You may not have thought about Solex lately. Jon Spencer probably, Cristina Martinez definitely. Especially if you are like us and spend nights awake wondering when Boss Hog are going to get back together. Until that glorious day, this meeting of the mid-’90s titans will do just fine. At first, the idea of mixing Elisabeth Esselink’s junkshop electronic wizardry with Spencer’s always-flamboyant vocal interjections and Martinez’s freeze-dried cool seems kind of weird, but then again, it might just make total sense. Judging from this video clip that explains how it all came together, there’s a good chance it will be amazing. The album (titled Amsterdam Throwdown, King Street Showdown) comes out on May 11th.

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Nick Curran’s last solo-album Player! garnered the Austin-based blues singer/guitarist the 2004 W.C. Handy Award for Best New Artist Debut. Although quite a distinction for a former rockabilly kid from Portland, rather than follow up the accolade with another album of raw, high-energy old-school rockin’ blues, Curran joined The Fabulous Thunderbirds and recorded the band’s 2005 album Painted On. He then spent the next five years playing in a number of projects including the punk-influenced band Deguello with fellow T-Bird bassist Ronnie James Weber. This month, Curran returns to his solo-work with Reform School Girl – a fiery, rock & roll album that finds Curran back in the studio with longtime producer/musician Billy Horton.

AMG’s Matt Collar spoke with Curran last week about his career, his new album, his recent diagnosis with tongue cancer and whether to call him blues, rock or punk.

AMG: What are you up to right now?

Nick Curran: Hanging around the house taking it easy.

AMG: Reform School Girl has a similar vintage vibe to your last four albums. I know you’ve worked a lot with Billy Horton (The Horton Brothers, The Hot Club of Cowtown, Miss Lauren Marie) in the past. Was this a similar approach to your other albums?

Nick Curran: It was, and it was definitely more pieced together. I actually played drums on it myself and we actually wrote some of the songs while we were in there. So it was kind of like more of a process than usual, but it was really good to be able to do it that way. But it was the same studio and me and Billy work great together and always come up with great ideas and bounce them off each other.

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When AMG published the third installment of “Eggheads in the Land of Jazz” — a continuing series on the history of jazz/classical crossover artists — one figure profiled there could only be sketched in. Of British composer, pianist and bandleader Reginald Foresythe (1907-1958) we had no photo, no sample recordings of his own group, and did not know his death date. We muddled through for the sake of the article, but as these things go it was only a matter of waiting until later in the year to have the answers to all those questions and more with the release on Dutch label BVHaast of The New Music of Reginald Foresythe. While it is not a complete survey of Foresythe’s recordings, it covers the essentials of his small recorded output and contrasts it with the numerous recordings other artists — such as Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, Adrian Rollini, Paul Whiteman, and Fats Waller — made of Foresythe’s compositions.

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So, you live in smalltown nowhere and the only live jazz you have access to is either none, or a Utah basketball team on ESPN. Don’t worry, because Smalls Jazz Club in New York City has been recording their live sets for a few years now and you can listen to them in the club’s online Artist+Audio Archive.

Opened in 1993 by Mitch Borden, Smalls Jazz Club became a Greenwich Village institution and mainstay for such then up-and-coming jazz talent as drummer Brian Blade, trumpeter Roy Hargrove, pianist Sam Yahel and others. Sadly, Borden was forced to close the club during the city’s financial woes after 9/11. Then in February of 2007, Borden and his newfound partners musicians Spike Wilner and Lee Kostrinsky re-opened Smalls.

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Photo Credit: Ginny Suss

It took two long years, but Al Green’s Lay It Down is just about ready for the street: the new album drops on May 27 from Blue Note. It was produced by drummer Ahmir Thompson (a.k.a. ?uestlove) from Roots, and keyboard giant James Poyser, whose work with Erykah Badu and Common are well known. Some of the other players are heavyweights as well: the Dap King Horns are part of the mix as are the voices of Corrine Bailey Rae, Anthony Hamilton, and John Legend. Rounding out the band with Thompson and Poyser are guitarist Spanky Alford from the Mighty Clouds of Joy, and Joss Stone’s band, and Jill Scott and bassist Adam Blackstone (Jill Scott, DJ Jazzy Jeff), to name a few more. While it’s true that some superstar collaborations have been underwhelming, there is something kinetic about the vibe on this set.

