Sunday, July 29, 2018

The Gospel According to Lester Bowie

For post #399, we have another fabbo concert from those naughty Norwegian TV archives.
This one catches true trumpet deity and of course Art Ensemble of Chicago founder Lester Bowie, leading an ensemble somewhere between the AECO and his Brass Fantasy group of the mid 1980s.
This show -- appropriately titled From the Roots to the Source -- is perfect for Sunday, as it treads the territory between a jazz-rock aesthetic and straight up Gospel Rock.
I hope the hybridization of forms in this one causes Wynton Marsalis to get a really annoying itch he cannot scratch.
The singers on this one -- which include Lester's wife Fontella Bass and her sister Martha, as well as belter David Peaston -- go absolutely wild here, abetted by LB and his cohorts.
I wish there was an official DVD series of these NRK-TV things, but until there is these 1280p rebroadcasts on their website will have to do.
Lester Bowie
From the Roots to the Source
Molde Kino 
Molde, Norway
7.29.1982

01 Louis
02 Ritmo Mo
03 Everything Must Change
04 Rescue Me
05 When the Spirits Come Back to Me
06 He's Got the Whole World In His Hands
07 Oh, How the Ghosts Sing/Let The Good Times Roll  
08 end credits + applause

Total time: 43:47

Lester Bowie - trumpet and pistol
Richard Purcell-Brown - tenor saxophone
Artie Matthews - piano
Fred Williams - bass
Phil Wilson - drums
Fontella Bass - vocals and piano
Martha Bass - vocals
David Peaston - vocals and organ

HD FLV file from an NRK-TV web rebroadcast
Not bad for a Sunday 36th anniversary special, if I do say so myself.
The first song in this is an extensive tribute to Louis Armstrong, but that's not the last we'll hear from Pops in the coming days.
That's a hint... I'll be back next Saturday with the big 400th post to this page, but for now let's have Lester leap in and take you all to church for 45 minutes!--J.
10.11.1941 - 11.8.1999

Thursday, July 26, 2018

Moonlight Milestone: Mick Jagger 75

I am here as we lurch weekendwards with another big birthday bash that needs mentioning, lest our minds begin gathering moss.
Today's big boy needs no introduction or explanation, so in lieu of the usual cookie cutter doggerel, I'll tell you a story.
One time I was sitting in here watching the concert film, made in 1972, called Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones, which had come on AXS-TV or somesuch music channel that night.
This was about two years ago, when my old landlord and his then-four-year-old son lived here.
Junior is six now and even more awesome, but back on the night in question he knocked -- as he often did -- at my door and wanted to hang out for a while.
He hopped up on the bed and plopped down next to me and began checking the movie. What happened next still cracks me up when it crosses my mind and I wish I'd have filmed it.
After about half of Midnight Rambler, Junior leapt from the bed and began to shout "He's doing the Chicken Dance!!!" whilst simultaneously rocking a pretty spot-on rendition of the same.
If I had to describe our hero's standard moves, I'd speculate that they dwelt somewhere between the Funky Chicken and the Running Man, but Junebug's assessment -- as is often the case, coming from the mouths of the innocent -- was and is the most accurate anyone could hope for from a small child.
So whaddaya know? Junior's Chicken Dancer -- also among the three most beloved frontpeople ever to prance before a rock-n-roll band -- is turning the gigando 75 today. You know him as Sir Mick.
Full and honest disclosure: I am not much of a Stones guy. I dig Sympathy for the Devil -- as cinematized by Jean-Luc Godard, especially -- Exile On Main Street, and the two mid-1970s (Some Girls/Emotional Rescue) platters with the disco tunes on them.
But we are gathered together this day to share up the rarities with flair, so it's incumbent upon me to step with stuff that very often doesn't represent my (esoteric, thoroughly uninteresting) personal taste and instead gets the very best of the bootlegs into broader circulation in their tastiest possible iterations.
To that end, we are gonna fire up a CD's worth of unissued KBFH master reels, formulated by them into what amounts to an unreleased live record from the Stones' 1978 Summer tour of the USA.
The Rolling Stones
"Some Live Biscuits"
USA tour highlights
Summer 1978

