How much can the sound of one instrument influence popular music? If the instrument is the Roland TR-808, the answer is: a lot. An hour of electro funk and hip-hop on Exfiltration Radio.
I had an idea to make an Exfiltration Radio show all about the hip-hop/electronic music style called electro. Days later, I feel like I’m deep in the rabbit hole and just starting to scratch the surface of this music.
What to know: electro is rooted in the rhythms and sounds produced by the Roland TR-808, a budget-oriented drum machine that substituted synthesized drum sounds for the fully sampled sounds of its market competitor, the Linn LM-1 (which at the time cost almost 10x more). While the 808 was a market failure, its fully synthesized drum sounds created a ruckus that could be felt across the dance floor, and its distinctive sound created an effect that felt futuristic in 1983.
Combine that with an esthetic borrowed from pioneers like Gary Numan and Roger Troutman of Zapp, with sizzling synthesizer sounds and vocoder-processed vocals, and you had a sound that enjoyed a huge amount of chart karma, picking up momentum from both the aftermath of disco and funk and the rise of hip-hop, and only losing popularity when Prince’s more florid Minneapolis sound elaborated it out of existence. But you can hear electro’s impact in some of Prince’s early material as well as in bands like Flyte Tyme (where Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis got their start).
There are two songs in this mix that are arguably iconic: “Planet Rock” is an early hip-hop classic that is still referenced in unexpected ways, and “Freak-A-Zoids” has become a Tiktok meme. Beyond that, I don’t know if anyone other than certain GenXers remember “Freaks Come Out at Night,” but I certainly do, and “Computer Games” showed that George Clinton had a creative life beyond Parliament/Funkadelic.
As for the rest? Ryuichi Sakamato’s “Riot in Lagos” predates the rest of the material here by at least two years, showing that things really did happen earlier in Japan. Warp 9’s “Nunk (New Wave Funk)” was an early electro track that bubbled up in New York in 1982, as was Man Parrish’s “Hip-Hop, Be Bop (Don’t Stop),” which ran afoul of identity politics when African-American hip-hop influencers found out that Parrish was white and gay. Cybotron’s “Clear” brings a strain of Detroit to the melting pot, courtesy of band member Juan Atkins, now considered a co-founder of the techno sound. Elektrik Funk’s “On a Journey” was a one-off single from the depths of 1982 electro heaven, and Hashim’s “Al-Naafyish” was a 1983 one-off from a New York DJ.
Friends, this could have been a three-hour mix. There are so many threads to follow in this sound. Phil Collins used the TR-808 on No Jacket Required, for heaven’s sake. But we’ll start here, with the famed battle cry: Freak-a-zoids… report to the dance floor!
Track listing:
“Drummers, they kind of get bored…” – Phil Collins (Exfiltration Radio: the bumpers)
riot in Lagos (2019 Remastering) – Ryuichi Sakamoto (B-2 Unit (2019 Remastering))
Planet Rock – Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force (Smithsonian Anthology Of Hip-Hop And Rap)
Nunk (New Wave Funk) – Warp 9 (12 Inch Classics)
Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don’t Stop) – Man Parrish (Hip Hop, Be Bop)
Freak-A-Zoid – Midnight Star (No Parking On the Dance Floor)
Clear – Cybotron (Enter (Deluxe Edition))
On a Journey (I Sing the Funkelectric) – Elektrik Funk (Rare Preludes, Vol. 1)
Freaks Come Out At Night – Whodini (Funky Beat: The Best of Whodini)
Al-Naafyish (The Soul) [Radio Version] – Hashim (Al-Naafyish (The Soul) – EP)
Is jazz just cover songs? If so, why stop with songs written 80 years ago?
Time for a little Hackathon radio show. This latest episode of Exfiltration Radio crosses between jazz and pop music and asks the question, “what if modern jazz is just cover songs?”
Of course, the answer is that most of jazz is just covers, it’s just a question of the age of the material. The revered Great American Songbook started off as pop music, after all—songs from movies and Broadway. All this show does is to update the material a touch. The oldest song covered here dates from the mid-1960s (it’s impossible to avoid the Beatles in an exercise like this, and very hard to avoid Burt Bacharach), while the newest is from the mid-2010s. A little about each one below:
Cécile McLorin-Salvant, “Wuthering Heights” (Ghost Song): I wrote about this cover at length in my article about Cécile’s album Ghost Song. I still love this reflection on the Kate Bush original, which locates the song somewhere around the Appalachians en route to the blasted heath.
Ahmad Jamal, “I Say a Little Prayer” (Tranquility): I could have done a full hour of Burt Bacharach covers (and may still someday). This one comes from a record that was in my Mom’s collection, hence the dust in the grooves. Great album, great song, and I love the way that Jamal got that percussive sound to swing. Makes you want to sit up and listen.
Cal Tjader, “Tra La La Song” (Fried Bananas): OK, so finding Cal Tjader, who made a career out of playing Latin-inflected soul jazz with a band he led from his marimba, covering pop songs is not surprising. That it was the “Tra La La Song” from The Banana Splits Adventure Hour is slightly more surprising, but it actually works. (Side note: I am not one of the GenX elders, so it took me until sometime after I graduated high school to understand why my team of middle school teachers called themselves the Banana Splitz. And once I saw the show—an early Sid and Marty Krofft/Hanna Barbera team up—I began to wonder how it was that there were any drugs left in the world, because it seems like the folks in the 1960s took them all.)
Matt Jorgensen + 451, “Everything In Its Right Place” (The Sonarchy Session): Jorgensen is a drummer from Seattle who I heard on the KEXP show Sonarchy Radio—or maybe more precisely streamed from their website. There are some pretty solid covers in that set, available on iTunes as The Sonarchy Session, including “Tomorrow Never Knows” and a solid version of Led Zeppelin’s “No Quarter,” but this version of Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place” is my favorite, thanks to the sax work by Mark Taylor as well as some really tasty Fender Rhodes (played by Ryan Burns).1
Bill Frisell, “Live to Tell” (Have a Little Faith): This one’s an epic. Frisell, who like Jorgensen moved back to Seattle from New York shortly before making this album, creates a lengthy psychedelic wonderland from this Madonna song.
Johnathan Blake, “Synchronicity I” (Trion): Blake’s trio with Linda May Han Oh (bass) and Chris Potter (sax) put out one of the most engrossing jazz albums of the last five or six years in Trion, and the burnout cover of the Police’s “Synchronicity I” is one of the highlights.
Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, “Videotape”(The Emancipation Procrastination): This isn’t the first Radiohead-adjacent cover that Christian Scott recorded; I liked his cover of Thom Yorke’s “The Eraser” enough to put it on a mix back in 2012. But this cover of the last track on In Rainbows carries an extra punch of alienation and longing.
Dr. Lonnie Smith with Iggy Pop, “Sunshine Superman” (Breathe): This is the track that all the reviews of Dr. Lonnie Smith’s final album talked about, and it’s easy to see why. Iggy Pop has aged into an unlikely vocal interpreter, as apt to shout out his musical collaborators in the middle of the song as he is to provide an utterly straight-ahead take on the song. And that’s Johnathan Blake again on the drums, alongside one of the great 21st century Hammond organ solos on the Donovan classic.