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That last time most of us probably remember seeing Jewel, it was back in 2003 when she was getting hosed down in front of a fire truck in her video for “Intuition.” A catchy, irony-soaked ditty about commercialism that — ultimate irony — ended up helping sell a bunch of Schick Intuition razors, “Intuition” was a hit (although the album 0304 sold poorly) and helped re-invent the often dire, if still cute, singer/songwriter into a campy pop pin-up.

“Intuition” also threatened to alienate most of her fanbase who misunderstood Jewel’s intentions and brought on accusations that the singer had sold out. Not surprisingly, Jewel’s 2006 follow-up Goodbye Alice in Wonderland was a return to her introspective folk roots. The album wasn’t bad, but it also didn’t have any strong radio hits and largely went unnoticed.

In 2008, Jewel has reinvented herself yet again as a contemporary country artist, and though it’s unclear what her fanbase will make of the switch, based on the lead-off single “Stronger Woman,” she may have finally found her true self. Hooky with a message of self-empowerment to woman that is both personal and universal, the track makes the most of Jewel’s knack for twangy, intimate melodic pop. Plus, as evidenced by her gold open-toe high-heels and shiny, metal girdle-belt, she hasn’t sacrificed any of the stylish glamour she’s earned over the past five years.

Furthermore, given the move toward stylish divas like Faith Hill, Shania Twain and now Carrie Underwood in country music, Jewel’s mix of high glam and down-home twang is even more justified. And heck, the woman grew up using an outhouse and yodeling in Alaska. If that ain’t country I don’t know what is.

Check out the video for “Stronger Woman” here.

When Merge announced they were doing a Big Dipper retrospective, the three-disc set Supercluster: The Big Dipper Anthology, the initial reaction here was “really?” And then, “why?” They aren’t that influential or even that well remembered of a band, so it seemed like an odd choice. When Matador gave Chavez the royal treatment a few years ago with Better Days Will Haunt You, at least they were dealing with a band who could claim a high degree of influence and cred. Big Dipper just seemed like an arbitrary choice. Here’s the thing, though. Big Dipper were surprisingly good. The albums (and EP) gathered here (1987’s Boo Boo EP, that same year’s Heavens and 1988’s Craps) are strong collections of impressively melodic and powerful guitar pop. Listening to the disc the first time brought a lot of “hey, I remember that song” moments and a slow realization that Big Dipper were one of the better bands of the college-rock era. It’s also quite clear that Big Dipper’s sound is pretty timeless. Even though it’s doubtful bands like Clap Your Hands or Wolf Parade ever heard the Dipper, they all share jittery guitar work, charmingly odd lyrics and a goofball braininess that has been appealing to indie-rock types ever since the heyday of the Talking Heads.

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Despite what you might think from the title of this post, we are not poking fun at Randy “The Emperor” Jackson’s look 20 years ago, back when the American Idol judge played with Journey and was Narada Michael Walden’s right-hand man. The post is not a salute to his weight loss, either, as commendable as it is. This being the week Randy Jackson’s Music Club, Vol. 1 hits the shelves of record stores and other retailers, we instead acknowledge Jackson’s 30 years in the business with a semi-arbitrary timeline of his activities as a bass player, songwriter, producer, and A&R man. (The dawg of all dawgs has sometimes been credited with “inspiration,” too.) Jackson’s success is as much about range as it is longevity, from being a top-flight fusion and R&B session bassist — you thought it was Louis Johnson or Bernard Edwards on those Billy Cobham and Stacy Lattisaw records? — to accumulating enough clout to get — or maybe even convince — Anthony Hamilton and John Rich to do a Michael Bublé song.

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