Author Archives: Brick Wahl

Blizzard of towels

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(weirdness at the Playboy Jazz Festival, 2008)

But the best thing I saw all weekend at the Bowl was late yesterday when I went into a restroom to wash up. There was a guy maybe my age, rather clean cut, very fit, at the sink washing his hands.  He then went to the towel dispenser. Pulled a towel. Then another. Then another and another and another and soon , completely oblivious to me maybe three sinks down, he began pulling them out in a frenzy, wild eyed and a big crazy grin from ear to ear. There was a blizzard of towels, they over flowed the sink and fluttered to the floor..a hundred, two hundred towels easy. Suddenly he realized I was there, water running over my hands, staring at him dumbfounded. Oh sorry man, he mumbled, and pointed at the dispenser….they don’t let you rip one, you rip one and another one and ohhhh, he shook his head sagely and said It’s a conspiracy, man, and walked off and disappeared around the corner.

About Lester Bangs

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(Comments posted to a New Yorker piece about Lester Bangs, 8-30-2012)

Astral Weeks, insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend. It is a precious and terrible gift, born of a terrible truth, because what they see is both infinitely beautiful and terminally horrifying: the unlimited human ability to create or destroy, according to whim. It’s no Eastern mystic or psychedelic vision of the emerald beyond, nor is it some Baudelairean perception of the beauty of sleaze and grotesquerie. Maybe what it boils down to is one moment’s knowledge of the miracle of life, with its inevitable concomitant, a vertiginous glimpse of the capacity to be hurt, and the capacity to inflict that hurt.
                                                                       Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung

That Astral Weeks review is awfully pretty, gorgeous even. Too bad it’s complete horseshit. It has nothing to do with what the album sounds like and everything to do with Lester Bangs. Not that Lester Bangs wasn’t a fascinating guy, but if you’re reviewing a record you should leave yourself at the door. I don’t care how many English classes you’ve had or if you’ve read Baudelaire or can do more acid that Philip K Dick, I just want to know what the album sounds like. So many music critics to ignore that principal. Lots of pretty words that don’t give you a clue about what the music actually sounds like. If you want to write about yourself, write your memoirs. If you’re going to review an album, let the music do the talking. And if you can’t do that in prose, you’re in the wrong business. Because when you write about music, the only thing that matters is the music. You the critic don’t matter at all.

Here’s a rule of thumb…if you’ve completed a review and it’s one of the best things you’ve ever written in your life, dump it. You probably wrote about yourself.

Tigran Hamasyan, again

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We used to see Tigran Hamasyan at the Foundry pretty regularly, he spent a lot of time at that upright piano. The kid is vastly talented, a virtuosic improviser, an explosion of rapid fire creative energy and new ideas. Kevin Kanner or Zach Harmon usually drummed and the music was endlessly intense…exquisitely beautiful passages then chunks of Monk then stretches of pure bop then Armenian melodic progressions and then a reductionist rhythmic pounding that only a genius can get away with. Owner Eric Greenspan lays out no rules for the cats here and the crowd is not quite jazz enough to demand conformity, so he just went a little nuts sometimes. And while we saw Tigran in a more sophisticated and more structured guise elsewhere, and were blown away every time, his performances at the Foundry were a special kind of madness. Doubtless he’s matured a bit, and certainly been schooled even more than he was, as he’s been studying and playing in the meantime in NYC and all over Europe. After this his next local gig is January at the Broad Stage playing his brilliant new Fable album for a big room full of jazz critics and rich people (you might start looking for tickets now). That’ll be a real concert, a solo recital in fact, with a captive audience hanging onto every exquisite note. The Foundry booking is just a no cover bar gig, with that hoary old piano just a step or two from your bar stool. Our kind of scene. We love jazz in bars.

“A Guide to Russian Band Pussy Riot’s Oeuvre”

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Never trust a rock critic who uses the word oeuvre. Never trust a rock critic who uses the word iconic. Never trust a rock critic who calls himself a pop critic. In fact, never trust a rock critic, they’ll steal your records. No they won’t. They get them free anyway. But they will try to get in on the guest list. Even if there’s no cover. A guest list is a guest list.

Yes, this goes for jazz critics too. Except for the word oeuvre. They can’t spell it. Well, I can’t, anyway. I spelled it oevre. Almost began this Never trust a rock critic who uses the word oevre. Imagine my embarrassment. It would have been an iconic moment in Brick’s typo oeuvre.

