Mark is Cranky

The funny thing here is that, unlike just about everything else that I write, the Friday Morning Listen is almost always composed at the keyboard. Today (which, scout's honor, is Friday October 28th, 2005) it's being scratched out with a BIC #2, 0.7 millimeter mechanical pencil.

Over the past couple of days I have experienced a distinct lack of modern, functional, Internet-type technology. When the wife made the reservations at this inn, she was assured by the representative person that each room had Internet access. Well, turns out that that's true...if you're equipped for dial-up. Oops.

Oh, well. I figure that'll give me more time to catch up with writing and that big stack 'o New Yorkers that's been taunting me recently (I'm up to the yearly food issue, September 5th). I supposed a solution to this would be to find a local Internet cafe, but since the wife takes the Jeep to the conference she's attending (and since I'm too lazy to get up early and take her there myself), I'm sort of stuck here...which, honestly, is a good thing. I'm having a mini-vacation that's full of what a friend of mine has referred to as 'Mark-time'. So be it.

So last night, after the wife had gone to bed, I decided (fortified by a nice glass of Laphroaig & water) that the iPod needed to be loaded with the source material for this morning's first encounter with moderately organized vibrating air molecules. I boot up the laptop (which seems to take forever since the latest Symanctec AntiVirus software was installed) and pop in Bjork's soundtrack to the movie Drawing Restraint 9. After a minute's worth of fighting with both iTunes and CDMax over which is going to play the disc (the answer is "Neither!! Now Just Go Away!") I finally get down to importing the song data.

(OK, I have to admit that this late night computer stuff was a huge mistake. Earlier in the day I had a horrifying run-in with my portable speaker/subwoofer setup. For no apparent reason, the sub went berserk and started making an insanely loud and unnerving deep growl. Unplugging the input jack seemed to solve the problem. Hours later the thing freaked out again. I'm sitting in a chair reading an article about the unknown/overlooked composer Franz Schreker (and trying to not be annoyed at the author's overuse of things like "fin-de-siècle" and "cri de coeur") when the devil's subwoofer goes into mad jackhammer mode...shortly followed by my cell phone ringing. But....the sub wasn't even powered on! I walked away from the desk and the vibrations stopped. Ah, the speaker system's electronics are picking up on part of my cell signal. Sure enough, I move the phone to within six inches of the speaker and the electro-burp fires up again. Hmmmm...maybe I should have spent more than fifty bucks on these things).

Back to fun-with-iTunes...

I notice that, because there's no Internet connection, iTunes has no information about the artist, song titles, etc. I right-click on the first track (so far known as "Track01") and bring up the song info dialog. Here the song title, artist and other fun stuff can be entered. In quick succession I type in the song names, moving to the next track via the amazingly logically labeled "NEXT" button. After the last song is entered, I click "OK".

By this time the CD import is about finished. Just then a dialog box pops up telling me that I'm running low on battery power. A quick rustle through my bag produces the power cable thingie. Ah, but guess what? This room, being part of a 200+ year old inn, doesn't seem to have any three-pronged outlets.

Except for in the bathroom.

Now I'm sitting on the edge of the bathtub with the laptop balanced on my knees (at first the computer was on the toilet with me squatting down in front of the bowl...my knees lasted about a minute, plus, I felt kinda stupid). Finally the Bjork CD finishes. My scotch-enabled stupidity allows me to repeat this process with the Mountain Goats' All Hail West Texas.

The last step. I plug in my iPod, wait the pathetic minute or so it takes clunky old Windows 2000 Professional to recognize this event, and the sync process goes on its merry way.

Hmmm...Drawing Restraint 9 seems to have ten songs titled "Track01" through "Track10", followed by the last tune, "Antarctic Return". That's funny, All Hail West Texas has the same problem. This might be a) an unfortunate bug in iTunes b) a Microsoft 'innovation' or c) a bad mix of technology and single malt. Since I don't have the answer (and really, what good would it do me?) I just retype the song information and perform an iPod resync. Halle-freaking-lujah, there's Bjork and the Mountain Goats in my 'Artists' list!

Exhausted and bewildered, I slip into bed to read an essay by Elizabeth Spiers about how blogging is dead. The Mountain Goats provide the soundtrack (it was kind funny to hear Darnielle singing "Hail Satan!" with thoughts of this technology skirmish so fresh in my head).

So you better-danged-well believe that I listened to Drawing Restraint 9 this morning.

