The contest for bleakest film noir is one wrought with contention. Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly is often named as a favorite for the prize, but there are several lesser contenders also worthy of consideration. Shot on the streets of New York in 1959 and released roughly two years later, Allen Baron’s Blast of Silence sits well within that select number. Baron’s film centers on Frankie Bono, a mob hit man with a back-story as clichéd as they come: an orphan and sociopath who always works alone, Bono is good at his job precisely because of the hate he harbors for other human beings. Based in Cleveland with New York roots, he accepts a contract in the Big Apple to take out a middle tier boss named Troiano at Christmas time.
Baron stocks the film with numerous noir and existentialist tropes starting with a title sequence that likens a hurdling trip through a subway tunnel to the disorienting trauma of birth. Blacklisted screenwriter Waldo Salt (operating under a pseudonym) scripts a heavy-handed second-person voiceover as a further means of eroding ambiquity. Read in an alternatingly sarcastic and menacing tone, the narration intrudes to the point of distraction and it’s hard not to imagine a better film sans its portentous presence. Where Baron does strike gold is in the many location shoots around the city. Vintage storefronts and nightclubs abound, captured in a visceral and grainy monochrome that accentuates the starkness of their geometries. There’s even a vicarious visit to the Village Gate, though the conga-led jazz combo entertaining the clientele elicits winces rather than applause.
Baron’s decision to play the part of the brooding conflicted Bono is also questionable. Peter Falk was purportedly cast prior, but jumped ship to star in a more lucrative film production. Wooden, Ed Wood-worthy acting is the norm, but there are standouts amongst the cardboard. In particular there’s Larry Tucker who plays the part of Fat Ralphie a particularly odious blackmarketeer who Bono must rely on to obtain his murder weapon. Tucker’s role is ripe with winsome touches, from a flop house residence populated with pet rats, to a vaguely effeminate demeanor that directly recalls his controversial work in Advise and Consentseveral years later, though far more nuanced.
Bono’s odyssey is one of methodical purpose. Baron exerts great care in documenting his preparatory activities without clouding them in concessions to morality. There’s an extended sequence where Bono cleans and readies his gun, set to the strains of a solo jazz trumpet, which is particularly effective in this regard. Elsewhere, the vibraphone-dominant soundtrack, feels somewhat dated and intrusive. A Bohemian party where Bono attempts to connect with old friends is similarly time-locked, couples waltzing and carousing politely while in another corner of the room a hipster palms and awkward bongo beat. A comical peanut-pushing race serves as quixotic culmination.
The film’s violence, though sporadic, is surprisingly brutal and bloody. The film’s dénouement is predictable, telegraphed well in advance by the ham-fisted narration, but the minutes leading up to it are still tense and well-choreographed. Again, Baron earns considerable points for location authenticity and flavor; it’s in the recreation of realistic interaction and dialogue where the production falters. His professional background was in commercial art and comics with film craft largely self-taught. That chemistry catalyzes in his sharp camera angles and astute use of shadow, but fizzles when it comes to the human element. Two weeks tardy for Cannes consideration, but the French press did offer up mystifying conjecture as to whether Baron might be the next Orson Welles. It’s a stretch beyond measure, but his film still stands up as an interesting early Sixties experiment in pushing the boundaries of noir to grim extremes.
~ Derek Taylor
The missive from Mosaic that multitudes have been waiting for appeared in Inboxes across the globe the morning: The Arista Recordings of Anthony Braxton now has an official ballpark street date of October. I’m not as jazzed as some by the news, but can still certainly appreciate its overall import. The diversity of material represented alone is impressive, ranging from cosmic quadruple orchestras to Mr. B by his unflappable lonesome. At eight discs it will require a chunk of change (if my math’s right, $128 plus S&H) to take one home, but given all the anticipatory hoopla that’s encircled the project since gestating rumors first dropped that’s probably only a pittance to most.
Been waiting for this one for awhile, ever since learning of Fat Possum’s acquistion of rights to the George Mitchell tape archives. Mitchell is probably familiar to most readers here, a guy who took the Lomaxes perigrinations as his loose template and traveled the South recording mainly rural musicians. Where he differed somewhat was in his penchant for spending significant time in the communities he visited, building rapport and often deferring to his subjects for direction. Save for a single disc compilation of bluesman Cecil Barfield, they opted to release the material as a series of 45 7” singles. The piecemeal nature of that format wasn’t to my liking, so I kept my wallet buttoned. Same held with with Emusic’s later presentation of portions of the holdings in mp3 form. Instead, I kept periodically pining away for a box set, hoping that one would appear sooner rather than later, subsisting on the scraps previously released on various Arhoolie cd compilations. Months passed and those unrequited desires eventually got buried in a cobwebbed corner of my memory.
A stop by Adam Lore’s indispensible 50 Miles of Elbow Room emporium this morning hipped me to the joyous discovery that my patience has finally paid off (thanks, Adam!). A box set respresenting all 45 volumes does exist and has been available since April. One is winging my way as I type this and I hope to have it hand next week prior to the start of the Deep Blues Festival (see below). I won’t bore readers with the details of the contents. That info is available within a few easy clicks. Suffice it to say that to the fan of country blues and gospel recorded in the field this set represents Rosetta and Grail rolled into one. More when I have the exalted object in my expectant hands….
Apologies for another meme post, but rest assured that its only purpose is to inform one & all that the Bags remodel is progressing apace. The Bags Hardhat Diving Brigade (pictured above in snapshot formation by deckhand Tintin Benoit) is continuing its endeavors under the expert command of the recently returned Al “Namor” Jones. Underwater acetylene torches are ablaze like a swarm of sunken fire flies, applying all manner of upgrades to the rusting barnacle-encrusted Bagatellen bulwark. I’ve been playing the part of desk jockey, trying to keep content current. As noted previously, feedback, suggestions & visions for the site are most welcome so please keep them coming. Toward that end, we’re curious how readers would feel about having a registration feature installed. This would likely mimic the apparatus of other sites in allowing for enhanced interactivity and also enabling a further retardant to interpersonal flammability. We’re shooting for a champagne bottle christening sometime around the first of August.
Friends. Long time, no post. Derek isn't aware I'm publishing this, but I'm sure he won't mind. *cough*
Being blessed with some free time -- I intend to revamp this place. Comparatively, I'm surprised that the community here has stayed more or less active for so long, in that the design and interfaces here at the site haven't changed much since the 2003 inception. Even 1.5x manpower makes management of bagatellen a huge responsibility, thus the less than static state many of you have seen throughout the years (license expirations, data loss, software transfers, blah blah). Derek has been at it solo with help from some contributors since early 2006.
My intentions are as follows, and I strongly desire input and suggestions from you guys and gals:
Additionally, I am considering either upgrading to the latest Movable Type rev, or shifting from the site's Movable Type interface to Wordpress. I am hesitant at this point because of the work that may be involved in the latter. Since our last technical nightmare, MT has become an open source interface and a new, better build is available that I intend to research. Any input on this end is appreciated.
The goal is to first make the site fresher, current, and user-friendly; and second, to relieve Derek and other authors and commenters of the frustrations frequently involved here.
Grad school starts back up for me soon, so time is tight to make these changes. Your input is appreciated.
Just heard word from erstwhile Baganaut Phil Freeman about his recent epic Q&A with Bill Dixon. The good folks at our sister publication The Wire (hopefully none on the masthead take offense at that presumptive ascription) have seen fit to stream the pair’s original phone session in toto. It’s also been boiled down into a 4500-word expose slated to pop in the July paper issue. I haven’t been able to check out any of the goodies yet as my antique work machine doesn’t have audio. But please do so & feel free to share thoughts/comments on the confab herein.
As revered for his brilliant Brechtian documentaries as he is notorious for his control freak tendencies, Fredrick Wiseman loosened the vice grip on his filmic catalog late last year. That surprise move has lead to a boon for followers of his work. No more waiting for blue moon screenings at museums or festivals. No more scouring closed stacks or holding out hope for rarefied inter-library loans in order to view slices of his sizeable cinematic corpus. Twenty-three titles are now available to the general public for purchase in dvd form. Sales so far appear to be robust and in celebration of the windfall the canny folks over at Not Coming to a Theater Near You have been devouring the catalog in earnest. Over a dozen reviews posted and more presumably on the way. The levels of comment and insight are high, particularly in Leo Goldsmith’s parsing of Primate. Do yourself a favor and spend some time perusing the primer and then cruise over to Zipporah Films central and empty the wallet.
Another one gone & this one’s big. Like certain other doyens, Bo Diddley peaked early, coasting through much the last four decades on the crowning acheivements of his Chess catalog. That kind of laurel-resting, while unfortunate, is more than warranted given his indispensible influence on music. Cigar box guitar and maracas made for a magical combination on dozens of Fifties and early Sixties sides that prove the Bo Diddley beat ain’t no joke. It’s a force of nature. One I fully intend to revisit once I get home tonight. Feel free to beat me to the punch by posting some remembrances and insights on the man here.
Heads up to all Mississippi Hill Country blues fans in the Midwestern United States (& beyond!): The second annual Deep Blues Fest is a go for the weekend of July 18th. I had last year’s event at the top of my docket, but a convergence of extenuating circumstances precluded my participation, something I still regret given the audio-visual evidence of what went down assembled on YouTube.
This year’s line-up looks every bit as appealing as last with a horde of delegates from the grittier and grimier side of the blues continuum converging on the Washington County Fairgrounds, a change in venue’s from last year’s storied Golf Course/Country Club hit. Looks like there’s a film festival component this time out too. Full schedule & specs viewable here. Among the headliners I’m itching to witness:
Elmo Williams & Hezekiah Early [caught these two in late ’98 opening for R.L. Burnside @ a Madison, WI tavern. They tore the roof off with a primal collision of amped-up boogie guitar and jackhammer cans]
T-Model Ford [see here]
Juke Joint Duo (feat. Cedric Burnside & Lightnin’ Malcolm) [don’t know Malcom, but Cedric’s lit rhythmic bonfires on a number of choice Fat Possum platters]
Dex Romweber Duo [unclear why Dex isn’t operating under his usual Flat Duo Jets sobriquet, but odds are his stage show will still be a gas]
Bob Log III [I last saw this helmet wearing one-man-band hedonist last in Tucson, summer of ’96, curious to hear how & if his cracked speaker stack sound has evolved]
Luther the Devil [never heard or heard of him, but hell, the name can’t help but give me hope]
Only downside is that Willie Nelson is playing a gig at a Hinckley, MN casino the same weekend and a date with the Red Headed Stranger is damn hard to break.
Jimmy Giuffre, and now Walt D. May is a cruel month is year. Rumors of Dickerson’s return to recording have been circulating for the past few years, spurred mainly by several “out-of-the-blue” interviews (links escape me at the moment) that revealed his activities over the past several decades. He was poised for a comeback on par with the one staged by Henry Grimes, but mortality has caught up and made it an impossibility. As consolation we still have the records, reflective of bursts of activity rather than a steady stream. I did a survey of his Prestige titles for One Final Note back in 2000 & while the prose is a little painful to revisit my sentiments remain the same. The platter pictured above is a bit harder to come by, but it’s worth the search as it’s a split of two sessions w. Rudy McDaniel (soon to be rechristened Jamaladeen Tacuma) and Edgar Bateman or Wilbur Ware and Andrew Cyrille as his running mates. The companion, Tell Us Only of Beautiful Things is even better by my lights, focusing on the Cyrille/Ware tandem over sidelong cuts. Both are rare, but the latter may still be available as a download here. Do check it out if you’re not yet familiar.
Dickerson was a colossus on his instrument and a continuing influence on many who came after. Matt Moran and Jason Andasiewicz are just two descendants that spring to mind. This hastily written appreciation does him little justice, but he certainly sits highly within my personal pantheon. Here’s hoping he’s sharing spirited mallet exchanges with Hampton and Jackson in the great beyond.
Debashish Bhattacharya represents a long tradition of adapting “Western” instruments to “Eastern” modes of expression, in this case a modified Hofner hollow-body guitar, to Indian Classical applications. I think it was the esteemed Professor Bivins who first hipped me to his work, but I can’t recall exactly. However my means of ingress, I’m unequivocally hooked and have been for some time. Bhattacharya’s Indian Archives albums are marvelous and allow for full length excursions through several popular raga forms. The best is probably “Raga Bhimpalasi”, a piece popularized by Ravi Shankar and recorded by the master at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival for World Pacific. Bhattacharya spends much of the first fifty minutes, building and retreating in waves through the alap, jor and jhala sections, his calm detailed picking rippling across a bed of braiding tanpuras. It’s the final thirty or so where his transcendental technique really takes off, partially cued by the entry of Samir Chatterjee’s tablas. “Jaw-dropping” doesn’t even begin to describe the improvisational ingenuity on display as patterns glide by at in a blur without losing anything the way of detail or accuracy. The effect of the whole is literally like an aural cleansing. Listening again on a jog along the Mississippi River this weekend, I was completely swept up, the myriad stressors of the last week washed summarily away.
In the copious notes to these releases, Bhattacharya gently, though repeatedly, laments the “lonely” course of his career development. The relationship of guru and pupil is historically central to Indian Classical music and Bhattacharya’s choice of expression complicated his search for such an arrangement. He eventually studied with a series of teachers, among them Indian slide guitarist-pioneer Brij Bushan Kabra and sarodist Ali Akbar Khan. Kabra’s teaching ran contrary to the customary course as he encouraged Bhattacharya to find his own voice, a directive that initially had a detrimental effect on the student whose desire was to copy his mentor. In reflecting on the experience, Bhattacharya almost seems almost sad that he’s had to devise a language of his own given the ‘foreign’ nature of his instrument. It’s an attitude in stark contrast to that of the typical Western improviser who commonly views individual innovation as paramount over deference to tradition. Time proved Kabra’s decision a savvy one as the mandate for self-reliance led Bhattacharya to seek out a myriad of collaborators, among them John McLaughlin and the Hawaiian steel virtuoso Bob Brozman, which have amplified awareness of his music to a global audience. I have yet to hear those encounters, but the music on his India Archives releases as well as Calcutta Slide Guitar, his debut for the Riverboat label, is an aural body I return to often to renew my sense of wonder.
Jimmy Giuffre has passed, a bittersweet blessing considering the trajectory his life took in the last half decade thanks to Parkinson’s. I have much I could/should write, but sadly not the time to write it right now. Suffice it to say he was a giant and one of my most cherished musical spirits. “The Green Country” is probably my favorite Giuffre tune; a 3-minute reverie of preternatural beauty that I hope will play at my wedding and funeral. Rest in peace, Jimmy.
The Street with No Name straddles the clash-prone genres of noir and FBI procedural better than most films of its ilk. Even so, the docu-drama segments play like unintentional near-parody. In the opening story-establishing scenes, the Hoover-run apparatus springs capably into action. Murder bullets are couriered to the Bureau’s DC crime lab and matched through a “data base” that consists of a filing cabinet with labeled drawers. A suspect is identified and apprehended within hours. One neat, if slightly far-fetched trick involves matching dried paint on the suspect’s coat to a building girder to corroborate an alibi.
Later, at a cinematic precursor to Quantico, an agent is picked out of a litter of recruits like an eager puppy from the pound. His qualifications for undercover work appear to consist solely of being a crack shot and possessing the ability to differentiate friend from foe. Mark Stevens gives a fair turn as the undercover agent Gene Cordell, investing the rather thankless blank slate character with some much needed personality. Cordell takes to his assignment with enthusiasm and resourcefulness, but isn’t infallible as a third reel gaffe on his part leads to potentially dire consequences. His means of infiltrating the criminal gang are at once simple and novel and provide panoramic ingress into the chaotic bustle of a vintage boxing gym as well as some welcome levity.
Director William Keighley deftly negotiates the studio mandate of a spotless and efficient Bureau with grittier doses of reality and bad guy who isn’t a fish in a barrel. Richard Widmark’s Alec Stiles has his own bag of tricks including a clever method of screening new members for his gang that involves carefully orchestrated frame jobs and subsequent access to police records. Stiles is the slow boil sort, cool on the exterior with an explosive temper simmering underneath. Widmark also gives him the slightly unsightly and unsettling habit of sniffing nose drops. His signature menace is present, but bridled much of time, making the periodic explosions of violence all the more effective, as when he guns down a woman in the back in the film’s first few minutes. Camaraderie with his gang comes out of necessity and his ruthlessness remains governed by a calculating intelligence. Stiles personifies a new sort of atomic age gangster, one “building an organization along scientific lines”.
Joe MacDonald’s cinematography is gorgeously gritty, particularly so in the location night scenes. Even with some print wear in evidence, his compositions of shadow and light and sharply contrastive angles give the film a look that easily qualifies it as noir despite the more staid procedural leanings of the plot. The Skid Row of the fictional Center City comes alive through the camera and the cast is similarly stocked with vibrant character actor talent including: Ed Begley, John McIntire and Howard Smith. McIntire in particular distinguishes himself as Cy Gordon, Cordell’s perpetually grave handler. In radio communications with headquarters he even goes so far as to dampen his voice to a somber whisper even though there’s no one else within ear shot to hear him. The script is saturated with period vernacular, but not overblown. One line stands out amongst the hardboiled banter: “The nose, hit him in the nose, it’ll splatter all over his kisser.” It’s a humorously savage sentiment manifested more explicitly in a surprisingly bullet-riddled finale.
Placeholder for discussion on any or all of the following: Oliver Reed, Charles Bukowski, Tallulah Bankhead, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Jackie Gleason, Brendan Behan, The Pogues’ Shane McGowan, Ozzy Osbourne, Winston Churchill, Kingsley Amis, Guided By Voices’ Robert Pollard, Red Sox pitcher David Wells, Modern Drunkard Publisher Frank Kelly Rich, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner. Known collectively under the mantle “Fifteen Famous Drunks” coined by artist Danny Hellman.
Commercial sheet music courtesy the Djll family library.
“At the very bottom of the process of musical development are the howls of the savage; shrill, piercing, and with indefinite pitch. ... Like all folk music, neither boogie woogie nor the blues was created by any one individual. Seemingly, both styles developed from the tribal music of the African savage.”– Sharon Pease, “Boogie Woogie Piano Styles,” 1940. Forster Music Publisher, Inc. (Chicago)
Of the many charming and half-forgotten love-children of the musical genre mixing that emerged during the fertile era of the 1930’s, when jazz music and American popular culture briefly shared the same bed, none had the eventual impact of boogie woogie. Christened with a name that fairly reeked of the world of chippies, cribs, honky-tonks and sporting houses, the boogie woogie style nevertheless enjoyed a brief rage in the early 1940s, faded from national attention and then was reborn, lusty and screaming, in the stomping ivories and honking saxophones under the command of Fats Domino, Little Richard and countless other rock ‘n’ rollers who followed them. It was still showing up decades later, although slowly losing its genetic thread among fuzzbox mutations by the 1970s. Then, during the 1990s, boogie woogie was reanimated and stitched onto that pop music Frankenstein known as “swing and jive,” unwittingly caricatured by pudgy sheiks in goatees and zoot suits, who didn’t seem to know the difference between a Sing, Sing, Sing and a Rocket 88. There’s a special place in Hell on MySpace for them now. But I digress.
The three-disc set Mosaic presents here collects a representative garland of boogie-woogie pianists and small bands recorded between 1935 and 1941, on labels associated with Victor and Columbia. The producers make plain their wish to avoid inclusion of the million-selling big band hits that capitalized on the boogie-woogie craze, such as Tommy Dorsey’s Boogie Woogie and that crushing collision of flag-waving and white hipsteria, The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. An impressive selection of important records in the eight-to-the-bar style is included, although completists must search elsewhere for some key omissions. Notable Decca recordings such as Meade Lux Lewis’ Yancey Special fall outside of the producer’s boundaries. And although Lewis laid down the pioneering boogie wax with Honky Tonk Train Blues in 1927, it is the re-recorded 1936 version that’s here; other progenitors such as Pinetop Smith, Champion Jack Dupree, and Wesley Wallace are unrepresented.
The eccentric style of a pianist like Wallace would be valuable in rounding out a collection like this. Not much is known about him, but his 1929 Chicago recording, No. 29 (included in the Riverside History of Classic Jazz) is a fascinating 6/8 train piece with humorously evocative narration and erratically-timed modulations between just tonic and subdominant keys. It’s unlike any other boogie or blues piano piece I’ve ever heard, and hints at the murky origins of the style as reportedly practiced by long-forgotten itinerant musicians who predated the recording age. Like Wallace, the origins of boogie woogie are obscure, probably stretching back into the ragtime era or possibly earlier. In Blesh & Janis’ They All Played Ragtime, Eubie Blake describes a 300-lb character from Baltimore named William Turk who “had a left hand like God…He could play the ragtime stride bass, but it bothered him because his stomach got in the way of his arm, so he used a walking bass instead. I can remember when I was thirteen – this was 1896 – how Turk would play one note with his right hand and at the same time four with his left. We called it ‘sixteen’ – they call it boogie woogie now.” Blake is probably speaking of a steady 8th-note bass in his description of Turk’s style. Turk, who reportedly played in all keys and sometimes in multiple keys (“and the chords still jelled,” recalled Blake), died in 1911. Blake also told of a Boston pianist from the same generation, One-Leg Willie Joseph, who grabbed a national ragtime prize for his rendition of The Stars and Stripes Forever in march, rag, and ‘sixteen’-time. Blake no doubt carried some of this musical DNA into his own work, evidenced by a 1922 recording of Charleston Rag (not the famous Charleston, by James P. Johnson), which sports tricky reverse-boogie walking bass-anchored themes sandwiched between hard-striding ragtime syncopations. I call it “reverse” because Blake shifts the pattern by an 8th note, and all the accents go with it, making the pattern sound backwards.
Practically all jazz and blues pianists of that era were acquainted with boogie woogie, even if they themselves didn’t play it. When the craze took off, many bands and pianists featured at least one boogie woogie number to please the patrons. Jelly Roll Morton, of all people, though such blues styles were too low down to be taken seriously; Earl Hines scored big with Boogie Woogie On St. Louis Blues but otherwise never touched the stuff; Fats Waller reportedly refused requests to play it altogether (although one listen to his 1942 Up Jumped You With Love proves he did play the style at least once). All this discursion is meant to illustrate that genres, then as now, are fluid melting-pot things, at least in the hands of American musicians. And it provides an introduction to the earliest recordings on the Mosaic boogie woogie set, by Cripple Clarence Lofton, made in 1935 (but presented last in the anthology). Lofton, like Cow Cow Davenport and doubtless others forever lost to time, wasn’t too particular about keeping the rag out of his boogie, and vice versa. He had an interesting half-time bass, heard on Strut That Thing, consisting of one bass quarter note on the root of the chord followed by a quarter note on the remainder of the triad, walking this pattern up and down. The result is as much oompah as boogie. Lofton’s five pieces are all vocal blues numbers, tastefully embellished by Big Bill Broonzy’s guitar. Brown Skin Gal features some charming whistling as well. Lofton’s are really proto-boogie pieces, more in the standard blues idiom of the day.
An acknowledged father of boogie woogie is Jimmy Yancey, whose story illustrates the all too common difficulties faced by many African-American musicians. For much of his life he didn’t own a piano, practicing only occasionally at his sister’s house. He lived in Chicago all his life; after early success traveling in vaudeville as a singer and dancer, he went home to a near-invisible musical existence ground out in rent-parties and seedy bar gigs. Yancey’s day job was groundskeeper at Comiskey Park. But with the help of Meade Lux, who recorded Yancey Special (which was then picked up by the Bob Crosby band and made a hit), in 1939 Moe Asch and Victor both tracked down Yancey and brought him into their studios. All the Victors are included in the Mosaic set, along with four sides for Vocalion for a total of seventeen. It’s great to finally have them all in one place and mastered well for CD, for they are stone classics of American music of any era or genre. It’s hard to know where to start digging – every piece is varied in rhythm, key, and mood, offering multitudes of pianistic pleasures. Yancey’s style was pure 12-bar blues with a strong beat, spare and no-nonsense. He didn’t announce his pieces with flashy introductions – on the contrary, many of his records start off seemingly in mid-sentence, catching the listener off-guard. State Street Special is a supreme example of his art. It starts out light and breezy but quickly gets down and funky. Yancey’s bass keeps shifting between about six different figurations, with a fluidity that would be astonishing if it weren’t so fully integrated with the right-hand syncopations, and therefore not attention-calling. For the last couple of choruses Yancey slyly segues into a steady boogie beat, using plenty of space and keeping the dynamics down for the initial chorus before hammering out strident blue-note octaves on top in the second (a variation of an earlier chorus) – suddenly ending with his standard tag-line stop. It’s one perfect performance. Yancey Stomp is a fast rocker with a couple of dazzling breaks in the middle. Five O’Clock Blues delivers a deeply felt meditation (although it doesn’t reach the level of enlightenment of Yancey’s 1951 Atlantic re-recording of the same set of variations under the name Mournful Blues. Like many great musicians, Yancey recycled material as he pleased – 35th And Dearborn and Cryin’ In My Sleep also contain variations of the same choruses.). A couple of times Yancey stumbles momentarily, generating some creative tension, as on Yancey’s Bugle Call, with its skin-of-my-teeth breaks (especially the unissued take). The Vocalions and three of the Victor sides feature Yancey’s vocals, which on the Vocalions are rather oddly formal. Yancey’s enunciation sounds professionally coached, defying our expectations of what low-down blues is “supposed to sound like.” The Victor Cryin’ In My Sleep and Death Letter Blues offer Yancey vocals that sound more “authentic.” (Which brings up a perplexing question: which was indeed the authentic sound of Jimmy Yancey’s voice? Was it the producer at Vocalion who specified a “more legitimate” (i.e., white) vocal sound, or someone at Victor who urged the artist to “black it up?” One could imagine either scenario as a scheme to boost sales, albeit to differently-pigmented audiences. Or, less conspiratorially, is the stilted singing on the Vocalion date – Yancey’s debut on records – the result of opening-night jitters, or a flashback to his vaudeville days?) (Another aside: Yancey had a brother Alonzo, also a pianist, who recorded a few sides in the 1940s. They show him to be solidly in the ragtime school, with scant blues touches.)
Yancey remained clear of the limelight practically all his life. On the other hand, at the crest of the boogie craze, three other black pianists brought authentic boogie woogie to concert halls and high-class clubs in New York. One should not be surprised to see the name John Hammond come into the discussion at this point, for it was he who first presented Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, and Pete Johnson in New York, opening the 1938 Spirituals To Swing concert at Carnegie Hall (Dan Morgenstern, who wrote the jolly liner notes for the Mosaic package, calls Hammond the “deus ex machina of boogie woogie.” He might well have said “of American popular music in the 20th century.) All three of these “discoveries” of Hammond’s were much more schooled and comprehensive piano players than itinerant bluesmen like Yancey and Lofton. But that didn’t guarantee steady gigs for them – Hammond found Lewis working at a car wash in Chicago, and Ammons and Johnson had been cab-drivers on and off to bring in the bread. After their debut at Carnegie, though, that changed – for a while, anyway. Soon Ammons and Johnson had a duo going at the very democratic Café Society (integrated bandstand and audience) and recordings on big-time labels. Albert Ammons (father of saxophonist Gene) was the earthier and more rhythmically solid of the two – he’s another guy with “a left hand like God.” Ammons has just one solo recording in the set, Shout For Joy (in two takes), which is a peerless example of the boogie woogie style. After a Big Ben chiming intro, the God-hand digs into a timeless boogie figure – anyone acquainted with Dizzy Miss Lizzy will recognize it. Like Lewis and to a lesser extent Pete Johnson, Ammons gives over the last eight bars of each chorus to a standardized cadence that doesn’t vary much on repeats. It’s a common blues form. Contrast this with the “primitive” Yancey, who was less prone to this habit.
Lewis, Johnson and Ammons are all on hand for the two-part Boogie Woogie Prayer, presumably a reprise of the music they had created together just days before at Hammond’s Carnegie Hall concert. It’s a thick, roiling stew of blue pianistics, not terribly varied in texture, locked into three-chord harmony and 12-bar cycling, but one can imagine the impact this relentlessly rhythmic music must have had on your average white audient in 1938. Certainly record producers felt a new kind of freedom, the kind that would soon tool up the dreadful assembly line of Bumble Boogies and Bugle Boys and the rest of that sour ilk. And the public was there to lap it up, along with the fables about African savages and so forth. Whites could enjoy the thrill of being “hip to the jive” while their received notions of Afro-primitivism remained intact.
Eight performances from 1941 by the Ammons-Johnson duo (with discreet drumming) finish out disc one, and they offer seamless, mildly commercialized boogie for the downtown trade. Worth singling out is Cuttin’ the Boogie, an easy-going ramble that showcases the kind of contrapuntal extravaganza the duo could produce. It’s not possible to fully disentangle the two pianists for a who-did-what, but it’s a good bet Ammons is doing most of the bass work. Johnson, a more versatile jazz pianist, handles at least some of the fancy high-register filigrees. In the middle, a thicket of riffs spills from the keys. The duo would gig with dual pianos, but in practice just used one, thus enabling them to work on keeping out of each other’s way. On the records, we get intertwining lines, which, like relay runners, pass the melodic lead off to each other as they cross. It can all get pretty frenetic, as on a fast-tempo number like Boogie Woogie Man. Towards the climax, the groove doubles up as the walking basses run up and down the lower keyboard registers and the riffs pile up like a ten-layer double chocolate cake, thick, rich and bewitching.
Johnson and Ammons get to show a jazzier side on a few sides with swing trumpeter Harry James. On the boogie numbers, James sounds fenced in by the eight-to-the-bar rhythm – his ideas are less adventurous than usual and at times the excitement sounds forced. Things lighten up considerably for the non-boogie pieces; Home James has Johnson fingering in the Teddy Wilson mode in his solos and exchanges with trumpet. The previously unreleased Jesse has Ammons striding forcefully in a minor thing reminiscent of Dark Eyes (as Morgenstern points out; but his pianist attributions for this session don’t agree with the discography. My ears say the latter is correct.).
Pete Johnson’s work with the monumental blues shouter Joe Turner is more representative, and these are essential sides in both their catalogs. Turner worked as a singing bartender in Kansas City, where he and Johnson often performed together in the 1930s. The duo has two pieces on disc one: Goin’ Away Blues has Pete serving up a stride bounce and virtuosic tremolos. Roll ‘Em Pete was their showpiece, and Turner was still belting out “You’re so beautiful baby, but you’ve got to die someday” in 1977 in Chicago (although by that time you could hardly understand the words – as he aged, Big Joe gradually excised consonants from his delivery). Disc two of the Mosaic set opens with Pete Johnson And His Boogie Woogie Boys, a sextet offering sublime slices of Kaycee swinging the blues. Hot Lips Page and Buster Smith (Charlie Parker’s elusive mentor on one of his rare recording dates) make the front line backing Big Joe on four numbers. Cherry Red is a relaxed blues with a delicious ensemble opening and clear, forthright choruses from the singer, while Baby, Look At You again limns the “you’re so beautiful” refrain, at a jumping tempo. Smith breaks out with smooth alto and Page – one of the all-time hot blues instrumentalists – boils away behind a tight mute. Then Johnson takes over and demonstrates bear-like tenacity in his solo, carrying the whole band in the out-choruses. On Jump For Joy, at a similar brisk tempo, Pete gets three stride choruses and demonstrates he could hold his own against any piano player of the day (the magisterial Tatum excepted). Lips sounds especially nasty in the opening to Lovin’ Mama Blues, while Smith backs Turner’s vocal with a natty obbligato. Despite the band’s name, the session doesn’t offer a lot of boogie, but it’s wonderful small-group jazz nonetheless. From the same date comes a curiosity, Café Society Rag (Morgenstern calls it “not a rag, not a blues, but a boogie-flavored romp on jazz changes”). Johnson, Ammons and Lewis are back as a piano trio while Turner calls out the switch-hitters (“Donald Duck swing…better known as Lux!”).
Turner gets in more soulful vocalizing on a couple of pick-up dates from 1940, led by Joe Sullivan and Benny Carter. On Low Down Dirty Shame with the Sullivan group, he’s ably answered by Benny Morton’s trombone and Edmond Hall’s clarinet. Also in the frontline was trumpeter Ed Anderson; little-known now, he gets well-met exposure on two takes of I Can’t Give You Anything But Love. The leader was not known as a boogie pianist but as an effective stride player of the vanilla persuasion; in the event, Sullivan doesn’t shame himself on Low Down Dirty. Carter’s group sounds lush, not surprising given the leader’s silky demeanor as well as the presence of two more horns. Morton is back on trombone, along with Bill Coleman, that most insinuating trumpeter (he deserves more recognition, if anyone does), Georgie Auld on tenor, sounding as always like Ben Webster with a lung removed, and Benny Carter himself on clarinet. Other members of the group were drawn from Carter’s working big band, making it a comfortable, well-balanced session. Mosaic gives us two takes of two tunes each. As Morgenstern notes, Turner doesn’t sound all too comfortable on Beale Street Blues, experimenting on both takes with mic proximity and timbre, clipping off his phrases in an un-swinging way, and getting words scrambled. But then the high-flying Coleman takes wing and all is well again for the nonce.
The rest of disc two is taken up with a grab-bag of small group recordings generated by the boogie woogie craze, mostly performed by superior jazz groups led by Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton, and Henry “Red” Allen. Wilson seems an unlikely acolyte to the cause, and A Touch Of Boogie gives a hint as to how much boogie the buyer will get. But after several exemplary swing solos, a full-band flourish announces the plunge into that low-down groove. Lionel Hampton doesn’t waste any time in Munson Street Breakdown (October 1939), a boogie blues with a diminished release à la Air Mail Special. Hampton plays piano and vibes in turn, opening with driving walking-bass on the ivories. Central Avenue Breakdown takes off similarly, but this time Hamp shares the keyboard with Nat “King” Cole, flitting around in the (mostly out of tune) upper register using his patented two-finger technique. This gambit may have represented little more than a vaudevillian trick, but it didn’t sound like anybody else’s piano playing, either, and Hampton managed in similar showpieces to prefigure some bop clichés by several years. (Another Hampton small-group recording from 1939, Sweethearts On Parade, is more profoundly prophetic: In it, Hamp and his men manage to conjure up the kind of perfect in-the-pocket shuffle that practically defined the early rhythm & blues era, complete with booting tenor saxophone (courtesy of Chu Berry).) The third and last Hampton entry, Bouncing At The Beacon, features Hamp’s working LA combo featuring Marshall Royal on alto and Lester Young’s brother Lee on drums. Sir Charles Thompson is given the bass-piano duties while once more the leader tinkles all over the top of the keyboard (with his two fingers, mind you); Royal contributes a not-ready-for-prime-time solo, bristling with odd notes. The two takes of K.K. Boogie from “Red” Allen shows the direction his band was taking in ‘41, from a kind of advanced Dixieland towards a jump band like that of Louis Jordan’s. Kenny Kersey is the pianist here (Yep! – same guy as on Cootie Williams’ 1942 recording of Thelonious Monk’s Epistrophy), jumping in on a galloping bass; when he solos, he drops the boogie in favor of fleet Wilsonian figures.
Finally, Mosaic offers several cuts from the Will Bradley-Freddie Slack-Ray McKinley nexus, and they’re the most blandly commercial sides in the set. Bradley and McKinley waxed a boogie woogie hit early in the craze, Beat Me Daddy (Eight To The Bar) that led to these sides. To be fair, they are very well played, and perhaps it’s unfair to dis them for commercialism, since the music’s equally as far from the kind of sonic oatmeal cooked up by the Kay Kysers and Sammy Kayes of the day as it is from “real” boogie woogie. It’s just that this listener finds nothing so cringe-worthy as white folks doing blackface, or in this instance, blackvoice. Ray McKinley’s singing is especially unfortunate in this regard. The man seemed to have no inhibitions; but then, they tell me he hailed from Texas (and no doubt was raised in Tennessee, as the song goes). He not only does the blackvoice but in falsetto on the first take of Southpaw Serenade. Thankfully, Columbia released the other take. (Right after the war, Ray McKinley hired Eddie Sauter as arranger for his big band and recorded a suite of Sauter’s forward-looking compositions, so I guess I forgive him. Will Bradley, for his part, later became a “serious” composer in thrall to the works of Alban Berg. Who’da thunk it?) Trombonist Bradley takes the interlocutor role to McKinley’s Mista Bones (well, not quite literally) on the novelty Down The Road A-Piece, and the two old boys blithely traffic their “Man, Ise a-goin’s” and “I sho would lak dat’s” while Slack keeps up the rhythm in acceptable fashion. During the bass solo, Slack splashes a few notes on a celesta, followed by McKinley’s whistling (and all that while he plays the drums! Heavens to Betsy!). The listener is treated to three takes of this three-ring circus. I’m not well acquainted with Freddie Slack’s work, but Mosaic’s producers hold him in some regard, having already released a Mosaic Select three-disker of his band from the early 1940s. The guest list looks pretty decent.
There’s one remaining pianist in Mosaic’s anthology I want to mention as a kind of icing on this rich, chocolaty cake, and that is Mary Lou Williams. She arranged a piece for Andy Kirk’s band called Little Joe From Chicago, and subsequently recorded another, entirely different, solo piano piece by the same name, which opens disc three. It’s an enchanting walking-bass boogie all the way, conceived as only Mary Lou Williams could, i.e., far out. For one thing, her walking bass covers more pianistic ground than most, venturing into the middle of the keyboard by the end of chorus three, with descending chromatic thirds on top emphasizing a diminished scale, producing a momentary bitonal crunch. She uses and extends blues changes but ignores any set form – she’s improvising like a jazz player, not a blues player. Then she switches to minor blues changes and confines the bass to a narrower, deeper range, giving the music an evil face. All the way through, her touch, dynamics and figurations are tightly controlled yet swinging and propulsive. The music stays at the same level of rhythmic intensity throughout, never getting too hot or showy. Mary Lou was always cool – and comfortably ahead of the times. Even more than Hampton, she was playing bop-like music when bop was yet to be. Kudos to Mosaic for including this overlooked orphan in this musical family reunion. And let the good times roll.
~ Tom Djll
Apologies to anyone who’s felt aggravation as a side effect of visiting the site over the past few days (if it’s any consolation, I’m among that number). The posting problems were finally localized to a faulty Pearl script module that got compromised in a recent behind the scenes mandatory host upgrade (largely Greek speak to me). A friendly server tech helped me with the fix and (knock on cast iron ship’s hull) it should be relatively smooth sailing from here on out. Such assurances have a nasty habit of falling short of certainty though, so please keep me appraised of any further headaches or hitches. Enough “meta”, back to the music (& film?)… Couple new reviews to peruse including a Hamid Drake record I really wanted to dig more than I do.
This slice of surreal Eighties cinema seems custom made to invoke conflicting feelings in regard to relative quality. The clunky script is peppered with curious non sequiturs and leaps in logic. Dated doesn’t even begin to describe the look and mood. But the sizeable list of faults folds up curiously into a viewing experience that is hard to shake. In an odd way, Miracle Mile is a West Coast counterpart to Martin Scorcese’s After Hours. The plot plays out in much the same fashion: boy meets girl, boy chases girl, and boy loses girl, all within a fish-out-of-water urban milieu. The difference comes with the central conceit, one that amplifies the story arc to apocalyptic proportions.
Anthony Edwards plays Harry Washello, a twenty something trad jazz trombonist, with typically bemused befuddlement. Visiting Los Angeles for a gig, he spends his off hours at a natural history museum located near the La Brea Tar Pits. There he encounters Mare Winngham’s Julie, a vaguely punk rock/New Wave waif who looks the spitting image of Ziggy Stardust’s sister. It’s a case of fledgling love at first sight. The pair shares a few magical hours together, but their courtship is cut short by the start of Julie’s waitress shift a Johnnie’s Diner (a local landmark). Harry suggests that they reconvene when she gets off and reluctantly returns to his hotel for a nap. Fate has other designs as a discarded cigarette leads circuitously to a short circuited alarm clock. Arriving back at the diner several hours late and discovering Julie long gone, Harry despairs. Picking up a chance call on the pay phone outside, his entire life (as well as those of the other diner patrons) changes irrevocably.
The film’s catalyst is a good one: a wrong number from a missile silo forewarning that a little over an hour remains before the West Coast is consumed in nuclear conflagration. Harry initially considers it a crank, but events converge that begin to dispel his doubts. What follows transpires with dream-like logic as the minutes on the clock tick inexorably by. Harry’s quest to reunite with Julie and secure safety for them both is beset by a darkly comic string of setbacks. Quirky humor is colored with strikingly dissonant explosions of violence. The Tangerine Dream soundtrack also aids immeasurably in this regard, relying on layered synth tones that mirror the early morning alieness of the city and a multiplying sense of dread.
Director Steve De Jarnatt deals strangely with the elements of time and perspective. An opening montage optimistically recounts the evolution of humankind from sea-dwelling amoeba to bipedal mammal, only to be revealed as a stock museum short. Eras and styles converge and conflict. The kitsch interiors of Johnny’s Diner contrast with the steel and concrete of adjacent skyscrapers. Harry’s vocation and an intimated fondness for vintage RKO films stands starkly against the ennui and impersonality of modern L.A. The fossil preserving tar pits serve as starting point and terminus. Weird stereotypes also abound, perhaps most egregiously in a segment set in an early hours gym constructed of neon and glass, the hairsprayed Spandex-sheathed occupants looking like hellish extras from an Olivia Newton John video. The final reel delivers on the tension and unease depicted in these fomenting incongruities. It does so with an uncompromising denouement that brings the underlying truth contained in that stage setting museum short harrowingly home. This is definitely a filmic example of the whole surpassing the sum of the parts, an artifact of an earlier era that still resonates potently regardless of the passage of time.
One of the peripheral reason for my move to Minneapolis six years ago was the regularity with which Bob Mould makes tour stops to the municipality. His Twin Cities roots run deep and the ties remain intact. I’ve written about Mould several times in these pages, the entries reflecting the ups and downs in my affinity for his music. Detours into dance club electronica and a propensity for angsty lyrics no matter how earnest haven’t always been rewarding moves. His new record, District Line, still hasn’t quite reconciled the stylistic incongruities, but as with past efforts the gold content still largely outweighs the pyrite.
Mould played First Avenue last night to a respectable, but hardly packed crowd, the first gig in a 20 city tour. It’s hard to approximate the number of times he’s played that particular stage since the early Hüsker years, but it has to number in the triple digits. I hit the venue early enough to catch the opening act, Halou, a five-piece from San Francisco mired in its self-conscious mix of indie rock influences. Two guitarists, one doubling on keyboards, crafted a melismatic sea of feedback around a female singer. The drummer and bassist were largely anonymous. Their short set left little of a lasting impression and felt more like a distraction.
Mould and crew set up quickly with a line-up nearly the same as the last time they rolled through save for the absence of Brendan Canty on drums, replaced by new recruit whose name escaped me. A soundcheck of the signature cerulean Strat elicited a few cheers from the audience. The set opened strangely with a string of vintage Sugar songs starting with “The Act We Act” and “A Good Idea”. Mould and bassist Jason Narducci lept and sprinted all over the stage, hammering on their instruments and building fast, finger-abrading versions of the tunes. Drinking in the clumsy histrionics, I couldn’t help reflecting on Mould’s reasoning behind retiring from touring in the late-Nineties, essentially that he didn’t want to end up a parody of himself. While the music was definitely rocking, the visuals seemed bear out, at least partially, the wisdom of this tack. Narducci’s explosive and exaggerated string plucks were particularly amusing in this regard, his beanpole frame stalking the stage and wobbling wildly at the knees. From my balcony perch, keyboardist Richard Morel (also a collaborator on Mould’s DC-based DJ project Blowoff) was obscured behind a row of garbage receptacles, but his contributions sounded modest by comparison, designed more for color than prominence. The exception: a late set rendition of “Circles” where Morel’s sparse accompaniment of Mould’s vocals beautifully presaged the coming ferocity of the amplified strings.