All you can do is watch and remember

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(Comments I added to a story about how Silver Lake got to be so damn straight in the Eastsider, 2012. Amazing what you can find when you google your own name.)

I’ve lived in Silver Lake for close to thirty years. The gay scene in Silver Lake (which was Silverlake back then, incidentally) was devastated by AIDS. It never recovered. Silver Lake’s gay scene was very leather, and that scene was hit particularly hard. The survivors began moving out, selling their homes, leaving town. Too many sad memories. Straights filled the void.

Silver Lake had the most wonderful estate sales back then. You’d pick through the stuff, get great deals, and head back out to your cars feeling vaguely guilty. Weird time.

When AIDS first hit Silver Lake it was scary. The dying were everywhere, the dead not there at all. Lost a lot of friends. Soon it seemed we had no gay friends left. They’d all vanished…moved, died, or just stopped going out.

I miss those days. I miss the gay bars, the ones we could go in, the ones we couldn’t. I miss the gay hamburger joint and gay coffee shops and gay steak houses. I miss the gay newspapers. I miss the leather guys in their chaps buying crisco at the corner markets. Good times. Even for a soooo straight couple.

Btw, in the sixties Silver Lake was a hippie haven. By the punk rock 80′s when we moved in there were a few of them left. They’d go one about the old days and wonder where everybody went.

Now us old punk rockers wonder the same thing.

Cities change. All you can do is watch and remember.

(And you know, I’m still not used to it being Silver Lake. Before it was hip and famous and yuppie breeder heaven it was Silverlake. Then the city put up that damn sign on Sunset….)

Man, I miss Charlie O’s…

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(Charlie O’s closed it’s doors on the last night of August, 2011. I still miss the place. Here’s some things pulled from Brick’s Picks columns back in the day, just to remind you why you were always there.)

Charlie O’s has a solid seven straight night’s of killer jazz music this week. Every one a pick. If you can manage to do all your shopping in the vicinity of Victory and Woodman you can just kinda pop in on your way home every night. (There’s a 7 11 nearby, a liquor store, always a yard sale or two in the area, that should work.)  It kicks in hard with tenor Ernie Watts on Friday…if you’ve heard his latest, the live To The Point, then you know what’s in store.  Then on Saturday tenor Pete Christlieb takes over, with that shiny namesake horn of his and just blows solid, swinging stuff. (and his classic Apogee with Warne Marsh is a terrific stocking stuffer). Then on the Sabbath cometh Benn Clatworthy, another mighty player who wanders off the blues map as often as not, looking over edges, soloing through unknown territories, smacking into unseen walls…. We love this cat’s style. Check out The Decider, a nicely succinct display of his chops and thinking. For Big Band Monday they brought in the great Med Flory’s JazzWave. The heart of which is SuperSax (you crate diggers take notice), those massed brass and reeds playing Bird solo’s rendered into large ensemble arrangements without dropping the tempo an iota. Wild. Then on Tuesday it goes deep again with Theo Saunders’ quintet built around his imaginative Monkish-McCoy flavored constructions that lets soloists go some serious places. Great jazz. Then the trumpet players wind up the week with Jack Sheldon on the night before Christmas and Carl Saunders grinching up Christmas night itself. Like we said, every night’s a great one….

…..Now how about the genuine nightspots….real jazz junkies collect at Charlie O’s in the Valley. It’s this town’s straight ahead epicenter, and the crowd is purist, half of them players themselves, the rest jazzophiles. These people demand the real stuff, three sets worth. There’s usually no cover (except on Big Band Mondays) and there’s no minimum, what else you want? This Friday check out saxman Justo Almario, a Colombian whose impassioned sound is shot through with Trane (much like fellow South American Gato Barbieri used to, though Justo can bop with the best, too.) In fact, the great tenor work continues all weekend here….with the mighty Don Menza on Saturday, his is a big, fat powerful tone, the kind that as they said of Dexter Gordon, seems to fill the whole  room. And on Sunday it’s Doug Webb, who delivers with a passionate intensity and nods to Trane and Joe Henderson and Hank Mobley and all the rest of those cats. We dig him. Real jazz in a real jazz freak’s club.….

