Burning Dervish

So when Ace got up this morning, on this, his 56th birthday, do you think he drew a deep breath and said, "Ahhhh, so gooood to be alive"?

Or do you think he pulled the covers over his head, cowered in the darkness, and cursing the gods who lurk in the shadows cried out, "Why? No! Please take me - just make it fast and painless!"?

It could really go either way with him I would think.

Happy Birthday, Ace. Here's to you.

Download our special birthday mix - Ace Frehley: Six Ones

On this date in 1994, my homegirl Grace Slick pleaded guilty to pointing a shotgun at police outside her California home.

At her trial Grace said she was under stress due to the fact that her home had burned down the year before.

She was sentenced to 200 hours of community service.

Crazy chick. I love her, though.

Grace Slick - Law Man and three others

I have been trying for a few days to come up with something insightful to say to mark the passing of a really unique jazz figure, Andrew Hill. As often happens, someone else has put together some better thoughts than I would have articulated.

In addition to a few great MP3s highlighting his work, the blog Destination-Out had this to say:

"We’re deeply saddened by the passing of the great pianist, composer, and bandleader Andrew Hill. He was an important artist who held fast to his idiosyncratic vision — even when that meant long stretches in the commercial wilderness. In recent years, Hill’s music experienced a resurgence through reissues and remarkable new projects. Where he once may have seemed a fascinating but marginal figure, his influence is now indelibly stamped on many of today’s most creative players."

And I thank them for it.

I am including an MP3 here as well, a previously unreleased alternate take from 1968 which finally saw the light of day in 2004...

Andrew Hill - Dance with Death
from Dance With Death

84-degree weather in April will get you thinking and feeling a certain way about the music you want to jam to...

This most-recent compilation is a return of sorts to the African (Ethiopian, Moroccan and Jamaican)-themed mixes I was throwing together throughout '06. I have a few more partially-finished ones sitting in playlists I need to live with a while longer before springing them on you...hopefully this one will get you through a warm spring day and a lovely evening or two...

Let me know how it treats you.

Click here to download Burning Dervish Volume 12.

This compilation contains tracks from these records: Hopeton Lewis - 200% Dynamite!, Sound Dimension - Jamaica Soul Shake, Vol. 1, Bob Marley & the Wailers - Burnin', Bullwackie's All Stars, African Roots, Act 1, Bahta Gebre-Heywet - Ethiopiques, Vol. 8: Swinging Addis, Jimmy Cliff - Ultimate Collection, Easy Star All-Stars - Dub Side of the Moon, The Musical Intimidators - Trojan Dub Rarities Box, U-Roy - The Lost Album aka Right Time Rockers, Burning Spear - Live In Paris: Zenith '88, The Itals - Give Me Power!, Konono No. 1 - Congotronics, Don Carlos - Inna Dub Style: Rare Dubs 1979-1980, Takamba Super Onze - Festival in the Desert
These albums are all available in the Burning Dervish Amazon Store.

Long thought it, always garbled my words when I tried to articulate it. This weekend's New York Times has a great piece by Ben Ratliff that nicely sums up why the only music that matters is the music you like...and it focuses on one of the things that drives the hipsters most nuts...dinosaur rock reunion tours...Early on Ratliff says:

"...reunion shows will soon become a much more normal concertgoing experience than we ever knew. More than that: I think we can meet them with an open mind....If...reunited bands meant something to you in an earlier time, perhaps you’re feeling the dirty power of money, or the lameness of aging...Perhaps some part of you tells you that you don’t deserve it; you didn’t put in your time in the rooms where that band started out, at CBGB, or the Rat, or North London Polytechnic, or wherever...Or maybe something about these events feels broadly, even comically, illegitimate. Aren’t we supposed to form a community of taste around living culture, not afterlife culture? Isn’t a great band supposed to be more than just a band, but an embodiment of a particular age, a state of mind, a place? How do you identify, then, with an aging act whose members are well past their original states of mind, have mostly relocated to sunnier places, and whose prime motivation would appear to be making money..?"

