Consumer Guide Album

Carla Bley: Dinner Music [Watt, 1977]
I'm quite taken with this, which reminds me in an abstract way of Another Green World. Where dance jazz was unselfconsciously functional, this is art jazz that was designed to be functional--just as Eno designed his electronic pop-rock to fade into the background the way so much electronic pop-rock does anyway. The result is yet another of those Jazz Composer's Orchestra get-togethers between avant-gardists (JCOA stalwarts Michael Mantler and Roswell Rudd) and pop luminaries (the Stuff studio funk axis), and this time the music meshes. Unfortunately, however, I find that only two of the right cuts--"Ida Lupino" and "Ad Infinitum"--combine melody and rigor as magically as the double-edged concept promises. B+