Bill Frisell - Live (1995)

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Bill Frisell had been working regularly with bassist Kermit Driscoll and drummer Joey Baron for five years when they recorded this concert in Spain in 1991. The familiarity shows in the spontaneity and in the intuitive grasp of every shifting musical gesture. The 70-minute performance may show Frisell's range and the ease with which he flows from one mood or genre to another better than any single studio CD. There's nothing contrived about the way a piece of Appalachian-inspired melody can sing with heightened clarity, only to transmute into fractured bits of electronic sound; nothing false in a Sonny Rollins bop tune, "No Moe," taking on country-western and funk edges. It's Frisell's sheer involvement with his guitar and all the dimensions of music that comes through here, more than the strange ballet between common and arcane forms. He can immerse himself in forms from bop and free jazz to folk melodies and rock, slide from high modern pointillism to heavy-metal chord storms, or play his way from Baroque dance forms to surf guitar and spy-movie themes. The eerie bends and film noir ambience of the often-played "Strange Meeting" might serve as a symbol for the whole enterprise. There's hardly a musical border that doesn't get blurred here, but it's the feeling of a band enjoying what they're doing that comes through strongest, so that even the strangest and most subtle transitions come off with the naturalness and enthusiasm of a garage band. --Stuart Broomer

Tracklist:

1. Throughout	Listen
2. Rag	Listen
3. Crumb/No Moe	Listen
4. Have A Little Faith In Me	Listen
5. Pip, Squeak/Goodbye	Listen
6. Hello Nellie	Listen
7. Strange Meeting	Listen
8. Hangdog	Listen
9. Child At Heart	Listen
10. Again	Listen
11. When We Go	Listen

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