Joe Henderson, Inner Urge

     I'm finally back writing about jazz! The last stuff I left off on was some modern jazz and even some rock: Pat Metheny, Ornette Coleman, St.Vincent, that kind of stuff. I really want to get into free-jazz albums. The only free-jazz albums I own is this great one by David S. Ware, one of the best saxophonists I've heard in my life. The other one is by this group called Dimensions in Space in Muisc, something like that. Anyways, this is a return to writing about jazz albums. This one is a straight-ahead album that pretty much all jazz fans should know, or at least they know the tune that the album is named after, 'Inner Urge', a fantastic jazz standard written by Joe Henderson, a great tenor saxophone player who recorded on the Blue Note record label in the 1960's. He would go on to play with many other famous jazz musicians and he even had a big band at some point later in his career.  
 This is the main info about the album: Inner Urge is an album by jazz saxophonist Joe Henderson released in 1966, the fourth recorded as a leader for Blue Note Records. It was recorded at the Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on November 30, 1964. It features performances by pianist McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones on drums, both associated with John Coltrane, bassist Bob Cranshaw and Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone. The Penguin Guide to Jazz gave the album a four-star rating (of a possible four stars), describing the music as "dark and intense". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_Urge) 
     Let's start with the first tune which is also my favorite tune on the album. It's called 'Inner Urge'. The first thing that you hear is the piano, bass, and drums playing this great melodic motif. The melody is played on the bass and sax and it is very melodic. What really stands out is how straight-ahead this sounds to my young modern jazz ears today. This is that classic sound from the 60's that jazz fans refer to as straight-ahead or post-bop. I would say the tune is modal and follows a form of chord changes over and over again, allowing the musicians to stretch out on familiar territory rather than improvising over new lines of chord changes. As they keep playing its like the whole song is reaching a musical climax, especially the drumming of Elvin Jones, who is arguably one of the greatest jazz drummers of all time. His style is so unique. The way he hits the cymbals and the bass drum are particularly Elvin Jones. He doesn't do that standard cymbal snare hit stuff that all jazz drummers do. Instead, his style is a flurry of notes all over the kit, complicated but somehow not sounding like he's showing off throughout the whole tune. There's some lines of tenor saxophone from the leader on this recording date, Joe Henderson, after the head. His solo here is very post-bop, it has some of the influences of the greats before him like Charlie Parker but his style is undeniably his own. This isn't a follower of Coltrane, this is a guy doing his own thing. McCoy Tyner was the pianist on this recording date and boy does he play! Its crazy how this album has two guys from the John Coltrane Quintet! McCoy's solo here is very smooth and shall I use the word coy? It's a melodic solo, that's for sure. After that there's an incredible drum solo by Elvin Jones. It's got a ton of licks and groove that all drummers can appreciate. His style is very complicated without sounding busy. It's really a marvel to hear. After that they play the main melody which is mainly played by the bass. Bob Cranshaw does a really great job with his bass tone here. The bass sounds like a great quality instrument in tune with great intonation. Before I end the discussion of this song I should say a bit more about the saxophone playing. Henderson's style is very professorial and chromatic yet full of melody and with precision on the sax. They used to call him the Professor. What I like about this song is that its become a jazz standard, and the mood is very dark, although the ending chord is a beautiful one. 
     Next, we have the tune 'Isotope', a very scientific name which could of came straight from Chem 101. This one has a straight-up bebop type head that is very chromatic and bluesy. Apparently this tune is suppose to be a tribute to Monk because of Monk's use of humor in his tunes. It has a playful atmosphere, especially in Henderson's solo. But it also has the virtuosity of a true bebop player as well. His lines here are very melodic, fast, and technical but he still has a great sense of melody and feel. By feel I mean to say that it never sounds like he's trying to put too many notes into one particular section. It's a bluesy solo, that's for sure. McCoy's solo here is very classic. There are some Monk-isms in there but for the most part he's following the chords harmonically. After that there is a trading bars part where the sax is playing some improvised lines and the drums are responding to it, a call and response, which is a part of blues as well as jazz. Elvin Jones was on fire on this recording. After that they repeat the head. It's such a Monk type melody, it's great to hear someone do a tribute to him. Thelonious Monk wrote, recorded, and performed some of the greatest jazz in the world.
