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Well, it has happened again. Two incredibly pleasant weeks have somehow passed in two blinks of an eye. It's a funny thing, the way the mind perceives the passage of time. I've said this kind of thing before, but it seems as though there have been single days in my life that have lasted longer than these two weeks. Not great days, mind you...but still.As tradition has it, we woke up pretty early this morning. It seems like the right thing to do...get the most out of this last day of vacation. So the coffee's on, the dog's been fed and the new Greg Brown is playing on the music contraption.
But wait, I'm getting ahead of things a little. I wanted to talk about last night's dinner. It honestly has not a whole lot to do with this morning except that it's become our habit to treat ourselves to one fancy night out per trip. Me and TheWife™ are not really fancy folks, but we are foodies (except for when we're in the mood for diner fare, which is most of the time).
So we hit Havana at 8PM. This is a swanky little Cuban joint. The kind of place that I'd normally avoid because I see the folks through the windows, swishing their wine glasses and looking all shimmery and comfortable in their beautiful skin and finery. Much more comfortable than me in my finery. Well, OK, I don't actually own any finery, but you get the idea. I had heard great things about this place so it was more than a little disconcerting to be confronted with the weirdness of the restaurant's first (and only) mistake: nobody shows up at our table for well over ten minutes. Miscommunication I suppose. Once the management figured out what had happened they were suitably horrified and rectified the situation by hurling free mojitos and impossibly tasty appetizers in our direction. Thank you very much. The food was pretty much nothing short of spectacular. I do love the adventure and surprise that comes with this kind of thing. You put a forkful of something into your mouth and there's this explosion of flavor as your eyeballs roll back into your head. Not all of the elements can be identified. It's just pure pleasure. Also kind of fun last night to sit in that environment and watch the pouring rain and lightning that lit up the sky.
What any of this has to do with Greg Brown's The Evening Call I do not know. Though I'm sure Greg's been to places like Havana, he's more likely to be tossing some ingredients in a pot and settling down for an evening of slow food. I listen to him because the songwriting is nonstop terrific and the music is a singular combination of folk, blues, country, and gospel. It's full of humanity and grace and home. He also speaks of heading out into the wilderness with a kind of reverence that approaches religion. Though I'm not a backwoods kind of guy, I can identify with closing out the rest of the world by immersion into something simpler, the essence of which can't be denied. 
I'm not in the wilderness up here (come on...there's a high speed Internet connection!), but I think I've done a halfway decent job of closing out the noise. Not by the head-in-sand method, but by filling the days full of music and words and sea and sky. I'll be sad to return to the noise and the worry (there is a whole lot of worry on the horizon) but it is home.
For now though, a little more coffee and later, one more trip to the rocks and sea spray. I tell you, a person can get used to this sort of thing.
It was a very, very short commute this morning. Counting only the distance from the bedroom door to where I'd left my laptop on the living room floor, then to the couch—15 feet. That sure beats my normal 27 miles. This wouldn't be too hard to get used to. Who needs work? Why not a permanent vacation? OK, there's that money problem. Got it.It took me a couple of days to relax. In fact, the first full day that we were here I fell into a long afternoon nap that featured a large slate of brain cobweb-clearing dream vignettes. These tend to occur when I've been under a certain amount of stress. Between the scary bit where my father shows up at the front door with one eye closed, proclaiming that he "had trouble writing at the mall"...to me telling Tom Waits how his next album should be arranged, I knew that the 'ole grey matter needed some maintenance.
Now that we've had nearly a week of sunny skies, incredibly fragrant ocean air, and many hours of uninterrupted music, things seem a little less, uhm....foggy. Thank goodness we're here for two weeks.
This morning I woke to yet another change in the weather. A cool, light rain was falling. No matter, take the dog out, put on the coffee and settle down to some music. Though at first I had a hankerin' for some Ornette Coleman, the diplomat and kind-hearted part of me decided to give TheWife™ a break and put on some J.s. Bach. There are hundreds of recordings of Bach's cello suites employing a wide variety of instruments. The one that started it all was of course the Pablo Casals version. Folks will argue back & forth about which set of suites is the definitive one. I have no idea, since I don't own a Casals recording and the only others I've ever heard were done by Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer (on the double bass).
What I do know is that the Rostropovich set is the first one I purchased and I love it to death. There's a mesmerizing quality to this music that carries with it a whole lot of emotion. It's the kind of quiet music that I've heard people put on as background. That's just not possible for me. Too many interesting twists and turns here for aural wallpaper. What's strange is that the music seems to fit into the background noises of this small neighborhood: the wind swishing through the trees, the sound of sea gulls, the occasional horn from a boat.
On second thought, maybe that's just me leaving my "real" life behind while allowing a total immersion in the moment.
Pass the coffee pot please.
The day has arrived. Make that...the day before the day has arrived. Though maybe I left mentally a few days ago, I'm actually leaving for vacation tomorrow.Tom Petty's Highway Companion has no direct relation to the trip that me and TheWife™ have so been looking forward to. Well, except for this: it has stood out far above all of the music I've listened to over the past week. A week, I must add, that's been full of late nights scrambling through the CD collection to flush out which recordings must make their way to the iPod. Hours and hours and hours of music and this little, almost unassuming record takes the day.
There was a recent interview with Petty where he mentioned that he almost felt like Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers were somewhat underappreciated in the world of rock. He didn't mean this in an "Oh, Poor Me!" way. In fact, the idea was that he'd become consistent enough to be overlooked. I have to agree. I mean, I saw him on an awards show not too long ago and was sort of taken aback at the quite lengthy list of hits he'd produced with his band, solo, and in other collaborations. Sure enough, I had sort of taken him for granted. The hits moved back in time all the way back to my first Petty album: Damn The Torpedoes (which has a funny/pathetic story attached to it in my mind. Ah, my young and irresponsible phase). Somehow, I had taken Petty for granted.
Honestly, I wasn't particularly looking forward to Highway Companion. The Jeff Lynne alarm bells were going off. Turns out that there was no need for concern. Lynne gets out of the way and allows Petty to make one fantastic record. Sparse in instrumentation (just Petty, Mike Campbell, and Lynne), direct in theme (except for "Ankle Deep"), and intense in focus. It's the kind of record that isn't made often today (folks like The White Stripes excepted). With so much "air" in the music, the rolling arpeggios of Petty's Rickenbacker and Campbell's sharp leads are that much more effective.
Highway Companion is an interesting take on a "road record." Most of it is not your typical "Windows down...Volume UP!" sort of thing. The themes of travel have more to do with movement through our lives. Still, it's a mostly hopeful trip. The opening "Saving Grace," a musical cousin to Chris Isaac's "Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing," just might have you cranking windows and volume in opposing directions. "Ankle Deep" might puzzle with the lyrics, but you'll hear a tune that Springsteen and Petty could have gone in together on. "Big Weekend" is an ode to a sanity-protecting getaway ("I need a big weekend/Kick up the dust/Yeah a big weekend/If you don't run you rust").
That's it. A sanity-protecting getaway. It's interesting to me how my "Catalog of Petty" can include items as different as a drug-induced marathon listening session and a two-week vacation.
All part of the journey, I suppose.
You wouldn't think that a hair salon or Toni Morrison or Flannery O'Connor would have much to do with turntablism. The truth is, they don't...but events can sometimes conspire to smash random thoughts together.A couple of nights ago I was sitting in one of the free chairs at our local hair salon, waiting for TheWife™ to be finished with her pre-vacation do. I was supposed to meet her there when she was done so that we could deal with yet another pre-vacation chore, getting a tiny repair done on the Jeep (You know the kind. It involves the replacement of a 79-cent part and will undoubtedly cost $150). Somehow, I managed to get there very early, so my only choice was to find some reading material and make myself comfortable.
Not wanting to be given an endless ration of grief for picking the "most guy" magazine on the rack (which would have been an Ikea catalog...not even really sure that's very "guy" at all), I selected the summer reading issue of Oprah's magazine "O".
The very first article my thumb stopped at was an essay by Toni Morrison about how she learned the "art of reading". Morrison drew an interesting parallel between her childhood love of radio and her fascination with the printed word—that both forms of media require the consumer of ideas to provide some of their own details, making the story seem that much more rich.
Now of course this is only marginally related to turntablism. What struck me about Morrison's reading concept was that it reminded me of how some of the characters in the documentary Scratch thought of what they did. If you haven't seen this film, it deals with the roots of Hip Hop and the progression of turntablism. The key seemed to be the re-imagining of music. Not just samples of one tune yanked from one context to another. No, the players put their turntables through some impressive paces, coaxing out some pretty freakish sounds.
Cut Chemist takes these ideas and produces what can only be described as danceable art.
Armed with few guest musicians, an armload of samples, and a whole pile of ideas, Cut Chemist (Lucas MacFadden) just brings it. From the skankalicious two-step of the opening "Motivational Speaker" (funniest sample: "The DJ of the future is going to be a respected member of the community"), to the stomping "(My 1st) Big Break", to the spacey beat workout of "Metrorail Thru Space", this record never lets up.
While MacFadden plays with a style quite a bit less dense than, say, Public Enemy's Bomb Squad, the resultant mash of ideas is no less interesting. "Spoon", built on top of a short ascending chord sequence, adds some guitar and bass to produce a sort of soul/jazz meditation. A similar treatment works with "2266 Cambridge", with keyboards lifting a suite of samples that give the impression of drive through a neighborhood...maybe not Bed Stuy though.
My favorite track on The Audience's Listening is without a doubt "The Garden". Put together around an Astrud Gilberto vocal from "Berimbou", the slinky tune of the past is gently pulled right into 2006. The layers and layers of percussion, guitar, and berimbau (a Brazilian stringed instrument) perfectly illustrate the "big ears" of Cut Chemist. The music and its construction serve to bring Gilberto's lovely vocal into extremely sharp relief. Great stuff.
Flannery O'Connor, hair salon, Toni Morrison, turntablism. Different for sure....but not unrelated.
We're down to one week. A week before vacation. One week from tomorrow, me and TheWife™ and TheWorldsBestDog™ will stuff that poor Jeep full of two weeks worth of the "accoutrements de slack" and head off to the coast of Maine.
This year, one part of the vacation inventory will travel in a different form. That would be the music. Technology, in the form of my little iPod, is going to let me skinny down the load. I must admit that I'd really prefer to have the CD's with me. You know, liner notes and all. On the other hand, I tend to seriously overdo it when making the list of "CD's I Really Need" for one week.
