Monthly Archives: March 2012

Bruce Forman

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(March 30, 2012)

Cow Bop at the Cafe 322 this past Wednesday were absolutely terrific. The fiddle player was outta town so they had a kid on tenor named David Wise fill in. He was perfect. I’d seen him do a quick sit in with them once before at the Cantina and loved his sound….very very old school, a lot of Prez, etc. He can play the newer stuff too, but also loves the oldtimers. He’s from Richmond VA I seem to remember and is laid back, a rather perfect fit for this town. He knew the Cow Bop form, too….used to sit in with a local band back him that was much along the same lines…a jazzified Texas Swing. Bob Wills and Asleep at the Wheel have left a whole tradition out there that the college kids and certainly not the boppers, post boppers and out cats are really aware of. Well Bruce Forman–from Texas–can play circles around a lot of jazz pickers in town and his bones are made of Texas country and roots…he’s all about bebop and country, deep down. He plays it like he was born playing it. He was hurling the bop lines at the kid on sax who took them easily….I don’t know nothing about playing the saxophone but watching a guy run through Bird on that bigger horn always seemed impressive. And of course the kid knew the whole Bob Wills thing, was laconic as hell and had the most beat up old wide brim this side of the Army of Northern Virginia It was a very loose night, Alex King and Jake Reed getting all smartassed on bass and drums, doing funny little bass player and drummer shit that was a ball to watch. Forman just seemed to encourage it. He ought to let them do Big Wind From Winnetka. That’ll show ‘em. Pammy was unflappable, though the band does their best to flap her. She backs out when the instrumental bits get crazy intense, comes in just right when the vocal is called for and all eyes are on her when she’s singing. Where the hell does she score them big old cowgirl skirts, btw? Do they even make those anymore? They are beautiful things, from back in the days when the dudes were decked out up there in the Nudie suits and the house lights would set  the spangles glittering  and the lady singer would wear a big pleated cowgirl skirt and colorful cowgal boots and a little widebrimmed hat with the brim curled up just a bit. The only place you can see that in town since the Palomino closed is on a Cow Bop stage. When’s Bruce gonna get himself some spangled Nudie Cohn western wear to go with that big ol’ Texas chapeau?

Bruce Forman’s playing…wow. He was taking long intros and even extended breaks sometimes and getting into these intense, light figured things…the players would sit still or maybe sizzle the high hat a bit and Forman would be experimenting…at one point he strained his left hand into some crazy chords and ran it up the neck in intervals…you could see the concern in his eyes wondering if the idea would pan out or crash. He turned to the players and said I can;t believe that worked as the band lit in. They just smiled, used to it.

Bruce Forman has a new album called Formanism that like a fool I didn’t bring into work with me today to listen to right now as I’m talking about it. It’s him and Jake Reed and Gabe Noel on the bass. They don’t do anything the right way. I mean you listen to a hundred jazz guitar trio projects and this doesn’t follow the rules. He busts them wide open. Now it’s a guitar record and unless you’re a guitarist, a really good guitarist, or a really good jazz musician, most of it will fly right over your head. It sure does mine, whoosh, a whole universe of concepts I can’t hope to dig. But not all of it…it’s different enough so that even a neophyte like me notices. Like the structure all’s different….that comfortable head/solo/solo/solo/head thing ain’t there. There’s some chamber music stretches, but chamber music with a big old kick drum propelling it along in places. That’s wrong. And there’s some almost furious bebop things that might have tripped up the cats at Minton’s since the usual pattern ain’t there, not quite. I dunno. I did the liner notes for it, and what a bitch that was. The music was deeper than I could see but still I got glimpses of something happening, something heavy. The coolness. The newness. So I went through I dunno how many drafts. I tried being a smartass. I tried talking about women. I tried sounding like a real live jazz critic. Nothing worked. I sent him a couple thngs and he cobbled something together. But it was frustrating. But I only bring this up because I’ve listened to this album a couple times since then. And I dunno if you’ve ever done liner notes but I know that by the time I’m done with them I never want to hear that fucking record again. You listen to something over and over and over again to get it down in words. Get sick to death of it. It winds up in the stacks somewhere down near the bottom, between a couple cds by jazz singers that I’ve never done more than look at the cleavage of.  They came by the dozens, those CDs. Everyday. Standards and some ill-advised pop cover or two. It was depressing. But I am digressing here. I just mean that a lot of awesome albums I’ve done liner notes for are now stuck in the stacks that I never get to. So why am I still listening to Formanism? Because I keep hearing things there I didn’t pick up before? Because listening to a great, great jazz guitarist is like learning a new language that has nothing to do with English at all?  Some alien tongue full of inexplicable ergative and oblique and weird temporal cases?  For me it is. So I listen again to figure out more. Listen and listen.