Jeremy Udden, “Fade Into You” (Wishing Flower): due to time constraints I could only fit only get a little of this in the outro. A crispy fried jazz guitar version of the great Mazzy Star song.
A quick site maintenance note. I got a peek at the bandwidth usage for this blog today, and pretty quickly decided I needed to move the MP3 files off the site and onto something that is better suited for streaming. So as of now, all the Exfiltration Radio posts now link out to the new home for the radio shows… on Soundcloud.
Everything should still work as it did before, but drop a comment here if something is screwy.
The second of this week’s Exfiltration Radio playlists is a dive into the roots of jazz in New Orleans, and specifically a spin through the collision between jazz and hymnody that is a constant thread in hot jazz, also known as “Dixieland” jazz. (I won’t pretend that there aren’t other reasons for putting together a playlist of religious music on Election Day.)
The New York Jazz Ensemble is today known only for a single recording it released in 1993 with an amateur clarinetist — Woody Allen, before his downfall. For my money the band is pretty good, and “In the Sweet By’n’By” is one of the best cuts on the album; “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” a few tracks later, is the other.
There are a few tracks here from different incarnations of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The first, from their 1977 survey New Orleans Vol. 1, is a good representation of their gospel ballads; “His Eye is on the Sparrow” dates from 1905 and has been recorded by artists as varied as Lauryn Hill, Jessica Simpson, Mahalia Jackson, and Whitney Houston. It’s essentially the same band, minus a few members, that returns for “Precious Lord,” a knockout track from their 1988 New Orleans Vol. IV album (coincidentally, the first of their albums I ever bought). An earlier incarnation of the band, as recorded on 1964’s Sweet Emma and Her Preservation Hall Jazz Band, is recorded only a few years after Pennsylvania-based tuba player Allan Jaffe began to manage the former art gallery in the French Quarter that had become a venue for local jazz musicians; “Sweet Emma” Barrett is on vocals “(Just a) Closer Walk With Thee.” It’s this earliest band that provides our closing rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Brothers Willie and Percy Humphrey are on all three recordings, spanning 24 years; Willie Humphrey was 88 years old when Vol. IV was recorded and his kid brother Percy was 83.
Kid Ory is one of the greats—the first great jazz trombonist, a bandleader who hired both King Oliver and Louis Armstrong during his career. “Joshua Fit De Battle of Jericho” is a spiritual that dates at least as far back as the early 19th century, and its message of walls tumbling down seems appropriate today. His track is followed by another pre-Civil War spiritual recorded by a much lesser-known musician. Sam Morgan was a New Orleans trumpeter and bandleader who recorded six sides in 1927, including this affecting version of “Down by the Riverside.”
The Firehouse Five Plus Two is one of those bands that would seem to be a fictional creation if it weren’t so well documented; as Wikipedia dryly notes, it was “a Dixieland jazz band, popular in the 1950s, consisting of members of the Disney animation department.” In particular, Ward Kimball, one of Disney’s “Nine Old Men,” played trombone when he wasn’t animating the Seven Dwarves or designing Jiminy Cricket or the crows in Dumbo, and other animators joined in; while Pogo cartoonist Walt Kelly was never a member, he was close enough to Kimball and the group to draw several album covers. “A Georgia Camp Meeting” is technically a cakewalk rather than a hymn or spiritual, but given that a “camp meeting” was a gospel revival, we’ll let it slide.
George Lewis & Papa Bue’s Viking Jazzband is a curiosity. Lewis was a New Orleans born clarinetist who played in a variety of hot jazz bands (including at Preservation Hall) until his death in 1968. The performance on this album comes from a radio show he recorded in Denmark in 1959 with “Papa Bue’s Viking Jazzband,” a Dixieland-style band that was given its name by the journalist and vocalist Shel Silverstein (yes, that Shel Silverstein). “The Old Rugged Cross” was a 1912 evangelical hymn that has become a gospel standard.
Ida Cox was a vaudeville singer in her early career, but her 1961 comeback album Blues for Rampart Street featured a hot jazz backing band that included Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge and Milt Hinton, among others. Her original “Hard, Oh Lord” fits thematically with the spirituals in the rest of the album.
For every Preservation Hall Jazz Band, there seems to have been a Kings of Dixieland—an anonymous band that kept the hot jazz tradition alive but about whom little is known. “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” is an African-American spiritual originating in slavery but first published in 1867. It thrived in a variety of covers, including classical settings, and was Marian Anderson’s first hit in 1925.
The thing about New Orleans is that it keeps a great many of its traditions alive, including the brass band. The Liberty Brass Band is one of several contemporary bands whose performances are collected on the Smithsonian Folkways anthology New Orleans Brass Bands: Through the Streets of the City from 2015. The anthology also featured a performance by the Treme Brass Band, which takes its name from the Tremè neighborhood of the city and whose performance of “I’ll Fly Away” here closes out their 2008 album New Orleans Music.
It’s the earliest incarnation of the Preservation Hall band that provides our closing rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Brothers Willie and Percy Humphrey are on all four recordings of the band on this mix, spanning 24 years; Willie Humphrey was 88 years old when Vol. IV was recorded and his kid brother Percy was 83.
“Amen, amen… what this world needs is more love” – Rev. Johnny L. Jones (Exfiltration Bumpers)
In the Sweet By ‘n’ By – The New York Jazz Ensemble With Woody Allen (The Bunk Project)
His Eye Is On the Sparrow – Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Narvin Kimball, Josiah Frazier, James Miller, Willie Humphrey, Percy Humphrey & Frank Demond (New Orleans, Vol. 1)
Joshua Fit De Battle of Jericho – Kid Ory (The Great New Orleans Trombonist)
Down by the Riverside – Sam Morgan’s Jazz Band (How Low Can You Go?)
At A Georgia Camp Meeting – The Firehouse Five Plus Two (The Firehouse Five Plus Two Goes South)
Closer Walk With Thee – Preservation Hall Jazz Band (New Orleans’ Sweet Emma and Her Preservation Hall Jazz Band)
The Old Rugged Cross – George Lewis & Papa Bue’s Viking Jazzband (George Lewis with Papa Bue’s Viking Jazzband)
Precious Lord – Preservation Hall Jazz Band (New Orleans – Vol. IV)
What a Friend We Have in Jesus – The New York Jazz Ensemble With Woody Allen (The Bunk Project)
Hard, Oh Lord (Album Version) – Ida Cox (Blues For Rampart Street)
Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen – The Kings of Dixieland (Kings of Dixieland)
Lily of the Valley – Liberty Brass Band (New Orleans Brass Bands: Through the Streets of the City)
I’ll Fly Away – The Tremè Brass Band (The Treme Brass Band)
When the Saints Go Marching In – Preservation Hall Jazz Band (New Orleans’ Sweet Emma and Her Preservation Hall Jazz Band)
We have taken control as to bring you this special show, and we will return it to you as soon as you are exfiltrated.
