Best Live Music Seen in 2012

Being less a list than a year-end roundup in numbered sections. The order is not to be taken as a ranking of relative quality, except perhaps for #1, which was pretty much transcendent.

1.
Fred Hersch/Dave Holland/Billy Hart @ Jazz Standard
This is the one I've found myself thinking back on most often.

2.
Milton Babbitt Retrospective @ CUNY Graduate Center
Seeing Philomel live is an experience I'll take with me to the underworld.

3.
Oliver Lake @ 70
In the latter half of 2012, especially the period around his 70th birthday, Oliver Lake seemed to be everywhere in NYC. Playing with several different groups at several different venues, it was hard to keep up with all his activities, but I did manage to catch him a few times. Sets with his organ quartet at Shapeshifter and playing new material with Tarbaby at Le Poisson Rouge were memorable, but the high point for me came at Jazz Standard, where Lake joined Andrew Cyrille and Reggie Workman as Trio 3 with Geri Allen guesting on piano. It was as good as those four names would suggest. At Shapeshifter, Lake was preceded by the Darius Jones Trio, who played beautifully and had Lake sit in for a couple tunes of inter-generational altoism.

4.
Tim Berne @ Shapeshifter Lab X3
Like Fred Hersch, Tim Berne figured in my Best of 2011 Iist as part of John Hebert’s Mingus tribute project Sounds of Love. While I didn’t manage to see Berne’s most acclaimed new project this year, Snakeoil, I did catch him in several other groups, including three excellent sets at the new Shapeshifter Lab - trios with David Torn & Ches Smith (Sun of Goldfinger) and Nels Cline & Jim Black (BB&C) and a new septet (the Tim Berne 7) that includes the members of Snakeoil. The guitar trios were both beasts, with highly formidable guitarists and drummers capable of taking the music at any moment from eerie soundscape to titanic freak-out. As for the septet, I haven’t yet gone back and watched it again on YouTube, but I remember having the feeling as I left Shapeshifter that this was one of the best sets I’d seen all year. The combination of Ches Smith on vibes, Matt Mitchell on electric and acoustic piano and Ryan Ferreira on electric guitar brought a sort of depth-of-field and range of color I’d never heard before in Berne’s music. I’m hoping this band, or at least some version of it, has a future within the ever-expanding Berneverse.

5.
Andrew D’Angelo @ Shapeshifter Lab X2
Andrew D’Angelo turned up in last year’s list as a member of the School for Improvised Music Big Band, where he stood out among a very distinguished lineup with show-stopping solo on a Kris Davis arrangement. This year, I followed through on my resolution to check out some of the saxophonist's own projects, two of which I saw at Shapeshifter Lab - a quartet with Bill McHenry, Mike Pride on drums and the young bassist Noah Garabedian, where the two saxophonists displayed some of the best musical chemistry I saw all year, and D’Angelo’s own big band, the DNA Orchestra. D’Angelo writes knotty, rhythmically and melodically intricate tunes in the bop lineage, but plays them with a passion that never allows the music to sound like an intellectual exercise.

6.
Peter Stampfel & The Ether Frolic Mob @ Brooklyn Folk Fest
Stampfel makes friendly, joyful, and joyfully twisted music that still has and probably always will have the power to inspire WTF? reactions, putting him in good company among the truly singular American artists.

7.
Ethan Iverson/Ben Street/Tootie Heath @ the Village Vanguard / The Bad Plus’ On Sacred Ground @ Damrosch Plaza
After several Smalls appearances (two of which I mentioned in 2010 and 2011 roundups) and a live album, it was about time Iverson got to bring his simple-but-profoundly-rewarding concept of playing standard jazz repertoire in trio with some of the Master Elders of the music into the Vanguard. The tunes spanned several decades (from Eubie Blake to Paul Motian) and were well-chosen to showcase the many aspects of Tootie Heath’s drum mastery, to the benefit of a very appreciative audience. If you missed it, the NPR stream will give you a pretty good taste. Seemingly at the opposite end of the spectrum scale-wise from standards at the Vanguard was The Bad Plus’ take on The Rite of Spring, presented with synchronized video projections, in front of a big crowd outside at Lincoln Center (what they had in common: deep attention to rhythm). In the big outdoor venue, On Sacred Ground almost felt like Stravinsky as arena rock, in the best possible way - I even saw people attempting to groove to the Rite's still-radical-sounding mixed meter. The authority with which drummer Dave King, in particular, handled those rhythms was a marvel to behold.

