Greg Tate on jazz fusion, The Wire 434, April 2020

When I was asked to write an essay on contemporary jazz fusion for The Wire 434, I immediately knew where I wanted to go. As I expressed in the piece, the interest in fusion today is largely the result of hiphop’s crate digging culture. Hiphop DJs and producers have long used jazz fusion records – both rare and common – as source material for samples and live sets, and this relationship has kept those records connected to contemporary audiences. When I started my essay, I didn’t know that it would be printed next to another piece on jazz fusion, written by the late Greg Tate. Where my essay explored fusion's contemporary expression, Tate delved into the music’s history and reading those pieces together acted as a full circle moment of sorts for me. Tate’s work with The Village Voice in the 1980s and Vibe in the 90s were foundational influences on my own writing about jazz and Black culture. As always, Tate’s analysis was insightful and wide-ranging and it was humbling to be asked to write about the music alongside someone who’d inspired me so deeply.

The Jazz Age: Brian Morton on Mary Lou Williams, The Wire 77, July 1990

Brian Morton’s profile of Mary Lou Williams celebrates the pianist, composer and arranger as one of the great, unsung masters of 20th century music. When addressing the misogyny that has largely kept Williams’s brilliance from being recognised in her time, Morton recounts a jam session in which Williams was recruited to play piano for sax legend Ben Webster: “It was Mary’s fate, long before that jam night in the 30s, to be a second choice player, acceptable on occasion in the recording studio but not on the stand, reduced to driving hearses while under the influence of unrecognised genius.” Morton’s prose throughout the piece is concise as he traverses Williams’s expansive career that ranged from her time as a big band arrangement for “curmudgeonly misogynist” Benny Goodman to her daring free jazz experiments with Cecil Taylor.

Steinski’s Invisible Jukebox, tested by Hua Hsu, The Wire 217, March 2002

Invisible Jukebox might be my favourite section of The Wire. Having DJ/producer Steve Stein (aka Steinski of Double Dee and Steinski) as a guest in The Wire 217 was an inspired choice. Hsu’s selections are eclectic and subtle, as he plays records to Stein that both preceded his seminal 1980s work with Double Dee as well as music that was influenced by that period. Hsu comes in hot with John & Ernest’s pioneering 1973 novelty sampling record “Superfly Meets Shaft”. Stein knows the record and calls it a rip-off of Dickie Goodman’s tape collage experiments when Hsu reveals that “Superfly Meets Shaft” actually is a Goodman production, just credited under a different name. The entire column is not only crazy informative, it’s a loose, fun exploration of the infinite worlds of sound and sampling with two of the greats.

Oral Pleasure: Peter Shapiro on America's New Hiphop Underground, The Wire 197, July 2002

Rap music was in a strange place at the turn of the millennium. For the most part the music was held together by the force of two competing and contradictory ethics. On one hand, 2000 saw the release of commercial rap juggernauts like Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP and Jay Z’s The Dynasty: Roc La Familia, and on the other hand, the indie boom was in full swing as an entire underground aesthetic and industry developed outside of the gaze of the mainstream. Peter Shapiro’s fantastic piece from issue 197 takes a look at the state of underground hiphop at the time by covering Anti-Pop Consortium, Mike Ladd, Sonic Sum, Dose One, and Ozone Entertainment founder Amaechi Ozoigwe. Shapiro and his subjects draw the connection between rap and jazz as Priest of APC draws an insightful connection between free jazz, the blues and their own avant garde approach to rap. The piece is not only a report of a vibrant scene, it's an accurate snapshot of the dynamics that informed rap two decades ago.

