It was a bright, almost springlike (temps over 32!) Saturday afternoon. The wife had a hair-styling appointment. This gave me about an hour to schmooze around with Mike at the used record store (yow, I almost talked myself into buying a couple of thousand easy listening records for a mere $200) and to flip through some vinyl. Here are the results.

Oregon - Out Of The Woods. Folks out of the know will often lump these guys into the 'new age' category. Big mistake. McCandless, Walcott, Moore and Towner put out some fantastic music that just happened to cross over a lot of boudaries. This record is no exception.

Michael Brecker - Michael Brecker. To be honest, I have to call this one "Mark bought it because Pat Metheny plays on it". But seriously, there's some fine playing on this album, what with the crazy-great cast of Brecker on horns, Metheny on guitars, Charlie Haden on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums.

Louie Bellson & the Explosion Orchestra - Sunshine Rock. While there are some moments of swing on this release, most of the time is taken up blowing through some smokin' charts. Think Tower of Power or maybe Billy Cobham with a horn section. Also, an album like this serves as a prime example for why I'm so high on vinyl. Sunshine Rock is out of print. Crazy.

Yehudi Menuhin & Ravi ShankarWest Meets East. Two legendary masters, one of the sitar the other of the violin, get together for one thought-provoking session. Plus, all those tasty tablas! Man, I wish I owned a sitar.

Rick James - Bustin' Out Of L Seven. I do remember all those wild Funkadelic, Parliament and Rick James records being advertised in Creem magazeen back in the day. Never bought any at the time. Years later I got a copy of Funkadelic's One Nation Under A Groove and realized that I'd made a terrible mistake. All those years devoid 'o funk! This particular James record is a full-on funk assault, recorded before all of those nasty and sterile 80's studio habits came into being. Check it out.

Yesterday, fellow Blogcritic Wally Bangs posted The Punk Rock Mid-Life Continues, a perfect illustration of the power that art (visual art, music or, in this case, books) can have on our memories.

This got me to thinking about something that I wrote a while back. My 'important' Records described several albums that had made an impression on me, partially because of their musical uniqueness...but mostly due to the particular circumstances surrounding the record's acquisition.

Well, I forgot one very 'important' record: Pete Townshend's Empty Glass. Ok, I didn't really 'forget' it. It's just that the attached memories were so intense and bittersweet that, at the time, I didn't have the strength to revisit them.

During my first year of college I discovered that a friend of mine (who was still in her last year at our high school) had developed an interest in me beyond 'just friends'. This kinda thing has always whacked me upside the head a little. Really? She does? Wow.

So me & Shelley had one of those romances that can only happen when you're young and, well, full of being young. We reveled in in being young, in music and in each other. One particular night I remember picking up a bunch of food and heading over to her house (this was back when I was in my gonna-be-chef phase). I cooked us a sort of Japanese beef on the grill thing. After that we spent the rest of the night blasting records and becoming more and more horizontal (don't ask me where her parents were...off on a trip somewhere I think).

I can't quite express what a match we were. Back then I was as much of a music geek as I am now. The fact that some of her favorite records were The Who's The Kids Are Alright and Who Are You just added to the seeming perfectness of the situation. So on that one night we played Pete Townshend's Empty Glass over and over and over. The 'mystery' of some of that album's lyrics were all over the rock press. "Rough Boys", "And I Moved"....what the heck was he talking about? This made no difference to me because the memories of that evening were chemically bonded to Townshend's music and words. What he was getting at was irrelevant as those sweet and perfect recollections took precedence.

The next year Shelley began attending my university and we continued on.

But then something happened. To this day, I'm not really sure what it was. The final straw involved me making an emergency trip to her dorm room after a frantic call from her roommate. There was a mostly empty vodka bottle and a lot of confusion. After that we went out separate ways.

