The Game 1997

Misha Mengelberg - The Root Of The Problem (1997) {Hat Hut hatOLOGY 504}
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© 1997 Hat Hut | hatOLOGY 504
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Modern Creative / Post Bop / Piano

Musical chess master Misha Mengelberg versus four worthy opponents. A German trumpeter and drummer, a French tuba player, and an American-born, French-resident (since 1972) saxophonist. Three nights in Köln, at Loft, matching wits in duets and trios. One can study the Maestro taking on all contestants, approaching the music as a game of strategy, a set of moves and countermoves. Chess is also a suitable metaphor for the Dutchman's approach to instant composition because it has no final or definitive form, no absolute and irrefutable game-plan.

With a life as tragic as any bluesman, Jackson C. Frank wrote songs laced with melancholy and pathos, and the best of these ("Blues Run the Game," "My Name Is Carnival," "Halloween Is Black as Night") are striking in their resignation and their acceptance of the dark turns of fate…

The only real problem with One Way Records' anthology on Katrina & the Waves is that it gives too much room to their first Capitol album (which ought to be out as a free-standing CD) and not enough to their later material. Anyone seeking to go further should track down this imported disc. Thanks to EMI's acquisition of the SBK label, for which the band recorded in 1989, and its merger with Virgin Records, for which the Waves recorded in the early '90s in Germany, this collection has a little range and depth, although it's still just a greatest-hits collection – if it were a best-of, it would also have to include some of their Attic Records sides from before their signing to Capitol. In addition to the eight songs off of the first Capitol album, there are four more off of Waves, including "Lovely Lindsey" (the one glaring gap in the One Way release).