Rock-a-Rama
ROCK-A-RAMA
This month’s Rock-A-Ramas were written by Billy Altman, Michael Davis, Rick Johnson and Ira Kaplan.
KENNY KOSEK AND MATT GLASER— Hasty Lonesome (Rounder):: The presence of a medley of songs from Marx Brothers movies seems all too fitting on this album, which marks the united effort of Kosek and Glaser, two brilliant violinists with similar screws loose in just the right places. How else could you account for such bizarro bonanzas as “Lonesome Fiddle Blues,” a kind of South American bluegrass samba, or the title track, a sprawling beyond the fringe mind excursion into jazzbowed bananaland. Once in awhile, Glaser and Kosek play it straight and true (“Deep Elum Blues”), but more often than not they’re gleefully sabotaging standard fiddle tunes with split second tangential dazzle and virtuoso playfulness that would have Margaret Dumont doing double takes all day. Either this review is over or my typewriter’s stopped. B.A.