Burning Spear - Trelawney Beach, Jamaica 2/24/78
I’ve got Marcus Garvey, but that’s the only Burning Spear I know and this average sounding show is from 2-3 years later. Where on the album, the vocalist’s bizarre style seems to work with the music, live the idiosyncracies dominate the sound quite a bit and it all sounds a lot less together. Still, that makes two data points, not enough to triangulate with, so I’m curious if it’s just a bad night.
Behold…The Arctopus - Nano-Nucleonic Cyborg Summoning
This is the Relapse CD that contains both of their EP length releases including live material, I can’t remember if this live material = the MP3s on the first EP or not and the printing on the booklet is too small to bother with checking for the facts. Apparently BtA only release EPs because the music is so complicated and nonrepetitive that they can only write so much. BtA are an instrumental technical metal group whose riffing extravaganzas cause whiplash, lots of building, multiple lines that crescendo and climax in virtuoso fashion. It’s one hell of a ride and now that there’s a good 50 or so minutes of music together, it seems more like a condensed double or triple album. This will definitely be too mathy for some, but another credit to the band is their ability to infuse emotional wealth into the style, it really does have a good sense of dynamics, so those looking for something both technical and visceral will find those qualities here.
Jimmy Smith & Wes Montgomery - Jimmy & Wes The Dynamic Duo
First listen to a date I would have thought to have been more lauded, as I listened I wonder if it was the big band segments that might not have worked for some, as I found the album enjoyable while noting it gets a bit sweet at times. When this was released, it could have been the two kings of their respective instruments and neither of them were reluctant to hold onto their crowns, in fact if you hurled this forward in time a good 30 or so years, this could have been a fusion album by the likes of Planet X. Smith burns on his organ, while Montgomery generally takes the laid back approach, but they’re both definitely the most impressive, not when they are soloing but cooperating for sophisticated melodic impact.
Freddie Hubbard - Ready for Freddie
Man, what a scorcher! Joined by Tyner and Elvin Jones, with Art Davis on bass, Wayner Shorter on tenor, and the surprising addition of Bernard McKinney on euphonium, this has got to be one of Freddie’s best outtings. I found myself watching Hubbard, Tyner and Jones together a week or so ago giving tribute to a Love Supreme, however everyone is in far better form in late 1962 and this just accentuates my feelings of apathy to that video. This is prime hard bop, prime Coltrane-ish hard bop, a style I’d love to have seen Hubbard participate more in. A classic, right now I gotta figure out if it’s a 12, 13 or higher.