March 2020 Recap: A Monthly Exercise in Critical Transparency

My memories of the concerts I attended during the first week of March seem like implausible fever dreams.

Top Five Performances
1. Luciana Souza, Chico Pinheiro and Scott Colley- Folly Theater
My review.
2. The Pavel Haas Quartet with Boris Giltburg- Folly Theater
My review.
3. Bill Frisell’s Harmony- Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
My review.
4. Stephen Martin’s 5529 jam session- 5529 Troost
My Instagram clip.
5. Nick Schnebelen- Uptown Theater
The blues-rock stalwart almost upstaged headliner George Thorogood.

Top Five Albums
1. Jay Electronica- A Written Testimony
My review.
2. Childish Gambino- 3.15.20
My review.
3. J Balvin- Colores
In spite of everything, spring is here.
4. Hailu Mergia- Yene Mircha
Life itself.
5. Nicolás Jaar- Cenizas
Dark shadows.

Top Five Songs
1. Duck Sauce- “Captain Duck”
Wot.
2. Bob Dylan- “Murder Most Foul”
Jukebox hero.
3. Meredith Monk- “The Games: Downfall”
Hee-haw.
4. Aoife O’Donovan- “Bull Frog’s Croon: iii. Valentine”
I feel like going home.
5. Run the Jewels featuring Greg Nice and DJ Premier- “Ooh La La”
Gangstarrs.

I conducted the same exercise for Feburary and January.

(Original image of Stephen Martin’s jam session by There Stands the Glass.)

Album Review: Childish Gambino- 3.15.20

I was among the millions of Prince fans who rushed to record stores on Tuesdays to buy the nine albums he released in the 1980s.  Alternately hedonistic and apocalyptic, the communal soundtrack was admirably adventurous and challenging.

Childish Gambino’s 3.15.20 is a splendid evocation of that era.  While the musician born Donald Glover isn’t as innovative as Prince, his ingratiating references to the vintage sounds of Cameo, George Clinton, Marvin Gaye, Sly and the Family Stone and Prince are balanced by astute allusions to Frank Ocean and Kanye West.

3.15.20 is an invigorating reminder that not everything is awful.  Arriving nine days after Jay Electronica’s essential A Written Testimony, 3.15.20 is the second classic album of the coronavirus era.


---
I yakked about Kansas City artists including Deborah Brown, Julia Lee, Marilyn Maye and Mary Lou Williams on an episode of 90.9 The Bridge’s Eight One Sixty.

---
I reviewed Eldar Djangirov’s Rhapsodize at Plastic Sax.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Pandemic Playlist

I was awakened by a helicopter hovering over my home at 1:50 a.m. last night.  At least I think I was.  I’m no longer confident in my capacity to distinguish dreams from reality.   The tone and/or the lyrics of each track on my two-hour pandemic playlist reflect the circumstances.  Please wake me when it’s over.



(Original image of cat by There Stands the Glass)

Album Review: Jay Electronica- A Written Testimony

What a time we living in/just like the scripture says/earthquakes, fires, and plagues/the resurrection of the dead.- Jay Electronica’s “The Neverending Story”

A Written Testimony couldn’t be timelier.  The long-awaited arrival of an official Jay Electronica album clocks in as much of the world’s population confronts calamity.  Everything about A Written Testimony hits home.  Because I maintain an (intermittently) halal household and regularly visit mosques, I don’t blink at the album’s foundation in Islam.  Still mourning a December death, I appreciate the spiritual meditations on the 39-minute recording.  As someone with suddenly precarious employment prospects, I share the artist’s skepticism of several of our shared institutions.  The bleak A Written Testimony provides an entirely apropos soundtrack for this pivotal moment.

(Original image of the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan by There Stands the Glass.)

Album Review: R.A.P. Ferreira- Purple Moonlight Pages

Most jazz-based vocalese is unlistenable drek.  Jazz poetry is even worse.  Yet as the cool kids hyperventilate to Shabaka and the Ancestors’ entirely adequate new spiritual jazz album We Are Sent Here By History, I’m obsessed with R.A.P. Ferreira’s Purple Moonlight Pages.   Backed by the faux-jazz band Jefferson Park Boys, the rapper formerly known as Milo avoids the pitfalls of the form by applying a hip-hop sensibility and a protective cloak of ironic detachment to rhythmic poetry.  Smart and funny, Purple Moonlight Pages’s simultaneous evocation of Nas and Thelonious Monk is rarely corny.  My fingers involuntarily snap when Ferreira raps lines like “whisper-singing Nelly Furtado/wishing I was a Yardbird/plastic saxophone/ashy metronome.”  Although the songs are among the album’s weakest tracks, Ferreira created videos for “Doldrums” and “Leaving Hell”.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Expense Ratios

I’m a value investor.  I relish taking advantage of market anomalies in stocks as well as in goods ranging from albums to airline tickets.  Operating as an adaptable music obsessive in Kansas City means it’s impossible to uncover attractive deals on admission to concerts by stars like Lil Uzi Vert, but bargains abound for ostensibly highbrow performances.