Two weeks is an even bigger problem. The "rule" (which of course I made up...so I can ignore it) is to only bring what will fit in that oversized LL Bean canvas bag. The problem is that I pack that thing full and then start remembering all of the "orphaned" recordings that can't be lived without. You may think I'm kidding here but this orphaned "problem" is why I own Tom Waits and Leo Kottke compilations. After driving five hours and discovering that there's no Waits in the bag, well...gotta fix that problem!
The chore of readying the iPod for vacation isn't an easy one. I'm not one of those "entire collection on the iPod" people, so almost all of my iPod content consists of stuff that I intend to review. Sure, the mechanics of ripping and updating are easy enough; it's the making of the list that's the challenge. After thinking about it for a few minutes last night, the list so far:
Tom Waits
Bruce Springsteen
Greg Brown
Ellis Paul
Bob Dylan
Southside Johnny
Dar Williams
Lucy Kaplansky
Leo Kottke
The Grateful Dead
Bjork
Emmylou Harris
We're About Nine
Ani DiFranco
Lori McKenna
Willie Nelson
Johnny Cash
Patsy Cline
Billie Holiday
Pat Metheny
Ornette Coleman
Philip Glass
I hit the Glass entry—had to think for another minute and came up blank—and decided that it was time for bed. This task is funny, like coming up with a real desert island list. I'm sure that time will be spent standing in front of the racks just staring at things, hoping for the inspiration that'll help us avoid the "Oh crap! I forgot...." experience.
Oops, a couple more entries just popped in:
Miles David
John Coltrane
Steely Dan
Thom Yorke
Norah Jones
Hmmm...maybe I will get one of those gigundo iPods someday.
Anthony Braxton
Peeping Tom
Cheap Trick
Bill Frisell
Jim Hall
The Rolling Stones
.
.
.
A few more from TheWife™:
Tori Amos
Loreena McKennit
.
.
Phew! One more week to go....
So, we'd all been hanging out at this friend's house on the pond. Fall, with all of the beauty loaded into that word. The long, slow arc of summer into autumn was progressing.Canoe paddles sliced through he water's surface as we made our way over to the other side of the pond to the old abandoned farm house in the woods. Sad, in a way. It was empty but we filled it with life—the apple fight that broke out (dang, those uncultivated apples were hard as rocks) was intense and hilarious. Glad I wasn't the guy who took on in the face!
The sun was setting so it was back to the canoes, the water, the shore, the bonfire. The rest of our lives.
I'm not exactly sure was caused this old memory to pop out here.
While listening to Way Out East, the new release by Wayne Horvitz' Gravitas Quartet, I'd begun to think of Claude Bolling's Suite for Flute & Jazz Piano Trio. Not that this music sounds like Bolling's. No. The initial parallel was that Bolling did a great job of illuminating the similarities between classical music and jazz. This led to the idea of unexpected lines of reasoning. A person might not think that those two genres had any areas of commonality.
Then...on to composed vs. improvised music. Both are "thought out", though differently. The majority of jazz uses the song's structure as framework for the improviser. Classical compositions do vary by performance, but don't contain much in the way of improvisation, at least not in the modern era. Reading these ideas, you might think that the two broad genres have nothing in common. Bolling's Suite proved otherwise. The idea that a section of classical music might be bent toward jazz was definitely an ear-opening experience.
Horvitz' Gravitas Quartet, while being mostly about improvisation, does seem to have more composed underpinnings. If you listen to the opening lines of the "LB", you'll hear a trumpet, cello, and bassoon (Ron Miles, Peggy Lee, Sara Schoenbeck) moving through some gradually descending melodies. This all seems (and may in fact be) written out, but then things change when Horvitz' piano enters the picture. The lines shear off in several directions with the performers responding to each other's melodic fragments and rhythms in many different ways. Things get pretty chaotic for a while until the piano improvises on the opening theme, which is then restated as the song closes.
"Between Here And Heaven" takes a different direction. Beginning with the most vague of electronic chords, the band slowly layers on ideas, almost willing a theme to take shape. Way Out East is absolutely packed with these kind of situations. The Gravitas Quartet's players seem perfectly suited to the task of extending Horvitz' ideas. It's sheer musical chemistry (If you don't believe me just check out Gravitas in microcosm, "Our Brief Duet": Horvitz on piano, Sara Schoenbeck on bassoon—sheer bliss).
It's too bad that some folks are put off by improvised music because of its "difficulty" (and I'll admit that some stuff way out on the edge can indeed be a challenge). In some ways, that sentiment misses the point...misses the playfulness that's inherent in this music. The swooping cello tones on "One Morten" provide a perfect example. We don't have to know what Peggy Lee is doing, or even what she intends. The fact is that these noises running circles around the piano are just plain fun. That idea refutes some of Bolling's detractors who complained that the music wasn't classical enough, wasn't jazz enough.
Hey, it being interesting and fun wasn't good enough?
The pond. The trip across, the house, the apple fight. These are all memories now. Still, that one evening is not unrelated to the rest of my life. Music can function the same way. Connecting lines draw together items within a song, an album, and even across genres.
It's a big world out there. Listen.
On August 5th, 1967, yours truly was a whole five years old. At the time, the only music in the house was probably stuff like my folks' Tommy Dorsey records. I didn't get to hear The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn until some time in the middle of my college years. 1982 or so.Why's that? Well, most people my age were really turned on to Pink Floyd during the Wish You Were Here/Dark Side Of The Moon era. That was when they were plastered all over the radio. Then of course, The Wall came out and you more or less had to turn off your radio to escape hourly plays of "Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2".
A friend of mine at school was really into the early Floyd records, especially the first. When I sat down with him to really give it a listen, I realized that I'd heard one of the songs, "Astronomy Domine". Ah, that's it! One of my buddies from high school had recommended UmmaGumma for it's overall weirdness (plus, what sixteen year old can resist a song title like "Careful With That Axe Eugene"?) Sure enough, that record started off with a live version of "Astronomy Domine".
Still, as much as I liked that song and the rest of that record, I never bought either of them until many years later. In fact, maybe just a couple of years ago. Also bought Syd's The Madcap Laughs. It was one of those things. I'd gone on a localized psychedelic music jag caused by, among other things, the Grateful Dead's So Many Roads box set. The second disc has a killer jam of "That's It For The Other One" -> "Cryptical Envelopment" -> "The Faster We Go, The Rounder We Get" -> "Cryptical Envelopment".
Listening to The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and then the follow on A Saucerful Of Secrets, I was reminded of the early history of Pink Floyd and the tale of Barrett's early life with the band. Obviously, we'll never really know what would have happened to Syd if he'd avoided the massive doses of acid. Was he a "genius"? Dunnno. It's just sad to think of a man so screwed up that his bandmates unplugged his guitar...and he didn't notice. Did he notice when the rest of the band stopped picking him up for rehearsals?
You can hear the change in that second record. While Secrets isn't hugely dissimilar from the first album, it does contain only one Barrett tune, "Jugband Blues". You can hear Pink Floyd's future foreshadowed with the swelling keyboards and slowed tempos on the rest of the record.
Back to The Piper. For my money, it ranks right near the top as far as psychedelic records go. Lots of folks put The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper there as well. I go for the introductory Floyd because of it's combination of weird and dark. The juxtaposition of things like "Interstellar Overdrive" and "Bike" just does it for me.
And now Syd Barrett has passed on. I can't quite put my finger on why this makes me so sad. I guess it's the wasted potential of a life. On the other hand, Syd did at least plant the seeds for a whole lot of psychedelic music to come. We still have that.
That and the lyrics that close out "Bike":
I know a room of musical tunes
Some rhyme, some ching, most of them are clockwork
Let's go into the other room and make them work
Syd Barrett (1946 - 2006)
Indie rock guitar god. Boy does that read funny. What's it supposed to mean? Even the term "indie rock" is tough to nail down. Sort of like "emo", but louder? Or more serious? Or something?I wrested with these issues back when I first listened to Built To Spill's Time Trap compilation. It turns out that Doug Martsch is my kind of guitar hero. Sure, the man's got the chops, but it's his conceptions that really get me going.
Unless you're thinking about the music that's been labeled "post-rock" (Godspeed You Black Emperor, and others), one element usually missing (or more likely: avoided) from indie rock is the long song form. While bands from the art rock era loved to extend things to well beyond ten minutes, the "modern rock" crowd tends to stick to shorter songs, tighter construction.
Doug Martsch and company manage to split the difference with their music. While there are some shorter, more "traditional" tunes ("Just A Habit" and "Saturday"), what makes this record stand out are the epic, sound-shifting, almost suite-like songs. "Wherever You Go" (6:10) begins at a dark and loping, Crazy Horse tempo and builds the intensity from there. "Conventional Wisdom" (6:21) launches with an almost happy distorted guitar hook that the verses are then hung on. Midsong there's a bridge of short unison lines that introduce a blistering and majestic guitar solo. "Goin' Against Your Mind" (8:42) plays with a bunch of different textures including interlocking arpeggios, slide guitar, feedback on the verge of meltdown, and monstrous power chords. "Gone" lets the guitar slowly give way to keyboards, giving the rest of the song a completely different feel.
What I'm saying here is that Built To Spill does not often (or maybe ever) play "verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus, chorus, fadeout"-type tunes.
My pick with the highest PlayedTooLoudlyInTheCar™ potential is "Mess With Time" (5:43). Not since the introduction to Cream's "White Room" has a bolero been set against mind-melting guitar. Just when you're sure that the wall of guitar is going to cave in on itself, the whole band downshifts into a reggae skank that carries on the the end—with Martsch's eastern-tinged guitar riding on top. Built To Spill updates "Miserlou", sort of.
None of this is to imply that the shorter tunes are without merit. No, You In Reverse ends with "The Wait", a song that encapsulates what I find so interesting about this band. Within the span of just a few minutes, the song transforms from a sparse, acoustic sorta-folk tune into a full-on, wailing electric guitar and psychedelic skronk freakout. Very satisfying.
Toss the labels (and your expectations!) out the window and allow yourself the pleasure of hearing some well-executed and rich musical expressions. Doug Martsch may tire of the "guitar hero" status that's been forced upon him, but he's got to know that it's his ideas that really matter.
