tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1 2008-05-09T21:21:15Z Words About Music by Greg Burk and Friends Movable Type 3.34 tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1.298 2008-05-09T21:09:53Z 2008-05-09T21:21:15Z

Fri.-Sat. May 9-10 -- The most wide-swinging Door, drummer John Densmore, presents his world ensemble TribalJazz. At Catalina’s; 8 & 10pm; $20-$30. Fri.-Sat. May 9-10 -- All-time great trombonist Curtis Fuller leads a topflight local ensemble: pianist Nate Morgan, bassist Tony Dumas, drummer Fritz Wise and vocalist George Harper. At Jazz Bakery; 8 & 9:30pm; $30. Fri. May 9 -- Pianist Steve Lockwood unveils an intelligent modern chamber trio with Ken Rosser on guitar and Ellen Burr on flute. At Café Metropol, 923 E. Third St., downtown 90013; 8pm; $10 cover, $10 minimum; (213) 613-1537. Fri.-Sat. May 9-10 -- Sit with a bunch of fusion guitarists focusing their opera glasses on the gear and amp settings of Michael Landau, with a different group each of the two nights. At the Baked Potato. Sat. May 10 -- Otep has gone through some personnel changes; time to check up on what metal poetess Otep Shamaya is pulling off these days. Bound to be good. At the Whisky. Sat. May 10 -- Rethink what jazz is when bassist Steuart Liebig corrals the finest avantists in L.A. for Seconda Prattica: drummer Alex Cline, trombonist Michael Vlatkovich, saxist Bill Plake and cornetist Dan Clucas. Read this week’s record review of another Liebig project, Tee-Tot Quartet (also featuring Clucas) here. At Café Metropol, 923 E. Third St., downtown 90013; 8pm; $10 cover, $10 minimum; (213) 613-1537. Sat. May 10 -- Richard Meltzer is 63 today. Send him some Jell-O up in Portland; he’ll provide his own dead rats. Mon. May 12 -- My favorite world groove trio, Maetar, wraps up the four-day Global Sound Conference: “key individuals from the Music, Film and Television industries with Pioneers in the areas of Wellness, Sound Healing, and Integrative Medicine.” At the Marina del Rey Marriott, 4100 Admiralty Way 90292; 8pm; $12 advance, $20 walk-up; www.globalsoundconference.com. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1.297 2008-05-09T20:55:20Z 2008-05-09T21:08:35Z

L.A. except for Rudolph, now a New Yorker after 28 years among us lotus eaters. Grr.

The Bennie Maupin Quartet, “Early Reflections” (Cryptogramophone) Bennie Maupin, “The Jewel in the Lotus” (ECM reissue) Who is this Bennie Maupin? You might be surprised. Since he hasn’t recorded much as a leader, most listeners think of the woodwinder as sort of a circa-1970 color man, the ghost who wove the dark bass-clarinet threads through Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew,” or who broadened the spectrum of Herbie Hancock projects -- the avantish “Mwandishi” and the funky hit “Head Hunters.” Maupin’s personal palette had registered with the public mostly in shades of gray until the current decade, when he assembled a stellar ensemble featuring percussionist Munyungo Jackson, bassist Darek Oles and drummer Michael Stephans. They played around and released the unindebted yet attractive -- and appropriately titled -- “Penumbra” (meaning a partial shadow) in 2006 on Cryptogramophone. Late last year, ECM reissued “The Jewel in the Lotus,” Maupin’s neglected 1974 debut as a leader. And Cryptogramophone has just brought out the masterful, emotional “Early Reflections,” a lucky encounter with Polish musicians. Finally we’re starting to fill the gaps in a portrait of an artist we should have known better all along. “Early Reflections” continues to emphasize Maupin’s strength as a thoughtful composer with a logic all his own. It’s got a couple of fun genre pieces -- the sexy & soulful Brazilian number “Escondido” and the ditty-bop blues “Prophet’s Motifs.” But the mood is mostly one of searching, with the search becoming its own reward; Maupin looks around him on his path, aware of beauty and little concerned with a destination. His tenor, bass clarinet, soprano sax and flute have a centered, measured quality, with each note containing a spherical universe. You hear carefully constructed meditations on death (“ATMA”), love born out of grief (“Tears”), anxiety tempered with playfulness (“Not Later Than Now”), guarded optimism (“Early Reflections”), mourning and moving on (“Inner Sky”), and finally transcendent resignation (“Spirits of the Tatras,” whose title refers to a Polish mountain range). The recording and mixing, by Sebastian Witkowski, Nolan Shaheed and Rich Breen, resulted in a gorgeous sound field. Maupin was treated like royalty in Warsaw, where, he told me, he had the use of an excellent studio and what was described to him as the best piano in Poland, a Homburg Steinway shipped from halfway across the country. His pianist, Michal Tokaj, must have loved that instrument. This incredibly sensitive young gent anticipates the motion of the music (much of it improvised) and devises chords that not only reflect an instant’s context, but suggest new directions. He gently demolishes the notion that dissonance must be harsh, occasionally offering a snapshot of his harmonic methodology by allowing a complex chord to fade in space. (Long tones on flute, bass, piano and voice signal some of the album’s most telling moments.) Bassist Michal Baranski is a model of earsmanship and substance, especially when bowing. Drummer Lukasz Zita meets the challenge of quietness superbly. And on a couple of tracks singer Hania Chowaniec-Rybka, who’s mainly known for inventive Polish folk interpretations, approaches abstraction with a distinctly appropriate timbre and obvious joy. The packaging is lovely, too. “Early Reflections” is a ruby in the Crypto crown. And it’s great that we can hear it alongside “The Jewel in the Lotus.” In ’74, Maupin is full of ideas, more of an experimentalist and less of a storyteller. He’s got a hell of a band: Hancock and Headhunters drummer Bill Summers, along with the omnipresent ‘70s-‘80s rhythm section of drummer Billy Hart and bassist Buster Williams, plus percussionist Frederick Waits (father of latter-day skinsman Nasheet Waits). The era encouraged newness; you can feel the excitement of discovery as Maupin mixes steadily growing avant squeals with monkish chants, gongs and whistles on “Excursion”; flashes on Pink Floydian space adventure on “Mappo”; and monitors the relaxation of a tense heartbeat during a vacation in “Ensenada.” This original version of the title composition is more static and less Coltrane-influenced than the new one on “Early Reflections” but equally coloristic; Hancock’s freaky electronic piano treatments still sound fresh as the track ends with fast psychedelic pans between the speakers. At 33, Maupin was creating atmospheres where he could breathe freely, and the listener could only feel grateful for the opening of new doors. Not many ran across him at the time, though; Maupin wasn’t a Name, and he wasn’t interested in remaining a fusion guy or joining any other popular club. It’s high time we joined his. Steuart Liebig Tee-Tot Quartet, “Always Outnumbered” (pfMentum) L.A. bassist Liebig knows that many listeners think his compositions sound weird (he was the one who came up with the label name Cryptogramophone, after all), but the impression arises just because he’s a real observer; he takes the weirdness of the world as he finds it, and his music is the natural consequence. Often, though, as in his group the Mentones, he has found ways to make the strangeness slide down pretty easy, and his Tee-Tot Quartet (named after an early mentor of Hank Williams) is another example. Historically, Liebig will funk ya, he will blues ya, he will even metal ya occasionally just to get his greater point across. “Always Outnumbered” is his way of modernizing the blues, keeping some rhythmic flavor and some traditional structure but appropriately distancing the form somewhat from the soil while substituting a sense of unease and disconnect we can all understand. In this he made a canny choice by teaming up with Scot Ray, whose electrified dobro is capable of both the downest of Delta slidations and the noisiest of apocalyptic disruptions. Drummer Joseph Berardi always keeps substantial trashcan beats under his freeform fingernails, and cornetist Dan Clucas, though a wool-dyed avanteer, consistently allows the clear enunciations of the human voice to pour through. Liebig’s muscular six-string electric bass weaves up, down and around with such fluidity -- sometimes driving, sometimes commenting or arguing -- that it seems almost subconscious. Well, it is his music. The blues include a limping shuffle, a slow yawner, a start-stop urban strut, a poky prodder, a straight boogie and a Beefheartian boozer, all rendered ungeneric by off-center harmonies, lopsided beats and even some Arabic guitar melisma. Liebig always dishes up some of that Beefheart stew, the difference in the blues-battering being that where the Captain was at root an instinctive hippie in overalls, Liebig is more of a suburban crank schooled in Schoenberg. Can you dance to it? Yeah. You probably won’t, though. ANOTHER OF STEUART LIEBIG’S MANY PROJECTS, THE POSTMODERN JAZZ GROUP SECONDA PRATTICA, PLAYS CAFÉ METROPOL SATURDAY. Adam Rudolph’s Moving Pictures, “Dream Garden” (Justin Time) I’ve been waiting months to review this, thinking that SURELY Mr. Rudolph would temporarily abandon the New York playground to which he moved last year and revisit us in Los Angeles, which the Chicago-born hand drummer, bandleader and composer called home for nearly three decades. And then I’d synchronize my words with his arrival. Nope. I scan his calendar, and it looks as if Rudolph has pulled a “California Dreamin’” in reverse, stopping in to a NYC church, getting on his knees to play, and the preacher knows he’s gonna stay. I don’t even know if his new Go: Organic Orchestra disc, “Thought Forms” (due June 17), features a group from the SoCal avant community he has done so much to unite. L.A. musicians have long looked eastward to dodge homelessness and starvation -- from Dex and Mingus and Dolphy to Ralph Alessi and James Carney. (Well, Carney was from New York before hitting CalArts.) Somehow, though, I thought it might be different with Rudolph, who had established himself as some sort of Venice high priest of neolithic religion and rarely performed to less than full houses. We miss him. But on to “Dream Garden,” the fifth Moving Pictures release, which of course is excellent. The name of the ensemble is no accident; the first thing you’re likely to think about the selections, several of which are only a minute or two long, is that they’d make perfect movie soundtrack music. It’s surprising that Rudolph hasn’t worked more in that field. Typically, the eight-man ensemble sets an Afro-Arabic mood -- with the flute, lute and chimes of “The Violet Hour”; the semi-saudade guitar, ticking percussion, cymbal washes and cool trumpet of “A Vision of Pure Delight”; or the Jajouka-like pipes, heavy hand drums and Ra horns of the title cut. It doesn’t stay in one oasis, though, as when the desertlike flutes of “Cousin of the Moon” build into a rumbly groove with cinematic stings, or the Brazilian sway of “Helix” accumulates a darker sustained energy. There are real tunes, too. The opening “Oshogbo” boasts a couple of appealing melodies, as Graham Haynes’ trumpet edges close to bebop and Ned Rothenberg’s sax vibrates multiphonic heights. “Happiness Road” gets its bounce from Haynes’ slide whistle and somebody’s quirky marimba lilt -- hard to say whose, as everybody plays a bunch of instruments, most of all the African-trained Rudolph, who leads the pack with eight. It’s quite a substantial everybody, with oud and percussion player Brahim Fribgane, guitarist Kenny Wessel, bassist Shanir Blumenkrantz and multiblower Steve Gorn adding to a most sympathetic group feel. You can add yourself to the drum circle, as well; you may quickly begin to feel that Moving Pictures are the soundtrack of your life. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1.296 2008-05-09T20:41:45Z 2008-05-09T20:54:17Z

