Freddie Hubbard - Red Clay and Straight Life - I've listened to these records before, but I don't think I ever got knocked out by them like last night and this morning. They bracketed my going to see some friends play some out-ish jazz-ish situations on a Tuesday, which felt positively bohemian. Just last night on my way home, the guy sitting next to me on the bus smelled kinda funny and my initial thought was It's just like a real city! Seeing my friends play last night made it feel about as NYC as it gets around here. Freddie Hubbard's two greatest records are some unfair bookends to put around any body of work, but it made for a cognitive fluidity that I needed to flush out the system a bit.
Bebel Gilberto - All In One - This album is too hot for mortal men to bear. Hear those weird booms that punctuate this record? That is some schlub's head exploding after having to deal with the unbearable hotness. It's frankly unfair to drop this on us.
Super 400 - Sweet Fist (listen) I know by repeating this anecdote I am only stoking the marketing-thru-nostalgia engine that threatens to destroy us all, but it is a cool story. The band recorded this album at Ardent studios in Memphis, the studio of Al Green and Big Star and Isaac Hayes and all things good in the world, and like every music nerd that passes through there, eyed the long inoperable and original Stax record lathe that cut so many killer records, and sweet talked Larry Nix into reviving it and cutting the record on it. Details at Blurt. As for the music itself: lil' busy but still rawx.
The Delta 72 - The R&B of Membership - I have been listening to this record for all 14 years that its been around, and still get giddily flummoxed by the skewed brio in the title. What could "the R&B of membership" possibly be? The groove of interpersonal relationships? The fact that any organization's success hinges on the interlock of skills and the cohesion of effort? That we all want to wear dark sunglasses and a killer suit?
Red Clay and Straight Life are incredible albums!
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