Some months back, I wrote an entry about some upcoming albums that were coming up that I was planning to buy. I already reviewed one of the albums in the comments (Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream & Other Delights - Re-Whipped), but hadn't gotten to the other ones yet.

One of them, "Weird Al's" new album, isn't finished yet. It's mostly finished, but apparently he has to go back into the studio for some reason (he mentioned something about silly record company politics on his site). Whenever it comes out, I'll be sure to get it and review it.

However, he did release one new song (for free) on his website (4.5 MB MP3). I'm not keeping up with current music at all anymore, but I gather from various forum discussions it's a parody of something. Rumor has it, he couldn't work out a royalty arrangement with the original artist, so instead of just canning it, he released it for free. No royalties there. (Edit: the full story behind the new song is available here.)

Anyway, here we go with the other two albums.

Maynard Ferguson: MF Horn VI - Live at Ronnie's

For those not in the know, Maynard is a trumpet player who became famous in jazz circles through his incredible playing in the upper register. A rather amazing clip of him at the age of 22 (with Stan Kenton) is available on YouTube (the video quality is pretty awful, but it is from 1950).

Some 56 years later, at 78 years old, he's still touring the world, playing dozens of gigs every year. This album was recorded in London last year, and depending on which fan you listen to over at the forum on Maynard's official site, this is either the worst album MF ever recorded, or the best. I think it's somewhere in the middle.

In an interview, the tour manager said, for unspecified reasons, that after listening to what they'd recorded, they figured they only had about 60% of an album. I'm not sure if this was due to technical issues, an off-night for the band, or just Maynard showing his age, but I'd say 60% is about right. Certainly, it's not one of Maynard's best. It fails to reach any spectacular heights that are the hallmarks of most of his albums. But it's still a pretty good jazz album. The band plays pretty well, although they sound a bit thin at times (particularly the lead trumpet - Patrick Hession). Some of the arrangements feel a little lifeless, but there's some good soloing to be found throughout (although it doesn't sound like the trombone player was ever in tune).

Maynard mostly punctuates the songs with high notes here and there, and chimes in with relatively short melodic lines. His playing sounds pretty good at times, still hitting notes younger players would kill to be able to play, and at other times it seems rather sloppy, as if he was just plain tired. On a DVD shot a few years ago, Maynard was badly overweight, had trouble catching his breath, and seemed to tire rapidly.

Reportedly, Maynard is in better health now (having lost some 50 pounds in recent months), and is playing better, too. It's just too bad this album wasn't recorded after that. Really though, for someone to play the way he does (and as often as he does) at 78 is remarkable. Reportedly a studio album is in the works this year, so I'm looking forward to that. While I prefer live albums for the most part over studio recordings, it does take out the risk of recording something on a bad night.

As for MF Horn VI (yes - there are 5 previous MF Horn albums, all from the early 70's), it's got some good tracks on there (although most have appeared on previous albums), decent arrangements, and performances ranging from merely competent to rock-solid. I could have completely done without the "MF Hit Medley" though. This is an ever-changing collection of pieces of songs he recorded mostly in the 70's, at the height of his commercial success with Columbia Records. I don't care much for medleys, since you're just getting into one song when they switch over to another (often abruptly), and invariably there's some stuff in there that's just filler. I'd rather have less songs, but have them complete.

A guest artist on this album is sax player/flutist Denis DiBlasio. While the MF faithful are always glad to see him on another album (he was a fixture with the band in the early 80's), he does entirely too much of his scat-singing shtick for my tastes. Admittedly, it's only one song, but given that it's an eleven minute song, it kills a good chunk of the album for me.

Overall, I'd have to give this a 6/10.

Michael Nesmith: Rays

I gave a little background on Maynard, so fair is fair. Michael Nesmith (aka Nez) has several claims to fame. He invented MTV, won the first ever Grammy awarded for a video, his mom invented Liquid Paper, and... he was a Monkee.

Although he started in music prior to getting hired for The Monkees, that 60's TV show was where he gained most of his fame. However, after leaving the group, Nez went off in a completely different musical direction than the slickly produced TV pop music most people are familiar with. Blending country and rock, he produced a string of critically acclaimed albums that are considered pioneering in that genre. After that, he went on to create more music that was uniquely his and largely defied classification, and was one of the pioneers (there's that word again) of music videos.

Nez's latest album is an interesting project. In some ways it feels like his previous work, The Garden. It's mostly instrumental, with lots of synths and sequencers. And like The Garden, it's very programmatic music. But whereas The Garden was a book with a soundtrack (which was a follow-up to The Prison - one of my all-time favorite albums), Rays has no written narrative to support it, although from the cover and some of the lyrics, a journey of some sort is implied. Where the journey begins and ends is left up to the listener, although I've found it to be, as Nez suggests on his website, well-suited to just driving around, and letting the music work as a soundtrack to wherever you happen to be at the moment.

While the music is well-produced, and often enjoyable, I really missed Nez's ability to craft brilliant lyrics. The Garden also suffers from this, but perhaps that's not quite a fair comparison, since this music is obviously meant to be different from other music he's written in the past. Judging it on its own merits then, it's a pretty good album. Whether someone who is not a fan of Nez's own self-defined (and undefinable) genre would like it or not is another question altogether. But that's what the song clips on his website are for - trying before buying.

I'll give it a 7/10.