For years and years, Empty Glass remained on the shelf. I had no interest in revisiting that time period. When "Let My Love Open The Door" came on the radio, I had to change the station. Then, around the time of my (gulp) twentieth high school reunion, I somehow managed to get back in contact with Shelley via email. We had a nice 'what the heck happened' discussion. We came to the conclusion that we were both young and foolish and ended up treating each other the way we did for all sorts of reasons that were more or less out of our control. Then we got to really reminiscing. Now that was fun. Interesting the stuff you can remember from so long ago. We've both been through so much stuff over this time gap but some things remain fresh.

Years after that reunion of sorts, I am finally able to listen to Empty Glass without the pain...and a fine record it is.

Much like those pointless negative reviews where the writer (read: attacker) has never liked the band in question, I sometimes wonder if maybe it's just not right to go on about my favorite artists. Let's face it, I own just about every recording Pat Metheny has ever produced. Solo records. Sideman projects. Film music. Soundtrack singles. Group albums.

So, is it possible for an uber-fan such as myself to deal with a new Metheny composition in an impartial manner? Is impartiality worth anything in this context?

No. That's just not what I'm here for. Aside from the implication that music can be graded via some sort of empirical scale, there's one very important aspect of the music that is done little justice by the application of detachment:me. That is: I've been listening to this music for so many years (around 25) that the memories and emotional attachments simply cannot be ignored. This isn't just music, it a part of me.

So be it.

To these ears, The Way Up is one of the most impressive and thrilling compositions that Metheny and collaborator Lyle Mays have ever done. Metheny has spoken about his idea that the music of the Pat Metheny Group can be thought of as one long tune. The Way Up takes that idea, expands upon it and then distills it down to 68 minutes of Metheny Group essence. It's a career retrospective brought to life through a new and forward-looking four-part suite. A retrospective that's not looking backward? Isn't that a contradiction? Metheny himself states that "This record takes every aspect of the band to a new level."

That is not mere hyperbole.

Some sound fragments to consider:

• The staccato guitar (recalling his work with Steve Reich on Different Trains) that simulates the arrival of a train at the very start of the program
• The tag-team phrases that seem to complete each other's thoughts as "Opening" expands
• The gorgeous Lyle Mays piano solo during "Part Two". It's full of long chords played very rubato. The final notes of the solo morph into a Cuong Vu trumpet solo.
• The Gamelan-like "dropout" section in "Part One"
• The cymbal crashes that decay and fade out as "Part One" concludes...leading into the guitar arpeggios of "Part Two"

Structurally, The Way Up introduces a theme in "Part One" that is returned to at various points of the suite. This is very reminiscent of the Metheny/Mays album As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls. What's new is that nearly every other aspect of the band's history can be heard throughout. There's the exoticism of Imaginary Day, the tension of "Halflife of Absolution" (from The Road To You), the dynamics and sheer joy of First Circle's title track, and the slow-burning emotional overload of "Are You Going With Me" (from Offramp).

Relative Metheny Group newcomers Antonio Sanchez (drums) and Cuong Vu (trumpet) make huge contributions here. Metheny has always stressed the importance of the drummer in his band. Sanchez' rhythmic concept glues together both the composed and improvised sections so that the interplay seems effortless, even when the tempos are at their most breathtaking. Vu adds beautiful trumpet tones and ghostly atmospherics throughout.

Right! Then there's the guitar. There's Pat's signature hollow body, acoustic guitar, sitar (probably the Choral electric), guitar synth, distorted guitar, slide guitar, even a little EBow. Layers and layers of guitar. Clearly, Pat and Lyle have been inspired by the aural capabilities of the latest group lineup as the ideas flow nonstop. Of course, with Metheny's guitar winding its way through the proceedings.

It's still a mystery to me, this thing I call musical resonance. Why does one particular piece of music feel "at home" during the very first listen. I'll never know. What I do know is that The Way Up is already a part of my life. There's no taking that back.