01 Let It Rock
02 All Down the Line
03 Honky Tonk Women
04 Star Star
05 Lies
06 Miss You
07 Beast of Burden
08 Shattered
09 Respectable
10 Just My Imagination
11 Far Away Eyes
12 Love In Vain
13 Happy
14 Sweet Little Sixteen
15 Brown Sugar
16 Jumpin' Jack Flash

Toatl time: 1:19:36

Tracks 01, 06, 10, 12 & 13 - Masonic Hall, Detroit MI 7.6.1978
Tracks 02-05, 07, 09, 14-16 - Sam Houston Coliseum, Houston TX 7.19.1978
Track 08 - Mid-South Coliseum, Memphis TN 6.28.1978
Track 11 - Rupp Arena, Lexington KY 6.29.1978

Mick Jagger - vocals, harmonica, keyboards and guitar
Keith Richards - guitars, bass, keyboards and vocals
Ron Wood - guitars, vocals, bass, drums and percussion
Bill Wyman - bass, and synthesizer
Charlie Watts - drums
plus
Ian McLagan - keyboards
Ian Stewart - piano

KBFH pre-FM master highlight reels from the Joe Maloney archive
This is a great document, selecting the best performances from several shows recorded 40 years ago this month and presenting them in a form indistinguishable from a real, mixed live record.
I'll be back, perhaps on the weekend, with a bit more ballast for your boat before August arrives, but for now you're just a Rolling Stones' throw from 80 minutes of their particular brand of mayhem, borne to the cloud in acknowledgement of their head chicken dancer -- born this day in 1943 -- and his mileStone birthday today.--J.

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Revolutionaries In Leo: Grandfather's Day

True Blues
Ain't no new news
about who's been abused
For the Blues is as old
As my stolen soul
I sang the Blues when the missionaries came
Passing out Bibles in Jesus' name
I sang the Blues in the hull of the ship
Beneath the sting of the slavemaster's whip
I sang the Blues when the ship anchored at dock
My family being sold on a slave block
I sang the Blues being torn from my first born
And hung my head and cried
When my wife took his life
And then committed suicide
I sang the Blues on the slavemaster's plantation
Helping him build his free nation
I sang the Blues in the cotton field
Hustlin' to make the daily yield
I sang the Blues when he forced my woman to bed
Lord knows I wish he was dead
I sang the Blues on the run
Ducking the dogs and dodging the gun
I sang the Blues hangin' from a tree
In a desperate attempt to break free
I sang the Blues from sun up to down
Cursing the master when he wasn't around
I sang the Blues in all his wars
Dying for some unknown cause
I sang the Blues in a high tone, low moan
Loud groan, soft grunt, hard funk
I sang the Blues on land, sea and air
About who, when, why and where
I sang the Blues in church on Sunday
Slavin' on Monday
Misused on Tuesday
Abused on Wednesday
Accused on Thursday
Fried alive on Friday
And died on Saturday
Sho'nuff singin' the Blues
I sang the Blues in the summer, fall, winter and spring
I know sho'nuff the Blues is my thing
I sang the Backwater Blues
Rhythm and Blues
Gospel Blues
St. Louis Blues
Crosstown Blues
Chicago Blues
Mississippi Goddamn! Blues
The Watts Blues
Harlem Blues
Hough Blues
Gutbucket Blues
Funky junkie Blues
I sang the up north cigarette cough Blues
The down south strung out the side of my mouth Blues
I sang the Blues black
I sang the Blues blacker
I sang the Blues blackest
I sang about my sho'nuff 
Blue Blackness
Jalaluddin Mansur Nuriddin
Be Yond Er
1969-1977

