DAVID MURRAY CUBAN ENSEMBLE PLAYS NAT KING COLE EN ESPANOl;   Motema. Nothing like the original except the tunes. Murray, always adept at finding new ways to frame his music, works with a nine-piece ensemble and strings to do what he does best: cry, caterwaul, lose control (never; it only sounds like it) and get fresh during ballads. More to come on this outstanding recording.

FURTHER EXPLORATIONS, Chick Corea, Eddie Gomez, Paul Motian; Concord Jazz, release date: January 17,2012. Recorded live at the Blue Note in NYC and celebrating the 50th anniversary of the release of Bill Evans Explorations this two-disc set warms us with the sort of interplay that LaFaro and Motian attained on the original. Nobody would mistake Cora for Evans and that’s the beauty of it. For the late Motian, an extension, a perfect circle.

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY SOUNDTRACK  by Alberto Iglesias; Silva Screen Records. Pedro Almovodar’s favorite composer has strung together a variety of downbeat themes that sound as a continuous whole. We hear some John Adams, some Phillip Glass, even some Steve Reich in this moody music. More on this later as well.  

Pianist Keith Jarrett’s quarter-century of trio recordings with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette sustains his reputation as one of music’s most inventive improvisers. But it’s his infrequent solo work, beginning with his 1971 release Facing You, that best displays his improvisational genius. Rio, recorded live in the Brazilian city in April of this year, reflects the 66-year-old keyboardist’s entire canon, a body of work that includes excursions into Bach and Mozart as well as jazz standards. Unlike his early solo recordings with their long, evolving variations on rhythmic and melodic themes, Rio is a collection of 16 miniatures that range across blues, impressionism, contemporary boogie-woogie and the avant-garde. The wide variety of material here, including tango-tinged dances and Middle-Eastern moods, spotlioght the pianist’s wide and ambitious vocabulary. It’s hard to believe that these are spontaneous improvisations, as Jarrett has explained in recent interviews. Even the most modern, formless excursions have a substance that lends shape to their off-beat harmonics and aggressive tempos. Best are the sensitive, emotionally-revealing pieces (Jarrett recently divorced after 30 years of marriage) that develop narratives a short story writer could envy. If he sometimes lacks a way to end his stories—more than a few seem to just tail off—it’s easy to excuse him by the wonderful path each piece has taken. –Cabbage Rabbit

REINCARNATION OF A LOVE BIRD, Paul Motian and the Electric Bebop Band ; JMT, recorded June 1994. Motian had a way of layering his sound against the ring of electric guitars and for a while in the ’90s had bands that doubled up on them and saxophones (see Garden of Eden, below). Here’s it’s Kurt Rosenwinkel and Wolfgang Muthspiel adding sustained atmospherics and plucky bebop lines. This may be the best example of Motian’s skill at choosing and reworking jazz standards, taking them from innovators including Monk, Miles, Mingus, Bird and Gillespie. And while there’s only one Motian original, “Split Descision” performed twice, beginning and  end, it illustrates how Motian, that most color-conscious drummer, was extending the moods and harmonic construction of the greats he covers. Would we have pulled this out if the man hadn’t passed? Eventually. Motian’s in our infrequent rotation list, someone we return to again and again as time rolls on.

GARDEN OF EDEN, Paul Motian Band; ECM, recorded November, 2004. We pulled this out a couple weeks back when the man was still on the planet and haven’t let go. Another example of Motian’s two-guitar,-two sax ensemble; this time with seven Motian originals of the kind that send us (the drummer also gets great contributions from his sidemen; hear Muthspiel’s “Waseenonet” from Reincarnation above, saxophonist Chris Cheek’s “Desert Dream” here. What we said before: “Paul Motian plays drums like Bill Evans played piano. Here’s it’s in support of a larger group; the tangle of guitars (Steve Cardenas, Ben Monder, Jakob Bro), brother saxophones of Chris Cheek, Tony Malaby, the try-this-on-for size bass of Jerome Harris. Some Mingus, some originals from the band. But it’s Motian’s “Mesmer” that has a mesmerized. It’s like an Ornette tune at half-speed; inviting, entrancing and ultimately about the human condition.” I forgot to mention the great rework of Mingus’ “Pithecanthropus Erectus.”