I know almost nothing about opera. I mean, except for it being this musical art form where singers of incredible talent act out their dramatic roles onstage. Since this is a genre that I've never really investigated all that much, I'm more or less stuck at the "I know what I like" stage. I bought some Cecilia Bartoli discs after hearing a radio segment featuring her doing some Rossini arias. Then there's the copy of Catalani's La Wally, purchased after falling in love with the aria performed by Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez in the film Diva. Not too much else, really. Oh sure, I do own a version of Mozart's Don Giovanni...mostly for the sheer bombast. In the "C'mon, are you going to count that?" category, I've also got Philip Glass' La Belle et La Bete, Akhnaten, and Einstein On The Beach. My only opera experience was to see a performance of Akhnaten in Boston.
This morning I'm listening to the last operatic disc on in my little collection: Bach cantatas BWV 82 and 199 as performed by the late Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson. I was very saddened to read this week that she'd passed away at the all too young age of 52.
I know as much about Lieberson as about opera in general. Heck, I don't even really know what a mezzo-soprano is. What was obvious was that Lieberson's relationship to the music was a particularly intense one. During an NPR feature segment on the singer, it was apparent that Lieberson was not your normal "Diva." Anybody who lives in service of the music is OK in my book. My interest was piqued.
So all I've got to show for this interest is a single, stunning disc of Bach cantatas. Very much like some iconoclastic blues and pop singers (Tom Waits, Bjork, and Howling Wolf come to mind), you've really got to hear Lieberson's voice to get it's true measure. No amount of language can get at its essence.
Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson. March 1, 1954 - July 3, 2006.
Back in the dark ages (read: before the Internet) I spent a fair amount of time searching out new music by paying very close attention to the listings of my local public and classical radio stations. On any given week night there might be broadcasts of solo works, string quartets, and all manner of chamber ensemble and full-on orchestral madness.That was how I discovered David Ocker. Specifically, Ocker's solo bass clarinet version of the 4th movement of Brahms' Symphony No. 3 in F. My cassette recording of that performance has a lot of miles on it—the bass clarinet (so full of character!) being put through those winding passages was something that just made my ears light up.
I honestly hadn't thought of Ocker for many years (sadly, that tape hasn't seen the light of day since I moved in 2004). That is, until listening to the first moments of Penumbra by The Bennie Maupin Ensemble. Maupin's bass clarinet brought back all of the reasons why my ears are so attracted to solo works—the textures and sounds made by the instrument, performer, and instrument parts (clacking valves, for example) provide a kind of music all their own.
Of course, Penumbra is not a solo performance. Maupin's very flexible group does manage to focus so tightly on certain ideas that the musical conceptions make the listener forget about the existence of a group. A neat (if unintentional) trick.
Penumbra begins with "Neophilia 2006". After an opening clarinet phrase, drums (Michael Stephans) and percussion (Daryl Munyungo Jackson) frame a groove that is soon joined by the bass (Darek "Oles" Oleskiewicz) and then the leader's clarinet. Maupin breaks away from the full band ostinato to improvise over the top of the proceedings. The tune ends with a reverse construction—bass clarinet exiting...then bass...and finally percussion.
When the grooves peak on this album, it's very reminiscent of those Miles and Herbie Hancock records that Maupin was a part of. It you think of albums like Bitches Brew and On The Corner, but with less "statistical density" (as Zappa liked to say), then you're headed in the right direction.
But...while there are many examples of the collective groove here ("Message to Prez", "See The Positive", and the title track, with Maupin switching to alto flute), Penumbra offers several more atmospheric pieces. "Level Three" starts off with a pensive and slightly disjointed improv which then wants to be a blues...but leans toward a free(er) jazz freakout...but finally: blues. "Blinkers" is a breathy workout for solo tenor. "Mirror Image" finds Maupin and bassist Oleskiewicz engaging in a short duet for sax and bowed bass. My favorite of these is "One For Eric Dolphy", full of breath and horn and valve and passion.
Penumbra ends with the gorgeous blues of "Equal Justice". Maupin has moved over to piano, lending a stately feel to an airy composition that gives "Oles" plenty of solo space. It's a nice touch and an unexpected style change to close things out.
Now, if I can just figure out which box I put that David Ocker tape in.
Things have been kinda strange as of late. Various people at the house have been sick (and now recovering, I think). The weather has been very bizarre too. Two things we almost never get in New England are: hot & dry and warm & extremely damp...at least not at the end of June. Warm & damp doesn't begin to describe the recent sog we've suffered through.So the word I'm looking for is oppressive. Emotionally and physically oppressive. It's been a weird slide toward summer.
This being the 4th of July weekend in the States, you would think that I would have picked some big, blustery sort of music that would both kick off the weekend celebration and kick this nasty wet blanket of a mood squarely in the ass.
Well, that would have been a good idea because on top of all of whatever's been going on, I've been up very late several nights yakking on the phone with friends, culminating with last night's dinner with an old friend at a locale requiring a two hour drive home....through severe thunderstorms.
Yow. So when I got up this morning I had some nice John Astin-style dark circles underneath my eyes. Lovely.
Instead of blasting some VeryAmerican™ Bob Seger or whatever, I end up with a very British, very introspective Robert Fripp. I can't explain it. This is Fripp at his most...uhm...something. He calls them soundscapes and that they are.
Some folks might think that Fripp is being pretentious, what with titles like "Acceptance - Affirming", "Love Cannot Bear", and "Requiem - Affirming". No, I've read and listened to many an interview with the man and, basically, he is who he is. A musician with perhaps too many brain cells in that head. A musician who can listen to blissful classical music in his hotel room and then go onstage to commit aural violence with his guitar. A musician who recognizes his touring personality enough to refer to himself as "grumpy".
Also, a musician with big ears. Big enough to come up with these soundscapes, pretty much dripping with personality and hope. Or something.
Don't worry, I'll slap Live Bullet on the record player tomorrow.
Or....how to get from "One Man Wrecking Machine" to "Bitchin' Camero" in three easy steps. Actually, the conversation wasn't that linear, since Barenaked Ladies and Paris Hilton were involved too.OK, here's the deal. Me and DJ Radiohead were yakkin' up a storm the other night on the phone, mostly about the stupendous greatness of the latest Guster record Ganging Up On The Sun (A double review will be cooked up soon). The DJ mentions that he saw Guster as warmup to a Barenaked Ladies show he and TheWifeToWhomHeIsMarried attended. This moved into a discussion of Barenaked Ladies and how I never got what was so special about them. Maybe it was the "jokiness" of some of their tunes. I dunno. Despite the very nice melodies they employ (a trait they share with Guster), when I hear the talking vocal on "One Week"...it just makes me cringe. Sort of like when I hear your average They Might Be Giants tune.
What they hey? Is it that I don't like havin' some funny in my music? Does humor not belong there? Gawd, of course not! I'm more than a little susceptible to the big gag, owning records by Skid Roper & Mojo Nixon ("Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant"), Hayseed Dixie (bluegrass covers of AC/DC), and Dread Zeppelin (reggae covers of Led Zeppelin).
So then we move on to a short discussion of one of my favorite funny bands, The Dead Milkmen. Pop with very punk roots, they mow over all sorts of musical and cultural issues with a fine and snotty eye toward detail. You may remember their one hit, "Punk Rock Girl". That was from their fine Beelzebubba CD. (Come on, you laughed at that title, didn't you?!!) Anyhow, if you're in the mood for short dissertations on hatred of beachgoers, stupid people, right wing pigeons, burrow owls, or sex hotels in Sri Lanka then The Dead Milkmen are for you. As funny/gimmicky as the songs are, the actual music displays more than a little serious muscle. The bass playing blasts through some lower melodies and the guitar slashes away with all sorts of off-kilter rhythms.
Big Lizard In My Backyard's finest three minutes (plus one second if you need to be picky) is "Bitchin' Camero". After an absurd spoken word introductory conversation, the band launches into one minute of blistering punk squall. The music reminds me of when Christian Slater's character in Pump Up The Volume hurled himself around the basement to the anarchy of The Descendents' "Der Wienerschnitzel". They also get extra points for rhyming "Donuts on your lawn" with "Tony Orlando and Dawn". Heh.
Ah, Paris Hilton? Both me and the DJ have review copies of her single "Stars Are Blind". Do not look for a joint review there.
This has been a week saturated with Bob Dylan. Last weekend, the Dylan remasters box set that I ordered showed up at my local store. Yessir. Remastered, repackaged, hybrid SACD format. This set is now known at the house as TheBigBoxOfBob. So me and TheWife listened to tons of Dylan on Saturday as we drove through the rain to do our errands (read: while we avoided work around the house). By the end of the day, during the drive home from having a nice Indian dinner, we'd made it all the way to Nashville Skyline (meaning that we'd listened to The Freewheeling Bob Dylan, Another Side Of Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde, and John Wesley Harding).
At that point I figured to bring the next few discs with me to work on Monday.
Except for one thing. We woke up on Sunday morning and it was sunny outside. Not a big deal if you live in San Diego, but up here in New England we haven't had a bright weekend in a long, long time.
So...we figured that rather than doing housework, it'd be so much more fun to drive to the coast for a lobster roll and some sun. Of course, we were right. Along the way and back we enjoyed Planet Waves, Blood On The Tracks, Desire, and Street Legal. Fine music, and an indescribably great lobster roll.
During the week I went back and revisited Desire (one of my favorites), and Street Legal. Because of various podcasts and actual work activities, Slow Train Coming was the only "new" disc I made it through.
Bringing us to Infidels.
This is the one Dylan record from the "Dylan Christian Era" that sort of throttles back on the message. There's no mistaking that the message is there, but it doesn't feel as forced as on albums like Saved.
Beyond that though, is the music itself....which is just absolutely gorgeous. Credit of course must be given to the beyond stellar backing band: Mark Knopfler and Mick Taylor on guitars, Alan Clark on keys, and the infamous rhythm duo of Sly & Robbie. The power and ease that group brings puts a relaxed spin on tunes like "Jokerman", "I And I", and "Man Of Peace". Great stuff.
And...I've still got Oh Mercy and Love And Theft to go.
Bring on the weekend!
As far as I can tell, there isn't a lot of middle ground when it comes to opinions on minimalism. Folks tend to gravitate toward, or be repulsed by, the music of artists such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich and John Cage.Though my ear parts are highly susceptible to the charms of those composers, I can certainly see why a person can think otherwise. Long-form compositions such as Einstein On The Beach, Music for Eighteen Musicians, and 4' 33" take some getting used to, if not requiring a downright suspension of disbelief.
