MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS – VISION TOWARDS ESSENCE (Pi Recordings)
One of the great thinkers of the jazz avant-garde, progenitor guiding light of the AACM, teacher and mentor to many of the post-Coltrane jazz scenes primary outside musical forces, Abrams explores the solo side of his multifarious musical personalities on this live recording from the Guelph Jazz Festival in 1998. Abrams believes that improvised solo performance best reaches his artistic essence.
An hour-long suite of mesmerizing beauty and soaring, dislocating edge-play, this set envelopes as it jars the listener into long, swooping expanses of mood. From simple eloquence to dissonant, pan-Asian jagged chord clusters zigzagging up and down the keys, Abrams technical radiance and philosophic mindset is fully exposed in the completely improvised performance. 2007 ****
KING CRIMSON – Mann Music Center, Philadelphia, PA. July 30, 1982 (live unreleaed recording)
When guitarist Robert Plant reformed King Crimson in the early 80s, the band’s new sound was all it’s own while still versed in the edgy experimentalism and art-rock proclivities of it’s antecedents. The two new members of the band (guitarist/vocalist Adrian Belew and bassist/Chapman Stick player Tony Levin, drummer Bill Bruford had played in previous incarnations of the band before joining Yes) brought their own unique approaches to their instruments into the fold. Most importantly this group sounded like a band.
This show is from the tour supporting their second CD as a unit, BEAT, which supplied about half of the program. The majority of the remaining material came from their debut CD, DISCIPLINE that stands as one of the great albums of progressive rock.
I was at this show and when the band left the stage after just about 45 minutes, I was very disappointed. Why the truncated performance? In the day and age of the four-hour Dead and Springsteen shows I was regularly attending, I was a tad miffed. Especially since the first 45 minutes had been so tremendously riveting. But the encore was nearly as long as the set itself and was face-peeling. We left the show thoroughly exhausted and fully satiated.
Belew was the stunt guitarist of choice during this period, having gained his rep with Frank Zappa, toured and recorded with David Bowie, the Talking Heads and Laurie Anderson but here he was thrust into the spotlight as relative front man, by way of his engaging vocals and strange post-modern lyrics. But, in an ensemble of such forcefully iconoclastic turf-swallowers, the precision and interaction and group gestalt prevent any one member from holding center stage for very long.
The sound quality of this boot is excellent so I must presume it was a live FM broadcast at the time. ****
JOHN McLAUGHLIN / JACO PASTORIUS / TONY WILLIAMS – TRIO OF DOOM (Columbia/Legacy)
Before fusion was a bad word in the jazz world, these three primal innovators were individually amongst the most far-reaching and popular musicians on their respective instruments. They crossed musical boundaries pulling listeners from the rock n roll world into the realm of improvised music with a maelstrom of technical brilliance, harmonic daring and rhythmic ferocity that led handful of inspirational recordings and collaborations and to armies of less musical imitators who opted for the speed and flash without the balls, vision and substance.
With this long-awaited release, the vault-keepers at Columbia/Legacy have filled a major hole in the fusion pantheon by gathering the complete recorded works of this short-lived “super-group”. The band was formed in 1979 when all three were in top form. McLaughlin and Williams, having been seminal and influential players who came into their own in the bands of Miles Davis, had gone on to form two of the most popular and explosive bands of the fusion era, Tony Williams’ Lifetime (with whom McLaughlin played early on) and John’s Mahavishnu Orchestra. Pastorius had burst onto the scene and quickly become, quite possibly, the most influential electric bassist of all-time through his groundbreaking work with Weather Report, Joni Mitchell and on Pat Metheny’s first record.
Trio of Doom was formed for a one-time only gig at the Havana Jam in 1979. Three of the tracks were previously released on the Havana Jam LP but were actually not from the concert but recorded three days later in the studio in New York. The remaining cuts here have never before seen the light of day. There are two partial alternate takes (false starts, basically) of “Papa Oriente” from the studio sessions as well as the entire live set from Havana. Though a bit on the short side, this CD does not disappoint for fans of any of the players involved.
