Denton, 2.28.2024

A night out at the "Latex Mittens," as Sarah Ruth Alexander dubbed Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios. This month's edition (number XX, for whom who keeps a record) of the Molten Plains concert series opened with Venezuelan expat electroacoustic duo Monte Espina -- that's Miguel Espinel on percussion, small instruments, and electronics, and Sarah's Molten Plains co-curator Ernesto Montiel on guitar -- in the Rubber Room. The duo was releasing their new cassette, alquimia criolla, and the room was full by the time they started. Listening to the way Espinel's instruments (which on this occasion included the Rubber Room's upright piano along with his usual compliment of percussion implements, violin bow, recorder, and harmonica) responded to his electronic treatments, the phrase that popped into my mind was "tintinnabulation under the volcano" -- shimmering and tinkling over an undertow of dark ambience. When a passing freight train interjected its sounds, they fit right in with what the musicians were doing.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from the Houston-based duo of Aisen Caro Chacin and Adam Zaretsky. She's an academic; leads the UT medical prototyping lab and teaches pathology in the medical school. He's a "Wet Lab Art Practitioner." When we walked into the main room, they were seated at a table in front of the stage. He had a laptop, she had a number of implements including what looked like a coffee pot, and some mysterious liquid boiling in a pan on a hotplate. There was back projected video, and Zaretsky was mixing music on his laptop. 

At a certain point, Chacin started dropping cylindrical objects into the "coffee pot," which turned out to be a blender. It being Wednesday night, it occurred to me that maybe she was going to pick the lotto numbers. She pressed a button and grinding noises emanated from the blender, then shards of ice came flying out the top -- ice cubes! (She was wearing eye protection.) Then Zaretsky stood, stretched, and walked over to the blender. He started pouring liquids and powders in and covered the top. Chacin pressed a button and blended the mixture. This process was repeated, then Zaretsky poured the mixture through a strainer into a canister. It began to separate into layers. When I asked him later, he said the mixture included coca leaves, whiskey, and baking soda -- "Kind of like the things you'd mix up when you were a kid." (I did; didn't you?) It was a total Dada event. Afterwards, Monte Espina's Espinel was heard to exclaim, "That was real experimental music!" And Chacin's post mortem take? "It finally worked!" A set full of surprises, and big fun to watch.

Bill Nace is a guitarist from Philadelphia who's collaborated with the likes of Kim Gordon, Susan Alcorn, and Chris Corsano, among others. On this occasion, he played a taishogoto -- a "mutant two-string instrument" he found in a curio shop in L.A.'s Japantown. Manipulated with a keyboard, the instrument was remarkably resonant...and LOUD. Over an underlying drone, Nace played melodic arpeggios that created a hypnotic atmosphere -- like a one man Acid Mothers Temple. When he paused mid-set to lift the instrument and briefly hold it in front of the amplifier, it was notable that the sustaining harmonic feedback never oscillated. Then he returned to the keyboard to bring the set to a satisfying conclusion. Later, Nace said he also has a similar five-stringed instrument but it lacks the taishogato's resonance. While he said that lately his improvs have been getting into melodic areas that are "outside my comfort zone," he finds that having taken a break from guitar for awhile, he's ready to return to his primary instrument. A performance of riveting intensity. 

Last set was a trio of vocalists -- Sarah Jay, Michael Briggs, and Aaron Gonzalez. Briggs, who currently runs Civil Audio and performs with Lorelei K, is a figure who's been central to the Denton music underground for a couple of decades through his involvement in Gutterth Production, Violitionist Sessions, and other entities. One of my first experiences of free improv in North Texas was seeing him perform in Vexed U.K. with Sarah Ruth. In this setting, he electronically manipulated his voice using his laptop while Jay used an array of pedals and Gonzalez extemporized straight through a microphone with no added effects. It was kind of a quintessential Denton set, and a fitting close to a night of intriguing music. Sound tech extraordinaire Aubrey Seaton made sure everyone sounded good.

Molten Plains continues March 10 with a special Sunday evening with peripatetic improvisers Blue Lake (Texas via Copenhagen), Hal Lambert and Mitchell Mobley (Baton Rouge), and Kelby Clark (NOLA), plus a cello duo of Dentonites Kourtney Newton and Brianne Sargent. Then on March 27, Molten Plains XXI will feature Copenhagen-based international quartet Tactical Maybe, Chicagoan Daniel Wyche, Stefan Gonzalez's new band Trio Glossia (joined by guest guitarist Jonathan Horne), and Bitches Set Traps, the feminist improv trio of Sarah Ruth Alexander, Elizabeth McNutt, and Kourtney Newton. All at Latex Mittens, of course.

ADDENDUM: I stand corrected twice. Somehow I had Adam Zaretsky's name as "Duretsky." And Miguel Espinel is responsible for the electronic treatments in Monte Espina. Mea culpa.

David Leon's "Bird's Eye"

I have long held that any musician can play with any other musician if the people involved listen and give each other space. For proof positive, one need look no further than this new album (out on Pyroclastic on March 8) by saxophonist/composer/improviser David Leon and his trio Bird's Eye (whose name provides the album's title). A Miami-born New Yorker of Cuban heritage, Leon undertook the study of Cuban rumba with Mexico City-based percussionist Manley "Piri" Lopez, virtually during the pandemic lockdown and later in person, along with Bird's Eye drummer Lesley Mok. Leon's interest in microtonal music led him to collaborate with the trio's third member, Korean gayageum player and vocalist DoYeon Kim.

The music on Bird's Eye doesn't have the percussive drive one might expect from an amalgam with Afro-Cuban roots although the clave is definitely in evidence at times, as on "Nothing Urgent, Just Unfortunate" (in this case, driven by Kim's gayageum -- a delicate instrument, but I once saw Jen Shyu pick one up and carry it while playing). Instead, their sound is light and spacious, almost like a conversation where you can hear the participants listening and considering their response. 

Leon is capable of Braxtonian angularity (as on the opening "You won't find it by yourself") or languorous lyricism (as on "to speak in flowers"). "A Night for Counting Stars" features Kim's vocal on a text by Korean poet Yun Dong-ju (a martyr of the resistance to Japanese occupation), with Kim and Leon weaving an intricate web of melody. Mok, who released their debut album The Living Collection on American Dreams last year, is the most subtle and intentional of percussionists, but also capable of stunning power; their full range is showcased on "Expressive Jargon I & III"). On that track, Leon shifts seamlessly between flute and alto. 

Apparently the members of Bird's Eye have made it a practice to cook and eat together as part of their rehearsal regimen. With that in mind, perhaps I might be excused for observing that this album is a savory blend of influences -- as Leon writes in the liners, "more gazpacho than ceviche." And we're on notice of three new talents to watch for. Pre-orders available now.

Things we like: Ezra Sturm/Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Lisa Cameron/Alex Cunningham, Jonathan Horne/Joshua Thomson

There's another Bandcamp Friday coming March 1, so I'd be remiss if I didn't load you up with recommendations of new tuneage, of which I have a couple.

I first became aware of the San Francisco-based experimental guitarist Ernesto Diaz-Infante via his work with Austin percussionist Lisa Cameron back in October. Since then, Diaz-Infante has released other work, including a tribute to the late saxophonist and improviser Jim Ryan. His most recent, and the first of three releases planned for this year, is The Escape, a collaboration with his son, guitarist/synthesist Ezra Sturm. (Ernesto's partner/Ezra's mother Marjorie Sturm joins on flute for one track.) Both father and son are active, busy players, Ezra laying down highly rhythmic electric drones while Ernesto explores the pure sound of his instruments, playing contrasting rhythms and textures (including slithering slide) against his son's explorations. On "Tears Before Chaos," Ezra uses a highly saturated sound to produce ringing chords which his father's acoustic scrapes and bumps against. "Safe in the Hamster Ball" finds both guitars in percussive mode, with Ezra's glisses and high register interjections approaching mania. An ever more abstract cross-generational conversation, filled with adventuresome invention.

