Album Review: Strum & Thrum: The American Jangle Underground 1983-1987

Original image by There Stands the Glass

I’m the same age, race and gender of the majority of music enthusiasts raving about Strum & Thrum: The American Jangle Underground 1983-1987. Thirty-five years ago, we tuned into college radio stations with playlists liberally peppered with melodic bands inspired by The Byrds. I vaguely remember a quarter of the 28 songs on the new compilation and have vivid recollections of attending mid-’80s club shows by Great Plains, Salem 66 and the Windbreakers, three of the better-known groups represented on the set. Naturally, I anticipated thoroughly enjoying Strum & Thrum. My immediate revulsion surprised me. The songs are embarrassingly wimpy, exasperatingly twee and glaringly devoid of soul. I’m horrified by my one-time affection for these middling trifles. To be fair, elite bands of the genre like Let’s Active, the Long Ryders and R.E.M. aren’t included on the compilation. While I’d still like to peruse the 80-page booklet that comes with the vinyl edition, I hope to never hear any of these characterless songs again.

The Saddest Air Horn

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

Concierto Virtual en Tiempos de COVID-19 Desde el Coliseo de Puerto Rico, a jarringly depressing album released by Rauw Alejandro in May, may be the definitive release of the Coronavirus era.  The audio companion of a free virtual performance is a permanent record of the international trauma.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with the energetic effort of the Puerto Rican pop artist, the decision to issue the show as an official live album is bizarre.  Alejandro’s exhortations and a steady stream of air horn blasts are greeted with eerie silence.  The necessary absence of an audience is an unintentional repudiation of the sterility marring almost every responsible livestream performance.

Released last week, Alejandro’s debut studio album Afrodisíaco exudes the warmth lacking in Concierto Virtual. His lively interplay with stars including Anuel AA and J Balvin are hopeful affirmations. Even so, Alejandro’s extremely awkward live album stands out as an emblematic document of this difficult moment.

Album Review: Susan Alcorn Quintet- Pedernal

I occasionally subject friends and strangers to unsolicited spiels about my affinity for hillbilly jazz. The obsession for the melding of jazz and country began when my dad picked up Merle Haggard’s Bob Wills tribute album in 1970. The late Claude "Fiddler" Williams is among the musicians known for winsome versions of the style. Abetted by guitarist Mary Halvorson, violinist Mark Feldman, bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Ryan Sawyer, Susan Alcorn brings the noise to the concept on Pedernal. While much of the pedal steel guitarist’s new album expands on the twangy chamber jazz associated with Bill Frisell, the best segments are harsh big city freakouts of the type I documented at the Big Ears Festival last year. Imagine Thurston Moore in overalls.

Corky Carrel, 1956-2020

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Corky Carrel congratulated me as I purchased a pair of eighth row tickets to Marvin Gaye’s concert at Kemper Arena in 1983.  He explained there wasn’t much customer demand for the physical tickets allocated to Capers Corner, the suburban record store he managed.  Being showered by hurled bras and panties that fell short of the stage was part of what made the show a transformative experience.

I had no way of knowing it at the time, but Carrel would play a minor but impactful role in my life over the next 30 years.  (We fell out of touch in recent years.) He began making recommendations to me when I was teenager.  Carrel’s suggestions partly dictated the order of my purchases of the catalogs of artists including Bob Dylan and Van Morrision.

The tables were turned when I became a sales rep for independent record label distributors. He never bought much from me when he operated brick-and-mortar stores in Mission and Shawnee, Kansas, and later a mail order business he operated with Bill Lavery, but I always enjoyed my dealings with him. Carrel was a gracious businessman, excellent photographer and passionate music fan. He died last week.

The Top Kansas City Albums and EPs of 2020

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

As part of an ongoing effort to preserve my sanity in a preposterously challenging year, I choose to believe Ty of Blackstarkids was joking when he recently told a journalist he was unable to secure the interest of a single Kansas City based record label.  I fell in love with his trio in February after hearing just 30 seconds of “Sounds Like Fun,” the first song on Blackstarkids’ self-released debut EP.  Ty’s group subsequently signed a pact with the prestigious London based Dirty Hit consortium.  Blackstarkids is the most exciting act to emerge from Kansas City in years.