It’s another Veracode Hackathon, which means it’s time for some Exfiltration Radio. This set had its origins in our trip to Germany and Austria this summer, particularly Vienna, where it seemed Falco (of “Rock Me Amadeus” fame) was around every corner. I didn’t spot the artsy mural above, but we did see him in a few other places:
After my kids stared at me blankly the third time I mentioned his name, I downloaded a greatest hits compilation and played them “Rock Me Amadeus,” then “Der Kommissar,” and then went off and listened to the rest of it. What I was struck by was how much the music reminded me of the New Wave that was being made around the same time by others. For instance, there’s a direct line between Gary Numan’s “Cars” and Falco’s “Helden von heute.”
So I went down a rabbit hole, and the result is the mix you have here.
I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge Musicophilia’s magnificent 1981 series of mixes, from which quite a few (okay, more than half) of the tracks here were drawn. In particular, the “briefcase,” multiple hours of unsequenced tracks, is the source for quite a lot here. I also apologize to any native German speakers for the introduction…
Der Kommissar – Falco (Falco: Greatest Hits)
99 Luftballons – Nena (99 Luftballons)
Computer Love (Edit) – Kraftwerk (1981 – Computer)
Lust of Berlin – Neu Electrikk (1981 – Briefcase)
Neue Straßen – Metro Pakt (1981 – Briefcase)
Goldener Reiter – Joachim Witt (Silberblick)
Deutscher Wald – Deutsche Wertarbeit (1981 – Briefcase)
Microbes – Mekanik Kommando (1981 – Briefcase)
Elefantendisco – Pyrolator (1981 – Briefcase)
Ich Komme Aus Der DDR – Gleitzeit (1981 – Briefcase)
It feels like everyone is talking about the Blue Nile and their 1989 song “The Downtown Lights,” possibly thanks to that Taylor Swift shout-out. As it turns out, I’ve been collecting cover versions of this song for several years, and so it felt like the right time to do one big mega-mix of “Downtown Lights” covers.
The original song starts us off, and then we roll into a series of covers of greater or lesser fidelity. I tried to use cover versions that stayed in the same key, and mostly succeeded, with just one exception, the very last version that fades out the mix. I hope you’ll find something in the mix you like, even if it’s just tranquility… or catharsis.
Versions of “The Downtown Lights” in this mix are by:
The Blue Nile (the original)
Annie Lennox
Pure Bathing Culture with Ben Gibbard
Louise Burns
Collapsing Scenery
Rob Noakes
Kathy Kosins
Full Dark
Kevin Mackenzie & Steve Hamilton
Scala & Kolacny Brothers
We have taken control as to bring you a special show…
When I was about 14 years old, riding in the car with my dad and doing errands, we were listening to a Saturday morning jazz show on WHRO (an infrequent occurrence for our mostly classical family) when I heard something fascinating: a jazz quartet playing behind, not a singer, but a poet. The idea that poetry was not just words on a page, but something that could be performed, was a new idea to me, and the connection between some kinds of poems and some kinds of jazz was electrifying.
It took me years to find the piece, and I’m not 100% sure I did, but I’m pretty sure it’s one of the works on this mix. There’s a lot of obscure stuff here, so I’m going to give you a track by track breakdown.
The intro comes from e.e. cummings’ great Six Nonlectures: i, the first of his Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard. The lectures were not only published but also recorded, released on Caedmon Records, and I’m looking forward to doing an Album of the Week series on them at some point once I track down volumes 4 – 6.
Philip Levine’s “Gin,” which I heard him read live at the University of Virginia as a still-practicing poet in the early 1990s, is conversational and funny, but also deep. He recorded dozens of his poems with saxophonist Benjamin Boone before his death in 2015, and they’ve been released in two albums (so far) of jazz/poetry bliss. “Gin” and the version of Levine’s great “They Feed They Lion” later on the mix both come from the first volume.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Coney Island of the Mind is one of those great New Directions paperbacks that you can easily find in used bookshops, and it’s a great read. It’s a great read, very fun (as the first excerpt indicates), and has some great things to show about poetic diction.
I’ve featured Gil Scott-Heron on other mixes, but this one highlights more of his spoken word performance. He’s a fiery speaker and anchors his sometimes hopeful, sometimes despairing performance of “The New Deal” in the condition of black Americans — and all Americans as a whole.
Ronald Stone is a lesser known performer, but the New Jazz Poets anthology this is drawn from is a must-have. While there’s no jazz accompaniment here, Stone’s delivery draws both from jazz song and birdsong in an homage to Billie Holiday (among other subtexts).
Charles Mingus’ “Scenes in the City,” with a Langston Hughes and Lonne Elder text narrated by Mel Stewart, is one of the two candidates for the performance I heard on WHRO all those years ago. It’s a narrative that touches on poverty, jazz music, love, the desire for greatness, and other universal themes, and is a fun listen to boot. Branford Marsalis covered it on his very first album for Columbia Records, years later.
Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen’s “Sounds of the Universe Coming In My Window” is a fun read, and Allen is an unexpectedly sympathetic collaborator with the great Beat poet. Similarly rewarding is Langston Hughes’ performance with the pianist (and frequent Mingus collaborator) Horace Parlan, in which there are frequently recurring themes of the dream deferred but also of city life.
There are a few tracks featuring poems written and performed by jazz players. Hasaan Ibn Ali’s “Extemporaneous Prose-Poem” is just that, a brief moment of unaccompanied verse from the eccentric pianist. I’ve written about Archie Shepp’s “Malcolm, Malcolm, Semper Malcolm” before; his threnody for the slain civil rights leader is powerful both lyrically and musically here.
None of this prepares one for Marion Brown’s “Karintha,” a musical setting of a poem by Harlem Renaissance author Jean Toomer and the other candidate for that poem I heard on WHRO all those years ago. An uncomfortable exploration of gender relations, female sexuality and its consequences, it’s riveting and not an easy listen.
After one more Ferlinghetti interlude, we get “At Night,” an unpublished John Coltrane poem read by American author and performer Julie Patton with a quartet led by Coltrane’s son Ravi. Released on the 2005 compilation Impulsive!, the musical setting is as playful as the cosmological contents of the poem are grand; one suspects the senior Coltrane might have done something different with the setting, but it’s still a good, and respectful, listen.
The final track on the album, “And Then He Wrote ‘Meditations’” brings together a number of these themes, including civil rights, poetry for its own sake, and jazz musicians (particularly Coltrane) into a single heady brew. The great Gil Scott-Heron is our spiritual guide here, on a track that for my money is an under-appreciated masterpiece.
Listen!
We have taken control as to bring you this special show!