With McLaughlin the only surviving member of the Trio of Doom, we will have to luxuriate in the fact that this is all we will ever hear of this incendiary ensemble and we are lucky to be so blessed. ****1/2
VARIOUS ARTISTS -- MILES…FROM INDIA (Times Square Records)
Producer Bob Belden (check out his work elsewhere if you don’t know him) brainstormed this trans-continental coming together of over two-dozen musicians. Roughly half the participants are Miles Davis alumni and the other half classical and jazz musicians from India. They come together to reinterpret music from a wide swath of Miles Davis career blending Indian rhythm and texture with the genre-bending proto-fusion jazz/funk/rock styling of Miles early 70s years.
Contributions include stalwart heavyweight such as Ron Carter and Jimmy Cobb from Miles’ pre-70s classic quintets to Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, and Lenny White from the “Bitches Brew”. The 70s rock/funk influenced alum here include Pete Cosey, Dave Liebman, Michael Henderson, Badal Roy, Gary Bartz and the post-hiatus players of Miles 80s units is represented by his nephew Vince Wilburn, Adam Holzman, Robert Irving III, and Benny Rietveld. Also present is trumpeter Wallace Roney who Miles chose to join him in some of his final performances and who joined the 60s quintet on the road after Miles death as well as up and coming alto saxist Rudresh Mahanthappa whose own critically acclaimed music mines his Indo-American heritage as well as the influence of Miles and the players here.
The Indian musicians here were organized by Indian keyboardist Louiz Banks and represent some of the finest musicians in the country. Belden went to Indian with sketches of the music and worked with the musicians in Mumbai and Bombay to put together tracks incorporating Miles interest in Indian sounds and mood and then once back in the U.S. Belden used SKYPE technology to record the alumni from studios around the U.S.
Most importantly, the music soars. A potent and wonderful take on everything fom “All Blues” to Pangaea. Release date: April 15, 2008 ****
P.S. Catch the Miles From India project live May 9 at Town Hall in NYC and May 31 at the Palace of the Fine Arts in San Francisco. The live band features Carter, Roney, White, Cosey, Bankz, Bartz, Mahanthappa, Roy and Rietveld as well as featured Indian musicians from the cd.
ROBERT PLANT / ALISON KRAUSS – RAISING SAND (Rounder)
2007 ***** (see separate review)
Showing posts with label Robert Plant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Plant. Show all posts
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
CD Review: ROBERT PLANT & ALISON KRAUSS - Raising Sand
Produced by T-Bone Burnett
First of all let me preface this by saying that I think T-Bone Burnett is one of the great unsung artists of the past 30 years. Since I first saw his weird stork-like countenance loping around in Bob Dylan's peripheral vision in RENALDO & CLARA. the insanely self-indulgent, wondrously oblique and grandly ambitious film which surreally documented Dylan's ROLLING THUNDER REVUE, I was taken by his sheer musicality and sense of purpose. Whether producing songwriter Peter Case's brilliant self-titled solo debut from, classic records by Elvis Costello (my fave EC record “King of America “ being one), Los Lobos, Roy Orbison, Leo Kottke, The Wallflowers, Counting Crows, or pulling together the surprise hit soundtrack album of 2001, Down From The Mountain: O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU, T-Bone has laid a swatch across the past generation's musicians and fans that has been subtle and surreal in its subversive influence while embracing all that is real, rootsy and left-of-center tasteful.
Wow, I just recalled sitting next to him at lunch before a meet and greet at a record store in Ardmore, PA back in the 1988. I’d been invited by the regional promotions rep for Columbia Records to attend and T-Bone was out promoting his latest record, “Talking Animals.” A fabulous record by the way if you can find a copy. At any rate, all I truly remember is that the dud is incredibly tall and that he and I got into a wonderful conversation about the horrid state of American political leadership (a favorite topic of both of ours) and the importance of a guy like Johnny Cash in bridging the gap between the old world (pre-Dylan) America and the new post-Vietnam era.