8.
Psychic Paramount @ LPR & Pitchfork Festival / Earth @ Littlefield
Earth’s slooow tempos and repetitive, heavy but spacious riffs add up to a sound that reminds me of Noguchi sculpture - massive but refined, static but seething with potential energy. There’s a temptation to resort to metaphors involving coiled desert snakes and the like, and "menace" is certainly a word that comes to mind. Not a band to be compared to immovable stone objects, the Psychic Paramount are all about forward motion. Although it was fun to see them outside on a sunny day (well, maybe “overcast” is a better word - it poured rain soon after their set) at Pitchfork Fest in Chicago, they were more in their element inside at Le Poisson Rouge (although the set was a bit early by their standards, at least it was in a basement, albeit a pretty fancy one) where they could deploy the smoke machines and strobes that make theirs one of the most unified presentations in music today - they actually care about matching a look to a sound, and it pays off to overwhelming effect.

9.
Nick Lowe @ Town Hall / Human Hearts @ Hank’s Saloon / AC Newman @ Rock Shop
In which I lump three of the great songwriters of our time, all quite distinctive, somewhat arbitrarily into one list entry. Nick Lowe is a tremendous, charismatic solo performer, but with a backing band (including the soulful Welsh keyboardist and singer Geraint Watkins) his songs, new and old, come into full bloom. Franklin Bruno (as The Human Hearts), celebrating the release of his excellent (and in its Kickstarted-funded vinyl incarnation, beautifully packaged) new album Another, did some songs with only a drummer and was joined on others by guest guitarists and singers, including Laura Cantrell. Bruno is a fine guitarist and I'd love to see him sometime with a keyboardist who could get into some of the Steve Nieve-ities that show up on the new record and recent EP. I saw Carl Newman at the record release party for his latest (and best) solo record, and while he didn't play as long a set as I imagine he would on a regular headlining appearance, the combination of his new songs and new band easily made it one of the most satisfying nights of music of the year.

10.
In which I cram A Few More Outstanding Performances into one entry to make an even ten.

The JACK Quartet @ Abrons Art Center

Lee Konitz's Les Enfants Terribles (Bill Frisell/Gary Peacock/Joey Baron) @ the Blue Note 

Billy Budd @ The Met
A fine night at the opera with Benjamin Britten’s Melville-by-way-of-E.M. Forster all-male sea tale. Most impressive: the chorus of sailors (“heave away”!), though the closing epilogue, with Captain Vere alone on stage reprising the opening and completing the frame that contains the rest of the story, is hard to forget.

Jason Kao Hwang’s Spontaneous River @ Brecht Forum


Repeat Performances

I tried to select different artists, or at least different projects or lineups, for this year’s list, but a few acts from last year that I saw again in 2012 are worthy of another mention.

I put Bill McHenry’s quartet w/ Andrew Cyrille, Orrin Evans, and Eric Revis on last year’s list for what I believe was their first engagement at the Vanguard. I saw them at the same venue twice more this year, including during the March run that yielded their new record, La Peur du Vide, and was reinforced in my opinion that this is one of the most exciting groups going. I’ve read varying opinions on this group from some fine critics, often hingeing on the McHenry-Cyrille pairing (as opposed to McHenry’s previous, longstanding collaboration with Paul Motian): pro, con (scroll down), and some of both. While I happen to like both drummers in the context of McHenry's music and admit that the change makes a big difference, I would argue that the change in chording instruments, from Ben Monder’s guitar to Orrin Evans’ piano, is the most important factor in the new McHenry sound, something that comes through very dramatically on the first track of La Peur du Vide, “Siglo XX”. And as anyone who’s seen Tarbaby live can attest, the combination of Evans and bassist Eric Revis is one that always produces urgent, exciting music. The new album, while very strong, hasn’t yet managed to displace McHenry's previous release, Ghosts of the Sun, as my favorite of his - McHenry-Motian was a special combination, and I believe it reached its peak on Ghosts. Based on the way the current quartet were playing in October, though, I'm very eager to hear more from them, live and on record.

