A Few That Almost Slipped through

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Regular readers may have noticed that I cover a lot of music here. The cool part of that is I get a lot of free music. A lot. The downside of it is I get a lot of free music. While I really try to review anything and everything worth mentioning, occasionally I get so inundated, some things get shuffled to a lesser priority than others. A number of factors weigh into this, but the main culprit is time--there are only so many hours in a day. Bare minimum, I listen to an album three times before even attempting to review it. And then there's my need to research the band.

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There's another factor at play, and it has nothing to do with the merits of a particular album. In my reviews, I attempt to cut through to the essence of the album, without talking it to death. My feeling is that the reader only wants to know if an album is worth their time and money-- not whether the artist may have a tie to an obscure French poet. As a result, some works, particularly EPs, don't lend themselves to a lengthy review.

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The eponymously titled EP by the Cat Empire is a case in point. If you haven't heard of the Cat Empire, you will soon. This Melbourne-based sextet are multi-platinum stars in Australia, and they're set to storm the States in early 2007, with the American release of Two Shoes. Recorded in Havana, Two Shoes fuses Latin rhythms, jazz, funk, hip-hop, barrelhouse blues, ska and rock into a miraculously cohesive whole. It's a #1 hit Downunder, and with good reason. For now, we Yanks have to be content to whet our appetites with this compilation teaser EP.

The six songs here are culled from their three Australian releases, and they're all winners. Think Madness, with reggae-style Clash sitting in, at a beach party, and you have a rough idea of their sound. Watch out for these guys.

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While they may have the worst band name in history, What Made Milwaukee Famous is actually a pretty good, albeit uneven, listen. Trying to Never Catch Up, their debut release on indie label Barsuk, is actually a remastered reissue of their 2004 self- release, for those keeping score of such trivialities. Like a lot of Austin bands, WMMF know their music on a technical level, and they showcase their technical expertise and influences just a tad bit too much.At some points, they sound like an eighties power pop band, at others, brooding artistes and at yet others, Bay area hippies. Still, most of the songs here hold up quite well individually. As a cohesive package, however, it's lacking. Chalk it up to artists searching for their voice. When it's all said and done, though, WWMF is going places, regardless of how much I hate that name.

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Persephone's Bees is a band name that rolls off the tongue a bit better (at least, for literary types.) Notes From the Underworld is an exuberant pop rock album that never strays far from its punk roots. Fronted by Russian-born Angelina Moysov, the Beeshave a sound that harken back to the heyday of eighties new wave, with a vibe that falls somewhere between the pop balladry of the Motels and the post-punk anthems of Siouxie and the Banshees, with a dash of Chrissie Hynde thrown in for luck. This is the core of rock-- guitar, bass, drums and vocals--played with a conviction that undermines any pop superficialities. Make no mistake about it--Persephone's Bees will be a breakout band in the coming months. Make that the breakout band.

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I've always said there's good music out there--you just have to look for it. In this case, I just had to listen to things that got buried in the clutter.

Darker than Dexter, Colder than the Ice Truck Killer

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Dexter Morgan, just like every other human on the planet, spends a lot of his time lying to himself. While most of us focus our self-delusions on our inherent goodness, Dexter ruminates on his self-imposed isolation from the rest of humanity. He likes to think he feels nothing, that he is incapable of feeling what other people feel. A large part of this was instilled by his foster father Harry, who saw Dexter as a tool through which he could, by proxy at least, train Dexter to vent his own frustrations.

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In "Love American Style," Dexter is forced to wrestle with the lie that drives him: namely, that he is devoid of the need to connect emotionally. Up to this point, he's been portrayed mostly as a merry prankster of mayhem, his singleminded devotion to his craft deftly played for dark humor. In the subtext of the plotline, however, there's always been a thread devoted to Dexter's understandable sense of isolation. After all, it's not easy to maintain mainstream appearances when your avocation is acting as an avenging angel.

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"Love American Style" brings that conflict to the fore, and takes the series into a more three-dimensional direction. Heretofore, the motives for Dexter's killings have been presented matter-of-factly--that one's a pedophile killer, this one's a snuff filmmaker, and so on. But with this episode, the series delves into the events that precipitate Dexter's grisly actions.