One singer who blows me away year after year: Tony Harnell of TNT, Westworld and Starbreaker.

One singer who blows me away year after year: Tony Harnell of TNT, Westworld and Starbreaker. If he puts out something new, I acquire it without premeditation -- for the rocket-engineered voice, for the pinnacle of the pop-meets-metal aesthetic, and mainly for the highly crafted songwriting. While marking time between projects, Harnell has posted some amazing "demos" on his MySpace page that somehow remain unreleased. You can listen here.]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1.295 2008-05-02T20:31:15Z 2008-05-02T20:47:41Z

Fri. May 2 -- From the early ‘70s onward -- I mean, “Doctor Doctor,” please! -- UFO have always rocked. No more Michael Schenker on guitar, but Vinnie Moore shreds. Crazed bassist Pete Way couldn’t get in the country this time, but he’s being replaced by Sebastian Bach’s Rob De Luca. Original drummer Andy Parker? Check. Keyboardist Paul Raymond? I was just thinking how valuable he was to Chicken Shack and Savoy Brown. And of course the ever-punchy Phil Mogg, one of rock’s most underrated singers, remains. At the Key Club. Fri.-Sat. May 2-3 -- Present at the birth of the cool but getting more abstract all the time: alto saxist Lee Konitz, with drummer Joe LaBarbera and bassist Matthew Brewer. At Jazz Bakery. Fri. May 2 -- Don’t get me wrong, I like prog metal. Just not so much Dream Theater, Opeth, Between the Buried and Me or 3. And they flock together. What’s the common factor? A free album from Amoeba to anyone who can tell me. At Gibson Amphitheater. Fri. May 2 -- Fine mainstream jazz with some tradition behind it: the quartet of saxist Dale Fielder, with pianist Jane Getz (she played with Mingus), bassist Trevor Ware (all over the South L.A. scene) and drummer Thomas White. At Café Metropol, 923 E. Third St., downtown 90013; 8pm; $10 cover, $10 minimum; (213) 613-1537. Sat. May 3 -- The bass and guitar half of L.A. Jazz Quartet, Darek Oles & Larry Koonse do silky & snaky originals. At Café Metropol, 923 E. Third St., downtown 90013; 8pm; $10 cover, $10 minimum; (213) 613-1537. Sat. May 3 -- Dean Chamberlain plays solo acoustic (with vocal help on a few tunes). At the Stone, 5221 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood 90027; 11:15pm; (323) 466-6061; FREE. Sat.-Sun. May 3-4 -- I’ve never seen Wild Don Lewis perform; I know him as a great photographer who’s at all the best underground noise shows. But obviously he’s got good taste, so it’ll be well worth experiencing his Small Drone Orchestra, consisting of himself on bowed electric bass, synthesizer and trumpet. At Santa Fe Art Colony Open Studio, 2401 Santa Fe Ave., Studio 107, downtown 90058; two sets 2pm and 4:30pm both days; free I think. Sun. May 4 -- Some guys are just tuned in to the vibrations of elevated dimensions -- like Dead Air, featuring trumpeter Dan Clucas, drummer Brian Christopherson and guitarist Jeremy Keller. Plus you get the trombone-&-tuba wrangle & woof of Michael Vlatkovich & William Roper. At Center for the Arts, 2225 Colorado Blvd., Eagle Rock; 7pm; $10; (626) 795-4989. Tues. May 6 -- A naturally beautiful vacationland trio of world-class vets: drummer Peter Erskine, pianist Alan Pasqua and drummer Dave Carpenter. At Jazz Bakery; 8 & 9:30pm; $30. Wed.-Sat. May 7-10 -- The most wide-swinging Door, drummer John Densmore, presents his world ensemble TribalJazz. At Catalina’s; 8 & 10pm; $20-$30. Wed.-Sat. May 7-10 -- All-time great trombonist Curtis Fuller leads a topflight local ensemble: pianist Nate Morgan, bassist Tony Dumas, drummer Fritz Wise and vocalist George Harper. At Jazz Bakery; 8 & 9:30pm; $30. Thurs. May 8 -- Aw, come on, you know the armor-plated tour known as Paganfest is gonna be a great way to kill the pain by dying in battle: Nuclear Blast’s “Pagan Fire” compilation, which includes several Fest bands, is a chanting, gouging, looting and luting way to introduce your barbaric friends to the party pillage sometimes known as Viking metal. Tonight you get Ensiferum, Turisas, Tyr and Suidakra; HoB’s site also lists Eluveitie, but I can’t confirm that. At House of Blues Sunset Strip; $20. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1.294 2008-05-02T20:26:25Z 2008-05-02T20:48:35Z

