Are You Glad to Be in America? is an album by American guitarist James Blood Ulmer recorded in 1980 and originally released on the Rough Trade label in the UK in 1980 and the Artists House label in the US in 1981. The album was rereleased on CD on the Japanese DIW label in 1999. The Allmusic review by Nathan Bush awarded the album 4 stars and states “Shards of jazz, rock, funk, and surf guitar are shuffled together and unfurl in frenetic lines. At times the rhythms are too rigid and the results sound like an experiment from which the musicians are trying to break free. At best, the individuals lose themselves in a highly charged dialogue”. Trouser Press describes Are You Glad to Be in America? as an “exceptionally fine” album that “reveals a staggering understanding of the roots of jazz, dance music, Eastern polyrhythms and harmolodic textures in a lively sound mix….[T]he music fairly crackles.”
New Music United 