{"id":6437,"date":"2017-03-08T12:05:01","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T12:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/skylight.gr\/administrator_wordpress\/index.php\/2017\/03\/08\/the-ed-palermo-big-band-releases-the-great-un-american-songbook-volumes-1-a-2-feat-covers-of-the-beatles-king-crimson-traffic-jethro-tull-and-others\/"},"modified":"2017-03-08T12:05:01","modified_gmt":"2017-03-08T12:05:01","slug":"the-ed-palermo-big-band-releases-the-great-un-american-songbook-volumes-1-a-2-feat-covers-of-the-beatles-king-crimson-traffic-jethro-tull-and-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/2017\/03\/08\/the-ed-palermo-big-band-releases-the-great-un-american-songbook-volumes-1-a-2-feat-covers-of-the-beatles-king-crimson-traffic-jethro-tull-and-others\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ed Palermo Big Band Releases \u201cThe Great Un-American Songbook Volumes 1 & 2\u201d Feat. Covers of The Beatles, King Crimson, Traffic, Jethro Tull and Others!"},"content":{"rendered":"


The Ed Palermo Big Band is Making America Un-Great Again with a Brilliant Blast of Anglophilia, transforming British Rock Treasures into Wildly Inventive Jazz Vehicles on the Double Album: \u201cThe Great Un-American Songbook Volumes 1 & 2\u201d (Cuneiform Records). From the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Jeff Beck to King Crimson, Traffic, and Jethro Tull, Palermo\u2019s 18-piece ensemble Storms the British Invasion and Plants the American Flag (upside down). Crazy times call for outrageous music, and few jazz ensembles are better prepared to meet the surreality of this reality-TV-era than the antic and epically creative Ed Palermo Big Band. The New Jersey saxophonist, composer and arranger is best known for his celebrated performances interpreting the ingenious compositions of Frank Zappa, an extensive body of work documented on previous Cuneiform albums such as 2006\u2019s \u201cTake Your Clothes Off When You Dance\u201d and 2009\u2019s \u201cEddy Loves Frank\u201d.<\/p>\n

His fifth project for the label, \u201cThe Great Un-American Songbook Volumes 1 & 2\u201d is a love letter to the rockers who ruled the AM and FM airwaves in the 1960s via successive waves of the British Invasion. Featuring largely the same stellar cast of players as last year\u2019s gloriously eclectic \u201cOne Child Left Behind\u201d, the 18-piece EPBB lovingly reinvents songs famous and obscure, leaving them readily recognizable and utterly transformed. The first installments in what he hopes to be an ongoing project (he is currently working on an \u201cUn-American Songbook, Volume 3\u201d), these two volumes give a whole new meaning to Swinging London.<\/p>\n

\u201cVolume 1\u201d kicks off with guitarist\/vocalist Bruce McDaniel belting Lennon and McCartney\u2019s \u201cGood Morning, Good Morning\u201d (Palermo obsessives will notice that the track opens with a bleating goat, which is rumored to be the same creature heard at the end of \u201cOne Child Left Behind\u201d\u2026how\u2019s that for continuity?) The Beatles provide the widest thread running through the project, including an instrumental version of \u201cEleanor Rigby\u201d that\u2019s a tour de force by violinist Katie Jacoby (who also tears up King Crimson\u2019s prog rock masterpiece \u201cLarks\u2019 Tongue in Aspic, Part 2\u201d).<\/p>\n

Palermo deploys his surging horns on an ecstatically sanguinary romp through Blodwyn Pig\u2019s \u201cSend Your Son to Die,\u201d and delivers another blast of brass on the extended arrangement of Nicky Hopkins\u2019 \u201cEdward, The Mad Shirt Grinder,\u201d a piece introduced on Quicksilver Messenger Service\u2019s album Shady Grove. A pedant might quibble that a recording by a San Francisco band doesn\u2019t belong in \u201cThe Great Un-American Songbook\u201d, but was there a more British Brit than Hopkins, the era\u2019s definitive session keyboardist? Anyway, the picaresque piece provides the players with a consistently inspiring vehicle for improvising, including Ben Kono\u2019s torrid tenor, John Bailey\u2019s thoughtful and beautifully calibrated trumpet, and another arresting violin solo by Jacoby.<\/p>\n

More than any other EPBB release, \u201cThe Great Un-American Songbook\u201d is like rummaging around Palermo\u2019s record collection and playing tracks at random after imbibing an espresso-laced bottle of absinth. He\u2019s the first to admit that the album is a highly personal and nostalgia-induced undertaking. \u201cAlmost everything I do lately is reliving my past,\u201d Palermo says. \u201cWith the craft and skill I\u2019ve developed being an arranger for all these years, I can now take those songs that I grew up with and loved, and reinterpret them. I picked my favorite songs, songs that I\u2019m going to want to hear and play a lot. There\u2019s really no other way to explain my selection process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cVolume 2\u201d opens with another rule-breaking wild card, as Palermo mashes up the Berkeley punk band Green Day\u2019s bitter indictment \u201cAmerican Idiot\u201d with the point-counterpoint exchange of the West Side Story anthem \u201cAmerica.\u201d In his completely unnecessary defense, Palermo points out that he\u2019s inspired by the version of \u201cAmerica\u201d that Keith Emerson recorded with his pre-ELP band The Nice, rather than the Broadway cast album or film soundtrack. Jethro Tull\u2019s \u201cBeggar\u2019s Farm\u201d features an appropriately charged Ben Kono flute solo, while also unleashing Bruce McDaniel\u2019s vocals, which register just the right tone of reverent irreverence (or is that irreverent reverence?). There are far too many highlights to mention them all, but Napoleon Murphy Brock\u2019s vocals on The Crazy World of Arthur Brown\u2019s \u201cFire\u201d sounds like a lost Zappa outtake (Zappologists will catch numerous Zappa quotes and references laced throughout the project).<\/p>\n

