Charles Mingus' "Mingus in Argentina: The Buenos Aires Concerts"

Producer extraordinaire Zev Feldman has been the mastermind behind Resonance Records' incredible run of archival jazz releases, a series marked by impeccable audio engineering and painstaking historical scholarship. Sonny Rollins' Rollins in Holland and Freedom Weaver (The 1959 European Tour Recordings), Charles Mingus' The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott's, and Sun Ra's Lights On a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank are just a few of the titles, but you get the idea. Previously unheard recordings of jazz with the immediacy of a live performance, in the best fidelity modern technology can provide, thoughtfully annotated by knowledgeable scribes. What's not to dig?

The set in question today, Mingus in Argentina: The Buenos Aires Concerts, is one with particular significance for your humble chronicler o' events, because it's a rare live document of the band (with one substitution) that I saw at Stony Brook on November 13, 1976, when I was only a couple of years into jazz fandom but had had my mind blown by Mingus sides like Mingus Presents Mingus, Town Hall Concert, and especially The Great Concert of Charles Mingus. (For years, I'd buy any recording of the 1964 touring band with Eric Dolphy and Jaki Byard; the DVD and YouTube availability of concert footage of that band was a major event in my life.) 

I'd also dug more current Mingus -- Changes Two but not One (my record budget was definitely finite, even with an employee discount from the hipi record store in my town) and Three or Four Shades of Blues (which had fusion-associated cats like Larry Coryell, John Scofield, and Sonny Fortune in the large ensemble playing Mingus repertoire) -- but I wasn't quite sure what to expect when my buddies and I made our way to the Union auditorium on the SUNY Stony Brook campus. 

Sam Rivers opened in a trio with Bob Stewart and Bobby Battle, and I've read that he actually sat in with the Mingus band during the late show (we caught the early, being working lads). Then Mingus hit with a quintet that included newcomer Ricky Ford on tenor, veteran Jack Walrath on trumpet, Walter Norris (who'd played on Ornette's Something Else! and whom I mistook for Jimmy Rowles, who'd played on Three or Four Shades -- all look same?) on piano, and Mingus' ultimate accompanist Dannie Richmond on drums (returned to the fold for the final run after a sojourn in rock with Mark-Almond). And Mingus, who seemed subdued compared to the fireball on The Great Concert. 

They played a set that comprised three Changes numbers ("For Harry Carney," "Remember Rockefeller at Attica," and "Sue's Changes") and a quick homage to Charlie Parker (the heads to "Ko-Ko" and "Cherokee"). While diminished, the titanic composer-bassist was still formidable, and the set had an elegiac air, as though he was glimpsing mortality. A year later, he'd be diagnosed with ALS, which took his life on January 5, 1979.

On Mingus in Argentina, Norris is replaced behind the 88s by Bob Neloms, who played on the last four Mingus albums for Atlantic. The setlist on the three LP/two CD set (to be released April 12 and 18, respectively) is more expansive than the one we heard at Stony Brook, and the band has benefited from playing the tunes together for another half a year. It's a sign of the times that "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is introduced as having been covered by Jeff Beck. That tune, "Noddin' Ya Head Blues," and "Three or Four Shades of Blues" sound better to these feedback-scorched ears in these compact quintet versions than they did in the studio, encumbered by rock-inflected guitars. 

The Changes tunes here -- "Duke Ellington's Sound of Love," "For Harry Carney," and an epic "Sue's Changes" -- lean toward the Ellingtonian side of Mingus' musical intelligence. Ford in particular shines in his virtuoso solo spot on "Sue's Changes," proving himself to be a worthy successor to Booker Ervin and Clifford Jordan in the tenor chair (and even adding some multiphonics as George Adams might have) while his bandmates vocalize their approval. The two brief Mingus piano improvs tip his hat to Duke in the same way the two Parker themes do to Bird.