(The Way Up was released today on Nonesuch Records)

The music that Miles Davis put together for William Cayton's Jack Johnson documentary could not have been more dissimilar from what Wynton Marsalis constructed for the recent Ken Burns' Unforgivable Blackness - The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. Wynton's take was more of a period thing, with bits of W.C. Handy and Jelly Roll Morton, in addition to his own compositions.

Miles, on the other hand, brought an all-star cast (Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Steve Grossman, Billy Cobham, Michael Henderson) into the studio and came out with something far closer to rock than jazz. A Tribute To Jack Johnson explodes out of your speakers with "Right Off". It's a big, swaggering workout based on just a few chords. It seems that that swagger was what Miles was going for, as Jack Johnson was surely that type of man.

The second (and closing!) tune, "Yesternow", is a much more pensive composition. It's got its moments of abstractness as well as loping funk. There's a fair amount of tension as well, which reminds me of the ugliness of the time in which Jack Johnson was a star. This tension and sense of disconnection is further amplified with a short quote from Miles' own "Shhh/Peaceful" (from In A Silent Way).

This has been an interesting week: Martin Luther King day, the Burns Jack Johnson documentary and the inauguration of President Bush...with all of the attendant celebration, dissent and snarling debate. It's that debate that makes me think that as far as we've come from the abject ignorance and cruelty of the past, we do still have some distance to travel.

On the morning of the day when we will coronate our Texas philospher king, I saw the following bumper sticker on a pickup truck:

First Iraq, Then France

Gee, I'm so proud to be an Amercian these days.

Hasbro has announced that their latest Mr. Potato Head figure is going to be called (ugh...I can't type it) "Darth Tater".

Yep, check out the ugly and geeky details here.

Big ears: usually a none-too-nice description of some poor kid on the elementary school playground. In the jazz world, "big ears" is a good thing. The musician with big ears has an advantage when responding to band mates and improvising against them. The big ears concept can also be extended to a musician's use of external influences.

In Bill Frisell's case the latter concept is more than evident with his stew of jazz, blues, folk, avant and several other musics that I'm sure I'm forgetting. On Unspeakable, Frisell partners with producer/musical mad scientist Hal Wilner resulting in one fine and thought-provoking chunk 'o sound.

Over the past I'm-not-sure how many years, there has been some grousing that Frisell has become too deeply enamored with the Americana thing. While I can see where they're coming from, I've found no problem with Frisell's track. Maybe the music had become too 'slow' for some. For a person like me, who sees too much speed in all areas of modern life, his introspective takes on American music were the perfect tonic. Plus, there's nobody else out there doing things like simultaneously paying tribute to Aaron Copland and Madonna (check out the respectful "Billy The Kid" and the deconstruction of "Live To Tell", both on Have A Little Faith).

Never one to be afraid of hefting a big sonic palette, Frisell adds Wilner's production genius as well as his turntable and sampler skills. Two guys with big ears..hooboy, this is some tasty stuff. Another wrinkle here is the groove. While you wouldn't mistake this material for, say, John Scofield with Medeski, Martin & Wood, there is definitely some percolatin' rhythm going on. The opening "1968" hops along on the strength of the percussion of Don Alias and Kenny Wollesen while many of the more familiar elements write the story: chiming guitar lines and 'commentary' guitar responses. Who better to improvise with Frisell than the man himself? Rounding out this sound are some string arrangements executed by the stellar "858 Strings" of Jenny Scheinman (violin), Eyvind Kang (viola) and longtime Frisell cohort Hank Roberts on cello.

For the fan of the 'thoughtful Frisell', there are tunes such as "Sundust" (with very cool "Tribal Calling" samples), "Gregory C" (all Frisell and Wilner), and especially "Hymn For Ginsberg", which pairs up the 858 Strings with Frisell at his pastoral best.

Then, for those who first encountered Frisell in the Before We Were Born era (I'm in that group), there are things like "Stringbean" (full of those angular guitar lines we all love), "Fields of Alfalfa" and "Old Sugar Bear".

