HK's 10 Best Recordings of 1991 East Bay Express The economics of the CD vs. the LP seems to have stabilized this year. Most record companies have altogether dispensed with LP releases and are only issuing CDs and cassettes. The smaller, more adventurous labels, whose products I usually enjoy the most, seem to have adjusted to the market's format change and are now issuing plenty of exciting new releases on CD. There have been an amazing numbers of carefully produced CD reissues of both previously released and previously unreleased material in all genres and idioms of music. There have been more releases that have excited me this year than in the last three years put together. I might guess that this is a result of this market stabilization. My listening habits usually lead me to experimental music, world music and the most adventurous and personal guitar music. For my ten favorite releases of the year I have selected the ones that I have enjoyed the most and that have most often been in my CD player. NIKHIL BANERJEE: The Hundred Minute Raga: Purabi Kalyan (Raga) This is a recording of a 1982 Berkeley concert by one of this century's greatest masters of the Indian sitar. This is as fine an extended performance of classical Indian instrumental music as you will find on CD. The two CDs of music are accompanied by a 31 page booklet that provides a lot of useful information about Banerjee, his music, his personality and the musical and cultural contexts of the classical Indian raga in the twentieth century. As a public service, I'd like to mention that the absolute best and most economical place to purchase this and virtually all other current releases of Indian music is at Shrimati's Ltd., 2011 University Ave., Berkeley, telephone: 548-6220.
THE GRATEFUL DEAD: Infrared Roses (GDM) Let me say that today I'm most often disappointed by any Grateful Dead show that I might attend. I suspect that most shows that hold some kind of magic for the majority of their fans today still lack for me the innovation and exploration of the unknown that were the essential features that I loved about the Dead back in the late 60's and early 70's. I suppose they still occasionally attain moments like that nowadays? Once in a while, at least? Here is proof that they do! The Dead's sound technician/wizard Bob Bralove has gone through many tapes of years of live concerts (particularly the open-ended, improvisational sections of shows known as drums and space) and he has edited the greatest moments into four symphonic, three-movement pieces of extraordinary imagination, fantastic tone colors and searching musicality. This is simply great improvised music. It is light years beyond what the many grant-funded charlatans in the "new music" scene serve up and label as experimental art. This is music that actually manages to ask a few new questions rather than providing tired old answers. (I should mention that I've had a very tough time deciding between Infrared Roses and the Jerry Garcia - David Grisman CD on Acoustic Disc. On another day I might have selected that fantastic and subtle CD of acoustic music for inclusion here.)
MAHALEO: En Concert (AAFM) To judge by the number of telephone calls that it has received, this is the most popular recording that I have featured on my KPFA radio program during the past year. Mahaleo is/was the most successful popular music group in the history of Madagascar. Born during Madagascar's revolution from French colonial rule in the early 70's, the group is led by the singer-songwriter of Madagascar, Dama Mahaleo. Mahaleo was the first group to sing popular music in the Malagasy language and to play Malagasy roots music influenced pop music. In a way, he could be considered the Bob Dylan-Muddy Waters-John Lennon of Madagascar. For many reasons this recording of a live radio concert in Germany recorded sometime during the 1980's always excite immediate and fanatical interest in anyone that I play them for. Incredible vocal harmonies, terrific fingerpicking guitar, strange rhythms, wonderful songwriting (obviously wonderful even across the Malagasy-English language barrier) and solo singing by a couple of the greatest voices that I've ever heard are some of the most appealing features of the music. Down Home Music in El Cerrito has been trying to order some copies for a while. I hope that they get them in soon. I've been trying to get the Shanachie label to license some Mahaleo music for USA release. I hope that you get to hear some soon. (A special consumer warning to beware of a very bad-sounding CD by a great artist from Madagascar. Jean Emilien's Hey Madagascar (Celluloid) commits an absolute atrocity to some originally fantastic music. Out of tune instruments, insensitive overdubs and thoughtless production show what the Evil French Disco Lords like to do to any traditional roots music that they can get their corrupt paws on.)
SCHLIPPENBACH TRIO: Elf Bagatellen (FMP) Free jazz or free improvisation? Whatever this is, it's great by the standards and criteria of both idioms. Beneath the six hands of one of the most talented trios playing today are forged eleven amazing pieces that have compelling structure, spiritual depth and inspirational delight in the making of music. Pianist, Alexander Schlippenbach originally owed a great debt to Cecil Taylor. On this disc he sounds 100% his own man. Saxophonist Evan Parker is simply the most innovative and original reedman of the 70's and 80's. Drummer Paul Lovens is a unique pioneer of new percussion language. It's a shame that the names of these men are not household words among the American lovers of improvised music. For each of them are as great a practitioner of that craft as you could find. And together, especially on this CD they transcend themselves and become something greater than I could imagine if I had not heard it myself. This is the rare recording where the music jumps out at you and grabs you and won't let go.
