Customer Reviews

Inflated Tear

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Buy everything this guy has to offer becos' you may never get to hear the likes of this again.

Kirk is an otherworldly musician - like Trane, Miles, Hendrix... He does things that leave you wondering if there are any rules left in music. Obviously not.

This album's title track takes on a freakish significance as it was created after Kirk had an acid trip in which he relived the callousness of a nurse who blinded him when he was an infant.

Yet he could see more than most.

Roland Kirk's music is jazz by definition but in reality it is s unclassifiable: a completely original performer whose style encompasses his early New Orleans roots, through swing and bebop, to the abstraction of the 1960s and 1970s avant-garde. This CD is, in my opinion, his finest work. From the opening chords of the Black and Crazy Blues Roland takes the listener on a ride that is unmatched in virtuosity by any other performer regardless of their musical idiom. While Inflated Tear is Kirk's spiritual essay about his sightless life, it is a musical tone poem for the listener taking us to places seldom visited. It is truly a masterpiece. Highly recommended

This magnificent musician is one of the true treasures of American jazz;
before I actually started listening to him I was a bit suspicious about his multiinstrumentalism, but he uses his numerous (and often strange) horns and whistles as a musician - there is nothing flashy or inflated in what I heard of him so far (incidently; the title of the album refers to Kirk's medical problems connected to his blindness...).

But, if you want to know, on the cover of this fine Atlantic album they say he plays tenor sax, Manzello, stritch, clarinet, flute, whistle AND "English horn or flexafone"...

The rest of the group are Ron Burton (p), Steve Novosel (b) and Jimmy Hopps (dm), plus Dick Griffith (tb) on "Fly by Night"...

I enjoy what the other reviewers have wrote about this great album.

People were distracted from Kirk's real talent (because he plays 3 horns at one time, and was blind and charasmatic). Try listening to the song "The Inflated Tear". This song encompasses the strength, delicateness, and creativity of his playing. And, I wonder how such a song could have been concieved. There is no other album like this one. I hope you try it.

Also...

I've read that this album was on Ken Keasy and the Merry Prankster's bus. Of course, the guys in the Grateful Dead must have heard it. It sounds to me that "Sage and Spirit", from the Deads 1974 album, "Blues for Allah" sounds like it might have come from an appreciation of the song "Fingers in the Wind" from "The Inflated Tear". Maybe?

Rahsaan was one of the great jazz players, with his own take on black classical music. This CD shows the different instruments and styles he used to make swinging, beautiful, inspiring music. If you like this, or if you like the flute, try "I Talk to the Spirits" also. All jazz fans could use some Trane, Miles, Mingus, Monk, and Rahsaan too.

I saw Rahsaan Roland Kirk twice, including once at the Village Vanguard... sorry to say I didn't know what I was seeing; I was young and just getting into this stuff, the music known as jazz... I am sure I liked it, but am sure I'd appreciate him much more now.

I am also embarrassed to say that after all these years of enjoying jazz, buying or trying to buy every Art Blakey Jazz Messengers album ever made- an arduous task- I have recently expanded my taste a little bit to some post bop and avant-garde.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk's earlier stuff is closer to hard bop and more straight-a-head.

While this album is progressive, it is still firmly rooted and linked in form, harmony and tone to the hard bop music I enjoy.

This is a highly creative and wonderful album.

Inflated Tear- the song- reportedly came to him in a dream, a dream of a careless health care worker, nurse, etc. who caused his blindness. Another account states the "dream" came to him while tripping on LSD.

I also gather that Rahsaan Roland Kirk probably delighted in kidding with people, being controversial and leaving people wondering exactly where he is coming from...

However his blindness really developed, the song is highly emotive, with childlike chimes evoking the thought of a baby sleeping peacefully, his simultaneous horns playing beautifully, but also turning into an emergency foghorn warning...

The song is followed by a beautiful rendition of Ellington's Creole Love Call.

A Handful of Fives has a middle eastern sound and reminds me of Coltrane and Dolphy's playing, and while somewhat "outside", still "inside" and connected to music as we know it... in other words, not too crazy... see I'm Glad There Is You; a standard, done in high flying post bop style but kind of close to hard bop...

it's all music anyway...

More Coltrane sound in Fly By Night, yet I don't want to make it sound like Rahsaan Roland Kirk was copying Coltrane; yet it may be impossible to avoid the influence of John Coltrane.

But Rahsaan Roland Kirk is very much his own man, and while the more I hear the Coltrane influence, I hear it used beautifully, expanded upon, developed upon, built upon, personalized...

and with every listening I am digging this album more and more...

Up to five listens of The Inflated Tear (the song itself); it is so highly emotional...

I just got his mammoth Mercury box set with plenty of more conventional playing, yet plenty of his forward thinking, "different" ideas.

I think I will be taking another reviewer's advice, and trying to get every piece of music this man ever produced...