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Sing a Mean Tune, Kid: Chicago for people who hate Chicago

by Mark Lempke
When people rebuff my attempts to share my love of jazz-pop-rock group Chicago with them, I understand their qualms. Really, I do. Few bands went from being quite so inventive to quite so predictable in the long, tough slog between 1968 and 1984. (The political parallels alone are terrifyingly relevant: many of the exact same people ...
The Led Zeppelin Papers: Sacred Cows, Led Zeppelin and Does the Song Remain the Same?

by C. Michael Bailey
"Sacred cows make the tastiest cheeseburgers" --after Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989) I have always said of popular culture, that like a McDonald's cheeseburger, it is to be consumed but never considered. Much of music is nothing more than a reflection of popular culture and certainly falls beneath that grand proclamation. A good deal of hip ...
Roswell Rudd: The Musical Magus Turns 75

by Raul d'Gama Rose
"Years ago it would have seemed an impossible dream to get to record with this musical magus, but here we are... and what a thrill!" class="f-right">--Charlie Kohlhase, From liner notes to Eventuality: The Charlie Kohlhase Quintet Plays the Music of Roswell Rudd (Nada, 2001) I see him suddenly as if in a ...
Free Jazz: The Jazz Revolution of the '60s

by Robert Levin
[Editor's note: Revised and expanded here, this piece originated as an oral essay for an installment of the Cosmoetica Omniversica internet radio series on the arts and sciences. The series was hosted by Dan Schneider and Art Durkee.] More or less officially unveiled with the first New York appearance of the Ornette Coleman Quartet ...
Tcha Limberger: Gypsy In The Footsteps Of Bela Bartok

by Raul d'Gama Rose
The hair of the bow gently caresses the string, catching an A" high on the upper register. Then, in a series of sweeping glissandos, it descends the diatonic scale in a minor mode. I am caught in its downdraft like a bird on a rapidly cooling thermal, falling... falling through air thick with saddening notes. The ...
Don Cherry: From Out of the Shadows

by Raul d'Gama Rose
It was cool in Bombay that July in 1985, or was it 1986? Somehow the year does not seem to matter quite as much as it did when the phenomenon first occurred. The other details, of course, I remember clear as day. Association PC were tearing it up on stage at the fabled arena of the ...
Why George Russell Will Always Live in Time

by Raul d'Gama Rose
A measure of just how underrated a musician he was in his lifetime is reflected in the fact that even three days after he passed on most of the major publications had not even reported his death, much less celebrated his life in the glowing terms that he so richly deserved. Perhaps this was because oddly ...
Toronto Jazz '09 Festival Journal: 'Round About Midday to 'Round About Midnight

by Raul d'Gama Rose
T.D. Canada Trust Toronto Jazz Festival Toronto, Ontario, Canada June 26-July 5, 2009 To begin at the beginning: close encounters in a war against the abolition of free will by methodical conditioning and the servitude made acceptable by regular doses of chemically-induced progress and happiness from: canned food, ...
Denny Zeitlin's Inhabiting a Parallel Universe

by Raul d'Gama Rose
The artist is alone. Not woefully or desperately alone, but more like willfully alone and enraptured... He empties his head of thought to make way for the flow of air. And in the air, notes of varying pitch and character. They bring their sound alone... then sometimes strung together like necklaces of varying beads--whole ones, halves ...
Duke Ellington: Symphony of the Body and Soul

by Raul d'Gama Rose
A study in sepia It was the package that arrived, which prompted me to open an album of memories in the first place. Looking at the photograph, I recall some--not all--of the many details of the evening it was taken. The boy in the photograph is I, and I am in a black mood. ...