SOUTH MARKET STREET JAZZ BAND

 

Sometimes you just want to enjoy yourself, and the folks in SOUTH MARKET STREET JAZZ BAND seem to want to enjoy themselves at all times. "Earnest dixieland jazz from San Diego" is a sentence I never thought I would write and especially not on these pages....and yet here we are. Once again I emplore you: pay attention to the tapes in those charity shops and thrifts stores, because they may bring you joy.  This one brought me some, and I will take all I can get. 

OH BABY!

THE WOODEN NICKEL JASS BAND

 

Sometimes you just need a little something to make you feel (a little) good, you know? Turns out that little something for me yesterday was Sacramento's THE WOODEN NICKEL JASS BAND, a tape I never saw coming until it was making me boogie. You see, sometimes I just start ripping things without listening to them - rip first and listen later - if it's good then it gets an earnest, "stop everything" listen but sometimes (admittedly) it gets a "listen while you edit" listen. But occasionally I get a "hey what's this?" feeling and I stop....and listen. That happened yesterday, and even though this is light years removed from a tape that I think I actually need, it's a tape that I apparently needed in the moment. That's worth far more than the $1 price tag. New Orleans jazz, show tunes, Western Swing....maybe a touch of high school jazz band for good measure? Tough to describe the sounds and justify the effect they had, but music is a motherfukkr man. Had several twinges of "Down Yonder" from Red Headed Stranger and it's almost the King's birthday so maybe that was a factor but......really this one just got plopped in the deck at just the right time. 

SHUFFLE OFF THE BUFFALO

TIME ADDICT

 

Free form improvisational misanthropy, presented as experimental free jazz noise shit.
And some days all I ever want is cacophony. 
TIME ADDICT delivers (again). 

U.S. BLUES

MAX NORDILE

 

God/s this is beautiful. You've heard me talk about Max and his compulsions on these pages over the years, and these comments are no different.......it's that this one hits just right as I type these words. Free jazz mixed with boundary-free experimentation and ambient bliss. (Pharoah) Sanders, (Shane) Embury and (Genesis) P'Orridge embodied in sonic freak skin. There's really nothing like Sir Nordile in the current realm. 

THE VIVID HISTORY OF THE CAPITOL EGGS

COLIN LANGENUS

 

One Side: A multi-instrumental freak out captured live in 2007.

Another Side: A collection of improvisations collected by Colin Langenus between 2005 and 2008 and manipulated to create.....this.

SON OF BEETHOVEN // HIGH AS HELL

HIGH AS HELL

GERY BURTON // CHICK COREA

 

You got a guy playing a piano and you've got a guy playing a vibraphone thing.....and they're both generally considered to be pretty good at what they do. They made this record called Duet back in 1979 and a pretty famous record label made a cassette version and I rescued it from a thrift store in the Inland Empire (which is honestly a weird thing to call a place when it's not an actual Empire and it's like 50 miles from the Coast). So here you go. 

DUET

EATING

 

I do not know how to (best) describe EATING, because EATING defies description. Sure, it's avant-improvisational jazz/punk......if you want. But it's something else even though it's also not. All of the sounds are here, punks - the foundation of everything that you do is here in one form and/or another. So listen and learn and fucking create everything that you are compelled to create, because that is exactly what makes the Music For People punks very very special punks. 

EATING

DUKE ELLINGTON

 

See my MINGUS post from a few weeks back to understand my association with and introduction to jazz. Maybe DUKE ELLINGTON is different because anyone who listens to music should know who he is even if they don't fully appreciate his place - but that doesn't change the fact that the shit is brilliant, you know? He's not just a name though. The Duke is a legend for a reason. There are countless collections labeled "Best Of..." and this is just one of them. Maybe it's not the best, but you should start somewhere. Why not here?

THE BEST OF DUKE ELLINGTON

RALPH TOWNER

 

You might be better going in blind here, as I did. I picked up Old Friends, New Friends based on the cover, and decided to bring it home when I saw that it was a 1979 ECM release (plus, it was $1). I had no preconceptions when I popped it in the deck, I just hoped it would be interesting....and it was. It is. So you can ask the Wonder Destroying Machine about Ralph Towner if you like - it will tell you where he's from and what he's famous for....or you can just listen. 

OLD FRIENDS, NEW FRIENDS

CHARLES MINGUS

 

I left Ponca City in 1990 when I was seventeen. Enrolled in classes at the University of Oklahoma and moved into the dorms (required for first year students) and learned some life lessons that I should have paid more attention to (especially in retrospect). Spend a few months working in the scraping room at the cafeteria (which was every bit as nasty as it sounds) and then got a job as a graveyard baker at the hippie cafe, where I would remain until I left for Los Angeles in '94. The bakery was run by a powerful woman named Beverly who new her shit and took no shit - lots of stories and lots of laughs and just generally a good person to work with and/or for. Her partner was a jazz pianist who might have been named Horace and occasionally helped out and would sometimes just chill in the wee hours after gigs....and it was on these nights that I had my first real exposure to jazz. I really only "knew" the starter artists that would get mentions in mainstream rags so I understood that John Coltrane and Miles Davis were important and I had that Spy vs. Spy record andthought I knew something about Ornette Coleman (I didn't). But Beverly and her dude would play Sun Ra, Cannonball Adderley, Gábor Szabó, Pharoah Sanders, MODERN JAZZ QUARTET and countless other acts that I had never heard of while they tried to describe to me the nuances of free jazz, hard bop, Afro-Futurism and third stream. I never fully switched gears and I never really dove in, but those lessons and those sounds made the $4/hour I was getting for those bakery shifts seem more than worth it. Somewhere in that mix was my introduction to Charles Mingus....which is obviously the only connection between that story and this post. Check Larry Coryell's guitar on "Noddin Ya Head Blues" because that shit is just....damn. 

