Spacemen 3 – Sound of Confusion

Sound of Confusion

Spacemen 3 – Sound of Confusion Glass GLALP 018 (1986)

Wow!  An early name of The Stooges was “The Psychedelic Stooges” and that well fits what you have here.  Take the monster riffs of The Stooges and then trip out like The 13th Floor Elevators or Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd and you’ll end up with Sound of Confusion.  It’s a rather simple formula, but its no less powerful and enthralling for it.  More proof that the 1980s produced plenty of great rock and roll if you were willing to look left of the dial.

Various Artists – Lenox School of Jazz Concert 1959

Lenox School of Jazz Concert 1959

Various Artists – Lenox School of Jazz Concert 1959 Royal Jazz RJD 513 (1990)

There are a few jazz concerts that changed the world.  The “October Revolution in Jazz” series is often cited as one of them.  But that concert series from 1964 wouldn’t have occurred without a particular concert at the end of the Lenox School of Jazz summer jazz workshop in 1959.  Run by John Lewis of The Modern Jazz Quartet, Ornette Coleman was brought in to an audience of East Coast (mostly New York City) jazz luminaries.  Ornette had the opportunity to present his music to the most influential performers in the jazz world.  It was this concert, more than any other factor (Cecil Taylor still being ignored and not finding gigs), that convinced the jazz world that something eventually called “free jazz” was a real possibility.

The first track is Ornette’s “The Sphinx.”  The melody is perhaps reminiscent of Henry Mancini, but without the irony or kitsch.  That was the thing about Ornette.  He could merge the simple and complex seamlessly, just as he could high and low culture.  There are a lot of good performances here, from many different performers, many of whom are stars in their own right (or at least notable underground/fringe figures, like composition student Margo Guryan), but it is most likely that listeners will come to this seeking to hear Ornette’s performance.  Bear in mind this is a mere selection from the concert; not all the performances have survived in recorded form.  For listeners most concerned with the earliest recorded performances of Ornette Coleman, note that there are earlier recordings, including Complete Live at the Hillcrest Club (recorded in 1958) and his studio albums for Contemporary Records.  But the reason his studio albums for Atlantic Records gained notoriety is because of these concert performances.

Sun Ra – Super-Sonic Jazz

Super-Sonic Jazz

Sun Ra and His Arkestra – Super-Sonic Jazz El Saturn H7OP0216 (1957)

This early offering from Sun Ra is more for completists.  That is to say the converted will appreciate this more than the unconverted.  It’s nice enough, if a little rough in the performances and recording fidelity.  There are certainly hints (“India,” “El is a Sound of Joy,” “Medicine for a Nightmare”) of what was to come.  But all we really get are hints, or, at least, undeveloped sketches and first passes.  As a composer, Ra was clearly still developing.  There is more hard bop here than on any other Sun Ra album, and bear in mind that hard bop sort of represented the mainstream in jazz at the time.  But those hints at other things are as weird as anything you could find in the late 1950s — like Ra’s early model electric piano on some of the first few songs.  On the whole, though, the results are not quite as impressive as other Ra recordings from roughly the same era when the Arkestra was based in Chicago. “Kingdom of Not” and “Advice to Medics” are my favorite tracks.

Björk – Volta

Volta

Björk – Volta one Little Indian TPLP460CD (2007)

Björk has established herself as one of the more interesting mainstream acts of her era.  She is quirky and charming in a way that exudes a convincing innocence and naiveté — if always grounded in a sort of melodrama that keeps her firmly connected to the pop charts.  Her time in the spotlight was drawing to a close, but Volta is an interesting record even if it is also an uneven one.  The duet with Antony on “The Dull Flame of Desire” is quite nice, and some punchier, more dance-able grooves than usual are elsewhere near the top of the album.  But things cool off considerably after the first four songs.  The very weakest stuff tends to be the rather straightforward balladry and slower material, where it becomes apparent that anyone who has been listening before has already heard it done better.  Still, the best Volta has to offer ranks among Björk’s very best.

Anthony Braxton – Trio and Duet

Trio and Duet

Anthony Braxton – Trio and Duet Sackville 3007 (1975)

Good performances, but, like most Braxton stuff recorded around 1974, this has the feeling of only being at the brink of something big.  The opener “Composition 36,” a trio piece with Richard Teitelbaum and Leo Smith, is definitely cut from the same cloth as New York, Fall 1974, which was recorded at sessions just before and after this one.  The remainder are standards, with just Brax and Dave Holland.  Probably, those new to Braxton should start with Five Pieces 1975 or even New York, Fall 1974 and then work back to this if interested.

Loïc Wacquant – On Urban Relegation

Quote from Loïc Wacquant:

“To speak of urban relegation – rather than ‘territories of poverty’ or ‘low-income community,’ for instance – is to insist that the proper object of inquiry is not the place itself and its residents but the multilevel structural processes whereby persons are selected, thrust and maintained in marginal locations, as well as the social webs and cultural forms they subsequently develop therein.  Relegation is a collective activity, not an individual state; a relation (of economic, social and symbolic power) between collectives, not a gradational attribute of persons. It reminds us that, to avoid falling into the false realism of the ordinary and scholarly common sense of the moment, the sociology of marginality must fasten not on vulnerable ‘groups’ (which often exist merely on paper, if that) but on the institutional mechanisms that produce, reproduce and transform the network of positions to which its supposed members are dispatched and attached. And it urges us to remain agnostic as to the particular social and spatial configuration assumed by the resulting district of dispossession.”

