http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Mon, 5 Dec 2005 16:34:11 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/12/05/163411.php Todd A. PriceThe songs on Triptych Myth's The Beautiful (Aum Fidelity) play out like a series of cinematic scenes. The jazz trio, led by Cooper-Moore on piano with Tom Abbs on bass and Chad Taylor on drums, starts the record in a traditional manner--the piano and drums chatter back and forth a few measures before the bass enters and the whole group locks into a groove. But they soon abandon the standard jazz format to follow a curve more like the crescendo of a dramatic tale. The romantic piano motif of "Pooch (For Wilber Morris)" conjures images of a ballerina stepping across a room, while the odd contrast of the frenetic drumming keeps the track from becoming sentimental. The slow, creeping rhythm of "Last Minute Trip Part One" could be the soundtrack for a caravan's slow march in a long-forgotten desert epic.Cooper-Moore has been involved in the creative music scene for over thirty years, although he has often been overshadowed by collaborators such as David S. Ware. After a frustrating European tour in 1981, he destroyed his piano with a sledgehammer and a match. He redirected his energy first towards childhood music education and then to performing on a collection of hand-built instruments. In the early 1990s, Cooper-Moore returned to the piano as a member of William Parker's group In Order to Survive. With the Triptych Myth, he has assembled his first working jazz group in decades.Cooper-Moore has perhaps been inspired by the time he spent scoring theater and dance productions. The Beautiful, however, is undoubtedly a jazz album. Cooper-Moore crafts a haunting ballad on "Frida K. The Beautiful." Chad Taylor fires the upbeat "Poppa's Gin in the Chicken Feed" with a funky intensity. The album ends with Cooper-Moore tapping out single notes--a peaceful coda to the frenzy of creativity that came before. The final notes hover in the air unresolved, waiting to be fulfilled by Triptych Myth's next recording.Also posted at A Frolic of My Own.Editor's note: This work of yours now has another venue for success - and more eyes - at the Advance.net Web sites, a site affiliated with about 12 newspapers.One such site is here. Music40535@blogcritics.org Mon, 5 Dec 2005 16:34:11 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/07/26/160157.php Todd A. PriceBuckwheat, you've been gone too long! The zydeco accordionist and singer Buckwheat Zydeco released his last studio album eight years ago. Jackpot! (Tomorrow Records), his new album, explodes with nearly a decade of bottled up energy. The album captures the potent mixture of zydeco, R&B and blues that makes every Buckwheat performance electrifying. If Prince were born on the bayou, if James Brown were a Cajun, they might sound like Buckwheat Zydeco. There is no heartbreak and sadness in Buckwheat's world. In the song "Jackpot!" he declares, "You know I've always been luck / But I really hit the jackpot with you." Even when his luck turns sour and he loses his lover on "Come Back Home Baby," Buckwheat's high spirits never falter. In the revved up tune, he seems to be enticing his wandering lover home with the sounds of good times. Buckwheat began his career playing organ with the legendary zydeco musician Clifton Chenier. Jackpot! ends with the "Organic Buckwheat," a three song encore with Buckwheat on Hammond B-3. These tracks are more soulful and jazzy than Buckwheat's regular playing. It's like hearing a musician stretch-out in the backroom of a club after a show. Let's hope Buckwheat doesn't wait another eight years to record his next album.Also posted at A Frolic of My Own. Music33177@blogcritics.org Tue, 26 Jul 2005 16:01:57 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/07/09/185813.php Todd A. PriceGrayson Capps is a natural. The country-tinged tales on his national debut If You Knew My Mind are sung by a young man who's seen more hardships than his age would indicate. When Capps sings "They're trying to drag me down / I'm going to get back up again" on the opening track, it's not an anthem but a weary man dusting himself off and climbing to his feet. Disaster is always around the corner in Capps' world. On "Slidell," Capps recounts a wreck where "five people were murdered by a woman talking on her cell phone." Capps's doesn't create an overwrought, gothic South, just the average tragedies that happen when people are drunk and careless.Capps ranges easily from folk to bluesy rock. On the haunting "A Love Song for BobbyLong" he accompanies himself simply on acoustic guitar. The menacing "Graveyard," about a man killing his lover, has a rollicking band and a growling chorus of male singers.Capps performs regularly at bars around New Orleans. When John Travolta starred in "A Love Song for Bobby Long," based on