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You’ve got to respect any
contemporary musician who chooses jazz as their musical mode of
expression, after all they can’t look forward to big advances,
mega record sales, the screaming adoring masses, it requires sacrifice
& dedication. As they were growing up the Marsalis brothers
would have witnessed their jazz piano playing father Ellis &
seen that material gain did not always follow talent, but each of
them have dedicated their musical lives to keeping the jazz flame
burning either in combination with each other or in solo mode, Wynton
on trumpet, Jason on drums, Delfayo on trombone & Bradford on
saxophone. Another difficulty that current jazzmen have is that
in the marketplace they are also competing with the plethora of
reissues of jazz masters from the past that can almost swamp the
jazz racks at your local record emporium. It’s hard for the
younger cats to get seen & heard. So Branford Marsalis’
first release on his own label “Footsteps Of Our FourFathers”
is a wise move, a young band of feisty players reinterpreting the
music of the greats, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane
& The Modern Jazz Quartet, with the all modern studio technology
to enhance the performances for modern ears. And it works. What
makes it really interesting is how much Bradford’s sax playing
is both like & unlike the originals, they’re interpretations
not just slavish cover versions, on the 2 central major pieces in
particular, Rollins’ “Freedom Train “ & Coltranes
“Love Supreme “. Bradford’s tone is appropriate
& reverential but at the same time he stretches & develops
his melodic runs fired by the depth of feeling & empathy that
he brings to the material that is all his own. Modern ears will
also find that the bass & drum sound is fuller & more dominant
than vintage recordings, making the music more digestible for people
used to listening to the dynamics of other current musics. Great
compositions played by superior musicians are always worth a listen.
Consensus reality is boring & limited, it’s
a prison. Richard Metzger throws some escape ladders over the walls
of the reality asylum with ideas & concepts that flourish outside
& beyond most people’s self limits. He loves to mess with
your head, stretching your brain to comprehend stuff that you never
considered or dreamt of. Performers, artists, thinkers, scientists,
philosophers, architects & more provide the mind bombs that
can shift the parameters of your mind & its conditioned narrow
focus. Metzger runs the web site www.disinfo.com
, where he sends out the sort of mind-boggling material that always
walks the double helix between joke & genius. He also runs a
publishing arm as well as having produced & compered a banned
in America TV series that is now available on video. The book Disinformation
The Interviews features the dialogues between Metzger & a cast
of genuine outsiders from the TV series including author Robert
Anton Wilson, the visionary genius artist Joe Coleman, Genesis P
Orridge & a fascinating cast of free thinkers in their chosen
fields. Even a random sampling generally yields a dazzling mind
missile of iconoclastic ideas & perceptions. It’s invigorating.
But it’s more than just a book of interviews, the typeface,
the paper stock, the colour reproductions & the overall design
& layout are all so excellent that it adds to the pleasure of
partaking of the text & reminds you why you love books so much
more than any computer screen. The power of the press.
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