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Euro-jazz discovery
Just when you thought the vault-scouring reissue operations had scraped bare the bottom of the 60s Euro-jazz barrel, the deep-digging Jazzanova crew has come up with a monumental score in the private holdings of song publisher and club owner Hans Wewerka . The fab Forum West (Sonar Kollectiv) comp presents 17 superbly tight small-combo swingers cut by groups led by Joe Haider , Fritz Pauer , Rolf & Joachim Kuhn , Hans Koller and others between 1962 and 68. The really good news for dedicated collectors is that only two of the tracks have previously been released, and unless Grandad bequeathed you his insanely rare 64 copy of the Wolfgang Dauner Trio ‘s Dream Talk LP, you likely won’t have them either. Awesome.
Monomania deferred
One of the tragedies of the punk rock era is that DMZ ‘s studio recordings never came close to capturing the raw power of Jeff “Monoman” Connolly and his pre- Lyres Beantown badboys, who helped kick off the first garage rock revival by recognizing the teenage rebel yelp of the Stooges ‘ Iggy Pop had a direct connection to that of Gerry Roslie and Roky Erickson . The quality of the songwriting and cranked-up performances on DMZ’s self-titled Sire debut – just reissued by Rhino ‘s Sepiatone imprint with entertaining liner notes by Connolly (now calling himself “Pokemonoman”) – confirms that with better production and label support, DMZ could’ve been bigger than any of their esteemed labelmates.
Broken Social scheme
A certified buzz band at this weekend’s South By Southwest music conference, Toronto’s Broken Social Scene are shrewdly capitalizing on the attention with the release of the Bee Hives (Arts & Crafts) comp (out Tuesday). They’re calling it a “B-sides collection,” but it’s really an assortment of low-key leftovers that didn’t fit on either of their albums. So they threw together the more intriguing textural experiments and happy accidents and, in characteristic BSS fashion, it works perfectly. The surging Backyards could be the feel-good hit of the summer.
Cooking with Cachao
Considering all the incredible music Cuban bass boss Israel “Cachao” Lopez recorded during the 50s alone, you’d expect there to be stunning Afro-Cuban big band sessions reissued weekly, but loads of his best Havana stuff remains frustratingly difficult to obtain. The folks at Vampi Soul have kindly stepped up to rectify the sad situation by reissuing one of Cachao’s classic descarga sets, Cuban Jam Sessions In Miniature from 1957, which students of the form will know as an end-to-end burner. The killer set comes packaged with 11 extra tracks from the period involving Guillermo Barretto and Tata Guines – now that’s what I call a bonus.
