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My interest in New York City salsa and Cuban son was fueled in part by <a href="http://www.descarga.com/cgi-bin/db/catalog?adYB2HaU;;654">Descarga.com<…;, an impressive resource for all things Afro-Latin. The Spanish word "descarga" means <i>to unload</i>, but, in musical terms, is Cuban slang for a hot and riotous jam session. You'd often hear about guys getting together in the streets or on the beach for a wild, time-stopping <i>descarga</i>. Providing in-depth interviews with musicians and producers, well-informed think pieces, hard-hitting reviews, and tons and tons of great music, Descarga.com is a great destination for music lovers.

It drives me nuts when people, some of them intelligent and not prone to idiotic statements, say things to me like a colleague did the other day: "Do you ever hear a good record anymore?"

I just received my $600 from President Bush. I feel suddenly rich. Who said money doesn't grow on trees? In order to do my part in stimulating this dismal economy, I've decided to purchase a few phono accessories. (Yes, I will also be buying more records. Duh.) Wee!

Recent CD purchases that I need to buy all over again on vinyl, in alphabetical order (obviously):

A powerhouse trio is playing at the Village Vanguard through Sunday—Ethan Iverson on piano, Charlie Haden on bass, Paul Motian on drums. I saw them last night, and if you’re a jazz fan who lives in the Tri-State area, you need to go see them, too. Haden, who made his mark 50 years ago in Ornette Coleman’s original quartet, remains one of the supplest and most instinctively musical bassists around. He knows just when to hit the fundamental of a chord, when to spell out the arpeggio, when to walk the scale, or when simply to evoke the mood of a song. The last time I saw him, playing duets at the Blue Note in August, he’d recently had a hernia operation, and while the notes he played were spot-on, in their customary surprising ways, he couldn’t play very many of them; I wondered, in this blog, if age (he was 70) might finally be taking a toll. Last night proved he’s fully recovered and plucking full-throttled. Motian, who has played off and on with Haden since the early ‘70s (he was also the drummer in Bill Evans’ 1961 trio that played at the Vanguard on <I>Waltz for Debby</I>), is, to put it plainly, a magician. Nearly each bar, he attacks his drumkit, usually with brushes, in a completely different way (the Motian Variations, you might call them), sometimes in a way that seems at odds with what his bandmates are doing (double-time is one thing, but is there such a thing as one-and-a-half time?), yet it all merges and converges <I>perfectly</I>. Iverson is best known as the pianist for The Bad Plus. I like that group a lot, but he goes leagues beyond on his own, excavating hidden patterns, rhythms and motifs from jazz standards, while preserving their lyricism or blues or swing. The set I saw, the trio played mainly ballads and blues, including Bill Evans’ “Blue in Green,” Haden’s “Silence,” and a couple Charlie Parker tunes, which generally aren’t up Haden’s or Motian’s alley but they swung hard and clear and just a bit intricately off the beaten track.

<B>KEITH JARRETT TRIO: <I>The Cure</I></B><BR>
Keith Jarrett, piano; Gary Peacock, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums<BR>
ECM 1440 (849 650-2, CD only). Manfred Eicher, prod.; Jan Erik Kongshaug, eng. DDD. TT: 77:36