     Then, is the tune 'El Bario', which is a tune Henderson wanted to have a Spanish musical ethos. It sounds like some simple chords over and over again and the band is just playing off that creating some great off the cuff music with a Spanish vibe. Henderson doesn't play any particular main melody or theme but rather an improvised musical performance with tons of musical phrases on his sax. His saxophone tone is very tenor-y. It sounds like he doesn't like overblown notes, or at least he just does it very rarely, and he likes to play all of his notes perfectly in tune. At the end Henderson does hit a few overblown notes, which is cool. I always liked when sax players hit the notes really hard, loud, and brashly. Reminds me of John Coltrane but also the great saxophonist with Sun Ra named John Gilmore.
     The next tune is 'You know I Care', which is a ballad, something that every straight-ahead jazz album should have. The head could have been written in the 40's. It's very beautiful and 'jazzy', it follows some standard jazz chord changes before the rise of bebop. I tried to find this song online and I believe it is an old standard. It's interesting hearing them play something so old school after hearing the other cuts before this. Joe's saxophone playing here takes you way back to that time. The melodies, the licks, the phrasing, its all straight from the jazz book. I've never heard McCoy play a tune like this before. He really can do it all. He restrains himself on this piece, not playing as much as he did on the other tracks. He doesn't really get a solo on this piece, he just comps and plays beautifully.
     Lastly, we have a tune by Cole Porter entitled 'Night and Day'. This one has more of a bebop stride to it. The saxophone solo just hits all the changes with great rhythmic and melodic content. He's really swinging his notes. That swing rhythm is hard to explain with words but once you hear it you'll know exactly what it is. It is one of the most essential elements of straight-ahead jazz. In more far out stuff like free-jazz sometimes the rhythm is unclear, or non-existent in some cases.  This last tune doesn't really stand out as much to me as the other tunes. 
     Finally, I have to say that this was a great album. I don't think you can really rate albums like this because the stuff recorded during this time was technically all great to me. All those guys had something to say back then and they were all great. I'd always heard of Joe Henderson because I'm a huge jazz fan, but more of straight-ahead and avant-garde side of jazz. I'd seen a few videos of Joe Henderson online playing with his big band and I thought it was amazing stuff. Once I went to see the CSUN college jazz band perform and they did mostly all Joe Henderson tunes with one of their sax teachers playing Henderson's parts with their school big band. It wasn't exactly amazing like seeing Henderson on YouTube but it did open my ears to more of Henderson's material. His style is great and he's one of those classic jazz saxophonists. This is such a cool laid-back album, I'm surprised I haven't heard it until now. There's going to be a lot of those classic records like this one that I'm going to have to go back and check out thanks to the Internet. Check this one out.

Update 1.03

     Things have been great lately. I've really been enjoying the summer and having fun in the sun. Lately me and my entourage of friends have been going out to the beach to swim and enjoy the weather under the sun. The great thing is the fact that I've actually met a group of friends that I consistently hang out with now. It took me about two years to find friends out here in California. For a while I missed all my old friends back home in Wisconsin. I had made a few friends out here, here and there but they turned out to be very squirrely and sometimes downright impossible to deal with. This includes some bands that I played in very briefly too. I was even in an all Asian band for a while! I met most of these bands and musicians through Craigslist. The internet is a bit iffy and you never truly know what kind of people you are going to met online. Anyways, so things have been fun and I've enjoyed the summer so far hanging out with my buds.
