Viddie: Semi-Simple Variations (TBP)

Finally, a notable jazz video less than 40 years old. No doubt it took a lot of arm twisting to get superlative geek jazzers The Bad Plus to play along in this video accompaniment to their recording of modernist composer Milton Babbitt's "Semi-Simple Variations." The track is from TBP's album "For All I Care" out last month on Concord.



Tip: Do the Math, The Bad Plus Blog, which has stills from the shoot and, as if to justify the peripatetic eye-candy, an essay by pianist Ethan Iverson on the blending of jazz and classic forms. (They also express the hope that Babbitt gets a chance to see the video before his 92nd birthday in May. I'm sure Rush would also appreciate a similar treatment for TBP's cover of Tom Sawyer.)

More on Babbitt (TNLD's own justification for the aforementioned leggy goodness, you ask? Uh huh.): AN NPR interview with the "difficult" composer

Fessing up

The news of singer Blossom Dearie's death at age 84 last weekend has inspired a host of tribute posts this week, many of them with mp3s or YouTube videos attached. I've enjoyed reading them all. While I generally try to keep this an obit-free zone, the occasion prompts me to offer a long-overdue apology to my first wife.

It was the late 80s and, as was so often the case, we found ourselves short on cash and decided to sell some old LPs at one of the record stores in Westport. One of those old records was a Blossom Dearie album (I've forgotten which). Janis had played some of it for me once and I suspect that I heard the little girl voice and saw the cutey pie on the cover and, knowing Janis's love of mid-century kitsch, wrote the whole thing off as an affectation. The album soon disappeared down the gaping maw of Penny Lane (probably) where it hopefully found a more unanimously appreciative home.

So let me officially declare: Boy, was I wrong about Blossom Dearie. She was the real deal. Over the years I grew into an outright fan, although there was always a nagging regret about that lost disc of vinyl. It also bothered me to be have been complicit in an economic argument trumping an aesthetic one. Life's too short for that.

And so the apologies: Sorry, Janis, that you had to part with your treasure. And likewise to you, Ms. Dearie, wherever you are, for not listening well enough at first.

-----

Further Blossom Dearie clickage

About Last Night - Teachout says he first heard BD in 1979 and "became a fan on the spot." Way to go, smartypants.

DJA's Secret Society - who never seems to miss a trick

Fernham - cutely calls Dearie's style "ultra-white"

Rifftides - also has a fascinating note from Dave Frishberg about how Dearie's piano playing influenced Bill Evans. Fascinating, I tells ya!

There Stands the Glass - hurry while link lasts

JazzWax - a wealth of interesting details

NYT obit by Stephen Holden

LA Times obit by Jon Thurber

Review: Andy Scott - Don't Tempt Fate

Making a good cream puff is hard. Sure, you can buy them by the frozen bucketful at Costco. And while you're there you can also buy a cushy leather sofa and that big flat screen television you've had your eye on. Then you can go home, put on your sweat pants and eat that whole bucket while you watch all those Friends episodes on DVD and mourn the fact that you never moved to New York like you told all your actual friends you were going to back in the 90s.

Someone who won't be joining you on the couch for your pity party is Andrew Scott Rosen, who left Cleveland behind for a music career in New York. For a while he left that name behind, too, putting out two albums out under the name Goat ("Great Life" made it onto the soundtrack of "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and some car ads). But that's the great thing about moving off to the big city: reinventing yourself. (Remember how you were going to change your name to Schuyler Della Verite when you got to New York and wear all in those vintage duds you bought at the DAV thrift store? Well, did ya ever, steampunk? Did ya?)

And now he's gone from Goat to Andy Scott and he's just released a new album, "Don't Tempt Fate." Where Goat was a puckish pop artist with eclectic influences that included jazz and cabaret, Andy Scott is a straight up cabaret jazz artist. It's a move that really works for him, so I hope he sticks with it.

Getting back to baked goods, "Don't Tempt Fate" is as fine a cream puff as you are likely to find. All ten songs are smartly written and the arrangements expertly crafted, something to be lauded from the highest Upper East condo in these days of sampling and mishmashups. And this attention to craft is enhanced by the great musicians backing Scott throughout, including the venerable Victor Lewis on drums and Sam Yahel on keyboards.

Sadly, there's also an air of playacting hanging about the project. It's there right from the start with title track, a duet featuring Madeliene Peyroux. I've never been a fan of Peyroux, who has always struck me as Billie Holiday without the Strange Fruit. Andy Scott, on the available evidence, is Randy Newman without the Bad Love. I suspect they're both stronger singers than they let on.

Critics have dropped the name Hoagy Carmichael in connection with this CD and Andy would do well to study Carmichael's knack for allusive specificity. Carmichael may have a kid from Indiana but could make you believe that he had Georgia on his mind or that a skylark could hear the music of the night. By contrast, many of the lyrics on "Fate" have a borrowed quality that keeps them from rising much higher than a commercial jingle.

Andy escapes this trap on the album's penultimate track, "Who Doesn't Call" (see spanky video below) where the elusive becomes the point, in the process taking on an existential dimension. He strips the accompaniment down to an acoustic guitar and the result reminds me favorably of classic Leon Redbone (born Dickran Gobalian, supposedly). It also gave me hope that the next time out Andy Scott will offer us a whole meal and not just dessert.


Video: Who Doesn't Call, with animation by Andy Cahill


Further Clickage

Andy Scott on MySpace

MilkRocks.com - The music of Goat

Amplifier Magazine - Interview with Goat

Review: Erin Bode's Little Garden

So who is this Erin Bode? Was she marooned on a desert island as a child with only a stack of Paul Simon records for company? Maybe, at least on the evidence of "The Little Garden."