THREE OR FOUR SHADES OF BLUES

MODERN JAZZ QUARTET

 

I remain firmly convinced that MODERN JAZZ QUARTET is the ultimate group for less familiar with and/or hesitant about jazz. Smooth and accessible, innovative and interesting, challenging and engaging;  they settle comfortably into the confines of what the civilians think of as "jazz" while pushing those very same boundaries. You're not going to hear any free jazz freak-offs, but the vibes up front create a truly unique approach to the (sub)genre, and their 1958 collaborations here with Group de Paris are just smooth as fukk. Did I scoop this out of a bargain bin? Yes. Was it a good choice? Absolutely.

LOS GRANDES DEL JAZZ: 5

MAX NORDILE

 

Why the fuck not stick with Wet Cassettes for another day...especially if they're combining forces with Max Nordile? Exactly. There's no reason not to stick with a winner paired with a winner. Twenty minutes of sonic debauchery from one of the finest modern purveyors of improvisational free form sound. I am in constant awe of Nordile's ability to create and document....the fact that they share those documentations with us? That's just the bonus. You never know what you're going to get, but you always know there's nothing else like it. 

A RACE TO THE BOTTOM

SHELTER MUSIC

 

The parade of compelling sounds from the Yard Sale For World Peace family appears to be never ending, and the latest release in their series of improvisational performances recorded in open air park shelters is further confirmation that these people are on an entirely different plane. One half hour of imagination and sound that travels from dark voids to whimsical sonic narratives....the laughter lifts and, as the label description reads: Cement and wood melt. Pay attention to these people. 

SHELTER MUSIC

MUCH BAND

 

File Under: Things I'm Not Trying To Describe. MUCH BAND are equal parts free form jazz and jam band and hippie prog and indie/alt and....look, punk: MUCH BAND sound like whatthefuckever they want to sound like, and if you can't at least appreciate that then you are on the wrong fucking team. It's not as if you need to like it, but you must recognize it. 

LITERALLY TOO PLEASURABLE

CRAZY DOBERMAN

 

To create. To be driven to create. To feel compelled to document....everything. 

To see the importance of creating sound and capturing sound.

CRAZY DOBERMAN are undefinable.

Experimentation and sonic freedom, folks...that's what it's all about. 

SPIN AGE BLASTERS

LOCAL SHELTER COMMUNICATIONS

 

Absolutely brilliant improvisation captured in a picnic shelter in Washington last summer - if there were justice in the world then the Sun Ra bandwagon jumpers would be talking about the Yard Sale For World Peace (and Hair Clinic) family of artists in 2023 and beyond. These heads are light years ahead/s of the rest of us, and I'm here for all of it. 

FLOWER POWER SOUND SYSTEM COLLABORATIONS

MAX NORDILE

 

Another dose of improvisational mania from Max Nordile...twenty three minutes of manipulations, found sounds, free jazz, repetition and calculated madness. Nothing but respect for the constant and consistent compulsion/s to create....and release on cassette, of course.

I DON'T WANT TO BE HELD HOSTAGE BY WASTE DISPOSAL 

BODY & SOUL

 

I've listened to this a few times recently, and it's one of those recordings that is nearly impossible (for me) to consume casually. You can put it on while you're doing something else, just because you like sound and you need to have sound in your life (tinnitus is a motherfukkr, y'all), but you'll find (I find) that soon the 'something else' just fades away and you're left with Max Roach on the drums and Artie Shepp on the saxophone and they're just speaking to you in a language that you can't quite understand...but you listen. Because you want to learn. You want to learn their language because you need to understand what they are saying but you know that you will never NEVER never be in that place with them much less be on that plane with them. A stunning encapsulation of two masters at the top of their game in Paris, released in 1976 and referred to as Sweet Mao. Imagine a sound so powerful that the song titles alone are political statements. Imagine two people so completely consumed by the moment that they each know what the other is going to do with no communication beyond sound in the moment. Yet another example of why I am grateful for the now-defunct Loathed Sound label....

BODY & SOUL

THEME

 

Three short pieces of bumper music for your consideration.

Which one do you like?

THEME

And lest you think this is weird, remember that on this date in 2009 I posted an audio recording of my father-in-law discussing rectal thermometers on public radio. Download link is dead (you're welcome).

FATS WALLER

 

With a voice (and a presence) like his, Fats Waller could have been a band leader of legend playing emcee and leading groups of revelers through the 1920s. With improvisational piano chops like his, Fats could have written his own history as an absolute giant of smooth swing, giving the instrument a voice of its own that made his instrumentals sing. Waller left a legacy of hundreds of credited compositions before his death on this day in 1943, several of which are included on this tape of two sets from the famous Yacht Club in 1938. No "Ain't Misbehavin'" here - but "Honeysuckle Rose" always does the trick. 

LIVE AT THE YACHT CLUB