The highlight of my stingy concertgoing career may always be nabbing a deeply-discounted front-row ticket to a 2012 Philip Glass concert for $30.  Even so, I’m inordinately pleased to have spent a measly $20 (plus a $4 dollar service fee) to see the jazz giant Bill Frisell last week.  (My review at Plastic Sax).

I’ve also been living high on the hog due to market aberrations for chamber music at the Folly Theater.  Spending $35 on a front-row seat for a concert by the revered chamber orchestra Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin allowed me to live like a Prussian monarch for two hours on February 21.  I pondered palace intrigue while basking in the rarified sound of unamplified period instruments.

The wondrous experience compelled me to buy another $35 front-row ticket for a concert by the Pavel Haas Quartet featuring pianist Boris Giltburg on March 6.  As the embedded photo of the string quartet’s Veronika Jarůšková and Giltburg indicates, I was so close to the action that I couldn’t capture the entire ensemble in a single frame.  As much as I’ll always love “XO Tour Lif3”,  the chamber music concert transformed me in a way an Uzi performance can not.  Watching Giltberg wrestle with Rachmaninoff’s “Études-tableaux”- (more or less exactly like this)- from a distance of ten feet allowed me to finally grasp the appeal of the composer’s work.

The jazz inflections in a contemporary piece by Ľubica Čekovská reminded me of Anthony Davis (this AD) compositions while the ensemble’s vital take on String Quartet No. 9 in C major made it seem as if Beethoven should be celebrating his 50th rather than his 250th.  Even though I didn’t enjoy a 45-piece Dvorak nearly as much, I walked out of the Folly Theater a changed man.  Eternal Atake resonated differently on my drive home.

I’ve saved the best for last.  I lamented the necessity of passing on Daniil Trifonov’s March 12 concert.  Tickets were far too rich for my blood.  But less than five minutes after receiving an email notification from the presenter offering remaining seats at a eighty-percent discount, I owned a fourth-row center ticket to hear the one of the most celebrated pianists in the world for a price of just $20.50.  I trust Uzi admires my investment acumen.


---
I make weekly concert recommendations for The Kansas City Star.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Album Review: Bad Bunny- YHLQMDLG

The range of intoxicating thrills available to sober vegetarians is limited.  That’s why I’m mainlining Bad Bunny’s deliriously heady Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana.  Beginning with the opening track’s hilarious send-up of “The Girl from Ipanema,'' the twenty-song set makes me feel as if I stopped at a dispensary on my way home from a liquor run.  The relentless application of giddy production effects on sugary pop-oriented reggaeton jams like “Pero Ya No” makes me dizzy.  Here’s actual footage of me dancing to “Yo Perreo Sola” in my bedroom.


---
I recently resumed management of The Kansas City Jazz Calendar.

---
I write weekly concert previews for The Kansas City Star.

---
I reviewed Pat Metheny’s From This Place at Plastic Sax.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

February 2020 Recap: A Monthly Exercise in Critical Transparency

Top Five Performances
1. Post Malone- Sprint Center
My review.
2. Roddy Ricch- Uptown Theater
My review.
3. Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin- Folly Theater
My Instagram image.
4. Matt Villinger, Peter Schlamb and Zach Morrow- Blue Room
My review.
5. Joseph- Madrid Theatre
My Instagram clip.


Top Five Albums
1. Beatrice Dillon- Workaround
My review.
2. Obongjayar- Which Way Is Forward?
My review.
3. Blackstarkids- Surf
N.E.R.Ds.
4. Jóhann Jóhannsson- Last and First Men
End times.
5. Tame Impala- The Slow Rush
Smooth sailing.


Top Five Songs
1. Pongo- “Uwa”
Sonic sunshine.
2. Boosie Badazz- “Mop Wit It”
Cleanup on aisle America.
3. yMusic- Gabriella Smith’s “Tessellations”
Classical pops needn’t be lame.
4. BTS- “Ugh!”
Get on up.
5. Sam Hunt- “Hard To Forget”
Webb Pierce for the win.

