Friday, January 12th, 2007 ... 3:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

I'm typing out this playlist about a month after the fact. The one thing that stands out with this show is the Caroliner set; see below. It brought the show into a nice weird space for the final half hour.

Format:
ARTIST -- "TRACK TITLE" -- ALBUM TITLE (LABEL, YEAR)
Horizontal lines denote microphone breaks.

* Windsleepers -- "Exit N" -- La Fiancee du Pirate (Shaa, 2006)

Previously noted here.

Jason Kao Hwang -- "No Myth" -- Edge (Asian Improv, 2006)

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

Noted here.

Noted here.

A pair of New Orleans/Katrina-related CDs. Both are instrumental jazz, so they're more "inspired by" than "about," although this track has an amusing monologue about the government's perceived indifference to the plight of the poor. A bit more info here.

* Kahil El'Zabar Ritual Trio -- "Oof" -- Big M: A Tribute to Malachi Favors (Delmark, 2006)

Previously noted here. It has nothing to do with Katrina, but the gentle kalimba rhythms here, put down in homage to bassist Malachi Favors, were the right kind of mood to follow up, I thought.

Previously noted here. The Moe!kestra gets understandably loud most of the time (having elements like 12 electric guitars in unison, or guys banging on sheets of metal... yeah, "loud" is a good word). This piece explores some unusual quietude. One element of the Moe!kestra this time is a nine-player chorus of wine glasses, rims rubbed to produce that chiming hum. The sound is even hard to place if you don't know where it's coming from, and yes, they get a "solo" in there. Nice work.

Unit is a Swiss label that sends some of the most compelling avant-garde stuff we receive. Big surprise, then, to open up this one in the library. It's straight jazz, the whole post-bop modal thing, done up in large doeses of about 15 minutes per track. It's a great live set, with some rich piano playing anchoring the quartet. Just surprising, that's all. No one had played it since at least 2001, according to our database, so I figured I'd give it a spin.

Noted here.

* Vinny Golia Quartet -- "NBT" -- Sfumato (Clean Feed, 2005)

Previously noted here.

*! Nanci Griffith -- "Grapefruit Moon" -- Ruby's Torch (Rounder, 2006)

Actually a good fit for a jazz show, because this is an album of torch songs, done up in languid, lush style. They aren't all jazz standards, though; this one's a Tom Waits tune.

Previously noted here. A left turn into free improv.

* Zeena Parkins -- "Visible/Invisible" -- Necklace (Tzadik, 2006)

Previously noted here. Continuing the weird stuff with some string quartet music.

Nice improv stuff pairing one of our own DJs with Gale, the San Jose Ambassador of Jazz.

The bass/drums duet of Devon Hoff and Ches Smith; Ben Goldberg once quipped, "Everyone knows, if you want the music to sound good, you have to have Good For Cows as your rhythm section." (This was at a show while he was introducing the band, and yes, Hoff and Smith were on stage.) They're able to get quite a few gigs as just a duo, which speaks to the strength of their playing and the reasonably rock-oriented approach in the composing.

Possibly the pinnacle of Bay Area weirdness, and yes, I know The Residents live here. Their albums come in homemade packaging with this insane yet meticulous pen-scrawling all over them, and the lyrics are written out in the same hand -- not that you can understand any of the words, as they're sung in screeching gibberish tones. (Hence the "maybe," above... I've no idea which tracks I actually played here, but there were a few of them.)

And then there are the sets, full of day-glo fluorescent paint and more of the same scrawlings, costumes shrouding every band member, an inhuman cubist head on the main singer and cloth animals -- halves of bulls -- hanging from his wrists, swinging madly as he flails out of control. Oh yeah, the music's weird, too.

So artistic is the Caroliner Rainbow madness that their sets were the subject of an art installation this month at the California College of the Arts in a small second-floor gallery. Just look at the pictures! They capped off the exhibit with a couple of live performances (rare occurances these days) inside the set -- it was cramped, dampening the energy a bit, but great to see. They drove up in their makeshift prairie-wagon cart, a pickup truck with wood attached to the sides and two constructed oxen on the front.

Anyway, that show was happening the night after this show, so I dug into our Caroliner vinyl archives to play a few tracks. The band is 23 years old and unquestionably a major piece of Bay Area underground history. Just look how much I was able to say, and I didn't even mention the thing about the resurrected soul of a singing bull from the 1880s.

Previously noted here. Done up in repeated phrases, bouncing around the sounds of words and mixing them up with similar-sounding phrases. Wordplay, you could call it. This one's a narrative about the demise of the dinosaurs after an asteroid impact.

Previously noted here.

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