….Since the legendary all night contest when Lester Young finally cut Coleman Hawkins, tenor battles have been a jazz tradition. Crowds love it: Herman Riley and Rickey Woodard brought down the house last year at Catalina’s going chorus after chorus. But such matches are rare anymore. Battling tenor albums are even rarer. A particularly splendid example, Apogee, had Pete Christlieb and his mentor Warne Marsh going at it across two sides and the result was joyous, intoxicating hard bop. Alas, Warne is gone, but Christlieb has found a worthy sparring partner in mighty Don Menza. They sound nothing alike but share a passion for aggressive soloing and their past matches have been electrifying. No one gets humiliated—these are more chivalrous times—but the competition is real as the two battling tenors strive to outblow each other at Charlie O’s this Friday, April 13. It’s a perfect way to kick off a great week of local jazz…..

…..Charles Owens is at Charlie O’s again this Friday, with the fine quartet of pianist John Beasley, bassist Edwin Livingston, and drummer Roy McCurdy. Last time Charlie O played Charlie O’s he finished the night with a suite of half a dozen tunes, included some Miles, an incredibly funky “Cold Duck Time” (bassman John Heard owned the tune that night) that actually had people dancing (at Charlie O’s!), and then into a profound take on a movement from A Love Supreme that eventually segued naturally, somehow, into an extended avant-blues workout on “Meet Me With Your Black Drawers On”.  His playing had tapped all his specialties—the blues, the straight up, the hard bop, the spiritual and the out there. It went unrecorded of course.  Owens has few recordings. A few old LPs if you can find them, and last year’s fine So Far So Good but like so many of our local horn masters (and Owens plays nearly as many reeds as Rahsaan Roland Kirk) you have to catch him live. He’s a different animal in different venues: catch him in Dwight Trible’s Band and he summons up the ghosts of masters past, simmering low or exploding in Dolphy-esque fireworks. At the World Stage last year he went into the stratosphere with percussion accompaniment, an event we described deep in the pages of “The Best Of L.A.”  In a blues band he’s down and dirty. But at Charlie O’s he’ll run down the middle, veering into some blues here, some craziness there, but always back to the righteous straight ahead with an unparalleled “Eternal Triangle”. Don’t miss this one…..

….When alto saxist Zane Musa takes off it is a sight to behold. He leans into the wind and seems to blow out the crazy chords with every ounce of his being, rocking back and forth in some sort of jazz ecstasy. It’s a style not for everyone—some prefer their players cool—but for fans his wild Bird progressions, gutsy Maceo funk and all that Cannonball seem just right. Those influences and inspirations fuse into white hot flurries and molten blues runs that never fail to kick up the pace on the bandstand a notch or three. On Friday at Charlie O’s he’s backed by a terrific version of the John Heard Trio, with bassist Heard, drummer Roy McCurdy and pianist John Beasley.  An excellent way to open up the jazz week….

….There are a pair of saxophonists bookending the weekend at Charles O’s that absolutely slay us every time. On Friday we got Charles Owens, fresh from a big LACMA appearance. A masterful player (and orchestra leader…the Luckman has done brilliantly under his direction), Owens plays just about every reed and woodwind ever made (just dig him on English horn) and plays a mean dirty flute; but it’s on tenor that he is on fire. At the World Stage we’ve seen him go what looked like utterly out of his mind, all Dolphy and Kirk and late period Trane or a way gone Sonny running down East Broadway, you know, crazy clusters and Fulani scales and notes flying so fast, damn…. And at Charlie O’s we’ve heard the most soulful A Love Supreme, the crowd utterly silent, not a whisper or a stir till it fades on that final bass thrum…then hot damn it’s Charlie getting down with Eddie Harris, music so funky people are actually dancing at Charlie O’s, and so greasy they’re getting drunk. That’s Charlie Owens, delivering. And that’s part one. Part two is Benn Clatworthy, same stage on Sunday. You’d never think a foul mouthed Michael Caine-as-Alfie-sounding Brit would play saxophone as good as any Yank, even better than most. He’s got a voice on that thing, steeped in mid period Trane, in Booker Ervin, in lots of Sonny Rollins when Sonny was the greatest of them all. But that’s just the sound. But the ideas, the vision, the places he goes, pushing, daring…god damn. Nobody in LA does this. Maybe nobody nowhere. It can be the most radical. It can be the most hard bopping. It can be so gorgeous you will not draw a breath till that horn has expended his. His is an intense, radical, beautiful jazz playing and still completely in the tradition. So there ya go, two of LA’s most exciting saxophonists, just waiting for your ears. Oh…and who’s got the floor on the Saturday between them? Tenor Don Menza is who, and he can kick anybody’s ass. Don’t let no one tell you this town ain’t got great saxophone players…..