"Cumbia and Jazz Fusion" includes the memorable "Who said Mama's little baby likes shortnin' bread" sequence that we used to sing the way we also sang the lyrics to "Original Faubus Fables," as though they were pop hits -- a reminder that Mingus' racial consciousness remained strong throughout his life. The quintet gets a remarkably full sound for a small unit, a credit to the composer's orchestral ear. They swing hard, and everyone digs deep for their solo statements. "Fables of Faubus" itself gets a rousingly raucous rendition, and remains sadly topical ("Boo Nazi fascist supremists" indeed). Mingus solos agilely and inventively, demonstrating that his virtuosity was still intact near the end of his touring career. He and Richmond complete each other, like different sides of the same brain.

It's thrilling to have this document of a great but underappreciated Mingus band. One wonder what other unheard gems Feldman and Resonance have up their sleeves. Their handiwork remains the best thing (in this writer's opinion) about Record Store Day. So there.

Oak Cliff, 3.22.2025

On a cool, calm night a couple of days after the Spring Equinox, the backyard at The Wild Detectives was the site of an early candidate for my show of this young year. I hadn't seen my fellow Sputnik baby Mike Watt since his Missingmen played at the Granada on Lower Greenville back in 2010. I still cherish the memory of seeing him playing Stooges songs with Ron Asheton when J. Mascis and the Fog's More Light tour docked at SXSW 2001 -- a key link in the chain of events that saw Iggy and the Stooges reunited a couple of years later. Got to talk to him briefly and learned he is newly sober and using a crutch due to knee problems that started when he was a kid. He had surgery back then and doesn't want to go back under the knife. He was wearing a jacket like the one Patrick McGoohan wore in The Prisoner; Watt's a fan and his sister made it for him.

Tonight was the ninth stop on MSSV's "Haru Tour 2025," with another 42 dates to follow for punk rock bass warrior Watt and his bandmates, guitarist-singer-songwriter Mike Baggetta and drummer Stephen Hodges. (In an earlier post, I misidentified Hodges, who drummed on Watt's Contemplating the Engine Room and has had an illustrious career working with the likes of Tom Waits, Mavis Staples, and David Lynch. Mea culpa.) Baggetta inhabits that Nels Cline sound world, using devices that mess with time and timbre in ways I can't really comprehend, manipulating the controls like an electronic musician, but also plays blazing skronk, well-integrated into intelligent rock song structures. Watt and Hodges gave him a big pocket to operate in, and Hodges took a brief solo on the closing "Human Reaction." New album On and On, their third as a unit, has quickly become a fave around mi casa, and we got to hear a big chunk of it on the Wild Detectives stage. On the way out, I wished Watt fair winds and following seas.

I've been digging the members of Austin improv supergroup THC Trio in different contexts for the last few years, but this group is the first time the three of them -- saxophonist Joshua Thomson (Atlas Maior), guitarist Jonathan F. Horne (The Young Mothers, (Exit) Knarr), and drummer Lisa Cameron (ST 37, Suspirians) -- have played together as a unit. They exploded out of the gate with full-on fury, Horne switching between his Ventures model Mosrite and Fender Bass VI, Cameron shifting her patterns and driving the music, Thomson moving a big column air and drawing from a deep well of musical inspiration. They followed the music's flow through several dynamic shifts before concluding quietly. A second piece was shorter; overall, a highly satisfying set.

We'd seen Thomson play a guest slot with my favorite band of the moment, Trio Glossia, a couple of nights before. For this evening's opening set, they were joined by leader-vibraphonist-drummer Stefan Gonzalez's former Unconscious Collective bandmate, guitarist Gregg Prickett, and limited by the constraints of a 30-minute time slot. They condensed a lot of material from their recently released debut CD, with Gonzalez and tenor saxophonist-drummer Joshua Canate shifting positions midway, Prickett adding his voice to the heads and playing edgy improvs. He achieves the same tension with a clean tone and dissonance that others use volume and distortion to attain.