     In addition, I've been hanging out with my older brother a lot, playing Diablo III: Reaper of Souls on PC. The picture above is a cosplay of a Crusader character from Diablo III. I just got into the game again because I played it on console with my friends a while back and I suddenly saw it as an amazing game again after maybe a year after it came out. They've added so much to the game now that its really worth coming back and replaying characters again. They've added an adventure mode where the game feels more like an open world game. And then there are Nepelom Rifts, these levels upon levels of monsters and demons where you kill them all and you get chances for epic loot called legendary items and what not. The experience is definitely a 10 out of 10. 10/10 would buy the game again! Blizzard is adding more content to the game all the time now. Its really become quite a great game now that they've polished it and added more content to it. I'm a Blizzard fan boy. I literally own every game they've made on the PC. I think they're all great but I really like Starcraft II, Diablo III, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm. Pretty much all their triple A titles. Also, they're working on a first person shooter game called Overwatch. I really wish I can get in the beta for that game when the beta is out! Also, Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void, the last chapter of the Starcraft II trilogy is coming out this winter, hopefully by Christmas time. I'm actually in the beta for that right now but I haven't played any of it yet because its only multiplayer and I'm afraid I'll just get rekt because I don't know any of the new units and how they work yet. I'll figure it out eventually.
     Also, I've been playing more guitar. A little bit here and there, even at friends' houses playing their guitars. I've also been watching a lot of Dragon Ball GT. I've actually almost finished watching the whole series now. I've only got about 20 more episodes. Luckily for me I've been able to watch the whole series on Youtube rather than going through anime websites. Makes it easy for viewing. The best part of GT is when this robot mutant named Baby takes on Goku, and when Hell Android 17 fuses with Good Android 17 to become Super Android 17!
     I've been reading Herbie Hancock's biography Possibilities. I gotta say that the guy is an amazing composer and pianist, and his memories of playing with the Second Great Quintet (Miles Davis on trumpet, Herbie on keys, Tony Williams on drums, Ron Carter on bass, and Wayne Shorter on tenor sax) were just amazing! It was the best part of the book, although I'm still not finished with it yet. Other interesting parts was the band Herbie formed after the Miles Davis Quintet broke up. He formed a band with an African name called Mwandishi and they played this real far out free-jazz type stuff. I've listened to some of their stuff online and those cats could play! I'm more into that kind of stuff rather than Herbie's Headhunters period when he started doing funk. But most of the young people my age would rather prefer his funk stuff. It's more accessible and has a beat that you can tap your foot to. In addition it was cool reading about Herbie's Buddhist faith. I like the idea of chanting and meditation but I don't think I'd ever have that inspiration to ever go to a temple and learn and ask questions about it.
     As a customer at my work likes to say all the time,"Life is good". Before the summer is over I want to go out to more concerts at the Baked Potato if anybody interesting is coming to the valley. Also, a while back I was learning more about computers and learning simple things like html and css. Maybe I could actually learn a real program like javascript or c++ or something. I think I have the aptitude for that kind of stuff. My friends were talking about working on programming, learning programming, maybe trying to make ourselves a simple game, or even better yet, an app or something. It would be cool to learn how to do something like that although I'd have to start from the bottom and learn a lot. At least with the guitar I'm already pretty high up the scale. Its been a while since I blogged. Sometimes I forget I have a blog when I don't write for long periods of time. I hope I can get more viewers and keep an audience, engaging them with entertaining posts. Figueroa out.

Heads Up!

     

     Hey everyone thought I'd write another one of these updates for the readers, the fans, the hardcore Orlando Figueroa blog fans! Anyways, I've been up to a lot more fun lately. A lot of gaming. Not so much in terms of music or guitar playing. Like I've said in previous posts I'm becoming disillusioned with music and guitar playing and becoming more enamored of gaming. In the last post I talked about how I was going to start streaming and stuff. My twitch channel is twitch.tv/megaman1597 if you want to check it out but there's really not much interesting content on there at the moment. Its a bit iffy streaming because the quality is not so good unless I'm playing something like my Super Nintendo emulators. On a game like Heroes of the Storm the quality is terrible and blurry because of my network connection speeds. Unless you have a fast internet connection you can't really stream that well. So I looked more and more into what it takes to be able to stream and all these programs and options to make a stream great and I've kind of run into a wall because I think all my streaming problems stem from not having a super fast internet connection speed. So I've been kind of studying and looking up all this stuff just to be able to stream. Has it been worth it? Yes! But like I said I think I've run into a wall because I think my internet connection speed is just not good enough for it.