a novel by Capps' father, it looked like the songwriter's work on the soundtrack would make him a star. The movie, however, was never shown in more than a handful of theaters. If You Knew My Mind will hopefully be Capps' well-deserved ticket to a wider audience.Also posted at A Frolic of My Own. Music32321@blogcritics.org Sat, 9 Jul 2005 18:58:13 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/06/26/200915.php Todd A. PriceRegina Spektor looked a little shy when she stepped onto the stage. Piles of amps and guitars and drum kits that belonged to the headlining acts, Louis XIV and Keane, stood behind her. The crowd was still walking in and taking their seats. She grabbed the microphone and launched into a bluesy acopella version of "Eight Miles High." She tapped her finger on the microphone to keep time. Her tough vocals occasionally had Russian inflected little girl moments, like a kittenish Cold War spy. After that act of bravery, she had the audience's full attention.Regina Spektor is an utterly self-assured performer. She came out of New York's anti-folk scene with a repertoire of narrative songs. She can be ferocious. And she can be silly and still be cool. Her piano chops show her years of classical training. But even when she picked up a guitar and accompanied herself with single, unsteady note, she commands the stage.As she worked through songs from Soviet Kitsch and her earlier albums, she won over an audience that had bought tickets to see a pop act instead an odd cabaret singer with a foreign accent. Spektor closed her set with "Poor Little Rich Boy," a sneering portrait of a beautiful young boy with money. She played piano chords with the left hand and with the right she pounded a drumstick against a stool to keep the beat. Spektor, unfortunately, was too punctual. She started on time and ended after exactly 30 minutes. I would have preferred that she play for hours. Music31626@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Jun 2005 20:09:15 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/06/07/124212.php Todd A. PriceThe Chicago Luzern Exchange brings together three young Chicago avant-garde jazz players--cornetist Josh Berman, tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson, drummer Frank Rosaly--and a Swiss. The Swiss, tuba player Mark Unternahrer, met the Chicago musicians through a "sister cities" exchange in 2002. He returned to the U.S. to record the group's excellent new album Several Lights (Delmark).The Chicago Luzern Exchange creates their music as they play, and the first track "Slips" feels like the group is getting to know each other. They soon become a unit and play with unusual coherence for a free jazz ensemble. The Chicago Luzern Exchange often sounds like a single mind improvising. The group occasionally locks into an almost funky groove, for example when the horn players bounce lines back and forth like a sax quartet on "Our Thing." "Soon Enough" sounds like two bop musicians playing runs in separate rooms, until Unternahrer enters with his tuba and string it all together.Most tracks on Several Lights are shorter than a pop tune. The brief songs show the group's desire to craft a coherent improvisation, rather than string together indulgent solos and howling horns. Although Several Lights may be initially forbidding, the complicated music becomes more melodic and lucid with each listening. Let's hope that Unternahrer gets back to Chicago soon to record another album of intelligent free jazz with the local boys.Also posted at A Frolic of My Own. Music30678@blogcritics.org Tue, 7 Jun 2005 12:42:12 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/17/165510.php Todd A. PriceTwo lovers, John and Caroline, take a hazy journey across America on Aimee Mann's new concept album The Forgotten Arm (SuperEgo). It's a landscape populated with junkies, faith healers and fortunetellers. The album feels oddly second-hand, as if this is a story overheard from across a bar. The music, as well, is emotionally distant. The Forgotten Arm smolders but never catches fire.On the opening song, "Dear John," Caroline meets John at a state fair. Mann sings that "cotton candy was king / on the midway that spring," and there is an innocence to the encounter even if the two lovers are less than pure. By the second song, "King of the Jailhouse," Caroline and John have traveled through the country and crossed into Mexico. When Mann sings, presumably in the voice of Caroline, "there is something wrong with me," the song could be heartbreaking if it weren't so static."Goodbye Caroline" breaks through the fog of the opening tracks. It also highlights why the rest of the album feels stillborn. The song is soulful. An unadorned acoustic guitar strums the opening chords, providing breathing room in an album full of muddy arrangement that cling to the middle range. The band builds up steam and