THE RECORD EXCHANGE REVIEW: CHAD ON BLUE NOTE’S LONG-AWAITED VINYL REISSUE OF LEE MORGAN’S ‘THE GIGOLO’

Artist: Lee Morgan
Album: The Gigolo
Reviewer: Chad Dryden

I’ve been on a Lee Morgan kick for the past few years, during which time he has rapidly moved up my list of jazz favorites, now second only to Miles because, well, Miles is Miles.

But Morgan was no slouch on the trumpet either. Schooled by Clifford Brown and absorbing much of Brown’s aesthetic (not to mention some of Miles’), Morgan released several solid albums as a bandleader in the late-’50s and early-’60s while also playing with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers before retreating from the group in 1961 with a nasty heroin habit. After getting clean, he reemerged in a big way with his most well-known (and best) album The Sidewinder (1964), whose title track with a huge hit by jazz standards (No. 81 on the Billboard Hot 100) after it was released as a single. Maybe it was the catharsis of playing again after beating his drug problem or the subsequent return to the New York City jazz scene, but the unrelenting Sidewinder is a blazing, pedal-down exercise in hard bop with nary a ballad among its five original compositions. And speaking from experience, it’s sonic rocket fuel for a late-night highway drive.

Ditto The Gigolo, one of four(!) full-length corkers Morgan released in 1965 and which Blue Note finally reissued on vinyl in 2024 – mercifully so, because cherry copies of the original pressing trade in the triple digits. And while the album closes with the romantic, understated ballad “You Go to My Head,” the four preceding cuts rival The Sidewinder’s two-lane-blacktop momentum, grooving, bopping and building to the 11-minute title track and its scorching solos by Morgan and tenor saxophone godhead Wayne Shorter. A thrilling ride throughout, and worthy of inclusion in your jazz collection if The Sidewinder leaves you breathless and you’re not quite ready to stand still again.

THE RECORD EXCHANGE REVIEW: CHAD ON MORPHINE’S ‘CURE FOR PAIN’

Artist: Morphine
Album: Cure for Pain
Reviewer: Chad Dryden

It’s hard to imagine here in 2024 that vinyl ever went through a “dead era,” but if you hear a collector use that term, it’s likely they’re talking about the ’90s. And I can tell you with certainty (because I was there) that’s exactly what the decade was like for vinyl while the compact disc was peaking.

In the here and now, that means countless beloved albums from the ’90s are either woefully scarce (and painfully expensive) due to limited demand for the format (and thus minuscule original press runs) or unavailable on vinyl – most artists and labels simply never bothered to make it.

Fortunately, in recent years the ’90s have been getting their just due, as the racks at stores like ours are filled with vinyl reissues from an array of artists large and small who made their mark in the last decade of the millennium. Morphine is one of them.

Cure for Pain, originally released in September 1993, was virtually impossible to find on vinyl upon its release – only one pressing surfaced, in 1994, and that was in Brazil. The first U.S. pressing finally arrived in 2011, and now Rhino Records has cut a fresh remaster from the original tapes in conjunction with its annual Rocktober reissue series.

The album was and remains one of my favorite albums from the ’90s, and is universally accepted, more or less, as Morphine’s crowning achievement. The Boston trio – principal songwriter Mark Sandman on vocals and homemade two-string slide bass guitar; Dana Colley on baritone and tenor sax, which he often played simultaneously on stage; and Jerome Deupree then Billy Conway on drums – were scene vets who came together with a decidedly unique concept for jazz-influenced underground rock. In lesser hands, it would be a one-trick gimmick like so many from the era, but the sheer talent of the musicians and Sandman’s fully-formed vision for their aesthetic resulted in a series of incredible albums leading up to his death on stage by heart attack in 1999.

Sandman – whose wry, hipster-cool wit was always on display in interviews and on stage – alternately referred to the Morphine sound as “low rock” or, in a winking nod to the times, “implied grunge.” And certainly there’s a low-end aggression to some of their songs, but ultimately the groove triumphs. Sandman makes the most of his two strings, crafting slinky, sultry and sometimes feedback-soaked bass lines that provide more color than most rock bassists can conjure from a traditional four-string. It’s a foundation for his bohemian lounge-lizard tales, the sort of hazy cigarette-smoke late-night noir that traveled a through line from mid-century jazz to Tom Waits to Jim Jarmusch films. Morphine provided a soundtrack for the fedora-clad hepcats of the ’90s, and it’s no surprise their songs found their way into movies of the time like Get Shorty.

Morphine’s music may have been the product of a certain era and a certain place, but unlike many artists and albums from the ’90s American underground, the moody, infectious Cure for Pain does not come on like a time capsule here in 2024. Seek it out if you haven’t already, or use this fantastic Rocktober reissue as an excuse to revisit a certified classic, then come back for more on Black Friday when Morphine’s B-Sides and Otherwise compilation gets its first-ever vinyl release.

THE RECORD EXCHANGE REVIEW: CHAD ON BRIJEAN’S ‘MACRO’

Artist: Brijean
Album: Macro
Reviewer: Chad Dryden

Brijean’s Treefort Music Hall set was a Top 5 highlight of my 2023 Treefort, and quite possibly the top of the top. Following the duo’s performance, my wife Erica and I beelined to the merch table and bought their entire discography, which consisted, at the time, of the debut full-length Feelings (2021) and the 2022 EP Angelo.

Macro is Brijean’s second full-length and third record overall (all for Matthew Dear’s forward-thinking Ghostly International label), and it picks up right where Angelo left off with 12 tracks of buttery nu-disco and lush psych-pop. Vocalist/percussionist Brijean Murphy and multi-instrumentalist/producer Doug Stuart – whose fluid musical interplay on stage is a treat to watch in person – call their sound “back-room disco,” which paints an enticing portrait but only hints at the influences that color Macro: string-laden 60s pop, bossa nova, deep house, downtempo electronica and yes, disco. But the sum is better than its parts, and Macro is the best testament yet to the duo’s seemingly effortless ability to fuse disparate sounds into something wholly singular.

Not to mention immediately infectious and fun. Inside the space-age exotica lounge, if Air and Nightmares on Wax were the mood-setters and Thievery Corporation the late-night comedown, Brijean would be the peak-hour party starter, the heart of the warm groove that smoothly glides the evening into cosmic euphoria.