Belphegor want to stick some sex into modern metal, and being swordly Austrians, they can’t write about begging their galkyries to sugar ‘em up with some o’ that good thang.

Belphegor, “Bondage Goat Zombie” (Nuclear Blast) Belphegor want to stick some sex into modern metal, and being swordly Austrians, they can’t write about begging their galkyries to sugar ‘em up with some o’ that good thang. Cradle of Filth pretty much have a lock on the vampire-lust angle, so the Belphegorians opt to blacken some fresh S&M and succubus filets for their seventh studio alb. Musically, the spice injection is consummated. Conceptually, it only sorta works. As metal so often demands, you need to approach the subject metaphorically. Only idiots take metallers’ satanic posturing at face value -- it’s a counter-establishment stance, Gomer. Similarly, simps will be tempted to get literal about the abasement of women on this record. The battering-ram sonic assault of “Sexdictator Lucifer” begins with a woman’s ecstatic moans and ends with her writhing scream: We’re supposed to wonder if she’s cumming or expiring. On the final “Der Rutenmarsch” (“the march of the pricks” perfectly describes the stomping lamentation of the music), you hear the female masochist flagellated till she gasps then weeps. The title demoness of “The Sukkubus Lustrate” is commanded to “insert the wooden arm -- ride the crucifix.” In “Justine: Soaked in Blood,” the “dethroned cunt” is “deadfucked to pieces.” Dethroned, huh? You don’t gotta be Freud to figure out that guitarist-throatsman-lyricist Helmuth is nothing but a pussy-whipped little boy crying for power. That may be a pathetic condition, but from the Rolling Stones’ “Under My Thumb” and “Midnight Rambler” on down, it’s inspired damn good rock music. Which is what we have here. The low frequencies emanating from Torturer’s busy kick drums and Serpenth’s underworldly bass can’t help but resonate in your nether extremities -- unlike a lot of modern-metal rhythm sections, the two bring an undulating, unmechanical feel to their high-energy onslaught, and the arrangements allow you to draw an occasional breath during a metallic “Duke of Earl” mini-breakdown or a courtly bridge. Belphegor does, in fact, make a highly melodic noise. Helmuth’s slew of lovely buzz-picked riffs serve not the usual metal aggro, but an atmosphere of longing (for peace and poontang) and despair (that he’s ever gonna get any). The mood of “Stigma Diabolicum” is positively prayerful; “Shred for Satan” submerges one of the album’s persistent threads of oblique humor under a goulashy murk before ending with sensually gritty feedback. Dig the neat slipsliding lead axwork on “Chronicles of Crime.” Seems like a thousand metal bands are competing to author a new soundtrack for the Siegfried epic. If there’s an “Austrian Idol” contest to determine the victor, Belphegor will certainly rank among the finalists. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1.293 2008-05-02T20:17:02Z 2008-05-02T20:25:31Z

The common thread? Europe. The Lizard King was buried there.

“Blue Note: A Story of Modern Jazz” (EuroArts) A couple of Germans flee the Nazis to New York and establish the most influential label in the history of American jazz. This DVD by Julian Benedikt offers a nice little peek into the unlikely story of Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff. Kareem Abdul Jabbar in a cowboy hat talks about “bordello music.” The always reliable writer-producer Michael Cuscuna lays down the reality: “A lot of it sold nothing.” We learn that Reid Miles, the genius behind the Blue Note album look, traded in his free copies for classical records. The whole thing seems like a fantasy until you see the snips of an Afro-garbed Art Blakey tearing into a drum solo, or Sonny Rollins whipping his tenor in improvisational fervor, or Freddie Hubbard greasing up just two notes till they smear your pants. And then you wonder if this music could ever have gone undiscovered. Look around now: Maybe it could’ve. Aside from the valuable history lesson, watching this thing sent me back to my Benny Golson and Art Farmer records. And that was reward enough. “Play Your Own Thing: A Story of Jazz in Europe” (EuroArts) The above concerned Europeans’ influence on jazz; “Play” examines jazz’s influence on Europeans. Telling the tales of first encounters with the extraterrestrial music are trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, bandleader Daniel Humair, Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt and a lot of others; the narratives are probably more interesting to Continentals than to Americans, who may hate being continually reminded that our top musicians had to flee to the welcoming arms of damn furriners because the good ol’ USA couldn’t feed its own. Singer Juliette Greco says the expatriates were surprised to discover lands with so little racism. The footage of Dexter Gordon, Kenny Clarke, Miles Davis and the rest is pretty skimpy, not enough reason to buy “Play Your Own Thing.” But once again it’s likely to inspire binges, in my case through a large stack of Bud Powell discs. Ever hear the 1964 Roulette sessions recorded in New York with bassist John Ore and drummer J.C. Moses, two years before Powell died? Got a version of “Someone to Watch Over Me” that’ll break your heart. “ ‘The Doors’: The Definitive Authorized Story of the Album” (Eagle Vision) Since I regard the first Doors album as a virtually sacred object, I hoped that the Classic Albums series -- which has done solid work on the likes of Deep Purple’s “Machine Head,” the Who’s “Who’s Next?” and Cream’s “Disraeli Gears” -- would hit a homer with this doc. But while it doesn’t blow chunks as loudly as the one about Lou Reed’s incredibly overrated “Transformer,” it coulda been better. The main problem is the interviewees. Ray Manzarek’s cosmic-accountant demeanor only gets more annoying with the years. His co-Doors Robbie Krieger and John Densmore just seem frail (and justibiably wary). Michael McClure might’ve once been a good poet and playwright; too bad he turned into a clueless windbag. Do we really gotta put up with Henry Rollins and Perry Farrell AGAIN? Call me when those two “rock poets” volunteer to sniff Jim Morrison’s mummified scrotum. There’s some useful stuff about the music, but the overall tone undercuts it; the magic convergence of time, place and talent is made to seem like a lucky accident backdropped by yet another rundown of Jimbo’s crayzee antics. The extras omitted from the already-running VH1 Classic screenings are disposable and sometimes redundant. But it’s only 9 bucks on Amazon! Buy three and get free shipping. “Marc Ribot: The Lost String” (La Huit) Anaïs Prosaïc should have changed her surname before making this documentary; whatever you want to say about the music of avant guitarist Marc Ribot, prosaic it ain’t. Though Ribot had already played with NYC extremists Arto Lindsay and John Zorn, not to mention the Lounge Lizards, I first noticed him when I was listening to a mid-‘80s Tom Waits album and checked the credits to find out who was carving out those spare, gritty guitar lines. Well, he says here that he always wanted to play like Grant Green and couldn’t. Turns out that Ribot is one of the few who’s turned technical limitations to his advantage: His meaty physical interface with the instrument defines the way he sounds. Look at the way the sweat flies off his forehead and his left hand mugs the frets of his electrified acoustic guitar in one segment. Observe how clumsily he boots his stomp boxes in another. Even when he’s plucking a lovely Spanish ballad, he’s far from delicate -- it’s appropriate that when an audience member kicks over a beer bottle in the quietest moment, nobody seems to notice. Ribot’s body is connected to his subconscious. He says klezmer influences just “floated to the surface” from time to time, as with the strange Middle Eastern moan that evolves from “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.” According to Ribot, it’s impossible to play, as he would prefer, without preconceptions, but “You can find your DEEP preconceptions, your deep history.” Lindsay, Ned Rothenberg and various other musicians fill in the gaps. Mostly documentary but including four full-length live selections, “The Lost String” is well balanced. You’ll like this dark-eyed ghost, and you probably already know whether you like his music. I do, about half the time. “Yohimbe Brothers” (Freedom Now) Though I’m a fan of Vernon Reid’s lava-spewing guitar and DJ Logic’s psychedelic grooves, their sporadically active group Yohimbe Brothers has never much grabbed me. And Jérôme de Missotz’s performance documentary didn’t change my mind. Abetted by a vocalist, a bassist, a drummer and a keyboardist, Reid and Logic rarely draw the funky/rocky/reggaefied music together satisfyingly -- not much band chemistry. Mathieu Foldès’ colourful post-production image manipulations and superimpositions try to take you on a trip, but the limitations of the small stage and the flat camerawork prevent him from getting out of the garage. The sound’s okay. Nothing’s seriously wrong (unless you count the fact that the disc wouldn’t play on my computer). Maybe it’s partly that I saw Reid’s Masque trio in a club a couple years back, and they burned like a fireworks factory. Yohimbe comes off more like a clove cigarette. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1.291 2008-05-02T19:50:20Z 2008-05-02T20:49:34Z

