I’m helplessly eclectic in my tastes, but I will say my choices are lively and resonant of our trials. Happy New Year and thanks for visiting!
I’m helplessly eclectic in my tastes, but I will say my choices are lively and resonant of our trials. Happy New Year and thanks for visiting!
It’s been one helluva hard year–but when has one not been lately, and when has music not been succor? At one time or another, each of these 195 records has acted as a spell–however temporary–to vanquish the horror from my ears, eyes, and mind. To remind me that maybe all is not lost, that we are capable of bounteous joy when we are inspired, especially, perhaps, when we are inspired by the void.
I’m not one to theorize, and I am too convinced by chaos to believe that a given year’s list of recordings can be read like tea leaves and divined from. But, scanning mine again, I can see some things that finally dawned on me, some things I’ve always loved become far more important to me and sound so much more inexhaustible than I ever would have predicted, and some things that, mercifully, were the direct result of humans I actually know pushing me (as opposed to me retreating into a bubble of books and blogs, and just drifting and hacking my way through a jungle alone). I mean, it’s not like I don’t listen to people, but I have a tendency to mutter, “Hey, I know what I’m doing here.”
Dawnings: Electronic music, which I’d always appreciated but never been elevated by. Ah, yes–I’d like a Fourth World to choose to inhabit every day, an Outro Tempo to swing to every night, and a Mono No Aware to hourly heighten my consciousness. Perhaps I’m waxing too clever, but the stuff I’m alluding to was like a good massage: ultimately soothing but not without hitting spots that made me wince.
Inexhaustibles: I have loved free jazz since I first heard Ornette Coleman–I was young and dumb in ’82, but I can remember thinking, “This sounds beautiful, not crazy, and it’s not that free!”–but, to be honest, I’d always assumed that once I oozed into the second half of my life, I’d probably be seeking things that were easier, since surely my life would become more difficult. Well, life–not necessarily mine, but that’s not all that important a distinction–has become more difficult, often I do need easier things in my ear, but, lo and behold, free jazz (free experimental music, if you choose) has become easier. Not just easier, but more engaging, more thought-provoking, more exciting, funnier and wiser than I’d ever heard it to be and expected it to stay. That applies to many recordings I was already familiar with, but breaking into a trove of really, really hard-to-locate masterpieces from St. Louis’ Black Arts Group (late ’60s to early ’70s–gone to soon, but their seeds drifted elsewhere) and being led by such perceptive writers as John Corbett and Kevin Whitehead to the London Jazz Composer’s Orchestra and Instant Composer’s Pool were straight-up blessings that rearranged my mind and cleaned out the wax. And I know this wish is in vain, but I hope Joe McPhee never dies.
Humans: I thank my students at Stephens College for opening my stubborn ears to The Internet, Rhiannon Giddens, SZA, and Lana Del Rey–and for indirectly helping me access a moving, depressive, and daring vein of what I suppose I have to call r&b but which I really believe is something new that’s just starting to blossom. I thank so many old friends: Whitney Shroyer, for tugging my coat about Harlem River Drive and Sunshine Daydream, John Schooley, for convincing me to take a chance on Link Wray’s Polydors, Isaac Davila, for stoking the fire of my interest in electronic music, and Nicole, my wife of 27 years, for setting us both off on a Latin rampage after we saw Eddie Palmieri’s 80th birthday show. Last but not least, I thank the lively Facebook group Expert Witness, several members of which I have indeed met in reality and many more I seriously intend to, for pointing me hither and yon and often assuring me my instincts were right about the greatness of, just for example, Albums Number 1, 2, 7, 8, and 9 in my Top 10–records the titles of which might well look very foreign to you but which you better lean in to. (Though I do not need it, I await affirmation on #4!)
Suggestion for everyone reading this: host some listening parties starting today, and get out of your comfort zones.
OK…on with it! Here’s some great stuff, most of which is linked so you can sample it immediately. In my Hot 100 are some recordings that are old but that have never been released before–at least not in the present form. Also, I’m with Duke Ellington in ignoring categories and just seeking out good music; I see no reason why you can’t queue up some free improvised music like William Parker’s right after the joyous dance music of Ibibio Sound Machine and have a killer time.