MICHAEL TIPPETT DIVERTIMERNTO ON “SELINGER’S ROUND,’ LITTLE MUSIC FOR STRING ORCHESTRA, THE HEART’S ASSURANCE, CONCERTO FOR DOUBLE STRING ORCHESTRA, City of Londo Sinfonia condcuted by Richard Hickox; Chandos, recorded March, 1995. There’s a variety of music here, indicating a range not often associated with the 20th century English composer. Sure, the dancing  “sprung” rhythms of the Concerto catch our off-beat ears but it’s the audible empathy for simple lives, especially heard in the Lament from “Sellinger’s Round” that sticks with us, so much that tenor John Mark Ainsley has to wrestle us back in “The Heat’s Assurance” with a display of  compassion (the music ponders a woman’s suicide, inspired by poets killed in World War II) and passion lost.

APPEARING NIGHTLY,Carla Bley and Her Remarkable Big Band; ECM, 2007. Lively, playful, wonderfully arranged music that jumps jives and gets serious all in a matter of moments. Full of respect for the tradition as well as inside jokes and running gags, the bulk of them perpetrated by trumpeter Lew Soloff. The 25 minute suite that lends the disc its title is a historical overview with the band shouting jive to accent the period feel. “Greasy Gravy” and “Bad Coffee” burns with sax and trumpet reflux (although at different tempos). Emotional highpoint: when the trombone (is it Beppe Calamosca?) blares a warning above the groove and shimmer from Bley-mates bassist Steve Swallow and Karen Mantler on organ. Did I mention Steve Swallow? Who else could play with this noisy of a band and sound like an entire section on his own?

I first saw Paul Motian in the early ’70s with the Keith Jarrett Quartet. The group came to our modest Midwestern university one cold Saturday night and set up on risers in the student union ballroom. Except for Motian, none of the group, which included bassist Charlie Haden and saxophonist Dewey Redman, seemed glad to be there. Jarrett, reportedly upset with the condition of the piano, spent most of the concert prowling around the make-shift stage shaking things and beating his fists on the piano box. Occasionally, he would reach inside and grab at the instrument’s strings as if trying to pluck something out of it. For a brief moment in the second set, he sat down on the bench and began to roll out his signature harmonic churn. But he soon grew bored of it and walked off the stage leaving Redman, as he had done all night, to solo at length.

The performance proved a showcase for the drummer. Motian, smiling and slapping sticks at his kit, played in an off-beat fashion that seemed odd to our young ears. When we thought the accent should come just there, he brought it a split second later. When we anticipated an extended press roll, he cut the rumble short. At the break, we foolishly described his playing as sloppy and carefree,  as if he’d had one too many beers (we didn’t know if he’d had any, and probably not). By the end of the show, especially after his sonically-rich solo that highlighted the second set even more than Jarrett’s brief stint at the keys, we better understood what he was doing, how it fit in and what all the color and shading he applied did for the quartet’s sound. Motian had made us believers in a different kind of timekeeping.

Today, with his passing  , I’ll lament not only his loss  –recent recordings showed he had much left to add — but also the loss of my vinyl copy of Conception Vessel (scroll far down), his 1972 date with Haden, Jarret, violinist Leroy Jenkins and others.. I’ll pull out I Have the Room Above Her to hear him with long-time mates guitarist Bill Frisell and saxophonist Joe Lovano, Monk In Motian to enjoy his comprehension and extension of the Monk sound and some of those wonderful JMT recordings of the ’90s (I’m listening to the cymbal-shimmered twang of Trio i sm  now) and to Reincarnation of A Love Bird  with its two guitars, two saxes and fine Steve Swallow bass work (truly a reincarnation of Monk, Miles, Mingus and Gillespie). And I’ll listen to what he’s done for younger emerging artists, like pianist Anat Fort whose music seemed the perfect canvas for Motian’s painterly ways (he’s on her first ECM recording Long Story, the opening and ending cuts of her latest are titled “Paul Motian”). Recordings make it too easy to miss our lost musicians.

Maybe Richard Cook and Brian Morton say it best in The Penguin Guide To Jazz Recordings:

Time will tell how important Motian is ultimately considered to be in the development of jazz since the war; but if all revolutions in the music turn out to be upheavals in the rhythm section, then it seems likely that he will be seen as a quiet revolutionary.