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More importantly, it scrutinizes one of the vilest, darkest and most overlooked aspects of illegal immigration-- the ugly trade of human trafficking, as practiced by the smugglers known as coyotes. Coyotes smuggle illegals into the States, for a hefty fee. Often, these would-be immigrants are never seen again. "Love American Style" explores this issue with a typically Dexteresque solution.

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When Rita asks Dexter to use his police connections to investigate the disappearance of a coworker's fiance, there is no doubt where the episode is headed. He immediately goes into Dexter the Stalker mode, and pieces together the evidence he needs to justify the coyote's untimely demise. Things get more complicated when he discovers at the last minute that the coyote's wife is the brains behind the scam. Together, they've drowned countless Cubans whose families could not pay the surprise transportation fee.

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Woven through this main line are the subplots and themes that make Dexter compelling. Tucci, mutilated but recovering, is the one solid lead the cops have on the Ice Truck Killer murders. Doakes and Deb are assigned to interview Tucci as part of the investigation. While Doakes is typically all business, Deb bonds with Tucci on a more human level. Doakes cautions her to put emotions aside, and deal with the questioning on a purely professional level. But Deb has always dealt with everything on an instinctive level, and here, it goes into an empathic level.

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Dexter's developing relationship with Rita is becoming the thread that may prove to be either his salvation or his ultimate undoing. As much as he tries to convince himself to the contrary, Dexter is in love with Rita, and his attempts to come to grips with this alien emotional state may be contributing to his carelessness of late. On the one hand, he seems more focused in adhering to Harry's Code at any risk. On the other hand, he's distracted by his new found need to lead "a normal life."

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All of this may explain the seemingly incongruous title of the episode. What "Love American Style" does is look at the various angles the word can bounce off of and still maintain its integrity. There is a scene near the end of the episode when Dexter asks the doome coyote couple how they've made their marriage last. "We do everything together," the wife replies. Indeed they do. Dexter sees to that.

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Love, as Dexter suspected at the episode's beginning, does complicate life--and death. His mission to avenge the illegals the coyotes had killed was complicated when it turned out he had two evildoers to eliminate. Consequently, he didn't have time to neatly cut the wife into pieces for disposal at sea. Whole bodies have a tendency to resurface, even when dropped indeep waters. "But sometimes you have to take a chance," he muses as he prepares to dispose of his victims.

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He has no idea what a chance he's taken. Somebody sees him loading the Hefty bags into the trunk of his car. We only see a moving eye watching from the trunk of a junked Mercedes. Is it a coincidence? Or is someone besides the Ice Truck Killer stalking Dexter? Either way, Dexter is poised to find his life becoming increasingly complicated.

If You have to Define It, You Ain't It

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Here is what it is. . .

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There are certain aspects of life that just are not meant to be defined by words. You know what it is when you encounter it, but it works on a level that words can't touch.

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The whole concept of "cool" is like that. In fact, cool is so cool that dictionaries often use the word itself to attempt to describe it. "Socially adept" doesn't quite cut it. A lot of people describe themselves as "cool", but those are people who don't have a clue as to what cool is. The people who are cool are. . . well, too cool to label themselves that way. When you're cool, other people already know it, so there's no need speak of it.

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Miles Davis never said he was cool. His music said it all.

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Cool and Collected is something of a soundbyte in relation to how his music defined jazz in the latter half of the twentieth century. But what a soundbyte it is! Focusing mostly on the work he did in the mid to late fifties with various incarnations of the Miles Davis Quintet, this compilation showcases some of the tunes that made Miles Davis the epitome of cool. "So What", arguably the tune that veered jazz away from bebop towards a more modal style, appropriately opens the album. In this 1959 version, Cannonball Adderly on alto sax and John Coltrane on tenor sax are also featured, as well as Bill Evans on piano, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Johnny Cobb.