OK we won't talk about his incredible but under appreciated solo work. It is often downright impenetrable in it's quirkiness, in nothing but the best sense, mind you. Taking his cues from the most obtuse Dylan moments of dense and just plain odd character studies, tossing edgy political metaphor laced with a very persistent sonic and textural daring, his solo music is an acquired taste. Unfortunately not many record buyers actually acquired them. My favorite is the mostly acoustic self-titled CD from ‘86 and “Proof Through he Night” (1983) is also a keeper.
Which brings us to this new CD by rock icon Robert Plant and new acoustic figurehead Alison Krauss. "What?" was my first reaction. Sounded like a match made in a smoky room at a struggling AAA station trying to find something new to play that didn't alienate either of their audiences of aging boomers or ‘90s fans of female singer-songwriters. Good on paper but I was having a hard time envisioning where these worlds collide.
I recalled Plant and Led Zeppelin III, the album of mostly acoustic, very British folky ditties but it was much rougher hewn than the pristine filigree of Krauss's modernized yet ancient country sensibilities. OK, maybe there were possibilities here. But try as I might hearing a cross between the wailing "Immigrant Song" and the calico earthiness of "Too Late To Cry Now" was still a stretch.
Then I heard T-Bone was in the control room overseeing things and I was sold. Perfect. This MUST be great or at least right up my alley. And I hadn't heard a note when I opened the CD and saw among the players downtown iconoclastic jazz/avant guitarist Marc Ribot aboard (he shares Costello pedigree with T-Bone) as well as folk acoustic legendary string master Norman Blake. I was very intrigued.
Well, if you are looking for Plant’s innovative, improvisatory, verging-on-the-edge-of-disintegrating old-school vocal histrionics that spawned legions of crappy pseudo imitators from under their copy-cat Goldilocks fright wigs, go buy a Zep boxed set. It ain’t here. There are a couple of glimmers of Frodo-meets-Dragonslayer vocal wail but very gracefully appointed.
This is a Plant all about harmony and gentle grace and coming not only directly from the folk music of the British Isles where he got his early lessons but more directly filtered through Krauss’s roots in the American antecedents of those same ballads and reels—the music of Appalachia and Kentucky and West Virginia—the Southern, American roots of what would later leave the farm and head to Nashville and become country music. We also find here the splinters and fingers and streams of the other roots music of the American South—the blues, but not a direct, 12 bar version that inspired Led Zeppelin’s plundering and elongation of the form but the variations that permeated the music of New Orleans and Memphis and Tupelo and Austin. Music that became early R&B and rockabilly and rock and roll. Nothing on the CD really rocks but just seems absolutely well-worn and comfortable.
Krauss, began her recording career as a 14-year old fiddle phenom and who has become in the last ten years one of country music’s most popular purveyors of eclectic stylistic exploration and roots-centric classicism.
All of these links are present here in music that never sounds dusty, antiquated or nostalgic--never anything but fresh and vibrant. This is one gorgeous album of great songs and superlative taste.
Song by song glimpse:
"Rich Woman" opens the album with what may be the bluesiest structure on the disc but more delicate in presentation with Krauss harmonizing to Plant’s soft-pedaled and introspective vocals sung in a smoother, more slippery smoothness than even the crooniest of Plant vehicles we’re used to.
"Killing The Blues" - self-explanatory.
"Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us" - written by T-Bone’s wife and wonderful singer-songwriter Sam Phillips.
“Polly Come Home” - one of two songs here by the great and under appreciated Gene Clark of the Byrds. This is a haunting folk ballad.
“Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On) - T-Bone has long been a huge fan of The Everly Brothers (consider he and Costello’s Cowardly Bros EP from ????). This Phil & Don song is very different from the original with Plant vamping the blues a bit in the spaces between verse and the guitars a bit more distorted than anything thus far.
"Through the Morning, Through The Night" - Gene Clark again. Also from the Dillard & Clark album of the same title, is a forlorn country ballad.
"Please Read The Letter" - oddly enough one of only three or four tunes with Krauss's fiddle, this also features some classic Plant moans and an aching and slow Krauss harmony vocal. What a trademark sound that is. No one can sound like that. The tune is also the only tune on the CD that features a Plant writing credit (along with Jimmy Page and several other folks).
