HK's 10 Best Recordings of 1990 East Bay Express Well this seems to have been a great year both for new releases and also fancy CD reissue packages. Rather then spend a lot of time philosophizing or summing up the year let me provide with a holiday shopping list of many of the recordings that have excited me this year. Most of these recordings are pretty hard to find and you'll probably need this long list of alternates to find something that I suggest for you listen to. Any of the recordings listed below could substitute of any of the ten best that I've selected. I just happened to feel like writing about about the particular ten that I selected today. On another day I would probably have selected a different ten from this list: - TURTLE ISLAND STRING QUARTET: Skylife (Windham Hill Jazz)
- TOM CONSTANTEN: OutSides (TC)
- KASSE MADY: Koulandjan Kela (Melodie)
- ORNETTE COLEMAN "PRIME TIME": Jazzbuhne Berlin '88 Live (Rundfunk Der DDR)
- ALBERT AYLER QUINTET: Black Revolt (Magic Music)
- MAX ROACH & DIZZY GILLESPIE: Paris 1989 (A&M)
- U. SRINIVAS: Magic Mandolin (Chhanda Dhara)
- BOBBY KING & TERRY EVANS: Rhythm, Blues, Soul & Grooves (Rounder)
- KOUYATE SORY KANDIA: Vol I & II (Bolibana Collection)
- 3 MUSTAPHAS 3: Soup of The Century (Globe Style)
- CECIL TAYLOR: In Florescence (A&M)
- EUIS KOMARIAH & YUS WIRADIREDJA: The Sound of Sunda (Globe Style)
- EUIS KOMARIAH WITH JUGALA ORCHESTRA: Jaipongan Java (Globe Style)
- MATT "GUITAR" MURPHY: Way Down South (Antone's)
- HUBERT SUMLIN: Healing Feeling (Black Top)
- BO DIDDLEY: The Chess Box (Chess MCA)
- JIMMY BRYANT: Guitar 'Take-off' (See For Miles)
- KOUYATE & KOUYATE: Faso (Melodie)
- THE BEACH BOYS: Pet Sounds (Capitol)
- VARIOUS ARTISTS: Circle Dance (Hokey Pokey)
- DEREK BAILEY & BARRE PHILLIPS: Figuring (Incus)
- CONLON NANCARROW: Studies for Player Piano Vol. III & IV (Wergo)
- ALI "FARKA" TOURE: The River (World Circuit)
- VARIOUS ARTISTS: If 6 Was 9 - A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix (Communion)
- LI XIAANGTING: Chine- L'art du Qin (Ocara)
- TERJE RYPDAL: Undisonis - Ineo (ECM)
- ENNIO MORRICONE: The Legendary Italian Westerns (RCA-BMG)
- THE GRATEFUL DEAD: Without a Net (Arista)
- TIM BUCKLEY: Dream Letter (Demon)
- TENNESSEE ERNIE FORD: Sixteen Tons (Bear Family)
- VARIOUS ARTISTS: The Slide Guitar - Bottles, Knives & Steel (Columbia)
- JANE BUNNETT & DON PULLEN: New York Duets (Music & Arts)
- LONNIE JOHNSON: Steppin' on the Blues (Columbia)
- BLINKY & THE ROADMASTERS: Crucian Scratch Band Music (Rounder)
- CECIL TAYLOR: Tzotzil Mummers Tzotzil (Leo)
- VARIOUS ARTISTS: Hard Cash (Green Linnet)
- USTAD VILAYAT KHAN: The Royal Touch (EMI India)
- BEMBEYA JAZZ NATIONAL: Live - 10 Ans de Succes -1971 (Bolibana Collection)
- MARILYN CRISPELL: Live in San Francisco (Music & Arts).
My criteria for inclusion in these two lists might be: 1) Originality
2) Intensity of personal musical expression
3) Music that asks questions rather than providing reassuring, obvious answers, and finally
4) Music that is about music rather than being about marketing which seems to be the main ingredient in most popular music recordings nowadays.
With this in mind, today's ten favorite recordings are: THE BYRDS: The Byrds (Columbia) This 4 CD reissue set is certainly one of the best executed rock CD issues to date. 90 selections. Many unreleased. An excellent job of remixing many of the the tracks has been done while some of the great classics such as Eight Miles High have been sensibly left alone. Three stand-out reactions of mine to this set are: 1) There sure are a lot of great songs and performances here. Like the classic Bob Will's Tiffany transcriptions on Kaleidoscope, I can listen to these discs all the way through and enjoy every song. 2) The late Clarence White was sure a great guitar player. The final two CDs in this set function as much as a tribute to Clarence as a tribute to The Byrds. If you're interested in his post-Kentucky Colonels electric work this is the place to hear it. 3) The Byrds were one of the most successful groups at coming up with brand new guitar sounds and timbres. At this kind of experimentation they were far ahead of any of their contemporaries - Hendrix included. This set provides a coherent and chronological documentation of this experimentation.
MOUTH MUSIC: Mouth Music (Triple Earth) This is probably the most startlingly innovative of the year's new releases. It is also one of the most beautiful and appealing. American born singer Talitha Mackenzie sings traditional Scottish "mouth music" vocals backed up by the complex backing tracks of Englishman Martin Swan. This instrumental accompaniment is really strange. It is influenced by some of Peter Gabriel's most eclectic work. Swan's intricate rhythms and textures combine African-sounding percussion with odd synth sounds and samples along with electric guitars, bagpipes and many difficult to identify sounds. Whenever I play this album on my KPFA radio show I get a tremendous number of phone calls asking where to get it. You might find a copy of this English import at Down Home Music in El Cerrito. Fortunately Rykodisc plans to issue an American release of this in January.