The aforementioned Lisa Cameron and St. Louis-based violinist Alex Cunningham were at Grackle Art Gallery last April in a quartet with bassist Damon Smith and multi-instrumentalist Sarah Ruth Alexander.  The trio of Cameron, Cunningham, and Smith has previously recorded twice (Dawn Throws Its First Knife on Smith's Balance Point Acoustics label and the cassette-only Time Without Hours), but Chasms is the first release by Cameron and Cunningham as a duo. Like their live performance, the three long tracks presented here are dense soundscapes where it's hard at times -- particularly when Cameron applies her Nakatani bow to a cymbal, or Cunningham uses found objects to assault his amplified strings -- to tell exactly who's playing what. No matter. The dynamics shift from massive sound field to extreme close-up intimacy. The net effect, when the intensity is at its clangorous apogee, is the sound of a world very laboriously being turned. There is a tension here that, while it dissipates, is never released. These sound artists shake the listener out of their expectations and carry them into a dimension where friction creates light as well as heat.

Jonathan Horne is one of my guitar heroes. A purveyor of Sharrockian skronk and otherworldly inventions, he's a member of the transcontinental free jazz/hip-hop/metal juggernaut The Young Mothers; I saw him at Molten Plains Fest in December duetting with prepared guitar specialist Sandy Ewen (at the pre-show) and joining Austin drone rockers Water Damage for the festival finale. At this point he's had about ten surgeries to repair a severed tendon in his fretting arm, re-learning how to play each time with an inspiring tenacity. And he plays a Mosrite, like Nokie Edwards and Fred "Sonic" Smith. On Clandestine Flower, released last June on Personal Archives, he's paired with saxophonist Joshua Thomson from the expandable free jazz/"world music" duo Atlas Maior for a set of lyrical ambient improvised meditations, recorded inside an industrial tank. I haven't got the cassette yet, but I plan to snag one when the duo plays at the Grackle Art Gallery on March 1. They recently recorded in Austin with drummer extraordinaire Stefan Gonzalez (Trio Glossia, Dennis Gonzalez Legacy Band), and that trio, billed as Atlas Maior: Palindrome, will be at The Wild Detectives on February 29. Catch either or both shows and prepare thyself to deal with a miracle (as Rahsaan Roland Kirk once said).

Revisionist history (Loose canon updated)

This is an update to a list I made back in January 2018, this time not limiting the number per decade but choosing only one title per artist (I cheated with the Who, Hendrix, and Beefheart), limited to 100 total. Numerical order has no significance. Unsurprisingly, there are more from the '70s than any other decade. The golden age of anything is when you came in. And with that, let us be done with compulsive list making till at least the end of the decade. (On the web, you can see the stuff I added because the spacing becomes irregular even if the HTML looks identical. Thanks, Google!)

Teens
1) Laurie Anderson - Heart of a Dog
2) Chris Butler - Easy Life
3) Billy Bragg/Joe Henry - Shine A Light
4) Beck - Morning Phase
5) Mark Growden - Saint Judas
6) Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly
7) D'Angelo - Black Messiah
8) Petra Haden - Goes To the Movies
9) They Say the Wind Made Them Crazy - Far From the Silvery Light
10) Richard Dawson - Peasant

11) Wendy Eisenberg - Auto 

Aughts
1) Brian Wilson - Smile
2) Hochimen - Totenlieder
3) Goodwin - S/T
4) Woodeye - Such Sweet Sorrow
5) Stumptone - Gravity Finally Released
6) Joe Strummer - Streetcore
7) Nels Cline - Coward
8) Yayhoos - Fear Not the Obvious
9) Top Secret...Shhh
10) Sonic's Rendezvous Band - box set

'90s
1) Frank Zappa - Civilization Phaze III
2) Sonny Sharrock - Ask the Ages
3) Turbonegro - Apocalypse Dudes
4) Sundays - Reading, Writing and Arithmetic
5) Freedy Johnston - This Perfect World
6) A Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Marauders
7) Living Colour - Time's Up
8) Wayne Kramer - The Hard Stuff
9) Charlie Haden/Quartet West - Haunted Heart
10) Mick Farren/Jack Lancaster - The Deathray Tapes

11) Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach - Painted from Memory

12) Mike Watt - Contemplating the Engine Room

13) Wilco - Being There

'80s
1) Lou Reed - New York
2) George Clinton - Computer Games
3) Ornette Coleman - In All Languages
4) Clash - Sandinista!
5) Captain Beefheart - Doc at the Radar Station
6) Gang of Four - Entertainment!
7) Ronald Shannon Jackson - Mandance
8) Minutemen - Double Nickels On the Dime
9) Husker Du - Zen Arcade
10) Power Tools - Strange Meeting

11) Jack DeJohnette - Special Edition

12) Bob Mould - Workbook

14) Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska

15) James "Blood" Ulmer - Odyssey

16) Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays - As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls

'70s
1) Stooges - Fun House
2) Who - Live At Leeds
3) The Band - S/T
4) Grateful Dead - American Beauty
5) Velvet Underground - Loaded
6) Jimi Hendrix - The Cry of Love
7) MC5 - High Time
8) Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns
9) King Crimson - Red
10) Funkadelic - Maggot Brain

11) Arthur Blythe - Lennox Avenue Breakdown

12) Bola Sete - Ocean

13) Don Cherry - Relativity Suite

14) John Abercrombie - Gateway

15) Alice Cooper - Killer

16) Pete Townshend/Ronnie Lane - Rough Mix

17) The Rationals - S/T

18) Detroit - Featuring Mitch Ryder

19) Marvin Gaye - What's Going On

20) Sly and the Family Stone - There's A Riot Going On

21) Television - Marquee Moon

22) Neil Young - Decade

23) Little Feat - Waiting for Columbus

24) John Cale - Paris 1919

25) Stevie Wonder - Innervisions

26) Blue Oyster Cult - Tyranny and Mutation

27) Mott the Hoople - Mott

28) Flamin' Groovies - Teenage Head

29) Pretenders - S/T

30) Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells a Story

31) Thunderclap Newman - Hollywood Dream

32) Todd Rundgren - Something/Anything?

33) Move - Shazam!

'60s
1) Who - Sell Out
2) Jeff Beck - Truth
3) Beatles - White Album
4) Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
5) James Brown - Live at the Apollo
6) Miles Davis - In A Silent Way
7) Jefferson Airplane - After Bathing At Baxter's
8) Zombies - Odessey and Oracle
9) Jimi Hendrix - Axis: Bold As Love
10) John Coltrane - A Love Supreme

11) Small Faces - Ogden's Nut Gone Flake

12) Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica

13) Blues Project - Projections

14) Animals - Animalization

15) Rolling Stones - Aftermath

16) Sir Douglas Quintet - Mendocino

17) Jethro Tull - Stand Up

Max Kutner's "Partial Custody"

My candidate for the American guitarist most deserving of wider recognition: Max Kutner, Las Vegas native by way of Cal Arts, currently based in Brooklyn. Kutner's toured with Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and Oingo Boingo legacy bands, and is a regular on the NYC free improv scene. Back in 2022, he released an excellent quintet album, High Flavors, featuring his own compositions, recorded and mixed by Martin Bisi, that almost nobody noticed. At the time, I suspected it was partially because the album was only available in digital format, and lots of scribes of A Certain Age tend to prefer physical media, still.

On April 5, Los Angeles-based Orenda Records will release Partial Custody, 67 minutes of music comprising six new Kutner compositions and an arrangement of Brian Eno's "Bone Jump." It's the debut recording of a new trio, also called Partial Custody, that includes Ben Stapp on tuba and James Paul Nadien on drums and glockenspiel. The instrumentation is identical to an earlier band Kutner co-led, Evil Genius. But the original material here is all new, written over five days in the run-up to the recording of this album. And Kutner relied on his bandmates to bring their own voices and ideas to the music to achieve its full realization.

To pull in those of us who are still geeked on The Romance of the Artifact, Partial Custody is being distributed in a unique physical format, as well as your garden variety digital download. Vegas native Kutner is offering the album in the form of a casino chip bearing a QR code which links to a folder containing the tracks; a 12" x 12" poster and album information sheet are also included with the chip. This requires a leap of faith on the artist's part that folks who buy the chips aren't going to share the code around. It's a kind of social experiment: by modeling trust, can one cause others to behave in a trustworthy manner? It says a lot that Kutner presumes goodwill on the part of his audience.

Fortuitously, the review link arrived during a week when I'd been thinking a lot about tuba-centric bands I recall from the '70s (Sam Rivers, Arthur Blythe). Stapp, a composer in his own right, has all the fluency and facility of, say, Bob Stewart or Joe Daley, and is equally expressive whether reading or extemporizing. Nadien's a deft and imaginative percussionist. Together, the three form a perfectly balanced orchestral unit and vehicle for Kutner's complex, knotty compositions. 

