RSSFrank London [extended]
- Di Shikere Kapelye [Piranha, 2000] ***
- Carnival Conspiracy [Piranha, 2005] A-
- Salomé: Woman of Valor [Nuiu Music, 2020] **
See Also:
Consumer Guide Reviews:
Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars: Di Shikere Kapelye [Piranha, 2000]
"Band of Drunks" revisited--the Jewish equivalent of nouveau honkytonk ("A Shiker Iz a Bloyzer-Shpiler [A drunk is a brass-player]," "Lekhaim, Efraim [Cheers, Frank]"). ***
Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars: Carnival Conspiracy [Piranha, 2005]
It's a conspiracy because it requires confederates. Without them, the trumpeting Klezmatic would lead one more blotto wedding band. Aided not just by such co-klezmerists as singing Klezmatic Lorin Sklamberg and singing Brave Old Worlder Michael Alpert but by a Brazilian drumming school and a Ukrainian avant-folksinger and nine Orthodox women set on defying the Orthodox ban on men hearing women sing, he unleashes track after track of internationalist anarchism. Lead elements shift, but every song partakes of the Eastern European breakout Gogol Bordello rocks so hard--and Gypsy-Jewish-Moorish myth London promotes so well. A-
Adeena Karasick/Frank London: Salomé: Woman of Valor [Nuiu Music, 2020]
Of course a poet who wrote a thesis called Of Poetic Thinking: A 'Pataphysical Investigation of Cixous, Derrida and the Kabbalah tends pretentious--but her klezmer/carnivalesque trumpeter plus maybe some pataphysics render her playful, painful, grooveful, and sexual anyway ("Johnny," "Martyrology") **