Another group from last year's list that I saw twice more in 2012 was Marshall Crenshaw backed by members of the Bottle Rockets. Neither of the two performances I saw (indoor and outdoor shows at City Winery) surpassed the 2011 Chicago show that saw, but they each presented new aspects of this partnership (I've now seen the “Marshall Rockets” in three different configurations, differing in which one or both of the BRox guitarists were available). While City Winery would probably be fine for a Crenshaw solo show, it felt wrong to be seated at a table sipping Gamay while the full force of the three-guitar lineup kicked in. The Winery's back yard stage was a better setting, and the outdoor show featured a tune I hadn’t seen them do at the previous shows, a very creditable cover of Hendrix' “Manic Depression”.

I mentioned Jeremy Denk’s Zankel Hall pairing of the Ligeti Etudes with the Goldberg Variations in last year’s roundup. I saw him again this year, playing a far smaller and more casual (if I remember correctly, Denk wore jeans) venue, Le Poisson Rouge. He played some of the Etudes again, but the centerpiece of this recital was a time-stopping performance of Beethoven’s last sonata (Op.111), which is paired with the Ligetis on Denk’s latest album.

Peter Stampfel @ Brooklyn Folk Festival

Peter Stampfel utterly lacks all the qualities that sometimes make folk music boring to me. Though his knowledge of American music matches that of the most scholarly revivalist, none of the following adjectives apply to him: tradition-bound, conservative, retrograde, humorless. While he plays multiple instruments, including a mean fiddle, Stampfel's art is one in which instrumental technique for its own sake is not a concern. His voice is, and has been for almost 40 years, one of the strangest in any genre of American music, though it wouldn't sound out of place on the Harry Smith Anthology - for which he contributed Grammy-winning liner notes - among the likes of Dock Boggs. This live uke rendition of one of Stampfel's signature covers, "Goldfinger", makes for a bracing immersion in the man's singular artistry. I'm glad whoever made this video got some audience reaction shots - lots of smiles ranging from politely baffled to genuinely amused, a few blank looks suggesting a state of shock, and one dude absolutely loving it.

My first exposure to Stampfel was via a live album he made in the mid-'90s with Chicago's Dysfunctionelles, a band of folk-rock weirdos every bit as great as their name. Though they played at least one show with fellow founding Rounder Steve Weber, the album, Not In Their Wildest Dreams, just features Stampfel and was compiled from shows in New York and Chicago. The album features Stampfel classics like "Griselda" and "Hoodoo Bash" and wacky covers of "Be True to Your School" and the Springsteen/Pointer Sisters "Fire", but it may have been Stampfel's solo banjo version of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", from a soundcheck, that made the biggest impression on me. Desert island material, for sure. Unhinged but capable of playing anything, the Dysfunctionelles seemed like the ideal band to stimulate and support Stampfel's peculiar genius, and it's a shame their collaboration produced just the one micro-label tape (which I desperately need to dig out of storage and transfer to digital - my comments above are strictly from memory). I did find an old article from the mid-'90s that referred to a planned follow-up session, but as far as I know nothing ever came of it. Note to the possessor of the master tapes: Not In Their Wildest Dreams deserves a reissue - a digital download, a CD, vinyl, whatever!

At the Folk Fest, Stampfel played one tune that I knew from Wildest Dreams, "Screaming Industrial Breakdown", which also appears on 1986's Peter Stampfel & The Bottle Caps. Robert Christgau has a typically perceptive appreciation of Stampfel in which he reviews the Bottle Caps album. Though not wholly uncritical, he goes so far in his enthusiasm as to declare it better than the contemporaneous Psychocandy(!). I found a vinyl copy a couple years ago, and it is, as Christgau says, "well-made", but despite having strong songs and imaginative arrangments, it suffers a bit from the unmistakable time-stamp of a well-made '80s record - yes, even folk-rock records on Rounder had that reverb-y drum sound. I'd like to hear some of the later Bottle Caps recordings, as these guys are clearly excellent musicians with a feel for Stampfel's music.

