Music Notes
By 
I saw two excellent shows last week. I finally saw the great Rodney Crowell, at the Narrows Center in Fall River. I’m not sure why I had never seen him, I guess it just hadn’t worked out. But of course I’ve listened to the great songwriter forever. It was pretty super to see him live. He’s now in his mid 70s, which is hard to believe, but he still sounds great. He’s still writing excellent songs too. This was also an exciting moment for him because just a few days before I had seen him, Willie Nelson released his latest album, all Crowell covers. There are some deep cuts here too and Crowell was happy for this. So he played a bunch of these songs. I can’t say I expected to see “Banks of the Old Bandera,” which is on The Houston Kid, for example. There were a few of his big hits too, such as “She’s Crazy for Leavin'” and “Leavin’ Louisiana in the Broad Daylight,” which is one of my favorite songs of all time (this ain’t no time for lengthy speeches….). He’s a pretty funny guy and good storyteller too, including one song making fun of his ridiculous look on the cover of Diamonds & Dirt, which was his biggest album.
And as you can see from the above picture, Crowell remains a Good Hair Man.
I also saw the late 90s/early 00s hipster New York jazz band Sexmob, at Firehouse 12 in New Haven. This was also a very fun show. Steven Bernstein plays his slide trumpet to his heart’s content, which is basically more of a baby trombone than a trumpet, but I don’t know the technical details of horns. The rest of the band is Tony Scherr on bass, Kenny Wollesen on drums, and Briggan Krauss on saxophone. Bernstein made an interesting claim here. The band has been together for 30 years now. They often go years without playing but as a band, there’s never been a lineup change. Bernstein claimed that this was unprecedented in jazz history and….I think he might be right. There are bands that have been around longer, centering around their leader. But how many people played in the Sun Ra Arkestra or Duke Ellington Orchestra or whatever over the years. Hundreds, probably. But Sexmob has always just been these 4 guys. I don’t know, maybe there’s something else, but it struck me. In any case, Sexmob always had more in common with New York rock bands than a lot of the jazz scene and it still felt this way seeing them live. They are a loose band in the ways a good rock band is loose. A lot is decided on the fly. It’s definitely Bernstein’s band but these are guys that have the attitude of just playing fun music with each other. It was a refreshing atmosphere given that jazz shows can often be rather serious affairs these days.
Other News:
I guess I appreciate the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame introducing the “Influencer” category to finally get some of the greats in who were never popular enough to get through the traditional electoral process that of course led to Bad Company being inducted. This was introduced a couple of years after Kraftwerk was repeatedly a finalist and never made it over the top. So now Warren Zevon and Salt-N-Pepa have been inducted in this way. That’s fine. There are so so so so many influences that need to be included this way. So we will see in future years. At least it means Jann Wenner isn’t in control any more….
The jazz singer Andy Bey died, at the age of 85. We also lost Mike Peters from The Alarm and Jill Sobule, whose “I Kissed a Girl” is one of the most important songs in the history of queer pop music, in a house fire of all things.
A friend of mine was at the new Rhiannon Giddens-helmed festival Biscuits and Banjos in Durham, North Carolina and said it was fantastic. Here’s a discussion of it.
This week’s playlist:
- Angélica Garcia, Gemelo
- The Coathangers, Suck My Shirt
- David Mallett, Personal Lives
- John Coltrane, Giant Steps
- Ashley Monroe, Like a Rose
- Led Zeppelin, Houses of the Holy
- The Meters, Look Ka Py Py
- Wayne Shorter, Super Nova
- Bill Frisell, Quartet
- Tanya Tucker, Sweet Western Sound
- Wayne Hancock, A-Town Blues
- Richard Buckner, Our Blood
- Richard Thompson, Front Parlour Ballads
- Merle Haggard, Strangers
- Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, disc 1
- George Jones, I’m a People
- Waxahatchee, Out in the Storm
- Empress Of, Us
- George Jones A Picture of Me (Without You)
- Don Rigsby, Empty Old Mailbox
- Mitski, Puberty 2
- Sleater-Kinney, Little Rope
- James McMurtry, Childish Things
- Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth, Epicenter
- Ariana Grande, Sweetener
- Father John Misty, God’s Favorite Customer
- Drive By Truckers, It’s Great to Be Alive
- Jason Isbell, Sirens of the Ditch
- Kris Kristofferson, The Essential, disc 1
- Jimmie Dale Gilmore and the Flatlanders
- Wussy, Strawberry
- Silver Jews, Starlite Walker
- Dolly Parton, Jolene
- Billy Bang, Vietnam: The Aftermath
- Margaret Glaspy, Emotions and Math
- Drive By Truckers, Decoration Day
- Christopher Paul Stelling, Itinerant Arias
- Dave Alvin, Public Domain
Album Reviews:
Hinds, Viva Hinds
Crunchy rock and roll with some cutesy pop overtones from this Spanish band singing in English. It’s good enough for a listen. These women know what they want to do and they are doing it. Breaking new ground? No. Providing a pleasant album? Sure.
B
Satoko Fujii, Hazuki
It’s hard to keep up with Fujii’s prodigious output. The brilliant, if difficult, Japanese pianist has no compunction about putting out several albums a year and this is one of her 2020 releases. This is a solo piano album and relatively accessible for her work. But still, it’s not going to be for everyone. She’s an amazingly skilled player and great visionary on the art of the possible with the keys. It’s also a good bit of work to sit through an hour of it.
There’s nothing from this album on YouTube, but here’s some other Fujii solo piano work.
B+
Jaye Jayle. Prisyn
This is the project of the Louisville based artist Evan Patterson, who decided on a good band name instead of his own standard name. It’s an interesting project, kind of typical for a certain kind of songwriter today, who likes to sing–or musically talk more accurately–over a lot of electronic production. But it works pretty well. The lyrics aren’t profound to my ear, but do the job, while, well, one could say the exact same thing about the electronics. This certainly works as atmosphere at the very least.
B
Mekons, Horror
New Mekons? Yes please. Will it surprise you that they are not happy with the state of the world? It should not! This album, with several different members taking leads on various songs, deal with the impact of imperialism, climate collapse, the sins of the British empire, the Irish famine, the ravages of capitalism, and other light topics. Song titles include “War Economy,” “Private Defense Contractor,” and “The Western Design.” In other words, everything you want from a Mekons album–rock and roll and leftist politics in the best punk tradition. Very solid addition to their now sizable catalog.
A-
Archie Shepp & Jason Moran, Let My People Go
Archie Shepp is sadly underrated today. He was such a great legend in the 60s and 70s and is still alive and active and yet seems largely forgotten about, like a man from another time. Like he’s dead, actually. I don’t get it.
Well, Jason Moran, who knows his history as well as anyone, sure hasn’t forgotten him. And so in 2017 and 2018, they played some festival dates in Europe and in 2021, released this work culled from those. This is a surprisingly mellow, contemplative performance, which is more Moran’s thing than Shepp’s, or at least that’s true of Shepp’s glory years. Can’t say I’m sure about that today because much of what I have heard from him in recent years is occasionally showing up on others’ projects. Some of this is remaking old spirituals made famous by Robeson, such as “Let My People Go” and “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” The vocals aren’t quite Robeson, but that’s not really possible and an unfair comparison. In any case, this is a very solid work between legends of two generations and it’s worth listening to just to hear two very different masters, each enormously important in jazz history, work with each other. Moran is also just astounding here.
A-
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.