Segment3 - Geoff Wilkinson of Us3

Geoff Wilkinson, mastermind of the jazz-hiphop group Us3, shares his thoughts on how the whole enterprise got started, his creative process, and the presence of hiphop styles on jazz radio.


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Us3







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Sunday Time Warp - Playlist 3/3/13

Song, Artist, Album

Start Stop, Medeski Martin & Wood, Combustication
Dapper Dan, Lonnie Smith, The Healer
Specifunky, Jambalaya Brass Band, It's A Jungle Out There
Old School Cyclons, Greyboy Allstars, Whatever Happened To TV?
Randiculous, Organissimo, Dedicated
Nu Bop, Matthew Shipp, Greatest Hits
Rocket Shipp, Matthew Shipp, Greatest Hits
4D, Matthew Shipp, Greatest Hits
Key Swing, Matthew Shipp, Greatest Hits
Dusty McNugget, Brad Mehldau, Largo
In Dreams, Jeremy Pelt, Water and Earth
Soulful Drums, Brother Jack McDuff, Screamin'
My Blues Is Funky, Charles Earland, If Only For One Night
Us Three, Horace Parlin, Us Three
RSVP, Michael Blanco, No Time Like The Present
Crazy Aquarius, Stockton Helbing, Crazy Aquarius
Postcard, Michael Blanco, No Time Like The Present
Freedom Jazz Dance, Cynthia Felton, Freedom Jazz Dance


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Segment3 - Matthew Shipp

Pianist and composer Matthew Shipp brings out a selection of his best of Thirsty Ear's Blue Series on his new Greatest Hits.



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Matthew Shipp





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Sunday Time Warp - Playlist 2/24/13

Truth & Lies, Us3, Say What!?
Led Gillespie, Jazz Punks,  Smashups
Underdog Theme, Oyabando, video rip
Man of Constant Sorrow, John Hollenbeck, Songs I Like A Lot
Bicycle Race, John Hollenbeck, Songs I Like A Lot
Wichita Lineman, John Hollenbeck, Songs I Like A Lot
Chapel Files, John Hollenbeck, Songs I Like A Lot
Blues for Gwen, McCoy Tyner Trio, Inception
Stolen Moments, Oliver Nelson, The Blues and the Abstract Truth
Black Snake Blues, The Fat Babies, Chicago Hot
Hip Hug-Her, Jambalaya Brass Band, On The Funky Side
Mystery Train, Elvis Presley, The Essential Elvis Presley
Cell Phone Man, Willie Buck, Cell Phone Man
Sookie Sookie, Grant Green, Alive!
Pinocchio, Miles Davis, Nefertiti
Freedom Jazz Dance, Harold McKinney, The Creative Profile


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Segment3 - John Hollenbeck

Drummer and composer John Hollenbeck plunges into the pool of pop music with a versatile big band and vocalists Kate McGarry and Theo Bleckmann on his new release, Songs I Like A Lot.

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johnhollenbeck.com
theobleckmann.com
katemcgarry.com


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PN 233 - Doug Seroff - 'Ragged But Right'

Doug Seroff, co-author of a book about some of the most the popular songs of the ragtime era, talks about his part in writing the comprehensive study Ragged But Right.




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Sunday Time Warp - Playlist 2/17/13

Title, Artist, Album

Freedom Jazz Dance, Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express, Second Wind

In The Bamboo Grove, The Bamboos, Step It Up

Lapdance, The John Popper Porject Featuring DJ Logic, The John Popper Project

Be Dope, Garaj Mahal, Mondo Garaj

Lenny, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Texas Flood

Ali Farka Toure, Heygana, The River

Kenny Wayne Shepard, Voodoo Child, Blue on Black

Song For My Father, Horace Silver, Song for My Father

34 Skidoo, Pamela Hines, 3.2.1

Stuck in the Middle With You, Nicole Henry, So Good So Right

So Good So Right, Nicole Henry, So Good So Right

Fire and Rain, Nicole Henry, So Good So Right

Tall Drink of Water, John Ellis, By A Thread

Jean and Renata, Ben Wendel, Frame

Uncle Underpants, Dan Pratt Organ Quartet, Toe The Line

Baby Goats, Will Bernard, Blue Plate Special

Rhythm Music Rides Again, Charlie Hunter Quartet, Scenes from the Analog Playground

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Segment3 - Nicole Henry

Vocalist Nicole Henry broadens the songbook with her tour of tunes from the 1970s on her new live album So Good So Right.