You know Dave Shulman? Go ahead and know him.

ILLUSTRATION BY JEFFREY VALLANCE You know Dave Shulman? Go ahead and know him. He's a most entertaining and precise writer of factual fiction as well as a visual artist of various kinds; I was one of his editors at LA Weekly before he got kicked out for being good. Dave's exhibit at Track 16 in Bergamot Station, along with friend Jeffrey Vallance's iconic chicken displays and a bunch of other good art, ended last month just after I saw it, so I had no chance to recommend it. But you can see a slide show of it here. A continuing stream of patrons was drawn to "The Extrasensory Polynesian Butt Plug Mystery" represented in slide 5, with closeups of the titular totem in slides 8 and 9. You can't read the butcher-paper representations of Dave's columns in these slides, but you can examine his work at leisure here. Mr. Shulman also needs a job as a journalist, graphic artist or suicide bomber. Prospective employers can contact me (greg@metaljazz.com) and I'll put them in touch.]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1.290 2008-04-25T22:09:41Z 2008-04-25T22:20:30Z

Rachelle Ferrell is jazz (she’s just as much R&B), but the way her voice gooshes around a lyric and then leaps way up into the chandelier, hey, it’s got the improvisational thing. Writes all her own words and some of her music, too; got a groove like Sly. At Catalina’s, 8 & 10pm; $30-$40; (323) 466-2210; www.catalinajazzclub.com. Fri. April 25 -- Drummer Winard Harper, formerly of the Harper Brothers, pilots a sextet in tribute to his old mentor Billy Higgins. At the Theater at 4305, 4305 Degnan Blvd., Leimert Park Village 90008; 8:30 & 10pm; (213) 952-4665; $20. Fri. April 25 -- Vibesman Nick Mancini swings old-school, but with a modern edge. Crowds dig this guy, and so do I. At Café Metropol, 923 E. Third St., downtown 90013; 8pm; $10 cover, $10 minimum; (213) 613-1537; reservations recommended. Sat. April 26 -- Wreck Your Neck Fest. Lotta local metal bands including Warbringer and Bonded by Blood. At the Black Castle, 855 W. Manchester Ave., L.A. 90044. Sun. April 27 -- Equally adept as a bassist and a painter, John Heard holds a salon featuring both. The music half includes drummer Lorca Hart and pianist Danny Grissette. At the Theater at 4305, 4305 Degnan Blvd., Leimert Park Village 90008; 2pm; (213) 952-4665; $20. Sun. April 27 -- Poetry & trombone. Call & response. S & M. Dorothea Grossman & Michael Vlatkovich. At Dangerous Curve Art Gallery, 1020 E. Fourth Pl., downtown 90013; 7pm; $10. Tues.-Sat. April 29-May 3 -- Present at the birth of the cool but getting more abstract all the time: alto saxist Lee Konitz, with drummer Joe LaBarbera and bassist Matthew Brewer. At Jazz Bakery. Tues. April 29 -- Fusion music that involves no rock, no jazz and no electricity: the Nigerian ensemble Etran Finatawa. It seems that musicians from two West African tribes, the Tuareg and the Wodaabe, have joined their traditions -- mainly instrumental on the one hand, mainly singing/dancing on the other. And I think you’re gonna like the soulfully grooving and desert-beautiful result; check it out here. 10:30pm, with Masanga Marimba Ensemble at 9:30pm. At Temple Bar, 1026 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica; $10; www.templebarlive.com. Tues. April 29 -- Singer-guitarist Dean Chamberlain leads an electric trio. Hmm, where have we heard that before? But it’ll be rootsier this millennium. Dean opens for onetime X guitarist and all-around ‘billy blazer Tony Gilkyson, plus Dan Janisch, with some mixin’ & matchin’ along the way. At Cinema Bar, 3967 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City 90230; 7:30pm; (310) 390-1328; FREE. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1.289 2008-04-25T21:56:49Z 2008-04-25T22:05:59Z

Been awhile since I reviewed me a mess o' metal.

