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Lee Oskar: The Best of Lee Oskar
by Robert Spencer
Remember WAR, the old rock and funk group? Remember their killer harmonica player? That's right: it was Lee Oskar. Lesser known outside WAR, Lee released a passel of first-rate Seventies-funk solo albums. This Best Of collection culls the best cuts from those albums. They are uniformly funky and distinguished by the Danish-born Oskar's distinctively straightforward, refreshingly ...
Eugene Chadbourne: Worms with Strings
by Robert Spencer
Well, the world may or may not be ready for a musical celebration of fecal worms, but Eugene Chadbourne certainly is, and when Eugene Chadbourne is ready for something, he has long since ceased to wait for any sign of approval or readiness from the populace. For all his joyful eccentricity, Chadbourne is a first-rate instrumentalist, ...
Eugene Chadbourne: Worms with Strings
by Robert Spencer
Well, the world may or may not be ready for a musical celebration of fecal worms, but Eugene Chadbourne certainly is, and when Eugene Chadbourne is ready for something, he has long since ceased to wait for any sign of approval or readiness from the populace. For all his joyful eccentricity, Chadbourne is a first-rate instrumentalist, ...
Italian Instabile Festival: Pisa Teatro Verdi, December 1997
by Robert Spencer
This sprawling 2-disc set contains a stunning abundance of great music. The 19-member orchestra includes a number of luminaries of the Italian jazz and free music scenes, most of them largely unsung Stateside: the mercurial and hypnotic Carlo Actis Dato (tenor and baritone saxophones, bass clarinet); the wily, grizzled veteran Enrico Rava (trumpet); Bruno Tommaso (double ...
The Jazz Mandolin Project: Tour de Flux
by Robert Spencer
Mandolin, yes, but you won't find any foggy mountain bluegrass here. When these folks took the name the Jazz Mandolin Project, they could have been inspired by the Truth in Advertising Commission. Actually, without knowing that Jamie Masefield is wielding a mandolin (as well as a “tenor banjo"), a casual listener might figure that this is ...
Various Artists: Smooth Jazz Radio Hits, Volume One
by Robert Spencer
Oh yaaaaaaaaaaasssss, it's another smoothfest from Instinct Jazz, and this one, let me tell you, is smoother'n glass, smoother'n the finest crystal, smoother'n your bathroom mirror, and oh yaaasss, smoother'n yer baby's bottom. It's two from the redoubtable Gota, three from the jam meister extraordinaire Count Basic, and one each from Soundscape UK, Brian Tarquin, Duncan ...
Stefano Maltese and Open Sound Ensemble: Living Alive
by Robert Spencer
Stefano Maltese is an accomplished Italian saxophonist who recorded a marvelous album in 1995, Double Mirror, featuring the “free music" giants Evan Parker and Keith Tippett. This time around he takes up soprano sax, alto sax, and (in a new addition) bass clarinet, but the rest of the instrumentation is rather more unusual: he's joined by ...
What We Live: Never Was
by Robert Spencer
What We Live, a trio consisting of Larry Ochs (tenor and sopranino saxophones), Lisle Ellis (bass), and Don Robinson (drums), creates a series of reflective soundscapes on Never Was. Ochs, a titan of the Bay Area music scene and one of the mainstays of the innovative and breathtakingly virtuosic Rova saxophone quartet, is a versatile tenor ...
Mingus, Coltrane, Blakey & Monk: Four Rhino Reissues
by Robert Spencer
This second set of Atlantic classic jazz reissues from Rhino is just as attractively and imaginatively packaged as the first, and the music is just as seminal. I wonder why no one had this idea earlier: instead of trying to approximate LP packaging in and around a jewel box, Rhino here simply shrinks the actual original ...
Shirley Eikhard: Going Home
by Robert Spencer
Ah, la Shirley. Smoky-voiced, sensual, Shirley Eikhard has the full low tones of Sarah Vaughn and the bold spiritedness of Cleo Laine. Not only is her singing emotionally powerful, but, unusually enough, she wrote the songs that serve as its vehicle here. They range from intimate bossa nova ("Desperately") to up-tempo jazz ("Nothin' Like Love," “Crazy ...