Gin – Benjamin Boone and Philip Levine (The Poetry of Jazz)
Coney Island of the Mind, Pt. 20 – Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Beatnik)
The New Deal – Gil Scott-Heron (The Mind Of Gil Scott Heron: A Collection Of Poetry And Musi)
Lady Day Spring – Ronald Stone (New Jazz Poets)
Young Sycamore – Bob Hardaway (Jazz Canto Vol. 1)
Scenes in the City – Charles Mingus (A Modern Symposium of Music and Poetry (Remastered 2013))
They Feed They Lion – Benjamin Boone and Philip Levine (The Poetry of Jazz)
Sounds of the Universe Coming In My Window – Jack Kerouac & Steve Allen (Beatnik)
Double G Train – Langston Hughes & Horace Parlan Quintet (The Weary Blues With Langston Hughes)
Extemporaneous Prose-Poem – Hasaan Ibn Ali (Retrospect in Retirement of Delay: The Solo Recordings)
Malcolm, Malcolm, Semper Malcolm – Archie Shepp (Fire Music)
Karintha – Marion Brown (Geechee Recollections)
Coney Island of the Mind, Pt. 26 – Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Beatnik)
At Night (A Poem featuring Ravi Coltrane with Julie Patton) – John Coltrane (Impulsive! Revolutionary Jazz Reworked)
…And Then He Wrote Meditations – Gil Scott-Heron (Free Will)
A Veracode Hackathon has started and it’s pirates! Just as with our abortive pirate-themed Hackathon of the annus horribilis 2020, this one has occasioned a mix of cover songs! Cover songs consist of one artist performing the music of another, which sometimes feels like “love and theft,” as Bob Dylan once wrote, hence the name.
The prior mix was strictly themed, featuring reggae covers of pop songs—and reggae originals that later became pop songs in famous covers. This new one is a little more freewheeling, but that’s not to say it’s not equally fun. Just be prepared for that last cover at the end.
Listen here:
Do not adjust your set; there is nothing wrong.
I Am I Said – Bunny Scott (To Love Somebody)
Something – Booker T. and the M.G.s (McLemore Avenue)
Do Right Woman, Do Right Man – The Flying Burrito Brothers (The Oxford American Southern Sampler 1999)
Golden Lady – Lambchop (TRIP)
Ziggy Stardust – Bauhaus (Swing the Heartache: The BBC Sessions)
Love Will Tear Us Apart – Hot 8 Brass Band (Love Will Tear Us Apart)
Ashes to Ashes – Tears for Fears (Saturnine Martial & Lunatic)
Love and Anger (Kate Bush) – Nada Surf (if I had a hi-fi)
I Wanna Be Adored – The Raveonettes (I Wanna Be Adored – Single)
Where Is My Mind – Bobby Bare, Jr. (The Longest Meow)
Five Years – Cowboy Junkies (Songs of the Recollection)
Born Under Punches – Good in the Dark (If You Feel It – EP)
There Is a Light That Never Goes Out – Dum Dum Girls (He Gets Me High – EP)
I Can’t Give Everything Away – Spoon
Fitter Happier – Samson Dalonoga (Feat. The Found Sound Orchestra) (Stereogum Presents… OKX: A Tribute To OK Computer)
It’s the second Hackathon playlist this week, and the second Prince covers playlist (see: “Wanna be your cover”). This time I went hunting for jazz covers of Prince’s music, and it was surprisingly harder than I thought to find them… but they’re out there and they’re funky.
Austrian pianist David Helbock is new to me, but he was a godsend as his album Purple had a huge number of highly creative Prince covers. “Kiss” is a great example, recognizable but substantially recreated with melody line in the low bass and a combination of regular and prepared piano.
Michael Wolff was the bandleader on the Arsenio Hall show, and “The Wolff & Clark Expedition” has been recording together since 2013. “1999” comes from their 2015 album, and it’s a great version of the song, with Christian McBride on bass, Wallace Roney on trumpet, new-to-me Hailey Niswanger on sax and Daryl Johns on bass, Wolff on piano and Clark on drums.
Guitarist Dave Stryker’s “When Doves Cry” is a classic soul-jazz group lineup with Jared Gold on organ, McClenty Hunter on drums, and Steve Nelson on vibes. It’s a great take on one of Prince’s most covered songs. “The Beautiful Ones” has a very different vibe, with Ethan Iverson’s distinctive piano and improvisational style anchoring his iteration of the Bad Plus on their final record together. Often the Bad Plus can come across as bombastic on record, but this track feels lighter since the band steps back to let Reid Anderson take the lead melody in the verse on bass.
Helen Sung is another new-to-me pianist who’s been recording since 2003. “Alphabet Street” comes from her second album, in the trio format with Lewis Nash on drums and Derrick Hodge on bass. It’s a bop, a real romp through one of Prince’s lightest songs. Compare and contrast to the Jesus & Mary Chain’s version on “Wanna be your cover.”
There were a bunch of jazz covers of “Sexy M.F.”—not surprising, given the thick horn arrangement in the original. A lot of them, indeed, sounded like straight-up instrumental versions of the original chart. Brazil-born Swiss pianist Malcolm Braff’s version reimagines the song through a James Brown inspired lens, with a persistent bass line heartbeat from Reggie Washington and nimble drum work by Lukas Koenig.
“Jailbait” is a little bit of a cheat, as I don’t know if there was ever a Prince recording of this funk/blues composition. But given it comes from Miles Davis’s last live recording from Vienne, and it was specifically written by Prince for Miles, I couldn’t not include it. The last band he toured with featured Kenny Garrett on sax and a really tight rhythm section with Deron Johnson on keys, Richard Patterson and Foley on bass, and Ricky Wellman on drums.
Miles’ old bandmate Herbie Hancock released an album of pop covers in the mid-1990s with a killer band—Michael Brecker, Jack DeJohnette, John Scofield, Dave Holland, and Don Alias! “Thieves in the Temple” has a feel of some of Herbie’s early Blue Note recordings, filtering Prince’s increasingly complex late-1980s songwriting into a distinctive brew.
So many new faces! Marcin Wasilewski records on ECM, and that label’s famed sonic approach is all over “Diamonds and Pearls,” from his second album. This trio recording is what jazz trios are all about; the degree of telepathy with Slawomir Kurkiewicz on bass and Michal Miskiewicz on drums is something to behold, and the arrangement is sparse, unfussy, and beautifully melodic. Wasilewski’s solo (coming at about the 2:30 mark) honors the song while making its own lyric approach, which can be hard to do when dealing with a well known composition. Looking forward to digging into more of his discography.
From the solemnly beautiful to the bonkers, “Controversy” is the second tune from David Helbock’s Purple. I can’t tell what piece of scrap percussion Helbock hammers throughout the piece, but it’s perfectly tuned to an F# and beautifully represents the four-note “Controversy” theme, which Helbock develops throughout the work, veering from a quiet melody to a bluesy stomp to something symphonic and strange.
Joshua Redman’s quartet take on “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore” is a more straightforward bluesy reading of this essential Prince deep cut. The band here—Brad Mehldau on piano, Larry Grenadier on bass, Brian Blade on drums—keeps things just off-kilter enough to make it more than just a superb soul jazz workout, which it of course also is, and most of the interesting bits happen just with Redman and Grenadier or Blade.
We wind out with an excerpt of Aretha Franklin’s big band arrangement of “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Where the arrangement by Jimmy Scott on “Wanna be your cover” is achingly dry, this one is ebulliently Aretha; we fade out her scat solo with deepest regret.
