We Need to Dance

After the Miami Heat intro vids and The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings: Ninth Edition.

**** Dwyane Wade, Number Three Guard. Highly unexpected set from an alto player best known for his pitch-perfect standards and ballads. Here, Wade stretches out in various spare trio settings. With piano and drums, he sets up dense thickets of squelches and squeals; piano and bass bring out his deliberate, elegiac side like never before; in the more conventional sax/bass/drums format, Wade tears through angular post-bop originals like a man pushing his creative capacity to the point of exhaustion, even collapse.



*** Udonis Haslem, Forty Forward. Haslem had always been a sturdy pianist in the Bobby Timmons vein, but when got the chance to record for Blue Note, he took advantage of the extra rehearsal time and created something far more ambitious. Sticking to the standard soul jazz trio, and finding himself constantly returning to its cliches, Haslem nevertheless aims high with these forty short pieces about his conversion to Islam and travels in the Middle East. Engimatic bassist Babar, making his only appearance on record here, is the only one whose solos consistently realize this exalted mood.



***1/2 Mario Chalmers, C-H-A-L-M-E-R-S. There were plenty of other trumpeters around New York with the same slashing tone, technical facility, and knack for heady skeins of harmonic sophistication. Sons of Miles and Dizzy alike, they were a dime a dozen, each more impressive than the next and thus somehow bringing the whole bunch down. What makes Marion Chalmers's debut so remarkable is that not only does he capture a moment, he transcends it due in no small part due to the fast company he keeps.



***** Michael Beasley, Forward. Beasley was a prodigy in the truest, and most unfortunate, sense. He was barely in his twenties when this masterpiece was recorded, and already had several standards to his name. Forward was unlike any other jazz being made at the time, and it remains elusive to this day. Employing a crude form of multi-tracking, unorthodox combinations like flugelhorn, banjo, and bagpipes, and sometimes changing instruments mid-improvisation, it's nevertheless Beasley's raw, vibrant piano that steals the show.



**1/2 Carlos Arroyo, Number Eight. Blue Note rarely attempted to cash in on trends, but one of its few truly venal records is also one of the strangest. Arroyo was a largely forgettable salsa pianist with progressive tendencies. Cutting Latin versions of the music from the then-obscure British television series The Prisoner falls somewhere between crass opportunism and off-beat pop culture plundering. Arroyo is all over the place, sometimes solemn, oftentimes festive, as if he were at once trying to take the material too seriously and reject its source. A curiosity worth hearing.

*** Quentin Richardson, Five. An oddly iconic title for such a workmanlike set. Richardson's trombone can be heard on a slew of other recordings from this period, ranging from proto-funk to cerebral cool. He's the sort of player, and writer, whose solos and compositions typically include at least one passage of utter ingenuity and another that borders on pap. Five is his only solo effort. While far from the archetypal quintet outting, it's nevertheless admirable from start to finish.

** Daequan Cook, Number Fourteen Guard. Cook was a sporadic, slapdash drummer best known for his hi-hat flourishes and otherwise low-key timekeeping. This is the kind of record that should discourage drummers from ever thinking they can take the lead in the studio, even if the label's put them up to it.

Slipping at Slow Speeds

Nothing FD-worthy is happening, and I have a day gig, a book, and an impending wedding to worry about. So feast upon this clip of Kareem playing congos on one of my favorite modal beginner's standards, and try and decide what this means for BASKETBALL IS NOT JAZZ.

Speaking of which, earlier today Ziller and I got bored and tried to figure out which positions would correspond to which instrument if basketball WERE jazz. You'd think that soloing would equate roughly to scoring, because of style and voice and improvisation and all that. But we agreed that, in a conventional quintet, the piano comes closest to approximating the role of the point guard. Things got really screwed up when I suggested that scoring might actually equal drums, since both are alternately propulsive, matter-of-fact, jarring, and still. That would make the big men . . . the horn section?

So basketball still isn't jazz, but does offer a interesting inversion of the usual listening hierarchy, and maybe some compositional cues. Please tell me what you think, and damn, I wish I could get this video to play.

AT LAST

Feels like I've been waiting all of FD's life for this to turn up.

Proceed below for some Quentin Richardson projection.

UPDATE: Holy crap. Via Zillz, Gerald Wallace with some choice quotes on his future in Charlotte, and the devil that's taken over there:

"My agent called me and he had talked to (GM) Rod (Higgins) and those guys ..." Wallace said. "I said, 'Well, I'm in Alabama with my kids. Call me if I've got to move.' That was it."

"He's trying to break me out of the one-man defensive thing," Wallace said. "He wants all five guys to play defense. ... If you go for those steals and miss and the way you're going to leave your teammates hanging."

Of course, I've edited out the parts where Brown suggests that Wallace is his kind of player, because I'd never believe anything that snake says for a second. And hearing that Wallace is being asked to stop being a "one-man defensive thing" positively sinks my ship.

"FREE DARKO" was stupid, "FREE AMIR" only a matter of time. But at this point in his career, "FREE GERALD" would be as big a downer as I can imagine.

SEE, BASKETBALL IS NOT JAZZ

Someone needs to speak to Tom about NBA Electability (scroll down to the table at column's end). Chris Paul's FBP quotient is through the roof.