The ruminative tone poem "Whatever Else the News Has Planned" serves as the curtain-raiser. The guitar plays a wending melody, punctuated by snare rolls, until the tuba emerges as the solo voice. There's a lot going on here, and the music's density increases the farther you get into the album. After the brief "Going," the album hits its first highlight with "Exaggeration Holmes." 

Starting out with a mutant funk groove, the piece's statistical density increases (one wonders if Nadien can play glockenspiel and drums simultaneously live) before taking on a heavier aspect, then a lighter one. Next, Kutner unleashes a face-melting solo -- tonally and texturally similar to Frank Zappa's signature '80s sound, with some of the yearning quality of FZ's mixolydian meditations, but with a melodic imagination that's uniquely Kutner's. Supported by Stapp's burbling tuba and Nadien's exuberant crash and thump, the net effect is like stumbling on a meet-up between Zappa, Jack Bruce, and Terry Bozzio in the emerald beyond. When the groove returns and gives way to still more thematic and textural shifts, it's astonishing to remember that they're doing all of this with only three instruments. Magic.

"The Bell Mimic" is an ambient study, with Stapp playing cavernous long tones and Kutner entering the sound world of Nels Cline and Bill Frisell to produce sounds like shifting tectonic plates and some head-spinning backwards looping. I'll admit to never having heard the original version of Eno's "Bone Jump," from 2010's Small Craft on a Milk Sea album. (I kind of bailed after Before and After Science, but Kutner's enough of an Eno fan to have once played an arrangement of "Discreet Music" for solo electric guitar.) Partial Custody's version of the piece starts out juxtaposing hypnotic, minimalist repetition against discordant noise, building to a thunderous heavy clangor of effects-laden tuba and guitar, then winding down with some science fiction sounds. 

"Dancing to the Dead Beat" was the last piece written, on the eve of the sessions. Its sedately meditative opening serves as a showcase for Stapp's fluid facility. Kutner uses a clean tone to play with bluesy lyricism, but "out" -- like Grant Green on the moon. The piece evolves through more changes; a military waltz gives way to dub reggae before a punishing fuzz drone slashes its way in and drives the intensity up for a spell, before things wind down pensively to a unison close.

"Jet Plane" is the album closer, 24 minutes of relentless forward motion, repeating figures that are deconstructed, then reconstructed, and breakneck drumming. There's enough variation in the twists and turns the music takes that the time flies by as fleetly as Stapp's blinding runs (how can he play that fast on that instrument?) until all is subsumed under a wave of random oscillation, radio chatter, and feedback meltdown, and catharsis is achieved.

An early candidate for my album of the year, this is. Kutner says he wants to tour this band. I'm thinking interest could be found in Houston, Austin, Denton, and Dallas. We live in hope. Pre-orders happening now.

Oak Cliff, 2.15.2024

The first thing I'll say about tonight's show at The Wild Detectives is how refreshing it was to hear two sets of music without electrical amplification. Now, I'm no Luddite and I love a loud electric guitar as much as the next person with tinnitus from standing in front of great big amps, but there is nothing like experiencing the thrill of feeling the vibrations from drum heads, reeds, and strings vibrating your solar plexus without any intervening technology.

The program consisted of two duos: two Chrises, preceded by two basses. A first time duo of Chris Pitsiokos on alto and Chris Corsano on drums erupted out of the gate with kinetic force that continued unabated for pretty much the duration of their set. The Berlin-based Pitsiokos moves a big column of air through his horn to power a volcanic flow of ideas sustained by circular breathing wonderment. (That which I can't comprehend but know is real I call magic.) His robust sound reminded me of Henry Threadgill (whose birthday it was) writing about the difference between the tenor (a blues horn) and alto (made for testifying and speaking in tongues). Pitsiokos interrupted the glossolalia to take the music to a mellow Johnny Hodges space, replete with warm vibrato, before ramping up the energy again.

A buddy of mine in San Diego had seen Corsano last week in a trio with Mike Watt and Joe Baiza, and he told me to expect intensity. But nothing could have prepared me for the experience of watching Corsano at work behind his kit from five feet away. He can play more with one hand (one or two sticks) than any drummer I ever witnessed, and he's thinking ten times as fast -- switching between sticks and beaters, looking around for a cymbal or other percussion implement to toss on top of a drum, using the rubber tips on the grips of one pair of sticks to rub against the heads, another stick with the metal disc from a tambourine attached. He even had a pedal for the bottom head of his floor tom. Cat used everything available to make music. An invigorating set. They're at Rubber Gloves tomorrow night with Trio Glossia. You owe it to yourself.

Opening set was by bassists Matthew Frerck (speaking of Trio Glossia) and Aaron Gonzalez, playing together for the first time in seven years. The sound of two upright basses on the wooden floor was a particular delight. Frerck and Gonzalez used the full array of techniques available -- arco, pizzicato, false harmonics, percussive sounds, playing every area of the instrument, following each other (and at times trying to unfollow, Frerck said), moving from spontaneously created counterpoint to harsh scraping sounds. I'd like to hear more of this duo. Frerck had a digital recorder running; I hope the recording came out. Best Thursday night in awhile. And now, to bed.

FTW, 2.10-11.2024

I was recently reminded that Sarah Ruth Alexander was the first musician to play at the Grackle Art Gallery, a house in my neighborhood that over the past eight years has become the place to go in my city to hear music I dig. So it was fitting that she was performing there when we stopped in to see our friend Martha Anderson's art as part of the current exhibit. 

As much as I dig Sarah's work in ensembles -- a duo performance she did with Joshua Miller (Same Brain, Trio Glossia) at Grackle last year was a nice object lesson in how to do non-idiomatic improv with small instruments -- it's her solo performances that are my favorites. This time, her announced theme was "questions," and she started out by using some electronic treatments including a Kaoss pad on her pellucid and splendidly controlled voice to craft a sonic bed, then responded to the sounds so produced. She used the piano and organ patches on her keyboard, including some dissonance and surprise pitch-bending, to create different moods -- a human scale psychedelic dreamscape, and a very satisfying 30-minute excursion. My wife isn't a huge fan of experimental music, but says Sarah is an exception. Then we visited with the Oakhurst crew before heading home to our geriatric cat.

The following day, I was back to participate in the Second Sunday Improv Jam, which on this occasion was the opener for Kavin Allenson's retirement party. Kavin's the fella who makes the Grackle music happen, and a fine guitarist himself. Usual suspects like Mark Cook, Robert Kramer, and Darrin Kobetich were absent (DaKobe showed up later), but Mark Hyde was present with his Partscaster, and I attempted to play repeating figures for folks to test their pedalboards on. (This kind of reminded me of when Pete Bollinger and I used to play the four chords to "Maggot Brain" for half an hour while encouraging his son Nick to blow lead. The last time I saw Nick, he gave me a CD he'd made. He sounded just like me if I played Christian death metal.) After awhile I got up and let another fella play my guitar, like I used to do with Lee Allen at the Wreck Room. My right hand fingers were unhappy with me for hybrid picking after not touching a guitar for a month.

Hopefully Kavin will enjoy his retirement and get to travel and play out more. He, Linda Little, and Matt Sacks have created a nice little locus of community for creative types here in a city that can sure use it. (Respect also to Arts Fifth Avenue and South Side Preservation Hall.) Long may they run.

21st century jazz (after Nate Chinen)

At the end of his 2018 book Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century, Nate Chinen lists 129 albums that he deems "essential." Of necessity (because I'm not on as many mailing lists as Nate), this will be shorter, and I have adhered to his practice of only one listing per leader. Not surprisingly, my list skews toward performers I've seen live, which I suppose means that it's influenced by where I live. (If I lived in Brooklyn, say, my head would probably explode from all the choices.) And yes, I skipped a few years. Will fill them in if something occurs to me later.

2001

Jason Moran  -- Black Stars (Blue Note). The venerable multi-instrumentalist Sam Rivers returns to Blue Note in the company of a fiery trio led by a pianist who came out of Houston Arts Magnet High School and learned from the stride-to-Cecil master, Jaki Byard. The revered elder and the young firebrands mesh well together.

Peter Brotzmann -- Never Too Late But Always Too Early (Eremite). The German saxophonist had a rep as a flamethrower from his 1968 classic Machine Gun to the unremitting high energy of '80s Lower Manhattan supergroup Last Exit. He sounds earthier in the company of NYC bassist William Parker and Chicago drummer Hamid Drake; although he breathes some fire here, all kinds of expression are explored in the course of this concert double CD.