His current band, the Ether Frolic Mob (I hope they were named in honor of this Bugs Bunny cartoon), which in this incarnation included a variety of stringed acoustic instruments, an electric bass, Stampfel's daughter Zoe on percussion and vocals, and fellow '60s folk legend John Cohen on guitar, is agreeably loose and plenty capable of getting in the right spirit for this music. Their too-brief Folk Fest set started with "Shambalor", setting the bar high for weirdness (read more about this incredible '50s artifact here), and peaked for me with "Demon in the Ground", an answer song to/parody of "Spirit in the Sky", which Stampfel instructed the band to play with (if I heard correctly) a "boogie shuffle machine"(!) feel. My repeated exposure to the latter on classic rock radio as a teenager primed me to appreciate the Satanic glee (and who can do Satanic glee better than Peter Stampfel?) of the former, including the lyrics "I gotta friend in Sa-tan" and "when I die my soul will be cursed/I'm gonna go to the place that's the worst".

I also saw Dennis Lichtman's Western Swing outfit Brain Cloud at the Festival. They escape the trap of merely turning out museum-quality reproductions of period music (something they clearly have the chops for) with song choices both obscure and wide-ranging (true to the spirit of the original Western Swing bands, which drew from blues, Dixieland and Big Band jazz, country, and various strains of "old-timey" string band music to create one of America's most ear-catchingly potent though still somewhat underappreciated forms of music) and the presence of vocalist Tamar Korn. Korn's vocals, seemingly inspired by the great radio and Big Band singers from, I'd guess, Annette Hanshaw to Ella Fitzgerald, feature many of the vocal mannerisms common to that era, but eccentrically magnified to great effect. Lichtman and company succeed by doing justice to the inherently lively quality of a style that was essentially created as dance music, and at the Folk Fest they received the best possible endorsement by inspiring widespread dancing in the crowd.

Recent Listening - Jones and More

Hank Jones - The Oracle (with Dave Holland and Billy Higgins)
From 1989 - if you heard this record in a blindfold test and weren't familiar with Hank Jones, I don't think you'd ever guess that it featured a 70 year-old pianist who was born several years before Bud Powell and within a year of Monk. Of course, this is one of the standard lines on Hank Jones - though he could play authoritatively in older styles, he stayed contemporary over an incredible number of decades - but it's absolutely true and particularly striking on this session. The first track, Jones' "Interface", starts things off like a blast of fresh, cool air on a hot, muggy day. Holland and Higgins are tremendous in this trio, as you'd expect, though I wish there was a touch more Higgins in the mix (Holland is particularly well-recorded). Though Jones recorded with so many of the great musicians and assembled some amazing trios, and I have a long way to go in catching up with, for example, Ethan Iverson's deep knowledge of the Jones discography, I can't imagine he ever had a trio much better than this one.  So why is this record apparently out-of-print?

I've also been listening to Jones' entry in the Live at Maybeck Hall solo piano series. His full, two-handed approach was great for solo playing. Some of my favorites so far from this concert are "Blue Monk", on which Jones makes creative use of Monk's harmonic and melodic material without entering the realm of deconstruction or abstraction, and "Oh What a Beautiful Mornin'", the famous Rogers & Hammerstein tune he also recorded with Joe Lovano but which, to my knowledge, hasn't been done by too many other jazz musicians. You can feel the sun coming up when Hank Jones plays that tune. I also find Jones' version of Joe Bushkin's "Oh, Look at Me Now" (also recorded with Lovano on the excellent Kids) irresistible. From reading some interviews, it seems like Jones had an excellent dry wit, which would explain the introduction (given a separate track on the CD) where he refers to Bushkin (who composed "Oh, Look at Me Now" in 1941) as "one of the newer writers on the scene".

On the subject of remarkable pianists, I just watched a Marc-Andre Hamelin DVD I got from Netflix. Recorded a few years ago in Germany, it has a documentary piece combining interview and concert footage plus the full length interview and recital that the documentary draws on. All parts are well done, very professionally edited and shot, with good sound, but you could almost skip the documentary and go straight to the full length interview and concert tracks. I guess not everyone wants to watch an hour-long interview about classical concert piano conducted by a soft-spoken, almost taciturn (or perhaps just respectful) German interviewer, but I find Hamelin a fascinating character and enjoy watching his mind work. He's hugely intelligent and articulate and has a slightly odd but charmingly Canadian sense of humor. The recital features a fairly conservative program - Haydn, Chopin, Debussy, and some Gershwin in the encores - for Hamelin, who is known for playing works by lesser known composers along with his own compositions, but he's capable of making anything new - not by updating or modernizing anything but simply by playing the pieces so well. Or, you might say, so thoroughly - there seems to be no idea, nuance, detail that the composers put into these pieces that Hamelin does not extract and present clearly to the listener.

