Friday, May 18th, 2007 ... 3:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

Format:
ARTIST -- "TRACK TITLE" -- ALBUM TITLE (LABEL, YEAR)
Horizontal lines denote microphone breaks.

* David Binney -- "Contributors" -- Out of Airplanes (Mythology, 2006)

Previously noted here.

* Gebhard Ullmann, Chris Dahlgren, Art Lande -- "Das Tiefe A" - Die Blaue Nixe (Between the Lines, 2006)

Previously noted here.

* Esperanza Spalding -- "Loro" -- Junjo (Ayva, 2006)

Spalding is a young bassist who shows lots of promise in a mainstream/Latin context. She also sings, too, with a nice light voice. It's a trio disc with lots of bass prominence.

* Matthias Schubert -- "Don Cordolone" -- Trappola (Red Toucan, 2006)

Previously noted here.

Sonny Simmons -- "Manhattan Egos" -- Manhattan Egos (Arhoolie, 2000; orig. released 1969)

Hadn't played anything of Sonny's in a while. If you don't know the story, Sonny was part of the San Francisco jazz scene back in the '60s, but as happens all too often, he faded into obscurity. By the '90s, he was living in a residence hotel and earning money playing on the street, tossing out a rich free-jazz brew to mostly indifferent Union Square shoppers. Gradually, he got his career back together, with some help from the good folks who ran Bruno's at the time, as they gave him a weekly gig for a while.

Sonny went on to release a series of CDs, some with a two-sax band called the Cosmosamatics, during the late '90s and early '00s. He's now living in Paris, I believe, and hopefully receiving steady work. Anyway, he's a local institution and certainly worthy of more airplay than I've been giving him. This 2-CD set features a band with his then-wife, Barbara Donald, and with Michael White on violin.

* Taylor Ho Bynum -- "Woods" -- The Middle Picture (Firehouse 12, 2007)

Noted here.

Bruce Ackley Trio -- "Juggernaut" -- The Hearing (Avant, 1998)

The "A" in the

ROVA sax quartet. Ackley had been playing around town with a trio called Actual Size, featuring Garth Powell on drums and George Cremaschi on bass. They opened for Tim Berne in one of the earliest out-jazz concerts I attended locally. I don't know the full story, but in committing the music to disk, Ackley enlisted the more famous rhythm section of Joey Baron and Greg Cohen -- maybe at the insistance of John Zorn, who was curating the label.

Ackley describes this track as a blues written for Sonny Simmons, so it was on my mind as the Simmons track was playing. He describes attending an art exhibition and hearing Sonny's playing from the street below. Being familiar enough with Sonny to recognize his sound, Ackley "left the gallery and stood in the street listening for several minutes to his enormous tone and cascading ideas."

Side note: I got Ackley to sign my copy of this CD after seeing his 50th birthday concert at Venue 9. Unrelated: The cover picture, of him listening studiously into a saxophone bell, adorns the top of the BayImproviser site.

*! Jessica Bailiff -- "If We Could" -- Feels Like Home (Kranky, 2006)

Bailiff does shimmery guitar landscapes with echoing, surreal vocals, creating a dreamy wash of sound. She's gotten a little more song-like in her approach with recent albums, more obvious and direct, but still has that dreamy feel.

-- 4:00 p.m. --

* William Parker and Hamid Drake -- "First Communion II" -- Summer Snow (AUM Fidelity, 2007)

Previously noted here.

Marty Krystall -- "Wildflower" -- Plays Herbie Nichols (K2B2, 2006)

Very mainstream stuff, but it's Herbie Nichols, so you can't go wrong. Nichols was a contemporary of Thelonious Monk's, but never reached the same pinnacles of fame. It's become a crusade of many a jazz musician during the past decade to rekindle Nichols' 15 minutes and elevate his status to the other greats of his time. Krystall is an L.A. musician, often playing in Hollywood contexts, but he turns in a fine set here, with some unexpectedly adventurous soloing.

* Brad Dutz -- "Biff the Salesman" -- When Manatees Attack (pfMentum, 2006)

Previously noted here.

