When I Think About the Good Love You Gave Me

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

Rendered senseless by a regrettable quantity of liquid courage, I’d go with “I’m Your Puppet” or “Cry Like a Baby” at a bar’s karaoke night.  As with many Dan Penn compositions, the melodies and lyrics are so ingratiating that sympathetic people would likely mask my caterwauling by heartily singing along.  Furthermore, both familiar classics justify the ridiculous gesticulating that come naturally to me.  Penn, 78, the writer or co-writer of the Southern soul classics “Do Right Woman, Do Write Man,” “It Tears Me Up,” “Rainbow Road” and “The Dark End of the Street” in addition to “I’m Your Puppet” and Cry Like a Baby,” released another set of lived-in story songs in June.  The unassuming Living on Mercy is packed with gems worthy of Penn’s legacy.  Soul revivalists and honky tonk traditionalists would do well to incorporate “Soul Connection” and “I Do” into their repertoires.  I’ve already added the graphic heartbreak of "Blue Motel" to my hypothetical karaoke routine.

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The Kansas City musician Steve Phillips has died.  All the reports I’ve seen focus on the guitarist’s membership in the Celtic rock band The Elders.  I first became aware of Phillips through Steve, Bob & Rich’s frequent performances at the Westport club Blayney’s in the 1980s.  The trio became the core of the hit-making heartland rock band The Rainmakers after my one-time associate Peter Lubin signed the musicians to Mercury Records.

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The only thing worse than absorbing a hurtful insult is the gnawing suspicion the dismissal is warranted.  I began an impertinent analysis of the listlessness bedeviling Kansas City’s jazz scene at Plastic Sax.

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An extremely imaginative staging of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s “Les Indes Galantes” demonstrates how an archaic 300-year-old opera can be made relevant.  The dazzling German production was the 196th installment of my daily opera marathon.

Well, You Needn’t

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

I revere Thelonious Monk.  So why didn’t I join the rapturous chorus of giddy anticipation for Palo Alto?  The release of the live 1968 recording is widely hailed as one of the most momentous jazz events of the year.  For starters, I already own live sets by Monk’s quartet of saxophonist Charlie Rouse, bassist Larry Gales and Ben Riley.  It seemed silly to flip my lid over another session.  The pages dedicated to the unlikely high school gig are among the most interesting sections of Robin D.G. Kelley’s essential but often tedious 2009 biography of the icon.  The backstory is further explored in a podcast promoting Palo Alto that’s almost as interesting as the actual recording.  Still, any additional documentation of the singular American genius is a cause for celebration.  I suppose I’m finally singing from the same hymnbook after all.

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I provide context for We The People’s new album in my review of Misunderstood at Plastic Sax.

Fervent Osculation

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

Satirical “Any Functioning Adult” campaign signs aren’t particularly helpful in this election cycle.  The gag dismisses real problems that aren’t laughing matters.  Besides, I feel as if I’ve only begun to come of age in recent weeks.  My daily opera initiative during the pandemic altered my worldview.  I’ve endured a lot of sentimental hooey, irrelevant relics, trite diversions and yes, boatloads of pretentiousness, in a quest to discover a handful of works that have enhanced my humanity and lifted a heretofore invisible veil of ignorance.

Operas including Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” and Strauss’ “Salome” are among the essential cultural touchstones for anyone aspiring to become a fully informed global citizen.  My prior obliviousness of these essential works shames me.  Only now do I feel as the dimension in which thoroughly educated people function is coming into focus.

“Einstein on the Beach”- the 189th opera in a binge that’s closing in on 200 productions- isn’t indispensable.  Yet a willful surrender to all five hours of Philip Glass’ 1976 work transmuted me into a state of enlightened acquiescence.  Many of my acquaintances might argue that I’m still not a “functioning adult.”  I may lack maturity and refinement, but I’m well on my way to becoming an enlightened barbarian.

September 2020 Recap: A Monthly Exercise in Critical Transparency

Screenshot of the English National Opera’s production of Benjamin Britten’s “Death in Venice” by There Stands the Glass.

Top Five Albums

1. Prince- Sign O’ The Times (Super Deluxe)

Eight hours of electrifying brilliance.

2. Steve Arrington- Down to the Lowest Terms: The Soul Sessions

The glorious comeback of the famed funkateer.

3. The Gospel Truth: The Complete Singles Collection

My review.

4. Ainon- Drought

My review.

5. Deftones- Ohms

Veterans in fighting form.

Top Five Songs

1. Alicia Keys featuring Khalid- "So Done"

Me too.

2. Elizabeth Cook- “Stanley by God Terry”

Dim lights, thick smoke and loud, loud music.

3. Tyler Childers- "Long Violent History"

Southern man.