First of all, I know next to nothing about this film. Bjork is in it. The photo stills look 'arty' (Bjork nude in a metal tub full of water, two Geishas behind her, a bunch of either lemons or tennis balls floating in front of her). The music is pure Bjork. Very strange to hear Will Oldham (Bonnie 'Prince' Billy) traversing a typically Bjorkish melody on the opening "Gratitude". The rest of the disc makes use of Bjork's recent fixation with the instrument of the human voice: there's chanting, throat-singing and an amazing (if creepy) solo vocal performance by Shiro Nomura on "Holygraphic Entrypoint". All of this is supported by layers and layers of percussion, harp (hello again Zeena Parkins), orchestration and blurpy noises. Very, very entrancing.

The men who built this inn surely could not have imagined how their world would progress over the centuries that followed their own. The beam above my head, sixteen inches wide and full of axe marks, is a still-solid product of their hard work. It also makes me wonder about the permanence of today's technology. Will any of it be around in the year 2205? Is iTunes the hand-carved wooden peg of our time?

I sort of doubt it.

You know those little plastic puzzles, the ones where there's one tile missing and the point is to slide everything left/right/up/down until you've got the 'solution' (words, picture...whatever) in place?

Yes? Well, I've always hated those things. In fact, I don't like any puzzles. They're supposed to be fun, an interesting and engaging challenge. Honestly, all they do is make me feel stupid. This extends to any and all games. Jigsaw puzzles. Crosswords. Video Games. Board Games (OK. Exactly one counterexample here: the RPM Version of Trivial Pursuit..but nobody at home'll play it with me, so it doesn't really count). Sorry, nothing there. They make no sense to me. Their 'meaning' is opaque.

One of the many problems with not having a 'game gene' (and perhaps less important than having to deal with the stunned looks that accompany the refrain "What? You won't play Pictionary with us?") is that I can't use the act of puzzle construction as a parallel to the listening experience. Think about it. You first encounter a piece of music and it takes a while, maybe even several whiles, for the 'picture' to emerge. So even though I've never put together a jigsaw puzzle, I imagine the thrill of discovery to be similar.

Except...that the 'what' of music is different for every single listener. When I hear a violin pleading against some dissonant chords, I may think of a damp breeze blowing the curtains back in the front window of an abandoned country house. On the other hand, you may hear nothing more than some meandering notes.

This whole music vs. game-playing idea has been floating around the back of my head recently. The other night, in the middle of a listening & writing session, I flipped on the TV. The idea was to check to see when/if it'll ever stop raining around here. For whatever reason, I am unable to remember where the Weather Channel lives. Click (QVC). Click (Texas Holdem). Click (Texas Holdem). Click (something in Spanish, all women partially clad). Click (Texas Holdem). What they hey?! Has Poker invaded the planet or what?! After stumbling onto the correct channel (the rain-ending answer: maybe) I put Mr. TV back to bed.

The rest of the listening session was sprinkled with partially formed thoughts about games. Just what is the attraction. More important, why am I seeing it from the outside? From the land of the non-converted? Later on the answer came to me: that there is no 'correct' answer. My head collects musical bits, joins them together and provides the 'meaning'. But I'm never wrong. There's no pressure to get anything 'right'. I'm always 'right'. Everybody is.

Of course it was Mat Maneri's Pentagon that was interrupted by my Remote Control Olympics. This is definitely a collection of music that's open to multiple interpretations. While Maneri's violin is the main instrument, the group improvisation actually takes center stage. For every slow & reflective segment (the opening tune did in fact bring up that abandoned house image) there are rollicking funk things that remind me of the less harsh bits of electrified Miles Davis.

Maneri's musical puzzle here is presented by Tom Rainey on drums, Thirsty Ear cohort Craig Taborn (Rhodes, laptop), Ben Gerstein (trombone), T.K. Ramakrishnan (percussion) and Joe Maneri (alto, keys, voice). A great and textured group of instruments. The sound palette is further stretched by quite a bit of sampling and processing. Maneri's violin sometimes plays it straight, quiet and acoustic....while at other times verges on near-electric guitar scorch.

I'm not sure that my mental puzzle of Pentagon is done yet. The opening theme ("Ava") resurfaces several times througout the program with each new episode distorted just a bit more toward the angular and spooky side of things (though the closing "America" seems to make the whole package work). There are a few hip-hop oriented tracks that at first seem to not belong, but then make perfect sense in the company of the acid-trip freakout of "Howl In My Head/Motherless Child". Maybe it makes no sense to gather this stuff into a 'picture' at all. When a violin and trombone swap sounds, it just might be that all bets are off.

Or...those waving curtains are as far as I need to go.