The Thing with Joe McPhee -- She Knows (Crazy Wisdom, reissued on Hat Hut). The power trio of Swedish tenorman Mats Gustafsson and the Norwegian engine room of Ingebrigt Haker Flaten on bass and Paal Nilssen-Love on bass meets the estimable American trumpeter-tenorist McPhee and bonds over their mutual affinity for Ayler, Ornette, and Cherry. An easy way into his and their large discographies.

Wayne Shorter -- Footprints Live! (Verve). The most cerebral of composing tenorists had a late career resurgence with the quartet of pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade. It seemed to me like Wayne was trying to push these musicians to create on the stand, the way Miles Davis had with the quintet Wayne was part of.

2002

I got fired from my soul destroying corporate gig a couple of days after witnessing the rock show that would serve as the energy model for every show Stoogeaphilia ever played. The rest of the year was consumed by playing pickup blues gigs and attempting to find my feet writing about local music for the alt-weekly.

2003

Sam Rivers -- Celebration (Posi-Tone) After the NYC loft scene he'd championed died out, the master improviser toured with Dizzy Gillespie and landed in Florida. In the late '90s, he cut three sterling big band records -- two for RCA with all-star ensembles, one for his own label with the band he formed of moonlighting theme park musos. The core of that band was a pair of multi-instrumentalists: Doug Mathews on basses and bass clarinet and Anthony Cole on drums, tenor, and piano. As a trio with the leader's tenor, soprano, flute, and piano, they surpassed the flexibility of his great '70s bands.

Science Friction -- The Sublime And (Thirsty Ear, reissued on Screwgun). Altoist Tim Berne is a composer who specializes in lengthy compositions that wend their way through multiple themes, with lots of room for improvisation. Here he's joined by three of his most creative accomplices: Marc Ducret on guitar, Craig Taborn on keys, and Tom Rainey on drums.

2004

Charlie Haden -- Not in Our Name (Verve). In the wake of the US invasion of Iraq, the bassist-composer reconvened his Liberation Music Orchestra, this time to play a selection of skewed patriotic themes and the Bowie-Metheny-Mays composition "This Is Not America," with Bill Frisell's " Throughout" for momentarily relief and Barber's "Adagio" for all the dead yet to come. Now, with our democracy under threat, this music remains topical, goddammit.

Don Byron -- Ivey-Divey (Blue Note). Once the clarinet of choice for the Lower Manhattan weirdos, noted for his propensity to play klezmer music, Byron plays it relatively straight-ahead here on a set of Tin Pan Alley standards, originals, and a couple of Miles Davis tunes (you never heard "In a Silent Way" like this), in the company of Jason Moran and Jack DeJohnette.

Hard Cell -- Feign (Screwgun). Another Tim Berne project, basically Science Friction minus guitar. Craig Taborn owns this record.

2005-2006

I'd quit the paper and was working for an ad agency (big mistake), also holding down a Wednesday night house band gig at the Wreck Room, my favorite rawk dump of all ti-i-ime. So no time for writing reviews. (During this period I was asked to interview Dewey Redman for the public library's oral history project. I begged off. The next time I heard from the person who'd asked was when they sent me Dewey's NYT obituary.)

2007

Dennis Gonzalez/João Paulo -- Scapegrace (Clean Feed). First meeting of the deeply spiritual Dallas trumpeter and a Portuguese pianist. A record of lyrical beauty. There's a YouTube video of these two playing in the square of a Portuguese village that reminds me of a scene from Cinema Paradiso.

Fieldwork  -- Door (Pi Recordings). Third album by a co-op trio formed by pianist Vijay Iyer and saxophonist Steve Lehman, first with drummer Tyshawn Sorey -- who wrote six of 11 compositions and clearly dominated the proceedings. Even then, you could tell he was going places.

2008

Nels Cline -- Coward (Cryptogramophone). This is one where the "only one per leader" rule really hurts. As much as I love the orchestrated easy listening homage Lovers and the duo record Room with Julian Lage (some the best guitaring I ever witnessed live), this overdubbed solo record was the one that really pulled me in (after first hearing Cline on the first two Mike Watt solo albums). "Rod Poole's Gradual Ascent to Heaven" is worth the price of admission by itself.

Linda Oh -- Entry (No label). Debut from the Malaysian-Australian bassist, playing her originals and covering the Red Hot Chili Peppers (sorry!) with a trio including trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. Oh would go on to work with Dave Douglas, Pat Metheny, Terri Lyne Carrington, Vijay Iyer, and her own bands.

2009

Paradoxical Frog -- S/T (Clean Feed). The trio of Tyshawn Sorey (drums), Kris Davis (piano), and Ingrid Laubrock (saxophone) plays experimental compositions and free improv. The Canadian pianist Davis impressed early on with her ability to play with both Cecil Taylor-like intensity and classical delicacy. Later, she'd show her fluency and facility with jazz tradition. 

2010

Sonny Rollins -- Road Shows, Vol. 2 (Doxy). Trane changed the world, Sonny lived long enough to fulfill his potential (although he'd undoubtedly disagree). Once Rollins had control of his recording scene, he quit studios for good and began releasing a series of high quality concert recordings. This one, drawn mostly from his 80th birthday concert, is particularly noteworthy for a version of "Sonnymoon for Two" that includes a guest appearance by Ornette Coleman. Both men solo, then Sonny takes one in Ornette's style. Almost as good as the "Oleo" from Our Man In Jazz that featured Ornette's familiars Cherry and Higgins.

2011

Wadada Leo Smith -- Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform) -- Towards the end of a long spell in academia (at Cal Arts), Anthony Braxton's one time trumpet foil began a surge of creativity that continued unabated through the decade and beyond. This mammoth (four CDs) tribute to the Civil Rights movement includes pieces for Smith's Golden Quartet (or Quintet, with a second drummer) and a chamber music ensemble, both separately and, on a handful of tracks, together. Smith's accomplishment here is stunning, and earned him a Pulitzer Prize.

2012

Craig Taborn Trio -- Chants (ECM). Taborn has fewer records as a leader than any pianist of comparable stature, but he does loads of notable work as a side musician (I bent the "one per leader" rules to include Hard Cell's Feign). This trio, with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Gerald Cleaver, sounds a lot different than Taborn and Cleaver do with William Parker as the more rough-and-tumble Farmers By Nature. Goes to show how much one ingredient can change a recipe. Taborn's compositions and the group dynamic here are spellbinding.

Neneh Cherry & The Thing -- The Cherry Thing (Smalltown Supersound). Dance music diva Cherry cut this album with the Scandinavian punk-jazz juggernaut, performing material that included covers of songs by MF Doom, Suicide, the Stooges (CD only), her stepfather Don Cherry, and Ornette's "What Reason Could I Give."

2014

Yells At Eels -- In Quiet Waters (For Tune). In 1999, punk rock siblings Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez coaxed their father, Dennis, out of musical retirement to form this family trio. From 2002 on, every time I saw them, they were fiercer and more astonishing, so it makes sense that this, their last recording, released on a Polish label ("where the most Dennis Gonzalez fans are," Stefan says) is probably their best (although French label Ayler released several fine ones). The iconic themes "Hymn for Julius Hemphill" and "Document for Walt Dickerson" get definitive readings here.

Zooid -- In for a Penny, In for a Pound (Pi). Henry Threadgill won a 2016 Pulitzer Prize for this scintillating chamber jazz suite, and a decade later I'm still striving to parse all its threads. Following very specific guidelines for improvisation, the musicians in Zooid sound less celebratory than those in Threadgill's precisely scored Sextett (one of the great bands of the '80s). But they (and the composer) keep me returning to this.

Max Johnson -- In the West (Clean Feed). NYC bassist Johnson shines at the helm of a quarter with Kris Davis on piano, Mike Pride on drums, and pedal steel innovator Susan Alcorn, playing three Johnson originals and an Ennio Morricone medley/homage.

Roscoe Mitchell, Sandy Ewen, Damon Smith, Weasel Walter -- A Railroad Spike Forms the Voice (Balance Point Acoustics). Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians eminence Mitchell is the biggest name here, but the real news is Ewen, a prepared guitar specialist from Houston via Brooklyn who's gone head to head with Keith Rowe and used to lead an all-woman large ensemble back in H-Town. Her trio with prolific bassist Smith and ex-Flying Luttenbacher percussionist Walter has several records out, all equally amazing. Her solo work is equally worthwhile; she approaches her instrument in a way that's unsurprising coming from a visual artist and architect, both of which she is.