"The Little Garden" is the St. Louis-based singer's third studio album and by far her strongest effort. The writing partnership between Bode and Adam Maness continues to deepen and the songs they've come up with are all first rate. Bode and the band -- Maness (piano, etc.), Syd Rodway (bass) and Derrek Phillips (drums & percussion) -- produced the CD themselves and the arrangements are sophisticated and assured. And although Bode & Company generally get categorized as a jazz group, "The Little Garden" is further evidence of her trajectory away from the standard jazz vocalist template. Not that Bode is averse to jazz or the charms of the American Songbook. She's just not cracking that corn this time around. And I don't care.

On the track "Long, Long Time" from her 2006 album "Over and Over" Bode sings:

You're playing old songs. That's been done before.
What are you playing all those old songs for?
Will you look back on yesterdays
And wish that you had so much more to say?

Perhaps tellingly, the following year Bode and her former label (on St. Louis-based MaxJazz) went through what seemed from the outside like a bitter split. (Sample the scuttlebutt on Dean Minderman's excellent St. Louis Jazznotes.) Neither side has discussed it publicly, but it resulted in Bode posting an appeal for "legal defense" funds on her website in August 2007. Then in January 2008, another posting announced that the legal issue was "resolved" and a few months later Bode signed with California independent jazz label Native Language.

So was MaxJazz trying to keep Bode on the jazz standard straight-and-narrow? Or did it have more to do with booking, or personalities, or whatever? At this point, it's anyone's guess. But her career does present a case study of the dilemma facing the young jazz-oriented musician.

• Bode's debut album "Don't Take Your Time" (MaxJazz 2004) was an impressive cover-heavy mix of pop, country, bluegrass, and jazz standards (with one original composition, the title track, by Bode and Maness) and she was backed by some heavyweight jazz sidemen including Bruce Barth, Mulgrew Miller, Larry Grenadier and Montez Coleman among them.

• On "Over and Over" the Bode's and her working band came to the fore. Maness and Bode also wrote most of the CD's fourteen songs and only one of the three covers, "Alone Together," is a standard.

• And now The Little Garden, which clearly has jazz somewhere in its DNA, but would rest comfortably on a shelf next to any number of late 70s albums by Billy Joel, Joni Mitchell, Boz Scaggs, or James Taylor.

Which brings us back to Paul Simon, who seems to be a touchstone for both Bode and Maness. (Significantly, a side project of the band's was a 2006 trip to South Africa to record with the Themba Girl's Choir, and since it's hard not to draw a comparison to Simon's "Graceland" project I won't even try.) Bode covered "Graceland" on "Over and Over" and it was one of two weak moments on the album. The other was the cover of Simply Red's "Holding Back the Years." To me, both tracks come off a little too reverential and plodding.

By contrast, the only cover on "The Little Garden" is Simon's "Born at the Right Time" (from 1990's "Rhythm of the Saints") and this time they actually outdo the original by removing the World Market exoticism and rendering the song the way Simon might have in the 70's, on a lush bed of Fender Rhodes. (Had I been asked to pick out the Paul Simon cover on first hearing, I might have gone for "Chasing After You" instead.)

Songs about difficult lovers ("Sweater Song" and "Sydney Come Down" representing the ying and yang of the Bode/Maness approach, respectively) occupy much of "The Little Garden," and really, where would popular song be without them? Where Bode and Maness move beyond this format the results are especially satisfying.

On the string-infused "Fences," they manage a spooky sweetness that Kurt Weil would have appreciated.

I've tried reason, but they don't comprehend.
I've tried sanctions, but they won't make amends.
I've taken hostages, but the won't meet my demands.
I've tired blackmail, but they have too many friends.

The album closer, "Goodnight," is a beautiful lullaby complicated by a perplexing point of view and an undercurrent of resignation worthy of a suicide note. But that may just be Bode's Swedish Lutheran upbringing.

So who is this Erin Bode? Whoever she is, I'm looking forward to seeing what she and the band come up with next.

Freebies: There are plenty to be had on Bode's website.

State Capitols

The day after my hope for America came off life support, C and I jumped in the car and drove more than a thousand miles through five states. This took several days and passed through two state capitals (Indianapolis, IN and Frankfort, KY). If we'd had a little more time and stamina, we could have made it to Columbia, SC, but oh well. A couple weeks later we hopped in the same car and drove to my dad's house in South Dakota for an early Thanksgiving. We plotted the trip so as to pass through two more state capitals (Madison, WI and Des Moines, IA). In all four capitals, we stopped to have a look at each state's capitol building. The slide show above is for your viewing pleasure, should you really care.

I mention this as a way of letting you know that I have a nerdy and indefensible goal of seeing all 50 state capitol buildings. This flurry of activity in November allowed me to check of numbers 20, 21 and 22 (I'd already visited Frankfort in 1998, but C had never been there and the building is limestone remarkable).

Here are the simple rules of this geeky quest:

• Driving through a state's capital city doesn't count. Physical proximity to the building itself is required. If it's closed for any reason (after hours, holiday, fumigation, etc.), I still get credit.
• You can't make a special trip just to see the capitol building.

I have a corollary goal of visiting all 50 states (current total 34), but I figure focusing on the capital buildings will take care of that.

What it's all about

With so much in such disorder these day, this video from Denton's own Brave Combo helps to keep everything in perspective.

Subway ride 1905

Beneath the streets of New York, going from 14th Street to 42nd. You'll feel like you're in a century-old tunnel for a while, but the payoff arrives just past 5:05.