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Karen Russell at Books and Books

     One of the best short stories I've read in many years, "Proving Up," can be found in Karen Russell's new collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, a gathering of consistently impressive tales from one of the most remarkable contemporary American writers of what I would call "the fantastic."  I've been reading, reviewing, and interviewing Russell since her first collection came out, and she's always funny and interesting and of course brilliant as a guest.  As usual, she was booked for an interview on Passing Notes to coincide with the release of Vampires and her usual drop-in at Books and Books in Coral Gables.
     Perhaps it's the creeping supernatural element in Russell's work.  Perhaps it's the ghost in the machine.  Russell and I did one interview many weeks ago, but, frustratingly, the file was corrupted -- even the backups.  Russell was nice enough to do another interview, and that file wasn't corrupted, but after some cordial small talk, the rest of the recording was marred by the strange ghostly voice-over from a documentary on the Olmecs that was playing somewhere else in the building I was working in.  Some sort of analog signal creep through the wires.  Perhaps the spirits are at work to prevent the world from learning the secrets that Russell already knows about vampires and ghosts and the weird in general.
     All this is to say that I don't have any new material to offer from Karen Russell.  Nobody is more frustrated than I am.  But you can listen to the extensive interview we did for her novel Swamplandia! a few years back.
     Also, if you want to hear Russell reading from her newest work, she'll be appearing at Books and Books in Coral Gables tonight.

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PN 232 - Nicole Henry - 'So Good So Right'

Vocalist Nicole Henry takes a bold step forward with a bolder step back into the songs of the seventies for her new live album, So Good So Right.



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nicolehenry.com



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Video Jukebox - John Hollenbeck

Composer, arranger, bandleader, and drummer John Hollenbeck has a new album out -- Songs I Like A Lot - featuring Theo Bleckmann, Kate McGarry, Gary Versace, as well as the Frankfurt Radio Big Band.  This week's video jukebox has Hollenbeck mostly with his smaller group, The Claudia Quintet, but you can hear him talk about his new album on this weekend's Segment3 on the Sunday Time Warp.  We had to reschedule from last week!


johnhollenbeck.com






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Sunday Time Warp - Playlist 2/3/13

Song, Artist, Album

Freedom Jazz Dance, Woody Herman, Giant Steps

Canto No Y Llores, Billy Martin’s Wicked Knee, Heels Over Head

Wind It Up, The Stooges Band, live audio rip

Whipping Post, Bonerama, Live From New York

Roberta, Rev. Billy C Wirtz, Deep Fried and Sanctified

Knock Knock, Carol Fran, Excello single

Red Beans, Marcia Ball, Blue House

Straighten Up And Fly Right, Nat King Cole Trio, Greatest Hits

I’m Hip, Blossom Dearie, Blossom Time at Ronnie Scott’s

So You Say, John Scofield, Blue Matter

Unpack Your Adjectives, Sara Gazarek, Blossom & Bee

Everything I’ve Got, Sara Gazarek, Blossom & Bee

Fly Little Birdie, Sara Gazarek, Blossom & Bee

The Luckiest, Sara Gazarek, Blossom & Bee

Africa Is The Center of the World, Roy Ayer, Center of the World

Born Under Punches, Talking Heads, Remain in Light

Modern Technology, The Daktaris, Soul Explosion

Ganawa (Blue Moses), Randy Weston featuring Pharaoh Sanders, Blue Moses

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Segment3 - Sara Gazarek

Better late than never, I talk with Sara Gazarek about one of last year's best jazz vocalist recordings, her third album, Blossom and Bee.  She talks about trusting yourself as a musician, about the influence of Blossom Dearie, and how she and her band put together the new album after a five year recording hiatus.

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Sara Gazarek


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Movie Notes - 'Sound City'

If you haven't yet caught some of the buzz surrounding Dave Grohl's documentary, Sound City, allow me to buzz a little more in your ear. After doing fairly well at a number of film festivals and getting positive feedback from pre-release screeners, Sound City had as large a release as it's probably going to get this week.