Watt, who'd just come from Oklahoma, said he heard some Charlie Christian in there, and compared bassist Matthew Frerck to Ronnie Boykins in Sun Ra's Arkestra. High praise from San Pedro, California's finest. They closed with a quick version of Frerck's as-yet-unrecorded "To Walk the Night," with Prickett playing the part usually played by the composer. Next week, Gonzalez heads to Europe with his bass playing sibling Aaron Gonzalez for a 16-day tour with Humanization 4tet. After that, Stefan says Trio Glossia will devote some time to writing new material. We look forward to hearing it.

The Hemphill Stringtet's "Plays the Music of Julius Hemphill"

In the second half of the 20th century, no one wrote multi-horn polyphony better than Fort Worth-born multi-reedist Julius Hemphill (1938-1995). Just listen to the harmonized voices on, say, the title track from the World Saxophone Quartet's Revue, or "Otis' Groove" from the Julius Hemphill Sextet's Fat Man and the Hard Blues. Hemphill arrived fully formed with 1972's Dogon A.D. (for "adaptive dance"), originally released on his own Mbari label, later reissued by Arista Freedom. On that album, he debuted a biting tone on alto, wrote modern sounding lines with deep blues roots, and led a quartet highlighted by Abdul Wadud's cello. He'd been a founder of St. Louis' Black Artists Group, became a fixture on the mid-'70s Lower Manhattan loft scene, was the most interesting composer in the aforementioned World Saxophone Quartet, and formed his own all-saxophone sextet after leaving the WSQ. He remained musically active even after physical infirmities (diabetes, heart disease) rendered him unable to play. 

Hemphill was such a prolific composer that when one of his disciples, altoist Tim Berne, was recording a tribute album -- Diminutive Mysteries (Mostly Hemphill), released on JMT in 1993 and later reissued on Winter & Winter -- he wrote a new set of tunes for the occasion. Since then, Berne has performed Hemphill's music in his Fort Worth-centric repertory band Broken Shadows. More crucially, another Hemphill acolyte, Marty Ehrlich, has served as Hemphill's archivist, preparing his scores for publication. The genesis of the Hemphill Stringtet came through a chance meeting between Ehrlich and violinist Sam Bardfeld (Jazz Passengers, Bruce Springsteen), in which Ehrlich suggested Bardfeld form a group to perform Hemphill's WSQ compositions.

In turn, Bardfeld reached out to cellist and fellow Hemphill fan Tomeka Reid, who collaborated with Joel Wanek on an essential interview with Abdul Wadud for Point of Departure and had just received a commission to play Hemphill's Mingus Gold (a suite of three Charles Mingus compositions, arranged for string quartet by Hemphill) at a Chicago festival. (We were sorry to miss Reid when she visited Texas last year with Myra Melford's Fire and Water Quintet but regrettably didn't visit the Dallas-Fort Worth area due to the lack of suitable venue with grand piano. Sigh.) They recruited violinist Curtis Stewart and violist Stephanie Griffin, and the resultant album, Plays the Music of Julius Hemphill, drops April 4 on artist-run, Richmond, Virginia-based label Out of Your Head.

So, how do Hemphill's compositions work as chamber music? On the version of "Revue" that opens the album, the strings' sonority lets the listener luxuriate in Hemphill's gorgeous harmonies before the quartet takes off into the stratosphere for a collective improvisation that allows each member a brief solo spot. Ehrlich emphasizes that the scores can be played as written by non-improvising musicians, or extemporized on as Hemphill's groups did, and the Stringtet does here. 

Mingus Gold -- originally written for the Kronos Quartet, replete with double-stops to thicken the sound, and recorded by the Daedalus Quartet in a 2007 version that appears on the archival The Boye Multinational Crusade for Harmony box set -- opens with a straight reading of "Nostalgia in Times Square" (familiar to Fort Worthians who used to frequent the Sunday night jazz sessions at the old Black Dog Tavern), followed by a rendition of "Alice in Wonderland" that features Reid on an ad lib cadenza, finishing with a rousing "Better Get Hit in Your Soul" where you can imagine the synchronized handclaps along with Dannie Richmond's kick drum under Bardfelt and Stewart's improvised duo.