ROSSY: Madagascar (Celluloid) Here's a two record set of an electric pop band from Madagascar. Much of my favorite music comes from Madagascar these days. This is the first LP by an electric band from there. Like everything else from Madagascar it sounds like it has the most unlikely possible set of influences and the end result sounds absolutely unique. Traditional Malagasy harps, flutes, accordions, percussion and fiddles join with rock instrumentation to create a gentle deep sound that is as yet untouched by the creepy French disco producers who seemed to have ruined much of the popular music of the African subcontinent.
KEITH ROWE: A Dimension of Perfectly Ordinary Reality (Matchless) Keith Rowe is the almost totally unknown father of the guitar as a sound source. During the early 60's as a member of the British group AMM, Rowe pioneered the virtuoso use of the guitar to create music as sound rather than music as pitches, rhythms and harmonies. English avant guitar hero Fred Frith copped his entire guitars on the table bit directly from Rowe. Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca and much of New York City's downtown scene owe a tremendous and usually unacknowledged debt to Rowe. I could make a strong case for much of today's "industrial" music as being directly descended from the work of Rowe and the AMM group. While he has appeared on at least a dozen recordings during his career Rowe has never released a solo recording until this year. If you are interested in improvised music and strange new sounds you will be shocked to hear Rowe for the first time. It could be sort of like hearing Chuck Berry after already being familiar with the years of rock and roll that followed Berry's seminal work. This solo guitar CD is an excellent document of the state of his art. He sounds better now than ever before.
GIACINTO SCELSI: String Quartets 1-5, String Trio, Khoom (Salabert Actuels) Scelsi is one of my favorite late 20th century composers. Here, the Arditti String Quartet reinforces my opinion that, musically speaking, they are head and shoulders above any other quartet that specializes in the modern repertoire. Scelsi's little known music concentrates on sound and timbre. The sense of time seems Eastern, more related to breath than heartbeat. Some of the almost tactile sounds could be reminiscent of Ligeti.
CECIL TAYLOR: Cecil Taylor in Berlin '88 (FMP) Here's an eleven (!) CD boxed set that documents a residency by the great American pianist in Berlin. You get to hear him play with five different drummers, a trio with cello and sax, solo, with a large jazz orchestra, and in a fantastic duet setting with major league guitar innovator Derek Bailey. A huge book with terrific documentation and photos is included.
T-BONE WALKER: The Complete Recordings of T-Bone Walker 1940-1954 (Mosaic) This is my favorite of the many jazz and blues CD reissue projects that were released this year. This 6 CD set includes all of the work by the great blues guitar pioneer and big band leader T-Bone Walker during his most fertile fourteen year period of creativity. My hat is off to Mosaic records for an exhaustive job of compiling all of this material with attention to achieving superb sound. T-Bone was the most important post-war blues artist and a quick audition of this set will let you know why. Not available in stores. You can only get it direct from Mosaic by calling: 203-323-3526. At least call and ask them to send you their catalog of their many amazing reissue packages.
NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE: Ragged Glory (Reprise) This is one of the few commercial pop releases of 1990 that devotes any energy at all to instrumental expression. Ferocious energy is devoted to instrumental expression through the vehicle of Neil's guitar. Sure this is the old style Crazy Horse rock format of Neil Young, but is the music of a band that is possessed playing for the moment of now. Most all of the tracks feature extended guitar solos and Neil puts more music, feeling, and commitment into any one note than someone like Joe Satriani puts into his entire career. And also, unlike Satriani, Young has a sense of humor too.
VARIOUS ARTISTS: Legends of Guitar (Rhino) GUITAR PLAYER MAGAZINE is sponsoring this on-going series of anthologies that feature some of the historical greats of guitar. The first five releases are jazz, country, electric blues, 50's rock and 60's rock. All of the better-known guitar masters are featured with well-chosen tasty selections. Folks like B.B. King, Charlie Christian, Chet Atkins, Jeff Beck, John McLaughlin, Ry Cooder and Wes Montgomery get to show off their classic licks. But one of the great features of these anthologies is that you get a chance to hear many forgotten and lesser known but equally influential creative geniuses of the instrument such as: Billy Bauer, Derek Bailey, Allan Reuss, Grady Martin, Harvey Mandel, Wayne Bennett, Floyd Murphy and Dick Dale. This is a great way to educate yourself about guitar. A great gift for young guitarists. Many more releases are planned in this series for next year.
VARIOUS ARTISTS: Madagaskar 1 - Musik aus Antananarivo (Feuer und Eis) This is the very best anthology of music from the island of Madagascar to be released in the west. Terrific performances. Terrific recording. Terrific variety. Many different bands and performers were recorded especially for this anthology. This is the recording debut of the amazing one man dance band: Jean Emilien. He plays the kabosy a small diatonically fretted guitar native to Madagascar, at the same time he sings and plays the harmonica. Also featured is the first released recording of a hira gassy band troupe. It sounds like one of the wildest parties that you are ever likely to hear. It is the happy ceremonial music of the ceremony of the turning of the bones. In the central plateau regions of Madagascar it is customary to dig up your ancestors every few year and throw a big party for them. The music for this kind of party is some of the most ecstatic that I've ever heard. This happens to be my favorite release of the year. It's the one CD that I would trade all of the others for. It seems like Down Home Music in El Cerrito is the only store that carries this German import.
| 
