stuff we been listenin' to

laura nyro - the first songs: i usedta _hate_ this rekkid when i was in high school and my formerly broadway musical-listenin' big sis usedta throw it on, 'cos it didn't have loud electric gtrs, but since then, i've revised my opinion. nyro was the precursor of fiona apple, lower manhattan boho weird chick, but her music was something _entahrly other_. as quirky as she wanted to be, she was a songwriter in the grand tin pan alley tradition. today her toons hit the same way burt bacharach's from around the same time do -- both of 'em were among the hipper pop toonsmiths of the day; laura had songs ("wedding bell blues," "blowin' away," and "sweet blindness" among 'em) covered by the likes of the fifth dimension, blood sweat & tears, and barbra scheissand (when la barbra wanted to appear to have rawk quotient). nyro also sang like a jazz chanteuse, with plenty more soul than most of her white hipi-chick contemporaries. this was nyro's first alb, originally released in '67 as more than a new discovery on jazz label verve (that also had the blues project, velvet underground, mothers of invention, and tim hardin for a minute), and it's my fave alb of hers except for possibly 1971's gonna take a miracle, on which she sang acapella r&b wonderment backed by the former patti labelle & the bluebelles, no less. died of ovarian cancer, 1997.

bill evans trio - portrait in jazz: the intro to nyro's toon "bilie's blues" was stolen almost verbatim from the one bill evens played to "so what" on miles davis' epochal kind of blue, and evans was a stone original: introspective whiteboy pianner player back in the late '50s, when jazz was filled with flamboyant bud powell imitators. he went his own way, played his own song, and inspired legions of thoughtful, lyrical players in his wake (which i suppose means he's partially to blame for keith jarrett, the whole ecm label, and even new age abominations like george winston, but nevermind). he was at his best on the sides he cut for the riverside label with his late-'50s trio with bassist scott la faro (r.i.p.) and drummer paul motian. kinda ironic that the owner of such a deep muse would destroy his health with cocaine and die from a bleeding ulcer and pneumonia, 1980.

rova: orkestrova - electric ascension and nels cline / greg bendian - interstellar space revisited: i love coltrane's a love supreme in the same way as i love the stooges' funhouse, the who sell out, van morrison's astral weeks, the beach boys' pet sounds, marvin gaye's what's going on, maybe a coupla others. for me, it's a _perfect rekkid_; you don't need to "know" anything about jazz to understand its simple, spiritual message. the first coltrane i ever heard, though, was the roof-raising group-improv freeblow of ascension -- a burst of pure energy from a year later (1965) that polarized coltrane fans the same way bitches brew would miles fans a few yrs later. inevitably, late-period coltrane -- when the restless seeker started paring down his "sheets of sound" to the root sounds of horns 'n' drums -- has achieved the status of repertory, and musos who grew up listening to this sound like heartbeat have dared to take on works as daunting as ascension (which the rova saxophone quartet essayed with the help of electric gtr and bass -- nels cline 'n' fred frith, no less -- turntablists, electro-noise wonks, and a coupla string players taking the place of the original trumpets) and interstellar space (in which cline and drummer greg bendian take on coltrane's '67 duets with drummer rashied ali and transform them into a facemelting shitstorm of improvisational fury, with a version of "lonnie's lament" from crescent at the end to bring thangs back to earth). recontextualized, you can focus on the shapes of the compositions and realize that there was more going on here than listeners might have twigged when these sounds were new -- that it wasn't total fucking chaos, just a new kind of order that, today, oddly sounds oddly reassuring (at least to these feedback-shredded ears).