I brought up John Cage not to be inflammatory, but to point out he was very much about pushing the boundaries of perception regarding music. Cage was all about getting people to look at the idea of composition in a different way.
The same can be said for Nik Bärtsch's group Ronin. The instrumentation is jazz-like (piano, bass, bass & contrabass clarinet, drums, percussion),but the music is not. At least...not in the sense of a melody fitted to a set of key centers which are used as base material for improvisation.
What Stoa brings to the table is a series of composed looping structures that fill out the musical space in a way that manages to bridge the worlds of jazz and neo-classical minimalism. While most of Stoa is composed, Bärtsch did leave room for improvisation. This gives the grooves (Bärtsch refers to this as "Zen Funk") a very organic feel.
And what exactly does Zen Funk sound like?
"Modul 36" begins ominously with a deep, muted piano note that echoes as if sent out across the Grand Canyon. This is repeated a few times before moving up an octave and continuing. Both the percussive clack of the note and its overtones ring out. The note gives way to a similarly muted arpeggio that after a fashion is allowed to go full voice as the percussion (Andi Pupato) and bass (Björn Meyer) frame the moment. Bärtsch's piano splits off into two figures driving the same descending path as a low, low clarinet (Sha) shadows that line.
If Philip Glass and Steve Reich attempted to compose some jazz, it might sound like this.
But wait—we're not finished yet. That was only the first seven minutes!
The piano and clarinet drop away exposing the bass and drums (Kaspar Rast) mining a smart groove which, after a bit, is circled by more muted piano tones...until a whirlwind of piano falls in place, pushed along by insistent single clarinet pulses.
Nine minutes down, 6:18 to go!
A bridge of ascending chords then moves on to a Bärtsch piano solo of sorts—by that I mean that it's less about sketching and framing a melody than pulling and teasing out the vamp.
Two minutes left.
Acoustic and Fender Rhodes piano figures swirl around each other in a culmination of what "Modul 36" is about...before everything slowly fades away to showcase a single, echoed piano tone.
The rest of Stoa is full of surprising turns and ideas. There's even an Anthony Braxton-esque "composite", "Modul 38_17", where two compositions are nested or "stacked".
Honestly, when I first listened to this piece of music, my initial thought was "What the hell was that?!" I still don't have an answer. Nik Bärtsch's Ronin is not playing jazz. It's not playing pure minimalism either.
What it is is a beautiful and thought-provoking counterexample to the notion that there's nothing new to be heard out there.
I knew nothing about him until the Springsteen Seeger Sessions show. After than, I knew that he's a great and soulful singer.
Today, I found out that he's also known as Chocolate Genius. Dang.
Check out his description of the recent shows:
The shows have been transcendent. Like your first trip to the circus, or a Baptist church where Ikea used to be, or like when you open your dad's closet door and out pops a snake charmer, or sort of like when you go to the barn for a smoke and find Shangri La and the girl that got away, or it's like finding 400 dollars in an old suit after you pay the rent, or like kissing the fisherman's wife because he asked you to, or riding 3rd point without having to paddle out, like magic without mirrors, like sex and sweat and sugar and smiles and sirens and sunshine and spit, like...well, like messy balls out love with everyone you've ever known. Well, that's the first ten minutes anyway.
I'm so hoping that they add another northeastern visit to the tour.
Leaving politics aside, it seems that the two topics most likely to squeeze some extra ignorance juice out of the blogosphere are a) The Dixie Chicks and b) Heavy Metal music. Since the Chicks have had their fair share of late, lets move on to the music that our parents just loved to hate.I'm in the middle of reading Chuck Klosterman's Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota. Klosterman spins up a memoir of his youth and love of all things Hair Metal. Truly funny stuff. While discussing what the lyrics to "Shout At The Devil" really mean, he speculates on Tommy Lee's true intent: "In exchange for letting me sleep with some of the sexiest women in television history, I will act like a goddamn moron in every social situation for the rest of my life."
Nice.
There's one particular chapter where Klosterman deals with the idea that maybe, just maybe, you don't really need every record in your collection. Many years after "the day", is there really any point in owning (his example, not mine) Iron Maiden's The Best Of The Beast? He then comes up with an interesting twist/inversion of the Desert Island concept. It's called the "Jack Factor". This is the amount of money that somebody would have to pay you in order for you to never listen to a record again for the rest of your life. A neat combination of the Desert Island idea, guilty pleasures, and commerce. Your guilty pleasures, in theory, would have a pretty low Jack Factor...unless of course you like them much more than you're willing to admit.
The author's Jack Factor list went from Van Halen's 1984 (Jack Factor: $66) to Def Leppard's Pyromania (Jack Factor: $877)to the most hallowed Appetite For Destruction (Guns 'n Roses) coming in at a Jack Factor of $5001.
Personally, I can't do these kind of calculations. There are very few records in my collection that I'd be able to give up. Oh sure, it's easy to say that I don't really need that copy of, say, Aerosmith's Rock In A Hard Place. But years later, my urge to listen to "Lightning Strikes" would begin to eat away at me like a musical cancer. Forget it, I want 'em all!
However, in the spirit of fun and discussion, I will now post a list of rock and pop records (don't go near my jazz albums...don't even look at them!) that, if you saw them in my bins, you might begin to question my credibility, sanity, or taste. I will not comment on any of them. That's your job.
There now. Anybody else wanna 'fess up?
Because I came late to the non-rock music game, artists such as Emmylou Harris didn't really exist for me. Harris was country. Country wasn't rock. Case closed. OK, not really closed. I'll admit that as teen growing up in the late 1970's, we'd rationalize the bejeebers out of things. Songs like "The Weight" by The Band were surely closer to country than rock. This was kind of too bad because a ton of great music was ignored. All those great Emmylou Harris records. Heck, even that sweet photo of Tanya Tucker on T.N.T. wasn't enough to get me to buy it. What the hell would my friends think?!Mark Knopfler required no rationalization. "Sultans of Swing" hit the airwaves with such authority (helping to clear away the last dregs of Disco) that we all knew it was something special. While Dire Straits didn't smack you over the head with power chords, the music had an undeniable inertia and uniqueness. I remember first hearing that song on the radio and thinking, "What the hell was that?!". As Knopfler's band went on to attain massive success in the MTV-era, the legend of his guitar and songwriting prowess grew and grew.
During the intervening years, a few things changed. Firstly, I got over my fear of "non-rock". Jazz, blues, experimental, country: there's something of interest to be heard everywhere. When I finally got to see Emmylou Harris in a live setting (one night during the final Lillith Fair tour), I was completely blown away. Backed by a muscular young band plus country guitar veteran Buddy Miller, Harris pinned me back in my seat and caused a permanent smile to form on my face. By the time she played the slow-burning "The Maker", I was determined to head to the store and pick up every Emmylou Harris album to be found.
Second, Mark Knopfler's career moved away from Dire Straits. Though there was a successful reunion tour, Knopfler spent more and more time working on solo recordings and film music—much of it displaying Knopfler's rootsy and homespun ideas. Honestly, he's so good at working with Americana that I've never really thought of him as being from England.
All The Roadrunning: two understated musical icons get together and, much to the chagrin of critics who seem to enjoy shooting fish in the dream collaboration barrel, the results are stunning. These two musicians sound like they've been together for decades. Emmylou sounds as beautiful as ever while Knopfler has started to remind me of a young Johnny Cash. His guitar choices are stellar as always, whether picking or emoting or adding that trademark low growl.
It's tough to pick a favorite on this disc because there are just so many. Is there an emotional centerpiece? That probably depends on the listener. The album closes out on a powerful note with "If This Is Goodbye", about Flight 93 on 9/11. It's sad and heartfelt. Then there's the single "This Is Us", where a married couple looks back on their life together. That could be it. How about the uptempo swing of "Belle Starr"?—"I'll be your Belle Starr, You can be my Jesse James". Maybe!
For me, the question has an easy answer: "Love And Happiness". Those two words are what every parent wants for their children. The message is delivered with a lilting tempo and gorgeous harmonies: "You will always have a lucky star/That shines because of what you are/Even in the deepest dark/Because your aim is true". The sentiment is a beautiful one and the music goes right along with it.
I no longer feel too bad about missing out on music like this way back when. There are plenty of things you can't appreciate when you're a kid and, for me, Emmylou Harris was left out by default. That's OK. I've made up for it....with an armload of vinyl, a short stack of CDs, and this wonderful disc.
Pink Floyd is gone. Or their time has past. Or they've gotten too old.Or something.
OK, OK. I know you're thinking that we don't need another one. True enough. I'm not saying that Secret Machines is the new Pink Floyd. It's just that of the several bands that have pushed my Floyd buttons over the last few years (including Godspeed You Black Emperor, Tortoise, and Radiohead), Secret Machines has pushed the most.
The similarities tend to be along the lines of atmosphere rather than tempo and roots. Floyd's music, never moving much past a fierce mid-tempo plod, was nonetheless informed by the blues. I hear none of that on Ten Silver Drops. I do hear songs that attempt to rock out past ThePlod™—not very Floydian.
The sonic overlap shows up on the opening "Alone, Jealous And Stoned". Keyboards and analog-sounding synths create a very spacey vibe (to say nothing of the reverb-drenched electric guitars). This is followed by the elongated notes of feedback and panned helicopter burble that introduces "All At Once (It's Not Important)". These kind of touches are all over Ten Silver Drops—from the crushed guitar at the beginning of the sinister "I Hate Pretending" to the jumpcut sound battles that open "I Want To Know If It's Still Possible".
"1,000 Seconds" closes out the program with a unifying musical theme and an odd fadeout into space.
None of this is to say that Secret Machines are in any way cloning psychedelic rock's past. Far from it. I hear a lot of new and interesting ideas going on here. As much as I'm having a good time listening to today's fresh twists on garage rock, it's nice to hear a band not afraid of longer song forms.
By the way, which one's Pink?
