(Still one of the great covers)

Trying to think back how I became aware of Branca's music. It was when "The Ascension" was issued, in 1981 and probably either through a Village Voice article or having heard something on KCR. I was entirely unaware of his no-wave experience with the Theoretical Girls and some other bands. But around that time I was just beginning to acknowledge the possibility of rock still having something to offer (not an easy sell for me at that point!) and the notion of someone doing instrumental music with massed electric guitars was intriguing.

Well, this album knocked me out. Much has been written, accurately I think, about the basic Romantic constructs behind Branca's music, the way it has more of a fundamental resemblence to Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff (think "Isle of the Dead") than post-LaMonte Young maximal dronage. And I'm sure that's part of what appealed to me, that sort of approach still having a pull at the time, especially when layered with modern trappings; likely still does, truth be told. "The Spectacular Commodity" has an amazing tension-and-release aspect, a pure orgasmic thing that's undeniably (if amygdallically) effective. I still find the title cut to be the strongest, also the one that points most clearly toward the direction Branca would take in ensuing years with those huge, cloudy masses. The conclusion of that piece remains one of the more exciting things I've ever heard.

Hee-hee. Happy I could locate an image of this one. Don't think it's been issued on disc? A split LP on Giorno Poetry Systems. The Branca piece, "Strange Smells", was written for Twyla Tharp. It's first half is pretty much as stellar as anything on "The Ascension" but it comes to a grinding (intentional) halt about midway through and lurches awkwardly to the end. The Giorno tracks are great fun, the cantankerous old lech (I realize now that he was only about 46 when this was recorded) ranting and raving about day-today botherations.

We got here yesterday We're here now And I can't wait to leave tomorrow or I'm spending my whole life being around people I don't wanna be with.

Pretty fun stuff, Giorno excoriating over bass and drums (Philip Hagen and a pounding David Van Tieghem).

I caught Branca in action for the first time at St. Marks Church in 1982, an event that would eventually be issued as Symphony # 2. I remember arriving late and having to take a seat up in the balcony (or choir loft). It was a kind of rotunda, several of his homemade guitars (banks of three or four 2x4's strung with guitar string) around the perimeter with normal guitars and basses and Wischerth's drum set. The interior of the circle, about 20 feet in diameter was vacant save for an enormous "bass drum" some five feet wide, set at an angle to the floor, maybe a 20 degree tilt. I'm not sure how much of a profile the percussionist known as Z'ev carries these days but he was a rather impressive figure back then. Bare-chested (though there may have been leather straps crisscrossing his upper body), he strode into the center of the space carrying a club or two with which he began to beat said drum. Loudly. He soon attached heavy chains to his wrists, those chains in turn attached to various sheets of metal, basins and Allah knows what else. He proceeded to twirl (a word that seems too dainty here) these items around him, transforming himself into a sun about which rotated an asteroid belt full of metallic detritus creating an ungodly--and fantastic--welter of noise, the bangs and clangs resounding through the church space (I have a sneaking suspicion the duration of this prologue was cut for the disc release). For sheer physical endurance, it was an impressive enough display. Eventually the band proper assembled and the volume level rose even further.

Two things stood out at the time. One was that such a huge volume could be generated by such minimal physical action on the part of the guitarists, especially on the homemades. They played them "percussively" with thin wooden rods, moving their hands all of a couple of inches , looking for all the world as though they were gently tapping. The second thing was the way the overtones resulting from the varying tunings of the guitars manifested as a buzzing, palpable presence deep within my ears. I swear, it was like a molecular choir had taken up residence on my stapes. Amazing effect.

Saw Branca and his ensemble twice more after that, once at Lincoln Center (Alice Tully Hall) which I think was part of a subscription series for many of the attendees, resulting in the amusing spectacle of older folks scurrying rapidly toward the exits moments after the music began. Branca hurling himself around the stage probably didn't help. (btw, his, erm, conducting antics are pretty annoying). The last time was at the Kitchen for a performance of his Symphonies #8 & 10, maybe 1999 or so? I think my interest had begun to pall a bit but I have to say, that concert was extremely strong. It was a relatively small group, maybe 7-8 guitarists, but it was also in a smaller space and they filled it up and then some. Come to think of it, the recording of those pieces is likely the last thing I've really heard from him.

[Addendum: John Cage once famously referred to Branca's music as "fascist". I can see his point (using the term in its loosest sense) but...there's some nexus along the line from "fascism" in the aesthetic sense, ie, an insistence on rigid form, a perceived martial quality, etc. and transcendence that might be achieved by the hyper-concentration on just such a form (think Vermeer). I believe that Branca at least approximates, however distant, this last in tracks like "The Ascension", and some of the "cloudier" moments in later works, though I admit that Cage's comment slides uncomfortably close to the bone. A knotty little issue, imho.]

Ok, found one.

Amazing painting, imho. Sergio, in a comment below, referenced Zorn and the sort of photos he used (does he still? haven't kept up) as album covers since around 1990, beginning with the Weegee photo on the first Naked City disc. I always gave him a lot of credit for having a discerning eye in this regard, for choosing images that resonated far beyond the merely grisly. The photo used for Leng T'Che, for instance (btw, probably my favorite Zorn recording) is just astonishing in a complicated/horrific way:

The sheer gruesomeness of the scene is uncomfortably offset by the transcendent look in the eyes of the individual being tortured. iirc, when discussion of this came up on the zorn-list, mention was made of the victims having possibly been heavily drugged; one would hope so. But there's also the stolid looks on the observers there, just going about their business. It affects on many levels even, one is embarrassed to say, formally. Not so surprising, I guess, that this photo (this image is cropped from a somewhat wider view in the original) doesn't appear in collections of "great" documentary photogrpahy of the 20th century. Too close to the bone. For those who can stomach it, there's a page documenting another instance of this form of torutre/execution here

I was also always very taken by this photo, from the second Painkiller disc. Great implied narrative here (why the handcuffs? who is the skull?) as well as being a purely beautiful image, with the bend of the hands and wrists, the cuffs, the dark around the skull, etc.