Here’s the track listing:
Kiss – David Helbock (Purple)
1999 (feat. Michael Wolff & Mike Clark) – Wolff & Clark Expedition (Expedition 2 (feat. Michael Wolff & Mike Clark))
When Doves Cry – Dave Stryker (Eight Track II)
The Beautiful Ones – The Bad Plus (It’s Hard)
Alphabet Street – Helen Sung Trio (Helenistique)
Sexy M.F. – Malcolm Braff Trio (The Enja Heritage Collection: Inside (with Reggie Washington & Lukas Koenig))
Jailbait (Live at Vienne Jazz Festival, 1991) – Miles Davis (Merci Miles! Live at Vienne)
Thieves In the Temple – Herbie Hancock (The New Standard)
Diamonds and Pearls – Marcin Wasilewski Trio (January)
Controversy – David Helbock (Purple)
How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore – Joshua Redman (Timeless Tales (for Changing Times))
Nothing Compares 2 U – Aretha Franklin (Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics)
And please enjoy listening to the mix. Kick back, dig…
It’s a Veracode Hackathon time, so it’s time for some Exfiltration Radio! And this time around we are feeling purple! Show notes below.
I was talking about Sheryl Crow for some reason at the office recently, and casually mentioned the Prince cover of “Everyday is a Winding Road,” and they said, What? And I said, “Oh, you have to hear that.”
And so I decided to put together a playlist of songs that Prince covered. Then I realized that there actually weren’t that many songs that Prince covered in his lifetime… though the ones he did were epic. So I broadened the scope to include … unusual covers of Prince songs. Turns out, there are a lot of those out there!
Let’s start with the Information Society’s version of “Controversy,” from Prince’s fourth album. This version puts awkward industrial dance energy into Prince’s electrofunk, with unusual—maybe danceable—results.
Chaka Khan’s version of “I Feel For You” might be more familiar, at least if you were born before 1980. I personally remember people wandering around saying “Chaka Khan? Chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka Khan?” after the famous opening, which (fun fact) was recorded by Melle Mel of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. (Melle Mel’s most famous performance was on “The Message,” which deserves its own themed mix.)
This version of “1999” is by Dump, the pseudonym of James McNew, bassist for Yo La Tengo (and onetime attendant at the Corner Parking Lot, memorialized in The Parking Lot Movie), and comes from a full collection of Prince covers in a variety of … unusual styles. I’m not entirely sure what time signature this cover is in, but I do like listening and floating away with it.
Cyndi Lauper’s “When You Were Mine” comes from the impeccable A side of her debut album and covers a great track from Prince’s Dirty Mind album, itself one of the great albums of the early 1980s. It’s a great example of a cover artist making a song their own. Likewise, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings’ version of “Take Me With U” could almost have come from any Sharon Jones album—which is high praise, considering the uniformly high quality of her soul albums.
“Soul” is not necessarily a word one would use for the Tom Jones/Art of Noise cover of “Kiss,” but there is an incredibly high level of energy in both Jones’s gutsy vocal and the Art of Noise backing track that makes this a fun listen. Also fun: identifying the Easter eggs from Art of Noise’s earlier hits in the outro.
We then take a big ol’ left turn into the Jesus and Mary Chain’s version of “Alphabet Street,” which is two-plus minutes of abrasive guitar feedback that I rescued from a b-side to an obscure 1994 single. It’s noisy fun! So is the Hindu Love Gods’ version of “Raspberry Beret,” a jangly romp through one of Prince’s most lighthearted songs with a pickup band consisting of Warren Zevon and three-quarters of R.E.M. (Bill Berry, Mike Mills and Peter Buck).
“Everyday is a Winding Road” is the first of the two covers by Prince that show up on this playlist. I’ve told the story about how this cover came to be here up above, but I’ll just note that when Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic came out, I was still in a formative phase when it came to understanding funk. The difference in meter and rhythm between the foursquare original by Sheryl Crow and Prince’s version might, in jazz terms, be summed up as swing; the arrangement is pure joy, even to the chant at the end, which puts this cover in the context of Prince’s songs to the divine.
“If I Was Your Girlfriend” is from Prince’s earthier tradition, and this TLC cover might be the definitive version, adding explicit hip-hop beats and a dollop of sensuality to Prince’s original. In a very different way, “The Cross” provides its own definitive version of one of his most explicit pro-Christian songs. The Blind Boys of Alabama had a huge career resurgence from their 2001 album Spirit of the Century, which put a gospel lens on pop and rock music and exposed its listeners to the intensity and depth of the gospel tradition. “The Cross” comes from the follow-up, Higher Ground, and adds even more earthiness and grit to Prince’s religious statement.
“Can’t Make U Love Me” is the second of the two covers by Prince on the album. That he would cover a Bonnie Raitt song is only surprising for casual fans; his love of music was omnivorous, and the song’s depth of insight on relationships is as chilling here as in Raitt’s version. This is one of the times that Prince pulls off a Chaka Khan (or Cyndi Lauper) in reverse; it feels like it’s always been in his catalog, and at the same time adds a greater depth and maturity.
The final track, “Nothing Compares 2 U,” is more covered than almost any other Prince song apart from “Purple Rain.” I agonized about which version to include, but ultimately had to go with the Jimmy Scott version from his Holding Back the Years CD. Scott’s voice, shaped by his Kallman syndrome and by his difficult career, carries the lovely ache of the song better than almost any other, and this version deserves to be better known.
The track listing:
Controversy – Information Society (Essential ’80s Masters)
I Feel for You – Chaka Khan (I Feel for You)
1999 – Dump (That Skinny Motherfucker With The High Voice?)
When You Were Mine – Cyndi Lauper (She’s So Unusual)
Take Me With U – Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings (Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Rendition Was In))
Kiss (7″ Version) – Art of Noise featuring Tom Jones (Kiss (EP))
Alphabet Street – Jesus and Mary Chain (Come On (EP))
Raspberry Beret – Hindu Love Gods (Hindu Love Gods)
Everyday is a Winding Road – Prince (Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic)
If I Was Your Girlfriend – TLC (CrazySexyCool)
The Cross – The Blind Boys Of Alabama (Higher Ground)
Can’t Make U Love Me – Prince (Emancipation)
Nothing Compares 2 U – Jimmy Scott (Holding Back The Years)
Please enjoy listening, and know that Funk not only moves, it can remove, dig?
With great Veracode hackathons come more Exfiltration Radio episodes. This time around, I have a playlist of indie/alternative/etc. rock with female voices that I’ve been building for a few years. Only I didn’t realize it.
The original version of this playlist had basically the same intro as the final version but segued into a hip-hop and funk set halfway through. While it made sense from a musical and beat perspective, something bugged me about it, and that something revealed itself over the past few weeks as the half-forgotten memory of an observation my sister made about some of my mixes twenty years ago: that they were heavy on dudes with guitars, or dudes, period.
I’d say the rethinking of this playlist was worth it, as it made me listen more closely to what the songs had to say. And they aren’t shy. Let’s begin with Caroline Polachek. In her 2020 solo spot on KEXP, she comes across as thoughtful, deep, a little shy. There’s all of that in “Welcome to My Island,” but there’s also a huge self-confidence on display, along with a magnificent set of pipes and what she has called “brattiness,” a.k.a. a well-earned swagger.