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Much of Cool and Collected centers around the triumvirate of Davis, Coltrane and Adderly. "Milestones," "Stella By Starlight" and "Fran-Dance" all showcase the three horn players bouncing scales off each other, and the interplay between them, nearly forty years later, still astounds. Between those four pieces alone, there's nearly 25 minutes of trumpet and sax swirling and dipping like the aural equivalents of birds at play.

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But it's when Davis and Coltrane play together on the Thelonious Monk classic " 'Round Midnight" that may be the single most telling moment of what made Miles so freakin' cool.

Here (and to a lesser extent, on "Bye Bye Blackbird") , we're reminded of an era when smoky, dimly lit bars were a sanctuary from the pressures of the middle class, and when mystery lay just beyond the next cocktail.

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While the bulk of Cool and Collected focuses on his cool jazz work in the fifties, it does offer a few glimpses of where Davis would later head. A young Herbie Hancock is featured on "Seven Steps to Heaven" (1963) , and the 1969 recording of "E.S.P." also features Wayne Shorter on sax and Ron Carter on bass. Particularly on the latter piece, we hear an inkling of the profound influence Davis had on the fusion movement that would be the driving force of jazz in the 1970's.

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No single album can encapsulate the work of a man whose career spanned nearly fifty years, especially in the case of someone like Miles Davis. He defied every convention placed before his vision, and for over forty years, he constantly redefined jazz. What Cool and Collected does is show us in snapshots how he rose to that stature. While I would have liked to see more seventies work, what's included here is a valuable primer as to how it all began.

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And how cool is that?

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The Politics of Passion...And Vice Versa

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A great film must, by necessity, strike a universal chord in the human consciousness. Otherwise, it's just an elaborate way to sell buttered popcorn. Citizen Kane was a great film. The Searchers was a great film. Bladerunner was a great film. The genre doesn't matter-- a great film speaks to the human condition.

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Reds: 25th Anniversary Edition is another reminder of what elevates a movie to "great film" status. Made in 1981, Reds was nominated for twelve Academy Awards, and won three, garnering Warren Beatty a Best Director honor, as well as earning Maureen Stapleton an Oscar as Best supporting Actress, and acknowledging Vittorio Sioraro's work for Best Cinematography.

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Despite its backdrop of communist ideaology at the dawn of the twentieth century, Reds is ultimately a story about the power and pratfalls of love and passion. The story of John Reed and Louise Bryant is not, in Beatty's vision, the tale of a couple of American communists, any more than his later Bugsy was a gangster story. Instead, Reds is an intimate love story set against of a tableau of epic proportions.

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The relationship between Reed (Beatty) and Bryant (Dianne Keaton) mirrors the tumultuous events of 1915-1921, beginning with America's tenuous involvement in World War I and culminating with the aftermath of Russia's Bolshevik Revolution. It's a complex, sprawling film with themes of idealism versus reality, personal sacrifice in the name of love, and disillusionment with the constraints of beuracracy, among others.

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Beatty's solution to tying all of this together was ingeniously simple. Rather than transition the myriad events going on in conventional cinematic terms, he stitched the film together whrough a series of interviews with Reed's contemporaries. Shot against a black background with a single light source, these "witnesses" serve as a framework who enrich the story's credibility. These are people who lived through the period, who knew Reed and Bryant and who aren't remotely hesitant to share their outrageously varying opinions. The lines in their faces trace a timeline of the routes America took--or could have taken--throughout the twentieth century. In the end, they show us that attitudes weren't that different in the early days of the twentieth century than they are now--they were just more discreet then.

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There are naysayers who will insist Reds is a platform for Warren Beatty to express his left-leaning viewpoint. Those people are wrong. They are borne of the same ilk who believe Citizen Kane was a sensational attempt to discredit William Randolph Hearst. True, both films are politically slanted to a degree, but by more necessity to drive the story than by personal agenda. In order to tell the story of Reed, Beatty had to focus on the protagonist's idealistic zeal towards worker's rights. But in the course of the film, we see that idealism slowly deteriorate as the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution take hold in Russia.

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Jack Nicholson's portrayal of Eugene O'Neill and Maureen Stapleton's version of Emma Goldman serve as counterpoints to any romanticism the film depicts regarding the early days of socialism. Visually, Reds is stunning, colored in landscapes seamlessly alternating from the pastoral to the cataclysmic, from Oregon autumns to Moscow winters.

