Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

I’m home alone for the first time in thirty years.  The members of my brood aren’t going to burst through the front door at any moment and my wife is exploring a distant island.  I feel jarringly isolated no matter how high I crank the volume on the latest albums by Brockhampton, Rapsody and Taylor Swift.

That’s why the new release from Shannon Lay hit me like a ton of bricks.  I intended to give August just a cursory listen, but bleak songs like “Death Up Close” and “Nowhere” directly address my newfound solitude.

Lay is best known for her affiliations with Ty Segall and Kevin Morby, but August is superior to anything I’ve heard by either indie-rock mainstay.  Of the multitude of recordings by the Nick Drake and Sandy Denny facsimiles currently clamoring for attention, only Bill MacKay’s Fountain Fire and Lay’s August are worthy distractions from blockbusters like Ginger, Eve and Lover.


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I commend the Kansas City jazz musician Brian Scarborough at Plastic Sax.

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Miniature reviews of the aforementioned albums: Taylor Swift remains intensely unlikeable on Lover, but her craftsmanship is impeccable.  The sound field on Rapsody’s Eve is atrocious. I demand a remix.  Brockhampton’s Ginger is a glorious mess.  Sad songs (say so much).

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I knew Carl Jefferson.  I can say with complete confidence that he’d be horrified by most of the music currently released by the straight-ahead jazz record label he founded.  That said, you can’t argue with success.  The absurdly revisionist The History of Concord Jazz video feature is worth a look.

(Original image of Iceland by the life partner of There Stands the Glass.)

Year-End Clearance

All bets are off.  I suppose it’d be nice to act my age in 2018, but I don’t think it’s in me.  I walked out of a distinguished jazz concert on Sunday.  Blame Brockhampton.

The urgency of Saturation III, the third album of 2017 from self-professed “best boy band since One Direction” obliterated my patience for bop formalism.  How can I relish the sound of June 1964 when “Boogie” is happening in December 2017?  Saturation III isn’t perfect- the new release contains the best and worst songs of Brockhampton’s crazed career- but its vitality makes almost everything else seem stale.

N.E.R.D’s No One Ever Really Dies is similarly inconsistent.  Even so, the highs are the stuff of codeine dreams.  Had I waited another week to publish my year-end best-of lists, Saturation III and No One Ever Really Dies would have placed prominently.

I wish I also embraced Revival.  While I’m predisposed to like Eminem, his new album induces involuntary eyerolls and reflexive raspberries.  I should have known that there’d be side effects to my obsessive listening to Future all year.


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I was a guest on Chris Haghirian’s Eight One Sixty radio show on December 5.  I featured tracks by Samantha Fish, Vince Staples, Isaac Cates & Ordained, Brother Ali, Pistol Pete, Bobby Watson and Syd in the year-end best-of program.

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An article about my work on behalf of the Kansas City Jazz Calendar is in the December issue of Jazz Ambassador Magazine magazine.

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I recently named The Matchsellers, The Kansas City Jazz Orchestra and The Floozies the KCUR Bands of the Week.

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John Scott of the Green Lady Lounge is Plastic Sax’s Person of the Year.

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My most recent weekly music previews for The Kansas City Star were published here and here.

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Pat DiNizio of the Smithereens has died.  He appeared to be in very poor health when the band performed at a community festival in downtown Overland Park in 2016.

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Kevin Mahogany has died.

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Johnny Hallyday has died.

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Keely Smith has died.

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The jazz guitarist Mundell Lowe has died.

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The jazz drummer Sunny Murray has died.

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Leon Rhodes of the Texas Troubadours has died.

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The Chicago jazz pianist Willie Pickens has died.

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Saxophonist Ralph Carney has died.

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Blues man Leo “Bud” Welch has died.

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After dreading the obligation for months, I finally hit play on Chuck Berry’s posthumous album Chuck.  It’s fine.

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I regret overlooking Downtown Boys’ Cost of Living this year.  RIYL: the Clash, relevant rock, Priests.

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The vintage Ghanaian party album Ebo Taylor and the Pelikans has been reissued.  RIYL: Osibisa, highlife, Fela.

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Tyler, the Creator’s Tiny Desk Concert outing is vastly superior to his recent perfunctory concert at the Truman.

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Dustin Lovelis adds a polished spin to the psychedelia of Syd Barrett and Ty Segall on Been Hit Before.  (Via S.S.)

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My former coworker Glenn Jones delivers “A Different Kind of Christmas Carol”.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

I Spit My Heart Out, Looking Out For My Best Interests

The king is dead.  Long live the kings.

Following last night’s slightly disappointing concert by Tyler, the Creator, I’m officially switching my primary deviant hip-hop allegiance to Brockhampton.  Tyler behaved like a semi-responsible adult at the Truman.  That’s not what I want from the disruptive artist I fell hard for in 2011. 

Brockhampton is right on time.  ”Junky” is among the thrillingly subversive anthems on the mind-boggling Saturation 2.  (Saturation, the first album the Texas collective issued in 2017, isn’t quite as transcendent.)

The so-called boy band is loaded with transgressive young talent.  I fully expect two or three of its members to become mainstream stars who will inevitably disappoint me a few years from now.  Until then, the thrill isn’t gone.


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I reviewed Tyler, the Creator’s concert at the Truman for The Kansas City Star.

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I write weekly music previews for The Kansas City Star.

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I named Katy Guillen & the Girls the KCUR Band of the Week.

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Blaque Dynamite’s Killing Bugs is an insanely dense experimental funk album.  RIYL: Flying Lotus, the low end, Thundercat.

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Jerry Granelli’s Dance Hall is like Hudson 2.0.  Veteran jazz cats- in this case a group that includes drummer Granelli, guitarists Robben Ford and Bill Frisell- cover classic rock, blues, jazz and R&B staples by the likes of Bob Dylan, Charles Mingus and Fats Domino.  It’s redundant fun.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)