Glenious Inner Planet is reviewed by All About Jazz

Review By: C. Michael Bailey

Track review of "Blue Rondo a la Raad"

Personnel: Joel Fulgrum: drums; Christ Cortez: guitar; Ted Wenglinski: keyboards; Glen Ackerman: bass; Woody Witt: saxophones.

This is not yourt parent's Dave Brubeck. For that matter, if you put Brubeck in the Telepod from the 1958 film The Fly, with the spirit of Shawn Lane, and teleported them into the future, that might come closest to describing this "Blue Rondo a la Raad." Brubeck is replaced by Chris Cortez's precisely reverberated electric guitar. Paul Desmond morphs into Woody Witt, and the festivities are started by bandleader Glen Ackerman, who is the product of a gamma-ray irradiated Eugene Wright. Joe Morello? He is played by Joel Fulgrum on this episode of Gilligan's Bikini Atoll.

Cortez and Witt dance during the head arrangement, before Cortez rips out the wires for a full-bore Shawn Lane extravaganza. This is as far from 1959 and Brubeck's classic Time Out (Columbia) as one can get. But the spirit of jazz remains. Witt's roaming alto solo skates across the cosmic funk poured out by Ackerman and Cortez. Ackerman's solo is cogent and melodic, reminiscent of Shawn Lane's partner in crime Jonas Hellborg. An excellent tribute to an original, 50 years on.