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It took 25 years for Reds to be released as a full-featured DVD, in part because of Warren Beatty's reticence to be interviewed in depth for special features additions. He's always been an advocate of letting film speak for itself. He finally relented, thankfully. The special features on this disc, collectively titled "Witness to Reds", make for fascinating insights into the making of the film. "The Rising" focuses on the origins of the movie. "Comrades" offers insights into the concept of the witnesses as plot device. Other segments focus on the politics of the film, how it was cast, and problems in pre-production. In all, "Witness of Reds" is comprised of seven chapters. Combined, they are inspirational to students of the intricacies of filmmaking, as well as an entertaining companion piece for the casual viewer.

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At 3 1/2 hours, Reds is an epic film of the sort Hollywood doesn't make any more. This DVD release preserves it to the most minute detail, even including the "Intermission" tag from the theatrical release. Presented in its original 16:9 aspect ratio, with enhanced Dolby 5.1 sound, it recreates the experience of the moviegoing experience. Including special features, this edition serves up over six hours of entertainment.

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Reds: 25th Anniversary Edition is long overdue, but it's been worth the wait. It's a rare film that's provocative, historical, educational and still entertaining. Reds more than amply delivers at all levels.

The Cars Drove Pop Down A Darker Road

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Sure, looking through the jaded eyes of twenty years later, it's easy to diss the Cars as a glam pop band from the dreaded eighties. Too easy.

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The truth of the matter is the Cars were a band so important in the evolution of rock that their influence still permeates today's pop landscape. What Ric Ocasek and the late Benjamor did, along with bandmates Elliot Easton, David Robinson and Greg Hawkes, was take white bread pop, add a dash of German cabaret and infuse it all with a punk sensibility. As a result, their sound became the standard by which rock throughout the eighties was judged.

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Then, too, was their look-- the Cars took full advantage of the burgeoning influence of video in the pop culture arena. They didn't wear matching outfits, but they were color-coordinated, almost always wearing varying degrees of black, white, red and blue. Ocasek, invariably hiding behind Ray-Bans, looked like a demented Ichabod Crane, playing off the teen idol looks of Orr, the nerdy personna of Hawkes, and the beatnik hipster facades of Easton and Robinson. Combined, they presented an image of unified aloofness that struck a chord in the pop music world. Imitators came out of the woodwork, none of whom could muster more than one hit wonder stature.

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The Cars Unlocked is an unbiased, non-linear look at the Cars, from the perspective of their live performances. Moving back and forth between performances from 1978 through 1987, the DVD shows the band's evolution from club gigs to sold-out stadium concerts. That the video clips are largely left "as is" makes this documentary more enticing, in an odd way. There's been no attempt to digitally enhance ancient VHS footage, which lends it more historical credence. There are amusing backstage tidbits here, too--particularly a segment entitled "Dr. G," in which a supposed rock journalist for the Denver Post makes an utter ass of himself with his pretensious, chemically-inspired interview approach.

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But since this is a documentary that tells its story through concert footage, it's the performances that must carry the story. All the hits are here, obviously, and they're mostly performed in the time frame in which they originated. We see and hear an early club rendition of "My Best Friend's Girl," as well as a thundering performance of "Candy-O", as performed by the veteran, well-seasoned version of the band. There are twenty live performances in all, interlaced with interview segments, anecdotal dressing room scenes and soundcheck footage. Five bonus live videos are also included on the disc, as well as a rather utilitarian photo booklet that also includes snippets of lyrics.

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As interesting as all that is, The Cars Unlocked also comes packaged with a full-length, first-ever live CD. Digitally remastered, the discshowcases the band at its zenith, and the fourteen performances rank with the best of live albums. The Cars were often oblique, but as a live act, they were incredibly tight.

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Anyone who remembers the Cars cannot say they were not, at one time or another, a fan. For better or worse, they were a band that left an indelible footprint on the face of pop culture, the echoes of which can still be heard in the current strata. The Cars Unlocked is a time capsule that proves the eighties weren't that bad, after all.