The Top 40? In order of my preference for them. The Final 70? In random order. The 85 older releases that crept up on me? Alphabetized for your convenience!
85 Great Older Releases That I’ve Bought in ’17 That I Still Can’t Get Enough Of
(If it’s bolded, I’ve been hooked on the thing quite seriously)
Here’s 117 records from late-2015 to December 31st of this complicated year, the high quality of which I can vouch for from multiple lessons, I mean listens. If I’d have to put a grade on ’em, current and former students and fellow teachers, I didn’t give an A+, and there’s nothing below a B+. 15 days remain in December, so we may have some work turned in just under the wire, and some of these may shift up and down in the spotlight as I keep revisiting them (for example, I may be checking myself too much on the new Stones album; the worst of Jinx Lennon’s two excellent records from 2016 may be getting a boost because I love the best one so much; “grading” the estimable Wadada Leo Smith’s sprawling parks tribute is a chore just the first time through; I just got a new Tom Zé, and he’s dangerous and a grower given repeated exposure); Chicago workaholic Serengeti just dropped a new one today. Nonetheless, I’m posting results. Come back and visit in a few days. However, I suspect that Queen Bey, the charms of whom I’ve mostly resisted her whole career, is unlikely to be knocked off her throne–note that she gets the top spot by virtue of the CD + DVD version. Happy holidays, and support these artists with your cash instead of just streaming or stealing! (More links coming soon!)
2016 TOP 10 FULL-LENGTH RELEASES
THE REST OF THE TOP 40
Best of the Rest (Alphabetical Order)
New Old Stuff
Eight Bold Souls
Field Mob
Joe Harriott
As wave after wave of tracks and albums wash over our cyber-eyes and into our cyber-ears, I become more and more committed to exploring the past, to seeking out releases I learn about from my reading and conversations that sometimes end up barely available on Amazon or Discogs or eBay. Honestly, I find this pursuit more exciting—at least at present—than I do hearing new music, which I do continue to enjoy thoroughly. Though it does make me smack myself upside the head quite frequently: how did I miss 8 Bold Souls, Joe Harriott, and Field Mob—easily my favorite “excavations” of the year, and clearly significant innovators in their fields?
So, continuing to strive to counteract the pull of the dustbin of time, here are my 50 favorite purchases of old stuff from 2015 (the links don’t necessarily take you to tracks from the album, because, contrary to popular belief, “Everything is[n’t] on YouTube!”):
Above are my choices for Top 10 albums and singles for 2015 (ignore what I thought were my Top 10 albums, below). In addition to being invited to submit a ballot (100 points distributed among 10 albums, no fewer than five points, no more than 30, per rekkid), we can mail in an essay or more scattered “commentary,” which is usually all I have time to do. For those on tenterhooks, here is my attempt to put shit together in a world of chaos!
“If a year-end best-of-pop-music Top 10 lacks the presence of anyone 70 or older, it’s lying. As has been proved over and over again, though pop was, perhaps, once actually a youth music, the older guys (and gals) not only know what it’s all about, but they really have it all worked out. I think Gram Parsons sang that. Just before he died at 26.
Though my Top 10 has more fresh blood than maybe any ballot I’ve ever submitted—Courtney Barnett is absolutely irresistible, the comparatively ancient Kendrick Lamar an irrepressible force whose growing confidence I hope isn’t dulled by pessimism—it’s got plenty hair sprouting out its ears. Made in Chicago: Muhal Richard Abrams 85, Roscoe Mitchell 75, headliner Jack DeJohnette 73, Henry Threadgill the pup at 71, all celebrating the AACM’s 50th anniversary—and not with a bingo game. Welcome Back: Irene Schweizer, 74, and Han The Man Bennink, 73, joining forces to improvise racket and rhythm into beauty once again after two decades. Albert Ayler’s Ghosts Live at The Yellow Ghetto: John D. Morton, 62, and Craig Bell, 63, proving that a very bad attitude, ugly noise, and irreverence aren’t the exclusive property of the kids—and also pushing siblings Willie Nelson, 83, and Bobbie Nelson, 84, to #11 and off the ballot. I feel a little guilty about that decision—but Willie shouldn’t have recycled so many songs. This is serious business.
