Joe Maneri at Beachland Ballroom

[Captain Hate]

As part of an extension of the Cuyahoga Community College Jazz Festival, Joe Maneri will be playing on 4/18 with relocated local group Birth; and with his own group (I assume, his name is the only thing listed) on 4/19. Joe played in Cleveland a couple of years ago with Mat on violin, Barre Phillips on bass and Randy Peterson on drums; Birth opened for him that night. Birth is a trio featuring Josh Smith on reeds & electronics, a mediocre electric bass player and a pretty good drummer (obviously I can't remember their names). They play somewhat interesting songs that don't reward, imo, repeated listenings. Josh has very good chops and when he lays off overly heavy use of electronics he does very well. I know they've played the Knitting Factory at least a couple of times and received a fairly good response. A release of theirs received a positive review in Cadence. Their heart and heads are in the right place and I try to be supportive of them; they have the irritating habit of playing overly long opening sets and delaying the performance of the main acts.

[Chris Castelle]

Hmmm...I really dig Birth's latest release, Find. There was a feature on the group in Signal to Noise about a year ago that really intrigued me, since their principle influences appear to be groups like Tim Berne's Bloodcount and Chris Speed's Yeah No, which are among the first "avant-garde" groups I became interested in. I find it fascinating that such relatively recent aggregations should have such an immediate influence upon younger players, but, hey, those are a couple of damn fine units, as is Birth, IMO. The CD, Find, on Assif Tsahar's Hopscotch label, features a couple of excellent klezmer-ish pieces by bassist Jeremy Bleich and a remarkable simulation of CD skips which every review of the record seems to comment upon. According to the articel, the group is also heavily influenced by drum'n'bass and IDM (Aphex Twin, etc.) genres with which I am almost completely unfamiliar, so I can't really comment on how they are affected by that area of music.

Oh yeah, and Josh Smith sounds like me with chops. Sorry to hear that they haven't been totally consistent in concert. I'm sure that the group will improve wih age. A cliche, sure, but they do show promise--because of this thread, I'll probably dig out their CD, if I can find it....

[Captain Hate]

Chris, I'm really glad you like Birth's release; they're definitely the freshest thing to hit Cleveland in a long time (if I had to make do with Ernie *YAWN* Krivda zzzzzzzzzz). My only complaint was that they opened for EVERY interesting group that's played around here (in some cases they were involved in the whole production) and I'd have to wait through the same songs (imagine seeing Masada with less talent and only 5-8 songs over and over again) in order to see DKV trio, Brad Shepik & others. In the case of Shepik, he didn't get on until almost 1 am (in the middle of the week) so I could only catch a few songs & Vandermark was pissed that he had to wait so long until he played. And they've also been instrumental in bringing people like Tim Berne, Cuong Vu & Chris Speed (NOT my favorite) to town. Josh Smith is a good guy and I think he's got the ability to go places. I'm sure they will improve with time. I'm interested in how Joe Maneri will play with them, since I find his music pretty incomprehensible (BUT I'M WORKING ON IT!!!!)