by S. Victor Aaron There’s jazz and and there’s whack jazz, that label I assign to jazz that is unrestrained, unconventional and sometimes, rude. The kind of jazz that you wouldn’t play at any party, but boy, they sure are fun to listen to when you’re really engaged to theRead More

by S. Victor Aaron A few weeks ago, with little warning, my office got transferred from the cozy suburbs to the concrete jungle. Stranded in a 7th floor cube farm in the middle of Gotham about 30 miles from home and averse to sitting still on freeways, it was timeRead More

by S. Victor Aaron I’m not one of those critics who creates a “best of” list by merely dumping a bunch of names and titles. But I felt a need to explain that because this list of mainstream and modern jazz from the past year has 41 entrants on it.Read More

by Pico & Nick DeRiso Over at Something Else Reviews, we’re in a celebratory mood tonight as our team has finally made the Big Show. So for now, only one kind of music will do for us… You May Also Like: No related posts.

by Pico I was going to start off this year’s version of the Fusion Jazz list by explaining what exactly we are calling “fusion jazz,” until I recalled that I already attempted to define it last year. And looking back, it seems so damned convoluted. So disregard that: if it’sRead More

by Matt Reynolds In the mid-to-late 90s, when bands with names like Oasis, Blur, Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam were inescapable on the American airwaves, there was an up-and-coming band out of San Francisco that arguably held more musicianship and all-out rock and roll firepower than all the previous mentionedRead More

by S. Victor Aaron 2009 has had its share of the blues but there were plenty of blues practitioners making the best of the hard times, as we saw a slew of fine releases by them last year. There were seven of those that really stood out to me, aboveRead More

by Pico It’s the middle of January, which can only mean we’re about a month late on those year-end lists. Oooops. This past year, I’ve listened to perhaps a little less of the rock, pop and r&b records than in 2008, but the selections for my favorites were easier toRead More

by S. Victor Aaron In 2001, the avant garde jazz leading light Henry Threadgill had just recorded two albums he wanted released but couldn’t find a record company willing to do it. Quite a turnaround in the attitudes of the music business toward creative modern music, where Threadgill’s prior threeRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Eric Alexander is a tenor sax specialist who comes from the same generation of reed players as Joshua Redman, who he finished second to in 1991 in that career-defining Thelonious Monk Institute sax competition, when Alexander was in early 20’s. Since then, he has been extremelyRead More