Clare Fischer, 1928-2012

Well aware that it's overused, I tend to avoid using the phrase "musicians' musician." Yet the characterization is almost unavoidable in any reference to Clare Fischer. A note from steadfast There Stands the Glass reader BGO aside, the only notifications I received about Fischer's recent passing were from musicians. Frankly, I never got it. Fischer's smooth solo albums continue to baffle me. Honestly, I have no frame of reference here.

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D'Angelo!

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Why does Rodrigo y Gabriela always leave me cold? The new Area 52 should be just my thing, but it seems far too slick and forced.

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I'm sadly underwhelmed by the new album by Cloud Nothings. Really good video, though.

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Kisses On the Bottom, Paul McCartney's new release, reminds me of those wonderful comeback albums by Alberta Hunter.

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I know a lot of people who are very excited about the latest shenanigans of Neil Young.

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Jumpin' Jehosafats! Vivica Genaux is in my town Friday!

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Kansas City Click: Slow Southern Steel oozes into the Beaumont on Wednesday.

Marty Bush of Salt the Earth performs at the Beaumont's Sidecar on Thursday.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Kill Them All

Spotting an outbreak of graffiti in a Kansas City suburb earlier this week threw me into a bout of bittersweet nostalgia. As an alienated teen, I became obsessed with The Clash for about eighteen months. The band epitomized my inchoate rebellious instincts. Confessing to my former naiveté is a bit embarrassing, but the band's first three albums served as my code during that time. If I was 16 years old today there's little doubt I'd be tagging OFWGKTA's name in my neighborhood. The hip hop collective's obscene nihilism is tailor-made for disaffected American youth in 2012. I'm more than a little bit jealous of the kids responsible for the vandalism pictured above.

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Appropriately creepy photos highlight my review of Friday's Scott Ian-less Anthrax concert.

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"Batteries", the latest song and video from XV, is disappointing.

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Chairlift take me nowhere.

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No Mayhem 2012 date in KC? I feel like a spurned teen.

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Heems' Nehru Jackets is one of my favorite new releases of the month. "Burritos 'til I die!"

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Attention wimps refined music lovers: a delicate Marketa Irglova concert is available as a free download at NoiseTrade.

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Kansas City Click: My official picks are published here.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Ioannis and Jamesetta

Johnny Otis was a brilliant work of fiction. And Etta James was much more than one song.

Ioannis Alexandros Veliotes was born in 1921. His story is hard to believe. Thankfully, one version of the truth can be found in Listen to the Lambs, a 1968 book in which Otis examines race in America. He identified as black, although his parents were Greek immigrants. Even Otis' biggest hit was blatantly subversive. (And what is Lionel Hampton doing in that clip?)

Otis is described as "The King of Rock and Roll" in the opening credits to his televised variety show. Although I adore his tributes to Jay McShann and Bill Basie on this amazing album, that characterization works for me.

Otis "discovered" Jamesetta Hawkins fourteen years after her birth in 1938. The lascivious recorded result was James' 1955 hit on Modern Records. Ever since I purchased her excellent album Seven Year Itch as a new release in 1989, I've been mildly obsessed with James. A wild woman until the end, her final performance in Kansas City scandalized me. The obituaries that focused on James' "At Last" miss the point. "It Hurts Me So Much."

Veliotes and Hawkins died last week.

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Here's my review of the Jazz Winterlude festival.

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I'm included in a KCUR audio feature titled "Where To Next For KC Jazz?"

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I could mess around at Paul McCartney's Rude Studio for hours on end. (Tip via Rock Town Hall.)

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OFWGKTA in a nutshell.

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Welcome to 2012 (Part 2).

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Youn Sun Nah covers "Enter Sandman." I love the 21st century.

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I never knew him well, but I take pride in once having worked with Glenn Jones. Here's the guitarist's new Tiny Desk Concert.

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Winston Riley has died.

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I genuinely love about a quarter of the tracks on the massive new Chimes of Freedom album. Inevitably, a handful of selections on the benefit project for Amnesty International make me wonder if torture isn't such a bad idea.

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Kansas City Click: Ladysmith Black Mambazo perform Tuesday at the Kauffman Center.

Emilie Autumn does her thing Wednesday at the Beaumont Club.

