Blog

First of all, I apologize for the inactivity vis a vis On The Ball, and once again offer my kudos to my dedicated commenters who are proving perfectly capable of continuing intelligent discussion without me. That said, I owe readers a little heads up about how I’ll be handling postseason posts.

I went to the Wolves press conference with McHale yesterday morning and will offer up my thoughts on the state of the team moving forward–but probably not until Monday. I just needed to decompress from the season a bit; plus there were three interesting music gigs in the Twin Cities, concluding tonight with Eric Bibb at the Dakota, that I felt like writing about over at my music blog, Hear Hear.

Sometime this evening or night, I’ll post my picks for various NBA awards–I still haven’t made up my mind on MVP and Coach of the Year, two unbelievably competitive races–and do previews and picks for the playoff series that begin on Saturday. On Saturday night I’ll do my previews and picks for the playoff series that begin on Sunday. And on Monday I’ll have my Wolves’ season recap and review.

Somewhere in the midst of all of that, I also want to take up commenter AK’s suggestion that we coordinate playoff series to view and dissect. In fairness to folks who don’t have cable, I want to say that I’ll definitely talk about and provide a forum for the network games this weekend, which are San Antonio and Phoenix on Saturday afternoon and Denver and the Lakers on Sunday afternoon. The other series I know I am catching this weekend are Houston and Utah on Saturday night and Boston and Atlanta on Sunday night. I’m still not clear how I’m going to set up shop for this playoff thread, at least initially, as you notice that I’ve also set myself up with quite a bit of writing otherwise over the weekend. But rest assured that as the field winnows and the pivotal games and series become more apparent, there will be a place here for both me and my reader/commenters to chime in and kick stuff around.

Meanwhile, I notice that there are some discussions continuing apace beneath my past On the Ball submission. Feel free to extend it there or transfer it over to this one. And know that, for better or worse, you’ll be reading quite a bit more of my hoops reactions in the days ahead.

Thanks for your patience and your participation.

Ryan Montbleau’s shoes may
need a shine, but that’s a tough thing to do when you’re a travellin’
man. Montbleau and his band play an average of 200 shows a year, bringing
their eclectically influenced soul across the country and back again
on a nocturnal circuit only the hardest working bands feel compelled
to journey.

Perched on a stool, tapping
a foot wildly to the beat, Montbleau seems poised and natural in this
setting. Performing didn’t come about so comfortably from the start, however.

"For me to cross that threshold,
I was really nervous at first and I kind of didn’t want to, but I
knew I had to for some reason," Montbleau says. "So you just keep
forcing yourself to get up there. Now being on stage makes more sense
to me than anything else."

His strength came from a source
terrifying to any normal adult: a classroom of teenagers.

"I used to teach for a little
while. I was a substitute teacher. If you can face a class full of high
school kids at seven in the morning…" Montbleau erupts into laughter.
"I was scared shitless. That helped me to be able to face a crowd."

Montbleau is the male equivalent
to Fiona Apple. He sings stark, emotional tales that leave listeners
laughing or dancing or standing rigid, lost in personal reflection.
He also has this amazing ability to turn "love" into a five syllable
word, partly due to his R&B-soaked vocals.

Montbleau’s musical inspirations
are all over the map. Growing up he listened to as much of fellow Bostonians,
New Edition, as he did AC/DC.

"They kind of just blended,"
he says. "I got some of my vocal stuff from this cheesy R&B stuff
growing up. I’m not ashamed of it. Some of that led me into Sam Cooke
and Stevie Wonder."

In addition to R&B, elements
of blues, jazz, and pop reflect in his music. Visually, the band is overtly
American, with an appropriately nerdy-looking key boardist and a viola
player wearing a baseball cap. Musically, the band also has a strong
national influence, with rhythms at times delightfully bordering on
rag time and a strong focus on folksy story-telling.

One such story-telling highlight
comes in "Quickie," a very an honest and dangerously heartbreaking
tale of, well, a quickie. Old couples and ones meeting for the first
time filled the floor with slow-dancing, before returning to their bopping
and beer drinking during Montbleau’s more lively numbers, such as
"City," with its thumping guitars and beaten-to-death bongos. "75
and Sunny" is unabashedly cheery with lyrics like "You better believe
I’m living for the moment/ but my moment’s growing bigger by and
by."

Montbleau is open and unassuming
onstage. He leaves any rock and roll posturings to the front men with
egos twice the size of their Telecasters. But, breaking down those barriers
has left him sometimes clouded with misconceptions.

