In the Changer

I have gotten a whole lot of new cd's in the last year, and have been trying to absorb them in order to file them in the collection. Some of these I may have written about before, but here is what has been in heavy rotation of late:

Ryan Adams & the Cardinals: Cold Roses: I have said it before and I will say it again: Ryan Adams is a genius, but his blessing is also his curse; He is almost too prolific for his own good. The highlights of this double album set (One of three albums Adams spewed out last year -- a record of productivity that makes me envious) are brilliant. My two favorite songs are probably "Let It Ride" and "If I Am a Stranger" from disc two. Compressed, this would be one hell of a cd. Separately, there is just a little too much chaff. This ties into one of my theories about cds and movies these days, however: "They" (presumably the record companies and movie studios) know in their hearts that their products are too damned expensive. But rather than do the logical thing and lower their prices, they instead think that we consumers are morons, and that we will think that more=better, and therefore worth the usurious cost. This seems to explain why so many cd's these days have 19 tracks, several filler, and why even the most marginal fluff movies weigh in at two hours. I am more than happy to pay $10 for a dozen good tracks, or $6 for a good, taut, 90 minute movie. In any case, I give Cold Roses a B, but it could have been an A had Ryan or Lost Highway curbed a little self-indulgence.

Ahmed Abdul-Malik: Jazz Sounds of Africa: The title is at least a little bit of a misnomer. Abdul-Malik, a bassist (primarily), bandleader, and well-regarded jazz composer, is not African per se (he is of Sudanese descent). He has, however, embraced a cultural Afrocentrism that allows his work to swing easily between traditional jazz and inflections of Africa, especially North Africa. He earned his earliest fame working with Thelonius Monk and has been a committed advocate of both African music and of breaking down artificial national barriers. In a sense, this album is something of a hybrid. One can imagine it most easily consumed in lp format (and if you do not know what an lp is you are far too young to be reading this!), as it seems that this disc is self-consciously more traditional jazz on the first half, and more African on the second. If you are looking for an introduction to African jazz qua African jazz, this may not fit the bill. But if you want to hear a master craftsman comfortably blending and merging styles with a transnational focus, Jazz Sounds of Africa will be a listening pleasure. B+

AC/DC: High Voltage: I used to say that AC-DC was one of my guilty pleasure bands. Fuck that. I just plain like AC-DC. I do not need to listen to them in large doses, I probably never have to listen to the wildly overplayed (and overrated) Back in Black again, and Bon Scott's death marked a turning point for the worse with these Australian hard rockers, but people who cannot let themselves like AC-DC also probably think that sex is too messy and beer is too lowbrow. High Voltage was the lads' first real studio album and it is pretty raw. But their best work was right around the corner, and this album shows definite signs of the promise to come. It's simple, dumb RAWK. And what's wrong with that? B

Brokeback Mountain Remember that Brokeback began life as an Annie Proulx short story in the New Yorker. Well, the dvd comes with this story-on-dvd. I have not yet been able to bring myself to watch Brokeback -- I know it is going to be heartbreaking, and I am not afraid to admit that I have a quick emotional trigger. Hell, about once a week a story on Sportscenter will be so touching or sad that it will make me tear up and suck snot. (This week's was a feature about a recreational baseball Umpire in Utah who got cancer and devoted the rest of his days to his wife and to umpiring games.) So while I am not a books-on-tape kind of guy (for me, books on tape are like phone sex. get the real thing or don't bother.) I figured this might provide a good introduction since I had been too lazy to track down the original version of the story and I refuse to pay $10 for the newly published book version with Jake Gyllenhaal and heath Ledger on the cover. (I never buy the promotional edition of a book with the Hollywood actors on the cover. I have few principles, but this is one.) In any case, it is all that I had imagined and hoped -- tragic, sad, and powerful. I have only listened to it once, and that is probably enough, so while it is not really in rotation, and was never in the changer (I listened to it in the car while running errands. As it ended I was at the post office and had to sit and compose myself for a few minutes, running the air conditioner for about ten minutes in 105 degree heat, surely sucking up about $3 worth of gas.) I wanted to mention it. The story? A The cd version: A- (I still don't dig books on tape).