As promised in my review of the Knitting Factory’s tribute to Captain Beefheart, I’m going to take a walk through the many high points of the Beefheart discography. Altogether, this will add up to a Beefheart Top Ten, but since it’ll be more in-depth than I usually go in such pieces, we’re serializing it. First up, a look at his 1967-68 output, encompassing his first three LPs.

Safe As Milk (Kama Sutra/Buddah)
There’s earlier material eventually collected as an EP titled The Legendary A&M Sessions, which includes a legendary "Diddy Wha Diddy," but it’s safe to start the Beefheart story with Safe As Milk, reportedly a favorite album of John Lennon’s.

Shelagh McDonald: Let No Man Steal Your Time (Castle)

The debut album by young Scottish singer songwriter Amy MacDonald is housed in a retro-style sleeve that suggests it has been scuffed and dented by years of careless sifting and neglect. She is garnering enthusiastic reviews, has the grit of the late Kirsty MacColl, and seems assured of long and major success.

Paul Martin: Paul Martin (Distortions)

If finding brings joy, then seeking permits that beguiling whisper of reward. Paul Martin's extremely select excursions into the vinyl wasteland are alluring items of suitable cachet, Two singles in '66 and '67, then not a whisper till 1996 when Distortions issued an album, limited to 1000 units, compiling these and fifteen other lost songs culled from acetates and four track demos. It proved to be an Aladdin's Cave of well-crafted garage pop; the ripples it created quickly vanished, and the record is now sadly deleted.

Jimmy Giuffre, the great modern jazz clarinetist (and saxophonist and flutist), died on Thursday (4/24) of pneumonia, two days before he would have celebrated his 87th birthday. If not for that, this article would have appeared on May 27 to commemorate the 15th anniversary of his last recording before Parkinson’s Disease ended his playing career. That recording, Conversations with a Goose, still stands as a superb valedictory album.

Thank heavens for going off script.

In terms of mass media (what's left of it anyway), we live in such a heavily scripted era -- everything managed, sanctioned, picked over, obsessed upon; it makes the 1950s look like a time of cultural hedonism. But at a recent (April 16) taping of the new, Elton John-backed TV show (remember TV?) Spectacle: Elvis Costello With ..., scripts were checked at the door.

What else would one expect when you get Elvis Costello interviewing Lou Reed?

It has been over twenty-five years since Captain Beefheart’s last official studio album, Ice Cream for Crow, was released on Virgin in 1982. At the time it seemed like the musical career of Beefheart, the nom de plume of Don Van Vliet, was on the ascent, but he then abandoned music and built a second career as a painter. His musical hiatus has lasted much longer than his musical activities did. (It is rumored that health problems have been a factor.) This is a great loss to us music lovers, as he was one of the most original creators and performers of his time, unique in rock despite having influenced many (look for an overview from me in a day or two).

R.E.M.: Accelerate (Warner Brothers)

As The Who, Van Halen, and so many other rock bands have shown over and over, a group cannot lose a member without irrevocably changing things. Consider the case of R.E.M., whose original drummer, Bill Berry, retired eleven years ago; they smartly never tried to replace him. Though mostly good, their three Berry-less albums - 1998's Up, 2001's Reveal, and 2004's Around the Sun - have been increasingly…less enthusiastic.

Vashti Bunyan: Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind (Fat Cat)

The critical and commercial resurgence of Vashti Bunyan – from a sort of leftfield Marianne Faithfull (without the vulnerable success, or the tragedy) to bona-fide Sixties siren and revitalized recording artist – has been painstaking, unlikely, and snail-like. Never a star, though she knew plenty who were, she was cursed with a name that tripped off the tongue for all the wrong reasons, and possessed a wanderlust that wasn't the best approach for maintaining a career.

There are many roads to the top of the musical mountain. For some, it is Julliard and years of practicing. For others, it's touring from the back of a battered van across the North of England or the South of America. For some, it's the Mickey Mouse Club. And then there's Ashley Alexandra Dupré. Otherwise known as "Kristin." Otherwise known as the, well, you know what she's known as....

But this is a music review, not a social review. So, what's the story on her musical chops? Like almost a million other Americans, I dropped 98 cents into the internet and got her song, "What We Want." So?

Tarantula: Tarantula (A&M)

What was quintessential can quickly fade. It then becomes the gift of those who decide where relevance exists, and there lies a problem. History is largely a composite, a construct by those who were not present. Much of what is deemed to be wholly representative of an era was largely ignored at the time: the poetry of Rimbaud, the paintings of Van Gogh or the songs of Nick Drake. Messages can take a long time to get through to receptive ears, and one such missive that remains in transit is Tarantula's sole album, from 1969.