Odd guy, Bruce Forman. Stretching jazz concepts way out when he does a trio, and sticking close to the bone when it’s Cow Bop time. Both work.

Bruce Forman

Monotreme

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My first words at the office today were who the hell put a fucking platypus on my monitor? Normally it’s good morning, but there was a platypus on my monitor.

I was up till three in the morning writing, come to work a few hours later and have to deal with a monotreme. A stuffed blue monotreme with absurdly bulbous eyes. Cute.

I hate cute. I’m six and a half foot tall and look like an aging linebacker and that and cute don’t jibe.

But I work at Disney. ‘Nuff said.

Once I came to work many years ago and found an eight foot Tinkerbelle painted on my wall. There was me, my desk, my computer, and Tinkerbelle. The girls had a ball with that. A big macho dude with a huge Tinkerbelle over his desk.

That’s not even cute. It’s just sick.

And while none of this is worthy of a blog post, it’s my blog so there.

Vibrato

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[Sent this late January 2012. Amazingly enough a mess of people showed up to the York on the basis of this. People showed up at the other gigs too. Ya never know what'll work.]

Hopefully there’ll be some great jazz in a bar sometime soon, a bar with loud people and hustlers and tourists who don’t know shit from fuck and drunk chicks trying to get laid and people you have to shush to hear the music. That’s my kinda scene. Actually I see Matt Marucci has his annual two nite run at Jax with Manning on tenor on Jan 20-21. That’s a great gig. Fucker doesn’t play one tune he didn’t write, and is a killer drummer besides. Wanna go see Elliott Caine blast it Blue Note style in a loud bar this Sunday at the York. Never seen him overwhelmed by any crowd. When ya play they kinda stuff, you can crank it. He’s got a veteran drummer from Chicago, too, who knows to make it loud when necessary.

I can’t remember who I sent that to but yeah, the Caine gig at the York sounds like a good deal. Cool joint too, along one of my fave stretches of Highland Park. Rich jazz fans won’t be anywhere to be seen, since rumor has it Mexicans live in the neighborhood, and I recall how terrified rich jazz fans were of the “blighted intersection” Charlie O’s was on out in the valley…..you know how squalid and desperate those middle class neighborhoods can be, and there were middle class people all over the place outside Charlie O’s. Gives me chills just to think about it. Hence tonite we’ll be going to Vibrato, far up in the rarified Bel Air. Not a lot of tourists there, but the rich people don’t know shit from fuck either, and there’s a whiff of a meat market at the bar, with rich chicks looking to get laid, and loud blinged out dudes talking shop bullshit. I love it.  The food is delicious but beyond the means of almost anyone I know…but you can snack on the free breadsticks at the bar and watch as entire herds of cattle, well sliced and grilled to perfection are delivered by absurdly cute waitresses who smile at the millionaires and pretend they give a flying fuck. 

We’re going to Vibrato because I have been jonesin’ bad for some of that Benn Clatworthy saxophone. Charlie O’s is history and he can’t seem to get booked at Jax anymore but lord can that dumb English bastard play a saxophone. (It’s OK, I call him a dumb English bastard to his face all the time. It’s an Irishman’s compliment.) And Pat Senatore went and booked the guy because Pat Senatore is probably the single coolest club booker in town. Benn goes on about nine, but the rich people who don’t know shit from fuck will still be whining about the 405 to each other at the top of the solid gold lungs so that opening set might be a tad understated.  The second set opens up though, and the last set will be glorious. We’ll probably get there after 9:00. There’s no cover, too. Nor a  minimum. Nor a dress code.  Hell, you don’t have to wear clothes at all.

Hope yer all  cool, groovy, high, whatever….