The new Okkervil River, I Am Very Far, is turning out to be a textbook "grower" for me. It didn't make much of an impression on first listen, but lots of nice musical and, especially, lyrical details keep revealing themselves (as mentioned in the previous post).

I recent purchased the Gillian Welch version of John Hartford's "In Tall Buildings" from this tribute album. Gillian's introduction pretty much nails it - this song will make you want to quit your job if your job involves a subway commute and an elevator ride, and maybe even if it doesn't. If "In Tall Buildings" isn't being included in anthologies of the great American folk songs, it should be.

I learned about Felt via the Clientele and Alasdair MacLean's expressed admiration for them and their leader Lawrence, but I didn't know about Lawrence's next band, Denim, until reading some tributes to him on his 50th birthday. This is a great example of his work, reminiscent of, and perhaps deliberately nodding to, some of Ronnie Lane's songs with the Faces.

Recent (and Less Recent) Live Music, Part Three

James Carter Organ Trio w/ Nicholas Payton & James 'Blood' Ulmer
Having recently picked up Carter's live organ trio record (with Ulmer guesting), I had to check out this group live, especially with the addition of Nicholas Payton. I'd only seen Carter as part of the WSQ, and while his mastery was very much on display even as the junior member of that group, he has more of an opportunity to show his personality when leading his own group. In his interactions with the crowd, choice of material, even his sharp suit, Carter made it clear that, at least with the Organ Trio, he’s proudly working in the tradition of band leader as showman, though I hear no pandering in his playing. I imagine Carter takes on familiar material - the first, trio-only part of the set featured "Out of Nowhere", "Killer Joe", and "Come Sunday" (with vocals from drummer Leonard King) - knowing full well that he can transcend familiarity through virtuosity and straight-up musicality. (I thought there was another Sunday-themed tune, as the set was on Sunday night, but I can't remember it now. It definitely wasn't "Gloomy Sunday" or "Sunday Kind of Love". “Sunday in Savannah”? Maybe, but I don’t think so...) Payton and Ulmer came out toward the end of the set and were featured on the last few tunes, including Ulmer's blues guitar-and-vocal showcase "Little Red Rooster" (also featured on the live record). I would've liked a bit more of the guest stars, but that's not to say there was anything lacking when it was just the trio.

I also recently picked up a copy of Carter’s US recording debut as a leader, The Real Quietstorm, featuring an intriguing band that includes Dave Holland on several tracks as well as a young Craig Taborn on piano. It’s a serious record with an strikingly wide range of material (including pieces by Monk, Ellington, Sun Ra, Don Byas, Jackie McLean, and even Bill “Honky Tonk” Doggett) and Carter helps keep it interesting by playing six different instruments in nine tunes (it's not a gimmick if you can play them all as well as James Carter). As with the Organ Trio, Carter took on a potentially trite concept and made real, substantial music out of it.


Neil Young w/ Bert Jansch at Lincoln Center
I only recently bought my first collection of Jansch's music, having previously been more aware of his reputation than his actual music. Though his Scots-accented vocals got a bit lost at times on their way to the upper balcony, his mastery of the open-tuned acoustic guitar was absolutely clear and undeniable.

I've seen Neil several times (six? seven? eight?) now, and I would probably rank this solo appearance somewhere in the middle of those shows. There was nothing as transcendent as seeing him play "Like a Hurricane" with Crazy Horse in the middle of a raging thunderstorm or as surprising and satisfying as his rarities-filled solo acoustic set at the United Palace, but neither was there anything quite as awkward as seeing the full choreographed version of Greendale performed in front of a summer shed crowd or the debut of a long block of electric car-themed songs at Madison Square Garden before they'd been refined (I think that’s almost a pun in this context) into the form in which they'd appear on Fork in the Road. On a guitar geek note, the Gretsch White Falcon (familiar from the early CSNY days) threatened to upstage Old Black (yes, it has its own Wikipedia entry), as Neil played some surprisingly effective solo electric numbers on both guitars (something I've never seen him do). The best comparison I can come up with is this: if Old Black would kill you by liquifying your internal organs, the White Falcon would come to life, slice through your flesh and snap your bones with its beak. The Falcon had some serious bite.