–Cabbage Rabbit

***I hope our countless fans around the globe will forgive the delay of this Playlist…a winter storm took out our internet and the company formerly known as Qwest took four days to repair it. Hope this isn’t the norm in Santa Fe.

SOULTRANE, John Coltrane; Prestige, recorded February, 1958.  I was preparing to see a Coltrane tribute band with Jimmy Cobb—no, he’s not on this recording— and wanted no Kind Of Blue clichés. Pulling Soultrane out was genius, not just for its foreshadow of Coltrane’s later, denser play but for the amazing bass work of  Paul Chambers, the grace of Red Garland and the shing-a-ling of drummer Art Taylor. I have a feeling that saxophonist Javon Jackson of the We Four Coltrane tribute band did the same thing before touring with his Cobb-included quartet. And yes, I pulled out Giant Steps to hear Cobb on “Naima,” the only track from that landmark recording on which the drummer appears.

KIND OF BLUE, Miles Davis Septet, Columbia, recorded  March and April 1959. You move into a new home, set up your well-traveled sound system and what do you want to hear? Something you know (and love) well. Yeah, I know it’s a cliché. But it’s a classic cliché. And besides, I was feeling all “Blue In Green.” Not to mention that fact that I was looking forward to seeing Jimmy Cobb, now a spry 82, perform with the next generation. Final report: yes, my speakers were in phase.

GARDEN OF EDEN, Paul Motian Band; ECM, recorded November 2004. Paul Motian plays drums like Bill Evans played piano. Here’s it’s in support of a larger group; the tangle of guitars (Steve Cardenas, Ben Monder, Jakob Bro), brother saxophones of Chris Cheek, Tony Malaby, the try-this-on-for size bass of Jerome Harris. Some Mingus, some originals from the band. But it’s Motian’s “Mesmer” that has a mesmerized. It’s like an Ornette tune at half-speed; inviting, entrancing and ultimately about the human condition.

SCHUBERT IMPROMPTUS, OP.  90 & op.142, Mitsuko Uchida; Philips, recorded 1996. Serious music for serious times performed with respect and sensitivity. With the possibility of dark moments on the horizon, I want to be prepared. And Schubert’s an expert at resolution.

Joseph Haydn: Die sieben lezten Worte unseres Erlosers am Kreuze (The Seven Last Words of Our Savior On the Cross); Broodin Quartet, Teldec, recorded October, 1993 . The lush, lovely side of the Passion Play, the Largo second movement is to die for. Grave, but somehow transcendent. No, not first-thing-in-the-morning music. Leave it for late afternoon, when the day’s enticements are less promising.

Franz Schubert Octet in F, D.803, Music From Aston Magna; Harmonium Mundi, 1992. Double adagio and still uplifting. The instrumentation is divine, the rhythms natural, the music moving like deep water.

Morton Feldman: Piano and String Quartet, Kronos Quartet with pianist Aki Takahashi; Nonesuch, recorded November, 1991. In a time of change against a background of stasis, Feldman’s almost 80-minutes of repeated space makes for soothing returns and an alertness that comes of incremental difference.  Like waiting for something to happen when things are happening all around.

Miles Davis Quintet:  Filles de Kilamanjaro; Columbia, recorded June, 1968.  Filles is more melodic that the preceding quintet recordings most likely due to the presence of Gil Evans when these tunes were written. The themes are light and graceful, but dissolve in to free-expression solo sections that catch everyone  (but especially Wayne Shorter) in expansive moods. And then back to those themes of grace and respect, the perfect things for someone looking for beauty and while trying to make order out of the chaos.

Initiate,  The Nels Cline Singers; Cryptogramophone, recorded September, 2009. Disc two, the live recording of this two disc set, reminds us that hearing Cline live was always something of a symphonic experience. A good momento of what this band can do on stage, the variety of moods and sounds it covers and its ability to adapt music to its surroundings. Don’t ask me which disc I like best — studio or live  –  both represent the varieties of life in surprisingly different ways.

TIME FOR TYNER, McCoy Tyner; Blue Note, recorded May, 1968.