The next half dozen songs zoomed by in a blur with Mould touching on “See a Little Light”, “Egøveride”, “I Am Vision I Am Sound” and others from his solo canon. Banter was minimal, until he paused and wryly mused “oh yeah, the new album”. I counted three from that source, “The Silence Between Us”, “Again and Again” and “Miniature Parade”, and all translated well to the live quartet, shorn of most of their production accoutrements and boiled down to rock-receptive cores. Still, I couldn’t shake the rushed feeling of their delivery as if the band were intent on reaching the finish line in record time. Part of the problem was the distracting presence of a drunk fan on the balcony stairs in front of me. His stumbling impressions of Richard Nixon and repeated near tumbles down the stairs continued despite interventions by myself and others and he swiftly became an abject lesson in the ineptitude of the First Avenue event staff. To put it another way, it’s apparently easier to be impeached as a president than it is to get 86’d from the Ave.
A one-two punch of Hüsker standards, “I Apologize” and the immortal “Celebrated Summer” primed the audience for an unexpected finale choice. Mould seemed re-energized by the shift in repertoire, particularly on the second, his hallmark song. It’s a number he’s played countless times, but remains a near perfect piece of melodic song craft, equally effective in the service of a full electric band or a lone acoustic guitar. A slight pause and Mould signed off a selection that surpassed my most fanciful expectations: the old Hüsker chestnut “Divide and Conquer”, my favorite entry in the band’s somewhat-mouldy (sorry) songbook. Apparently I wasn’t alone in my affection as the crowd erupted at the strains of the familiar racing loop riff and Mould’s shout-sung lyrics:
“Well they divided up all the land
And we've got states and cities
Cities have their neighborhoods
And more subdivisions
There's countries divided by walls
Oceans and latitudes
And longitude, longing to find out
Just what they're missing
They're lots of area codes
And nine-digit zip codes
Secret decoder ring codes
Arteries, shopping nodes
We'll invent some new computers
Link up the global village
And get AP, UPI, and Reuters
To tell everybody the news
[ Lyrics accessible from http://www.rare-lyrics.com ]
We'll be one happy neighborhood
Spread out across the world
But who's going to stop that burglar
From breaking in to my house
If he lives that far away
We'll be just like old friends
No means to your ends
The police state is to busy
And the neighborhood's getting out of hand
It's not about my politics
Something happened way too quick
A bunch of men who played it sick
They divide, conquer
It's all here before your eyes
Safety is a big disguise
That hides among the other lies
They divide, conquer
Well I expect I won't be heard
Because my silence is assured
Never a discouraging word
They divide and conquer
They divide and conquer”
I suppose the choice makes perfect sense given the long-standing cultural and political climate around these parts, but it was still an unmitigated thrill to hear the old man run down the song with such sound and fury. And Narducci’s bodily exaggerations had finally found a vessel apposite of the energy expenditure. An encore was forthcoming, but I felt compelled to split since nothing could have topped the closer.
With results certain to be tabulated and circulated in serious academic circles, please take part in this impromptu scientific poll:
What is your favorite Black Sabbath song AND why (100 words or less)?
Long before he became the befuddled NRA rube caught in Michael Moore’s dubious documentarian/contrarian crosshairs, Charlton Heston had a respectable Hollywood career. He built it on chiseled-jaw turns in biblical epics The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, later dystopian sci-fi operas like Planet of the Apes and Soylent Green, and a slew of other genre productions that demanded an action-oriented lead. Westerns were another dramatic outlet and Will Penny sits squarely as Heston’s defining turn in such role. Directed and scripted by Tom Gries, the film tracks the circuitous path of the titular character, an aging, itinerant and illiterate cowboy who gradually finds himself confronted by a crisis of self. It’s revisionist in its attention to realism and self-reflection, but Gries balances the psychology with a fair share of traditional Western action and melodrama. His visual sense owes much to John Ford and Budd Boetticher with regular wide shots of Eastern Sierra locations and detailed attention paid to recreating the harsh and filthy conditions of frontier life.
A protracted prologue sketches a character study of Penny and his cohort as they escort a herd from trail to sale. Heston plays him close to the chest and the film is all the better for it. He’s a man of few words guided by pragmatism forged through a life lived mainly alone. His friendships are few and fleeting and it’s difficult to draw a bead on his personality in the beginning. With thick moustache, facial scruff and a five gallon hat clamped down over his pate, he bears uncanny resemblance to Warren Oates at a distance.
Gries fleshes the cowboy contingent out with a near-perfect cast of character actors including Slim Pickens, Clifton James, Robert Luster, Anthony Costello, and later Ben Johnson. A youthful Lee Majors plays Blue, the closest thing Penny has to a confidant, with an easy aw-shucks manner and Anthony Zerbe completes the trio as Dutchy, a largely ineffectual immigrant cowpoke with a faulty accent. The three soon run afoul of Preacher Quint and his familial band of outlaws. Donald Pleasance’s Quint is typical of the actor’s more over-the-top performances, comically devout and prone to violently psychotic outbursts. Bruce Dern and George Rutherford play his loutish and lascivious sons to the hilt. While certainly entertaining, Quint and his crew are caricatures and personify one of the film’s flaws.
Repeated run-ins with the Quint family frame Penny’s peregrinations as do encounters with a widow and child played by Joan Hackett and the director’s son Jon. The latter relationship gradually leads to Penny’s personal crisis as the closed-off manner in which he’s lived his life comes under assault with the realization of other alternatives. Heston handles the transition in outlook beautifully, conveying the awkwardness of a man used to solitude awakening to the pleasures and perils of emotional company. Hackett does a decent job on the other side of the equation as well, capturing the fish-out-of-water elements of her character coupled with a budding fondness for an individual far removed from her realm of experience or comfort.
These earnest and occasionally over-drawn human moments don’t detract from the quotient of western-calibrated violence. The film features unexpectedly gory altercations, even flirting with rape and child murder. One scene dips into the disturbingly surreal, depicting a deranged hoedown by the Quints where Pleasance lets his freak flag fly maniacally to the wild accompaniment of Jew’s harp and harmonica. Gries script has some great darkly comic touches too as when Penny and Blue stop off for a whiskey binge, leaving a gut-shot Dutchy bleeding out in the wagon. Shots poured, this exchange follows:
“How’s it taste?”
“Dunno, but it definitely burns a dollar’s worth.”
Aside from the purple acting of Pleasance, the film also has several other faults. The story’s time frame is difficult to ascertain, but the presence of plastic rain slickers seems totally incongruous with the otherwise carefully constructed 19th century milieu. The closing credits deliver another debilitating minus as the hackneyed strains of crooner Don Cherry’s “The Lonely Rider” demolish much of the depth of the decidedly downbeat denouement, though the misstep is not enough to diminish it completely. Heston is but a shell of his former self these days and an easy target. This film harkens back to happier times when he could readily hold his own and is one of the finest in his cinematic folio.
Few, if any, bands surpass the Dead in terms of tape archive magnitude. Despite best attempts by legions of fans, an exact inventory of every concert, session and rehearsal committed to tape is probably impossible. The same goes double for Sun Ra whose discography resembles a scintillating mosaic of asteroids in an orbital belt, constantly shifting and extremely difficult to quantify. One thing’s for sure though, there’s an awful lot of it sift through. From piles of hand-pressed and painted vinyl to stacks of barely and often-mislabeled cassettes and reel-to-reels, the Ra archive is one of celebratory chaos. Order was a condition meant for the music’s creation, not its dissemination.
The tiny Transparency label has been making in-roads into organizing some of the more obscure entries, first with a string of DVD releases and soon after with an adjoining series of CDs. The newest projects are a pair of limited edition CDR box sets. Announced a few months ago and available via mail order in the interim they’re now making the rounds of retailers like Downtown Music Gallery and Jazz Loft at middleman-boosted prices. The scope of each is something to marvel at and somewhat akin to a Fatman and Little Boy relationship, if you’ll forgive the atomic analogy.
The Complete Detroit Jazz Center Residency: December 26, 1980 – January 1, 1981 packages an entire 11-concert New Year’s eve stand by the band onto 28 discs and clocks at over 26 hours(!) The 14-piece incarnation of the Arkestra holds court on over a hundred compositions and group improvisations. Audio is surprisingly decent, the product of soundboard sources. Two poster-sized pages give a rundown of both set lists and band members. The smaller Live at the Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto, Canada 1978 culls eight hours of material from three different dates onto ten discs. The Arkestra on hand for these shows is slightly smaller, but basically the same in membership and again, fidelity, while a bit boxy, is more than listenable.
I’ve been living with both sets for about the past two weeks and predictably haven’t been able to carve out much time to spend with them thus far. A warts-and-all philosophy pervades, but it’s also to be privy to the music without the potential distractions of major interruptions or edits. The Horseshoe set is a bit problematic in that individual tunes do not appear to be indexed into tracks and accompanying set lists are not included, but Michael @ Transparency assures me that the information is forthcoming. The entire production operation consists only of himself and a recently hired employee. Given the time and effort necessary to construct each box, they’re both keeping very busy trying to keep up with the steady stream of orders. More boxes are planned for the near future, but honestly, I’m wondering when, if ever, I’ll be able to digest the entirety of these initial ones. Still, the promise of further installments is enough to cause the collector gene in my DNA helix to vibrate expectantly. As I’m so fond of quoting, “addiction ain’t fiction”.
A couple of weeks back the Naval War College in Newport, RI hosted a guest speaker, Dr. Hank Brightman, to discuss the evolution of the insurgency in Iraq and the mathematical model that may assist in tackling problems steeped in chaos.
Brightman's an expert in Game Theory and uses the concept of Nash Equilibrium -- yes, that Nash -- to explore the destabilization of groups (large tactical units, or small insurgent nests) and vulnerabilities over time. Better, that 2 or more opposing "players", given the most optimal choices and moves in a game, will approach an equilibrium as long as all sides are making the most informed tactical decisions in their playing of the game. As long as this happens, the payoff hovers only to reduce in value, such that the end of the game itself slowly becomes as attractive as the payoff. The longer two sides hold one another near payoff, the less value they are willing to accept at its end.
Brightman's article applied to Jund al-Samaa clashes in Najaf requires more than a cursory read, but the content and theories he posits are worth strong consideration, not just through the lens of conflict, but in other areas that require strategic thinking. Maybe someone would be willing to tackle the concept of "strange attractor" and its applicability in music.
Head out to the hinterlands for the weekend & there’s no telling what disaster may strike in one’s absence. It seems Bagatellen’s domain registration expired sometime on Friday summarily sinking the works and leaving more than a few readers scratching their heads. Petty Officer Pinnell sprang into action, firing up the Sikorski rotors and setting out on a split-second rescue mission across white-capped seas…
On the reality side of my tall tale, copious thanks to Richard for taking charge in such a timely fashion & covering the cost of a registration re-up. He’s graciously refused remuneration, which makes the gesture all the more generous. Apologies to anyone who attempted a visit earlier in the weekend and found only evidence of a possible site demise.
A rhetorical question to be sure, but the musical coordinates can be found in the catalog of Lu Watters. Not a name that sparks much recognition in the minds of current jazz intelligentsia, Watters played an important niche part in keeping the traditional jazz repertory spirit alive from the Forties forward. Fortunately, the bulk of his catalog is still available via a box set put out by the good folks at Fantasy, The Complete Good Time Jazz Recordings. Watters had a cherubic visage, kind of a Chet Baker with baby fat intact, and a commercial-friendly Caucasian pedigree. The band name* borrowed from that of a Bay Area record shop and musician hangout. But seeing as Watters’ took Satchmo as his most immediate musical sourcebook, I prefer to think of it as an under the table reference the herbaceous ‘tea’ leaves that were Armstrong’s tonic of choice. Curiously, the set makes no mention of the possible corollary even though it seems an obvious one.
Watters deviated from the Armstrong model several important ways, chief among them the addition of a second cornet to his frontline (a la King Oliver). Bob Scobey proved an inspired choice for the slot. Trombonist Turk Murphy and clarinetists Ellis Horne or Bob Helm completed the horn section. One session, recorded during Watters’ wartime absence with trumpeter Bob Strickler pinch-hitting even featured the licorice sticks in tandem. The earliest sides plugged in tuba for string bass and also relied on the dueling banjos of Clancy Hayes and Russ Bennett for extra rhythmic potency. Watters’ experimented little with the instrumentation once established, preferring to concentrate instead on building a working band and reliable repertoire in line with classic Crescent City convention. Spanning the band’s recording debut in December of 1941 through its initial swan song in August 1947, the music is gloriously and unapologetically anachronistic.
Most of the sessions come from live air shots and while the fidelity is frequently far from ideal, the raucous atmosphere of venues like the Avalon and Dawn Club bleed persuasively into the acetates. Set lists tap tunes from the usual suspects: Bunk Johnson (who split an LP w/ Yerba Buena), Jelly Roll Morton, Kid Ory, Oliver, Scott Joplin and original muse Satchmo are all represented in the band songbook of rags, stomps and blues. Individual tracks all tie off in the two to three-minute range, but Watters’ arrangements are tight and terse enough not to require further elaboration. The repertory feel remains resolute and any liberties taken are relatively minor. Why then even give these sides the time of day when superior versions of many of the songs are available from earlier more renowned sources? It’s a good question and one I’d answer by arguing that what Watters’ adds to soup isn’t innovation, but personalized veneration. There’s brio and jubilance in these performances that cuts to the quick of what the band’s more celebrated sources were also aiming for. Preservationist though their efforts might have been, Watters and his crew didn’t treat the music as staid stone tablets secluded behind museum glass. In true populist fashion, they held them heartily aloft and paraded them around the town square.
Echoing that which it explicates, the booklet is very nearly a work of art, comprehensive in its inclusion of annotations and ephemera that encompass original liner notes to all of the Good Time albums as well as color facsimiles of the album art. The latter feature deserves special mention as the San Francisco city shots by photographer Fred Lyon give the records distinctive local flavor. Essays and anecdotes are plentiful, documenting Watters’ various musical triumphs as well as the commensurate hard-drinking and womanizing that often went along with them. A concluding portrait by two non-musician friends delves into his colorful eccentricities and activities post-Yerba Buena as an activist, ornithologist, botanist and fisherman. Watters’ ascendancy was comparatively brief and his name now is little more than a footnote. Exposure to these sounds doesn’t necessarily call foul such a curtailed career arc, but it certainly opens the door for reappraisals. In the meantime, that map to fabled Yerba Buena remains readily within reach.
[*“Yerba buena” also refers to various strains of aromatic medicinal mint]
Cliché as the saying may be, the right picture really is worth a thousand words. Peter Gannushkin’s Downtownmusic.net has been mentioned before in these pages and a convenient link has nestled in the cluttered Bags Points of Interest section for years. Still, given the scope and longevity of his enterprise (no sign of lapsing or lagging in nearly seven years) another shout out is hardly out of order. The man appears a tireless shutterbug, snapping any and all improvisers who touch down and hold court in the Five Boroughs area. Thanks to his lens I’ve been able to put face to name on dozens of musicians from old guard heroes like Charles Burnham and Joe Daley to younger talent like Tyshawn Sorey and Daniel Levin. To put it in another frame of reference: Gannushkin’s camera captured the visual contents of several hundred gigs last year alone. That impressive figure telescopes to a couple thousand over the site’s run thus far. His preference is for close-ups, presumably for easier indexing of shots by subject’s name, but many of the full ensemble compositions could easily qualify as album cover material. Some no doubt have. There’s also an admirable balance between color and black & white. Long sell short: it’s a library of images that consumes hours if your not careful.
Downside, though it’s a perfectly understandable one and a savvy move on the part of Gannushkin: None of the images lend themselves to capture via web browser. Interested parties must go through the proper channels and presumably pay the proper fees for usage. Makes sense to me. And before anyone gets bent over the many imbedded links to Downtown Music Gallery (there’s another one!), let me be the first to say I salute the move. Gannushkin’s been quietly doing the creative music community an immeasurable service, much like earlier photo-documentarians answering to surnames like Wolff, Wilderman and Willoughby, the last of whom is responsible for that everlasting Big Jay McNeely spectacle above.
Thomas Wolfe’s prescient line “you can’t go home again” is clichéd beyond measure, but it still constitutes the quiet crux of Kelly Reichardt’s 2006 indie effort Old Joy. Running at a lean 76 minutes the flick is more an EP than an album, but still packs plenty of food for thought into its relative brevity. The plot centers on the reunion of two thirtysomething ‘slackers’ and the sobering realities that come to light with their renewed acquaintance.
Mark lives with his pregnant wife Tanya in Portland, Oregon. A quick succession of scenes suggests a marriage strained by impending responsibilities and Mark jumps at the phoned invitation to join his college friend Kurt on a camping trip in the Cascades. Clumsily negotiating permission from Tanya, he packs his gear and heads out to pick up his friend. Air America drones over the car radio, a loop of progressive opining that’s more background noise than engaging fodder for Mark’s mind.
Kurt’s situation seems suspect from the start as he meets Mark curbside outside a mutual friend’s house, a Red Flyer wagon with a TV in it inexplicably tow. Deftly deferring to Mark to drive, he also convinces him to make a pit stop to procure pot, even going so far as to hit him up for money to complete the transaction. Once on the road, Kurt regales Mark with tales of his counterculture adventures crisscrossing the country at drum circles and nature preserves, pausing in his monologues only to blaze up repeatedly.
Mark’s responding duplicity is subtle on the surface, but speaks volumes. He presents an engaged and supportive face to Kurt, but the edges of the façade peel back periodically, as when he vents passive frustration to his wife during several cell phone conversations out of earshot of his friend. These are two men that may have shared something in the past, but are now leagues apart. Each attempt by either to reconnect fails, frequently punctuating with a pregnant silence as when Mark recounts the miraculous recovery of his father from a brain ailment. Kurt focuses instead on earlier relayed information of parental infidelity, suggesting “it’s sort of like when an old Eskimo goes out on the ice to die” and missing the point of Mark’s story completely. The disparities in viewpoint are subtle, but indelible.
Things deteriorate as Kurt forgets the directions to the campsite and the two get lost. Pulling into a clearing at dusk they find an impromptu fire pit and pitch a tent. The night’s conversation, broken by target shooting at emptied beer cans, follows a similar script of dislocation and interpersonal distance. Kurt exhibits a rare moment of candidness, lamenting what he perceives is a disintegration of the friendship. Alarmed, Mark attempts to smooth things over with empty platitudes. Later, in a variation on the earlier car scene, Mark relates his efforts at building a community garden in his neighborhood. Kurt is complimentary, but Mark is quick to qualify his achievement so as to not offend or diminish his friend. Another uncomfortable silence follows.
The cinematography and languid pacing echo these themes of disassociation. Long tracking road shots scored with Yo La Tengo’s minimalist Ry Cooder-reminiscent music create a beautiful sense of ennui. Overcast Oregon skies accentuate the feeling. Once the men reach the wilderness the palette changes, with blue skies, white clouds and the deep mossy greens of the rainforest replacing early grays. The shift hints at some hope for the pair and a moment of offered connection and accompanying acquiescence, while fleeting, brings out the humanity in both men.
The film clicks with me because I’ve lived it, both the scenery and the situation, at least in part. Many have. Time and geography have a habit of eroding and calcifying relationships. Decorum is not a means of repair. Reichardt and her actors relate these themes in such an understated way that it’s easy to dismiss the film as slow and pretentious. To the receptive viewer though, the potential faults resonate as memorable strengths.
Ferreted far back in the stacks tonight and found Parliament’s First Thangs, one of the more laudable Fantasy reissue choices of ’98 and a nearly exemplary time capsule of an epochal band at its genesis. Out of a sweet sixteen, the tune that keeps pinging the replay synapse in my cranium is “Come in Out of the Rain”. It’s the perfect early Seventies jukebox joint mixing pointed political commentary with a groove that just won’t quit. George Clinton leads the vocal charge, running down a soulful rap that simultaneously indicts as it inspires. Handclaps and an pocket-locked backbeat by “Tiki” Fulwood braid with “Billy Bass” Nelson’s bottom-dwelling bass to mobilize an edifice of monster funk, but it’s Herr Eddie Hazel’s fret fortitude that dominates the studio stage, all Hendrixian wah-wah and flexing Afrocentric sex. Bernie Worrell brings the church counterpoint with a shimmering, understated organ backdrop and the ensemble builds to suitably florid release. This is a track I can play on continual repeat whether washing the dishes or cruising with the windows down in the car. Hyperbole? Maybe, but it’s still a “2:55” that never fails to convey an explicit urban consciousness upon whomever cues it up, right along with a rump-shaking thump.
Curious to learn the identities of other folks perfect “2:55”’s, “3:23”’s, etc.
The Bags homepage is built a bit like a 18th century Parisian squatters’ row: Some sections bustle with activity while others exhibit heavy shrouds of cobwebs and mold. The Interviews area is indicative of the second category, a wing where the overhead bulbs burned out several years ago and rodents now reign supreme.
Over the years, a number of readers have remarked on the unsightliness inherent in this vacancy of new content. I’ve been thinking about a remedy for awhile, even going so far as to mull over the idea of a new site feature focusing on newly-minted interviews. A few serendipitous events appear to have brought this closer to fruition, among them the strong possibility of an existing contributor filling the gap. Time will tell if it’s got a future, but in the meantime I thought I’d put a preliminary confab in the cannon barrel.
Contact Mic isn’t as apposite now that Brian’s on sabbatical, but I still like the name. So as an initial entry in what might become a series, here’s the results of an email exchange I had with Ted Gioia, editor of Jazz.com. The questions were pulled from the text of the recent discussion below, scrubbed of any lingering vitriol and answered in kind by Ted. I plugged in a few more based on his initial responses and he fired off a second round of answers. The only area that he declined to elaborate on was funding, but I respect his desire to keep that information personal and private.
Some may find the conversation bland or softshoe, but I enjoyed engaging in it and came away with at least a better understanding of the site’s motives and goals. Best of all, as (almost) always, the Bags comments flue is wide open, so start shoveling coal or kindling down the chimney if so inclined. I won’t be at the bottom to strike a match, but maybe someone else will and we can watch the damn thing burn like the first go round. Either way, I’ve positioned a fire extinguisher a short sprinting distance away.
Thanks again to Ted for the collaboration and to you for reading.
How did Jazz.com come about?
I am not sure of the entire history of the www.jazz.com domain. I imagine that it has changed hands a few times, but I am not aware that it has ever played much of a role in the jazz world. But I was intrigued when the current ownership of the domain name asked for my help in building it into something special.
This is an unusual project for me. As you probably know, I have rarely written jazz journalism or reviews. I have focused instead on books and historical research. I like big projects that allow me to tackle large subjects. I spent more than a decade researching my recent Work Songs book, and my big book Delta Blues, another huge undertaking, will come out later this year. Web writing is usually the exact opposite – a place where people toss off random thoughts, often poorly thought out and rarely backed by research.
I decided to try to bring my “big project” approach to the jazz.com site. I wondered if I could gather a team of top notch writers, reviewers, photographers, artists, and other talented people, and succeed in providing a multi-layered and comprehensive approach to the jazz idiom.
Probably the most ambitious idea was to review individual tracks – not entire CDs – and try to cover the whole history of the music. By my estimate, I will eventually need more than 10,000 reviews to do a good job of this. We have around 1,400 completed right now.
That is impressive, but your indictment of “web writing” gives me pause, particularly since the brevity of many of the reviews on Jazz.com could potentially invite a similar conclusions. In this regard, they read like soundbites rather than fully cooked meals of criticism. I suppose this fits with the focus on tracks over albums. But readers familiar with the music may find them lacking, as I have. Do you see this as a viable conclusion to reach or am I looking at them in the wrong light?
This is an important issue. I too am concerned about any approach that reduces music criticism to sound bites. In fact, I have changed some of our guidelines on reviews in recent weeks. When we first started writing track reviews, I suggested that our critics write reviews that were between 50 and 100 words per track. I am now encouraging the writers to stretch out, and contribute longer and more detailed reviews when they feel it is appropriate.
I remember my disappointment at many of the reviews in the All Music Guide, which attempted to sum up an entire CD in one or two sentences. I don't want to go down that path. In some instances, I am now publishing reviews of individual tracks that are longer than reviews for individual CDs in other periodicals.
Of course, the quality of the review is more important than absolute length. But I want to give our critics the flexibility to go shorter or longer depending on what they want to say in the review.
What is the rationale behind reviewing individual tracks rather than albums?
I have always been unhappy with the traditional CD review. Back when I wrote my book The History of Jazz, I was asked by the publisher to add a list of recommended CDs. I refused. Instead, I compiled a list of recommended tracks. This was long before the rise of downloading and the iPod. But even back then, I preferred focusing on the individual track for a variety of reasons.
As we know, CDs are often a mixed bag, with some strong material mixed in among weaker performances. Also, the most important historical tracks often show up on various reissues, some of which go out of print very quickly. So you can recommend a CD only to find that it has been discontinued by the label, while the song is now available on some other compilation. A track-oriented focus avoids these problems.
But perhaps the most important advantage of recommending tracks is that it encourages closer listening of the music. When people listen to an hour-long CD, they often treat it as background music while they do some other task. If I can get people to listen to a track, in contrast, there is a greater chance that they will focus their attention on the music. For these reasons, I am firmly convinced that a track orientation is a much better approach for both the reviewer and the fan.
Of course, with the rise of downloading, the track review is the way of the future for purely technological reasons. I think you will soon see other people jumping on this format for reviews.
The death of the album as default music format does seem imminent. But what about recordings that are conceived of as albums by the artists (ie. Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, A Love Supreme, etc.)? Doesn’t parsing them apart do the overall whole a disservice?
You're quite right. I've learned that I need to make exceptions in certain instances. For example, we sometimes need to discuss works that encompass multiple tracks -- such as an extended composition -- in a single review. I recently did this in a review of Wynton Marsalis's Blood on the Fields. I considered reviewing individual tracks from this extended composition, but finally felt that I needed to treat it as a single entity. We did the same with Ellington's Black, Brown & Beige. So we are willing to break our own rules, when they don't seem to work.
How did you recruit the staff and who handles what in terms of operations? What qualifications do you have for contributors?
I am responsible for recruiting reviewers, and I have been working hard at this for more than a year. I want critics who know the music and write well. The quality of the writing is especially important to me, since so much web journalism falters in this regard.
I have written some short guidelines for our reviewer. Let me quote from them. “We look for intelligent, stylish reviews. We don’t ‘dumb down’ our writing. We encourage you to develop your own tone and attitude, and not try to match some perceived generic style of writing.” Etc. This gives you a sense of our philosophy. I want to encourage individual reviewers to develop their own voice and approach to the music. I am not imposing any ideology on them. In fact, I strive for the opposite. I think ideology has done a lot of harm in the world of jazz criticism.
Our web technology is also a big help. Our software architecture allows me to publish multiple reviews of the same track – and each with comments from site visitors. This encourages different perspectives and attitudes, and is a major advantage the web has over the print media.
Bagatellen operates in a similar fashion, but on a much smaller scale. One of the unfortunate by-products of an open comments policy is anonymous invective, usually followed by conflict. What steps are you taking to curtail this sort of behavior on Jazz.com?
We have a policy that allows us to remove comments that are abusive or otherwise inappropriate. But so far I have only censored one comment from a site visitor-- and that was from a woman who invited people to visit her salacious web site for purposes that seemed to have nothing to do with jazz music.
In perusing the site, I came across several examples where the reviewer did not appear to possess a grasp of the artist under review. What sort of quality control measures do you have in place to ensure that an artist receives fair and accurate appraisal?
I am working to recruit the best critics I can find for our track reviews. I am quite proud of the team that I have compiled – currently 26 reviewers and growing. I enjoy reading Rob Bamberger writing about Jelly Roll Morton, or David Sager discussing King Oliver, Jeff Sultanof on big band music or Eric Olsen on hard bop, and the like. I bring in the critics that have the most interesting things to say, and give them a platform to say it.
I see that some of the posters at Bagatellen have questioned Alan Kurtz’s familiarity with free jazz. Honestly, Alan was hanging out with Eric Dolphy back in the day, exchanging views with Dolphy after both of them had been listening to a John Cage concert. He brings a lifetime of intense jazz listening to his reviews. Alan – and our other reviewers – teach me new things all the time. And he is a great prose stylist, which is very important to me. The fact that he doesn’t like a particular Sun Ra recording is not grounds for disputing his knowledge of the music.
That said, we encourage intelligent rebuttals from site visitors. And we also can publish multiple reviews of a single track. So this isn’t like the old days at Down Beat when there was no way to criticize the critics. We like frank and spirited exchanges.
In the case of Kurtz, the issues centered on his apparent unfamiliarity with Sun Ra’s music and the conspicuously provocative nature of his prose. His pieces contained very little in the way of specifics about the music, trading instead in cagey quips and erroneous generalizations. To me, that’s not good criticism, nor is it especially good writing. There’s no problem with not liking something, but in the case of a critic, such dislike should be substantiated with an informed perspective. From my vantage, such a standard didn’t seem in place with Kurtz’s pieces.
I imagine Alan could have added another paragraph or two elaborating on his views. But I don't think that would have softened the blow for Sun Ra fan's who disagree with his sentiments. Alan didn't like the recording, and he made his points using humor. That's a valid way of expressing an intelligent opinion.
I thought his views were provocative and amusing. I still do. Of course, I also knew that they would generate controversy. When he first showed me the review, I sent him an email suggesting that it would get people 'hot and bothered' -- those were my exact words. But I also laughed out loud at his wit. So I never considered not publishing his review.. But that doesn't mean that there aren't other perspectives on this track. We would publish an alternative review from another critic without hesitation.
By the way, even the most devoted Sun Ra fans need to realize that there are different opinions about this body of work. Sun Ra's music -- in fact, his entire career -- was designed to evoke strong reactions. When you set yourself up as an Egyptian sun deity you have to expect some flack.
In light of the rapid growth of content (1400+ reviews in several months) what concerns, if any, do you have about maintaining depth of coverage and caliber of writing? If the history of All About Jazz is any indication, the danger would seem to be quantity trumping quality.
We have been writing these reviews for more than a year – so it isn’t like we cooked up all this material overnight. We didn’t open the site until we had a solid library of content ready. There has been no rush to pad the site with hastily written reviews.
Of course, we all know about other places on the web that publish lots of poor quality reviews. Or publish good reviews mixed in haphazardly with bad ones. These outfits operate like fanzines. They serve a function, but this is different from our vision for jazz.com.
First, we pay our writers, and that gives me an advantage over the amateur outfits. Site visitors can submit reviews too – so we can publish the work of fans as well as experienced critics. But I haven’t started doing that yet. And I won’t if the submissions aren’t good enough.
I am convinced that anyone who takes the time to read a couple hundred of our reviews will be impressed by the high caliber of what we are doing. Will they agree with everything our critics say? Of course not. But that is always true of good criticism. It is supposed to engage people with provocative viewpoints, not just dish out bland comments that never offend.
I am having a little trouble with your claims of across-the-board quality. Not to pick on poor Kurtz again, but his reviews of Charles Mingus’ “Stormy Weather” (97/100 rating) and “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” (100/100)-to name just two examples- leave me in serious want of more in the way writing and criticism. Both read like off-the-cuff blog or fanzine entries and neither delves deeply into the music’s mysteries or mechanics, despite awarding near-perfect and perfect ratings respectively. Are you concerned about the magnitude of your content masking reviews that do not measure up to your intended standards? It appears to have done so in some cases already and to put it in direct terms some of the content does feel suspiciously fanzine-like.
Alan Kurtz is probably the best prose stylist on our reviewing staff. I work hard on the style and flow of my sentences, but I often find him delivering metaphors and turns of phrases that I wish I had come up with myself. I would hire ten more like him if I could find them. Honestly, compare his work with what passes for reviewing in the major magazines, and it compares quite favorably.
And there is an art to writing a scathing review. Check out Kurtz's take on Kenny G's "Songbird" which belongs in the Hall of Fame for musical invective. But he is also generous with his praise when he finds music he admires.
How is Jazz.com funded? I noticed direct purchase links to Amazon.com on the review pages. What rebuttal would you offer critics who see this arrangement as a conflict of interest?
We are just like other small jazz outfits – such as independent record labels, nightclubs, magazines and the like. We rely on funding from individuals who love the music and want to do something for it. The only difference is that we have a philanthropic approach, and intend to donate any money we make back into jazz-oriented charitable causes.
If, God forbid, something like Hurricane Katrina happens again, we want to be able to offer help to the members of the jazz community who are impacted. And, of course, there are many pressing areas for jazz philanthropy that arise all the time. If we can get Jazz.com on a stable financial basis we will use the cash we generate in these areas.
I see that some people have suggested that Amazon.com is funding us. Wouldn’t it be great if Amazon was actually channeling money into jazz web sites? But that is not the case. We have no corporate funding.
We put in the Amazon links as a service to our site visitors. I am trying to create the kind of site I would enjoy visiting myself. I like listening to new music every day, and when I read an interesting review I want to be able to find the music quickly. The links to Amazon allow that. We could just as easily be linking to iTunes or eMusic or other sites. But Amazon has the widest selection, and they do a great job of offering even obscure and out-of-print releases.
Who handles the editing of content and what is the process? How is content determined? To what degree is it left to the discretion of the reviewers?
Until recently, I was the only editor, but that’s changing. I recently brought on Tim Wilkins to take over some of the work of editing our on-line encyclopedia. We have ambitious goals for our encyclopedia, much as we do for our track reviews. Soon I will probably need some help editing reviews as well. In the last 24 hours, my reviewers have sent me around twenty submissions to edit -- so this keeps me pretty busy, maybe too busy. And I want to have time to write more myself.
My editing style is fairly low key. I ask the reviewers to suggest which tracks they want to review, and I almost always let them focus on the music they like to cover. Many of them have different opinions on the music than I do – but that is fine. In fact, it’s desirable. I encourage them to take a stance on the music, and express their views clearly Sometimes I have sent back a review for more work because it didn’t take a firm position. And I am a stickler for good writing. I will be quite insistent on that. You can have controversial views on the music, and I will publish them. But if you write poorly, there is no place for you at jazz.com.
Please explain the rating scale for reviews. A spectrum of 1 to 100 points seems quite broad, not to mention a potential breeding ground for ambiguity and inconsistency.
I never liked the one-to-five-star rating system that you find, for example, in Down Beat. In practice, reviewers almost never use the top end or low end of any scale – so most reviews are crammed together in the three star or four star range. It’s hard to see what use that is to anyone. I wanted a range with room for more nuance and subtle gradations. I find that the one hundred point scale works well.
Good points, but such a scale also leads to potential anomalies. A Bagatellen reader noted the Harmon trumpet feature where Chris Botti in the company Sting trumps Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Art Farmer, Chet Baker, Lee Morgan AND Dizzy Gillespie in terms of rating points. Regardless of where one falls in regards to Botti, the average jazz fan would probably find such an appraisal suspect, if not plain crazy.
Could you maybe take me through the process by which you personally assign scores? Let’s take your “12 Essential Brad Mehldau Performances” piece: the scores for the 12 selected tracks range between 88 and 98, a ten-point spread at the top end of the overall scale. What makes “All the Things you Are” a “98” and “Martha My Dear” a “95”? Also, are those scores in relation to jazz writ-large? Or just Brad’s own catalog?
You can compare review scores, and wonder why I gave a higher score to one Brad Mehldau track rather than another. But, honestly, I couldn't say anything here that would be any more astute than what I have already communicated in my reviews. I don't give out scores of 98 cavalierly, and any time I have done so in a review, I will try to communicate as clearly as I can why I did so.
Will everyone agree with my score? Of course, not. It wouldn't be much fun if everyone agreed. But I absolutely stand by my Mehldau reviews. Just as I am sure that Alan stands by his reviews.
A stop by the homepage today (1/12/08) revealed links to articles and reviews on Clark Terry, Ron Carter, Brad Mehldau, Cyrus Chestnut, Lee Morgan and Frank Zappa. Save Zappa, such a sampling seems pretty centrist or “mainstream”. What sort of plans do you have to more prominently feature other styles/eras of jazz (free, third stream, Dixieland, etc.)?
We want to cover the full range of jazz music. I am painfully aware of where we have gaps in our coverage, and I am working to fill them.
For example, during the last few weeks, I have been working to recruit reviewers and photographers from outside the United States. In just the last few days, I have added three more European reviewers and two European photographers, and I have some leads in other parts of the world. This will help alleviate the US-centered bias that is so pervasive today in jazz journalism.
But there are many other gaps that I need to address. Our last three features, as you point out, were devoted to Clark Terry, Frank Zappa and Maria Schneider – I think that is a reasonably diverse trio. And in the last ten days we have published reviews of Willem Breuker, Cheick-Tidiane Seck, Stan Kenton, Dan Grolnick, Marian McPartland, Etta James, Woody Shaw, Deborah Harry, Philip Catherine, Kerry Politzer, Paolo Fresu, Pat Metheny, Nancy King, Art Pepper, Frank Zappa, Martial Solal and Ed Palermo, among others. I don’t think anyone can look at that list and say that we have a narrow definition of jazz.
Heard word about the launch of the impressive new addition to the internet jazzosphere earlier today, Jazz.com. Looks to be quite a resource and a serious contender at giving the heavyweight champion (in terms of scope & size) AAJ a run for the title. The monthly review totals alone are staggering, though I have to admit to not having much time yet to conduct a litmus test in terms of depth and quality of the coverage. The strategy of reviewing tracks in lieu of albums also seems a little irksome, a necessary concession to the mp3 culture we’re living in, I suppose. Layout and navigation appear intuitive and aggravation-free, so there’s another plus.
Props to Ted Gioia for spearheading the project and the thirty-odd scribes he’s conscripted thus far to assist in the endeavor. Judging by the contributions under his own by-line, it looks like his listening diet stresses diversity far wider than his seminal West Coast Jazz survey would suggest: Shipp, Bley and Zappa all fall into his widely cast net. I just hope potential writers aren’t won over by the gloss and shine before giving Bags corroded bulwark consideration as a possible place to proffer their services. I can dream, can’t I?
Brian’s impending shore leave leaves an obvious black hole in Bags coverage. I’m wishing him the best while holding out hope that his Rowe tome reaches completion in a matter of mere months and he opts for a return to active duty shortly thereafter. But quality takes time and with that in mind I’m readying myself for a long night of shadowboxing.
We’ve had open casting calls before, but this time the results may prove particularly pivotal. A large chunk of the site readership revolves around eai and related improv, a zone where I have both minimal expertise and interest. So, if there are any brave souls out there in the stands willing to put on the gloves in “K.O.” Olewnick’s stead please give a holler. Those with interests more closely aligned with mine are certainly welcome as well.
Bags might be a perpetually rusting, listing hulk of a ship, but she’s still got fire left in her cast iron boiler and we need the person-power to keep it properly stoked.
Back from a holiday hiatus to Tucson and the rejuvenating environs of Rancho de Taylor. The desert sun and air did me good, but it also made the transition back to the double digit minus temps of Minneapolis all the more galling. Another disheartening development arose through my attempts at organizing a successful CD safari in the Old Pueblo. Tucson is now a veritable wasteland when it comes to brick and mortar music establishments. Hear’s, the high-end jazz, blues and world music boutique, is now a vacant storefront. A large shop that launched shortly prior to my last annual visit and looked a promising newcomer was at some point in the interim also erased. PDQ, once a vinyl juggernaut also riddled with all manner of obscure CD finds, is under new management and a mere shell of its former self. Zia’s, a scrappy Southwestern chain, is now over-priced and denuded, its retail focus redirected to DVDs and head shop sundries. I made the rounds and was routinely greeted with dissolution and decay, returning to the Twin Cities with not a single music purchase. What a sobering difference a year can make.
Minneapolis still has a number of healthy shops and I made beelines to a number of them upon my return, reassured by rows of racks and a handful of gratifying finds. The snapshot above is of B-Side in Madison, WI, another “mom & pop” holdout that seems to be weathering the desertification. Still, the desiccation out West makes me wonder, how long before the Midwest (stereotypically 3-4 years behind the coastal cultural curves) ends up in the same sorry situation?
I wanted to announce my intention to take a more or less complete break from reviewing new music during 2008 for the purpose of allowing myself more time to concentrate on the Rowe biography. I figured I'd post it prominently here in lieu of trying to think of all the musicians and/or labels likely to send things my way; I'll also post it on the blog.
It's a tough decision on several levels. I love doing the write-ups, I love hearing the music. I'm in the minority camp that thinks more is good, so I really do enjoy hearing new things, even if I ultimately don't care for them. I'm also concerned that this gap, small though it may be, won't be filled which would be extremely unfortunate. I seriously hope that one or more individuals steps up and covers for Bags many of the same areas I've tended to.
But the time constraints have become tougher and tougher. Working a "regular" job, having a wife, dog and household duties, I have only so much I can devote to writing activities. In the evenings, doing reviews has often been "easier" than working on the biography simply because they can be done in bite-sized chunks. But the book, delayed enough as is, has suffered and I'd very much like to get it completed in a semi-reasonable amount of time.
I said "more or less" above. I don't doubt that there will be one or a handful of releases I'll feel compelled to write about and may do so. Plus, I committed to do some work for Squid's Ear where I can pick and choose from a list, keeping things manageable. But for all those musicians and labels who have graciously sent their wares my way over the last several years, I can no longer promise to write about them. At least for 2008. We'll see what happens after that. Anyone with whom I've had prior communication on stuff I've agreed to receive will, of course, get the write-up, so there are still a few things in the pipeline. But after this, no promises!
I will, of course, continue hanging around here and other boards, freely commenting.
Thanks for everything, to the musicians, to Derek for keeping this place going.
What’s that they say about the Reaper reaping in threes? Frank Morgan left us this morning here in Minneapolis. He would’ve turned 74 on the 23rd of this month. I caught a disappointing gig of his at the Minneapolis Jazz Festival last summer. Lukewarm playing and a set list that sadly included bromidic pap like “Suicide is Painless”. On record it’s another matter. From his 1985 Contemporary comeback, made after decades of incarceration, insolvency and obscurity, through a prolific string on High Note he dovetailed his Bird-bred alto in a multitude of settings. My favorites include the three volume Live at the Jazz Standard Series with a dream rhythm section of George Cables, Curtis Lundy and Billy Hart in tow, and his 1986 album of duets with Cables, Double Image. My biggest regret is not having made more of an effort to hear his various concert gigs here, most often at the Saint Paul basement bastion of jazz, The Artists' Quarter. Here’s to you Mr. Morgan, many thanks for the music.
I’ve got my longstanding beef with Ike Turner, namely the way he treated Tina for lo those many years, but there’s no denying the import of the man’s music, from his early sides for labels like Sun, Cobra and Crown to last year’s out-of-left-field album for Zoho, which earned him his first solo Grammy. Even more important to me recently, his role as talent scout and Virgil to Joe Bihari’s Dante on field recording trips throughout South, the results of which can be heard on the four-volume Modern Down-Home Blues Collection on Ace. The first volume was a ROW four plus years ago and the other three are pretty much on par. So here’s a tumbler raised to Mr. Turner prefaced by a summary figurative kick to the shin.
A chorus of trumpet bleats seems in order to announce the launch of Pete Cherches’ Overview of Downtown Music. I haven’t had time to delve too deeply into the online project, but a cursory cruise through the sections suggests a lot of edifying material on display. As someone who lived through the evolution of that scene and was a direct observer to much of it, Pete possesses the positioning to take an accurate pulse of both its development and outcomes. Do check it out and also swing by his other web home, Word of Mouth, a food blog boasting few worthy peers that appears to be on a temporary hiatus no doubt due to the auspicious launch.
I’m really not the proper person to be posting this as my listening experience with Stockhausen could safely fit on the front of a postage stamp. The magnitude of the loss isn’t lost on me though, so here’s hoping he’s enjoying the limitless banks of celestial electronics in the Hereafter.
It’s that time of year again when polls start popping up like so many lily pads on a pond. Bags has been part of the punditry in the past and it will be once more. So please consider contributing your Best Of tallies to the objective. I’ll post everything more formally sometime toward the middle of January, submersible scrimmage schedule permitting. In the meantime, use this space as placeholder for debate and check out here and here for a recap of how it went down last year. As always, limits and conditonals are minimal, just send along what you’re digging or have dug over the past 12 months, annotated or otherwise, to derekct AT hotmail DOT com. Obrigado in advance.
