Amazon makes strange bedfellows

... or, more accurately, shelf fellows:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

As someone who has purchased or rated books by William Shakespeare, you might like to know that "Outlaws of Poplar Creek / Bowdrie Follows a Cold Trail / His Brother's Debt" will be released on February 12, 2008. You can pre-order yours at a savings of $4.80 by following the link below.

Outlaws of Poplar Creek / Bowdrie Follows a Cold Trail / His Brother's Debt
Louis L'Amour

List Price: $14.99
Price: $10.19
You Save: $4.80 (32%)

Release Date: February 12, 2008

> Extra credit link for word dorks cultural literacy: Shakespearean origins of the expression "Politics make strange bedfellows."

Wrecking Ball Blues

The ice house is melting.
Originally uploaded by maltoodle.

On my most recent trip back to Kansas City, I noticed that one of my favorite Kansas City landmarks is coming down. I forgot to pack the camera, but fortunately Maltoodle braved the snow recently to capture the dramatic image here.

The American Ice building hasn't held any actual ice for many years. Word has it barbecue baron Ollie Gates who owns the land has plans for commercial development in the area. And Bog knows that's much needed and long overdue in a part of town that has long been overlooked by developers. (Further scuttlebutt and some fine pictures here.)

All the same, I'm having trouble fending off nostalgia for the old brick pile. The American Ice building used to greet me every morning just after the 6:06 newscast when I'd step outside to grab the Kansas City Star from the loading dock. At least every other month I'd make a trip to the community recycling center that sat on the west side to drop off a load of gin bottles, egg cartons and cardboard boxes. A snap I took of it in '04 has also served as the wallpaper on every computer I've used over the last four years, a kind of anchor in the whirl of digital flotsam in which I seem all too often to abide.

The American Ice building was also reminder of the turn-of-the-20th, corrupt-expansive, meat-packing-City-Beautiful Kansas City that has been slowly crumbling away, as these things often do, especially in a city as demolition-happy as is the City of Fountains. It's probably a sign of my age but I realize that I've come to associate Kansas City with demolished architecture: the Mill Creek Viaduct, the Trolley Barn Neighborhood, Twin Oaks, the Mission Center Mall. If the paranoids are right, they may even aim the ball at Union Station some day.

There is a new crop of turn-of-the-21st, hocked-to-the-eyeballs, glass-euphoric new architecture sprouting in Kansas City (the Sprint Center, the Nelson's Bloch addition) but so far I'm having trouble warming to it the way I did to the old ice house.

Rudder: Steady as she jams

My friend Happy over at PlasticSlacks once espoused a theory that hippies may be jazz's last hope. He could be right and one fine day a chronically underfunded (not to mention bitter) cultural studies professor at an obscure college in the nation's midsection may use the band Rudder as evidence to support this line of argument.

I put Rudder's debut release (the aptly named Rudder on upstart 19/8 Records) on my 2007 favorites list for the simple reason that I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it the way you enjoy something deep-fried at the fair, with a wet-nap afterward and maybe some AlkaSeltzer and definitely a promise to start eating more veggies come Monday.

And since my list was free of modifiers, I sidestepped the buzz-kill question, "Yeah, but is it jazz?" My answer to the question is usually "Who effing cares?" But since I've brought it up, what about it?

All four member of Rudder have jazz bona fides they could trot out, particularly saxophonist Chris Cheek, and the Gracenote database classifies the CD as jazz when iTunes loads it. But I can easily imagine a group of blue-haired jazz brunchers reaching for the nitroglycerin at the opening strains of almost any train. There is also enough bass groove here make Bootsy Collins smile (and lead out-jazzers to pull their berets down over their ears).

The band's MySpace page lists their genre as "Electro / Nu-Jazz / Jam Band" and "metalic hokey-pokey" all of which seems apt. It also proves that the digital age is leading us beyond genre and out into an uncertain world for die-hard catagoricals. So be it.

Meanwhile, Rudder's album is climbing the jam band charts, something I didn't even know existed. They've also launched a campaign to get themselves included on the next Dave Matthews Band tour. It remains to be seen whether these talented sidemen will remain together as a group or return to their Ronin ways. In the meantime, we can still lick our fingers over Rudder. Far out.

Tribute: Gregory Hickman-Williams

Last night I finished up work on a short feature on Gregory Hickman-Williams that will air on KCUR tomorrow and this weekend on KC Currents. Once it airs I'll post the link here. [Update: Here's the link. Many, many thanks to radio goddess Laura Ziegler for producing.]

A heart attack landed Gregory in the hospital in March 2006, just as his debut recording Passages was about to be released. He never made it out of the hospital and died five months later at the age of 49. It's ironic that Gregory's physical heart should have given out because it's his heart, that metaphorical center of magnanimity, is the thing that people close to him most remember. That, and his one-in-billion voice.

The feature condenses the story quite a bit in the interest of time, but I hope that it gives a sense of the person that Gregory was, his talent and what he went through.

