VOTD 09/11/2025

 Modern Jazz Quartet: Concorde (Prestige)

Some days I seek a record or CD for the purpose of writing about it here. It's one of the reasons for the blog, right?

Other days I seek the music for my mood, or a reason. I don't just listen for writing.

I wanted something lower-key today. I don't mourn the death of Charlie Kirk. I didn't wish him harm but I consider him one of the problems, not one of the solutions. Not that I even knew much about him, being over the age of 30. 

I don't especially mourn 9/11, though I remember the day. I was living in my old house on Beechwood Blvd, sleeping in before my day at CAPA High School. My wife was already on the job. She called to say, "Just put on the TV right now." I tuned in to watch the second plane fly into the second tower. More students than not showed up that day. I didn't teach any lesson. I told the students to go online, read up on what's happening, or just sit and talk.

It's not so much that I consider the Modern Jazz Quartet to be musical comfort food, but at the same time it is. Low-key yet with concentrated intensity. My father, a big fan of MJQ, has posed the question of why they aren't better remembered or respected. I don't have an answer, any more than I do to his question why some pieces enter into standard practice as opposed to others. Maybe it's the chamber music quality that makes this less remembered than the Coltrane Quartet. 

Milt Jackson is the obvious star in the group, but that's too easy considering he's the primary melodic voice on vibes. John Lewis on piano is much more the glue. Hold things together. In this respect he reminds me of Teddy Wilson in the Benny Goodman Quartet; he's the proverbial center of the storm. Everyone else circles around him. 

I saw the Modern Jazz Quartet, I guess in this configuration (Jackson, Heath, Lewis, Kay) in 1982. It was at Heinz Hall in downtown Pittsburgh as part of the Mellon Jazz Festival. It must have been June 17, because it was Stravinsky's 100th birthday. A cake was wheeled on stage. My companion for the night, Chuck Gorman, noticed that Milt was repeatedly looking at his watch.

Opening the concert was the Wynton Marsalis Quintet. Chuck said, give these guys a year and they'll be amazing. Surely enough, I saw them almost a year to the later a Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh, and they were indeed great. My favorite player by far was pianist Kenny Kirkland. There was a loss.

And to follow up on that thread of thought, the day after MJQ at Heinz Hall, I saw Ornette Coleman & Prime Time at Carnegie Music Hall, with the Chico Freeman Quartet opening. Chico played freer than I associate with most of his records. Ornette was a free jazz funk assault: him, two guitars, two basses, two drummers. Far too amplified for the space. I saw my friend Sachiko afterwards (last time I saw her) and she remarked, "I didn't expect Ornette to play disco!"

I wish I could see her now to ask her about her current opinion. Disco it definitely was not.

MJQ plays though some standards and a few originals here. Probably like most of their records. Comfort food?

VOTD 09/07/2025

VA: Z-95 8Tracs

Purchased in a local used record store, somewhere

I'm going autobiographical again, and some eastern PA niche history. 

I always had an affinity for music. Some my earliest experiences with music were TV commercial jingles. My mother told me she was impressed I would and sing the most complicated one, such as the song for Apple Jacks cereal.

It was really about age 12-13 I started paying more attention to music, which included listening to the local rock FM stations. These were the days of what was once called AOR: album-oriented rock stations. You were just as likely to hear an album cut played as a single. Nothing typified this more than Steely Dan's LP Aja; I remember hearing every song on that album played on the radio at least once. "Peg" was the big hit, but the "real" rock stations were more likely to play "Josie" or "Deacon Blues". 

I grew up more-or-less half away between Philadelphia and New York City, a little closer to the former. The closest metropolitan area was Allentown/Bethlehem. It was at the vital age of about 13 I discovered the rock station WEZV out of Allentown.

If I'm correct about my history, WEZV pulled a literal WKRP. In that sitcom, an easy listening station changes format mid-song into a rock station. I remember telling a friend my favorite station was WEZV, and commented, "That easy listening crap?" What I remember is that every time I tuned in, I heard either Queen or Blue Öyster Cult being played. Fine by my 13-year old self. Within a year, the call letters had been changed to WZZO. Z-95. Far more rockin'.

One of WZZO's primary commercial sponsors was an Allentown head shop. I don't remember the name, but I do recall their mascot was Buzzy the Bear. I found it hilarious someone turned up in an Allentown holiday parade dressed in a Buzzy costume. 

