The Musical Concern
The Dear Hunter
Act III: Life and Death
(June 23, 2009 -- Triple Crown Recordings)

Caveat #1: Unless you are Guided By Voices please do not attempt more than eleven tracks. In fact, every cut beyond ten compounds the odds of you coming off as a self-pleasuring jellyfish awash in his own doings.

Caveat #2: The Beach Boys are history. They were a pop act with sporadic artistic aspirations, but a consistent drift toward novelty led to mediocrity. Your compositions will not thrive because you think Beach Boy vocals are cool.

Caveat #3: Concept albums are usually for schmucks. Even if you’re a jazz legend (see Digging Up Bones, below), the concept needs –really needs – to end on the final cut. (Google “ZZ Top Trilogy,” check out the earth-shattering tunes that littered that snatch of vinyl.)

Caveat #4: Freddie Mercury was one of the best vocalists in rock history. If you must, channel his voice, but please don’t turn tail mid-stride and revert to prog-emo hollering.

I would like to like this record; there’s so much ambition and musical ability at play, how could you not be drawn to it? The third recording in what is to be a collection of six. A madly prolific songwriter with a vision, who not only conceptualizes a grand, musical monstrosity, but also finds the players to pull it off.

The Dear Hunter is both a band and a boy. The band explores the life of the boy.

Imagine a writer, the best writer, your favorite writer, attempting to traverse six volumes of “the life of a boy”… … …

Okay, I’ve been snarky enough and negative enough, but I do enjoy elements of this record. At some point, perhaps in the next century, The Dear Hunter may distill all these improbable spirits and deliver a masterpiece. (Songs that peak my suspicion are in this week’s Soundtrack To Wednesday. Player in the sidebar.)

Caveat # 5: Never, ever, for as long as you breathe, title your album…(pretentious pause)…Life and Death.

JH

Digging Up Bones
Charles Mingus
Tijuana Moods
(1962 – Bluebird)

Wow! If confidence were rhythm and audacity were alto sax…

Recorded in 1957, two years before the milestone Ah Um Mingus, Tijuana Moods was finally released in 1962. Ah Um and Moods capture Mingus at the height of his creative genius. Nothing was beyond reach, and the fun was in the reaching.

Tijuana Moods, as the title implies, is heavy on traditional Spanish motifs, but these are the avenues of an afternoon’s dalliance. The opening hard bop number, "Dizzy Moods," signals nothing significantly out of the ordinary. Then the castanets start snapping on "Ysabel’s Table Dance" and you start to wonder where you turned.

This is a rambunctious, dirty piece of jazz that slams through blues interludes in ¾ time, quasi-classical piano, and flamenco guitar (sometimes mirrored on bass!)

Topping it all off: a healthy dose of real live human hollering, shouting, and screaming.

If you’re looking for something to cleanse your “aural pallet,” without question, this is it.

Mingus, ah um, again.

JH

The Gulf Coast Dispatch
Hot Hot Heat & The Three- Minute Fiction

There is nothing more boring than talking (or, in this case, writing) about “the heat.” But I do so, ad infinitum, because of its deleterious effect. The hotter the weather, the worse I feel. And since there is nothing to be done about it, I complain. Complaining steadies me, tides me over until I can get past what’s bothering me and move on to something fun or productive. (I might be the first person to type straight through a heat stroke.)

An early-season heat wave began on Thursday of last week, and today is at full boil. I mention it because the heat has shut down the world. Or the world south of Mobile, anyway. Everyone just stays inside, waits. The bank sign read 100 at 1 p.m. Monday, Tuesday was supposed to be hotter… Happy summer!

Point is: there’s nothing going on. Twenty seconds away from the AC, and my plans and ambitions are torn asunder; I become a lame, doddering idiot. Doom is all around. And nothing is more palpable than Doom. Personal Doom engulfs the writer; Vicarious Doom consumes the reader.

Enough, already…

NPR wants your short, short stories: an original piece of fiction that can be read in three minutes or less. The submission deadline is July 18th – so hurry, hurry! After hearing a sample reading (“For Sixty Cents” by Lydia Davis) I decided that the bar was set appallingly high and recused myself on the grounds of incompetence.

Should you (brave soul) decide to pursue it, you might have your story read on air. When it’s all said and done in late July, the king or queen of Three-Minute Fiction will be crowned and he or she will receive an autographed copy of a book…written by the judge…who edits at The New Yorker. Best of luck, and DO check out the sample reading mentioned above. Damn good.

JH