Customer Reviews

I'm Sick About My Hat

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I've enjoyed John Corbett's record. It took a few listens, butit's now among my often-played favorites. While I am aware that Corbett is a contributor to Downbeat, I allow that "I'm sick about my hat" is not intended for a puritannical jazz audience. Still, Corbett's a big man in improv jazz circles. He gets cred points from the contributors on his album, Mats Gustaffson and Jeb Bishop for example, to the people he' s produced: Peter Brotzmann, Hamid Drake, Ken Vandermark, etc. John Corbett also writes for the Chicago Reader, teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago, deejays a radio show, hosts a well-known improv series at the Empty Bottle, writes books, and so on and so on. The guy does not stop. For full disclosure, while I've had the pleasure of seeing Corbett play live twice, I am in no way his friend.

Awful album - was so dissappointed - just a weird collection of strange music that makes no sense.

There are some albums in my collection where their purchase is a total mystery to me. Like this one: I fully remember where I bought it, and even how much I paid ($15.98), but I've got no idea what my motivation was. I didn't know who John Corbett is when I bought it,. I don't recall reading any reviews, and I'm not really the kind of guy who goes into a store and buys things at random. The album cover isn't that enticing. Was there a big display case of them at the store maybe? I have no clue. Anyway, I'm glad I've got it because it's a fun CD. I just don't know what compelled me to find out.

So it turns out that John Corbett is a well-known guy in the Chicago free jazz world, and that most of the Heavy Friends here are also from that scene. Apparently Corbett is a guitarist, but that's hardly the primary instrument here. The album is mostly focused on sound collages, and the guitar work largely fades away after the first few songs. Opener "Speed Hump" begins with some acoustic guitar, but quickly shifts to squalling saxophone and drums, chopped apart with different types of audio filters. Much more coherent is "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning", where the guitar is a solemn bedrock for some pretty jazz vocals and taped-together birdsongs. My personal favorite songs on the album are "Parapoli, Rosa E.", a slightly clipped-apart reworking of some older ululating vocalist with accompaniment, and "Cold Sweat", a monotone vocal-only cover of the James Brown number. The only relatively unadorned recording here is the downbeat "Ready Kilowatt", with multiple horns that squawk menacingly. Everything else on the record is chopped apart to within an inch of its life, sometimes far past being able to figure out what the original elements were, as on "Road Rage".

I had to do a crapload of research for this review, since as I said, I didn't know anything about the album, and it seems like most other reviewers didn't have much patience for the noisier compositions on this disc. I guess it's a question of taste. If you're a fan of abstract music and improvisation, there's a lot of interest here for you. If you tend to be drawn to melodies and song structure more than pure sound, you might want to give this a listen before you buy it. John Corbett is also apparently a writer for Down Beat Magazine, so I'm sure he'd do a better job at this review than I would (although he'd have an obvious bias in this case), but the bottom line is I picked this up for reasons unknown and managed to enjoy it, and if you walk into it without any expectations I'm sure you will too.

This is some of the crappiest stuff I've ever heard. I'd like to say that the writer - whose self importance is of titanic importance - should stick with writing but even that stuff is pretty lightweight stuff hiding behind a few dropplets of critical theory. Don't waste your time, your energy or your money.

Sam

John Corbett is a jazz critic who writes for Downbeat magazine. Here he actually makes an attempt to make the music that he makes his living criticizing. To say that he is a weak musician and conceptualist would be kind. He is a total zero - there is nothing of any originality or musical merit to be found here, and one has to wonder after hearing this record just what kind of ego it would take to have the gall to attempt to write about music that he here proves to be so completely inept at presenting. Like his writing, he attempts with his music to be "ironic" and "edgy" - but without any real point of view, and certainly minimal musical skill and knowledge, it all comes off as the whinings of a high school sophomore given the keys to the electronic music lab of his school for an afternoon. There are no substantial musicial ideas, only "mood" pieces that might work as really bad film music for a film that no one would ever want to go see. And when he does attempt to address a "standard" tune, (In the wee small hours of the morning), it is nothing short of embarrassing in it's lack of conception and understanding and it's inability to do anything but summon up the usual alternative newsweekly brand of ironic kitsh that passes for "avant garde" in todays world. One thing is for sure, after hearing this record, Downbeat readers will be able to pass over his reviews, which are now rendered as meaningless as if they were written by an amatuer musician with the pretense and illusion of competence - exactly what we have here.