4. Conway the Machine featuring Flee Lord, Havoc and Lloyd Banks- "Juvenile Hell"

Ain’t no cure for the summertime blues.

5. Gillian Welch- "Picasso"

Both recently released sets of “lost” material are astonishingly excellent.

Top Five Livestreams

1. Bad Bunny- atop a bus in New York City

2. Midwest Chamber Ensemble- at BRC Audio Productions

3. Gladys Knight and Patti LaBelle- Verzuz battle

4. Melissa Aldana Quartet- at Smalls

5. Hyde Park Jazz Festival (Alexis Lombre Quartet, Greg Ward’s Rogue Parade, etc.)

I conducted the same exercise in August, July, June, May, April, March, February and January.

Krizzmas Time Is Here

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

Krizz Kaliko summarizes his unusual career in a few bars on "S.O.B.", a dyspeptic song on his new release Legend: Fans don't give a damn if I put fifty on my wrist/All I gotta do is chop/But I don't make the hottest list.../My aesthetics pathetic/I look like I'm pregnant.

The man born Samuel William Christopher Watson IV in 1974 plays second fiddle to Tech N9ne in the Strange Music camp.  Yet as I’ve asserted for years, Kaliko is the secret sauce at the Lee’s Summit, Missouri, based empire.  In addition to singing, rapping and dancing at a high level, Kaliko is a human hook machine.  

As implied by “S.O.B.,” Kaliko’s stockiness doesn’t impede fans’ appreciation of his formidable talent.  Legend, Kaliko’s seventh solo album, is engaging partly because he repeatedly references his creative frustration.  His grievances are justified. Legend isn’t nearly as good as it could be.

Kaliko is poorly served by the stale production that’s plagued Strange Music for years.  He deserves better.  Provided the opportunity to rap and sing on the fashionable throwback beats associated with Buffalo’s Griselda crew, the murky flow coming out of Earl Sweatshirt’s collective or the cutting-edge lo-fi soundscapes crafted by Slauson Malone, Kaliko’s name would almost certainly appear on the best-of lists he so clearly covets.

Album Review: The Gospel Truth: The Complete Singles Collection

Original image of St. Joan of Arc Chapel at Marquette University by There Stands the Glass.

Failing to direct my attention to the weekly rollout of 25 digital reissues of albums on The Gospel Truth Records label is among the biggest mistakes I’ve made during the pandemic.  The uplifting sets by gospel artists released by the subsidiary of Stax Records in the 1970s would have given me much-needed strength.

The recent release of The Gospel Truth: The Complete Singles Collection improves my attitude dramatically.  The powerfully funky assertions of liberation theology make the two-hour set consisting of the A and B sides of 17 singles essential for fans of Southern soul, protest music and anyone interested in expanding their knowledge of 1970s black gospel beyond the Staple Singers.

The Rance Allen Group, the biggest name on the set, is represented by five strong singles.  But it’s the deep cuts that make compilations like The Gospel Truth: The Complete Singles Collection rewarding.  Charles and Annette May’s "Keep My Baby Warm" is startlingly sensual.  Joshie Jo Armstead’s "Ride Out the Storm" is an anthem for our time.  The 21st Century’s “Who’s Supposed to be Raising Who” may be the most danceable parental guidance diatribe ever laid down.

Several tracks are blatant repurposings of secular hits, but the results reflect divine inspiration rather than commercial desperation.  Only two wildly out of place selections by Blue Aquarius- a psychedelic band dedicated to Prem Rawat- kill the vibe.  It’s going to be difficult to tear myself away from the other 32 tracks to finally dig into the reissues of full albums by each act.

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I review Norman Brown’s Heart to Heart at Plastic Sax.

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Opera update: I watched 182 operas during the first six months of the pandemic.  The Lithuanian National Opera & Ballet’s 2020 production of Sergei Prokofiev’s "The Gambler" is a recent highlight.

Got to Be There

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

The biggest regret of my concert-going life is my failure to convince my mom to drive me to Lawrence, Kansas, to see Bob Marley & the Wailers in 1979.  I’d just purchased the current release Survival- my first Marley album- so I sensed the import of the performance.  I can’t imagine a scenario in which my mom might have acquiesced to my pleas, given it was a school night in December and I was an incorrigible delinquent. She unceremoniously shut me down.

Black Uhuru, Burning Spear and Steel Pulse were soon part of my regular rotation.  But my favorite reggae album- then as now- was Toots & The Maytals’ Funky Kingston.  It’s one of only a handful of albums I’ve regularly returned to over the past 40 years. Alas, the only other Toots Hibbert album I unequivocally admire is Toots in Memphis, a project on which he affirms his status as the Jamaican version of Otis Redding.