“Revisiting Territories of Relegation: Class, Ethnicity and the State in the Making of Advanced Marginality.” Urban Studies Journal, 53, no. 6, December 2015, Symposium (with responses by Janos Ladanyí, Troels Schultz Larsen, Orlando Patterson, and Emma Shaw Crane): 1077-1088.

Don Cherry – Don Cherry [Orient]

Don Cherry [Orient]

Don Cherry – Don Cherry [A/K/A Orient] BYG YX 4012/13 (1973)

A live album featuring tracks recorded at concerts in France in April and August of 1971.  This is world fusion jazz, continuing in the tradition Cherry had established on such prior recordings as Eternal Rhythm and “mu” First Part & Second Part.  While this might be less than those other efforts, it is still mighty fine.  Cherry gained renown working with Ornette Coleman, and he seemed to draw from Coleman a kind of anarchic sense of egalitarianism.  But while Coleman’s music presupposed mostly a base in American musical forms, working primarily with players steeped in bebop, blues, R&B, and rock, and balancing individual performances within those realms, Cherry took musics from different cultures and placed those different cultures on equal footing.  Coleman worked with mostly monocultural styles, or at most with roughly binary juxtapositions of jazz and euro-classical composition.  On Don Cherry (confusingly, one of a number of self-titled albums he released, but helpfully renamed Orient for reissues), there is room for extended passages, plus many shifts of styles, with a density that is semi-intimate while retaining a sense of fullness.  Probably not the place to start with Cherry’s music, but a worthwhile stop in his catalog for fans of his other work.

Don Cherry & Ed Blackwell – El Corazón

El Corazón

Don Cherry & Ed Blackwell – El Corazón ECM 1230 (1982)

In some ways, El Corazón is a continuation of Cherry’s “mu” First Part and “mu” Second Part from the late 1960s.  Yet a lot had changed in the meantime.  The duo of Cherry and Blackwell are certainly more contemplative and restive here.  This album also features some of the trademark ECM Records chamber jazz sound.  The album remains eclectic.  There is a tribute to The Skatalites‘s sax man Roland Alphonso, a Thelonious Monk song, and various world music influences on display.  Perhaps the best offering is the wonderful percussion-heavy piece “Near-in.”

Tom Zé – Tom Zé [1970]

Tom Zé

Tom Zé – Tom Zé RGE Discos XRLP 5351 (1970)

Tom Zé’s second album — and the second of three self-titled albums in a row — isn’t always as highly regarded as his first, but it shows him more versatile as a vocalist.  There are some funky rock riffs with more bass and guitar, without the heavy organ of his debut.  There are more ornate arrangements, with lush strings and horns.  The songwriting is, perhaps, less dripping with irony, but the irony and starkly earnest shock humor is still present.  There are plenty of excellent compositions here.  

In an interview, Zé described this time and album as fraught with personal crisis:

“I was in a kind of crisis because I knew at that time that I didn’t want to do the popular music from my first album again. At the same time I didn’t know what to do and at the same time, João, the guy who freed me from my contract . . . was putting pressure on me to work and do more music. To me, it’s a crisis album and I don’t like to listen to it very often.”

The sorts of crises that he’s referring to weren’t just personal.  This was still a turbulent time in Brazil.  In his memoir Tropical Truth: A Story of Music & Revolution in Brazil (2002), fellow tropicalista Caetano Veloso described the era this way:

“In 1964, the military took power, motivated by the need to perpetuate those disparities [making Brazil the country with the greatest social and economic disparity in the world] that have proven to be the only way to make the Brazilian economy work (badly, needless to say) and, in the international arena, to defend the free market from the threat of the communist bloc (another American front of the Cold War).  Students were either leftist or they would keep their mouths shut.  Within the family or among one’s circle of friends, there was no possibility of disagreeing with a socialist ideology.  The Right existed only to serve vested or unspeakable interests.  Thus, the rallies ‘With God and for Freedom’ organized by the ‘Catholic ladies’ in support of the military coup appeared to us as the cynical, hypocritical gestures of evil people. *** we saw the coup simply as a decision to halt the redress of the horrible social inequities in Brazil and, simultaneously, to sustain North American supremacy in the hemisphere.”

When Veloso and Gilberto Gil were jailed in 1969, Tom Zé took over hosting the TV Tupi show Divino, Maravilhoso for a few episodes.

This album is still about the manifesto of tropicalismo.  There is the famous line Dustin Hoffman delivers in the film The Graduate (1967); when asked what he’s doing, he responds, “Drifting.”  Zé is drifting a bit here, but in the best possible way.  He wonderfully evokes a kind of unsatisfied boredom and uncertainty, matched with curiosity and open-mindedness.  There are very poppy tunes, verging on the commercial (“Passageiro,” “Jeitinho dela”).  And there are ballads (“O riso e a faco,” “Me dá, me dê, me diz”).  But there is more than that too.  “Jymmy Rende-se” has a tight groove.  The lyrics are playful nonsense,  but that kind of sums up the best of what the album as a whole has to offer.  Some of the other upbeat numbers (“Guindaste a rigor,” “Escolinha de robô”) are quite good too. And this isn’t all just variations on conventional pop/rock forms — some of this stuff is dissonant and weird too (“Qualquer bobagem”).

This might not be Zé’s most highly regarded album, but it’s still up there with his best.  Though it isn’t like he’s ever really made a bad album in a decades-long career.