2016

Jeff Parker -- The New Breed (International Anthem). A hip-hop/R&B/jazz hybrid from the Chicago Underground/Tortoise guitarist. One could easily be forgiven for thinking they were hearing a Soulquarians outtake. In a good way.

Tyshawn Sorey -- Verisimilitude (Pi). My pick for the artist of the Teens and the composer of his generation makes the piano trio sing symphonically, with Cory Smythe on piano and Chris Tordini on bass.

2018

Kris Davis, Craig Taborn -- Octopus (Pyroclastic). After duetting for a couple of tracks on Davis' 2016 album Duopoly, the two pianists recorded this album live on tour. They play together with remarkable sympathy and communication that can only come from deep listening. Hearing them play together on two successive nights (at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas and Fort Worth's Museum of Modern Art) was the highlight of my listening year in 2022.

Wendy Eisenberg -- The Machinic Unconscious (Tzadik). A singular musical intelligence, my favorite guitarist of the moment can do a lot of things well. While I dig her several vocal albums of Gilberto-esque songcraft the most, she's also an uncommonly elegant noise improviser, as demonstrated by this trio recording with bassist Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle) and drummer Ches Smith.

2019

Mary Halvorson's Code Girl -- Artlessly Falling (Firehouse 12). My favorite record by the new guitar voice of the Teens, on which producer David Breskin assigned her different poetic forms to use for the lyrics to each song. Best of all, Amirtha Kidambi is joined on vocals by Brit art rocker Robert Wyatt, who returned from retirement after five years to participate.

Thumbscrew -- Never Is Enough (Cuneiform). Halvorson-as-guitarist shines on this, the sixth outing with a cooperative trio that also serves as the core of her Code Girl Band: bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Thomas Fujiwara. Here they perform a set of compositions -- six by Formanek, three each by the others -- that were galvanized in the studio by concurrent work on an Anthony Braxton project. Limited edition vinyl includes a bonus side of live tracks.

The Young Mothers -- Morose (Self Sabotage). A mostly Texan sextet, led by bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten (The Thing) and fronted by trumpeter-rapper Jawwaad Taylor, these guys mash up free jazz, hip-hop, and death metal and the result is pure fire. For proof, check the intense opener "Attica Black," or "Black Tar Caviar," where saxophonist Jason Jackson comes across like Archie Shepp channeling Coleman Hawkins before a black metal apocalypse sweeps away all in its path.

2020

Jaimie Branch -- Fly Or Die Live (International Anthem). A concert document of the complete suite from trumpeter-vocalist Branch's first two albums, this captures her quartet (cellist Lester St. Louis, bassist Jason Ajemian, Chicago Underground drummer Chad Taylor) in full flight. It also serves as a memorial since the leader's tragic death by drug overdose in 2022. "prayer for amerikkka pt. 1&2" and "love song" serve to remind us how much was lost.

William Parker -- Painter's Winter (AUM Fidelity). I missed out on most of NYC bassist Parker's work with Cecil Taylor and David S. Ware, and his solo discography is too dauntingly large for me to take on at this point. But of the albums I've heard, I like this trio date with trumpeter/multi-reedist Daniel Carter and drummer Hamid Drake best. The three musicians' multi-instrumental fluency gives their work here a textural variety that belies the size of their group. This barely edged out Mayan Space Station, which teams Parker with guitarist Eva Mendoza and drummer Gerald Cleaver for some Lifetime-y fusion fun. 

2021

Ingebrigt Haker Flaten -- Exit (Knarr) (Odin). Again, I've cheated on the "one entry per leader" thing, but what the hell. Haker Flaten's best known as an improviser, but his composing chops come to the fore on this episodic autobiographical suite, revisiting some of the places he's called home through the course of a peripatetic life. The octet includes altoist Mette Rasmussen, and the record has the feel of a masterpiece.

Zoh Amba -- O, Sun (Tzadik). Since she hit the Apple in late 2021, the Tennessean saxophone prodigy (24 this year) has made quite a stir, playing with and winning plaudits from veterans like William Parker, Tyshawn Sorey, Joe McPhee, Ra Kalam Bob Moses, and on this album, John Zorn. Of the several recordings that have emerged so far, this is my favorite. While less representative of what she does live, it works better as an album for me. And she's just getting started.

2022

Terri Lyne Carrington -- New Standards Vol. 1 (Candid). Carrington founded and leads the Berklee Institute for Jazz and Gender Justice, and won a Grammy for this album, released in conjunction with a sort of alternate Real Book featuring 101 lead sheets by women composers. An all-star lineup anchored by Kris Davis, Linda May Han Oh, and the leader plays selections composed by Abbey Lincoln, Carla Bley, and Marilyn Crispell, among others.

Patricia Brennan -- More Touch (Pyroclastic). Mallet percussion specialist Brennan leads a percussion heavy quartet -- trap set, hand drums, and bass, fronted by the leader's vibraphone and marimba -- through originals that blend jazz and classical influences with rhythms from the Afro-Cuban diaspora and her own native Veracruz, Mexico.

2023

Diatom Ribbons -- Live at the Village Vanguard (Pyroclastic). Pianist Kris Davis followed up the debut by this innovative group with drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, turntablist Val Jeanty, and bassist Trevor Dunn with a live tour de force that features no repeats from the first album. Instead, there are new Davis compositions (including the three part "Bird Suite"), two different takes of Wayne Shorter's "Dolores," and a cover of Ronald Shannon Jackson's "Alice in the Congo" (which she played with Craig Taborn at the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth). Julian Lage brings a different feel to the guitar chair Nels Cline and Marc Ribot filled on the previous album. Since this was recorded, Davis been touring with Dave Holland's quartet and has a new trio of her own (a first since 2013's hideously rare Waiting for You to Grow). 

Susan Alcorn Septeto del Sur -- Canto (Relative Pitch). Alcorn's a pedal steel virtuoso who took up free improvisation after encountering Pauline Oliveros and Dave Dove in Houston during the '90s. On this album, she's joined by Chilean folkloric and experimental musicians to perform a suite dedicated to the victims of that country's brutal Pinochet dictatorship. Music with an important message for a moment when authoritarianism is on the rise globally.

2024

Ches Smith -- Laugh Ash (Pyroclastic). Drummer extraordinaire for John Zorn, Tim Berne, and Marc Ribot reaches a new level with a set of compositions that boldly synthesize influences as disparate as minimalism, Haitian Vodou, Euro classicism, electronica, and hip-hop into a sound that has the shock of something really new.

A-a-and that's as much time as I'm going to give this. It's notable to me that this list, covering 24 years, contains fewer entries than the previous one covering only 17. I blame Chinen and his "one entry per leader rule," and my early affinity for certain artists, whom I listened to in extremis while trying to figure out what all this stuff meant. (I'm still doing so in some cases -- I'm looking at you, Mr. Threadgill.) Not all of it's blues-based, not all of it swings; I'm hoping the Marsalis/Crouch/Murray conservative impulse goes the way of the Whiplash bebop-as-competitive-athletic-event school of didacticism. These days, it seems the lines between jazz, pop (meaning rock and hip-hop, to me), and experimental music (composed or improvised) are being erased, and the trend is for musicians to follow Oliver Lake's injunction to "put all my food on the same plate." I can't wait to hear what comes next.

Jazz 1973-1990 (after Ethan Iverson and Steve Smith)

If I hadn't been a reader, I wouldn't have been a music geek, and like all geeks, I'm a list-maker. The Facebook "20 album covers" game Aaron Gonzalez tagged me on got me thinking of my formative listening experiences, some of which didn't occur until the records in question had been out awhile (I've been swinging after the pitch for 50 years now). Ethan Iverson wrote a piece on today's theme, and Steve Smith has since added his take, so now I guess I'll throw in my two cents' worth, since those years were basically when I developed my relationship with the music (and the golden age of anything is when you came in).

1973

Dave Holland Quartet -- Conference of the Birds (ECM). In the '70s, Holland was concurrently bass player of choice for both Anthony Braxton and Sam Rivers, both of whom appear on this, a pretty succinct document of the state of the art for avant-jazz in its moment.

Don Cherry/Jazz Composer's Orchestra -- Relativity Suite (JCOA). Having progressed from Ornette's trumpet foil to peripatetic world music minstrel, Cherry makes a pretty definitive statement here. First side's a swirling mix of folkloric elements with free jazz that culminates in the beautiful theme "Desireless" (played on alto by Carlos Ward). Second side's gentler, with "March of the Hobbits" at the end to remind us that Cherry played with Albert Ayler.