     On the other end of things there's actual gaming I've been doing as well. I've been playing a lot of Super Nintendo games on my emulator on my PC. Games like Super Metroid and Super Mario World mostly. I'm actually pretty far in Super Metroid. I've finally got most of the items in the game and now I'm just trying to power my way through it, fighting these big ass bosses that take a while to take out. Some of them are actually really difficult to fight because on some bosses they don't have a set HP that you have to deplete, instead you just have to survive the whole fight until something happens, like you pushing them across the entire map until they fall off. There was one boss fight where it was like that and it was pretty tough.
     In addition, I've been playing the first Bioshock. I'm playing the game on the PC, on my steam account. If any of you want to add me on steam my name on there is Spacemarine, I should be like the first hit in the search, with the sexy girl space marine picture. I'm actually really getting into Bioshock. I'm really feeling it! The story of the game kind of gives me the creeps because I get scared easily and the whole idea of quasi-zombies/cannibals/whatever they are running around underwater with guns trying to kill you just freaks me out. Also the idea that you have to kill Bigdaddy's and then absorb Littlesisters (basically just little girls but I think they're much more, not far enough in the game to say) is pretty interesting. The picture is a Big Daddy Little Sister cosplay. Its so good! You can choose to save the Littlesisters but then you won't get a lot of the superpowers needed to power up your character, making it easier to make it through the game. Right now I'm enjoying the game but I find it really difficult. A friend of mine told me he thought the game was super easy. I guess for some people these modern originally on Xbox360 first person games are really easy but for me they are the epitome of difficulty. Because of playing this game its gotten me interested in playing more of the first-person xbox games in my brother's collections. The main game that comes to mind that I want to play that he has is Fallout 3. But that's for another time.
     In other news, today was really fun because I brought over Diablo 3 for the Xbox360 over to a friends house and they really enjoyed the game. I was getting so into the game and playing on a console, that later on we went to Gamestop and I bought the expansion, Reaper of Souls because I knew that they would want to play it with me on other days we hang out. I already have both D3 and RoS on PC but having it on console just makes it more of a chill game to play when your just relaxing with your friends. The PC version is a bit more hardcore and has players that have played since launch still putting in incredible amounts of time. It's a really great game. Reaper of Souls turned Diablo 3 into a much more open world RPG experience, where you can kind of go anywhere you want at any time to complete quests, kill demons, and get epic loot. All in all its a fun time. 10/10 would buy again.
     Also, I've been getting a bit more into anime because the new Dragon Ball Super episodes have aired in Japan, and people have put English subtitles to it already. It's pretty cool. I'm actually going to start watching Dragon Ball Z GT again because I'm kind of into a DBZ phase again now that I'm into Dragon Ball Super, but I don't want to watch the same old DBZ stuff that I've seen before, so I'm going to give GT another shot. I once watched it but after a while I became bored and just stopped. Maybe now I'll be more into it? It's worth a shot although pretty much all of the friends I've ever had have said that GT was garbage. Maybe after I watch a bit of the series I'll do a little anime mini-review for it, I haven't done one of those for a long time. The last anime I watched was this great one about time travel called Stein's Gate. I would recommend that one to any modern anime fan.
     Lastly, as you can tell I have a lot of time on my hands! If I was using my time wisely I would be working more on music but I'm a lazy musician. I have chops but I don't want to put the practice in to truly become great. To learn a 1000 songs and find the right people to play in a band with. I feel like part of my problem is that I have no direction musically, and that I should spend the money to hire a guitar teacher but then comes the problems of paying for said teacher. If I'm going to pay for a guitar teacher, then I might as well just pay to go to music college, learn the whole thing about harmony and counterpoint, as well as be a hotshot guitar player. I think musicians do get kind of stuck or in a rut or a musical depression and they just take a break for a while. I feel like that's what I need to do. Just take a break and come back later. Its funny that I used to listen to music all the time but lately I haven't listened to any music other than some death metal here and there. It actually doesn't bother me at all when I'm not listening. Before it used to. So I've changed in that respect. If I had to say what is the greatest thing in the world to me I would say music but gaming and work would be additional followups to that. Figueroa out.