Another bastion of childhood idolatry meets his maker. Evel Knievel passed away yesterday at the ripe old age of 69, decades older than his lifestyle would’ve seemed to dictate. Knievel left behind a plethora of progeny and a cult of personality that will likely be the subject of American Studies courses for centuries to come. While his son has Robbie arguably evinced more talent as a motorcyclist, nobody touches Evel in terms of raw showmanship. After retiring in the he kept financial flush over the years by licensing his name and likeness to everything from pinball machines to beach towels to the downright bizarre. There’s even a certain amount of poetic parody to one particular deal inked later in life. Bottom line: he knew how to make and maintain a buck. But to a kid growing up in the early to mid-70s, that cultivated business savvy hardly mattered a whit. Far more important was the temerarious willingness to risk life and limb with full awareness of the probability of coming away the worse for it. However cloudy and compromised the conduit, that lesson in courage is carried by many to this day. Here’s too you, Evel!
The third of four concerts in this season’s Interpretations series took place at Roulette on November 8th and featured the music of Maria de Alvear and Gavin Bryars, presenting material from recently issued CDs on Mode Records.
This was my first exposure to the music of de Alvear. Before the performance, the composer gave a brief talk about the work, titled “Asking”, a 50-minute piece for solo piano played by Eve Egoyan. That the work involved the various uncomfortable and awkward psychologies around the act of asking turned out to be less interesting than her described compositional method. De Alvear apparently roughs out the general structure of the piece then proceeds to compose in “stream of consciousness” fashion, notation tumbling out of her, and a given composition can be completed by the end of the day. Without begrudging the possible effectiveness of this attack, I have to say that in this case, it sounded exactly like that.
“Asking” had a very improvisational feel which might have been a good thing except that here, words like “meandering”, “rambling” and “melodramatic” kept coming into my head. It began with slow, falling patterns of single notes, generally of a tonal nature with only occasional forays into mild dissonance. There was something of a noodling aspect which, given the description of her procedure, made some sense and could easily be accepted as a process element as long as it either led to something or acquired a mysterious and unexpected life of its own. However, it occupied pretty much the same territory from start to finish. Vaguely melancholy passages would lead to a loud, dramatic chord that would signal a slight turn in direction, though a few minutes later you’d be back at the same juncture, leading to another heavy chord, more discursive rambling, etc. Later in the piece, the chords had their own portion, ringing out disconsolately, reminding me of similar motifs in Satie’s Rosicrucian period, though with less starry-eyed intensity. While there was little if anything that referred directly to jazz, I began to hear a touch of kinship with Jarrett’s solo marathons, though without the faintest trace of gospel of rhythmic intrigue. Some funereal thematic material was introduced in the work’s second half, a couple of very attractive, somber passages that would have been welcome to have extended their stay. There was also, late in the piece, a section of intense pounding chords that recalled Cecil Taylor a bit but more so, and oddly, the Ron Geesin of “Patruns”, but sans his melodic invention and insane complexity. This led to some fine, roiling playing, easily the most exciting point in “Asking” and led toward a gradually diminution of soft, long notes that effectively and subtly closed out the work. Overall, however, it was a something of an aimless amble, never for this listener achieving the kind of rapturous dreaminess as heard in, say, Robert Ashley.
I had high hopes for the early Bryars compositions. Though I have a distant memory of having heard “The Squirrel and the Ricketty Racketty Bridge”, I never owned the recording and only knew “1, 2, 1-2-3-4” very well, it having been a favorite of mine since first encountering it on the old Obscure LP. As all four works arose from the period 1970-71, I was looking forward to more at the same level of inventiveness. However, while I’m tempted to ascribe a good portion of the blame for what followed to the ensemble on this particular night, I also find it somewhat difficult to imagine, with the exception of the abovementioned piece, that very much more could have been achieved.
First up was “Pre-Mediaeval Metrics” (1970) with Seth Josel and Eli Friedmann on electric guitars and Ulrich Krieger on tenor saxophone. A kind of one-note minimalist samba, the players iterate that note in unison throughout, in steady patterns of two, three or four beats with a couple of attacks (the notes held normally or clipped off, accented differently). Interspersed among these brief phrases are rests of the same varying number of beats though their variation followed no pattern I could discern. You’re left with a Swiss cheese minimalism, as though a basic fabric of single notes (though differing slightly in enunciation) had had exactly measured holes torn into it. A mildly interesting conceit, played with a clarity and cleanliness that seemed appropriate at the time, perhaps going on a tad too long, its point having been achieved after five or so minutes.
“The Squirrel and the Ricketty Racketty Bridge” (1971) was written for Derek Bailey and originally recorded by the late guitarist on his “Solo Guitar Volume One” (Incus). Though intended for an individual guitarist playing, via finger taps, two guitars lying flat, here Josel (on the two guitars) was accompanied by Friedmann and Robert Poss (electric bass) who seemed only to add adornment to the main body of the piece. As mentioned above, I can’t quite recall the sound of the original but I’d bet decent money it was much less clean and orderly than this performance. The score seems to indicate a series of ten 2-note figures for the left hand that wander up and down scales on the open fret board, while the right hand remains more free—soloing, as it were. The sound of the Josel’s guitar itself strongly recalled that of Fred Frith, especially the timbre of “No Birds” from his own first volume of solo work. It was quite liquid and a bit characterless. When Josel ran into some dextral trouble toward the ending, one almost wished that such “troubles” were more present throughout as the steady rhythm had long since acquired a sense of plodding. A kind of “ta-da!” ending was presumably intended to be wry but fell flat.
The blame for “Made in Hong Kong” (1970) must be placed at Bryars’ feet, I suppose, though I was imagining contexts in which it might have worked just fine. One would have been as a Scratch Orchestra “non-event”, where the dozen or so small wind-up toys might have been set in motion in some public space, the passers-by only dimly aware that an “art” performance was occurring. Another may have simply involved a performer with a more poetic understanding of choice-making, a Steve Beresford, perhaps. As it was, Ulrich Krieger sat at a table strewn with brightly colored, motorized toys, wound them up at will (apparently improvised), allowed them to scurry over the tabletop which had a good amount of resonance, blew into the toy saxophones hanging around his neck in a faint echo of Rahsaan Roland Kirk and generally amused himself for about 15 minutes. A large part of the failure had to do with the showmanship of the performance. When someone like Taku Unami sets his wandering toys skittering across a surface, they’re subsumed into the environment of the room and relate to his collaborator(s). Here, there was a bravura aspect that was somewhat off-putting on its own and combined with an insensitive disregard for sound placement and for the character of the room as a whole made for a tiresome and overlong piece of work.
I still held out that the evening’s finale, “1, 2, 1-2-3-4” (1971) could make everything worthwhile. On the original recording (which included Cornelius Cardew and Bailey), the musicians were sonically isolated by headphones which allowed them to only hear music coming from a cassette player, which music had been composed by Bryars in a given mode (e.g. jazz) and along with which they’d try to duplicate their part in the piece. The bassist would play the bass part, the drummer the drum part, etc. Some of the musicians might be fairly familiar with the score, having previously played it, some not, making their entrances wonderfully and naturally clunky. The cassette players themselves would be started roughly at the same time (though not quite exactly) and might not be entirely consistent as to tape speed, so the piece heard over the headphones would drift a bit in relation to the ones others were hearing. This combination of hesitancies and asynchronies, on the Obscure recording, resulted in a lovely, dreamy, giddily awkward piece that, especially given the nature of the source material, anticipated the sound of Angelo Badalamenti’s music 20 years hence. It also might be said to be a partial and inadvertent antecedent to Rowe/MIMEO’s “sight”.
This night’s ensemble, the above named musicians augmented by pianist Ron Spitzer and drummer Mark Brotter, opted to go with a mélange of Beatles songs as their basis, automatically imparting a very different character to the music. They also, I’m sure, sourced from digital media (might they have programmed in asynchrony?) and, crowded together on stage, could presumably hear each other without problem despite the headphones or earplugs. There are pluses and minuses to these decisions. The audience will, one guesses, be pretty familiar with many of the melodies and rhythms that surface making for a fun identification game, Friedmann’s guitar providing the solidest clues, hammering out themes from “Helter-Skelter”, “Glass Onion”, “I Want You” and so on. Also, obviously, the overall tone was pop-rock, not smoky jazz. For the first ten or so minutes, this worked rather brilliantly, producing a surreal, off-kilter stew of fractured melodies, isolated rhythm guitar and bass lines and delightfully out of place drumming. Unfortunately, they went on for about a half hour. The original ran about 14 minutes and was just about perfectly timed. I had the disquieting notion here that the increased lengths of this and the other works had more to do with filling a CD’s capacity than any inherent musical judgment. Aside from a progression through the recorded material, converging on “Good Night”, little was accomplished by this extension, nothing new revealed aesthetically, no transcendence via repetition achieved. The welter of sound that had been initially bracing dulled to a matte sheen of insensate clatter as audience members began to discreetly file out.
In sum, a disappointing event. Aside from “1, 2, 1-2-3-4”, I’m uncertain if differently conceived performances could have invigorated the music or whether the ideas in the scores have simply palled over the intervening years; only additional renditions could determine that. But I do get the sense that the material would tend to suffer in contemporary interpretations simply because the zeitgeist that existed in England 35-40 years ago, as epitomized by the Scratch Orchestra, is impossible to recapture and is an utterly essential element of the music.
I’d intended a little essay on Astor Piazzolla, a newfound All Hallow’s artist of choice, but time expired before I could get copy entombed in the can. So in its stead, here’s a link to a downloadable sampler of an upcoming Norton Records digital-only box set irascibly titled: I Hate CDs. The good folks over at Norton are world-renowned for their barber’s skill in taking straight razor to the hairy underbelly of garage rock & R&B and lovingly bagging up the still-writhing shavings for joe & jane consumer. The press release for the new project describes the contents as such:
“Norton is proudly prepping a comprehensive survey -- from the psychotic blasts of surly teenage zit-poppers to raging rants from backwoods rockabillies, to howling blues from Valmorized hair hoppers to stomper time demos from world class demi-gods to balls-out garden variety insanity from balls-out garden variety maniacs.”
Strong contender for purple prose pull-quote of the year, but I already have a handful of the tunes on various comps & releases & can vouch for the veracity of every word. I’m under the impression that the sampler is meant for public (ie. non-press) consumption, but if not I may be pulling the plug here momentarily so get it while you can.
Track list for the first volume of the project is included below with a release date set for December 4th. To borrow a phrase from the Malt-O-Meal lexicon that’s almost a second parlance in these parts: “Good stuff, Maynard!”
And to make up for the absence of that aforementioned Astor copy, here's a link to a web-based treastise aiming to prove the thesis of this post's title. It's amateur in design, but chock full of colorful photos & kooky ideas, enjoy!
01. DICTATORS - WHO WILL SAVE ROCK AND ROLL?
02. READYMEN - SHORTNIN' BREAD
03. LEGENDARY STARDUST COWBOY - I HATE CD's
04. BUNKER HILL - THE GIRL CAN'T DANCE
05. HERBIE DUNCAN - HOT LIPS BABY
06. ANDRE WILLIAMS - THE MONKEY SPEAKS HIS MIND
07. INCREDIBLE KINGS - THE LIMP
08. SCREAMING JOE NEAL - ROCK AND ROLL DEACON
09. DALE HAWKINS – NUMBER NINE TRAIN
10. RAMONES - I WANT TO BE YOUR BOYFRIEND
11. DON "PRETTY BOY" COVAY - SWITCHEN IN THE KITCHEN
12. 5.6.7.8's - HARLEM SHUFFLE
13. DARYL BRITT AND THE BLUE JEANS - LOVER LOVER
14. JACK STARR - CHICKEN
15. MARY WEISS - A CERTAIN GUY
16. SCREAMIN' JAY HAWKINS - I HEAR VOICES
17. WADE CURTISS AND THE RHYTHM ROCKERS - PUDDY CAT
18. KID THOMAS - ROCKIN' THIS JOINT TO-NITE
19. SHADES OF NIGHT - FLUCTUATION
20. BIG STAR - SEPTEMBER GURLS
21. TRIUMPHS - SURFSIDE DATE
22. JOHNNY CLARK AND THE FOUR PLAYBOYS - JUNGLE STOMP
23. DOUG SAHM AND THE PHAROAHS - SLOW DOWN
24. REIGN - ZIPPERED UP HEART
25. ESQUERITA - ROCKIN' THE JOINT
26. HASIL ADKINS - CHICKEN SHAKE
27. SONICS - BUSY BODY
28. DANNY ZELLA AND THE ZELL ROCKS - SAPPHIRE
29. JOHNNY POWERS AND THE A-BONES - NEW SPARK
30. MONACLES - I CAN'T WIN
31. LONG JOHN HUNTER – HEY MRS. JONES
32. REAL KIDS - ALL KINDSA GIRLS
33. RAMONES - JUDY IS A PUNK
34. SCOTTY McKAY - BAD TIMES
35. QUESTION MARK AND THE MYSTERIANS - ARE YOU FOR REAL?
36. ROY LONEY AND THE A-BONES - STOP IT BABY
37. STUD COLE - THE WITCH
38. ALARM CLOCKS - MARIE
39. CREATIONS - BETTER WATCH OUT
40. SABRES - MY HOT MAMA
41. HENTCHMEN - HOT ROD MILLIE
42. JERRY McCAIN AND HIS UPSTARTS - A CUTIE NAMED JUDY
43. UNKNOWN GROUP - I'VE HAD ENOUGH
44. NEANDERTHALS - TWINKLE TOES
45. LINK WRAY AND THE RAYMEN – VENDETTA
Apropos of the ongoing discussion elsewhere on-site, I have a little anecdote to recount that deals indirectly with Damon’s described dilemma. On safari at a local Half Price Books location, I stumbled across a disc by Cecil Barfield (aka “William Robertson”) for a couple bucks. Barfield was an Atlanta based bluesman who made a series of recordings for roving musicologist George Mitchell. Over the years, Mitchell’s voluminous field recordings have filtered out in commercial form through a variety of label conduits including Flyright and Arhoolie. A few years ago, Fat Possum acquired the rights to much of the material and started releasing it under the “George Mitchell Collection” banner. The bulk of titles are available in 7” form, but a few cd collections have also surfaced, the aforementioned Barfield among them. I recall an announcement for the series on the FP website, but as is so often the case initial curiosity quickly dissipated in the wake of another volley of announced new releases.
Spinning the disc on the drive home, I was immediately transfixed by Barfield’s sound. He’s got one of those eccentric voices that’s so endemic to the blues, in this case a pinched nasally whine coupled to a lisp that sounds as if he’s missing a few teeth from his upper palate. In a conventional sense it’s an ugly sound, but yoked to Barfield’s peculiar way of enunciating a lyric it works like magic in monopolizing the ear. His fretwork on acoustic and electric is similarly understated, adequate at delineating dark cyclic riffs, but nothing spectacular in the way of dexterity or drive. Despite his Atlanta residency, his songbook and style exhibits greater kinship to the Mississippi hill country traditions formerly so prevalent on Fat Possum.
By turns, I hear snatches of Sleepy John Estes and Furry Lewis in his performance mien, but mostly a more obscure corollary, that of Maxwell Street Jimmy Davis. Davis was a fixture on the thoroughfare of his moniker, busking in the market stalls for coins and switching to the clubs after sundown. He recorded a number of sides for Fahey’s Takoma imprint and an LP’s worth of material for Elektra in the Sixties before sliding off the radar. A session cut decades later and released on the German Wolf label found him slightly mellowed, but still a respectable talent. It’s those Sixties sides on Takoma that are the mother lode though, just Jimmy and his acoustic belting out percussive dolorous blues that borrows from John Lee Hooker, but also spikes a far older vein. It’s a haunted sound brimming with all the tropes of the idiom, yet none of them seem the least bit trite or counterfeit in his hands. In other words, if you aren’t familiar, do check his stuff out. Barfield strikes me on similar grounds with an inherently contradictory articulation that can sound at once wounded and aggressive, lustful and reticent, regretful and righteous. Both men take the familiar and make it strange while retaining an underlying individualized veracity, which in my book, is what the blues is all about. I don’t know what sort of set up Mitchell used in capturing the music, but the intimacy comes through with uncompromised clarity on the disc.
So here I am with this great ‘new’ blues find and the natural impulse to hear more as soon as possible. The packaging on the disc carries next to nil in terms of information, not much more than a track list and the FP logo. A search online reveals a Barfield discography, but the comparable set listed contains not the 19 of my edition, but 47(!), basically another ninety-odd minutes of music. A few more clicks leads to the discovery that this material is available ONLY as a downloadable release through emusic. Much of the Mitchell Collection, which is now spread across several dozen 7” releases, was available in similar omnibus form back in 2005. So I’m a day late, if not a dollar short, and in order to hear the music now need to accept the mp3 format it comes in. Fortunately, there’s the promotional emusic offer of 25 gratis downloads w/ a subscription, so that should just about cover the difference. But it’s still a slightly disheartening situation considering how great what I have so far sounds in disc format. The wheels of progress will not be diverted by minority dissenting preference, so I’m opting to shut up, suck it up, and shell out for my intangible Barfield fix.
Went on a Netflix “Watch Instantly” bender this weekend and screened the titles to follow. So far their selection is dominated by “straight-to-video” fare, but I'll rue the day when a more sizeable share of their DVD holdings makes the transition to the format. I already have a hard enough time leaving the house w/ the ever-replenishing piles of multimedia strewn about.
The Long Riders (1980): Peckinpah-inspired western from Walter Hill. A little lazy in spots (esp. the ending), but it’s kind of nifty seeing the sibling teams onscreen together (Keachs, Quaids, Carradines). I’ve read some commentary claiming the final shootout superior to that of The Wild Bunch, but I’m just can’t fathom the claim. The squib & slingshot wire technology is certainly better, but that’s about it.
Calvaire (2004): French roasted exploitation blend of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance that goes down more like a two-day old pot of sludge. The opening act is suitably innocuous, but the switch to yokel-orchestrated horror in the second felt strained w/ too many “why didn’t he?” moments. And the third act gets plain ridiculous w/ all sorts of travails assailing a lead character that I’d long since lost interest in. One plus: the weird danse macabre that erupts to the strains of dissonant barrelhouse piano at a hillbilly watering hole.
Attack! (1956): Early Robert Aldrich WWII potboiler, with basically the same plot as Paths to Glory & Jack Palance playing Dax to Eddie Albert’s Moulard. Regrettably Aldrich falls prey to his more lurid melodramatic tendencies short-circuiting Albert’s promising performance and turning him into a caricature by the climax. Palance is good, but wobbly in his odd mix of volcanic rage and tender empathy. Decent supporting work from reliables Buddy Ebsen & Robert Strauss, and Lee Marvin works his magic as a career-blinded colonel w/ a weakness for Kentucky bourbon.
Days of Wine and Roses (1962): One of my faves. Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick as slaves to the bottle. Blake Edwards directs w/ a deft hand, painting a pretty picture at the beginning and slowly soiling it with the debauched descent of his leads. Surprisingly, few punches are pulled. The scene in the greenhouse still makes me cringe with Lemmon attacking the potted plants like a feral animal in a frenzied search for that elusive fifth of gin.
Heavy Metal (1981): Contraband celluloid from my early teen years that’s more artifact than classic to these adult eyes. The magazine was a staple in tree fort libraries throughout my neighborhood and the film does a decent (if primitive) job transferring page to screen, though the Den segment only captures a fraction of Richard Corben’s airbrush genius. The soundtrack is still the best part with tunes from Cheap Trick, Sammy Hagar, Blue Oyster Cult and others seamlessly edited and synched to the onscreen sex, drugs & rock ‘n’ roll antics.
I’m curious if anyone is having difficulty accessing the site. A computer savvy friend of mine wrote a few days ago saying that he was a receiving a “Server Not Found” message each time he tried to access the URL. I’ve not encountered any such problems and haven’t the faintest idea what they might stem from. So before I go hammering on our server host’s help line I was wondering if other’s could tell me if they’ve experienced the same. The catch twenty-two here is that if you’re having such problems, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to access the site to comment. Any feedback would be appreciated though.
Also, maybe this can serve as placeholder for any further discussion on site moderation, so as to give the belabored Capece one a reprieve. Thanks again.
In the intervening years since its 1983 release, much of the commentary on Testament has taken pains to contextualize the film within the era it was made: the apex of Reagan versus Russia atomic brinksmanship. Such a macro-minded strategy makes perfect sense, but it also presents in global terms what is essentially a local level story, that of a family and their neighbors weathering the ultimately un-weatherable after effects of a nuclear exchange.
Lynn Littman’s quietly powerful film unfolds in the fashion of a small-scale theater production, one that reflects its American Playhouse roots. The first twenty minutes are quotidian in the extreme and focus on the daily routines of the Wetherly clan, residents of Hamlin, a small hamlet near San Francisco. Scenes of the father Tom (William Devane) cycling with son Brad alternate with mother Carol’s (Jane Alexander) efforts preparing the other two Wetherly children for school and, later in the day, assisting with a school production of The Pied Piper. Others in the community also receive introduction including Kevin Costner and Rebecca DeMornay as the Pitkins, a pair of new parents, and veteran character actor Mako as a gas station owner with a developmentally disabled son. It’s a typical neighborhood in a typical American town. Littman gives almost no foreshadowing of the horrors in store other than the degree of initial normalcy imparted by her setting.
The attack comes in discomfortingly subdued form. The children’s afternoon cartoon program is interrupted first by static and then by an emergency response message announcing missile strikes on the Eastern seaboard. The screen goes blank and several blindingly bright flashes of irradiated light bathe Carol and the kids as they cower on their living room floor. The scenes that follow are similarly muted. No blast ravaged cityscapes that were the defining visuals of contemporaneous films like Threads and The Day After. No riotous scenes of mass panic and violence. No sky-scraping mushroom clouds. Just dazed people pouring out onto still tree-lined streets and attempting to process the magnitude of what has happened. In this respect the film oddly echoes an archaic antecedent, Panic in Year Zero, with armageddon arriving not amidst thunderously destructive bedlam but with a deleterious whisper.
An elderly couple with the fortitude to have stocked supplies and a short wave radio becomes the initial focal point for the populace. Through their reports, the citizens learn that much of the continental United States has been destroyed. Even with this calamitous news things still remain relatively status quo in Hamlin. Only in the ensuing days does society start to fray and fall apart and it’s in this thematic departure that the film truly transmits its devastating power.
Carol attempts to maintain the routines in the absence of Tom, who was at work at the time of the attack and has subsequently not returned home. A breakfast conversation revolves around radiation, with the children wondering what is safe to eat and drink. The ineffectual conjecture that follows brings the sitting duck nature of Carol’s situation painfully into focus. Supplies begin to dwindle and people fall ill. The radiation attacks unceremoniously and without preference. Carol’s sanity begins to falter with the realization of her utter helplessness. The remainder of the film documents a prolonged slide into the abyss, as her attempts to keep her children healthy and safe repeatedly fail. On the Beach depicted such a zero-sum end game, but Littman’s unflinching application of the scenario to a nuclear family unit makes the reality all the more harrowing and bleak. The fate of Carol and her kids is sealed. The film’s unremittingly downbeat denouement hammers home the certainty of atomic insanity with a force that belies the subtlety of the means used to impart it.
This past weekend, I got the movie Primeval from Netflix. If you're not familiar with it, you're not missing that much. It's a sort of horror movie starring Dominic Purcell (one of the two leads from the indescribably crappy TV series Prison Break) and Orlando Jones, an underrated comic actor who got his big break on the equally underrated MAD TV. Those two, plus a damsel destined for distress and a few other incidental schmucks, go to Africa in search of "Gustave," a 25-foot crocodile that's been eating people for years. During their search, they run afoul of the local warlord, who calls himself Little Gustave in tribute to his less-evolved but equally predatory counterpart.
The movie holds quite firmly to its view of Africa as primitive hellhole where if you're not getting chewed on by prehistoric beasts, you're getting shot or raped by the savage natives - who haven't changed a bit despite trading nose-bones for post-colonial fatigues and AK-47s. So sensitive souls will doubtless find it regressive, even offensive. That's not the big problem for me, of course - I've been watching white-man-in-the-Third-World horror flicks going back at least to Wes Craven's The Serpent And The Rainbow, if not Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust, and I'm fine with their...uncomplicated racial politics. My big problem with Primeval is that it's boring. The crocodile is a fairly phony bit of CGI, and the thuggish Africans aren't half as intimidating as the project dealers in The Wire.
The only good scene in the whole thing, the only moment that displays even a glimmer of style, is one in which a little girl, swimming in a river, is eaten in a single bite, with no anticipatory Jaws-style music or anything. One second she's there, the next she's not, and there are no shocked reactions from adult bystanders, or anything - we're just off to the next scene. That filmmaking choice, in its way, displays a genuine attitude toward the cheapness of African lives to the filmmakers - an ugly attitude, but a clear one, and thus worth displaying on-screen.
But anyway, my point in typing this post isn't to talk about the movie, but its soundtrack. There's very little non-score music in the film; three or four songs, one of which rolls over the closing credits. But of those four songs, two are absolute scorchers - so awesome, in fact, that I paused the credits so I could write them down and seek out the compilations on which they appear.
The first is Moussa Doumbia's "Keleya." Appearing in two versions (one just under five minutes, one nudging eleven) on an album of the same name, it's a scorching hunk of Afro-funk that combines almost muezzin-like chanted vocals with Archie Shepp-esque buzzy/roaring sax and guitar that sounds sourced from a James Brown bootleg circa 1969 on the short version, and from a Can bootleg circa 1972 on the long take. Plus, the long take adds sardonic female backing vocals reminiscent of Afrika 70 at their best.
The second is "Allah Wakbarr," by Ofo The Black Company. It's available in a couple of places - the Luaka Bop compilation World Psychedelic Classics 3: Love's A Real Thing, or where I found it, on the 3CD set Nigeria '70: The Definitive Story Of 1970s Funky Lagos, a blazing 3CD set that also features early and/or rare tracks by Koola Lobitos, King Sunny Ade, and Fela with Afrika 70, among many others. Import-only, but well worth dredging up if you're at all into 1970s Afro-funk. (If you're not into 1970s Afro-funk, what the hell is wrong with you, anyway?) This track is even noisier and wilder than "Keleya," featuring a scraping-the-inside-of-your-skull-with-a-rusty-chisel guitar sound to open things up that would make Jack White wet himself, and a riff straight out of a 1971 cop show. Every sound, from vocals to percussion to that unbelievably hellish guitar, has been fed through so much distortion it makes Konono No. 1 sound like the cleanest Berlin techno you ever chilled to. These guys are like the Chambers brothers on crystal meth, borrowing Motörhead's PA. An absolute must-hear.
This has been Multiculturalism For The Uncultured. See you around!
[Here’s a post about a month old that got lost in my transition from old to new laptop. For all I know there’s been a cascade of new press in the interim, but I kinda doubt it for reasons described below.]
Concert films of pantheonic jazz figures in their relative prime, priced to sell and professionally packaged would seem to be a sure bet for jazz mavens. But encomiums on the Jazz Icons series have been inexplicably slow to build*. Thanks to the efforts of European television stations and cultural organizations cameras captured a wealth of footage over the years. Access to such material is still predominately available throughonly cobbled together compilations with dubious dubbed VHS sourcing, not to mention questionable legality. That, or grainy nth generation footage streamed fromYou Tube pages. Naxos presumes to put these pretenders to shame and appears well poised to do so. I have been meaning to sample a title or two in the series for the past few weeks and finally took the plunge on a post-work pitstop to a local music emporium. Cruising the racks, I quickly settled on the Mingus set covering two plus hours of performances from the 1964 band’s celebrated European tour.
The film opens with a shot of a tour bus rolling up to a venue to the strains of the Mingus band. The doors open and out strides bandleader with his bass, followed in short order by Clifford Jordan, Eric Dolphy, Jaki Byard and bringing up the rear the dapper Dannie Richmond. The effect is as galvanizing as an iconic rock band arriving for a stadium gig. Once seated at his kit, Richmond regularly sparks up cigs, integrating his periodic drags into the rhythmic movements of his sticks and loosing expressive puffs of smoke into the studio air. Dolphy opts for black shades, curling his mustachoied upper lip in concentration and looking the epitome of cool. Jordan’s expressions are a bit harder to read, a blend of the stoic and stern, seated on his stool anticipating his ensemble reentry. Byard looks cherubic in his tight-fitting suit, a roll of fleshy fat spilling over his collar as he sits hunched at the piano bench. Mingus exudes an air of congenial confidence, dressed in a sharp black shirt and tie and making it look all so easy from his position centerstage. The camera crew gets in close and intimate, the edits between shots smooth and largely conducive to the music’s flow, though there is a point where Dolphy’s flute opening to “Meditations” occurs off camera, the lens lingering instead on a staid seated Jordan and partially obscured Mingus in arco crouch.
These sights are so engrossing that the music almost seems like gravy on the goose. Obviously scrubbed with noise reduction software, the audio comes through so clear that it’s a bit disconcerting when coupled to the aged imagery. Navigation is simple from a title menu, allowing access to the footage in whatever order the viewer desires. The case inlay card contains a collage of memorabilia and the accompanying booklet, detailed essays by enthomusicologist Rob Bowman and others. Access is made all the sweeter in the context of the recent Cornell set released on Blue Note, a visual corollary to those even more magnificent sounds.
I’ve yet to sample the content of the other two dates represented, but the inveterate consumer in me is already scheming a return trip to the shop to pick up a couple more volumes. Most likely the Monk and Gordon titles, assuming copies are still in stock. I am very interested in hearing other folks reactions to this stuff.
*A sidenote to Naxos: fire your so-called publicist & go with another agency next time. My brief dealings with Michael Bloom were easily the most offensive and ineffectual I have ever encountered in ten years of writing about music. It’s a shame too, because a series of this magnitude and quality deserves so much better in terms of representation.
[a few more of Mr. Richmond in action:]
Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop is part of a loosely delineated cinematic triumvirate that also includes Vanishing Point and The Driver. The first two films share sharper similarities in terms of general style and subject: ostensibly a muscle car race conducted on the open road. The Driver is more circumscript, confined to city streets that provide constant impediments to vehicular speed and coupled to a superficial noirish plot. Vanishing Point’s Kowalski is competing against himself, his cross-country road trip fueled not just by gasoline but also by the constant ingestion of amphetamines. Hellman’s film is lower key and more self-reflexively existentialist.
The characters are named succinctly after their identifying traits. Back-story is incidental. The Driver and The Mechanic are a couple of gearheads whose minimal banter consists mainly of meticulous car talk. Criss-crossing the country in a souped up ’55 Chevy, they eke a meager living seeking out others to race for quick cash. James Taylor and Dennis Wilson deadpan the roles to the hilt, their lack of dramatic training effectively emphasizing the characters’ social disconnection and single-mindedness. These attributes are mirrored in the car itself, devoid of distinctive features other than a coat of dull gray primer and a hood-affixed supercharger.
Warren Oates makes the film as GTO, an equally enigmatic man whose desire for self-invention and interpersonal connection borders on the pathological. Adrift in his lemon yellow Pontiac and garrulous to the point of parody, his defining traits run directly contrary to those of his opponents. Throughout the film, he picks up a succession of passengers including a notable turn by Harry Dean Stanton as a vaguely gay cowboy. Each attempt to connect with his riders ends in failure until the film’s final act when it seems he finally may have found an audience receptive to his self-referential flights of fancy. Oates brings a rich humanity and humor to role that contrasts sharply with the granite slab personalities of his opponents. Laurie Bird doesn’t fare as well as The Girl, a teenage waif who complicates the dynamics between the racers, and her presence tends to grate whenever she opens her mouth.
The race that forms the crux of the plot switches from defined to nebulous in short order, veering from antagonistic to amicable and back again as the character’s trajectories continually overlap. Even the agreed upon prize of vehicle pink slips is less a motivating factor than the lure of the constraints-free open road for its own sake. At several points, The Driver is tempted into a more emotive state, but soon recognizes the error of such a transformation and returns to a position of safety behind his purse-lipped faceplate. Hellman seems to suggest that any attempts to delve beneath the surface only expose the tenuousness of human relationships and that it’s wiser for his characters to keep moving than to come to rest for this very reason. It’s a cheerless sentiment echoed in the film’s nihilistic final frame.
Hellman shot the film in grainy film stock, setting up handheld cameras in the backseats of the cars to capture first-person vantage points. For all the fixation on cars and speed, most of the racing segments are curiously pedestrian. Static shots of roadside vistas and the drab small town environs the characters pass through prove far more interesting. Budget constraints are visible throughout, but Hellman continually uses them to his advantage by allowing the narrative to unfold in an easy, almost improvised manner. The film’s reputation as a Seventies cult classic is well earned and while not my favorite amongst the aforementioned triumvirate it still carries plenty to recommend it.
Looks like Brian and I picked the same time to start publishing the backlog from our respective review caches. Ergo the resulting cloudburst above. See what a week in Montauk can do; he comes back the Rain King. It’s the Minnesota monsoon season (or as close as we get to one before the temperatures drop to what feels like single digit Kelvin) so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m going to hold back a bit on the rest of mine and would encourage readers to be sure to peruse the new entries of the past few days.
photo: Paula Court
She may not launch into “Wild Women with Steak Knives” these days, but Diamanda Galas has not lost any attitude. Her set on Sunday, August 19th at the Highline Ballroom, a relatively new club on West 16th St. in Manhattan, was meant to feature her “Chansons Malheureuses and Amanedhes”, a song cycle that combines lyrics derived from French symbolist and surrealist poets with vocal traditions from Greek Rembetika and other near-East traditions of improvised lamentation. However, a late arriving piano and other technical snafus made sound-checking impossible so she reverted to the set she’d performed there the previous two Sundays, singing selections from her forthcoming disc on Mute, “Imitation of Life”.
Ms. Galas was not pleased.
After her first number, a harrowing rendition of Ronnie Earl’s “A Soul That’s Been Abused” laced with the hollers and groans that her fans know and love, she addressed the audience, apologizing for not being able to present the program she intended. She said she’d had notes printed and left them on the tables but the site personnel had them removed. At this point, a voice from near the bar shouted, “Bullshit!” Galas fiercely shot back, “Fuck you! I know who you are, motherfucker and I know what you did!” She proceeded to explain that the notes had advised the attendees that they were free to walk out at any time and demand their money back, given that the performance was not the one advertised. I didn’t notice that anyone took her up on this, but it was refreshing to hear someone on the fringes of pop fame refuse to put up with nonsense from the kind of venues that treat their musicians as hired help. Good for you, Ms. Galas.
Her set rotated between three basic areas: blues or jazz-based songs (O.V. Wright’s “8 Men and 4 Women”, “The Thrill Is Gone”, “You Don’t Know What Love Is”), chansons out of the torch tradition of Piaf and Juliette Greco (“Amours Perdue”, “Bonjour Tristesse”, “Heaven Have Mercy”) and, most impressively to this listener, several of those Greek lamentations.
I’ve been listening to Galas since her first recording, “The Litanies of Satan”, and have observed the arc her career has taken as she moved from larger scale, more overtly dramatic and experimental work (culminating, perhaps, in “Plague Mass” which I witnessed at St. John the Divine in 1991, a memorable evening to be sure) to song-oriented albums. On record, I’ve not always been convinced, often finding the song format too constraining although assuredly acknowledging that when she hits her mark she does so powerfully as on, for example, the EP “You Must Be Certain of the Devil”. (Especially “Let’s Not Chat About Despair”, the single strongest AIDS-related song I’ve heard). But there were also discs like “The Singer” which read as simply better or worse renditions of standards, lacking to these ears the force and passion of her earlier work.
I was therefore heartened that much of this evening’s performance was so enthralling, so emotionally piercing. Her voice, as she’s reached middle age, is huskier in the lower registers than it once was but has also assumed an air of cynical wisdom that more than compensates. If she doesn’t ululate into the stratosphere with the frequency she used to, she can still get there when required and remains quite capable of emitting a genuinely creepy witch’s cackle if necessary. Some amount of subtle delicacy has also emerged in recent years or maybe it’s just that I’ve only begun to discern it. When she sang “You Don’t Know What Love Is”, she allowed a number of high, pure tones to hover in the air, lingering and pulsing for several seconds, recalling similar strategies in late Feldman. In a later piece, she played a note on the piano that was only fractionally different from the clear tone she was singing, causing the sort of diffractive beats you hear in Alvin Lucier’s pieces for sine wave and acoustic instruments; a very beautiful, very subtle effect, all the more delightful when embedded in a relatively traditional structure where it gleamed like a hidden jewel.
With the exception of the final encore, I was most moved by the Greek pieces (her own “Keigome, Keigome” and most stirringly, “Uparxo” by the late Greek singer Stelios Kazantzidis), where Galas concentrated on glottal stops and low tones emanating from deep in the chest, imparting an anguished melodramatic effect that was anything but sentimental. On those songs particularly, I found myself wishing that I could hear her in a context well away from that of a rock club, maybe in the back room of an old Greek restaurant in Astoria. The passion of her delivery was too real, ultimately, to be comfortable on a clean stage replete with (unnecessary) smoke effects and computerized lighting.
The final encore was possibly my favorite of the standards Galas has covered, “Gloomy Sunday”. A magnificent, haunting piece written by Reszö Seres in 1933 and made semi-famous in the US by Billie Holiday, it was popularly known as “the Hungarian suicide song”. Urban legends have cited it as the source of numerous self-inflicted wounds and subsequent banishment from the airwaves. Record companies forced Holiday to use lyrics that had been translated so as to imply a more upbeat ending; Galas, unsurprisingly, abjures that, going with the original translation by Desmond Carter. She had recorded the work in 1992 on “The Singer” but, whether it’s the weight of years or otherwise, her rendition this evening achieved far greater probity. Here, sardonically interpolating the melody of “Lullaby and Goodnight”, she invested the song with a vast, dark, brooding power and unrelenting precision of focus that threatened to draw the shadowed walls of the room down upon the listener. Extremely impressive and enormously moving, the work shows Galas at her deepest and most bitterly incisive as well as her most open and troublingly human.
At work with no time to post something proper, but here’s a placeholder for Roach-related remembrances. I’m going to miss you, Max.
Cue the no-input chorus line in honor of the arrival of Mr. Olewnick’s 53rd annum on the planet. Here’s hoping he spends this historic day prostrate in a chaise beachside, ear buds planted securely in sockets and a frosty beverage & slice of celebratory yellowcake within ready reach.
And a clarion trumpet call to Dennis Gonzalez too, who just so happens to turn the same age on the same day. Serendipity!
[Apologies for the unwieldy gif image above- I’m posting this from work as my antiquated laptop is once again on the blink]
A lot of prison cinema in the 70s mined the fairly narrow spectrum between melodrama and exploitation. Ulu Grosbard broke from the mold with Straight Time, a film that touches on the behind-bars experience only in passing and focuses instead on the consequences experienced by a parolee. Based on Edward Bunker’s novel No Beast So Fierce and born from a screenplay co-written by the ex-con author, the film explores how personal choices and predilections can doom a man in perpetuity.
Dustin Hoffman plays Max Dembo, a three-time loser just paroled from prison. A dream assemblage of character actors including M. Emmett Walsh, Harry Dean Stanton and Kathy Bates populates the cast. Even Gary Busey turns in respectable work as Dembo’s heroin-addicted hick friend. The opening credits set the story beautifully, following Dembo from the prison gates through a night spent wandering around Los Angeles rather than checking in at a halfway house, a decision that ends up a determinant in the domino arc of the film.
Walsh is pitch perfect as his parole officer Earl Frank, a by-the-book-when-it-suits-him suit who also exudes a fair bit of sleaze. A surprise inspection of Dembo’s flophouse room reveals a spent book of matches. Walsh immediately connects the dots and concludes that somebody has fixed on the premises, cuffing Dembo and setting in motion a sequence of events that catalyze the latter’s sociopathic tendencies. Hoffman handles the personality sea change beautifully, conveying Dembo’s simmering frustration and his inevitable explosion with an attention to detail that doesn’t completely abandon the character’s earlier charisma. Not only is the deck stacked against Dembo, but he simply isn’t predisposed to play by the rules.
Stanton’s Jerry Schue has successfully assimilated back into society, at least on the surface. He owns an auto repair shop and a rambler in the valley with a swimming pool, but he pines for the adrenaline rush that accompanies a successful score. His conscription into Dembo’s renewed criminal causes comes all too easily, even in the face of mounting evidence indictating the error of such judgment. Bates and Theresa Russell play the only two female characters in what is predictably a male dominant cast. Both are good, but it’s Russell who receives the most screen time as Jenny, Dembo’s love interest. She makes the most of what she’s given, turning in a layered performance that aims for deadpan over drama, the traits of a wounded woman prone to making careless choices in men understated, but tragically apparent.
Grosbard stocks the film with fine and blackly comedic details: The Los Angeles Department of correction office situated in a low rent mall space; the menial indignities of Dembo’s job in a can factory; how relatively little luck and chance play a role in Dembo’s fate. He’s also skilled at sketching the seedy locales of Dembo’s world. Conversing with his new landlady, Dembo inquires: “does the bed come with sheets?” Her flatly inflected “no” speaks volumes. In another scene, Dembo and Busey’s character are discussing where to go out on the town. Dembo reminisces about catching Chet Baker, Hampton Hawes and Howard Rumsey’s Light House All-Stars in earlier years, name drops designed to make the jazzbo viewer grin. A tender scene between Dembo and Jenny unfolds to John Fahey’s rendering of “Poor Boy, Long Ways From Home”. David Shire’s original soundtrack is great too, pivoting on an underdog-oriented pop orchestral theme ironically at odds Dembo’s late film persona.
Themes of personal freedom and respect run deep through the script. Dembo is struggling to achieve and sustain both, but his selfish actions continually undermine his attempts. He’s just not equipped to earn a societal place in a conventional sense and his belief that he’s paid his debt to society falls on largely deaf ears. The interpersonal dynamics with those he comes in contact with, old friends, new lovers, and the like present an indelible roadmap to his downfall. A self-aggrandizing soliloquy to Jenny in a steak house reveals just how out of touch his is, the punch line being his inability to pay for the meal. Suspension of disbelief is required in a few instances. Jenny’s lasting continued attraction to Dembo feels a bit forced, as does the speed with which he renews his criminal associations after a six-year absence. But these are minor inconsistencies and the uniform strength of the performances makes them easy to excuse.
When it comes to crazy mortality-intimating weeks, count this as one for the personal record book. Ingmar Bergman, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Sal Mosca, Art Davis and Sonny Dallas have all left this mortal coil. A bridge collapse last night here in Minneapolis took at least another nine souls, with more no doubt to be named. Two more soliders and Jehovah knows how many Iraqis dead in Iraq yesterday, though this site supplies numbers on that latter severely under-reported demographic as recent as Sunday, 7/29. This site puts the situation writ large for our species in the stark context of Eye in the Sky encapsulation and reveals a far more dire perspective. The one ray of light in a barrage of such hope-obliterating statistics: bicycles outpacing autos by a ratio of nearly 3:1. Another far more petty analgesic: my discovery this week of Elijah Craig’s 18-year bourbon. With a bottle barrelled two months prior to my high school graduation (you do the math), I’ve been taking necessary steps to numb the aggressively-encroaching despondency. Sometimes it truly can feel like a mythical Atlas-like entitiy is the only thing preventing us from tumbling into the abyss.
This is old news, but I thought I’d fire up a flare anyway in the interest of feeding the wallet-depleting habits of fellow music mavens. The Jazz Loft, one of the foremost millenaries on the net, is winding up its week-long hatOLOGY sale on the July 6th. That’s nearly 90 titles priced @ $4.99 for singles, $6.49 for doubles, quite the deal considering standard list on Hats now hovers just under a Jackson apiece. Happy shopping!
Summer here in the Twin Cities means heat and humidity coupled with swarms of flesh perforating insects, all downside to a state with seasonal temperature differentials that reach as high as 120° F. One of the positives to that kind of pugnacious climate is a comparatively healthy film culture. Five “art house” theaters and several excellent DVD rental brick & mortars serve a small, but hungry clientele of cineastes. Several previous attempts to establish a cinematic beachhead here at Bags have failed, but those defeats haven’t dissuaded us from the cause. My schedule is finally wide open this weekend and I fully intend on whittling down an intended screening list that has ballooned to the unconscionable size of several pages. Whether these efforts will result in new film content here & the subsequent delight of reader Graham L. Rogers remains to be seen. In the interim, please visit the fine celluloid scholars at Not Coming and check out their “What Is Animation?” series of features for keen insights on Don Hertzfeldt, Jirí Trnka and Hayao Miyazaki among others. The Flash title page alone capsizes the meager film musings here at Bags like a Chinese supertanker’s wake effect on a Fijian submersible, though I’m not as convinced by the piece on Laloux’s Fantastic Planet, a chink in an otherwise expertly crafted suit of chain mail criticism.