"Trampled Rose" - ah, this hauntingly beautiful Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan song features an ethereal Krauss vocal and some delicate Waits-ian coloration (though without the ever-present trash can symphony sonic color of Waits’ own work) which makes it sound oddly like a hi-fidelity version of a Zep outtake from III. Some hand drum stuff and National Steel guitar work with some ether haze floating through the mix. Don't hear Plant on this but the swooping vocal swells by Krauss could very well be Plant inspired.
"Fortune Teller" -- the classic early rock of New Orleans (the Stones also covered this early on) written by one "Naomi Neville" which was a pseudonym for either Art Neville or Allen Toussaint depending on who you believe. This is a rockin’ little ditty with Plant in quiet rocker mode.
“Stick With Me baby” -- by 60s Nashville star Mel Tillis finds the production etching more of a 50s street R&B vibe. Music for the front stoop, albeit dusky and shadowy where the melody’s softness pierces through the smoky haze.
“Nothin’” -- A dirge-like, grungy take on a Townes Van Zandt tune full of big guitar layered with subtle and scratchy fiddle riffs. Like a murky tale told under a dirty blanket. The sound of this track is wonderfully crafted mixing banjo, tambourine, Krauss’s wonderfully filthy fiddle and the other-side-of dawn Van Zandt ethos into a non-rocking rocker. Loud and ominously spooky.
“Let Your Loss be Your Lesson” - written by Mike Campbell, I presume the same guy as in Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers. Starts with a 60s Stax/Motown-esque riff and then sliding into a bouncing, rockabilly shuffle this features a tasty Krauss vocal that at times feels a bit little like she’s channeling Dolly Parton with that great little warble in her voice. The nice little edge on the guitar in the refrain is very Buffalo Springfield 60s and the solo kicks the tune out. One of the CD highlights with a compelling Krauss vocal. Not a country girl on this one.
“Your Long Journey” - begins with an autoharp figure from the folk pedigree of Mike Seeger and is the purest old-time song on the album with banjo, light drums, acoustic bass and Blake’s tasteful acoustic guitar. Sweet gospel tying Krauss’s roots to the album full tilt. Dig Plant’s dipping vocal. A man who long ago did his homework on this music. If you heard this on the radio you’d NEVER guess it was Robert Plant. Not in a million years.
Here’s a CD I will listen to for years. Can’t say that very often any more. Funny, while listening early on I felt it was a heavily Kraussian record, later I felt the Plant presence more. In retrospect, it hangs together perfectly. Burnett has been criticized for getting complacent with his productions in the last few years. His early work with his wife Sam Phillips was jarringly original as were his own albums. His work with Los Lobos sounding nothing like the BoDeans records he worked on. I don’t feel that critique has any validity here. This is a wonderfully solid and inspired collaboration between producer, artists and band that is one of the most listenable records to my ears in a long time.
So again, here’s another CD by a 60s iconic musical fave of mine and I will say wholeheartedly that unless you HATE country roots music of any kind (and this is by no means a country CD but her voice and one or two of the songs distinctly sit on that porch) I can recommend this record to everyone. Even my Dad would like this record and to get him to listen to any Led Zeppelin would be harder than me mastering Chinese algebra (is there such a thing?).
First of all let me preface this by saying that I think T-Bone Burnett is one of the great unsung artists of the past 30 years. Since I first saw his weird stork-like countenance loping around in Bob Dylan's peripheral vision in RENALDO & CLARA. the insanely self-indulgent, wondrously oblique and grandly ambitious film which surreally documented Dylan's ROLLING THUNDER REVUE, I was taken by his sheer musicality and sense of purpose. Whether producing songwriter Peter Case's brilliant self-titled solo debut from, classic records by Elvis Costello (my fave EC record “King of America “ being one), Los Lobos, Roy Orbison, Leo Kottke, The Wallflowers, Counting Crows, or pulling together the surprise hit soundtrack album of 2001, Down From The Mountain: O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU, T-Bone has laid a swatch across the past generation's musicians and fans that has been subtle and surreal in its subversive influence while embracing all that is real, rootsy and left-of-center tasteful.