One of my favorite movies is the French thriller Diva. Curé, one of the film's almost cartoonish bad guys, is constantly listening to French folk music through an earpiece. Curé, an odd fellow, also seems to hate everyone and everything (one simple example will do: "J'aime pas les ascenseurs!"..."I don't like elevators!"). He presses that earpiece deeper into the canal just before launching into his next act of bad: putting a bullet into an adversary or perhaps sticking them with an ice pick.Anouar Brahem's jazz trio is an odd one, at least to American ears. Piano, accordion, and oud. Two thirds of that set are not often found in a traditional trio. Instrumentation aside, the music itself shares the spirit of improvised jazz with its thematic focus and constantly shifting instrumental roles. Brahem's background in Arab classical music merges easily with the more Western sound of jazz.
Though leader Brehem plays the oud, he is more than willing to share the spotlight with the rest of his band.
The album's title track is a perfect example of this sort of egalitarian musical concept: the theme is introduced by a few long accordion lines (Jean-Louis Matinier) before the oud joins in to add unison support while Francois Couturier's piano chords fill in the remaining space. These roles often change mid-composition, giving the listener different angles on the themes.
Another suite-like piece is "Vague/E La Nave Va". Beginning with a Philip Glass-esque piano motif, the accordion comes in to punctuate the chord changes before the oud states the main theme with the piano switching back into unison for a bit. The accordion also moves to unison before Brahem steps out to take a solo. All three players restate the theme before the composition ends on a single, resonant piano chord.
The music made by Brahem's trio seems like a new jazz chamber ensemble of sorts—one that blends several musics together while avoiding the stuffiness associated with the old "Third Stream".
Le Voyage de Sahar would have been too good for Curé. He wouldn't have deserved the richness and thoughtfulness of the music. At least not while he was alive.
The debate has become predictable. Maybe a little sad too. An artist is coming out with a protest record. You can hear the bluster from miles away. Folks twist themselves into spittle-flecked knots in the attempt to dress down the album an insincere, misguided, vain, self-absorbed...go ahead, pick your own adjective. Add to this the obligatory "They're just musicians, they should keep their mouths shut" line of reasoning and well, there's your template for debate.I'm not here to solve this problem. Heck, I'm pretty well sure that it can't be. Not with the current level of divisiveness in the political environment.
What I will say is that I like it when artists put out records that piss people off. Neil Young does it. Pearl Jam does it. Lee Greenwood does it. Toby Keith does it. While I might not be aligned so much with the latter two musicians, their viewpoints are equally welcome.
One of the many functions of art is the expression of points of view. It's inevitable. If you don't like what's being said, join the debate. But to suggest that the opinion shouldn't be aired because "They're only musicians" is to apply a restriction unevenly. Bono can't talk about this stuff but George Will can? Take the opposite angle: Pro-war songs and/or direct support of the troops are generally acceptable. Really? They're just musicians. Shouldn't they keep their mouths shut as well?
Neil Young, of course, is not known for keeping his mouth shut. In fact, his heart seems to be wide open with a direct line to his guitar and pen. The results, very much like all of our interior lives, are often spotty. I mean, I know that Trans was Young's way of expressing his desire to communicate with his son Ben, who suffers from severe cerebral palsy—but that doesn't make the record any less weird. On the other hand, Prairie Wind was a sincere reaction to a tough year in Young's life. One that sits comfortably beside both Harvest and Harvest Moon.
Living With War finds "Ohio"-era Neil sandblasting away at the problems he sees with the American political situation. Specifically, the war in Iraq and the current political climate. The themes are what we'd expect to argue about: abuse of power, shadow governments, media overload, political swagger. Much less confrontational are the ideas of how families deal with war, hope for future leaders, and pacifism.
Sonically, it's the electric side of Rust Never Sleeps-meets-Greendale. Thanks to the lack of the presence of Crazy Horse (Don't get me wrong, I love Crazy Horse) this record has a tighter feel than your average Young rumblefest. On the other hand, it has a sense of urgency, given that it was recorded in a fairly spontaneous manner. Though Young has used horns on other records, the trumpet here is sometimes really creepy. On "Shock and Awe", basically a reworking of "My My Hey Hey (Into The Black)", the horn faithfully reproduces the original melody line.
Living With War ends with the freaky Neil Young Choir singing "America The Beautiful". It's been said that this song should be our national anthem. I'd go for that. It is a beautiful country. Yet, it does has flaws— flaws that should be debated. If we can't do that then I do fear for our future.
It's the middle of vacation and New England is just beginning to dry out from days and days of flood-inducing rains. Now we've reached sixty-five degrees and party sunny. Amazing. I've got my notebook and iPod, just hangin' out on the balcony. It almost feels weird to be out in the fresh air. Good though. I put my notebook down and for a moment stare off into the trees.My ears take over and soak in: the chirping birds, clacking treetops, a small airplane off in the distance, power saws from the construction site at the base of the hill, the too-loud television coming from the living room (a soap opera, The Bold & The Beautiful, I think).
Now, the funny thing about all of this is that the sounds made their way in during the introduction of "Water Torture", the third track from One And The Same, the new release from The Jeff Gauthier Goatette.
Funny? What's so funny about that? Maybe "funny" isn't the right word. Fortuitous? Serendipitous? Ech!! That's so pipe & slippers! Let's just say that it was a happy coincidence.
What was interesting about the collision of music and the real world was just that. Many people— especially those not so hot on the seeming randomness of music like "Water Torture"— have no use for music that "makes no sense" to them. Fair enough. But take those random real-world noises in their totality— television + birds + construction noise + trees + a distant aircraft — and in my mind the sum is "vacation". That very same calculus can be applied to "random" musical sounds too. The total might not be so easy to get at, but it is there.
This focus on "Water Torture" does not imply that the rest of One And The Same traffics in that arena of full-on improvisation. In fact, the song itself moves on from the scraping violin bow, electronic burbling, and bits of percussion to state a unifying theme that's used for further improvisational sections. Particularly fun is the call and response workout between leader Gauthier's violin and the bowed bass of Joel Hamilton.
While there have been some big names in world of jazz violin (Stephane Grappelli, Joe Venuti, Billy Bang, Jean-Luc Ponty, Regina Carter), Jeff Gauthier seems to bridge the gap between the traditional (Grappelli) and the avant garde (Billy Bang). The opening track, "Ahfufat - For Wan", actually recalls early Jean-Luc Ponty, but with the group interplay of electric-era Miles Davis.
The Goatette turns out to be quite the flexible outfit. With Nels Cline (on loan from Wilco, also had a stellar "out-there" past) on guitar, David Witham (piano, keyboards, effects), Joel Hamilton (bass) and Alex Cline on drums, this group seems at ease with traditional structures ("Solflicka"), angular back 'n forth ("Don't Answer That"), and extended forms (the uptempo "Rina Pt. 1" and the more pensive closing track "A Corner of Morning").
By the time I'd finished this review, the rain had moved in again. Fortunately, my mind will forever associate the music of Jeff Gauthier with this spring day's charms.
"Surprise" is not enough. Shock is the proper word. When I read that Paul Simon was teaming up with musician/producer Brian Eno, I honestly didn't know what to think. It just made no sent to me. Simon, the legendary folk artist—Simon & Garfunkel, Rhymin' Simon, Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover, Graceland. The man's practically his own genre. Eno is another iconic figure, this in the art rock world. To my ears, the two had nothing in common.Wrong. Very, very wrong.
I guess the problem was that I always hear Simon's voice in a rootsy, acoustic environment. Even the polyrhythmic environment of Graceland is essentially acoustic. Eno brings the heavily layered and textured approach used to great effect with artists such as Robert Fripp and U2. Paul Simon? Come on!
So, on a recent trip to the local store to replenish my supply of alergy pills (lest I sneeze out what's left of my brains while driving to work every morning), I popped Surprise into the CD player. A few crisp electric guitar chords and some rigid percussion formed the base over with Simon's voice floats. The verses state in this sort of rock mode. It's during the chorus that Eno-time kicks in. The heavy guitar falls away to allow Simon's voice to dominate. A light, repeated, Fripp-esque guitar figure holds everything up. The contrast between those two musical segments parallels the lyrical shifts, where the verses introduce themes of human innocence and development while the chorus ponders how we cope with life's problems...how we become who we are. When the electric guitars explode into the final verse, it's one of the most surprising and exhilarating moments I've ever come across on a Paul Simon record.
The rest of Surprise is full of similarly rewarding aural experiences. There's something about the pairing of Simon's voice with Eno's soundscapes that just works. The jazz guitar figures over musique concrète that opens "Another Galaxy", the Talking Heads-like lope that runs through "Once Upon A Time There Was An Ocean", "That's Me"—sounding like it was completely constructed from instrumental samples, the techno-ish beats that underlay "Everything About It Is A Love Song", the choppy funk of "Outrageous", the slow-building, Gospel-infused "Wartime Prayers": I'm not a religious man, but I love this line: "Because you cannot walk with the holy if you're just a halfway decent man".
Oh yea, the car ride...back to the errands. I eased Surprise into the car CD player and almost immediately my surroundings vanished. Me & TheWife rode in total silence, both of us mesmerized by the music. Upon arrival, I realized that I remembered almost nothing about the terrain we'd just negotiated. Nothing except the music on this great record.
Scary.
I was planning (as much as you can call staring off into space while showering "planning") to talk about Hair Metal and Chuck Klosterman's hilarious and excellent book Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota. Even had my copy of the book and the prospective disc (Shout At The Devil - Motley Crue) with me.But on the drive to work I felt compelled to listen to Taking The Long Way again. Part of this is because I'm at the stage where I've listened enough to start mentally collating all of the interesting musical parts that I'd like to write about. When I get that far, there's an inner urge to listen a few more times because I'm close to "getting" it. The other reason for the listen is all of the Internet yak-o-rama about the Chicks and "Not Ready To Make Nice".
So, I'm not really here to beat that dead horse because, let's face it, the horse is dust. Pounded finely into the earth. This is America. You're free to like, love, dislike, hate...whatever you'd like for whatever reason. It's actually a couple of lines from that song that I've got to talk about.
Truthfully, I was still planning on the Hair Metal Listen until I made it about a half way to work. It was at that point that I was stopped at a light smack in the middle of one of the small towns I drive through every morning. Looking over to the right I saw a family of three (dad, mom, curly-haired daughter) just sitting down to breakfast at a roadside cafe. The sour feeling in the pit of my stomach, one that had been growing over that last week or so after listening to an interview with Natalie Maines, intensified tremdously.