Along with several newer songs (a mixed bag), After The Gold Rush figured prominently in the set, including what might've been the night's high point, an "I Believe In You" so pure and perfect that it seemed to dissolve time, making the 40+ years (!) since it first appeared temporarily irrelevant.


Gowanus Jazz Fest at Douglass St Music Collective - Michael Formanek Quartet, Frank Carlberg's Tivoli Trio
In the Formanek Quartet, the bassist-leader (the only member of the group I hadn't seen before) seemed to form a solid center with his playing, and his compositions were a fine launching pad for his hugely talented bandmates. Even among musicians as good as these, it's hard for Tim Berne not to be the center of attention when he's playing, but he also found opportunities to lay out, setting up some nice trio moments with Formanek, pianist Jacob Sacks and drummer Gerald Cleaver. I need to get this group's album (with Craig Taborn rather than Sacks on piano) as there seemed to be a lot of meat to the compositions that would reward repeated listening.

Cleaver was back the next week at Douglass St. with the Finnish pianist Frank Carlberg. Carlberg's Tivoli Trio compositions (inspired by childhood memories of a circus/variety show  trio) made for a fun, varied set, but it was bassist John Hebert who stole the show for me. I've seen Hebert several times with a wide variety of musicians, but I don't know if I've ever seen a group that gave him a better showcase. Hebert left no doubt why he, along with Cleaver, is one of the most in-demand musicians working. It was one of those performances that makes you think, at least on that given night, there can't possibly be anyone anywhere playing that instrument better. Hebert was somehow both inside Carlberg's tunes, in deep communication with Cleaver, and threatening to burst out of them with a surplus of furious invention.


Most recently, I saw Tim Berne/Ches Smith/David Torn/Trevor Dunn tour the stations of the free improvisational cross at Barbes (playing what Berne called “the Unpaid Jazz Fest”), moving together through moods ranging from outer spacey to droning to ferocious to funky. I hadn’t seen guitarist David Torn before, but I’m guessing that the phrase “mad scientist” gets used a lot in writing about him. He’s got a lot of gear and knows how to use it to get sounds that are both (to employ two cliches) ear-catching and mind-bending. He threw some crazy curveballs and often added contrasts to what the other musicians were doing without overwhelming them (though, to be sure, he could have with the tools at his disposal). It was also my first time seeing Trevor Dunn (though I knew about him going all the way back to Mr. Bungle), and I was impressed by how he maintained a very high level of focused, creative intensity, a continuous stream of ideas executed with conviction, for the entirety of an almost continuous hour-plus set of improvised music.

As at Douglass St, I noticed how good Berne seems to be at listening, his sense of when to contribute what to the mix, including knowing when to lay out. He seems to be all about the total sound rather than taking a star turn as a soloist, though when he decides it's time to throw down, he can chop some heads. As for Smith, he gave a clinic in [whatever you want to call the style of music this group was playing] drumming, going beyond the kit to play various toys and spare parts and then coming back to build a sick beat. Leaving aside all the extended techniques, I've never seen anyone play drums anything like Ches Smith does. He's certainly developed his own style, particularly in the unorthodox way he approaches the cymbals. I think it has something to do with the combination of long arms and a small kit.

Recent (and Less Recent) Live Music, Part One

Although it's already been said better, I feel I should add one more voice to the chorus of enthusiasm for the meeting of contemporary titans that was The Bad Plus w/ Joshua Redman at the Blue Note. To say that Redman was able to find a place within TBP's often tightly arranged tunes would be a huge understatement. If I was to employ a deliberately terrible mixed metaphor, I would say that like master jewelers, the trio gave Redman a setting in which to shine and he knocked that s**t out of the park. For every mood and mode that The Bad Plus explored (and they get to lots of different places in a single set), Redman was right there with something profound (and often jaw-dropping) to add to the mix.