Apropos of nothing, other than I’ve been on a serious flamenco jag over the past 24 hours, I present this potent aural pearl for reader approval. Peña’s a new name to me in the flamenco pantheon (shows the little I know about the idiom), but this Decca “2 on 1”, easily procurable for under ten bucks, captures his prodigious skills in the pristine sound of “Phase 4 Stereo”- one of the few vintage Hi-Fi marketing ploys that actually surpasses its romanticized claims. It’s also somewhat unique in that it’s the only cd I own that clocks in at (80:54). The twenty tracks feature Peña solo as well as with traditional accompaniment of second guitar, castanets and handclapping. By and large, it’s glorious stuff; probably more appropriate for a ROW pick, but I just couldn’t wait two weeks.
As evidenced by the many punctilious posts at his blog, Pete Cherches is more of an epicurean than a gourmand. His deep appreciation of fine cuisine comes across with either assignation; plus, it’s hard to imagine him going Travis Bickle on the bit. Vicarious gustatory thrills exist in abundance over at Word of Mouth, though it’s often a place I forget to frequent. Ergo, this post as a placeholder for an convenient link. And, as is probably predictable, I’m also curious to hear about readers favorite restaurants from their own locales (hell, we’ve chewed the cud about pretty much everything else, so why not food?). Here in the Twin Cities, my top three haunts are:
Chai's Thai: a tiny establishment nestled in a storefront nook on the West Bank. Delicious, cleverly cobbled dishes, impeccable presentation (shaved ribbons of carrot & radish garnish nearly every order) & starving student prices have made it my first choice for Asian eats in Minneapolis. The gratis Dum-Dum pops w/ each bill are a nice parting touch. Menu tip: their Massaman Curry (finest I’ve yet tasted in my thirty-five short years on the planet).
Puerto Azul: Puerto-Rican cuisine served w/ home-cooked panache in a converted Saint Paul residence made to resemble a South Miami bodega. Meats and seafood are the menu focus w/ sides of plantains and sofritos a must. My pick is their Mango Salsa chicken. The buck-fifty excised for extra salsa might seem exorbitant, but it’s really a pittance considering the electric effect the substance has on taste buds.
Lotus, Uptown: an incongruous hold out from less-gentrified times encircled by a sea of high-end hipster restaurants and hangouts. A décor of neon and Formica isn’t much to look at and the menu in sum can be hit or miss, but the marinated beef spring rolls and Vietnamese barbecue chicken plate are old reliables when a double-digit bill isn’t desirous.
On May 6th, I was at the Blue Note to see Cecil Taylor’s New Aha 3, with Henry Grimes on bass and violin, and Pheeroan AkLaff in the drum chair. Andy Bey was in attendance as guest vocalist, and the group played two sets, one at 8:00 and one at 10:30 P.M.
Since the late 1970s, the structured sections of Taylor’s compositions seem, in large part, to be built on repeated and arpeggiated intervals, replacing the more bare-bones chromaticism of Akisakila and Live in the Black Forest with lusher more harmonically driven gestures. Brief and exclamatory still, each phrase is connected to the last by a quasi-tonal motion, hanging just at the edge of ready comprehensibility and logic. By Garden, this approach was fully developed, occurring simultaneously at several transpositions. More recently, as with the Willisau Concert, tonal centers are briefly discernable, and this was the case on May 6th.
I am not certain that Taylor considers these triads in that way, serving those functions, but my classical training insists on separating the more clustered elements in any performance from their triadic counterparts.
Grimes and AkLaff were all over even the slightest changes as the first set, an extended piece of approximately an hour and a half, swelled, crested and ebbed in the now familiar arcs. Whether on bass or violin, which he played frequently throughout the evening, Grimes would shadow Taylor, picking up on a choice motive and subjecting it to the torrents of ideas issuing from his own inwardly reflective yet persistent imagination. Grimes and AkLaff, the latter exuding intensity and energy, almost seemed to be anticipating the arrival of each “tonal” moment, rendering them two of Taylor’s finest collaborators in some time. Several bells and other objects he had placed inside the piano modified Taylor’s playing, approximating a prepared sound in the Cage manner. When drums and strings were at their highest in volume and energy, such subtleties were inaudible, as the music washed over the crowd in the almost unbearable yet exciting pandemonium that it was so unnerving to experience live.
Andy Bey’s contributions were alternately thrilling and disappointing. His incredible ear sampled and held those moments where a note was repeated, and he hurtled around each harmonic suggestion with speed, drama and precision. Where the language veered into what I can only call abstraction, Bey continued in a vocabulary of precisely “Western” pitch, either unwilling or ill equipped to partake in the freedoms offered by piano or unfretted strings. Yet, the second set was a mellower affair, Taylor’s own playing subdued and concentrated; Bey’s appearance part way through actually enlivened the trio, bringing back some of the adrenalin without which the group seemed to falter.
Despite all manner of excitement, the most interesting music occurred at the beginning of the first set. Grimes and AkLaff emerged, playing soft repeating figures, non-tonally military invocations was how I heard them, and these wonderfully minimalistic utterances continued until Taylor entered, shaker in hand, and began to sing in his raspily alien voice. Off mic, it was strangely beautiful, almost resembling a bagpipe as Taylor added tones to the rhythmically textured angles of violin and drums. After some lines of poetry, Taylor began to work on the piano’s innards, as he did on his 1988 collaboration with Derek Bailey for FMP. It was as if an autoharp had been placed, softly, amongst rocks and crags, weaving velvet through a maze of metal. Without a change in the drum and violin patterns, Taylor began to incorporate the arpeggiated structures, and the effect was magical, two alien worlds, fully formed, colliding and somehow, miraculously, coexisting.
Given the grandeur of those opening minutes, I felt some considerable disappointment as the more familiar trio interplay took root. Exhibited on countless releases, the energy was something to behold in a concert environment, but the absolute beauty and subtlety of the opening’s timbral interplay was lost.
I was left pondering the question of development, of the artist’s duty to develop the language he/she invents, to modify it, expand it, and maybe, ultimately, to destroy it and begin again. This is by no means an imperative; just listen to Monk, for example, who found his voice by his thirtieth year, maybe even before, and spent his life honing his craft. The same might be said of Duke Ellington, whose radically differing versions of his standards, heavily reorchestrated, were as much refinements as evolutionary statements. Taylor’s forays into timbral glory at first set’s opener made me ache for him to continue along that path, to mine those freshest elements of what I was hearing, as he did with standards so many years ago. The opening of Student Studies hinted at similar tantalizations, and I was reminded of these by the Aha 3’s first 15 minutes on stage. It is obviously not my place to dictate how the master artist proceeds, but I felt that such a superb trio, capable of making such important music, might also have been used to realize the kind of discoveries upon which this music continues, I hope, to be predicated.
~ Marc Medwin
[apologies to Marc for being so dilatory in getting this piece up & thanks to Jeff Schlanger for use of the painting Mahattan Spaces 21, above, as visual preamble. DT]
One of the things I love about Bagatellen is the way in which it elicits unforeseen correspondence. Some curious soul does a Google search. An entry pops up and they’re moved to comment, or, in rarer cases, to send a missive directly to the writer. Yesterday, I received an email from Joseph Befumo Holiday. Who is that, you say? Joe is an octogenarian tenor saxophonist who’s been playing his instrument professionally for over a half century. His performance folio includes gigs with Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday and Max Roach. He’s probably best known these days for a Prestige compilation saddled with the somewhat myopic title Mambo Jazz. I wrote a review of the discs years ago for AAJ & I’m guessing that’s how Joe came across my name & contact info. He also appeared on a pair of cuts on Larry Young’s Testifying date for Prestige and a handful of other sessions. Best of all, he’s alive and well, living in Port St. Lucie, Florida and serving as curator for the city’s annual Art and All That Jazz Festival where he performed most recently with Ira Sullivan. He’s also a fine artist, painting in a style that reminds a bit of Jeff Schlanger, the Music Witness. At any rate, I’m thinking a return visit to Mambo Jazz w/ a six pack of Negro Modelo and a plate of gruyere & gouda nachos just might be the perfect way to usher in this fine summer weekend.
Why, right HERE @ the (relatively) new abode of Walto’s World, a MySpace page that houses his fledgling blog and a damn sight better set of digs than his previous office. I’ve mentioned repeatedly how much I miss Mr. Horn’s more formalized musings on music (ie. reviews) and now there’s a sliver of hope that he’ll return to that thankless enterprise with his site as forum. Fingers crossed. It also has the distinction of being one of the most frills-free MySpace pages I’ve ever seen; here’s hoping he succeeds in keeping the rabid wallpaper & ring tone solicitors at bay with those well-chosen Screwdriver samples.
Some of the regulars around here are probably already in the know, but I just wanted to give a shout out to Bags alum Joe Milazzo in honor of his impending nuptials on June 30th. I don’t know if he ever swings by here anymore, but I’m selfishly hoping that a knot tied will slow him down enough to consider at least a provisional return to the bullpen. Whatever his post-matrimony plans, he deserves all the happiness I hear married life accords. So raise a glass, or whatever you have handy that will hold a swigs worth of liquid, and join me in wishing he and his bride the best.
[above shot: the Milazzo Wedding Band @ an earlier gig]
I’m winging out to Austin, Tejas on Friday for the wedding of my girlfriend’s brother. He’s a man after my own heart considering that the only stipulations on attendance are a willingness to swill copious amounts of beer and leave all facsimiles of formal attire at home. No problemo! We’ll be in the city through Monday and needless to say, I’m looking forward to the change of scenery from the humid greenery that is Minneapolis to the thunderstorm-prone desert that is Austin this time of year. I haven’t been there since an impromptu road trip in grad school some nine or so years ago, so I’m not that versed in the current must see sights & sounds. If there are any readers out there who can give me a heads-up on the local attractions, I’d be much obliged.
Sincere thanks to everyone who contributed to the ad hoc Bags pledge drive (names below); the outpouring of support was unexpected and most appreciated. We’ve raised enough for our server fees this year & even have a slight surplus that I’m squirreling away as a Bags Disaster Fund buffer. In an effort to express gratitude in musical form I also enlisted the services of the Mounds H.S. Maple Leafs Saxophone Septet. Unfortunately, understudies Toby and Milo (2 o’clock and 9 o’clock, respectively) tagged along, screwing up my shot at a purely alliterative title to this post. An mp3 link to accompany the above photo op will presumably be forthcoming once Buzz Mendelssohn mixes down the gymnasium tape. In addition, the geeks at Geek Squad have finally relinquished their repair claim on my laptop, so I’ll be posting more frequently in the coming days & weeks. Thanks again to everyone.
Eberhard Meisel
Mark Chodan
Damon Smith
Lewis Radin
Sergio Zamora
William Russell
Tom Djll
Gary Sisco
Stephane Berland
Reuben Radding
K A Kilimis
Joel Wanek
Nate Dorward
What's that they say about death and taxes? A third certainty here at Bagatellen is the annual appearance by the server host piper, a surly leotarded sort who won't leave the premises until payment is proffered. In past years, we've cut the requisite check from the coffers and sent him on his surly way. This year, with Namor submerged somewhere under the Seven Seas, I've come to discover that I don't have access to our Alms account. In the interest of giving mine & Brian's wallets a break, I thought I would try an experiment and initiate an informal Bags pledge drive. The annual server fee is $157.00. I've dispatched a Bags busking team (pictured below) to several of the busiest street corners, but thus far they’ve come back with bupkis. Any bread you can spare (crumbs or loaves) would be much appreciated. Donations can be made via PayPal to derekct AT gmail.com. Just click on the simple “Send Money” tab and follow the instructions. I’ll keep a running tally here of the progress.
[Fast Fiddlin' Paddy O'Heliotrope]
[Rev. Pearly Whites]
[Helmut "Mumps" Goss]
A day late, but this is news that will likely dampen spirits for weeks, if not months, to come. Andrew Hill passed away yesterday after a valiant battle with lung cancer. A busy week finally behind me, I plan to spend the afternoon revisiting his Mosaic box and pondering the magnitude of talent that we've lost.
Poll any jazz pundit about their particular addictions and you're certain to receive a passel of responses. Some have a rabid appetite for rare vinyl. Others fixate on certain artists or periods. For me, it's a more consumerist niche: Verve box sets. Norman Granz was incredibly prolific as a producer, tirelessly financing and shaping sessions to his own tastes. Between Verve itself, now under the umbrella ownership of Universal and blocks of the catalog leased to Mosaic there's an astonishing amount of material available. Many of these weighty slabs of jazz history carry the dangerous signifier "Complete" affixed to their titles, dangerous both in a sense of wallet integrity and in overall quality of content. Some, like the Complete Charlie Parker Verve set, sound great on paper, but are in reality casual listening debacles, as fragmentary alternates, false starts, studio chatter and other audio ephemera clog the spaces around complete takes. Others, like the Complete Norman Granz Jam Sessions are marvels from beginning to end.
Perusing my shelves recently, my eye halted on the curiously protruding spine of the Lionel Hampton & Oscar Peterson – Complete Quartets and Quintets set. This odd brick-shaped object is a product of the late 90s Verve box set boom where the company brass presumably approved a hashish-friendly office policy and the graphic designers went whole hog on bushels of the finest Amsterdam-imported stock. It's the sort of crackpot construction that would make the folks at Rhino Handmade, the undisputed industry leaders in nonsensical box set packaging, proud. The spine is swaddled in burlap sackcloth and two stainless steel pegs hold its thick cardboard covers together. A forty-page booklet and five burgundy cardboard disc sleeves lies sandwiched within. The whole thing slides into an ill-fitting and ultimately flimsy tan cardboard box. An ungainly fold-out poster is also included.
As unappealing as the set's appearance is, its musical contents offer a plentitude of pleasures. Prior to purchasing a used copy about five years ago, my opinion of Lionel Hampton could best be described as distanced respect coupled with mild disinterest. I knew the back-story about his seminal big bands. I had heard the epochal "Flying Home" with Illinois Jacquet's R&B pioneering freak-register solo and other sides featuring a teenage Mingus in pre-bloom. But compared to players like Bobby Hutcherson, Walt Dickerson and even Milt Jackson, his swing-rooted style seemed antiquated and even prosaic. Turns out my tin ears weren't really listening and the music on this set proves it.
Hamp hooked up with Granz in 1953 and the producer immediately set up a string of studio sessions that yielded a series of 10-inch LPs. Oscar Peterson and Ray Brown were natural picks for the rhythm section given Granz's religious use of their talents and their partnership in Peterson's working trio. Buddy Rich was tapped as well and the quartet cycled through a songbook of second-nature swing tunes by the likes of Irving Berlin, Ira Gershwin, Benny Goodman, Cole Porter and Fletcher Henderson among others. The pedestrian quality of the songbook is more than offset by the flexibility it allows the players in sounding off at length and with brio.
Essays by Brian Priestly and Francis included in the set's booklet do an excellent job providing a personal history of Hamp prior and after these sessions as well as placing the music in context. He and Peterson were an excellent match, each man often seized by the need for exuberant displays of virtuosity. There's plenty of that here starting with the first disc, which contains one dizzying vibes solo after another. The metaphor of a rollercoaster is frequently used to convey musical velocity and swiftly changing trajectories. It's an ideal encapsulation of Hamp's double-malleted drills, the precisely parceled notes dropping in blurred sequences that immediately recall Tatum's piano runs and by association, presage Hamp's Granz-funded small group conclave with the pianist, a session that not so coincidentally included Rich as third man and was eventually released on Pablo. Peterson's Tatum-isms come through too, but staying true to his sideman role, he holds the more bombastic side of his musical personality largely in check and the sessions are all the better for it. There's still room for successive duels and two spar breathtakingly on numerous occasions, but the overall musicality sustains intact.
In addition to Hamp's speed and implacable placement, there's his tone: A brightly ringing metallic sound that uses sustain only sparingly and centers instead on a clarion candor. Granz has him jacked up in the mix on the first session and it's an unnecessary tactic that places Peterson at a slight disadvantage, one that pianist shoulders with good humor. The upswing is that there's even more bite to Hamp's delirious runs, but Brown ends up suffering the most, his bass muddied and several excellent solos compromised by the faulty balance. Rich remains unperturbed, secure in the knowledge that his muscular chops will surmount any recording inequities. He revels in the lighting of rhythmic fires beneath the soloists, but also shows restraint on the occasional ballad numbers. Most drummers require sticks to strike with the force he musters on brushes and his solo in the closing minutes of "The Nearness of You", cited by Priestly in the notes as a "master class", is but one of many superlative showings. Subsequent discs improve in sound and attain a more equitable balance.
Granz stuck with the winning quartet formula as his constant, but Hamp was also receptive to the occasional guest. The set's third and fifth discs feature clarinetist Buddy DeFranco and guitarist Herb Ellis, respectively. DeFranco's bop-tempered reed fits right into the playfully competitive frontline while Ellis seems to prefer a more relaxed role slipping in between Rich and Brown as another frequent rhythmic voice. In both cases, it's exhilarating to hear the core quartet additionally sparked by the presence of such a distinguished guest.
Hamp repeatedly fielded heat throughout his career for the earthy exuberance that often informed his playing. Critics claimed that his enduring ties to popular dance music and the more plebian facets of jazz (ferocious rhythm, crowd-catering displays of dexterity, etc.) were evidence of an improvisatory mind not on par with later bop and postbop successors. This set proves such notions as utter hogwash. Hamp's rhythmic, harmonic and melodic aptitudes accepted the parameters of swing as their root, but as the dozens of solos on this set substantiate, they also included copious imagination and ingenuity in their execution. The nearly 18-minute rendering of Hamp's signature "Flying Home" that dominates disc three is displays this beyond the shadow of a doubt, starting light and airy with Rich on brushes and culminating with a the drummer, on sticks, engaged in a frenzied chase with the leader, the latter grunting with a volubility almost on par with instrument. A provocative, perspiration-drenched performance, it perfectly puts to lie the prejudice of swing as a fogeyish exercise.
Five discs sequenced to near capacity may seem like overkill and, to be honest, I'm not usually inclined to play more than one or two in a single sitting. But for me this set is a smaller example of the retort I use when queried about the exorbitant size of my collection. Sure, there's probably no way that I'll be able to listen to everything repeatedly in my lifetime, but as with any well-stocked library, it's nice to have the option hear any one of these immensely enjoyable sessions when the whim visits.
Captain America met his maker this past Wednesday when the final issue of his comicbook hits newstand racks. Oddly enough, the august flag-garbed jingoist is felled by something as mundane as a sniper’s bullet. Actually, Joe Simon, half of the creative team who first hatched the character in the Spring of 1941, is still with us, holding steady at a ripe old age of 93 and reportedly none too pleased by the demise of creation. Cap was a favorite of mine as a kid, the bright red, white and blue colors of his costume and signature shield capturing my imagination before Spider-Man wooed me away with tales of teen angst tied to super heroics. He paged through countless incarnations during his 66 years in circulation with costumes and backstories so profuse and convoluted it would take a cinema screen-sized schematic to keep track. He also inspired a cadre of copycats, my pick among them the even weirder Captain Canuck. Overtly political in appearance and bearing, writers and artists imagined an assortment of personalities for him from benevolent boy scout to facist patriot. I lost track of him sometime in the mid-80s (around the end of the Zeck/DeMatteis years), but his Wikipedia entry does a pretty decent job filling in the blanks. Also on the subject of comics, copious thanks to my pal Ted for hipping me to this Blog structured in much the same manner as musical counterparts like Church Number 9, etc. and providing back issues in generous batches while also begging the question: Is there anything that can’t be downloaded these days?
A Twin Cities institution went silent at the stroke of midnight this past Tuesday as One Final Note sounded its curtain notes into the Troposphere. DJ Scott Hreha beamed out his final broadcast from the KFAI studios, having decided to hang up his ear goggles and mic. I don’t have the scoop on the whys & wherefores, but I’m surmising it has something to do with the growing gig list of his up & coming band, The Unreasonables. OFN’s gone through various guises over the years, from links clearinghouse, to quarterly journal, to weekly webzine and radio show and I’ve had the privilege of being a participant in some of them. Scott’s kept the latter incarnation going for 2+ years and the archived play lists record an impressive range of jazz and improv platters. I wish him the best in his future endeavors, but will no doubt feeling pangs of loss when I sit down to hear the final show still accessible here for the next fortnight or so. An end of an era? Probably not, but still a very impressive run.
Yesterday marked the fourth anniversary of the first Bagatellen post: a little missive from Al “Namor” Jones on the merits of Henry Threadgill. Hard to believe this little backwater of the web has been around that long. I’m in the midst of a major laptop debacle so my postings will probably continue to be sporadic for the next week or so, but I couldn’t let the occasion pass without at least a minor toot of the kazoo & tilt of the bourbon tumbler. While there still seems to be plenty of contention regarding the relative usefulness of this place, it remains my favorite spot to hang my cyber-sombrero, nonetheless.
Also, rest in peace Leroy Jenkins: three quarters of a century still seems too soon to lose you.
I stumbled across this amazing trio of pint-sized Argentinean rockers on a Maker’s fueled YouTube binge. Vaguely reminiscent of The Shaggs, but a damn sight better in terms of musicianship & taste, brothers Emilio (14) and Martin (10) are the heart and soul on guitar & bass with amigo Augstin (11) completing the band on cans. The power of the net beams performances taped in their bedroom “studio” to the global headbanging masses. According to a December ’06 interview with Vice Magazine they’ve accumulated a songbook of 30 covers, but stadium-sized gigs are still elusive. My Español is rustier than a sunken Spanish doubloon so the copious entries on their blog aren’t much help in learning more, but there are still plenty of great pics to peruse. Here are a couple of the choicest video clips:
Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper” and “Hallowed Be Thy Name”
Solo Emilio [those with severe arpeggio allergies beware!]
Tribute to Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Sepultra’s “Refuse, Resist” [Emilio & Martin pulling a switcheroo]
Slow goings here on the Bags Blog, so I thought I’d annex some space to mention another of my regular web-stops, namely Kevin Whitehead’s music reviews over at NPR. Probably best known to Bags readers for his first-in-the-field tome New Dutch Swing, Whitehead’s held the coveted jazz critic post at Fresh Aire going on eighteen years. His dispatches, now made from the University of Kansas campus where he lectures in Jazz and American Studies, follow a casual biweekly schedule. The scripts are sharply written and he’s careful to commit at least half the airtime to audio samples that corroberate his findings and opinions. It’s an innovative style of music reviewing that I wish we were able to accommodate here at Bagatellen as the Show & Tell aspects of the style have instant appeal and value. No more guessing as to how patches of purple prose relate to associative sounds. The format also calls for rigorous attention on the part of the critic: No phoning it in possible when the music itself can make or break contentions in real-time. Anyway, Whitehead’s latest piece finds him venturing off his usual jazz beat to cover a new Ennio Morricone box from Rhino. As usual, the spoken insights are spot-on.
True to form, the 49th Grammy Awards show from the Staples Center was a near complete vacuum in terms of worthwhile airtime, but it did offer several memorable moments. I spent 2+ hours of the broadcast playing Super Scrabble w/ friends and swilling cans of Tetley’s Smoothflow™ English Ale as scenes scrolled by as background noise. Seeing Ornette Coleman take the stage with Natalie Cole (some suit’s idea of a clever pairing hinging on similarity of surnames?) to award country ingénue Carrie Underwood with a gramophone statuette certified as a surreal moment. Coleman looked dapper as ever, mumbling through his scripted preamble and seeming a bit bewildered in the process. Underwood’s look of polite indifference in his presence, coming on the heels of her participation in a particularly painful Eagles medley, was priceless. The Red Hot Chili Peppers sole stage prop during their performance, a spray painted sign reading “Love to Ornette Coleman”, was strangely predictable, but also endearingly sincere. The earned good karma parlayed into a small boon of statuettes for their own double-album Stadium Arcadium. On completely different front, it was a guilty pleasure hearing my man Lionel running down a version of his Eighties urban contemporary ballad “Hello.” As with pretty much every Grammy encounter of the past several decades, I left the experience feeling oddly aged and out of touch with the pulse of popular music.
Most Prisoner of War films pivot on some element of planned escape. The protagonists’ goal usually entails attempts to elude their captors through clandestine collaboration and elaborate preparation. British director Bryan Forbes’ 1965 picture King Rat deviates sharply from that plot pattern, presenting a population of prisoners who concern themselves with trying to simply stay alive and sane, and for whom the notion of escape never enters the mental equation. Emancipation eventually comes, but its arrival is anticlimactic and carries with it negative implications along with the obvious positive ones. The story’s de facto polestar is Corporal King, played with vernal brio by George Segal, still two years away from his Oscar nod for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? King takes his surname seriously and is respected (often grudgingly) as the go-to-man: the guy who can get anything for a price and pocket a profit in the bargain. Within the constricted and hierarchical economy of the camp, his gift for graft has blossomed. He’s charismatic, but not sympathetic, a self-serving chiseler who usually has a half dozen schemes operating at any one time.
The camp itself presents a fascinating social ecosystem. Situated in a rural region of occupied Singapore, the natural topography of jungle and ocean serves as an intangible set of stockade walls. British, American and Australian officers occupy shanty huts outside a walled compound where their Japanese jailers and enlisted internees reside. Free to wander about the rocky terrain, none of the officers sees the relatively lax security as a reason to flee. The system of segregation is almost a reverse of the usual penal configuration and the Japanese are barely visible at all through the first two thirds of the film, their presence mainly felt in the despairing countenances of the captives. A hill littered with corporal punishment devices termed “boar holes” hints at off-screen brutality, but is never elaborated. Forbes and his production team do an excellent job conveying the demoralizing nature of the surroundings from the oppressive sun and humidity to the filth and disease that invests the camp. The men are clad in a disheveled and sweat-stained mixture of uniform remnants, subsisting on shark meat soup and generally displaying a realistic degree of misery through a profusion of perspiration. Only King stands out with his pressed pants and starched shirt, implicit symbols of his disparate wealth. Still, a sense of military decorum endures, however pliable to the realities of the camp.
Co-star James Fox plays Marlowe, a British officer invited into King’s inner circle by virtue of his fluency in Malay. The two strike up a friendship that takes on vaguely homoerotic overtones in the film’s second act. Tom Courtney is Colonel Grey, King’s adversary, an officer who chafes repeatedly at his transgressions and cannot condone the corruptions and hypocrisies that are so ingrained in daily camp life. Despite a deft portrayal, his behavior veers very close to caricature in his blind obeisance of military code. When alerted by a superior to his own contradictions in comportment he very nearly short circuits from the moral strain. A series of vignettes illustrates King’s con skills, among them the titular swindle of raising and selling rodents disguised as Malay delicacy meat to unsuspecting officers in the camp. Another involves a boiled dog stew made from a fellow prisoner’s executed pet. It’s a wonderfully telling scene as the men are initially repulsed by the meal, but eventually acquiesce when exposed to the savory odors and set about devouring the food with Bacchanalian relish. The series of sharply edited close-ups reveals both the depths of their hunger and a renewed sense of camaraderie that results from the feast. As with the best prison films, Forbes excels at exposing how the men make do with so little and how each tiny luxury, from a fried egg to a cigarette can mean the difference between solace and despair.
Various other British and American character actors supplement the cast, among them Denholm Elliott as a good-natured member of King’s coterie and Patrick O’Neal as his hapless lackey. There’s even a cameo by a pre-Family Feud Richard Dawson as a paratrooper sent to “liberate” the camp. The film falls apart somewhat in its final segment, resorting to a sermonizing comeuppance for one of the characters, but it also has the courage to take the viewer through the consequences of the camp’s dissolution. Despite their newly gained freedom, the men of the Changi Jail exit the bamboo gates of the prison far from intact.
Hollywood screenwriters routinely modified the film noir ethos to a myriad of settings, but few work as surprisingly well as Anthony Mann’s Border Incident. Starring Ricardo Montalban and George Murphy as partnered federal agents representing either side of the titular divide, the film delves into the hot political topic of illegal labor along the Mexican-American border. The film’s opening expository segment plays out like a typical G-Man procedural of the era. Even the hackneyed “based on a composite of actual events” trope comes across like an obedient concession to studio execs. None of this gives any indication of the dark and subversive detours to follow.
Saddled with the painfully generic name of Pablo Rodriguez, Montalban’s federale goes undercover as a migrant bracero, while Murphy’s Jack Bearnes settles into an alias as a wanted ex-con in possession of prized immigration work permits. The pair purposefully runs afoul of an elaborate illegal labor network run by two gringo bosses. Howard Da Silva is Owen Parkson, an American ranch owner well versed in the profitable business of trafficking in illegal workers while Sig Rumann portrays Hugo Ulrich, his supplier on the Mexican side of the border. Da Silva’s Parkson is a near perfect blend of wily intelligence and genteel confidence and he imbues the character with a three dimensional persona that’s both singular and memorable. Various Hispanic and Caucasian character actors flesh out the remainder of the cast. Blessed with the sort of facial features that come alive with noir lighting, Arnold Moss and Alfonso Bedoya stand out from the pack as Zopilote and Cuchillo, a particularly sleazy pair of hired goons. Murphy’s misshapen mug and frame are also ideal in this regard with a pomade topped, potato-shaped head and the wiry frame of a welterweight prizefighter. His Bearnes is a bland, by-the-book agent, but once he slips into his alter ego, he’s given much greater depth and the opportunity to shine through a series of canny tough-guy one-liners.
John Higgins checkers his script with all kinds of clever twists of plot that collectively succeed in sustaining suspense. There’s also an uncommon attention to detail and continuity that together make for a rich and often bracing story. The heroes are far from infallible and repeatedly make errors in judgment. Some, through sheer strokes of luck, end up serving their purposes better than their initial laid plans. Others lead to dire consequences. In one scene the braceros are forced to undergo an impromptu inspection of hands, Montalban’s soft uncallused skin reveals him immediately as an imposter, but rather than tipping their hand, the bad guys lull him into a false sense of security. When eventually called on the ruse, he tweaks his lie ever so slightly and regains trust by veering even closer to the truth. Mann’s direction is similarly sure-footed, relying on a wealth of creative camera perspectives and expert use of light and shadow. The film is uncompromisingly brutal, with several scenes of torture and another involving the graphic murder of a principal character sticking out as complete anomalies in a production of this vintage. The rampant violence of the finale is also at odds with the plainly patriotic and paternalistic Hollywood ending that once again glosses over the underlying political and social problems at the root of the story. As a western, a neo-noir, and an FBI melodrama Mann’s film hits each mark square on.
Just a quick communique to announce that the Film section of the site has been fleshed out with some freshly-excavated oldies. I’ve been combing the library racks on a more consistent basis and fully intend to paste-up more opinion on my filmic finds (cue: uproarious applause). In the meantime, do check out the other entires, especially the erstwhile Joe Milazzo’s musings on Jubilee.
Moons aplenty have passed since I owned an operational turntable and it’s a condition unlikely to be rectified considering the continuing flood of LPs available online. Even so, I occasionally experience pangs of want for a working stylus. Such was the case last Friday night when I sought shelter from the blood-freezing Minneapolis weather in the basement vinyl room of a local brick & mortar. Flipping through racks in an effort to warm sausage-swollen fingers, I stumbled across a set of platters that chased away the tendrils of cold from my senses and set me to wondering feverishly about the contents.
Packaged in gatefold sleeves, Newport in New York, The Jam Sessions, Vols. 1-4 has a definite whiff of Norman Granz and the old ploy of bundling players with the expectation of pyrotechnics about it. There’s no overt sign of his name, but bop sage Ira Gitler pens the liners on each set. Biographical sketches and period photos of each player also grace the interiors and some of the mug shots are priceless (Mulligan in his shaggy hippy phase and more starched floral print collars & muttonchops than you can shake a pachouli stick at). There was also another LP set, documenting the Soul/Blues portion of the ’72 program feat. Curtis Mayfield, B.B. King, Roberta Flack, Herbie Mann and Les McCann in various combinations (seems even back then the phrase “jazz festival” had conveniently loose connotations).
Sufficiently defrosted & precariously late for a social engagement I left the store before sampling any of the sounds on a tryout turntable, but not before scribbling the set lists and personnel down on a scrap of receipt so as not to forget (below). Anyone heard these and care to comment? The version of “So What” with sax phalanx of Moody, Phillips, Gordon, Sims & Kirk(!) has my mouth watering, as does the rhythm section of Williams, Heath, Roach & Black on “A Night in Tunisia.” It’d also be a hoot to hear Mingus mix it up with the reliably loony Buckner on “Jumpin’ at the Woodside.” Train wreck or transcendent meeting of pros, I’d be curious to find out.
Newport in New York, The Jam Sessions, Vols. 1 & 2 (Cobblestone)
Side A
Perdido (18:53)
Side B
Misty (3:29)
Now’s the Time (13:50)
Joe Newman, tpt; Nat Adderley, tpt; Illinois Jacquet, ts; Budd Johnson, ts; Tyree Glenn, tbn; Gerry Mulligan, bs; Jaki Byard, p; Chubby Jackson, b; Elvin Jones, d. Recorded: 7/6/72, Radio City Musical Hall.
Side C
Blue ‘N Boogie (28:11)
Clark Terry, tpt; Howard McGhee, tpt; Sonny Stitt, ts; Dexter Gordon, ts; Gary Burton, vbs; Jimmy Smith, org; George Duke, p; Al McKibbon, b; Art Blakey, d. Recorded: 7/6/72.
Side D
So What (25:13)
Harry “Sweets” Edison, tpt; James Moody, ts; Flip Phillips, ts; Dexter Gordon, ts; Zoot Sims, ts; Roland Kirk, ts, stritch, manzello, whistle; Kai Winding, tbn; Chuck Wayne, gtr; Herbie Hancock, p; Larry Ridley, b; Tony Williams, d. Recorded: 7/3/72.
Newport in New York, The Jam Sessions, Vols. 3 & 4 (Cobblestone)
Side A
Jumpin’ at the Woodside (21:33)
Side B
Lo-Slo Bluze (22:35)
Cat Anderson, tpt; Jimmy Owens, tpt; Charles McPherson, as; Buddy Tate, ts; Milt Buckner, org; Roland Hanna, p; Charles Mingus, b; Alan Dawson, d. Recorded: 7/6/72.
Side C
Bag’s Groove (16:19)
Side D
A Night in Tunisia (18:37)
Dizzy Gillespie, tpt; Benny Green, tbn; Stan Getz, ts; Milt Jackson, vbs; Josh Blair, vln; Kenny Burrell, gtr; Mary Lou Williams, p; Percy Heath, b; Max Roach, d; Big Black, cga. Recorded: 7/3/72.
Certain films of the Sixties and Seventies carry with them attributes that makes the 21st century viewer ponder seriously if they could get made today. Directed by Arthur Hiller and released in 1969, Popi definitely fits that bill and despite its flaws it’s still a sometimes fascinating artifact. Alan Arkin plays, Abraham “Popi” Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican resident of Spanish Harlem and a widower with two sons, who works three jobs and is obsessed with a secretive crackpot scheme. “Papi” is Spanish slang for “father” and the film details Rodriguez’s elaborate and duplicitous machinations to engineer a better home for his children. The action shifts unceremoniously between slapstick, sentimentality and drama and it’s the first category of scenes usually fall flat. One involves Popi’s attempts to fix a flooded basement in a pair of improvised bucket shoes. Another finds him inadvertently impersonating a Bay of Pigs veteran and a Cuba Libre fundraiser. Both painfully parade Arkin’s sketchy sense of comic timing as well as a tacked on accent that’s as phony as his character’s trademark black beret.
The sons are suitably scrappy and streetwise, spending their days involved in precocious mischief making and roughhousing, and the script takes pains to emphasize the everyday dangers of their surroundings. In an altercation in a stairwell they witness a junkie decapitate a pigeon and Popi comes to the rescue with a can of bug spray. Later, they’re stripped and smeared with soot by a gang of peers. The Rodriguez apartment is also evidence of the family’s dire straits, a rattrap of a residence with strung Christmas lights and a decaying mannequin in a chair as presumable surrogate spouse. The rationale behind Popi’s plan is feasible, but the design and execution end up requiring a serious suspension of disbelief.
Production values largely leave the grittiness of the urban locations intact, but there are also some dated elements in other areas of the film. A treacly, syrup-and-strings theme songs sticks in the head despite best intentions to raise defenses and an opening credits sequence in a cemetery comes off as equal parts Courtship of Eddie’s Father and Little House on the Prairie, with long slo-mo shots and close-ups of the kids frolicking through the headstones. Cinematographer Andrew Lazlo has a naturalistic flair and is much better at capturing the crazy hustle and bustle of Spanish Harlem. There are some excellent aerial panormas of the neighborhood, its cultural color and tangible grime in Technicolor display. At least three scenes of child nudity, one involving humiliation, seem a bit suspect. The fruition of Popi’s scheme also contains a component of disturbing cruelty, one that’s ultimately difficult to reconcile with his character’s supposed paternalistic preoccupations and motivation. The dénouement is equally unconvincing, involving a rescue-at-sea, mistaken identities, an audience with the president, and several more opportunities for ill-fitting slapstick. Popi is a strange little flick: a footnote in Arkin’s long career, but one that is curiously evocative of time and place.
Like most people my age and older, I still remember seeing Star Wars when it came out theatrically, in an ancient movie house in Vancouver when I was six, sharing shouts of approval with the enthusiastic Canadian audience. Several years later, I went to with a friend and his parents to a screening of Lucas’ first commercial release at Fairhaven College, the counter-culture counterpart to the state university in my hometown. I don’t recall much from that original exposure to the film other than the final 15-minute action sequence that synched well with my prepubescent sensibilities and still stands as a memorable milepost in 70s cinema. The rest was a blur of unintelligible imagery and sound. Since then, the title has repeatedly fallen through the fissures in my film consumption. I have read several commentaries about it over the years, but for some inexplicable reason have never revisited it. A Director’s cut DVD copy checked out from the library recently changed that.
Much has been written about the film’s sci-fi plot and visuals, particularly the context of the director’s subsequent success with the highest grossing franchise in film history. The nameless numbered protagonist, here played by a young Robert Duvall, and his gradual awakening from a pharmaceutical-derived stupor to the horrors of his homogenized and dehumanized world has now almost become clichéd in the genre of science fiction. One of the most effective scenes illustrating this reality involves two unseen techicians monitoring Duvall’s imprisoned character via video screen. One is training in the recently transferred other and their ensuing dial twiddling and flip-switching leads to severe psycho-physiological trauma for the otherwise clueless Duvall, undercut with more banal banter and techno babble. It’s a sequence both disturbing and darkly humorous and one that runs directly at odds with a clip from a vintage Buck Rogers serial that prefaces the film and imagines the future as an arcadia teeming hi-tech wonders. The script is actually riddled with this sort of pseudo-technological and religious doubletalk, presumably to further the impression of a society so bureaucratized and faceless that the human element is all but lost. But its presence is so abundant that it soon starts to feel overwrought.
Lucas has long been derided for his handicaps concerning character development. Those impediments are not much of an issue in this setting, where even a modicum of original thought and expression separates the individual from the sheep. Duvall does a decent job depicting THX-1138’s transformation from chattel to dissident, mapping an emotional ping-pong pattern from confusion, to fear, to anger, to tenderness and back. Other character actors in the oddly eclectic cast include Donald Pleasance, as a creepy voyeur desperate for companionship who, despite his protestations and rationalizations to the contrary, finds himself just as institutionalized as his compatriots, Sid Haig, who would go on to become an icon of 70s and 80s schlock cinema, and Johnny Weissmuller, Jr., son of MGM’s Tarzan, as one of the proto-Stormtrooper robot sentries.
Despite the dated nature of some technology, Lucas’ dystopian world holds up pretty well. Most of the populace is parceled into highly dangerous drone-like manufacturing work where triple-digit on-the-job fatalities are factored into monthly production quotas. Downtime consists of the numbing trifecta of mandatory consumerism, drug intake and holographic entertainment either erotic, violent or monotonous in content. A menu of pills and interactive medicine cabinets are part of the daily routine. Everyone is assigned a white jump suit and maintains a shaved cranium to discourage individualist impulses. All are familiar futurist tropes, given an early-70s spin by Lucas and co-screen writer Walter Murch, who also shows off his fledgling genius for sound editing and design with complex montages and splices throughout the film. Lalo Schiffrin’s largely electronic score completes the aural side of the equation, mixing interludes of poignancy with passages of overlying ennui. It’s the sort of thing he would go on to perfect in later films like The Conversation and Apocalypse Now.
As with his Star Wars trilogy, Lucas went back to the original film cut and augmented various sections with Industrial Light & Magic upgrades for the re-release. Some, like various large-scale city shots and a concluding sequence obviously employing new millennial CGI, are easy to spot. Others are less so. None really adds that much to the picture and the most striking imagery still lies in the scenes describing Duvall’s imprisonment in the antiseptic white cell seemingly without walls. It’s a concentration camp in the literal sense of the phrase, where recusants are sent to reflect at length on their transgressions. The ease of Duvall’s eventual initial escape also points to the pervasiveness of the conformist worldview. The surveillance guards are so anesthetized by the status quo that they simply allow him to walk out. When realization of his departure does register, a special budget is assembled to finance his recapture and a running tally records its depletion. In the end, his freedom hinges solely on the cost-effectiveness of venture. It’s a set of circumstances with sharp metaphorical corollaries to the economic shift from studio to corporate ownership occurring in the American cinema of the era and the succession artistically stultifying side effects that came with the switch.
Second in Andrzej Wajda’s celebrated cinematic war trilogy, Kanal opens with what seems like a conventional expository preamble for the genre. A ragtag column of Polish resistance fighters marches past the camera, negotiating the rubble and wreckage of a besieged Warsaw. The main characters file by in short order, a somber gravel-voiced narrator concluding his introductions with this fatalistic epigraph:
“Watch them closely, for these are the last hours of their lives.”
The next segment of the film focuses on the company’s efforts to retain their wits and resolve in the midst of the German’s impending and overwhelming attack. Some drink, others fornicate, most fall into the familiar war movie archetypes: the stoic C.O. who cares more for his troops’ safety than his own; the temerarious daredevil willing to risk life and limb; the plucky company mascot; the bean counting by-the-book subordinate; the civilian artist brought into the group as a refugee. Several of the characters also have affectionate nicknames, Slim, Wise and Daisy among them, that suggest further familiar ties to the genre. There are also a number of children in the ranks, each as willing as the adults to shoulder arms and fight. Wajda takes pains to illustrate the youth and life still left in this people and the tragedy of their imminent demise. The battle scenes are impressive on one level, with long tracking shots of the destruction that reminded me of some of imagery in the recent theatrical release Children of Men. There are moments where it’s difficult to discern whether Wadja is using historical stock footage or actually staged the scenes himself, such is the scale and detail of havoc. Nevertheless, much of the close quarters combat feels strangely stilted and unrealistic.
The film picks up again with a calculated retreat into the city’s sewers and its here that the harrowing action hits a new high. Separated in the maze-like passageways, the company, now reduced by casualties to platoon size, stumbles about in fragmented packs. Some fall prey to German grenades dropped from manholes; others become hopelessly disoriented, wading through the waist-deep pools of excrement and filth. Wadja pulls no punches in realistically depicting the subterranean surroundings and the characters are soon caked and smeared in steaming fecal matter. It’s difficult to determine whether the gas percolating up from the porridge-like muck is methane or the contents of submerged Zyklon canisters. The fates of nearly all are not as inconclusive. One wanders the tunnels as a sanity-cracked somnambulist, playing haunting strains on an ocarina. Two others survive several brushes with death and reach apparent safety, only to find their way barred by an impassable obstruction. As promised in the preamble, the film concludes on a bleak note, one mirroring the filmmakers’ opinion that the event upon which it was based was ultimately an ill-conceived and deleterious plan for Poland’s future. Those political undertones take a secondary seat to the film’s visuals. Shot in grainy black and white with low light and an abundance of menacing shadows, the sewer segments in particular deliver scenes that stick.
