Archive for the 'Editorials' Category
Goodbye to All That (For Now)
Author: Anthony Medici
I’ve been writing for this blog since its inception, more than a year ago. I’ve decided it’s time for a rest, or maybe a change. Sometimes a rest is a change. I hope you have enjoyed what I have written. Or, if not enjoyed, at least found yourself thinking about the subject at hand. Thank you for reading, and thank you to Princeton Record Exchange for providing this forum. I have tried when and where I could to argue for the necessity of keeping the art known as jazz fresh, vibrant, indeed revolutionary, as it has always been at its best, but now seems in danger of ossifying under commercial pressure. There is no point to jazz’s survival, if that survival is one of only dreary “repertory” renditions, tired variations on tired themes, and endless reissues of many-times-reissued before albums. I have directed criticism at public radio and TV for its timid cowering to commercial and organizational pressure, its abysmal failure to offer content with “the shock of the new,” its dereliction of cultural duties that are its real reason for existence. Endless Yanni offerings, or pallid cocktail jazz, are not valid exercises of their public trust. Instead, public programming should stop acting like an also-ran commercial network, and start being a cultural change-maker. They do it much better in Europe. Read the rest of this entry »
read comments (1)Meeting People Is Easy
Author: Andrew Overton
For the last four years without question Radiohead has been my favorite band. Never has a band held my heavyweight title for that long. I’ve never been big on watching videos or movies about bands, but I make an exception for Thom Yorke & Co. I’m lying down to watch the documentary
Meeting People Is Easy , which follows the and during their infamous 1997 OK Computer tour. I’ll keep you posted on my thoughts and ramblings throughout the film.
92 in the Shade
Author: Anthony Medici
92 in the shade. An emblem of heat. The title of Tom McGuane’s modern classic novel. Phoenix was not quite that cool. It might have been all of a balmy 98 in the shade on my last trip there. 102 in the sun. Carless, and on foot, I was in search of LPs. Vinyl. Jazz vinyl. I scored my first vinyl at Grandiose, on East Pierce, a hip boutique with records, clothing and art. There I picked up a sealed copy of Stuff Smith’s Black Violin on MPS. I also picked up a double-LP on Arista Freedom (a short-lived but great label), Ornette Coleman’s The Great London Concert, recorded 1965, with David Izenzon, Charles Moffett and a small classical ensemble. I hadn’t seen this one before, and was glad to get it. There was also a nice copy of Jimmy Lyons’ “Some Other Afternoon” on BYG, but I already had that, so left it for the next vinyl hunter. In search or more vinyl, I was directed to Wax ‘n Trax, further along on Central Avenue, at Camelback; too far to walk. I would need to take the light rail train that runs along Central. As I attempted to finagle a ticket from the station dispenser, as the sun beat mercilessly down, and my hot sweaty hand clutched my bag of vinyl treasures, the question occurred to me: what is the melting point of vinyl? Read the rest of this entry »
Jude the Unobscure
Author: Lydia Pudzianowski
After a long hiatus (and one blog), your favorite post-grad is back for some guaranteed Sunday blogging. Now that I have a BA in writing from the University of Pittsburgh, I’m qualified to do this (apparently that’s it though, as no one wants to hire me). Read the rest of this entry »
Utopia’s Last Of The New Wave Riders Hurtles Towards Oblivion
Author: Jeff Boule
Photo By Jeff Boule
Once again, we revisit, review and revise a blog lost to zeros and ones…
As we recover from the last two back-to-back weeks of the Deface Tour, we need to take it easy. With this in mind, we will be doing an abbreviated review (read: not a two-parter this week). We are continuing with our examination of the Utopia box set, Last Of The New Wave Riders. A set of live performance CDs spanning from early in Utopia’s career up to almost the end. This particular show, the Oblivion Tour, is a single disc. The only one in the box set that isn’t a two CD set. VALUE!
BACH BEETHOVEN BROTZMANN
Author: Anthony Medici
It was the second day of a business trip to Phoenix, in the never-more-aptly named “Valley of the Sun,” where the temperature hovered around 100* and the sun and heat felt like a hair dryer blowing in your face. I had used my post-business “happy hour” scouting some local record stores (a story for another post). Heat-struck and foot-worn, I was consoling myself with a pizza and beer, when my cell phone signaled a text message. It was a ten second clip of German free jazz avatar Peter Brotzmann performing that night at D.C club Velvet Lounge, sent by a friend to offer a small degree of consolation for having missed the performance. Opening that little video clip in the desert night was like a visitation from another world, as if an old Norse god, perhaps Wotan himself, decided to offer a glimpse of an unseen world for just a fleeting moment; unlike the place I inhabited at the moment, this one was dark, mysterious, loud, seemingly violent and stormy , yet compelling. It lifted my spirit and increased my expectation for Brotzmann’s next performance at Wind Up Space in Baltimore, this past Saturday. Read the rest of this entry »
Utopia’s Last Of The New Wave Riders Deface The Beatles Music (Part Two)
Author: Jeff Boule
Photo By Jeff Boule
Picking up from where we (mercifully) left off last week, we are smack-dab in the middle of what is part of the box set from Todd Rundgren and Utopia chronicling their Deface The Music tour. To recap, Deface The Music was Utopia’s tribute to the Beatles. Rundgren and Sulton have frequently stated that the Beatles were tremendous influences on them both. Powell and Wilcox are more comfortable in the jazz realm, but also have Beatle-influence (come on, everybody has Beatle influence, even if you didn’t like them, odds are, many of the artists you DO like were influenced by the Beatles so vicariously, you are influenced).
