November 18-24, 2004

cover story

Get Set

Music is better in boxes.

100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can't Be Wrong

Bon Jovi

Despite cheekily tonguing the gold lamé ghost of Elvis on its cover, the toast of New Jersey (and indoor football) takes box-compiling seriously. Rather than top load 100,000,000 with demos of shopworn hits, the fancentric collection finds a mix of subtle musicality and sarcastic lyricism within the 38 previously unreleased tracks — the trash pop of "Why Aren't You Dead?," the oozingly atmospheric "Satellite," the bitch-and-moan spit-takes of "The Radio Saved My Life Tonight" and "Garageland." If they had put these infinitely more fascinating songs on their sugar-metal LPs, I would've been impressed sooner. Look. No one starts out liking Bon Jovi — the stadium anthems, the dippy hair, the positivist lyrics. Then one day, you find yourself humming "It's My Life." That's when your heartache begins.

—A.D. Amorosi

Mark Sandman

When it wasn't the squalid roots-blues of Treat Her Right, it was the rumbling, bass-bin noir of Morphine. Either way, the late Mark Sandman supplied these lean sounds with a beat's sense of disconnected, yet romantic, imagery and a lounge singer's laconic grumble. If it's been a while since you've heard Sandman's gravel-and-caramel croon, this package's mix of blowsy, stripper skronk (aided by Morphine's signature tenor/baritone saxophonist Dana Colley) and dirtball Delta bliss is like sipping a smooth, strong Scotch. As bittersweet as it is sinister, Sandbox redelivers moments celebrated ("Bathtub") and silly ("Born Again"), brusque ("Good Time Last Night") and tender (the countryish ballad "Devil's Boots").
—A.D. Amorosi

Tal Farlow

An undisputed jazz guitar master in his time, Tal Farlow has lately been relegated to the status of a connoisseur's choice. But as this collection makes clear, the former sign painter from Greensboro deserves full marquee status. Beginning with a 1951 Decca session by the Red Norvo Trio, the set underscores Farlow's remarkable negotiation of technical brilliance with ebullient warmth. Later sessions, featuring such high-caliber players as pianist Hank Jones, bassist Milt Hinton and saxophonist Frank Wess, show him to be a bandleader as generous as he is self-assured. Altogether, this is strikingly modern jazz, blending the flighty virtuosity of New York bebop with the cool aplomb of the West Coast school — and Farlow is the factor behind each impressive take. Present-day Farlow inheritor Howard Alden, in his liner essay, calls this material "the Holy Grail of jazz guitar." It's more than that — it's an underrated touchstone of modern jazz.
Available solely through Mosaic Records, 35 Melrose Place, Stamford, Conn., 06902, 203-327-7111, www.mosaicrecords.com.
—Nate Chinen

Miles Davis

Columbia's seemingly bottomless well of Milesiana has spawned a series of fine compilations in the past decade, but none more revelatory than this oddity, which charts the trumpeter in transition. A curtain rises on Davis as he sifts through the ashes of his classic quintet — Coltrane sought solace in sainthood, and the rest decamped for a trio career. The first post-fallout band (pianist Victor Feldman, saxophonist George Coleman, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Frank Butler) shows scintillating promise; Feldman's songs "Joshua" and "Seven Steps to Heaven" enter the Davis repertoire as cryptic riddles to be solved. But the ensemble, clearly too genteel for Davis' palate, enjoys only a brief run on Disc 1 before changes come. There's an immediate upturn on Disc 2, thanks mostly to the galvanizing presence of drummer Tony Williams, then all of 17. What follows is mostly well-trod terrain: Williams, Carter and a brilliant young Herbie Hancock reinventing rhythm-section elasticity while the unfortunate Coleman arpeggiates himself out of a gig. This scenario occupies four of the box's seven discs — and that's not a bad thing, given that Four and More and My Funny Valentine rank among Davis' best-loved live recordings. Still, it's a welcome jolt when on Disc 6 Sam Rivers steps in for Coleman on a Tokyo concert date. Rivers dams his wilder impulses, but his wooly arcs are still clearly the wrong foil for Davis. Thank heavens for Wayne Shorter, whose arrival on the set's final disc feels less like a revelation than a fantasy fulfilled. The Berlin Philharmonic recording that closes these proceedings is a mere foreshadowing of greater glories ahead — documented, we're left to note, on another Legacy box. The aural equivalent of a "To Be Continued" tag, it'll still be a happy occasion for most listeners, reminded here that Davis' greatest band was anything but a foregone conclusion.
—Nate Chinen

Albert Ayler

Revenant Records lives up to its name with this release, a monument to one of the central heroes of free jazz. Holy Ghost isn't a box set so much as a reliquary, stocked with concert recordings, audio interviews and reproductions of fliers, photos and literary journals. There's even a pressed flower (dogwood, the tree of the cross). The result of such hagiography is a portrait of the tenor saxophonist that occasionally suggests more ghost than man, despite the music itself, which is as earthy as it is ecclesiastical. Some of it — a meditative 1964 trio set, assorted European quintet dates and some bracing sextet stuff with brother Don — reaches the level of the sublime, bootleg-sound quality and all. But as one might expect, there's also a lot of music here that's liturgically redundant. In the end, Holy Ghost isn't aimed at nonbelievers — that task still goes to Ayler's ESP Records output, his transcendent best. It's the converted who'll be transfigured by this collection, as by a baptism in fire.
—Nate Chinen

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