Search - Art Ensemble of Chicago :: Jackson in Your House/Message to Our Folks

Correct CD available from the label

Mark A Heyert | Hollywood, CA USA | 10/18/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Fuel 2000 Records has just released this CD and Don Cherry's "Mu First Part/ Mu Second Part" but the manufacturing plant mixed up the two titles and switched the music. Cherry's music inadvertently appears on this disc and vise versa. The defective CDs have black lettering on white background, whereas correct discs have been made with light blue background instead of white. Consumers wishing to exchange can send their bad disc(s) to Jazz CD, Fuel 2000 Records, 6607 Sunset Blvd., 2nd Floor, Hollywood, CA 90028"

Yes, it wanders, but that's half the fun

Jason Gubbels | San Diego, CA | 10/28/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This legendary band (almost more of a collective, really) found the post-Coltrane American jazz scene so dead they hightailed it to Europe, hanging out in France where they delighted the locals with freaky concerts featuring face paint and props, and cutting wild albums in Paris studios. (And hey, don't believe the Ken Burns/Jazz swipe that this Franco popularity means they must have been phonies. Europe's always been at least two steps ahead of us Yanks as far as appreciating good jazz.) This cd compiles two individually released 1969 albums onto one disc. And they're pretty great, too. To be sure, there's more whoops and giggles than I really need, and I find them least compelling when they use their voices rather than their instruments to communicate, but that's part of the AEC package. As Lester Bangs once wrote, you gotta sit through lots of beads rolling around on drum heads to get to the good stuff. And there is good stuff, too - the faux-Dixieland breakdown the group slides into halfway through the opening cut, for one. Or their rendition of Charlie Parker's "Dexterity," which starts out utterly straight and quickly detours into glorious atonality. And I even like the two long side-closers, full of found sounds, snatches of melody, and, yes, beads rolling around on drum heads. Crazy music, but always full of life and energy, and light-hearted, too - a fine intro to the formidable institution known as the Art Ensemble of Chicago."