Jeff Lederer: Guilty​!​!​!

Note to conservative Republicans: stop reading this review now. Note to self: There cannot be but a handful of folks who are both MAGA and jazz and improvised music listeners.

Jeff Lederer's Guilty!!! recalls a time when jazz was at the forefront of the zeitgeist. Max Roach, John Coltrane, and Charles Mingus were creating music about and during the civil rights movement. Elsewhere Neil Young was protesting the four dead at Kent State, while Graham Nash was recruiting demonstrators to come to the Democrats' Chicago convention to change the world.

Lederer recruits his Swing n' Dix ensemble of cornetist Kirk Knuffke, tubist Bob Stewart and drummer Matt Wilson to invigorate the progressive cause of ending the career career of the 45th President and his MAGA cronies. He connects the dots between the racist segregation of the 1950s and Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus and today's Nazi admirers in Congress with a sampling of Mingus' "Fables For Faubus" that swings every bit as hard as the original version. Trombonist Curtis Hasselbring co-wrote along with Lederer the title track which samples the words of Congressman Adam Schiff's reading Mr. Trump's 34 felony guilty verdicts. These are transcribed for the ensemble to mimic and accelerate into a fever pitch. None of the usual suspects are left out. Marjorie Taylor Green of Jewish space laser fame is skewered on "Buzzsaw" and so is expelled congressman and serial liar George Santos. "Cheapening The Process" returns to Santos' alleged drag queen career in Brazil with Mary LaRose wordlessly singing over the bossa nova groove. Senator Katie Britt's imitation of a Stepford Wife is sampled, it is her rebuttal to the 2024 State Of The Union address for "We The People" as the circus clown sounds swirl around her words.

"Buttigieg vs. Sanders" samples the 2020 debate between the two politicians with each man talking over the other. The ensuing music follows suit, eschewing call-and-response for a comparable weave of instrumentation. Stewart mimics Mr Trump's speech patterns on "Deportation Operation" as the ensemble relinquishes order for chaos. The appropriate ending track is Lederer's cover of Albert Ayler's "Truth is Marching In." The buoyant march, chock full of hope should replace "Hail To The Chief" if as Lederer predicts, we have our first Madame President.

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