Fair enough, but he goes on to conclude, "...all you have is your ears..." and "...those shows over the last few years by the reunited Pixies and Stooges, they were loud and rude and fantastic. And they were judicious. Through their set lists, they located the potential excitement in the task of explaining what the bands had been all about."

More:

"If you had working knowledge of the Pixies’ and Stooges’ albums, you may have been stunned by how sophisticated live sound has become since those bands disappeared the first time, and how they have adapted the advances to their own needs. And what about the best of those who never formally went away — a band like Slayer, a performer like Prince? They carry so much maturity after more than 20 years that even if they don’t retain perpetual youth, they have something that might be more important: complete control over their own sound (emphasis added by me)."

And the closing really nails it:

"It seems now that the audience position for rock is coming closer to that of jazz around the mid-1970s. Most of the forefathers are still with us; increasingly, they seem to have something important to teach us. And we are developing strange hungers for music of the not-so-distant past that might be bigger and deeper than the hunger we originally had...If you’re still looking for something sacred...It’s in you: It is your own reaction to how they sound. Nobody can take that away from you."

I really feel like mounting the soapbox and having a good rant of concurrence with this article, but I'll leave it to the experts and leave you with a couple of tracks from two of the reunion tours I will have the privilege of working with in my own small way this year. Enjoy. Shamelessly.

Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
The Police - Invisible Sun

I am constantly getting asked to check out MySpace pages with an eye towards reviewing bands in this blog. I listen alot but have yet to pass anything on.

'til today.

I love this record, The Great Compromise, by a band called
Kingsbury. There's a lot to like: heavy, atmospheric, guitar-centered tracks, with what I think is very impressive production quality, given that their website claims the record was recorded in their home studio. Whether this speaks to the underlying technology available these days or their skill with it matters not, it's just a great-sounding record.

My take is a mix of prog-rock with maybe a little Radiohead (but not sound-alike) on the side. I think it is a very classic but timely sound. I am eager to see them live to see if they are the complete package.

Check out the downloads and let me know what you think.


Kingsbury - Buried Beneath the Trees and The City and the Sea
from The Great Compromise

This contest is part of my day job but I thought I would post about it here since it is in keeping with the kind of thing I would blog about anyway...Details:

"Who Are You?" Flyaway Contest
Pete & Roger are asking their fans - "Who Are You?" Tell The Who about yourself by uploading a photo, photo collage or personally-created artwork to TheWhoTour.com. Pete & Roger will personally select the grand-prize winning entry based on creativity, skill and the entry that best represents "Who Are You." The grand prize winner (plus one guest) will receive a flyaway and 3 nights' hotel accommodation along with front row tickets to the band's July 9th show in Helsinki, Finland! AND... The grand prize winner and guest will MEET PETE TOWNSHEND AND ROGER DALTREY! Flights and hotel accommodation will be provided by lastminute.com.

Enter here and good luck!

I saw the band's first show since 1975 when they played in New York City in November 1998 at the Cavestomp Festival. What a show - what a treat.

If you are not familiar with the Prettys, their place in rock history and why they are so damn cool, check out this from the bio on their website:

"The Pretty Things have been a magnet for controversy since their inception. At a time when the Rolling Stones were seen as the ultimate nonconformists, the Pretty Things made them look tame by comparison. The band members' hair was longer, their lifestyles wilder, and their music louder and more extreme...Born survivors, they continue to command a loyal following without ever compromising their ideals or "bad boy" image."

Indeed. They were badasses. It's not hype, either. Their music was harder and raunchier than the Stones and their behavior was outrageous to the point of getting them banned from whole countries (New Zealand, the one place they had real commercial success)!

Today's tracks are from their 1970 record Parachute, which I just picked up this week...Enjoy.

The Pretty Things - Miss Fay Regrets, Cries from the Midnight Circus and Cold Stone
from Parachute

Now here is a jam for the ages...another recent eMusic download...

Some funky, soulful playiing...vintage 70s Jerry sound...deep Hammond grooves...this track has it all.

I've not seen the physical disc myself but I understand the packaging mimics a matchbook - right down to the worn strike strip on the back!