There's been a lot of not-so-great events going on recently and they've been weighing on me a bit. Continuing fallout from hurricane Katrina. Brazilian rain forest sadness. In terms of sheer numbers there's the aftermath of the earthquake in Pakistan.

All of that is surely bad enough, but the story of the schizophrenic mother (as related here by Blogcritics own Mary K. Williams) was the last straw. The death of innocents by either disturbed or purposeful hands is, well....I'm not even sure it's fair to apply words. It leaves me shaken, to say the least.

So this week it's pure, 100%, unadulterated, organic, biodegradable, down-home comfort listening by way of the words & music of Greg Brown. An interesting thing here is that this is not escapism. Yes, Brown can spin up some absolutely joyous tunes. "If I Had Known" speaks of the discovery of a number of life's wonders. Then there's the going-home-for-fun two-step of "Hacklebarney Tune". But Brown can break your heart by wrapping the sad story of a life gone wrong ("Fooled Me Once") in an absolutely gorgeous melody.

Just before arriving at work, the CD finishes and I begin to think that maybe the next few days will bring better news.

DOESN'T ANYBODY PAY FOR THEIR LUNCH AT THE CHECKOUT WITH CASH ANYMORE?

A FREAKING CREDIT CARD FOR A $6.37 SANDWICH?!!!

CRIMINY!!!!!

So there's that thing about how if you wait around long enough, items long gone out of fashion will slide back into the spotlight. I used to believe that that was just wishful thinking: folks pining for their glory days driving around in their AMC Pacers while wearing their Earth Shoes. But then, sure enough, tidbits of the 1970's popped their collective heads around the corner: bellbottom pants, long hair (OK, not quite as unkempt as back then), even fondue sets! Then there's the media celebrations making 'art' out of the decade of bad hair and leisure suits: That 70's Show (TV) and Dazed and Confused (film).

Don't get me wrong. I have not been hoping for the return of macramé. Of the Brady Perm. The Love Boat.

One thing that might not be bad though...just a little bit of arena-type hard rock. Not the latter decade pop cheese (I'm thinkin' groups like Journey) but the blues-based melodic crunch of bands like Blue Oyster Cult and Bad Company.

Apparently, my wish has been granted by Finland's H.I.M. They've been doing this for a number of years (completely under my rock radar), finally producing Dark Light for their U.S. debut. I don't know what their other records sound like (yes, I know, with this new record they've "sold out", mellowed" or whatever adjective describes an old fan's betrayal), but this one sets my WaybackMachine to 1975.

Blue Oyster Cult turns out to be a very apt point of comparison. Listen no further than the opening track "Vampire Heart". That introductory figure leads into a wall of distorted guitar. What sets the song apart from "modern" rock is the delivery of the lead vocals: long, winding melodies taking the full verse to develop. A signature of many a B.O.C tune employed to great effect here. That opening riff is used as a musical thread that's mirrored by those huge chords, morphed into the bridge arpeggios and pushed to the wall during the post-chorus guitar mayhem. All of this builds a kind of tension that's missing from much recent "everything louder than everything else" rock.

I don't mean to be casting H.I.M as a pure clone of "thinking man's metal." It's just that the layered vocals (which do sound a bit like Eric Bloom...with a little Billy Idol tossed in) show a direct link back to those years. Truth be told, those distorted (and creamy) guitars don't hurt either. Finally, a band putting together interesting combinations of distortion and chime. Equal parts squall and chord deconstruction.

These are interesting musical times. First we've got the 1960's garage rock revival (hello White Stripes), skeletal punk (there are so many echoes of Gang Of 4 and Television these days) and now H.I.M. as part of neo-arena metal.

What's next? Art Rock? Hair Metal? Disco?!

I sure enough know what I'll be doing on November 15th: driving to the store to pick up the 30th Anniversary reissue box of Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run.

I'm not sure how I missed out on announcements of this release, but this morning on the Amazon front page I saw a video of Bruce doing "Born To Run" circa 1975. Hmmm, why is Amazon showing this? A little Google action and I have my answers.

The box set will contain:

A concert DVD of Springsteen & the E-Street Band: "Hammersmith Odeon, London '75"
A documentary DVD entitled "Wings For Wheels: The Making of Born to Run"
Remastered version of "Born To Run", with 48-page booklet

To say that I am psyched doesn't even come close to my true feelings. Just check out track listing for the Hammersmith concert:

Thunder Road
Tenth Avenue Freeze Out
Spirit In The Night
Lost In The Flood
She's The One
Born To Run
The E Street Shuffle/Having A Party
It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City
Backstreets
Kitty's Back
Jungleland
Rosalita
4th Of July Asbury Park (Sandy)
Detroit Medley
For You
Quarter To Three

For more information on this, check out the always interesting Backstreets Magazine website.

