Thanks to Inky and his jazz-rock vision, I am being drawn back to Electric Ladyland, a Jimi Hendrix Experience. I was exposed to Hendrix as far back as my junior high school years from Mr. Hilt who was my favorite art teacher. Twice a week, I was looking forward to his class so I could just paint and enjoy Hendrix. I didn’t know what the heck I was listening to, but at least the music that came out of his stereo system was not as excessively loud (even though he played at a high volume for a classroom) as other rock shit I couldn’t stand. With Hendrix, I could hear what he was strumming without going deaf, and his virtuoso improvisations were rich and colorful, not just a bunch of white noises screeching up my eardrums.

After hearing his melodic invention on “Voodoo Chile,” I could figure out where Miles Davis got his inspiration for his fusion. In the album liner notes, Derek Taylor quoted what Davis had to say about Hendrix: “He had a natural ear for hearing music… it was great. He influenced me and I influenced him and that’s the way great music is always made. Everybody’s showing somebody something and then moving on from there… Jimi Hendrix came from the blues, like me. We understood each other right away… he was a great blues guitarist.” In the jazz-inflected “Rainy Day, Dream Away,” Hendrix’s riff works along with Freddie Smith’s horn and Mike Finnigan’s organ to create a thought-provoking interaction.

While the psychedelic intro, “…And The Gods Made Love,” gives us a hint of what we are about to enter, the powerful-closer “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” lets us know that the experience will live on after the music stops, or the heartbeat stops—”If I don’t meet you no more in this world, then I’ll meet you in the next one, and don’t be late, don’t be late.” Hendrix crooned. Almost forty years later, the album still rocks!

Anh Tuyet’s Di Tim is the latest attempt to jazz up old-school Vietnamese ballads. To be more accurate, it is an effort from the moldy figs (Anh Tuyet, Nguyen Anh 9, and Bao Chan) trying to get their swing on. Anh Tuyet sure has a fine and mellow voice despite of her age, but she doesn’t have the right chops for jazz. A jazz singer can’t just sing tunes straight the way they were written. The more notes being sung, the less the jazz.

What makes jazz so lively and sexy is that she doesn’t play by rules, but that is not the case here with Anh Tuyet and the musicians (including Ly Duoc on bass, Trong Hieu on piano, and Xuan Hieu on saxophone) who have no rhythmic sensibility for jazz. They don’t have the heart to strip down the standards to their basic structures and then build them back up with their own invention. They are just simply there to back up the vocalist. In the pseudo swing, Quoc Truong’s “Nhung Phut Giay Qua,” not only the rhythm section is unswingable, the rock guitar added an excruciating noise to Anh Tuyet’s pallid flow. The title track feels the same way, but less distracting because no rock riff is involved.

The biggest disappointment of the entire album is that Anh Tuyet hardly pushes her delivery, manipulates her vocals range, or improvises her singing. The only time she breaks free from the written notes is near the end of Tran Dung’s “Loi Chim” where she mimics the bird’s voice. Now if she applies more scat singing and improvising on the blues, like Nguyen Anh 9’s “Buon Oi! Chao Mi,” “Mua Thu Canh Nau,” Trinh Cong Son’s “Vet Lan Tram” and “Hay Khoc Di Em,” she would have created a revelation. In jazz, it is not how well a standard being sung, but how to transform it into an individual statement with new melodic lines while still capable of articulating the lyrics.

In “The Presence Is Always the Point,” which included in Considering Genius, a collection of Stanley Crouch’s writings on jazz, he argues “[t]hat jazz is a music built on adult emotion while rock is focused on adolescent passion created another problem for jazz musicians who tried fusion.” I share his view on rock (not as sophisticated as jazz), but I disagree with his position against Miles Davis’s fusion direction. Davis never lost the complex emotion in jazz when he combined the two styles. Listens to Bitches Brew, one can still hear Davis’s deep expression that came out of his trumpet. Although we both have different views on jazz-rock and hip-hop, I still have respect for Crouch as a jazz critic who speaks his mind with an intellectual voice.

What makes Crouch’s essays intriguing to read is that he does not use heavy technical terms (something I avoid to do myself), yet he could let us hear the sound of jazz through his eloquent pen. If one would like to learn about several important jazz figures—such as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Ahmad Jamal, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Duke Ellington—“The Makers” section is perfect for that, especially the piece on Bird. Crouch started out castigating Clint Eastwood’s Bird (film) and Chan Parker’s To Bird With Love (a book filled with photos), and then told the story of legendary Parker through his own research.

Even though the “Battle Royal” section, which featured eight short pieces Crouch wrote for JazzTimes, is brief, the writings are filled with controversial topics. One comes to mind is the dismissal of John Coltrane. McCoy Tyner, Coltrane’s pianist, left the band because he was “unable to deal with many squeakers, howlers, shriekers, and honkers his boss was invited onto the bandstand.” Yet, one important detail that fascinated me the most in this book is when Crouch’s father made a comment about Billie Holiday: “You should have heard her singing one to a woman. That was when she was really singing. I saw her romancing a girl with her voice just a couple of blocks from here at an after-hours joint up near Adams Boulevard on Central Avenue. She was fine and mellow all right but she was in her element when she was trying to pull a girl up next to her.” Holy shit!

Nas’s “Where Ya’ll At?” from his upcoming Hip Hop is Dead. Yes, hip-hip indeed is losing her touch. I haven’t feel anything from her lately.

Busta Rhymes’s “Untouchable” featuring Rah Digga and Spliff Star. Ra Digga spits, “The only thing tighter than my rhymes is the puss.” Not all puss are tight, alright!