Brick 
 
ps: ya gotta love a guy who quotes his own email.

Joe Bataan

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Man, I love Joe Bataan. I finally got to see him several years ago (circa 2004, I guess) at the Filipino Cultural Festival in San Pedro. All around those huge old trees with their screaming parrots was a sea of Filipinos. They were chattering like mad, averaged about four feet, and craned their necks and stared waaaaaay up at me, giggling. We got some pansit or something and watched the inevitable beauty contest. There was some important pinoy dude emceeing the thing, and some politicians, and somebody from the consulate. And there were two beauty queens, former Miss Philippine Cultural Festival or something. One was a perfect pinay virgin, prim, sinless, polite, with a sweet smile. The other was some saucy knockout, an LA girl, this smartass, hysterically funny gorgeous chick who made a risque joke and I fell immediately in love with her, of course. She had some kind of connection with the LA Raiders, had been a girlfriend or something. A wantonly sexy woman. I remember the good beauty queen was obviously offended by her.

Anyway, there was some bad singing group that opened and went on forever. Then out came Joe Bataan. Really thick NYC accent and attitude. He called himself Joe Bataan (as in ran), and not Bataan (as in on) or Joe Bata’an (as in ah-on), which is how he was introduced. What an amazing set. Great soul and funk, all the classics. A total showman, he owned that stage. I stood in line afterward to have him sign the CD I bought there….something I never did before or after. I felt like a complete geek. But he was soooooooooooooooo cool, that Joe Bataan….

(2003 or so)

Helluva jazz session

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There was a helluva jam session at Sonny’s down in Leimert Park 0on Saturday night. Right around the corner from the World Stage. Lots of players. And old guy in a wheel chair laying down some very nice conga. Isaac Smith went monster on his trombone, reaching places way way up where God did not intend that instrument to go. And there was a guy, I can’t remember his name. a physician, played remarkable bop piccolo. Apparently the place is jumping like that almost every night. Amazing street that, music at half a dozen or more spots all within a few doors of each other. Unknown cats, amateurs, students and professionals mixing it up. Guys with horns walking up and down the street. You drop by Sonny’s and listen a while, then walk around the corner to the World Stage, catch a set, and head back to Sonny’s where they’re still blowing. Crazy.

Sigh…..wrote that all back in 2007. Ain’t been like that in years. Recessions are brutal. Jazz just disappears. Everything disappears. Everything but the bills. They just keep coming as if nothing had happened.

The York

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Elliott Caine is at the York in Highland Park on Sunday, March 18 and the place goes nuts whenever he’s there. Helluva band–Carl Randall on tenor, Mahesh Balasooriya at the piano, Trevor Ware on bass, and Kenny Elliott on the drums–and Elliott gets all fired up doing his Lee Morgan Blue Note thing, the band wails, the people fucking cheer and–get this–give the band a stand ovation. At a jazz gig for a local band? Is this possible? Plus you’re allowed to talk and even hit on each other. I don’t (the wife would pour her beer on my head and kick me, hard), but you can. Fish’n'chips ain’t the best, tho’. But everthing else is. No cover. Parking behind the place in the city lot. Groovy neighborhood, reminds me of Silver Lake sorta before Silverlake got on the cover of Los Angeles Magazine and was ruined forever.

Luckman Jazz Orchestra

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Still tripping over that Luckman Jazz Orchestra gig last nite. Charles Owens has that crazy touch, keeps eveyone up and lively. I got there late, of course, and had to wait till the tune was up before they’d let me sit down, like waiting till the whistle blows before you can go to your seat at a hockey game. So I stood out in the lobby ans listened to it over the speakers. You could hear the looseness…LJO is all about feel, playing things by ear. The changes aren’t always skin tight, things roll to a stop sometimes when they should stop on a dime. But the same goes in spades for the Gerald Wilson Orchestra, the same for those large Mingus ensembles, for Ellington even, for so many great bands. Sort of the white band vs black band traditions. White bands can read better, polish those arrangements till they squeak, but the black band leaders, a lot of them, they wanted more than that. They wanted to feel it. They wanted the music to sound alive and organic and swinging for real, a Saturday nite kinda swing, pumping and rocking and gorgeous. That’s the Luckman Jazz Orchestra. Owens assembled arrangements of JJ Johnson tunes that were phenomenal…a Garnett Brown piece was breathtaking and must have been a bitch to learn and even more so to play (especially as I just found out they’d never really rehearsed it). And there was a number that featured extended bass clarinet work by Bennie Maupin and that cat doesn’t so much blow that thing…he paints with it, vivid strokes and washes of deep blue. Oh baby.