The somber tone poem "My First Winter" and the vamp-driven dance piece "Touchic" originally appeared on the WSQ's Live in Zurich but sound like they could have been purpose written for the Stringtet, as does the early WSQ study "Choo Choo" (first recorded after Hemphill's death on the Saxophone Sextet's disc Dr. King's Table). Any opportunity to hear Hemphill's music performed in the now is welcome; may all such efforts have the spirit and fire that the Stringtet brought to this release.

Dallas, 3.20.2025

The first day of spring in Dallas brought us back to Full City Rooster to see Trio Glossia joined by Austin multi-reedist and jazz/world music savant Joshua Thomson in a first-time collaboration, preparatory to Saturday's big blast at The Wild Detectives, in which Trio Glossia will be joined by guitarist extraordinaire Gregg Prickett, Thomson will appear in THC trio with guitarist Jonathan F. Horne and drummer Lisa Cameron, and the evening will be headlined by Mike Watt's current band MSSV. A likely candidate for my show of the year, but tonight's outing, although sparsely attended (it's Spring Break and lots of folks are out of town), will certainly be hard to beat. 

It's a gas to see how many ways Trio Glossia can reimagine the material from their self-titled debut CD. Their multi-instrumentalism and each player's facility in every facet of their axes lends them seemingly endless flexibility. Even without rehearsal, Thomson -- on alto for this occasion, although occasionally dipping deep into the low end of the horn's range -- was seamlessly integrated into the arrangements, whether providing harmony and counterpoint to Joshua Canate's raging tenor or going head-to-head in full-on fire music fury. You could hear both Middle Eastern melodies and the influence of Ornette Coleman in Thomson's fluid improvs. Leader Stefan Gonzalez opened the set with a thunderous drum solo that led into Canate's "For A Fee," then musicians segued into the always excellent bassist Matthew Frerck's "Arcane's Dance," during which the players shifted smoothly from freely improvised sections into gorgeous unisons, which were even richer than usual with Thomson's added voice.

When Gonzalez moved from the trap set to vibraphone, Canate's drumming was particularly fiery, taking a different approach than usual (cymbals with brushes rather than rimshots with sticks) to the unison tattoo that introduces "Nerdy Dirty Talk." But the evening's high point was achieved during the closing number, "Dream Travelers," when the two Joshuas conducted an extended dialogue, Canate keeping a steady beat using a double kick on the bass drum, with a brush in one hand and a string of bells in the other (his use of small instruments throughout the set broadened the music's textural palette) while Thomson gave a fervid testimony on alto. All in all, a powerful reminder why this is my favorite band of the moment. If you've only heard their record, you owe it to yourself to see them live. Often.

Mazinga's "Chinese Democracy Manifest: Greatest Hits Vol. 2"

Back in 2002, Chris "Box" Taylor was playing bass in Scott Morgan's Powertrane when they played their "Ann Arbor Revival Meeting" show in his hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, the show that was the energy model for every show my "proto-punk repertory band" Stoogeaphilia ever played. That was only a side project for Box, however; since 1995, he'd been playing guitar in "cosmic punk" outfit Mazinga (not to be confused with Wanz Dover's '90s Denton space rock outfit Mazinga Phaser) with vocalist Marc McFinn, bassist Big Tony Fero, and drummer Donnie "Downtown Detroit" Blum (Von Bondies). 