Fire it up!

Merl Saunders & Jerry Garcia - Merl's Tune
from Well-Mattched: The Best Of Merl Saunders & Jerry Garcia

A great article from last week's issue of The New Yorker entitled, Club Acts: New York's Vital New Music Scene, talks about the diversity of "serious" music filling up New York's concert venues, from the Lower East Side to Lincoln Center.

The piece gives the obligatory tip of the trucker cap to John Zorn, who has been entertaining hipsters with noise, dissonance, non-Western scales and duck calls for over 20 years. Correctly, it traces the whole topic of "genre ambiguity" back to George Gershwin, and the promise - and limitations - of "a total synthesis of pop and classical traditions".

Worth a read...let me know what you think.

A new record, Stars in my Crown, and a renewed spiritual outlook, brought on my Jorma's recent explorations and embrace of his Jewish identity.

This is really a beautiful record, one that seems to be very much in context with the rest of Jorma's canon while at the same time bringing new elements to his sound and song selection. There are the requisite Gary Davis covers (and too seldom for Jorma - five originals!) as well as two other outstanding remakes, both included here for download...


Jorma Kaukonen - By the River of Babylon and When the Man Comes Around
from Stars in my Crown

So I am a little slow on the up-take...
Belle and Sebastian have been around for ages but off my radar screen...what can I say? No one told me what exquisite pop music they make...not knowing where to start with them I decided I couldn't go wrong with a record that came out on my son's first birthday...

One a record full of sparkling gems, one track stands out as particularly fun: Belle and Sebastian - Sukie in the Graveyard, from The Life Pursuit, available on eMusic

I thought I would love this record...I like it a ton but I was really wanting to be blown away...

There are some great grooves and if you are into Afro-Beat you'll dig it but it doesn't forward the genre at all...Maybe it does begin with
Fela Kuti but it doesn't have to end with him...and the majority of this record consists of 7-minute-plus vamps with 2 minutes of lyrics at the end - the exact convention you've heard a million times. Great grooves, deep lyrics, but nothing much seperates it from 1975 except the release date.

With all that said the track below really stood out for me. Enjoy - and let me know what you think.


Antibalas - I.C.E.
from Security, available on eMusic - Get 25 FREE iPod® compatible downloads from eMusic! Choose from over 1.7 Million songs!

One of the best MP3 blogs around is Soul Sides, and I have been promoting it on this site for a while now. There is a post up there now that I couldn't help but surface for you...

First about Soul Sides...if you love vintage R&B, Soul, Funk, etc as well as the history of the era that birthed so much of that music I cannot encourage you enough to bookmark their site or subscribe to their feed.

So the post...a beautiful riff on the Sam Cook track A Change is Gonna Come...I know you'll dig reading the whole thing, especially once you listen to the song, but here's enough to whet your appetite:

"As both an idea as well as performance, it's impossible to listen to this and not wonder what would have happened had Cooke not died in '64. Especially as the rest of the R&B world began to move towards embracing the social movements of the era, what role would Cooke have ended up playing as one of soul's elders?"

Let me know what you think.

My first real introduction to the Grateful Dead, from a Deadhead as opposed to the radio, was the songs on this compilation. Back then they were called "mixtapes" ;-)

Before I got heavy into collecting live shows I played this tape over and over...in my car, at parties, in my basement bedroom...The old beat up TDK tape is lost to antiquity but I still have the cover so was able to put it back together for this mix.

Whether or not this is even a good beginner's guide to the band's various studio albums isn't really the point of this post...I've been in a melancholy frame of mind lately and this tape transports me to fall of 1985 - maybe not the most interesting destination to set the time machine to but there sure was some fun involved!

Click here to download Burning Dervish Volume 11.

This compilation contains tracks from these records: Grateful Dead - Anthem of the Sun; From the Mars Hotel; Shakedown Street; Blues for Allah; What A Long Strange Trip It's Been; Terrapin Station; Go to Heaven; Aoxomoxoa; Jerry Garcia - Garcia; Bob Weir - Ace; Kingfish - Kingfish