SPIN CYCLE

This article keeps popping up in recent months, and it seems to get a little dumber each time. (You know the old line about how, if you sit down at a poker table and can't tell who the mark is after half an hour, the mark is you? If James Acklin, the young man described in the story's first two paragraphs, doesn't come across like someone who should be beaten to death with a meat tenderizer, congratulations! You're a douchebag too.)

I hated vinyl before there were any such things as CDs. A format that sounds a little worse every time you play it? Gee, thanks. I was a cassette guy in the '80s - I'll take hiss over crackle any day. And in the 21st Century, I'll be sticking with digital. The only thing I don't like about MP3s below, say, 192kbps is how cymbals sound. (Worth noting: I hate the sound of cymbals no matter how well they're recorded. If it was up to me they'd be outlawed.) Anyway, my point is: The vinyl revival is a blip. Take it from someone who works at a music magazine. I'm just glad I'm old enough to not have to spend my days surrounded by college students who think they've discovered something. My bag is already heavy, what with a laptop and books and the like; adding a meat tenderizer to that would just be too much.

ELVIS

It’s been awhile since I posted anything here that wasn’t a link to a published CD review or article somewhere else on the web. What can I say? I’ve been busy. But there are moments, however intermittent, when I’m not writing about Lee Perry or Scandinavian folk-weirdness or editing a metal magazine, and I get the chance to listen to music strictly for my own pleasure. And lately, when that chance arises, the odds are good that I’ll be listening to Elvis Presley.

I’ve long believed that From Elvis In Memphis is one of the Top Ten greatest rock albums of all time, indeed one of the greatest works of American popular music, period. It outstrips even some of Elvis’s 1950s hits. I’d damn sure rather listen to “Wearin’ That Loved On Look” or “Long Black Limousine” than “Love Me Tender.” It’s an astonishing album; it combines soul, country, gospel, blues and rock ’n’ roll into a churning, hip-shaking, foot-tapping blend that’s about as uniquely American as it’s possible to be, and that’s before you add Elvis’s sublime, breathtakingly powerful vocal performance into the mix. But it was more than just a one-time achievement, a brief flare before an eight-year descent into darkness, as the mythology has it. No, he never equaled it again; even Back In Memphis, which featured tracks from the same sessions, is in some ways a pale shadow of its big brother. But. But. From Elvis In Memphis was absolutely the sound of Elvis beginning a creative resurgence, after the miasma of the Hollywood years. And if you listen to the 1970s studio albums, the way I’ve been doing the past few weeks, you realize that he managed to bring a surprising amount of energy and commitment into the studio all the way into 1975, if not until the absolute end of his life.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that Elvis really started making albums that worked as albums; in the ’50s, RCA pumped out collections of singles, B-sides and filler, as was industry standard. And in the ’60s, his discography consisted primarily of movie soundtracks – albums, yes, but neither the product of a focused artistic strategy or made under conditions that inspired Elvis to do his best. So 1969 was, in effect, the beginning of his career as an album artist – it took him five to seven years to make a move other pop/rock musicians had begun making at the beginning of the 1960s.

But albums like Elvis Now, Today, and particularly the trilogy of Raised On Rock, Good Times and Promised Land, all recorded at a few marathon sessions in 1973 (at the Stax studio, among other places) but released one a year through 1975, are powerful slabs of Elvisiana. For a guy who didn’t write lyrics and whose guitar and piano playing was far from virtuosic, he really put his stamp on a song. There are some genuinely weird moments from this period - Elvis Country (I’m 10,000 Years Old), with its snippets of the title spiritual serving as bridges between versions of “Funny How Time Slips Away,” “The Fool,” “I Really Don’t Want To Know,” etc., is probably the weirdest album, but 1973’s Elvis has some head-spinning tracks, too, particularly the album-closing blast through Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”

It's that Stax-related trilogy, though, that absolutely kills me. The song "Promised Land" is one of Elvis's hardest-rocking tracks, ever; you may remember it from the movie Men In Black (it's the song playing when Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith are rocketing upside down through the Lincoln Tunnel). Much of the rest of the album is kinda countrypolitan and ballad-heavy, but that doesn't mean Elvis isn't totally committed to each and every performance. His way of inhabiting each lyric is Sinatra-esque in its intuitive brilliance and power, and when he does decide to punch the energy level up a little, with the soul song "If You Talk In Your Sleep," you'll about jump through the wall. Never mind his take on Merle Haggard's "You Asked Me To," which closes the album. The weakest album of the trilogy is definitely Good Times, though it's got its share of high points - I'll put "I Got A Feelin' In My Body," "I've Got A Thing About You Baby," and "Talk About The Good Times" on any Elvis playlist or mix disc. Raised On Rock, as befits its title (and its awesome cover art, featuring Elvis in caped jumpsuit and full live crouch/roar), is the most aggressive of the three albums, with the highest ratio of rockers to ballads. The title track, "Find Out What's Happening," "If You Don't Come Back," "Just A Little Bit" and "Three Corn Patches" all kick ass, and that's not meant to give the ballads short shrift - I mean, we all know Elvis could sing the living shit out of the slow ones, right? I don't really have to explain that to you?

