On his eight or ninth album in little more than a decade, young Chicago native Andrew Bird continues on his smart way, singing, whistling and fiddling bemusedly but sincerely about life’s conditional conditions.

He’s got a detached demeanor but he’s well beyond the post-ironic state of most indie-rock and while he could be accused of sounding smug sometimes, he’s never condescending. At his most sincere, he sort of sounds like a less flamboyant Rufus Wainright and he’s more about folk/ethnic/classical than Broadway.

One of the first “concept” albums, Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely invited listeners back in 1958 to pull up a chair and share the singer’s misery exquisitely expressed in a carefully collected set of tunes given sensitive, sumptuous backdrops by the late, great Nelson Riddle.

That these twelve heavily orchestrated tracks were recorded live in the studio two days in May of 1958 and two days in June is a feat that probably would not be possible to achieve today.

Krall’s cool, detached yet available look on the front and back covers of this popular 2002 release let you know from whence the emotions flow here. She sells these standards intimately yet barely rising above a warm smolder, leaving you to crack the code.



It’s a good strategy. Why compete with Claus Ogerman’s now classic, lush Bossa Nova orchestrations? Better to just let the atmosphere do the heavy lifting. On some songs Krall seems to have more emotion invested in and be more expressive playing the piano. She’s looser with her fingers.

I know people who actually think that The Ramones were a “joke” band—sort of a punk version of Sha Na Na. I’m not kidding. I know people who thought The Ramones were a sloppy outfit goofing around on stage. I know people who think Joey Ramone was a screamer. But then I live in the suburbs.



If you think The Ramones were anyof those things you haven’t heard this great live album recorded in the UK at The Rainbow New Year’s Eve 1977 by Ed Stasium and produced by T. Erdelyi A/K/A Tommy Ramone.

This summer of 1955 set probably recorded at United in Los Angeles August 23rd and 25th 1955 just a few days after a successful Hollywood Bowl appearance finds Holiday covering standards in fine voice backed up a great small combo.



Holliday (born Eleanora Fagan) covers “I Don’t Want to Cry Anymore,” “It Had to Be You,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “A Fine Romance” and some others taken at a slow, summer’s eve pace, with both musical feet firmly set in the 1940s but with hi-fidelity sonics.

Leave it to Pure Pleasure to unearth great, but obscure titles like this, but more importantly, kudos to the label for having the nerve to put their money where their eclectic musical tastes reside and release it! And this one’s a double, making the enterprise twice as risky.

Georgie Fame (born Clive Powell) is better known and more highly revered in the UK than he is in America, though older Anglophile rock fans might remember his 1965 hit single “Yeh Yeh” that made its way here in Beatlemania’s flotsam.

One side of this 1975 release gives you a smokin’ hot live recording of mindless, Texas-style speed-boogie music (the mind is not a terrible thing to waste!), while the other is a somewhat more introspective studio set.



The live set, recorded without studio overdubs at New Orleans’ The Warehouse, is a sweaty aggressive affair taken at warp speed before a wildly enthusiastic, probably sloppy-drunk crowd of revelers.

This is not your typical Blue Note album. Sure, Oscar Pettiford and Ed Thigpen swing impeccably on bass and drums, but fronting baritone sax, trombone and guitar? Sounds more like a description of an oompah band than jazz, but honest, jazz it is.

The Modern Jazz Quartet would never have been signed to Blue Note. The group’s Bach-influenced button-down counterpoint was a bad fit with Blue Note’s gospel and blues influenced soul-jazz.

This unusually cool, reserved, Blue Note odd-lot created by the late musician, artist and electronic instrument builder Gil Mellé, has more in common with The MJQ, something Bill Evans and Jim Hall might have conjured up, or a dry martini ala Paul Desmond than a wailing Blue Note.