KIYOHIKO SENBA & THE HANIWA ALLSTARS: In Concert (Japanese Sony) Mr. Senba seems to be one of the most successful studio drummers in Tokyo. I sure hope that he is very successful, as I'm sure that the music copyist bills alone of the Haniwa Allstars would bankrupt most small businesses. There are about one hundred people in this band. All on stage at once. 5 or six drummers. A big horn section. A huge section of traditional Japanese instrumentalists. A dozen vocalists. All dressed in pajamas and nurses uniforms. Many of the members are big pop and/or jazz stars in Japan. Senba is the writer-arranger-conductor-madman behind this band. I suppose that the only person that you might compare Senba to in America, in terms of scale of ambition, is Frank Zappa. (Although Senba's music has absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Zappa or his musical interests.) Senba is spectacularly successful with his truly insane, giant, all style-encompassing musical vision. It's too bad you will never ever see this release in any American record shop. Too bad that we are so culture-bound over here. In case you might want to try to order this at the Japanese record store over in the Japan Center in San Francisco, it's Nippon Sony catalog number is SRCL 2132.
JODY STECHER & KATE BRISLIN: Blue Lightning (Rounder) Jody Stecher has always been one of the most innovative and expressive instrumentalists operating in the old timey-related idioms of American roots musics. This is his second CD together with partner, Kate Brislin. The elegance and honesty of the vocals and playing on this recording is a refreshing change from the loads of superficial pop music that fills most record stores nowadays. Sometimes we don't immediately recognize the greatness of things that are close-to-home. If this was an ethnic release by some obscure artist from some obscure foreign country in some obscure musical idiom then it certainly would be heading up the lists of many in-the-know critics best recordings of the year. As it is you may only hear about it from a few people interested in the "folk music circuit." Check it out.
VARIOUS ARTISTS: Legends of Guitar - Surf Vol. One (Rhino) For the last couple of years Rhino has been releasing some great CDs in their Guitar Player Magazine sponsored Legends of Guitar series. Jazz, Rock, Country; many different styles have been featured. This is probably one of the most listenable and powerful compilations in the various series. This is real, raw, instrumental surf music. The best of the classics: Dick Dale, The Chantays, The Lively Ones, etc. If you are a guitar player and have never heard this stuff you should search it out as it contains many surprises and much pleasure for the uninitiated. It's the best music that I've heard in a long time for driving around with the car stereo up pretty loud and a sense of purpose.
VARIOUS ARTISTS: The Wassoulou Sound - Women of Mali (Stern's) A wonderful compilation that reflects the strength and diversity of the pop music scene in Mali. This is probably the best and most universal holiday gift suggestion on this list. A few years back, a lot of listeners found the Bulgarian women's choirs to be the creators of some of the moist beautiful singing around. There is some wildly different and pretty stiff competition here from Mali: real African pop music that has not been over westernized by western producers. This is the real thing. Originally created for local consumption, and then edited and anthologized for us over here by someone who sure seems to have known what they were doing. Strong melodies, compelling rhythms, great voices.
THE TONY WILLIAMS LIFETIME: Emergency! (Polydor) Drummer, Tony Williams; guitarist, John McLaughlin and the late organist, Larry Young. A recording from 1969 reissued here in a newly remixed version, that created the genre of jazz fusion music. This is probably the freshest and greatest recording of fusion music, too. Probably the wildest guitar playing of McLaughlin's ever recorded. When this was originally recorded I suppose that the engineer didn't care much about the music at all. Too wild. Too new. Like nothing he had ever heard before. Maybe this was why the original LP issue sounded absolutely terrible. I remember listening to it carefully on headphones, as a youngster, trying to figure out what was going on. Someone spent a lot of time and took a lot of care in remixing this for CD. Now you can pretty much tell what is going on most of the time. And it's frightening. Frightening intensity. Frightening drumming. Frightening guitar playing. And absolutely frightening organ playing from some other world. This is one of the greatest (and most forgotten) jazz recordings of the 60's. It ranks with Coltrane's, A Love Supreme or Miles' Kind of Blue in terms of its influence on music that was to follow. Yet, perhaps because of its originally abysmal technical quality it has been largely forgotten and is long out-of-print on LP. If it was recorded today it would still sound like something from the future, something from way ahead of its time. You'd better pick it up before it goes out-of-print again.
NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE: Arc (Reprise). What was Neil Young's motivation in releasing this thirty-five minute CD of screaming guitar feedback? I don't think that it was the "FUCK YOU" to the record company and fans that Lou Reed intended many years ago with his Metal Machine Music, a release that also differs significantly from the artist's usual output. I'm sure that Neil finds this to be a beautiful piece of out-of-the-mainstream expression. That's how I hear it. The pure beauty of wild guitar playing. It also instantly demonstrates the absolute wimpiness and emotional poverty, by comparison, of the New York Noise Enthusiasts (like Sonic youth, who were the opening act for Young on the tour, where most of this was recorded). I'd also match this against anything from the Knitting Factory in New York or from the Olive Oyl's scene in San Francisco. I'm pretty darn sure that Neil would win in about five seconds. (I suppose it's a matter of individual taste if you would actually enjoy listening to something like this. I do.) Is it just because I've felt my guitar vibrate in my hands during moments like these, that Young has digitally edited together here? And that I can instantly project myself into that sonic picture and feel like a participant? Do I enjoy this so much because as a connoisseur of crazy guitar, I recognize that Young is a expressive virtuoso at this form? That like Jimi Hendrix or Harvey Mandel he is some kind of Segovia of feed back? Well, anyway... it just seems like a unique lot of fun to me.
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