Unspeakable closes things out with eight minutes and fifty-nine seconds of "Goodbye Goodbye Goodbye". Said to be based on Teddy Lasry's "Sonate En Plein Ciel", this is one spooky piece of music that starts out all American Gothic but ends closer to The Scream. Pure Frisell, I tell ya.

You can think of Unspeakable as a Bill Frisell career retrospective, played out via new compositions. If this seems like a contradiction in terms, just give the album a listen. You'll come around.

Gees, I haven't had that much fun watching a football game since the Pat won the superbowl over St. Louis.

I'd have to say that I kinda feel bad for Manning. They've gotta get him a real defense.

P.S. If I read one more article where the writer uses the words "patchwork defense", I swear I'm gonna have a hissy fit.

One of the most surreal moments of my life occurred several years ago on an early morning drive to work. I used to get up extremely early on Friday mornings to get to work before 6 AM, ensuring an early exit and time to go out with my dad and shoot some pool (always got my ass kicked at the table).

On one particular morning drive I had picked Philip Glass' Mishima so as to get my head cleared. As I'm rounding a corner in the middle of Nashua, New Hampshire, I see a woman standing in the middle of her lawn doing something quite peculiar: she was bent over at the waist slightly so that she could more easily hold a piece of paper beneath her dog's butt...the dog was in the middle of pooping.

Hooboy! The combination of Glass' repetitive arpeggios and the woman/dog/paper/poop thing just about pegged my surreal meter.

Now, in my area of the woods we've been having some bizarre weather. During last night's drive home the temperature went from 35 all the way up to nearly fifty. This was while I gained over a thousand feet of elevation. I hit one of those crazy whiteout fog banks that rendered me blind for a few terror-ridden seconds. Throughout the night the wind blew in angry gusts that squeezed funny creaking & groaning noises from our old home. Some time in the early morning the blasts of rain moved in.

This morning, after I'd fed our dog, I found myself standing in the doorway of our three-season porch begging the poor dog to 'do his business'. He seemed pretty unperturbed by the rain that was pelting him (his ears dragging through the mud and ice). In fact, he was much more interested in all of the hammering and voices coming from the guys renovating the old police station next door. As I gently encouraged the dog it struck me that I was now a kin to that lady with the paper. Cripes. Then the shifting music of Mishima materialized in my head. Oh no.

Ya know, I'm gonna have to rent that movie some day. I mean, I just know it's not about dogs & pooping & stuff. It's about some dude named Mishima, right?

Last Friday, I said that my next CD vs. LP cage match was going to be Billy Bragg & Wilco's Mermaid Avenue. The event was scheduled for Sunday evening but was preempted by some unexpected weirdness from the Flaming Lips. So last night was the night.

After many listens to Mermaid Avenue (what a great, great record) I selected three tunes that best illustrated the various musical configurations presented: "Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key" (with Natalie Merchant on backing vocals), "Walt Whitman's Niece" (full band with Bragg on vocals) and "Birds And Ships" (Bragg on acoustic guitar, Merchant on lead vocals).

First up was "Birds And Ships". The verdict?

Bad pressing.

That's right. My careful tune selection turned out to be a complete waste of time. This particular LP sounds like crap. It's either one of the worst analog mastering jobs in the medium's history or the maybe the press operator had had too much to drink over a long lunch. Muddy midrange, vocal distortion. Blech. It reminds me of some of those Springsteen bootlegs I used to listen to. Just plain ugly. I've heard records like this before they're usually the sad result of abusive treatment: dirty or poorly adjusted equipment, brutish tracking forces, etc. This was a brand spankin' new album. Good thing this is just a loaner.

Oh well, I'm not shocked by these results...but maybe just a little disappointed. I've grown so fond of this record that plans were forming in my head to seek out my own 180 gram copy. I've got to do some more investigating, as there's gotta be others out there who've had the same experience.