I'm not joking or crazy when I say that if I had to choose, right now and irrevocably, I would happily spend the rest of my life listening to 1969-77 Elvis even if it meant I could never hear 1953-1957 Elvis again.

ME 'N' SCRATCH HIT FRISCO

[My first piece for the SF Weekly.]

LEE PERRY
Repentance
Narnack
Onstage and in interviews, Lee "Scratch" Perry's persona is a mix of giddy surrealism, folk wisdom, apocalyptic theology, and simple crudity (fart jokes, raw sex talk). And while there's fun to be had listening to him ramble, when you unpack his riffs, there are deep worries in there — his lines about ghosts and Satan seem fueled by genuine belief. That darkness was reflected in his classic 1970s music, which transmogrified reggae into shamanic psychedelia anchored by massive, throbbing basslines. But since his Black Ark studio burned down in 1978, Perry has issued one lazy collaboration after another.

Repentance, which matches Perry with Andrew W.K. of all people, is far from sluggish. In fact, the legend sounds inspired on one of his most successful releases in decades. That's largely because of the element of surprise in this pairing: Scratch does his usual "crazy prophet" act, but the music behind him owes little to the party-rock for which W.K. is best known. Instead, the instrumentation comprises sparse electronic grooves and rhythms that gesture toward reggae, but via cheap-synth indie sounds (à la Spank Rock or M.I.A.). Hearing the septuagenarian talk dirty on "Pum Pum" and "Crazy Pimp" can be disconcerting, but the grooves are undeniable. Similarly, the end-times political preaching on "War Dance" is bolstered by hints of skronk and sonic disorder. Repentance is reminiscent of bluesman R.L. Burnside's late-career experiments with electronic music: Not what you might come expect from this particular artist, but occasionally verging on brilliant nonetheless.

THIS MONTH IN RELIX

[Can you spot the gigantic factual error in one of these reviews?]**

CUTTY RANKS
Limb By Limb
17 North Parade/VP
Cutty Ranks is one of the toughest of all danceahall deejays. From his debut single, "Gunman Lyrics" (which closes this two-disc career overview), to recent collaborations with industrial-strength UK producer The Bug, his raw-throated delivery and sex- and violence-packed lyrics have made him one of the most exhilarating and intimidating figures in Jamaican music. However, as this compilation reveals, Cutty is more thoughtful than his biggest cuts - "The Slaughter," "The Bomber," "Press The Trigger," "Limb By Limb" - imply. Collaborations with some of Jamaica's most romantic crooners, including Dennis Brown, Wayne Wonder and Beres Hammond, might seem incongruous, but the pairing of Ranks' toughness and bluster and the singers' seductive sweetness is compelling. And the four tracks here where Ranks teams up with Marcia Griffiths, one of the greatest and most revered female voices in all of reggae, are brilliant and affecting, particularly "Really Together," which finds Griffiths revisiting one of her classic 1960s hits. She even manages to get Ranks to let his guard down somewhat, and deliver a pure love lyric, with no gun talk or "slackness" (raunchy sexual bragging). The occasional embarrassingly '80s keyboard sound aside, this is an ideal introduction to one of dancehall's true legends.

JOHNNY OSBOURNE
Truths And Rights
Heartbeat
Johnny Osbourne is probably best known to casual listeners for "Under Mi Sleng Teng," a genuine classic of dancehall and source for one of the greatest rhythm tracks of all time, verisoned what seems like a thousand times by nearly as many artists. On this 1979 album, he was only beginning to achieve the popularity he'd enjoy in the decades to come, and dancehall wasn't as synthetic and digital as it would later become as technology improved. So his rich, soulful voice is heard atop classic Studio One instrumental tracks (some dating back as far as 1967) that had once served Al Campbell, Alton Ellis, the Heptones and others. The lyrics are fairly straightforward love songs and hymns in praise of Jah, and the music is always soulful and conducive to slow, steady dancing: "We Need Love" is driven by an organ groove worthy of Al Green's early 1970s classics. The aggression that would come as dancehall became more influenced by hip-hop is nowhere to be found here. The original album's 10 tracks are augmented by six bonuses, including a dub version of "We Need Love" (retitled "Luanda") and three extended mixes. This is a killer set of summertime reggae.