Death Angel open Thursday's concert at the Midland.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Review: Jack DeJohnette- Sound Travels

Jack DeJohnette will celebrate his seventieth birthday on August 9, 2012, and it seems as if he can get everything he asks for at this stage of his illustrious career. The credits of his new album Sound Travels read like a who's-who of today's top "jazz" artists. The list includes Ambrose Akinmusire, Lionel Loueke, Jason Moran and Esperanza Spaulding. Bobby McFerrin also makes a (very nice) appearance. The only misstep is a jamband track featuring Bruce Hornsby. It's five minutes of pain on an otherwise exceptional album. Here's the EPK.


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I love scrutinizing the annual Pazz and Jop poll. Here's a short list of artists I overlooked in 2011: Matana Roberts! Wussy! Tombs! Ballaké Sissoko & Vincent Segal! Random Axe! And I'm chagrined that my top album, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey's Race Riot Suite, isn't among the 1734 titles that received at least one tally. Am I the album's sole champion?

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ZZ Ward's "Better Off Dead" confounds me.

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I feel obligated to spend my time and money on the new Chick Corea/Eddie Gomez/Paul Motian tribute to Bill Evans. Here's the EPK.

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The KC Sound Collective- the act responsible for my favorite performance of 2011- is the subject of a nice introductory video.

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I recently discovered the Freedom Suite, a collaboration between Nnnenna Freelon and The Beast, at Bandcamp. (It's free.)

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Welcome to 2012.

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I'll consider the life of the late Johnny Otis next week at There Stands the Glass.

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Vizzy Zone.

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"We've got the songs- we don't have the money." Here's Molly McGuire's Kickstarter campaign.

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Kansas City Click: My official picks are here.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Jimmy Castor, 1947-2012

"One of the Butt sisters!" I've been snickering at "Troglodyte"'s lowbrow gag since I was a child. Yet Jimmy Castor, who died yesterday, did much more than provide me with cheap laughs.

My friend BGO chided me in an email exchange for implying that Castor was a mere novelty artist. And sure enough, according to Castor's site "(b)efore even finishing junior high school, Jimmy Castor had written his first million seller for Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers called 'I Promise To Remember'." Castor would have been nine years old at the time. How does that work? I'll count on superior scholars to sort out Castor's career. Besides, I heard the entirety of Castor's 1966 hit "Hey, Leroy, Your Mama's Callin' You" for the first time today.

It's an odd thing to attribute to a novelty song, but "Troglodyte" had an enormous impact on my musical development. The monstrous groove prepared me for the advent of the Ohio Players and the life-changing "Flash Light" five years later. The hip hop samples that followed in the next decade only confirmed my ardor.

One last note- it was "Troglodyte" that first stirred my prepubescent hormones. And what could possibly be more significant than that?


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I wrote an piece about Nicholas Payton's Black American Music proposal.

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An "elitist music snob" reviewed Nnenna Freelon's concert Saturday at The Folly Theater.

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I'd intended to offer a survey of today's new releases but I couldn't get past this.

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Ebony Tusks' video for "Everybody Runs" is on point.

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Kansas City Click: Whoop whoop! Boondox hit the Beaumont Club tonight.

The Life and Times return to the Riot Room on Wednesday.

I'll made the trek to Lawrence for Doomtree's show at the Granada on Thursday.

Start Here

I'm hardly a shill for NPR's music programming. I frequently mock the insular indie rock that's closely associated with the media conglomerate and its self-congratulatory audience. Last year's list of its listeners' favorite albums is a case in point. While I respect and even admire acts like The Decemberists, that rarefied sound rarely moves me.

I'm a hypocrite, however, because that same smug tone doesn't bother me half as much when it's applied to jazz Black American Music and "world" music. In fact, NPR's free concert downloads from globalFEST have dominated my listening this week.

I implore you to grab 'em all. My favorites are the performances by Wang Li and Mayra Andrade. Both artists had been unfamiliar to me. Andrade's straightforward take on a Caetano Veloso song is the dreamiest thing I've heard in 2012. So, thanks NPR. My gratitude is so earnest that I won't use this space to mock your endorsement of Real Estate.


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I'd love to check out Coachella. Truth be told, however, I'm much more of a Essence guy.

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You know what the world needs? A great new Alicia Keys album.

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CES Cru signs to Strange Music.

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The trailer for the forthcoming LCD Soundsystem doc is pretty great.

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The dull EPK for the new Robert Glasper album dampens my enthusiasm for the project.

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What's up, mirror?