Harmonic serendipity from vibes and piano, ditto for the personalities. This is our favorite of Tyner periods,  beyond Coltrane and into McCoy. Cleverly arranged standards; Tyner puts the crop to the horses on “The Surrey With the Fringe On Top,” working the theme into a fast trot, the solo section into canter. “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was “is pegged on a two-note bass riff. But it’s the McCoy originals at all tempos, that glisten. Tyner’s propulsively lengthy attack covers wide stretches of varied territory and resolves in ways attorney’s might admire. Likewise Bobby Hutcherson, who rings in ways that mirror the pianist. My first introduction to McCoy was a band that featured bassist Herbie Lewis (with a big “Free Angela” sticker on his upright). This is welcome reminder.  Here, Lewis adds a kinky touch to Tyner’s romanticism. Time check: for some reason I didn’t think much of Freddie Waits back then. Some of us made jokes about his playing. Perspective all-these-years later: I was wrong. Dead, driving wrong.

BITCHES BREW LIVE, Miles Davis; Columbia Legacy, recorderd July 1969 and August , 1970. For the last 25 years, a butchered document of the Miles Davis band heard on Columbia’s  three disc  “Isle of Wight” was the grail. This collection, finally, gives a long infusion of the ’70 festival performance (Dylan did not show), and a sax-less session recorded at the ’69 Newport Fest (Wayne Shorter was stuck in traffic).  It takes some of “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down” for the band to hit stride minus Shorter, which suggests the saxophonist was the spark plug that kept things firing when Miles stepped away from the mic. Corea’s edgy play is everywhere, almost at once. On the Wight sessions, the band finds new worlds. Corea is joined by Keith Jarrett in the gig that made him swear off electric keys. Ssaxophonist Gary Bartz plays rough with the blues.  Miles, powered again by Holland and DeJohnette, finds ways to come and come again, reaching for it like a pull-up, then descending to do it again. Why this? It makes sense of intense times. Then and now.

SO BEAUTIFUL SO WHAT, Paul Simon;Hear Music, released April of this year. The so-they-say on this disc is best since Graceland. Don’t believe it or compare them. There’s still some rhythmic assimilation going on and Simon likes the sound of African guitars. The tunes are catchy in a Simon sort of way and that’s good enough for me. God (and his only son) play a big role. But the spiritual thing never gets too mushy, escept for maybe “Love & Blessings” and only with the addition of  “simple kindness.” The lyrics swing from pop aphorism –Love is eternal sacred light – to chuckle up: “It’s Jay-Zee, he’s got a kid on each knee.” After God slurs his creation as “slobs,” everything is fine.  Let him tell you. “So beautiful  so what.”

KODALY MUSIC FOR CELLO, Three Choral Preludes, Opus 4, 8; Maria Liegel Cello, Jeno Jando, piano; Naxos, recorded 1994-’95. Determined, inspiring, get-over-it music for those times you need it. Can someone suggest another recording?

RED CLAY, Freddie Hubbard; CTI, 1970. Follow up from last week’s Hubbard. How could I not? Everybody knows these numbers, these guys — Henderson, Hancock, Ron Carter, Lenny White — and what can I say? Solid. Freddie’s title tune is the best read of “Sunny” since Bobby Hebb’s original. “Suite Sioux” has become a post-bugaloo classic and “The Intrepid Fox” has set countless musicians, at a challenging pace, in search of themselves. This late-issue CD has an alternate take of “Red Clay” and an appreciation of John Lennon’s “Cold Turkey” that, despite the flatulent beginning, seems to get it. Fun in the afternoon.

You know the rap about symphonic orchestras playing jazz. Can’t swing. There to frame real jazz musicians in pretty strings.  Pops orchestra. Sure, Charlie Parker and Strings was great but strings without Charlie Parker? Are you kidding?

And then there’s the Netherlands Radio’s Metropole Orkest, directed by Connecticut-born Vince Mendoza. Mendoza’s had plenty of practice working with large and/or off-beat instrumentation. Listen to the full-throated brass of  “Anjelicus” with its three French horns, bass trombone and tuba  from his 1990 date Capitol date Start Here and you’ll know he was better than half-way there two decades ago.  Teamed with the Metropole since ’95, he’s proven that symphony-styled orchestras are great for the same reasons as any great big band: the harmonic possibilities, the infinite orchestral combinations, the size of the sound. And the Orkest not only swings, it bops, it comps, it gets funky. Tight percussive accents punctuate lyrical, beautifully-paced string lines. There’s not a weak section to be heard, even in numbers recorded live.