WZZO's programming was a little more interesting initially than what it would later became. They flirted with New Wave, Jim Carrol's "People Who Died" and The Nails' "88 Lines About 44 Women" in rotation. There was a short-lived show "Power Rock" which was a Punk and New Wave showcase, the first place I heard Devo's "Social Fools". 

Those things aren't an effective way to make money though, and the programming shifted to something closer to what Pittsburgh's WDVE is now. A straight-forward classic rock station, even though some of the music was then current.

So some time around 1980, the station decided it would release a compilation of local talent. According to the notes, they received eighty demo tapes, boiling down to the four groups on this LP. That must have been a real chore, plowing through those tapes. I imagine many were quickly deemed "pass". 

Who made the cut? Mountain Jam, Jimi Gear, John Fretz and the Bounce, and P.F. and the Flyers. There's no reason at all why anyone reading this would have heard of any of those groups any more than someone in the Lehigh Valley would have heard of, say, Hector in Paris. 

I owned this LP in high school. It was exciting to think that local bands were given the chance to record and release some of their music. These things were uncommon at the time! I would later sell it off in a mass record purge I've done a couple of times, only to buy it again recently for $5. Someone wrote on a sticker: "Great unknown Allentown PA bands!".

Great is a stretch.

Oh, some of it's okay. Copies of this apparently made it farther out than Lehigh and Bucks Counties. If so, did it make the scene surrounding Allentown sound provincial? Second rate, second market?

Mountain Jam was the name I remember hearing Z-95's concert calendar and gig announcements. I think there was hope that this would be the regional band that would break into something bigger. In terms of location, the Lehigh Valley isn't such a bad place to be. You can drive to NYC or Philly, gig and drive home the same night. Mountain Jam sounds like serviceable if unremarkable folk-rock. I'd invoke the Allman Brothers, but that would suggest MJ is more interesting than they are. They sound fine, and it's probably the best produced pair of songs on the album. 

Next up: Jimi Gear. He's right on the cusp of something like Loverboy but with synth lines more closely associated with New Wave. It's all multitracked, and maybe there'd be more juice if he had a real backing band. 

John Fretz and the Bounce? Straight forward pop rock. I'm probably sounding cruel, but I found it instantly forgettable on current listening. 

The group I found exciting in high school was P.F. and the Flyers. The first of their two contributions, "Black Hole Tone Dance", grabbed my teen ears. It's the only instrumental on the LP which automatically makes me more interested. Now? Not as excited but it's definitely not bad. I remember wanting to play the piece myself. I think I would have been aware of what a whole tone scale was at the time. Maybe. I didn't exactly benefit from superior music instruction in my high school days, I learned many of these things myself. Their other song, "I Do Do That", is a kind of white-boy take on reggae. It's okay, still better than the majority of the rest of the album. 

Where are they all now? Who even remembers this LP exists? How many sit in landfills? And maybe I should be more grateful. With so few of these things documented at the time (unlike now, in which you can stream a gig live on Youtube or Facebook) shouldn't I be thankful that anything from the then-scene was captured at all?

PS the title: it's an obvious play on words, eight tracks/8 track tapes. I don't miss cassettes all that much, but 8 tracks seemed especially stupid to me. When my family was buying a new car in 1978, my father asked, cassette or 8 track? I said, PLEASE, cassette.

VOTD 09/03/2025

Nocturnal Emissions: Befehlsnotstand: The Incomplete Werk of Nocturnal Emissions. (Sterile)

Purchased used at Amazing Books and Records, Squirrel Hill

I've sometimes used this forum to comment on the state of being a record hound. How, through the years, the chance to purchase used albums of interest has waxed and waned. The opportunity to buy something really unusual, and at not a completely outrageous price, seems to mostly be a thing of the past. Finding the Batman and Robin LP with Sun Ra last week was something of an exception. Not that it's a particularly valuable slice of vinyl, but rather to find it in the wild was exciting.

Even more than that particular album, any sort of 1980s industrial/experimental/noise LPs are very rare to come across, even at premium prices. I paid a what I consider to be a lot for my recent purchase of Hoisting the Black Flag, the early United Dairies compilation, because that we close to the top of my "want" list.

I definitely don't go hunting for Nocturnal Emissions LPs. I don't really know that much about them/him. The band, if you can call it that, is centered on Nigel Ayers (now there's British name). I remember their albums were generally part of that early 80s British industrial/noise scene, half a generation behind groups such as Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire. The in-house label was Sterile Records, which also released an LP by MB and cassettes of Lustmørd and SPK.

But there's a NE album in a neighborhood used book and record store. Not cheap but not outrageous either. (I know I'm being evasive. More than ten dollars, less than fifty.)

