Jackson in Your House/Message to Our Folks [Original recording remastered]

Art Ensemble Of Chicago | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 18, 2001)
• Original Release Date: 2001
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Varese Sarabande
• ASIN: B00005O54I
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #546,713 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Jackson in Your House

2. Get in Line

3. The Waltz

4. Ericka

5. Song for Charles

6. Old Time Religion

7. Dexterity

8. Rock Out

9. A Brain for the Seine

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Leading the charge for radical black music in the '60s was the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Drawing from old jazz traditions, trumpeter Lester Bowie, saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman, and bassist Malachi Favors added heady doses of satire along with a collectivist sense of sonic mischief. Employing a multitude of "little instruments"--whistles, sirens, hand drums, gongs, bells--and various costumes, the group's early performances were as much theater as music. On this CD, a collection of their two earliest studio recordings (made in Paris in 1969), many of the theatrical elements are included, and without visuals supporting them, these recordings tend to be more cultural artifacts than consistent musical experiences. Which is not to say there isn't much great music here--Mitchell's R&B flavored "Rock Out," the free-form horn blowout of "Get in Line," and the eclectic "A Brain for the Seine" stand out--but there are also stretches of satirical vocalizing and percussive meandering (this was prior to drummer Don Moye's arrival) that perhaps worked better in performance. Nonetheless, as the first documents of this important group, this is a must for devoted Art Ensemble followers. --Wally Shoup

Product Description

UK digitally remastered reissue combines two of the avant-garde jazz act's 1969 albums together on one CD, A Jackson in Your House & Message to Our Folks. 2001 release. --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Correct CD available from the label, October 17, 2001

By 

Mark A Heyert (Hollywood, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jackson in Your House/Message to Our Folks (Audio CD)

Fuel 2000 Records has just released this CD and Don Cherry's "Mu First Part/ Mu Second Part" but the manufacturing plant mixed up the two titles and switched the music. Cherry's music inadvertently appears on this disc and vise versa. The defective CDs have black lettering on white background, whereas correct discs have been made with light blue background instead of white. Consumers wishing to exchange can send their bad disc(s) to Jazz CD, Fuel 2000 Records, 6607 Sunset Blvd., 2nd Floor, Hollywood, CA 90028

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Yes, it wanders, but that's half the fun, October 28, 2004

By 

Jason Gubbels (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jackson in Your House/Message to Our Folks (Audio CD)

This legendary band (almost more of a collective, really) found the post-Coltrane American jazz scene so dead they hightailed it to Europe, hanging out in France where they delighted the locals with freaky concerts featuring face paint and props, and cutting wild albums in Paris studios. (And hey, don't believe the Ken Burns/Jazz swipe that this Franco popularity means they must have been phonies. Europe's always been at least two steps ahead of us Yanks as far as appreciating good jazz.) This cd compiles two individually released 1969 albums onto one disc. And they're pretty great, too. To be sure, there's more whoops and giggles than I really need, and I find them least compelling when they use their voices rather than their instruments to communicate, but that's part of the AEC package. As Lester Bangs once wrote, you gotta sit through lots of beads rolling around on drum heads to get to the good stuff. And there is good stuff, too - the faux-Dixieland breakdown the group slides into halfway through the opening cut, for one. Or their rendition of Charlie Parker's "Dexterity," which starts out utterly straight and quickly detours into glorious atonality. And I even like the two long side-closers, full of found sounds, snatches of melody, and, yes, beads rolling around on drum heads. Crazy music, but always full of life and energy, and light-hearted, too - a fine intro to the formidable institution known as the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

5.0 out of 5 stars classic, January 16, 2010

By 

Bill Your 'Free Form FM Handi Cyber Print DJ ... (Mahwah, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Jackson in Your House/Message to Our Folks (Audio CD)

Dammit. Just when avant-gaurd jazz was finally getting heavy, getting a rep, street cred, along come the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

It is 1969. You are an avant gaurde jazz musican. You are making big statements about race and politics. You make the heaviest of the heavy music. Heavier than Hendrix, the Doors, or even the Beatles themselves.

In walks AEC: these guys play free jazz, but they are mixing dixieland, soul, little tunes; really, anything that pops into their eclectic little heads.

Is this some statement about the roots of jazz, race, the politics of music, a fist against the man, Nixon, Vietnam. No.

It is about making avant gaurd jazz fun. The mix of styles here is random: this band loves to play with the genres, and at times, seem to be having fun goofing on their implications. Like Zappa, AEC never tie themselves to a musical style. They pick up and drop pick up and drop over and over styles like hammers and saws.

This band sees all music as theirs for the taking, and this makes even their early work fresh forty years later.