Whitesnake, “Good To Be Bad” (SPV) There’s good bloat and bad bloat, and this is good. Metalsoul groper David Coverdale tarried some 20 years in baking a full-on worldwide-issued studio soufflé rolled and poked with the Whitesnake brand, so you knew the result wasn’t gonna be something you’d spit out. Is there a difference between catering and pandering? Who cares? Just knock back some cognac and suck up the Whitesnake goo. The sound is luxurious, and stamped with an understanding of the current marketplace. Though I listened on CD, the audio crept across with that pillowy insubstantiality you associate with mp3 -- chalk it up to the predilections of guitarist Doug Aldrich, who co-produced (along with Coverdale and Michael McIntyre). Possibly the planet’s premier hard-rock axman, Aldrich always walks the borderline between note and noise, beat and rhythm; he wants you to feel the vibrations before you process the mathematical structures. To be as sexist as possible about it: Chicks dig this. As a soloist (mainly dude territory), Aldrich here sublimates his slick brilliance in favor of an overall environment redolent of well-used silk sheets; the result, impossible for a macho shred orgy, has been an instant U.K. chart-buster. One can only imagine what would have transpired if Tommy Aldridge, the sexiest metal-and-blues tub-slapper in the business, had been retained from the Whitesnake touring band rather than replaced by the more mechanical Chris Frazier on drums. (Aldridge had commitments with former Whitesnake guitarist John Sykes in Thin Lizzy.) Fine longtime guitarist Reb Beach, bassist Uriah Duffy and keyboardist Timothy Drury serve in the valuable but blanketed role of mattress components. Averaging over five minutes, the 11 songs each could have been trimmed by a quarter without sacrificing anything -- except the languid suggestion that Coverdale is in no hurry to get out of bed, and you can’t underestimate that. He’s also in no hurry to try anything new; after such a long absence, reliability was the obvious choice. Coverdale remains the most proficient Led Zeppelin imitator around: Consult his crossbreeding of Whitesnake’s already Zeppified classic “In the Still of the Night” with Zep’s “Black Dog” to spawn “Lay Down Your Love”; reflect on the biting Pagelike slide work on “Got What You Need”; and zoom in on the “Kashmir” rhythms tacked onto the end of the Bad Company-style thud-ballad “’Til the End of Time.” But the album kicks off with three straight rockers that condense the riff-heavy history of Whitesnake and classic rock: “Best Years,” charging off the gangplank like a horny sailor; the alternately chest-beating and thigh-stroking “Can You Hear the Wind Blow”; and the wrangle-riffed soul-metal testifier “Call on Me.” Of the less distinguished compositions, the cock-foremost strutter “Good To Be Bad” nevertheless boasts a rampaging coda and “All for You” a grabby Lizzy lurch. Though I’m not quite enough of a girl to get fully behind the couple of slow romancers, I appreciate that Coverdale’s voice moans and soars with undiminished potency on those numbers and throughout. And when he sings, “You’re all I want, all I need” -- well, it’s nice to know he still feels that way about me. Children of Bodom, “Blooddrunk” (Spinefarm) Here’s the opposite metal approach: all shred, all protein, no waste, and (probably) no women. Nine tracks in 37 minutes. And what a bullet-train ride it is. Children of Bodom have grown to be one of my favorite bands, because these Finns have got everything except a world-class vocalist: thrill-packed songwriting, ultratight performances, ceaseless rock energy. And the production, good god: Mikko Karmila has twisted the Bodomites’ knobs so long that he knows how to extract every erg of impact, with Alexi Laiho’s guitars carving laserpoint volutes into your brain folds while Jaska Raatikainen’s bang-triggered drums beat a judo-chop massage all over the rest of your helpless frame. This is rock. “Blooddrunk” marks a full partnership (after 11 years of unequal balance) between guitarist-raspman Laiho and keyboardist Janne Warman, who alternates stabbing chords and pirouette leads on the opening post-thrash churner “Hellhounds on My Trail,” and frequently trades crazy-ass solos with Laiho or essays dual countermelodies throughout. Indeed, if you slowed the tempos down by 30 percent, the album would sound like old-school pomp ‘n’ rage, quite danceable in its way, except the dance is the frantic Eurofolk variety rather than any variant of African buttsmanship. Though every track is magnificent, the concluding trio -- the mini-epic “Done With Everything, Die for Nothing,” the depressive ultramelodic face-puncher “Banned From Heaven” and the captive-slaughtering methedrine finale “Roadkill Morning” -- has to go down as a door-slam suite for the ages. 2005: “Are You Dead Yet?” 2007: the live DVD “Chaos Ridden Years.” 2008: “Blooddrunk.” It’s a virtuoso span unsurpassed by any other metal band during the same period. And there’s a lotta competition out there. Testament, “The Formation of Damnation” (Nuclear Blast) It’s so great to see Testament putting together all the pieces after labels folded under ‘em and singer Chuck Billy fought through cancer. Now they’re gonna be on MTV, they’ve got a manager who believes in them (Maria Ferrero, who first signed them to MegaForce/Atlantic in 1985 when she was 19), they’ll be opening dates on the Heaven & Hell/Judas Priest tour, they’re rocking with a classic lineup, and their first album in nine years (arriving April 29) is a killer. It sounds fantastically big, heavy and well-machined -- recorded with Andy Sneap but with Testament guitarist Eric Peterson on his ass like a bad smell. “When [Sneap] mixed Megadeth or Machine Head or Arch Enemy,” Peterson told me, “he says none of the bands are there when he’s mixing. And I’m like, ‘Well, how do you do that?’ And he goes, ‘I just MP ‘em.’ And I’m like, ‘Hmm, well, maybe that’s what makes ours a little bit more special,’ because I’m driving him nuts.” Chuck Billy said Testament decided to focus on the drums this time: “Instead of doing them at our own place and using more samples, we wanted to get a live sound, and we went back to where we did ‘Practice What You Preach’ and ‘Souls of Black.’ It’s a room that’s built to sound good for drums, and it sounded great. It didn’t hurt to have Paul [Bostaph] kickin’ butt on it.” Bostaph, a 1993 member of Testament who later did three albums with Slayer, indeed sounds hellacious. You could just listen to him and find yourself permanently pinned to the floor, but having Alex Skolnick back from his jazz journeys adds considerable dimension. The unsettled time signatures and hovering guitar solo he brings to “Dangers of the Faithless” make for a welcome weirdness, and he’s got a bunch of other nice spotlights: the snake-charmer album intro “For the Glory Of . . .,” the downspirals and wreckage of “The Evil Has Landed,” the ghostly smoke and textured fade of the concluding “Leave Me Forever.” Dude’s got some LSD in his DNA. The songwriting is ace; each composition goes on a journey like a little symphony, the hookiest numbers being the sing-along “More Than Meets the Eye,” the purposeful “Afterlife” and the bubbling/sludgy “F.E.A.R.” Billy took a chance in opting to sing rather than deathbellow nearly the entire album, since his chestily melodic style and phrasing owe a large debt to his old Bay Area thrashmate James Hetfield of Metallica, whose influence he acknowledges. Fans of melodic metal will quickly get over the resemblance (if they haven’t decades ago), and many will prefer “Formation” to anything Metallica has done since the late ‘80s. You’ll want to give this record a lot of spins. It’s deep. Read my LA Times Testament interview here and live review here. Arsis, “We Are the Nightmare” (Nuclear Blast) This album made me think, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Largely I was thinking that, though I dug the riffs and the general manic activity generated by one-man army James Malone, I didn’t much care for drummer Darren Cesca, who seemed to have gotten addicted to nonstop million-beat kick triggers because they blurred the fact that he was out of sync a lot of the time. Then I thought, well, how the hell is any human being supposed to drum along to this hyperaccelerated, constantly changing mess of personal expression? What I really objected to was the fact that Cesca was trying to be a machine -- but I later realized that his lack of success therein should not be despised. In fact, whether intentional or not, doesn’t the imperfection lend the music an appealing jazzlike variability? And Malone is a valiant soldier to have on the battlefield of technical metal, so we should take him any way we can get him. Where else can we experience so much musical information crammed so densely: chopped and surging rhythms, nervous dual harmonies, battered Viking determination, mathy blasts, Yngwie-like classical overdrive, anal jigsaw-puzzle riffing -- even reimagined speed-freak condensations of boleros and Eagles and Elton John? He’s not always brutal: Is that wrong? The production is thin in the middle, but that’s probably just the way Malone wants it; otherwise the highly trafficked terrain could grow muddy. Ultimately, I just had to turn off my primitive brain and settle back with some of the best technical metal around. In prog heaven. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1.288 2008-04-25T21:49:03Z 2008-04-26T16:40:09Z

