Monday, July 09, 2007
Not Ruling the Radio World
Apologies to anyone out there ("Anyone?", he asks) who may have tuned in via radio or Internet to the non-show not being broadcast yesterday. Seems our station's radio transmitter was on summer vacation as was our engineer. We were basically off the airwaves for the entire day; definitely not part of a working master plan to rule the radio world.
Which, was a shame. Had some new CD's that I'd planned on playing including a few selections from Bad Plus' late April release, Prog, including their enoyably distrubing version of Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" (Mr. Ethan Iverson playing a minimally tinkled and sardonic piano while Mr. David King furiously pounds our foreheads, I mean drums, with the Ohrwurm melody. I'll confess that this song is still very listenable in its orginal version, even after all of the attempts by FM radio and MTV to kill it. Look! Even Patti Smith recently (April, 2007) did a very nice version of this song.
In addition to the Tears for Fears song, Bad Plus (especially drummer David King) do quite a listenable job with Rush's Tom Sawyer, not to mention (but I will) a superb version of Burt Bacharach's "This Guy's in Love with You".
For me at least, Bad Plus are a hit 'n miss band. I've listened to the majority of their CD's multiple times but I own only their most recent one, Prog, as, after repeated listening, all of the songs on this CD hold up quite well. The musicians, Ethan Iverson on piano, Reid Anderson on bass, and drummer David King are all ludicrously talented and the collective known as Bad Plus is one of the tightest bands you'll hear these days. I'd strongly encourage anyone to search out their stuff; their renditions of tried and true compositions and their performance of their own stuff is aggressive, referential, funny, and, just sometimes, a bit too loud. I would strongly recommend Prog as the starting off point, even though it's their newest piece of work. If a jazz group (a huge pigeon-holing if ever there was one) can secrete a suggestion of Heavy Metal, Bad Plus would be such a band.
More illuminating reviews of Prog can be found at:
Stylus Magazine,
All About Jazz,
and the indispensable Meta Critic.
Labels: Recording Reviews, WVUD 91.3
Comments:
<< Home Verging on Pertinence Just some more disposable thoughts clogging up the hinterlands
Just Great album! By the way, here is some useful
website devoted to the
PROG album: Click!
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website devoted to the
PROG album: Click!
# opined by 
: 11:28 AM, July 12, 2007
: 11:28 AM, July 12, 2007 << Home Verging on Pertinence Just some more disposable thoughts clogging up the hinterlands