Like I said it was an evening of J.J. Johnson tunes and there was a lotta trombone…Phil Ranelin played his horn righteously, very pretty stuff, and it’s a wonder that you can get such beautiful stuff out of that ungainly thing. And a superb trumpet section as always. Trevor Ware and Kenny Elliott had the bottom locked down. Charles blew crazy charles owens lines, circularly breathed. I can never remember who did what, but there were some wonderful moments from each chair. From out on the lobby Winston Byrd’s high notes sounded intense. He does that way high thing wild, man. Cat Anderson. You got to be dedicated to do that like that. Ouch.

Come May they’re doing Charlie Parker. Get your tickets now.

 
(March 2012)

There is jazz out there

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Didn’t get to the Blue Whale in time to see Kneebody. Fucked up. Bumming, we headed west to Vibrato. Chuck Manning in a pianoless trio. Absolutely wailed. Not out at all, but intense, every tune, every solo. Dick Weller was doing his best Roy Haynes. Crowd dug it. Chuck Manning is a helluva player. There is jazz out there.
 
(March 2012)

I just wrote that sentence in electrons

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Half the stuff I have ever written in my life disappears in unsaved drafts or forgotten and long obliterated emails. All the long first drafts of Brick’s Picks columns I gushed out…I’d trim them to the exact word count and turn all that excess writing back into random electrons. And I have no idea how many emails–thousands and thousands of emails–I do my best stuff in emails. Some are saved. The ones written at work, however, they too are now electrons. They can run on for hundreds of words, for paragraphs, crazy tales of something or other and then poof…..gone. Words become crazy spinning electrons. Probably a million words have gone that way. Hundreds of stories. Thousands of vignettes. I never even think about it till suddenly I want to retrieve one like the tale of  the girl I nearly squirted with pickle juice. Sounds funny now, but to a little kid from California plunked down on an island off the coast of Maine that was no laughing matter. Lobster bait. It was my very first day in Great Island Elementary School, the fifth school I’d attended in second grade….beginning in San Diego, a stop in Tacoma, a couple other places, then the the wilds of Maine……and my mom packed me a liverwurst sandwich on rye with a pickle and when I bit into that pickle it squirted…but just then the little girl sitting next to me ducked down to pick up a pencil or something and the juice arced clear over her head and landed unseen in the floor. I could see it there, a tiny little puddle. Probably the most relieved I ever felt in my entire life. That was half a century ago but I can still remember it vivdly. I wrote down the whole thing in a longish email to my friend Danette. I send all my stories to Danette. I don’t know why exactly, but she’s seen more of my stories than everyone else in the world combined, probably. The poor thing. But she’s beautiful and smart and writes like a champ herself, brilliant. I suppose that’s why. Anyway, the pickle story is gone now. Just electrons. And you know how electrons are. Meaningless. Brownian. Infintesimally small. Too small to give a fuck about, really, except that I just wrote that sentence in electrons.   

Frank Strazzeri

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Wandered into Jax last nite with Fyl for a late dinner. There was a trio happening, but the way the piano is there you can never see the player unless he’s my size, and there aren’t that many Andy Langhams in jazz. But this cat was playing some beautiful be bop…his voicings were gorgeous. I figured he was a veteran because you don’t really hear that kind of sound anymore…it’s much more strong-fingered now, much firmer on the keys, all that classical training I suppose. But this guy’s chords floated over the melody, and I’m trapped in my limited language chops here, trying to describe something I can’t actually understand. Let’s just say I dug it. So I got up from our booth and went up to the stage and peered way over the piano, and there, bent over the keys and completely lost in his music was Frank Strazzeri. Of course, I shoulda known that sound. Not many of his old west coast bebop comrades still working. But he’s at Jax pretty regularly, and is a real treat for us jazz fans that are left…..keep an eye out for him. Certainly was a nice surprise last nite.
 
(March 2012)