01 Bird's Word (Last Poets)
02 True Blues (Last Poets)
03 E Pluribus Unum (Last Poets)
04 Mean Machine chant (Last Poets)
05 Mean Machine (Last Poets)
06 On the Subway (Last Poets)
07 Sport (Lightnin' Rod)
08 Doriella Du Fontaine (Lightnin' Rod/Buddy Miles/Jimi Hendrix)
09 Reflections (Last Poets)
10 White Man's Got a God Complex (Last Poets)
11 Surprises (Last Poets)
12 Opposites (Last Poets)
13 Tranquility (Last Poets)
14 Brother Hominy Grit (Lightnin' Rod)
15 The Bones Fly from Spoon's Hand (Lightnin' Rod)
16 Jones Comin' Down (Last Poets)
17 O.D. (Lightnin' Rod/Buddy Miles/Jimi Hendrix)
18 Hamhock's Hall Was Big (Lightnin' Rod)
19 Wake Up, Niggers (Last Poets)
20 Death Row (Last Poets)
21 Jazzoetry (Last Poets)
22 Beyonder (Last Poets)

Total time: 1:30:43
disc break can go after Track 13

compilation by EN of Jalal's early 1970s output as Lightnin' Rod and with The Last Poets
So yes, it's Jalal's birthday. He passed away on June 4th, but today would have been his 74th so I am putting up this mixtape I made the week after he split.
He is considered, with his Last Poets compatriots and Gil Scott-Heron, one of the formative Grandfathers of Rap.
His Lightnin' Rod persona collaborated with Hendrix and created some of the most vivid portraits of the Hustler's life ever waxed. Then he joined The Last Poets and led them in fusillades of pure militancy, switching gears into a whole bunch of the greatest screeds ever penned about the oppression of one human group by another.
All of his stuff is ripped from yesterday's, today's and tomorrow's headlines, and he will be missed. But he did his job, over a lifetime, and his was as good as a life can be when it's lived in service to a cause greater than the selves we are tricked into worshiping as phony deities of Ego.
I never agreed with everything he had to say, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that we all rediscover what it means to think for ourselves, beyond the false choices and suicidal constructs the power piglets allow us to pitifully perceive in perspectiveless penury for their eternal profit and dominance.
Jalal walked that path for all his years, and he'd want us all to continue his life's project... in the context of space and time, and maybe even rhyme.--J.
7.24.1944 - 6.4.2018

Sunday, July 22, 2018

Gato Be There: Europa Caliente!

Let's finish off this mini-flurry of rebroadcasts with another jewel in that series.
This is another France Musique gem of a rerun, featuring a stalwart jazzer rocking the funk out.
This comes from the time when Gato Barbieri left the Impulse! label, only to find chart success as soon as he moved to A&M.
I dunno if it's "Third World Jazz" or whatever ridiculous term white people wanna make it into, but it sure is funky.
Gato is so enthusiastic here, blowing passionate lines all set long and singing and scatting along when he isn't snapping reeds at 10 paces.
There isn't too much to say except this was rebroadcast by France Musique and it makes a cooker of a Sunday night 41st anniversary special to close out the weekend.
Gato Barbieri Sextet
Festival de Jazz d'Antibes
Juan-les-Pins, France
7.22.1977

01 Europa (Earth's Cry, Heaven's Smile) 
02 Don't Cry Rochelle
03 Los Desperados
04 Fiesta
05 I Want You
06 El Día Que Me Quieras

Total time: 53:26

Gato Barbieri - tenor saxophone, vocals
Edy Martínez - piano, keyboards
Joe Carotenuto - guitar
Eddie Rivera - bass
Steve Jordan - drums
Angel ‘Cachete’ Maldonado - percussion

digital capture of a May 2018 France Musique rebroadcast
I'm taking a day off Monday but am back Tuesday to start another flurry of curry, so don't you worry. 
This golden rebroadcast -- thank you, France Musique -- is a burner from the immortal G.B. though, and don't hesitate not to miss it because it funks hard, trust me.--J.
12.28.1932 - 4.2.2016