Ringing endorsements

First: In the event that Ann Coulter is still on your mind -- and she shouldn't be -- there's this bit of amusement. Normally Godwin's Law wears me out, but I enjoyed this one.

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El Lefty Malo has already posted his recap of our experience Tuesday evening at the Costello/Toussaint show, but I'll endeavor to add something new. Like Lefty, I found the evening almost entirely enjoyable and often thrilling, despite a few obvious musical flaws.

Toussaint was near-perfect, emerging midsong early in the evening. If anything, we needed to hear more piano in the mix. His flourishes are sometimes too subtle for a rhythm section like the Imposters'; Pete Thomas in particular seemed to play for a four-piece band instead of a ten-piece aggregation. Having spent time with the lively Get Happy, I can't say Thomas doesn't "get" funky soul music, but he could certainly stand to scale back his attack on some of the groovier material. It seemed like he couldn't quite shake the new-wave-ish boom-tap drumming he's been doing all his life; he did, however, get the marching-snare thing right on "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror."

Some things were perfect, like the ballads "Poisoned Rose" and "Freedom for the Stallion": the piano was right out front, the vocals were powerful, and the rhythm section was held in check. Toussaint's horn charts added rhythmic contrast and tonal color, while the horn players themselves provided visual humor and stayed loose at stage left.

Oddly, Costello's vocal weariness shone through not on the ballads, but on the rockers. He seemed fine at first -- opening with "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love & Understanding" -- but eventually he seemed to wear out over the course of the three-hour show. Maybe it was all the sing-a-longs. I don't know about you, but I don't feel comfortable being goosed to sing along with a performer eighty yards away, waving his arms and conducting the audience. I don't like clapping along at the performer's behest either. And you know what else? Most people have such abysmal rhythmic sense that their clapping just screws everyone else up. And those that clap the loudest seem to be those with the least sense of rhythm. I mean, I've heard better performances at Oakland A's games. I don't mean to get all musician-snob on you there, but really... make it stop.

Costello's little speeches, mostly pertaining to post-Katrina government SNAFUs, went over well in friendly Oakland, though there may have been one too many cracks for my taste. (Wonder how much more we heard than other audiences did.) His grandstanding has gotten to be a bit much; he wasn't like that last time I saw him, following Toussaint at JazzFest in New Orleans last year. I bet his guitar tech hates him too.

The worst part of the show was the noisiest -- the section after Toussaint left the stage during the main set. "Dust 2" was almost all kick drum, and the high ends of Costello's guitar and the Hammond. (There was way too much kick all night, at least to my ears upstairs. It's not what I paid to see.) And the best part was the quietest: Toussaint's inner voice emerging on a brief encore solo section where he ran through a personal, musical, and regional history, incorporating Professor Longhair's "Big Chief" and both the major and minor-key "Tipitina," along with a short eulogy for Fess and several halfway-to-Debussy transitions, all in three minutes. Then E.C. returned for "Ascension Day," and they finished the party a little while later with chestnuts like Lee Dorsey's "Yes We Can Can" and Benny Spellman's "Fortune Teller," two of Toussaint's early hits.

Last, a note on the Paramount. I'd hang out there when the place was empty. Wow. And Pho 84 too.


FMFM: Hank Mobley's Roll Call, featuring Art Blakey's aggressive swing and young Freddie Hubbard's dazzling runs at high altitude.

The blogosphere misses you

My amigo in Chicago may have stopped blogging, but he's still earning shout-outs in the press for having brought together two excellent middle-aged rockers. (Fourth graf.)

There's another local music figure with the same name in San Francisco. I believe the Boss may actually know him. Boss?


FMFM: Some live shows from Archive.org, a resource I had hardly tapped until now. My goodness, that's a lot of Scott Miller & The Commonwealth live material.

I myself would even like a little higher ground

Readers of this space probably remember that one of the musical highlights of my 2005 was Allen Toussaint's performance at JazzFest in New Orleans, four months before the flood. Toussaint has landed in the public eye lately, largely due to his album and tour with Elvis Costello. I've been enjoying The River In Reverse for a few days now, and strongly recommend watching the DVD that comes with most pressings too. (I watched it before I even played the record.) There's even an additional song on there that didn't make the record for some reason or other.

There is a lot of strong material on the record -- old Toussaint numbers from the 1960s, a new Costello song, and a few new collaborations between the two. Most stunning of all is "Ascension Day," based on Toussaint's minor-key version of Professor Longhair's magnificent "Tipitina." It's hard to imagine anyone else doing such a thing credibly. Who else could get away with turning "Tipitina" into something somber? And turn it into the best song yet about one of the worst things that's ever happened in this country? You can hear Toussaint giving it everything he's got: his love of classical piano, the rolling Longhair licks, his own thing from all those 60s soul records on the Minit and Sansu labels. If you're going to mess with "Tipitina," you'd better do it right. He does.

As it turns out, there is a missing link. Toussaint performed a minor-key "Tipitina" at some Katrina benefits in New York. There's also a recorded version with two pianos, the other played by Jon Cleary. (Shades of another song's crooked path.) I love it when that happens.

There's a point in the DVD when Toussaint, the picture of elegance and composure throughout, is nearly speechless. (Actually there are several, particularly when he's riding around the devastated city, but I'm thinking of one moment in particular.) He measures his words very carefully as he says that just as with everything else in life, this disastrous time will bring great things one day soon. Now, I think part of the reason Toussaint is not a household name in this country is that he almost never left New Orleans. (Why would you, if you were him?) Except now old New Orleans is gone, and he had to go somewhere else just to survive... at which point it became obvious what a musical treasure had been hiding in plain sight down there for all these years. And sure enough, wider public acknowledgment of his greatness is finally happening. In (the pre-flood film) Make It Funky!, Bonnie Raitt says Toussaint deserves a Kennedy Center medal. Joe Henry says he's our living Duke Ellington. Hope his name is on a lot of lips this year -- maybe at Grammy time or something like that. It'd surely help.

