Customer Reviews

Dark Day / Live In Verona (1977)

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This cd is actually two concerts in one package. The first disc re-releases an old hard to find (make that impossible to find) LP recorded in Chicago. The second cd is a previously unreleased concert recorded just a few days later in Italy (and with much better sound, too.) Over the course of a few long renditions, Fred Anderson honks and blows in a very unique style that's nevertheless hard to instantly recognize. In length and structure, these performances resemble the avant-garde, but Fred stays away from extreme noise and screams. Just as fascinating is the drumming of the great Hamid Drake, here going by the name of Hank Drake. He's awfully young, but already putting together his signature sound of absolute precision, the funk, and African rhythms. The sound is a bit diffident, the arrangements are pretty sloppy (and pretty unmemorable thematically, too) and the bass player is either one of the worst in the world or just the victim of a really poor microphone set-up. But these are not disqualifiers. It's an intense, revealing set.

This double CD set is a fine way to meet the smoothness and calm of Fred Anderson's evolved free jazz playing style. I don't know exactly what it is about Verona, Italy but it gestates great things. Enjoy.