What’s that they say about musical deaths in threes? I hope that the passing of Alice Coltrane will be the last this week and we won’t lose another of her caliber. Coltrane is another whose work I’ve not paid nearly enough attention to over the years. The static she received for her so-called circuitous contributions to her husband’s final works also seems ill deserved. The raga-esque piano improvisations on Live in Japan are part of appeal as far as I’m concerned meeting the challenge of Trane’s unfettered loquacity with a musical agent that is at once innervating and calming, tide-like in its liquidity. Her gilded, but muscular harp playing on McCoy Tyner’s Extensions is another of her most successful appearances. And of her own work, Ptah the El Dahoud ranks as one of the finest late period Impulse! platters, particularly for the truly inspired frontline pairing of Pharoah Sanders and Joe Henderson, a tandem that would sadly not be repeated. Coltrane returned the favor, appearing on the interesting, if slightly uneven, The Elements under Henderson’s name. I read mixed reviews of her 2004 “comeback” album Translinear Light, but her legacy as stalwart steward of her husband’s music as well as her own made the more mean-spirited comments levied in its direction seem trite. As is the customary course of action for the grieving music fan in honoring the dead, I’m off to go spend time with Stellar Regions and Live at the Village Vanguard Again! in her memory.
Michael Brecker might seem like an odd subject for a reverential obit here at Bagatellen. Along with his brother Randy, he rode the lucrative surf of mainstream jazz popularity for much of his career, churning out a litany of albums and garnering 11 Grammys along the way. A long-practicing Trane disciple, his cyclopean chops were a magnet to followers hungry for virtuosity, sometimes seemingly at the expense of soul. I never really paid much attention to his music, recognizing him more as a name than an identifiable sound, but this past year brought me into contact with two of his recent sideman releases: brother Randy’s unfortunately-titled Some Skunk Funk and Odean Pope’s stellar Locked & Loaded. The former is packed typical crowd-pleasing pyrotechnics, bombast and sometimes painfully obvious grooves. Taped prior to the saxophonist’s diagnosis of leukemia, it also finds the brothers in playful and spirited form, fronting a small combo that is at times augmented by the horn section of a German big band for extra (and largely unnecessary) firepower. The Pope date features Brecker as guest soloist in the Saxophone Choir along with other big guns James Carter and Joe Lovano. His solos on “Prince Lasha” and “Coltrane Time” are standouts on the date and ideally suited to the sax-heavy surroundings. Much has been written about his activities as a jazz educator and figurehead and 57 is too youthful an age to die by any estimation. Here’s toasting Brecker’s memory and the strong legacy he leaves behind.
Posted by al at 9:53 AM
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Here’s the collection of favorites lists for ’06, so far. Some consensus coupled with lots of variety. If I’ve forgotten anyone or there are others to be added, just let me know.
Onward to ’07!
Gerardo Alejos
1.) nmperign / Jason Lescalleet - Love Me Two Times (Intrasitive)
2.) Keith Rowe / Toshimaru Nakamura - between (Erstwhile)
3.) Simon H. Fell - Composition No. 62: Compilation IV (Bruce’s Fingers)
4.) Otomo Yoshihide’s New Jazz Quintet feat. Mats Gustafasson - ONJQ Live in Lisbon (Clean Feed)
5.) Exploding Customer Live at Tampere Jazz Happening (Ayler)
6.) Axel Dörner / Mattin - Berlin (Absurd/1000+1 Tilt)
7.) Evan Parker - Time Lapse (Tzadik)
8.) Ornette Coleman - Sound Grammar (Sound Grammar)
9.) Atomic - Happy New Ears! (Jazzland)
10.) Joanna Newsom - Ys (Drag City)
11.) Klaus Filip / Toshimaru Nakamura - Aluk
12.) Jason Lescallet - The Pikgrim
13.) Keith Rowe / Mark Wastell - Live Concert From the I-and-E Festival, Dublin
14.) Jason Lescalleet / Joe Colley - Annihilate This Week
15.) Joe Foster - Knock Nevis (for Wilson Zorn and J.P. Jenkins)
16.) Serge Baghdassarians / Boris Baltschun - 13.46-11.04-25.09
17.) Greg Davis / Jeph Jerman - Live @ Pere Tucker Regional Gallery, Australia 07-14-2006
Honorable mention: Los Dorados - Turbulencia
David Bauwens
1. Radu Malfatti & Mattin – Going fragile [Formed]
2. Scott Walker – The drift [4AD]
3. Current 93 – Black ships ate the sky [Durtro / Jnana]
4. Ami Yoshida & Christof Kurzmann – a s o [Erstwhile]
5. Joanna Newsom – Ys [Drag City]
6. Nmperign & Jason Lescalleet – Love me two times [2-CD] [Intransitive]
7. Keith Rowe & Toshimaru Nakamura – Between [Erstwhile]
8. Lionel Marchetti – Red dust [3x3”] [Crouton]
9. Drudkh – Blood in our wells [Supernal]
10. Destroyer – Destroyer’s rubies [Merge]
11. Klaus Filip & Toshimaru Nakamura – Aluk [IMJ]
12. Carla Bozulich – Evangelista [Constellation]
13. Kommando Raumschiff Zitrone – First time I ever saw your face [Quincunx]
14. Sanjah – Musen / is [PSF]
15. Dona Dumitru Siminică – Sounds from a bygone age vol. 3 [Asphalt Tango]
16. IST – Lodi [Confront]
17. Beirut – Gulag orkestar [Ba Da Bing!]
18. Olivia Block – Heave to [Sedimental]
19. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – The letting go [Drag City]
20. Keiji Haino & Tony Conrad – Live at Instal, Glasgow, 14 October 2006 [arika.org.uk]
21. Om – Conference of the birds [Holy Mountain]
22. Axel Dörner & Mattin – Berlin [Absurd]
23. The Czars – Sorry I made you cry [Bella Union]
24. Toru Takemitsu – Corona - Tokyo realization (Jim O'Rourke) [Columbia Japan]
25. Manfred Werder – 20061 [Skiti]
26. The Knife – Silent shout [Rabid]
27. Josephine Foster – A wolf in sheep’s clothing [Locust]
28. Jason Lescalleet – The pilgrim [LP+CD] [Glistening Examples]
29. A Hawk And A Hacksaw – The way the wind blows [Leaf]
30. Polwechsel – Archives of the North [HatHut]
31. Johnny Cash – American V: A hundred highways [American / Lost Highway]
32. The Drones – Gala mill [ATP]
33. Oren Ambarchi & Keith Rowe – Squire [For4Ears]
34. Entrance – Prayer of death [Entrance]
35. Kyle Bruckmann / Werner Dafeldecker / Boris Hauf – Wane [Formed]
36. (N:Q) – November Quebec [Esquilo]
37. Wooden Wand – From the road vol. 4: Goat general and other delusions [WWVV]
38. EKG & Giuseppe Ielasi – Group [Formed]
39. Katsura Yamauchi & Michel Doneda – La drache [IMJ]
40. Keiji Haino & Sitaar Tah! – Animamima [2-CD] [Archive]
41. Sibylle Baier – Colour green [Orange Twin]
42. Greg Davis & Jeph Jerman – Ku [Room40]
43. Joe Foster – Ethics [Copula]
44. Tom Waits – Orphans [3-CD] [Anti]
45. Peter Evans – More is more [Psi]
46. Philip Samartzis – Unheard spaces [Microphonics]
47. Masahiko Okura / Günter Müller / Ami Yoshida – Tanker [For4Ears]
48. Will Guthrie – Body and limbs still look to light [Cathnor]
49. David Lacey / Paul Vogel / Mark Wastell – Live concert from the I-And-E Festival 1 April 2006 [Confront]
50. The Contest Of Pleasures – Albi days [Potlatch]
Rob Cambre
-Masayuki Takayanagi - reissues of several rarities that popped up in '06, especially Action Direct, Mass Hysterism In Another Situation, and Eclipse.
-Evan Parker (with Derek Bailey and Han Bennink) - The Topography of the Lungs (reissue, Psi)
-Mission of Burma - The Obliterati (Matador)
-Mats Gustafsson & David Stackenas: Mountain Blues from Sweden (Atavistic)
-Various - Fonotone Records box set (Dust-to-Digital)
-Harry Miller's Isipingo - Which Way Now (Cuneiform)
-Flaming Lips - live performance at Voodoo Fest and At War with the Mystics (Warner Bros.)
-Tetuzi Akiyama - live performance at The Big Top and several CD's, especially Terrifying Street Trees, Route 13 To The Gates of Hell, and Vinegar & Rum.
-Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped (DGC/Geffen)
-Nels Cline - New Monastery (Cryptogramophone) and Cline/Shoup/Corsano - Immolation/Immersion (Strange Attractors Audio House).
Other Faves :
-Carla Bozulich - Evangelista (Constellation) and powerful live performance of same at The Big Top
-Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Brotherman in the Fatherland (Hyena)
-Frank Wright Quartet - Unity (ESP-Disk)
-Cat Power - The Greatest (Matador)
-Peter Brotzmann Group - ALARM (reissue, Atavistic)
-William Parker - Long Hidden, Olmec Series (Aum Fidelity)
-Nash Kontroll - Your Left Hand Just Exploded (Ideal)
-Sun Ra Space Arkestra - What Planet Is This? (Leo)
Other stuff:
-The amazing tenacity and growth of the scene for adventurous/improvised music in New Orleans in the face of overwhelming odds that would kill most towns. Somehow the first year post-Katrina was perhaps the most energized one for the scene in years. Elders Kidd Jordan and Alvin Fielder are still a strong presence, and now there's a growing crop of younger players.
-Playing-wise, a great year of first meetings with inspiring collaborators: Roger Turner, Dave Dove, Suzanne Thorpe, Annette Krebs, and Tetuzi Akiyama. How fortunate am I? And more hits with longtimers Donald Miller, Endre Landsnes, and Bill Hunsinger. Yet another fine bout with Tatsuya Nakatani.
-Personal introduction to the very fab improvising community in Austin/Houston (largely via the NoIdea Festival), espec. Dave Dove, Chris Cogburn, Sandy Ewen, Nick Hennies, PG Moreno, and Mari Akita. Lovely folks, all. Good to have some regional neighbors.
-My town surviving in spite of fuck-all in the way of help from the government.
-Goodbyes to too many too soon: Raphe M., Dewey R., JB, Malchi R., Will Westbrook, Arthur Lee, Syd...i'm sure i'm forgetting several others.
-Stephen Colbert, Keith Olberman, and others for fighting the good fight.
Nate Dorward
The shortlist
1.) Simon Fell, Compilation IV, Bruce’s Fingers
2.) Trio BraamDeJoodeVatcher, Change This Song, BBB
3.) Bobby Zankel and the Warriors of the Wonderful Sound, Ceremonies of Forgiveness, Dreambox Media
4.) Kent Carter String Trio, Intersections, Emanem
5.) Andrew Rathbun, George Colligan, Renderings: The Art of the Duo, Fresh Sound New Talent
6.) Misha Mengelberg, Afijn, ICP/Data Images (DVD)
7.) Nels Cline, New Monastery, Cryptogramophone
8.) Trio 3 (Oliver Lake, Reggie Workman, Andrew Cyrille), Time Being, Intakt
9.) Roy Nathanson, Sotto Voce, AUM Fidelity
10.) Buck Hill, Relax, Severn
11.) Fred Hess, How ’Bout Now, Tapestry
12.) Ran Blake, All That is Tied, Tompkins Square
13.) Paul Flaherty, Chris Corsano, The Beloved Music, Family Vineyard
14.) Simon Nabatov, A Few Incidences, Leo
15.) Andrew Hill, Time Lines, Blue Note
16.) Jesse Zubot, Dementia, Drip Audio
17.) Billy Stein, Hybrids, Barking Hoop
18.) Rudresh Mahanthappa, Codebook, Pi
19.) Trio Continuo, Authentic Basics, WLJWC
20.) Ab Baars, Kinda Dukish, Wig
21.) Evan Parker, Crossing the River, Psi
22.) Lee Konitz/Ohad Talmor String Project, Inventions, OmniTone
23.) ROVA, Totally Spinning, Black Saint
24.) John Butcher/Christof Kurzmann, The Big Misunderstanding Between Hertz and Megahertz, Potlatch
25.) Howard Riley, Two is One, Emanem
26.) Peter Evans, More is More, Psi
27.) Tony Bevan, John Edwards, Orphy Robinson, Mark Sanders, Ashley Wales, Derek Bailey, Bruise with Derek Bailey, Foghorn
28.) Alex Ward, Luke Barlow, Simon Fell, Steve Noble, Help Point, Copepod
29.) George Lewis, Sequel (For Lester Bowie), Intakt
30.) Conjure, Bad Mouth, American Clavé
31.) São Paulo Underground, Sauna: Um, Dos, Três, Aesthetics
32.) Fond of Tigers, A Thing to Live With, Drip Audio
33.) Jeff Kaiser, Andrew Pask, G.E. Stinson, Steuart Liebig, The Choir Boys with Strings, pfMentum
34.) Stefano Battaglia, Raccolto, ECM
35.) John Ettinger, Kissinger in Space, self-released
36.) Johnny Valentino, Stingy Brim, OmniTone
37.) Thom Gossage/Other Voices, 5, Effendi
38.) Achim Kaufman, Michael Moore, Dylan van der Schyff, Kamosc, Red Toucan
39.) Robert Marcel Lepage, Pee Wee et Moi, Ambiances Magnétiques
40.) Phil Nimmons/David Braid, Beginnings, self-released (NNB)
41.) Michiel Braam’s Wurli Trio, Hosting Changes, BBB
42.) Tony Wilson, Horse’s Dream, Drip Audio
43.) Temperamental Trio, Raw and the Cooked, Kadima Collective Recordings
44.) Dave Liebman/Bobby Avey, Vienna Dialogues, Zoho
45.) Jorrit Dijkstra/John Hollenbeck, Sequence, Trytone
46.) Reuben Radding, Fugitive Pieces, Pine Ear
47.) Billy Hart, Billy Hart Quartet, HighNote
48.) Jack DeJohnette/Bill Frisell, The Elephant Sleeps but Still Remembers, Golden Dreams
49.) Johnny la Marama, “…Fire!”, Traumton
50.) Jack Wright, Tom Djll, Bhob Rainey, Tim Feeney, Road Signs, Soul on Rice
51.) Jack Wright, As Is: Solos from Beirut & Barcelona, Spring Garden Music
52.) Badland (Simon Rose/Simon H Fell/Steve Noble), The Society of the Spectacle, Emanem
53.) Agusti Fernandez/Mats Gustafsson, Critical Mass, Psi
54.) Free Zone Appleby 2005, Psi
55.) Muhal Richard Abrams, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Streaming, Pi
56.) Roscoe Mitchell, No Side Effects, RogueArt
57.) Mujician, There’s No Going Back Now, Cuneiform
58.) Ornette Coleman, Sound Grammar, Sound Grammar [Nice album, but, no, it’s not in my top ten, or top twenty. There are boots out there of this band which seem to me better…]
59.)Omer Avital, Asking No Permission, Smalls Records
60.) Polwechsel, Archives of the North, Hatology
61.) Miles Perkin, Common Thread, Ombu
62.) Lindsey Horner, Don’t Count on Glory, Cadence
63.) Matt Steckler, Persiflage, Innova
64.) Dave Burrell, Momentum, High Two
65.) Drumheller, Wives, Rat-Drifting
66.) Schlippenbach Trio, Winterreise, Psi
67.) The Reveries, Live in Bologna, Rat-Drifting
Reissues/Vault issues
“Vault issue” is the term for issues of previously unreleased older material. I’m defining “older” as “ten years or more” (hence the Chapin).
1.) Roswell Rudd, Blown Bone, Emanem
2.) John Butcher, Phil Durrant, Paul Lovens, Radu Malfatti, John Russell, News from the Shed, Emanem
3.) Barry Guy/London Jazz Composers Orchestra, Study II, Stringer, Intakt
4.) Thomas Chapin, Ride, Playscape
5.) Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Han Bennink, The Topography of the Lungs, Psi
6.) Warne Marsh, Ne Plus Ultra, Hatology
7.) Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Biosystem, Psi
8.) Iskra 1903 (Rutherford/Wachsmann/Guy), Chapter Two, Emanem
Fun in the Dark
Kazutoki Umezu: Show the Frog
J-Zone: To Love a Hooker
Sten Hanson: Autobiography
Dead C: Perform Max Harris
Dead C: live in San Fran '95 bootleg CD
Kuchiroro: Fanfare
Kuchiroro: 20th Century Abstracts
Kuchiroro: Light of Morning/ Cinderella Beach
Kuchiroro: (three squares)
Poets of Rhythm: Practice What You Preach
Sun City Girls: Piano Bar box
Glands of External Secretion: (the LP with the bright painting of the nun and the squirrel on the cover)
Robert j. Kirkpatrick
The following lists would be my favorite recordings of 2006 in several different categories. The first are my favorites of the year, the things that I thought were amazing music, that I listened to over and over again. In general these are all one hundred percent solid, albums that only have a couple of good tracks on them are usually not candidates for this. For me, and perhaps it is my classical background, but I think of albums as a piece and if they contain a bad track or two it just won’t become a favorite. However this year there were several albums that had pretty amazing tracks on them but were marred by one or two tracks. These I’ve collected into the Other Things I Liked section along with a couple of things just shy of the top twenty. Finally the “Essential Reissues” is certainly not comprehensive and is really just a couple of things that are pretty much top five material but I either already had in previous editions or were clear reissues of an existing album.
2006 Favorites
Keith Rowe/Toshimaru Nakamura between (Erstwhile)
Ann Heymann Cruit go nÓr • Harp of Gold (self released)
Filament Dark Room Filled with Light (Uplink)
David Tudor/Gordon Mumma (New World)
(N:Q) November Quebec (Esquilo)
Toshimaru Nakamura/Klaus Filip aluk (IMJ)
Anthony Burr/Charlies Curtis Alvin Lucier (Antioptic)
Mark Wastell/David Lacey/Paul Vogel Live at the i+e festival (Confront)
Traw with Rhodri Davies Cwymp Y Dwr Ar Ganol Dydd (Confront)
Taku Sugimoto/Taku Unami Tengu Et Kitsune (Slub)
Eddie Prevost Entelechy (Matchless)
J.S. Bach Goldberg Variations, 14 Canons (Richard Egarr Harpsichord) (Harmonia Mundi)
Keith Rowe/Tomas Korber/Günter Müller fibre (For4Ears)
Manfred Werder 20061 (Skiti)
Burkhard Stangl / Taku Unami I was (Hibari)
Fergus Kelly/David Lacey Bevel (Room Temperature)
Nmperign/Jason Lescalleet Love Me Two Times (Intransitive)
Jeph Jerman/Albert Casais/Greg Davis - 6×20 (Winds Measure)
Joe Foster Knock Nevis (For Wilson Zorn and J.P. Jenkins) (homophoni)
Ami Yoshida/Christof Kurzmann a s o (Erstwhile)
Essential Reissues:
John Cage Sonata’s and Interludes for Prepared Piano (John Tilbury, Piano) (Explore)
Earl Brown Selected Works 1952-1965 (New World)
Morton Feldman The Viola in My Life (New World)
Other Things I liked:
GOD Each One Confinement Force (self released)
Joe Panzner Polished Rocks (gmby)
Masahiko Okura/Ami Yoshida/Günter Müller tanker (For4Ears)
Will Guthrie Body and Limbs Still Look to Light (Cathnor)
Morton Feldman Complete Violin/Viola and Piano Works (OgreOgress)
Joe Foster Ethics (Self Released)
Brian Olewnick
10 Favorites of 2006, in rough order of preference:
1) Keith Rowe/Toshimaru Nakamura - between (Erstwhile)
2) Jason Lescalleet - The Pilgrim (Glistening Examples)
3) Ferran Fages/Will Guthrie - cinabri (Absurd)
4) Olivia Block - Heave To (Sedimental)
5) Filament - Dark Room filled with Light (Uplink)
6) Keith Rowe/Mark Wastell - s/t (Confront)
7) Looper - Squarehorse (Absurd)
8) David Lacey/Paul Vogel/Mark Wastell - s/t (Confront)
9) Mattin/Radu Malfatti - Going Fragile (Formed)
10) [N:Q] - November Quebec (Esquilo)
Runners-up:
11) Alfredo Costa Monteiro - Stylt (Absurd)
12) Jeph Jerman - Lithiary (Fargone)
13) Mark Wastell - Amoungst English Men (absinth)
14) Gabriel Paiuk - Res Extensa (Sedimental)
15) Serge Baghdassarians/Boris Baltschun/Burkhard Beins - Zur Stabilen Stutzung... (absinth)
16) Joel Stern/Anthony Guerra - Outdoor Bowers (twothousandand)
17) (various) - For Feldman (OgreOgress)
18) Morton Feldman - Complete Violin/Viola and Piano Works (OgreOgress)
19) Didac Lagarriga - The Reversed Supermarket Trolley.... (Lalia)
20) Kai Fagaschinski/Bernhard Gal - Going Around in Serpentines (Charizma)
10 Things Containing Music from Years Past that I Loved:
1) Morton Feldman - The Viola in My Life (New World)
2) Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - En Concert a Paris (Ocora)
3) Pura Paku Alaran - Java: Court Gamelan, Vol. 1 (Nonesuch)
4) Ornette Coleman - Paris Concert (Trio)
5) Robert Ashley - Dust (Lovely Music)
6) Keith Rowe/Oren Ambarchi - Squire (For4Ears)
7) David Tudor/Gordon Mumma - s/t (New World)
8) Loren Connors - Night Through (Family Vineyard)
9) Nguyen Vinh Bao - Nguyen Vinh Bao Ensemble (Ocora)
10) Luc Ferrari - Son Memorise (Sub Rosa)
Other recordings I enjoyed a bunch (thanks, everyone!)
Philip Samartzis - Unheard Spaces (Microphonics)
Ami Yoshida/Christof Kurzmann - aso (Erstwhile)
Giuseppe Ielasi/Howie Steltzer - Night Life (Bronbron)
Jon Mueller/Jason Kahn - Supershells (Formed)
Tomas Korber/Keith Rowe/Gunter Muller - Fibre (For4Ears)
Rick Reed - Dark Skies at Noon (Elevator Bath)
Richard Chartier - Current (Room40)
Mattin/Jean-Luc Guionnet/Bertrand Denzler/Taku Unami - -/:. (Fargone)
Ingar Zach - In (Kning)
Asher - Three Untitled Compositions (CDR)
Mersault - Mersault (Quakebasket)
EKG/Giuseppe Ielasi - Group (Formed)
Nmperign/Jason Lescalleet - Love Me Two Times (Intransitive)
Mike Cooper - Giacinto (Hipshot)
Greg Davis/Jeph Jerman - Ku (Room40)
Philip Samartzis/Lawrence English - One Plus One (Room40)
Seth Nihil/John Grzinich - Gyre (Cut)
AS11 - Monotheism (antifrost)
Michael Renkel - Errorkoerpor III (absinth)
Ingar Zach - Percussion Music (Sofa)
Traw/Rhodri Davies - Cwymp y Dwr ar Ganol Dydd (Confront)
Sei Miguel - The Tone Gardens (Creative Sources)
Loren Chasse/Phil Mouldycliff/Chris Potter/Keith Rowe - Debris Field (ICR)
Eliane Radigue - Elemental II (Records of Sleaze Art)
Annette Krebs - Untitled (CDR)
Asher - And, Invariably, the Blue (CDR)
Michael Renkel/Sonia Bender - 7ft_KONKA (absinth)
Philip Samartzis/Kozo Inada - h[ ] (Room40)
Mike Shiflet - Ichinomiya 5.3.6 (Little Enjoyer)
Adam Sonderberg/Paul Bradley - Anoxia (Longbox)
Greg Davis/Steven Hess - Decisions (Longbox)
Asher - Graceful Degradation (con-v)
Daniel Menche - Creatures of Cadence (Longbox)
Mattin/Axel Dorner - Berlin (absurd)
John Butcher/Christof Kurzmann - The Big Misunderstanding... (Potlatch)
Jason Kahn/Tomas Korber/Christian Weber - Zurchen Aufnahmen (Longbox)
Will Guthrie - Building Blocks (Antboy)
Sunshine Has Blown - s/t (mymwly)
Michel Doneda - Solo las Planques (Sillon)
Eddie Prevost - Entelechy (Matchless)
Kommando Raumschiff Zitrone - First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (Quincunx)
Arek Gulbenkoglu - s/t (Antboy)
Polwechsel - Archives of the North (hatOLOGY)
If, Bwana - Gruntle (absurd)
Janek Schaefer - In the Last Hour (Room40)
RM74/RLW - Pirouetten (Crouton)
Momeht Ybaxehnr - Five Moments of Silence for the Dead of Chernobyl (Fargone)
Minamo - A Herdsman's Life (Esquilo)
Will Montgomery - Water Blinks (Selvageflame)
Scott Walker - The Drift (Drag City)
HZL - Ayes (White Flag)
VHF - Statics (l'Innomable)
Joe Colley/Jason Lescalleet - Annihilate the Week (Korm)
Bruce Russell - 21st Century Field Hollers and Prison Songs (wmo/r)
Will Guthrie - Body and Linbs Still Look to Light (Cathnor)
Sabine Ercklentz - Steinschlag (l'Innomable)
Loy Fankbonner - El Pabellon (Azul Discografica)
Grundik Kasynasky - Light and Roundchair (Creative Sources)
Richard Pinnell
A Top 20 then, selected from 350 or so acquisitions in 2006 and obviously excluding any Cathnor releases...
1. Keith Rowe / Toshimaru Nakamura – between (Erstwhile)
2. Taku Sugimoto / Taku Unami – Tengu et Kitsune (Slub)
3. Klaus Filip / Toshimaru Nakamura – Aluk (IMJ)
4. [N:Q] – November Quebec (Esquilo)
5. Mark Wastell – Amoungst English Men (Absinth)
6. Jakob Ullmann – A Catalogue of Sounds (Edition RZ)
7. Nmperign / Jason Lescalleet – Love me two times (Intransitive)
8. Mattin / Radu Malfatti – Going Fragile (Formed)
9. David Lacey / Paul Vogel / Mark Wastell – Live Dublin (Confront)
10. Manfred Werder – 20061 (Skiti)
11. Keith Rowe, Tomas Korber, Gunter Müller – Fibre (For 4 Ears)
12. Will Guthrie / Ferran Fages – Cinabri (Absurd)
13. Anthony Burr, Charles Curtis – Alvin Lucier (Antiopic/Sigma)
14. Burkhard Stangl / Taku Unami – i was (Hibari)
15. Arek Gulbenkoglu – Untitled (Document)
16. Tim Parkinson – Cello Piece (Wandelweiser)
17. Jason Lescalleet – The Pilgrim (Glistening Examples)
18. Kai Fagaschinski / Christof Kurzmann – First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (Quincunx)
19. Christof Kurzmann / Ami Yoshida – a s o (Erstwhile)
20. Taku Sugimoto – Live in Kansai (Slub)
Tom Sekowski
SOME FAVOURITE RECORDS IN 2006
MIKE SAMMES & THE MIKE SAMMES SINGERS - Music for Biscuits [Trunk Records]
PHILL NIBLOCK - Touch Three [Touch]
PETER WRIGHT - Pariahs Sing Om [Last Visible Dog Records]
JANEK SCHAEFFER - IN THE LAST HOUR [Room40]
JOHN CALE - New York in the 1960s [Table of the Elements]
TAYLOR DEUPREE - Northern [12K]
VOLCANO THE BEAR - Egg and Two Books [Vivo Records]
HISATO HIGUCHI - Dialogue [Family Vineyard]
SENOR COCONUT AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Yellow Fever! [Essay Recordings]
GEORG GRAEWE / ERNST REIJSEGER / GERRY HEMINGWAY Continuum [Winter & Winter]
DEREK BAILEY - To Play [Samadhi Sound]
SECRET MOMMY - Plays [Ache Records]
FOVEA HEX - Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent: Two – Huge [Die Stadt/Janet Records]
PAULINE OLIVEROS - The Roots of the Moment [hathut]
RAY WARLEIGH - Ray Warleigh's First Album [Sunbeam Records]
LIBRARY TAPES - Feelings for Something Lost [Resonant]
SCOTT WALKER – The Drift [4AD]
ERIC LA CASA - Air.Ratio [SIRR]
sunnO))) & BORIS - Altar [Southern Lord]
TETUZI AKIYAMA / OREN AMBARCHI / ALAN LICHT - Willow Weep and Moan For Me
[Antiopic]
FAVOURITE COMPILATIONS OF 2006 – Tom Sekowski
VARIOUS ARTISTS - From the Closet to the Charts: Queer Noises 1961 – 1978 [Trikont]
VARIOUS ARTISTS - Radio Algeria [Sublime Frequencies]
VARIOUS ARTISTS - Jamaica to Toronto: Soul, Funk & Reggae 1967 – 1974 [Light in the Attic]
VARIOUS ARTISTS - Musics in the Margin [Sub Rosa]
VARIOUS ARTISTS - Brazilian Beat Brooklyn [Mr. Bongo]
VARIOUS ARTISTS - Sunday Afternoon at Dingwalls [Ether Records]
RICHARD GARET / DALE LLOYD / JOS SMOLDERS / UBEBOET - Territorium [Non Visual Objects]
DVD RELEASE TO DIE FOR - 2006
BAD BRAINS - Live at CBGB 1982 [MVD Video]
Gary Sisco
Jazz
Ornette Coleman - Sound Grammar (Sound Grammar)
Ab Baars Quartet - Kinda Dukish (Wig)
Exploded Customer - Live at Tampere Jazz Happening (Ayler)
Assif Tsahar, Cooper-Moore, Hamid Drake - Lost Brother (Hopscotch)
Fred Anderson – Timeless (Delmark)
Georg Graewe/ Ernst Reijseger/ Gerry Hemingway – Continuum (Winter & Winter)
Dennis Gonzalez's Boston Project -- No Photograph Available (Clean Feed)
Ellery Eskelin -- Quiet Music (Prime Source)
Trio Braam/DeJoode/Vatcher - Change This Song (BBB)
Joe Morris -- Beautiful Existence (Clean Feed)
Other Music
Keith Rowe / Toshimaru Nakamura - between (Erstwhile)
Polwechsel - Archives of the North (Hat)
v/a -- The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of (Yazoo)
v/a -- American Primitive, V2 (Revenant)
The Places -- Songs For Creeps (High Plains Sigh)
The Necks -- Chemist (ReR)
BJ Nilsen & Silluppsteypa -- Drykkjuvisur Ohliodanna (HMS008)
GOD -- Each on Confinement Force (Rasbliutto)
Jeffrey Frederick -- Clamtones BC (Frederick Productions)
N:Q --November Quebec (Esquilo)
Damon Smith
Stand out cds of 2006:
Birgit Ulher - Scatter (Creative Sources)
Roscoe Mitchell - No Side Effects (RogueArt)
Kidd Jordan - Palm of Soul (AUM Fidelity)
Roscoe Mitchell / George Lewis/ Muhal RichardAbrams - Streaming (Pi)
Joëlle Léandre - Concerto Grosso (Jazz’Halo)
Michael Maierhof - collection_1
Evan Paker / Barry Guy/ Paul Lytton - Zafiro (Maya)
What We Live - Sound Catcher (Fire Museum)
Polwechsel - Archives of the north (hatOLOGY)
Schilippenbach - 12 Tone Tales, Vols. 1 & 2 (Intakt)
Wolfgang Fuchs / Fred Van Hove - Facetten (a/l/l
Mersault
Keith Rowe / Toshi Nakamura - between (Erstwhile)
Peter K Frey / Urs Voerkel / Christoph Gallio - TIEGEL (Atavistic)
Peter K Frey / Daniel Studer - Kontrabass duo Zweierlei
Mujician - Theres's No Going Back Now (Cuneiform)
Mark Dresser / Roswell Rudd - Air Walkers (Clean Feed)
Iskra 1903 - Chapter Two: 1981-3 (Emanem)
Other stuff:
* Ubu.com
* Seeing a double exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin: Rebecca Horn Downstairs/Herman Nitsch Upstairs
* Seeing a ton of live gigs By Joëlle Léandre and her kicking ass on every one of them.
* Touring Israel again with Ariel Shibolet
* Getting a lot of releases out of the can
* Playing a ton of gigs with a really wide range with Weasel Walter
* Meeting and playing with Joe Morris
* Hanging out with Fuchs in Berlin and Birgit Ulher in Hamburg
Derek Taylor
50+5 in 2006 (no particular order as that would take the better part of a fortnight to finish)
Joe Morris – BEAUTIFUL EXISTENCE (Clean Feed)
Alexander von Schlippenbach – TWELVE TONE TALES, VOLS. 1 & 2 (Intakt)
Kent Carter – INTERSECTIONS (Emanem)
Thomas Chapin – RIDE (Playscape)
Trio 3 – TIME OF BEING (Intakt)
Kidd Jordan – PALM OF SOUL (AUM Fidelity)
Ellery Eskelin – QUIET MUSIC (Prime Source)
Assif Tsahar/ Cooper-Moore/ Chad Taylor – DIGITAL PRIMITIVES (Hopscotch)
Stephen Gauci – WE’RE COMING JUST ONE TIME (Cadence Jazz)
Bill Barron – LIVE AT COBI’S, VOL. 2 (Steeplechase)
Andy Biskin – TRIO TRAGICO (StrudelMedia)
Dave Burrell – MOMENTUM (High Two)
Carl Maguire – FLORICULTURE (Between the Lines)
Various – FREE ZONE APPLEBY 2005 (Psi)
Roscoe Mitchell – NO SIDE EFFECTS (RogueArt)
Harry Miller’s Isipingo – WHICH WAY NOW (Cuneiform)
Benny Maupin – PENUMBRA (Cryptogramaphone)
Otomo Yoshihide’s New Jazz Quintet – LIVE IN LISBON (Clean Feed)
Agusti Fernandez/ Barry Guy/ Ramon Lopez – AURORA (Maya)
Fred Hess – HOW ‘BOUT NOW (Capri)
Rich Perry – AT THE KITANO (Steeplechase)
Odean Pope Saxophone Choir – LOCKED AND LOADED (High Note)
Rashaan Roland Kirk – BROTHERMAN IN THE FATHERLAND (Hyena)
Frank Wright – UNITY (ESP)
Steve Lantner – PARADISE ROAD (Skycap)
Peter Brötzmann & Michael Zerang – LIVE IN BEIRUT 2005 (Almaslakh)
Evan Parker/ Barry Guy/ Paul Lytton – ZAFIRO (Maya)
Roy Nathanson – SOTTO VOCE (AUM Fidelity)
Stephen Gauci/ Reuben Radding/ Todd Capp – THE FIRST THIRD (577)
Buck Hill – RELAX (Severn)
Free Music Ensemble – MONTAGE (Okkadisk)
Evan Parker – CROSSING THE RIVER (Psi)
Adam Lane’s Full Throttle Orchestra – NEW MAGICAL KINGDOM (Clean Feed)
Seith Meicht – ILLUMINE (CIMP)
David S. Ware – BALLADWARE (Thirsty Ear)
John McNeil – EAST COAST COOL (Omnitone)
Trio Beyond – SAUDADES (ECM)
John Tchicai/ Charlie Kohlhase/ Garrison Fewell – GOOD NIGHT SONGS (Boxholder)
Microscopic Sextet – HISTORY OF THE MICROS, 1 & 2 (Cuneiform)
Iskra 1903 – CHAPTER TWO: 1981-3 (Emanem)
Peter Brötzmann – PICA PICA (Atavistic)
Evan Parker – TOPOGRAPHY OF THE LUNGS (Psi)
Steve Lacy – ESTEEM (Atavistic)
Jim Hall – THE COMPLETE JAZZ GUITAR (Gambit)
Sonny Rollins – LIVE IN LONDON, VOL. 3 (Harkit)
Gerry Mulligan – THE ORIGINAL SEXTET COMPLETE STUDIO MASTER TAKES (Lonehill)
Gil Evans – COMPLETE PACIFIC JAZZ RECORDINGS (Blue Note)
Roswell Rudd – BLOWN BONE (Emanem)
Lee Konitz – VERY COOL/TRANQUILITY (Gambit)
Loren Conners – NIGHT THROUGH (Family Vineyard)
Joe McPhee & Clifford Thornton – AT WBAI’s FREE MUSIC STORE 1971 (hatOLOGY)
Lou Blackburn – COMPLETE IMPERIAL RECORDINGS (Blue Note)
Serge Chaloff – BOSTON BLOW-UP! (Capitol)
Spontaneous Music Ensemble – BIOSYSTEM (Emanem)
John Coltrane – FEARLESS LEADER (Prestige)
Alastair Wilson
Mark Wastell - Amo(u)ngst English Men (Absinth)
Sunshine Has Blown - Sunshine Has Blown (MYMWLY)
Stangl/Unami - I Was (Hibari)
Lasse Marhaug - Spaghetti Western Rainbow (Utech)
Nakamura/Filip - Aluk (IMJ)
Eric La Casa - Secousses Panoramiques (Hibari)
The Necks - Chemist (Fish of Milk/ReR)
The Year Of - Slow Days (Morr Music)
Greg Malcolm - Hung (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon)
The International Nothing - Mainstream (Ftarri)
Sergio Zamora
Ami Yoshida / Christoph Kurzmann - a s o (Erstwhile)
[N:Q] - November Quebec (Esquilo)
Muhal Richard Abrams / George Lewis / Roscoe Mitchell – Streaming (Pi)
Ornette Coleman - Sound Grammar (Sound Grammar)
Keith Rowe / Toshimaru Nakamura – between (Erstwhile)
nmperign / Jason Lescalleet - Love Me Two Times (Intransitive)
Ali Farka Toure – Savane (World Circuit)
Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza – Azioni (Die Schachtel)
Roscoe Mitchell Trio - No Side Effects (RogueArt)
V/A - The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of (Yazoo)
Filament et al - Dark Room Filled with Light
Kommando Raumschiff Zitrone - First Time I Ever Saw Your Face (Quincunx)
Tom Ze - Estudando o Pagode (Luaka Bop)
Ghostface Killah – Fishscale (Def Jam)
AVVA - Gdansk Queen (Erstwhile)
Tsahar / Cooper-Moore - Lost Brother (Hopscotch)
Dennis Gonzalez - Idle Wild (Clean Feed)
George Lewis - Sequel (For Lester Bowie) (Intakt)
Ellery Eskelin - Quiet Music (Prime Source)
Will Guthrie - Body and Limbs Still Look To Light (Cathnor)
TV Pow – presents (Southport)
Lacey / Vogel / Wastell - Confront Performance Series 1
Ernest Dawkins New Horizon Ensemble - The Messenger: Live at the Velvet Lounge (Delmark)
Mattin / Malfatti - Going Fragile (Formed)
Oren Ambarchi / Keith Rowe – Squire (For4Ears)
Joelle Leandre - At the Le Mans Jazz Festival (Leo)
EKG / Ielasi – Group (Formed)
John Butcher / Christoph Kurzmann - The Big Misunderstanding Between Hertz and Megahertz (Potlach)
Frequency - s/t (Thrill Jockey)
The Electrics - Live at the Glenn Miller Café (Ayler)
Ben Goldberg - The Door the Hat the Chair the Fact (Cryptogramaphone)
Yells at Eels – Geografia (Inner Realms Outer Realms)
Boghossian / Tilbury / Wastell - Archi.Texture Vol 1 (Cathnor)
Paul Flaherty / Chris Corsano - The Beloved Music (Family Vineyard)
Kent Carter String Trio – Intersections (Emanem)
Polwechsel - Archives of the North (hatOLOGY)
Ferran Fages / Will Guthrie – Cinabri (Absurd)
The Coup - Pick A Bigger Weapon (Epitaph)
Bassist, improviser, composer, and all around bon vivant, Reuben Radding’s been somewhat of a regular here at Bagatellen and the site’s been made all the better by his presence. Awhile back, he mentioned his intention to begin releasing albums via download. That anticipated day has come with the release of an inaugural January installment. Future monthly entries are slated to follow. The first album features Reuben alongside Jack Wright, Nate Wooley and Andrew Drury in a free improvisational format. I haven’t yet had a chance to sit down and give it a serious listen, but man am I looking forward to doing so.
And while we’re on the subject of bull fiddles, anyone had the opportunity to check out the new bass-centric box set from Dust-to-Digital? Playfully-titled How Low Can You Go?, it’s certainly got my appetite-whetted and the short audio samples available of all(!) tracks have me seriously pondering parting with the necessary ducats to bring a copy home. Also worth a listen, Kevin Whitehead’s NPR coverage.
Thanks to those who have sent in Year-End lists privately and to those who have recently been posting them in the Auld Lang Syne thread below. Our correspondence staff (pictured in part above) is more than capable of handling additional submissions, so please keep them coming in. I hope to have everything compiled into a new post by the close of the weekend, time and bourbon supply permitting.
Once you’ve turned your dispatch be sure to swing over to Point of Departure’s newly launched ninth issue. Bill Shoemaker brings in the big guns of Art Lange, Brian Morton and Evan Parker(!) to wax perspicacious on topics ranging from the cultural connectivity of Ornette Coleman and Thomas Pynchon to the new work of a passel of creative clarinetists. I’m still digesting the Parker lecture on Coltrane and the numerous nuggets therein.
Also worth a lengthy look: the new ish of Paris Transatlantic, which marks the New Year with one of its most voluminous offerings yet and yet another mp3 Blog, Gizmo, in the midst of a Derek Bailey love-in that includes the first four Company LPs on Incus, presumably otherwise out of print.
I’ll take my leave now and return to dusk-lit screening of Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence, a film that has me routinely short-circuiting my internal mortification meter in response to Gena Rowlands deeply peculiar portrayal of a suburban housewife spiraling in and out of madness.
Recent expeditious exploration of the labyrinthine machinery that makes Bags run brought me to the realization of just how much stuff there is under the hood, some of it inevitably rusty and outdated. As such, I’ve begun gingerly excising some of this obsolete and extraneous content starting with the Links section, replacing dead or dusty ones with some fresh faves. I haven’t yet figured out to integrate them alphabetically with their older brethren, so for now they’re listed in order of posting at the top. If there are any others you would like to see added, please drop me a line via derekct AT hotmail.com
Judging by his glowering countenance, this old gent hasn’t yet found gold in them thar hills, but I can confess to discovering a strike in a new (actually renewed) web presence. The print version of Adam Lore’s Fifty Miles of Elbow Room made up for its publishing infrequency with a wealth of articles and insight into the highways and byways of vernacular music and culture. Seriously, each of the journal’s extant issues is a many-paged treasure, and I assert that claim having only gotten my hands on two. Adam’s passion and respect for artists running the gamut from Robert Pete Williams to Earl “Goggles” Freeman is palpable not only in his prose and but also in his concerted actions to raise awareness through direct exposure.
I’ve always read his regular posts at Jazz Corner with great interest, whether in their documentation of his listening habits (on enviable original vinyl where I’m usually limited to cd reissues and compilations) or in informative dispatches from his record forays and projects with New York-based musicians. So when a tiny envelope arrived in my mailbox containing a handcrafted holiday card and a tiny cardboard announcement of detailing the URL, I wasted no time in firing up the laptop and dropping by the digital digs.
Things are still in the formative stages, but the site already includes a mail order catalog sure to set certain music mavens to cart wheeling uncontrollably and there’s also the promise of soon to be reprinted articles from 50MoER’s original print run. Swing by and check it out. And while you’re there, crack the wallet and score yourself a copy of the Daddy Grace disc; I discovered it a few months ago in a local shop and have been returning to it with regularity. Adam’s candid plug: “The closing "Jericho March" is over 11 minutes of glorious collective honk that I would rank up there with Otha Turner's Everybody Hollerin' Goat and Albert Ayler's Live in Greenwich Village” is spot on.
A mutha of a damper on Christmas morning festivities to be sure, James Brown is dead at 73. The web is probably already ablaze with tributes & commentary. I’m otherwise occupied with family & feasting, but wanted to at least send a quick shout out to a man who’s long been a cornerstone of my listening diet. Even though the past few decades haven’t been kind to JB’s creativity or standing, the cultural clout garnered by his earlier catalog is unassailable. There are certain times when nothing but a James Brown rap or hook will satisfy a hankering between the ears. Each of us has our favorites & I’ve love to get hip to them here. I’ll kick off with one of his choicest proclamations, short & sweet, from “The Payback”:
“I don’t know karate, but I know karezza.”