Chinese Democracy Manifest: Greatest Hits Vol. 2 is Mazinga's first full length since 1999's self-titled debut, proving that rock and roll is a distance, not a speed event. For a crew who can claim the MC5, Stooges, and Sonic's Rendezvous Band as "local acts," it's unsurprising that this record explodes with turbocharged high energy, spearheaded by Taylor's fuzz-and-wah drenched rifferama, propelled by a piledriver rhythm section, and capped by McFinn's primal yelp. 

The ten songs here are mainly short, sharp shocks, with only opener "This Is Fine," "Lobot's Task" (a fine workout for Box), and closer "I Quit" (replete with head-spinning tempo changes) breaking the three-minute barrier. "All Rise" and "Rock 'N' Roll Jihad" were recorded in the late Stooge guitarist Ron Asheton's basement studio, with Box playing through Ron's Marshall amp. (When we were in Ann Arbor back in 2002, the late Powertrane drummer Andy Frost gave us the rock and roll tour of the town: "There's Pioneer High School...there's the MC5 house...there's the Up house...there's the Scott Asheton memorial bridge [where the Stooges drummer accidentally peeled off the top of their equipment van]...and there's Ron Asheton with his guitar, crossing the street to the Blind Pig!" Days gone by.)

A must-hear if you dug Aussies like Radio Birdman and the Celibate Rifles, or Scandinavians like the Hellacopters and Gluecifer, as well as the midwestern OGs. 

Denton, 3.12.2025

What a difference three weeks can make. Last time we were in li'l d for Joan of Bark Presents, temperatures were in the 20s. Last night, they were hovering in the 70s, comfortable enough that the back doors to the Rubber Room could be left open to provide ventilation and more seating for the decent-sized (30-plus) crowd. I bogarted a couple of minutes to present an Asian Media Crew shirt to honorary member Larry Hill (aka Animals Mistaken for Monsters), who does yeoman work shooting video of the music scene in Denton and Dallas (we haven't seen him in Fort Worth yet, but that's a temporary condition), and make a brief pitch about the Ides of Trump postcard campaign (wherein folks are encouraged to write postcards telling our wannabe "emperor" what they think of his rule, and mail them on the date Julius Caesar was assassinated).

Singer-songwriter Grae Gonzalez led off with a caveat that "one of these things is not like the others," but their engaging set won over the hardened experimental music cognoscenti as well as friends and family members who'd come out to support Grae. Self-accompanying on baritone uke, Grae sang a selection of witty, conversational self-penned numbers from their upcoming EP (recorded by estimable engineer Michael Briggs), interspersing the songs with self-deprecating stories. In a month when I've been fixated on songs and singers (most recently: Patti Smith), I couldn't help but be impressed by Grae's compositions -- rooted in classic Tin Pan Alley style (including one dedicated to their partner Aaron Gonzalez, who had to miss the gig due to his grandmother's passing in Missouri), and the full, rich, friendly and inviting voice in which they were rendered. Grae's cover of Paul Simon's "The Boxer" only missed the ABC Sports Olympic theme viola solo; maybe next time they can whistle it?

Veteran improvisers Kristina Smith and Will Frenkel are longtime friends but had never collaborated before this evening. They took their time creating a spacious, minimalist soundscape in which every gesture from Smith's amplified and electronically treated voice, her accordion and bass guitar, Frenkel's cello and what looked like a video game controller, resonated deeply. When they finished their set, it seemed to have passed in an instant. 

 

Photo by Taylor Collins.

Cereboso is the solo performing rubric of the aforementioned electronic musician/audio engineer Michael Briggs (Lorelei K). Originally scheduled to perform in a duo with Aaron Gonzalez, he replanned his set as a solo venture when Aaron was called away by the passing of his grandmother. Briggs brought extra speakers along to the Rubber Room, striving to create a surround sound type ambience, and when it was time, he used only his voice and software to create his trademark dark, juddering blast of noise, like icebergs colliding or tectonic plates shifting. An immersive experience, but of brief enough duration not to overwhelm the uninitiated.

