Combat Rock: Joe Strummer and Four Fists

Strummer 001, a recently released two-hour compilation of Joe Strummer rarities, confirms what I’d already knew.  The man who died in 2002 did his best work with the Clash.  Even so, hearing Strummer working out new ideas before and after his contributions to the seminal band is fascinating.  I hadn’t heard half of the 32 punk, folk, pub-rock and reggae tracks on Strummer 001.  The previously unissued selections make it clear that Strummer was striving to become a modern-day Woody Guthrie.  He succeeded.

Four Fists’ 6666, a collaboration between underground hip-hop luminaries P.O.S and Astronautalis, is a de facto tribute to Strummer.  Not only is the sixth selection titled “Joe Strummr,” the opening track “Nobody’s Biz” references the Clash’s “White Riot.”  The snippet of a Strummer interview that opens “Unjinxed” highlights Four Fists’ embrace of Strummer’s mandate to create protest music.

With the exception of the title track of Four Fist’s album and a version of Strummer’s garage-band classic “Keys To Your Heart,” all of 6666 is better than anything on 001.  The vitality of Four Fists’ fusion of rap, rock and electronic music honors Strummer’s legacy.  The only thing P.O.S and Astronautalis get wrong is their lament that “Joe Strummer has been dead for too damn long.”  Strummer lives in 6666.


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I reviewed Ed Sheeran’s concert at Arrowhead Stadium.

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My most recent concert previews for The Kansas City Star are here and here.

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I reviewed performances by the Vijay Iyer Sextet at the Gem Theater and Ramsey Lewis and Urban Knights at the Folly Theater for Plastic Sax.

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Jazz saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett has died.

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The opera star Montserrat Caballé has died.

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The experimental musician Takehisa Kosugi has died.

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Angela Maria has died.  My fellow music obsessives will appreciate this documentary about the Brazilian star.

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Ambrose Akinmusire’s Origami Harvest has replaced Kanye West as the subject of the most heated music-related altercations I'm having with my family and friends.  Not everyone shares my enthusiasm for the probable album-of-the-year.

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Zinc City is a fever dream in which saxophonist David Binney and pianist Manuel Engel give free reign to their most psychotic impulses.  RIYL: Karl Stockhausen, nightmares, John Cage.

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The avant-garde bluegrass of Nathan Bowles’ Plainly Mistaken occasionally sounds like a mashup of Earl Scruggs and Philip Glass.

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Spider Bags’ scuzzy Someday Everything Will Be Fine is my kind of rock and roll album.  RIYL: Tav Falco, stage-diving into the abyss, Deer Tick.  Here’s “Oxcart Blues”.

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Lovely or fussy?  Artful genius or pretentious twaddle?  Past his prime or a lion in winter?  I won’t argue with either set of assessments of Paul Simon’s In the Blue Light. 

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Donny McCaslin’s concert at the Folly Theater in 2017 was transcendent because the saxophonist’s trio played jazz with the energy, volume and showmanship of a rock band.  McCaslin loses the plot on Blow, a rock album that resembles a forgettable solo venture by a David Bowie sideman.  RIYL: Adrian Belew, miscalculations, Reeves Gabrels.

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Prodded by a pal, I reluctantly listened to the Midnight’s Kids, a nostalgic love letter to mid-’80s suburban America in which synth-pop and video games were ascendent.  RIYL: Howard Jones, synth-wave, Yazoo.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Album Review: Noah Preminger- Meditations On Freedom

Noah Preminger is tilting at windmills.  Few artistic statements are more quixotic in 2017 than jazz protest albums.  Twitter rather than tonality is the order of the day.  Yet even if the New York based saxophonist fails to engage the new president in a war of words on social media, he’s made jazz great again with his sixth album Meditations On Freedom.  The project is slated for digital release on Friday, January 20, to coincide with the presidential inauguration.  Trumpeter Jason Palmer, bassist Kim Cass and drummer Ian Froman join the saxophonist on instrumental interpretations of familiar material including Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is” and striking original compositions like “The 99 Percent.”  Performed in the liberating free jazz style associated with Ornette Coleman’s classic quartet, the appropriately named Meditations On Freedom is terrific, tremendous and very, very strong.


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I wrote a nasty review of a desultory concert by Lloyd and J. Holiday.

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I reviewed Ramsey Lewis’ concert at the Gem Theater.

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I reviewed Echoes of Europe, the new album by the Dino Massa Kansas City Quintet, for KCUR.

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I chastised a misguided Kansas City artist at Plastic Sax.

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I wrote an extended preview about Atmosphere’s return to the Granada.

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I write weekly music previews for The Kansas City Star and Ink magazine.

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I discussed Blackbird Revue on KCUR this week.

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Posted here, for the first time anywhere- my response to the contemporaneous teen albums meme:

1. The Clash- London Calling
2. Michael Jackson- Off the Wall
3. Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson- Waylon & Willie
4. Bob Marley- Survival
5. Prince- 1999
6. Ramones- Ramones
7. Bruce Springsteen- Darkness on the Edge of Town
8. Talking Heads- Fear of Music
9. Hank Williams, Jr.- Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound
10. Stevie Wonder- Songs in the Key of Life

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Buddy Greco has died.  I thought about goofing on the late lounge lizard, but I genuinely like this ish.

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Tommy Allsup has died.

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Greg Trooper has died.

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William Onyeabor has died.

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Yukmouth’s JJ Based On a Vill Story is an unexpected triumph. RIYL: The Game, Oakland gangsta rap, E-40.  ”Thank You Lord” may be the album’s worst song.

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Systema Solar’s Rumbo A Tierra is a party-starter.  RIYL: Bomba Estéreo, a sense of surprise, Julieta Venegas.