Baby New Year is about to drop and in that very American spirit of “out with the old, in with the new” I’m hoping readers might want to hip me & the rest of us to what they’re looking forward to musically in 2007. What upcoming releases, events, etc. are you awaiting with fingers ready to pry dwindling bills from holidays-depleted wallet? What does the future foretell for music mavens the world over?
[A little caveat on the lead shot above and a lesson in the perils of procrastination: I’ve been sitting on this post for a good week, sifting through a series of distractions and generally trying to prep for my annual sojourn to the desert on Wednesday. Yesterday, my good colleague Mike Ricci, proprietor of the jazz-information megalith All About Jazz, sent out his monthly missive to contributors. Lo and behold, plugged into the text was a slightly different mug shot of The Great Wazoo. Seems he’s been hiring himself out to whomever has a handful of cold hard Benjamins, binding contracts be damned. I can’t stay too angry though, as the dry-cleaning bills on that headgear alone, not to mention the weekly prescriptions of Valium® and Demerol®, must set him back a pretty penny.]
Okay, I was afraid of this, and now my worst fears have come to fruition. Delving into the gateway drugs of Church No. 9 and Nothing Is has led me to a full-on mp3 bender that hasn’t let up all weekend, save for several short recesses to crack open Hangover Square, Patrick Hamilton’s fictional memoir of a socially-blighted Pre-War Britain, sleep and eat. A stack of partially-finished reviews and a barely-begun year-end feature for Dusted Magazine lie neglected on my hard-drive; a half empty container of Dutch double salt licorice coins my sole source of nourishment for the last several hours.
A couple new haunts discovered during that span:
Dinosaur Gardens: a deliciously eclectic blog that for some reason reminds me of Lileks in its collected kookiness. Check out the recent highly edifying posts on the history of “Miserlou” (complete with evolutionary mp3 ladder), Leopold Stokowski’s seminal version of “Danse Macabre”, and Robert Lee’s hilariously kitschy “Ballad of Bruce Lee” and fuzz-disco-funk of “JKD- Jeet Kune Do”, the latter of which I just can’t seem to stop jammin’. The soundtrack to El Topo is accessible just a few more posts down & they even have Sammy Davis, Jr. rockin’ the “Plop Plop Fizz Fizz” Alka-Seltzer theme(!). What a wonderful weird world we live in.
Brazilian Nuggets: Set-up much the same way as Church No. 9, but with a focus on obscure Brazilian platters. The text is in Portuguese, but the cover scans alone are worth a thousand words in terms of selling the contents of each. Seriously, the holdings here make the Dusty Groove selection (impressive in its own right) look like the vinyl section at Sam Goody (before it presaged Tower in going belly-up). It’s a spot I’m just starting to explore.
Patrick Moutal’s Indian Music Page: Not that pretty to look at, but a pretty amazing mp3 collection of Indian Classical 78s, indexed by instrument and performer. I’ve barely scratched the surface here, but have enjoyed what I’ve sampled thus far immensely.
Honey Where You Been So Long: Compendium of Pre-War Blues and Jass 78s. Many are familiar, but it’s nice to have them sequenced and annotated as such, shellac crackles & all. Dig Mattie Hite’s keening take on “St. James Infirmary” custom-tailored to her man Joe & w/ a young Fletcher H. on ivories.
One thing’s for certain, I’m already sorely in need of a mp3-methadone regimen.
The internet is a vast and murky sea, rife with places not worth the pixels consumed to put them together. Its size is so daunting that I usually find myself frequenting the same two dozen or so sites in my Favorites folder, doubtful that any foray beyond that number will reward the effort. Pop-ups, Adware and the ubiquitous cookie are all real dangers with every excursion. Additions to my folder are rare, but thanks to Phil’s counsel, I’ve just added two: Church Number Nine and Nothing Is. He’s absolutely right: both should be added to the Points of Interest posthaste.
I’m not usually one to download mp3s. Enough music arrives through postal channels and when it comes to debates about sound quality, I’m on the side of the naysayers who frown at compressed fidelity the format offers. However, the free jazz treasures available gratis at both sites make it hard to hold such a party line. Most of the original recordings in question were anti-audiophile to begin with. Taped in lofts or in distant proximity to festival stages on late-60s and early-70s portable audio equipment, there’s ample crackle and fuzz interlaced with the musical sounds. To the free jazz maven, the majority of the LPs accessible on both sites mirror the title of a recent Yazoo compilation of Pre-War Blues and Gospel: “The Stuff That Dreams are Made Of”. These are the platters that would require a small fortune to procure and that’s assuming you could even locate copies for sale. Sure, the thrill of a vinyl safari isn’t present in the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel ease of downloading them en mass. But to the lazy 21st century music consumer that’s hardly a reason to carp. The mirrored architecture of download pages coupled with an Ethernet connection makes the process a snap.
The only obstacle (& it’s a minor one) stems from the proprietary software employed to house the music. In order to keep things free & moving expeditiously, non-subscribers are limited to one download per hour and made to wait an average of a minute before receiving word that a file is ready for capture. Small prices to be privy to albums like the Noah Howard & Frank Lowe Village Vanguard set on Freedom, or just made available today, Force, a long forgotten duo album from Archie Shepp & Max Roach. Moreover, for those who don’t mind shelling out ducats, the subscriber rates, levied in Euros, seem very reasonable. Frequent return trips to both sites and my listening backload is now easily a dozen albums deep. A quick transfer of files to cdr or my Muvo portable player and I’ll have a lengthy soundtrack for an upcoming holiday trip home to visit the folks.
Ethical issues along the lines of those discussed in the recent Vault thread definitely play a role in the activities of both sites. Antanase and James, the sites’ proprietors, take pains to communicate both their intent (that of disseminating music that deserves to be heard) and willingness to remove any files that visitors deem inappropriate. Proof of this policy put into action came with a rapid response to Chuck Nessa’s request for the removal of several albums from the Church Number Nine holdings. Overall, sound and conscientious operating procedures from my perspective. Copious thanks to both A & J for making this music available.
Obits are a periodic presence on this blog space, though not of late, and a number of recent passings certainly warrant mention, Robert Altman, Anita O’Day and “Steam Train Maury” Graham among them. Rather than dwell on the recently deceased, I thought I mix things up a bit and give a shout out to the memory of my favorite left-handed guitarist on his birthday. Jimi Hendrix would’ve been 64 today, hardly a ripe old age considering how long he’s been gone. That sexagenarian number makes the mind mull at what he might be up to had he been able to outrun the demons at his heels. I’m spinning Axis Bold as Love for the 100th-odd time & patiently pining for the December Dagger Records release of Burning Desire, another tasty collection of Hendrix family-sanctioned outtakes.
Europe has long emanated status as an environment more receptive to and enamored of jazz than the States. Evidence is everywhere, from the periodic exoduses of American musicians over the decades, to healthy government-subsidized scenes in various countries, to the recent influx of labels that capitalize on the comparatively lax nature of European commercial copyright laws. It’s that last category I’d like to elaborate on in this post, having been following the activities of a handful of such companies, sometimes with interest, sometimes with concern for the past few years.
Imprints like Classics, which specializes in the systematic excavation of catalogs of swing and bop pioneers and more recently Lonehill, which doesn’t appear to have much in the way of constraints in what it releases, other than a preference for pre-1970 jazz, are probably well known to readers. Disconforme’s province is later swing through hardbop. JSP and Proper have cornered the market on cheap box set samplers of a single artists and sprawling genre overviews. The reissue and center sale sections of Cadence Magazine are often dominated by product from several of these European-based labels. Given the publication’s long-standing stewardship of independent artists/labels and a readiness to confront corruption in the industry, the embrace of what, at best, seems “gray market” merchandise seems strange. Looking closer, Cadence’s readership extends to the European community where labels’ activities are presumably legal. In light of this reality, coverage of the titles makes more sense.
At first, I assumed the guiding parameter on such products was grudging respect for a (seemingly arbitrary) European statute dictating a 50-year buffer on any attempts to market U.S. copyright-protected music. That no longer seems the case, as the Lonehill folks have expeditiously reissued material well within the temporal borders of that no-fly zone. I also received a much-needed education from a reader in the pages of Cadence, calling into question my claim of the Classics label’s diligence in securing rights to the music sold under their name.
U.S. jazz reissue bellwethers like Blue Note and Fantasy (now Concord) have presumably absorbed the brunt of the sales hit. When I was first delving into jazz in the mid-1980s, the storied vaults of these companies were the recipients of much conjecture and downright desire. Repeatedly perusing a copy of Cuscuna and Ruppli’s The Blue Note Label: A Discography (now largely duplicated online) in a grad school music library in the early 90s, my mind reeled at the aural possibilities of unissued sessions contained therein. The Blue Note vaults were a place of mystery and promise, their contents doled out in sometimes painfully piecemeal fashion. Reflecting back in the context of today’s reissue-rife market that sort of cultivated anticipation now seems nostalgic. Label’s like Disconforme and Proper have broken the locks and cracked the combinations. The reinforced steel doors have swung wide and ingress into the vaults is no longer circumscribed.
Smaller, more financially vulnerable imprints like Uptown are also in the crosshairs of these trans-Atlantic plagiarizers. Chuck Nessa has repeatedly gone on record lamenting the costly legal rigmarole he was forced to engage in with a European label that copied the meticulously mastered music on an Uptown Charles Mingus reissue and passed it off as its own. It’s hard to imagine how infuriating such an experience must have been. There’s also the persuasive point of musician’s royalties and the probable statistic that familial estates aren’t receiving dime one from these enterprising entities. Why send a check on to a widow, child or sibling when there’s no legal apparatus in place to mandate such an action?
Even with all the obvious evidence, the flipside of this argument is a compelling one too. First, there’s the reality that a significant slice of what these labels release is either not currently of commercial of interest to the American companies that hold the rights or slow to draw their notice. Lonehill, in particular, has brought into recirculation a startling body of 50s jazz that has yet to receive formal reissue on stateside shores. The packaging and documentation isn’t always the most diligent or accurate, but their multi-disc retrospectives on musicians like Illinois Jacquet, Gigi Gryce, Lennie Niehaus and French horn obscurist John Graas, are difficult to beat in terms of comprehensiveness and price. There’s also a wealth of single and double disc titles like the Earl Bostic two-fer that combines his hen’s-teeth soul jazz dates with Richard “Groove” Holmes and the Complete Gerry Mulligan Original Sextet Studio Master Takes (a set itself trumped by another set that also includes live material).
To the jazz junky, cheap and convenient access to this sort of stuff makes moral quandaries surrounding its provenance more difficult to reprove. I was just a record shop yesterday and discovered a pair of reissues on the Gambit label that instantly put this dilemma to the test. Also based in Spain (the Wilmington, DE for “gray market” reissues), Gambit’s licensing practices are unclear, but given their current catalog holdings (albums on labels as diverse as Verve, Contemporary, Columbia and United Artists) the Stateside legality of their program does seem suspect.
The two titles that caught my notice were a two-fer of Lee Konitz’s Very Cool and Tranquility, two highly sought after Verve sides that have yet to be reissued outside of expensive Japanese paper sleeve-pressings, and The Complete “Jazz Guitar” by Jim Hall, a set that purportedly presents the guitarist’s legendary debut on Pacific Jazz in unexpurgated form for the first time. I have an old CD release of the Hall album that includes edited versions of many of the tracks (solos by sidemen Carl Perkins and Red Mitchell were excised by producer Richard Bock) and had long been curious about the music in its earlier unabridged form. Also sweetening the pot on the Hall set, five bonus tracks featuring the guitarist in the company of various members of the Modern Jazz Quartet, including an eleven-minute duet with John Lewis from 1957. The Konitz is arguably even more tantalizing. The first session features his alto in the company of Trisantoites Don Ferrara, Sal Mosca and Peter Ind along with wildcard Shadow Wilson on drums. The second relies on a rhythm section comprised of Billy Bauer, Henry Grimes(!) and Dave Bailey, the latter two men Gerry Mulligan’s tandem of the time. Needless to say, I parted with the necessary ducats to bring both home, a needling conscience barely perceptible through the euphoria that ensued upon auditioning the sounds.
If the Dusty Groove inventory is any barometer of sales success, Gambit seems to be doing quite well. Over half its back catalog is out of stock on the site. Other “gray market” labels appear to be well in the black as well and not all of the income is financing nefarious designs. Sales of Lonehill and Disconforme product through Trem Azul has contributed to the financial solvency of the Clean Feed label. The proceeds, in turn, help Clean Feed release new releases by European and free jazz musicians both established and up-and-coming, a positive outcome by any free jazz fan’s estimation.
Still, the questions of legality and ethics persist. The presence of this sort of product across the retailer spectrum from online behemoths like Amazon.com to local brick & mortars like the one I visited yesterday seems to suggest a general acceptance of its viability as a lucrative earnings venture. People are selling it. People are buying it. But who’s being squeezed and abused in the bargain. These are vexing issues, ones I’m still pondering as the piquant strains of Konitz and his compatriots pipe through my stereo speakers.
Well, it’s that time of the calendar again when editors start wrestling and scrabbling for writers’ year-end tallies. Here at Bags, past years participation in end-of-annum popularity contests has been periodic, due in equal parts to sloth and a general perception that tabulating lists before January 1st results in a needlessly stunted sample. For example, I’m just sitting down with the new two-part Schlippenbach solo set from Intakt, a body of music that upon first audition sits very highly in my esteem, but one that I’m not yet familiar enough with to vaunt above other more conversant fare. I understand the driving force behind such expeditious efforts, but here at Bagatellen we don’t really operate under those incentives. Other than the Record of the Week slot, there’s no set schedule for anything. For better & worse, things go up when they go up & readers are able to comment at will (at least when the circuitry’s working properly).
Publications limiting their scope of lists to those of “published” writers is another persistent and pernicious problem; the assumption being that this cadre of “professionals” somehow has a better grasp of the bijous and baubles in the music market than readers. It’s a fallacy disproven practically every day here at Bagatellen and at chat boards across the net. Each of us is only privy to a relatively small piece of the pie with personal tastes as our primary guides.
In the interest of addressing these issues, I’d like to invite everyone/anyone to send me their year-end lists for inclusion on this site. No stipulations on number or content (new releases & reissues are all fair game). If you’d like to annotate your picks, please do. The only caveat that I ask is that you wait until after 12/31/06 to finalize your selections. The resulting collated post probably won’t be pretty, but I’ll put ducats down that it will contain information useful to us all. Thanks in advance for folks participation & in the meantime, let’s use this post as a placeholder for discussion of possibles.
Believe it or not, even I’m getting weary of these meta-posts (& I usually love ‘em), but here’s a little update on our situation. Conversion to our new publishing software necessitated the dismantling of the previously operational “Forkette” force field. Namor is hard at work in search of a substitute & will hopefully have one in place at some point this weekend. My meager technical skills can still be contained in a poetry broadside thanks to plenty of hooky playing, but I’m hitting the books with renewed vigor. In the meantime, we’ve conscripted Marcel Latrobe (pic above) to assist in periodic clean-up measures. M. Latrobe was a Cousteau Cadet in his teens and most recently served as Adjunct Technical Advisor on Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, strong credentials to be sure. He’s been making daily dives to surgically scrape the droves of Spam barnacles from the Bags bulwark. Apologies if his sometimes-overzealous elbow grease has resulted in the inadvertent excision of one or two legitimate posts.
Most have probably noticed that there are still a few nettlesome leaks in the Bags hull (tortoise-slow posting times & the like). We’re looking into upgrading to the latest version Moveable Type (our publishing software) to plug the remaining lacunae & bring the vessel up to 2006 standards. It’s a fairly steep investment though & not to solicit shamelessly, but any available “Alms” assistance would be much appreciated (go excavate under the cushions of your couch if you have to). Namor will be handling the nuts & bolts end of the switch, which may or may not commence as soon as this weekend, hence the Indian head test pattern above. Once the site goes dark again (probably for no more than a day or two), you’ll know it. In the meantime, I’m studiously attacking my previously uncracked MT handbook in preparation for taking over the technical helm. Allah help us!
“For me, it starts and ends with Thelonious Monk,” pianist Jason Moran stated matter-of-factly in response to one of those mundane influence queries. “I mean the list of pianists is long for sure, but Monk is it—the way he focused on a relatively small amount of material for many years, the way he developed a particular aesthetic, the freedom when he danced on stage …”
The exchange took me so far aback as to be disturbing. I’ve heard everything from Herbie Nichols to Bill Evans in the 31-year-old Moran’s playing and trio deployment, not to mention the merging of even more disparate forces like James P. Johnson and Cecil Taylor, coloring each moment on Moran’s seven Blue Note records with a different and boldly effective hew. Furthermore, he’s made all that influence apparent without resorting to heavy-handed reference. His work is never encyclopedic for its own sake; it exudes pride in the broadest interpretations of music as witnessed by the early 21st century.
But Monk? That genius of the singular vision, the master of a steadily slow-burning career following hard on the heels of a big compositional bang? The connection was unclear until a bit of meditation on the man and his music afforded some insight. Rooted in swing like Joyce was rooted in Dublin and never really feeling the need to abandon formative rhetoric, no matter how far afield travel and travail took him, Monk created a language whose repercussions are still being felt sixty years after its emergence. When Monk was thirty, he began to cut what are now seen as his first definitive sides for the fledgling Blue Note label. There, the impetus that rendered “Blue Skies” into the rollicking “In Walked Bud” also gave rise to the similarly transformed and intimidating “Evidence”, serving up “justice” to player and classroom teacher alike. It’s Webernesquely syncopated head bespeaks absorption of multiple traditions over a simple dose of “Ding-Ding da-Ding” simplicity that continues to turn heads around and put feet in motion.
I’m not necessarily suggesting that Moran sounds like Monk, nor do I mean to imply that his music will have a similar impact on history and development. While his success in the commercial arena cannot be denied, my feeling is that the full scope of his talent remains to be seen. His allegiance to Monk is evident, though, in very broad strokes, in terms of planning and execution rather than pianistic approach. True, compositions like “Another One” exhibit definite Monkish traits—the short sharp bursts of clusterally percussive whimsy that informed Monk’s pianism are certainly evident. However, the intervening years have brought Monk, bebop and subsequent linguistic approaches into the standard vocabulary of any “jazz” player, a term about which Moran shows no qualms. “Fine with me! Brilliant people use the word; equally brilliant people hate it—there are convincing arguments on both sides.” Moran’s very conscious of all manner of reference, both overt and covert. “I always hear my references back to other pianists—that’s where I am now. Once you mix them all up, it becomes a different being.”
While such thinking is symptomatic of a post-modernism, which, I’m fairly certain, would be quite foreign to Monk’s worldview, the elder pianist’s work is at least a conduit for a nascent form of such multifarious expression. Moran has made it work for him with surprising regularity. His discs might be viewed as composites, as the slices of life to which the liners to his 1999 debut, Soundtrack to Human Motion, make endearing allusion. The album would be a blueprint in several ways, not least of which was the inauguration of the “Gangsterism” series. In part a direct tribute to Andrew Hill, it would be transformed over the succeeding six years while always maintaining some motivic semblance of the original; changes in tempo, of register and orchestration, never allowing the initial vision to be extinguished. The album also brings to the fore a whimsically profound allegiance to several simultaneously invoked periods of “jazz” history, and while none is canonized, neither is anything excluded.
It’s this, the very idea of a constant but varied core concept, that has molded and unified Moran’s multifarious projects, and their uniform success is to his credit as conceptualist. His most recent disc, Artist in Residence is a series of commissions. Superficially, there’s nothing more to the “concept” than that; seemingly in support of a diverse view, the oft-analyzed opening track samples and repeats the phrase “Break Down”, giving rise to a list of barriers in need of removal. Really though, this is just another foreshadowing, as “Artists Ought to be Writing” makes plain. Adrian Piper’s remonstration with artists to expose the presuppositions behind what they do is telling. I interpret her words to mean that simple breakdown is not the point, and that “the work” still stands as an entity worth repeated and multi-angled exploration.
In Moran’s case, the constructs are somewhat Rabelaisian or Faulknerian, involving constant “spilling over” and cross-reference: “Artists” continues the thread established by “Break Down” but also invokes shades of his own “Ringing My Phone (Straight Outa Istanbul)”, where human speech is also set to an acrobatic piano accompaniment. The fact that the Bandwagon, Moran’s long-standing trio including bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits, has come to understand the multiplicity of Moran’s present idiom demonstrates the consummate craftsmanship of all concerned.
I broached the question of a “unified” style to Moran. After all, there’s no mistaking Monk, and while Moran’s pianism is prodigious, he’s still a young artist. For him, that’s the point. “I need to investigate each one of these roads I’ve been traveling,” he says of the recordings he’s made, “I really need to explore each one fully. Only time will tell, I’m in no position to predict any stylistic outcomes now.” A possible upcoming project is what he calls a “Reconsideration” of Monk’s 1959 Town Hall concert, what I’m gathering to be a kind of microhistorical revisitation. If realized, it should be a fitting homage to a revered conceptualist, a project that renders Moran and Monk transgenerational brothers in theory, or at least in the conceptual realm.
~ Marc Medwin
Where to begin… except to say we’re back & to convey sincere thanks for your patience. The site may still have a few lingering glitches & gremlins, but the worst appear to be fixed. Details forthcoming, but Al “Namor” Jones deserves full credit for raising the sunken hulk from the depths of inactivity and making it seaworthy once again. What now lies in question: the duration of our new deployment and who will captain the ship. Questions that will definitely yield answers soon.
Recent passerby have probably noticed prolonged posting times and a preponderance of redundant postings. These pesky developments are still not localized or remedied, despite my wiring Emory about it posthaste. Regrettably, he appears to be unreachable at the present time, but rest assured, we’re working on a solution and hope to have the works ungummed in an expeditious fashion. Toward that end, I’ve enlisted the services of one Lafayette G. Pettibone (pictured above) of Funkley, MN (pop. 15). Mr. Pettibone’s usual province is antique typewriters, specifically Royal and Remington models, but he assures me that the learning curve on MT software-related repairs is a snap.
Life in the Twin Cities can sometimes feel like cruel exile to the hinterlands when it comes to in-concert jazz and improvised music. We’re about a day’s travel from Chicago as the crow flies and the outposts of Madison and Ann Arbor aren’t that much closer, making the trek mostly the folly of hearty souls willing to play for door proceeds and a palette on the floor. This reality is why the bounty of riches that’s been bestowed on Minneapolitans and Saint Paulians this month is such a welcome change of circumstances.
Seems like a veritable flood of improvisers has been cruising through town and in typical fashion, my procrastinating personage hasn’t been getting out nearly as often as I should. Much of the action is orbiting around the locus of the annual Sur Seine Festival, a conclave of French and local musicians that has since expanded to include European heavy-hitters from other locales. The full schedule is available through the bolded hyperlink above. Performances thus far have included a visit by Peter Brötzmann in trio w/ bassist Anthony Cox and drummer Mark Sanders Last night was the first of three Evan Parker gigs, a solo recital in the acoustically sound surroundings of the Clouds in Water Zen Center. Arriving a bit early, I had a chance to eavesdrop on Evan running through Monk’s “Evidence” and what sounded like the fragment of a Lacy tune, promising melodic exercises for the upcoming feast. Shuffling out in his socks (as per the Zen Center custom), he eschewed addressing the audience with introductions and commenced instead with the music.
After impressive, if predictable, circular breathing salvos on soprano and tenor that filled the space with the slippery spirals of his signature multiphonics, Parker slipped his spectacles back on, his ruddy cheeks made all the ruddier by the previous exertions and the color contrast of his coarse white beard, and paused for a spoken anecdote. He told the story of his meeting with a famous Japanese flautist while in the company of free jazz drummer Sabu Toyozumi. Over tea, Sabu told the flautist of Parker’s circular breathing skills. “That’s not possible,” replied the flautist. Sabu rejoined with an offer to have Parker demonstrate the technique. “That’s not necessary,” countered the flautist, “I already know that it is not possible.” Citing its Zen appropriateness, Parker brought things back to the present with a wry quip: “So, I’ve shown you that I can circular breathe; now I’ll play some music.”
Curiously enough, the two remaining soprano improvisations of the program where well-stocked with circular breathing as well, though Parker did vary the palette with some staccato and legato passages the broke free from the mold of cyclical overlapping tones. The first piece even included a pithy concluding tag referencing the Steve Lacy tune “Hubris”. Quite abruptly, Parker left the room, leaving his horns behind on a plastic chair. Applause erupted. Soon after, he returned to retrieve his horns, only to exit once again. The clapping continued and he returned once more, bowing graciously and offering gratitude to the small crowd, but by this point it was obvious to everyone that recital was over with barely 40-minutes elapsed. Trundling out to the lobby to recoup my shoes, I still found myself a bit in awe over what had transpired, but strangely, a little disappointed too, having hoped for more variety in the performance. It was a delight to hear Parker in person, but the recital’s brevity and relative homogeneity still left me hungry for more.
Tatsuya Nakatani’s performance the previous night was similarly mixed. Hosted by the Acadia Café, a small Minneapolis coffee house with a surprisingly diverse beer menu, the concert included three sets by the visiting New York percussionist. Nakatani played the first set solo, employing a round robin of extended techniques. Some, like his use of bowls and cymbals as agents for rubbed harmonics, were stunning; others, like the application of bows to gong to create reverberating drones, less so. Perhaps most impressive was how he kept things moving, ranging over his kit and not allowing the ensuing music to list for too long. The second set featured the addition of two local improvisers: alto saxophonist Jaron Childs and a laptop guitarist whose name I didn’t catch. Things slowed down significantly, the two newcomers dealing in molasses gradations that seemed to stymie Nakantani’s more animated side. After 45-minutes of lackluster interaction, I decided to call it a night and not stay for the third set. On the way out, I picked up a postcard detailing Nakatani’s current tour schedule: 37 dates in 19 states, that’s an itinerary of Kowaldian proportions! Here’s hoping that safe travels and plenty of adventures ensue.
Vijay Iyer’s Quartet plays the Walker Arts Center tonight, but I have a prior obligation to attend the opening of a friend’s play. I am looking forward to catching at least one night of Lew Tabackin’s three-night stand at Saint Paul’s Artists' Quarter this weekend. He’s touring as a single and will most likely be playing with a pick-up band that includes AQ proprietor Kenny Horst on skins. Horst is an acquired taste, a drummer whose inner Buddy Rich tends to come out at inopportune times, and for whom the rim shot and press roll are prerequisites in every solo. But Tabackin, who evidently comes through town for an AQ gig every five or so years, is more than capable of keeping him in check. I’m particularly looking forward to hearing the piquant Eastern-tinged Tabackin flute in person. And Parker’s playing twice more, first with Tony Hymas and then with the local improv ensemble Charcoal (Milo Fine, Anthony Cox & Davu Seru). Both gigs are at the tiny Zeitgeist Gallery in Saint Paul and word on the street is that either or both may sell out.
Next week, it’s Dave Holland’s Quintet for a two-nighter at The Dakota, Monday and Tuesday, though ticket prices as per the norm for Minneapolis’ most swanky jazz venue, are steep at $35 a pop. Also on the horizon, bebop burnout turned comeback Frank Morgan in the company of Mr. Beautiful himself, George Cables. I caught Morgan as part of the Minneapolis Jazz Festival this summer and came away less than impressed, thanks mostly to his sluggish color-by-numbers phrasing on treacly ballads like “Suicide is Painless”, but the subtraction of pick-up band coupled with the addition of Cables makes it more than worth consideration. Who knows how long the flood will last? In the meantime, I’ve gained renewed resolve to frolic in the waters while they continue to flow. With winter nigh, the inevitable drought can’t be far behind.
Well, it’s safe to say that the Bill Dixon thread two doors down can be added to the select others in the mud-sodden drawer of bloated Bags debacles. Moreover, despite Marc’s initial best intentions. I’m not sure what it is about the long-distance nature of the net, but it periodically seems to bring out the worst in us, myself most certainly included. Therefore, here’s a trio of apposite quotes from my main man J-C that will hopefully get us back on track:
“A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It's a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.”
“There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat.”
“Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease.”
[Please pick up your complimentary packet of Planters™ peanuts at the door]
CD boxed sets have encouraged wretched excess in packaging pretty much since the format was pioneered in the mid-’80s. (Anybody know what was in the very first CD boxed set? Some classical crap, probably.) But lately, I’ve received some that have been downright absurd, way out of proportion to the niftiness of their sonic content. And they’ve all been released by Rhino Records.
The new Goth anthology, A Life Less Lived, contains three CDs and a DVD spotlighting acts ranging from Joy Division to Xmal Deutschland (?), all three phases of Ian Astbury’s artistic “development” (Southern Death Cult on Disc 1, Death Cult on Disc 2, the Cult on Disc 3), Bauhaus, Tones On Tail, Love And Rockets, Peter Murphy, Daniel Ash, the Birthday Party, Nick Cave…the list goes on and on, obviously. A reasonable selection, offering a decent overview of a genre that was at its top-dollar best never worth more than a cursory glance. But as seen above, the thing comes in a faux-leather-bound book, with the front made up to resemble a corset—with actual laces! That’s what you’re paying for, far more than the sounds on the discs (or the videos on the DVD).
In a similar spirit, the new Tori Amos collection A Piano has its five CDs encased in a box, the lid of which is made to look like…you guessed it, a piano. The keys don’t move, or make any noise, so I guess some sort of budgetary limitation did emerge midway through the likely laborious series of concept meetings that led to this thing’s being dropped in the lap of all the faerie princesses (of both genders) who make up the Amos fan base. The forthcoming Robert Plant box, Nine Lives, containing all his solo albums including the Honeydrippers EP (but neither of the Page/Plant releases), one per disc, plus a DVD with videos and a documentary, looks like it’s going to be packaged in a coffee-table book, or something similar.
As more and more people express (through their purchasing habits or lack thereof) a preference for pure digital distribution channels, it’s easy to see why a label might attempt to attract purchasers with ever more elaborate packages. But I’m still left wondering who this sort of thing appeals to. Is there someone out there slowly, gently unlacing and re-lacing their copy of A Life Less Lived as “”Temple Of Love” blasts from the speakers? Is there a Tori Amos fan who wants to pretend they’re playing along with her cloying, hideous music? I guess it’s like air guitar, but just a little bit sadder.
The thing is, it doesn’t have to be this way. I have also received boxes recently by Waylon Jennings, Bob Wills and Weather Report (seen above), and those came in minimal, functional packaging. Each of those was released by Legacy, not by Rhino, and each contains four or five CDs, a semi-informative book, and an attractive cardboard box to keep 'em in—and nothing else. Maybe, because I’ve been doing the vast majority of my music listening on an iPod for the past several months, I’ve been seduced over to the “dark side.” But I just don’t have the time or inclination to moon over a pleather-coated box or fake plastic piano keys.
October 5th is Bill Dixon’s eighty-first birthday. I missed his eightieth, because at this time last year, I barely knew his work at all. Late last fall, I read a mention of Odyssey, Dixon’s independently produced six-disc box set of trumpet solos, on this very site, and I couldn’t resist; I finally bought the box last winter, and I have already made my enjoyment of the set public in another forum here. The more I listen to Dixon’s solo playing as it evolves from 1970-1992, the more I understand his assertion that his playing is orchestral. By the way, I have seen very little mention of his piano work on disc 5, compositionally revelatory in the way I found Paul Rutherford’s approach to the instrument on the Iskra 1903 Emanem set.
Odyssey was my introduction to what rapidly became an obsession; all last winter and into the spring, I listened heavily to what I found to be an excitingly varied output, from the stunning late 1990s duos with Tony Oxley that make up the two volumes of Papyrus (where, coincidently, Dixon’s finest piano playing to date can be found) to the dense but ethereal Intents and Purposes of 1966. The latter clued me in to the depth and breadth of Dixon’s compositional and timbral imagination and compelled me to seek out whatever “orchestral” works were available. Sadly, there isn’t anything in print at this point. Intents has never gotten a proper reissue, and neither has the second volume of Considerations, home to “Orchestra Piece” and “Sequences”, both written for student groups in Madison, Wisconsin in 1972. I started spending many hours on the phone with Dixon, who informed me that he had written many such works, only to have them performed once and shelved due to lack of means.
The other day, I heard one of these in full force. On October 3rd, WKCR DJ Ben Young, an ardent Dixon champion and scholar for many years, broadcast the fragments of a 1967-1968 work written for the Free Conservatory Orchestra of the University of the Streets. I know very little about the physical space in which the work was performed, or rather rehearsed; Dixon informs me that the tapes caught the ear of Deutsch Grammophon, but they disappeared in transit. Luckily, some of the music survives in decent quality, on tape and on film, enough to give a good idea of overall structure and sonic scope.
Dixon’s music, at whatever dynamic level, has always seemed to me to maintain a certain icy stasis. I do not mean this negatively. I had imagined, before hearing this broadcast, that he deliberately eschewed the more heated and raucous elements of Ayler, early Frank Wright and late Trane in favor of longer more languid phrases; liquid Webern might begin to describe his orchestral approach. However, the piece for UOS is a huge and all-inclusive history lesson, embracing everything from Ellington to Coleman and much in-between and beyond. There are lush passages of triadic harmonies with sinewy saxophone overlays, evoking the late 1930s in voicing and sentiment; they are juxtaposed with broilingly intense percussion, some of it so loud that the recording equipment couldn’t quite handle the strain. Dixon can be heard leading the large ensemble throughout in what sounds like unconventional rehearsal strategies that blend improvisational practice with a nevertheless rigorous approach to composition and performance. While the broadcast was fragmentary, fading in and out with each missing piece in the puzzle, and while I have no idea of the work’s real running order, I became aware of what I took to be a huge crescendo, miniscule motives being passed from player to player creating a dense but transparent wave of increasing elemental power, vocal and saxophone duets in half-step transposition being only one sonic object carried along and only plainly audible at key moments. If UOS had been given the beautiful production that late 1960s DG could have offered, the experience might have been different but equally visceral, given the fact that such extraordinary musicians as Ron Carter and Sam Rivers lent their voices to the work.
So why didn’t it happen? Why could Dixon not secure the funds, or interest, to complete the project? More important now, forty years later, what else is languishing, unheard or unperformed? Such a man of talent doesn’t just stop searching in 1968, or 1998 for that matter. If I heard the whole history of what Dixon calls “This music” in a comparatively early work, even encompassing the rhetoric of European developments post World War II, what must he have accomplished in the forty years from then to now?
I am fully aware that Dixon is considered jealous, angry and overly egotistical by many that will be reading this. My response, especially after hearing what I heard this week, has become: Why shouldn’t he be indignant? I have seen composers of much less creativity reap rewards they simply do not deserve. Why did it take me so long to become familiar with Dixon’s work when more and more supposed “jazz” scholarship is emerging all the time? Finally, how many others, like Dixon, defied categorization only to pay the price for it? Whose work, and whose story, do I still need to hear to gain a more complete understanding of a music about which I am desperately passionate? As far as I’m concerned, the man deserves a life-time achievement award, or a MacArthur Genius Grant, or any other award that would allow him to devote as much time and resources as necessary to the fostering of his artistic vision, in whatever guises it manifests itself now, stripped of the necessities of historical expectation. To Dixon, now is of the utmost importance, his entire focus. As much as I would like UOS to see completion, it’ll never happen, and this is understandable as he moves forward in the same restless way he has for sixty years. Happy birthday, Mr. Dixon, and thank you for your music.
~ Marc Medwin
Proving I’m no pugnacious Perry White and that a bended-knee plea can produce results, Troy Collins joins the bullpen with the first in what will hopefully be a slew of reviews. You may be familiar with Troy through his incisive work over at One Final Note and All About Jazz, the latter of which where he’s one of the few to tackle the freer leaning albums on a regular basis. I’m glad to have him on board and we’ve already got him outfitted for a snug-fitting Submersible Team uniform. With Al returned from active duty in October & once again at the helm of the ship, we might just have a shot at the Southern Hemisphere Circumnavigational Title, wresting it from the hands of those seemingly unbeatable Fijians.
Apologies for the continued preoccupation with my compadre Herr Olewnick, but I just happened to stumble across his blog today. The appropriately titled Just Outside dates back to June of ’06 and I have to admit I’m a bit miffed that he’s yet to provide formal notice here of its existence (unless I missed it?). But for a stroke of blind luck in clicking on a link via a comment he left over at Destination Out, I’d still be none the wiser. And there’s another selfish part of me wishes he had posted some of those topics here in the perpetually listing Bags Blog. But enough of my petty and pusillanimous grousing. If you haven’t, do check it out: Brian’s skills at personal narrative are just as perspicacious as his reviewing ones. And while I’m at it, be sure to stop by Pete Cherches Word of Mouth too, a choice cuisine-oriented trove well stocked with pearls of gustatory wisdom. I can personally vouch for Pete’s singular talent at singling out the best eateries & culinary ensembles, having benefited from a 12-course Chinese feast assembled by his keen, menu-parsing eye. No finger wagging in his direction though, as I’ve been a regular visitor to his web digs for some time.
Students of the Sweet Science of reviewing both, Brian and I have been in the Bags ring since nigh its inception. Nevertheless, I’ve noticed over the last stretch that the pool of title-hungry contenders has winnowed to nearly just the two of us. Sure, Phil “Boom-Boom” Freeman swings by occasionally for a spar with a choicely dropped metal write-up or two tucked under glove, but mostly it’s ol’ “K.O.” Olewnick & I duking it out week after week, the standard back-and-forth drawing out to near tedium. I can’t speak for him, but mine own knuckles are feeling a bit calcified, the knee joints & lantern jaw, a little rickety and rundown. It’s been a long time in the ring and rounds keep chalking up without respite. All of this is a circuitous way of saying “how’s ‘bout (sorry for the pun) some new blood?” Some fresh young fighters to join in the fun. Or better yet, some of the existing talent signing up for more ring time? I’ve always been more of a WWF fan than a WBA one myself and have envisioned Bags as a Battle Royale setting with droves of salty writers taking to the top turnbuckles for Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka style smackdowns. Joining the fray is easy, just drop me a line.
Behind the curve, as usual, but here’s a little placeholder for Bags discussion pertaining to John Zorn’s recent MacArthur windfall (& Regina Carter’s too, if’n you’re so inclined). That’s $500K parceled over 5 years to do with as he pleases. At the very least, it will likely mean the end of The Stone’s financial woes for a spell. Speaking again of Carter, I found it curious that she’s one of the nine featured recipients on the Mac’s In Focus page while poor ol’ Zorn’s relegated to merely a mugshot. And another question for the hopper: how has 2004 recipient Reginald Robinson been spending his loot?
I’ve been meaning to pen a little paean to one Otis “Lightnin’ Slim” Hicks, King of the Swamp Blues, for a while. I considered scribbling up a Record of the Week, but most of Slim’s work is the province of compilations and his true talent rested in sculpting jukebox-sized singles not LPs. That simple singular directive delivered in every articulation from an emphatic whoop to a lackadaisical drawl (probably chiefly dependent upon how much sauce had been swilled before and during the session) works like a war cry for Slim’s music. Whether the recipient was Schoolboy Cleve, Lazy Lester or some other mouth harp slinger, the declaration was a license to wail. The early Excello aesthetic was ideally suited to his chosen instrumentation and it’s these cuts that stand as his crowning contribution to the Blues. Ace Records four-disc (four and half, if you count the two-fer he shares with acolyte Whispering Slim) series gathers nearly every extant track Slim recorded at Excello between 1954 and 1964.
Referring to Slim’s early style as Spartan or anachronistic just doesn’t do justice its rawboned mien. It’s easily some of the most boiled down small combo blues of the era. Slim would set up shop in the Crowley studio, plugging in his Epiphone electric and twisting the volume knob to gain a strident overlay of amplification. Most of the early songs feature him with just harmonica and drums backing, rolling out smoldering slow drag shuffles that owe a deep debt to Lightnin’ Hopkins, and to a lesser degree, John Lee Hooker, but still exude an indelible Louisiana identity. Even on up-tempo boogies like his thinly veiled JLH cover “Just Made Twenty One”, Slim suggests the first part of his sobriquet is a misnomer as brittle riffs shave off his strings in dilatory cascades. Later on in his career, he mined the ore from the repertoires of other colleagues to the north, most notably Chessmen like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. “I’m Grown”, Slim’s take on Muddy Water’s “I’m a Man” makes a respectable run at the superlative Chess original. A throbbing fuzz bass line, clip-clop snare beat, and the seductive overdubbed interjections of one Carol Fran assist in blending just the right ratio of sex and despair.
Slim’s vocals, delivered in a nicotine-dusted croon or croak, weren’t pretty, but they were perfect at conveying the burned out, beaten down content of his songs. Most dealt with typical topics: love gone wrong, broken carburetors, draft notice deliveries, agricultural insolvency, and other harrowing tales of a rural Southern youth spent growing up black.
“Police took me down to jail,
and they tied me to the wall.
Thirty days I spent in jail
with my back turned to the wall.
If it wasn’t for bad luck,
Lightnin’ wouldn’t have no luck at all.”
Standard Delta blues fare there, but in Slim’s entreating, punch-drunk voice, it takes on a whole new emotional resonance. The other key ingredient was a liberal dousing of studio echo. The effect gave the performances shimmering depth and an even harder metallic edge. Here’s another choice sonnet from one of my favorites, punctuated by some of the nastiest biting guitar licks this side of Pat Hare and a snare downbeat that could drill holes in pig iron.
“Well if you’re lookin’ for a Daddy,
and want to treat him right,
give him lots of love and kisses every night.
Well I’m him, Baby, yes I’m him.
Give me your name and address sweet mama,
and Poor Lightnin’ will move in.”
The same shuffling cornerstone rhythm often gets recycled from track to track, but Slim somehow manages to make it sound enticing nearly every time. Take the stomping rave-up “It’s Mighty Crazy” with its punch press drumbeat, keening harmonica and jack knife guitar. The resulting hard rocking juke vibe offers the model vehicle for one of Slim’s stabs at double entendre lyrics. Check the lascivious beauty of this particular lyric:
“You know I had on some ol’ dirty clothes,
standing by a tub,
she pulled me right down in it,
and she began to rub.
It’s mighty crazy,
it’s mighty crazy,
it’s mighty crazy,
Just a keep on rubbin’ at the same ol’ thing.”
Contrast that performance with a version of “West Texas” taped two years earlier. On the latter, the drummer just uses brushes, but thanks to Schoolboy Cleve’s train whistle harmonica and Slim’s bent plectrum picking the track lacks nothing in the way of menace or volatility.
Label owner and producer J.D. Miller was a businessman, one with an ear-cocked constantly to unit sales and public trends. While he recorded a fair share of Slim in the bluesman’s preferred minimalist Froggy Bottom argot, he also recognized the commercial need to adapt with the changing times and tastes. Unfortunately, Slim’s idiosyncratic music didn’t mesh will with the added ingredients of organ, piano, bass, horns and fuller, more pop-friendly band charts. Still, many of those later sides, sprinkled throughout Ace’s series, exhibit their own charms as Slim continues to play in his rough-hewn, no-frills fashion accoutrements be damned. The checkerboard approach also makes it difficult to safely recommend one volume over another, but if forced to choose I’d probably start with It’s Mighty Crazy for it’s preponderance of early cuts and a great essay by Slim’s former manager Fred Reif. Dave Sax’s essay and full sessions details on the final volume Winter Time Blues are also valuable in gaining a gauge on Slim’s ascendancy and decline.
Slim’s recording fortunes waned in the mid-60s and he left Louisiana for points north in a general state of dissatisfaction. He settled Romeo, Michigan and found work at company called International Lock, Pipe and Junk where he worked as a laborer. Several years later while living in Pontiac he received an invitation to perform at the 1972 Ann Arbor Blues Festival. The concert and a subsequent date for Excello led to a minor resurgence in his popularity and a string of European tours. There isn’t a lot of material available from Slim’s second coming, but Blue Lightning, a live club date on the London-based Indigo imprint, gives a pretty accurate barometer of where he was at. Once again, his stripped down style isn’t the finest fit with the slick seven-piece band and there’s at least two guitarists too many on stage, but harmoncia player Laurie Garman picks up the mantle left by Cleve and Lester and responds to Slim’s signature entreaty with nary a hesitation at the gender-specific tag.
