From “What Pretentious White Men Are Good For,” a book review of Robert Coover’s Gerald’s Party (Voice Literary Supplement, Apr. 1986):

Maybe I’m too young to fully appreciate such things, but I’ve always felt that novels about Time succeed (Proust) or fail (Ada) irrespective of their metaphysical revelations. No matter what’s contraindicated by subatomic physics or mystico-philosophical introspection, the vents of which almost all these novels still (ostensibly) consist take place in something like a sequential, diachronic dimension, a dimension that’s physically human (mammalian, say) in scale, and the novelist is hard-pressed to dislodge them without resorting to the kind of sci-fi devices that are beneath pretentious white American men. This isn’t to dismiss such excellent Time-related themes as the intransigence of death, the persistence of regret, the inadequacy of memory, the unfathomability of causation, all of which Gerald’s Party does its erudite yet idiomatic bit with (while keeping its distance from their corn quotient, of course). I’ll go along with Vic, for instance, when he argues that “rigidified memory, attachment of the past” is the only crime (only I wouldn’t say only), and I know why Tania insists that “art’s great task is to reconcile us to the true human time of the eternal present, which the child in us knows to be the real one!” But I’m afraid Tania is getting a little too close to Inspector Pardew, who posits a world in which space is fluid and time fixed and eventually concludes that Ros was done in by a satyrical dwarf who makes his entrance well after the guests notice her body on the floor. Even worse, I’m afraid Coover is setting Pardew up to do the hard part for him—to jar events into a properly metafictional dimension, to deprive us of the teleological comfort that no reader interested enough to get to the end of this book is likely to feel much need for. Maybe Pardew is just venting his anti-satyr prejudice, or maybe he knows something about the dwarf’s movements that omnipotent Gerald doesn’t bother to mention. Maybe he’s fitting facts to theory, or maybe he’s creating truth with it. It’s hard to know what Coover thinks. And impossible, or inappropriate, to care.

Bunny Wailer - Hook, Line and Sinker [Solomonic, 1982]
The skanking Memphisbeat Sly & Robbie rolled out for Joe Cocker goes uptempo and downriver here, and Bunny rides it for the entirety of a delightful groove album. Imagine what a reggae-goes-Stax-Volt-second-line tune called “Soul Rocking Party” might sound like. No no no—imagine it done well. Now you’ve got it. A-

Ali Hussan Kuban - From Nubia to Cairo [Shanachie, 1991]
Candidly commercial if not cockeyed drunk, a veteran entertainer from the melanin-rich upriver highlands leads a thoroughly modern band that favors the same stop-and-go tricks polka strategists love so. His horn players live for their solo features, and that’s not to mention his accordionists—or his bagpipers. And throbbing and clattering incessantly behind, what else? The drums, the drums, the drums, the electric bass. A-

Girl Talk - All Day [Illegal Art download, 2010]
Less fun than Feed the Animals because the sample pool is less obvious, but deeper, if stolen party music can be deep, which in his shallow way is what Greg Gillis believes. With the predictable scad-and-a-half of exceptions on an album that claims 373 sources, the strategy is to provide verbal content via the most unpoetic strains of hop-hop—marginal Dirty South club records, say Project Pat’s “Twerk” or Young Berg’s “Sexy Can,” of which most fans from outside that world were unaware—and beats/grooves/IDs via canonical rock: U2 and the Ramones, Iggy’s “Lust for Life” and Miley’s “Party in the U.S.A.” Of course, since these won’t necessarily provoke enough partying in the U.S.A., there are also actual beats a level below, drums and that sort of thing. Multifarious posteriors notwithstanding, the lyrics are less raunchy than on Feed the Animals—rated R, not X. As a result, Gillis’s vision becomes less orgiastic and more humanistic. Track 10 features Springsteen and Nirvana, track 11 Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day,” and the finale goes out on the daily double Gillis could have conceived the entire record around: the tough-guy sentimentality of UGK’s gangsta threnody “One Day” over the mods-versus-rockers universalism of John Lennon’s late-hippie hymn “Imagine.” Suffused with hope that someday we’ll join him and the world will live as one, Gillis dares Yoko Ono to tell him otherwise. A

Sylvester and the Hot Band - s/t [Blue Thumb, 1973]
In which everybody’s favorite black transvestite internalizes songs by Neil Young (“Southern Man”), James Taylor (“Steamroller”), and Procul Harum (guess) as well as Ray Charles (not bad, in its way) and Billie Holiday (and people complain about Diana Ross). “Southern Man” is almost unrecognizable in its rock-funk arrangement, which is interesting, and if you think Sweet Baby Wimp sounds funny invoking a “churnin’ urn of burnin’ funk” just imagine those words from a cartoon character who is three-fourths Tweety Bird and one-fourth—well, it is the puddy tat’s name—Sylvester. Finale: a Stax-Volt “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” Quite a curiosity. B-

From “Rising to the Top” (Village Voice, Apr. 18, 2000):