Top 25 Kansas City Albums of 2020

1. Blackstarkids- Whatever, Man (My review.)

2. Bobby Watson- Keepin' It Real (My review.)

3. Molly Hammer- I'm Feeling Mellow (My review.)

4. Mike Dillon- Rosewood (My review.)

5. Ebony Tusks- Heal Thyself

6. Steve Cardenas- Blue Has a Range (My review.)

7. Shiner- Schadenfreude

8. Pat Metheny- From This Place (My review.)

9. Rich the Factor- Blaccfish (My review.)

10. The Freedom Affair- Freedom Is Love

11. Brian Scarborough- Sunflower Song (My review.)

12. Guitar Elation- Double Live at Green Lady Lounge (My review.)

13. Kevin Morby- Sundowner

14. Matt Otto- Alliance (My review.)

15. Shy Boys- Talk Loud

16. Flutienastiness- This Is Me (My review.)

17. Krizz Kaliko- Legend (My review.)

18. Black Light Animals- Playboys of the Western World

19. Ashley Ray- Pauline

20. The Casket Lottery- Short Songs for End Times

21. Rich the Factor- Rose Out the Concrete 2

22. Howard Iceberg & the Titanics- Kansas City Songs, Vol. 3

23. Orphans of Doom- II

24. Purna Loka Ensemble- Metaraga

25. The Black Creatures- Wild Echoes

Top Ten Kansas City EPs of 2020

1. Blackstarkids- Surf

2. We The People- Misunderstood (My review.)

3. Una Walkenhorst- Woman of the Year

4. Blackstarkids- Surf (Basement Demos)

5. Hermon Mehari- A Change For the Dreamlike (My review.)

6. Stik Figa- ...If It's the Last Thing I Do

7. The Cur3- The Anecdote (My review.)

8. Tech N9ne- Fear Exodus

9. Jo MacKenzie- Let Me Give You What I Wish I Had 

10. Dylan Pyles- Solo Acoustic Guitar, Vol. 1

Jump In, The Opera’s Fine

Screenshot of Toni Blankenheim in Wozzeck.

A friend recently expressed profound bewilderment about my ongoing daily opera initiative.  The count currently stands at 228.  When I urged him to dip a toe into the operatic waters, he insisted he didn’t know where to begin.  That’s lame.  Like many needlessly wary people, my friend is hindered by classist assumptions and cultural constraints.  Doesn’t he realize those arbitrary rules no longer apply?  With the financial and social barriers of purchasing expensive tickets and wearing ostensibly appropriate clothing removed, there’s no real excuse for open-minded music lovers not to give opera a chance.  Links to four wildly disparate murder-themed operas I watched in October are below.  The free YouTube streams are listed in order of accessibility.

1. 1982 film version of Giuseppe Verdi's "Rigoletto"

Recommended if you like: starpower, Italy, familiar arias

My take: Wanna hear hits? “Rigoletto” has ‘em.  Love celebrities?  They don’t get much bigger than Luciano Pavarotti.

2. Birmingham Opera Company's 2002 production of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Fidelio"

Recommended if you like: revolution; red Solo cups; musical heresy 

My take: Community opera productions resembling immersive performance art may be the most welcome discovery of my opera immersion.  This unruly production takes extreme liberties with Beethoven’s only opera.

3. 1972 film version of Alban Berg’s "Wozzeck"

Recommended if you like: atonality; agrarian Germany; madness

My take: Although it premiered in Berlin in 1925, “Wozzeck” sounds as if it was written yesterday.  The freakily absurdist “Wozzeck” is a personal favorite.

4. Fisher Center at Bard College’s 2013 production of Sergey Taneyev’s “Oresteia”

Recommended if you like: gore; Greek mythology; conventional productions with a stage, audience and orchestra

My take: The obscure 125-year-old Russian opera performed by a secondary company is excellently rendered as a three-hour bloodbath.

Revelation

My late friend R. and I huddled with a few dozen other weirdos in the basement of All Souls Unitarian Church for a performance by Peter Hammill in 1979.  The extraordinarily unlikely event was my first meaningful experience with a literal and figurative music underground.  Artlessly Falling, the frequently harsh prog-rock freakout by Mary Halvorson’s Code Girl, reminds me of the transformative concert.  Not only does Artlessly Falling feature Hammill’s art-rock peer Robert Wyatt on three tracks, I witnessed Halvorson’s showcase of what I suspect was some of the same material at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville last year.  I realize it’s the perilous times talking, but I fear that if my presence at the 1979 concert in Kansas City was the inception of my proclivity for patronizing performances of outsider music, my trek to Tennessee to catch Halvorson might end up being its unexpectedly premature conclusion.

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I reviewed I’m Feeling Mellow, the new album by the Kansas City vocalist Molly Hammer, at Plastic Sax.