The Hitch-hiker is a lean, mean proto-noir filmed when the genre was just starting its initial artistic downswing. It’s a progenitor to such later (and inferior) exploitation fare as The Sadist (1963) and The Hitcher (1986). Director Ida Lupino, widely renowned today as one of the only female filmmakers of her era, tells what is today an archetypal B-movie tale, but invests it with traits that transcend its modest means. The film dates from 1953, but its grainy, low-budget stock place it nearly a decade earlier in terms of look and feel. The cast is minimal with most of the action involving only three principal characters. A preamble placard redundantly proclaims the facts as actual, its words inscribed above a backdrop of broken asphalt. Exposition is accomplished swiftly and the 70-minute film never mires in trivialities.
Two married Average Joes on a fishing trip decide to detour across the border into Mexico for some booze and perhaps a little more. Through skillfully hinted at back-story, it’s an impromptu mission to relive some Glory Days. A sociopathic highway killer, one Emmett Myers, is simultaneously in the midst of a cross-country murder spree. Their paths cross and the pair become his captives at gunpoint. The construct effectively presages the horror morality dynamic that would inform countless of its successors: even the intent of indulgence in vice leads to dire consequences. The obligatory law enforcement side of the equation plays a distant second fiddle to the tense test of wills that plays out between the three men.
Frank Lovejoy plays the more grounded and stolid of the pair, his stubble-stippled jaw clenched in a stern scowl for much of the film. Edmund O’Brien is more openly headstrong and angry, but also less equipped to handle the demoralizing stress doled out by William Talman’s Myers. Lupino takes pains to the illustrate harrowing effects on both men, their features haggard, their clothes caked in grime and desert dust. Far from stalwart heroes, the good guys are flawed and their fear and frustration is palpable. Near the film’s end, they each look nearly as feral and disheveled as their assailant does.
As solid as Lovejoy and O’Brien are, Talman steals the show. The turgid lid of his lazy eye coupled with a set of cauliflower ears give him a countenance worthy of a grotesque Dick Tracy villain. He plays to the tropes of a sociopath without overplaying them, easily rivaling the reigning champion Richard Widmark in the unhinged reprobate department. Lacking in book learning and invested with a sadistic streak, he is still very careful, almost methodical, in the manner in which he commands his captives. That underlying confidence, however fragile in the end, only amplifies his threat. Any slivers of sympathy harbored toward his prisoners are fleeting. The notion of a rosy or even just outcome to the story isn’t a certainty as it is with so many Hollywood “true crime” films of the era. Myers is destined for death, but the question of whom he takes with him remains open for much of the film.
Lupino keeps things moving at a brisk pace without compromising clever details, and she fills the film with all manner of inventive visuals. From light and shadow car interiors to long distance tracking shots of the car’s winding journey across dusty rural roads. The lighting and capture of Talman’s face is particularly effective, giving him the appearance of pallid, cackling ghoul on more than one occasion and reflecting the bullying depravity in his actions. One scene involves an ad hoc game of target practice in a roadside gulch that conveys just how devoid of scruples his Myers truly is. Another gives menace to one of his deformities, eroding his captives’ chances of escape and keeping them perpetually on edge. The reasoning behind Myers decision to keep his the men alive becomes progressively far-fetched and the film’s dénouement is pretty standard, but not without some subtle twists that further degrade the mental stamina of the erstwhile good guys. Even with a typically bombastic “crime jazz” soundtrack and cardboard cutout supporting characters, including several Hispanic ones that border on caricature, the film’s strengths far outweigh its foibles. As a hardboiled melodrama stacked with one of the most malicious, if lesser known, miscreants of Fifties cinema, Lupino’s labor of love hits on nearly every cylinder.
~ Derek Taylor
This is probably old hat by now, but I’m finally parceling some time to post some momentous news from Sonny Rollins’ website. Concurrent with his 76th birthday and the release of his new disc, Sonny, Please, Rollins has unveiled nine archival audiovisual slices of his career; all perusable for a week (starting from 9/7, so there’s a mere 4 days left on the meter). Each cut has its charms, but the early ones with Henry Grimes are priceless. Props to webmeister Bret Primack for putting the whole production together, and a warm Feliz Cumpleanos to Señor Newk!
One of the peripheral joys of a recent trip to the Northwest was the opportunity to spend quality time in-flight with octet of albums on my pocket mp3 player. I chose a handful of Steve Lacy discs as part of the program, not so much for the presence of Lacy, but for his reliable foil Steve Potts. Potts is a person who always seems to slip my mind when I’m making mental lists of unsung saxophonists, but not for wont of merit. He’s been in the game for well over three decades, but like John Gilmore to Sun Ra or Jimmy Lyons to Cecil Taylor, his discography is still disappointingly scant outside of his better-known employer’s orbit. His complete immersion in many of Lacy’s own projects coupled with a continued expatriate residency probably have something to do with the scarcity, but it still seems odd given his talent and I have to surmise it’s by choice.
To draw another (probably superfluous) analogy, Potts strikes me as the Pharoah Sanders to Lacy’s Coltrane. His attack and vernacular are often the playfully vulgarian counterpart to Lacy’s more studied constructions with brash emotive swoops and a sharp-fanged tone regular parts of the package. But he’s far from a monochromatic improviser. He’s also adept at relaxed and ruminative balladry, reeling out restrained bluesy lines when the situation dictates. He reflects Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis’ old adage about “commanding the horn” and “not allowing it to play you” and thin threads of old teachers like Eric Dolphy and Charles Lloyd are occasionally audible in his solos. Listening again to Morning Joy, a Parisian club date that removes Irene Iebi from the mix and centers welcome attention on the two-pronged frontline, I was repeatedly won over by his daredevil phraseology and use of freak-register tonguing. There are moments when his ideas outstrip his technique, but the disparity never seems to stop him from walking the wilder side anyway. A prominent R&B flavor crops up regularly in his playing, one that projects an infectious earthiness that often coaxes Lacy toward looser, funkier paths of expression. Both of them play the hell out of their horns, ably and energetically backed by bassist Jean-Jacques Avenel and drummer Oliver Johnson. If polled, I would probably pick it as the most viscerally enjoyable entry in the Lacy canon (at least among the three dozen or so albums I’ve heard).
Flim Flam offers an even more concentrated dose of Potts in juxtaposition with Lacy. Presenting just the two saxophonists on a Swiss stage sans band, the disc is stocked with examples of extended improvisation and plenty of steam heat. Cliches and Wee See are larger affairs with Potts less prominent, but he still manages to make memorable marks on each. All this brings me back to my opening query: why has Potts been so reluctant to record on his own? The same strange paucity exists for his work as a sideman. I’m familiar with his part on Misha Mengelberg’s Root of the Problem (hatOLOGY), but was hard pressed to recall other sessions in a supportive capacity. A swing by his website reveals some surprising detours in his discography including dates with the Alan Parsons Project, Sugar Blue, Ghetto Blaster and several obscure film soundtracks. Two dates as a leader are also listed, Pearl and Wet Spot, but details as to labels or personnel are difficult to come by. Concert gigs appear to have been plentiful in 2006, with Potts both fronting and contributing to a variety of ensembles. But again, commercially available recordings just don’t seem to be a viable outcome of these collaborations. So, what’s the deal? Do I have Potts and his comparative talents pegged wrong, or should he be handed a record contract posthaste?
Just returned from a trip to Bellingham, Washington and a brief retreat to my parent’s oceanside cabin on Chuckanut Bay. One of the many draws of my hometown is its proximity to Vancouver, British Columbia and a day jaunt to the city did not disappoint. It helped that we struck lucky with the weather (upper 70s & sunny) and that my girlfriend wasn’t averse to hoofing it hither and yon to save on cab fare.
As with any trip to an urban locale, a cd safari, however brief, is ALWAYS on the itinerary. I managed to hit a respectable handful of brick & mortars, once again owing to my girlfriend’s Job-like patience and the promise of equal time at the seemingly limitless supply of clothing boutiques. A rude awakening to the inflated prices on Canadian compact discs stymied said safari from the start. HMV was the most egregious culprit with single discs tagged as high as $33(!) a pop. A $9.99 sale on certain Blue Notes was more within the bounds of reason, but did little to allay my dismay at the exorbitancy on display. Used shops were guilty of the gouging too with titles commonly priced at $10.99 and up. Resigned to the situation, I came back across the border empty handed and reserved my disc-spending budget for the meager selection of stores in Bellingham and the better pickings in Seattle.
So, I’m wondering is how long has this madness been going on? Are Canadian music consumers asked to swallow this sort of grievous profiteering across the country? What are the rationales behind such pricing and how are they sold to the public? How are the brick & mortar branches of companies like HMV staying afloat considering that much of the music they stock is available at drastically reduced prices through other retailers online? Here in the States, stores like Sam Goody and Musicland practice similar big-ticket tactics, but they’re not catering in specialty jazz for the most part (ie. Mosaic Selects for $109 apiece, another revelation at the HMV I visited) and they’ve taken it on the chin repeatedly to the tune of regular layoffs and shop closings. I’m curious if, and how, this situation has affected Canadian Bags readers. There’s an intangible thrill that comes with perusing record store racks, but when you’re priced out of a purchase before your fingers touch the bin it’s hard to justify the pastime as a profitable pursuit.
Now that the coffee pot on Bags’ cinema side is once again plugged in & percolating, I figure we’re overdue for a similar section devoted to suds. Summer is my preferred season for beer drinkin’ (& hell raisin’ when the occasion arises) and while it’s on the wane, there’s still time to solicit recommendations from the hopped-up side of the spirits spectrum. I’m thinking of brews beyond the usual suspects. Belgians like Chimay and Maredsous are givens. But what of the less celebrated strains? Those personal favorites that require a bit more skill to sell to the curious, but uninitiate. I’m thinking of that special secret quadruple bock brewed for generations by Zoroastrian Friars in the catacombs beneath Bridiore Castle, or the mint-scented lager hand bottled in miniscule batches by the Pavageau family of La Ronge, Saskatchewan. The number of community-oriented beer sites continues to multiply with studied opinions on virtually every brand and extraction attainable in a matter of clicks. My pick of the litter is probably Beer Advocate, a site so elite & erudite, it requires a specialized login account to peruse (whoo whoo!). But right now I’m more interested in what the discerning improv and jazz listener (and by proxy, Bags reader in general) opts to imbibe & why.
I bought the fancy new double-disc version of Apocalypse Now, which is one of my top five movies ever by anybody (the others, today anyhow: Repo Man, Blade Runner director's cut, The Big Red One posthumous long version, and Road House tied with Day Of The Dead) yesterday. I am disappointed and angered by it, for one very big reason.
The set features both versions of the movie - the 1979 original, a/k/a/ "the good version," and Apocalypse Now Redux, a/k/a "what the fuck were you smoking? Seriously...the French plantation scene? Dude..." - along with an assload of bonus features, including full-length director's commentary tracks for both versions, a lost scene that's extremely damn creepy and dream-haunting, a bunch of other extended scenes in very rough form that wouldn't have added much of anything to either version of the flick and in some cases are pretty inexplicably weird, and a fistful of behind-the-scenes stuff about the sound mixing and the editing and all the stuff only hardcore geeks like me care about, but hardcore geeks like me care about those things a great deal indeed. (Side note: wasn't it great how I used "fistful" and "assload" in the same sentence right there? I know that's the kind of thing that keeps folks reading my stuff.)
Here's the problem, though: rather than do the sensible thing and put Apocalypse Now on Disc 1 and Apocalypse Now Reallysux on Disc 2, along with however many bonus features could fit, or putting both movies on Disc 1 and all the bonus features on Disc 2, they (and by "they," I mean Francis Ford Coppola, since he had to have signed off on this thing) put "Act 1" of each movie on Disc 1, and "Act 2" on Disc 2.
According to Coppola's logic, Act 1 runs from the beginning through the massacre of the family on the sampan, and Act 2 picks up right after that - basically, Do Lung Bridge to the end.
So now I have to keep my bare-bones AN DVD for when I feel like watching the movie for itself (have I made my disdain for the re-edit clear enough yet?), and I can pull out the extra nerdy party pack when I feel like listening to Marlon Brando read "The Hollow Men" for 15 minutes. Damn you, Coppola!
Believe it or not, there’s another Coltrane box on the horizon. I discovered a single disc sampler of Concord’s upcoming Fearless Leader in my mailbox last week. Seems they’re phasing out the old 16-disc Complete Prestige Sessions behemoth, still available at a drastically slashed price while supplies last, and replacing it with a streamlined 6-disc set focusing solely on the saxophonist’s sessions as a leader. The common and frequently warranted complaint of nonsensical record company repackaging and recycling will likely be levied at the project. In this case though, the switch makes some sense.
I’ve been living with the bigger red box for about a dozen years now and have spun its contents countless times. I first encountered it working at a record shop the summer after college when a used copy miraculously crossed the counter. Even with my employee discount, the price tag proved too steep for my measly record clerk income. Undaunted and instantly enamored, I scored a copy a year later via a friend’s radio station discount for the still princely sum of $7/disc. The biggest draw for me initially wasn’t Coltrane, but the rather the prospect of copious Paul Chambers solos, my favorite bassist at the time. The set doesn’t disappoint in that respect and Mr. P.C. takes some doozies. Coltrane’s great too, even on the small segment of otherwise lackluster sessions built around blowing session gimmicks of the day. Tenor Conclave is a bit crowded and convoluted, how could it not be with Al Cohen, Zoot Sims and a somewhat outclassed Hank Mobley crammed into the frontline. Conversely the tandem with Pres-influenced Paul Quinichette, maligned in some circles, has its share of quirky charms and its treat to hear Trane trade licks with his more antiquated senior.
The sampler cherry picks tracks from each of the set’s six discs, with preference for the third. As several recent Prestige Best Of compilations demonstrate, the prospect of shaving the corpus down to single disc borders on preposterous. The compilers seem cognizant of this. The emphasis is on quartet and quintet combinations and the sequencing stresses maximum replayability. Documentation is minimal with even session details excluded from the tray card. It’s a platter strictly designed to whet the appetite. There’s plenty of great stuff missing that is hopefully included on the box. I’m thinking of single tracks like the rundown of “I Want to Talk About You” that gorgeously presages more virtuosic later versions and the dusky rendition of the folksy swing standard “Russian Lullaby.” There’s also no taste from the quixotic, but intoxicating Dakar, specifically the Sun Ra-sounding “Route 4”, where Coltrane’s tenor tumbles with the formidable baritone duo of Cecil Payne and Pepper Adams, though I can’t recall offhand whether he was behind the wheel on the one.
If the sampler is a reliable indication, the new set will trump its older, rheumy-sounding sibling by a wide margin in terms of freshly scrubbed fidelity. Coltrane sounds great, but it’s the rhythm sections that truly receive a boost, particular the bass, making the prospect of revisiting all those pizzicato P.C. solos all the sweeter. The obvious downsides: no previously unreleased material and the lingering feeling that Concord is still primarily trying to hustle a buck. That latter point sort of seems moot- they’re a music business and the mining of Coltrane’s legacy has long been a lucrative enterprise. The set’s title also seems a bit strange and ill suited to me, attaching a plucky mantle akin to Shackleton or Rommel to Coltrane’s easygoing pacifist persona, but from a marketing standpoint, I suppose it’s an attractive tagline.
While I’m not planning to trade-in my treasured red goliath, the notion of a condensed counterpart with far improved sound isn’t something I’m scoffing at either. I’ll be curious to see how the set moves off the shelves after its street date of 9/30/06 (not coincidentally, Coltrane’s 80th birthday). In the meantime there’s the chance (far from infinitesimal) to win one of 80 gratis copies, along with the recently released Monk & Coltrane - Complete 1957 Riverside Recordings & a spiffy T-shirt here. Those canny Concord promotions people are never ones to rest on their laurels.
I got my audio engineer's certificate in the mail today. (Given the state of the music biz, a pretty brilliant career move, if I do say so myself.) So now all I need to do is find some bands and a studio foolish enough to let me behind the board, and voila! I'll be one of those hubristic asshole critics who puts his money where his mouth is and tries to make the record he thinks everyone else should have been making all along. (See Landau, Jon; Marsh, Dave; Albini, Steve.) With luck, mine will sound a lot like Sir Lord Baltimore's Kingdom Come or Grand Funk Railroad's Closer To Home. So who's ready to give me a job mixing their next ultra-delicate eai session? Jon?
Recognizing that I sometimes test the decorum of the blog with entries less than germane (this bijou among my favorites), I still feel compelled to compose a quick telegraph transmission in the hopes of learning the whereabouts of a certain errant Warburton. A previous communiqué has gone unanswered & I now see that the Paris Transatlantic billboard has yet to receive a fresh coat of August paint. Here’s hoping that his submersible hasn’t been sunk at sea, the victim of another dastardly torpedo attack by anti-improv insurgents. Dan, if you’re within reach of a wireless, a GPS uplink, or even a pair of primitive soup cans & string, please notify us posthaste of your safety & situation. The indefatigable Emory Davis has issued an APB & a post on hoppy summer libations is forthcoming…
Henry Kaiser - six string acoustic bass guitar
Damon Smith - Ergo six string electric upright bass, laid flat
Recorded by Henry Kaiser / July 23rd, 2006
All of a sudden, I have more Venom CDs than any sane person needs. So why not waste the Bagatellen denizens' time with a tedious exploration of this ultimately second- (if not third- or fourth-) tier '80s thrash band? Why not, indeed?
Late last year, Venom got the boxed-set treatment; MMV piled up four discs with album cuts, non-album singles, outtakes, live tracks - the usual. All digitally remastered for optimum sound, of course. But here's the thing: "optimum sound" doesn't mean what you think it means, where Venom is concerned. See, these records sound like shit. And I'm a guy who doesn't mind a little rawness in his rawk.
I didn't buy the box, mind you; instead, I bought their first four albums - Welcome To Hell, Black Metal, At War With Satan and Possessed. They were available cheapish from Amazon third-party vendors, also in remastered editions slathered in bonus tracks, so why not, right? They were a band I'd heard about for years, but never bothered to listen to - I was busy with Motörhead, Slayer, and a zillion other bands. These forefathers of black metal (though frontman Cronos has expressed loud and public disgust with church burning, ritual murder, and all the other headline-grabbing antics that made the '90s Norwegian scene the non-stop fun-fest it was) had evaded my attention, until this year.
Well, once I actually listened to the albums, I realized my initial non-decision to not bother had been, in fact, the correct one.
Welcome To Hell, I recently learned from reading the boxed set's accompanying booklet, actually consists of demos for what the band hoped would be their first album. The label liked the cheap-ass, ultra-raw, drums-like-cardboard-boxes-hit-with-cardboard-tubes, guitars-half-as-loud-as-the-inept-vocals, bass-totally-inaudible-except-when-it's-out-of-tune-and-right-up-front sound and ran with it. And somehow, this band of knuckle-dragging Limey wankers, with their cartoonish lyrics about Satan and even more cartoonish lyrics about pussy, earned themselves a following. Was it that bad in the UK in 1981, that this took off?
Funnily enough, Cronos, guitarist Mantas and drummer Abaddon actually claim to have spent time working on the follow-up disc, Black Metal, with the specific aim of sounding better than the ultra-shitty WTH. Well, mission decidedly, abjectly not accomplished. Their second blast of lobotomized shriek 'n' rattle was, if anything, dumber than the debut. They set an all-time low mark for rock sexism with "Teacher's Pet," but that's about the only genuine achievement that can be credited to Black Metal - except, of course, for the title track and the whole genre it spawned.
The third album, At War With Satan, fills its entire first side with a 20-minute title track. Now, if you can barely keep a hold on your instruments for five minutes, why would you attempt a 20-minute concept suite? Oh, well; the thing exists, and it must be grappled with. Unless, unlike me, you've got some sense. The second half of the disc has some decent (by Venom standards) songs, including "Cry Wolf" and "Women, Leather and Hell." So keep your thumb on the skip button, listeners, for your own sake.
The fourth and final studio album from the "classic" trio lineup was Possessed, which lots of people claim represents a dropoff in quality. Damned if I can hear it. No band since the Ramones has better defined the phrase "more of the same" - in fact, Venom make the Ramones seem like the Mothers of Invention in terms of complexity and willingness to experiment (and technical skill).
Here's the thing, though. The three original members of Venom reunited in 1996 and recorded the album Cast In Stone, which I received in yesterday's mail. It's been reissued as a 2CD set, including on its second disc 15 re-recordings (circa the CIS sessions) of Venom "classics" from the first four albums. And you know what? When properly recorded and mixed, these are actually good songs. Fifteen years after their debut, Venom had pretty much learned how to play their instruments, and they were able to give the old songs some real punch. It's almost a shame they're known for their early, shitty records, and that those records have been as influential as they have. I made a lot of fun of "lo-fi" indie bands when that trend was buzzing, but it's even worse when metal, normally a genre that worships sonic hugeness, embraces crap sound as a virtue.
By the way, I got the boxed set in the same big padded envelope as Cast In Stone and the brand-new album (Cronos is the only original member in the band these days), Metal Black. Looking over its track listing, almost all its contents (and more) are contained on the single-album reissues I bought, and the CIS reissue. A few live tracks on Disc Four are no argument for keeping the whole shelf-space-hogging thing. So, to sum up: early Venom bad, bad, bad. A few good songs, and every once in awhile, against my better judgment, I find myself clicking them up on my iPod ("Warhead" and "In League With Satan" are their closest brushes with greatness), but generally speaking, inexplicably popular and bad, bad, bad. Middle-period Venom, especially re-recordings of old songs, actually pretty good. Present-day Venom a cover band with original singer. Venom boxed set mostly useless, as diehards will buy the reissued albums which contain all the rarities from the box, and a bunch more besides. Thank you for your time. Have a pleasant day.
Sabers have been rattling for a while regarding the Concord-Fantasy merger and the possible consequences to what was once rightfully referred to as “the world’s mightiest jazz catalog.” The events of the past year are inconclusive, but there are still many who fear the worst. Concord has confronted the growing consumer apprehension with vague assurances and reactive moves that have in some senses backfired.
Certainly, publicist Terri Hinte’s separation from the company about a month ago was an ominous harbinger. Her parting announcement echoed all the class and composure I’ve come to expect from her, but there was also the hint of contretemps in her departure. A revamp and consolidation of the Concord and Fantasy websites winnowed the previously comprehensive listings of the latter down to a fraction of the size. One of those “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” situations if ever their was one. The current Summer Blowout Sale, featuring 300+ titles from the back catalog at practically giveaway prices, seems to corroborate conjecture that preserving the catalog in its voluminous entirety isn’t high on the Concord checklist. Then there’s the ongoing repackaging trend where “Best Of” compilations appear to be the flavorless soup de jour for the foreseeable future.
It’s highly unlikely that Concord will melt down the priceless bullion in their vaults --the Monk, the Coltrane, the Miles, etc.-- and sell it off as scrap. But there is a slew of lesser known discs that are almost certain to receive the axe, gems like Gil Melle’s Primitive Modern/Quadrama, Jimmy Hamilton’s Can’t Help Swinging and Taft Jordan’s Mood Indigo. It’s this sad probability that’s had me mulling over the fate of one of my favorite Fantasy creations- the beloved two-fer.
Fantasy’s two-fer program was one of my favorite series. The concept was simple and nothing new. Two albums, usually by the same artist, paired on a single disc, sometimes with one or two tracks excised because of time constraints (an action that had many completists shaking their fists in ire). Blue Note, Verve and more recently Collectables have trafficked in pretty much the same product. But there was something about Fantasy’s take on the formula that set it apart. Reprinted liner notes and tiny facsimiles of original album covers were often included. What I dug most was the chance to sit down with between 70 and 80-minutes of music that I would otherwise probably never hear. List prices were admittedly steep ($16.98), but the value was readily apparent once the case was cracked.
The truly troubling thing for me is that there’s still a lot of material in the Fantasy vault ripe for the two-fer treatment. With Concord’s continuing preference for compilations and distillations the odds of these albums being reissued in their entirety seem hardly worth betting on. So here’s a tumbler raised to the two-fer and a brief index of some of my favorites as a commemorative act of catharsis:
1.) Gene Ammons – Gentle Jug
2.) Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis – Streetlights
3.) Bill Jennings & Jack McDuff – Glide On
4.) Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis & Johnny Griffin – Blues Up and Down
5.) Dick Wellstood & Cliff Jackson – Uptown and Lowdown
6.) Buddy Tate & Claude Hopkins – Buddy and Claude
7.) Four Trombones – The Debut Recordings
8.) Shirley Scott w/ Stanley Turrentine – Soul Shoutin’
9.) Rusty Bryant – Legends of Acid Jazz, Vol. 2
10.) Gene Ammons – Up Tight!
11.) Sal Nistico – Heavyweights!
12.) Gus Mancuso – & Special Friends
13.) John La Porta – Themes and Variations
14.) Clifford Jordan – Mosaic
15.) The Sandole Brothers – And Guests
16.) Harold Mabern – A Few Miles From Memphis
17.) Eric Kloss - & the Rhythm Section
18.) Woody Shaw – Blackstone Legacy
19.) Mongo Santamaria – Afro Roots
20.) Cal Tjader – Los Ritmos Calientes
21.) Charlie Byrd – Byrd By the Sea
22.) Billy Taylor – Warming Up!
23.) Bola Sete – Voodoo Village
24.) Cannonball Adderley – Dizzy’s Business
25.) Red Rodney – Quintets
As always, anxious to hear other folks' favs in the form of typed boquets…
Several people have shared information regarding the current plight of Mazen Kerbaj. Kerbaj is a Lebanese improviser and visual artist who, along with several colleagues & several million people, is currently stranded in the beseiged city of Beirut. I’m not familiar with Kerbaj personally, but a quick survey of the web reveals information about his life and work including a bio and a folio of his visual art. Most recent among the sites is KERBLOG, a daily account of his thoughts & experiences in the wake of the tragic events that continue to unfold in Lebanon. Please consider this space a catch-all for reader perspectives on Kerbaj and this deeply troubling situation.
Lately I’ve been reading Ashley Kahn’s latest work chronicling the history of Impulse Records. Overall, the book gives its subject a rather superficial treatment, privileging a beautiful design and a breezy, nostalgic run-through of the label’s noteworthy accomplishments over an incisive analysis of the music. Which is fine. Music fans often delude themselves when they try to suppress the consumerist impulse that governs many of their purchases. It isn’t always about the music; sometimes what we buy reflects more a schoolboy excitement over the latest thing than any deep appreciation for the contents inside the shiny packages. More significantly, consumerism also pulls us closer into the imagined, online community that shares our passions and our tastes.
Which brings me back to Kahn’s book, because at its best the book captures a sense of what it was like to be a jazz fan during Impulse’s heyday in the 1960s and early 1970s. Referring to the label’s unique gatefold design, John Sinclair reminisces that “those gatefolds were a wonderful development because they served as a deluxe rolling tray to manicure your marijuana. The best Impulses had the most seeds stuck in the middle.” Along the same lines, Gary Giddens remembers the first time he heard John Coltrane’s Ascension: “We used to listen to albums in college and talk about [them as] ‘main courses’ or ‘chasers.’ The night we listened to Ascension, the first version, we were wired. We were young and impressionable, and because we didn’t give a shit what the critics said, we all thought that Ascension was wonderful. We had to think very carefully about the chaser, and we chose Dexter Gordon’s A Swingin’ Affair. Perfect! It brought us right back home again. Those two albums were a total of eighty minutes’ listening with a lot of dope going around. That kind of deeper listening experience has disappeared.”
There are two strands running through these anecdotes: marijuana and an active sense of community. We still have one, but not so much the other. In lieu of sitting around with friends and listening to, say, the latest Erstwhile or IMJ (to shift to a different genre closer to my own heart), it seems to me that our listening experience has become profoundly isolated. For the most part, we order our discs over the Internet and listen to them alone, on our private audio systems or headphones. The closest thing to community that we seem able to muster are the rather desperate (by comparison to the real thing) WAYLT threads on the various music boards, Soulseek chatrooms, where we also tell people sitting in front of their computers hundreds or thousands of miles away what we are listening to, which of course they can’t hear, and file-sharing networks. This, of course, is the paradox of the Internet: it brings people together while at the same time reducing their interaction to a one-dimensional forgery of real human community.
And it is hardly limited to the outer fringes of music, whose audiences often encompass only a few thousand people spread out over several continents and dozens of countries. As far as I can tell, the same trend applies for mainstream jazz and pop music as well. The Internet has brought us greater access to whatever music we like to listen to, while also encouraging us to isolate ourselves from those living in our own neighborhood.
I recognize that I am not saying anything new here. The atomization of Western culture is a phenomenon that has been well-documented for some time now. But it seems to me that as music fans this is something we must actively fight. Just as the music we listen to tries to critique modern society, so must we work against its debilitating effects on our ability to reach out to people in human ways. Whether that means trying to start a local listening club or going to greater efforts to build an online community connected by more than pixels on a screen, I don’t know. I don’t have the answers; I only wish to raise the issue.
Of course, if none of these options seem feasible, we can always opt for the alternative and smoke more weed.
a little heads up on the amoebic Destination: Out, a new mp3-oriented site from the folks that publish Chemistry Class. You'll find at least a portion of some of those old, OOP sessions that may or may not see day's light anytime soon. I thought it a nice pick to host the Zorn/Frisell/Lewis bastardization of Kenny Dorham's "Lotus Blossum", which should hopefully be available for download a while longer.
Norman Granz was one of those impresarios of whom it can safely be said lived the Sinatra ode “I Did It My Way” to the fullest. He never really catered or kow-towed to anyone, calling his own shots and cobbling a cottage industry couched in his own stubbornly commercial aesthetic. People hated him for it, especially the jazz intelligentsia. But he paid his detractors little consideration, investing his energies instead toward preserving the work of some of the music’s most legendary figures.
It’s pretty easy to peg a Granz jazz session right off the bat. Swing and/or bop luminaries assembled in all-star configurations. If it’s a studio date, the sound is usually dry, but clear for the vintage. If it’s live, there’s an even greater focus on combative fireworks. Akin to the pit boss at a cockfight, Granz had a thing for pitting prodigious talent against talent and capitalizing on musicians’ competitive natures. Blues and standards clutter the menu on his records with a preference for mid- to up-tempo numbers and minimal arrangements. Some players like the bantam rooster-tempered Roy Eldridge and the bombastic Buddy Rich reveled in the settings. Others like debonair Benny Carter and gentle-souled Lester Young were less suited to the fisticuffs and roughhousing. Either way, Granz was set on gleaning performances that emphasized the visceral over the intellectual and celebrated spontaneity, no matter how premeditated the parameters.
The Complete Norman Granz Jam Sessions showcases all these tropes in abundance spread across nine sessions and five compact discs. I recently dropped ducats on the box through Yourmusic.com, a subsidiary of BMG, which dispenses with the troublesome purchase quotas and instead sells all its wares at discount prices. The catch is the subscription service side of the membership. Each subscriber must purchase one disc a month at the locked-in cost of $5.99 by way of a queue. Leave your queue empty and you’re still levied the fee. Overall though, it’s a pretty sweet deal & I’ve used it mostly to pick up several otherwise exorbitantly priced Miles Davis boxes at cut rates.
But back to the Granz box. The only content previously released domestically is the first and most famous jam session featuring Charlie Parker. None other than Carter, Johnny Hodges, Flip Phillips and Ben Webster join him, and that’s just the sax section. Also on roll call: Charlie Shavers; Oscar Peterson; Barney Kessel; Ray Brown and J.C. Heard. In other words a swing-to-bop fan’s dream team. The other seven sessions arguably don’t quite match that level of assembled royalty, but they trade for some very interesting aggregations just the same. Sessions 3 and 4 convene the tentet of: Harry “Sweets” Edison; Buddy DeFranco; Carter; Willie Smith; Stan Getz; Wardell Gray; Count Basie; Freddie Green; John Simmons; and Buddy Rich. Basie even doubles on organ for the lengthy ad-hoc confab “Blues for the Count," a piece where Getz encounters reed problems. And it’s a treat to hear woefully under-represented Gray solo on each of the four jams, garnering a spotlight on “(I Don’t Stand” A Ghost of a Chance With You” during the requisite ballad medley.
A shout out is in order too for the various rhythm sections. As Granz’s golden egg, Oscar Peterson is the most frequent ringleader, but it was precisely this sort of set-up in he excelled amidst big guns that could put his polished Tatum-isms to the test. Ray Brown is a supple-skinned rock throughout and its fun to hear recalcitrant Rich reined in on the various ballad medlies. Louis Bellson is great too, particularly on the final two dates in the potentially daunting company of the well-oiled O.P. trio.
I suppose the sameness of general formula from session to session could pall for some people. And despite the ebullient excitement on cuts like “Apple Jam” and “Lullaby in Rhythm” it’s pretty obvious that the musicians aren’t stretching themselves too rigorously, just enjoying the relaxed and paid opportunity to play with their peers. But Granz was careful to vary solo for each meeting and even allowed for some spirited ensemble interaction during the various breaks. What I dig most about the set the summit conference-like atmosphere that pervades each conclave. Sure, these guys were jamming in a studio rather than an after hours speakeasy. And yes, the paycheck, and therefore impetus, was more than a hat passed around for house rent. Moreover, a producer’s mitts are all over the proceedings. But these potentially stultifying properties hardly seem to matter a whit when Illinois Jacquet rips into his opening salvo on “Jamming for Clef”, pouring out booting string of choruses before reluctantly ceding to the ferocious brass barrage of Eldridge. The shortest of the cuts clocks just under 12-minutes and most spool out well beyond that. Everything has the aural sheen of a thorough remastering scrub.
The packaging is up to Verve’s typically quixotic standards. A metal backless case with a clear plastic window holds a cardboard one containing five foldout digipacks, each embossed with original David Stone Martin cover art from the original LPs (see above). Martin’s graphics are another huge draw: line drawings depicting weirdly arranged instrument assemblages or caricatures of the musicians that bring to my mind Edward Gorey. A thick booklet contains session more illustrations, photos, essays and biographies. Solo sequences for every track are conveniently limned, both in the book and on the tray cards. It’s a top-notch monument to Granz’s vision and moxie and thus far has delivered hours of listening pleasure to these ears. Now if only Yourmusic would hurry up and get the JATP box in stock!
One of the first pieces of advice I was given prior to leaving for Namibia last month was to try to ready myself for the vast cultural differences which would confront me the moment I stepped off my plane in Windhoek. "For one, African airports are different," I was told. "When you step into the terminal a rush of people comes toward you, trying to get your money, offering you things you don't need. Over there you are going to stick out and be an easy target."
Imagine my surprise, then, when I actually arrived at Windhoek International Airport on May 16. As the plane made its descent toward the ground, I had already noticed one startling thing about Namibia, of which I would be reminded time and time again over the next four weeks. The emptiness. The vast emptiness of the country. Miles and miles of open savannah and desert. Namibia is, first and foremost, a desolate country. Its population density is lower than Canada, lower than Australia, lower even than neighboring Botswana, which is dominated by the arid Kalahari desert.
The airport, like the rest of the country, was surrounded by nothing. No neighborhoods, no factories, no homes, no people. Just open space, everywhere you looked. Therefore it came as little surprise when I entered the small terminal that there was no one there trying to offer me anything. As my eyes scanned the reception area all I saw was one guy sitting by himself in the corner of the airport cafe, drinking a beer. It was 7:30 in the morning. "You need a ride into town?" he belched as he observed me struggling with my four bags. I explained that the hostel where I was staying had arranged to have a driver pick me up, though he hadn't arrived yet. "Well, if he doesn't show up, I'll take you," the man offered. I wandered over to the bar where drinks were being served by a woman wearing a Chicago White Sox baseball cap. Welcome to Namibia?
As it turns out, American baseball gear is popular in Namibia, even though no one follows or cares much about the game. It is a fashion statement that has reached the country via Hollywood and rap music, two of the three mediums through which most Namibians encounter America (the third being the much reviled policies of George W. Bush.) Superficially, then, much about Namibia resembled America. In Namibia many people wear 50 Cent t-shirts and believe that Tupac Shakur is not dead. When they have the money, they eat at KFC, the only major American food chain in the country. (McDonald's used to be in Namibia, I was told, but pulled out a few years ago because of lack of profits.) Almost everyone, even the poorest people, owns a cell phone. Possessing one is almost a prerequisite for accomplishing anything, since most people do not have land phone lines. Namibia is also, like America, a very Christian country: Lutheran, Catholic, and Episcopalian churches are everywhere. The Da Vinci Code has stirred up a lot of controversy there, just as it has here. Namibia also has its own race problems, perhaps even more pronounced than in the United States. The legacy of apartheid and South African-rule lives on. Whenever I had a conversation in public with a dark-skinned person, we drew stares from both whites and blacks alike. Whites, mostly of German origin, live in the wealthy suburbs, in gated homes with high-priced alarm systems and attack dogs. Blacks live in slum conditions that make the American ghetto look almost middle class by comparison. Nonetheless, I was told by more than one person that the primary race problem in Namibia today is not blacks against whites, but blacks against blacks.
Yet the differences are equally profound. The average Namibian is fluent or semifluent in at least three languages, English, Afrikaans or German, and Oshiwambo. Walking down the streets of Windhoek, one finds people dressed in suits and ties walking next to bare-chested women. Signs of the country's poverty are everywhere, from a lack of indoor plumbing and electricity to hungry children begging on the streets. But the differences are not only rooted in the contrasting material conditions. The pace of life is much slower. Because few have electricity, people wake up at sunrise and often go to bed soon after dark. There is little of the pent-up anxiety and stress that, to my mind, has come to dominate life in the West. Perhaps because people have less, they have less to worry about, or rather, what they have to worry about is more basic. The average man or woman living in Katatura has few bills to pay, since all he owns is what he keeps in his corroded shack. There is no worry about saving for his children's education, since such opportunity does not exist. There is no concern over paying medical bills, since access to quality medical care is reserved for the few who can afford to pay, and anyway, the average lifespan in the country, wracked as it is by the AIDS pandemic, is only about 44 years. Perhaps it is the case that those who are the furthest and most protected from death are those who fear it the most. I don't know.
I do know that in my time there I fell in love with the country, with the friendliness of the people, the vast emptiness of the desert, the peace of the sand dunes. For me, the culture shock came not when I arrived in Windhoek, but when I returned to New York this past Sunday. Already I felt out of place, and wished to get on a plane and head back. In my mind I know that I will return for a longer stay soon, but already I feel myself pining for a life less cluttered by piles of cds, stacks of books, and old closets stuffed with irrational fears.
This is egregiously late in coming, but truthfully, I was hoping someone else would take the lead. My knowledge of Ligeti (1923-2006) could fit on a thimble head so I’m absolutely the wrong person to be posting anything resembling an obit or an appreciation. But for those who are better suited here’s a formal Bags forum to do so. Fwiw too, I found The Bad Plus’ recent Ten Reasons (scroll down) very instructive.
I spent part of the weekend making decent headway on reviews, but I’ve still yet to type commentary on a set that’s been taking up a big chunk of my listening time. Saddled with the somewhat trite sobriquet of Trio Beyond, the ensemble of John Scofield, Larry Goldings and Jack DeJohnette have dropped a fusion warhead-fitted bomb in the form of Saudades. The two disc ECM of package documents a live date taped at Queen Elizabeth Hall winter of 2004. Back then, the trio’s main purpose was according musical tribute to Tony Williams and more specifically his celebrated Lifetime band with Larry Young and John McLaughlin. Over the intervening year and half their repertoire and scope have purportedly expanded and a string of new concert dates are currently in the works. But this snapshot of their nascency is one revalatory listen on its own.
Sco’s playing is a bit too flashy and precious for me in places, but his detours in effects-riddled funk and playful grandstanding fit well within super-group format. Goldings can’t compete with the full girth of Young’s earthy eccentricities and his occasional tendency toward dapper technical polish is another minor quibble. Again, when it counts he meshes well with his partners and his use of electric piano and sampler further vary the playing field. For my money, and fittingly enough considering the identity of the concert’s dedicatee, it’s DeJohnette who lights the most consistent and calefactory fires. He’s a monster on the versions of Joe Henderson’s “If” and Lifetime’s signature jam “Emergency” that bookend the concert and his work on the funk and dub-blasted title cut suggests a 21st century update on the protean syncopated style that powered last year’s Cellar Door Sessions set. Thirty-six years dissipate under the stamp of a declamatory snare shot and the London crowd must’ve loved it. No ECM austerity and elegance here, just blowtorch jamming that could school younger, if more popular, bands like the Bad Plus and Medeski, Martin & Wood. There are also a handful of detours into schmaltz, Goldings’ flowery “As One” in particular, but this also aligns with source of inspiration. Lifetime certainly had its share of cornball tunes. The recording is so brash and crisp that along with Charles Lloyd’s recent Sangam it solidifies my position that the label should divert its attentions away from trafficking in the tried and true studio sheen of most of their releases and instead funnel production funds into capturing its roster in front of keyed up crowds, vérité-style.
Anyway, this hardly anything approximating a formal or faultfinding review. I’m just curious to glean other folks’ opinions of the set. The four (& counting) reviews over at AAJ are all laudatory and when I get around to composing my own it will probably echo like sentiments. But on the flip, I’m fully willing to accept culpability if it turns out my tin ear is acting up again. So what say you? Is this set one of the Best of 2006 as John Kelman boldly claims? Or is it case of wankery dressed up with the respectable face of an undeniable drum doyen as colophon?
The weekend is nearly here and I’m gearing up to catch my first ‘mainstream’ jazz concert in nearly two months. Eric Alexander is coming to town for a three night stand at St. Paul’s Artists' Quarter. Given the modest $12 cover, he’s presumably touring as a single. The AQ website provides no skinny on the local rhythm section that will preside at his flanks. My fingers remain crossed that at least the mighty Anthony Cox might be among them on bass, but odds of that are highly unlikely. At any rate, I’m excited both for the show and to have my girlfriend and several of her relatives from Mexico City in tow.
Alexander is something of a poster boy for neo-hard boppers and has weathered his share of slander for the distinction. I haven’t kept up on his recordings (some of the press copy boasts 70+ sessions to date) since his 2003 platter Nightlife in Tokyo with mentor Harold Mabern at the ivories, but I remember digging that disc for what it is, an earnest, and dare I say satisfying, scoop of vanilla-flavored jazz, closer to bean than the soft serve machine. His ’95 Delmark tenor duel with now-departed Lin Halliday remains my favorite of his discography that I’ve sampled, both for the explosive horn tandem and for the killer Chicago rhythm team that includes Jodie Christian and Wilbur Campbell. Halliday, who was repeatedly hamstrung by a series of self-sabotaging personal problems, really rises to the occasion, inspired by Alexander’s brio and obvious respect.
The AQ’s been smoke-free since April and their bar staff has a welcome tendency toward generous pours when it comes to top-shelf bourbon- two more persuasive reasons for an evening excursion to its hip, though largely non-descript surroundings. It may not be the Village Vanguard or Iridium, but they do their best the basement performance space to create ambiance on par with the big city joints. If things go well at the two sets tonight, I’m seriously considering making the scene again on Saturday, and possibly Sunday. Alexander may be plundering the past with a repertory sound and approach, but he’s doing it without pretension and with an ear toward establishing his own niche, both traits that I’ve got to admire. I’m confident that his passion and candor will hold up on stage and hopeful that they will warrant repeat visits.
Last night I sold a bunch of used CDs at Kim's on St. Marks Place. For every 20 CDs you sell, they give you (in addition to the cash) a coupon for a free DVD. I had two such coupons left over from my previous visit, so upstairs I went, and after much searching, I wound up with two of my favorite horror movies, Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark and John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness. I almost grabbed Larry Clark's Bully, but didn't, so I've got one coupon left for future use.
I saw Near Dark in its theatrical run, when I was 14. My dad took my brother and me to a theater in Paterson, NJ where it and PoD were both playing, but we weren't there for either of those. I was much too stupid for that. No, I wanted to see Surf Nazis Must Die!, and this rat-trap in Paterson was the only place in NJ showing it. So we went. The theater was a complete dump, but it had one thing going for it. It was showing five movies, all in the same theater; you could walk in for the movie you wanted to see, and hang out for as many of the others as you felt like, as they rolled by in sequence. So we watched Surf Nazis Must Die!, and Near Dark, but left just before Prince of Darkness started.