Last month’s selections are here.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Album Review: Kilter- Axiom

A deadly virus is inciting global panic, stock markets are in free fall and impending elections are problematic.  Only the most extreme sounds suffice in this perilous moment.  Kilter fuses the two of the most detested forms of music- doom metal and free jazz- on Axiom.  Naturally, I’m all about it.  The racket made by the New York trio on tracks including “Behind Your Door” and “Spherical Bastards” reflect the deeply troubled tenor of the times.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Version Galore

I’m rarely starstruck.  I don’t blink in the presence of celebrities or artistic luminaries no matter how much I respect their work.  Lee “Scratch” Perry is one of very few luminaries who’ve caused me to swoon.  Making physical contact with the legendary Jamaican at the Beaumont Club in 2009 meant a lot to me.  My friend McClain Johnson, aka DJ Diehard, recently secured ten minutes of customized ranting from Perry for his impressive collaboration with the saxophonist Aryana Nemati.  The raw dub-based “Riding the Riddim” features a characteristically loony string of Perry’s non sequiturs.  Here's a small sampling of Perry’s phrases from what he rightly characterizes as a version galore: “when I cough I send demons to hell,” “I’m perfect; I don’t make mistakes” and “I’m anti-ghetto.”  The soul fire still burns brightly.


---
I make weekly concert recommendations in The Kansas City Star.

---
I extol a harbinger of jazz to come at Plastic Sax.

(Original image of a roundabout in Akko by There Stands the Glass.)

Penance

Artists occasionally evolve more quickly than my perspectives about their music.  I failed to stay up to speed with Post Malone and Mac Miller.  In continuing to judge each man by his early output, I mistakenly held on to my first impressions more than a year past their respective artistic maturations.

I was infuriated by the popularity of Post Malone’s wretched initial work, yet his appearance at the Sprint Center earlier this month is one of my favorite performances of recent months.  Stoney hasn’t merely come a long way.  I belatedly realized he’s a pivotal figure in the history of popular music.

Just as Post renders genre distinctions meaningless, Miller’s posthumous album Circles is an intoxicating cocktail of hip-hop, jazz, R&B and pop.  The inviting sound makes his confessional songs about addiction and exhaustion all the more painful.  Worlds removed from the moronic juvenilia that characterized his first recordings, the profound Circles acts as a weary farewell. 

I’ve written positively about Post for a couple years.  He knows I’ve come around.  Sadly, my mea culpa is too late for Miller.  He was just 26 when he died 17 months ago.  I’m so sorry.


---
I write weekly concert previews for The Kansas City Star.

---
I reviewed the essential new Charlie Parker box set The Savoy 10-Inch LP Collection at Plastic Sax.

(Original image captured at the entrance of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by There Stands the Glass.)

Concert Review: Roddy Ricch at the Uptown Theater

Hearing the most popular song of the moment performed live is among the biggest thrills a music obsessive can experience.  Roddy Ricch provided that rush in triplicate at the Uptown Theater on Thursday, February 13.  The 21-year-old Compton rapper executed his ubiquitous smash “The Box” three times in his 50-minute headlining set. 

Ricch’s debut album Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial claimed the top spot on Billboard’s Top 200 for four non-consecutive weeks since its December 6 release.  In addition to being streamed on Spotify more than 322 million times, “The Box” is a TikTok sensation.

I squeezed into the sold-out Uptown Theater to witness more than 2,000 of Ricch’s peers lose their minds during renditions of viral songs including “War Baby,” “Ballin’,” “Die Young” and, of course, “The Box.”  Ricch made cursory stabs at a keyboard on one selection and was joined by a Hendrix-inspired guitarist on several other hits.

I may have snorted derisively when Ricch commended his “day-one fans”- he’s been releasing music for less than three years- but I loved every minute of the adrenaline-laced experience.  It looked and sounded just like this.


---
Tame Impala’s The Slow Rush sounds like a Kanye West remix of Genesis’ 1977 album And Then There Were Three.  A longtime skeptic of Kevin Parker’s ostensible genius, I’m finally on board.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

The Final Fall of Wichita

The lack of appreciation for Pat Metheny and his close collaborator Lyle Mays outside the jazz community baffles me.  Much of their work is as groundbreaking as the output of widely revered artists like Brian Eno.  A listening session inspired by the death of Mays heightened my appreciation of their legacies.  Revisiting Metheny and Mays’ 1981 release As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls today, I was struck by how the 20-minute title track is echoed by my current obsession.  Beatrice Dillon explores the same sort of electro/acoustic and android/human divergences on her astounding debut album Workaround.  If I were a talented DJ, I might attempt to create a mix of As Falls Wichita... with drops of Dillon’s congruent tracks “Three,” “Pause” and “Ten.”  Dillon and her peers in the cutting edge of electronic music may not know it, but Metheny and Mays got there first.