OK, enough morbidity for one afternoon.....

Did a small experiment at Record Club last night. By Tuesday, I was still having a tough time trying to choose my selections. I generally want to include at least one piece from my current listening but there hadn't been anything that really grabbed me (and which I thought could be reasonably, to some extent, latched onto by innocent observers in a single listen) that wasn't way to long to bring. Length is always an issue for me in this regard just due to practicality and to a degree, courtesy. When 7-8 people are playing two tracks each, probably averaging 4-5 minutes per, it can be a little overbearing to bring a half-hour long piece. The Rowe/Beins I brought once, at 28 minutes the record holder for this group, worked well but there were only 6 people there; still, that was pushing it.

Anyway, I was sitting there with five or six possibilities, not too happy with any of them. That afternoon in the mail, I'd received two discs from Ingar Zach, his trio with Thomas Lehn and Ivar Grydeland as well as the Sedimental release, "Flore de Cataclysmo" with Giuseppe Ielasi and Michel Doneda. I put on the latter just to give it an initial spin. Often, unless it's a recording I was very eagerly looking forward to, the first time I play it I'll sort of half-listen, getting the"feel" of it as it were, before giving more concentrated listens. So I was at the PC with this on in the background. I had the impression that the first piece was a bit dry, the second much better. About midway through the third and final track, my ears perked up and I said to myself, "Hey, this is very nice stuff here." The I said, what the hell, I'll play this piece tomorrow at Record Club, which is what I did. (My other selection was "The Animal Speaks" from the second Golden Palominos record, with John Lydon singing and belching)

It was an experiment for me since I'd only heard the piece once and even then, not so thoroughly at all, but I thought it might be interesting to trust my instincts and go with it. Worked very well. For my part, the music was as good and fascinating as I'd thought and the rest of the group dug it a bunch, asking a number of good questions. Thanks, Ingar!

Other musical highlights form last night: Derrick brought a fun Negativland cut-up of Julie Andrews singing "My Favorite Things", Nina a fine Meat Puppets instrumental, Dan a wonderful quirky cut by some Dutch guy called Benny who channels Shuggie Otis, Julia a wild Ute Lemper rendition of a Scott Walker piece and guest Priscilla a surprisingly (to me) fine Roy Harper track as well as an early 60s, enjoyably loose, quasi-reggae song from one of the Soul Jazz releases.

Newly purchased, not yet heard:

Joe Harriott - Free Form
Phill Niblock - Touch Food

Thinking about Gericault this afternoon. As before, I thought of the amazing, harrowing series of still lifes (nature mortes, to be sure) he produced as studies for The Raft of the Medusa. They were pretty meaningful to me when I first encountered them in black and white reproduction while at Vassar in a book, iirc, devoted to a complete analysis of the Raft. Not due to their inherent gruesomeness at all but to the very unflinching way he used them as objects, as things equivalent to cantaloupes or vases. Of course, you can't help but see them as former parts of human bodies and are reluctant to re-view them as hunks of meat and bone but this is precisely the great service Gericault does for you. The hubris is stripped away; the core reality remains. The viewer is obliged to deal with it.

In the past few years, when I've thought of these works, I've been somewhat surprised at the absence of images available on the net. Aside from the one above, which I guess has amassed a bit of notoriety as representative of the group (and it's a fantastic painting, imho), which includes piled hands, feet and heads, I'm unable to locate any. This is strange in one respect but may speak to the power of the images, how repellant their message is found to be, even now. I mean, Gericault is a fairly major artist and these paintings were, to the best of my knowledge, unique in their time and remain extremely powerful today. Yet they seem to be by and large ignored.

I note a book on the subject was published in 1999 by Jason Dewinetz, an edition of a couple hundred copies. Otherwise, they seem too hot to handle, an impressive achievement for works pushing 200 years old.

I don't have the above-pictured album but I hope to one day. It's one of several hundred issued (I think beginning in the late 80s, running through the mid 90s) by King World Music Library, a bland sounding name for an amazing record company. I don't recall how I first stumbled across them or which was my first purchase (maybe the Kim Sinh disc?) but their batting average is astonishingly high. In fact, I've yet to come upon anything on their label less than "very good". And their are tons of them from all over the world, from Turkish military bands to Korean Sinawi music to Central Chinese Islamic music to Peruvian brass bands.

However, I believe they closed up shop several years back and the discs became very, very difficult to find. I stumbled across a British site a couple years back, Far Side Music (for some reason this site isn't allowing the link--it's www.farsidemusic.com) when our finances precluded such extravagances, that carried a goodly stock of WML releases. Steve Smith just reminded me of its existence and, since I can now afford a splurge here and there, I plan to make regular visits and order what I can. They don't come cheap at 15.99 pounds per disc, but as far as I'm aware, it's the only source. If anyone knows differently, please let me know.