1974

Cecil Taylor -- Silent Tongues (Arista Freedom; reissued on ORG Music). I will buy any Cecil Taylor solo recital; this one is my favorite, possibly because it was my first.

Lester Bowie -- Fast Last (Muse). I was unaware the Art Ensemble of Chicago trumpet master had recorded for Muse until I read the discography in Rafi Zabor's novel The Bear Comes Home. This is sort of a St. Louis/Chicago reunion with the likes of Julius Hemphill, John Hicks, and Philip Wilson, and material ranging from Bowie originals to Ornette's "Lonely Woman" and, yes, "Hello Dolly."

Sam Rivers -- Crystals (Impulse). Maybe the greatest improviser I ever witnessed (opening for Mingus at Stony Brook ca. '76). Having made his way from Boston to Blue Note and short spells with Miles Davis and Cecil Taylor, Rivers made a lot of free improv trio and quartet records in the '70s (the best ones were with Dave Holland and Barry Altschul), as well as this robust big band LP, a harbinger of more to come in the '90s and '00s.

1975

Bola Sete -- Ocean (Takoma). Not really "jazz" I guess, although he got filed there in the store where I worked as a teen. This is the album John Fahey released on his label, accompanied by awestruck advance hype in Guitar Player. The depth of expression the Brazilian guitarist attains here seems to me more akin to a jazz improviser than any folkloric muso. 

Miles Davis -- Agharta (Columbia, reissued on Music On Vinyl). By the time I heard this (in the CD era, when this and its companion concert Pangaea became generally available here), the influence of Miles' '70s electric music had become so pervasive that it was hard to understand why it was so controversial when it was new -- like Ornette's 1959 records. (I think Greg Tate's scrawl in the Village Voice contributed to wider acceptance of '70s Miles.) The deep groove is kind of the point, but of course I was there for Pete Cosey's space blues guitar (unimaginable without but in no way imitative of Hendrix).

Don Cherry -- Brown Rice (A&M Horizon, reissued on UMG). I read about this in the same New York Times piece that pulled my coat to Eternal Now (my favorite of Don's purely "world music" -- e.g., no trumpet -- recs) and the debut from the Ornette alumni outfit Old and New Dreams (whom I saw open for Arthur Blythe's In the Tradition at Town Hall the first time I ventured back to NYC after moving to Texas). This is sort of a commercial record, adding vocals and electronics to the basic band of Don, his '59 Ornette bandmates Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins, and Frank Lowe on squalling tenor. Meditative, hypnotic stuff.

John Abercrombie, Dave Holland, and Jack DeJohnette -- Gateway. Abercrombie was more fluid and thoughtful than the average fusioneer, like Jim Hall if he'd been a rocker first, and his influence endures in near contemporaries like Metheny, Frisell, and Cline. Holland and DeJohnette were the backbone of Miles' Bitches Brew-era touring bands, and together they operated in the grey area between rock and jazz, but darker and more cerebral than most of the Miles vets who were cashing in their CVs in those days.

Julius Hemphill -- Coon Bid'ness (Arista Freedom). One side of sessions from the Fort Worth native's time with St. Louis' Black Artists Group, together with a side-long unused track ("The Hard Blues") from his Dogon A.D. album -- a masterwork but originally self-released in '72 and thus outside the scope of this inquiry (subsequently reissued on Arista Freedom and more recently in CD and 2LP versions that restore "The Hard Blues" and I presume are legit).

Larry Coryell -- The Restful Mind (Vanguard). Back when Mahavishnu Orchestra was all the rage, I was kind of afraid of John McLaughlin in the same way I was kind of afraid of King Crimson's Robert Fripp. Myself, I preferred Coryell, who was more of a rocker, wringing feedback of out his fat hollow body Gibson the way his fellow Seattleite Hendrix would from a Strat. (Larry's Live at the Village Gate is practically a Band of Gypsys homage.) I'd seen Coryell with the Eleventh House (his response to Mahavishnu, with Alphonse Mouzon, ex-McCoy Tyner, playing the Cobham role). The next time I saw him, opening for the New Tony Williams Lifetime at My Father's Place, he was in an acoustic duo with Steve Khan, and he did a lot of acoustic playing for the rest of his career. This LP has him backed by members of the acoustic proto-world music outfit Oregon, led by 12-string specialist Ralph Towner. (There's hilarious video on YouTube of a young, crewcut Coryell, and, separately, a similarly embryonic Towner playing on a TV show with a bandleader called Chuck Mahaffay that must be seen to be believed.) The rustic vibe on much of this is not for everyone, but Larry sure could light up them strings, even without electricity.

McCoy Tyner -- Trident (Milestone). My first taste of the force-of-nature pianist away from the classic Coltrane quartet, in a trio with fellow Trane alum Elvin Jones and the formidable Ron Carter. The opening "Celestial Chant" instantly grabbed my attention (and was an early inspiration for bassist Melvin Gibbs), McCoy had his way with A.C. Jobim's "Once I Loved," Sir Elvin got an eponymous feature (with honorific added), and here was where I heard my favorite Monk tune, "Ruby My Dear," for the very first time.

The New Tony Williams Lifetime -- Believe It (Columbia). OK, it's the "F" word: fusion. Tony was one of the iconic drummers of his generation (hear him on Miles' Filles de Kilimanjaro or Dolphy's Out to Lunch), but the real revelation of this band and record was Allan Holdsworth (ex-Gong and Soft Machine), about to set the world on fire with his preternaturally fluid attack. "Red Alert," "Fred," and "Wildlife" still signify.

Don Pullen -- Healing Force (Black Saint). Probably the source, if Silent Tongues wasn't, of my fondness for solo piano records. I recently spent an evening going through nearly all of them to find the title track to this one. Shame on me for not remembering.

1976

Don Pullen with Sam Rivers -- Capricorn Rising (Black Saint). Pullen was the pianist in Charles Mingus' last great band (not a patch on the '64 touring group with Eric Dolphy and Jaki Byard, but that's the league). This was also the first Sam Rivers record I owned, and the drummer here, Bobby Battle, was in the trio Sam led at Stony Brook. Explosive energy abounds. Pullen possessed punishing technique that got him compared -- inaccurately, he said -- with Cecil Taylor. (There's video of him with Mingus at the '75 Montreux fest where you can see him raking the keys with the backs of his hands.) Pullen was also capable of expansive openness and lyricism. I need to investigate his quartet with fellow Mingus alum George Adams more.

Gil Evans Orchestra -- There Comes A Time (RCA). Found out about this from a review in, um, Penthouse. Thrilling modern big band with material from Jelly Roll Morton, the original Tony Williams Lifetime, Hendrix, and trumpeter Hannibal Marvin Peterson, who's here along with Billy Hart, David Sanborn, Howard Johnson, and others. It'd take me awhile to hear Gil's collabs with Miles, let alone Hannibal's original of Children of the Fire.

Anthony Braxton -- Creative Orchestra Music 1976 (Arista). It's taken me years to warm to Braxton, and aside from his Aristas, his '80s quartet, and some of his classical music, I'm still not entirely there, but this LP was a good place to start, especially the "out" march "22-M (Opus 58)."

1977

Herbie Hancock -- V.S.O.P. (Columbia). This double LP is very much an artifact of its time, but it was useful back when I was still trying, with my rockaroll-tuned ears, to process the whole history of jazz with only Nat Hentoff's Jazz Is, Leroi Jones' Blues People, and Gary Giddins' Village Voice columns to guide me. The sides that reunite Miles Davis' '60s quintet (with Freddie Hubbard subbing for the leader) lack the subtlety of the original versions, but are well suited for listeners (like my 20-year-old self) who are accustomed to the bombast and grand gestures of big rock shows. The Mwandishi quintet and the funk band with "Wah-Wah" Watson are also fine, but the Milesians were clearly the big news here -- so much so that Columbia followed up with another double LP called VSOP: The Quintet. Truth in advertising.

Julius Hemphill -- Blue Boye (Mbari, reissued on Screwgun). What Julius Hemphill did better than anything else was orchestrate horns, and even before the World Saxophone Quintet, he was doing it on this self-recorded, solo-with-overdubs set.

