Monday, February 28, 2005  

Dizzy Reece meets with a crazed fan on the streets of NYC.

I posted another audio interview with Dizzy Reece over at his Web site. This one is from 2002 by Harry Graham on Radio Mona, FM93, Jamaica.

Big ups to Wayne & Wax, Largehearted Boy, Tofu Hut, and GrapeJuice Plus for linking to my previous posts about Dizzy. Good things are starting to happen.

Posted by CP | Link |

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Thursday, February 24, 2005  

blanc*mange
Pronunciation: (blu-manj', -manzh'), --n.
1. a sweet pudding prepared with almond milk and gelatin and flavored with rum or kirsch.
2. a sweet, white pudding made with milk and cornstarch and flavored with vanilla.
3. an '80s synth-pop duo with a couple of pasty jimmy jamz und terry lewisez.

The giraffes are cuter.

Blancmange
"Lose Your Love"
"What's Your Problem?"
Believe You Me
(Sire, 1985)
Their albums are out of print; buy the best-of.

Keep "Living on the Ceiling." I'd drop some legs for these tunes way before that one, and I did so many a time in my teens. Matta fact, I'm doing a deskchair jig right now, though my boogie-down vinyl pants don't fit so well 20 years later. (DAMN! THESE SONGS ARE 20 YEARS OLD. Lift ya cane, shake it high, f**k an old age.)

Posted by CP | Link |

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Wednesday, February 23, 2005  

The past week = great time to be in SoCal.
We missed the disasters, not the rain, but the sun found us just enough times to make it awww'ight.
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I've joined the praise chorus:

Washington City Paper
Friday, February 18
Born in the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica, amid political turmoil and civil-rights struggles, hiphop is, at its core, more than just beats and rhymes. To paraphrase Chuck D, hiphop was the CNN of the black diaspora. But over the past 30 years, the music and its message have been carried from urban street corners to the world's stage, informing, inspiring, and infuriating people of all colors and creeds. The history of hiphop is sometimes portrayed as a cartoon---all superhero pseudonyms, zipper pants and fades, bling and braggadocio. But in Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, Jeff Chang traces hiphop's evolution with great skill, painting a focused narrative about the music and its artists without ever forgetting the larger social picture that frames them. So when he spends 12 continuous sheets of the 500-plus-page book talking about Reggie Jackson, the 1977 blackout in New York City, and the Cross Bronx Expressway---with virtually no mention of music---you never find yourself asking why. Rather, Chang's narrative sweeps you along like a great novel's, only he builds his detailed scenes with enough raw data to form a hiphop encyclopedia---one that you will eagerly read from cover to cover. Chang reads at noon Friday, Feb. 18, at the Institute for Policy Studies, Suite 1020, 733 15th St. NW, free, (202) 234-9382; and at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 18, at Karibu Books, 3500 East-West Highway, Hyattsville. Free. (301) 559-1140. (Christopher Porter)

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Wednesday, February 16, 2005  

Dizzy Reece, Part Deux

After overwhelming everyone with Dizzy Reece data on Monday---"Hey, here's a 2,000-word article on a jazz musician you've never heard of, which is followed by a two-hour radio program on him!"---I realized I should break it all down for easier consumption.

Cliff Notes for the SparkNotez:

Dizzy Reece is a trumpeter who was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1931. He attended the Alpha Boys School for a short period---the same institution that trained many a Skatalite, as well as Joe Harriott and numerous other now-legendary Jamaican musicians. But Diz is strictly pre-ska, a pure jazzman: He left for England in 1948, when he was 16, and started making records there in 1955 with some of the leading lights of the British jazz scene. Reece moved to NYC in 1959 to be a Blue Note recording artist, cutting four LPs for the legendary label. While Dizzy continued to perform live from the 1960s to the early 1990s, he made only a handful of commercial/studio recordings during this period (though he has an extensive log of private/live tapes from that time).