To close the show, nothing says "Fight the Power" quite like a Black trans noise guitarist, and Angel wasted no time in getting down to it, following a brief dedication to Grae Gonzalez, unleashing a torrent of distortion and feedback, using a violently percussive right hand attack, and occasionally coaxing atonal moans from mercilessly stretched strings. It was a sonic exorcism and the perfect palate cleanser to send us back into the cool night air. Angel also has a duo project, Rrose Selavies, with vocalist Arturo Velazquez. Their Justin Lemons-recorded self-titled debut is available digitally and on cassette via Bandcamp. Keiji Haino would understand. 

Next Joan of Bark Presents is scheduled for April 30. Don't you dare miss it.

Things we like: Extended Guitar Trio, Ava Mendoza, MSSV

Guitars, guitars, guitars. So many styles, approaches, players. So many records. In a perfect universe (which we all know doesn't exist), I would have pubbed this before last Friday (which was Bandcamp Friday). Oh well. Better late than never. Here are three I dig...

New Yorker Nick Didkovsky's axe has made its mark in hard rock, metal, RIO-esque prog, and computer-aided modern compositions. He's the only musician I'm aware of who's played with Alice Cooper, Fred Frith, and Hugh Hopper, but he's also played free improv in outfits like Zinc Nine Psychedelic and Eris 136199. Last October, he traveled to Germany to perform in the Extended Guitar Trio with longtime collaborators Erhard Hirt and Hans Tammen. The results have been released, digitally and on CD, as MUNSTER 02 OCT 24. The four pieces collected here require multiple attentive listens to hear all that's happening. In these three-way conversations, the corporeality of fingers on strings collides with the sci-fi futurism of electronic sounds that are barely recognizable as guitar, all rendered in extreme close-up fidelity. (This would be a good one to listen to through headphones.)

Speaking of Frith familiars, Ava Mendoza studied with the ex-Henry Cow composer and master improviser at Mills College, and participated in a performance of his Gravity album that's YouTube available. Since then, she's performed with the likes of William Parker, William Hooker, and Bill Orcutt, and led her own groups (Unnatural Ways, Mendoza Hoff Revels), but my favorite Ava is solo Ava (dig her New Spells from 2021 on Relative Pitch). Now she's got a new solo disc, The Circular Train, on Orcutt's Palilalia label. I've always dug the rock grit in Mendoza's tone, and here her electronically juiced modal explorations, haunting/haunted vocals, and root source-rich song forms come together in a way that really signifies (imagine a Latina amalgam of Richard Thompson and Old Neil with a soupcon of punk rage and you're in the neighborhood). Plus she caps it off with a gorgeously tough-as-nails instrumental version of Lead Belly's "Irene, Goodnight" that's worth the price of admission all by itself. For now, this is where I'll go when I want to hear Mendoza at her finest.

 

Punk eminence Mike Watt has always had good taste in guitar players, from d. boon and Ed Crawford to Nels Cline (whom I heard for the first time on the first two Watt solo discs), Joe Baiza, and a couple of Stooges. His current trio, MSSV, finds him in harness with his Porno For Pyros/Banyan bandmate Stephen Perkins on drums and Knoxville-based jazzer Mike Baggetta on guitar. Punk-jazz has really come to the fore in the last couple of years, what with the aforementioned Mendoza Hoff Revels and the Messthetics with James Brandon Lewis treading the boards, and MSSV's third album, On and On, shows them to be masters of the art. Baggetta sings at least as well as Ed Crawford, but his playing is a real revelation -- from the same post-Hendrix/Sharrock school of skronk as, say, Epitaph era Wayne Kramer, but with even more freewheeling melodic imagination, textural variety, and sonic daring. I've been listening to the digital version, but am awaiting the LP, which features additional improv interludes. Can't wait to hear these cats at The Wild Detectives on March 22 (on a bill with Austin's THC Trio and my favorite band of the moment, Trio Glossia, augmented for the occasion by my favorite guitarist, Gregg Prickett).