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The XX’s I See You is an adorable homage to 1980s synth-pop artists like Alison Moyet and the Human League.

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I’m glad for my friends who are excited about Radiohead’s return to Kansas City on April 5.  An even more promising performance of forward-thinking sounds will take place at the Folly Theater on April 7.  The quartet of Donny McCaslin, Jason Lindner, Tim Lefebvre and Mark Guiliana act as convincing jazz ambassadors in a recent Tiny Desk Concert.

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Bonobo updates smooth jazz on the impressive Migration.  RIYL: Bob James, hot tubs, John Klemmer.

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Sepultura’s Machine Messiah isn’t just another perfunctory genre exercise.  RIYL: Pantera, rage, Kreator.

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Who needs the parody act Steel Panther when Grave Digger is still producing unironic gems like ”Healed By Metal”?

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Concert Review: Gingger Shankar at Polsky Theatre

Gingger Shankar’s intriguing appearance at Polsky Theatre on Saturday was intended to illuminate the underappreciated artistry of her mother and grandmother, but the multimedia concert raised more questions than it answered.

A short documentary narrated by Shankar, her performance with multi-instrumentalist Vivek Maddala and drummer Carlo Ribaux and a question-and-answer session left me more confused than ever about the family trees and music of the Shankar and Subramaniam clans.   I sense that Shankar told the audience of about 200 only one side of a very complicated story.

Yeah, but what about the music?  The most interesting bits featured the prerecorded voice of Shankar's mother (the provenance of the source material was hazy) accompanied by the sort of crossover fusion once associated with L. Subramaniam (the man I thought was Shankar’s father until Saturday’s presentation clouded my understanding).


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I reviewed Elle King’s return to the Midland theater.

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I reviewed a concert by Purity Ring and Health.

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I write weekly music previews for The Kansas City Star and Ink magazine.

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I discussed Berwanger on KCUR last week.

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I wrote an extended preview of Sturgill Simpson’s appearance at the Midland theater for The Kansas City Star and Ink magazine.

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Lecrae’s bravely existential “Can’t Stop Me Now” could kill his career as a Christian rapper.

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Donny McCaslin’s Beyond Now is an essential companion to David Bowie’s Blackstar.   The least appealing moments of the daring album remind me Sting’s work with Branford Marsalis, but much of Beyond Now is precisely the sort of fusion I dream about.

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Jah Wobble is a gem.

(Original images by There Stands the Glass.)

Album Review: Jodeci- The Past, The Present, The Future

Several weeks after attending an embarrassingly inept concert featuring Guy, K-Ci & JoJo, El DeBarge and Doug E. Fresh at Municipal Auditorium, I cued up Jodeci’s comeback album with great trepidation. 

Against all odds, The Past, The Present, The Future is amazing.  The sex songs are sexy and the love songs are dreamy.  The new effort is clearly superior to the band’s 1991 debut album.

Instead of jeering when K-Ci and JoJo spoke about a forthcoming Jodeci reunion during their outing at Municipal Auditorium, I should have applauded.

Here’s a video for ”Every Moment”.


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Hearing David Lindley in a concert hall setting was a nice change of pace.  I reviewed his concert at Johnson County Community College.

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I contributed a Local Listen segment about Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys to KCUR’s Up To Date.

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GlassField’s The Answer’s In the Pit of Your Stomach is RIYL: Fleet Foxes, Missouri indie-folk, Iron & Wine.

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Stik Figa and Leonard Dstroy have a video for ”More Or Less”.

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Loyal readers of There Stands the Glass will recall that I fell head over heels for José James’ No Beginning No End.  The smooth, innovative project was my fifth favorite album of 2013.  James’ followup album was a funky mess.  Aside from the rendition of “Strange Fruit” that closes the recording, the new Yesterday I Had the Blues: The Music of Billie is as straightforward as a Tony Bennett album.  I can’t imagine anyone not liking it.  Yet I doubt I’ll ever love it.

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I’m worried for myself.  I was repeatedly moved to the brink of tears as I listened to Valentina Lisitsa’s solo piano album Plays Philip Glass. 

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Donny McCaslin’s fascinating electro-jazz album Fast Future is RIYL: the Pat Metheny Group, 2015, Nile Rodgers.

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Hilary Hahn’s new Mozart set is nice.

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After viewing their ”What’s In my Bag” segment, I want to hang out with the Decemberists.

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Danya Stephens’ Reminiscent is uneventful.  RIYL: Walter Smith III, Blue Note blowing sessions, Ravi Coltrane.

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I can’t stand Ben Goldberg’s Orphic Machine, but I suspect a few There Stands the Glass readers will adore the hybrid of jazz and art-rock.  RIYL: Bjork, intellectuals, Becca Stevens.  Here’s an EPK.

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Pending the availability of cheap flights, I might attend the Free Press Summer Festival in Houston.  The lineup that includes R. Kelly, Slim Thug, Pentagram, Yung Lean, Mastodon, Z-Ro, Chance the Rapper, Sturgill Simpson, Lecrae, Charles Bradley, Bun-B, Diarrhea Planet, Ilovemakonnen and Paul Wall is calling my name.

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I didn’t have high expectations for Kaleo’s set at the Tank Room last Thursday but I didn’t expect generic blues-rock from the Icelandic band.  It’s not the worst show I’ve seen in 2015, but it’s certainly among the most disappointing.

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As I was appreciating the Norwegian tubist Daniel Herskedal’s excellent Slow Eastbound Train, a resident jazz-hater suggested that he admired the sound and asked “what kind of music is this?”  I didn’t have a good answer.  I suppose it’s contemporary Nordic classical music.

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I freely admit that Sufjan Stevens’s Carrie & Lowell is quite good.  RIYL: Iron & Wine, hushed indie folk, Alexi Murdoch.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)