Secret Society

And all the kids, all the kids that want to make the scene, here in North America

My homeland has recently been behaving in a most extraordinary manner. The Canadian dollar is currently worth more than the Gringo greenback, the NDP are outpolling the Liberals in the upcoming Federal election, and last night, to everyone's shock, the Vancouver Canucks somehow managed to not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Game 7.

Further investigation is clearly warranted. Therefore, I am authorizing Secret Society for a strategic insertion into Canadian territories. Our incursion will proceed as follows:

26 June 2011
Vancouver International Jazz Festival
Vogue Theatre
9:00 PM
Tickets

28 June 2011
Ottawa International Jazz Festival
OLG Stage at Confederation Park
10:30 PM
Tickets

29 June 2011
Festival International de Jazz de Montréal
Théâtre du Gésu
6:00 PM
Tickets

30 June 2011
Toronto Jazz Festival
The Outdoor Stage at Metro Square
5:30 PM
Free admission

In all seriousness, Secret Society have performed in London, Milan, Amsterdam, and various other European locales but will be our first time hitting the Canadian jazz festival circuit and I am so stoked to be able to bring my co-conspirators on a tour of my home and native land. We're counting on our Canadian partisans to help get the word out, so please tell all your buds about these shows!

Bigband travel expense are no joke and there's no way we would be able to do this without the very generous support of the following awesome organizations:

The Canada Council for the Arts!

And the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation!

The Society is insanely grateful to both of these organizations for making this tour possible.

Also, there is some official stuff I am supposed to say in acknowledgement of their support. Ready? Okay:

"This tour is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which enables Canadian audiences to discover artists from other regions and provinces."

And:

"This engagement is supported by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through USArtists International in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation."

Okay then. See you hosers later.

I am fused just in case I blow out

So as a follow-up to our previous Jim McNeely listening session, Ethan Iverson and I got together again last week to listen to Jim's epic recording, East Coast Blow Out, in its entirety.

To begin, let me lay my cards on the table: this is one of the most mindblowingly great bigband albums ever recorded. Jim is very prolific, and has written a ton of outstanding music before and since -- some of which we talked about last time -- but East Coast Blow Out will always have a special place in my personal pantheon. As an album-length cohesive artistic statement for large jazz ensemble, I think it's up there with Ellington+Strayhorn’s Such Sweet Thunder, George Russell's New York New York, Bob Brookmeyer’s Make Me Smile, Kenny Wheeler’s Sweet Time Suite from Music for Large and Small Ensembles, and Maria Schneider’s Concert in the Garden. But unless you are an obsessive bigband junkie (and bless you if you are), you probably haven’t heard (or even heard of) East Coast Blow Out. Even John Scofield completists aren’t necessarily hip to this record, which features some of Sco’s most tantalizing work on disc.

It doesn’t help that the album is long out of print, has never been issued on iTunes or similar, and used copies of the CD tend to be rather pricey. But listen, people: Jim McNeely is badass and this is his masterpiece. You need to seek it out. (I’ve taken the liberty of uploading a few brief clips in this post so you can have a taste of what Ethan and I are talking about.)

Our conversation begins below the fold...

I'd conquer the world and you'd see it on television

Incriminating video from our January 5 hit at the Kennedy Center:

Also, did I mention we have a YouTube Channel? Because we totally do.