Reece is one of the most distinctive and idiosyncratic trumpeters in the history of jazz---his tone is as fat as his melodies are rich, and his solos are wicked chromatic exercises. Plus, he's a damn smart composer and arranger to boot. Diz still lives in NYC, but he hasn't played there in more than a decade; a few of us are trying to correct that by getting the word out on this great artist.

You can read an extensive feature on Dizzy from the October 2004 issue of JazzTimes by going to his Web site, DizzyReece.com.

There you'll also find a downloadable radio interview with Diz by Ed Berger on WBGO. It's a little under two hours, and I've posted the show in 14 segments (128kbs MP3s).

Below is a rundown of the radio-interview tracks that also feature music; that way you can try out a few files and hear Dizzy play to see if you want to download the whole program. (The tracks not listed below feature the interview only, and you can get them from here.)

To download each segment, do the the standard right click on the linked track number. (Mac folks, you know what to do.)

Track 1 - The standard "Melancholy Baby" is a 1966 (or 1963) live private recording from Club Embers West in NYC, featuring Diz with pianist Mike Longo, bassist Eddie DeHass, and an uncredited drummer.

Track 2 - Features two original tunes by Reece: "Bang" from 1955 (Dizzy's first recording as a leader) and "Now" from 1956. Both numbers are on A New Star (Tempo/Jasmine).

Track 4 - "Maenya" is an original work by Reece that's based on a Moroccan folk song. It's his first big-band composition, and the recording can found on Victor Feldman's Suite Sixteen (Contemporary/OJC). Dizzy's arrangement here is stunning.

Track 5 - "Colorblind" is a Diz original from Blues in Trinity, his first record for Blue Note. It was cut in England in 1958 with drummer Art Taylor, trumpeter Donald Byrd, tenor saxophonist Tubby Hayes, pianist Terry Shannon and bassist Lloyd Thompson. It wasn't released until the following year.

Track 6 - "I'll Close My Eyes" is a standard from 1959's Star Bright, the first album Reece made in U.S.

Track 7 - "A Variation on Monk," a Reece original based on "I Got Rhythm Changes," is also from Star Bright, which features the formidable lineup of pianist Wynton Kelly (who was born to Jamaican parents, though he was raised in NYC), bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Art Taylor, and tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley. All of Dizzy's Blue Note albums are available in a 4-CD box set on Mosaic Select.

Track 9 - Diz says that "Yamask," from 1962's Asia Minor (New Jazz/OJC), was inspired by the masks worn by Arabic women. The album features baritone saxophonist Cecil Payne, reedist Joe Farrell, pianist Hank Jones, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Charlie Persip.

Track 11 - "You Stepped Out of a Dream" is from Capo Jazz, an ultrarare Czech LP on Supraphone from 1969 featuring Reece's way-cool arrangements with the Vaclav Zahradnik Big Band, featuring tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, baritone saxophonist Ronnie Ross, trombonist Slide Hampton, and trombonist Erich Kleinschuster.

Track 12 - "Valzu" is a live recording made with the same Czech big band in 1969.

Track 14 - "Krisis" is off From In to Out (Futura), a rare, long out-of-print 1970 (or 1974) live LP made in Paris. The band includes the Sun Ra Arkestra's John Gilmore on tenor sax as well as drummer Art Taylor, pianist Siegfried Kessler, and bassist Patrice Caratini.

Posted by CP | Link |

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Monday, February 14, 2005  

Jamaica was roiling in 1938. The economy was hurting, and workers were fighting against low wages and colonial rule. Violent strikes and bloody riots were common in the capital city of Kingston.

Led by a loud, charismatic speaker named Alexander Bustamante---who would later become the country's first prime minister---the call for labor rights hit its crescendo on May 23 in downtown Kingston, when a couple thousand Jamaicans, mostly dock workers or unemployed, crowded Victoria Park to protest economic conditions. Bustamante climbed on the giant statue of Queen Victoria and told the crowd in no uncertain terms that he would negotiate on their behalf and never back down.