the energy level rises. "Going through the Motions" is also strong. A raspy drawl sings behind Mann on the chorus of this tension filled song. The lyrics tell of an addict fighting his disease in a straightforward manner rather than hiding in impressionist language.Too many tracks that follow return to the plodding tempos and distant lyrics of the first two songs. There are highlights. "She Really Wants You" starts with a direct narrative that has strong forward motion. Mann begins "That's How I Knew this Story Would Break Your Heart" with unadorned, majestic grace. When John promises to quit drugs in "I Was Thinking I Could Clean Up for Christmas," the melody has a singsong quality that betrays the fact that he has made and broken this pledge before.The best moments of The Forgotten Arm reveal that a better album is hidden underneath the surface. With more urgency, less emotional detachment, and a greater variety of tempos and arrangements this album could have been an epic. As it stands now, Mann's concept album has some strong songs but doesn't fully convince when played from the opening notes to end of the story.Also posted at A Frolic of My Own. Music29641@blogcritics.org Tue, 17 May 2005 16:55:10 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/04/142255.php Todd A. PriceA strange crowd can be found any night in New Orleans. The oddest collection of characters, however, gathers annually in the days between the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival at the Ponderosa Stomp, two nights of obscure R&B, swamp pop, blues, garage band and surf guitarists. An individual of indeterminate gender checks tickets at the door. Black guys in zoot suits gather in the corner. A hulking man, as hunched over as Herman Munster, prowls the entrance. White girls dressed as fake Mardi Gras Indians hop and hoot in the audience. An old cowboy, his black shirt embroidered with white and a grey pony tail falling from his hat, drinks beers and nods to the music. Yo La Tengo hangs out at the bar. They aren't playing anywhere in town, so they must have flown in just to listen.The Ponderosa Stomp runs nearly twelve hours a night and the music never stops at Rock 'n' Bowl's two stages. A house band backs many of the artists, who have often been coaxed out of retirement by the Stomp's organizers. The play a few songs, step down, and immediately the next act begins. After seeing a different musician every half hour, my head was spinning and my ears were ringing. I scribbled pages of notes, but I walked out remembering a few vivid highlights.Travis Wammack, who gained a reputation in the 1950s as the fastest guitarist in Memphis, muscled his way through his song "Karate Time." Elvis' original guitarist Scotty Moore reprised his glory days on an all Elvis set with Billy Swan filling in for the King (see photo at left). Dressed in a gold jacket, slide guitarist Johnny Farina played such a blistering style of 1950s rock that I realized my parents' music could match the raw energy of punk. In an R&B revue, zydeco legend Buckwheat Zydeco handled B-3 organ duties, a instrument he played for James Brown in the early years of his career. Phil Phillips sang his original version of "Sea of Love," covered many years later by Robert Plant and the Honeydrippers.Some of the people in the audience look like they first heard these tunes when the artists released the original 45s. Others must have discovered the music long after the fact, like the twentysomething woman with cherry colored hair who started jumping up and down with recognition when Arch Hall Jr. and the Archers, reunited for the first time in 40 years, launch into a track off their 1962 album "Brownsville Road." I've now got a long list of obscure albums I need to track down.I may be run out of New Orleans as a heretic for saying this, but the Ponderosa Stomp is three times the fun of Jazz Fest. Next year, I plan to come earlier and stay later.Also posted at A Frolic of My Own. Music29032@blogcritics.org Wed, 4 May 2005 14:22:55 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/21/124132.php Todd A. PriceSome jazz bassists make the instrument sound nimble. Their walking bass lines seem to skip. They slide up and down the neck as easily as a guitarist. When William Parker, one of the leading avant-garde jazz musicians, plays the bass, you never forget that it's a massive instrument with thick strings. There is nothing sluggish in his playing. He often keeps the music bouncing along in the midst of utter noise and chaos. He swings like it's his natural state and his swinging beats feel like they're backed by the weight of a sledgehammer. Luc's Lantern (Thirsty Ear), his latest recording, is more intelligent than difficult, more accessible than avant-garde. Luc's Lantern will hopefully attract new fans to one of the strongest jazz musicians working today.Parker adopts a more