Once again ladies and germs, señoras y señores, it's my monthly musical diversion. You can find the January rotation here. As usual this time of year, pitchers are way ahead of the hitters. My starting five are in top form.
Wilco, Austin City Limits 2007
Much of this live set comes from the Sky Blue Sky album, which they were touring for at the time. I wrote about the album here only briefly, and my feelings about it haven't changed: some stellar material, warm and hummable and pulsating, some that feels dashed-off. Hearing the songs in concert doesn't add that much, to be honest, as Wilco is so damned polished they can basically reproduce the recordings at will. That's not necessarily bad, but it's weird to hear intricate guitar solos played back live note for note.
My favorite cut might be "Handshake Drugs," not for its depth -- it's a sheepish re-telling of a trip downtown to score a dime bag, the type of song Jimmy Buffett might write if stuck in New Haven, Conn. all winter. But I love its sonics. It starts as a three-chord acoustic-rocker and evolves into a locomotive of noise and feedback. The song perfectly illustrates how Wilco can appeal to both the frat-rock and the art-rock types; I'd love to test it out on El Papa Malo, 70 years young, who has a hard time with dissonance but loves the strummed chords and electric white-boy blues of, say, Sticky Fingers. (I think "Wild Horses" is his all-time favorite song.)
AC/DC, High Voltage
When I was 12 years old one of our most heated debates was "favorite AC/DC album." Many said Back in Black because it was pretty darn good, and Brian Johnson, the then-new singer, seemed a decent-enough replacement for the dearly departed Bon Scott. But he was no Bon Scott. Highway to Hell got votes, as did Powerage and even the debut, but I always picked High Voltage. Nearly 30 years later, "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" is still the coolest rock song with bagpipes, and probably in my top fifty, bagpipes or not.
The Realistic Orchestra, Live at Bruno's 1/25/03
I got this CD from a friend of the band many years ago. I haven't kept up much with the local jazz scene, but five years ago these guys -- part of a free-flowing network of musicians always trying new blends and permutations -- were doing novel stuff, spiking big-band horn charts with free-jazz noise, a turntable, rapper, and a marimba. Not all of it worked, especially the rap breaks, which thankfully are only on a couple of tracks, but live I remember the orchestra (an expansion of the smaller unit Realistic) was experimental enough to require serious listening but groovy enough to elicit shouts of pleasure from the audience. Just for kicks, the avant-garde big band concept made me dig into my collection for one of its ancestors...
Johnny Hodges with Billy Strayhorn & The Orchestra
Recorded in 1961, it's as if bop, West Coast cool, free jazz and everything else after 1945 never existed. "The Orchestra" here means the Duke Ellington Orchestra, though that's not why it's stodgy. Toward the end of his life, Ellington was pushing the envelope a little, with movie scores and global ruminations and sacred music.
But this Hodges/Strayhorn work is definitely your grandparents' jazz -- that is, if your grandparents had enough sophistication to get beyond Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey. There are energetic horn charts but nothing raucous unless you count Cat Anderson, the trumpeter who made his name by blasting away at the highest notes, as he does here.
50 Foot Wave, "Power + Light"
Kristin Hersh has spun off several incarnations in her twenty-plus years of making music. 50 Foot Wave is one of my favorites, her lean and mean power-punk trio that echoes Nirvana in its crashing fuzz and hookiness without the bedraggled edges. The latest, currently streaming on her Web site, is a 30-minute suite of songs, or musical ideas, strung together. And it's free, as is a lot of her music online. Hersh has abandoned the music biz to run her own biz, asking fans for donations and offering lots of digital goodies, including demos of an upcoming album. Even if you don't like her -- and you know who you are, pal -- you have to admire her attempt to go truly solo.