…..We first remember seeing pianist Otmaro Ruiz some years ago at Charlie O’s, where he once was pretty regular on the piano bench. We walked in one night and a perfect maelstrom of piano chords was filling the joint, customers yelling, the band in a jazz frenzy. We’d never heard jazz piano like that, the mad chord progressions, the crazy Latin rhythms we couldn’t identify, the things plucked from Chopin and chunks of Monk and Bud Powell. It was a different bar inside then, some ridiculous piano lounge layout from days when people hung in places like that, smoking too much and picking each other up, and the crowd stood round the piano and there’s was no way to see who the hell was making that crazy wonderful music. Otmaro Ruiz someone said. Who? Otmaro Ruiz, the Venezuelan guy. Like that explained it. But he really was an exotic, inexplicable genius back then, and just as thrilling now. We saw him with Dwight Trible at California Plaza this summer, and every time he soloed the audience shouted with excitement. He’s always exciting, with a mess of players or just a duet. He can completely blow your mind with some one-of-a-kind Latin American meets jazz thing, or an absolutely gorgeous melody awash in color, or an utterly mad explosion of ideas that defy words completely. He has a trio at the Blue Whale on Friday…..

….Charlie O’s is the quintessential jazz room. Outside is a non-descript stretch of the Valley, but you walk inside and it’s dark, with a low stage at one end and a handful of players jamming their asses off. So leave it to this joint to book saxist Chuck Manning with John Heard’s house trio when you’re all supposed to be home with the eggnog and Andy Williams. Manning’s intensity really comes out here with John Heard behind him, there’s a toughness to his sound at Charlie O’s. He probably has that sound everywhere he plays, actually, it’s just something you notice more at Charlie O’s, the way you notice the chance taking at the World Stage or new ideas at the Blue Whale. A great room has a vibe, and Charlie O’s has that bad ass nothing but straight ahead vibe. Which makes it special. And not sappy on Christmas Eve….

….Now Charlie O’s has a purist vibe, too…but it’s still a place where you can just waltz in on most nights (there is a cover on Mondays) and sit at the bar and down a few as well. It’s a jazz joint, our one true jazz joint, and as jazz has always been made in joints since time primordial, it is in that sense maybe the purest jazz venue in town. It certainly has a helluva line up this week, beginning with house band the John Heard Trio (with drummer Roy McCurdy and pianist Theo Saunders) hosting a pair of Trane-mad saxists this weekend: Justo Almario on Friday and Azar Lawrence on Saturday. Saunders’ McCoy Tyner inspirations connect especially well with Azar; his Monk underpinnings work beautifully with Justo. On Sunday trumpeter Carl Saunders leads his sextet there…the man’s technical skills are extraordinary, his Live at Charlie O’s (of course) is a veritable handbook on the things one can do on a horn without need of another breath. And grooving trumpeter Elliott Caine has his Charlie O’s debut on Tuesday. But the high point for us is Theo Saunders again, fronting his own sextet on Wednesday. He’s collected some exceptional players: tenor Chuck Manning and alto Zane Musa (both are fine and completely distinct soprano saxophonists as well), his longtime trombonist David Dahlsten, and the powerful team of bassist Jeffrey Littleton and drummer Tony Austin. Saunders is an underrated composer (word has it that he has several albums of stuff out somewhere), his pieces can be difficult, if beautiful, and are rhythmically complex, his solos are always surprising and for some reason we really dig his unpredictably right-on-the-money comping best of all. Four whole sets of the stuff and no cover, baby, just a couple of drinks. Can’t beat that.

 

 

Soooo tempting

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(2010)

An email from a Pinay pal. She’s gorgeous, of course, and wants to know if I’d like to go see a Filipino transvestite jazz singer.  Really? A Filipino tranny jazz singer? It was tempting and odd…. Filipino transvestites can be awfully hot to the young and unaware. I remember this one flirty number who worked at a lunch counter near my job on Wilshire. Total babe. This was the 1980’s and I was in my late 20’s and awash in testosterone. I was standing there in line and imagining fucking her when suddenly I realized there was a penis there. The bitch. She saw me and laughed. I had completely forgotten this for nearly 25 years. I was horrified then but it sure is funny now.