This gives you a general sense of their direction. More often than not NE sounds a bit like Cabaret Voltaire, with early drum machine, distorted vocals, noisy instruments. Sometimes it's more of a wall of sound, but not the sheer confrontation of early power electronics groups. Can I describe this as cheeky? That's too cute. I get the sense of Nigel being young and passionate, enjoying the noise but not wanting to alienate everybody. As an album, it feels like an assortment of odds and ends; some of the tracks are taken from live performances, according to the sleeve.

For my personal collection it feels like a piece of the puzzle of that time and scene filled in, filed in between to my Bourbonese Qualk and Nurse With Wound albums. 

CDOTD 09/01/2025

 Mustafa Özkent vi Orkestrasi: Gençlik Ile Elele (Finders Keepers)

Purchased used at The Exchange in Squirrel Hill

I bought a new boombox yesterday at Best Buy. I dislike having to rely on a big box store for such things, but it seems there are few choices otherwise. 

Why a boombox? I wanted something portable I could play outside if need be, plus it's a combined CD/cassette/Blue Tooth player, which I can run through my stereo. I had been using a DVD player for CDs, but it lacked a screen to display tracking. 

Compact discs, such a rise and fall. I don't hide that I love vinyl. However I will continue to defend CDs as a format. They can hold close to eighty minutes of audio, don't degrade on multiple plays if you handle them correctly, they're light and take up very little space. Try moving 500 LPs as opposed to 500 CDs, and you'll gain an appreciation for how heavy and bulky vinyl albums really are.

Cars don't come with CD players any longer. To play discs in my car, I bought a $20 portable player, hot glued the power supply running from what used to be the cigarette lighter, and connect using an 1/8" cable. Unlike built in players in decades past, the disc doesn't pick up where it left off when you restart the car. 

I remember a time when, if you wanted to pick up a cheap copy of something used just to check it out (for example, I wanted to hear Miles Davis' Tutu), the cheap one was the vinyl over CD. That has completely reversed now. Vinyl, new or used, has reached some ridiculous prices. 

I did a small bit of research though, and maybe I'm not being entirely fair. The first LP I bought for myself was Kansas' Leftoverture. (Hey! I was thirteen!) Let's say I paid probably $6 for it new. According to an online inflation calculator, that would be $34 in current money. 

New single LPs often run about $35. I don't know, it still seems like a lot of money though.

The Exchange is a chain of new/used media and collectables in western PA and Ohio, and probably beyond. For a time the dollar bins were a wealth of real scores, such as when I found two Fela Kuti CDs for $1 apiece. I'd also say the used in general were more varied and interesting about ten years ago. I don't think I'll ever find something as multiple disc sets of Morton Feldman and Harry Partch on the shelves now. But I still look.

Which brings me to this oddity. It was sitting in my neighborhood Exchange. I suppose someone must have put it face out on the shelves, because why would I have ever noticed it otherwise? Who is Mustafa Özkent? Why is there a chimp wrapped in recording tape on the cover? It was the quotes on the outer cover that got to me, including, "The Harry Partch of Turkish Pop..." There's also notice it's part of the "Anatolian Invasion Series". Okay, now I'm interested. Being a used CD, it was at most $8 if I remember correctly.

So what is it? Let's start with the basics: all instrumental (fine by me). The instrumentation is guitar (often with wah wah), organ, bass, and drums, with possibly some additional rhythm instruments mixed in. It's vaguely kind of psychedelic; I'm reading the album originally dates to 1973. Driving bass grooves, often very prominent, with soloing on guitar or organ. The pieces are generally simple. if everything was less intense, you'd almost start to head into easy listening. I have found this a a good thing to put on for cookouts. It can play in the background, but will catch your ear sometimes.

Discogs.com indicates that a single original vinyl copy has sold there for $1700, with another currently up for $2150 (from South Korea!). Too rich for my blood, I'm happy to experience this for $8.

And wouldn't it have been a shame, that I'd never have gotten to hear this gem without the inexpensive CD version crossing my path. 

VOTD 08/27/2025

 DEVO: DEV-O Live (WB)

Purchased from Mike Shanley at a record show at Spirit

This past week I watched the DEVO documentary on Netflix. I slapped this one the turntable, being the only physical copy of a DEVO record in my personal collection. 

What of the movie? There was a point I made about the recent Led Zeppelin doc, based on having a review of that film: it comes from a viewpoint of fandom. In other words, expect more of celebration than critique. It has something else in common with the LZ film: the only people seen speaking on screen are the band members themselves. No seemingly endless stream of talking heads, such as in the Ennio Morricone and John Coltrane docs. 

