I'd like to say i bought this to see what trumpet blower and all round jazz master Don Cherry was doing in the year that the SEX PISTOLS broke and punk rock came into it's own. I didn't, i bought it because Don Cherry looks like a mildly retarded boy scout wearing his mom's christmas jumper on the front cover and I thought 'If this sounds even one tenth as good as it looks then this could be a contender for my all time hot fifty.'Sadly it does not.
...This is not to say that 'Hear and Now' is bad by any means, it's just not the sound of a cross-dressing idiot boy with a thing for the scouting movement. It actually sails dangerously close to 'jazz fusion' and at times even 'funk'. it sounds scary but luckily there are moments of bizarre brilliance in there that manage to level it out into something exciting and listenable.
There's a theremin, some steel drums, a nice bit of what i shall call 'soul scatting' and the first track 'Mahakali' even even gets some heavy guitar, also and back to the heart of the matter there is no shortage of truly formidable trumpet work courtesy of the guy on the sleeve.
I wonder if he made that necklace himself?
I am listening as i write this and i have to say 'Surrender Rose' side 2 track 4 is lovely. Harps and angels, harps and angels.
What 'Hear and Now' lacks is any kind of lengthy jam, most of the songs hover around a very respectable 5 minutes which means nobody can really break loose and destroy shit... And shit needs to be destroyed as don himself would tell you were he not busy looking like a cross between a children's TV presenter and the vacant and fully indoctrinated member of some transglobal love cult....
Oooh! congos and a Fender rhodes.
I like this and can totally justify the 20 euros i paid for it off of ebay.de
In closing i rate it 52.6 out of jazz
yo dude,
ReplyDeletehe looks like he's going for a kind of 'sultan of swing' look (did he ever work with dire straights?), or 'buddha of bad jumperness' or something. he is also hovering in the air. do you think he actually looked at the sleeve before he said 'yep, thats the one - go to print'. or was he high? i think he was high.
20 euros? are you mental? i've got the 12 inch of gabrielle 'dreams' somewhere, you can buy it from me for, erm, 25 euros. deal? i'll throw in swv 'right here' for nothing.
duder