Common is still someone a major hopes to make dough on, while Del is committed to the DIY economy (he owns Hiero Imperium along with such fellow Hieroglyphics as Jive rejects Souls of Mischief and the group’s principal producer, Def Jam reject Domino). But both take the career-planning view of their material prospects—they want decent comfort, not obscene luxury. Their musical growth shows the same kind of practicality. In wordy rap at least as much as anywhere else, it’s music that breaks through, and they know it—though they identify underground, they’re not purists or minimalists. Common’s earnest, down-to-earth flow is no more charismatic than his monikers (he lost his first in a copyright hassle with an asinine Cali surf band, but in fact Common is an even braver and more suitable name for an unpretentious man). Here he addresses that problem by abandoning homeboy producers for the Roots’ ?uestlove, aided materially by the Soulquarian’s’ Jay Dee, and together they crush out a distinctively beat-heavy variation on the jazzed-up funk so many thinkers worked in the ’90s. I confess I like it best when it’s tricked up some—with backup vocals by Bilal and Jill Scott or cross-talk by Monie Love (another swimmer heard from) or, especially, D’Angelo and Roy Hargrove and Uncle Jam all grooving “Cold Blooded.” But throughout, Like Water for Chocolate is the first Common record with an identifiable, enjoyable sound, and given who created that sound, it’s certain to make the noise it deserves.

Lou Reed - Berlin [RCA Victor, 1973]
I read where this song cycle about two drug addicts who fall into sadie-mazie in thrillingly decadent Berlin is a … what was that? artistic accomplishment, even if you don’t like it much. Well, the category is real enough—it describes a lot of Ornette Coleman and even some Randy Newman, not to mention a whole lot of books—but in this case it happens to be horseshit. The story is lousy—if something similar was coughed up by some avant-garde asshole like, oh, Alfred Chester (arcane reference for all you rock folk who think you’re cool cos you read half of Nova Express) everyone would be too bored to puke at it. The music is only competent—even Bob Ezrin can’t manufacture a distance between the washed-up characters and their washed-out creator when the creator is actually singing. Also, what is this water-boy business? Is that a Buddhist cop? Gunga Din? Will Lou lick the bloomin’ boots of ‘im that’s got it? C

[Ed. note: Artists associated with the adverb thrillingly:
Al Green
Lou Reed
The Isley Brothers
Son Seals]

MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO
The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams
(Emarcy, 2007)
Rolling Stone ***

Though her deep voice is mixed down a little, most of Meshell Ndegeocello’s seventh album — five of its tracks reprised from last year’s Article 3 EP recalls 2002’s Cookie. Call it Sade unlite: jazzy atmospherics meant to evoke spiritual fundamentals rather than zoned-out surfaces. But this changes. The last five tracks include abrasive funk, animist gospel, child-rearing reggae and the prayerful near-metal closer, “Relief: A Stripper Classic.”

Juan Carlos Formell - Songs From a Little Blue House [Wicklow, 1999]
I knew he was the son of Los Van Van’s big man first time I played his blandly pretty folk-jazz and chalked its bloodlessness to the suburban New Age crap first harbingered when Kenny Rankin discovered chromatic chords in Marin County 30 years ago. Not until later did I read that the younger Formell had “literally re-defined the concept of Cuban music,” only the Commies wouldn’t let him so he went into exile, only then he suffered “rejection” “in some communities here in America too.” Self-pity being folk music’s universal solvent, my own suspicion is that said communities, if they exist at all, didn’t like his clave. Really, JC—I don’t care whether you like Castro. I’m a major El Duque fan. I just think you’re a wimp. B-

From “Positive Harangues,” Rock&Roll& (Barnes and Noble Review, May 11, 2009):

I didn’t get around to the advance [of Hold Steady’s A Positive Rage] I was mailed till after its April 7 release on the grounds that live albums are for fans only—big fans, often sentimental, undiscriminating fans. This rule does not apply to jazz, and there are other exceptions, generally involving repertoire, improvisation, or death. A Positive Rage, however, didn’t qualify. Commercially and artistically, it’s filler—old music to patch up a release schedule. Eight of the 16 songs Finn and his boys recorded at Chicago’s 1,100-capacity Metro on Halloween of 2006 come from their best-regarded album, Boys and Girls in America, which they were promoting at the time. Yet it sounded so right when I finally played it that I packed the CD for a West Coast trip. And when I stuck it into the slot of my rental car as I followed a friend home from an East L.A. mole place, I was transported to another plane.

This kind of thing happens to me when I’m driving. For a Manhattanite who gets around by bike and subway, the getaway cocoon of a sedan with the windows up and nothing else to do is an ideal listening environment. There were no tempo or intonation changes in the banging 30-second guitar-then-keyboard riff of “Stuck Between Stations,” which leads A Positive Rage as it does Boys and Girls in America, or in Finn’s “There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right/Boys and girls in America they have such a sad time together/Sucking off each other at the demonstrations/Making sure their makeup’s right.” But the performance grabbed me so hard that I didn’t mind when Finn swallowed the last word of my favorite line, losing a slantwise internal rhyme: “She was a really cool kisser and she wasn’t all that strict of a Christian.” My mind did wander as the song moved on to John Berryman jumping into the Mississippi (“He likes the warm feeling but he’s tired of all the dehydration”). But when Finn launched “The Swish,” which I’d heard only at shows since it surfaced on the band’s 2004 debut, Almost Killed Me, I was delighted all over again by its sub-hip-hop celebrity rhymes: Beverly Hills/Beverly Sills, Neil Schon/Nina Simone/André Cymone.