Friday, Oct. 26th, 2007 ... 3:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

(Return to playlists.)

Back from a few days in Atlanta, after spending the previous week in New York. Two cross-country trips -- four, actually -- within two weeks. I know there are people whose jobs involve much more travel, with jogs to Asia and Europe, but still -- I'm feeling the travel hangover today and am content to be grounded until Christmastime.

Didn't get much chance to sample the music scene in Atlanta. There was a time I'd be arriving early, spending a day off in Athens, dining in Little Five Points, checking out Criminal Records and other stores whose names escape me ... not this time. Them's the breaks.

The Gold Sparkle Band used to be down in Atlanta. Parts of the group have migrated to New York, as happens with all these guys. Maybe I'll spin them for old times sake.

Rooting for the Rockies in the World Series. Cross your fingers; that big Colorado outfield and Manny Ramirez's fielding skills could be a big morale boost for the Purple Row.

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

* Food -- "Eat" -- Veggie (Rune Grammofon, 2002)

They use a traditional jazz lineup of sax, trumpet, bass, drums -- but they come out with a dreamy, floaty sound closer to Harold Budd than John Coltrane. With Iain Ballamy on sax -- his band from the late '80s became Bill Bruford's first Earthworks group -- and three Norweigans. Reasonably interesting stuff that pushed boundaries.

Nellie McKay has a song where the refrain goes, "We're gonna get some food in the house tonight." It's very tempting to play that, followed by some of the Food CD ... get it? Food "in the house?"

OK, bad idea. Plus, the songs totally wouldn't mesh.

* Dewey Jackson -- "That's a Plenty" -- Live at the Barrel, 1952 (Delmark, 2006; recorded 1952)

Live set of upbeat trad jazz with its ragtime roots still showing.

Really really fast guitars from both these guys. Minasi plays a blend of inside jazz guitar and some "out" shredding. The results can be quite good, maybe a little forced at times. If I have one complaint about that, it's that Minasi's "out" work seems to be an adjunct to the music; the compositions aren't as avant-ly constructed, if you will, as someone like Ellery Eskelin. Haven't heard of Hemmersam before, but he seems to fall quite well into that same motif.

Previously noted here.

A 2-CD set that includes live dates from 1999 and 2002, when Lacy and his usual Paris-based trio performed with Rudd. As a bonus, the disc ends with a handful of tracks from Lacy and Rudd's quartet in 1962, with Denis Charles on drums. Most of the 1962 tracks are Monk covers, but they tossed in one Cecil Taylor piece as well.

The 1962 tracks are all short, but the 1999/2002 pieces stretch out to 15 or 20 minutes. This particular one sticks to the jazz tradition but adds lots of rhythmic ideas from African music, showing off Rudd's background as an early champion of what we'd now call "World" music.

* Steve Lacy/Roswell Rudd Quartet -- "Tune 2" -- Early and Late (Cuneiform, 2007; recorded 2002)

The aforementioned Cecil Taylor track. Seeing Denis Charles' name on here made me want to celebrate his music a little more, so I grabbed the Susie Ibarra duet disk ...

Susie Ibarra/Denis Charles -- "Stand Back" -- Drum Talk (Wobbly Rail, 1998)

A marvellous live set of two great drummers, one modern (Ibarra), one an elder statesman (Charles), released just a couple years before Charles' death. Both of them enjoyed a melodic playing style that makes for some compelling duets, even though the disk is almost entirely two drum kits with only one track of tuned percussion. Plenty of loud, brisk passages infused with bebop spirit.

Soft psychedelia with that childlike-innocence thing going on. Light, lovely stuff in small packages.

Previously noted here.

* Floratone -- "Floratone" -- Floratone (Blue Note, 2007)

Previously noted here.

The now famous violist, violinist, and singer, whose mix of classical, Czech folk, and modern influences eventually landed her a contract on Nonesuch. This CD came to us from a Czech label, back before Bittova broke into the public consciousness, and she may have been a KZSU favorite even back then; she certainly was when I arrived on the scene in 1998. Marvellous stuff that packs some power despite it being just her voice and her instrument on these tracks.

? Marilyn Crispell and Tim Berne -- "Inference" -- Inference (Music & Arts, 1995)

Piano/sax duets, a CD that I was aware of when I first started listening to Tim Berne, but never bothered picking up. Now, of course, it's hard to find (well, it's online in places, but you know what I mean.) This is part of my spoils from the recent New York trip, courtesy of Downtown Music Gallery. There's a bit of an ... academic? ... lilt to the session, due to the presence of piano, but the music gets free-wheeling and fractured enough to be quite a ride. Berne's compositions present that familiar chugging, huffing, oddball rhythm that feels like home to me. I'm only sorry I waited this long to give this one a listen.

More noise stuff from a fave local noisy label. The gimmick this time is that you've got long church-organ chords and occasional violin outbreaks mixed in with he crunchy electronics noise. This track is a quick burst giving you a little bit of everything. The centerpiece, "Mineola Crescent," is a 26-minute epic that starts with long, long organ chords.

* Jim Connolly and the Gove County Philharmonic -- "Satan's Square-Dancing Monkey" -- Tim Stops to Visit... (pfMentum, 2002)

The "philharmonic" part of the name isn't ironic; ths septet seems to be a set of ably trained musicians playing some serious stuff. That's not to say it can't get goofy; this track presents a bouncy Nino Rota kind of circus music with an extra dose of crazy. The CD also features a more serious and symphonic 10-minute track that I'd like to play on a future show.

Friendly indie pop. Great stuff that makes a grand entrance (on this track, anyway).

Previously noted here. Used a segment from this track's finale, which turns into an electronics firestorm that becomes backdrop for some Rob Mazurek trumpet blasting.

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

INSANE madcap big-band stuff, at nine minutes of breakneck pace. Awesome. These guys are playing on Halloween, doing a live soundtrack to the silent movie Faust. It's probably not going to sound like this.

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

* = 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.