Herbert -- the first was Chako’s Paint
a Picture, Tell a Story. I’m beginning to think every jazz musician should make
the trek to Singapore to work with him.
William Edgar John was
released from prison briefly in 1966 while awaiting an appeal for his conviction the
previous year for manslaughter. David Axelrod and H.B. Barnum pulled him into a recording
studio to cut 11 tracks for Capitol Records that are only now being released on the UK
label Kent, which specializes in American soul and R&B. John is probably best
remembered for "Fever," which Peggy Lee famously covered, but he was a key
figure in soul music whose powerful and emotion-filled tenor voice influenced many of his
contemporaries. James Brown opened for him in the 1950s, and soon after John’s death
in prison, in 1968, Brown released Thinking About Little Willie John & A Few Nice
Things. The 20 tracks on Nineteen Sixty Six, eight of them alternate
takes, include two songs John recorded when he was with King Records, "Country
Girl" (aka "Home at Last") and "Suffering with the Blues."
Axelrod and Barnum gave John a more contemporary sound than he’d had on his earlier
recordings, with a crack band of L.A. session players. John responds with fiery, confident
performances that surely would have firmly established him on the soul charts. Capitol
decided against releasing the recordings when King Records claimed that John’s
contract with them was still in force. We can be very glad that Kent has released them
now.
Miles on Miles, edited
by Paul Maher Jr. and Michael K. Dorr (Lawrence Hill Books, 2008), is an anthology of
previously published interviews with and articles about Miles Davis. It begins with a
publicity piece for Columbia Records by George Avakian, who signed Davis to the label.
Even that puff piece contains a bit of the independence Davis always projected. "I
don’t keep any of my records," he tells Avakian. "I can’t stand to
hear them after I play them." When Nat Hentoff interviewed Davis in 1958 for The
Jazz Review, the trumpeter shared his opinions about musicians he admired (Billie
Holiday, John Coltrane, Ahmad Jamal) and others he felt less generously about (Herb Ellis,
Oscar Peterson). His insights about Thelonious Monk are both complimentary and critical:
"I love the way Monk plays and writes, but I can’t stand him behind me. He
doesn’t give you any support." The Hentoff interview also includes Davis’s
generous appraisal of Louis Armstrong: "You know you can’t play anything on a
horn that Louis hasn’t played -- I mean even modern."