I have been listening to Dum Dum Girls for almost ten years—long enough for lead singer Dee Dee (née Kristin Gundred) to release her solo debut in the meantime. I came on board with the Too True album, and it’s a piece of work. It reminds me of William Gibson’s description of AIs battling AIs in Neuromancer, in a passage that seems prescient now: “He … swung the program in a wide circle, seeing the black shark thing through her eyes, a silent ghost hungry against the banks of lowering cloud.” Which is to say, the song is sleek, fast-moving, and ready to take precious things from the unwary.
“Headspins” has been in my playlists for almost as long. Forming in 2012 and breaking up in 2018, the band (formed in London by Australian ex-pats) does a fine job of updating the sound of the Breeders and bringing them into the 21st century.
If you haven’t heard “Chaise Longue” by Wet Leg, you’re welcome. If you’ve heard it a million times, this is your opportunity to revel again in the slyly dadaesque innuendo of the verses, as well as the sheer joy of the guitar work.
It took me a while to get into the latest St. Vincent, a deeply personal work about her father’s release from prison, partly because of her artistic choice to lean into a 1970s-inspired set of styles throughout the record. But there’s nothing wrong about the funk that drives “Pay Your Way in Pain,” to say nothing of the deep discomfort just below the surface of the lyrics.
“So Unreal” is the oldest track on the mix. Post-punk has been a reliable well of inspiration for me, albeit one that gives me no small amount of impostor syndrome. After all, I was alive and listening to music when the Creatures formed their splinter group off of Siouxsie and the Banshees, but wasn’t nearly hip enough to know they existed.
Originally, “Kyoto” was the pivot point of this mix, and a different version of it followed up Phoebe Bridgers’ meditation on jet lag and alienation set to a brass section straight out of an old Beulah record with Thundercat’s “Tokyo” and a general pivot into 21st century funk and electronica. But I decided against taking what was, for me, the easy path; hopefully you’re as glad as I am.
“Silk” has been on this mix since it came up on a random shuffle through my music while I was blowing snow one bright winter day. I dearly love Wolf Alice on the basis of this early album and am almost afraid to listen future iterations of their sound. I might have said the same of Neneh Cherry, having been a huge fan of her first few albums but not closely following her since then. Broken Politics is a pretty darned impressive follow-up, albeit one more closely related to the remixes of “Move With Me” than to the funk of “Buffalo Stance,” and “Black Monday” is a pretty spectacular representation of the album’s pleasures.
Soccer Mommy (aka Sophia Allison) made one of the quintessential albums of the early pandemic years with Color Theory, and a slightly brighter version of the same introspective sound is in her latest release. By contrast, Liz Phair’s Soberish appears to have come and gone without an impact, which is a shame as I think the songwriting on it is as strong as anything since Whitechocolatespaceegg.
And then there’s Sales, whose “Pope is a Rockstar” probably would have languished in limbo were it not for TikTok, where mondegreen readings of the title as “go little rockstar” made the song go viral. But on its own it’s a woozy hybrid between indie pop and, maybe, surf rock? There’s something in those guitars, is what I’m saying.
I fell in love with Laura Marling a few years ago, on her album Once I Was an Eagle, which featured prominently on my 2013 mix “Something Other Than Regret.” Her most recent album, Song for Our Daughter, takes the stark template of that sound and layers on Laurel Canyon harmonies that go on for days, especially on this track.
Lavender Diamond, aka Becky Stark, is another artist who appeared on that 2013 mix, and promptly disappeared until their 2020 album Now is the Time. All the hallmarks of the sound are there — the high vocals, the chord progressions out of an evolved version of the American Songbook — but where their 2012 album Incorruptible Heart dwelt in heartbreak, the new album seems to seek out hope behind horror.
One of the newest tracks on the album, boygenius’s “$20” from their debut LP The Record is a sublime and angry tune about the desperate need to escape the ordinary, with layered and shifting vocals from Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker. It’s stunning. The following tune, from the final Low album before Mimi Parker’s tragic death from cancer last year, underscores and reinforces all the themes with its own harmonies, but the anger is replaced with resignation and sadness. “Always looking for that one sure thing/Oh, you wanted so desperately.”
The final track is something of a lost gem: the final cut from the debut album of Eggplant, released in 1996. While most of the songs on the London trio’s indie rock driven album nod to punk with short run times and brisk beats, the final song, “We Only Wanted to Be Loved,” is a heartbreaker of a ballad. The trio deserved better than the oblivion their records found on initial release; here’s hoping they get a good afterlife via the Bandcamp rerelease of their music.
I hope this show brings you some sounds you haven’t heard before and makes you think—or move your booty, or both. The full track list is below:
Welcome To My Island – Caroline Polachek (Desire, I Want To Turn Into You)
Rimbaud Eyes – Dum Dum Girls (Too True)
Headspins – Splashh (Comfort)
Chaise Longue – Wet Leg (Wet Leg)
Pay Your Way In Pain – st. vincent (Daddy’s Home)
So Unreal – The Creatures (A Bestiary of (Spectrum))
Kyoto – Phoebe Bridgers (Punisher)
Silk – Wolf Alice (My Love Is Cool)
Black Monday – Neneh Cherry (Broken Politics)
Feel It All The Time – soccer mommy (Sometimes, Forever)
In There – Liz Phair (Soberish)
Pope Is a Rockstar – SALES (Sales Lp)
Held Down – Laura Marling (Song For Our Daughter)
This Is How We Rise – Lavender Diamond (Now Is The Time)
$20 – boygenius (the record)
Days Like These – Low (HEY WHAT)
We Only Wanted To Be Loved – EGGPLANT (Catboy/Catgirl)
We have taken control, and we will return it to you as soon as you are exfiltrated.
When Wayne Shorter died on March 2, 2023, it was like the closing of a book that you knew was going to run out of pages soon, but hoped it never would. Shorter had retired from performance in 2018 due to worsening health, but was still composing and releasing new music up until last summer.
Having already put together an Exfiltration Radio episode of Shorter’s music, I debated doing another—I could easily do twelve or thirteen episodes of his works. But I decided to dedicate this episode to his music by highlighting performances of his compositions by others. Most of the recordings here come from the last few years, but there are two from the 1990s and one contemporaneous with Wayne’s most productive period as a composer in the 1960s—albeit with a very different approach.
I considered doing the entire album with covers and performances of “Footprints,” the Shorter classic that was dramatically reimagined by the Miles Davis Quintet on Miles Smiles. In the end I settled for two very different approaches to the standard, starting with Herbie Mann’s 1968 version. Recorded with an unusually star-studded group—Sonny Sharrock on guitar, Roy Ayers on vibes, and a very young Miroslav Vitouš on bass, with drummer Bruno Carr—the recording will surprise those who primarily associate Mann with his notorious early 1970s record Push Push.
