| Summer CD Roundup | |
The Blues of the Birth, Mikhail Horowitz (Euphoria Jazz) Horowitz is a journalist and all-purpose gadfly in Woodstock, NY, a sometime jester to Ed Sanders' lead warblings. And Birth is Beatnik stuff, down to the growling and “dig.” Smart and playful stuff: “No soft soft underbelly for Percy Shelley. . . No sweets for Keats. . . No angel cake for William Blake” from the title track. He’s a purist, dropping a cappella poems (“Art,” “Death”) into the set generally accompanied by his longtime co-criminal, guitarist Gilles Malkine, and David Arner (piano), Joe Giardullo (reeds), Jim Finn (reeds).
Horowitz is a hip ecologist who hears the riffs of Bird in the cackle of the grackle while sipping a gin and catatonic. He brings Albert “Professor Longhair” Einstein into the set for some choruses re: the antiMatterhorn and United intoNations. And when he dives into the hilarious “Hitman Haiku,” a bonus track unlisted on the CD, you know not even Darwin could evolve laughter like he does: “Old Pond / Frog jumps in / Or, was he pushed?” PDQ Bach and Jed Cost handle the helpful liner notes.
Blue Indians, John Trudell (Dangerous Discs) He does the same thing in Blue Indians. This is a new kind of spoken word album. It’s a rocker, no doubt, solid band, produced by Jackson Browne. But in no way do Trudell’s poems bow down to music. If it’s a five-line chorus this time and four every other time, then this time the band just adds eight bars and we’re on with it. His heavy voice, the surprise of rain, poetry that leaps but always makes the connect -- Trudell’s one of the greatest, and he just walks us right alongside.
Over all an obligato by Quiltman keeps the Indian wind blowing. This is Trudell’s most vulnerable album, and the love songs are haunted, aching, raw, physical. And tender. How? Listen, go to hear John Trudell whenever you can; his rare appearances will instill energy and possibility and hope. And prepare with the coarse and subtle touch of this totally great CD. Our Souls Have Grown Deep Like The Rivers, produced by Rebekah Presson Mosby with notes by Al Young (Rhino Wordbeat) Especially moving is hearing “We Real Cool” in Gwen Brooks’ own strong alto: she gives the beat behind the beat that etches that poem on air, on paper. Baraka is in great form, Jayne Cortez, too -- why don’t we get more chances to hear these instruments? Derek Walcott finds his place in this canoe, next to Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Quincy Troupe and Ish Reed. The Last Poets do “Run Nigger,” and Gil Scott-Heron “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” New jacks Public Enemy, Tracie Morris, Saul Williams. . . . This is one for the books, which are your ears.
BRIEFLY NOTED:
Boom Dot Bust, The Firesign Theatre (Rhino) Vocalor, Jaap Blonk Like Water for Chocolate, Common (MCA) Welcome to the AfterFuture, Mike Ladd (Ozone Records) Bob Holman
This is Mikhail Horowitz’s masterpiece, totally alive, drop-dead funny, halfway twixt the Lord (Buckley) and Lenny (Bruce). He’s an earnest hipster, master of multiple meanings, savvy standup politico with a jazz sensibility proudly demanding the Bongo Treatment. Even the cover hearkens back to Blue Note and Verve -- exceptin' the word reversal in the title, and the fact that our decidedly uncool looking artiste is soulfully blowing away on a plastic recorder.
Trudell’s recent poetry readings have been more like church services, though not any church you’ve ever been to before, sort of the Church of Payback, the Church of Wake-up, the Church of Absolute Rationality Leads to Absolute Revolution. He’ll start a poem, use it as a launch pad, circle round, lead to another, sermonize, dialogue, never let up from the focused connect he’s got with audience, not audience, tribe.
The death of Ed Dorn, whose classic Gunslinger was an ur-text of the 60s, makes the world spin slower, less various. His cynical bite was unmatched, his attack dog sensibility so sarcastic you couldn’t laugh -- the oxygen was all gone. It’s all here in this amalgam of live readings that poet Joe Richey has put together for NPR. Anselm Hollo, one of the US’s greatest and least known poets, delivers an hilarious intro, that segues straight into Dorn’s outrageous Stock Exchange poem.
A super two-CD set of black writers, with the first poem (text) by Phillis Wheatley and last poem (oral) by Carl Hancock Rux, get the picture? Langston Hughes reads from the title poem, Claude McKay sermonizes, Arna Bontemps, Countee Cullen, Sterling Brown. . . . to hear the voices of the Harlem Renaissance is to humanize it, to take on these great poets more as speakers than keepers of the tradition, and that’s a good thing.
These 4 (or 5, if you count their collective self, don’t get me started) guys are back, following last year’s Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death with another winner. This means they will find a whole new generation of fans for the best oral theater melt I town, So. . . . find ‘em!
Jaap Blonk comes out on Staalplaat, which is the greatest distributor of sound poetry/experimental audio in the world. Vocalor, in which the world’s hungriest (for sound) mouth meets up with Velemir Khlebnikov, Man Ray, Vicente Huidobro and many of its own compositions in the astonishing unceasingly inventive imaginings noise rush JAAP BLONK. If you are interested in sound poetry, this is The Man, and this is The CD. Blonk and Staalplaat are both Dutch. . . .
Excellent hip hop poetry. . . which puts him in the company of el MaestroMonstro:
Who gets the last word. . . .
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