October 2020 Recap: A Monthly Exercise in Critical Transparency

Screenshot of Galatea Ranzi in Zoroaster, Io, Giacomo Casanova.

Top Five Albums

1. Anja Lechner and François Couturier- Lontano

My review.

2. Sturgill Simpson- Cuttin’ Grass Vol. 1 (The Butcher Shoppe Sessions)

The first trustworthy album from the stylistic chameleon.

3. Marilyn Crispell and Angelica Sanchez- How to Turn the Moon

My review.

4. Blackstarkids- Whatever, Man

My review.

5. Sa-Roc- The Sharecropper’s Daughter

Old-school raps and throwback R&B.

Top Five Songs

1. Bruce Springsteen- “Janey Needs a Shooter”

Tramps like us.

2. Channel Tres- "Skate Depot"

Before I let go.

3. Blackpink- "Pretty Savage"

Green light.

4. Charlie Wilson featuring Smokey Robinson- "All of My Love"

Cruisin’.

5. Metz- "Pulse"

My review.

Top Five Livestreams

1. Bang on a Can Marathon #4 (George Crumb, Tyshawn Sorey, Anna Webber, etc.)

2. Danny Embrey, Bob Bowman and Brian Steever- Black Dolphin

3. James Francies, Matt Brewer, Jeremy Dutton and Ben Heim- Yamaha Artist Services

4. Veronica Swift with Emmet Cohen, Javier Nero, Julius Rodriguez, Philip Norris and Kush Abadey- Smalls

5. Beethoven 250th Anniversary Celebration- UMKC Conservatory

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

No Kidding

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

Aside from missing family, travel and live music, my most painful personal pandemic-related disappointment is losing a big scoop.  I met with the Kansas City trio Blackstarkids on March 3 to lay the groundwork for an audio feature for KCUR.  Then the coronavirus hit.  A studio interview scheduled for March 13 was canceled.  I’ve been quarantined ever since.

Filled with excitement about the then-unknown musicians, I told the trio of Ty, The Babe Gabe and Deoindre seven months ago that Blackstarkids is the most exciting new act from Kansas City of the past five years.  Consistent with my belief that everything is precisely as popular as it should be, Blackstarkids has since blown up.  

Propelled by nervous energy and the giddiness of adolescence, Blackstarkids’ debut EP Surf occupies the lane paved by members of the Odd Future collective.  A bit like a mashup of Green Day and N.E.R.D, Surf captures the youthful delirium of American kids.  An impressive set of outtakes indicated Surf wasn’t a fluke.  

Released today, Whatever, Man may be even better.  While I could do without the album’s skits, songs like “Frankie Muniz” and “Dead Kennedys” are instantly engaging partly because they retain the charming homemade production of Surf.  Gabe cites Britney Spears, Fergie and Gwen Stefani as role models on "Britney Bitch".  Countless members of Blackstarkids’ generation may soon harbor teenage daydreams about Gabe, Ty and Deoindre.

Ooh La La

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

I fell in love with Paris during my only visit to the City of Light about a dozen years ago.  Negative stereotypes were obliterated by unfailingly gracious and accommodating locals.  Ballyhooed raves about the transcendent atmosphere proved true.  A pair of hushed new albums by Frenchmen are emblematic of Paris’ subtle charms.

Jazz accordionist Richard Galliano transcends the novelty of the premise.  He’s held his own with the world’s top jazz musicians for decades.  "Ma plus belle histoire d'amour", the opening track of Galliano’s new album Valse(s), sets the sultry tone of the gorgeous work.  And you haven’t lived until you’ve heard Erik Satie’s "Gymnopédie n° 1" played on a squeezebox.

Valse(s) conveys the muted atmosphere of a romantic Parisian bistro, but En Sourdine, a collaboration between vocalist Laurent Naouri and guitarist Frédéric Loiseau, seems intended for boudoirs.  An interpretation of Gabriel Fauré’s "Les berceaux" is indicative of the album’s suggestive intimacy.  Naouri made his name in opera- he’s married to the charismatic star Natalie Dessay- but he practically whispers on most of the delicate chansons on the delicate En Sourdine.

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I didn’t set out to enrage readers with my unintentionally incendiary K.C. Blues series at Plastic Sax.  Honestly, I’ve already made each of my points several times.  I published the third installment of the four-part series yesterday.

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Opera update: I’m up to 211 operas in 211 days.  The last few screenings were uninspiring.  I hope my first viewing of Franz Lehár’s “Die lustige Witwe” snaps my cold streak this evening.