traditional jazz trio format on this album. "Morning Sunshine" starts with Parker playing a swinging figure with a rakish gliding note at the end. As Parker and drummer Michael Thompson keep the beat steady, pianist Eri Yamamoto darts in and out and finally builds to a cacophonous conclusion. "Jaki" has an almost rolling, bluesy feel to it. A bouncing bass line and more bluesy chords from Yamamoto in "Phoenix" keep the rhythm jaunty.Parker, as one of the leaders of the New York avant-garde jazz scene, has been at the center of some of jazz's most challenging music. Luc's Lantern, while eminently accessible, is far from mainstream. Songs like the spooky "Candlesticks on the Lake," with its screeching, slow bow work from Parker, would confound many fans of the artists picked to play at Wynton Marsalis' Jazz at the Lincoln Center. On Luc's Lantern Parker creates beautiful and harmonious music that is more modern than most of the jazz recorded today.Also posted at A Frolic of My Own. Music28473@blogcritics.org Thu, 21 Apr 2005 12:41:32 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/19/161837.php Todd A. PriceYou've probably encountered those obsessive record collectors who lust after a rare pressing of a 1950s garage act, can recite the entire line-up of a one-hit wonder R&B band, and treasure a single by an unknown blues singer more than their first-born child. Now imagine if these collectors had coaxed those obscure musicians out of retirement and convinced them to step on stage just one more time. That, my friends, is what happens once a year at New Orleans' Ponderosa Stomp.The two nights of the Stomp, April 26 and 27, celebrate the unsung creators of rock 'n' roll, R&B, rockabilly, blues, and swamp pop. The Stomp is held at the historic Rock 'n' Bowl in the week between the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. The performers, some who might ring a bell and other who will produce only a blank stare from even ardent music fans, will be tearing up the stage and digging up old history.Tickets are $35 and sell out quickly. Hurry, it just might be too late for this year. The lineup for the fourth annual Ponderosa Stomp includes: The Bad Roads, Classie Ballou, Archie Bell, Eddie Bo, Blowfly, Lonnie Brooks as Guitar Junior, The Carter Brothers, Jay Chevalier, Joe Clay, Larry De Riuex, Deke Dickerson & the Eccofonics, Skip Easterling, Nokie Edwards (of the Ventures), Johnny Farina (of Santo & Johnny), H Bomb Ferguson, Henry Gray, Betty Harris, Dale Hawkins, Roy Head, Al Johnson, Johnny Jones, Little Freddy King, Eddie Kirkland, Lady Bo, Lazy Lester, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Matt Lucas, Barbara Lynn, Mando & the Chili Peppers, Nathaniel Mayer, Scotty Moore, Phil Phillips, Freddie Roulette, Lil' Buck Senegal & the Top Cats with Stanley "Buckwheat Zydeco" Dural on Hammond B3 organ, Ray Sharpe, Warren Storm, Willie Tee, Travis Wammack, Barrence Whitfield, Brenton Wood and Link Wray. Music28365@blogcritics.org Tue, 19 Apr 2005 16:18:37 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/05/111422.php Todd A. PriceIn his quintet, bassist Dave Holland has created one of the most identifiable sounds in modern jazz. Muted horns bob and weave like prizefighters circling in a ring. Arpeggios on a vibraphone replace the piano chords that anchor most jazz groups. The accessible playing throws off plenty of sparks, but an intellectual reserve keeps the quintet from catching fire. In 2000, Holland expanded his group into a 13-piece ensemble for the Montreal Jazz Festival. That big band went on to record the Grammy winning What Goes Around (EMI, 2003) and the just released Overtime (Dare2, 2005).Overtime begins with the four part "Monterey Suite," commissioned for the Monterey Jazz Festival and first performed in 2001 just a few days 9/11. Holland's writing for the big band shows the same limberness that marks his quintet, but the arrangements have a lushness that recalls Miles Davis' work with Gil Evans. Listening to "Time Remember," a nostalgic piece, you can imagine a couple dancing across th room to this music. "Happy Jammy," the final piece in the "Monterey Suite," lets Holland deploy some blazing, funky lines on his double bass and the rock oriented tune wouldn't be out of place on an album by Ken Vandermark's Spaceways Incorporated trio.With this larger group, Holland seems to be still exploring how the history of big bands fits into contemporary jazz. "Ario" is a lovely throw back to the swing era. Holland's regular trombonist, Robin Eubanks, contributes a tune, "Mental Images," that fits the more cerebral sound of the quintet. And Overtime ends with the funky, almost pop sounding "Last Minutes Man." It will be interesting to hear how the work with the big band affects Holland's compositions when he next records with the quintet. Music27774@blogcritics.org Tue, 5 Apr 2005 11:14:22 EDT