The film is especially interesting and effective at tracing the origins, specifically to Kent State University. Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale were both students, at the time of the Vietnam War protests. Gerald knew two of those killed. It cemented the idea for both of them that protesting was an ineffective act, and other methods were necessary.

An aside: if I have my facts straight, not only these two mutants were at Kent State at the time, but so Joe Walsh attended KSU, Chrissie Hynde was there at the time, as was Chris Butler of The Waitresses and Tin Huey. John "Derf" Backderf was a kid in a neighboring community at the time of the shooting. His recent graphic novel Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio is excellent; Chris Butler is a primary source for the book and depicted as one of the characters in the narrative. The book is maddening and deeply sad, and I can' recommend it highly enough.

An additional aside: Derf attended high school with Jeffrey Dahmer, which he depicts in an earlier graphic novel My Friend Dahmer (later adapted into a feature film). Dahmer didn't really have friends per se, but he and Derf hung out together and the Derf celebrated Jeffrey's unusual and erratic behavior at the time. How could anyone know how bad it would get?

Sweet mother of mercy! This must surely establish Ohio as one of the weirdest places in the world in the 60s and 70s. (I haven't even mentioned Pere Ubu, the Cuyahoga River catching on fire multiple times, or Ghoulardi.)

And by the way, I was born in Akron in 1963, but we moved away shortly afterwards.

Back to the film. The pacing is brisk, especially in its opening with collage visuals to accompany the text. It's the origin story, moving from self-released singles to a major label contract, the surprise hit of "Whip It", and their failure to recapture the success of that record, and their eventual initial breakup.

"Whip It" is an interesting story in itself. Warner Brothers was looking over their shoulders trying to sniff out an actual hit single to sell. They chose "The Girl U Want", which failed to chart. But organically, some radio stations took notice of "Whip It". The video that resulted was a broad parody of sex seen in other music videos at the time, but apparently few people got the joke. It became a huge early MTV hit, and earned the band its first gold records. 

Seems to me none of that would happen today. 

There's plenty left out of the documentary, including mention of the recent reunion tours. It is however very successful in presenting how the bands philosophy and aesthetics developed.

This record is a token from their Freedom of Choice tour, supporting "Whip It". They sound fine, they're a well-oiled machine of a band by this point. During the movie, there's mention of Mark's enthusiasm for The Ramones. That influence not only demonstrated reductionism, but that DEVO's songs sounded better when they were played faster. "Be Stiff" is the example here, and the early recording seems to be frustratingly slow when compared to this later version.

My father emailed me to recommend the DEVO documentary. He's not anti-rock music, but he thinks most of it is disposable and just not very good. So consider that a strong endorsement.

VOTD 08/24/2025

The Sensational Guitars of Dan & Dale: Batman and Robin (Tifton)

Purchased at Jerry's Records

Isn't part of the point of recording collecting the thrill of the hunt? I don't anticipate finding something especially valuable for $3, but it's fun to look. In this digital age when anyone with a smartphone can look up sales prices on discogs.com, it's increasingly rare to find something unusual or valuable at a cheap price. And it's not that I'm always looking for something rare and valuable; unusual is more interesting.

Yesterday I spent a good ninety minutes at Jerry's Records with my old college pal Rob Pleshar. He was there with his girlfriend, both taking their time in various sections around the store. I very rarely spend that sort of time in a record store, and certainly not when my wife is with me (which she was). As Rob was combing through the unsorted 7" 45s looking for obscure Eastern European titles (and found a few), Norma and I were casually looking over the Jerry's "weird" section: picture discs, space-oriented, bas rock operas, Golden Throats (celebrities singing), recordings of trains, etc. I found this record in the superhero section. 

Could it be what I thought it was? Rob confirmed.

What makes this novelty/kids-orientated record of interest? It was legend for years but later confirmed: Sun Ra and members of the Arkestra (including John Gilmore) played on a Batman novelty record. Yes, this was it. 

So, this is not an especially valuable record, but certainly one of interest to some collectors. $9? Yes I'll pay. 

I recalled the last really interesting buy at Jerry's, when Jerry himself still ran the place. I came across three LPs titled Soothing Sound for Baby, volumes 1, 2, and 3. They could easily be mistaken for easy listening kid's records. In fact, they are three LPs of Raymond Scott's weirdly minimalist, pre-MIDI sequenced electronic music. Very desirable to the right collector. Being, me. 