And please, no emails on the evening of November 15th, I'll be too busy to reply.

For some reason, when I get creeped out when piano-playing is described as "tickling the ivories".

Please don't use those words in my company.

Back when my college radio station (WMEB 91.9 FM, University of Maine at Orono) started playing this band, I was totally enthralled. Sparse-but-tight drumming, hyperactive basslines, nice (if somewhat strange) harmonies and plenty of swirling guitar. Elements of folk, elements of rock. I didn't always know that Michael Stipe was getting at, but loved the snippets of lines that emerged out of the haze here and there: "...your hate, clipped and distant...", "...so much more attractive, inside the moral kiosk".

Murmur was a record that required extensive investigation (...looking back at the mountains of reviews written about this album, I've come to believe that the critics were being lazy with those Byrds comparisons. At the time, nothing sounded like Murmur.) Me and my buddy Gene had it on heavy listening rotation at our evening listening sessions at his folks' house on top of the hill in Bangor. Many hours were spent sitting on the couch, getting slowly dry-roasted by the too-hot woodstove, while we played this and other (I believe Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom was on the list as well) records. As those kind of experiences are playing out, you of course have no idea how precious they are. That adulthood will soon take over and opportunities to sit and reflect will be just a little tougher to come by.

Tonight me and TheWife will be heading out to upstate New York to visit with Gene, his wife Regina and their young & impossibly cute almost two-year old daughter Savannah. My how things have changed since 1983! Still, we will get the chance to sit around a bit and put on some tunes. In fact, vinyl will probably be involved. Maybe even a little R.E.M.

Over the past couple of mornings I've been making my way through a most excellent essay by Jonathan Franzen (a.ka. Mr. PissOffTheOprahReadersClub) on the topic of birding. Actually, being a Franzen article, it's of course about way more than birding. I've read one description of Franzen's New Yorker work as something like 'tediously autobiographical'. Well, since my whole Friday thang can be tediously autobiographical I'm not surprised that the essay resonated so much with me.

Anyhow...back the the bird thing. At one point Franzen got around to describing how birds were so endlessly fascinating because of their seemingly infinite variations in species (and hey, I'd have the exact text for you but it's not available online and my copy of the New Yorker is laying in a pile at home). His statement struck me as being very close to why I'm so in love with music. Even pieces of music I've listened to hundreds of times seem to show something different during the next repeat. Sure, some bands/albums/songs have more musical nooks & crannies (and thus more possibilities for discovery) than others but, overall, it's a big 'ole listening world out there. Endless.

Now, the birding essay (entitled "My bird problem: Love, grief & a change in the weather") reminded me that as much as I love birds (and I really do...man, I can sit out on the back porch and watch the chickadees and nuthatches for hours) and their songs, there's no way I'd ever be a birder. First of all, my color blindness prevents me from accurately identifying the things. Don't get me wrong, I can tell blue from red & stuff. But depending upon the available light, shades of brown, green and gray tend to look like shades of...shades of gray, green and brown. The other (and perhaps most important) thing is that I can be so taken by the birdsongs that I'd be distracted from the identification chores. Though I think it'd be fun to play up the birder stereotype (birders out there, please don't take offense) and don a pith hat and binoculars, I just don't see it happening.

So just for fun I thought it'd be nice to haul out my trusty copy of Messiaen's "Oiseaux Exotiques". This piece of music is one of many discovered on the radio, causing a pull-the-car-over-and-pray-for-a-DJ-announcment incident. Thankfully, I happended to be listening to WGBH out of Boston. Robert J. Lurtsema may have had a voice that was perfect for a Saturday Night Live makin' fun of public radio voices sketch. He was also passionate about music and birds (his show opened with a nice birdsong fade in). Robert J. did not dissapoint me that day, and my collection is all the better for it.

Another case of dinosaurs making fresh tracks? Let's find out.

Yesterday I was surprised by a radio sampler disc of tunes from Cream's recent Royal Albert Hall concert. What was surprising was not that Jack Bruce was in fine voice or that Eric Clapton's guitar had some decent snap to it during those famous "Badge" descending arpeggios. No, what really sparked up the ride to work was Ginger Baker's drums. Huge is the word. Those tom rolls leading into the chorus of "Sunshine Of Your Love"...tremendous. I'm not sure why I wasn't expecting this. I mean, I've seen Baker live before and he does tend to pound that kit. Was this some sort of aging rock star stereotype I'd allowed to creep in? I have no other explanation. Shame on me.