The Ice Truck Killer Moves to the Back Seat

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Even vigilante serial killers need a little down time.

"Popping Cherry," the third Dexter episode, opens with what appears to be familiar ground for the series. The Ice Truck Killer has struck again, this time leaving his victim's bloodless body parts neatly stacked in a pro hockey ice rink's goal line. This time, though, there may be a lead. A night watchman who's disappeared is identified on surveillance tape. Lt. LaGuerta, in her typically singleminded approach to detective work, orders a manhunt for the watchman.

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Of course, neither Deb nor Dexter believe that LaGuerta is on the right track, and Deb begins her own investigation to find the real Ice Truck Killer. Dexter has other, more pressing matters to address in the form of a recently paroled teenage murderer who's poised to strike again.

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It's the the developing subplots that drive Dexter as a series, though, and in this installment, there's no shortage of those. More clues to Rita's past come to the fore when a drug dealer with ties to her ex-husband repos her Rav-4 to satisfy a debt her ex- apparently owed him. She's amazingly compliant to his demands, handing him the keys with almost no argument. It's beginning to appear that Rita may not be the innocent she seemed in the first two episodes. With a furrowed brow and a muttered "he obviously doesn't know who he's dealing with," Dexter clues us that this is an unfinished matter. On the plus side (for Rita, anyway), Dexter treats her to a replacement for the SUV--a pimped-out classic convertible.

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Doakes, meanwhile, is treading dangerous turf as he pursues his own vendetta against crime lord Cuerrto, confronting him and his daughter at church. Doakes's dogged pursuit to prove Cuerrto's complicity in the murder of the undercover cop and his wife (with whom Doakes was having an affair) may yet be one of the more violent threads in Dexter. That's saying a lot, given the premise of the series.

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"Popping Cherry" could have almost been titled "The Origin of Dexter." In the present-day context, Dexter pretty much allows himself a personal day from his occupational mayhem. He even lets the teenager go once he discovers why his intended victim committed murder.This could prove to be a serious error on Dexter's part as the series continues to unfold. Still, it's in keeping with his adherence to Harry's Code-- that only those truly deserving fall to his brand of gruesome retribution.

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But no episode of Dexter would be complete without a bit of righteous vivisection. In this instance, it's all done in a series of flashbacks. What's revealed is what we always suspected: Harry not only inspired Dexter, but mentored him. We see how it all began for Dexter, how his first experience was sloppy, by Dexter's standards. Just for the record, his "first" was Nurse Jane, the "Angel of Death" who killed several patients by overdose. Thanks to her, Dexter was inspired to paralyze his victims via syringe. Thanks to Dexter, she became alligator food.

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"Popping Cherry" was a bit of an off day for Dexter. Nevertheless, it laid out more than a few clues as to where this dark satire may be heading.

The Power of Peaceful Protest

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That we live in violent times is hardly a revelation. The sociopolitical history of Earth is largely a history of violence. The Powers That Be have, since time immemorial, embraced war as a viable solution to differences of opinion.

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That's an oversimplification, of course, but in our current climate of global unrest, we've lost the focus of dissent. Civil disobedience has always been a large thread in the fabric of the American experience, and is largely responsible for the ever-evolving way we view ourselves. The current cultural context, however, has largely eliminated civility from disobedience. Increasingly, regardless of the issue, we turn to violence to make our point. To quote Walt Kelly, "We have seen the enemy, and he is us."

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Investigation of a Flame, by documentary filmmaker Lynne Salks, is a relatively straightforward retrospective about a benign Vietnam War protest by a group of Catholic activists who would become known as the Catonsville Nine. Now almost a footnote in the history of Vietnam-era protest, what happened on 17 May 1968 in the Baltimore suburb of Catonsville remains a powerful reminder of the ultimate power of quiet civil disobedience. Nine people, including two priests and two women, went into a Selective Service office, grabbed several hundred draft files, took them outside and ceremoniously burned them with homemade napalm.

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It seems almost a puerile prank by today's standards of violent opposition to any given social or political agenda. But it was enough to earn all the participants federal prison terms. More importantly, the action served as a springboard inspiration to much of the anti-war protest to follow.

