Joe Farrell
Moon Germs
Joe Farrell, Flute, Soprano
Sax
Herbie Hancock, Piano
Stanley Clark, Bass, Vocals
Jack DeJohnette, drums
David Friedman, Percussion, Vibraphone
Airto Moreira, Percussion
Gene Bertoncini, Guitar
Stuart Scharf, Guitar
Walter Kane, Bassoon
Jane Taylor, Bassoon
Wally Kane, Bassoon
Produced by 
Recorded at
Van Gelder Studios
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Rudy Van Gelder, Engineer
Recorded November 21, 1972
Catalog Number:
EK 61630
Format: CD
Label: CTI |
|
|
|
Shipping charges are $2.98 for domestic and Canadian orders, and $9.95 for international orders.
FREE SHIPPING on domestic and Canadian orders of $25 or greater, FREE SHIPPING on international orders of $55 or greater!
CTI can provide Gift-Wrap service on your order. Six different wrap designs are available. We include your greeting message. Cost is $2.00 per item.
|
Four Stars
Sticking to soprano sax for three of the four tunes, Joe Farrell recorded
Moon Germs in 1972. The third of six [albums he recorded] for the label,
Moon Germs showed that CTI could embrace musicians working the fringes with
more open forms. Joining Farrell are [Herbie] Hancock on electric piano,
bassist Stanley Clarke and drummer Jack DeJohnette. And while the opener,
"Great Gorge," starts out funky, the tone of the album is really
set by what follows, namely, a sprawling, uptempo, improvisatory search
untethered by chords or melody, more free than swinging. Farrell plays flute
on the closer, Clarke's "Bass Folk Song," a samba that, along
with Chick Corea's "Time's Lie," hints at Clarke and Farrell's
association with Return to Forever.
– Down Beat
Review
1972 was a strange time for jazz. The avant-garde movement had by then received
a fair measure of acceptance – but wasn’t selling very many
records in America. Mainstream players found the doors to the major record
companies closed to them – unless they were willing to “branch
out” into a smoother, funkier, more commercial direction. With the
exceptions of The Duke, Woody Herman, Sun Ra and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis
outfits, big bands were thought of mainly in terms of “nostalgia.”
The fusion movement that had been simmering since the late 60s was about
to boil over into the commercial arena. Into the historical context came
this lost classic album, Moon Germs, by the late Joe Farrell (1937-86).
I use the term “lost” not only because it’s been out of
print on vinyl for a LONG time and only recently issued on CD, but because
it got kind of lost in the massive shuffle jazz found itself in. And because
it was issued on Creed Taylor’s CTI label, a jazz label that actually
strove to be – horrors! – “commercial,” with its
handsome, slick and modern album covers containing music that was a refinement
of the soul-jazz of the 60s. This has caused many jazz critics to throw
the baby out with the bathwater: since CTI produces commercial jazz, it
follows that everything on CTI must be commercial, compromised crap, not
worthy of taking seriously at all. Moon Germs, among others, gives lie to
that rather elitist notion. (And even if it didn’t, so what –
when I was a teen, a local indie FM station played a lot of the better CTI
stuff. At that point, Freddie Hubbard’s “Sky Dive” was
a tad more accessible to my rock & roll-charged brain than Ornette Coleman’s
“Science Fiction,” and by the time I “outgrew” the
mellower side of Hubbard my appetite was whetted for the more wilder stuff,
like Don Cherry and Billy Harper).
Ah, but that’s enough
of historical context – what of the music herein? Moon Germs is
a classic lost no longer, a true gem, from the top shelf. It sounded great
for its time and in some ways sounds BETTER now. The milieu is what’s
easily termed (by me) as “modal free-bop fusion,” an invigorating,
seamless tapestry of hard bop, funk, free jazz, modality and some lessons
gleaned from rock (like distortion). Farrell, though known primarily as
a tenor guy, concentrates on soprano sax and flute here. He is a MONSTER,
wailing like there’s no tomorrow, yet never sacrificing melodic
invention or forward motion for passion, his sound exploratory but never
tentative or academic, obviously influenced by early-60s John Coltrane
but he sounds like no one but himself. Stanley Clarke would soon make
his international rep on the electric bass, but here he concentrates on
the bass’ big brother, the upright acoustic. Everything I just wrote
about Farrell would apply to Mr. Clarke – and the sheer speed and
agility of his rippling bass lines would surely exhaust the speediest
of punk-rock bands. Herbie Hancock plays the electric piano, and he’s
at his very best here: assertive, muscular, shimmering, and he gets some
nifty distortion on his keyboard, too. The drummer is Jack DeJohnette
– it’s corny I know, but if there’s one movie title
that describes JDeJ, it would be The Perfect Storm. The music of Moon
Germs surges like a triple cappuccino over ice hitting your tummy on a
sweltering 85-degree day. It’ll getcha goin’ in the morning,
also in the afternoon and evening. Three Thumbs Up!!!
–
Mark Keresman
|
Joe Farrell
Hancock
Photos by Chuck Stewart |
|
|
BACK TO TOP
Copyright (C) 2003 CTI Jazz Online,
Inc. All rights reserved.
Questions? Problems? E-mail webmaster@ctijazz.com
|
to hear sound samples.