I do regret not planning ahead and getting stuck in the SRO bar area with a terrible sightline, but even at that remove it was impossible to miss the strong musical message that was being delivered - TBP's inimitable compositions taken to the next level live. "People Like You" and "Layin' a Strip for the Higher-Self State Line" are the first titles that come to mind as highlights, but there were many, many great moments spread through the set I saw (which also included, if memory serves, "Who's He?" and "Dirty Blonde" - I didn't make any notes).

I can't fault the Blue Note on its bookings - they bring in some of the best - but the decor does tend to give one the unsettling feeling (as I'm sure I'm not the first to point out) of having walked into the highest tier "gentleman's club" in a medium-to-large size Midwestern city, so that seeing someone with, for example, the elegance and stature of Ron Carter on stage there can seem almost distractingly incongruous. I suppose the defiantly unremodeled yet far-from-classic interior could serve as a sobering commentary on the economic viability of presenting jazz seven nights a week in the current economic and cultural climate. Mirrors and neon or not, they keep pulling me back in by booking musicians that are just undeniable, such as James Carter with 'Blood' Ulmer and Nicholas Payton (more about that in the forthcoming Part Two of this post).

I was at The Stone twice recently, finally seeing Dr. Eugene Chadbourne after listening to his music on and off for many years, and seeing the mighty Ken Vandermark in a duo with Joe Morris on guitar. Though he originally made his reputation as a downtown/avant guitar weirduoso, the Doc's recent solo set left no doubt that he's also a heckuva songwriter (highlights in that department included "God Made Country Music" and "Old Piano") and a great (though still plenty weird) banjo player. Come to think of it, I'd love to see a guitar-banjo duo with Morris and Chadbourne (looks like they have recorded together). If Clifford Jordan and John Gilmore hadn't already used the album title Blowin' In From Chicago, it would suit Ken Vandermark perfectly. His technique is highly advanced, but at the same time, he makes it very clear that playing the saxophone essentially involves blowing into a tube. There was no shortage of brains or guts in the Vandermark-Morris duo.

I saw the Mary Halvorson Quintet at Barbes for a second time (the first time, I think they were playing a mixture of material from the trio album Dragon's Head and some then-new compositions that would end up on Saturn Sings, but I may be combining it in my memory with an earlier trio gig). In any case, with the newer material firmly under their belts, the growth of the group sound and of Halvorson's compositions was very much in evidence. This group, already acclaimed well beyond the Brooklyn scene centered on venues like Barbes and Korzo, just keeps getting better.

For the March installment of Tower of Song, a monthly songwriter's-circle-type deal at Rock Shop, host/organizer Jennifer O'Connor outdid herself, assembling a very heavy lineup: Tim Bracy, formerly of Mendoza Line; the undisputed Queen of Country Music in Brooklyn and personal favorite of John Peel, Laura Cantrell; and a man who must be one of the most underappreciated songwriting talents of our time, 33-1/3 author and sometime John Darnielle collaborator Franklin Bruno. The performers made the most of being onstage together as a group, covering each others songs and contributing harmonies and extra guitar and keyboard parts. The highlight of the show may have been Bruno's song inspired by Felix Gonzalez-Torres' Untitled (Perfect Lovers). I don't know if he's recorded it, and I'm not even sure of the title, but I'd really like to hear it again.

I guess these YouTube clips (scroll down on the right-hand column) of the '80s-era public access jazz chat show The John Lewis Show (not the famous pianist or the civil rights leader and politician, but the less famous drummer) have been circulating for a while, but I just discovered them via A Blog Supreme and they are my new favorite thing. Ron Jefferson, the Ed McMahon to Lewis' Carson, must have been one of the hippest people alive at the time (not to mention "dynamic", "prolific", and "beautiful"). The show provides a valuable historical window into '80s jazz fashions, though I assume that Jefferson's bow tie in this segment was purely his own thing and not representative of any current trend. And fans of The Fighter might enjoy the interview Lewis and Jefferson conducted with boxer Saoul Mamby (who, at a critical turning point of that movie, pulls out of a fight with Micky Ward at the last minute). Lewis has DVDs of the full-length shows available here.

Next time in Part Two: Bill Frisell! Paul Motian! Neil Young! James Carter! and more?

And a final word from Schroeder:
More true than I'd like to admit.