---
I contribute concert previews to The Kansas City Star.

---
I reviewed a performance by Matt Villinger, Peter Schlamb and Zach Morrow at Plastic Sax.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Hair of the Dog

I’ve anticipated hearing something like Obongjayar’s Which Way Is Forward? for most of my adult life.  The Nigerian’s seamless blend of hip-hop, indie-rock, gospel, electronica and Afrobeat is the effulgent fulfillment of the most optimistic version of my fevered reveries.  Here’s the essential “10K”. 


---
Tears filled my eyes when Waylon Jenning’s “Just to Satisfy You” popped up on Miranda Lambert’s pre-show playlist at the Sprint Center last night.  Her walk-on music was Aerosmith’s “Back In the Saddle,” another song from my childhood I hadn’t heard in years.  I reviewed Lambert’s concert for The Kansas City Star.

---
I can’t say I saw this coming.  The pop-country superstar Sam Hunt recasts Webb Pierce’s “There Stands the Glass” on his new single “Hard To Forget”.

---
I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.  Encountering the salvaged music video for Mark Anthony & Lyte Speed’s “I’m Just a Boogie Roller” turned my day around.

(Original image of an Arab-Israeli dog by There Stands the Glass.)

The Long Run

My obsessive-compulsive tendencies dictate my music consumption.  The necessity to fully immerse myself in the sounds that interest me means that lengthy works occasionally gum up the works.

The discovery of Anthony Braxton’s four-hour Quartet (New Haven) 2014 in December clogged my queue during the holiday season.  The live recordings of saxophonist and composer Braxton, trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum, guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Greg Saunier rendering a thorny form of free jazz aren’t exactly easy listening.

The new 230-minute version of Handel’s Agrippina that’s currently being staged at the Metropolitan Opera is similarly problematic.  Yet the 122 distinct selections of the digital version allow me to experience each distinct piece as an avant-garde chamber-pop song.

Dipping in and out of Agrippina during the past ten days- not to mention knowing less than 25 words of Italian- stripped all context and continuity from the work.  As is sometimes the case, not knowing what’s going on can be enormously comforting.


---
I reviewed Post Malone’s party-hearty concert at the Sprint Center for The Kansas City Star.

---
I write weekly concert previews for The Kansas City Star.

---
I admire Guitar Elation’s new album Double Live at Green Lady Lounge at Plastic Sax.

---
Justin Gillespie, the Kansas City man who rapped as Info Gates, has died.  I recall witnessing him best a clutch of area rappers at the Riot Room in 2018.  His work with the Beat Academy of Kansas City was also extremely promising.

---
I indulged my obsession with Jerry Hahn at his first Kansas City performance in eight months.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

January 2020 Recap: A Monthly Exercise in Critical Transparency

Top Five Albums
1. Jeremy Pelt- The Art of Intimacy, Vol. 1
I usually can’t be bothered with new mainstream jazz albums, but this tender trio recording buckles my knees.

2. Bill Fay- Countless Branches
I’m only slightly embarrassed to admit to being profoundly moved by Fay’s loopy mysticism and sentimental folk-rock.

3. Jennifer Curtis and Tyshawn Sorey- Invisible Ritual
Avant-garde hoedown.

4. Diana Damrau- Richard Strauss
Wandering in darkness.

5. Majid Bekkas- Magic Spirit Quartet
Visionary gnawa.


Top Five Songs
1. Future and Drake- “Life is Good”
Turnt.

2. 070 Shake- “Guilty Conscious”
The pop of tomorrow sounds a lot like the pop of yesterday.

3. Sa-Roc- “Hand of God”
Sacred ground.

4. Eminem featuring Royce da 5’9” and Black Thought- “Yah Yah”
Bring da ruckus.

5. Moneybagg Yo featuring DaBaby- “Protect Da Brand”
Goon squad.


Top Performances
An extended period of mourning, a debilitating illness and the trip of a lifetime prevent me from listing five worthwhile shows.  I intend to make up for the uncharacteristic breach in February.