I probably don't need to explain the godlike awesomeness of Near Dark to anybody reading this. By now, the movie's rep is thoroughly secure; it's the vampire movie for those who wish vampires were a little less romantic and a lot more badass. Well, in its initial theatrical run, there was just nothing like it on earth, especially for a 14-year-old nerd kid with punk rock and metal already coursing through his veins. Shit, when the Cramps' version of "Fever" starts on the jukebox near the end of the infamous barroom-slaughter scene, I about had a heart attack - this was the coolest movie ever. I've loved it since, possibly all the more since I stumbled across it with no anticipation or preconceptions. It was like finding a diamond in the sewer. The DVD is an Anchor Bay edition, so it's a double with a documentary featuring cast interviews (what ever happened to Joshua Miller, the kid who played Homer?), a (mercifully) deleted scene, etc., etc. Well worth owning.
Earlier this year, I was in a mood for John Carpenter but didn't feel like revisiting any of the ones I'd already seen multiple times, like The Thing or Vampires. So I got PoD from Netflix. I say in all seriousness, this is the one John Carpenter movie I found genuinely frightening. It's not one of his best-regarded movies, so I'll run it down: a weird glowing canister/vault thing is found in the basement of an abandoned church. A group of grad students and some religious types come in to investigate it. It starts to leak, and all of a sudden the local homeless begin forming some kind of bonus army of the damned outside the place. The people inside the church, meanwhile, start turning on each other and zombifying. Things go real bad, real fast. I think Carpenter's at his best working with enclosed storylines: you're here in this place, bad shit is happening, you've got to either preserve your sanctuary or escape. This is the plot of Assault On Precinct 13 and The Thing and PoD (and, of course, Halloween), and I think they're his best movies. It's hard to say what, exactly, creeps my flesh about PoD - the violence is mostly average-intensity, by 80s standards, and the special effects (the canister itself aside) are about as good as could be expected, but no more. Plus, it's about Satan, and I'm not exactly the most religious guy in the world. Somehow, though, Carpenter manages to make the subject matter and the events really, no-foolin' frightening. This one's a keeper. Check it out if you never have, revisit it if it's lost its grip on you over time. (Trivia: the "Transmission" tracks from DJ Shadow's Endtroducing..... are sampled sections from PoD.)
I’m always late to the party when it comes to internet audio-visual finds. After hearing about the wonders of You Tube through a handful of channels, I finally got around to spending some time over at site and sifting through its vast library of videos. It’s been a fixture in the news lately thanks mostly to its exponentially-expanding content, a growth rate perhaps only surpassed by MySpace? The reservoir of footage varys radically in terms of AV quality: everything from grainy, nth generation television dubs to pristine digital captures. Amateur home movies occupy an inordinately large percentage of files and there’s also the question of dubious legality when it comes to the more professionally shot stuff (many of the blues clips below were obviously pilfered from Yazoo’s Masters of the Blues video series), but the presence of so much cool content collected in one easily accessible and fee-absent place makes it easier to turn a blind eye (Napster, anyone?).
Below is a modest cache of my favorite finds thus far (Each bolded title should provide an active link direct to the corresponding video file). I’ve been searching for the Stevie Washington for quite awhile so I figured I’d lead off with it, a nifty blend of beatnik 60s cartoon style and absurdist humor. The face-off between Animal and Buddy Rich is also pretty classic. As always, I’m curious to learn of other folks finds too, so please, list ‘em below…
Stevie Washington, The Angry Youth.
Fred McDowell – “Goin’ Down to the River”… and “John Henry”.
Bukka White – “Medley #1” … “World Boogie” … ”Medley at Newport” …”Aberdeen Mississippi Blues” … ”Gibson Hill” …“Newport Medley #2” … and “Poor Boy’s Long Way From Home”.
Son House – “Death Letter Blues” …”Forever on My Mind” … “Medley #1” … “Medley #2 …“John the Revelator” … and “Death Letter Blues”
John Lee Hooker – “Hobo Blues” … and “I’m Leaving”.
R.L. Burnside – “Hey, Bo Diddley”.
Charles Mingus – “Flowers for a Lady”… Live in Oslo ‘64… “So Long Eric 1”… and “So Long Eric 2”.
Thelonious Monk – “Blue Monk (1968)”.
Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers – “Blues March” …“Dat Dere” … and with Sunny Murray & Elvin Jones.
Buddy Rich vs. Animal en Espanol(!)
Roland Kirk – “Say a Little Prayer for Me”.
Miles Davis – “All of You” …“Joshua/The Theme” …“So What” …
John Fahey – “The Death of the Clayton Peacock”.
Hüsker Dü - “New Day Rising”, “It’s Not Funny Anymore”… “Celebrated Summer”… “I Apologize”, “If I Told You”, “Folklore”… “Diane”... and “EIGHT MILES HIGH”.
Bad Brains – “At the Movies”… and “Attitude”.
Jimi Hendrix – “Wild Thing” …“Hey Joe” …“Red House” … and “Like a Rolling Stone".
Curtis Mayfield – “Superfly” …“Keep On Keepin’ On” …
Al Green – “Sweet Sixteen” … and “Here I Am”.
Sugar Hill Gang – “8th Wonder”.
Content has been admittedly a bit slow here of late, but there’s plenty of new prose to be accessed at several of our neighbor periodicals. A new edition of Point of Departure just hit the virtual racks replete with Bill Shoemaker’s wide-ranging musings. There’s also the May Paris Transatlantic feat. a coffee klatch w/ Borbetomagus, a band I’ve long been curious about, but have yet to explore with any depth. OFN has another week’s worth of reviews and features to peruse and I’m still working my way through Not Coming’s exhaustive Twin Peaks Primer. It’s raining buckets in the Twin Cities, gun metal gray cloud cover casting a pervasive soporific gloom- perfect weather for a marathon surf session, hunkered down, soaking up the ocular radiation and edifying information beaming through my laptop screen.
Regional Air Guitar Championships are once again drawing nigh across the globe, prompting figurative plectrists of every shape & stripe to sharpen their fictional chops for a shot at the World Title. Thanks to an embarrassing absence of a sponsor last year, the Twin Cities sat out the ’05 spectacle. A friend and I vowed to stave off a repeat situation in ’06 and set about contacting the proper channels several months ago to ensure Midwest representation on the schedule. Subsequently, a rival outfit usurped our claim on producing the event, but the upshot is that we’re now free to participate as contestants. To that end, I’ve once again been auditioning songs as potential picks and researching the competition as best I can.
The Oulu Music Video Festival page contains clips of last year’s contenders for the World Championships. You be the judge; but Michael Heffels alias The Destroyer’s crown-earning performance doesn’t strike me as all that visionary or transcendental with its lame robotic kitsch & even lamer soundtrack selection. My choice for the honor would probably be fellow compatriot Dan Crane. He has a sweet Paul Stanley thing going on facially & the synchronicity between licks and Sweet’s “Set Me Free” is tight, not to mention the playful pause for a toke built into the choreography. His eighth place finish just doesn’t seem fair, but the AGC’s a tough, bloodthirsty racket (no pun intended) and there’s always this year.
Oulu’s still months away, but U.S. heats start in Asheville, N.C. with a dozen more cities in succession. Minneapolis is slated for 6/1 with the venerable Triple Rock Social Club once again serving as venue for the beer-soaked pneumatic madness. That leaves a little more than thirty days for total transformation into an air guitar god…
A Non-Believer’s Appreciation of Bill Evans by Tom Djll
After all these years, I find myself unable to avoid an unhappy conclusion: jazz criticism is a bad idea, poorly executed. – Orrin Keepnews, from The View From Within, 1987
A piano teacher at the Berklee School of Music made me hate Bill Evans. I presented a singular problem to him: my overriding desire was to learn to play like Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller. I landed at the celebrated jazz school in 1974 from the hinterlands of northern New Mexico (where jazz piano teachers were as rare as Boston baked beans), seventeen and cringingly naïve, scared of (and attracted to) the giant-afro’d hookers on Boylston and perplexed by my Canadian roommate’s re-enactments of Monty Python routines. And I was a serious moldy fig. My gospel that summer was Alan Lomax’s Mr. Jelly Roll. I was laboriously working out the harmonies and fingerings to “Wolverine Blues”, which I was teaching myself by ear off a battery-driven cassette player I perched amid the cigarette burns and coffee stains on the practice pianos, the tape speed a bit fast so that my “Wolverine” howled in F#.
This teacher was a nice enough guy, but his cancer stick fell from his lips when I played him my stuff. Whatever words he used to hip me to what the Berklee staff was putting down in terms of keyboard, they had little effect. “This is jazz, too, isn’t it?” I asked, pumping out some left hand oompah. “You wanna live out your life playing intermissions at pie-eating contests?” he snarled.
So, to the listening library I was dispatched. It felt like a punishment even before I clamped on those thumbscrews-for-the-ears they called “headphones” and popped in a tape of Sunday at The Village Vanguard. (Isn’t there a part in all of us that rebels at unsolicited recommendations? Don’t you hate it when somebody gushes, “This is the awesomest, ever. You’ll love it.”) Village Vanguard, I thought, what’s that, some medieval theatre-in-the-round? The way my teacher described it, the experience I was about to receive would be pianistic heaven on earth, Mount Olympus on the 88’s, and god himself would vibe me from those solid grooves. Bill Evans was at that time the summation of everything that was ever worthwhile doing with a piano or a piano trio. Forget Monk – not really a piano player; didn’t he write some quirky tunes? – forget Hines and Tatum – hopelessly old-fashioned, heavy-handed stuff – who? Cecil Taylor? Get out of my sight, infidel.
For some, the lofty pedestal Bill Evans occupies hasn’t budged an inch. For instance, the 2005 Riverside box release of (yet another “complete”) “Bill Evans: The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings 1961” reads on the back, in part: “This is it. The breakthrough. The pinnacle of spontaneous musical communication. Three men breathing as one on a tiny bandstand... The intimate, contrapuntal dialogues between Evans’ poetic piano and Lafaro’s bass, as swift as the wind. Motian’s sustained riveted ride cymbal providing a carpet of stars... the crowning glory of these performances, the last ever by this singular trio. This is it… The night of nights. No more rehearsing, and nursing of parts, they know every part by heart.”
Okay, I spliced those last couple of lines from the Bugs Bunny Show theme song, and that wasn’t nice. But as far as romance copy goes, I’m moved to utter, This is it. The height of heights. And it’s not a sticker you can just peel off and toss, either: it’s printed in 12’ type on the back of the box. I don’t blame Riverside producer Orrin Keepnews, of course. He’s appointed himself the keeper of a legacy, since Bill himself is no longer on the Earthly scene. The antithesis of Jelly Roll musically and personally, Evans was a painfully introverted, self-effacing man; Keepnews probably felt it necessary to take on the role of his pedestal fitter, not just to sell more product but to buttress the artist’s sand-castle of a psyche. And perhaps Keepnews feels the cruelties of this savage time we live in are pushing away Bill Evans and his heartbreaking poetics. One must SHOUT! that this latest repackaging contains the holy grail of piano trios, the ne plus ultra, never to be surpassed in its This-is-itness. It’s a good thing Evans is dead – if he were to read this goop, it would probably finish him off. (Keepnews’ adoration gets personal in his booklet memoirs, and what a spectacle it is: “I guess I am entitled to say, with regard to this now-immortal series of ‘live’ recordings, that I was the very first one there…” [emphasis added])
I don’t pretend this is an academic paper, so I haven’t fully traced the arc of this hyperbolic elevation of Bill Evans’s work, and of the Village Vanguard sessions in particular, nor how it came to be received wisdom in the jazz world by the time Berklee accepted this doubting Thomas as a student. It might have had something to do with Gene Lees, who had an all-out epiphany when he first heard Evans, and went on to become not just a megaphone but a collaborator, friend, confidante, moneylender, and chronicler. (He wrote the lyrics to “Waltz for Debby” and “Turn Out the Stars”.) Lees was editor of Down Beat at the time he discovered Evans, and immediately featured the reluctant pianist on a cover. The year was 1959. He included a heartfelt tribute to Evans in his set of musician’s portraits Meet Me At Jim & Andy’s (published in 1990). Reading it, one realizes that part of the charm Bill Evans exerted – especially over those who saw him perform – was his personal vulnerability, something one did not see in men of that day and age. Evans was pale, thin and reedy – a regular pencil-neck geek, he looked ready to cave in at any moment. At the piano, he would hunch over until his forehead was nearly touching the keyboard, as if lost in prayer to the muse. He was soft-spoken (there are some unintentionally funny, mumbled announcements included in the VV set) and reluctant to record. In the rough-and-tumble jazz world, such naked exposure was like leprosy. That is, until Evans came along and opened up a valve of hidden, forbidden tears.
Lees writes of Evans, “His playing spoke to me in an intensely personal way.” And Lees quotes Martin Williams: “…some of the most private and emotionally naked music I have ever heard.” On the occasion of the 2001 re-reissue of this material, Adam Gopnik wrote in The New Yorker, “[Evans’s solos] are as close to pure emotion, produced without impediments - not at all the same thing as an entire self poured out without inhibitions, the bebop dream - as exists in music. His music hints at the secret truth that New York is sad before it is busy, and that it is a kind of inverted garden, with all the flowers blooming down in the basements.” Give Gopnik some credit for chutzpah: he penned that reverie just one paragraph after this caveat: “It is easy to cite worshipful jazz-critic passages about [this music]… though none of the writing itself has the least emotional force.”
Bill Evans was the kind of artist critics embrace because he did things in public they couldn’t do, and he seems particularly well suited to writers, musicians, and others of solitary, melancholic pursuits. He was the Robert Bly of his times, bringing light to a previously unthinkable concept: complicated emotions in men, shared in a public sphere. Instead of drum circles in boardrooms, he applied the piano trio in smoke-filled dives. Every gig was a potential catharsis, a love-in/freak-out for the dry Martini set. His life had its share of pain and suffering; an unhappy coda to the Village Vanguard date was the unexpected death of Scott LaFaro, still in his early twenties, which by some accounts Evans never got over. Evans’s drug addictions were common knowledge in the jazz world, too. He once played an entire weeklong gig with just his left hand; he’d pranged a nerve in his right arm, while shooting up. Evans brought an intellectual’s understanding to heroin addiction: “It’s like death and transfiguration. Every day you wake in pain like death, and then go out and score, and that is transfiguration. Each day becomes all of life in microcosm.” (quoted by Lees)
Evans’s art has always had its doubters. Whitney Balliett of The New Yorker wrote in 1963: “When Evans formed a trio, late in 1959, with Scott LaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums, a peculiar thing happened: The burden of being the soloist instead of a soloist appeared too much for him, and he became increasingly ruminative and withdrawn. He experimented endlessly with slow, cloudy numbers, and the singing climaxes all but vanished.” Balliett goes on to praise Evans’s then-new trio, again with Motian and Gary Peacock on bass, extolling the virtues writ often in the canonical Evans texts: the contrapuntal interplay, the lack of a clearly demarcated soloist/support structure, the sensitivity and freedom. By the late sixties, the critical clamor over Evans was such that Cecil Taylor was given to protest that, while Evans was “a competent cat,” surely were there a few other piano players on the scene who deserved some column inches too? John Litweiler looked back at Evans from the distance of the unromantic 1980s, and found his art wanting: “By far the most influential pianist of the 1960s was Bill Evans… Some of the spirit left his music by the 1960s, as he adopted a most distinctive touch, delicate as butterfly wings. This unique delicacy was excellent camouflage for Evans’s unremarkable melodic conception; his ingenious artifice extended to creating illusions of activity out of a limited dynamic range… the summary of all these qualities is an art of understatement and an emotionality that ranges from hip to pretty to wistful: modest good manners raised to a world view.” (from The Freedom Principle) Litweiler goes on to enumerate the manifold ways Evans’s closest disciples – Hancock, Corea, and Jarrett (he throws in vibist Gary Burton, too) – spread the Evansesque Romantic principle across the jazz sphere, laying waste via the scorched-earth firepower of jazz fusion.
Bassist Gary Peacock tested the freedom principle by moonlighting with Albert Ayler at the time he was in Evans’s trio. Ayler and the forces of “The New Thing” posed a big problem for jazz critics in the early Sixties; Evans provided a soothing resting place. His music offered erudition, freedom and familiarity in a tie and jacket. It had none of the aggression of Coltrane and Dolphy, the caustic sarcasm of Mingus, or the brimstone of Ayler. Yet the music of the Evans trios was undeniably advanced in its harmonic and rhythmic sophistications, perhaps less so in the oft-mentioned contrapuntal conceits – but there are limits to what can be done in a three-way counterpoint, while keeping the sounds pleasant and polite. It was a small, well-tended basement garden Evans depicted in his emotive haiku.
When I strapped on those primitive Berklee headphones and started the tape of Sunday at the Village Vanguard, I panicked: Where’s the music? “Cloudy” would have been a word I would have proposed, too, like Balliett. Certainly, all the subtlety of the music slipped right past my young, stride-ent ears (the most modern jazz piano I’d heard up to then was Erroll Garner). As I listened, I found myself unable to locate anything to hold onto, not a single recognizable musical signpost (what, no dominant 7ths? No four-to-the-bar?). A piece would begin, float along for a while – lots of little birdies twittering in the bushes, but no great flocks bursting out – and then end. Then a new one would start. I wasn’t thrilled, as my teacher had hoped. (I got my thrill the next day, when I found some Donald Lambert recordings in a tiny downtown record shop.)
That was quite a while ago. Now I own the complete Complete Village Vanguard 1961, and in a righting-old-wrongs sort of way, I feel more complete. There is music here, after all. Just how much music is there, is the question.
I’ve been approaching Evans guardedly. I dig Everybody Digs and Portrait of Cannonball and Portrait in Jazz, but none of it has really knocked me out save Evans’s work with Miles Davis. I’m especially fond of Evans’s perverse couple of choruses in the midst of the Davis sextet’s run-through of “Love for Sale”, recorded nearly a year before Evans and Davis co-created Kind of Blue. In this – the only up-tempo kicker Evans and Miles recorded in the studio together – following an exultant, driving Adderley and a just-woke-up Coltrane, Evans starts off as if to provide an ongoing context for the tenor’s bemused wanderings, using a bite-sized phrase menu and pianistic dressings that don’t connect melodically. Evans does some things only he could do with a piano in 1958, for sure. In the first chorus, Powellesque filigree flits by almost as asides rather than forthright statements. But as the pianist keeps going out, the composer in him is taking apart the song. His second chorus starts with a dissonant, teasing four-note phrase, extending it in two quick variants and ending the episode in the seventh bar with a Zen koan consisting of nothing more than a pair of octave A’s, ‘resolving’ on the seventh of the key, Bb minor. To start the second sixteen, Evans hits some open fourths in his right hand while filling the cracks with his left, rhythmically fracturing it, like a stuttering man trying desperately to get to the essence of what he’s trying to say. I should mention this bit is not only a kind of ‘inversion’ of that earlier four-noter, but it’s a restatement of the off-kilter introduction Evans hits as Davis snaps off the tempo. What’s compelling about Evans’s work throughout these two choruses is the sly, knowing humor of his playing right alongside some serious harmonic and rhythmic dislocation. Moreover, his variations stand up to repeated listenings not just as a collection of natty improvised phrases, but a distillation of a complex (yet simple-sounding) tune, and a recasting of it into sudden small revelations: the hesitations, the held notes, the chromatic cascades, and those stark open fourths, one of Evans’s favorite places of harmonic refuge. (The main melodic phrase of “Love for Sale” encompasses a perfect fourth.)
In between that session and the Vanguards sits the LaFaro-Motian-Evans trio’s first recording for Riverside, Portrait in Jazz. It’s an outstanding set, more coherent and close-to-the-bone than the Vanguard material. Another up-tempo Cole Porter number shows up, “What Is This Thing Called Love?” (a favorite of one of Evans’s teachers, Lennie Tristano). Evans’s intro is a kissing cousin to the “Love for Sale” intro he did with Miles. Motian drops out for 16 after the head is stated, and we get an all-too short piano-bass duo. In the last few bars of it, Evans plays way off the beat, but Motian comes back in on the dot. Those chattering fourths show up a little later, albeit with less force: Evans is already retreating from the harder touch he used in the Davis band. Evans applies those fourths and an unfolding series of zigzagging, multi-octave runs to build one of the singing climaxes Balliett mentions. A largo “When I Fall In Love”, treats the listener to one of those musical-magical moments of time suspension, as Evans spins out an impossibly lacy necklace of notes, which, no matter how many times I hear it, I always think will end long before it does. It just keeps on going and unveiling new colors, like a magician’s chromatic scarf unfurling from the sleeve. Such impromptu eloquence does tempt one to utter superlatives like, “No other pianist could have played that.”
However. I come not to bury Evans in praise, but to de-hype him. Regarding the Village Vanguard music, I’m trying not to hear Whitney Balliett’s prim, nagging voice in my head as I struggle to enunciate what bugs me about these sessions. Something’s missing that was there in the earlier Bill Evans. Evans has gone so far down inside himself, boxed into a closed definition of his own pianistic brand if you will – BE, Inc. – that the lyricism never comes up for air, suffocated under the weight of its own complex conventions. Texture, or the lack of it, is my gripe with this music. It makes great background precisely because it is of one uninterrupted texture. Never once does it reach out. The listener must approach it and find a way to stay engaged without sliding off the exquisitely polished surface, a non-texture that is as reflective and murky as obsidian. (It’s dark like heroin, too.) I don’t hear the sense of adventure or humor that’s on display in “Love for Sale”, nor the melodic pithiness that graces Portrait in Jazz. I would guess that Evans, in the tight basement confines of the Village Vanguard and leading his own group, might have considered humor unseemly and adventure too risky. (Aside: In the same season as the Evans Vanguard sessions were recorded and released, Ahmad Jamal’s trio was recording his Alhambra and Blackhawk records for Argo. They offer warm and engaging lessons in humor, surprise, as well as contrasting textures and dynamics, in the context of a very different kind of piano trio where the musicians definitely “breathe as one.”)
To sum up: Bill Evans was a great pianist and brought some important new things to the music. He made some great records, too, but the Village Vanguard sessions aren’t among them. They’re unfocussed, insignificant, and boring. It’s a case of over-rating one day’s work – at the expense of a man’s entire career.
LaFaro’s bass is beautifully captured by the microphones, putting him on an even footing with the piano (some have muttered: larger than life). In fact, the sound of the strings on LaFaro’s fingerboard, so closely mic’ed with all the little buzzes and clicks peeping through, provides practically the sole textural relief in this music. (Maybe LaFaro is the problem. He threatens to take over sometimes, and it could be that Evans, never a strong or confident leader, felt intimidated by the baby-faced bassist’s brilliance. LaFaro certainly wasn’t shy to berate Evans, off the bandstand, about his needle habit.* And then LaFaro had to go and get himself killed ten days after the sessions, adding untold mojo to the legend.) Motian’s playing here isn’t as rhythmically ambiguous as it would get in later years. But it is heavy on the brushes and the ride cymbal, which is to say, not at all heavy. The drums are tasteful and discreet, dynamically and tonally flattened. The music shines and shimmers, reflecting like dancing sunlight on a pond, revealing nothing under the surface. (*About the heroin thing. Evans was arguably in the worst throes of his habit at the time he recorded at the Vanguard in 1961. Is it unrefined to mention this, in connection with the heavy-lidded aura of the music? Here’s Gopnik on that subject: “It is … sadly possible that the dreamy, otherworldly quality of Evans's playing that day had something to do with what was flowing in his veins.”)
The diffusion that atomized Evans’s melodies at the Vanguard also infected the harmonic landscape. It’s those damn chords built on fourths – they can resolve in any direction, and usually do. “So What”? “Blue in Green”? – How about some straight blue, or pure green, for once? Yes, Evans brought French Impressionism into jazz (he wasn’t the first, as partisans of Bix Beiderbecke would point out), but in doing so cast his music into a never-never land of floating, unresolved harmony where every color is equal and none stand out. But then, he was some kind of student of Lennie Tristano, whose harmony was Viennese (sort of) and therefore even further out on a limb than Evans’s. (Jamal knew: sometimes an unequivocal cadence is just what the music needs.) And, as Litweiler points out, on the Vanguard sessions, Evans has lost his melodic sensibility, drowned in that featherweight touch. He doesn’t reconstitute the tunes or work with their structure, as he does on earlier recordings – in fact, he barely acknowledges the melody on some takes.
About hyping the Vanguard, 2005 edition: The bloom is off the rose, as pianists high and low for the last forty years have taken up Bill Evans as their spiritual father, much as saxophonists in the sixties and seventies deified John Coltrane. Arguably, Evans’s influence has shown even more scope and persistence than that. The pan-chromatic stew that passes for jazz piano these days is part of his legacy. Even strong individualists like Bill Charlap and Vijay Iyer don’t fully escape the Evans halo. Sure, it’s illogical and unsporting, not to mention curmudgeonly, to blame departed masters for the pandemic of unfocussed logorrhea infecting jazz today. (Could it be the brand of jazz pedagogy peddled at places like Berklee has something to do with it?) Combine that with the execrable state of modern recording – where everything is brought to the foreground and compressed within an inch of its life – and the effect, for this listener, is not unlike hearing Bill Evans’s Vanguard trios: a smooth, uninterrupted, perfectly miniaturized flatland where everything is permitted – and nothing is unexpected.
Re: the pianist I knew – I don’t know what became of my Berklee teacher. Don’t even remember his name. He was a good sport in the face of my unhippitude. He taught me chordal exercises through the circle of fifths and introduced me to a good Fats Waller song, “Jitterbug Waltz”. I didn’t fit in at Berklee, and never returned after that summer evaluation course. (Within a few years, I had picked up the trumpet and was blasting along with Albert Ayler records.) The irony is that Berklee’s blinkered approach to the jazz tradition – concentrating on the years 1955 to 1965 – was soon taken up with a vengeance by the neocon revolutionaries of the Eighties. But at least Marsalis and his allies looked farther back in time, and now it’s expected that any real piano player be able to pull some Walleresque stride out of the pocket – just for fun, mind you (Dave Burrell, always his own man, is a happy exception).
Berklee graded me a B: “Shows some promise, but kind of a dim bulb.” I gave them a D – “This is it. The place to study for your jazz taxidermy credential.”
~ Tom Djll
I have recently modified my facial hair in a small but decisive way. I've had a goatee for years - about 15 years, in fact. At some point about a half-dozen years ago, maybe a little less, I grew an accompanying mustache. I believe this combination is called a "Vandyke." Well, a month or two ago, I decided that with the warm weather coming soon (yeah, right - it just arrived this week) it was time for another change. So I shaved out the middle part of the goatee, leaving me with a mustache that goes clear down to my chin. Apparently, this look is known as the "Hetfield."
Yes, it's a look probably most familiar to frequent viewers of COPS. And for a week or two, I didn't see anybody else sporting it on the streets of Manhattan. But in the last couple of days, I've seen quite a few Hetfields on my way to and from work. This probably surprises me more than it should - metal's back, after all, and the Hetfield is the most metal of all facial-hair options. (Those long-ass braided/dyed/beaded goatees that came post-grunge were just horrifying, and I'm glad they're mostly gone - the only prominent headbanger still sporting one is the bassist from System Of A Down, and his fashion sense is not to be trusted, since his race, the Armenians, gave the world the tracksuit-and-dress-shoes combo.) So I feel like my Hetfield makes me part of something larger than myself. Which is one of the great things about the brotherhood of metal. Plus, my wife digs it. So I guess it's here to stay, for awhile anyhow.
Always the Fusion late-bloomer, I’m just getting around to delving into the Miles Davis’ Complete Jack Johnson Sessions box. I realize the set is probably old hat to most Bags readers by now, but it’s also my latest purchase in a snowballing addiction to the trumpeter’s electric years brought about by a Cellar Door review assignment several months back. Prior to covering that collection, I had purposefully avoided acquiring Miles’ plugged-in projects: first actively in the late Eighties, out of a psychosomatic allergy to the flotillas of electronics, and later passively, because of too many other musicians packed on my perpetually teetering plate. When the urge to investigate did arise, I relied instead on copies borrowed from friends. The Cellar Door box changed all that, waking me up to the pleasures of a live band aggressively fusing rock, funk, jazz, etc. into a exceptionally potent alloy and doing it with attitude to spare. More to the point, it got me hooked and positively jonesing for more.
A recent visit to Yourmusic.com yielded the J.J., In a Silent Way and Fillmore East sets at prices that seem unbeatable when it comes to new copies, even if they are BMG facsimiles. So far, two discs into the J.J., I’m digging it even more than the Cellar Door. I’ve read a lot of complaining about the rehearsals nature of much of the content and there are admittedly a fair share of sloppy moments and abrupt endings, but that seemingly unconstrained in-the-studio feel is actually a boon in my book. Plus, plenty of variety comes out in the jam session climate. Even the successive, and some might argue exhaustive, takes on “Willie Nelson” that dominate the first disc offer up engrossing variations around Dave Holland’s anchoring bass ostinato. Moreover, there are a few genuine surprises like the lazy blues lope and fragrant open trumpet musings of “Go Ahead John (Part One)”. Everyone sounds great, especially John McLaughlin and Jack DeJohnette, the latter’s funky drummer turn on “Duran (Take 6)” prompting me press “repeat” and make several smiling trips through the track.
I think what I like best is the stripped-down, keyboard-conserving nature of many of the line-ups. The same general strategy also worked as a pervasive draw on Cellar Door with Keith Jarrett’s stacked console favoring vintage analog components in that particular setting. It’s a preference that I’m guessing will make the other two sets in my haul somewhat less appealing, but who knows? I’m already pondering ahead to my next order with the Bitches Brew and Seven Steps to Heaven sets on deck, and preparing for the subsequent slugfest in the ongoing war with my perpetually put-upon wallet.
Alas, the powers-that-be on this site have congregated and come to the entirely justifiable conclusion that I shouldn't be posting copyrighted poems. So my grand scheme to barrage everyone with poetry three times a week for a month has been foiled. Curses! But anyway, I enjoyed the exercise for the few days before the hammer came down. It reminded me very much of my days as an undergraduate at George Washington, when poetry was intensely important to me. While most of my friends were getting internships on Capitol Hill, I had my nose buried in John Berryman's Dream Songs or the works of W.H. Auden. It was a heady, if solitary, four years, when my youth allowed me to nurse the delusion that one day I would be a poet. Maybe it was something about living in Washington, DC, but as soon as I graduated and moved to New York to study poetry full-time, I lost interest. Poetry no longer seemed like it mattered; it felt as if I had nothing interesting to say. So I quit the poetry program and moved on with my life.
Anyway, to conclude my little mini-series of poems, since I can't print anything that is under copyright, I am going to reprint here one of the poems I wrote in college. It was a long time ago, and I grimace at some of the stuff (well, most of the stuff) I wrote back then, but it was all in earnest, if nothing else. So, thanks for reading and sometime this month do pick up a volume of Garcia Lorca or Berryman or whichever poet strikes your fancy. Poetry, if a marginal literary activity in today's world, still can offer something essential, I think. Just don't try to make a career of it.
Two Days
Two days after my grandfather died,
and two days after my mother
slammed down the phone
and cried and cried,
my cousin and I argued baseball
in my grandmother’s basement.
There was nothing else to talk about.
It was 1985.
That afternoon,
after I touched my grandfather’s hands,
cold as popsicles,
my cousin, a Cubs fan,
sat by the covered pool table,
his 1984 Topps Ryne Sandberg
cupped in his hands
as he read off stats.
Upstairs, relatives argued
in my grandmother’s living room,
sitting on furniture
no one ever sat on,
while downstairs,
our baseball cards lay arranged
on the industrial carpet like saints.
I think I fell in love with Anne Sexton in June, 1997, staring at a picture of her through a display case as part of an exhibit on American poets at the New York Public Library. I had never before seen a poet who was so, well, sexy. She looked like an actress (which, in a way, she was, as well as a fashion model). And then I started reading her work and was immediately attracted to the rawness of it. I was 20 years old then, and the brutal honesty of the confessional school, with its nursery rhyme meditations on death and suicide, appealed to me. Looking back at her work now, I can see some of the problems, particularly the way Sexton publicly flirted with death in her work for nearly 20 years before finally killing herself in September, 1974. At times it seemed as if her work embodied a sort of self-fulfilling destructive narcissism in which her exposure of her psychological traumas became more intense through the act of performance. Without her suicide to bookend her career, her work would have seemed fraudulent; it was almost as if she had to take her own life to demonstrate that her confessional style was not all an act.
All that said, however, I still enjoy her work, and this poem, from her 1966 Pulitzer Prize winning collection Live or Die, remains one of my favorites.
Wanting To Die
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I have so simply declared myself
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.
In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.
I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.
Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.
To thrust all that life under your tongue! --
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad bone; bruised, you'd say,
and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.
Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,
leaving the page of a book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection.
April is National Poetry Month, and so I thought it would be a nice change of pace to feature a few poems each week throughout the month on these pages. Some of my choices will probably be familiar, some won't, one or two might even be written by yours truly.
Anyway, to kick things off here is a poem by Elizabeth Bishop that I have always liked. It was included in her first book of poems, North & South, published in 1946.
The Map
Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.
Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges
showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges
where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.
Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under,
drawing it unperturbed around itself?
Along the fine tan sandy shelf
is the land tugging at the sea from under?
The shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and still.
Labrador's yellow, where the moony Eskimo
has oiled it. We can stroke these lovely bays,
under a glass as if they were expected to blossom,
or as if to provide a clean cage for invisible fish.
The names of seashore towns run out to sea,
the names of cities cross the neighboring mountains
--the printer here experiencing the same excitement
as when emotion too far exceeds its cause.
These peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger
like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods.
Mapped waters are more quiet than the land is,
lending the land their waves' own conformation:
and Norway's hare runs south in agitation,
profiles investigate the sea, where land is.
Are they assigned, or can the countries pick their colors?
--What suits the character or the native waters best.
Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West.
More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.
Copious gratitude to Adam Lore, whose link in another section of Bags led me to Folkstreams.net. The site contains an extensive archive of documentary films dealing with a wealth of folk culture-related subjects. Several titles like Alan Lomax’s Land Where the Blues Began and Tom Davenport’s Remembering the High Lonesome are fairly well known. The majority of others are unjustly obscure; a condition the internet seems the perfect vehicle in changing. Most amazing, all of the content is available free via RealPlayer and QuickTime streaming. Just a few clicks and any given title cues up for perusal in full. The site also contains convenient forms of regional and title indexing to further aid in access. A cup of Licorice Spice tea steeped & poured, I’m several minutes into Born For Hard Luck: "Peg Leg" Sam Jackson and loving learning more about my favorite Medicine Show-era performer. My docket of writing projects lies neglected on the desk, but damn if this doesn’t seem a more important and rewarding pursuit at the moment.
Word of Jackie McLean’s passing spread like wildfire over the weekend. He died in his Hartford, CT home on Friday, aged 73. I don’t have much to say about it. He was one my favorite altoists. His Blue Note and Prestige work speaks for itself. The Steeplechase sides, especially the live ones, are exceptional albums too. I never delved too deep into his second Blue Note tenure or the sides on Triloka. I suppose there’s time enough for that now. Jackie coined one of my favorite quotes, one that I probably roll out far too frequently in my reviews. His own flowers were well earned if sporadically bestowed. Playing records seems like such a paltry and pedestrian way to pay tribute, but I’m off to revisit Right Now! and It’s Time! just the same.
Something of an 'event of the millennium' for Antonioni and Nicholson fans is the return of The Passenger to distribution after many years out of sight. (Word is that it will arrive on DVD this April. I wrote this review from memories of a showing this past January.) For an illuminating play-by-play of the film’s absence and return, click on over to Naachgaana – it’s found at the end of a wide-ranging piece on the film by Robert Koehler, whose name is unfamiliar to me, but who by his own account is a Hollywood insider.
The Passenger isn't really a "vehicle" per se for Jack Nicholson - no scene-chewing with roguishly-raked eyebrows here - and this is doubly ironic because of the film's title and the meaning the title brings to the lead role of David Locke. He's a successful international reporter who experiences a kind of personal crisis while on a difficult assignment in Saharan Africa. He sees an opportunity to trade identities with a dead man, and takes it, becoming a "passenger" in the dead man's life, no longer driving things but walking in the shoes of the deceased (using his address book for directions). After leaving Africa for Germany, Locke meets a young woman in Barcelona and begins traveling with her. By this time the shadows of the dead man's former business contacts begin to close in on Nicholson's character and his line of flight goes taut and perilous.
Most of the reviews I've seen take the obvious stance that Nicholson's character is "escaping from himself" as much as he's escaping his former life, wife, and business associates. That by itself would make The Passenger not much more than another Vietnam-era study in existentialism, along with Five Easy Pieces, Badlands, Last Tango In Paris, Taxi Driver,or Antonioni's own Zabriskie Point (beautiful desert, desolate dialogue) to name a few. These films all share a wandering-soul leading man, dialogue and situations ripe with disconnections and alienation, and – what smells like a cliché now – random, meaningless violence. Antonioni’s multilayered works go far beyond this formula, however, in both style and substance. Favoring long shots, super-slow pans and zooms, his passive camera is mute witness to a traumatized Europe; a zone rushing headlong into a future built upon, by and for American-style consumerism. Godard, Herzog, Tarkovsky, Wenders, Buñuel, Fellini, and Fassbinder all presented their own discursions on this weighty topic. But Antonioni made it his specialty, beginning with L’Avventura.
Seeing The Passenger today, however, after 30 years, brought no sense of datedness. In fact, current events impose powerful new meanings on the film. That aside, it’s not unreasonable to examine The Passenger as a meditation on the irreconcilable cultures of Europe and Africa. While Nicholson’s David Locke remains ambiguous in his motives for self-escape, there is a scene in the film that serves as a big tip-off – or tipping point – and is the key to an expanded understanding of what Antonioni’s up to. In it, Locke, the reporter, is confronted by one of his subjects, an African rebel. The man takes Locke’s microphone and begins to interrogate him. It seems to me that by this simple act are overturned hundreds of years of Euro-dominated world culture. The colonialist is made the subject. The ‘impenetrable’ African, victim and subject of endless exploitation and investigation, becomes the master of the situation, and suddenly seems much more open. No longer the mere muddy reflection of the European’s ‘darkest desires,’ the African has his own thoughts, he has an agenda, and he wants to succeed. His desiring-machines, if you will, are suddenly driving the bus. The Euro/American man becomes the passenger in this instance. And, not surprisingly, at that instant David Locke loses not just his authority but loses his voice and his identity as well.
Later in the film, more African revolutionaries become the active agents of Locke’s destruction, while Locke himself is a passive assassin – another kind of passenger – in his own termination. (It’s a finish reminiscent of what happens to Thomas Pynchon’s protagonist in Gravity’s Rainbow, Tyrone Slothrop, whose persona splits into fragments and disperses into a diaspora that exists just underneath world capitalist culture.) The end of the ride for Locke is situated in Gibraltar, the precise cultural and geographical point where Europe and Africa nearly, but never quite meet.
Maria Schneider, who plays Locke’s randomly chosen confidante in his last days, doesn’t arrive at any understanding or knowledge of him, a common trait in Antonioni couples. Her character is not open to interrogation, as it is predicated in large measure on the relationship to a man who will never be identified. At the very end, when called to identify the remains, Locke’s estranged wife says, “I never knew him.” We the audience are left to puzzle whether there’s any sentiment behind her on-the-surface expedient denial – a wish to somehow make sense of what’s in front of her (and the past she had with this man). Or is it a brutal erasure of her own history, anger at deception, or self-deception?
The richness of Antonioni’s work is the product of these and many more ambiguities. Full of the sexual alienation well known in his work, The Passenger is also a stark, sunburned lesson in the lugubrious game of cultural domination and downfall. See The Passenger – if your eyes can take the glare.
~ Tom Djll
As I type this it’s T-minus 15-minutes and counting ‘til Glen Branca presumably takes the Walt Disney Concert Hall stage in Los Angeles to direct his Symphony No. 13 “Hallucination City,” for 100 electric guitars. John Myers, Branca’s colleague of 19 years, is the actual conductor. As the sole accompanist, poor soul Virgil Moorefield has the daunting duty of counter-balancing 600-odd orgiastically amplified strings from behind a single (if he’s lucky, baffled) drum kit. Tickets to the concert are a very reasonable $10 a seat, which leads me to believe that either The Minimalist Jukebox series of which the performance is part has locked down some serious grant money from the sponsoring National Endowment for the Arts, or the vast majority of participants are volunteers. Most likely the latter. Either way it sounds like quite an event & one that makes me wonder wryly whether old Uncle Waltie is rolling over in his moldy, mustified grave.
Every so often, I’m reminded of the relative perils inherent in allowing my listening diet to revolve mainly around what arrives in the mail for review. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a privilege and a pleasure to have a steady supply of releases show up regularly in the old rusty rattrap of a mailbox. But it also inevitably leads to plenty of other albums falling under my radar. The most recent reminder of this regrettable side effect: The Onus.
I first encountered The Onus on Scott Hreha’s indispensable One Final Note radio show sometime last year. He spun tracks from both of the band’s 2005 releases, Triphony and Y’all Got It, and I recall fixating on the selection of the former disc, a trio date with just clarinet, double bass and drums. Even in what I assumed to be mp3 quality sound, the recording of the instruments was uncommonly vibrant and natural. But sandwiched within a program of other excellent selections, the resulting intrigue wasn’t enough to coax me into further investigation. Fast forward to about a month ago. I was at Saint Paul brick and mortar, half-heartedly flipping through the cd racks and happened across a used copy of Triphony (Scott, please tell me you didn’t sell it!), a mental trigger clicking with the memory of the OFN audition. Mulling over the purchase for a few minutes I opted to put the disc back in the racks, vowing that if it was still there on my next visit the wallet would part with the necessary dough to bring it home.
Sure enough, a week later it was still sitting where I left it (the Twin Cities appears woefully short on Onus fans, a condition that I hope this entry will have some small part in combating). Making good on my pledge I purchased the disc, brought it home. A few days later, I transferred it over to my Muvo portable and brought it to the gym. The nearly 80-minute program of levelheaded, highly animated chamber jazz supplied an absorbing soundtrack for a protracted treadmill session. Clarinetist Darryl Harper compares the group to the pianoless bands of Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman, but I detect the aural shadow of Giuffre in the mix as well. Harper’s woody, speech-like tone and agile articulation milk the same middle register, avoiding grandstanding displays in favor of more measured means of expression.
Also impressive are bassist Matthew Parrish and drummer Butch Reed. Parrish reminds me of a 1960s Steve Swallow weaned on a Motown and Stax record collection (the trio’s spry cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Jesus, Children of America” is no joke). His sonorous intonation and enveloping acoustic girth receive an additional boost from the recording, which captures the resonance of his instrument with a clarity that is rare these days. It’s seriously some of the best-engineered bass I’ve heard in a long while, especially for a jazz recording. I get the feeling that Parrish can play the hell out of his strings, but he keeps the preening peacock side of his personality completely in check. There are places where he matches Harper in terms of melodic acuity and dexterity. Best of all he’s not averse to getting funky, elastic vamps and deceptively complex harmonic patterns rolling off his fingers against the cozy lines of Harper’s licorice stick. Reed plays with a Shelly Manne-like sensitivity and reserve, quiet and sometimes introspective, but always responsive and active, particularly in tandem with Parrish. His rhythms revolve on careful dynamics and judicious accents. The sustained musicality of these three is something I continue to marvel at and the disc is a precious case where a packed-to-the-circumference silver platter actually lives up to the promise of its length.
A visit to the same Saint Paul shop a few days ago yielded an unexpected copy of Y’all Got It, The Onus’s album length exploration of Charlie Smalls’s music from The Wiz, how’s that for some undiscovered improv fodder? On it the core trio from Triphony is joined by two others, guitarist Jeff Ray and keyboardist Harry Appelman in variety of combinations. I’m only a few spins in, but so far, I’m digging it too. Actually, I’m enjoying both so much, I’m seriously thinking about splitting the difference on the used price paid to procure them and sending the band a check. A quick cruise over to the band’s website reveals a pair of releases that predate these two. There’s also plenty of background on Harper, including a pdf of his 6-page C.V. (some estimable credentials therein), and the lowdown on various Onus offshoots.
Encomiums come rather cheap these days and the common consumer claim that music critics aren’t critical enough crops up increasingly often, frequently with good reason. In the interest of allaying such suspicions in this case, I’ll stake a sawbuck as satisfaction guarantee to the following caveat-attached recommendation: anyone with curiosity toward clarinet-fronted postbop would do well to give these guys a listen. The onus now falls on you, dear reader, to heed the advice.