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Investigation of a Flame doesn't romanticize or glamorize the the action of the Nine-- indeed, it painstakingly puts the opposition's viewpoint into the historical context of the event. There are interviews with women who worked in the Selective Service office, who cared less about the politics of the war, but were fully committed to supporting the troops. The prosecutor is interviewed as well, and makes several valid points about social conscience not outweighing the order of law. On the other side of the coin, the interviews with Daniel and Philip Berrigan, and the others involved in the incident, offer compelling evidence that moral conscience can outweigh the dictates of civil law.

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By skillfully intercutting news footage of the time with contemporary interview segments, Sachs has succeeded in presenting a snapshot of sixties history that amply illustrates the dangers of not remembering the mistakes of history. Snippets of news footage from the era ring eerily reminiscent of contemporary political posturing. Lyndon Johnson saying "We will not hand Asia over to the communists" was a "stay the course" policy that proved to be fallacious. Asia has survived, and America is still nursing self-inflicted wounds.

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The power of this film lies in it sense of irony and history. None of the Catonsville Nine were longhaired radicals. At the time, they were middle-aged respected members of society acting on principles moral indignation. The surviving members of the group make few apologies for their protest. In their seventies and eighties now, they remain unbowed. However displaced their passions may have been in 1968, the drive of their convictions should imbue a sense of patriotism in all Americans.

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By holding the mirror of the past up to us, Lynne Sachs and her film shows us that despite all adversities, the American Spirit ultimately prevails. The current policy in Iraq is a losing proposition, but this too we will survive.

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In the span of forty five minutes, Investigation of a Flame forces us to remember that civil disobedience is a cornerstone of American history. It should also serve as a reminder that in the heart of patriotism is the eternal question of "why?" When we quit questioning the government's motivations, we risk losing all we hold dear.

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Punk Was Meant to Self-Destruct. . .And Here's Why

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Those of us who rode in with the first wave of punk instinctively knew that it was doomed from the start. Like Dadaism before it, punk was predicated on a premise that once a work had been created, it was no longer valid. As a result, its focus was in a constant state of flux. Bands sprang out of nowhere, and just as quickly, vanished.

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And that's when things started getting interesting.

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People were beginning to realize that what fueled punk--the anger of disenfranchised youth could only go so far before the message became redundant. That kind of energy burns itself out quickly if left to its own devices. Punk had to evolve if it was to survive. The punkers began to take their work seriously, and began drawing on other influences such as reggae and rockabilly to make their points. Some delved into the 60's mod movement, while others succumbed to heavy metal, and still others mouseed their hair and went a disco beat. It all was thrown into a big vat, stirred around, simmered until bland, and served up by the marketing chefs as "new wave."

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By 1982, punk was dead for all intents and purposes. It had adapted. It was absorbed.

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All that being said, watching U.K.Subs Warhead: 25th Anniversary Marquee Concert is a strangely surreal experience. Particularly in the interminably long interview segment-- a spcial feature of the disc--the Subs come across as, well--old wankers reminiscing about how things were different in their day. It reminds me of something I vaguely remember from my childhood--it was some TV series from the sixties I think it was a Man From U.N.C.L.E. dream sequence) in which all the hippies had grown old and doddering, but were still playing acid rock in subterranean pubs.

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There's nothing significant in the interview--the Subs were always second stringers in the punk movement, and their drunken comments, between beer belches and gladhanding, reflect that. When Charlie Harper alludes that the music they were making was relevant to the working man in the same way the blues were before them, he loses all credibility. Still, it's entertaining, in a Spinal Tap kind of way.

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But this is a concert video, and judged in that context, it's a pedestrian performance at best. Nicky Garrett can still lay down the lines, and the rhythm section of Alvin Gibbs (bass) and Steve Roberts (drums) have a couple of shining moments. On "Rockers" and "Crash Course", the band almost evoke the original spirit of punk. But every time you think they've got it together, Charlie Harper ruins it all by sucking up to the oddly sedate audience. There are no mosh pits here--the Subs are a nostalgic act in the eyes of the audience.

