Getting on the Jason Moran Bandwagon, Part II

So just about the time I was really getting into Jason Moran's Bandwagon, another friend noted in a post I wrote on jazz resources that she had run into Moran's Modernistic via the New Yorker and it was beautiful. Coincidence? I think not. So that was the next album to try out and it was a great next step as we moved from the more aggressive live sound to a more intimate solo album which contains a number of the pieces off Bandwagon, although in a very different form.

Now to take a slight detour, David Alder (who is someone to follow if you don't) recently started a bit of a debate with his post on Covers vs. Standards when he argued that we shouldn't dismiss jazz players who focus on "covers" which are an important component of both keeping the form alive and of mastering the form. Alder suggests that currently the pendulum of tradition vs. innovation might be swinging too far toward the modern, experimental music--at least in terms of who is getting recognized. It was funny as I read the post because I was thinking how well Moran keeps a foot in each camp and that Modernistic was a perfect example of this.

I am not disagreeing with Alder (although the discussion about artists like Moran not playing standards seemed a miss, at least in Moran's case) but rather to say that his post highlighted something I love about Moran--and noted in the first part: his breadth. But not just that he ranges across genre and style, but that he is so clearly grounded in jazz and plays with both beautiful technique and skill.

Modernistic opens with a wonderful arrangement of Jame P. Johnson's "You've Got to be Modernistic" which shows of Moran's wonderful stride piano work, followed by a beautiful rendering of "Body and Soul"--hello! We then shift into the more funky part of the album, starting with a brilliant version of the 80's Afrika Bambaata's rap tune "Planet Rock." and then back into an introspective section, and so it continues. Originals mixed with "covers," stride to funk, standards to classical, but all tied together in an absolutely beautiful album all laid out on just piano and mini piano.

To give you a sense of the album, which you can pick up straight from Blue Note, here are three tracks. First the opening title track if you will--just because I love when he does the stride thing and this is such a fabulous opening track. Then we skip to later in the album for a pair of tunes that show the other two main styles on the disc. First in "Gangsterism on a Lunchtable" you get an spacey, funky exploration--with the help of some interesting instrumentation that someone will have to explain to me--that is Copeland-esque in both tune and phrasing, but all jazz. This is followed by a beautiful take on Robert Schumann's "Auf Einer Burg/In A Fortress" that makes you realize Moran could be a wholly different type of piano player if he chose to be. In short, it is all good.

You've Got To Be Modernistic

Gangsterism On A Lunchtable

Einer Burg/In A Fortress

This is an album that should be in everyone's collection and made me wonder if Jason Moran might not be the best young pianist and composer out there right now. A question I leave to those with more knowledge and awareness of all that is out there, but it is hard to not see him up there near the top of the list.

Friday Haiku

Winter weekend comes

Luxurious anticipation . . .

Friday, coffee, bliss

Fantasy SOTU

It really is less about last night's speech and more about the whole enterprise that is the state of the union address colored by my current attitude about where we are at as a country and what is being done about that. With that caveat, here are a few things I would have liked to have heard as part of the address.

• Dear members of congress: Sit down and shut up. If you haven't noticed, things are pretty shitty out there for a lot of Americans and we continue to not be able to do enough to help them, so I don't think we have a lot to be applauding--especially not every 30 seconds.
• Oh, and can we all take the smug looks off our faces. We had enough of that for the last eight years and besides it just makes people think we're assholes--I'm talking to you mister curiously tan minority leader.
• This is supposed to be a report on the state of the union, not the potential state of the union, so I am not going to announce a whole set of new ideas implying that just because I said them here they are going to ever happen given how long it takes us to do anything. Instead I am going to focus on what is at hand and what needs done. Did I mention things are pretty shitty out there right now?
• Hey ladies, what did you think of that new Apple iPad? Nice name, huh?
• Speaking of ladies, I am going to give a nod to the first lady tonight without cracking flirty little jokes that frame her as a high schooler who can't handle the spotlight like her man can.
• Also thought it might be interesting to acknowledge the need for a strong union movement in this country since the work of their members is what led to my administration and this Congress and as far as I can tell we haven't really acknowledged that or done anything legislatively to improve the right to organize.
• Wow, there really is a lot of red and purple going on tonight--did we change our colors and nobody told me?
• To my colleagues in the Senate. Since most of you are millionaires already--would you mind sharing a little of the wealth so at least a few folks could eat and see a doctor? Mighty white of ya.
• Oh and yo, white people, I am now going to drop a little dialect on you so Chris Matthews remembers I am an African-American.

Enough for now. Perhaps more later.

Getting on the Jason Moran Bandwagon, Part I

Somewhere about a year ago, a friend from college days noted that he had been listening to Jason Moran and, in fact, had seen him in concert. He said "not to be corny, but it was more like a journey than a concert." Now, this is a person who is a musician, was a composition major in college and, most importantly, was the guy who once gave me a similar description of Keith Jarrett before he dropped The Köln Concert on me. Yeah, so given that track record, who isn't going to go buy a Jason Moran album? But what album I asked. "Well," says musical friend, it "was a piece called Intermezzo off his album Bandwagon" that got him interested.

And so, that is where I began--although I have subsequently picked up several others, so I am going to write about these in the order I experienced them rather than in the order in which they were released.