Mark Dresser is one of those guys who fell into a volcano while sacrificing to the gods of music and emerged as some kind of wraith made entirely from sound. This evening, paired with singer and string player Jen Shyu, Dresser made selective contact with the earthly plane while continually engaging the unearthly.

Mark Dresser is one of those guys who fell into a volcano while sacrificing to the gods of music and emerged as some kind of wraith made entirely from sound. This evening, paired with singer and string player Jen Shyu, Dresser made selective contact with the earthly plane while continually engaging the unearthly. Looking as if he’d awakened in a strange country, the once and future SoCal avantist Dresser (who left NYC in 2004 to teach at UCSD, among many activities) bent his tousled white head to his bow, with which he’s developed some stunning techniques. He would position his left hand, then sweep the bow across the strings to produce both a bass note and an overtone that seemed to ring all over the room. Or he’d windmill a bowed chord and manage to sound one intensely vibrating note at the same time. Or he’d tap the strings with one hand while sliding the other up and down the strings, producing tones, overtones and fuzzy boinging effects like a jew’s harp along the way. This wasn’t just the effects circus you might be picturing; a pulse emerged (from where?) and sustained with infinite variations, keeping my heel bouncing the whole time. Shyu, contrastingly defined in a black gown, complemented Dresser with her own bowings and pluckings on the high-pitched Chinese er hu (which, she informs me, means “two strings,” because . . .). She made the gravest impression when she laid down long notes, and Dresser either focused harmonies on them or used them as a center around which to spin improvisations. They switched roles in the visual space, Dresser staying rooted while Shyu moved from place to place in a stylized slow dance -- crouching, bending, extending her graceful hands to test the wind, gather a cloud, stroke an invisible cat. Meanwhile she used her pure, high voice to improvise calm words about river voyages and the permanence of change. They started strong, but halfway through an hour’s four extended workouts the limitations of the duo format started to show. Dresser and Shyu nevertheless gathered steam for a vaguely Latin finale: He pinged, wozzed, rumbaed and shoogaboogaed in abstract but physical fashion; she moaned with birthin’ depth. It was memorable, and not just for the novelty. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1.287 2008-04-18T20:26:44Z 2008-04-19T17:29:50Z

Fri. April 18 -- Former Miles sideman, Headhunter and Cryptogramophone artist Bennie Maupin celebrates the release of his new CD. The record features all Polish sidepeople, two of whom, pianist Michal Tokaj and singer Hania Rybka, augment the windman’s working outfit: percussionist Munyungo Jackson, bassist Darek Oles and drummer Michael Stephans. Expect intelligent, beautiful, original music. Read an LA Times article on Crypto and Maupin to which I contributed here. Photo by Barbara DuMetz. At Catalina’s, 8 & 10pm; $40 and $35, better buy tickets at www.catalinajazzclub.com and make reservations at (323) 466-2210. Fri. April 18 -- Who’s got the purple-orangiest electronic aura of them all? Halfmonk, a.k.a. guitar wandsman and loopmeister G.E. Stinson, accompanied by vocalist Jen Hung and live video improviser B.K. Bynum, who knows all Stinson’s secrets. Offer condolences for the death a month ago of Stuart Nevitt, Stinson’s drummer bandmate in the ‘80s earth-rock band Shadowfax. At Dangerous Curve Art Gallery, 1020 E. Fourth Pl., downtown 90013; 8pm; $10. Fri.-Sun. April 18-20 -- Always a lotta good live metal at Murderfest, headlined Friday by influential density demons Converge and their ingeniously mathematical progeny The Red Chord; Saturday by Swedish death-&-rollers Entombed, somewhat reconstituted but still still lo-bashing with the same voxman and guitarist; and Sunday by grind originators Napalm Death, with San Diego’s poetically radical Cattle Decapitation among others supporting. I like to come early and leave before it gets trash-compacted in there. At the Knitting Factory. Fri. April 18 -- Great bill: circa 1990 noiseriffery from Helmet, good songs and crude rock attitude from former Stone Queen Nick Oliveri and Mondo Generator, plus (are these guys really OPENING?), stoner masculinity to the max from Matt Pike (pictured) and the sludge-driving High on Fire. At the Key Club. Fri. April 18 -- “Murderfest pre-party” with explosive, noisy postmodern metal from Fetus Eaters. At Relax Bar, 5511 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood 90028; 8pm; $10. Fri. April 18 -- There are some worse Sabbath-influenced bands than The Sword, and some better (Kylesa, Danava). The Sword seem to be doing pretty well, but why? Synched-in groove? No. The riffs? Well, they hail almost exclusively from the folk-prance side of Black Sabbath, cf. Sab’s “Supernaut.” Solos? Below average. Drums? Bill Ward divided by four. Vox? I know it’s OK if stoner singers are wimpy, but this guitar/vocal guy needs some armor. Looks? Hmm, the bassist might have some chick magnetism. Is that it? Pretty good rock band, anyway. At El Rey. Fri. April 18 -- ‘80s glam rock that actually rocks? “Round and Round” by Ratt qualifies, and they’re touring with three original memberss -- singer Stephen Pearcy, guitarist Warren DeMartini and drummer Bobby Blotzer -- plus Robbie Crane on bass and onetime Crueman John Corabi (!) on second guitar. At House of Blues. Fri.-Sat. April 17-19 -- Bent Fest is a celebration of circuit bending and hacking -- messing with toys and tubes and stuff to get new sounds. Workshops and performances. Kinda grand that public money goes to support weird ideas like this. At Grand Performances, 350 S. Grand Ave., downtown 90011, and Zero Point, 1049 E. 32nd St., LA 90011; day and night; free unless you want to pay the $10 suggested donation. For details hit here. Sat. April 19 -- JUST IN: Feral cat benefit (we love those feral benefits, whether for cats or otherwise) featuring Halfmonk, Leticia Castaneda and many more. At Dangerous Curve Art Gallery, 1020 E. Fourth Pl., downtown 90013; 7pm; give in proportion to your love of wildness. Sat. April 19 -- When the trombone of Michael Vlatkovich and the tuba of William Roper hit each other in midair, glittering shrapnel results, not to mention left-field humor. At Café Metropol, 923 E. Third St., downtown 90013; 5pm; $5 cover, $10 minimum; (213) 613-1537. Sat. April 19 -- Pianist Josh Nelson gives melodic mainstream jazz a good name, and he’s got some band: Ben Wendel (sax), Anthony Wilson (guitar), Hamilton Price (bass) and Jeff Marrs (drums). At Café Metropol, 923 E. Third St., downtown 90013; 8pm; $10 cover, $10 minimum; (213) 613-1537; reservations recommended. Sat. April 19 -- Geekiest metal show of the year, with olde-school heavy-prog a-stabbin’ till every broadsword is broken. From least anal to most: I suspect that headliners Symphony X own some Bad Company deep, deep in their record collections, ‘cause their Homeric tech actually has balls. Epica write damn good melodies, and switching off with the band’s death vox, Simone sings yearningly from yond castle -- but she’s been sick and had to be replaced by backup singer Amanda Somerville for this tour. Into Eternity are real twiddly on them axes, and the singing can get too Yessy between growls, but they keep you listening with a lotta interesting twists. At House of Blues. Sun. April 20 -- If you’ve never heard Mark Dresser play standup bass, do yourself a favor; the man’s not just a world-class technician, he’s a real composer. Here he collaborates with multi-instrumentalist, dancer and all-around Renaissance woman Jen Shyu in what Rocco’s calling a special event, so believe him. Early show. At Café Metropol, 923 E. Third St., downtown 90013; 5pm; $15 cover, $10 minimum; (213) 613-1537; reservations recommended. Wed.-Sat. April 23-26 -- I don’t get into many jazz singers -- tend to stop not too far beyond Billie Holiday, Cassandra Wilson and Helen Merrill. Dunno if I should even call Rachelle Ferrell jazz, maybe just as much R&B, but the way her voice gooshes around a lyric and then leaps way up into the chandelier, hey, it’s got the improvisational thing. Writes all her own words and some of her music, too; got a groove that reminds me of Sly. At Catalina’s. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1.286 2008-04-18T20:21:56Z 2008-04-18T20:25:51Z

