Top 4 for October 20, 2015

Just a quick list to keep my blogging muscles flexed and maybe get back into the habit. Just some recommendations without much explanation I'm afraid.

Esteem - The Ideal Bread

from the Ideal Bread album. The Steve Lacy tribute band made up of his former New England Conservatory students in a contemplative mode.

Chitlins con Carne - Kenny Burrell

from Midnight Blue. Blue Note soul jazz from  the early sixties. I remember first hearing this when I was in high school on some sort of "Best of Blue Note" compilation borrowed from the public library, recorded and then force on anyone who I could listen in order to spread the jazz gospel.

Trio for Bass Instruments by Charles Wourinen

As played by the Group for Contemporary Music. One of the most lyrical of high modernists mucks about in the low registers for some interesting sounds and rhythms. Plus, it has the great David Taylor on bass trombone.

The Pusher - Nina Simone

The super funky lead-off to It Is Finished, a 1974 live album.

Program notes for the May 10, 2014 Unpopular Music webcast

The blog seems to have gotten away from “top [fill-in-the-blank] of [today's date]” format, which was really the format of the (off-line) music journal I'd been keeping for myself, largely as a writing exercise (itself, largely as an effort to “just do something”). The process of singling out a song, or two, or five, or whatever to write about has largely been replaced by adding said two-to-whatever songs to the playlist for the next webcast. So now, to get some more writing done, and, let's face it, create some more “content” for the blog, I'm going to try (at least this week) to write some “program notes” for the webcast.

I first heard Katie Lee singing Real Sick Sounds on a compilation called “Beat Jazz - Pictures from the Gone World volume 2” and enjoyed it's depiction of the lover of dissonant and off-beat music. Further research led me to the album “Songs of Couch and Consultation” a sort-of song cycle of psychologically themed songs which also include The Will to Fail, the Guilty Rag, Shrinker Man, and others, collectively a hoot-and-a-holler.

No. 1 from February 12, 2014

The Gleam – Steve Lacy Sextet

A great album from Lacy and his signature Sextet. Lots of good poetry, too. Those of you who feel Irène Aebi's singing is something that must be endured until the good stuff starts (I am not one of those people by the way, she's elemental to the Sextet's sound), just wait till Steve joins in on As Usual.