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I'm Beginning to See the Light
Martin Taylor, David Grisman Acoustic Jazz Quartet
Excellent, excellent CD. The quartet features Taylor on guitar, Grisman on mando (of course), and bass and drums. The 12 tracks are all instrumentals, featuring such old jazzy tunes as Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans? and Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.
This is a top-notch guitar/mando CD, so long as you know the material you're getting -- these are much older tunes, by the likes of Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Richard Rogers. Great stuff, as long as you're not expecting Coltrane or Bill Monroe. I love most of the tracks, especially Do You Know What It Means..., Autumn in New York, and Bewitched.... There are one or two tracks that I could've done without -- does the world really need another version of Makin' Whoopee? -- but they don't prevent this from being a great CD.
Total playing time: over 66 minutes. TIP: As is typical of recent "Acoustic Disc" releases, there's a 'hidden' tune at the end of the final track!
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Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza
Grisman, Bush, McCoury, Skaggs, etc....
This one is kind of hard to review. I guess I'd say that this 2-CD box set is for you if and only if you're a bluegrass mandolin fanatic.
Grisman and top-notch bluegrass mando player Ronnie McCoury brought together an amazing list of mando players to jam and record. Altogether you have: Grisman, McCoury, Sam Bush, Jesse McReynolds, Bobby Osborne, Ricky Skaggs, Frank Wakefield, Buck White, and Del McCoury on guitar, all on this 2-CD box set.
Depending on your tastes, this assortment of musicians will either make you love or hate this CD. What you have here is basically a jam session; a bunch of pickers doing the songs they know. I think that if you want a well-balanced band, you will hate this CD. But if you want a jam session featuring mando, mando, and more mando, then you will love this CD.
Between the songs, there is a lot of spoken commentary from the players on where they learned the song, etc. And the CD comes with a thick booklet with the most exhaustive liner notes I've ever seen; it even lets you know which mando player picked which solo on a given track. Between the audio commentary and the liner notes, this CD set has plenty of good stuff for the listener who wants to get into the story behind the music. But, again, I think you'll love the commentary and background if and only if you're a mandolin fanatic.
Total playing time: over 110 minutes.
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DGQ-20
The David Grisman Quintet
DGQ-20 is a retrospective of the first 20 years of the Grisman Quintet. This recording is a must for any serious Grisman fan. It's a 3-CD set, with an accompanying booklet containing many photos and stories of the history of the David Grisman Quintet.
Frankly, I was expecting that most of the older material would bore me, simply because I'd heard it before; after all, I've listened to Grisman since the late 70's. I'm happy to say I was wrong about being bored--this CD set never bores me. When putting together this retrospective, Grisman did some smart things to keep it all fresh: First, instead of simply re-issuing original recordings, he's provided us with alternate recordings. So even if you've got older Grisman recordings, and you look at the song list and say, "Oh yeah, 'EMD', 'Blue Midnight', I have those already..." you're wrong. The song titles are the same, but these alternate versions are very different -- in some cases, radically different -- than the original recordings. (Case in point: DGQ-20 provides a new version of Pneumonia called 'Newmonia', which features -- I kid you not -- a disco beat. The first time I heard it, I was nonplussed... Disco?! But once I was over the initial shock, the novelty and the energy of the recording won me over.)
Grisman also included a great deal of history. A live recording of DGQ and Stephane Grappelli features an introduction by Johnny Carson, and we also get to hear a funny little commercial jingle (which, alas, never made it past demo stages) the band did for Shasta soda pop.
Probably the main thing that keeps these old tunes fresh is plain old enthusiasm and energy. A lot of the tracks were recorded live, and energy level is very high, and it's contagious. In short, yes I've heard a lot of these tracks before, but I was still impressed by these retakes.
I'm glad Grisman made this a 3-CD set; it allowed him to include all kinds of material. In addition to the usual Grisman melting-pot of musical styles, there are some real surprises. Lennon/McCartney's Because (which works remarkably well as a mandolin vehicle); some Chopin; some Latin numbers; guest appearances by amazing talent such as Stephane Grappelli and the Kronos Quartet... it's hard to list it all. But Grisman is probably best known for his having fused elements of bluegrass and jazz, and there are some sterling examples of that, too: his take on Bill Monroe's Lonesome Moonlight Waltz is a perfect, seamless melting of musical styles. Very impressive.
If you're a Grisman fan, this CD will make you more of a Grisman fan! Buy it!
Total playing time: Each of the 3 CDs is over 70 minutes.
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Jerry Garcia/David Grisman
Another great CD.... provided you like Garcia's singing, which I like well enough. Some of his singing is pretty coarse on some of these tracks, but I'm in the "his coarse voice has an endearing quality to it" camp.
Besides, the lyrics on this CD take a back seat to the guitar and mando solos. In case you didn't know, Garcia was a very impressive acoustic guitarist, and this CD proves it. I'm especially fond of the track Grateful Dawg, which as the title suggests, melds the Grateful Dead and Dawg musical styles.
Some of the tracks are versions of already-well-known tunes, such as the Dead's Friend of the Devil and B.B. King's The Thrill is Gone. But Grisman and Garcia essentially reinvented the songs, by doing them at a radically different tempo than you usually hear. This is not the Friend of the Devil that you've heard before; this recasting of Friend... is as radical as was Clapton's latter reinvention of Leila as a slow piece.
Overall, the selection of tunes is a real mixed bag. One Dead tune, some instrumentals with typically Grismanesque Gypsy influences, some traditional tunes, and some which I think might be categorized as klezmer. In short, a typical Grisman melting pot of music (except there isn't really any jazz to speak of).
Total playing time: over 58 minutes.
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The David Grisman Quintet
The David Grisman Quintet
Eh.
I can't really recommend this CD, unless you're a rabid Grisman "completist." I do like several of the tunes, such as E.M.D., Blue Midnite, Pneumonia, and 16-16. But the thing is, the DGQ-20 retrospective provides those tunes (and the arrangements on DGQ-20 are better, in my not so humble opinion.) This CD does have Minor Swing, which is notably absent from DGQ-20; but again, if you really want to hear Minor Swing, I suggest you look elsewhere -- Grisman's Hot Dawg CD provides a phenomenal version of Minor Swing, with Stephane Grappelli on violin. (And Hot Dawg is a couple of bucks cheaper, too!)
Total playing time: over 45 minutes.