Album Review: The Gospel Truth: The Complete Singles Collection

Original image of St. Joan of Arc Chapel at Marquette University by There Stands the Glass.

Failing to direct my attention to the weekly rollout of 25 digital reissues of albums on The Gospel Truth Records label is among the biggest mistakes I’ve made during the pandemic.  The uplifting sets by gospel artists released by the subsidiary of Stax Records in the 1970s would have given me much-needed strength.

The recent release of The Gospel Truth: The Complete Singles Collection improves my attitude dramatically.  The powerfully funky assertions of liberation theology make the two-hour set consisting of the A and B sides of 17 singles essential for fans of Southern soul, protest music and anyone interested in expanding their knowledge of 1970s black gospel beyond the Staple Singers.

The Rance Allen Group, the biggest name on the set, is represented by five strong singles.  But it’s the deep cuts that make compilations like The Gospel Truth: The Complete Singles Collection rewarding.  Charles and Annette May’s "Keep My Baby Warm" is startlingly sensual.  Joshie Jo Armstead’s "Ride Out the Storm" is an anthem for our time.  The 21st Century’s “Who’s Supposed to be Raising Who” may be the most danceable parental guidance diatribe ever laid down.

Several tracks are blatant repurposings of secular hits, but the results reflect divine inspiration rather than commercial desperation.  Only two wildly out of place selections by Blue Aquarius- a psychedelic band dedicated to Prem Rawat- kill the vibe.  It’s going to be difficult to tear myself away from the other 32 tracks to finally dig into the reissues of full albums by each act.

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I review Norman Brown’s Heart to Heart at Plastic Sax.

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Opera update: I watched 182 operas during the first six months of the pandemic.  The Lithuanian National Opera & Ballet’s 2020 production of Sergei Prokofiev’s "The Gambler" is a recent highlight.

Got to Be There

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

The biggest regret of my concert-going life is my failure to convince my mom to drive me to Lawrence, Kansas, to see Bob Marley & the Wailers in 1979.  I’d just purchased the current release Survival- my first Marley album- so I sensed the import of the performance.  I can’t imagine a scenario in which my mom might have acquiesced to my pleas, given it was a school night in December and I was an incorrigible delinquent. She unceremoniously shut me down.

Black Uhuru, Burning Spear and Steel Pulse were soon part of my regular rotation.  But my favorite reggae album- then as now- was Toots & The Maytals’ Funky Kingston.  It’s one of only a handful of albums I’ve regularly returned to over the past 40 years. Alas, the only other Toots Hibbert album I unequivocally admire is Toots in Memphis, a project on which he affirms his status as the Jamaican version of Otis Redding.

I was overjoyed at my first Toots show in 1983.  I couldn’t believe I was singing and dancing along with the titanic talent in a dinky nightclub.  The ecstatic evening almost made up for missing Marley a few years earlier.  Marley died in 1981.  Hibbert died today.

Album Review: Ainon- Drought

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

I’ve long been troubled by the name of the Missouri based jazz presenter We Always Swing.  I’m more of a swing-optional guy.  The weight of the region’s formidable jazz tradition can be oppressive.  A lot of European improvisers don’t feel any compunction to follow conventional American mandates.  The motto of the young Finnish quartet Ainon could be We’ll Swing If and When We Feel Like It.

Ainon’s debut album Drought occasionally sounds like Charles Mingus’ ensemble using the string quartets of Arnold Schoenberg as an improvisational springboard.  Yet rather than resembling a bitter dose of academia-approved medicine, Drought is a wild and wooly joyride.

Consisting of Aino Juutilainen (founder and cellist), Satu-Maija Aalto (violin, viola and vocals), Suvi Linnovaara (saxophone, clarinet and flute) and Joonas Leppänen (drums), Ainon plays by its own rules.  Veering between ECM-like ambiance, the percussive spiritualism associated with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and conventional string quartet shadings, the serpentine title track of Drought is a distillation of Ainon’s charms.  

Ainon’s nebulous relationship with swing won’t fly in Kansas City.  The band will almost certainly never play in the old stomping grounds of Bill Basie and Jay McShann.  I’ll have to content myself with Drought until either Ainon makes its way to New York, Chicago or St. Louis or I take my first trip to Scandinavia.

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Opera update: I’m on a Benjamin Britten jag, a recent obsession that’s made my viewing of 174 operas in the past 173 days feel as if I’m just getting started.

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Tom Ray may have heaped more abuse on me than any man alive.  And I still love him, partly because his passion for blues, soul and reggae is genuine.  Here’s a de facto 47-minute infomercial about Ray and his St. Louis record store Vintage Vinyl. 