As is my wont, I'll probably just make my way from geographical are to geographical area, filling in what I don't have. So I began with two Korean discs, one byAn Bichwi and one from Chukp'a and Tong Jun Kim. We shall see.

[edit: I should probably have a firmer grasp on exchange rates before pulling the trigger on things like this...I only now realized that, postage included, these babies'll cost me about $35 each. Better be some damn good Korean stuff on 'em!]

Newly arrived:

Michel Doneda/Giuseppe Ielasi/Ingar Zach - Flore de Cataclysmo (Sedimental)
Ingar Zach/Thomas Lehn/Ivar Grydeland - szc zcz zec eci cin (Musica Genera)

Listened to "The Room" a bunch of times yesterday. Very dark, very, very dark, claustrophobic at many points. Shifts around a lot for me on relistens, pick up new things here, wonder what happened to things I thought I heard before there. More thoughts later on after many more hearings. The cover design works excellently, btw, especially, for me, when the "outside" and "inside" vistas are seen side by side, one panel each.

Also acquired:

Nicholas Bussman/Toshi Nakamura - Alles 3 - I know how you frown (Kwan Yin) (tough to get through, even once)

Tomas Korber/Christian Weber/Katsura Yamauchi - Signal to Noise, Vol. 2 (For4Ears)

Jason Kahn/Gunter Muller/Norbert Mosgang - Signal to Noise, Vol. 3 (For4Ears)

Ground-Zero - Live 1992 + (DoubtMusic)

A month or more ago, the good folks at Destination Out asked me to contribute a Jazz in the 90s Top 10 list for their site. They've been running various folks' lists all week; mine appeared today. It's a salient cutoff date for me as it was just around 1990 that I began to realize that there was less and less contemporary jazz being produced that excited me, that the feeling of "treading water" I was getting from new jazz releases grew strong enough that I could no longer ignore it.

I included Derek Bailey's "Guitar Solos, Vol. 2", pictured above, on the list for two reasons: One, of course, I think it's a fantastic recording. But second, it was the one that really made me reconsider what was going on in improvised music at the time. I'd first heard Bailey very early on in my listening experience, on the Music Improvisation Company album released on ECM and subsequently on the other "Guitar Solos, Vol, 2", the compilation with Frith, Reichel and Fitzgerald from '75. While I'd always retained a certain amount of interest and affection for those dates, I turned away from Euro-improv in general in the late 70s, going full-bore for AACM and related jazz. Part of this, as I may have mentioned before, derived from several lackluster (at least I thought so at the time--I may have been wrong) performances at Environ by some European luminaries, music that struck me as effete when compared with the AEC, Braxton, Cecil, etc.

By '90 or so, however, your average AEC album had become a pretty predictable affair, and if Brax and Cecil still put out the occasional great CD, there were few jazz musicians below whatever my age was at a given time (36 in 1990) producing anything vital, anything that didn't smack of simply a reworking of already arid ideas. A reintroduction to Bailey's music, then, came at precisely the right time and carried with it an extraordinary sense of freshness and invention. So I delved into all these musicians who I'd pretty much avoided for 15 years at the same time as I tried to maintain (and succeeded for a while) interest in the downtown NYC scene. By mid-decade, it shifted to AMM, post-AMM, etc.......

So, when asked for a Top 10 favorite jazz releases from the 90s, I find myself thinking of a few from older US musicians (Braxton, Taylor, Dixon) and more from, as it turns out, older Brits (Bailey, Guy, Parker, Prevost, Rogers).

I'm sure that's the last such I'll ever be able to produce as I'm pretty certain I couldn't come up with 10 from this decade with gun to head. Braxton's "Composition 247", though calling that "jazz" is a stretch. Cecil at Willisau....um...trying to think.....

So, Keith's "The Room" is available as of today. Very much looking forward, of course, to hearing the final version even having heard the "original" when Keith was here in March. I only experienced it one time and there were clearly multiple layers to sift through, but my impression was of a singularly deep work. One thing that struck me was how the first 10 or so minutes sounded very "Rowe-ian", very recognizable as his music and hence, in a way (not that it wasn't excellent), a little "eh". But then it blooms out into entirely different, surprising and amazing territory. Shoulda known better...As with his work in general, you have to be conscious of the whole thing, the entire structure, not just this or that segment.

Think I'll give Sergio a two-day headstart on this one, though, and not pick up a copy 'til Friday so I have more leisure time to listen over the holiday weekend.

I was thinking about Rolf Schulte today. On the way to work, I read a review in the Times of an Ursula Oppens performance (of works by Tobias Picker) and remembered Rolf. In the mid-90s, when we were still living on West 105th St., I used to run into this guy while walking Nanook, himself taking his Bijon (I think it was a Bijon) for a stroll. He was very pleasant to chat with, sporting a slight German accent; we'd run into each other for about a year. I think once he was carrying a violin case and mentioned that he was off to a concert. I asked who he was performing with and he responded, I'm sure expecting a look of incomprehension, "Ursula Oppens". "Hey," says I, "I know Oppens' work; in fact I've seen her play a few times, including when I was a student at Vassar. " He was plainly surprised. He says, "Cool. I play with her often and have recorded with her." "Hmmm, I have several recordings of hers. What's your name?" "Rolf Schulte." "Hey! I have at least a couple of records with you, how about that? In fact, I have this Rzewski/John Harbison split LP on Nonesuch from around '78 that you're on." He was pretty amazed.

Ah, only in NY.

Hey, Rolf!

