Out of One Box Into Another

from the Amazon.com Web page for this album

This year keyboardist and sometime vocalist David Garfield released two albums through Creatchy Records in a series called Outside the Box. Curiosity led me to check out the first of these albums, entitled Jazz - Outside the Box. Given that, over the course of over a century’s worth of history, jazz has been in and out of so many different boxes, it was hard to resist the urge to see where Garfield’s ventures would take him “on the outside.”

It did not take me long to identify the locus of those ventures. It was (at this point try to imagine the tone of voice that colored the word “plastics” in The Graduate) “easy listening!” Given that the track selections include “In A Sentimental Mood,” “Song For My Father” (in two different versions), and “Stolen Moments,” my only reaction was (this time remember the “Where’s the beef?” lady), “Where’s the jazz?” Clearly, it escaped Garfield’s box, presumably to high-tail it to someplace inhabited by cats more interested in making jazz!