The Batman record was my current secret score at Jerry's. But what of it? It's entirely instrumental, the first track being a lesser cover of the original Batman TV series theme. There's no credit given to anyone anywhere, and the entire project seems shady. In general it's blues-rock. The titles don't seem to have much to do with anything: "The Penguin Chase", "Joker Is Wild", "Robin's Theme", "Batmobile Wheels". There are arrangements of two old classical themes I can't place at the moment. "Batmobile Wheels" is an obscured instrumental arrangement of The Beatles' "She Loves You". It all smells fly-by-night, iffy. 

Writer Mike Shanley said he had this record as a kid and enjoyed listening to it. If there's any rarity to this particular album, it's that it survived kids' turntables everywhere. 

VOTD 08/20/2025

Lee Konitz: The Lee Konitz Duets (RRC)

Purchased at Jerry's Records

There were two inspirations for keeping this audio diary: Mike Shanley's blog, and Gino Robair's Facebook group, What's On Gino's Turntable?

In the case of the latter, he was unapologetic about that it was just about him. He didn't want to know what was on your turntable, he was only talking about what was on his. I don't think he's continued the group for at least a year, but whatever he put on the turntable was interesting.

As for the former, it's a more serious forum for album and concert reviews. Mike recently wrote a review of the Wold Eyes X Anthony Braxton, a disc I wrote about here myself. His take was far more in depth, analytical In my case, I wrote about myself in addition to commenting on the disc. 

I won't apologize for that, this forum is what it is. I only recognize that one of us is more serious in his writing. 

So more about me!

This was a record I discovered in the WRCT library back in my college radio days, and spin it a few times. I specifically remember playing the Lester Young tune "Tickle Toe", which finds Lee on tenor playing against Richie Kamuca, also on tenor. I know Lee mostly for playing alto, but I'm no expert on his discography. 

I run a bit hot and cold regarding Lee. Don't expect a passionate squonkfest when he plays, he's far too reserved for that. But damn, I wish he would play bolder now and then. He's practically the epitome of "cool".  There's a Kenny Wheeler CD on ECM, a quartet with Lee, Dave Holland, and Bill Frisell titled Angel Song. It's clearly meant to be a low-key session, sweet, chamber music-ish. It's beautiful, and Lee is an entirely appropriate person for the session.

When I was an undergraduate at Duquesne University, the jazz studies program brought in Lee Konitz for a short residency. I heard many complaints from fellow students: "Why not bring in Michael Brecker instead?" and similar questions. I found it disrespectful. Dr. John Wilson, like Lee, was a protege of Lennie Tristano, so Doc and Lee had a connection spanning decades.

I was taking Dr. Wilson's History of Jazz 1 Course at the time. Lee spoke to the group about Anthony Braxton. "Well I think Anthony Braxton is full of shit!" said Doc. Lee neither agreed or disagreed. According to Lee, he was hanging out in the early 70s at Chick Corea's loft, playing with him and Dave Holland and Barry Altschul. Anthony was also hanging around. He said the trio of Corea/Holland/Altschul wanted to go in a more modern direction. They went with Anthony and formed Circle, leaving Lee in the dust I suppose. Assuming all of this is accurate.

Lee had another anecdote about Anthony. He said that several times over, when Anthony Braxton said hello to him, he sang a particular phrase. Lee asked, "What is that?" Anthony: "It's part of a chorus you played." Lee wondered which. Doc retorted, "Yeah, now ask HIM to play it."

Lee gave private lessons to saxophone students that week, and I'm told was not at all kind to anyone. I didn't dare. 

Lee looked red- and puffy-faced that week. I don't think he was in good health at the time. Yet, somehow he lasted into the most recent decade and it was COVID that did him in. 

In my conversations with Anthony Braxton (a genuine raconteur), he told me that Lee Konitz had become "toughy-tough" (his exact words) with him after he won the MacArthur.

The album. I like this project, but I think I would have preferred a total commitment to the theme. "Struttin' With Some Barbecue" ends with overdubbed saxophone and euphonium, for example. 

Of all the tracks, the freest would seem to be "Duplexity" with Ellington trumpet (or in this case) violinist Ray Nance. It's the only track credited to both players. It's also the single longest performance on ths album. Here's where I say, more! 

The album ends with Marshall Brown's "Alphanumeric" with all players except Ray Nance. I completely understand ending the album this way, but personally I would have stuck to the theme. There's an inherent challenge to playing duet-style, but also an openness that is undeniable. I say embrace it.