Newly arrived listening:

Pablo Rega/Alfredo Costa Monteiro - Neumatica (Creative Sources)
Alfredo Costa Monteiro - Z=78 (pt:195.09) (audiobot)
Alfredo Costa Monteiro - Allotropie (Bourbaki)

I recall this album, recorded in '75, released the following year, causing a bit of a stir simply because it was released on Muse, pretty much a mainstream label and despite a cover of "St. Louis Blues" (Chicago Style), there aren't many concessions to form here. The band here is Bowie, brother Joseph (pretty sure the first time I heard him), Favors (also fairly sure it was the first I'd seen him use his honorific, here rendered as "Megistus" as opposed to Maghostut or other variations), Raymund Cheng on violin (who I've unforgivably confused with Jason Kao Hwang recently), Charles Bobo Shaw (first sporter of dreads on the loft scene) and Don Moye.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I owned Bowie's previous release, "Fast Last" as well, though if so it's disappeared. This one's an OK, not great album, "St Louis Blus" getting a fun workout, mock serious, though they briefly develop a mighty groove toward the end. The title track's the strange one, an, erm, musical rendition of the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire. The structure is alternating passages of musical "boxing" (rough and tumble improv and the members of the band intoning, in very drawn out fashion, "Rooope - Ahhhhhhh - Dooooooope". Hmmm....

My only other Bowie vinyl is "All the Magic" (ECM, 1983), a double LP consisting of one disc of solo work, one with a gospel/free band with Ari Brown (tenor, soprano), Art Matthews (piano), Fred Williams (bass), Philip Wilson and Fontella Bass and David Pearson singing. They cover "Ghosts" and "Let the Good Times Roll"; neither set is that interesting, unfortunately. Bowie does his fine "Charlie M"on the solo one, though.

The back cover, however, presents a photo from an event that I, to this day, kick myself for missing. I'm not sure of the exact year, maybe '79, but there was this massive event at Symphony Space, an orchestra made up of a Who's Who of NYC avant jazz under Bowie's conduction. Don't know the band size but I'm guessing over 40 musicians. I specifically recall thinking, "This has a huge chance of turning out to be a humongous mess" and didn't go. Well, for all I know I may have been right, but every report I've since encountered cites it as one amazing, stupendous concert. Dammit. In the photo, you can pick out Blythe, Braxton, George Lewis, Hemphill, Frank Lowe, Threadgill, Vincent Chauncy, many others I should probably recognize. Ah well...

Listening:

Grundik Kasyansky - Floating Point (Topheth Prophet)
Lietterschpich - ....yeah, that one
Lucio Capece/Axel Dorner/Robin Hayward - Kammerlarm (Azul Discografica)

Just a quick note to say that there are certain releases whose very title gives me great trepidation about pushing "Play".

Lietterschpich's "I Cum Blood in the Think Tank", newly arrived from Topheth Prophet adequately satisfies that condition.

I had a chance to look over Jason Kahn's graphic score for his 2-hour "Timelines" after the show last evening. Five "staves" with exact time demarcations filled with five or six sets of patterns--dashes, circles; basically images not so different from the excellent covers he creates for his Cut label. The variation was mostly in vertical density. ie, a series of 1/8" dashes might begin with one or two atop each other and, over the course of several inches, swell to a depth of 20 or so, then drift back down or abruptly stop. (I could be oversimplifying the graphic nature but we're in the ballpark). In any case, density or lack of same seemed to be the larger concern, the musicians segueing in and out of the mix (Kahn actually at a computer mixing board, presumably adjusting the output of the three electronicists--Korber, Muller and Moslang--though I couldn't pick up any clear changes resulting from his actions), ranging from sparseness to a thick stew.

I wasn't too keen on the piece in its entirety, though I have to say the two hours went by more quickly than I would have thought. There was a kind of constraint in play that bothered me a bit. I had the impression that a given musician's interpretation of the score was kept in a fairly narrow area. Additionally, there wasn't (to me) much sense of the piece as a whole, more just moving from section to section. Admittedly, I've been "spoiled" from my discussions with Keith about "Treatise". One of his main concerns with renditions of that score is that, even if a group of musicians is performing ovly a handful of pages, they should understand those pages' relationship to the entire score. A subtle thing, of course, but something I didn't pick up here.

To be sure, there were passages that worked perfectly well on their own, though it was most often in situations where the volume level rose which, unfairly in a way, creates physical patterns and sensations that are automatically fascinating by their very nature. (This is something that annoys me a bit--that loudness in this end of music is almost always "interesting"; sort of like large abstract paintings acquiring levels of "interest" simply by virtue of being large and enabling one to see things at a different level)

I'd positioned my self near the opposite side of the circular room from the ensemble, within close range of an open window. It was a breezy evening and the sound of the wind through the cluster of trees along the Gowanus Canal as well as the occasional passing car over the bridge, provided fine counterpoint during the work's quieter moments.

I also should cite Tim once again, whose gong playing throughout was unfailingly sensitive.

Listening:

Bade Ghulam Ali Khan - Gunkali/Malkauns (thanks, Nirav!)
Ellen Fullman/Sean Meehan - s/t (Cut)
Signal Quintet - Yamaguchi (Cut)

First night of SwissQuake last evening, a gorgeous day at the Issue Project Room site along the Gowanus Canal; cool, breezy, clear. Odd thing after the show was that the musical MVP turned out to be the sole American, the above-pictured Tim Barnes.