The Scofield date finds Mendoza and the orchestra dealing in depth and development.  Mendoza brings in a rhythm section and organist and picks up the sax.   “Jung Parade” opens with organ trio only, a familiar Sco’ format. Then, the brass starts dropping in counterpoint. The harmonics  bring tension and resolution, following the guitarist as he suckles up to the plenty. Over the bridge, the tune takes on chamber airs, a trumpet fanfare harmonized with the guitar. The ballads are rich in strings and brass honey. The funk tunes are vise-grip tight.

It’s surprising how well it works. Mendoza and Scofield have some history; that doesn’t hurt.  But its as if the orchestra were designed just for Sco’ and his electric contrasts. It kisses up during the ballads, blows through the rockers and hits some gritty beat-and-groove. Dig those funky, muted trumpets!  How the strings bring a dark, uncoiling undertone?  Then off come the mutes!

Even with a few ringers in the rhythm section, it’s all about the arranging, some of it by Mendoza, some by Jim McNeely and Florian Ross. On the Metropole’s recent tribute to Joe Zawinul, Fast City, Mendoza does all the arranging.  But it’s less the arrangement — Zawinul had already done a masterful job — and more the orchestration.  The harmonics make the music.

Again there are some ringers  — former Weather Report bassist Victor Bailey, percussionist Alex Acuna and drummer Peter Erskine — and for the same reasons. Bringing in the rhythm section guarantees the ethnically-expanisve Zawinul drive. Erskine is the only drummer who can pin the incessant rhythm like he does — those tom and hi-hat unison accents, the emphatic crescendos as the strings and woodwinds fade away, the sheer never-falter power of it.

Zawinul put a full range of symphonic sounds through his synthesizer and now the orchestra does it au naturel.  Mendoza doesn’t second guess Zawinul’s sound. Instead, he orchestrates the original with the Orkest’s acoustic instruments and just enough electric touches –  guitar, bass and of course synthesizers — to keep the music’s original spark. The oboe break in “Nubian Sundance” is straight off the Weather Report’s Mysterious Traveler album . That’s because it’s the perfect instrument for the part.

Unlike the Absolute Ensemble’s project with Zawinul, Absolute Zawinul, which chose more obscure pieces, Medoza picked stalwarts from the glory days of Weather Report; not “Birdland,” but the tunes from that era that were deep, thematically sophisticated and harmonized in their composer’s signature style.  Their familiarity is a reason the recording is so amazing; the Orkest and guests get the best from Zawinul’s compositions.  Guitarist Amit Chatterjee adds the vocal touches that so humanized Zawinul’s electric sound. There’s even a version of “In A Silent Way.”

It’s not all in Zawinul’s shadow. A trumpet solo bursts out of “Fast City” and the orchestra swings in hard-bop style that Weather Report didn’t visit (but Zawinul did at other times in his career, see “Cannonball Adderley”) before the tune turns back to its long, melodic theme. The strings on “Peace” are lush and lanquid. It could easily be mistaken for some 20th century concerto. And “In A Silent Way” has never been heard like this before, even if it’s appropriate a trumpet takes the lead.

So the jazz orchestra evolves. It’s not just bigger, it’s better (in its own way), too. And, as in some jazz-meets-symphony-projects,  it doesn’t forget the individual. Especially, the arranger.–Cabbage Rabbit

Gil-Scott Heron, dead today at 62,  was equal parts social commentator, freedom fighter and pop star. Known as the Godfather of Rap, a title he vehemently denied in an interview I had with him in 1995, he none-the-less influenced generations of rappers and was sampled dozens of times. Most rappers ignored his plea to “not lean so heavily on rhyme and concentrate on the message” (and he meant the socio-political message).

When I talked to Scott-Heron that first time, he had just ended 12 years of recording silence with Spirits. The opening track, “Message To the Messengers” (“if you gonna be teachin’ folks, you gotta know what you’re sayin’…”) was directed at the hip-hop generation, asking them to see where their movement had come from and what it should be about. I was in New York and was hoping to talk to Scott-Heron in person on his own turf.  Complications ensued and I suspected, not without reason, that the man who wrote “Angel Dust” and “The Bottle” was chasing his program, whatever it might be (what did Elridge Cleaver say in Soul On Ice about the sensitive and their vulnerability to drugs?). Most likely,  despite a new recording, he just didn’t want to spend time with a reporter from L.A., or anywhere for that matter.  There was a certain irony in our cellphone conversation as he pursued something around the city’s Upper Westside. The signal kept cutting out.