"It's a sad sad story when a mother will teach her Daughter that she out to hate a perfect stranger". Yes, it is. Maines wrote that after seeing a woman outside a Chicks show, young daughter in tow holding an anti-Maines sign. Weird and sad if you ask me. "And how in the world can the words that I said send somebody so over the edge/that they'd write me a letter sayin' that I better shut up and sing or my life will be over". I've heard these words described as everything from "heartfelt" to "whining".
How the hell did we get to a place where a discussion of a death threat can be dismissed as whining?
Again, I'm not interested in this band's politics today. In fact, the whole reductionist, black/white approach to all things political was handed very eloquently by our own DJ Radiohead. It's the devaluation of people thing that's really bothering me. Not only are there dismissals of death threats, there are nasty descriptions of personal appearance, statements of lack of talent (which honestly, are not grounded in fact), and pure hatred. Plain and simple.
Given the source of most of these opinions, the smart thing would be to just look the other way. To just ignore it. I mean, when some jackhole says that I am stupid because I like this record (or watch a particular TV show or whatever) then maybe it's time to move on. But I don't want to this time. See, this isn't just about the Dixie Chicks. It's about how our willingness to look upon others as lesser human beings. It's exactly what makes me dislike the way we elect our public servants. Endless television and radio copy proclaiming the absolute evil of the other side, delivered with "factual" content cleverly and/or clearly twisted to look ugly. It's condescending stuff. Both sides do it and we should be ashamed.
Except that it appears to "work".
So I got to that roadside cafe and saw that family and...well, I dunno. It just made me sad.
Call me stupid, but I love this record. Next time around, maybe I'll actually talk about it.
Download it and check it out for yourself.
There have been pieces of music in my past that have stirred such emotional resonance that I wondered if maybe the music was written for me. Thomas Newman's score for the film American Beauty: I had to restart the DVD after fifteen or twenty minutes because I just couldn't drag my attention away from that percussive stew. Gavin Bryars' elegiac The Sinking Of The Titanic—beautiful and spooky. I don't know a word of Polish (OK, I'm a Saleski...I can count to ten) but the emotion bursting from Dawn Upshaw on Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 is almost too much too bear.Andrey Dergatchev's soundtrack to Andrey Zvyagintsev's film The Return casts that same spell over me. Film music is of course written primarily to enhance the imagery but, every so often, the score is strong enough to stand on its own.
Dergatchev's use of atmospheric elements: muted voices, dogs barking in the distance, machinery, rainfall, cars, Russian folk music, thunder, dissonance—all serve to createa foggy sense of foreboding. I love every texture-wrapped second of it.
Even if I wasn't aware (via the promotional material) of the plot outline, I would have known that some sort of trip had come to pass as the mood darkened considerably at the midpoint, culminating in the oddly modern "Final Titles".
A neat trick, this. Usually I see a film and am overtaken by its music. This time around, the music of The Return has me hungering for the images—not that the ones in my head aren't interesting.
While driving back from Foxboro the morning after the Springsteen Seeger Sessions event, me and TheWife were listening to Pete Seeger's "We Shall Overcome, The Complete Carnegie Hall Concert". I was struck by the sense of community in that audience. Seeger would begin a tune as simple as "Skip To My Lou" and the crowd would not only join in but seemingly invite their communal past experiences with the song into the hall as an extra participant. Looking back at those times (Seeger's Carnegie Hall appearance was June 8, 1963), perhaps that sense of togetherness shouldn't be surprising—"We Shall Overcome" was a very important song for the civil rights movement.
But what to think of Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions concert experience? It was a communal happening. A surprisingly intense one at that. But what we don't have today is a tight connection to most of this music. How is it that we were all singing along as though our lives depended upon it?
You'll get no straight answer from me—I'm still trying to parse just what the hell happened on Saturday night. I mean, I don't sing along to anything. You can't even get me to go along with "Happy Birthday". Yet here I was belting out the chorus to "Pay Me My Money Down", "Jacob's Ladder", and "Buffalo Gals". I even shouted out "It Blowed Away!" during "My Oklahoma Home". Go figure!
One thing is certain: musically, Springsteen pushed all of the right buttons. The Seeger Sessions live band packs quite a punch. Folk music? Yeah...jazz, blues, and soul too—all filtered through the spirit of New Orleans. Bruce's own songs, obviously reworked for the tour, surprised and delighted. "Open All Night" done as a bluesy raveup. An upside down (Or was it sideways?) "Cadillac Ranch" giving way to "Mystery Train". Ah, and then there's the "Polka/Mariachi/Ska" version of "Ramrod".
Heck, even the mistakes were glorious. While trying to add one more rising key change to "Jacob's Ladder", only about a half of the band went ahead, resulting in a bar or so of giant sour notes. Somehow, it only added to the raucousness of the event. After the song, Bruce noted that "We tried to climb too high..and we fucked it up!"
The more thoughtful/spiritual side of the material was represented by a slow, soulful "When The Saints Go Marching In", "We Shall Overcome", "Bring Them Home (If You Love Your Uncle Sam)", Springsteen's own "If I Should Fall Behind", a mournful "Mrs. McGrath" that was punctuated by a bodhran-like bass drum, and the amazing tribute to New Orleans "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live?"
The final encore, a Peter Wolf-aided "Dirty Water" followed by the stomping "Buffalo Gals", brought to mind the E Street finale of yore—the Detroit Medley. Yes, knees were knockin' and everybody was rockin'.
To those folks who've vowed to sit out this tour: You have no idea what you're passing up.
Setlist:
Encore:
Because of a strange confluence of events—Memorial Day Weekend, during which me and TheWife will attend a Bruce Springsteen Seeger Sessions show— this seemed like the perfect occasion to talk about one of the world's most famous protest songs. A celebration is going on marking the 40th anniversary of the writing of Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant". Ah, I remember it like it was yesterday...Alice's Restaurant. One of the funniest things ever pressed into vinyl. A protest song. A Thanksgiving tradition. It's full of characters and situations that made us laugh out loud no matter how many times we listened. We loved Officer Obie. We loved those circles and arrows and paragraphs on the back. We loved the Group W Bench.
Still: a protest song. Of course, when I first heard it, the comedy side dominated. It wasn't until a few years late, after I'd begun to form opinions on war, that Guthrie's message stood out in my young mind.
There are several memories that come attached to my worn copy of this record. Some funny. Some serious. It's sort of amazing to me that one little song (however lengthy) can run a thread through so many decades and life situations.
The evening news. I'm not exactly sure how old I was. Probably no more than ten. Every night I'd sit down to dinner with my parents as we watched the evening news. Was it Walter Cronkite? Not sure about that. I clearly remember though, the body counts. "Dad, what's a casualty?" It really bothered my little kid head. I worried that I'd grow up and have to go "over there". Mom assured me that I was her only son—they wouldn't make me go because of that. Mom's will do (or say) anything to shelter their young.
Cousin Mickey. He was a vibrant and outgoing guy. I didn't know him that well but it was obvious that he'd changed from his tour in Vietnam. The sparkle was gone, replaced by a cool, quiet detachment. He showed us some slides. One in particular stood out. We all looked at it and said "Uhm...what is it?" Turns out it was a dead enemy soldier. Curious. It just looked like some discolored underbrush. Funny what a mortar shell can do to a human body. I again hoped for an end to the war before it was "my turn".
Registration. I turned eighteen and had to register with the Selective Service. That or risk losing all of my financial support for college. Was there a threat of jail time? Can't remember. I do recall being pretty upset about being forced to participate in something that every fiber of my being strained against. I no longer know if this is reality or fantasy, but I could just swear that I wrote "This fucking sucks" on the back of the registration card.
Gene & his Dad. Gene is my friend—and everybody has one—who could and would spontaneously bust into any and all parts of "Alice's Restaurant". Singing parts or not, Gene seemed to have internalized it all. This would really crack up Bill, Gene's dad...especially when the Group W Bench showed up. When I hear that part of the song I'm transported back to Bangor, Maine with Gene's dad and that belly full of laughter.
Everything Else. OK, it's not just a protest song. Sure, there's the war and draft bits. But there's also friendship, small town life, the absurdity of bureaucracy, Thanksgiving, and one incredibly catchy melody. Every bit as catchy as the message and the memories that go with it.
On many instrumental recordings, the instruments themselves are hard to escape. The stunning trumpet technique of early Wynton Marsalis releases, the torrent of notes pouring from Joe Satriani's guitar, Glen Gould's incredibly expressive piano. I don't mean this to be an indictment of technique. The point is that Black Codes From The Underground, Surfing With The Alien, and The Goldberg Variations are pretty clearly trumpet, electric guitar and piano albums.Ralph Towner, whether playing in an ensemble (Oregon) or duo (many examples here, including works with Gary Burton, Peter Erskine, John Abercrombie, and Jan Garbarek) seems to employ the multi-timbral capabilities of the acoustic guitar to great effect. Even though Towner has prodigious chops, he leans toward finding the absolutely right notes to play. In a group populated by several musicians, that might not seem like such a feat. I mean, isn't that what musicians are born to do?
Solo recordings are another story. Can the artist push the composition out into the light? Far enough to make the listener forget about the instrument involved?
On Time Line, Towner does exactly that. Recorded in the Church of St. Gerold (a monastery in the Austrian mountains), Towner's guitar takes a back seat to the musical constructions. Beginning with "The Pendant" (and recalling Bill Evans' "Waltz For Debby"), it becomes apparent that the chords, melodies, basslines, and counter-melodies are all part of the orchestra that Towner hears in his head. The guitar might be delivering the message, but the resulant composition is what you'll remember.
Other highlights include: "The Hollows" which, with its shifting, repeated motifs, evokes some sort of journey. "The Lizards of Eraclea", a short piece that sure enough does bring scurrying lizards to mind. The improvisational vignettes of "Five Glimpses". Towner also reworks a few classics with Bill Evans' "My Man's Gone Now" (performed on 12-string) and Harold Arlen's "Come Rain or Come Shine". One more highlight: the sound. I'm a pretty big fan of the ECM/Manfred Eicher sound but this recording, captured live in that church, gets a more natural version of the ECM reverb that we usually hear. There's a little more 'air' between the notes. It works.
Because of all of the great music I've heard Ralph Towner play (my favorite goes all the way back to 1973 with The Paul Winter Consort's Icarus), I'm sometimes surprised that the well hasn't run dry. That's not my usual line of reasoning and, given the fantastic musical ideas on this disc, it's probably one I won't waste my time on in the future.