When I first got the disc and put it in and the intro played followed by the first track "Another One" which is a pretty raucous affair, I had my doubts. Then comes "Intermezzo" which is actually a piece by Brahms--which is beautiful--followed by a whole host of tunes nothing like it. Now granted, I wasn't really attending to the disc as I should have been the first time thourgh, but I was left with the impression that the Brahms piece was the exception and reminded of the fact that my musical friend also loves the modern, dissonant stuff and I feared this was just not going to be my cup o' jazz.

But, I let it sit a couple weeks and then started playing it in places and at times when I could listen more carefully and a very different impression emerged. Here was someone who could range from Brahms to hip-hop oriented tunes, to beautiful delicate jazz ballads, to straight up bop, to swinging jazz standards. And the range and variation somehow manages to work in a way that produces an album that manages to not only hang together but also create, yes, a journey.

This is someone who uses voice and recordings in a way that makes the music rich and textured not gimicky. Moran is someone who not only has wonderful articulation on the right hand as skips across the keys, but who has wonderful left hand work that almost always has a stride feel to it or on more lyrical pieces big deep chords that resonate throughout the whole piece. That left hand rhythm work is aided by two talented musicians, Tarus Mateen on bass and Nasheet Waits on drums, both who drive the upbeat tunes primarily on the low ends of their respective instruments and delicately float through the softer pieces.

Bandwagon is a live affair so it has more pieces that are boppin' than chilled, but the balance is still wonderful. Just to give you a sense of that, here are two samples. I have to give you the Intermezzo, right, which speaks for itself. That is followed (here and on the record) by "Ringing My Telephone (Straight Outta Istanbul)" which exemplifies Moran's great use of voice.

Intermezzo, Op. 18, No. 2

Ringing My Telephone (Straight Outta Istanbul)

There is a whole lot more to say, but since, as I noted above, my experience with this album led to several other Moran albums, I will save some commentary for my discussion of those. If you like this one, you can buy the album here, or an autographed copy here.

Happy 5th Birthday Captain!

Tomorrow the Captain has a birthday that we have been celebrating all weekend and I didn't want to miss it here in the mess that will be tomorrow (otherwise known as Monday). Captain, how old did you say you were going to be?

Oh right, 5.

A high five!


Say goodbye.


Friends and family know where to get the details.

What Is My Body Telling Me?

It started yesterday morning--a hint of a sore throat, feeling a little tired, but there was still hope that having committed to getting back on a running schedule after metaphorically falling of the treadmill for a few months, my body was just saying slow down a bit, your old and out of shape.

But it got worse by mid-day. Again, perhaps just needed a bit more fuel and some hot tea. That lasted for about a nano-second and by late afternoon I was pretty miserable--tired, constricted throat, etc. I tried to to blame it on another dreadful planning meeting for an upcoming conference, but even after limping home, seeing the family, watching a few Hitler movies (that usually does the trick), nursing myself with a little of the usual and getting some dinner, nothing had improved. I was toast. My body was simply saying, your sick dude.

Great.

Then again perhaps my body knew that this news was coming out today and it just was trying to keep me off the roads for the sake of my mental health since really sleeping of a sickness really is in some ways preferable to commuting to attend irritating meetings, right?

Nap time.

Special Delivery: Prefab Sprout Exposed

So back during the holidays, College Roomy delivered, not 1, not 2, not 3, but 10 discs to my mailbox. This wasn't just a delivery of a lot of music, but a lot of music that is right in my listening wheel-house (I guess no real surprise given how well CR knows me). The delivery included classic jazz artists like Thad Jones, Eddie Harris and Steve Kuhn (amazingly three artists I had nothing by); Joe Henry's jazz infused Scar which I might have mistakenly chosen to not go back and get (it is a wonderful effort); a couple great solo piano albums, one by Richie Beirach at Maybeck the other Gabriela Montero's Piano Recital; and a few others including Van Morrison's wonderful Live Astral Weeks at the Hollywood Bowl.

But the album that took me by most surprise in someway, probably because I thought I knew (even owned) the album, was a classic 80's disc, Steve McQueen by Prefab Sprout. The original, which was released in the U.S. as Two Wheels Good, came out at a time that might not be thought of as the height of good music. Prefab's style, in some ways, fits into that less-than-memorable era of smooth-wave, British techno-pop, but this album stands out despite the musical tendencies of that era. That said, this disc might have been relegated to the shelves along with many fine memories of college music were it not for CR's special delivery.

The key here is that in 2007, Prefab re-masters and re-releases McQueen, but this time with a bonus disc of frontman Paddy McAloon, playing and singing most of the songs accousticly. The originals are all wonderfully jazzy tunes that are better than most pop (aided by Thomas Dolby's production of the original album), but these acoustic versions drive that point home. As Pitchfork points out:

One thing the new versions do highlight is the astonishing maturity of the songs. Coincidentally, almost all of Dolby choices dated from 1979, when Paddy was 22. Yet they sound all the more appropriate sung by a man of 50.

The point here is that this was a very good album in the 80's, still is, and these bonuses brought me back to the album as more than just an album from college days. And the reissue is well worth your while if you don't already have this one.

Here are a couple originals paired with the acoustic versions. The opening track of the album Faron Young isn't my favorite, but it is a great first track and gives you a sense of one type of song on the album. Appetite is the more common type song on the album and shows off what I believe are the strengths of the album. Enjoy!

Steve McQueen: Legacy Edition / Prefab Sprout: Buy the Album

Faron Young

Appetite

Faron Young (acoustic version)

Appetite (acoustic version)