Hate Camels, Death Comedy Jams
This disc stands at the crossroads of progressive rock and jazz fusion, with a flash of heavy iron doing a wheelie in the intersection. Six of its seven long instrumental tracks pay tribute to a series of great comedians who have passed on - Mitch Hedberg, Richard Pryor, Sam Kinison, Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, and Andy Kaufman. Kinison gets the metal treatment, natch. Lenny Bruce draws out a jazzy improv number that evokes the Beat era. Bill Hicks gets a piece with a twelve-tone feel, and so on. But direct references to the particular comics' personalities or styles aren't always easy to pick out - in some cases they might not exist. No matter; the compositions have enough inherent interest to please the kind of music fans who perk up at the genres I named at the start. Hear some of the tracks at Myspace.
Lorrie Ruiz, Chewy
And speaking of fusion, Lorrie Ruiz's good-natured jazz fusion disc might be just the thing to convince your grouchy friends that fusion isn't always as cold, virtuosic, and inaccessible as its reputation would have it. Taking some Stevie Wonder funk, adding some Steely Dan archness and George Benson smoothness, crafting some pretty good pop hooks to hang it all on, singer Ruiz and keyboardist Joe Doria have come up with a batch of fun, toe-tapping, and friendly songs. The weakness is Ruiz's hummy, uninflected vocals, which just make you think what someone like Stevie Wonder, or even Mariah Carey - or any number of great young neo-soul singers I can think of - would have been able to do with material like this. Fortunately the other elements are more important here. The playing - by Doria, guitarist Chris Spencer, bassist Dayna Smith, and drummer Larry Bichler - gives this disc its soul, and good songwriting gives it heart. Nicely done.
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