Getting a letter from the IRS saying I owe them $5257 is never the best way of starting the day. Needless to say I was still smarting from this entirely dick news when I got home from work.If I had even and ounce of energy I might have gone for a run or a bike ride, something to clear my head, get my thoughts together, work out a way out of my new hole. Unfortunately I don't. I get as far as sitting dour faced looking through my t-shirt at my beer gut and then usually find something more important to do, something like say looking on the internet for pictures or plane crashes or trying to find a new book on Japanese war crimes.
So 'thinking about exercise' didn't help, maybe listening to some angry jazz will. I scanned my 'just in' pile and pulled out 'Certain Blacks' by Art Ensemble of Chicago. This is the album they did after the epic 'Les Stances a Sophie'. Yeah, this should do it, some random drums and a fucked up skronking saxophone, a bitter, belting expression of frustration. Only 'Certain Blacks' isn't quite like that.
It does have some great shouty vocal work, on the title track a discordant mass of chanting that builds up before breaking down into some free jazz and again elsewhere on the album, what the group do with their voices is as interesting if not more so than the sound they produce with their sonic weaponry.
'Certain blacks, certain blacks, dig they freedom, dig they freedom.'
The instrumentation is solid but a lot looser than I had expected and the album does not dissapoint, mainly because we are talking about one of the coolest bands on the entire planet. For the briefest of moments my financial worries are gone, then I am chanting along with them.
'Certain blacks, certain blacks, have no idea where they are going to find five grand, have no idea where they are going to find five grand.'
i used to think IRS stould for Italian Rape Squad.... It doesn't.
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