Take Five: This leads to that
A video here, an interview there, and a reissue campaign of staggering magnitude led me back to cherished sounds and new discoveries this week, featuring Mdou Moctar, Pat Metheny, and John Coltrane
“Take Five” is posted each Friday, and offers five things I spent some time with over the course of the previous week. No criticism, no in-depth analysis, just a few things I think you might be interested to check out. When the spirit moves me, I’ll post other things at other time times.
1. Mdou Moctar Tiny Desk Concert
Seeing the Tiny Desk Concert released from Mdou Moctar this week, I was reminded of the show I saw from Moctar in 2017 as part of his first U.S. tour. At the time, few knew of this Tuareg guitarist, and the Trumpet Blossom, the tiny vegan restaurant here in Iowa City where he played, was full with maybe 50 people drawn by the enthusiastic promoter who told us we had to see this guy. It was the kind of show that a hundred would claim today to have seen now that Moctar is practically a household name. This show, seven years later, isn't appreciably different. Moctar still wows with his unorthodox guitar shredding, his genial stage presence, and his groove-heavy band. He may be a bit more polished these days, but the wonder and charm remain. I haven't spent much time with his latest LP, Funeral for Justice, but this will certainly spark a weekend listen that will involve pulling out the vinyl copy of Sousoume Tamachek I bought from the man himself that night. That was the rare time when I thought an autograph might be worth it, because I wasn't sure I would have the chance to see him again and wanted to be able to prove I had been there. Who knew he would become an international star?
2. Charlie Haden and Pat Metheny - “The Precious Jewel”
An interview with guitarist Pat Metheny at Aquarium Drunkard this week brought me back to a favorite album that is an improbable 27 years old. I'm not overly familiar with Metheny's vast solo work, concentrating most of my listening on albums where he plays with someone else, be it Ornette Coleman, Brad Mehldau or, in this case, Charlie Haden. In the interview, Metheny talks about his upbringing in rural Missouri:
I am probably like most musicians in that I became a musician because I am a fan of music. My immediate response to the music I love is an almost overwhelming desire to understand why I love that particular thing so much. I think I benefited from growing up in a place [Kansas City suburb Lee’s Summit, Missouri] where there were not a lot of indicators to me of what was good or hip or cool or anything – I just took music for what it was based on what I perceived in my limited 10-year-old self as doing its thing on me or not.
Beyond the Missouri Sky (Short Stories), the album he made with fellow Missouri native Haden, fits that perfectly. I doubt it would be considered "hip or cool," but it's a majestic album that captures its namesake vistas perfectly. My favorite tune is a cover of Roy Acuff's "Precious Jewel." The melody is there, but the feel is vastly different, mostly because the cutting quaver of Acuff's vocal is replaced by Haden's melodic bass line, the keening melody becoming a resonant, mid-range rumble before Metheny's guitar joins to mimic the high harmonies of the original.
3. Guided by Voices - “My Impression Now”
I was led down the rabbit hole that is the Internet Archive thanks to Tyler Wilcox's "Doom and Gloom from the Tomb" Tumblr where he writes about music bootlegs. He shared a Guided by Voices show from 1994, commemorating the 30 years he has been listening to the band. My interest slightly predates his, coming on board with 1993's Vampire on Titus album. Intrigued by the show he shared, I clicked around and found what purports to be the earliest known recording of a GBV show, this one from August of 1993 in Philadelphia. This would have been around the time I discovered the band, or rather, had it shown to me by, if memory serves, Kirk Walther, the owner of Record Collector where I spent most of the time when I wasn't in class or at the college newspaper. It's always interesting to experience something "before," as in, before anyone was really paying attention, before that attention had an impact on the choices made and perceptions formed. While the music of Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices has taken several twists and turns in the intervening decades, it's also possible that, save for a change in recording fidelity and age/cigarette/beer-related coarsening of Pollard's voice over time, this could be a recording from last week. The band has an aesthetic, and it remains true to it. Even as the playing has improved and the focus tightened, the blend of stadium rock aspiration and self-sabotaging irreverence remains. Offered here is a take of this Substack's namesake song, "My Impression Now," performed months before it was officially released on one of the many EPs that were released in 1994 as the world started to pay attention.
4. Marilyn Crispell - For Coltrane and the return of Leo Records
I have often dipped into an artist's catalog at odd points, not entering at the logical beginning or creative/commerical peaks. I hear a new album and then go back to listen to what came before. Or a reissue or box set highlights a period that isn't necessarily the usual entry point, so I jump in and then work my way forward and back. This happens often in jazz, as prolific artists hop from label to label, issuing date after date. Such was the case with Marilyn Crispell's For Coltrane, one of several albums recently made available on Bandcamp from the British label Leo Records. It doesn't seem that much of the label's music has been available in the States, but Burning Ambulance is rectifying that. BA, a Substack, podcast and now record label run by Phil Freeman, one of the foremost chroniclers of creative music and avant jazz. Burning Ambulance is helping to make the entire Leo Records discography available digitally. Seven releases by pianist Crispell are among the first batch. I am familiar with her more recent work, but not her vast back catalog, so I dialed up For Coltrane and found a beautiful solo piano album full of adventurous originals dedicated to the late saxophonist, as well as a few covers.
"I was listening to A Love Supreme one night and it changed my life," Crispell writes in the liner notes." I decided to get back into music and I had this mystical experience where I felt the presence and guiding of Coltrane's spirit in the room. I asked for his help and I know he gave it to me because I could feel him there and because right afterwards everything in my life went so suddenly and strongly in the right direction..."
This likely isn't the typical place to jump into Crispell's catalog, but opportunity knocked. Find more at leorecords.bandcamp.com where albums by Anthony Braxton, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Amina Claudine Myers, and others reside.
5. Coltrane Time
The dalliance with Crispell’s album led me to the album Coltrane Time. One tune on Crispell's For Coltrane is a cover of his "Coltrane Time." I can't find mention of it anywhere else, hampered because Google was confused by the fact that there is an album of the same name. I still didn’t find an original version of the song, but I did find this. The record was first issued in 1959 as Stereo Drive, credited to the Cecil Taylor Quintet1, of which Coltrane was a member on this date. Given the explosion in popularity of Coltrane, within three years it was issued under the saxophonists’s name (with a much less interesting cover). Calling back to last week's post about Kenny Dorham, the trumpeter also is part of the group here, which further piqued my interest. As I mentioned last week, Coltrane's Blue Train was one of the albums that got me into jazz 35 years ago, so I have been a fan for a long time. His discography, however, is daunting, and I had never heard this album before. With more than 100 total releases (and those are just the legitimate ones) to his name, it's difficult to keep track. This one is enjoyable if unremarkable given the lineup. All three primary instrumentalists seem to be following their own path along the bop-free continuum, and while the rhythm section keeps it from getting too disjointed, it doesn't have the focus of Blue Train, issued the year before, or Giant Steps, which came the year after. Still, anytime you "discover" fresh Coltrane music, particularly with Taylor and Dorham in tow, it's worth noting.
Serendipitously, I can remind you here that Phil Freeman, the man behind Burning Ambulance whose efforts to make Leo Records albums available led me to Marilyn Crispell’s For Coltrane and subsequently to this Coltrane-by-way-of-Cecil Taylor album, recently issued a biography of Taylor, In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor. I haven’t read it yet, but I would bet there is something there about this pairing.