March 2009

  • A Free Spiritual: Pharoah Sanders

    By cobwebsandstrange on 3/31/09 1:49pm
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    Generally considered the high point in his recordings, the solo albums that Pharoah Sanders released on Impulse between 1969 and 1973 make up a formidably dense set of discs and tracks. Curiously, though, all but a few of the nine discs from this time are made up of two tracks – one for each side of a record. And in this fact, it makes grasping the breadth of the multi-instrumentalists work even more difficult.

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  • John McLaughlin is Better at Guitar than You

    By cobwebsandstrange on 3/30/09 3:10pm
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    John McLaughlin probably hasn’t impacted jazz guitar playing as much as his predecessors, but he is as easily recognizable to listeners. It’s not necessarily the tone of his instrument or the setting that he’s playing in that makes attentive listeners able to recognize this British born musician, but the cascading fall of notes that he unlooses from his guitar. Playing with everyone from Miles Davis to the Rollin Stones, McLaughlin has remained an integral part of music for over forty years.

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  • Jim Hall and Ron Carter: Alone Together

    By cobwebsandstrange on 3/24/09 3:57pm
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    The range of work that Ron Carter has produced can be matched only be the shortest list of musicians. Anything from out bop to more modern (almost) smooth sounding work echoes from his deep back catalog. It could be figured that Carter work with one of the most important ensembles in jazz history when he did time with Miles Davis. That period during Carter’s career, though, could count as one of the most verdant epochs of the genre.

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  • Django: Gypsy Jazz

    By cobwebsandstrange on 3/24/09 1:41pm
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    The way in which anything is described – the words used to explain it and the context that it’s placed – serves to define it as much as reality does. One’s perception can differentiate the object, person or idea from the norm or even another person’s. So in describing music, whatever adjectives get tacked onto genre names serve to explicate a work almost as much as the work itself. Of course that’s a bit over blown, after all it’s just music.

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  • Byard Lancaster - Exactement

    By cobwebsandstrange on 3/23/09 2:44pm
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    Defining free jazz is obviously a waste of time. No other idiom within jazz has created as much negative fervor – alright, maybe bop. But while bop become the standard bearer of the genre, free jazz has continued to live out on the fringes of society. It attracts big names occasionally and is obviously a pretty good way to release whatever seems to be floating around inside of you, but by definition, it’s not meant to be all that palatable.

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