Day 55: Los Hombres Caliente V.2 & Jose Rizos Jazz on the Latin Side Allstars V.2

I'm back into mystery territory, I don't really know when or where today's CDs came from. And another mystery that probably won't be solved until we're much deeper into the process. Also, today is the day for second volumes.

Los Hombres Calientes
Volume 2

Usually I just take the liner notes out and scan them, but I was too delighted by the sticker on the cover of this one insisting that 30% of the music was free. During the set up I've been trying to come up with how that was supposed to work and I haven't yet. It's not like this is a re-issue of an old LP, this was recorded in 1999, Jason Marsalis is the other other Marsalis brother, the drummer. With the father being a piano player I was really hoping there was just one more in the wings that played bass and we could have the Marsalis Sextet.

I don't think that this CD sold at a particular discount. All CDs have the same capacity. I'm not really sure how the 30% became free.

Alright, enough of that.

I may actually have this album twice. What's worse is I may have bought the other copy not realizing I had this unwrapped copy already. Or I have both volumes and I'm thinking of the first one, but the first one has a different cover and this is the cover I remember. With Bill Summers, percussionist from the Headhunters, leading this expedition it is heavy on the afro-cuban side of things. Not surprising given the title of the group. But with two percussionists on top of the bill, it's going to be rhythm heavy.

Mayfield's trumpet is recorded or mixed in an odd way to make everything sound like its in the same room, a more 'natural' approach to recording that essentially feels like the trumpet is further away than the rhythm section. It's kind of distracting, if I'm being honest. Though I don't know if I would have noticed if I wasn't listening to it on headphones.

Blues De Enredo finally delivers on full on percussion feature you'd expect from an album like this where the whole toy box is brought out. I have to admit I really like that kind of thing. It's the closest thing I imagine there getting to that 'musical moment' where people walk in and pick up a percussion piece and join in. I always end up with the stupid fish, though.

The best possible way to end this album would be to revisit Bill Summer's Headhunter days with a latin version of Chameleon, apparently paired up with We Want the Funk. Naturally this means we're not getting the nearly 20 minute long progression that Chameleon can take on, but it's still pretty rump shaking.


Jazz on the Latin Side All-Stars
Jazz on the Latin Side All-Stars 2

So, because I wrote down and hit 'publish' my whole disbelief regarding the whole idea of 'cubop,' which of course means that a bunch of other CDs would pop up with references to cubop, including a label.

This is apparently an all-star super band of Latin jazz performers from the LA area brought together to perform in celebration of a radio program of the same name.

According to the liner notes, what makes this special is they didn't just get together for an extended jam session but actually rehearsed and came up with new songs.

I'm kind of stunned at how much the Albatross is grouping together. There today two Latin jazz albums, there's at least one more in the wings. I had that run of blues and the gathering of hard bop Blue Note CDs. There has been no real effort to organize the Albatross by any stretch of the imagination. On top of that, once I'm about a quarter of the way into a bag it becomes a giant jumble anyway. And yet the music does seem to be grouping together. Either that or I'm about to find out that there really isn't that much drift in the Albatross after all.

All of the truly out of line CDs ended up in rotation. There was about 400 CDs that were stolen when my bus was broken into 3 weeks after I installed a stereo in a vehicle with no door locks. I really miss having a stereo in the bus, though. But anything that really stood out made it into rotations like that and are either lost now like in that theft, damaged beyond playability, or already on the hard drive. Like the best promo I ever got is already on there. I've wandered into pre-amble style writing here, but it's just a good live performance of afro-cuban jazz. I don't really know what else to say.

It does end with the coolest track with the coolest title, McKibbon Walks the Talk, which goes from smokey to smokin'...alright, I feel bad for having written that sentence. I'm sorry.

I hadn't quite realized that the last track is just over twenty minutes long. It's managed to go through a few evolutions, I imagine to showcase each of the all-stars on the stage as a sort of grand finale.