I'll have more to say after their June 20th show in Oakland. Think I'd miss that one?


FMFM: "The River In Reverse," Costello's lone solo composition on the record, and it's a great one too.

Don't seek to burn them

They live in my old hometown, and apparently they are witches.

This is a new post-9/11 low for right-wing rhetoric. How depressing. How appalling. How does she live with herself?

I know, it's not worth getting worked up over Ann Coulter columns. But she's quite literally hitting home with this one, so I feel compelled to share my disgust. (It's not like Coulter hasn't been a witch herself, as you might remember.)

No more of that, please.


FMFM: Lou Donaldson's Lush Life, not featuring the Billy Strayhorn tune of the same name. It does, however, feature some beautifully measured blowing on a number of ballads -- some grand, some subtle, some both. Strong band too.

"Get Back"

Here's a little clip of Billy Preston's most famous gig. [More stuff lying around here. I recommend the Jackie Wilson clip too.]

Will it go round in circles?

If it does, Billy, I hope you wind up spinning somewhere peaceful. Like on my turntable, for example. R.I.P.

[UPDATE: Man, this is good stuff. Also note new obituaries under "R.I.P."]


FMFM: Encouraging Words. Nice band on that one, don't you think? (I admit I'm not sure what "The after band were aparenced" means, but that's Wikipedia for you. And to be truthful, I can't confirm that the Baker-Richards-Clapton band backed Billy on Encouraging Words -- although they sure did play on his previous album, That's The Way God Planned It.)

I see my light come shining

I spent Friday evening in the East Bay watching Bill Frisell play at Yoshi's. After an initial outdoor hot-weather round with KPK at the First and Last Chance Saloon -- and then, a potentially catastrophic second round at bad-day bar Merchant's Saloon -- we ventured into Yoshi's for the main event.

Frisell took the stage with steel guitarist Greg Leisz, a bassist, a drummer, and a forbidding electronic device that would surely be blown up by authorities if you left it on the steps of City Hall. Frisell played solo for about a minute (with the electronic slap-back/reverse sampler effect he would often deploy again), then the rest of the band entered in formless raga-ish mode for a short while before hitting a slow, warm groove. (KPK identified the first piece, but I couldn't... and I've since forgotten the title.)

Frisell is the type of player who uses the whole guitar, if you know what I mean. He rarely seems to miss a chance to allow a low open string to resonate while he frets unusual chords, often with strange overtones, higher up the neck. Although much of his playing is exceptionally serene and placid, he was not afraid to explore the dissonances hiding in "Straight No Chaser." (Frisell's preferred method of dissonance is strictly harmonic, however; despite the bevy of effects, he never leaned on them for distortion or other artificial means to get his skronk on.)

Although all four players worked together constantly, the dynamic of this band was clearly built around Frisell and Leisz squaring off against the rhythm section; the two guitarists faced each other and traded ideas while the bassist and drummer provided atmosphere and support for much of the night. (If I'm not mistaken, Leisz stuck to lap steel for a majority of the set, and played pedal steel on only two pieces.)

The band played only about six or seven numbers, constituting well over an hour of satisfying music. (I see that Frisell has recorded Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" on his live East/West album, but I can't find any citations for a recorded cover of Dylan's "I Shall Be Released." They did both.) All this, and there was still time to get over the Bay Bridge before the nightmarish traffic patterns began. Good thing we didn't go for the late show.


FMFM: The fascinating 1950 Red Norvo Trio sessions found on Disc Two of The Young Rebel, a not-quite-comprehensive overview of Charles Mingus' early years. Some fairly standard jammy stuff -- albeit with young Mingus's impossibly bold bass playing -- is tempered by a few sound sculptures (the Latin-tinged "Time and Tide," for one) that escape category. (By the set list, it sure looks like someone was enjoying Birth of the Cool too.)

The Word

Stephen Colbert's address at Knox College commencement:

"Now I know you’re all going to say, “Stephen, Stephen, immigrants built America.” Yes, but here’s the thing—it’s built now.... So we must build walls. A wall obviously across the entire southern border. That’s the answer. That may not be enough—maybe a moat in front of it, or a fire-pit. Maybe a flaming moat, filled with fire-proof crocodiles. And we should probably wall off the northern border as well. Keep those Canadians with their socialized medicine and their skunky beer out.... It’s time for illegal immigrants to go -- right after they finish building those walls."

Such great heights

I don't know how you pass the time while you're performing monotonous tasks, but I always like to have music as a companion. These guys seemed to agree, and they created the coolest thing I've heard in quite some time. From 1975. Wonder what happened to them.

WMFU's Web site has a lot of other interesting stuff, for free. (The John Lennon radio scan, on the December 2005 page, is a trip, too.)


FMFM: The George Benson Cookbook, a warmly swinging date similar to It's Uptown and featuring organist Lonnie Smith. The jacket does not list a bassist, which seems to indicate that the relentless walking bass parts on "Jumpin' With Symphony Sid" (and elsewhere) are played by Lonnie's left foot. Wow!

No, not Al Gore

The man who invented the World Wide Web speaks....

However, a part of me wishes the [Web address] structure had been different. Here, let me write it down: http:com/iht/news/2006/05, et cetera. No double-slash - duh! Double slashes can be assumed. We can just use the colon instead. Missing off the double- slash is something I definitely wish I had done.