Consumer Guide Album

Jack Bruce: Things We Like [Atco, 1971]
Recorded in Cream's heyday with John McLaughlin on guitar, Jon Hiseman on drums, and Dick Heckstall-Smith on saxophones, this has zip to do with rock or "jazz-rock"--it's an enjoyable contemporary jazz LP that owes more to Ornette Coleman and to bebop than to the simplistic modalism favored by most rockers. McLaughlin would be a find if Miles Davis hadn't found him in the meantime, and Bruce's playing is deft when it's solid and contained when it's stormy. His compositions are less notable--only "Hckhh Blues" stands up next to the tune borrowed from Milt Jackson and Mel Torme. But the real surprises are Hiseman and Heckstall-Smith, now kingpins of the infamous jazz-rock big band Colosseum, Hiseman because he's serviceable and Heckstall-Smith because he's a pleasure--his melodies striking, his eclecticism intelligent and strong-willed. The thinness of his tone, however, is frustrating--he is the lead voice, after all. B+