Friday, September 2nd, 2005 ... 2:50 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

Starting a bit early due to a Stanford volleyball broadcast.

Format:
ARTIST -- "TRACK TITLE" -- ALBUM TITLE (LABEL, YEAR)

* Yves Francois -- "Mecca Flat Blues" -- Blues for Hawk (Delmark, 2005; recorded 1981)

A CD of early '80s recordings meant to highlight two underrecognized saxophonists: Franz Jackson and Eddie Johnson. Francois played trumpet and organized the sessions. Both had made their names in the '50s but were rarely recorded over the decades. The CD runs through several traditional jazz styles, with dashes of ragtime, New Orleans, swing, and big heaps of blues thrown in everywhere. This is one of the N'Awlins tracks, brought to mind because of the Hurricane Katrina disaster ... not that my playing CDs on the air is going to do those folks much good.

Local guitarist. I really liked Alex's first CD, Staircase, which featured lots of tangly fast jazz guitar. Here, he's showing a different side, dishing out some loungy tracks, mostly covers from the likes of Cedar Walton and Frank Foster, plus a couple originals. I liked the first CD more, I have to admit, but I can appreciate what he's doing here. Bassist is Jon Evans, who tours with Tori Amos.

Graham's music is a wonderful jazz jumble. His late '90s CD are local treasures, and it's a crime that folks haven't heard them.

Percussion duets -- but don't get scared! That includes tuned percussion (marimba, xylophone, etc.), so the CD includes a couple of honest-to-goodness composed melodies, including this one. Brad is an active L.A.-area musician who cranks out a CD like this every few years -- nice stuff.

With Brown on alto sax, William Parker on bass, Jackson Krall on drums. This track is a healthy free-jazz workout; the CD also includes some slow, exploratory pieces.

Interesting disk that draws heavily from "regular" jazz forms but puts them in an open and free-ranging environment. This track is a lightly loungy bit, with Maroney sticking to conventional cocktail-jazz sounds but ranging all over the place in his choice of notes -- like an avant-garde spy. Wordless vocals from Alexandra Montano add to the effect.

* Andy Haas/Don Fiorino -- "Pharoah in the Age of Hypocrisy" -- Death Don't Have no Mercy (Resonant, 2005)

Fiorino plays guitars and guitar-like things (dobro, lotar, banjo), laying down low-key, rootsy/earthy jam rhythms. Quiet but fast-pulsing stuff, easy to get into. Atop that, Haas drops saxophone, electronics, flute -- whatever. So you get a mix of roots-music guitar and avant-jazz playing. Sometimes it's all quite mellow, sometimes fierce. "Contrast" concepts like this don't always work, but I liked this CD quite a lot.

Deceptively straightforward jazz with a coolly assertive theme and lots of agile dissonance packed into Vijay's piano solo. This CD is so cool, albeit in a calm-toned mainstream setting. This will probably be one of my top 10 CDs for the year -- but I can't wait to get the band Fieldwork on the air; their new CD on Pi Recordings, which features Vijay in a more "out there" setting, is awaiting its turn in rotation.

Guitar tracks that have an accessible sound but don't follow the mainstream "guitar-jazz" model. This one, for example, has a serious artsy/bebop feel, with a bouncing lead line done up in unison by guitar and female vocal. Some of the other tracks get into more straight-jazz territory and aren't as intriguing.

* Joelle Leandre/India Cooke -- "Firedance 7" -- Firedance (Red Toucan, 2005)

* Gebhard Ullmann/Steve Swell 4tet -- "Seven 9-8" -- V/A: CIMPosium Volume 15 (CIMP, 2005)

* Alex Cline, Kaoru, Miya Masaoka, G.E. Stinson -- "Robot Mundra" [excerpt] -- Cloud Plate (Cryptogramophone, 2005)

Shimmering abstract sounds, lots of electronics tricks (some generated by Masaoka's koto, no doubt.

Wadada Leo Smith's trumpet is featured amid dark, swirling masses of electronics. Deep, atmospheric stuff, like a bleak landscape (I'm thinking of artist Yves Tanguy when I say that).

The eclectic bluesman passed away yesterday, of unknown causes -- but being 79, it's a good bet he died of, well, being 79. I didn't know much about him, other than the fact that his CDs were getting good airplay here. Turns out he was a colorful character, more than a little risque in some of his songs and even his album covers! Figured I had to play something in his honor.

This track is a fast-boogying one, with his grandson Cedric Burnside on drums. The album cover is an incongruously D&D-looking affair; it's partly covered up by the requisite KZSU notes but looks like a cartoon of RL in a wizard's hat accompanied by a mean-looking, busty blonde warrior chick wearing (of course) a leopard-skin bikini.

'60s jam with a bit of a "Bitches Brew" sound. This -- and the next track -- seemed like a nice follow-up to RL, who got me in a bit of a rocking mood.

* Kahil El'Zabar's Ritual Trio -- "Where Do You Want to Go?" -- Live at the River East Art Center (Delmark, 2005)

Banyan -- "What's Left of Autumn" -- Banyan (CyberOctave, 1997)

Miles Davis -- "All Blues" -- Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959)

Not the usual fare for my show. The deal was, we got tickets to give away for the Monterey Jazz Festival, and we were asked to make the giveaway a bit dramatic -- you know, something more than just "first caller gets 'em." So I challenged listeners to identify the Miles track I was playing -- but I wanted to make it reasonably easy, to make sure somebody won the tix. It worked: The winner called in before the main theme had even started.

* Tim Brady -- "Playing Guitar: Symphony #1" [3rd and 4th tracks] -- Playing Guitar: Symphony #1 (Ambiances Magnetiques, 2005)

* Evan Parker and September Winds -- "Horn Choir" -- Short Stories (Leo Records, 2005)

* Blaise Siwula and Mike Khoury -- [untitled track #4] -- Eight Duets 2002-2003 (Detroit Improvisation, 2005)

* Tholem/Rivera -- "Phasing Out, Sliding Down" -- (Edgetone, 2005)

Andy McWain Quartet -- "Thorn Tea Jar" [first version] -- Starfish (Fuller Street, 2002)

One of those gems I'll play vigorously, then forget once it's out of rotation. McWain, a pianist, teamed up with saxophonist Assif Tsahar and others for this disk, a nicely rich palette of jazz pieces with plenty of freedom.

* = Item in KZSU rotation
! = Pop anomaly
? = Item not in KZSU library

-- Go back to Memory Select playlists.
-- Bay Area free/improv music calendar: http://www.bayimproviser.com.