Last night, the players were Frank Kimbrough on piano and Ted Nash alternating between flute and tenor…
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I’ve just found out about a new, and unlikely, place to go hear jazz in New York City: the Cacao Bar at the Chocolate Factory, a.k.a. MarieBelle. Most of the time, it’s a chi-chi caf—on the 2nd floor of 762 Madison Avenue, between E. 65th and 66th Streets—that serves hyper-rich chocolates, exotic drinks, and (so I’m told) killer short ribs. But on Wednesday nights, from 7:30 to 10, jazz musicians—a pianist and usually just one or two others (there’s no room for more)—come in and play.
I've been reading Daniel Levitan's The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature, which makes pretty strong claims for the importance of those tones in time. (Neil McCormick conducted an interesting interview with Levitan in The Telegraph.)
Music, Levitan argues, functioned as a means to store verbal information long before writing was developed, creates social bonds, and serves, like gaudy plumage, as a means of advertising genetic fitness. His thesis reminds me somewhat of one proposed by ethnomusicologist John Blacking, that primitive man could dance before he…
Joe Lovano’s Folk Art, his 22nd album on the Blue Note label, is an odd, sometimes jarring record—it took a few hearings before I found my bearings—but once the fragments snap into place, it’s a rousing pleaser, bursting with indigo moods, heart-skipped romance, and free-flow funk riffs. Lovano plays all kinds of reeds—tenor sax, straight alto sax, clarinet, and, on one song, the aulochrome, a Hungarian-built horn that’s a double soprano sax (attached to one reed), each side tuned to a different key, so that you blow melody and harmony simultaneously. He plays with a somewhat hardened tone,…
Last week, we moved—from the sixth floor of 261 Madison Avenue to the fifth floor of 261 Madison Avenue. The good news is abundant:
1. We are now on the east side of the building, which means we no longer face Madison Avenue, which means it is much, much quieter
2. Closely related to number 1: We get morning sunshine, which is nice
3. We share the floor with Soap Opera Digest, which means there are many lovely women floating about in their pretty spring dresses
The bad news is my office is still full of work.
Editor on deadline! Watch out!
One of the records we listened to at the Monkeyhaus last week was Sonny & Linda Sharrock's Paradise—a powerfully uplifting record, in my opinion. Sonny Sharrock, however, did not feel the same. In a 1989 interview with WKCR's Ben Ratliff, Sonny dismissed Paradise as being "not a good album," and attributed the album's failure to his own incompetence as a bandleader.
As a sideman, Sonny Sharrock appeared on three records in 1966: Pharaoh Sanders's Tauhid, Marzette Watts's eponymous album, and Byard Lancaster's It's Not Up To Us. Also around that time, Sharrock, like…
Lyle Owerko likes boomboxes.
When I think of the boombox, I think of growing up in Newark, New Jersey; I think of Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing; I think of making mix tapes in my bedroom, recording popular songs directly from Z100 and Hot 97; I think of my parents, young and happy, taking us to Jersey City's Lincoln Park, which, at the time, seemed like a million miles from home, and now is home; I think of my father making sure we had the right number of size-D batteries; I think of my first experiences with hi-fi.
In this video, Lyle Owerko and Fab Five Freddy discuss…
Lydia Lunch's 1980 album Queen of Siam (ZE Records ZEA 33006, LP) is so impressive—both sonically and musically—that, while listening, you might just find yourself compelled to send an enthusiastic, breathless text message to one of your friends.
"Dude," you might write, "do you have Lydia Lunch's 'Queen of Siam' on vinyl? Ooh, it's great fun on the hi-fi!"
And, if all is right with the world, you just might receive an equally enthusiastic and breathless message in return.
"You have to be kidding! I am listening to it right now. No joke. WTF!"…
I just got off the phone with Nathaniel Friedman, a writer working on a "vinyl revival" piece scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of Penthouse, that finest of fine men's periodicals. I think it went fairly well. If nothing else, it gives me an excuse to buy the magazine.
"I'm mentioned in an article in here. No, dude, really…"
We explored the possibilities surrounding this so-called "vinyl revival," discussed vinyl's ineffable soul, pondered its influence on the music industry, on hi-fi, and on the world, in general. I talked about vinyl's ability to communicate…
Digital sales rep, Jon Banner, just shared with me this bit of beautiful brilliance.
Ah, physical poetry. Ah, sweet ironic movement.
I would give just about anything to be Andy Macleod for even a single day. (Lord, hear my prayer.)
I mean, the dude is an excellent bass player. (Legs, legs, legs.) And notice that unique brand of self-assuredness in his eyes. (Oh, golden boots.) The man has got it together. (Such savage locks of wild hair falling free, falling free, never anywhere for you to land.) If nothing else, I'd like to just reach out and give that man five, you know, press the flesh. (Flesh! If I die tonight, so what, there's nothing left to build.)
The new album from Lights, the world's…