Cheap At Half the Price--Fred Frith

Fred Frith is a musician, composer, improviser, guitarist and more most commonly associated with the avant-garde side of jazz and improvised music. He is a musician that I haven't spent very much time familiarizing myself with, but one who I have always known I would enjoy and need to start listening to. I link to wikipedia a lot, but they have a pretty comprehensive description of him here if you are interested in learning more about the guy. Some of his work that I have checked out (not too in depth) and enjoyed is the band Skeleton Crew with Tom Cora, a duo album with Anthony Braxton, and some recordings with John Zorn. If you are looking for more stuff to check out perhaps Huff will chime in here and point you in the right direction.

The album we have today, and our last post from the TJ Huff list (our inaugural friends recommend list!) is Fred Frith's Cheap At Half the Price. TJ has been getting on me for a long time to listen to this one, even going as far as sneaking it on my ipod some months ago. It had been sitting there untouched until last week when I got TJ's recommend list and I figured it was probably time to give it a chance. I must admit, I am completely in love with this album now. It is eclectic beyond description with influences drawn from anywhere and everywhere. It is (supposedly) the first album Fred Frith sings on, which he does on about half the tracks, the other half of the album being instrumental. I would never call this a "pop" album but it is definitely pop-influenced (whatever that means) and much much more accessible that I expected from the first Fred Frith album I really checked out. If you consider yourself drawn to singers with weird and unconventional voices this is something for you. At first listen it reminded me of a mix between They Might Be Giants, Devo, and Servotron, but edgier and more interesting. A documentary about Frith titled Step Across the Border was released in 1990 and I definitely intend to check it out to learn more.

I wish I could post the whole album here so you could listen to how different each track is, but I can't. You can't even upload audio by itself to this site so I've set one of the tracks from Cheap At Half the Price to a couple of pictures of Frith in imovie. Don't mind the pictures...I just put them there so the screen wouldn't be black the whole time. This track is from the vocal half of the album and is called "The Welcome". It was very hard to choose just one, but I think this captures the mood and charm of what he does through the whole album and makes you feel happy in an off-center kind of way. Really, if you like slightly strange music you should have this album.




That might have been too short. Here is one more track off the album to give you more of an idea. Sorry, no pictures with this one just the audio. This is "Cap the Knife". I also really love "Some Clouds Don't," and "Some Clouds Do" and also how the track "Absent Friends" sounds like Riverdance meets the Shire. Enjoy!