Four sets. The first a lovely, delicate trio with Barnes, Jason Kahn and Christian Weber, some 20 minutes of sustained quiet tension, very well handled. Next was the biggest disappointment of the night, a duo with Gunter Muller and Norbert Moslang. It was exactly like what one could have heard from the two five years ago except sapped of any vigor, of anything but going through the motions. I've enjoyed Gunter's recent solo work more than some (not saying that it's up to snuff with his best music by any means but I think it has its own virtues) and while I can't say the same of Moslang, I'm told he's done excellent solo sets in the recent past. Hard to say whether last night's music from the two is par for the current course or an anomaly.

After a short break came the highlight of the set, a fantastic duo with Tim Barnes and Tomas Korber. Miles apart from the set they did at ErstQuake in 2005, this was a quiet, super-intense performance, Barnes restricting himself to a large-ish (24" or so) gong, Korber in ultra-restrained mode on his electonics and guitar. In two sections, the first drone-y with soft scrapes and taps on the gong, the second, itchily active (though still quiet), with small rattles, rustles, bangs and clatter. Tough to describe otherwise except that it absolutely stood out as some seriously good music. Lastly was the Signal Quintet made up of the five Swiss musicians, a set that had its peaks and valleys but was ultimately unsatisfying; nice work throughout from Kahn, though.

Some grief was dealt a while back at Bags for the notion, put forth nonchalantly by myself and others, that there was any sort of "Swiss-style" eai that could be so conveniently encapsulated. Well, while that's of course a generalization, there's more than a little truth in it. These guys are fairly well funded by Swiss arts councils and one has the gnawing suspicion that, in some cases at least, this may have led to a certain amount of relaxedness and loss of acuity in the music.

Tonight, the Signal Quintet will perform a 2-hour work by Jason Kahn, "Timelines". Talking with Korber about it last evening, it sounds fairly loose in structure, with broad areas sketched in for the players as to length, volume, general sonic character, etc., within which a good amount of improvisation takes place. We shall see.

Listening:

Axel Dorner/Toshi Nakamura - Vorhernach (ftarri)
Klaus Filip/Toshi Nakamura - Aluk (IMJ)
Tarab (Eamon Sprod) - wind keeps even dust away (23five)
Tim Catlin - Radio Ghosts (23five)

Yet another LP for which I can't find an image...Bosho's "Chop Socky" on the always intriguing, not always good Dossier label from 1987. Samm Bennett, pictured above in a more recent photo, was ubiquitous downtown for a few years, mid 80s. He had, for me, an initially intriguing, crisp sound but one that paled the more you heard it, not varying much from situation to situation. There was always a rockish rhytmic aspect that tended to drag things down. Bosho combined percussionists from three traditions with Bennett, Kumiko Kimoto and Yuval Gabay, joined here (invaluably) by guitarist/violinist Hahn Rowe. There was a time when Rowe was one of the more intriguing, difficult-to-pinpoint musicians in NY, someone I wanted to find out more about though, checking around now, it seems he abandoned improv for the club scene sometime in the 90s.

The album's OK as far as it goes and, I admit, is holding up better than I thought it would, but a certain sameness creeps in over the course of the disc something not helped by the presence of drum machines that nail the date as being from '86-'87. They were pretty rampant on a number of Dossier releases, actually. This fits in comfortably with the Bisi-engineered and produced stuff from the time--slightly "exotic", rock rhythm-driven, after all's said and done, slightly forgettable. The concluding track, "Boy Yaca" is the keeper if anything is.

I know Bennett's still very active in Japan and some of his work has shown up on those IMJ samplers, though nothing that's made my ears prick up.

There was a time in the early 80s when I thought William Bolcom's "Graceful Ghost" might be one of the most beautiful pieces of music I'd ever heard. Well, it is pretty nice, essentially a mid-tempo, romantic rag about three times removed from its source (maybe only once removed from work like Barber's "Excursions") and does retain something special about it although today I pick up a naivete I was likely deaf to then.

The album I have came out on Nonesuch in '83, featuring Bolcom on piano with Sergiu Luca on violin, performing the former's Second Sonata, Duo Fantasy and Graceful Ghost. The sonata blends genteel blues elements with neo-neo-romantic lushness and lassitude. I take it (I haven't kept up at all so I'm unsure) that Bolcom became something of a favorite among certain sectors (what I think of as the NPR crowd), kind of a John Adams without the minimalism (or a Bill Frisell?), dealing in a "classy" Americana that didn't quite shed its more blue-nosed Europeanisms, nodding politely to native forms while carefully avoiding actually getting his hands dirty. The fantasy refers back to antebellum parlor songs as well as ditties like "Turkey in the Straw" and the like, even more distasteful in a sense, though packaged very prettily.

"Graceful Ghost" (I think there's a version for solo piano, actually, that I like much more) has a nice lilt to it, a dreamy, summer riverbank feel that's intensely nostalgic, I have to admit. It's killer element is the sudden shift to a secondary melody in its closing minute (it's only a five-minute piece). ... but wait. Typing this as I'm listening, that last element is absent! I'm wondering now if I'm confusing this with another work or if that piano version (does that exist? I think so) contains the coda but this one doesn't? Hmmm...not sure if I'm entirely misremembering or not, though I can hear what I expected to hear in my head quite clearly andf I'm fairly sure I'm not composer enough to make it up myself. I guess Mr. Bolcom loses a few points for the time being.

I found myself thinking of Howard Skempton a bit while listening, wondering if, one day, I'll feel about Skempton's piano work ("Well, Well Cornelius", etc.) the same as I do about Bolcom now. I don't think so and certainly hope not, but you never know.