You can pick up where I left off in 2019 here.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

I’m Caught One More Time

Bill Shapiro introduced me to Astral Weeks.  I was unfamiliar with Van Morrison’s sublime album prior to hearing an episode of Shapiro’s weekly Cyprus Avenue program on KCUR in the late 1970s.  Shapiro played a significant role in my education in boomer rock by the likes of Morrison, Bob Dylan, the Band and Joni Mitchell on other episodes of Cyprus Avenue. 

I was saddened to learn of Shapiro’s death last week.  Even before perusing the outpouring of grief on social media, I knew I wasn’t the only person profoundly affected by Cyprus Avenue.   I discovered the program was a reliable sales driver when I worked in music retail in Kansas City during the 1980s and witnessed appreciative audiences at the concert series he curated at the Folly Theater in recent years.

While I’m grateful for Shapiro’s influence on my impressionable ears as a young listener, I eventually lost interest in his show.  Shapiro’s imperious tone was grating and his relatively conventional taste contained few surprises.  His 1991 consumer guide Rock and Roll Review: A Guide to Good Rock on CD is an instructive document of his inclinations.  I may have parted ways with Shapiro, but he and I will always have “Cyprus Avenue”.  To quote Shapiro, “‘nuff said.”


---
Here are my latest concert recommendations for The Kansas City Star.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

What Rough Beast

The worst aspect of an extended illness is the inability to properly listen to music and read books.  It’s been a discouraging four weeks.  The visuals for the title track of Keeley Forsyth’s despairing new album Debris offer an accurate approximation of my headspace.  The ambitious adventure I’m about to embark on will either rehabilitate me or leave in a permanent state of disrepair.

(Self portrait by There Stands the Glass.)

Make Me Say Uhh

The death of the New Orleans bounce artist 5th Ward Weebie revived a dormant memory from one of my prior lives.  When I was a travelling salesman peddling the wares of independent record labels, a Houston-based wholesaler was among my most lucrative accounts for Southern rap.  The account treated sales reps like clients at a doctor’s office, a humbling system that forced me and my fellow weasels to cool our heels in a dingy waiting room.  Among the regulars was a mild-mannered guy who demurred from the loudmouthed banter common among my colleagues.

One morning I was allotted a few minutes to pitch an upcoming release from a New Orleans based artist, something akin to Weebie’s “Shake It Like a Dog”.  I compared the song’s prospects to whatever was currently hot on No Limit Records.  My buyer countered by threatening to “call Percy in here.”  Spotting my confusion, the buyer stunned me by revealing that the quiet sales rep was Percy Miller, a.k.a. Master P, the genius behind No Limit Records.  Miller continued to make sales calls to key accounts even after he made the world say uhh.  You can keep Superman and Clark Kent.  I’m sticking with Master P and Percy Miller.


---
I contribute weekly music previews to The Kansas City Star.

---
Recently at Plastic Sax: an appreciation of the Kansas City journeyman Todd Wilkinson and my annual survey of the top stories and trends on Kansas City’s jazz scene.

---
I feel obligated to note the passing of Neil Peart.  I harbor unironic affection for 2112.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Hurt

The arrival of Dylan Pyles’ 20-minute Solo Acoustic Guitar, Vol. 1 on streaming services sent me down a redemptive rabbit hole.  Vastly different from the lo-fi freak-folk of his 2019 album Popular Songs for the Heart, Pyles’ genial picking on the EP is in the sublime tradition of John Fahey and Glenn Jones, solo guitar masters in thrall of Mississippi John Hurt’s soothing country blues. 

As reassuring as Mister Rogers and as profound as John Milton, Hurt isn’t merely one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century.  He’s a spiritual healer.  Bingeing on Hurt while riding out a rough patch bolsters me.  I suspect his songs are universal panaceas. 

Are you sad?  “Candy Man” will set you straight.  Lovelorn?  Try “C.C. Rider.”  Wanna party?  I recommend “Corrinna, Corrinna.”  Need a laugh?  “Funky Butt” to the rescue.  In an existential quandary?  You need “Here I Am, Oh Lord, Send Me.”  Kids underfoot?  Introduce them to “You Are My Sunshine.”  Can’t sleep?  “Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor” is a sublime lullaby.  Curious about the origins of roguish rap?  “Big Leg Blues” is shocking.  And as many readers of this missive already know, Hurts’ 1928 sessions for the Okeh label are among the best sounds ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.


---
I created an audio feature about the barroom preacher Carl Butler for KCUR.

---
I write weekly concert recommendations for The Kansas City Star.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)