Jazz panel

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(2009)

I was at a symposium or something once that had jazz panels. I hate panels. I hate anything jazz that doesn’t involve people actually, you know, playing jazz music. I got lots of better things to do.  But I checked out one of these panels, though, because it had an old alto playing be bop buddy of mine on it. But it was dull anyway. Dull dull dull. Even the panelists looked bored. So I told a pal sitting next to me that I could completely wreck it. He said I couldn’t. I said just watch this, and raised my hand and asked about Johnny Hodges. My old be bop alto buddy hates Johnny Hodges and out came a long winded, offensive and hysterically funny diatribe against the way Johnny Hodges played saxophone and against pre-bop alto saxophonery in general.  People in the audience were offended and yelled back. After a few raucous minutes things finally settled down. So I raised my hand again and asked about Art Pepper. My old be bop alto buddy hates Art Pepper and went into another long, offensive and hysterically funny harangue against Art Pepper. All hell broke loose again. The famous trumpeter on the panel, to calm things down, told an extremely rude joke about Puerto Rican women. The famous trombone player talked about how high he used to get. My bop buddy talked about reefers. The trumpeter told another rude joke. The trombonist had a million drug stories. My buddy went after Johnny Hodges again. The trumpeter told another joke. All three panelists were in stitches. People walked out. The moderator just gave up entirely.

And while that was probably the best jazz panel ever, I promised myself that I would never do that again.

So consider this an apology.

Silver Lake again

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(2012)

This morning right after I got up there was knock on the door. A rather urgent knock. I’m wearing yesterday’s clothes, my hair in all directions, half awake, cup of coffee in my hand, and swung open the door. There’s a gorgeous thing, tall, gracile, coifed and made up in some bizarre get up like something out Jimi Hendrix’s closet. She looked flabbergasted. Can I help you? Oh. Is this 2671 and a half? No. Oh. They’re upstairs. Upstairs? Yeah, around the corner. Oh, I’m sorry. Anytime. I stepped back and though the window watched that sweet package go down the stairs and thought how this neighborhood used to be all queers.

Then coming home tonight there was a shattering Asian babe in the shortest dress and highest heels ever hanging in my driveway. She was smoking a cigarette and the smoke wreathed her head and only added to the picture and I thought how this neighborhood used to be all queers.

The gay guys are gone, most of them. It’s all breeders and babes now. The breeders are on the street below, propagating the species and fighting over preschools. The babes are on our street, walking their dogs or knocking on the wrong doors or waiting in driveways and smoking and looking drop dead gorgeous. Is that for the better? Probably not…the neighborhood used to be a lot more fun. I miss the gay guys. Miss them a lot. Then again, from a purely aesthetic point of view it’s a nice change of scenery for an old man and besides, children are important. I know I was. Not that I had any.

A Love Supreme in a still, dark room

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(Comments from 2010 on a first draft of a Bricks Picks from 2007)

I just found this. It was written in one long take. I just let the thing gush apparently. My wife Fyl had been out of the hospital about six weeks [she’d nearly died of an infection…had died for a few minutes, but pulled through tho’ with severe amnesia] and right about this time she had a heart operation to install a defibrillator because the doctors (and me) were worried the arrhythmia would drop her stone dead. I’d avoided losing my job, barely surviving a big layoff. I was learning how to handle all the finances, and all the other things I had never done in our 28 year marriage.  I had decided to throw Fyl a big birthday party at the end of the month (and big it was, too, old friends by the dozens  just thrilled she was still around and a pile of gifts; she smiled and laughed and said thank you and had no idea who any of them were.)  And the economy had just caved in and the country was in a complete panic. Basically, all was madness. I was utterly exhausted. I even seem to remember briefly quitting the Weekly in there somewhere (my latest editor was fucking with me. He stopped). Writing is always a bitch for me, about this time it was becoming brutal. I hated it. You can see and feel that all here.  That last paragraph was so typo-ridden (Propler weill be praying fr everybody in ;ll the chuched, kankers will tr to keep pour mpney from diappearring, brokers will f;lutter and pamic. Even presidential candidates sat sc=art stuff.  But try this…pull out “A Love Supreme” in a still darj room. Let ijam. Siy tight, pillows hekp. Herbals too. Get all te way throight, ide it with Johgn C(ltrane. How many revolutions and wars, riys and assisinatiuons and recessuions, and disatr4rs has it withiood) that I could barely read it now and it was me that wrote the fucking thing. The final draft must have been cut by half. But reading this now it’s so evocative. What an amazing, terrible time that was.