Speaking of irreverence, Palermo populates the Songbook with a vivid cast of characters providing some running commentary, including his fey executive producer, Edvard Loog Wanker III, Pete Best, and Ringo Starr\u2019s long-lost cousin, Mick Starkey, who ends the album with a brief blast of Beatlemania on \u201cI Want to Be Your Man\u201d and \u201cGood Night.\u201d But don\u2019t miss the hilariously majestic hidden track featuring the cranky but always-game crooner Mike James (last heard pondering the meaning of it all on One Child\u2019s \u201cIs That All There Is?\u201d). By the end of the long and winding road through Palermo\u2019s musical backpages there\u2019s no doubt that his nostalgia is our delight, as vintage rock songs make for state-of-the-art jazz.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything can be grist for the mill,\u201d Palermo says. \u201cOnce I start an arrangement I get so into it. I\u2019m going to put my spin on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In many ways, Palermo\u2019s career is a case study in getting the last laugh. Born in Ocean City, New Jersey on June 14, 1954, he grew up in the cultural orbit of Philadelphia, which was about an hour drive away. He started playing clarinet in elementary school, and soon turned to the alto saxophone. He also took up the guitar, and credits his teenage obsession with Zappa to opening his ears to post-bop
harmonies and improvisation.<\/p>\n

Palermo caught the jazz bug while attending DePaul University, and took to the alto sax with renewed diligence inspired by Phil Woods, Cannonball Adderley, and Edgar Winter (the subject of an upcoming EPBB project). Before he graduated he was leading his own band and making a good living as a studio player recording commercial jingles. But like so many jazz musicians he answered New York\u2019s siren call, moving to Manhattan in 1977. After a year of playing jam sessions and scuffling, Palermo landed a coveted gig with Tito Puente, a four-year stint that immersed him in Afro-Cuban music.<\/p>\n

An encounter with trumpeter Woody Shaw\u2019s septet at the Village Vanguard in the late 1970s stoked his interest in writing and arranging for multiple horns, and by the end of the decade he had launched a nine-piece rehearsal band with five horns. Between Don Sebesky\u2019s well-regarded book \u201cThe Contemporary Arranger\u201d and advice from Dave Lalama and Tim Ouimette<\/p>\n

Palermo made his recording debut in 1982, an impressive session featuring heavyweights such as David Sanborn, Edgar Winter and Randy Brecker. As a consummate studio cat and sideman, he toured and recorded with an array of stars, including Aretha Franklin, Eddie Palmieri, Celia Cruz, Lena Horne, Tony Bennett, Mel Torm\u00e9, Lou Rawls, Melba Moore, The Spinners, and many others. As an arranger, he\u2019s written charts for the Tonight Show Band, Maurice Hines, Eddy Fischer, and Melissa Walker. Employed frequently by bass star Christian McBride for a disparate array of projects, Palermo has written arrangements for a James Brown concert at the Hollywood Bowl, a Frank Sinatra tribute featuring Kurt Elling, Seth McFarland, John Pizzarelli, and a 20-minute medley of Wayne Shorter tunes for the New Jersey Ballet.<\/p>\n

Palermo had been leading his big band for more than a decade before the Zappa concept started coming together. Inspired by electric guitar master Mike Keneally, who performed with Zappa on some of his final concerts before his death in 1993, Palermo decided to arrange a program of 12 Zappa tunes. When the time came to debut the material at one of the band\u2019s regular gigs at the Bitter End in early 1994, a sold-out crowd greeted the band.<\/p>\n

The Ed Palermo Big Band earned international attention with its 1997 debut \u201cThe Ed Palermo Big Band Plays Frank Zappa\u201d on Astor Place Records. With Palermo\u2019s brilliant arrangements and soloists such as Bob Mintzer, Chris Potter, Dave Samuels, Mike Stern, and Mike Keneally, the album made an undisputable case for the Zappa jazz concept. His first album of Zappa tunes on Cuneiform Records, called \u201cTake Your Clothes Off When You Dance\u201d, came out in 2006, followed in 2009 by \u201cEddy Loves Frank\u201d. But while Palermo has written more than 300 Zappa charts, he\u2019s anything but a one-trick pony. Recent releases like 2014\u2019s \u201cOh No! Not Jazz!!\u201d and 2016\u2019s \u201cOne Child Left Behind\u201d, both on Cuneiform, featured a bountiful selection of his original compositions and material by composers not named Frank Zappa.<\/p>\n

Nothing demonstrates the ensemble\u2019s ongoing vitality better than the stellar cast of players, with longtime collaborators such as violinist Katie Jacoby, baritone saxophonist Barbara Cifelli, drummer Ray Marchica, and keyboardist Ted Kooshian. Many of these top-shelf musicians have been in the band for more than a decade, and they bring wide ranging experience, expert musicianship and emotional intensity to Palermo\u2019s music. From the first note, well, after the goat, the band manifests greatness in a truly Un-American cause.<\/p>\n

To purchase: The Ed Palermo Big Band’s \u201cThe Great Un-American Songbook Volumes 1 & 2\u201d is available through Cuneiform Records, Amazon and www.palermobigband.com<\/p>\n

For more information on The Ed Palermo Big Band:
www.palermobigband.com – www.cuneiformrecords.com
http:\/\/www.cuneiformrecords.com\/bandshtml\/palermo.html<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Source: www.cuneiformrecords.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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