I've had more or less the same conversation with innumerable Deadheads during the past 40 years. Deadhead: “Do you like the Dead?” Me: “No, not really.” Deadhead: “You obviously never went to a concert.” Me: “Yes, I did.” Deadhead: “But… but…” Me: “I’ll grant you this- I love American Beauty.” The Grateful Dead’s 1970 album is loaded with smart, concise folk-rock shuffles. So is Cruel Country. Wilco’s twelfth studio album sounds like a loving tribute to American Beauty. The sound, atmosphere and intent of the two albums are strikingly similar. A handful of Cruel Country songs may one day become as universally beloved as American Beauty classics like “Friend of the Devil,” “Ripple” and “Truckin’.” Cruel Country is the miracle Deadheads didn’t know they needed.
Space Jams: An Appreciation of Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey
Original image by There Stands the Glass.
I envy Deadheads. Not only are they part of an interactive community open to all like-minded enthusiasts of the Grateful Dead, their single-minded obsessiveness simplifies their leisure time. I fret over whether to invest four hours in a production of Parsifal (the last “major” opera I have yet to see), investigate the new 10-hour William Parker boxed set, luxuriate in Whodini’s "Five Minutes of Funk" or brace for a round of Kansas City punk. Deadheads merely have to decide which vintage show they’d like to hear next.
A fresh slate of old Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey recordings arouses a related form of reassuring nostalgia in me. The first two of the scheduled five albums were released on May 7. The previously unreleased 2008 studio album Winterwood is a cheeky update of Ellingtonian swing and juke-joint boogie-woogie. The Spark That Bled: Tour '05 includes live interpretations of compositions by the Flaming Lips and Charles Mingus, a representative reflection of the ensemble’s sensibilities.
A corresponding 27-minute documentary champions the manic intensity, wild eclecticism and unlikely evolution of the band from Oklahoma. I’ve long flirted with full-on fandom. I interviewed front man Brian Haas for Plastic Sax in 2009. The band’s ambitious concept album Race Riot Suite was my favorite album of 2011. Come to think of it, I could do a lot worse than listen exclusively to Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. Deadhead? No man, but I’m perilously close to becoming a Fredhead.