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B.B. KING
Deuces Wild
--Sean Murphy
DEREK BAILEY, PAT METHENY, GREG BENDIAN & PAUL WERTICO
The Sign Of 4
PITY THE POP-JAZZ Metheny fan who drops dinero on this exceptionally cacophanous outing. This stuff is so far out that many of those who lauded Song X, the guitarist's album with Ornette Coleman, will be rushing it down to the used CD stores after hearing only the first of the three discs. Bailey is one of the patriarchs of avant garde guitar playing, and Metheny does well in matching his abrasiveness fret for fret. Bendian and Wertico (the latter is the Metheny group's regular drummer) supply the rest of the assault. It's wonderfully aggressive stuff that both introduces Bailey to a larger audience and further proves Metheny's uncanny ability to excel at playing just about any style. If you categorized your CD collection from smooth to sandpaper rather than from A to Z, this would go in that slot where Zappa and zydeco music used to be. If you're inclined to write it off as mere noise, you're overlooking the intensity and cohesion these guys display. --Dave McElfresh
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Family Name
SOMEWHERE ALONG THE line--was it with Saturday Night Fever? The Big Chill? Fast Times at Ridgemont High?--movie soundtracks stopped being the incidental musical accompaniment to films and began their role as important marketing tools. These days it's rare to find a commercially available soundtrack that functions as more than an advertisement or product tie-in to help generate interest or income in a film. Family Name, then, is a real anomaly at a time when it can seem like crappy movies get made primarily to sell records. Like few soundtracks before, Family Name works as an auxiliary to its same-titled documentary; it opens new understandings of the film and deepens meanings already gained. The film, a recent winner at Sundance, traces the search of director Macky Alston--a young, white New Yorker--back to his roots in Chatham County, North Carolina, for evidence of his slave-owning ancestors, the slaves they owned, and possible family links between the whites and blacks who share the Alston name. The film is fascinating and moving despite its first-time filmmaker/narrator, who is at times overwrought with misplaced political correctness and white guilt. Family Name works, like all good documentaries, because it lets real people speak for themselves. More, it touches a deep place in Americans who'd like to believe that, despite the racial divide, we're a lot closer to each other than we'd think. The soundtrack album, simply, features songs performed by various Alstons--black and white, northern transplants and southern traditionalists. There's a Hank Williams song performed by the director's father, a preacher, former civil rights activist, and part-time country singer who moved north in the '60s. There's a Southern black gospel song done by the local Alston-Boldin Family and Friends Choir. And there's an original song offered by Fred Alston, an African-American classical musician born in North Carolina who we (and they) discover lives in Manhattan, one block from Macky. As eloquently as the film's cinematic portrayal, the soundtrack weaves musically a fabric of the Alston family--and by extension, the entire United States. Between Charlotte Blake Alston's howling gospel blues and Wallace Alston's blue yodel, we become acquainted with our musical--and, it turns out, genealogical--cousins. (Family Name is currently in limited theatrical release, and will air nationally on PBS next spring). --Roni Sarig |
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© 1995-97 Tucson Weekly . Info Booth |
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B.B. TAKES A page out of fellow elder statesman John Lee
Hooker's book and records an album of collaborations with musicians
from outside the blues genre. Unfortunately, while Hooker's recent
efforts have produced some stunning hybrids of the form (most
notably tunes cut with