Album Review: Bettye LaVette- Blackbirds

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

Assembling a comprehensive collection of classic soul was one of my primary projects at the onset of the CD era.  I built an extensive library of artists ranging from Solomon Burke to Jr. Walker & The All Stars one disc at a time.  The endeavor was enormously satisfying.  My mind was repeatedly blown by hearing deep tracks by the likes of Ruth Brown, Al Green and Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes for the first time.  After all the obvious bases were covered, I began buying compilations of soul rarities.  That’s how I first heard the scorching vocals of Bettye LaVette.  While much of the material she recorded in the ‘60s and ‘70s sounds thrilling today, her efforts lagged stylistic trends at the time.  The many hardships the septuagenarian endured make her late career renaissance all the more rewarding.  Blackbirds, a new set of imaginative covers, is as solid as anything LaVette has released.  I suspect most of the CD mixes I made during my initial immersion in soul were only half as satisfying as LaVette’s profound new statement.

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The pledge breaks during the premiere broadcast of KCPT’s new Charlie Parker documentary Bird: Not Out of Nowhere were almost as interesting as the program. I assess the film at Plastic Sax.

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Four days after publishing an analysis of various opera presentations, I learned of the existence of “Trollflöjten”, Ingmar Bergman’s freaky adaptation of “The Magic Flute” (“Die Zauberflöte”).  I may be an uncultured country bumpkin, but I was on to something when I suggested Kenneth Branagh’s version might be appropriate for children.  Bergman’s primary conceit is the depiction of Mozart’s work through the eyes of a little girl seated in a Swedish opera house.  For those keeping score at home, I’ve now watched 169 operas in the past 168 days. My second rendition of “Der Rosenkavalier” is on deck.

What’s a Goon to a Goblin?

Original image of A Child’s Garden of Verses by There Stands the Glass.

I almost shed a tear when I heard the all-too-familiar click of a lighter in the opening moments of No Ceilings a few days ago.  The partial re-release of Lil Wayne’s woefully inferior 2009 mixtape documents the precipitous erosion of creativity caused in part by the activities implied by the embarrassing sound effect.  Lil Wayne was the most important rapper alive 15 years ago.  I reveled in Tunechi’s dominance from the first time I heard “The Block is Hot” in 1999 through 2008’s Tha Carter III.  Heavy rotation of the riveting video for "A Milli" may even have been the pivotal factor allowing hip-hop to overtake pop as the most dominant strain of popular music.  It’s impossible to stay on top forever, but Mr. Carter’s nearly instantaneous descent into mediocrity was particularly jarring.  He fires off a handful of good verses amid the revolting gynecology punchlines on the drab No Ceilings, but the subpar production is depressing.  Weezy is only 37, so there’s still a possibility he’ll recover from his lengthy artistic funk.  No matter what happens, I’ll always love him.

Album Review: Jyoti- Mama, You Can Bet!

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

I first encountered Georgia Anne Muldrow at Access Music in San Diego in 2009.  She and her partner Dudley Perkins were promoting their latest release at the hip-hop specialist shop.  Although I bought the album pictured above, I wasn’t entirely sold on the sound.  Mama, You Can Bet!, the recording Muldrow just released as Jyoti, is squarely in my wheelhouse.  Erykah Badu remains Muldrow’s north star, but she’s elevated her swing-rooted neo-soul into the rarefied cosmos between Funkadelic’s America Eats Its Young and Flying Lotus’ You’re Dead.  Additional references to Miles Davis and Sun Ra on Muldrow’s empyrean odyssey make Mama, You Can Bet! a contender for my album of the year.

Rock Me Amadeus

Screenshot of Jeremy Ovenden in the Royal Theatre of Monnaie’s production of “Lucio Silla” by There Stands the Glass.

I often think about Kanye West’s 2013 concert at the Sprint Center. My review of the show for The Kansas City Star went viral because I was obliged to report the arena was only a quarter full, but it was the combination of avant-garde noise from West’s then-current Yeezus album and spectacular visuals including a mountain and ballet troupe that made the night unforgettable.

More than five months into my daily opera immersion (161 operas in the past 161 days!), a little piece of me dies every time I commit to a stale production set in a beige parlor featuring stocky vocalists in period costumes. Thanks in part to West’s spectacular imagination, I now expect the visual component to be as compelling as the music it accentuates at large-scale live performances and in every video production. Thrilling versions of two Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart operas I recently watched attest to the power of unfettered creativity in a form long associated with stasis.

“Lucio Silla,” an examination of a tyrant’s abuse of power, is considered one of Mozart’s least essential operas. Yet an arresting 2017 production mounted by the Royal Theatre of Monnaie forces me to revise my expectations of opera’s possibilities. Without compromising the music of the 250-year-old drama, the Belgian company places the work in a dystopian version of the present. The depictions of bloodlust and sexual violence are so graphic I repeatedly had to turn away. I suspect Mozart would approve of the unflinchingly kinky staging.

But why be constrained by a stage at all? Kenneth Branagh’s delightful cinematic version of “The Magic Flute” (“Die Zauberflöte”) successfully adopts the topsy-turvy tone I associate with the direction of Terry Gilliam. The fanciful 2006 reworking set amid trench warfare in World War I includes an excellent English libretto by Stephen Fry. Aside from scenes of battlefield horror, attempted rape and thwarted suicide, the film is suitable for children. My primary objection concerns Branagh’s suppression of the opera’s Illuminati subplot.