When he finished his fiery speech, Bustamante urged the workers to disperse peacefully. As he climbed off the Queen, Bustamante was confronted by a group of policemen who aimed their guns at him and the crowd. The defiant 54-year-old aristocrat-turned-politician tore open his shirt, bared his chest and shouted, "Shoot me, but leave these defenseless, hungry people alone!"

Standing near Bustamante during much of this chaotic, nation-defining day was a seven-year-old future trumpeter named Dizzy Reece.

[Click here to continue reading this story.... You'll also be able to download a two-hour radio program on Dizzy Reece, broken up into 14 files, which features numerous examples of his work for Blue Note, Prestige, Tempo, out-of-print rarities such as his 1970 LP From In to Out with John Gilmore and his 1978 LP Manhattan Project, and unreleased recordings made with a Czech big band in 1979....]
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There's a grassroots effort going on right now, pushed along by longtime broadcaster Dermot Hussey (formerly of RJR in Jamaica, now with XM Satellite Radio), to get Diz an evening as the featured soloist at Jazz at Lincoln Center, with the institution's big band playing his arrangements (which, as you'll hear during the radio program, are stunning). As hard as it is to believe, Dizzy hasn't played in NYC for more than a decade, and only sporadically in Jamaica and England.

If you dig Diz, please consider writing an e-mail to Andre K. Guess (aguess@jalc.org), the vice president & producer for Jazz at Lincoln Center, urging the institution to consider a night that spotlights Reece's music. And if you really dig Diz's music, please give his Web site a big up with a link on yer blog. Spread the word.

Posted by CP | Link |

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Thursday, February 10, 2005  

VC
"By His Deeds"
six-song demo
(DigDis, 2003)
Strictly the Best 28
(VP, 2001)
Universal Message Chapter 2
(VP, 2001)
Buy the comps from Ernie B's Reggae.

The story behind "By His Deeds" in the Jamaica Star, and interviews with VC in the Jamaica Star and on Irie FM.

I saw VC perform twice at the Air Jamaica Jazz & Blues Festival, and you can read my long-winded review of the fest right here. I'm particularly proud of having noticed Roberta Flack's bosom.

Posted by CP | Link |

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Tuesday, February 08, 2005  

More hottt-ness from Crammed Discs:
A promo video for Konono No. 1.
[Quicktime, direct link]

Konono's Congotronics 1 (Crammed) and Lubuaku (Terp) are now be available in the U.S. through Aquarius Records.

More Suburban blathering on Konono: 1, 2, 3, 4

Posted by CP | Link |

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Monday, February 07, 2005  

Jah Division
"Heart and Soul Dub"
Dub Will Tear Us Apart 12-Inch EP
(The Social Registry, 2004)

No, silly, not the tip-o-yer-tongue Russian-Cuban Rasta reggae band Jah Division! This is a Williamsburg quartet featuring a bunch of pasty dudes from indie-rock bands---Brad Truax (Home, Broke Revuew), Barry London (Knoxville Girls), Kid Millions (Oneida) & Chris Millstein (Home)---having a bit of a goof, though it actually works really well. (Kinda like that Dub Side of the Moon project.)

Buy this limited 12-inch (800 copies) from Tone Vendor, Forced Exposure or direct from Social Registry.

Because I don't have a photo of Jah Division, and because I couldn't fire up the Photoshop in time to make a disturbing collage of Ian Curtis and Haile Selassie, the photo up there is of my Kingston Krew, Mike & Mike, getting down to "Hoochie Coochie Man" at the recent Air Jamaica Jazz & Blues Festival (which, for the most part, featured neither jazz nor blues, though Lou Rawls and Dionne Warwick were in fine form; lotsa purple and sequins).

Posted by CP | Link |

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