But this isn’t about the Beatles, it’s about Utopia, maybe for this tour we should call them Beatleopia.
A Classic Album
Author: Anthony Medici
Although I grew up on rock, in what many believe was the “classic” era of rock (the 60s), I am now far more immersed in the jazz scene than I am in rock. Don’t get me wrong: I still can be engaged and moved and excited by rock music, especially if it pushes the boundaries: boundaries of “good taste,” boundaries of commercial expectations; boundaries that bug the status quo. But very little of what I hear on what remains these days of commercial rock radio meets these criteria. The market now is all for and about “tweens,” the kiddies to teen market that just adores “Hannah Montana,” Justin Timberlake, and a host of other lip-synched, drum-synthed, generic popsters, who come and go with amazing rapidity. Yes, there is a market for alt- and prog-rock, but it, like jazz, has been pushed to the margins, and its audience forced to hunt for the music. Maybe just as well. As has been proven time and again, the commercial process, like the ancient gods, destroys what it first makes great. So what does my little screed have to do with today’s blog? Not much, I’ll admit, except that my post today deals with a rock album, and what I think is a great modern rock album, a classic really, that can stand, if not quite with “Sgt. Peppers,” at least with the Rolling Stones’ “Their Satanic Majesties Request.” (OK, I realize I’m likely in the minority on the latter pick). Read the rest of this entry »
Belated Record Store Day Recap
Author: jon
We’ve been very busy with back-to-back weekend events, so this is a little belated, but we wanted to give a big thanks to all the folks who came out and supported us on Record Store Day! Read the rest of this entry »
Punk Jazz: The Thing at Kung Fu Necktie
Author: Anthony Medici
No, not “Thing,” that disembodied hand that creeped you out in “The Addams Family.” No, “The Thing” I’m talking about is the kick-butt Scandinavian free jazz trio, with Swede Mats Gustafsson on tenor sax, and Norwegians Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass, and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums. The band has been touring the U.S. behind its new album, “”Bag It,” and a new CD box set. These guys are as much influenced by the Ramones, Sex Pistols, and The Clash, as they are by Coltrane, Ornette, and Albert Ayler. When you go, you know it is going to be loud, intense and full of high-voltage energy. I could feel that energy traveling way down to DC, enough so to make me drop what I was doing and make the two and a half hour trek to club Kung Fu Necktie (no, I have no idea either what the name means) on North Front Street, in Philadelphia, this past Friday night. Read the rest of this entry »
Ms. Delmhorst and Her Little-Winged Bird
Author: HJ Mills
“I just want to be part of all this beauty, want to be part of all this flight on little wings”, sings the lovely Kris Delmhorst in her song, “Little Wings” I see her as one of the most remarkable musicians I have ever come across. Her lyrics are as beautiful as the leftover drops on bushes after a sweet summer rain. In her song, “The Drop and Dream”, Kris wistfully sings “It’s both our curse and our grace, here in this place to reach for heights that we’ll never climb”. She sculptures her pieces with light, philosophy, self-reflection, cracked bits of robins’ eggs, and broken guitar strings tied in a bow. Yet, her name is only whispered, and according to “Little Wings”, Ms. Delmhorst does not mind that a bit. She confidently professes, “Now I don’t want to be a jet airliner, I just want to be a little bird, I don’t want to rip the skies wide open, I just want my song to be heard” . I heard her exquisite melodies long after one of my favorite music writers unveiled her . Read the rest of this entry »
Going Dutch in Baltimore
Author: Anthony Medici
Record Store Day this Saturday April 18,2009
Author: jon
The 2nd annual Record Store Day is this Saturday April 18, 2009!
We here at Princeton Record Exchange are proud to be one of the largest remaining independent record stores in the country and are pleased to be participating in this exciting event.
