DON’T BOTHER
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Listening to You’re Under Arrest (on Columbia Records) is an enervating, depressing experience. The grooves are robotic and lame. On covers like Human Nature and Time After Time, Miles is reduced to doing soft core R&B covers of pop tunes. I mean, we’re talking about Miles Davis, who was consistently in the center of […]

DON’T BOTHER
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Have you ever watched a movie and really grooved on the soundtrack, only to find that later on, when you bought the soundtrack and listened to it in isolation from the images, it wasn’t all that great? That’s a bit what it’s like to listen to Elevator To The Gallows (Ascenseur Pour l’Échafaud).
Mind […]

DON’T BOTHER
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Tutu (on the Columbia label) barely counts as a Miles Davis album. More accurately, it’s a Marcus Miller date, with Davis being the principle soloist. Most of the instruments are played by Marcus Miller. All but one of the arrangements are by Marcus Miller. Six out of eight of the tunes were written […]

DON’T BOTHER
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If the inclusion of multiple musical genres and thematic cohesiveness were enough to make a piece of music a masterpiece, Bob Moses’ The Story of Moses would surely qualify. A cursory analysis of The Story of Moses would reveal hip hop, funk, salsa, rock, and traditional Yiddish musical influences. No less an authority […]

DON’T BOTHER
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You know, I really want to like the 70s albums of Miles Davis, but I keep striking out. You see, I totally recognize that Miles’ experiments were really important and influential and resulted in some wonderful music when musicians in the 90s and 00s started to pick up on his innovations. But somehow, […]

CLASSICS THAT I HATE
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Boy, am I going to get in trouble for this review. Maybe I’m one of those philistines that just doesn’t get late Coltrane, even though I liked Sun Ship, which was recorded after Meditations. But I’ve got to say, I find Meditations (released on the Impulse label) difficult to sit through.
The first […]

DON’T BOTHER
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Now, why would I review a group like Voodoo Dogs in the first place? Well, I’m always on the lookout for new music. Voodoo Dogs is organist Larry Golding’s band. I liked his work with John Scofield on the Groove Elation and Hand Jive dates, so I thought that there would be a […]

DON’T BOTHER
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Grace Under Pressure is one of Scofield’s weakest efforts. It’s essentially a trio date, with guitarist Bill Frisell providing atmospheric flourishes, and God help us, blues and jazz flavored improvisations.
The problem is that Bill Frisell can’t improvise his way out of a paper bag. The pity of it is, if he’s used properly, […]

DON’T BOTHER
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Procession marks the debut of a new lineup of Weather Report, with Victor Bailey on bass, Omar Hakim on drums, and Jose Rossy on percussion. As always, keyboardist Joe Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter are the constants. The previous group had recorded the classic Weather Report dates Night Passage and Weather Report (1982), […]

CLASSICS THAT I HATE
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It might be going to far to say that I hate Spectrum, but let’s face it — considering the talent of the musicians involved in this recording, the results are underwhelming, to put it kindly.
Let’s see: Billy Cobham on drums, Jan Hammer on keyboards, Ron Carter on bass, Ray Barretto on […]