"People get all kinds of
funny ideas when they see you up onstage," he says. "I try to be
very open and honest and revealing with my lyrics. So people from that
might think they’ve got a complete picture of who I am and attach
their own expectations to that. And some people approach me as if I’m
going to be a total dick or something, and I really try not to be. I
try to be cool with everyone. But people kind of brace themselves. They
assume I’m one way and that’s it."

On both sides of the curtain,
Montbleau is pleasant and charming. It seems it would take quite a statement
to get him riled up. An easy way is to start in with the comparisons.
Call him the new Paul Simon. Call him a Beatles junkie. Just don’t
say he’s like Dave Matthews.

"I really believe in my heart
of hearts that we don’t sound like that. We’re certainly not trying
to," he says.

With the band’s fiddle and
viola and rambling keys, it could be easy on face value to put the Ryan
Montbleau Band in the same box as the jam rockers. Only, Montbleau has
more heart than could fill any of Matthews’ arenas. But if he has to
be in a box, you can be sure he will open a door and invite you in.

Having already tackled the legacies of Duke Ellington and Count Basie at medium-sized band concerts at Orchestra Hall last June and August, trombonist/curator Delfeayo Marsalis returns tonight with a tribute to Louis Armstrong, and wisely decides to deploy two musicians—Nicholas Payton and Kermit Ruffins—as stand-ins for Satchmo.

As with his paeans to Ellington and Basie, Marsalis is using seven or eight pieces and a vocalist or two to capture both the jangle and intimacy of Armstrong. His stewardship of this project seems especially appropriate, given that the Marsalis clan has become the first family of jazz in New Orleans (in the eyes of the nation if not the city), the crossroads of African, Creole, and Cuban cultures that was so vital to Armstrong’s distinctively American, iconic music and persona. Significantly, among tonight’s eight performers, only pianist Bill Charlap and local singer Charmin Michelle were not born and/or raised in the Crescent City.

Successfully recruiting Payton was an artistic and commercial coup for the event. The 34-year old trumpeter shares Satchmo’s stolid physical stature, bold brassy tone, and even some of Armstrong’s startling originality in his improvisations. What Payton’s lacks, however, is Armstrong’s gravelly vocals and penchant for mugging melodramatically for the audience. Presumably this is where Ruffins comes in–although that probably damns him with faint praise. Ruffins is a fine trumpeter in his own right–just not in Payton’s, never mind Armstrong’s, league. His CDs on the Basin Street label have demonstrated his ability to have fun with the music, however.

The rhythm section–bassist Reginald Veal and drummer Herlin Riley– is comprised of Marsalis family stalwarts, having played with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis for long stints extending back into the 1980s. They know their Armstrong backwards and forwards. Ditto saxophonist/clarinetist Victor Goines, who played Armstrong’s legendary Hot Five tunes alongside Wynton Marsalis at Jazz at Lincoln Center recently. Charlap is a refined and accomplished pianist, who likewise seems at his best reinterpreting classic material (a disc entitled Stardust and an entire album devoted to Leonard Bernstein are the highlights of his catalogue). I haven’t been a fan of Michelle’s work in the past, but it has been a long time since I’ve heard her.

The promo materials promise such crowdpleasers as "West End Blues," "What A Wonderful World" and "Mack The Knife." Personally, give me that three-horn front line on vintage stuff like "Muskrat Ramble" and "Twelfth Street Rag," with Payton wailing away in brassy splendor.

Ironically, Payton’s latest recording, Into The Blue (due out April 22 on the Nonesuch label), almost couldn’t be less like Armstrong. It features a quintet, with Payton as the only horn, and eight of the ten tunes Payton originals. Some are the songs are atmospheric and breathy, as if Payton was aping Chet Baker; some of them find Payton shadow-boxing riffs against a funky matte thrown up by his sidemen, in a manner reminiscent of some of Miles Davis’s recordings after he returned from retirement in the 80s.

The best-known of the sidemen is keyboardist Kevin Hays, whose impeccable credentials include a long stint with Sonny Rollins and a tremendous recent turn with organist Larry Goldings on drummer Bill Stewart’s Incandescence, released this month. But Hays plays a lot of electric piano and Fender Rhodes on this outing, which further fuzzes up Payton’s soft-focus leanings. I much prefer the still reflective pieces where Hays is on acoustic, including "Drucilla" and "The Crimson Touch." And there are occasions when electric Hays does a nice job of stoking and engaging Payton, as on "Triptych" and "Fleur De Lis."

