Blog: There Stands the Glass

Until I witnessed its incredibly sensitive yet thoroughly dynamic performance backing the legendary Daniel Johnston at the Middle of the Map festival in 2011, I dismissed Capybara as an irredeemably slight ensemble. Cute and cuddly aren't qualities I admire in a rock band. I'd written Capybara off as soft. Capybara's ability to inspire the best Johnston performance I've witnessed changed my perception of the band. That explains why I'm so uncharacteristically smitten by Dave Drusky , the Kansas City band's new album. The delightfully disorienting [...]

My knees are still weak days after attending Friday's concert by Vivica Genaux and Europa Galante . It's not just the nonexistent leg room in the balcony of the Folly Theater that made me wobbly. I'm still swooning from the intoxicating combination of the vocalist's superb voice, sultry visage and sublime accompanists. It looked like this but it sounded as good as any concert I've experienced. No amplification was employed in the high-ceilinged hall. I could distinguish every note played by the 14-piece Italian ensemble. I caught glimpses of God [...]

I flipped my lid when I stumbled across a copy of Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense at my local library. I'd been eager to see the documentary for a couple years. Alas, it wasn't quite as definitive as I'd hoped. Some of the footage that had piqued my interest in various clips at YouTube didn't make the cut. (The material is presumably available on the deluxe edition .) And the finished product seems disjointed- it skips about randomly. My favorite bits include Donald Harrison [...]

Well aware that it's overused, I tend to avoid using the phrase "musicians' musician." Yet the characterization is almost unavoidable in any reference to Clare Fischer. A note from steadfast There Stands the Glass reader BGO aside, the only notifications I received about Fischer's recent passing were from musicians. Frankly, I never got it. Fischer's smooth solo albums continue to baffle me. Honestly, I have no frame of reference here . --- D'Angelo! --- Why does Rodrigo y Gabriela always leave me cold? The new [...]

Spotting an outbreak of graffiti in a Kansas City suburb earlier this week threw me into a bout of bittersweet nostalgia. As an alienated teen, I became obsessed with The Clash for about eighteen months. The band epitomized my inchoate rebellious instincts. Confessing to my former naiveté is a bit embarrassing, but the band's first three albums served as my code during that time. If I was 16 years old today there's little doubt I'd be tagging OFWGKTA 's name in my neighborhood. The hip hop collective's obscene nihilism is tailor-made for disaffected American youth [...]

Johnny Otis was a brilliant work of fiction. And Etta James was much more than one song. Ioannis Alexandros Veliotes was born in 1921. His story is hard to believe. Thankfully, one version of the truth can be found in Listen to the Lambs , a 1968 book in which Otis examines race in America. He identified as black, although his parents were Greek immigrants. Even Otis' biggest hit was blatantly subversive. (And what is Lionel Hampton doing in that clip?) Otis is [...]

Jack DeJohnette will celebrate his seventieth birthday on August 9, 2012, and it seems as if he can get everything he asks for at this stage of his illustrious career. The credits of his new album Sound Travels read like a who's-who of today's top "jazz" artists. The list includes Ambrose Akinmusire, Lionel Loueke, Jason Moran and Esperanza Spaulding. Bobby McFerrin also makes a (very nice) appearance. The only misstep is a jamband track featuring Bruce Hornsby. It's five minutes of pain on an otherwise exceptional album. [...]

"One of the Butt sisters!" I've been snickering at "Troglodyte"'s lowbrow gag since I was a child. Yet Jimmy Castor , who died yesterday, did much more than provide me with cheap laughs. My friend BGO chided me in an email exchange for implying that Castor was a mere novelty artist. And sure enough, according to Castor's site "(b)efore even finishing junior high school, Jimmy Castor had written his first million seller for Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers called 'I Promise To Remember' ." Castor would have been nine years old [...]

I'm hardly a shill for NPR's music programming . I frequently mock the insular indie rock that's closely associated with the media conglomerate and its self-congratulatory audience. Last year's list of its listeners' favorite albums is a case in point. While I respect and even admire acts like The Decemberists, that rarefied sound rarely moves me. I'm a hypocrite, however, because that same smug tone doesn't bother me half as much when it's applied to jazz Black American Music and "world" music. In fact, NPR's free concert downloads [...]

The Micah Hermon album review is reposted from Plastic Sax : It must be terribly frustrating to be a Kansas City-area jazz bassist not named Bob Bowman, Jeff Harshbarger or Gerald Spaits. The three men invariably secure a disproportionate number of the area's high profile gigs. Each member of the triumvirate deserves his elite standing, but that doesn't mean that the talent pool ends with them. James Albright, Ben Leifer, Bill McKemy and Dominique Sanders are wildly different but uniformly excellent bassists. And then there's the often overlooked Micah Herman . [...]