There are a lot of reasons to visit us and join the fun. Read the rest of this entry »
In Defense of Digging
Author: Doctor B
Online shopping has its uses. With it, I have built and repaired computers for myself and others. I’ve located a new tweeter for a friend’s 1970’s-vintage loudspeaker. And at long last, I’ve finally found a source for sneakers which fit my feet properly.
But in my humble opinion, for finding music, online shopping misses the point. Read the rest of this entry »
More Other Stuff
Author: Anthony Medici
My order from Clean Feed came in yesterday. In case you’ve been misled by those pop-jazz magazine polls into thinking the usual suspects (Blue Note, Verve, ECM) are actually issuing jazz recordings of real artistic interest, let me fill you in: Clean Feed, a label based, perhaps rather improbably, out of Portugal, is among the new leaders in creative improvised music. The label, started in 2001, has performed brilliantly, and features some superb artists: Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, Tony Malaby, Steve Lehman, Charles Gayle, Paul Dunmall, and many other artists who are continuing to advance the art of creative improvised music. Where the industry “giants” look for the next Norah Jones clone, or pop star in need of a jazz “makeover,” Clean Feed is still about the “sound of surprise.” Blue Note used to be like this, but it has lost its way, depending upon a stream of reissues and pop crossovers to fill its roster and beholden to a corporate titan to adhere to the bottom line. Blue Note is now part of the “industrial-musical complex.” Anyway, the first two Clean Feeds out of the shipping box and into the CD player were Tony Malaby’s TAMARINDO, and Evan Parker’s A GLANCING BLOW. Read the rest of this entry »
The Appropriate Category for Amadou & Mariam’s Music is “Great”
Author: John Moses
I’ve been telling my friends about how much I like Amadou & Mariam’s music. Since they’re not well-known in the U.S. yet, the question that inevitably comes up is, “What sort of music is it? Who do they sound like?” After trying several weakly descriptive, “it’s-sort-of-like-this-and-sort-of-like-that” responses, I’ve settled on, “It’s just great, fun music. You should give it a listen.” Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this week, I started giving guitar lessons to a young boy. On the first day, I taught him how to tune the instrument and showed him some chords, then we started writing down some ideas for songs he can learn. During this process, I asked him what he thought of the Beatles, and what happened next still scares me a little.
He gave me a confused look and said “I don’t know who they are.” Read the rest of this entry »
Some Other Stuff
Author: Anthony Medici
It arrived on the scene inconspicuously, without fanfare. It had been on my want list for ages. I only came across it online while I was looking for something else. I found out it was released on February 24, 2009 in its current incarnation. A welcome arrival, indeed. What am I talking about (you may well ask)? I am referring to the Rudy Van Gelder series release on Blue Note of trombonist Grachan Moncur III’s laconically titled Some Other Stuff, recorded July 6, 1964 at RVG’s studio in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, and released initially in 1965 on Blue Note. It is one of the great “inside -outside” albums produced by Blue Note. For some reason, previous issues of this album on both LP and CD had proved hard to come by. Even repeated trips to our dearly beloved PREX failed to turn up a copy. I mulled purchasing the Moncur 3-CD box set on Mosaic just to get it, but I had all the other albums contained on the set and was loathe to pay the asking price just to complete my Moncur collection. Now the Moncur set is out of print (and already commanding high asking prices), but here was the individual album that I sought, complete with Reid Miles original and enigmatic cover art, and with an added annotation by Bob Blumenthal. It did not take long to hit “Buy,” and pop it into the CD player on arrival. Read the rest of this entry »
LANGUAGE IS A VIRUS FROM OUTER SPACE
Author: Jeff Boule
I am coming up on my first year anniversary of scribing for PREX. I tend to get introspective around such events. It has been a most eventful year, both personally and here on the blog. Some pretty outrageous things have happened behind the scenes and on the pages of this blog over the past year. I am going to use this blog entry to review, examine the possibilities of an open future, some short-term goals, long term goals, and more. Time to delve…
Pazz and Jop with The Bad Plus
Author: Anthony Medici
The title of the new The Bad Plus (hereafter TBP) CD on Heads Up, “For All I Care,” is as ambiguous, ambivalent, and inscrutable as the rest of the album. Perhaps the band is telling us that it cares for all types of music and things and people, that its approach is determinedly egalitarian and universal. Or maybe it is telling us, defensively, in advance, and in anticipation of the usual TBP criticism, that it doesn’t much care what we think of the album, that they are going to do what they want, not what we want them to do. I suppose that it is both of these things. They want us to hear them; they’re not terribly interested in hearing us. For example, their blog, DO THE MATH, demonstrates their wide interests in things musical and cultural; however, they long since stopped accepting comments from readers on their posts. It’s a High Modernist conception of the artist as creative and aloof, and perhaps more, creative because they are aloof. No matter, for in “For All I Care,” they have created an album that challenges and connects. Read the rest of this entry »