"The Other Parade" by Bassdrumbone: Helias, Hemingway, Anderson

Bassist Mark Helias, drummer Gerry Hemingway and trombonist Ray Anderson played together around 30 years ago. Since then (and before then too) they have racked up scads of kudos through their many recordings and appearances. You either know that already or you don't. Regardless, their new collaboration as Bassdrumbone, The Other Parade (Clean Feed 223) will get you up to speed in a hurry.

It's music that is both avant and in the jazz tradition. You hear echoes of NOLA parades and you hear the sound of jazz today.

Each player is an exclamation point in the sense that they have given their respective instruments their own individual identity and can and do compose some very worthwhile music to improvise off of. The composer's chores are shared equally by the trio with three apiece. They put the in/out approach into action and pave the way for the three-way musical conversations that follow.

The Kismetic (fatefully inevitable) rapport between the three produces some of the finest modern jazz I've heard this year.

Don't be fooled. Great artists like these are at the first rank of their instruments--and that, in spite of a bassoon-trombone sniper who weighed in on a comment some months ago--is an achievement that ranks equally with, say, the best tenors or the best pianists.

This album gives you the warp and woof of why that is so. Anderson forcefully swinging with a bold tone and subtle nuance, Helias punchy and smart, Hemingway a master of timbre and pulse, these are three of today's mothers. Check this one out and I think you'll be very glad of it.

Ben Britton's Unconventional Riot Gets It Going with "Children at Play" EP

Ben Britton and his group Unconventional Riot do something nice on a download-only EP Children at Play (self-released). Ben and his trumpet-playing brother John did a previous album under the nom de plum the Britton Brothers. I haven't heard that one, but Children at Play brings John in for one of the three cuts.

It's contemporary jazz with the kind of modern rhythmic and overall thrust of a small Dave Holland group. Jordan Berger's contrabass and Gabe Globus-Hoenich's drums lock into straight-eight grooves (one goes a rock-cum-low-amplification route). Ben on tenor, Matt Davis on electric guitar and for one cut John on trumpet get good leverage and interesting melodic-harmonic depth as a front line, with Matt comping chords with subtle openness. All three front liners have good solo moments and the compositions have weight.

You can grab this goodie at i-tunes or Amazon at a nice price. It's no doubt just a taste of things to come, but it gets a thoroughgoing froth of good sounds going throughout. Check it out.

Quintus McCormick's Soul-Blues? Oui! "Put it On Me!"

If you are into the soul blues tradition of legends like Bobby "Blue" Bland and Little Milton, then you will appreciate Quinton McCormick's Blues Band. Their second album, Put it On Me (Delmark DE 815) gives you the band at their best, 14 slabs of sanctified carrying on. Quintus wrote the songs, sings and plays the guitar solos and it all works. For about half the numbers the band is joined by the Chicago Horns. You get a good slathering of the old-school renewed for today.

It's the real deal. Quintus was born and raised in Detroit, began playing the guitar at age eight, came over to Chicago to study with Tyrone Davis's arranger, James Mack, and started up a band there. The Quintus McCormick you hear today is a fully formed bluesman with an original vocal style and some very soulful lead playing.

Get it happening with this one!

Emerson, Lake and Palmer 40th Anniversary Reunion Concert DVD

Say what you like, Greg Lake as vocalist and bassist with the first edition of King Crimson, Keith Emerson with the Nice and then the two joining with drummer Carl Palmer as ELP created a body of music that was enormously influential, a mainstay force in what later was called Prog Rock.

But of course there were others working the same turf in those days. What the Beatles, Procol Harum, the New York Rock and Roll Ensemble and the Left Banke did for the Baroque era of classical music ELP did for the Romantic and early modern era. They electrified it, gave it rock leverage and melded it to advanced rock song form. Of course they didn't just do that, but they did it so consistently and generally so well that their sound was one of the cornerstones to what came after. There also were of course the flirtations with jazz, the virtuoso keyboard aspect of the band and perhaps most importantly the art-song perspective that Greg Lake introduced to the mix which distinguished them from the earlier Nice and gave them more depth.

Last year ELP were invited to close the prog High Voltage Festival in England. They had not played together for something like 12 years, but eventually agreed. As Greg Lake remarks in interview portion of the DVD on tap today, they were men in their 60s recreating music they had first played in their 20s. Could they rise to the technical demands of the music and create the sound anew for a new generation of would-be fans?

The answer is contained in abundance on the new DVD 40th Anniversary Concert 2010 (MVD Visual/Concert One). There are a few rough patches here and there, and of course this is a one-take situation. Emerson occasionally sounds slightly overtaxed in the most bravura passages, and Greg Lake's voice has lost just a touch of the upper range, or at least has initial rustiness at the top of his voice for the first few songs. But Palmer is fit, the music flows majestically in a program of their most well-known pieces, while the classic light show, mist machine and electrically charged etc stage routine comes off without noticeable hitch. All is well-captured sonically and visually for the DVD.