PLASTILINA MOSH
All U Need Is Mosh
Nacional
Alejandro Rosso and Jonaz, the duo known as Plastilina Mosh, exemplify the contradictions, blurring and culture-jamming that make up the contemporary Latino experience. Their music mixes overtly '80s-influenced electronica with liquid funk basslines, rock guitars, samples and smarmy rapping in both Spanish and English. Their keen sense of irony and all-encompassing tastes make their work a mixed bag, both stylistically and qualitatively. The drum-machine garage-punk of "Let U Know" is balanced by the smirky, vacuous name-dropping of "My Party." Since the last release, the core duo has hired full-time instrumentalists and the (female) drummer occasionally sings and raps like a bilingual cross between the Tom Tom Club's Tina Weymouth and the Donnas' Brett Anderson. The disc's absolute high point is "Danny Trejo," a bilingual tribute to the most badass Mexican-American actor of all time. Plastilina Mosh aren't as smart as they think, but this album is good summertime fun.



**That's right, "Under Mi Sleng Teng" was by Wayne Smith; Johnny Osbourne's version, over the "Sleng Teng" rhythm, was "Buddy Bye." I blame my iPod, which had the credits reversed ("Buddy Bye" to Smith, "Sleng Teng" to Osbourne) when I was writing the review.

THIS MONTH IN THE WIRE

STEPHEN HAYNES/TAYLOR HO BYNUM
The Double Trio: Live At The Festival Of New Trumpet Music
Engine Studios
Unless you're talking strictly chronologically (as in "this is our new album"), the term new ought to be retired from discussions of jazz and jazz-derived improv - with a smile, not a resigned shrug or a defensive snarl. All the instruments played on this disc have been around for decades - centuries, in some cases - and every technique employed has been in the jazz toolkit for 40-plus years. The sounds trumpeters Haynes and Bynum are making may be unexpected in the moment, but are not unprecedented; there are great splashes of melody and lyricism here, particularly on the lovely, emotional version of Ornette Coleman's "Broken Shadows" and the romping take on Dizzy Gillespie's "Kush." When the group breaks into subsets, as on "Triple Duo," the dynamics will be familiar to jazz fans - trumpet/drums, guitar/drums.
Even when the two hornmen sputter and squeal in a manner reminiscent of their mentor and collaborator Bill Dixon, it's not shocking. But everyone present (Haynes, Bynum, guitarists Mary Halvorson and Allan Jaffe, and drummers Warren Smith and Tomas Fujiwara) is in top form, swinging and grooving in between bouts of pure three-on-three beauty. The compositions and improvisations alike reflect a considered group identity, never descending into chaos. Genuine newness is a near-impossibility in any genre, but jazz is a discourse, not a relay race with the baton of innovation passing from one player to another, and an album like this invigorates the genre by simply being really, really good.

WADADA LEO SMITH'S GOLDEN QUARTET
Tabligh
Cuneiform
It seems like false advertising to bill this as a Golden Quartet album, as trumpeter Smith is the only recurring member from the original lineup, which recorded a self-titled disc on Tzadik in 2000, and The Year Of The Elephant on Pi two years later. For this live outing, pianist Anthony Davis has been subbed by Vijay Iyer, bassist John Lindberg replaces Malachi Favors and drummer Jack DeJohnette's seat has been taken by Ronald Shannon Jackson. And this new group with an old name work together with a coiled intensity for a solid hour.
Smith's horn playing is spacious and meditative, befitting his Rastafarian beliefs; it's as if he's creating a real-time dub mix of his own lines. Opening track "Rosa Parks" is basically a tribute to Miles Davis circa 1969-70, with Iyer's Fender Rhodes and Lindberg's liquid, electric bass bolstered by Jackson's thunderous drumming as Smith unleashes ribbons of notes. "DeJohnette" offers acoustic instruments - Iyer speeds up and heads out as Lindner bows madly behind him - and a kind of free swing, while "Caravan Of Winter" and the title track are respectively a pointillist ballad and a 25-minute soundscape. Early on in the latter, a muted Smith returns to the land of Miles, every note considered and razor-sharp, but as the piece progresses, acoustic instruments and thoughtful freedom take over, including an apocalyptic Jackson solo to close things out.