Was Moses even a Hebrew? The tradition relates that after the future exodizer is born to Hebrew parents, his mother floats him down the Nile in a basket to escape Pharaoh’s command that all newborn Hebrew boys be killed. So Pharaoh’s daughter finds and raises him. That’s the cover story.

Was Moses even a Hebrew? The tradition relates that after the future exodizer is born to Hebrew parents, his mother floats him down the Nile in a basket to escape Pharaoh’s command that all newborn Hebrew boys be killed. So Pharaoh’s daughter finds and raises him. That’s the cover story. But the myth offers scant connection between Moses and the race of his supposed birth. The prominent self-questioning Jew Sigmund Freud was among the first to suggest that the legend of Moses was meant in part to indicate the actual source of Israel’s monotheism -- namely Akhenaten, the heretic Pharaoh who temporarily diverted Egyptian religion from polytheism. Some say that the biblical Exodus represents not the flight of oppressed Israelite slaves, but the relocation of an Egyptian monotheistic minority (pariahs after the fall of Akhenaten) to a new land, and it was from these refugees that Israel eventually learned to worship a single deity. The Old Testament holds some clues that the character of Moses did not originate as a Hebrew. First, he is raised as an Egyptian. Second, when he kills an Egyptian for mistreating an Israelite, Moses escapes into exile, where he marries not a Hebrew, but a Midianite woman, Zipporah. Perhaps logically, God chooses this border-crossing man to be his intermediary in approaching Pharaoh about freeing the enslaved Hebrews. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, God decides to kill Moses. And that’s where the third clue comes in. In Exodus 4:24-26, Moses is on the road to accost Pharaoh when the Lord comes to execute the death sentence. Zipporah, apparently understanding the reason for the attack, immediately grabs a piece of flint and whacks off their son’s foreskin, dropping it at Moses’ feet and calling him a “bloody spouse,” her Midianite heritage possibly rebelling against this painful, gory practice. God is appeased. The context: Immediately before this, God has instructed Moses to tell Pharaoh that Israel is God’s firstborn, and unless the Chosen People are released, God will kill Pharaoh’s firstborn. The unstated implication is that Moses, in order to utter such a challenge, must stand worthy in the case of his own firstborn -- who, contrary to the Covenant, is not circumcised. Given that the son, Gershon, is the offspring of a gentile woman and of Moses, who was raised by Egyptians, the retention of his prepuce up to that point doesn’t seem unlikely. In fact, Exodus suggests that, although circumcision was practiced -- not universally -- by Egyptians (a fact not mentioned in the Torah) as well as by Hebrews, Moses himself was not circumcised. The veiled revelation of this condition arrives in Exodus 6:12 and again in 6:30. Moses is complaining about being assigned as an interlocutor despite his lack of qualifications: He calls himself what the New American Bible translates as a “poor speaker” and the King James Version more literally renders as “of uncircumcised lips.” For “uncircumcised,” Moses uses the Hebrew word “arel,” which at root refers to something loose or disordered, particularly a foreskin. Moses’ choice of terminology (he says “uncircumcised” twice, and the word doesn’t relate to lips anywhere else in the Old Testament) is hard to justify unless he intends to imply that it applies “as above, so below.” Does it matter whether Moses was a Hebrew, was circumcised, or existed at all? No. Just trying to observe that marks of distinction are pretty damn common, and older than God himself. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1.285 2008-04-18T20:09:57Z 2008-04-18T20:20:33Z

From Mozart to dinosaur bones.

A congenial L.A. music-family event. Alex Cline curates this concert series, and his wife, Karen, is there pre-show tonight with their kid, who must be 3 or 4 now; they’re assembling balsa dinosaur bones on the floor amid an exhibit of local art. Meanwhile, Nels Cline is joining Alex and Cryptogramophone label chief Jeff Gauthier (the three constitute the remnant of the chamber-jazz group Quartet Music) plus Crypto artist Bennie Maupin in a photo shoot for an LA Times article I’m working on. (Link here.) Award-winning photographer Anne Fishbein, in traditional artist overcoat, is herding them around; she says it’s good to be documenting something other than food, which has been her main thing lately, though she established herself with her deep portraits of, y’know, humans. So here comes the Open Gate Theater Band, a mutable outfit consisting of Will Salmon, Alex and whoever; here it’s a trio with bassist Bill Casale, the leader of the evening’s other trio. I want Alex to introduce the kakologies at my funeral, ‘cause he can completely tune the air with just a perfect ringing stroke on one high cymbal. Immediately his kid is standing in the aisle of this echoing old former library, rapt. Casale takes a quick solo; his trademark is the way he taps the strings with hands moving up and down the neck a foot apart, real light but managing to fill the whole room with waves of dense chordal sound. And then there’s Salmon -- funny I’ve never heard him before, though he’s been co-hosting these Sunday Night Concerts for 11 years and performs a couple times a year at least. He’s a hell of a talent, an opera-quality vocalist who’s also proficient on B-flat flute, wooden flute and piano. The singing is scary, as Salmon executes clarion highs, nasty controlled growls and villainous tenor declamations; it might seem this would be silly, but he keeps his dignity all the way. Alex holds the feel together with rumbly malletwork. The next number is a scored excerpt from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” which starts semistraight with some grave bowed bass from Casale and barrel-chested baritone from Salmon, who gets progressively freakier with Klingon gutturals, Tuvan split throat tones, plucked piano wires and wafting flute. The well-balanced trio strikes a special chord at one point: a lovely triad consisting of a cymbal scrape by Alex, a bowed overtone by Casale and an upper-register sustain by Salmon. The Open Gaters proceed through a stalking, thrumming tango and a full-spectrum improvisation concluding with Salmon’s Tuvanoid version of a “Kyrie Eleison.” It’s all fresh, all fun. The energy maintains with Casale’s trio. Looking like a big, bearded professor of literature (without the self-importance), he’s all over the bass with techniques I’ve never seen before -- the tapping thing, pluckings above the nut by the pegs, rich overtones from the bow. He’s got a knack for matching and diverging from the lines of white-turtlenecked windman Matt Zebley, who blows a dark, pretty melody and Oz-wizard trills on alto, and careens through jagged yet soft riffs on the rarely seen E-flat alto clarinet (with a neck and a bell like the bass clarinet, but smaller). The music is rhythmically diverse, from a breezy ride groove to a butt-shaking huh-huh feel to a shoving tension, and drummer Alan Cooke, a very small, slight white-haired dude, kept drawing the ear and eye. Flipping his match-gripped sticks around the kit with quick sensitivity, he was all action while barely seeming to touch the skins and cymbals. A jazzman all the way. Nels sat in the audience, nodding and grooving. This concert series is hidden treasure; more people should come. Just mark the first Sunday of every month on your calendar and stop in once in a while -- it’s always good, and I always plug it on MetalJazz. 2225 Colorado Blvd., Eagle Rock, 7pm; $10. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1.284 2008-04-18T19:53:59Z 2008-04-18T20:08:19Z

