WHY ARE WE FIGHTING JEFFREY MORGAN’S MEDIA BLACKOUT #265!

The Rolling Stones – Stones In The Park (Grenada) :: This vintage television documentary on the Stones’ free Hyde Park concert of July 1969 shoulda been called Their Stupidic Altamont Dress Rehearsal instead ’cause the band cooked up a Grade-A recipe for disaster: Schedule a free afternoon rock concert; garnish with a gargantuan crowd of stoned hippies; and liberally spice with security provided by everybody’s favorite law-abiding enforcers, the Hells Angels. Then repeat five months later in America and slowly simmer all day until the whole lot suddenly boils over in the middle of the night and scalds everyone. Serves a quarter million.

So when the tough guy singer—funkily festooned in a frock no less—bellows out “ALLLLLLL RIGHT!” only to have the entire audience actually obey him and shut up, he clearly gains enough crowd control confidence to think that he can later likewise quell an irate Altamont audience...at two in the morning...while remaining blissfully oblivious to the fact that US Angels aren’t twee like their UK counterparts. Serves him right.

Dado Moroni – Live In Beverly Hills (Resonance) :: Classic—in the truest sense of the word—jazz as played by a trio of hip hyper-proficient proponents. But what elevates this offering above the ordinary is the accompanying disc that visually documents the audio only disc. Hearing them is one thing, but actually seeing pianist Moroni, bassist Marco Panascia and traps master Pete Erskine interact on stage is another enlightening thing altogether.

John Entwistle – Smash Your Head Against The Wall (Decca) :: From its ‘alkie artiste wearin’ a transparent death mask whilst staring through a lung cancer x-ray’ cover photo; to its affably inviting album title; to its ‘mortality meets the devil’ subject matter, this is the most downright cheerful downer album ever recorded. Aided and abetted by fellow Who inmate Keith Moon; Humble Pie’s Jerry Shirley; Ruttle Neil Innes; and Dave “Cyrano” Langston—who I still think is Pete “The Beak” Townshend—this is one of the mellowest hard rock albums ever interred in wax.

SIZZLING PLATTER OF THE WEEK: Christine Jensen Jazz Orchestra Featuring Ingrid Jensen – Treelines (Justin Time) :: At first listen I was gonna tag this one as a smooth distillation of Miles’ early excursions with Gil Evans, only to see in the liner notes that bandleader Jensen actually name checks Evans as being “an early influence and one of the coolest sound shapers in music history.” Which should clue you in as to what these eight exceptional tracks sound like, the big difference being that there’s an implicit aura of majesty present in these recordings that I don’t always hear in some of those early Davis recordings; doubtless an inevitable result of the virtuoso playing by saxophonist Christine and trumpeter Ingrid, both of whom have done their jazz homework well and are equally adept at aesthetically applying what they’ve learned in a classic way that few are capable of attaining these days.

Be seeing you!