* Einsturzende Neubauten -- "Semiotische Musik #5" -- Stimmen Reste (Musterhaus, 2007)

A CD of vocal experiments dated 2002-2006, from those German peddlers of industrial noise. Relatively un-noisy -- as is a companion disk that involved experiments from band members playing the bass spring. (Played that one the following week.)

* Create(!) -- "Durindana" -- A Prospect of Freedom (Sounds Are Active, 2006)

Previously noted here.

David Slusser -- "Beautiful Ohio" -- Rubber City (Breath Ears, 2001)
Ralph Carney -- "Eye Protection" -- I Like You a Lot (Birdman, 1999)
David Slusser -- "Eight Miles High" -- Rubber City (Breath Ears, 2001)

Rubber City is a quartet fronted by saxophonists David Slusser and Ralph Carney, both Bay Area residents, both emigres from Akron, Ohio, home of Devo. Carney is best known for playing with Tom Waits; his solo stuff is weird and amusing, with an impish sense of humor. Slusser is less overtly goofy but still plenty weird, having released an album on Tzadik, for instance.

Together, they direct Rubber City through some catchy jazzy themes, some of which have a carefree lightness to them, and then dig into gutsy free-jazz soloing. It's great stuff, and the cover of "Eight Miles High" is pretty damn cool and always made for a nice radio-set-ender. (Caveat: I don't mind the original tune at all.) Rubber City hadn't played a gig in years, at least not that I knew of, so once I saw them in the show listings, I knew I had to give them some spins.

* Arthur Bull and Daniel Heikalo -- "Moment Intense De Repit Colore" -- Concentres et Amalgames (Ambiances Magnetiques, 2006)

Previously noted here.

David Cross -- "Fake Tits/Real Beer" [excerpt: The Rickey Henderson bit] -- Shut Up... (Censored for Radio) (Sub Pop, 2002)

Pretty funny bit about how Rickey refers to himself in the third person. I'd heard this on another station (KALX, I think) recently ... and then today, a news story quoted Oakland A's officials saying they wouldn't mind signing Rickey for one day so that he could retire an Athletic. Couldn't resist playing this as a current-events service.

The CD itself is a bleeped version of Shut Up, You Fucking Baby!, made to be radio-safe.

-- 5:00 p.m. --

The Beth Lisick Ordeal -- "Hit and Run" -- Pass (DuNord, 1998)

A longtime fave of mine, as noted here. The applause ending of the David Cross bit, plus a quick legal ID ("KZSU, Stanford!") made a nice lead-in to the sudden crash-start of this one. This may be my most-played track at KZSU. If it's not, then I'm gonna go and play it some more.

* Glenn Kotche -- "Mobile Part 3" -- Mobile (Nonesuch, 2006)

Ambitious and artsy percussion experiments from Wilco's drummer. Seems to have a minimalist-classical influence. A CD that I didn't do justice during its time in rotation.

* Michael Dessen -- "Not Minutes, but Breaths" -- Lineal (Circumvention, 2006)

Previously noted here.

Evan Parker and Paul Lytton -- "Two Horn'd Reasoning, Cloven Fiction" -- Two Octobers (Emanem, 1996; recorded 1975)

Classic old free improv with sax, percussion, and live electronics.

Moe! Staiano's Moe!kestra -- "Piece No. 7" (Part 3) -- An Inescapable Siren Within Earshot Distance Therein And Other Whereabouts (Amanita/Rastascan, 2006)

Gearing up for the Moe!kestra 10th anniversary performance happening next week.

Gianni Gebbia -- "Hilbert" -- H Portraits (Rastascan, 1998)

Gebbia is an Italian saxophonist who's swung through the Bay Area numerous times; I try to give his stuff a spin whenever he's in town. This is a solo sax disc, where he particularly shows off his circular breathing -- long stretches of playing without stopping for breath -- while sifting through a variety of unorthodox squeaks, chirps, and whistles.

* Cooke Quintet -- "Hard 8" -- An Indefinite Suspension of the Possible (Black Hat, 2006)

Previously noted here.

* = Item in KZSU rotation
! = Pop anomaly
? = Item not in KZSU library

-- Go back to Memory Select playlists.
-- Bay Area free/improv music calendar: http://www.bayimproviser.com.