Getting the word out on some of more esoteric or little-known artists and their albums is something we love doing here at Something Else, hence the name for our little tea room on the interwebs. “Quickies” is where I’ve yakked up a lot of records by musicians who are notRead More

It’s been three whole months since our last “Quickies” and in the meantime, the new releases have been piling up on my desk. They’ll be more Quickies soon after this one to catch up, but for now, we present four, new jazz-oriented offerings from last month and all by veryRead More

Last year, keyboard whiz Marco Benevento caused a stir with his very first studio effort Invisible Baby. That record presented Benevento as a post-rocker who likes to mingle melodic acoustic piano with edgy electronic effects used to create a unique sonic presence; a sort of indie-minded Jim Brickman. Just oneRead More

David “Fathead” Newman, one of our favorite tenor men, has passed after a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 75. A Dallas native, Newman left college to tour with Charlie Parker’s mentor, Buster Smith. He then found fame as a sideman with Ray Charles, spending 12 seminal years inRead More

by Pico In 1939, German immigrant Alfred Lion founded Blue Note Records along with Max Margulis as a label dedicated to signing and recording jazz and blues artists. Over the years, this label became a central part of jazz history itself, as it became the home for seminal recordings byRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Jeff Beck has long been at or near the top of a lot of people’s greatest guitarists lists and it’s not hard to see why. He’s a master technician, and possesses a highly unique, blues-based style that no one has even really come close to duplicating.Read More

by Pico For the second time in a year, we’re here looking at an Avishai Cohen album, but from two different musicians. Because, while both are jazz artists who hail from Israel, the one we examined earlier specializes in acoustic bass. The one we looking at here is a trumpetRead More

This is perhaps Weather Report’s most honest record. You just have to lean in closer to appreciate it.

Arild Andersen may not be the first name that comes up when one thinks of the greatest living acoustic bassists, but he’s at least earned the right to be considered somewhere on that list. A player of expansive range, lyricism and velocity, Andersen’s list of credits as a sideman readsRead More

photo: Rueters (R.I.P. Esbjörn) by Pico With the best releases of the more mainstream type of jazz examined, it’s time to take a look at jazz hybrids, or fusion. In years past,”fusion” usually meant just jazz-rock fusion. Increasingly, even jazz-rock music has become more fragmented, as we’ve seen an explosionRead More