Shelton HullSome of the best music I’ve heard this year has been at house parties. Case in point: the Good Idea House on June 15, where local standouts Helios Eye and After the Bomb, Baby bookending a couple of stellar acts from Buffalo, NY, who stopped off here between stops in Athens and Panama City. Rebecca Ryskalczyk and A Hotel Nourishing made their local debuts at the first show held there since 2007, and it’s hard to imagine anything better happening that night.
(Ironic, perhaps, that The Buffalo Tears was playing at Eclipse contemporaneously!)
Ryskalczyk’s name, despite the jokes, is easy to spell and easier to pronounce, even with a belly full of Anheuser-Busch products. She played solo in the den, with colored lights hanging from the chandelier, in a setting that would have made for fine pictures had I bothered to bring a camera with me. The mic stand was fashioned from a mop and a traffic cone, which made for good awkward fun while trying to clean up spilt beer later that night. Her voice cut through the crowd noise in a room where every sound seemed amplified, while her acoustic fingering was a precise and percussive as one might expect from a lady who shares a city with Ani DiFranco, who (while making exception to the vast hordes of quality bluegrass and gypsy swing-style players–something very much different) is arguably the most dynamic acoustic player this side of Hamell On Trial, whose playing can not and probably should not be duplicated.
Ryskalczyk’s set included her version of the New Order standard “Bizarre Love Triangle”, which goes in my book as the second-best version I’ve heard, behind Frente’s take from 15 years ago. (The original ranks #3.) While RR’s vocals failed to exceed those of Frente’s Angie Hart, she did open the song up by placing the last word of each line well behind the beat. Further, her guitar playing was far superior to any of the instrumental backings heard in previous versions.
A Hotel Nourishing, on the other hand, was pure power. Drummer Cam Rogers was the truth on his deep-blue Mapex kit, Watching them–a duo of guitar and drums–was a bit like what watching America Del Sur would be like after a couple years of serious playing. It was hard to hear Sonny Baker’s vocals, but the energy of the band’s delivery made it a moot point. Even the chandelier, swinging wildly like JFK on an acid trip, did nothing to sway their concentration.
Got to speak with them all later, and buy some CDs, before they collapsed in exhaustion on the floor of the Good Idea House. Such gentlemen to let Ryskalczyk take the couch!
Filed under: Music, Uncategorized | Tags: Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Jazz, Max Roach, Money Jungle
I started a blog in 2002, and have blogged a little bit on the MySpace page, but with so much happening now and no serious outlet for many of my views on these subjects, it made some sense to return to the blog format. By way of a start, a few words about why the column is called what it is:
The “Money Jungle” column takes its name from the title of the album below. It was recorded in 1962, and marks the only time all three artists played on the same session. Ellington recorded mostly with members of his own band and in occasional collaboration with people like Coltrane, Count Basie and Louis Armstrong. In this case, United Artists made entreaty for a rare trio record, with sidemen drawn from the younger group of artists working the newer style, making for an instructive crossing between generations and methods.
Mingus and Roach were both masters by this point, and were then at critical junctures of their careers. Both had been employees of Ellington at separate times in 1943. Mingus lasted long enough to get fired after a fight with Juan Tizol (author of “Caravan”), while an 18 year-old Roach sat in for Sonny Greer for a gig.
Mingus had emerged as a force through his Jazz Composers Workshop, recording for labels like Savoy and Bethlehem before a short but phenomenal run on Columbia, a label he would return to in the 1970s. He was working with Impulse at this point also; his “Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” would arrive in 1963. Roach had plowed through the 1950s, first as Charlie Parker’s drummer of choice (appearing on most of his late-period Verve stuff), then as co-leader of a quintet with Clifford Brown, who died in 1956, and then as sole leader of successive bands that did a ferocious amount of work for Mercury and related labels, including two basically perfect jazz albums: “Max Roach+4″ and “the Max Roach 4 Plays Charlie Parker”. He’d recorded at least seven albums in 1958-59 alone; much of that is documented on a Mosaic Records box set, reviewed elsewhere. He had just recorded his “Freedom Now Suite” for Candid, and was in the midst of an association with Impulse that produced records like “It’s Time” and “Percussion Bitter Sweet” in 1962; the “Money Jungle” sessions would be soon followed by his last trio recording, with The Legendary Hassan.
As far as I know, Ellington coined the phrase himself on occasion of composing the title track, which is the album’s strongest. My understanding is he wanted to evoke the harshness and drama of NYC, a place that exists as testament to the sustained power of global capitalism. There was an interesting book released last year by Rutgers University Press using that title, playing the theme against redevelopment action in the Times Square area, and the economic contraction has led the occasional journalist to use it, too. And there was also a film by that name, which does in fact center on global capitalism. It may be inevitable.
While I can’t claim credit for inventing the phrase, I do claim credit for being first to jack it from Ellington.