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Even though the Subs are playing it by rote, and even though Charlie Harper comes across as the World's Oldest Living Punk, I'd still recomend this DVD as a living reminder as to what happens when bands can't pass on the torch.

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Punk is in its-- what?-- third generation now, and it's reduced to ramblings about manic depression from a suburban high school psycho POV. While the Subs DVD is not a great DVD, and while it shamelessly retraces old ground, it nonetheless reminds me of my days in dingy clubs with one step risers signifying a stage.

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It may be pure nostalgia on my part, or it may be that punk was my launchpad to rock criticism. Either way, this disc is a worthy reference edition for anybody interested in the origins of punk, and its subsequent decline and fall.

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Paraphrasing Lenny Bruce, "There's nothing worse than an old hipster."

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The same could be said of old punkers.

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Chet Baker: Trumpeter of Cool

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Any mention of jazz legend Chet Baker almost invariably focuses as much on his tumultuos life as it does on his music. That's a pity, really, because it takes nothing more than a casual listen of any of his recordings to realize that nobody epitomized West Coast Cool more than he did.

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Fortunately, Chet Baker Live in '64 & '79 pays tribute to Chet Baker's talents. As part of theJazz Icons DVD series, this disc serves up two performances by the late trumpet player, which together, provide an intimate overview of his evolution.

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In the first set, recorded for Belgian television in 1964, Baker plays flugelhorn through the entire session. He'd become enamored of its warmer sound some months before, after a French musician loaned him one after he'd lost his trumpet. (The details of how that happened are recounted in the liner notes, but aren't germaine to this review. We're focusing on Baker's music here.)

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Augmented by Belgian saxophonist/fllautist Jacques Pelzer, French pianistRene Urtreger, and Italians Luigi Trussardi and Franco Manzecchi on bass and drums respectively, Baker's '64 TV gig is a study in cool. Taped in black and white (this was '64, after all) and extensively utilizing forehortened lighting angles, this studio set presents the quintet in a casual setting bereft of any distractions, including a live audience. What we get instead is a living room setting where five guys are just having a good time grooving to each other's riffs. The visuals are often amusingly quaint, whether it's the close-ups of the musicians studiously bobbing in time to the music, or the cigarette smoking wafting aimlessly among the horns.

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But it's the music itself that draws us inexorably into Baker's world. And in this thirty minute set, Baker and his band stop at various locales in that world. From the light and airy rendition of "Bye Bye Black Bird" to the crooning vocals of Sammy Cahn's "Time After Time" to the cover of Miles Davis' "So What", the Belgian segment is tight, and nuanced so flawlessly that we're smitten by the power of cool jazz.

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The 1979 Norway segment presents a more weathered and more evolved Baker, a musician who not only stayed abreast of the changes that had happened in the fifteen years since the Belgium performance, but helped to define them as well. Her, his trumpeting is backed up by musicians Wolfgang Lackerschmid on vibraphone, pianist Michel Graillier and bassist Jean Louis Rassinfosse on bass. Playing to a live audience, the drumerless quartet exemplifies the freeform experimentalism of the late seventies without completely abandoning Baker's West Coast Cool sound. The fifteen minute version of Cole Porter's "Love For Sale" ties the entire DVD together, particularly in those final moments when Baker's trumpet soars in a finale that speaks volumes about jazz. This is music borne of the soul.

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Both performances are restored to pristine quality, as are all the titles in the Jazz Icons series. Also included is a glossy 16 page booklet featuring liner notes and a memorabilia collage. The Jazz Icon series is indispensable to anyone remotely interested in jazz, featuring as it does rare video performances from the greats.

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Except for a 90 second interview clip, Chet Baker Live in '64 & '79 lets the music speak for itself. But it's the interview clip that may be most revealing about Chet Baker. When asked what kinds of music he likes, he replies, "All kinds. But not country. Not rock. And not pop." He proceeds to roll off a list of jazz musicians from Dizzy Gillespies to Miles Davis to Weather Report. He wasn't being flippant-- to Baker, that was all different kinds of music. And for over forty years, he showed us what he meant.

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