 Anyway, I cleaned it up some here, mostly for spelling:

Brick’s Picks # 46

Yeah things are rough with the market down and unemployment up and mortgages defaulting and debates boring and what can a jazz fan do? You still need to hear music—and maybe need it more now than ever—but your 401K just took all the jazz cruise money and left you sporting hoover flags and no place to go.  Fear’s not the only thing scaring us, everything is anymore, and man do we all need a good night out to listen to some solid tuneage and just forget the whole bit for a couple hours. But there’s that image that jazz has picked up the last couple decades…that is it an effete entertainment, something expensive to expensive for you, the guy who had to dash in and out of the liquor store to pick up this Weekly without buying anything. It’s not that there aren’t pricey jazz joints and even pricier concerts—there are plenty—but there are even more places that charge no cover (or maybe just a little one), have no minimums, and won’t completely break you. So let’s pick a few for the weekend.

For early starters this Friday afternoon they’re kicking off the Thelonious Monk centennial (a week late and a decade early, as he was born on Oct. 10, 2017) with a whole herd  of master pianists—Geri Allen, Jean Michel Pilc, Frank Kimbrough, Bill Cunliffe are some—at Ernst and Young Plaza at 7th and Figueroa downtown. It runs from noon to three, so head on down there, buy an apple off some sad broker and dig the wide ranging interpretations. Pretty unique event. Then head over to LACMA where beloved local bassist Putter Smith leads his West Coast through some straight ahead. Also free. There’s bar there, too, and eats. And that’s two events right there that won’t cost you that spare dime and it’s not even night time yet.

Now how about the genuine nightspots….real jazz junkies collect at Charlie O’s in the Valley. It’s this town’s straight ahead epicenter, and the crowd is purist, half of them players themselves, the rest jazzophiles. These people demand the real stuff, three sets worth. There’s usually no cover (except on Big Band Mondays) and there’s no minimum, what else you want? This Friday check out saxman Justo Almario, a Colombian whose impassioned sound is shot through with Trane (much like fellow South American Gato Barbieri used to, though Justo can bop with the best, too.) In fact, the great tenor work continues all weekend here….with the mighty Don Menza on Saturday, his is a big, fat powerful tone, the kind that as they said of Dexter Gordon, seems to fill the whole room. And on Sunday it’s Doug Webb, who delivers with a passionate intensity and nods to Trane and Joe Henderson and Hank Mobley and all the rest of those cats. We dig him. Real jazz in a real jazz freak’s club.

It’s a whole other vibe at the Foundry, on Melrose of all places, where Fridays and Saturdays is about kids going nuts, pushing things. It’s always bassist Matt Cory’s trio, and generally the astonishing imagination and sheer ballsiness of Zach Harmon on the traps…on Friday Gary Fukushima is at the upright and—get this—on Saturday it’s  veterans Larry Goldings with the incredibly sympathetic Bob Sheppard on sax…these guys both have such advanced concepts about the things that can be done with a melody, but it never screams or scares people . The crowd is young (with women at a jazz spot!) and there’s no minimum but you cheap jazz nerds ought to buy a drink and a grilled cheese ferchrissakes. Help keep the happenings happening. And you know…talk to the jazz kids here and you’ll discover a whole scene in this town you never even knew existed….names and places new to anyone older than 30, and killer chops. 

