Customer Reviews

Ten By Two

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4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Terry Adams is an excellent pianist, even beyond his unique NRBQ stylings. He's playing with Sun Ra saxman. Terry has been compared as a mix of Monk, Sun Ra. Classical & jazz, mixed with blues, and omnipop. Terry has an important (and fun) musical voice.

Check it out.

The CD artwork is a throwback to the glory years of Sun Records, with the album title simply stating that 10 tracks are from the two performers, pianist Terry Adams (NRBQ) - who also plays a Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer - and alto saxophonist Marshall Allen (Sun Ra Arkestra).

Five numbers each are from the August 18, 1996, performance at the Brooklyn Museum and June 27, 1997, set during the Toronto DowntownJazz Festival. What makes the pairing click is how they easily flow into any number of musical genres - classic pop, jazz, avant-garde, blues - without a hitch. A neat gem is "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" - the iconic masterpiece from Hal David and Burt Bacharach - while the ragtime vibe is vivacious throughout "My Little Brother."

Adams and Allen obviously have a special professional/personal respect for each other and it is clearly heard note-by-note during the serious fun.

...if so please tell me so that I can revise my review and use it.Marshall Allen can play some decent licks on the alto sax,but it is his misfortune to be paired with one of the most absurdly non-jazz jazz piano players ever,Terry Adams..Maybe the sort of non-traditional,"cutting edge",earfully painful playing Adams delivers here may work well in the other musical circles Adams travels in,but here is is just terrible..As mentioned earlier,Allen can play,but his work is sabotaged at every turn by whatever it was,exactly,that Adams was trying to do.."Blue Skies" is a prime example..It opens with what sounds like amplified pan-pipes,out of tempo as they are played against Allen's sax ..The jarring combination of Allen's sort of traditional take on the old chestnut and Adam's senseless noise is the stuff that nightmares are made of...
I have to assume that what was attempted here was"experimental",and if so the experiment failed,dragging poor Marshall Allen down with it..Surely it must have been experimental,in that I just cannot imagine that there is a whole crowd of musicians out there who want to sound like this....