As was the case with my best-of-2007 list of new rock, pop, and soul releases, most things on this list are on independent labels. Sadly, though, that’s because the major labels (aside from Universal-distributed ECM) just don’t bother with jazz’s low-selling artists anymore. Even Blue Note is more interested in chasing the adult contemporary market in the wake of their success with Norah Jones, though their reissues are still a great boon. But in terms of musical quality (as opposed to sales numbers and promotion), does it make any difference whether a Dave Douglas album is released on RCA or on his own Greenleaf imprint? As long as we get it….

As the pop music mainstream becomes ever more corporate, lowest common denominator music aimed at mall-culture teens dominates. Outside the mainstream, though, diversity reigns and anything can happen. The most interesting part of this phenomenon is that it’s mostly happening on small labels. When you don’t have to sell a minimum of 500,000 (or whatever) copies of an album to hit your corporate goals – when 50,000 is considered a runaway success – a lot more interesting things can happen, or are allowed to happen. So there’s no need to lament the decline of your favorite genre, be it pop, rock, soul, because if you look beyond the flashy flavor of the month, there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on.

Any "death of classical" moanings can be safely dismissed merely by observing the continued profusion of classical recordings each year. Has it become more of a niche market? Yes. But the internet, especially the fine website Arkivmusic.com (which has the best search engine), makes it easier to track down CDs on small labels - and big ones as well, in the wake of Tower's demise and the downsizing of the classical department at Virgin. And of course there's iTunes for those (unlike this writer) who don't fetishize the physical packaging. I don't pretend that this is a definitive list, but I am convinced of the lasting value of every item on it.

There are the obvious gifts that you’ve probably already seen recommended in many guides like this. Legacy’s completion of its series of Miles Davis box sets covering his Columbia studio sessions up to his 1975 sabbatical, The Complete On the Corner Sessions, is certainly another commendable entry, with six CDs documenting 16 1972-75 sessions that revolutionized jazz as much as anything else Davis had done – though this radical rethink certainly met more resistance at the time. But Miles fans already have a lot of it.

Even before I met Joel Dorn, I felt like I knew him. The CDs his label 32Jazz issued almost always included his thoughts about and/or experiences with the musicians and music contained therein, sometimes reverent and more often witty. He could’ve had as great a career as a writer as he had as a producer. When I did meet him, it was to interview him for a now-defunct website. Alas, my tape recorder malfunctioned and I was unable to transcribe from it and thus wrote no article. I felt doubly guilty because he had been so warm and friendly. He had been in person exactly the man I had extrapolated from his writing.

Tony Bird: Tony Bird (CBS, 1976)
Bird of Paradise (CBS, 1978)

Born in 1945 and growing up in Malawi, Tony Bird might be expected to have absorbed some unusual influences, and indeed he did. Long before Paul Simon’s Graceland brought quirky African vibes to bear on Western folk, Bird created music of wonderful fusion and vibrancy.

I was in college at the University of Akron when Talking Heads: 77 blindsided me. Prior to college I’d been hopelessly addicted to the English music scene, having seen Mott the Hoople, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, and Roxy Music during my high school years at the very majestic Akron Civic Theater (a smaller version of New York's Beacon Theater). I would then latch onto progressive rock and graduate to the arena spectacles of ELP and Yes. But when punk broke, all bets were off.

Levon Helm and the RCO All Stars
Live at the Palladium NYC New Year's Eve 1977 (Levon Helm Studios)
Levon Helm Dirt Farmer (Vanguard)

Arguably one of the finest popular music groups in recent decades, The Band officially disbanded in 1976, its members having been on the road for almost twenty years commencing in the late '50s as Ronnie Hawkins’s band, on to notoriety as Bob Dylan’s backup and collaborators, then stardom on their own as The Band.

With this latest trio effort by pianist Matthew Shipp, we are led deeper into his dark, lyrical maelstrom. Slight touches of Tristano can be felt as Shipp caresses and brushes the keys in his usually offensive (as opposed to defensive) manner, as in the title piece, where he creates an inviting rather than threatening whirlwind, always on the attack, in his brutal love affair with his instrument. Here we are taken on short, sometimes bumpy rides, as with the Herbie Nichols-esque, off-kilter rollercoastering of “Key Swing.”

One of the greats of country music is gone. Henry William “Hank” Thompson died at the age of 82 on Tuesday night at his home in the Fort Worth suburb of Keller after a short bout with aggressive lung cancer. With 29 Top 10 Country hits from 1948 through 1975, and over sixty million records sold, he earned induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989 and into the Nashville Songwriters HOF in 1997.

As a youngster, Thompson won radio station WACO’s talent show so often that after awhile he was banned from competing, though they kept him around, first as a guest singer and then as a weekly show host (for which position he was dubbed Hank the Hired Hand).