Read Burk's LA Times interview with Chuck Billy and Eric Peterson here. Read Burk's LA Times review of Testament at the Coach House, April 10, here.

here. I want to add here a quote that there wasn't room for: Burk: On your new album, the song “Dangers of the Faithless” has some unusual rhythms. Eric Peterson: [Guitarist Alex Skolnick] showed me some of his riffs, and I got ‘em down fine. He was, ‘Oh, I thought that’d be hard for you.’ And I go, ‘No.’ He goes, ‘Well, it’s in 5/4.’ And then I couldn’t play it! Read Burk's LA Times review of Testament at the Coach House, April 10, here. For the record, a few facts in the review got misstated due to misunderstandings in the edit. 1) The new songs were not all played at the beginning; they were sprinkled throughout the set. 2) The encore was four songs, not one. 3) Eric Peterson is not stone-faced, he's stoner-faced.]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2008://1.282 2008-04-10T22:36:26Z 2008-04-10T22:46:34Z

X. Read Burk’s mini-interview with all four members in LA Times here. At Henry Fonda Theater, 6126 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Thurs.-Sun. April 9-12 -- At 82, Jimmy Scott is unique in the history of music, just bends time and space with his voice. Jazz in the deepest sense. At Jazz Bakery; 8 & 9:30pm; $30-$35. Thurs.-Sat. April 10-12 -- Look back on Freddie Hubbard’s ‘60s Blue Note stuff with Bu, Dex, Wayne and on his own, and then messing in the avant with Herbie and Jackie and Trane and Ornette, and listen to his variety of trumpet tones from piercingly intelligent to besottedly soulful. Regardless of his rep for unreliability, you gotta give a genius the benefit of the doubt sometimes. Also he’s got some kinda band: James Spaulding, Slide Hampton, Craig Handy, David Weiss, George Cables, Dwayne Burno, Roy McCurdy. Living history. At Catalina’s; $20-$35; reserve at (323) 466-2210. Fri. April 11 -- You know World Stage Stories, where Chet Hanley and Jeffrey Winston interview folks who know their jazz? This week they’ve got Steven Isoardi, author of a Tapscott book and an editor of UCLA’s great “Central Avenue Sounds” collection of musician testimonials. He’s got the historic mojo, bro. At World Stage, 4344 Degnan Blvd., Leimert Park 90008; 8pm; $10; (323) 293-2451. Fri. April 11 -- The versatile, grabby quintet of Elliott Caine rips post-bop/Latin originals and standards. At Pasadena Jazz Institute, 260 Colorado Blvd., Suite 206 (second level of Paseo Colorado), Pasadena 91101; 8:30pm; (626) 440-9002. Sat.-Sun. April 12-13 -- Check Saturday’s LA Times for Burk’s review of Testament at the Coach House Thursday. The classic lineup of these egg-cracking ‘80s Bay Area thrashers come back heavy April 29 with “The Formation of Damnation,” their first studio album in nine years -- stepped-up songwriting, ace production, intense performance. And they’ve just been announced as the opener for the summer tour of Heaven & Hell (Sabbath with Dio), Judas Priest and Motorhead. Holy damnation. At the Key Club. Sat. April 12 -- Spare and sensitive West Coast cool with guitarist Todd Milstein’s Chamber Jazz Trio, featuring the precisely feathered statements of saxist Damon Zick and trumpeter John Daversa. At Café Metropol, 923 E. Third St., downtown 90013; 8pm; $10 cover, $10 minimum; (213) 613-1537. Sat. April 12 -- Dorothea Grossman calls; trombonist Michael Vlatkovich responds; guitarist Tom McNalley mediates. At That Yarn Store, 5028 Eagle Rock Blvd., Eagle Rock; 5pm; free. Sat. April 12 -- The intriguing NYC sax-drums duo of Adam Diller & Matt Crane ($.99 Dreams) is still in town, this time abetted by the appropriately angled guitar of Tom McNalley (busy guy today). At the Bike Oven, 3706 N. Figueroa St., Highland Park; 9pm; free. Sat. April 12 -- Happy birthday to former Dred Scott guitarist Jay Sedrish, not that he deserves it. Sun. April 13 -- Saxist Adam Diller hits the Valley now, covering the Southland. At Freakbeat Records, 13616 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks 91423; (818) 995-7603. Sun. April 13 -- Now here’s a trip: “Five,” an opera by local flute mainstay Ellen Burr, based on the poems of Dorothea Grossman. Among the 10-player/singer ensemble, I recognize Jessica Catron on cello and Erin Barnes on marimba. A well-deserved tribute. At Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Ave., Venice 90291; 7:30pm; $15; (310) 306-1854. Mon. April 14 -- I don’t list many gigs outside of L.A., but the bill of Norwegian black-metal monarchs Dimmu Borgir and Polish death-metal monsters Behemoth (each blessed with a classical touch of camellias and pig’s blood) is too heavy to ignore. At the Grove of Anaheim. Wed. Apri 16 -- Chad Smith’s Bombastic Meatbats warm up for their Japan tour with an off-road gig. This is an absolutely slaughterous funkateering lineup, featuring the kickin’ Chili Peppers drummer plus guitarist Jeff Kollman, keyboardist Ed Roth and bassist Kevin Chown. Glenn Hughes’ band without Hughes, pretty much. At Life, 6311 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. 90048; 10pm; (323) 651-5433. Thurs.-Sat. April 17-19 -- Bent Fest is a celebration of circuit bending and hacking -- messing with toys and tubes and stuff to get new sounds. Workshops and performances. Kinda grand that public money goes to support weird ideas like this. At Grand Performances, 350 S. Grand Ave., downtown 90011, and Zero Point, 1049 E. 32nd St., LA 90011; day and night; free unless you want to pay the $10/day $25/three-day suggested donation. For details hit here. ]]>