I'd Love to Turn You On #64 - Rahsaan Roland Kirk – The Inflated Tear

Rahsaan Roland Kirk was many things, but let’s clear one thing up first – he was a genius. There are those who would tell you that because he sought to entertain as well as enlighten that his art is somehow lesser than the intensely serious music of a John Coltrane, a Miles Davis, a Cecil Taylor. But really, he’s in a line with Duke Ellington, with Charles Mingus, with Louis Armstrong – not exactly bad company to keep. He was also a remarkable jazz saxophonist (and player of other reeds as well), on a level with any of the greats you’d care to name, often using two or three (or more) horns simultaneously to create his own horn section. You can hear that right off the bat here with “The Black and Crazy Blues,” or most spectacularly on the title cut, where he contributes a gorgeous, tender solo interspersed with a gripping, multi-horn fanfare. And if you want to check out one of his tricks of technique that allowed him a unique approach to his soloing, listen to the extended improvisational line he lays down on “Many Blessings.” He just doesn’t stop to take a breath, because he uses a technique of circular breathing to draw in and exhale air at the same time. It’s not the first time he does it here, but it stands out here because the song is a more straightforward blowing tune. He’s also a traditionalist. You can hear that here most readily in his elegant reading of Duke Ellington’s “The Creole Love Song” and in the relatively restrained quartet music that makes up the bulk of this album, which ranges from light and lovely to the emotional intensity of “The Inflated Tear” itself.

But Rahsaan was also an avant-gardist in the sense that he was always pushing boundaries to find new ways to express himself; a surrealist joker always tweaking the noses of those who thought he could or should do things one specific way; a vaudevillian who knew how to elicit cheers of delight from audiences while still staying musically interesting. And that’s where the second album here comes in. Atlantic Records, Kirk’s musical home for many years, encouraged his experimental bent – the producer of The Inflated Tear even reports being a little disappointed when Kirk turned in the first album that didn’t showcase his wilder, woollier side. But after a string of great (and mostly out of print) releases for the label, Kirk fulfilled the experimental side of his destiny with Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata. At first these two albums – one of his nicest, cleanest, and best and one of his weirdest – seem to be strange bedfellows, but after a few listens, even the oddness of the later album just seems like Kirk’s quirks applied to a great set of songs, and the underlying eccentricities of his personality shine through on the seemingly “normal” earlier album. And what’s so weird about the second album? Well, excepting some mostly percussive support from a couple friends, Kirk plays every single instrument – and he’s credited with 18 plus “bird sounds” (including the “black mystery pipes” which he describes as “a piece of bamboo and a yard long metal tube – two pipes are played simultaneously.”) – by himself, live in the studio, without overdubs. It must have been the most amazing one-man-band show ever seen, and the fact that he actually made a terrific, albeit odd, album out of it just goes back again to show the level at which his genius operated. Mostly he’s recording his own tunes, again working the serious, the funny, the surreal, and the sentimental right alongside each other, and again he uses Duke Ellington as a touchstone, employing another non-percussive instrument (a piano) for the only time on the record, and creating a gorgeous duet that contextualizes the rest of Kirk’s songs on the album within a larger continuum of jazz and other black music and culture, one in which he’s not the sideshow figure he’s sometimes made out to be, but one of the true giants of the music.

The Inflated Tear is certainly the place to start with Kirk – it’s one of his best recorded, best conceived and loveliest album, but time has shown that even if Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata sold poorly in its first run, Rahsaan Roland Kirk was absolutely right in his conception, and created a really brilliant work there, even if it leaves some listeners in the dust. They’ll catch up one day.

- Patrick Brown

What Are You Listening To Lately (Part 2)?

I think I can speak for many record store employees when I say that the most dreaded question a customer can ask is “What are you listening to lately?” Most of us are on our own strange little personal journeys that are miles away from what anyone else we know is interested in. But I can promise you, we all have a pretty similar reaction when that question comes up: we brace ourselves and usually throw back a quick "What have YOU heard lately that you've liked?", because it would take too long to explain exactly what we’re actually listening to lately and why. With that in mind, here's a snapshot of what I have actually been listening to lately – what’s in the walkman, on the stereo, what I’m picking when I’m at work, and what I’ve been playing when I’m in the shower.

Talking Heads – More Songs About Buildings And Food
This is where their interest in R&B (and by extension, all black music) really starts to infect what they’re doing (and I mean that in the best possible way, of course). From the Al Green cover that they first cracked the U.S. top 40 with to the Shirley Ellis single they copped “double beating, double beating, double beating” from to the disco whistles buried deep in the mix in “I’m Not in Love,” this is a real move away from the quirks that so defined the debut. Of course, there are several songs of the same vintage as the ones that made up Talking Heads '77, but mixed in alongside the improved musicianship, their slicker feel for rhythmic motion, and most importantly the added depth of production that Eno helped them achieve, it really makes this record shine in a special way that the lankier, sparer debut doesn’t. Even if the tunes of the '77 may overall be at a (slightly) higher level (an 8.7 as opposed to an 8.6, say), the best stuff here is easily the equal of anything there, and the devotion to actually developing the music to another level, to working it over in the studio gives this the nod for me if you were to force me to choose. If only every band was this committed to developing their sound with each record.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Compliments of the Mysterious Phantom
It’s tough after listening to and reviewing a dozen or so great live performances by one artist to pinpoint exactly what makes this one of that one as good as others. It’s more like it’s one point along a continuum of great music and if it’s not immediately distinguishable from all the others, it’s at least at or above a certain level of quality at all times. Song selection is there to scan and certainly doesn’t tell you anything about the playing anyway – which in the pre-stroke Roland Kirk is always amazing. Humor is high here (both musical and in the spoken interludes), hard-blown saxes are at a high too. Multi-horn playing is minimal and it’s light on manzello and stritch, though nose flute has a full feature. Excellent, yet again. I expect nothing less. And if you have some doubts that he’s serious, you should require no more proof than the first two tracks to understand – he’s major. For real.

Jungle Brothers – Done By the Forces of Nature
For the long term, I’d have to say that the Jungle Brothers have been the most disappointing prospect of all the major Native Tongues groups. Nobody else of the movement showed such boundless promise that blanded out over their (sadly, intermittent) career into such so-so music. Listeners coming in late to their music at Raw Deluxe or the reduced-to-a-duo version of the group that made V.I.P., when they actually gained some mainstream radio play may not understand thius, but their great debut and this masterful follow-up – which, I might add, came out the same year as De La Soul and Queen Latifah’s debuts and a year before A Tribe Called Quest debuted – made it seem like the could’ve been the best group of the bunch. Like all the Native Tongues Posse, they drew influences from everywhere musically (especially James Brown, of course), but what stamped them as unique was how up, how positive, how pro-Black they were, always. All their compatriots touched on these things, but the JB’s never went to in-jokes, as De La was wont to do, never invested more in vibe than in words, as Tribe sometimes did, and they’re simply more consistent than Latifah – than any of the others, actually. At least that’s the case here, where their love for all kinds of pop music, their Afro-centricism, their humanism, their humor – all of it comes into play, molded into their best songs. They refined everything that their debut promised and they’ve never been as good since. Sigh….