************

Through the first 50 or so pages of George McKay's "Circular Breathing"; very good reading thus far, among other things giving me more context for the background of jazz in Britain than I'd previously had.

Is it a fair question to ask why there haven't been, let's be conservative and say over the last 15 years, any avant-mainstream albums as strong as Blythe's "Lenox Avenue Breakdown" (1979)? Oh, I'm sure there have been some contenders and if I wanted to sit dowen and think of a few I could probably toss out a handful of possibilities. But this one stands up so well. If I knew there would be music of this calibre at, say, the Vision Festival, I'd be there every night.

Blythe (still referred to in Stanley Crouch's liners as "Black Arthur" at this point), Blood Ulmer, James Newton (also at or near the height of his powers), Cecil McBee, Jack DeJohnette, Bob Steart and Guillermo Franco form as fine an avant mainstream group as you could ask for around that time. There's a vague rock-like feel to the session, maybe as a result of DeJohnette's propulsive drumming (you can pick up echoes of Miles' late 60s bands) and it certainly energizes matters. The pieces are all surging as well, no concession to balladry or (for these players) excessive free playing. Plus, it came out on Columbia, of all places. That was a major coup at that time. I think Blythe was the first musician to come out of the "loft scene" to sign with this major a company. Stayed with them until '87, longer than one might have guessed.

This group of musicians, for my bucks, are emblematic of a certain breed who do far better in more melodic, "straighter" settings than they do in free ones. Here, they manage to beautifully balance on that knife's edge between form and pure energy, really one of the best examples of that tightrope walking that I'm aware of. Some 28 years later, it reads as absolutely contemporary, more so (for example) than your average Viz Fest performance which almost inevitably sounds dated even as it's being created.

The only other Blythe album I own is "Blythe Spirit" (I suppose the title was inevitable somewhere along the line--awful cover I'll do you a favor and not reproduce here) from a couple years later. It's listenable, I guess, but the fire is largely gone, Blythe well down the path toward the blandness he'd achieve in subsequent years, at least when I've had the occasion to hear his music. I think the last time I saw him perform was as a sub witht he World Sax Quartet in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, more than ten years ago. Nice bunch of musicians assembled, deployed in various groupings: Abdul Wadud, the late John Hicks, Hopkins, McCall, Bob Stewart once again. But the only track (well, "Reverence" is OK too) that really comes together for me is his trio with Stewart and Amina Claudine Myers (on organ), the spiritual "Just Another Walk with Thee". Wonderful organ work from Ms. Myers. She's another one that, in my experience, is miles better the less free she plays.

I note in passing that the back cover portrait photo is by William Coupon. Back in October 1979, returning from our honeymoon at Block Island, Linda and I shared an Amtrak compartment with Mr. Coupon, then an aspiring photographer. As I recall, we found a common interest in the downtown loft jazz scene and spent an enjoyable few hours talking; very nice guy. I was pleased since then to find his work pop up all over the place, including things like TIME magazine covers. He has, and appears to have largely maintained, a fairly singular conception, his subjects often placed against a grainy background (hung burlap or linen, maybe?) lit with a single, low intensity light. He has a site with many images available for perusal here. Well done, William!

Just in:

Burkhard Beins - Disco Prova (absinth)

Three interesting items popped up yesterday:

Muta (Rhodri Davies, Alessandra Rombola/Ingar Zach) - Yesterday Night You Were Sleeping at My Place (Sofa) - a flute/harp/percussion trio that produces some surprisingly intense, loud music.

Annette Krebs/David Lacey/Keith Rowe/Paul Vogel - s/t (Homefront) - Excellent live set in Dublin from October, 2006.

James Saunders - #[unassigned] (Confront) - Two discs with 65 or 66 more or less 1-minute tracks, one disc for cello (Anton Lukoszevieze), one for clarinet (Andrew Sperling), designed to be played (if one wishes) simultaneously on two systems, not necessarily in sync, as presented or randomly shuffled. Pretty fascinating.

When a fledgling performance space opens a five-minute walk away from one's home, you're kind of obliged to go and lend support even if you have a pretty good idea that the music offered isn't going to be your smear of marmite. Such occurred last night with the inaugural concert at Homefield Advantage which is presenting four Saturday evening shows in a second floor gallery (Lex Leonard) here in Jersey City. From the look of things, this series is going to concentrate on the avant-to-ecstatic jazz end of the spectrum with shows by Jason Kao Hwang, Tony Malaby and others.

Last evening's set featured Daniel Carter with a guitarist and drummer. Admittedly, I wasn't expecting much of anything, but that's indeed what we got. Carter is obviously a good player (I'd seen him previously in the Astor Place subway station as a member of Test) and I can imagine moderately enjoying a solo set from him, especially when he plays it relatively straight. He rotated from flute to trumpet to tenor to clarinet to alto, doing some nice tonal playing on the first two. But it was all in the context of a typical Viz Fest-y formless, would-be-ecstatic set. The drummer was one of those thousands who brings a few dozen accoutrements, toying with each one for 20 seconds or so, checking them off some mental list then proceeding to the next (btw, I thought there'd been a law enacted against the use of bullroarers, no?). Were I his daddy, I'd lock him up in a room for a few months with a snare and a single stick. The guitarist included a Midi set-up, recording and altering his own and other's tones in pedestrian fashion, something that was irritating 20 years, much less today. I'm given to understand he was once a disciple in Fripp's League of Crafty Guitarists.