I am not ashame to admit that this kracker was the one that got me hooked into hip-hop. How ironic? Don’t tell me that you didn’t like that “Ice Ice Baby” shit. It was so damn groovy. Also check out his rendition of Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor.” Looks like fans outside the States are still feeling him. Maybe he’s the cat that could bring back hip-hop, and not Nas, Jay-Z, or Common.

Anyone who is familiar with Flash interface should get a kick out of “Animator vs. Animation” by Alan Becker. Even if you have never worked with Flash, it shoud be entertaining as well. The video reminds me of Xiao Xiao’s stick-figure fighting.

Jackson Pollock is kind of kool!

The Two Chinese Boys just published “Don’t Lie” from the Black Eyed Peas. They have definitely lost their humorousness.

Got a real copy of Ngo Minh Tri’s Buon C Major this morning. The final mix is way better than what I got for the review version, which took me quite a long time to appreciate its aesthetics. The arrangements are crisper and the vocals are much clearer. The album is fantastic.

Vuong Dung, winner of Sao Mai Diem Hen (Vietnamese Idol) in 2005, is under the influence of Thanh Lam. No harm in that, as long as she could carry her individual style. And she has with the rendition of Pho Duc Phuong’s “Khong The Va Co The” in her debut Trai Cam Mat Troi. Although her flow and phrasing are drawn heavily from Thanh Lam, she knows how to steer her performance away from the queen of pop, and makes it her own.

With a powerful, light-scratched voice and a marvelous intonation, Vuong Dung brings a new aroma to the Vietnamese pop fragrance, and her distinctiveness can be found in Nguyen Cuong’s “Thanh Pho Mien Quan Ho.” She rides skillfully in and out of the up-tempo arrangement, takes her time crooning the folk essence, and recites naturally the witty rhymes. On top of all that, she isn’t afraid to play around with her delivery, which makes her performance so elating. Furthermore, her northern style is so damn seductive that listening to her accent makes me want to sleep with her. And when she pours her heart out on the jazz-flavored “Bao La Buon” (also a Nguyen Cuong’s composition), I wish I could fly to her and take away her immeasurable loneliness by touching her hair, face, and whatever sad parts on her body. But when she gets rough and rocked-up in “Trai Cam Mat Troi” (another song from Nguyen Cuong), you know she is no weak soul. If a woman wants to pick the “orange sun” just to give it to you, what more could you ask for? If you could have that woman by your side, the world is yours.

In the album-closer “Ben Song” written by Nguyen Hoang Ha, songbird Vuong Dung completely changed her flow, and yet still giving the tune a heartfelt presentation. Besides the captivating vocals, what leaves listeners yearning for more is the striking orchestration from Duc Nghia who is the main man behind album’s productions.

It’s time for a bit of visual change. Back to white background. Goodbye Google’s AdSense as well. The experiment is shorter than what I have expected. Enjoy the new look!

Off topic: Connie Chung sang “Thanks For The Memory.” Was she on crack or something?

Jazz was originated in America, but has been embraced worldwide. Musicians around the globe have been using her rhythms and syncopations to introduce their own music to the world. Lately, the blending of eastern and western sound is becoming a new trend. The Twelve Girls Band is being recognized for weaving traditional sounds (Chinese instruments) into pop and jazz styles. Recently, the Mezcal Jazz Unit from France has teamed up with Vietnamese musicians to bring us Tim Gio (Looking For the Wind), a collaborative effort between two cultures.

As much as I appreciate the attempt from these musicians to bring something new to the table, I don’t experience a smooth fusion connecting the two groups. But instead, each instrument fights for your ears, like the whole Wu-Tang Clan is spitting in one mic. The reed section blows its own horn. The traditional instruments (dan nhi, dan bau, dan tranh) strike their own chords. The weak rhythm section does not swing. The saxophone improvisation is monotonous or lacks humanistic expression most of the time, but when it gets dissonant (on the title track for instance), it becomes John Coltrane’s sheets-of-sound imitation.

The biggest problem with Tim Gio is the chaotic sounds coming out of multiple directions. That’s not the way jazz-fusion works. When Miles Davis recorded Bitches Brew, the sounds came together coherently even though he had multiple electric keyboards, multiple drums, multiple basses, and multiple horns playing at once. The end result was an organic sound that felt so damn natural to the ears.

The album also has tried to provoke conversations between eastern and western instruments, but the outcome is like one speaks Vietnamese while the other speaks French in a mashup dialogue. The exchange is not even close to what avant-garde Ornette Coleman had produced forty-five years ago in The Shape of Jazz to Come. Coleman’s sax and Don Cherry’s trumpet were carrying on a call-and-response effect provided by the incredible rhythm section from bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins.

Too bad Tim Gio didn’t find its wind, but at least it is a perfect album to relax with. And I am feeling the dan t’rung (a musical instrument of the minority people in the Central Highlands of Vietnam) vibration in “Cent Pour Cent” played by Cao Ho Nga.

I love you, daddy!

I have been wanting to tryout AdSense to see if it works. Since the right side of this site has some empty space and the ads box does not interfere with the main content, it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. Maybe I could get some extra bucks from it to buy real CDs so that I don’t have to harass singers’ PR. In fact, I might not have to pen any more reviews, but just share the albums for you guys to do the justice. I’ll place the ad for a month or two, if it is worthwhile, I’ll keep it.

By the way, mad props to Hoa for the delicious albums. I’ll give them a spin when I am on the road. Have a great weekend y’all, and try to click on the ads while enjoying the games.