You can't rate free jazz. But I can. I am a professional reviewing machine. It is my job to assign a specific number, or "weight," to each and every album so that its place in the order of all things may be known.

[6 points for number of notes.]

Some people on the Metro told me, "Well, but who's to say? ...Oh, well, that take was good. But I know they did a better one in practice. So this only gets a 6.1."

I am! I told you, I make these kinds of judgements so that we all know where an album stands, what its importance is.

[15 points for pulling these songs off.]

My deadline at work says, "This sounds like it doesn't have any form! I don't want to listen to this!"

Ahh. But it has feeling.

"Yeah, the feeling that something is forming in my stomach!"

[11 points for bass clarinet. I played it in 6th and 7th grade.]

No. Yeah. So that's what it may do to you. And. But. Hey. It does have form. It's all made up of notes, isn't it? It just does not use a conventional structuring of the notes. Or of noises. Yeah, there are noises in there, too.

[$265,000 for becoming a MacArthur Fellow.]

And it doesn't sound "bad." Please don't write off this type of music with such a simple adjective. It is directed soloing. It is different, not bad. Reaction and spontaneity vs. the known.

[26 points for Bb clarinet. I still play that.]

"But what is the purpose of putting free jazz on a compact disc." This time my pile of laundry was chiming in. "Doesn't the recording process limit a song, constraining it to the version 'proper' contained on an album?"

It does. But the recorded version can just be seen as a representation or "record" (hmm, how convenient) of the track at that point in time. It needs to be heard. And it may be used as an entry point into the "idea" being laid forth by the musician.

[53 points for "Sthlm," a song title without vowels.]

My pile of bills picked up where the laundry left off: "Isn't the artist's 'idea' taken out of context when listened to out of context? The context being, of course, his or her relationship to the band in the studio at that particular moment?"

Well, I think that the disc may also be seen as a study document. To furthur examine the relationships at any particular moment.

[8 points for living in Chicago.]

"That brings us back to my point: who wants to listen to something only because it's smart or expressing an idea?" (I don't think that my work deadline had been buying any of this).

I think that's a stupid question. Don't you want new ideas?

"Yeah. But. Hmm. Don't you have some work to do for tomorrow?"

[total points: 119, $265,000]

Pitchfork Rating = [1/( 119 X 1/(265,000))]/700 = 7.4

-Chip Chanko