Anyone serious about advanced rock in those days will recognize most if not all of the program. Those new to the band will see them do what they do best. Those that do not like ELP or prog will not change their minds. Regardless, this was designed as a one-shot deal, so it is possibly the last chance audience and band had to commune together. That aspect permeates the set and is rather touching. Yes, they've gotten older, but they rise to the occasion and pull it off with class and honesty. It brought back all the reasons I and many others of my generation followed the band with interest, then branched out our listening to the fusion, prog and electric jazz that flourished in the period and beyond.

The DVD brings all of that back and does it with visual and aural impact. So get this if you want a good show. "The show that never ends" may have ended here. Be a part of it if you are so inclined.

Jose Rizo's Mongorama: Charanga Jazz With Plenty of Kick

Jose Rizo and a group of hip West Coast Latin jazz adepts pay tribute to congalero and musical icon Mongo Santamaria on Mongorama (Saungu SR003). They are joined by guests Hubert Laws on flute and Mongo's protege, Poncho Sanchez on conga. All contribute some nice solos, as does Oscar Hernandez on piano, Justo Almario on tenor sax and Dayren Santamaria on violin. Almario stands out in particular.

Musical director and flautist Danilo Lozano puts together an attractive program of originals and music associated with Mongo's great bands and their sound. The arrangements are hot and eminently musical.

It's the sort of disc that will make you want to dance and listen at the same time. Beautiful. Very recommended.

Dom Minasi Crafts an Absorbing Solo Guitar Set on "Looking Out, Looking In"

Dom Minasi has set out on his own path for many years as a guitarist who creates his own pedigree. In his own way he has reinvented the jazz guitar tradition. His playing can draw on that tradition or jump forward into the outer zones of freely conceived improvisation.

For his first unaccompanied solo guitar recording, Looking Out, Looking In (Re:konstruKt, no catalog #), he addresses directly both aspects of his playing. He in effect appears before us in a "pure" state, without song forms, rhythm accompaniment, or any other distractions. It's a record of a number of days spent in the studio, each day taking on one tonal, traditionally formed improvisation and a contrasting one that bounces off into the nether reaches of his outside style. In this way, as he explains in the notes that accompany the recording, he avoids repetition and potential boredom, which can be the case with an all-unaccompanied disk.

So we have Dom Minasi, his guitar, his amp set up with a reverb-drenched sound, and that is all. To succeed the inventive juices which he possesses in abundance would need to flow, copiously.

So I put my download-only CD-R on the machine the first time not long ago and was pleased at what I heard. The sound-oriented textural outness balances and is balanced by his tonal excursions. One style situates the other so that you get a feeling of release from constraints of genre, in favor of the unlimited potential music Dom has at his personal creative disposal. You get glimpses of his early chordal-noted rootedness in Johnny Smith and Wes Montgomery (without anything but hints at those origins) and you get the launched orbital space music, both equally a part of who Dom is as a guitar master.

It is music you can return to and grow into, to get to recognize the various musical structures he invents on the spot. It is a solo guitar album not quite like any other, because it shows you just how much Dom Minasi is totally his own person on the instrument.

Guitarists will listen with acute interest I suspect; non-guitarists will let themselves be enveloped in the pointed beauty and characteristic sound universes he makes for our delight and contemplation.

The recorded sound is quite decent. No attempt is made to disguise the occasional split-second hums, pops and buzzes coming from the string-pickup-amp feed one hears now and then as Dom takes his hands from the strings. This is how one sounds and this is what one hears. It is not a major distraction.

This is not music of a lightweight quality. It is a one-hour portrait of a guitar master as he existed in space and time on those several days in the studio. It is more a series of brilliant spontaneous sketches than it is a finished painting, Zen-like brushstrokes in sound to be savored, not an elaborately reworked painting with varnish, frame, spotlight and museum guard. It's improvisation after all. Improvisation of brilliance.

You can get a download copy at CD Baby and I suspect other download outlets as well. You should. Very much recommended.

F*cked Up and their Punk Opus "David Comes to Life"

How do you judge punk? With your gut. It has to hit it. There should be fire, attitude and primal scream. There should be energy. There should be some feeling coming out of the usually elemental chord progressions. They should all be together. . . or not, in interesting ways. The lyrics should express something, supposing you take time to listen to them and/or they are audible. Other things too. Hey I just woke up, so the other things are at the bottom of my coffee mug.

F*cked Up, a band from Toronto, have all that on their recent David Comes to Life (Matador). They are a sort of band that might get some melody and guitar work in there that isn't strictly punk. And to me that makes them interesting. Oh, this album is based on a play. That's what Matador Records' website says. And if you listen hard, it sounds like there's a story there.

This is wall-of-sound stuff. My wife hates them. She doesn't like punk, though. They have power. It has a hard, near-metal largeness to the thrash. They combine punk with '60s folk rock via a 12-string jangle on one--and that's different. The band name wakes you up, doesn't it? It tells you that they don't want to enter the mainstream pop world. You have to admit that's pretty cool.