What I've been up to lately and plans

     I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. Holiday being the Fourth of July with family and fireworks and all that. My family has never been too big on Fourth of July or going out to see fireworks but I do enjoy fireworks when I can. This year I worked both the 4th of July and the 3rd, so I didn't get to see any fireworks or anything, although I could hear it inside the store I work at. I got to spend the Fourth working with my good friend until 1 in the morning. Good times getting paid, making that bread. In other news, I've been looking and playing old school games on my computer via emulators. Mainly just Zsnes, I've been playing Super Nintendo games that I missed growing up because for me gaming was more about the Playstation. Right now I am playing Super Metroid but I also have Zelda:A link to the Past, StreetFighter 2, Super Mario Bros, Earthbound, and Chrono Trigger. The girl in the picture is doing a cosplay of Samus from Super Metroid. Anyways, today was cool because I ordered a USB Super Nintendo controller and it came through the mail. So I was finally able to play the games on a Super Nintendo controller, which is a much smoother gaming experience than using a keyboard to run and jump my way through Super Metroid. I've been thinking about streaming again and doing it in a much more focused way to actually get and keep viewers. One of my problems I think I had when I was streaming a lot on twitch was that I was streaming the wrong games. I was streaming Heroes of the Storm and I don't think most people want to watch mobas, especially that particular one. On the other hand, when I was streaming Starcraft 2 I would get like 10 viewers watching me play 1v1 matches, and it was awesome! So I'm planning on redoing my stream, and even getting a web cam. I feel like people really enjoy watching streams more if they can see the gamer playing it, seeing how they look and their facial expressions and all that is definitely part of the twitch experience. On the other hand, there are people who don't use a web cam and they just use a mic and they get along fine. Another thing I'm looking into is starting a YouTube gaming channel where I play these old school games like Super Metroid and A Link to the Past and stuff. So yeah these are my plans I got going on. Musically I've been feeling very down and in the dumps. I hardly play guitar that much these days as I'm getting more and more into gaming, not only playing new and current PC games but also games on Xbox 360, and doing retro gaming on emulators on my PC. Although every now and then I listen to some great death metal. Lately I've been really into this band Arch Enemy. They just added the great shred guitarist from Nevermore; Jeff Loomis to the band. They are one great death metal band, probably one of the best out there on the scene today. Anyways, so I'm thinking about making a better attempt at streaming. For a while, I was streaming everyday but the only game I was streaming was Heroes of the Storm, and I was getting like no views. Maybe if I try streaming some older games like Super Metroid and maybe going back to Starcraft I can get viewers again. I won't give up! Orlando out.

Alex Machacek live at the Baked Potato

  
     On Tuesday night I went to see Alex Machacek at the Baked Potato, a jazz club here in the valley, in Studio City. Alex played with bassist Ben Shepard and drummer Eric Valentine. The Baked Potato is named so because they have a menu that consists of nothing but different kinds of baked potatoes. You can even get a baked potato Philly cheese steak. I knew that the place was small from the pictures I saw of it online but I didn't realize how small the place was until I got inside and sat down. That being said, the club is very intimate and the band is right in your face. Perfect for the listening experience and the visuals. The cover charge at the door for this concert was only $20, and they require a two drink minimum. With a baked potato I got as well I ended up only spending about $40, pretty reasonable to see a concert and have food and drink. Anyways, let's talk about the actual music.