Sounded like it.

Ah well, did my civic duty to support any remotely interesting venture in the neighborhood. Be tough to drag me back there, though.

New listening:

Alvin Lucier - Nothing Is Real (Wergo)
Alvin Lucier - Ever Present (Mode)
"Blue" Gene Tyranny - Out of the Blue (Unseen Worlds)
Lubomyr Melnyk - KMH (Unseen Worlds)

One of the first times I ever ventured up to Environ, maybe the first time, a month or so before I began working there, was to see the Hamiet Bluiett Big Band. I can't for the life of me remember who was in the band, though I imagine it probably included David Murray, Philip Wilson, Fred Hopkins, Olu Dara, Amina; there were 18 or 20 musicians.

There were four of us in the audience. After each number, we tried to applaud very loudly.

Bluiett actually lived right next door to me at the time, on West 24th St. I think he did--his wife certainly did and he was around a bit, though I was never quite sure if he actually resided there or not. He wasn't the easiest person to talk with or to deal with when it came to setting up performances. He had, not unjustifiably perhaps, a very skeptical view of white-owned jazz lofts and Fischer was pretty white. Around that time (1977), I caught Bluiett playing at Jazzmania on East 23rd St. After the set, he announced some future dates of his, including one at "Plantation Environ". Gee, thanks. fwiw, Environ's policy was that the musicians rented the room for the evening (about $30, iirc, which was simply the monthly rented divided by 30) . They then kept 100% of the gate up to a certain figure, maybe $200 or $250. Any monies in excess of that were split 50-50 between Environ and the musicians. Needless to say, more often than not that ceiling didn't come close to being reached.

So the sort of disgruntlement evinced by Bluiett towards Environ was a little irritating. Nonetheless, he was welcome to play and did so on occasion, including one particularly memorable event. It was a solo performance, just baritone. Except that Bluiett divided his time in about five minute chunks between furious, impressive blowing and extraordinary and frightening vocal screeds, giving full vent to the range of his complaints against the world, the jazz establishment, the lofts and anything else that came to mind. It was one of the scarier things I've ever witnessed, not the least because I (and everyone else there, I'm sure) wasn't at all sure that he hadn't really lost it. I'm still not. You seriously considered that he might start whaling on the audience, scything through them with his baritone.

His "Clarinet Family" from 1984 is the only thing under Bluiett's name I have on vinyl. I think John Carter had already created a similar ensemble under the nom Clarinet Summit. Those were the days when every instrument seemed to have its "summit", right? By '84 all the WSQ variants had gotten somewhat tired and this isn't really an exception. By the way, I don't see it mentioned often enough that the genesis of the WSQ was as a result of a track on Braxton's great "New York, Fall, 1974" album for Arista, where he teamed up with Bluiett, Hemphill and Lake. Another little factoid: When they first formed (late '76 or early '77 I think), the original working name was The New York Saxophone Quartet. I have a publicity photo to that effect. Unfortunately for them, there was already a group by that name (!), a classical ensemble. D'oh!

Anyway, this album features a still very young Don Byron, Dwight Andrews, the eminent Buddy Collette, John Purcell, Gene Ghee, JD Parran and Kidd Jordan (I'd forgotten he was here! Really never liked his playing) on various shapes and flavors of licorice with Hopkins and Ronnie Burrage in the rhythm section. It's OK, I guess, but aside from the predominence of clarinetry, it's not too distinguishable from any other 100 records of the time. Byron's dedication to Machito, "For Macho", is pretty nice, though.

New listening:

Candlesnuffer - Wakool (Room 40)
Eagle Keys (Francisco Meirino/Tim Olive) - Eagle Keys (Even Stilte)

Ah, back to some vinyl for the first time in a while. Does everyone know who the Blue Notes were? You wonder sometime. They never made a large impression in the US, I don't think, you didn't hear them namechecked by the same generation of jazz musicians here with likely exceptions such as Don Cherry. A sextet of South African emigres (originally including tenorist Nick Moyake) escaping apartheid, fleeing to England in the mid 60s, they combined South African highlife and other forms with European free jazz, a somewhat more extreme version of the path chosen by Abdullah Ibrahim. Of the foursome on this date, only one, Moholo, is still alive. The great, great trumpeter Mongezi Feza was already dead as of this 1977 performance.

Pukwana was an amazing player; anyone who never got around to hearing him should try and do so; think a stronger version of Arthur Blythe and you come close. I first heard him in that record shop in Poughkeepsie, walking in one day to hear the wildest, most fantastic music emanating from the house system, only to find out it was his "In the Townships" album on Caroline. More on that one when we get there. He had a rare combination of acidity and joyousness in his playing, ebullient but very bittersweet. As with four other Blue Notes, he died absurdly young.

Moholo would, the following year, put together an astonishing midsize band recording, "Spirits Rejoice!" (which was finally issued on disc a couple years back--get it!) though what I've heard from him since then has been fairly routine. McGregor led the pretty well known and regarded large ensemble, The Brotherhood of Breath which, at least on record, I found somewhat inconsistent.

But Dyani. Damn. I'll write more about him, I'm sure, when I get to his batch of records (plus his extraordinarily beautiful album with Abdullah Ibrahim, "Good News from Africa") but what a bassist, what sound and imagination.

This recording sits more on the free jazz side of the fence than the overtly South African-influenced one and I have to say, I generally prefer the latter setting with these guys than the former. Still, it's a rollicking good show if more solo-driven than something like "In the Townships". When they do return to their African basis as at the end of Side One, the effect remains magical.