“Message To the Messengers”  is a lecture of sorts, a plea for peace in a movement that had turned on itself (“they’re glad we’re out there killin’ each other…”). Scott-Heron’s was asking the rap community to remember what had gone before, to show respect and generational brotherhood. It’s also a call to action : “what we did was to tell our generation to get busy/because it wasn’t going to be televised.” Knowing that the revolution has not and will not be televised is as appropriate today as it was in 1972 and 1994: the media is not our message but theirs, we are in this together but not everyone is together with us. “[Rappers] have to know they’re not going through anything new” he told me, “it’s the same stuff I went through back then. They’ve got to remember it’s not about them. It’s about community and the people.”

One of my favorite Scott-Heron tunes, “Lady Day and John Coltrane,” addressed the power of music in our lives. Scott-Heron’s music, socially relevant and politically charged, brought truth to that power. Sing on.   — Cabbage Rabbit

Plunged into a world of 1930s swing bands – Fletcher Henderson, Chick Webb, Jimmie Lunceford and, yes, Count Basie and Duke Ellington — for an upcoming piece in the Playboy Jazz Festival program,  I was in need of some temporal balance, a contemporary counterpoint. Via my high school library’s subscription to Downbeat (every school with a music program should have one) the Exploding Star Orchestra came into my life.

Get this straight from the beginning. No devotee of ’30s era swing music would admit to hearing any similarities between their favorite bands and this 14-piece outfit of Chicago renegades led by cornetist and “electro-acoustic constructionist” Rob Mazurek.  But there are shared qualities, ways that connect the  time passed to now, ways that allow us to say, with an ambiguity we’ve always loved when it comes to this type of band, that the Exploding Star Orchestra is out-of-the-tradition.

How? There’s the glossy sheen of well-orchestrated harmonics; yes the usual section blends but also the drone of various samples that Mazurek has collected: rain, insects, bicycyle pedaling, that sort of thing as well as the weird electronics that Mazurek applies to his trumpet. Did I say weird? One drone is concoted from the sounds of electric eels.

Another commonality? Riffing, almost exactly as Sy Oliver or Don Redman might do it (“Impression #1″) or as they most certainly would not (“ChromoRocker”).  Riffs give us a way to pin down the music, and there are just enough of them to make the contrasts strong and leave us anxious for resolution. As far out as the Exploding Star is,  it occasionally is as down-earth as a Fletcher Henderson ballad.

The tradition the Star most honors is that of the Chicago avant garde. Mazurek uses the same methods of development and cacophonous backgrounds to frame solos as did/does the best of the AACM (Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians; you know,  Muhal Richard Abrams, Fred Anderson, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie, those guys).  Like the best outside composers, Mazurek is a master of resolution. The long opening track, “Ascension Ghost Impression,” starts on a lips-only whistle, heats up, comes to a boil, then simmers, suddenly resolved in a wonderful brass chord. Terrifying dissonance resolves in moments of startling calm.

The main innovation here is texture, the way Mazurek combines reeds, brass and percussion with the samples and strange electronics. Mazurek’s cornet adds Miles-like electronic trumpet effects. Central to the mix is Jason Adasiewicz’s vibraphone which adds both natural and hand-manipulated sound, soothing one moment,  jangling the next. Soloists — the jagged sound of flutist Nicole Mitchell, Greg Ward’s alto saxophone, Jason Stein’s bass clarinet — add edgy, questionable behaviors.

High on our current play list, Stars Have Shapes captures the ups and down of modern life, its beauty as well as its confusion.  That it’s dedicated to the memory of Bill Dixon and Fred Anderson says a lot. The big band the Orchestra most resembles? Sun Ra. It employs some of the same melodicism — floating, gentle — as soloists bubble to the surface.  Also like the Arkestra, Exploding Star falls into worm holes even as it travels into deepest space.  How can you not believe in time travel?–Cabbage Rabbit