The liner notes begin: "Mermaid Avenue is the name of the street in Coney Island, Brooklyn, that was home to Woody Guthrie and his wife, Marjorie and their kinds in the years that followed world war II." This records sounds like it had been left out in the middle of Mermaid Avenue for a week or so.

Stay tuned. The next digital/analog matchup: Trout Mask Replica.

OK...so last night I'm just about to click everything off and head off to bed when I stumbled upon the beginning of Austin City Limits. It's the Flaming Lips. Hmmmm. I really loved The Soft Bulletin because it took such a long time to digest. Just what the heck was this stuff? Pop? Classic rock? Art rock with Led Zeppelin traces? The answer would be: "Yes".

So on the tube they first play "Race For The Prize" (from The Soft Bulletin) followed by "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Part 1". Stage left and right is populated by "dancers" in furry animal costumes. To add to the weirdness, there are also a couple of folks in "smily sun" outfits....sort of like the suns we used to draw with crayon back in school (or continue to draw now in the margins of our notepads during particularly boring meetings).

Then... lead singer Wayne Coyne introduces quirky sorta-folk singer Cat Power. Coyne pours some fake blood on his face before the whole ensemble launches into a nasty-if-sloppy cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs".

At this point my mouth is slightly agape.

A partially psychedelic cover of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" is then played with Vernan Drozd, Steven Drozd's dad, on saxophone. The whole crazy mess ends with the Lips 'oldie', "She Don't Use Jelly".

I tell ya, this is what's great about music. I'm all a-fricken-tingle.

This is the weekend of the "big battle". That'll be Mermaid Avenue on CD vs. Mermaid Avenue on vinyl.

A friend of mine insists that this album provides an example of 'the vinyl is definitely worse than the CD'. I've never run into a situation like this before, though it's certainly possible. Some recordings in the 80's were done very poorly and probably sounded cruddy on both formats. Put the old vinyl up against the modern remastered version and the black circle version would easily lose that fight.

But...I have my reasons to doubt that the Mermaid Avenue vinyl will lose. Firstly, my audio buddy is using an old turntable, one that he so far has refused to perform basic maintenance on such as oiling the spindle. My turntable (a VPI HR-19 Jr., a gift to myself for oh-my-god-i'm-turning-forty) is in much better shape. We'll see. Results will be posted next week.

Oh, if you're unfamiliar with this particular slab of music history, this is Billy Bragg and Wilco taking on the lyrics of Woody Guthrie. The results, to my ear anyway, are spectacular. Woody'd a been proud. The Amazon review begins "A ghost, a band, a troubadour", which is just about perfect.

There's always been controversy. DJ's started scratchin'...was that 'music'? Rappers started samplin'...what that music?

Now we come to the culture of the remix taken to its ultimate end: the mash-up. The phenomenon has been around for well over a decade. Last year though, a new controversy emerged when DJ Danger Mouse mashed Jay Z's Black Album with the Beatles' classic White Album. The result was The Grey Album. EMI records was not pleased. Too bad, really, because the Grey Album was a load of fun and could have been used to generate more interest in both Jay Z and the Beatles. It was a blast to hear 'modern' music folded into an old favorite.

Oh well, cease & desist it is. Not that it mattered. Support for the concept resulted in a mass-download day dubbed Grey Tuesday.

So here we have a 'legitimate' mash-up again featuring Jay-Z's stuff run headlong into Linkin Park.

I'm pretty well shocked at the results. While I'm a fan of Jay-Z, Linkin Park has mostly left me cold. So, like folks in those old Reece's Peanut Butter Cup ads, I'm blown away that these two things taste so great together. Jay-Z's rapping, which can have a cool sorta-swing to it, gives the Linkin Park material a huge lift. Right from the start, "Dirt Off Your Shoulder/Lying From You" just plain rocks. On its own, I get kinda bored with songs like "Lying From You" because of the monochromatic nature of the sound, the only dynamics coming from the quiet/loud juxtapositions. Add Jay-Z to the mix and Linkin Park's guitar sound explodes in proximity to his rhymes.