Payton is as technically unassailable as ever, with crystal clear intonation, geometrically sound improvisations, and rhythmic precision both solo and in tandem with the rest of his ensemble. I don’t begrudge him trying new things either, although his vocal on "Blue" demonstrates why Kermit Ruffins will likely be singing most of the Armstrong parts tonight, and the in-the-pocket groove of "Nida" could have used just a tad less cowbell (seriously).

Bassist Vincent Archer, drummer Marcus Gilmore and percussionist Daniel Sadownick round out the quintet. Into The Blue is neither a terrible disc nor one that will crack my "selected discography" of Payton’s best work. ** (Two stars out of five.)

Over the years, the Kentucky Derby
has drawn comparisons to such high profile annual events as the Super
Bowl and Academy Awards. But in comparing these events, the celebrity
status of the participants in the Kentucky Derby seems to fall short
compared to the other two. In the 133 year history of the Derby, the
list of household names emerging from the Run for the Roses is very
short, with most of them being horses.

The First Saturday in
May tells the story of six
contenders for the 2006 Kentucky Derby. The most impressive part of
this documentary is the well-told personal stories of the relatively
anonymous trainers, jockeys and owners that toil in the stables and
racetracks of America, with the common goal of qualifying for the Kentucky
Derby.

With the pomp and circumstance of
such a huge event, you would expect to hear about superstars and the
thrill of victory. But with 19 of 20 participants destined for disappointment,
most of the stories surrounding Kentucky Derby end in defeat. While
filmmakers John and Brad Hennegan were fortunate enough to document
the journey of 2006 Derby winner Barbaro and his trainers, for the most
part they exercised restraint from making this a Seabiscuit-esque biopic, and spread the story line
across all six featured teams.

What makes this documentary special
is the intimate peek of the annual journey made by thousands of trainers,
jockeys and horses along the Derby trail. The ups and downs of Frank
Amonte’s rise from Assistant to Head Trainer for Achilles of Troy are
particularly gripping. A blue collar guy working to make a better life
for his kids, Amonte’s passion for winning is obvious as he explains
in a thick New Jersey accent that, "The big one I want is the Derby."

There is an honesty in Amonte’s portion
of the story that keeps you glued to the screen as he inches closer
to his dream of training a horse in the Kentucky Derby. When his dreams
are dashed by a poor showing in the race that Achilles of Troy needed
win to qualify for the Derby, the disappointment is palpable.

As grippingly disappointing as Amonte’s
story is, the jubilation of trainer Kiaran McLaughlin’s horse Jazil
coming from way behind to finish second in the last race it needed win
or place in to qualify for the Derby, is just as captivating. A former
derby runner-up, McLaughlin has managed to keep his Multiple Sclerosis
in check for 10 years and become a very successful trainer. Jazil’s
qualification for the Derby would lead to a fourth place finish in the
big race, and eventually a Belmont Stakes win.

These stories may receive a short
sound byte during the Kentucky Derby broadcast, but most people never
get to see the dedication and sacrifice that trainers, jockeys and their
families put forth in pursuit of the dream of making it to the big race.
The Hennegan brothers deserve praise for bringing their stories to the
big screen.

Unfortunately, this praise is somewhat
tainted by the decidedly disappointing left turn the filmmakers take
with the movie’s ending. After spending over an hour following the ups
and downs for these six unique individual stories of struggle to acheive
their dreams, the final scenes take us from their various states of
excitement and worry at Churchill Downs as their horses come down the
stretch, to the aftermath in which the winner Barbaro struggles to regain
his form after a devastating injury in the Preakness.

While Barbaro’s story is an emotional
one, it is not the story that had been laid out for viewers throughout
the rest of the movie. The Hennegan brothers would have served their
audience better by showing the disappointment on the faces of the four
losing horses’ team members and ask them how they felt after such a
tremendous struggle for their goals had been dashed. Instead, the last
10 minutes of The
First Saturday In May
turned into the ending of a Barbaro biopic.

The Hennegan brothers did a great
job of avoiding the temptation of following the small number of celebrity
trainers, like D. Wayne Lukas and Bob Baffert, for 90 percent of The First Saturday in May. But in the end, they gave in to temptation
and focused on the glorious but tragic winner of the race and abandoned
the personal stories that truly make this documentary special.