Everything old is new again,
or so
the saying goes. But where reissues are concerned, much that was once
old proves to be now instead. Stark Reality must have realized this
when they recorded an album in 1970 and christened it with a title
no less appropriate today than it was back in the late '60s, when
happenstance
had Hoagy Bix Carmichael, composer Hoagy Carmichael's son, meeting
vibraphonist Monty Stark while volunteering as a producer at Boston's
WGBH, where "on-staff music man" Stark and his band had just wrapped
up a theme for one of the radio station's programs. The encounter left
a lasting impression on the younger Carmichael, who later approached
Stark
with the idea for a television show based on more "with it"
arrangements
of the many songs his father had written for children. Had Sid
& Marty Croft at some point taken over the production of the
"School House Rock" clips, with psychedelic-jazz arranger David Axelrod
in tow to juice up the
edutainment as music director, you'd at least have some precedent for
Now.
Instead, there is only this album, in a class all its own. The
magnanimous headz behind L.A. "undie" hip-hop enclave Stone's Throw
risked the deck-wrecking
wrath of their fellow DJs by organizing a reissue of Now, long a
jealously
guarded source of rare grooves-literally, considering the scarcity
of the Stark Reality LP. Now, at last, this amazing artifact belongs
to the masses, finally free to soak in its ageless appeal. Stark and
his associates brought Carmichael's well-loved rhymes up to date just
as Hoagy Bix had hoped they would. Stark's Oklahoman drawl and bright,
boppy vibes, often as ferociously fuzzed-out and/or distorted as Carl
Atkin's sax and John Abercrombie's torrents of wah-wah guitar, meet the
rugged, somersaulting rhythms of bassist Phil Morrison and drummer
Vinnie Johnson in a surreal, suggestively druggy, yet perfectly lucid
celebration of rhyme and revelry, dousing such familiar lines as
"Thirty days hath September / April, June and November / All the rest
have 31" in a veritable bitches brew of contemporary American musics.
And as if loosing the (still) thrillingly contemporary likes of "Rocket
Ship" and "Junkman's Song" on another generation weren't enough,
Stone's Throw packed in plenty of album-caliber unreleased material,
bringing this Stark Reality check-in to an exhausting, but that much
more exhilarating, 76:17. Now? Wow!
Everything old is new again,
or so
the saying goes. But where reissues are concerned, much that was once
old proves to be now instead. Stark Reality must have realized this
when they recorded an album in 1970 and christened it with a title
no less appropriate today than it was back in the late '60s, when
happenstance
had Hoagy Bix Carmichael, composer Hoagy Carmichael's son, meeting
vibraphonist Monty Stark while volunteering as a producer at Boston's
WGBH, where "on-staff music man" Stark and his band had just wrapped
up a theme for one of the radio station's programs. The encounter left
a lasting impression on the younger Carmichael, who later approached
Stark
with the idea for a television show based on more "with it"
arrangements
of the many songs his father had written for children. Had Sid
& Marty Croft at some point taken over the production of the
"School House Rock" clips, with psychedelic-jazz arranger David Axelrod
in tow to juice up the
edutainment as music director, you'd at least have some precedent for
Now.
Instead, there is only this album, in a class all its own. The
magnanimous headz behind L.A. "undie" hip-hop enclave Stone's Throw
risked the deck-wrecking
wrath of their fellow DJs by organizing a reissue of Now, long a
jealously
guarded source of rare grooves-literally, considering the scarcity
of the Stark Reality LP. Now, at last, this amazing artifact belongs
to the masses, finally free to soak in its ageless appeal. Stark and
his associates brought Carmichael's well-loved rhymes up to date just
as Hoagy Bix had hoped they would. Stark's Oklahoman drawl and bright,
boppy vibes, often as ferociously fuzzed-out and/or distorted as Carl
Atkin's sax and John Abercrombie's torrents of wah-wah guitar, meet the
rugged, somersaulting rhythms of bassist Phil Morrison and drummer
Vinnie Johnson in a surreal, suggestively druggy, yet perfectly lucid
celebration of rhyme and revelry, dousing such familiar lines as
"Thirty days hath September / April, June and November / All the rest
have 31" in a veritable bitches brew of contemporary American musics.
And as if loosing the (still) thrillingly contemporary likes of "Rocket
Ship" and "Junkman's Song" on another generation weren't enough,
Stone's Throw packed in plenty of album-caliber unreleased material,
bringing this Stark Reality check-in to an exhausting, but that much
more exhilarating, 76:17. Now? Wow!