At MSN Music, a scorching N.Y.C. performance by Spectrum Road—from left, John Medeski, Vernon Reid, Cindy Blackman Santana, and Jack Bruce—occasions, among other things, some consideration of what for the moment I'll call the other "F" word. Enjoy, I hope. (N.b., at the time of this posting there were a few wonky typos [my fault] in the sixth graf, but they're being fixed.)
what a cast! it’s like the musical equivalent of RED.
(also not to be stinted: Jack Bruce’s awesome collaborations w/Kip Hanrahan, particularly “Desire Develops an Edge” and “Vertical’s Currency”)
Man, I saw the advert for this walking through Times Sq last week but due to work had to miss. (Also missed the Zappa Plays Zappa in LI) Quite a weekend for live music. Great piece, I really enjoy your music writing as well.
Wow, I am literally moments away from going and picking up a t-shirt I ordered locally, emblazoned with the cover to Emergency!, so timing proves once more to be everything in comedy. And Spectrum Road has a fine cover story/interview in this month’s Downbeat, wherein Ms. Blackman-Santana avers that Mr. WIlliams never used the term “fusion” for his work in the music he truly pioneered, preferring the term “jazz-rock”. A distinction, per Mr. Bang, without a difference? Don’t know, don’t care — for my money, “jazz-rock-fusion” begins and ends with the Tony Williams Lifetime, ending not long after Mr. Bruce skedaddled (sp?) from the group after performing an uncredited vocal on “Two Worlds” for the album Ego.
Dreadful sorry to have missed SR’s NYC gig and Mr. Rypdal, as well. But delighted to see MSN publishing your superb music writing. Will you tell them your fans would like to see them let you do more of it? Thanks.
Thanks for the heads-up on this, Glenn. I was a big fan of Living Colour growing up, and also enjoyed Reid’s solo stuff, so I’m really looking forward to hearing this new record.
Damn. Hate to have missed this.
I really wanted to see this band –Jack Bruce inspired me to play bass guitar– but their Los Angeles date was at the Playboy Jazz Festival, which isn’t my cup of mocha java. Damn.
It’s too bad that the two Lifetime albums sound like they were recorded with the mic on a cheap cassette recorder, there’s some great music on them.
“Fusion” is an OK term for me, until it starts to mean “Fuzak” (fusion + muzak) in the late 70’s. I love the RTF album “Romantic Warrior”, for example, and will always be a huge fan of the original lineup of The Mahavishnu Orchestra so it’s not all bad Grover Washington and any Kenny G album.