Jad Fair 's latest project instantly transported me back to the early '80s. In those days I felt compelled to salvage Half Japanese and Jad Fair solo albums from record store cutout bins. I didn't particularly enjoy the absurd outsider sounds but I loved the fact that "music" of this nature could actually be recorded, released, distributed and sold. A video for the title track for the forthcoming EP Bird House is an uncanny representation of my disjointed memories of that era. I continue to embrace the anarchy. [...]

I'd been waiting for the moment for months. Hearing a song I selected at the internet site Turntable.fm boom through the sound system at a real life nightclub was a genuine thrill. When a few friends organized a Turntable.fm-themed event at Czar Bar during the holidays, the first song I programmed was Heavy D's "The Overweight Lover's in the House." I went on to play a few of my punk, metal and hip hop favorites but the party was eventually co-opted by fans of pop, dance and techno. That meant that a few of my [...]

Partly because I'm horrified by the absence of Tom Waits in my year-end albums and songs and shows lists, I was compelled to compile another list that would include the great man. 1. Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat- "Copper Top" (above) I identify with every moment. 2. Spoek Mathambo- "Control" Terrifying. 3. Tyler, the Creator- "Yonkers" A nihilistic star is born. 4. ASAP Rocky- "Purple Swag" Can't. Stop. Watching. [...]

Two of the finest musicians in the Kansas City area endured a tough gig Monday. The duo's discrete music was repeatedly drowned out by indifferent patrons at an establishment in Johnson County. One of the band's members attempted to address the worst offenders by politely engaging them at their table as his partner vamped. The group of twenty-somethings didn't take the hint. "We do weddings- anyone out there getting married?" the musician later asked with a murderous glare. "No? Well, we also do funerals. We play exactly the same repertoire." [...]

As the year-end lists in the previous two There Stands the Glass posts indicate, my preoccupation with jazz Black American Music and hip hop persists. That's why I recently dragged my weary carcass to the RecordBar after midnight a couple days ago for the latest installment of Mark Lowrey 's series of live collaborations with hip hop artists. It was disappointing to discover that the dozen or so B.A.M. and hip hop musicians almost outnumbered the members of the audience. Even so, what I witnessed was astounding. The [...]

The 25 Best Albums of 2011 I'd like to think that hip hop and jazz dominated my listening time in 2011 because that's where the most compelling and artistically relevant developments were taking place. I could easily list 25 interesting albums from each genre. Black Up would rate highly on both tallies. And The Race Riot Suite may very well be the Mingus Ah Um of our time. I reluctantly hopped off the metal bandwagon in 2011. The happy medium between blissful stupidity and self-conscious theorizing became too [...]

"The night life ain't no good life, but it's my life." I will have taken in over 365 individual performances in 2011 by New Year's Eve.. The following list of my favorite ten percent of these shows is deceptive. While hip hop is the dominant force in popular music, the genre is underrepresented. Only the charisma and vibrant catalogs of Weezy, Black Elvis, Tech and Ye and Jay allowed them to overcome their otherwise sketchy presentations. The reverse is true of jazz. Kansas City's jazz renaissance is, if anything, underrepresented here. Matt Otto [...]

While I'm a bit embarrassed that a twee pop song tops a list loaded with gangsta rappers, I simply can't resist Hidden Pictures' suffocatingly cute video. 1. Hidden Pictures- "Anne Apparently" 2. Greg Enemy - "Sophisticated Goon Sh*t" 3. Hospital Ships- "Galaxies" 4. XV- "Awesome" * 5. Stik Figa and Ron Ron- "Caked Up" 6. Hammerlord- "Tombstone Piledriver" 7. Big Scoob- "All I Kno is Hood" 8. The Latenight Callers- "The Tease" 9. Girls With Guitars [...]

I found my musical soulmate. Having come to the conclusion that my personal preferences in music had become so oddly deformed that no one could possibly share my love of free jazz, hip hop and metal, I discovered a year-end 50 favorite albums list that correlates with my interests. Craig Taborn and Tech N9ne? I am not alone. --- My new best friend's list does not include Everything's Getting Older , the new album by Aidan Moffat and Bill Wells. It's tentatively placed at [...]

Life can be painful for inveterate music nerds. The spiritual and earthly highs music affords are often matched by extended periods of despair and sorrow. The last few days have been particularly difficult. My music-related day job has been an emotional roller coaster. And a friend who owns a troubled nightclub has been vilified by many otherwise decent people. Meanwhile, many of the musicians I admire are scrambling to find alternative venues. Last night I was horrified as dozens of oblivious people spoiled otherwise exquisite acoustic performances by Brandi Carlile and the [...]