The scarcity of operatic innovations such as these might be part of a global conspiracy. I’m currently working my way through Glyndebourne’s four-hour and 44-minute stream of “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.” The stale 2011 production is set in a beige parlor and features stocky vocalists in period costumes. Music criticism is among the themes of Richard Wagner’s opera. In spite of the fusty visuals, I intend to give it a 8.7 rating.


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I observe the centennial of the birth of Charlie Parker by reviewing Champian Fulton’s Birdsong and Pasquale Grasso’s Solo Bird at Plastic Sax.

August 2020 Recap: A Monthly Exercise in Critical Transparency

Screenshot of Garsington Opera’s production of David Sawer’s “The Skating Rink”- #156 in my daily opera marathon- by There Stands the Glass.

Top Five Albums

1. Bill Frisell- Valentine

My review.

2. The Stooges- Live at Goose Lake: August 8, 1970

My review.

3. Ellen Fullman and Theresa Wong- Harbors

Dark drones.

4. Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids- Shaman!

My review.

5. Brian Scarborough- Sunflower

My review.

Top Five Songs

1. Caroline Shaw and David Lang- "When I Am Alone"

My review.

2. Drake featuring Lil Durk- "Laugh Now, Cry Later"

Baby.

3. Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion- "WAP"

Game-changer.

4. Gayngs- "Appeayl 2 U"

It’s got that whip appeal.

5. Miley Cyrus- "Midnight Sky"

Radiant.

Top Five Livestreams

1. Robert Wilson performs John Cage’s “Lecture on Nothing”- National Sawdust

2. Bang on a Can Marathon- Jeremy Denk, Wu Man, Oliver Lake, etc.

3. Dayna Stephens, Omer Avital and Anthony Pinciotti- Smalls

4. Washed Out- waterside in Georgia

5. Dee Alexander and John McLean- at home in Chicago

I conducted the same exercise in July, June, May, April, March, February and January.

Million Dollar Bash

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

I’ve reluctantly recommitted to the onerous task of organizing The Museum of Dead People and Obsolete Technology, the cluttered realm also known as my unfinished basement.  Consolidating old ticket stubs into a single box is one of the more enjoyable components of my job as chief curator.  As I sifted through thousands of bits of paper, it occurred to me that I’ve spent more money on Bob Dylan than any other musician.  Between concert tickets, physical recordings and books, I’ve almost certainly laid out more than a grand on the man.

Blood on the Tracks is one of several Dylan albums I’ve owned on cassette, vinyl and compact disc.  The relentless flood of must-have sets of rarities and live recordings plays a further role in emptying my wallet, as does mandatory attendance at area appearances of Dylan’s enigmatic Never Ending Tour.  I’ve even dragged my full brood to a couple shows.  And while I own six or seven Dylan-related books, I’m relieved I’ve never been tempted to buy a t-shirt.

Dylan isn’t my only substantial investment.  Here are nine additional artists who’ve separated me from inordinate amounts of money: 

• Mary J. Blige- Old-school R&B concert tickets are crazy expensive.

• Bill Frisell- I accumulate dozens of Frisell albums the way other people collect baseball cards.

• Thelonious Monk- I bought a Monk album at cost every Friday for nine months when I worked in a music distribution warehouse.

• Charlie Parker- So many books!  So many bootlegs!

• Prince- He was omnipresent in the pre-streaming era.

• Bruce Springsteen- Dylan redux.

• George Strait- All hail King George.

• Tech N9ne- I’ve seen more performances by the Kansas City rapper than all but a few dozen Technicians.

• Bobby Watson- Two or three $20 door charges every year for more than 25 years add up.

Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance and Psalm

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

The value of gateway artists is underappreciated. If it took Vanilla Ice for listeners to get to A Tribe Called Quest, so be it. A lot of St. Paul & the Broken Bones fans surely make their way to Otis Redding. That’s fantastic. In my case, the Clash introduced me to Augustus Pablo. I discovered Bob Wills via Merle Haggard. I found Willie Dixon via the Doors.

I’m not annoyed that Nubya Garcia’s debut album Source is being hailed as the 2020 equivalent of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. Jazz needs stylish young artists to give the popular press and jazz neophytes something to rally behind. Besides, Source is pretty good.

After enjoying Garcia’s fashionable dispatch from London, I hope a few adventurous listeners turn to the like-minded new release by Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids. Inspired by his mentor Cecil Taylor, Ackamoor founded the Afrocentric spiritual jazz collective almost 50 years ago. Now 69, Ackamoor and his longtime collaborators retain their vitality on Shaman!. The joyous grooves and inclusive sensibility are the best kind of communal folk music.


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I decry the blatant abandonment of social distancing on Kansas City’s jazz scene at Plastic Sax.

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Opera update: I’m currently 80 minutes into my 153rd opera in the past 153 days. A French staging of Benjamin Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” #151 in my streak, receives my unqualified endorsement. The creepy bits are skin-crawling and the comedic scenes are outrageous.