Mutters of Invention: Julian Cope on Can, The Wire 131, July 1995

In 1995, The Teardrop Explodes singer Julian Cope released Krautrocksampler: One Head’s Guide To The Grosse Kosmiche Musik, an enlightening study of the German rock and psychedelia of the 60s and 70s. That same year, The Wire published “Mutters of Invention”, Cope’s brilliant exploration of the sound and legacy of German experimentalist Can. As a writer and a researcher, Cope is formidable, capturing how Can were formed as a result of “the social and cultural ferment of mid-60s West Germany.” Cope also posits their unique approach as the product of a wide range of musical influences. Jaki Liebezeit’s jazz pedigree, Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt’s studies under Stockhausen and the introduction of psychedelic rock are all noted here as formative sounds that helped shape the band’s identity.

Meg Baird & Mary Lattimore’s Invisible Jukebox, tested by Abi Bliss, The Wire 419, January 2019

The January 2019 edition of The Wire features a fantastic Invisible Jukebox segment with writer Abi Bliss playing records for harpist Mary Lattimore and singer-songwriter Meg Baird. Bliss’s selections exist in the same musical universe that Lattimore and Baird occupy in their own music. British folk group Pentangle, lo-fi rockers Strapping Fieldhands and improvising harpist Rhodri Davies all make appearances and Baird, Lattimore and Bliss’s conversation is a joy. At one point, Bliss plays “The Magic Yard”, a Luboš Fišer tune from Valerie And Her Week of Wonders, a Czech New Wave horror film from 1970. Lattimore discusses her time with The Valerie Project, a group put together by Greg Weeks of Espers to perform a live, improvised score to that film. It was dope reading Lattimore’s thoughts on The Valerie Project as I’d caught them performing the score in Philly back in the mid naughties.

The Primer: Hiphop Mixtapes, by Jack Law, The Wire 372, February 2017

As hiphop has evolved aesthetically and as a commercial entity, so has the mixtape and its relationship to the music. In the 1970s and 80s, mixtapes were primarily recordings of live DJ mixes and these tapes were meant to capture the live hiphop experience. By the 90s, mixtapes had grown into their own underground industry with DJ making mixes made up of label promos and exclusive freestyles to sell on the street. The 2000s saw the mixtape evolve again. Then, mixtapes and the DJs that made them existed with one foot in the street and the other in the industry. Jack Law’s wonderful primer on mixtapes captures the state of artform in the 2000s as many mixtapes during this time were the product of a partnership between DJs, record labels and artists. Law’s selections are perfect and he waxes enthusiastically about classic tapes like The Diplomats’ Diplomats Vol 1 and Re-Up Gang’s stellar We Got It 4 Cheap Vol 2.

Urban Fusion Labs by Adam Sutherland, The Wire 129, November 1994

Scene reports written by outsiders are inherently problematic. The history of music journalism itself is rife with white writers cataloging and fetishising the “exotic” music of African, Asian and Indigenous people around the world. That’s to say nothing of the lack of intimate cultural context that an outsider would naturally have when writing about a culture that they are not a part of. Fortunately, Adam Sutherland acknowledges these limitations in this November 1994 report on Japan’s rich hiphop/acid jazz DJ scene: “But there is one significant difference between buying a Dust Brothers 12" remix of Bomb The Bass in London as opposed to Tokyo, and that is perspective. When music is removed from its indigenous surroundings one can only guess at the nature of the scene it came out of.” From there, Sutherland goes on to write a pretty robust account of the state of DJing and club culture in Japan in the mid-90s. All of the heavyweights you’d expect are accounted for: DJ Muro, DJ Krush, UFO, all get generous quotes and backstory to further contextualise Japan's unique take on hiphop and DJ culture.

Embraceable You: Charlie Parker by Brian Priestley, The Wire 7, Summer 1984

When Charlie Parker died the beloved saxophone genius had only spent a tragically short 34 years on Earth. During his brief and brilliant career, Parker recorded for a handful of labels including Savoy, Verve and Ross Russell’s Dial. In the summer of 1984, Brian Priestley reviewed Charlie Parker’s Dial Vol 4, a scorching collection of prime Parker recordings. Priestley’s review is thoughtful as he deftly identifies the breadth of Parker’s musical references ranging from Gershwin to Mozart and King Oliver. Like the best music writing, Priestley’s review enhances the listening experience.