McCoy Tyner -- Supertrios (Milestone). Another double album, featuring McCoy with not one but two, count 'em, two stellar rhythm sections. He also covers a couple of tunes from his estimable Blue Note masterpiece The Real McCoy. Over the years, I've listened to the Ron Carter-Tony Williams LP (with its colossal piano-drum duet on Monk's "I Mean You" and a version of Jobim's "Wave" as Pete Townshend might have imagined it) much more than I have the Eddie Gomez-Jack DeJohnette one. For what it's worth, two former housemates whose ears I bent with this record back in 1978 still swear by it.

Ornette Coleman -- Dancing In Your Head (A&M Horizon). The first Ornette I heard was Crisis! (in the college library at SUNY Albany the semester I dropped out) and Science Fiction, followed by The Shape of Jazz To Come and all the other Atlantics, which were mostly cutout-bin available in the mid-'70s. When this arrived, I wasn't quite sure what to think, but it might have helped that I'd been listening to Trout Mask Replica a lot, so the muffled drums and chattering guitars felt familiar. "Theme from a Symphony" could drive you nuts with its repetition, but if you let it, Ronald Shannon Jackson's drumline beat and that nursery rhyme theme could become hypnotic and get you, well...(see album title). Shannon was heard to better advantage on Body Meta, cut at the same session but not released until the following year (on Artist House, the label John Snyder started when A&M pulled the plug on Horizon).

1978

The Carla Bley Band -- European Tour 1977 (Watt/ECM). Composer/pianist Bley had provided much of the repertoire for her ex-husband Paul Bley's trio in the '60s. She'd gone on to compose A Genuine Tong Funeral for Gary Burton (inspired by the Beatles' Sgt Pepper, believe it or not), and then laboriously composed and self-produced the authentic masterpiece Escalator Over the Hill. This touring aggregation combined American avant stalwarts (Roswell Rudd, Bob Stewart, NRBQ's Terry Adams, Andrew Cyrille) with bad-acting Brits (Elton Dean, Gary Windo, Hugh Hopper). Bley's music includes a fair amount of humor along with Kurt Weill echoes, drunken patriotic tunes, and other oddments. 

Woody Shaw -- Stepping Stones: Live at the Village Vanguard (Columbia). I worked in record stores in part to get freebies; at one point I had all of Woody's Columbias, of which this was my favorite. Shaw grew up in Newark and had worked with Eric Dolphy, Larry Young, and Dexter Gordon, among many others. He was kind of an anachronism, a free-bop bandleader in the era of Lower Manhattan "loft jazz" (before Wynton and the neocons arrived, heralded by Stanley Crouch, to take over the Jazz at Lincoln Center franchise). In time I'd discover that Shaw's Muse records are even better than his Columbias. (My favorite: 1975's Love Dance.) Health issues and heroin addiction plagued him; he died a senseless and tragic death after being struck by a train.

1979

Art Ensemble of Chicago -- Nice Guys (ECM). This wasn't the first Art Ensemble record I owned; I had People In Sorrow first. But this made a bigger impression. The pristine clarity of Manfred Eicher's recorded sound worked well with the AEC's highly detailed music. The AEC mixed celebration, mystery, and rigor in ways unlike anyone else on the planet (possible exception: Sun Ra).  And "Dreaming of the Master" is a tribute worthy of Trane.

Arthur Blythe -- Lennox Avenue Breakdown (Columbia). Blythe was a big-toned altoist from California via Lower Manhattan who'd made records for Adelphi and India Navigation before Columbia scooped him up and pushed his career until Wynton and the neocons arrived. I saw him with his In the Tradition band (John Hicks, Fred Hopkins, and Steve McCall), whose album was mastered like a disco 12", all top end, and kind of painful to listen to. Much better was this exuberant label debut, with fellow Cali expat James Newton, fellow loft denizens Bob Stewart and James "Blood" Ulmer, and the rhythm section of Cecil McBee and Jack DeJohnette. I still listen to this on the regular.

Cecil Taylor -- One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye (Hat Hut). In 1978, Cecil Taylor toured Europe with a band and made four records: two studio (of which 3 Phasis is my preferred one) and two live (of which I prefer this one in the CD version which gives you the complete concert, including preliminary solos and duets). I usually prefer to hear Cecil play solo; his music is so thunderously complete that sometimes a band is just too much (exception made for his two '60s Blue Notes). The presence of Ronald Shannon Jackson in this band challenged Taylor in ways his earlier drummers hadn't, and the pianist is reported to have said retrospectively, "Mr. Jackson had his own agenda." A titanic listen; all of life is here. By this time I was ordering records from New Music Distribution Service and reading Musician, where David Breskin and Rafi Zabor's scrawl on Shannon put me wise to this album, the first Music Revelation Ensemble on Moers Music, and the first Decoding Society album on About Time.

Charlie Haden and Hampton Hawes -- As Long As There's Music (Artist House). I only saw Charlie Haden live once, with Old and New Dreams. He looked like a colossus, bent almost double, with his bass almost horizontal on his shoulder. But what Charlie really liked to do, I'd learn, was to play quiet and slow. He'd released two LPs of duets for A&M Horizon with a revolving cast of partners; Artist House subsequently released full duet albums with Ornette (Soapsuds, Soapsuds, with Ornette on tenor for the first time since, um, Atlantic's Ornette On Tenor) and Hampton Hawes, the L.A. bop pianist who'd recorded for Contemporary in the '50s. Another one I still listen to on the regular.

Chico Freeman -- Spirit Sensitive (India Navigation). A firebrand Chicago multi-reedist, son of a respected elder, plays standards on tenor with John Hicks, Cecil McBee, and Billy Hart. My fave: Rodgers and Hart's "It Never Entered My Mind."

Air -- Air Lore (Arista Novus). Altoist-composer Henry Threadgill's starter band, a cooperative trio with bassist Fred Hopkins and drummer Steve McCall, finishes the way they started, taking a modern approach to rags by Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton. From this launching pad, Threadgill would travel light years.

1980

Arthur Blythe -- Illusions (Columbia). Maybe the great Blythe record, reprising some tunes from his independent label records and juxtaposing his In the Tradition quartet with his working group that featured Blood Ulmer's guitar, Bob Stewart's tuba, and Abdul Wadud's cello. "Bush Baby" jumps with edgy funk, while "Miss Nancy" exemplifies everything I loved about the quartet when I saw them.

Jack DeJohnette -- Special Edition (ECM). Maybe the great DeJohnette record. The first lineup of a band the drummer would lead throughout the decade, this one featured Blythe in the front line alongside David Murray on tenor and bass clarinet, with Peter Warren on bass. "One for Eric" evokes the restless spirit of Dolphy, while "Zoot Suite" includes a cello interval by Warren that can make you weep. The two Trane covers on the second side are also worthwhile; "Central Park West" is my fave.

1981

Carla Bley -- Social Studies (ECM). A new band with Gary Valente replacing Roswell Rudd on trombone, rocker D. Sharp on drums, and most crucially, Steve Swallow on electric bass. Some classic Bley themes ("Utviklingssang," "Walking Batteriewoman") and the downright Ellingtonian "Copyright Royalties."

Max Roach -- Chattahoochee Red (Columbia). Roach was Charlie Parker's teenaged drummer, co-led an exemplary band with Clifford Brown before the trumpeter's untimely death, and was active in the Civil Rights movement, as well as the one against exploitation of musicians by promoters and record labels (both still ongoing). In his 50s, he was still forward-thinking enough to go head-to-head with modernists like Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton. Here he leads a sturdy quartet (Cecil Bridgewater, Odean Pope, Calvin Hill) through short takes including the rousing "The Dream/It's Time" and the waltz "Lonesome Lover."

Nick Mason -- Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports (Columbia). In retrospect, this seems like my "Year of Carla Bley," because what appears on the surface to be the Pink Floyd drummer's solo album is in fact a Bley record in all but name, with ringers Mason on drums, Chris Spedding on guitar (playing a Gilmouresque solo on "Hot River"), and most crucially, every prog fan's favorite Marxist Robert Wyatt on vocals. The whole project is a hoot, with "Can't Get My Motor to Start" and "Boo to You Too" being especially hilarious.

Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays -- As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls (ECM). I once passed through Lee's Summit, Missouri, from whence Metheny hails, so I understand why there's so much light and space in his music. It took me a few more years to check out his Ornettitude (from covering "Round Trip/Broadway Blues" on Bright Size Life to recording with OC alumni on 80/81 and Rejoicing to finally collaborating with the man himself on Song X), but on this classic (which I used to play to death in-store at my last record store before I enlisted), I find his rustic pastoralism less cloying than with his eponymous Group. First side's an Ivesian suite, second's a collection of shorter pieces, some of which were used to good effect in the soundtrack of an early not-horrible Kevin Costner vehicle called Fandango. Having proved myself to be irredeemably corny, I'll move on to...

