The Individuals should’ve been stars. Glenn Morrow (later of Rage to Live, and founder/owner of Bar/None Records), Janet and Doug Wygal (later of, naturally, The Wygals), and Jon Klages (who made an underrated solo album) cut Fieldsin 1982; the “hit” was “Dancing w/ My Eighty Wives.” The album was such a favorite of the bassist in my band at the time, Karen & the Compulsives, that she recently asked if I could arrange for her to hear it again. Alas, it’s long been out of print, and never on CD, so I had a more technologically hooked-up friend digitize it and their 1981 Aquamarine EP. (Shh, don’t tell John Davidson.) I’ve been listening to them more than anything new in the week since. Their angular, occasionally dissonant indie-rock still sounds great, and with everything early-’80s NY being hip right now, a reissue would be welcome.
Eccentric Soul: The Big Mack Label (Numero)
This compilation covers a lot of stylistic ground, from doo-wop to soul to garage rock to psychedelic funk. Big Mack was a Detroit label in operation on a shoestring budget from 1962 to ‘72. It never had much distribution, or a good sound engineer, but it had more than its share of talent, and there are some real gems here even if the performers – Bob & Fred, Ms. Tyree “Sugar” Jones, Soul President, Performers, Grand Prix’s, Essence – are now obscure. Another interesting release in this great series.
The more I hear this, the more I like it. Two of the twelve performances from this December 1993 solo concert have been issued before (though not in the U.S.), but the rest are released for the first time this week. The only feedback here is accidental, but the Dinosaur Jr. songs hold up anyway because they’re well-written (especially “Get Me”), and because as ragged as Mascis’s singing is, it’s full of distinctive character. He also “cooked up” (his words) two excellent covers, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Every Mother’s Son” and Greg Sage’s (Wipers) “On the Run” (“because he’s one of my idols”). His guitar skills? Never in doubt. And even though it’s a new release, it’s mid-priced. It’s also supposedly a limited edition, so don’t hesitate.
The jazz bagpiper’s psychedelic 1972 album – reissued last week, and the only one of his five classics on CD – has buckets of gospel organ and backbeats heavy enough for P-Funk. “The Crack” is a groove with eerie synthesizer, over which Harley wails. On a thrilling version of “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” that fans of Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “The Old Rugged Cross” will dig, organist Bill Mason gets some spotlight time and Larry Langston drums up a storm. “Hypothesis” speaks in the modal jazz language of John Coltrane. It’s back to heavy funk on “Gods and Goddesses,” with the electric bass of Larry Randolph added. The closing “Etymology,” also with Randolph, is a hard-driving 12/8 prog-rock excursion. Harley’s bagpipes and electric soprano sax are never just novelties; there’s superb musicianship here.
Various Artists – John Peel and Sheila: The Pig’s Big 78s (Trikont)
This new CD of some of the famous BBC DJ’s favorite 78-rpm platters was compiled by him before his death in 2004. The range of styles here is headspinningly broad, from Cantonese music to an English brass band, from an impressionist’s duck, car, dog, airplane, baby, etc. to hot jazz, from early rock ‘n’ roll to comical music, from South African tin whistle music to blues, from a tango to a foxtrot to a yodeling whistler – and more! The age of the tracks runs from 1908 up to 1955. There are a few famous artists – Lightnin’ Hopkins, George Lewis, Earl Bostic, Sonny Terry – but the obscurity of the rest (at least to Americans; Brits might recognize more) is part of the fun. Some of these records are brilliant, some bizarre; as a whole, they make a great memento of the late John Peel. His wife, Sheila, comments on all the records.
This past Friday, 5/26, would have been Miles’s 80th birthday if he hadn’t died 15 years ago. Back on January 8 I posted my Top Ten electric Miles albums. It was in chronological order; had it been in order of preference, this might have been on top (I go back and forth between this and Bitches Brew as my favorite electric Miles). Made in the throes of pain – Miles had a serious hip ailment and various other medical problems – this double album recorded live in Japan in 1975, just before his five-year sabbatical, wasn’t issued until several years later. Keyed by the coruscating guitars of skronkmeister Pete Cosey and Reggie Lucas (who later produced Madonna’s first album!), with the versatile Sonny Fortune reaching his apex as a saxophonist and flutist, it’s a shattering, cathartic outburst.
Davis’s collaborations with master arranger Gil Evans (exhaustively compiled on Miles Davis & Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings)) reached their apex on this 1958 selection of music from the George Gershwin opera depicting life in the South. The richly textured charts for a large groups are like a jeweler’s elaborate settings for the gems that are Davis’s spare yet beautiful melodic statements.
Adding soulful alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley to the frontline of Davis and John Coltrane and reuniting with pianist Bill Evans (replaced by Wynton Kelly on one piece) on a session characterized by modality and spontaneity produced a perennial candidate for the mythical title of “greatest jazz album.” The near-Impressionism of the harmonies reflects Evans’s style (he didn’t receive nearly as much credit as was due him for writing and arranging here), but most tracks are still grounded in the blues.
Davis found new creative life in the mid-’60s with another classic quintet, this time featuring Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. Their work together is collected on the box Quintet 1965-68); Miles Smiles was their single greatest creative statement, with complex yet accessible tunes (especially Shorter’s “Footprints” and the cover of Eddie Harris’s “Freedom Jazz Dance”) that have become touchstones for succeeding generations of players.
Not “unplugged” in the slightest; still, there are some moments of brilliance on this generally overlooked 1995 album that have to be heard. The anti-war Dylan stands proud, first with “John Brown,” a rarely heard song from the early 1960s, and on the closing “With God on Our Side,” which four decades after its creation had taken on a mournful, plaintive tone. Dylan turned 65 this past Wednesday, and I listened to a lot while I was writing an article for another website (read here); this album certainly didn’t make it into that piece, yet I find “Like a Rolling Stone” so compelling here that I listened to it four times: It’s given a new sound, especially by Brendan O’Brien’s organ riffs, mixing in melancholy but still peaking in defiance.