Wow, I just recalled sitting next to him at lunch before a meet and greet at a record store in Ardmore, PA back in the 1988. I’d been invited by the regional promotions rep for Columbia Records to attend and T-Bone was out promoting his latest record, “Talking Animals.” A fabulous record by the way if you can find a copy. At any rate, all I truly remember is that the dud is incredibly tall and that he and I got into a wonderful conversation about the horrid state of American political leadership (a favorite topic of both of ours) and the importance of a guy like Johnny Cash in bridging the gap between the old world (pre-Dylan) America and the new post-Vietnam era.
OK we won't talk about his incredible but under appreciated solo work. It is often downright impenetrable in it's quirkiness, in nothing but the best sense, mind you. Taking his cues from the most obtuse Dylan moments of dense and just plain odd character studies, tossing edgy political metaphor laced with a very persistent sonic and textural daring, his solo music is an acquired taste. Unfortunately not many record buyers actually acquired them. My favorite is the mostly acoustic self-titled CD from ‘86 and “Proof Through he Night” (1983) is also a keeper.
Which brings us to this new CD by rock icon Robert Plant and new acoustic figurehead Alison Krauss. "What?" was my first reaction. Sounded like a match made in a smoky room at a struggling AAA station trying to find something new to play that didn't alienate either of their audiences of aging boomers or ‘90s fans of female singer-songwriters. Good on paper but I was having a hard time envisioning where these worlds collide.
I recalled Plant and Led Zeppelin III, the album of mostly acoustic, very British folky ditties but it was much rougher hewn than the pristine filigree of Krauss's modernized yet ancient country sensibilities. OK, maybe there were possibilities here. But try as I might hearing a cross between the wailing "Immigrant Song" and the calico earthiness of "Too Late To Cry Now" was still a stretch.
Then I heard T-Bone was in the control room overseeing things and I was sold. Perfect. This MUST be great or at least right up my alley. And I hadn't heard a note when I opened the CD and saw among the players downtown iconoclastic jazz/avant guitarist Marc Ribot aboard (he shares Costello pedigree with T-Bone) as well as folk acoustic legendary string master Norman Blake. I was very intrigued.
Well, if you are looking for Plant’s innovative, improvisatory, verging-on-the-edge-of-disintegrating old-school vocal histrionics that spawned legions of crappy pseudo imitators from under their copy-cat Goldilocks fright wigs, go buy a Zep boxed set. It ain’t here. There are a couple of glimmers of Frodo-meets-Dragonslayer vocal wail but very gracefully appointed.
This is a Plant all about harmony and gentle grace and coming not only directly from the folk music of the British Isles where he got his early lessons but more directly filtered through Krauss’s roots in the American antecedents of those same ballads and reels—the music of Appalachia and Kentucky and West Virginia—the Southern, American roots of what would later leave the farm and head to Nashville and become country music. We also find here the splinters and fingers and streams of the other roots music of the American South—the blues, but not a direct, 12 bar version that inspired Led Zeppelin’s plundering and elongation of the form but the variations that permeated the music of New Orleans and Memphis and Tupelo and Austin. Music that became early R&B and rockabilly and rock and roll. Nothing on the CD really rocks but just seems absolutely well-worn and comfortable.
Krauss, began her recording career as a 14-year old fiddle phenom and who has become in the last ten years one of country music’s most popular purveyors of eclectic stylistic exploration and roots-centric classicism.
All of these links are present here in music that never sounds dusty, antiquated or nostalgic--never anything but fresh and vibrant. This is one gorgeous album of great songs and superlative taste.
Song by song glimpse:
"Rich Woman" opens the album with what may be the bluesiest structure on the disc but more delicate in presentation with Krauss harmonizing to Plant’s soft-pedaled and introspective vocals sung in a smoother, more slippery smoothness than even the crooniest of Plant vehicles we’re used to.
"Killing The Blues" - self-explanatory.
"Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us" - written by T-Bone’s wife and wonderful singer-songwriter Sam Phillips.
