my new book and cd AmericanMental (Amazon) arrived in March with the virus. so it’s been a seriously ironic year for me. but despite my particular circumstance, here we are on the heels of Annus Horriblis still clinging to traditions both minuscule and grand, like pOOp 2020 and I’ve something to painfully and willfully confess: I can’t listen to whatever modern pop or rock n roll is anymore. Truly, truly don’t care. Never thought I’d say that being so astute to the ch-ch-changes, so I’m not even going to try and bluff you. I’m going to list what got me through our perilous surge towards tyranny and affliction and move along to next year when the two Marks, who beat at the heart of this unscrupulous amalgam of obsession and obsfucation, hopefully email me to ask kindly, hey what you got this year dude?
stay healthy
mj
Buy New or Used via Amazon Rent via iTunes [?]
Nubya Garcia – Source
This one’s the whole trip. London’s sax terror’s debut with a new a whole new paradigm.
Buy New or Used via Amazon Rent via iTunes [?]
Lakecia Benjamin – Pursuance: The Coltranes
I placed these back to back because that’s how you should listen to them for full mind expansion and escape from this dire time.
Buy New or Used via Amazon
Maria Schneider – Data Lords
Like everywhere else, the sisters are bringing new challenges to the fore. New patterns of play.
The future is female all the t-shirts say. Good. I could use a change of scenery.
Buy New or Used via Amazon Rent via iTunes [?]
Charles Lloyd – 8 Kindred Spirits
They can and someone will undoubtedly write heady thesis upon theory and hypothesis about this one but not me. Turn off the clown circus and listen to a real leader lead. Amazing what rolls around in the minds of some octogenarians.
Buy New or Used via Amazon Rent via iTunes [?]
Tim Berne’s Snakeoil – The Fantastic Mrs. 10
Modern mayhem Mach 10 played with all the dexterity of an Avenue C shell game.
Buy New or Used via Amazon Rent via iTunes [?]
Joni Mitchell – The Early Years: 1963-1967
I’ve positioned Joni here so you can stop and catch your breath from the previous whirlwinds.
Then marvel at five discs of enduring art and budding genius. Cameron Crowe’s interview is way too softball, but hey, even icons get tired of explaining themselves. I know I sure as hell do.
Buy New or Used via Amazon Rent via iTunes [?]
Dave Brubeck – Time OutTakes
An exciting history lesson on how history can go either this way or that on a whim. That’s a lesson to be taken to heart considering where we find ourselves in history’s tide at the moment.
Buy via Bandcamp
Sun of Goldfinger – Congratulations to You
Tim Berne again along with fellow Lower east Side inmates guitarist David Torn and drummer Ches Smith, pulling it all apart because it needs to be.
Buy New or Used via Amazon Rent via iTunes [?]
The Nels Cline Singers – Share The Wealth
Cline doesn’t really care what genre he shreds or pays homage. God bless him for it.
Buy New or Used via Amazon
Sonny Rollins – Rollins In Holland
Someone had to navigate the world outside the margins that players like Berne, Cline and Nubya Garcia boldly sail upon. Here’s a previously unheard concert from ’67 that knows no boundaries.
Charles Mingus – @Bremen 64 and 75
Speaking of no boundaries, here’s Mingus in full gale glory with Eric Dolphy, Danny Richmond, Jaki Byard, Johnny Coles, and Clifford Jordan at his side in ’64. Richmond, Don Pullen, George Adams, and Hal Walrath in ’75.
Bob Dylan – Rough and Rowdy Ways
With the news that he took his big payday in advance by selling to Universal (“Wiggle Wiggle”
as background music for Late Night Charlie’s Exotica Forum? ”Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum” for a Pence/Pompeo run in 2024?) I was gonna kick the old bastard off this list. Then I thought Shit, that doesn’t affect me in anyway. I ain’t in the will and this really is a pretty damn good record. “I Contain Multitudes,” My Own Version of You,” “Key West (Philosopher’s Pirate)” and so on. So here you go.
Bruce Springsteen – Letter To You
Speaking of records far better than I or most could have expected, here’s Bruce and E Street slamming away at the dying of the light. That this could be the last E Street recording given their ages and the oncoming pandemics from melting ice packs, this is a great big grade A way of going out.
Aaron Parks – Little Big II: Dreams of A Mechanical Man
Accessible yet endlessly exploratory, keyboardist Parks revels in breaking big concepts down to their elemental selves, then reassembles at will. Check out 2018’s Little Big I after this.
Anne Mette-Iversen – Racing A Butterfly
Mingus and Beethoven by way of Brooklyn, bassist/composer Anne Mette Iversen leavens all her music with a humor and humanity you should immerse yourself in.
ephemera redux: seriously check out David Byrne’s American Utopia. . .
Donations Welcome!
$8+ suggested