     First, Alex started off the concert playing a song that he's playing here in this short clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDvhTDljZxs. I don't know the name of the tune but in that clip is where I first heard it. It was great and refreshing to hear him open up with that tune. It's a great opening tune that has some great rhythmic syncopation. From this tune we can tell that not only is Alex a great guitarist with lots of technique but that he's also a great composer as well. You can say that this tune is like progressive rock meets jazz fusion, which is really what Alex's whole musical style is all about. He mixes odd time signatures with jazz chord progressions and rhythmic motifs to create original material. As far as the concert went I would say that this was the best tune that he played just for the sheer amount of excitement that was displayed during this number. This song is exciting the whole way through, like a car race speeding across the 101. You got the sense that the whole band was all together on this one, speeding through the complex snare hits, bass fills, and guitar chords. As far as the concert went though, I would say this was the only interesting thing they played during the entire first set.
     That being said, once you hear a few of Alex's tunes you begin to realize that he uses the same kinds of orchestrations and the same kinds of chord progressions, with maybe a different melody here and there. I think at this particular concert Alex really wasn't feeling the music. He was just coasting. Whereas his sidemen were really pushing the envelop, truly improvising. I felt like there were only like maybe two times where Alex was really improvising and pulling off some great stuff in the process. The rest of the time he was coasting. By coasting I mean he's playing the tunes well but isn't really 'there' in the moment when it comes to his time for improvising. I was a bit disappointed to say the least but realistically I shouldn't have expected much for only $20. But his sidemen were terrific! Especially Eric Valentine on drums. He was playing these incredible odd time signatures and incredible snare/cymbal hits and never missing a fill. At times Valentine reminded me of the drummer from Return to Forever, Lenny White. He was my favorite part of the whole concert. Then the bassist Ben Shepard was playing some incredible bass fills and showing us what its like to play and get a great sound out of a 6-string bass. I didn't even know they made 6-string basses until I saw him play it that night! Shepard is a very melodic bassist that can play the bass like a guitar player plays the guitar. Very much like a Jack Bruce type player. The reason why I think Alex was kind of off this night was because I think this was just a pick up band he was playing with. These aren't the typical people he would usually play with so he was just laying low and again, coasting. The other thing I wish Alex would do is let the other guys write compositions for the band to play because after a while all his tunes start sounding the same. He uses the same tone on most of his songs. At best he sounds like a great Allan Holdsworth imitation, especially with that creamy slightly distorted lead guitar tone on his solos and that synthesizer sounding guitar chord stuff he does where it sounds like whales from the ocean. He definitely got that from Holdsworth. Out of all the Holdsworth clones I think there is only one player who has surpassed the master. He's pretty famous, his name is Tosin Abasi, a great progressive metal jazz fusion type guitarist (check out his band Animals as Leaders and side-project T.R.A.M). Anyways, once you hear Alex's compositions back to back you realize that they all sound the same. This isn't really bad but it does get old. Jazz is suppose to be fresh and unique and have more intensive improvisation. But this concert felt more like a rock concert in comparison to some of the jazz concerts I've been to here in LA. I'm not hating on Alex but I think he could have done a better job when it came to his solos.
     Lastly, the other song that stood out to me was the last song he played, ending the first set. It was a Gospel-type tune entitled 'Oh, Lard'. This one was slow and moody, simplistic but made more complex with a jazzy series of chord changes for the improvisation. Again, here Alex's playing was nothing special but the bass playing and drumming were phenomenal. Plus it was nice seeing them play something simple and that had a Gospel type sound. Basically they made Alex sound great at this gig, not the other way around. This is the case where the sidemen make the star sound great. I think Alex is a great guitar player but I think he gives more of himself to the music when he plays with high profile musicians. In videos online I've seen him play with people like drummers Terry Bozzio and Gary Husband and in those videos he's giving it all he's got to the music. Maybe he just needs to play with musicians that push him to the farther reaches of great jazz improvisation. I've seen concerts where the star is a great performer with other big names but with a pick up band they're just coasting. It was a shame but I did enjoy myself that night. On the bright side now I know a place I can go to to hear jazz music!