Very Close to, if not actually in, the CD player:
seen/heard ° listen ° buy
seen/heard ° listen ° buy
Standards
Stevie Wonder - They Won't Go When I Go (mp3) (buy)
I've always been amused by the spite that can come from those who've assured themselves salvation. It's not enough that I'm all Rapture-riffic; what matters is that you're not. Afterliving well is the very best revenge.
Not to cast judgment over Stevie Wonder. It's tough to resent him anything, isn't it? Though this was recorded during Wonder's incredible string of early ‘70s successes, and though the album artwork (as redressed in the CD booklet, at least) squeezes an image of the artist as an innocent child in the middle of this song's lyrics, "They Won't Go" doesn't smack of superstar self-pity. (Not the way George Michael's horrible, breathy, self-righteous cover of the song, from Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1, does. If you need to give your cringe muscles a workout, go listen to Michael wheeze, "He ain' har'ly gon' give.")
It helps that the original, from the great Fulfillingness' First Finale, is a studio creation. There's some dressing - overdubbed vocals and a moderately mooged-up arrangement - but the song's anger, and determination, are drawn from the central voice, the solo piano. This comes from a very lonely, very hurt place.
Denis Colin Trio - They Won't Go When I Go (Stevie Wonder cover) (mp3) (buy)
So, what might have happened, was: The meek got impatient, got themselves some lobbyists. It's not a cover song, it's an End Times revival.
Unlike Michael's version, this one - from an all-white French jazz trio and a Minnesotan gospel family - pushes Wonder's safe haven to Promised Land without making those promises entitlements. Its urgency and its plurality are striking. Sure, the subject's still singular, but the melody's built on surges. It's a movement.
The Denis Colin Trio's 2002 CD, Something in Common, is a covers album framed as a tribute to African-American struggle. It opens with a Wyclef Jean's song about Amadou Diallo, closes with Coltraine's "Amen;" there's some Sonny Rollins, some Hendrix, some. A lot of it works.
Some of that's due to the slightly off-kilter instrumentation. Instead of sax/bass/drum kit, they're bass clarinet/cello/zarb, and Didier Petit's bowing and Pablo Cueco's bongoing lift it up and push it forward. Colin's clarinet stays low - under the zarb, even - for the most part, giving the vocalists space.
Should The Steeles, Prince's go-to gospellers for a while, be along only for sake of legitimacy - all vocals on the trio's record are handled by African-American guests - they still turn in an amazing performance. The music streaming on their site is polished pablum; here, they're determined, convincing. Responses chase calls. What really earns the track its spot is a bit of break-out testimony not in the original. "I'm talking bout the wicked men! (They won't go!)."
Wicked men, watch out! I'm convinced.
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Cato Salsa Experience with The Thing and Joe McPhee - Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin cover)(mp3) (buy)
Submitted for its restraint. (And because that last one was a bit solemn for a Friday.)
There were eight musicians involved in that Wonder cover, all the sounds warm and perfectly delineated. There are eight guys here, too, and it's a glorious, honking piece of slop.
Recorded live at the 2004 Kongberg Jazz Festival in Norway, the Sounds Like a Sandwich EP features a collaboration between a garage band, a jazz trio, and one of my favorite free jazz hornmen, Joe McPhee. The musicians liked each others' company enough that they later got together and few years later and recorded a studio record (2007's Two Bands and a Legend, which features a P.J. Harvey cover and liner notes by Thurston Moore).
There's a lot of chaos burbling under the thing, but it's a really straightforward reading, riding on that riff and relying on one of Zeppelin's more Yardbirdsy-pop choruses. While lead singer Salsa (née Cato Thomassen) might get gonged (or whatever they do, there) on The Singing Bee (Way down in silence?) he does a serviceable Plant impersonation, and laughs at himself all the way.
When the song bump-bump!s back together at the end of the bridge, the echo after each second bump! makes these eight guys sound like an army.
But again, restraint: The live version on Zeppelin's How the West Was Won runs over twenty-three minutes. The first break takes place just ninety-six seconds in - a short drum solo, some psychedelic f/x, Plant's usual bird-calls-slash-sex-groans - and lasts almost three minutes. One verse and one chorus - one minute - later, it breaks down again into a back and forth between Page and Plant. Then detours into four other songs. When, just shy of the twenty-one minute mark, the riff reasserts itself the crowd goes bonkers, having totally forgotten that this was the song the band was supposed to have been playing.
The free jazz musicians? They bring it in just under the time of Led Zeppelin II's original studio cut.
Wicked men, watch out! I'm convinced.
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Remember the boys of Sure Juror? Of course you do.
Personnel problems - good drummers are hard to find (maybe this guy is available) - have kept them off the stage. So in lieu of promoting their second album Smut, they're giving it away for a while. Download it for free at their site.
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You've read it everywhere else, now read it here: A gaggle of NYC bloggers - everyone but me, actually, because I'm just not a team player - have put together an all-day music fest for charity.
It's called the After the Jump Fest and, despite the name, proceeds aren't going to suicide survivors. Any money earned will benefit music education in New York City schools, in hopes the next generation of music bloggers does so much better than we have.
Free day show outside Studio B; a wee-priced night show inside. Tickets are available here. Prizes - including CMJ badges - will be given away! It's next Saturday! The 25th! It's for charity!
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Fair Use Dept.:
Look! It's the trailer for Mr. L.F. Dibley's Be Kind Rewind!
Eh, I'll wait and watch it on YouTube.
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Tay Zonday is opening for Dan Deacon and Girl Talk at a show in his home state. He is also "the rising Aquarius Galaxy patriot." Stay weird, dude.
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Take the month of November off: Criterion is releasing Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz as a SEVEN-DVD SET, which will include a complete, author-penned 1931 adaptation (90 mins!) of Döblin's bildungsroman. And accidentally announced: Paul Schrader's awesome, supersaturated Mishima.
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Celebrity Schlong fans rejoice: David Cronenberg's new film, Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects Eastern Promises, will feature full-frontal Viggo.