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| alt.fan.frank-zappa | Underappreciated musical genius | 39,879 messages |
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| 03 Mar 17 12:30:13 |
For Immediate Release The Ed Palermo Big Band Releases “The Great Un-American Songbook Volumes 1 & 2” Feat. Covers of The Beatles, King Crimson, Traffic, Jethro Tull and Others! Featuring Zappa vocal legend Napoleon Murphy Brock! NYC - The Ed Palermo Big Band is Making America Un-Great Again with a Brilliant Blast of Anglophilia, transforming British Rock Treasures into Wildly Inventive Jazz Vehicles on the Double Album: “The Great Un-American Songbook Volumes 1 & 2” ( Cuneiform Records). From the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Jeff Beck to King Crimson, Traffic, and Jethro Tull, Palermo’s 18-piece ensemble Storms the British Invasion and Plants the American Flag (upside down). Crazy times call for outrageous music, and few jazz ensembles are better prepared to meet the surreality of this reality-TV-era than the antic and epically creative Ed Palermo Big Band. The New Jersey saxophonist, composer and arranger is best known for his celebrated performances interpreting the ingenious compositions of Frank Zappa, an extensive body of work documented on previous Cuneiform albums such as 2006’s “Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance” and 2009’s “Eddy Loves Frank”. His fifth project for the label, “The Great Un-American Songbook Volumes 1 & 2” is a love letter to the rockers who ruled the AM and FM airwaves in the 1960s via successive waves of the British Invasion. Featuring largely the same stellar cast of players as last year’s gloriously eclectic “One Child Left Behind”, the 18-piece EPBB lovingly reinvents songs famous and obscure, leaving them readily recognizable and utterly transformed. The first installments in what he hopes to be an ongoing project (he is currently working on an “Un-American Songbook, Volume 3”), these two volumes give a whole new meaning to Swinging London. “Volume 1” kicks off with guitarist/vocalist Bruce McDaniel belting Lennon and McCartney’s “Good Morning, Good Morning” (Palermo obsessives will notice that the track opens with a bleating goat, which is rumored to be the same creature heard at the end of “One Child Left Behind”…how’s that for continuity?) The Beatles provide the widest thread running through the project, including an instrumental version of “Eleanor Rigby” that’s a tour de force by violinist Katie Jacoby (who also tears up King Crimson’s prog rock masterpiece “Larks’ Tongue in Aspic, Part 2”). Palermo deploys his surging horns on an ecstatically sanguinary romp through Blodwyn Pig’s “Send Your Son to Die,” and delivers another blast of brass on the extended arrangement of Nicky Hopkins’ “Edward, The Mad Shirt Grinder,” a piece introduced on Quicksilver Messenger Service’s album Shady Grove. A pedant might quibble that a recording by a San Francisco band doesn’t belong in “The Great Un-American Songbook”, but was there a more British Brit than Hopkins, the era’s definitive session keyboardist? Anyway, the picaresque piece provides the players with a consistently inspiring vehicle for improvising, including Ben Kono’s torrid tenor, John Bailey’s thoughtful and beautifully calibrated trumpet, and another arresting violin solo by Jacoby. More than any other EPBB release, “The Great Un-American Songbook” is like rummaging around Palermo’s record collection and playing tracks at random after imbibing an espresso-laced bottle of absinth. He’s the first to admit that the album is a highly personal and nostalgia-induced undertaking. “Almost everything I do lately is reliving my past,” Palermo says. “With the craft and skill I’ve developed being an arranger for all these years, I can now take those songs that I grew up with and loved, and reinterpret them. I picked my favorite songs, songs that I’m going to want to hear and play a lot. There’s really no other way to explain my selection process.” “Volume 2” opens with another rule-breaking wild card, as Palermo mashes up the Berkeley punk band Green Day’s bitter indictment “American Idiot” with the point-counterpoint exchange of the West Side Story anthem “America.” In his completely unnecessary defense, Palermo points out that he’s inspired by the version of “America” that Keith Emerson recorded with his pre-ELP band The Nice, rather than the Broadway cast album or film soundtrack. Jethro Tull’s “Beggar’s Farm features an appropriately charged Ben Kono flute solo, while also unleashing Bruce McDaniel’s vocals, which register just the right tone of reverent irreverence (or is that irreverent reverence?). There are far too many highlights to mention them all, but Napoleon Murphy Brock’s vocals on The Crazy World of Arthur Brown’s “Fire” sounds like a lost Zappa outtake (Zappologists will catch numerous Zappa quotes and references laced throughout the project). Speaking of irreverence, Palermo populates the Songbook with a vivid cast of characters providing some running commentary, including his fey executive producer, Edvard Loog Wanker III, Pete Best, and Ringo Starr’s long-lost cousin, Mick Starkey, who ends the album with a brief blast of Beatlemania on “I Want to Be Your Man” and “Good Night.” But don’t miss the hilariously majestic hidden track featuring the cranky but always-game crooner Mike James (last heard pondering the meaning of it all on One Child’s “Is That All There Is?”). By the end of the long and winding road through Palermo’s musical backpages there’s no doubt that his nostalgia is our delight, as vintage rock songs make for state-of-the-art jazz. “Anything can be grist for the mill,” Palermo says. “Once I start an arrangement I get so into it. I’m going to put my spin on it.” In many ways, Palermo’s career is a case study in getting the last laugh. Born in Ocean City, New Jersey on June 14, 1954, he grew up in the cultural orbit of Philadelphia, which was about an hour drive away. He started playing clarinet in elementary school, and soon turned to the alto saxophone. He also took up the guitar, and credits his teenage obsession with Zappa to opening his ears to post-bop harmonies and improvisation. [continued in next message] --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2) |
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