There Stands the Glass

Pitchfork’s list of The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s inspired outraged tirades last month. Recently reading Philip Watson’s new book Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer: The Guitarist Who Changed the Sound of American Music reminded me that by including guest appearances and collaborations, an enthusiast could compile a solid “The 50 Best Bill Frisell Albums of the 1990s” list.

The music of the staggeringly prolific Frisell became a staple of my rotation during that decade. The guitarist who is a genre unto himself hasn’t slowed much in the intervening years. I continue to listen to a lot of Frisell, and I’m fortunate to have attended many of his performances. Having devoured Beautiful Dreamer, I’ll continue overdosing on Frisell for the foreseeable future.

The primary value of Beautiful Dreamer for this reader is its detailed accounting of works that had escaped my memory. Even though I own physical copies of the ensemble’s albums including I Have the Room Above Her, I’d forgotten about Frisell’s trio with Paul Motion and Joe Lovano. Furthermore, I hadn’t known that John Zorn played a significant role in Frisell’s evolution.

Watson wrote Beautiful Dreamer with the participation of Frisell. He’s susceptible to accusations of being a fawning flatterer, but Watson is not wrong in his assertion that Frisell is the modern-day equivalent of titanic figures of American music like Duke Ellington, Jimi Hendrix and Thelonious Monk.

I’ve never been particularly interested in the private lives of artists. I’m not disappointed, consequently, that Watson treads lightly on the subject of Frisell’s spectrum-ish disposition. Besides, the portion of the biography’s 548 pages dedicated to listening sessions with admirers ranging from Mary Halvorson to Justin Vernon are more insightful than theoretical armchair psychology.

Even after reading Beautiful Dreamer, I’m not mad at Pitchfork for overlooking Frisell. I like the publication’s rankings although my list would include only a couple dozen of the same titles. I’d begin by sifting through Frisell’s discography were I to take on the task today. Thanks partly to Watson’s invaluable biography, the list-making would be delectably difficult.