Sound City takes its title from the recording studio in Los Angeles where whole cratefulls of legendary rock albums were recorded.  Neil Young? Fleetwood Mac? Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers? Nirvana?  Dave Grohl, who we should all remember BF (Before Foo) as the drummer for Nirvana, now owns the legendary, hand-built Neve 8028 Console, which he bought when Sound City went out of business.  Not only has Grohl put together a fine documentary about rock and roll and what we might call "the ethos of the garage," in the second half of the film we get to see the Foo Fighters recording a new album with the likes of Stevie Nicks, Rick Springfield (who rocks), Trent Reznor, Josh Homme, and some dude from Liverpool named Paul (who shreds).

Recently, director and host and star and drummer and guitarist Dave Grohl made the media rounds in his own way -- I caught him on the podcasts WTF and Nerdist.  All the more interesting is the distribution model for the film's release, which you can see in theaters in a few markets -- but you can rent a download it as well for the price of a movie ticket or buy the film outright for $15.  You'd want to see it in the theater to hear the music -- and this is one downloaded movie that's worth watching on a computer so you can listen with headphones.  As you might expect, Sound City sounds great.

For audio nerds out there, Sound City is a movie to place alongside Tom Dowd and the Language of Music, Les Paul: Chasing Sound!, and some of the better episodes of Classic Albums for a introduction to how records get made and how the recording studio itself can be played like a musical instrument.

Remember -- use those headphones.  After Sound City is over, you might have that pleasant ringing in your ears.

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PN 231 - Rudresh Mahanthappa - 'Gamak'

Alto sax powerhouse Rudresh Mahanthappa continues to fuse East and West with a reconfigured quartet that features guitarist Dave Fiuczynski on the new album 'Gamak.'  Plus Mahanthappa drops a couple of prog references for everyone's Inner Peart.


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Rudresh Mahanthappa





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Video Jukebox - Sara Gazarek

Vocalist Sara Gazarek already has three albums out -- Yours (2005), Return To You (2007) and last year's outstanding Blossom and Bee.  This weeks playlist on the Video Jukebox has Gazarek performing with her own group and with the German group Triosence.  She'll be the featured guest on Segment3 this weekend on the Sunday Time Warp.

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PN Unscripted - Marc Myers

Jazz journalist  -- visit his website Jazzwax -- and Wall Street Journal writer Marc Myers breaks things down in his social history of the music, Why Jazz Happened, which provides a cultural context for developments in the music from the 1940s to the 1970s.

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Movie Notes - 'Let's Get Lost' (1988)

Last time around it was Thelonious Monk, and this week's jazz documentary from 1988 is Bruce Weber's elegant and mysterious examination of the life and celebrity of trumpeter and singer Chet Baker -- Let's Get Lost.  An icon of the West Coast school of cool, Baker did indeed get lost amid a heroin addiction, run-ins with the law, and a serious beatdown that trashed his embouchure for a number of years.  A fascinating life, a more fascinating film.



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Sunday Time Warp - Playlist 1/27/13

Song, Artist, Album

Freedom Jazz Dance, Don Ellis, Live in 3 2/3/4 Time
Waiting Is Forbidden, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Gamak
Nu-Bop, Matthew Shipp, Greatest Hits
Use Me, Nicole Henry, So Good So Right
Treat Me Right, Ironing Board Sam, B-Side to Orignal Funky Bell Bottom
The House of the Rising Sun, Nina Simone, Nina Simone Sings The Blues
Texas Flood, Whispering Smith, Blowing the Blues: A History of Blues Harmonica
Wasted Life Blues, Valerie Wellington, Life in the Big City


Cut Off My Right Arm, Johnny Copeland, Boom Boom
Chicken Walk, LVM Trio, LVM Trio
Hardest Button To Button, Louis Durra, Rocket Science
Tangled Up In Blue, Louis Durra, The Best of All Possible Worlds
Nine Eleven, Louis Durra, Rocket Science
All I Really Want, Luis Durra, The Best of All Possible Worlds
Where’s The Music?, Medeski Martin and Wood, Let’s Go Everywhere
Four on Six, Wes Montgomery, The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery
Mad World, Todd Clouser’s Love Electric, The Naked Beat
The Last Broken Heart (Prop 8), Christian Scott, Yesterday You Said Tomorrow
Whiplash, Branford Marsalis Quartet, Four MFs Playing Tunes

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Segment3 - Louis Durra

Pianist, bandleader, and arranger Louis Durra explains his approach to reworking songs from all over the musical map.  Bob Dylan, The White Stripes, Alanis Morissette, and even DJ Rob Swift inform Durra's distinctive approach to the piano trio.



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Louis Durra



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