Yes, this is an album presented with an acoustic guitar, but the guitar is not the point.
Here are a couple of stories. One amazing and funny. The other, just amazing.Wes Montgomery, the great jazz guitarist, didn't know how to read music. That's right, this is the man whose fingers blistered their way around such tunes as "Twisted Blues" and "Four On Six" and who released such monumental records as Boss Guitar, Full House, and Smokin' At The Half Note (I know...it's a Wynton Kelly record, but nobody really thinks of it that way). All that great music coming out of no formal training. Bill Frisell put it perfectly:
"He didn't read music. It was like this homemade thing he did all himself."
Of course, my favorite Montgomery anecdote comes out of his famous distaste for practicing. Wes put it this way: "I never practice my guitar. From time to time I just open the case and throw in a piece of raw meat."
Pat Martino, the great jazz guitarist, does know how to read music. He also knows his way around that fretboard. In fact, Martino had to relearn the guitar after undergoing surgery for a brain aneurysm in 1980. Using his own records as source material, Martino eventually found his old form. Every time I put on one of his more recent records, I continue to be amazed, both by the music and the improbable backstory that is a part of it.
Twenty-six years have passed and Martino has decided to revisit the passions of his youth by recording Remember: A Tribute To Wes Montgomery. Focusing on Montgomery's Riverside recordings, Martino's fine band (Scott Allan Robinson/drums, Danny Sadownick/percussion, David Kikoski/piano and bassist John Patitucci) puts in some inspired performances on such classics as "Full House", "Twisted Blues" (during which Patitucci swing mightily and leader Martino shows why he's so deserving of the accolades tossed his way), "West Coast Blues" and, my personal favorite, "Four On Six".
Not only are the band members sympathetic to the material, they're very much in tune with each other. Face it, these tunes demand swing and groove. Any hint of "mechanics" and the mood would be ruined. Just check out the slippery descending unison lines that open "SKJ". Nice.
While there are undoubtedly many reasons for the creation of this record, Martino points out that looking back can be more than just a nostalgia turn:
"We get caught up in life and can't get back to that place when you were a child and had dreams for yourself."
So true.
Last month, a Friday Morning Listen related the story of me and TheWife and a quick road trip for ice cream and CD's. This of course turned into the "trailer trash confessional", due to the presence of some Southern Culture On The Skids.Here's part of the story that you don't know. It's our sort of ritual for listening to new CD's on a drive.
Usually, I'm doing the driving (TheWife doesn't particularly enjoy driving, so I let her enjoy the scenery), so TheWife get's the chore of unwrapping the minty fresh discs. This is a good thing since she manages to do it with way less profanity than when I'm struggling with that bastardly plastic. After this we play the first (and sometimes second) track from each CD.
This is where it gets interesting.
I know from experience that, while putting up with my peculiarities in taste, TheWife will make attempts (however subtle) to avoid musical mayhem. This manifests itself in a sort of predictable ordering of the new music: from least to most scary. What I bought that day: John Zorn - Electric Masada, Dave Van Ronk - Two Sides Of Dave Van Ronk, Southern Culture On The Skids - Doublewide and Live, and Muddy Waters - Live at Newport.
Can you guess the order of play?
Muddy Waters->Dave Van Ronk->Southern Culture on the Skids->John Zorn. She seems to have a radar for these things, even when she couldn't really tell you what the music was like. I suppose that "Electric Masada" might not sound pleasant? Dunno.
We really enjoyed all of the new tunes, but her enjoyment ended on Masada's "Tekufah". Recorded during Zorn's 50th birthday celebration, the band (and its sound) is downright scary: Zorn's sax, Marc Ribot (guitar), Jamie Saft (keyboards), Ikue Mori (laptop), Trevor Dunn (bass), Joey Baron (drums), Kenny Wollesen (drums), and Cyro Baptista on percussion. It's big. No, it's huge>. Sort of like electric Miles, with Ribot taking on the freakout guitar of Pete Cosey...and with Mori adding all manner of disturbing squirgy electronic noises (No, "squirgy" isn't a real word. Yes, it perfectly describes what's going on here).
As the song went on, I could almost hear the thoughts in TheWife's head as her optimistic outlook ("Well, it's only one song") transformed into despair. Sure, it was only one song, all fourteen minutes and thirty-three seconds of it. When it finally came to an end, I'd never seen her hand shoot out so fast to that eject button. Heh.
Ah, it was good for her. Honest.
Just what in hell is going on here?!That was my reaction back when I had my first crack at records like In The Court Of The Crimson King, Pink Floyd's Ummagumma, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Tarkus.
Art rock. Art....Rock. I've always thought that was such a funny category. An odd combination. As if there's no art to be found in a distorted guitar chord or the loud crack of a snare drum. Or is it that art can't be simple?
No matter? I'm here neither to resolve that issue not stir up a debate. After all, art rock is to rock & roll what fusion is to jazz. Please move along, there's nothin' to see here. Honest.
Instead, I'm here to celebrate the next wave of art rock (or whatever we end up calling it), championed by The Flaming Lips. When I first heard The Soft Bulletin, the "art rock" light did not flash on. They seemed like a rock band with a Bonham-influenced drummer, quirky lead singer , and some good ideas. Then Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots showed up and, while devoid of songs about ArmadilloTanks, there were plenty of oddities. It was around that time that I saw an incredible Flaming Lips performance on the television show Austin City Limits. Dancers dressed in animal costumes, great original tunes, and covers of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and Black Sabbath's "War Pigs". What's not to love?
Now: At War With The Mystics. Forget the labels because this band has become a musical island. They are alone. Nobody else sounds like this (and sure, maybe nobody wants to). This is a kind of art rock without the pretense. No symphonic themes. No orchestral leanings.
What The Flaming Lips manage to do is to create art by instead drawing from the history rock and pop music: Zappa and The Beach Boys (the vocals on the opening track "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song"), Prince ("Free Radicals", lead and background vocals), Syd Barrett (the atmosphere of "My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion"), The Beatles (wobbly melotron-ish instrumentation opening "Vein Of Stars"), Pink Floyd from the era of Syd ("The Wizard Turns On... The Giant Silver Flashlight and Puts on His Werewolf Moccasins", "Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung"), Bowie ("Haven't Got A Clue").
Now of course, these are some of the things that I hear on this record. Your experience will probably differ except for this: whatever you perceive coming from the tracks on At War With The Mystics, you'll have to admit that the end result is really unlike anything you've ever heard before.
Cynics love to parade around that "nothing new under the sun" business. Good for them. I hope they enjoy their small world.
Last weekend was official SpringCleaningWeekend at chez Saleski: chasing out the killer dust bunnies from underneath the couch, removing the Munsters-style cobwebs from a few of the corners, running the all-in-one floor swabber/scrubber/vacuum over the particularly nasty spots, cleaning off the front porch (no, that dried up Christmas tree didn't really need to be there anymore), picking up various bits of front dooryard cruft, like the chunks of plastic from the windshield washer bottle that was accidentally sent through the snowblower. You know, just tryin' the make things look a little less white trashy.In the middle of the marathon vacuum session in the living room (marathon length unavoidable when your danged living room is 30 feet long) I get the idea that some loud music needs to happen. So in goes the copy of Billy Joel's Kohuept that we'd picked up earlier in the day (because me & TheWife had seen Joel perform "Angry Young Man" on an episode of American Chopper). Ah, it sounded great—the hammered piano intro, the loud guitars, the way the music started cutting out and back in...
Obviously, that last bit was not so pleasing.
After issuing a few choice words directed at the dvd player (an older Sony piece of junk that I am looking forward to going all Office Space on when I get a replacement), I just shut everything down as the equipment didn't need to be getting in the way of my agenda to make the house neat.
Later in the afternoon when all we had left to do was to hose down the kitchen, I again got the musical urge (right, like when don't I have it) and put a different CD in, figuring that it was just the 'ole Sony being particular. Twenty seconds into The Donnas' "It's On The Rocks" and things go all haywire again. I go over to the stereo and turn the volume down, noticing that the sound cut out any time the knob was moved. Hmmm...maybe I can't blame it on the DVD player for once.
Then the smell hit me. That very unhappy odor of burning wire. Uh oh. I pull out the receiver a little and, sure enough, eau de smokin' wire was pouring out of the vent holes.
So there you have it, the very last bit of music played through my almost 20 year old Yamaha RX-900U ("Natural Sound Stereo Receiver") was Spend The Night by The Donnas. Hey, what a way to go. Four naughty girls playing big, loud & fun rock. I think of them as the racy cousins of Kiss and The Ramones. Fun to hear all of the sexuality and innuendo of "regular" rock turned upside down. With tunes like "Please Don't Tease" and "Take Me To The Backseat", what I want to know is: "Where were they when I was a kid?!!!"
If I cut a hole in the top of the receiver and plant some flowers in it, would that be too white trash?
No, there were no cash prizes.
There are weeks when I pick the tunes, and then there's this week. I had to face up to the fact that this is the only disc I've listened to since midday Tuesday. Much of it took me by surprise. I mean, sure, I'm obviously a pretty big Springsteen fan. But usually any of his releases take a little while to ingest, to figure out.Not this time. For as much as I know about Peter Seeger (quickly: banjo, folk music, The Weavers, blacklisting, Dylan at Newport, "Erie Canal"...Uh, that's it!), these renderings grabbed hold and would just not let go.
I'll have much more to say about this recording next week (a roundtable discussion will emerge midweek or so with Blogcritics Lisa McKay and DJ Radiohead, also Me & The DJ will blab about it in next week's BC Radio), but here's what has won me over so far: The Seeger Sessions, from the very first bar, sounds like Bruce & company having the time of their lives. One big room full of musicians, horns out in the hallway. From the raveups of "Old Man Tucker" to the sunset beauty of "Shenandoah" to the stomping spiritual of "O Mary Don't You Weep".
While I can go on and on in an attempt to get at what's going on here, Springsteen says it best:
"It was a carnival ride, the sound of surprise and the pure joy of playing. Street corner music, parlor music, tavern music, wilderness music, circus music, church music, gutter music, it was all there waiting in those old songs, some more than one hundred years old. It rocked, it swung, it rolled. It was a way back and forward to the informality, the freeness and the eclecticism of my earliest music and then some."
Exactly.