Really, though, looking at my list, it isn’t mostly about age. It’s about time and race. Between the 1885 formation in New Orleans of the first “black Indians gang,” The Creole Wild West, and the hands-across-the-‘hoods of the 79rs Gang’s Fire on the Bayou, on which New Orleans’ 7th Ward Creole Hunters and 9th Ward Hunters team up on a rare stripped-down Mardi Gras Indians record, lay 130 years of self-defense and self-preserving “social clubs” that shouldn’t still be necessary.
Between the first Chicago meeting, in 1965, of a group of young musicians debating the laws and details of an impregnable artistic sanctuary and classroom called the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (its first record, Sound, by Mr. Mitchell, arrived in ‘66), and Made in Chicago’s defiant proof of the founders’ and the organization’s undiminished power stand cultural, financial, political, and aesthetic obstacles Hercules would have been hard pressed to surmount.
Between Alex Haley’s “faction” of an 18th century Kunta Kinte and Mr. Lamar’s “King Kunta” testify 250-plus years of deliberate oppression that shape-shifts with every hard-earned challenge. Maybe you’d argue that this isn’t how I should put a year-end best-of-pop-music Top 10 together. I’d counter that the records are that good, and they may be that good because of what sprawls across the expanse of time and presents itself to us right now. Or maybe not.
Some further notes about time and race: Jeffrey Lewis’ Manhattan-leading “Scowling Crackhead Ian”’s persona wearily and compassionately peers back across the years—all the way to grade-school horrors perpetrated by a human he stills sees regularly, 20-some years later. He wonders when the two of them can just…shake hands and put the past aside. That was the most moving line I heard all year, and I couldn’t help but hear it, too, as a metaphor for our country’s own near-fatal stubbornness. And Allen “The Maine Monk” Lowe’s mournful, angry, questioning jazz march “Theme for the Nine (Murdered in Church, Parts 1 & 2)”—smeared with the haunting blues baritone of Black Artists’ Group founder Hamiet Bluiett, 75 years young himself—was the first serious musical response to the Charleston massacre. Have there been others? I don’t know. But I expect them.
The best thing about listening to the music I liked most in 2015 was that it forced me to wonder whether we are capable of the change we need to make, and question myself about whether I have been doing enough to make that change happen. Also—I will be honest— whether I even want to be part of this continuing social experiment that refuses to unmask itself, for its own good. Time and race—I can’t get them off my mind.”
The lucky blatherers get either a few sentences or, in select cases, whole essays excerpted in the corrupted old Village Voice itself. I’ve been excerpted four times, and this strange offering is not likely to get published fully. But it’s fun to try. And I really believe it: pop music is youth music, but way more–it’s an avenue for old farts to pass along wisdom as to what to expect! Aren’t you interested?
Some of my favorite “singles” for 2015:
In another post below, I listed 116 discs from 2015 that I thought were plenty good. Should you have cared, just reading it might have seemed daunting balanced against trying to properly live your life. For folks with less time on their hands, here is the Top 20 I’m going to send in to the various polls to which I am asked to contribute, followed by my favorite 15 “archival digs”–collections of old stuff that demands reconsideration, but shouldn’t properly take up space on a REAL EOY Top 20.
Top 15 Archival Digs or Comps
UPDATED December 18
Overeem’s End-of-Year Best-of-2015
“Guaranteed Interesting” (at least)
Not all of the below are 2015 releases–some were released earlier but are just now breaking the cyber-surface. But the thing is, for those who argue good music is dead (ho-fucking-hum), here’s 121 slabs that have given me pleasure this year. Not all are perfect, but I stand behind this statement: it’s all good. Also, if you’ve looked at the list and are thinking, “Where’s x? What about y?” and it’s not Taylor Swift, I probably haven’t listened to it yet–like you, probably, I follow my nose, and it’s attuned to certain, um, scents. Note: These are in alphabetical order, obviously. The grading scheme is borrowed from master critics Bob Christgau and Tom Hull. The asterisks next to each B+ indicate how close that record is to excellent. Fascinating, isn’t it? Note 2: See my official Top 20 in meaningful order, plus a list of great reissues, also in order, here.
Rock and Roll and Such
R&B, Soul, and Blues
Rap
Country and Folk
International
Jazz