Consumer Guide Album

Medeski, Martin and Wood: Friday Afternoon in the Universe [Gramavision, 1995]
Supporters apologize for calling this stuff "eclectic" not because the cliché embarrasses them, but because they know the band's much-bruited groove will sound suspiciously like a hodgepodge to heathens like me. Bad Brubeck, Jimmy Smith as fusion, musique concrète ordinaire, soundtracks for arty shorts about urban hyperactivity--it's all these things and more, one after the other in apparent perpetuity. Please let me out of the basement before they think of something new. B-