David Ashkenazy’s “Chief Crazy Horse” is a 2008 performance compiled on a 2021 tribute album on Posi-Tone Records. Drummer Ashkenazy leads a quartet with Matt Otto on tenor sax, Steve Cotter on guitar, and Roger Shew on drums, playing a version of the closing song from Adam’s Apple that manages to be at once familiar and new, thanks largely to Cotter’s sterling guitar work.
One of my favorite large-band renditions of Shorter’s work, David Weiss’s “Fall” comes from a live tribute to Wayne recorded in 2013 with a group that includes Ravi Coltrane on tenor, Joe Fiedler on trombone, and the great Geri Allen on piano. While the arrangement undoes the innovation of the original Miles recording, in which the horns repeat the theme while the rhythm section improvises underneath, the performance is not to be missed, especially for Weiss’s trumpet solo.
More “Footprints” follow, this time in a duo recording by Dave Liebman and Willy Rodriguez from the 2020 compilation album 2020. The album is credited to Palladium, an effort by Shorter’s social media rep Jesse Markowitz to get his music better known. The performances here run from more traditional to more avant-garde and this one is firmly on the latter side of the spectrum, with Liebman’s soprano sax and Rodriguez’s drums moving things along briskly.
Walter Smith III is having something of a moment, coming off several collaboration albums with Matthew Stevens as In Common, guesting with Connie Han on several of her excellent recent albums, and about to release his Blue Note debut. The performance of “Adam’s Apple” here from his 2018 release Twio foreshadows much of that greatness, including his impeccable taste in sidemen. I’m not sure how the studio didn’t explode with the fury of Eric Harland’s drums on this number, and Harish Ragavan’s bass is nothing to sneeze at either.
The vocalist Clare Foster recorded an entire album of vocal adaptations of Shorter’s work at the beginning of her career, in 1993. While some of the lyrics are flights of fancy only tangentially connected to the work, her “Iris” precisely captures the mood of Shorter’s ballad. This track is followed by the other 1990s performance on the mix, the great Kenny Kirkland’s take on Shorter’s “Ana Maria” from his sole outing as a leader before his untimely death in 1998.
We close with another performance from Shorter Moments, a 2009 performance of Wayne’s phenomenal “Infant Eyes” by Wayne Escoffery on tenor sax with Avi Rothbard on guitar. While Shorter did not only write ballads, there was arguably no one in the second half of the 20th century who was better at writing ballads, and this recording makes a persuasive case in favor of that argument.
Full track listing and link for playback are below. Enjoy!
Footprints – Herbie Mann (Windows Opened)
Chief Crazy Horse – David Ashkenazy (Shorter Moments – Exploring the World of Wayne)
Fall (Live) – David Weiss (Endangered Species: The Music of Wayne Shorter (Live at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola))
Footprints – David Liebman & Willy Rodriguez (2020)
Adam’s Apple (feat. Eric Harland & Harish Ragavan) – Walter Smith III (Twio)
Iris – Clare Foster (Clare Foster sings Wayne Shorter)
Ana Maria – Kenny Kirkland (Kenny Kirkland)
Infant Eyes – Wayne Escoffery (Shorter Moments – Exploring the World of Wayne)
Do not attempt to adjust your radio; there is nothing wrong.
“Portrait of woman wearing dark suit, possibly Vera, holding record album,” Charles “Teenie” Harris (c.1960). Courtesy Carnegie Museum of Art.
So you’re stuck at home this Christmas. You have Covid, or someone in your family does, or both. Might as well crank the music up, and what better way to ring in the season than an hour of Christmas jazz?
This set, and yesterday’s, have been percolating for a few years, ever since my “Off Kilter Christmas” showed me how hard it was to trim all the holiday music I wanted to share down to an hour. But when I was putting together yesterday’s set, I realized I had something like four mixes worth of material, so I started separating the jazz out… and what came was remarkably coherent. Though maybe that says more about my record collection than fate. The track listing is below, though be prepared for Babs Gonsalves to pop up a few times.
“Sleigh Ride,” Duke Pearson (Merry Ole Soul). Pearson was, in addition to being the A&R man for Blue Note Records in the 1960s and composer of the great Donald Byrd track “Cristo Redentor,” a pretty fair pianist and arranger. This uber-cool take on “Sleigh Ride” is viewed through the prism of spiritual jazz, with a drone in the bass and drums that’ll knock your socks off.
“Marche Touche,” Classical Jazz Quartet (Christmas). This record is one of my happy discoveries this season. Featuring Ron Carter on bass, Kenny Barron on piano, Stefán Harris on vibes and marimba, and Lewis Nash on drums, this take on the March from Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” is something else.
“Littler Drummer Boy,” Tia Fuller (It’s Christmas on Mack Avenue). If you want a modern classic of jazz interpretations of Christmas standards, I’d check out this compilation. Fuller’s take on “Little Drummer Boy” is representative, with a combination of traditional melodic interpretation and contemporary rhythm.
“We Three Kings of Orient Are,” Ellis Marsalis (A New Orleans Christmas Carol). This standout album from the late patriarch of the Marsalis clan has a lot going for it, especially Jason Marsalis’s beat on tracks like this one.
“Carol of the Bells,” Wynton Marsalis (Crescent City Christmas Card). I remember listening to this with my family with some puzzlement when it first came out. Now I love it: the horn line that shifts around the beat with each chorus, the typically crunchy Wynton chords, the classic Wynton Marsalis Septet members throwing everything into the arrangement (yes, that’s Marcus Roberts, Wycliffe Gordon, Todd Williams, Wessell Anderson, Herlin Riley, and Reginald Veal on the track).
“White Christmas,” Ill Considered (An Ill Considered Christmas). The Ill Considered Christmas album might be the 21st century equivalent of Crescent City Christmas Carol for dividing family opinion. There are some mighty interesting reharmonizations on this album. But I love the inclusion of Eastern melodies over the traditional Irving Berlin tune here, and the band is uptempo and bright.
“Christmas Time Is Here,” Ellis Marsalis. A second track off Ellis’s Christmas album, this is a solid reinterpretation of the Vince Guaraldi classic and a completely different mood from “We Three Kings.” Contemplative and mellow. You might want to refill that eggnog.
“Vauncing Chimes,” Bobby Watson (Blue Christmas). This contemporary collection from Blue Note has a bunch of fairly faithful covers of classic jazz arrangements, but this one actually comes from a different 1991 compilation and is a retitled version of “Jingle Bells,” with Watson’s saxophone taking us on a tour of the outer reaches.
“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” Jimmy Smith (Christmas Cookin’). A top five holiday jazz album, Smith’s Hammond organ sizzles throughout this set. While I enjoy the numbers with orchestration in this set, this cut just has the trio, and they make a joyful noise.
“Here Comes Santa Claus,” Ramsey Lewis Trio (Sound of Christmas). This set from 1961, like the Jimmy Smith set, has trio numbers and orchestral arrangements, and this is also “just” a trio setting. But with Ramsey Lewis at the keys, it might as well be an orchestra. Rambunctious, bluesy and jolly, this’ll have you wondering what you put in that eggnog.
“Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” Bill Evans Trio (Trio ’64). Just why the otherwise straight album by Evans, Paul Motian and Gary Peacock contained this cover of the Fred Coots/Haven Gillespie holiday standard is up for debate. What’s not up for debate is the high level of artistry on this track, with Evans, Motian and Peacock displaying telepathic abilities throughout. Worth the price of admission for Motian’s bass part alone.
“Sleep, Holy Infant, Sleep,” Dave Brubeck (Christmas Lullabies 12”). I don’t know too much about this vault issue, which was a Record Store Day release a few years ago, except that Brubeck demonstrates a delicacy of touch and interpretation that’s characteristic of some of his later Telarc recordings. This is, true to the release name, a lovely lullaby.
“Auld Lang Syne,” Bobby Timmons (Holiday Soul). The great soul jazz pianist and composer Bobby Timmons sees us out, with a great soul-inflected cover of the New Years Eve classic (or, depending on your leaning, unofficial University of Virginia alma mater).
It’s time for more Christmas craziness, so break out the eggnog, put up your feet, close that window that’s blowing open, and enjoy! Big range this time, with tracks from Yo La Tengo, Low and Jane Siberry joining the expected bits of old blues and funk.
The tunes:
The Last Month Of The Year – Vera Hall Ward (Where Will You Be Christmas Day?)
Getting Ready for Christmas Day – Paul Simon (So Beautiful or So What)
A Groovy Christmas and New Year (Kojo Donkoh) – Houghas Sorowonko (A Groovy Christmas and New Year (Kojo Donkoh))
It’s Christmas Time – Yo La Tengo (Merry Christmas From Yo La Tengo)
Christmas In Jail – Ain’t That A Pain – Leroy Carr (Where Will You Be Christmas Day?)
When It’s Christmas Time on the Range – Bob Wills (Lit Up Like A Christmas Tree II: The Eggnog Is Spiked)
To Heck With Ole Santa Claus – Loretta Lynn (Lit Up Like A Christmas Tree – A Vintage Holiday Mixtape)
The Christmas Blues – Bob Dylan (Christmas In the Heart)
Santa’s Got A Bag O’ Soul – Soul Saints Orchestra (Lit Up Like A Christmas Tree II: The Eggnog Is Spiked)
Merry Christmas Baby – Bootsy Collins (Christmas Is 4 Ever)
Xmas Done Got Funky – Jimmy Jules & Nuclear Soul System (Santa’s Funk & Soul Christmas Party Vol.1-3)
Christmas on Riverside Drive – August Darnell (A Christmas Record)
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas – Dread Zeppelin (Presents)
Go Where I Send Thee – Fred Waring & The Pennsylvanians (The Sounds of Christmas)
Another Hackathon mix! This one is about finding different states of mind in music from around the world. The mix is heavy on African music from different countries, but there’s a healthy dose of other stuff too. Track notes below.
“Ali’s Here,” Ali Farka Toure (Niafunke). I learned about Ali from his collaboration with Ry Cooder in the 1990s, Talking Timbuktu. But this solo album is grittier and deeply, deeply funky.
“Durgen Chugaa,” Shu-De (Voices from the Distant Steppe). This album of Tuvan throat singing is infamous in my family; I was blasting it in my first post-college apartment when a knock came at my door, and the melodious sounds of throat singing were the first things that Lisa heard when she met me for the first time as she and our mutual friend Shel met me at my door. Reader, she married me anyway.
“Shamas-Ud-Doha, Badar-Ud-Doja,” Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Shahen-Shah). My favorite of Nusrat’s albums for Real World. I began to learn vocal improvisation technique from listening to him on this track.
“Wagane Faye,” Youssou N’Dour (Badou). An early recording of Youssou from the mid-1980s, parts of this song would end up reprised on his Set album from 1990 as “Medina.” This version skips the xylophone-like synths and saxes and just goes full-out as a live band cut, much heavier on the percussion and other dance elements.
“Living Together,” Remmy Ongala & Orchestre Super Matimila (Mambo). I slept on this early-90s Real World album and am sorry I did. Great Tanzanian funk that fits nicely with the Senegalese sound around it.
“Gainde,” Omar Pene & Super Diamono (Direct from Dakar). Late-1990s Senegalese mbalax from the great rival to Youssou N’Dour.
“Na Teef Know De Road of Teef,” Pax Nicholas (Daptone Records’ Rhythm Showcase). A legendary track. Nicholas was a member of Fela Kuti’s band Africa 70 who recorded this solo album in 1973 in Ginger Baker’s well-equipped Nigerian studio with many of Fela’s musicians. Apparently Fela didn’t like the competition, and told him, “Don’t you ever, EVER play it again!” And thus the recording remained underground for more than 30 years.
“Pop Makossa Invasion,” Dream Stars (Pop Makossa – The Invasive Dance Beat of Cameroon). A great song from a great compilation of highly danceable funk from Cameroon, all following the original release of Manu Dibango’s legendary “Soul Makossa.”
“Lonyaka,” Ladysmith Black Mambazo (Classic Tracks). I love the mbube style showcased in this track. There’s a reason that so many people fell in love with this band when they heard it on Graceland.
“On the Street,” The Dmitri Pokrovsky Ensemble (The Wild Field). A completely different singing style from Pokrovsky’s pioneering folk ensemble, this traditional song comes from a region of Russia that adjoins Ukraine, and so has a completely different meaning today than when it was released over 30 years ago.
“San Vicente,” Milton Nascimento (Brazil Classics 1: Beleza Tropical). There was a pretty notorious cartoon that ran in a student magazine when I was an undergrad, picturing Peter Gabriel and David Byrne as carpetbaggers due to their leveraging world music sounds in their pop music. The accusation has a ring of truth to it, but both musicians did their best to provide the musicians with whom they collaborated with a broader platform, Gabriel through his still-vital Real World label, and Byrne through Luaka Bop, a more eclectic group that began with this release. Brazil Classics 1 highlights some of the musicians who worked with Byrne on the Talking Heads release Naked and Byrne’s solo debut Rei Momo, including Nascimento, a dean of Brazilian folk music.
“Voyager,” Kudsi Ergüner & Süleyman Ergüner (Sufi Music of Turkey). A hypnotic album I found in college showcasing the ney flute of Kudsi Ergüner and a very different sound from the Sufi tradition that manifests in the qawwali singing of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
“T’Amo,” Tenores di Bitti (S’amore ’e mama). Lest we think that remarkable vocal styles are a strictly extra-European phenomenon, give this track a listen. The Sardinian ensemble on display here does things with overtones that you normally have to travel to Tuva to hear.
“Svatba,” Bulgarian State Television Female Choir (Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares). Still hair-raising more than 30 years after these recordings hit the United States.
“En Mana Kuoyo,” Ayub Ogada (En Mana Kuoyo). The liner notes for the album describe this song as a “parable suggesting that the person who hurries eats his sesame seeds with sand.” I feel seen.
“Gut pluriarc with one man’s voice” (Instrumental Music of the Kalahari San). This uncredited performance, just a man and a stringed instrument, reminds us that there is still so much to listen to and learn.