Sometimes, a man has just got to go for TheBigStupid™. Last night was such a night. I was burned out from trying to juggle too many activities. Just fried. Not even a nice bowl of homemade split pea soup, usually a fine tonic of sorts, put a dent in my...uhm...well, whatever the hell it was.So I get the idea to head out for a little drive. The Mini had just had a tuneup and was ready to rock. Me & TheWife took off, first to a local coffee/food/ice cream establishment (where I had a scoop of Ginger, TheWife, a lemon smoothie), then to "the big city" for a little CD exploration.
It was a good trip. I landed some blues (Muddy Waters - At Newport, 1960), folk (Dave Van Ronk - Two Sides Of...), jazz freakout (John Zorn's Masada - Electric Masada) and a big throbbing pile of Southern fun, the new Doublewide & Live from Southern Culture On The Skids.
So many fun songs, so many references to life on the wrong side of the tracks. Ah...it brings me back to my own days in a single wide. Yes folks, I usedta be trailer trash (Or maybe I still am? Is it like being Catholic, where you're always Catholic no matter what? Dunno).
Nine years old, I moved with my parents to a brand spankin' new single-wide in a similarly brand spankin' new mobile home park on the east coast of Florida. Say what you want about trailers, this kid had a blast. For whatever reason, I can clearly remember all sorts of stuff from the two short years we lived down there:
Of course, I really knew nothing about the supposed seedier side of things as hooted about on this great Southern Culture CD. Still, the groovin', rebverb-soaked music manages to take me back, whether it's the Middle Eastern-flavored surfy stomp of "The Wet Spot", the fun singalong of "Banana Puddin'" or crazy two-step of "Liquored Up".
Hmmm, I've got that "Miami Dolphins #1" single around here someplace...
What is a musician to do during the so-called "twilight years"? Continue on with various attempts at reliving the past? Press hard at reinvention? Take on elements of the current fashion so as to seem hip?It's a tough position to be in for some artists. Fans know what they want—or at least... what they don't want. Just look at the last handful of recordings from Miles Davis. While there might have been flashes of brilliance on that live Montreux record, the Miles of yore just wasn't there. And let's not get started with Doo-Bop.
Of course, any musician leaving behind the "safe" domain toward the new—Miles' electric period being a perfect example—will alienate some older fans while picking up some new converts.
Moving "toward the new" appears to be Charles Lloyd's standard operating procedure. Not only is he showing no signs of slowing down, his latest live recording, Sangam, takes a bold step toward the new.
The Sangam lineup of Lloyd's horns (and occasional piano), drummer Eric Harland (last heard on Jumping In The Creek), and tabla-wizard Zakir Hussain, forms something very close to the literal meaning of the album's title—"Sangam" being the Hindi word for "confluence" or "union."
Obvious from the first seconds of "Dancing On One Foot," the chemistry between Hussain and Harland is undeniable. Hussain begins with one of his impossible tabla patterns and Harland fills in what little gap there is to be found. It's not until the two-minute mark that Lloyd steps in with a long set of Eastern-flavored lines that bring to mind both Coltrane and Jimmy Guiffre. This inspiring improvisation 'ends' with a Harland drum solo that shows off the man's intimacy with polyrhythms.
What makes this trio so interesting is not just the amazing interplay but the lack of a bass player. Hussain's tablas fill that role while also providing their unique melodic content.
Throughout all of this is the tireless and endlessly inventive saxophone work of Lloyd. Players many years his junior wish their ideas came this effortlessly.
The concert ends with "Little Peace," where the percussionists set up a driving beat over which Lloyd blows with the flute. Rightfully so, the leader steps aside to allow the drummers to blaze to a conclusion.
I tell you, if I have this much of a creative well to draw from a few decades from now, I'll be a happy man.
Last night TheWife walked in the door to be greeted by the sounds of AC/DC's Stiff Upper Lip being played way too loud. I was in the middle of cooking dinner (tomato & garlic saute/reduction thingie, served over bruschetta with fresh mozzarella...honestly, an excuse to drink some nice red wine (And hey, we're no snobs. The wine was Red Truck. You want snobbery? Check out this review bit: "It's a jovial quaff, but the fruit outruns minimal acidity, leaving a pudgy beverage that seems as much like a "spiked" glass of fruit juice as wine." Whoa.)Anyhow, the reason for the garlic in the air and the wall-shaking music was that the house was empty. This is not a common occurence around here. Earlier that day, my folks had left for a trip down to Pennsylvania to visit my niece. So it was just me, the GreatestCockerSpanielInTheWorld™, and the circa-1825 house itching for some action. Brian Johnston and the Young Brothers provided the soundtrack.
This morning's Listen is coming to you from the comfort of my living room couch. The opportunity to hang out in the emptiness was too much to pass up. Midday yesterday I "scheduled" an impromptu vacation day....and here I am.
This particular soundtrack isn't the quietest thing you've ever heard. In fact, given the nature of the film itself, it's got quite a bit of tension-building and foreboding chunks of sound. It's also got David Bowie doing "This Is Not America".
That's still not why I picked it.
The opening "Psalm 121/Flight of the Falcon" contains one of those moments that can cause a person to well up. The human voice is such an amazing instrument. Here it's inspiring to witness the voices of the Abrosian Choir swell as the "Psalm 121" explodes joyously into "Flight of the Falcon". The feeling I get when hearing that bit of music is very much like how I felt this morning when I realized that I was on vacation. Oh yea.
Now I've just gotta figure out what's for dinner tonight.
Besides all of the usual signs of spring (warm days, cool nights, mud, the snow melting away revealing the junk I "accidentally" left out in the yard), one commonplace phenomenon this time of year is the collection of sap for maple syrup. The pails, buckets, taps, collection hoses, and basins are all over the place around here. The local papers cover things like the maple syrup competitions in area schools.We like to take part in all of this by going to Saturday morning breakfast at a very rustic restaurant/sugar house where the tables are made from thick slabs of wood, the syrup is made on the premisis, and the pancakes are almost as big as your head.
It's kind of amazing to see the wide range of equipment used in the collection process. You have your traditional galvanized buckets, plastic pails, huge washtubs covered with plywood, gigantic plastic collection basins...and on it goes. It all reminds me of the New England (this probably fits for all rural areas) tradition of making do with what you have or what you've found: wooden pyramids constructed to protect shrubbery from heavy winter snows, bright blue plastic juice drums converted to driveway sand & salt containers, car tires painted white and turned into front yard flower beds.
This stuff also reminds me of some of the music and instruments used on the experimental music collection Gravikords, Whirlies & Pyrophones. Yes, long before Blue Man Group got the (excellent) idea of pressing PVC pipes into service, there were musicians making good with objects like the bamboo saxophone, rainsticks, chunks of metal, bicycle wheels, glass jars and other oddities.
The music on this CD runs from the moderately serious—Don Buchla and Robert Moog playing the Buchla 400, Harry Partch playing the "Harmonic Canon"—to the just plain weird: Hans Reichel playing the Daxophone, a wooden instrument that has a both beautiful and unnerving human vocal quality.
Spring, maple syrup, and musical instruments. As a good friend of mine likes to say, "It's a big 'ole world out there".
I built a time machine
Going to see the homecoming queen
Take her to the Christmas dance
Maybe now I'll get in her pants
Whatever...
I'd have to say that the thought has definitely crossed my mind once or twice.
Back with my high school friends
Meetin' where the train tracks end
Passin' 'round a skinny joint
Rollin up to look our point
I have wondered what happened to my high school friends. I mean, it's been a lot of years. I know what exactly one of them is up to.
I wanna pull it apart and put it back together
I wanna relive all my adolescent dreams
Inspired by true events on movie screens
I am a one man wrecking machine
Adolescent dreams. I'm not really sure that I had any. Not much beyond struggling with the usual concerns: acne, girlfriend, dread of the next history exam. Damn, it all seems so important back then, especially the girlfriend thing.
Now that I think of it, there is one little incident I'd like to revisit. I'd gone out with a girl throughout my entire junior year. She was truly my first love. Can't quite remember why I broke up with her. A little over a year later, feeling incredibly lonely at a big (for me) university, I started writing to her (this was back when people used to actually writer letters...on paper and everything). I asked her out on a date. She said yes. When I came back for that weekend I picked her up in my dad's car. We talked for a while and then she mentions, kind of in passing, that "we're going out 'just as friends', right?"
I was internally crushed.
The 'date' continued. When we stopped back at her house later, we again talked for a bit before she went in. I so wanted to tell her that I couldn't stand this 'just friends' stuff. I wanted to grab her and kiss her just like in the movies. Nope. My timid self ruled.
So, the thing is...would I want to change what happened that night? Would I want to go back and threaten to completely alter the course of the rest of my life? Would that make me disappear Back To The Future-style?
With One Man Wrecking Machine, Guster has put all of these thoughts into my head. It's a great song. By the time you get to the chorus you feel like you've known this song your entire life. I mean that in a good way.
Back in my parent's house
Back to the shouting out loud
One day you'll be a man
One day you'll understand
I never went through that particular emotion, though I can understand it.
Here in the present tense
Nothings making sense
Waiting for my moment to come
Everything’s come undone
Now this I can identify with. Can't everybody from time to time? Later in my life I went through a few things that had some scary parallels to my first girlfriend indcident
Guster's new CD, Ganging Up On The Sun, will be released on June 20th. I'm really looking forward to it.
The music starts playing and every little bit of you pays attention. This is a musical connection.The listener-artist connection can go much farther than that. Years of record purchases, concert attendance, magazine articles, and television appearances can fill a person's head and ears with all sorts of information. You "know" a lot of facts about the artist but...do you really know him?
One one level, the answer is an obvious "No". I've never met Leo Kottke, much less had a single conversation with him, so of course I don't know him. On the other hand, all of the lyrics & stories told at shows—even those Prairie Home Companion apperances—have me convinced that, were I to bump into Leo in a hotel lobby, we might actually have something to talk about. The re-release of Kottke's concert video Home & Away Revisited has served as a huge reminder of our "friendship".
...that and the fact that Kottke's guitar playing pretty much defines its own genre.
Shot at Bathurst St. Theater in Toronto, Home & Away shows Leo at his most self-deprecating, funny, and virtuosic best. In addition to a selection of tunes from early in his career ("Vaseline Machine Gun", in particular), several "new" songs (new in 1988, tha