“Polly Come Home” - one of two songs here by the great and under appreciated Gene Clark of the Byrds. This is a haunting folk ballad.
“Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On) - T-Bone has long been a huge fan of The Everly Brothers (consider he and Costello’s Cowardly Bros EP from ????). This Phil & Don song is very different from the original with Plant vamping the blues a bit in the spaces between verse and the guitars a bit more distorted than anything thus far.
"Through the Morning, Through The Night" - Gene Clark again. Also from the Dillard & Clark album of the same title, is a forlorn country ballad.
"Please Read The Letter" - oddly enough one of only three or four tunes with Krauss's fiddle, this also features some classic Plant moans and an aching and slow Krauss harmony vocal. What a trademark sound that is. No one can sound like that. The tune is also the only tune on the CD that features a Plant writing credit (along with Jimmy Page and several other folks).
"Trampled Rose" - ah, this hauntingly beautiful Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan song features an ethereal Krauss vocal and some delicate Waits-ian coloration (though without the ever-present trash can symphony sonic color of Waits’ own work) which makes it sound oddly like a hi-fidelity version of a Zep outtake from III. Some hand drum stuff and National Steel guitar work with some ether haze floating through the mix. Don't hear Plant on this but the swooping vocal swells by Krauss could very well be Plant inspired.
"Fortune Teller" -- the classic early rock of New Orleans (the Stones also covered this early on) written by one "Naomi Neville" which was a pseudonym for either Art Neville or Allen Toussaint depending on who you believe. This is a rockin’ little ditty with Plant in quiet rocker mode.
“Stick With Me baby” -- by 60s Nashville star Mel Tillis finds the production etching more of a 50s street R&B vibe. Music for the front stoop, albeit dusky and shadowy where the melody’s softness pierces through the smoky haze.
“Nothin’” -- A dirge-like, grungy take on a Townes Van Zandt tune full of big guitar layered with subtle and scratchy fiddle riffs. Like a murky tale told under a dirty blanket. The sound of this track is wonderfully crafted mixing banjo, tambourine, Krauss’s wonderfully filthy fiddle and the other-side-of dawn Van Zandt ethos into a non-rocking rocker. Loud and ominously spooky.
“Let Your Loss be Your Lesson” - written by Mike Campbell, I presume the same guy as in Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers. Starts with a 60s Stax/Motown-esque riff and then sliding into a bouncing, rockabilly shuffle this features a tasty Krauss vocal that at times feels a bit little like she’s channeling Dolly Parton with that great little warble in her voice. The nice little edge on the guitar in the refrain is very Buffalo Springfield 60s and the solo kicks the tune out. One of the CD highlights with a compelling Krauss vocal. Not a country girl on this one.
“Your Long Journey” - begins with an autoharp figure from the folk pedigree of Mike Seeger and is the purest old-time song on the album with banjo, light drums, acoustic bass and Blake’s tasteful acoustic guitar. Sweet gospel tying Krauss’s roots to the album full tilt. Dig Plant’s dipping vocal. A man who long ago did his homework on this music. If you heard this on the radio you’d NEVER guess it was Robert Plant. Not in a million years.
Here’s a CD I will listen to for years. Can’t say that very often any more. Funny, while listening early on I felt it was a heavily Kraussian record, later I felt the Plant presence more. In retrospect, it hangs together perfectly. Burnett has been criticized for getting complacent with his productions in the last few years. His early work with his wife Sam Phillips was jarringly original as were his own albums. His work with Los Lobos sounding nothing like the BoDeans records he worked on. I don’t feel that critique has any validity here. This is a wonderfully solid and inspired collaboration between producer, artists and band that is one of the most listenable records to my ears in a long time.
So again, here’s another CD by a 60s iconic musical fave of mine and I will say wholeheartedly that unless you HATE country roots music of any kind (and this is by no means a country CD but her voice and one or two of the songs distinctly sit on that porch) I can recommend this record to everyone. Even my Dad would like this record and to get him to listen to any Led Zeppelin would be harder than me mastering Chinese algebra (is there such a thing?).
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