1982

Ornette Coleman, Of Human Feelings (Antilles). It took two drummers (Denardo Coleman, Calvin Weston) to take Shannon Jackson's place in Ornette's Prime Time band. I always think of this as Jamaladeen Tacuma's record, as Ornette's harmolodic funk pushed the Philadelphian's bass to the fore.

Ronald Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society -- Mandance (Antilles). After one album on About Time and two on Moers Music, Shannon firmly found his feet as composer and bandleader on this, the Decoding Society's fourth LP, produced by jouro-turned-record man David Breskin. With Henry Scott's scream trumpet replacing Billly Bang's violin or Khan Jamal's vibes in the front line, Melvin Gibbs and Bruce Johnson on dual dancing basses, and Vernon Reid showcasing his wizardry on electric, steel guitar, guitar synth, and banjo, this band went from strength to strength. I was recently reminded how great this material was when Kris Davis covered "Alice in the Congo" (live at the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth and on her Live at the Village Vanguard). 

Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, and Lenny White -- The Griffith Park Collection (Elektra Musician). Found a cassette of this at the base exchange when I was stationed in Korea, and spun it whenever my "sanity tape" (A Love Supreme on one side, In A Silent Way on the other) wasn't sufficient to cool me out. An unlikely event: 75% of Return to Forever (my least favorite fusion ensemble; was it the Scientology, or the Mutola?), with Blue Note stalwarts Henderson and Hubbard up front, playing straight ahead post-bop. Ethan Iverson has written that Chick was a better bop pianist than Herbie because he understood Latin rhythm better. Comparisons being odious, this cooks more organically than V.S.O.P. did, and primed my ears to become a Henderson fan a few years later, when he started cutting for Verve. 

1983

Bob Moses -- When Elephants Dream of Music (Gramavision). Present at the creation of jazz-rock (Free Spirits with Larry Coryell in 1966, Gary Burton's quartet the following year, credited as "Lonesome Dragon" on A Genuine Tong Funeral because he didn't like the record), drummer on the early Pat Metheny stuff with Jaco Pastorius, Moses made his mark as a composer for large ensemble with a couple of early '80s LPs on Gramavision (mainly this and the following year's Visit with the Great Spirit) that won plaudits from the likes of Gil Evans. There's a New Orleans pastiche ("Everybody Knows You When You're Up and On") as well as R&B and homages to Miles, Billy Strayhorn, and Steve Swallow. More recently, Moses (now using his religious name Ra Kalam) emerged from a spell in academia as a free improvising marvel, and is now in remission from Stage 4 cancer. Bless him. They're making a documentary about him now.

Charlie Haden -- The Ballad of the Fallen (ECM). The second album by Haden's politically-themed Liberation Music Orchestra, with arrangements by Carla Bley. Their albums always seemed to appear during Republican administrations. This one, a reaction to Reagan-era US foreign policy, mixes original compositions (notably Haden's "Silence") with revolutionary anthems from Spain, El Salvador, and Chile. 

James "Blood" Ulmer -- Odyssey (Columbia). Ulmer made edgier (Free Lancing) and more exploratory (No Wave) records, but this date, with a stripped down trio of guitar-violin-drums, is the best edition of his music because it's the earthiest, including my favorite rendition of his finest song, the oft-recorded "Are You Glad to Be in America" (kudos to violinist Charles Burnham). In the early Aughts, producer Vernon Reid would reinvent Blood as a bluesman.

1984-1985

Seems weird, but I don't own any jazz records released in those years that I'd consider "formative." I was in the Air Force then, and had small kids. I got back from Korea at the end of June 1983, a couple of weeks before Fort Worth Mayor Bob Bolen gave Ornette Coleman the key to the city, Prime Time opened the Caravan of Dreams, and John Giordano and the Fort Worth Symphony played Ornette's Skies of America. I wasn't even aware when Ornette, Cecil, Shannon, Blood, and loads of other musicians I'm writing about here played at Caravan -- never attended a show there until Sonny Rollins, a couple of weeks after I got out of the service in September 1992. Different times, different priorities.

1986

Henry Threadgill Sextett -- You Know the Number (RCA Novus). With the Sextett -- really a septet, with two drummers playing scored parts -- Threadgill was evolving into the most intriguing composer, for my two cents, to come out of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians cohort that made its way to New York and thence to academia. First side, starting with "Bermuda Blues" and ending with "Theme from Thomas Cole," is the jam.

1987

Dennis Gonzalez New Dallas Sextet -- Namesake (Silkheart). The first of three albums as a leader the Dallas-based trumpeter would cut for the Swedish label, this one finds him in the company of a bunch of Chicagoans: AACM veterans Douglas Ewart, Malachi Favors, and Alvin Fielder, and Sun Ra Arkestra alum Ahmed Abdullah. The wildcard on the date is tenorist Charles Brackeen, a highly individuated player who'd previously worked with Don Cherry, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Paul Motian, among others. The leader contributes five solid originals, and the horns mix it up nicely. Fielder became a lifelong friend of Gonzalez's, and he kicks a nice Elvin groove on the title track.

Shannon Jackson -- When Colors Play (Caravan of Dreams Productions, reissued on Knit Classics). Recorded at Caravan of Dreams with a new group of musicians in place of the Decoding Society, this record contains some of Shannon's finest writing, inspired by a trip to Africa. 

Ornette Coleman -- In All Languages (Caravan of Dreams Productions, reissued on Harmolodic/Verve). Double album with one LP featuring the original 1959 quartet (Cherry-Haden-Higgins) and one featuring Prime Time. Listening to the two bands essaying some of the same material, it's surprising how similar their approaches seem. The quartet remains remarkable for its telepathic communication, while Prime Time seems more conventionally contrapuntal than on their earlier outings. To these feedback-scorched ears, hearing musicians who learned Ornette's music from its originator has an essential rightness that's absent when others play his tunes. 

Power Tools -- Strange Meeting (Antilles New Directions). A trio date bringing together Bill Frisell, Melvin Gibbs, and Ronald Shannon Jackson, this album remains an underrated gem in all three men's discographies. The Decoding Society rhythm section pushes Frisell to play with more fire than he usually displayed even then. All three contribute strong material, and Gibbs one classic ("Howard Beach Memoirs," which I saw him play with Shannon at the drummer's last performance in life).

Sonny Sharrock -- Guitar (Enemy). Sharrock's guitar-as-saxophone was astonishing in the '60s (notably on Pharaoh Sanders' Tauhid and Don Cherry's Eternal Rhythm), but by the '80s, rescued from obscurity by producer Bill Laswell, he got his tone together (the Les Paul and Marshall helped) and developed an interest in melody that would sustain him the rest of his career. This album of overdubbed solo instrumentals was his definitive statement until Ask the Ages (released in 1991 and therefore outside the scope of this inquiry, but as close to a new Coltrane record as we were likely to get then).

1988

Dennis Gonzalez Dallas-London Sextet -- Catechism (Daagnim, reissued on Music & Arts). All the prog kids in my neighborhood know this is the record Dennis went to England to make with musos from King Crimson (Keith Tippett) and Soft Machine (Elton Dean), along with a South African drummer (Louis Moholo, ex-Blue Notes) who became another lifelong friend. The two versions of "Kwela for Carol" carry an appropriate township lilt, while "Hymn for John Carter" overlays an upbeat rhythm section with a slow, mournful melodic line. (Steve Smith has a lot to say about Fort Worth native Carter's masterwork "Roots and Folklore: Episodes in the Development of American Folk Music.")

1989-1990

This surprised me, although it shouldn't have. I own nothing formative from these years either; I became an Air Force instructor in September 1989, which is where I learned how to stand up on my hind legs and talk in front of people. I was fortunate that one of the stores in the mall near where I was stationed used to stock Westbound Funkadelic CDs, as well as the aforementioned Ask the Ages and Lou Reed's New York, all of which were important to me for different reasons. My music fandom went on hold until after I got out of the service in 1992, went through a divorce, and started working in record stores again. 

This only became a blog post because my hands get tired from writing in a notebook. At least it was a good excuse to spend an afternoon listening to records I hadn't heard in awhile. And that's that.