Abercrombie ascends and transcends on this disc, released earlier this year. The Third Quartet achieves a level of sublimity this ensemble flirted with on their previous two superb outings, Cat 'n Mouse (2002) and Class Trip (2003). Abercrombie, in pursuit of “a more acoustic” sounding band relative to his earlier units (he seems to re-invent his bands about every five years or three to four recordings) has evolved a spatial ambience inclusive of his quietest acoustic musings and the energy of his most bombastic electric playing with a stunning subtlety, with violinist Mark Feldman’s additional intuitive intertwining and creative violin contributing to the overall chamber jazz atmosphere.

Born October 10, 1917 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Monk was raised in New York City from 1922 on. He started playing piano at age nine and eventually applied his keyboard skills to playing in church and going on tour with an evangelist. His first studio recordings came with Coleman Hawkins in 1944, while his first recordings as a leader came for Blue Note in 1947. By that point Monk had already had a major influence on the development of bebop as the house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse.

Radiohead: In Rainbows (online edition)

Expectation can make you crazy. And with the release of their latest effort, via a unique pay-as-you-wish internet scheme, Radiohead announced in more ways than one that they know the stakes. In Rainbows popped into my inbox at 2:22 AM New York time (I had opted for the fixed price deluxe set, which will be delivered in December, including vinyl albums!, but still got my download access) and as soon as I unzipped it I was pulled in by a magnet of sound.

The first two public figures whose deaths emotionally affected me both died 25 years ago: Thelonious Monk on February 17, 1982, and then Glenn Gould on October 4. It was partly because they were pianists, and as a pianist myself – not that I was ever any good, but a decade-plus of lessons creates an identity for one – I had paid a great deal of attention to their work. I identified with them because they played how I would have played, if I had not utterly lacked the skills to. (Monk I will discuss next week, when the 90th anniversary of his birth rolls around.)

The guitarist with two brains and four hands is back. Hunter is prolific and a restless advocate of changing things and mixing it up with a humor and skill that’s attracted a diverse fan base including the jam band crowd, jazz guitar buffs, and more. On Mistico, Hunter puts the twang back in the thang with energetic audiokinetics for nine original tracks. The loose, often jangling, borderline psychedelic-dream instrumentals tend to have a strong ’60s throwback vibe via effects and the stripped-down analog recording technique employed.

Josef Erich Zawinul, who died on Tuesday of skin cancer, was a major pioneer of jazz fusion. His best epitaph was written by Miles Davis in 1970 for the sleeve of the LP Zawinul: "In order to write this type of music you have to be free inside of yourself and be Josef Zawinul with two beige kids, a black wife, two pianos, from Vienna, a Cancer and Cliché-Free."

Born in Vienna, raised playing accordion, Zawinul was classically trained but came to love jazz and moved to the United States in 1959, working with trumpeter Maynard Ferguson (where he met saxophonist Wayne Shorter) and then singer Dinah Washington.

John Cage (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) revolutionized music as much as anyone in the 20th century. His first important music was for percussion ensembles, utilizing both homemade and ethnic instruments as well as "found objects." He achieved a breakthrough when he moved this style of composition onto the piano by playing objects between the strings to alter the sound and achieve a more percussive effect. This "prepared piano" style caught the attention of avant-garde tastemakers, and he moved to New York, where his music shocked mainstream audiences and critics.

Home Schooled: The ABCs of Kid Soul (Numero)

The soul aficionados at Numero have dug deep into the crates for this one – only experts will recognize any of these artists – and handily matched the glories of their Eccentric Soul series. “Children should be seen and not heard” definitely doesn’t apply to the kiddie acts featured here – more like “you’ve got to hear this to believe it.” Yes, Michael Jackson wasn’t the only prepubescent popster making the scene in the Seventies.

Popa Chubby: Electric Chubbyland, vols 1&2 (Blind Pig)

Let me continue the tradition of virtually every reviewer feeling compelled to mention that Popa Chubby began life as one Ted Horowitz in The Bronx, in the neighborhood, as the promo material points out, “immortalized in Robert DiNiro’s film A Bronx Tale. So, Popa and I actually share the same childhood neighborhood, except I was born almost 20 years earlier than him and actually in the time the movie was set in.

With the death of Max Roach, we have lost the last of the first generation of bebop innovators from the circle of players who cohered around the core of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk in New York in 1941-45. Roach started playing in jam sessions with Parker in Harlem in 1942, joined Gillespie’s band in 1944, and was the drummer on Parker’s first recording session as a leader (November 26, 1945 for Savoy), taking a solo on “KoKo,” Parker’s brilliant and challenging extrapolation from the standard “Cherokee.” Even if Roach had never done a session as a leader, his ’40s-’50s work in the bands of Gillespie, Parker, Monk, Bud Powell, Miles Davis (including the Birth of the Cool sessions), Dexter Gordon, Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins (Saxophone Colossus and Freedom Suite), and many more would ensure his reputation.