If you want to hear more (and you happen to be in Kansas City) there will be a tribute to Gregory at Jardine's Jazz Club this Sunday night with live performances by many of the musicians who played on Passages, including Stan Kessler, Pamela Baskin-Watson, and Gerald Spaits. Millie Edwards and David Basse will also sing some of the songs that Gregory planned to sing on future albums. I'll be making the trip to KC for the event and plan to play selections from some of the interviews I've done.

The tribute also serves as a kind of re-release for Passages, the album that Gregory and Jon Bauer spent more than a year producing, but which was largely set aside. Jon has recently hired a promoter for the disc, so it may yet reach a wider audience.

----
Note: As mentioned previously in this space, I've been working for just over a year now on an increasingly lengthy radio documentary about Gregory. The Pitch's Charles Ferruzza was kind enough to mention the doc in his preview of Sunday's tribute, saying that it asks the question "Why wasn't this man famous?"

Actually, that question originally came from our pal over at Plasticsax and the answer turns out to be fairly disappointing. Fame, as it turns out, is fickle and performers do well to spend more time thinking about their craft.

Among the more profitable questions I hope the doc will ask are:

• Who can tell the singer from the song?
• What is this thing called love?
• Good morning, heartache. What's new?
  

2007 Listing, slightly

First, a confession: I hate end of the year lists. I hate them so much that I wasn't planning to put any together. But then that nice Pete Dulin at Kansas City's Present Magazine asked me to, so I decided to relent. Two weeks later I realized what I was up against and the Holiday were upon me. The only prudent course was to procrastinate. And now January of 2008 is already rolling merrily by and it's time to re-face the music (again).

[If you haven't already, check out the lists that more virtuous folks submitted to Present Mag.]

An observation: Some critics I know seem to prepare their end-of-the-year lists as they go along. Probably because they know what a pain it will be if they don't. God bless them. But it's just not the way I listen to music. Some of the best stuff I heard this year was borrowed from the library and sometimes put out decades ago. Thank you Cal Tjader, Lee Morgan, Lou Rawls, et al.

Caveat: Since I didn't get to hear every album or see every show, the following are list of favorites, not a best-of.

Local (aka KC) Releases
Listed in in alpha order. No particular ranking is implied, dammit.

• Alaadeen - And The Beauty of It All - Ballads (ASR)
• Beau Bledsoe - Ole Che
• Eldar - Re-Imagination (Sony)
• Charles Gatschet - Step Lightly
• Russ Long - Time to Go (Passit) Released in December 2006, too late to make it onto my 2006 list.
• The Harold O'Neal Project - Charlie's Suite - Ballads (PME Records)

National Releases
Listed in alpha order. No particular ranking is implied, again, dammit.

• The Bad Plus - Prog (Heads Up)
• Terrance Blanchard - A Tale of God's Will (Blue Note)
• Michel Camilo - Spirit of the Moment (Telarc)
• Sara Gazarek - Return to You (Native Language)
• Robert Glasper - In My Element (Blue Note/EMI)
• Charlie Hunter Trio - Mistico (Fantasy)
• Metheny Mehldau - Quartet (Nonesuch)
• Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra - Sky Blue (ArtistShare)
  
• Esbjörn Svensson Trio - Tuesday Wonderland (Emarcy)
• Rudder - Rudder (Nineteen Eight)
• Terrel Stafford Quintet - Taking Chances: Live at the Dakota (MaxJazz)
• Abram Wilson - Ride! Ferris Wheel To The Modern Day Delta (Dune)

Live Performances
A tough category for TNLD in 2007, given my vampire schedule. Still, there were weekends. These, by the way, are in order. Dammit.

• SF JAZZ Collective - Gem Theater - March
• Roy Hargrove - Folly Jazz Series - January
• Matt Wilson's Art & Crafts - Blue Room - April
• The Life and Times - Empty Bottle (Chicago) - November
  
• Chiara String Quartet - The Brick - November

Radio: Charles Gatschet

As I got started brooding on the subject of my best of 2007 list, I came across an oversight. I neglected to point TNLD readers to my last bit of musico-journalism at KCUR, namely an interview with guitarist Charles Gatschet. The interview was produced by Alex Smith and Sylvia Maria Gross (while I was busy filling cardboard boxes) and aired on KC Currents the week after I blew town for Chicago.

You can still listen to it on KCUR's website: Charles Gatschet - Step Lightly

Gatschet is a Kansas City native whose classical training is more than apparent in both his playing and in his compositions. Step Lightly is definitely be one of my top local jazz albums of 2007, but that distinction deserves a footnote.

Gatschet currently splits his time between KC and Denver. On top of that, the musicians backing him on Step Lightly are all Denver-ites. All of which points to the growing clout of that mile-high metropolis, with its light-rail line and its jazz radio station. All of which should serve as nervous-making news for fans of jazz in old Kaycee.