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Kansas City Click: My official picks are published here.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Review: Micah Herman- The Ship

The Micah Hermon album review is reposted from Plastic Sax:

It must be terribly frustrating to be a Kansas City-area jazz bassist not named Bob Bowman, Jeff Harshbarger or Gerald Spaits. The three men invariably secure a disproportionate number of the area's high profile gigs. Each member of the triumvirate deserves his elite standing, but that doesn't mean that the talent pool ends with them. James Albright, Ben Leifer, Bill McKemy and Dominique Sanders are wildly different but uniformly excellent bassists.

And then there's the often overlooked Micah Herman. He's no less impressive than the aforementioned bassists, but to my knowledge he hasn't had a regular widely-touted public gig since he teamed up with Loren Pickford at the Golden Ox for a three-year run that ended in 2009. His new album The Ship, Vol. 1: The Studio Sessions makes a strong case for Herman as a top-tier talent.

While The Ship contains a breadth of styles, Herman generally works from a post-Coltrane perspective. "My Ship", a duet with saxophonist Matt Carrillo, is gorgeous. The contributions of saxophonist Matt Chalk also impress.

Yet it's the presence of Logan Richardson that makes the album essential for listeners not already heavily invested in Kansas City's scene. The brilliant saxophonist appears on five of The Ship's nine tracks. Richardson's innovative soloing on "Ease Back" is the sort of next-level stuff that fans of adventurous jazz dream about. Rather than merely admiring Richardson's improvisations, Herman acts as an electric Charlie Haden to Richardson's stunning Ornette Coleman.

The Ship's quiet issuance in December didn't do it any favors. In spite of its unfortunate timing and complete absence of hype, The Ship is the best album released by a Kansas City jazz artist in 2011.


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The Oak Ridge Boys and the Dukes of Dixieland team up for a new version of "Elvira".

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I intend to catch the A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs touring exhibit this month.

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Tinariwen's Tiny Desk Concert is wonderful.

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Rich Forever, Rick Ross' free new mix tape is shockingly good if you like that sort of thing. (And I do.)

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A link provided by BigSteveNO threw me into full geek mode.

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I don't know what to make of "Glory", Jay-Z's tribute to his newborn child.

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"She Smells So Nice"!

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Miles Bonny has a new Kickstarter campaign.

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Kansas City Click: Jason and the Scorchers appear Wednesday at Knuckleheads.

Lord T & Eloise do whatever it is they do Thursday at the Riot Room.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Review: Jad Fair's Bird House

Jad Fair's latest project instantly transported me back to the early '80s. In those days I felt compelled to salvage Half Japanese and Jad Fair solo albums from record store cutout bins. I didn't particularly enjoy the absurd outsider sounds but I loved the fact that "music" of this nature could actually be recorded, released, distributed and sold. A video for the title track for the forthcoming EP Bird House is an uncanny representation of my disjointed memories of that era. I continue to embrace the anarchy.

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Album of the Year?

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The unseasonably warm weather somehow makes the idea of driving to Arkansas to hear acts like Bob Weir and Railroad Earth at Wakarusa seem attractive.

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Kansas City Click: My official picks are published here.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Why Are There So Many Songs About Rainbows?

I'd been waiting for the moment for months. Hearing a song I selected at the internet site Turntable.fm boom through the sound system at a real life nightclub was a genuine thrill. When a few friends organized a Turntable.fm-themed event at Czar Bar during the holidays, the first song I programmed was Heavy D's "The Overweight Lover's in the House." I went on to play a few of my punk, metal and hip hop favorites but the party was eventually co-opted by fans of pop, dance and techno. That meant that a few of my selections- including Nashville P*ssy's "All F*cked Up"- were quickly skipped after they were "lamed." It was no surprise, consequently, that my troll pick "Rainbow Connection" made it all the way through without getting axed. I'll get another crack at it when The Beaumont Club hosts a similar event January 13.

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Here's 66 minutes of excellent footage from Mark Lowrey's December 21 gig at the Record Bar.

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I'll admit it- I always look forward to hearing Skillz' year-end wrap-up. Just once.

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Mac Lethal's new release is out. Here's the video for "Jake + Olive".

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Skip past the introduction for a sublime performance by Terri Lyne Carrington, Geri Allen, Esperanza Spalding and Tineke Postma.

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Jeff Harshbarger is Plastic Sax's Person of the Year.

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I can relate to the subject matter of the latest effort by Brother Ali.

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Kansas City Click: This is the best time of year to investigate locally-based talent.

(Original image of a large-screen projection from the Turntable.fm party by There Stands the Glass.)