I was overjoyed at my first Toots show in 1983.  I couldn’t believe I was singing and dancing along with the titanic talent in a dinky nightclub.  The ecstatic evening almost made up for missing Marley a few years earlier.  Marley died in 1981.  Hibbert died today.

Album Review: Ainon- Drought

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I’ve long been troubled by the name of the Missouri based jazz presenter We Always Swing.  I’m more of a swing-optional guy.  The weight of the region’s formidable jazz tradition can be oppressive.  A lot of European improvisers don’t feel any compunction to follow conventional American mandates.  The motto of the young Finnish quartet Ainon could be We’ll Swing If and When We Feel Like It.

Ainon’s debut album Drought occasionally sounds like Charles Mingus’ ensemble using the string quartets of Arnold Schoenberg as an improvisational springboard.  Yet rather than resembling a bitter dose of academia-approved medicine, Drought is a wild and wooly joyride.

Consisting of Aino Juutilainen (founder and cellist), Satu-Maija Aalto (violin, viola and vocals), Suvi Linnovaara (saxophone, clarinet and flute) and Joonas Leppänen (drums), Ainon plays by its own rules.  Veering between ECM-like ambiance, the percussive spiritualism associated with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and conventional string quartet shadings, the serpentine title track of Drought is a distillation of Ainon’s charms.  

Ainon’s nebulous relationship with swing won’t fly in Kansas City.  The band will almost certainly never play in the old stomping grounds of Bill Basie and Jay McShann.  I’ll have to content myself with Drought until either Ainon makes its way to New York, Chicago or St. Louis or I take my first trip to Scandinavia.

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Opera update: I’m on a Benjamin Britten jag, a recent obsession that’s made my viewing of 174 operas in the past 173 days feel as if I’m just getting started.

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Tom Ray may have heaped more abuse on me than any man alive.  And I still love him, partly because his passion for blues, soul and reggae is genuine.  Here’s a de facto 47-minute infomercial about Ray and his St. Louis record store Vintage Vinyl. 

Album Review: Bettye LaVette- Blackbirds

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

Assembling a comprehensive collection of classic soul was one of my primary projects at the onset of the CD era.  I built an extensive library of artists ranging from Solomon Burke to Jr. Walker & The All Stars one disc at a time.  The endeavor was enormously satisfying.  My mind was repeatedly blown by hearing deep tracks by the likes of Ruth Brown, Al Green and Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes for the first time.  After all the obvious bases were covered, I began buying compilations of soul rarities.  That’s how I first heard the scorching vocals of Bettye LaVette.  While much of the material she recorded in the ‘60s and ‘70s sounds thrilling today, her efforts lagged stylistic trends at the time.  The many hardships the septuagenarian endured make her late career renaissance all the more rewarding.  Blackbirds, a new set of imaginative covers, is as solid as anything LaVette has released.  I suspect most of the CD mixes I made during my initial immersion in soul were only half as satisfying as LaVette’s profound new statement.

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The pledge breaks during the premiere broadcast of KCPT’s new Charlie Parker documentary Bird: Not Out of Nowhere were almost as interesting as the program. I assess the film at Plastic Sax.

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Four days after publishing an analysis of various opera presentations, I learned of the existence of “Trollflöjten”, Ingmar Bergman’s freaky adaptation of “The Magic Flute” (“Die Zauberflöte”).  I may be an uncultured country bumpkin, but I was on to something when I suggested Kenneth Branagh’s version might be appropriate for children.  Bergman’s primary conceit is the depiction of Mozart’s work through the eyes of a little girl seated in a Swedish opera house.  For those keeping score at home, I’ve now watched 169 operas in the past 168 days. My second rendition of “Der Rosenkavalier” is on deck.

What’s a Goon to a Goblin?

Original image of A Child’s Garden of Verses by There Stands the Glass.

I almost shed a tear when I heard the all-too-familiar click of a lighter in the opening moments of No Ceilings a few days ago.  The partial re-release of Lil Wayne’s woefully inferior 2009 mixtape documents the precipitous erosion of creativity caused in part by the activities implied by the embarrassing sound effect.  Lil Wayne was the most important rapper alive 15 years ago.  I reveled in Tunechi’s dominance from the first time I heard “The Block is Hot” in 1999 through 2008’s Tha Carter III.  Heavy rotation of the riveting video for "A Milli" may even have been the pivotal factor allowing hip-hop to overtake pop as the most dominant strain of popular music.  It’s impossible to stay on top forever, but Mr. Carter’s nearly instantaneous descent into mediocrity was particularly jarring.  He fires off a handful of good verses amid the revolting gynecology punchlines on the drab No Ceilings, but the subpar production is depressing.  Weezy is only 37, so there’s still a possibility he’ll recover from his lengthy artistic funk.  No matter what happens, I’ll always love him.