Later in the morning I popped in Ten Thousand Fists by Disturbed. This wasn't my first spin through the disc. The first couple of passes left no impression beyond "loud vocals" and "very loud guitar".

This time around, it was like my ears had a buncha wax blown out by Baker's drums. Loud guitar and voice? Hell yea...and vicious, tight drumming. I'm thinkin' that my stereotype plastering most 'modern rock' bands as boring and monochromatic (I think of this as the LimpBizkitSyndrome) was shoved aside by that earlier Cream experience.

So now that I'm actually listening, what do I hear? Basically, that there's much more going on here than just full-on agro-roar. First of all, this David Draiman guy can actually sing. The low growl, the rising verse and the soaring chorus. The anthemic title track is a perfect example.

Some high points:

The locked-in guitar and drum hammering on "Just Stop". Seems like a more recent take on the Hetfield-Ulrich experience.
"Deify", with its warning against unquestioned allegiances.
More blistering guitar and drum mayhem on "Decadence". I hate to keep bringing up Metallica, but "Blackened" comes to mind.
An honest-to-gawd, old-fashioned, double-tracked guitar solo on "Overburdened".
The fantastic edgy & off-kilter rhythm that opens "Pain Redefined".
The cover of Genesis' "Land of Confusion" (OK, the jury's still on that one! No, wait...I like it...I think.)
The way the guitar riffs and the drums sort of circle around each other mid-track on "Deify"

Ten Thousand Fists is definitely one of those records that I'll have to be in the mood for. Taken in its entirety, it's nearly an hour of fairly aggressive stuff. Still, I'm happy to have been nudged (by a rock dinosaur, no less) in this direction. Cranky is one thing, closed-minded is something else entirely.

I didn't hear the whole segment (because extreme smugness is hard for me to tolerate) but last night I heard Tucker Carlson talking about rapper 50 Cent. Big deal, eh? I suppose not...except that Carlson was using the 'correct' pronunciation: "fitty cent".

Snort-inducing, I tell ya.

Things I remember about the Mike Douglas show: Shecky Greene, the comedian. I'm not even sure if I thought he was funny. What I do know is that I'd never heard of anybody named 'Shecky'; the Patti Smith appearance. You think there were uncomfortable moments during some of Dick Cavett's rock star interviews? Nothing compared to the bohemian poet goddess vs. the squarest man in America; Anthony Newly singing "Send In The Clowns".

Why I remember this stuff is a mystery. Plenty of television weirdness from the early 70's made itself comfortable inside of my head. For instance, I remember Sam Irvin during the Watergate hearings only because that danged endless panel of jabber got in the way of my daily dose of The Price Is Right.

At this point, an artist such as Bob Stenson might be appalled to have his good name tossed around amid Borscht-Belt comics, snotty punk primadonas and crooners of yore.

Or not...

Because Stenson's very romantic read of that Sondheim classic serves as a reminder (at least to me, a person somewhat obsessed with divining connections between past and present) that even the most well-worn visitation from the past can color who or what we are now.

Pianist and compost Stenson has quite the musical past to draw upon. Had has played with the likes of Jan Garbarek, Stan Getz, Tomas Stanko, Red Mitchell and Charles Lloyd. His group Rena Rama was one of the first to mix jazz with the folk musics of India and Bulgaria.

Stenson's current release Goodbye finds him drawing from many of his past musical architectures to produce one fine trio outing. To add to the graceful opening "Send In The Clowns", we have the chromaticism of bassist Anders Jormin's "Allegretto Rubato", the moody contrast of "Sudan" (where Stenson and drummer Paul Motian lay back for Jormin's bowed bass motifs) and the Stenson-composed "Queer Street", a sort of piano vs. bass & drums call and response.

The inversion of traditional trio roles is what makes things interesting. Like the afore-mentioned "Sudan", their version of Tony Williams' "There Comes A Time" finds Jormin's bass taking center stage.

Perhaps more surprising is the jazz arrangement of Henry Purcell's "Music For A While". I have to admit that the thought of a walking bassline moving through Purcell's music had never occurred to me before.

There is some traditional trio music on Goodbye including the opening "Send In The Clowns", Paul Motian's low-blues "Jack Of Clubs" and the pretty title track.

Goodbye closes up shop with a run through Ornette Coleman's "Race Face". Very much like a lot of Thelonious Monk's tunes, Coleman has a way of making even the most oddball material seem fun. Here it definitely sounds like a good time was had by all.

I'm not sure what Miles was getting at when he titled that song "Yesternow", but I'd like to appropriate that word as the perfect description for modern music that's been touched by the past and the present...and everything in between.

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