A lot of that scene seems to be popping up at Rocco’s latest spot, the Café Metropol. There is a smallish cover here, but the east are great and beers varied and the room has a kind of intimacy that makes it ideal for, like,  dating…the place won’t scare anyone from the office you talked into going out with you.  Sometimes the music might—Rocco likes a lot of fringier stuff, which is fine for a lot of us, but not for many of those that know us. Saturday’s a great bet, though—Nick Mancini is back, and he can charm his way through the most intense arrangements, and man what a vibes player. Another downtown spot on Fridays and Saturdays is the high ceilinged bar at the Biltmore…all that space up there takes from the volume, but bands seem to dig the room and there’s a pretty varied, friendly crowd.  No cover, no minimum. No eats either. Which just lets you save more money…. Anyway, trumpeter Elliott Caine is there on Friday and he’s been on a post-bop tear lately—the Lee Morgan is still there, but Lee wasn’t all cornbread, and Caine and crew seem to head in that Search For a New Land direction too, if you can dig that. (He’s also at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach on Thursday…and such a deal that room is. A great—and historic venue, back to what, the 40’s? the 50’s?)

Then there’s good and reasonable restaurants that happen to have good jazz in there on occasion, and if you are into solid fifties hard bop and straight ahead you are in luck. Out in Sierra Madre the very family friendly Café 322 has the splendid Donavan Muradian Quintet. They have that Jazz Messengers thing down (and check out Donavan’s tom work), from Chuck Manning inventive distinctive tenor work (though his primary source, Joe Henderson, never did the obligatory stint in Blakey’s batalion) to Kye Palmer’s dulcet, gorgeous trumpet sound. Their Live at the 322 from a couple years ago was ridiculously solid (check out “Whisper Not”). Great stuff, great pasta, reasonable fare, no cover and just a quick jaunt up the 210.  No city traffic at all. Now more good eats—American heavy—will accompany that other local outfit that has hard bop thing down: The CJS Quntet. Chuck Johnson’s tenor is martini dry and always on the mark, while Houston Texas’s Smitty Smith just oozes blues and Pops. Great pairing. Kirk Silsbee once compared them to the classic Max Roach-Clifford Brown Sextet (which says something about Smitty’s playing, huh?), and this makes this a great if higher calorie follow up to Friday’s dinner with the DMQ.

Of course head west out of Hollywood and things begin to empty the wallet a lot faster. Like up in Brentwood, if you haven’t got the bread you shouldn’t even think about eating at Vibrato. I mean, look at them waitresses….they don’t waste them pushing hamburgers to bums like us. Nope, they are for the power diners. But don’t let all that hot air fool you (and it’s a LOT…you don’t make it big on that end of town, apparently, by being quiet)…it dissipates into boozy, overfed murmur after a couple sets, and enough jazz fans have slipped in by then to transform the place into a serious jazz gig. The bar might be full of rich people crying into their fruity Belgian imported beer because their portfolios have blown all over Wall Street but there’s no minimum so just grab one of the strong drinks and a seat somewhere and dig Chuck Manning again—-he’s there Saturday, and he stretches more here than in the DMQ, and quite beyond the whole Buhaina thing…and if you’re lucky it’s John Campbell on the piano and man does that cat swing in the classic sense. Sometimes for a minute it’s like Bud Powell (let alone Monk) never happened. Which can be very refreshing sometimes. Go listen for yourself.

Oh yeah, we’ve received word of  some Thursday night jazz craziness that’s erupted without warning at TiGeorges Chicken on Glendale Ave (just south  of Temple) in Echo Park. It’s the Haitian place, but no compas on jazz night…instead we have the Tom McNalley Trio with saxist John Gross. Hot damn. So what there’s no beer. Drink enough of their coffee and you be hightailing up Glendale to leap into the Lake. It’s safer in there. Repomen are scared of geese, you can’t hear the news, and no brokers can jump that far from any of those gleaming towers just down Temple.  We’ll survive this, you know. Just hang in there, and let the music purge the shit at least once a week. Go out for a late night listening to some of our exceptional jazz talent. Hang onto every last note till they turn off the lights and clear everyone out. Let those final progressions, the last traces of that the melody that fade to breath out in a pair of suspended notes, tenor chords that dissipate to air, follow you all the way home, bouncing around inside your head. Let it lullaby you to sleep. And do sleep. Hearing good jazz’ll do you more good than you know, and you can always worry about the end times in the morning. People will be praying for everybody in all the churches, bankers will to to keep your money from disappearing, brokers will flutter and panic. Even presidential candidates sit scared stiff.  But try this…pull out A Love Supreme in a still, dark room. Let it jam. Sit tight, pillows help. Herbals too. Get all the way through, ride it with John Coltrane. How many revolutions and wars and riots and assassinations and recessions and disasters has it withstood?