The combination of "Numb" and "Encore" is similarly impressive, while "Izzo" and "In The End" actually sound like they might have been written by the same artist. By the time I got to the closing "Points Of Authority/99 Problems/One Step Closer", that danged volume control had edged its way dangerously close to the ear damage region...and that is always a good sign.

It was a very good year in the jazz/instrumental music world. So many choices, so many sounds. You can't go wrong with anything from the following list. Trust me.

• Spring Heel Jack - The Sweetness of Water

  Over-the-top great collective improvisation. Evan Parker shines.

  (Original Blogcritics review here)

• Marilyn Crispell - Storyteller

  Airy piano melodicisms from my current queen of the jazz piano.

  (Original Blogcritics review here)

• Arto Lindsay - Salt

  Lindsay is a tough one to categorize. This is as much pop as it is jazz. What it is is sultry 'n slinky.

• Matthew Shipp - Harmony & Abyss

  A Jazz ensemble cavorts with Flam the electronics wizard.

  (Original Blogcritics review here)

• Jarrett, Peacock, DeJohnette - The Out-of-Towners

  I didn't want to impart any order to this list but I must say that this particular record spent more time in my player than any other. Easily some of the best music ever made by this trio.

  (Original Blogcritics review here)

• Carla Bley - The Lost Chords

  Bley's group spins an early childhood musical memory into sheer magic.

  (Original Blogcritics review here)

• Stephan Micus - Life

  A Zen koan becomes a musical story.

  (Original Blogcritics review here)

• Craig Taborn - Junk Magic

  If you want to know why I'm so high on the Thirsty Ear Blue Series, look no further than this mind-expanding record.

  (Original Blogcritics review here)

• Patricia Barber - Live: A Fortnight In France

  Barber playing live with the Verse touring ensemble. Nobody today takes subtlety to such a level.

• John Scofield Trio- EnRoute

  It's tough to go wrong with Scofield, Steve Swallow and Bill Stewart.

  (Original Blogcritics review here)

I was so pooped out last night that I spent nearly two hours watching episodes of Viva La Bam on MTV.

This might be a new low for me. Oh well. (I laugh really, really hard when they start subtitling Don Vito).

Ah, a full week of decompression. Lounging around the house in the early morning, cup of coffee in hand, catching up on pile of reading, hangin' out with the new dog (an 8-month old Cocker Spaniel puppy).

But then New Year's Eve rolls around and I've got to venture out of the house for provisions (soap, coffee, a present for a visiting cousin) and stuff. Off to the town I go.

First: to a bank. I make a quick mental note to find a credit union in this area because, holy jeebers batman, $1.75 is waaaay too much to pay for my own money! Next stop, the bookstore. With a little help I find a copy of Natalie Goldberg's The Great Failure : A Bartender, A Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth. My cousin really enjoyed the copy of Long Quiet Highway that we gave him so I figured he deserved the followup volume. Now, it's off to the health food store for some rockin' french roast and a few bars of soap. Jasmine, verbina and ginseng found their way into my bag. Did you know that they still make pine tar soap? Yow, that stuff is way stinky.

Mission accomplished. Now, what with that huge infusion of Christmas music/movies (I managed to watch The Christmas Story ("You'll Shoot Your Eye Out!") twice during the marathon) I was in definite need of an aural palette cleanser. I actually picked up this Kayo Dot cd several weeks ago, but it had made its way into my player only once. Well, this was the perfect selection. Monstrous, dissonant guitar chording. Bits of free-ish jazz. They seem to be on the same wavelength as Godspeed You Black Emperor. All I know is that it was a blast driving through the countryside along with this joyous noise symphony.

Oh yea: Happy New Year Everybody.