Everyone deserves music (and inexpensive Irish whiskey)

Catching up after a busy string of evenings out...

∙I saw Ron Carter's late show Friday night. You may know that he is one of the most frequently recorded (and best) upright and electric bass players in history. Carter made his name in the 1960s, most prominently playing alongside Miles Davis in his quintet that also featured Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams and Wayne Shorter, all still young and strong. (Emphasis on young, in the case of Williams!) Later on, while continuing to record jazz records with incredible prolificacy, he lent his talents to such diverse records as the first Paul Simon album, most of Roberta Flack's biggest hits, and A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory. That's quite a life in music.

This weekend, he brought his quartet to Yoshi's, featuring a pianist, a drummer and a percussionist. Now, sometimes when you listen to jazz records, it's not totally obvious who the leader is; he may hand off most of the solos to other people, or he may be the arranger and conceptual leader without really showing you who's carrying the ball. Not so, on this particular night. Carter led the band by building music from the bass on up -- not an easy feat, unless you're Charles Mingus -- and clearly drove the bus all evening, even when it was someone else's turn to solo. The drummer's touch was light and yet assured, the percussionist supplied flash and variety, and the piano player's tangents into Afro-Cuban-influenced chord structures and atonal free-improv stuff were intoxicating. Carter himself drew diverse sounds from an instrument not exactly known for having a wide palette, making his extended solos some of the most interesting parts of the night. The level of musical conversation was, as you might imagine, very advanced. I do wish Carter had played arco for a little while, but you can't have everything.

An hour and a half of this magnificent music cost me exactly $18, plus one-drink minimum. When I think of some of the things I've paid $18 for in the past, I can't imagine why I wouldn't spend more time doing this and, well, less time doing whatever it was I was doing all along.

∙I made it back to Yoshi's on Monday night for a strange evening of music, on someone else's recommendation. Some local musicians attempted a fusion of Moroccan folk music and contemporary jazz. This usually meant that an oud and a bunch of talking drums were thrown into a mix of vaguely avant-garde and vaguely quiet-storm-ish music. Some of the experiments worked better than others; I could've done without the Luther Vandross-by-way-of-Marrakesh moments. I thought they sounded best during the intros and outros of the songs, when the oud wasn't overwhelmed by the other instruments doing more familiar things. On the whole this was worthwhile, though I don't think I'll be back for more.

∙Clarifying an earlier point about Trader Joe's: I'm not sure that their groceries really qualify as The Best, as my hermano seemed to imply they would have to be for the store to succeed. In fact, compared to some of the gourmet goods you can probably get less than two blocks away, TJ's is likely to fall short. Their store is really about bang for the buck -- $19 liters of Bushmills, $7 cylinders of above-average coffee, cheap and delicious cheeses, organic pasta for 89 cents a pound, the notorious Two Buck Chuck (probably $4 in NYC!). I suspect the store will become more popular among younger Avenue A transplants seeking a slightly healthier, cheap, stylish grocery store than among Upper West Side lifers, who will regard Trader Joe's with some suspicion. (They're also going to have to stay open later than 9pm.)


FMFM: Tamba 4's We and the Sea, a largely forgotten take on bossa nova and jazz from 1968. Purchased on a lark for $2, this turned out to be an unusual treat, as did Luiz Henrique's Barra Limpa. The latter does have some corny material, I admit, though it has its moments too. We and the Sea is fully realized music that, for some reason, seemed to have no logical successor and wound up mostly of interest to weird record collectors like me.

Funny how that happens sometimes. I've felt for the last ten years or so that the current crop of rock bands -- call them indie, modern, progressive, whatever -- seems a little too concerned with where they fit into the Great Rock Story, and not concerned enough with making memorable music that touches people. I wonder if it's because of the geometric/exponential rise in the number of rock critics and journalists, in conjunction with the boom in self-publishing and increase in Web outlets. It's been going on for some time: Bands like the Archers of Loaf were, essentially, translating rock criticism into rock'n'roll ("Greatest of All Time," "Might," etc.). The world of retro-rock is down to a coldly calculated science, something our parents' generation never would have even considered. Must everything fit into a recognizable story? Can't people just do good work?