After Dyani's death in 1986, the remaining trio recorded "Blue Notes for Dyani" the following year (no title image available as best I could search). It's a good record, balancing the jazz and the African to a fair degree, including some fine Dyani compositions. (Dyani's recordings under his own name for Steeplechase in the early part of the decade, especially "Witchdoctor's Son" featuring John Tchicai, are well worthing checking out.) Some really nice playing from McGregor on pieces like the traditional "Ntyilo Ntyilo".

He and Pukwana would die within about a month of each other in 1990. Moholo still plays, performing at the Vision Festival last year (I didn't catch it).

To these ears, Feza, Pukwana and Dyani rank among the best in jazz on their instruments over the last 40 or so years. A shame they remain so little known.

You get weird responses to reviews sometimes. You expect to receive "you liked it, I thought it sucked" responses or the reverse as well as replies that add to the information, dispute it, what have you. You even anticipate hearing from those who are convinced you have an evil agenda, are part of a cabal determined to topple all they consider holy and good in favor of the execrable crap you like.

But sometimes I have no clue what people are going on about, why they bothered to set fingertips to keyboards. I posted a write-up of the Tilbury/Beckett disc at Bags the other day, one that I greatly enjoy. Walter Horn, who I know pretty well and who, in fact, was really the first person to convince me to write about this stuff in more than a poster capacity way back when, threw in a sarcastic line (reprinted in its entirety):

I didn't know that, in addition to reviews of movies, comic books and chocolate bars, I could also find reviews of radio plays and suchlike here at bags. Sweet. There's like nothing at all we bags guys don't know, is there?

I've no idea what to make of that. I assume he objects to the fact that I reviewed a radio play. Now, had he asked about my background knowledge in such, something I in fact alluded to in the body of the review (that is to say, not so much), fine. Were someone to post, "I've heard a dozen renditions of 'Cascando' and you might want to hear X, Y and Z before you assign such high marks to Tilbury because, in that context, he ain't no hot stuff!" again, fine. But posts like the above come across as snippy and crabby, nothing more. I happen to know that Walt, in many areas, knows his stuff very well so the remark is all the more baffling.

Then, one "A Chair" (yes, I love it when people don't have the balls to use their real names) chimes in with:

Consider that this is a Matchless recording featuring John Tilbury. Now that you mention it, if any of those guys came up with their own chocolate bars or comic books, that would be hilarious.

The second sentence is merely silly but what to make of sentence number 1? The best I can do--it would be wonderful if people were actually explicit, no?--is that it's a contention that anything on Matchless with Tilbury automatically generates a rave. Well, no. I forget if I wrote it up or not, but the first duo with Eddie Prevost (pre AMM break-up) certainly wouldn't have gotten one from me. True, there's nary a pianist I'd rather hear than Tilbury so he's more likely than not to get a positive response, but he's been involved in several things over the last few years that have left me cold, including that piano trio on Emanem especially. And, for what it's worth, the Beckett recording was something I purchased, under no obligation to review. I only did so because I thought it was very special.

Not to carp so much, it's just that the level of discourse gets a little dispiriting at times.

New arrival:

Sabine Vogel/Magda Mayas/Michael Renkel - phono phono (absinth)

I'd posted this at Jazz Corner yesterday but for those who don't trawl those waters:

At Record Club, Nina brought some pashmak, a gift from her Iranian boyfriend's mom. Pashmak (pictured above and also known as, seriously, Persian Fairy Floss) is essentially cotton candy, spun sugar flavored with almond or vanilla extract except with a very fine, silky texture. It comes densely packed in a cake about the size of a loaf of rye bread. It has the interesting property of greatly expanding once released from its confines. I'm not sure if it ever stops. It filled a large bowl on Sunday and after we'd each helped ourselves to a few handfuls there was more there than before. But that's not its most salient feature, especially to me.

Pashmak looks and feels exactly like my faithful hound Nanook's fur. I mean to a t. (crosswordese sidetrack--I hate when "to a t" is a four-letter answer to a clue such as, "Exactly". Inevitably, no matter how often I encounter it, I sit there for a second going, "What the hell's a toat?") So I took a small but exapanding bagful home, got it into the pantry without Linda's knowledge and planned.

On Tuesday, the stage was set. I had gone down to the pantry with a Baggie, filling it with a handful of pashmak and putting it my pants pocket for easy access. Ate dinner with Linda. When she finished her main meal, she got up and went to the kitchen to get a mango. Nanook, ever mindful of the possibility of a food handout, tagged along, standing patiently behind her as she prepared her fruit. I ambled over, having discreetly palmed a hank of pashmak. "Did you ever taste Nookie's fur?" I asked. Linda, distracted while slicing the mango, goes, "What?" and half-turns around. "Nookie's fur," I say, "It's really good." I reach down, pull an apparent tuft and munch.

Linda gives me a priceless look. "What the hell's wrong with you?! What are you doing?!" She seriously thought I'd lost it, both my eating the fur and pulling it off Nanook in the first place. I actually managed to keep a straight face for about 15 seconds....Excellent.

*****************

Enjoying the Eco very much some 100 pages in.

Gentle, tuneful Record Club last evening. Several times, I've brought 'between' intending to play the sunspot piece but one thing you tend to do in these situations--appropriately--is to try and somehow fit your piece into whatever stream happens to develop. Now, if you only bring two, there's no option and usually that's what I do. But when one or both of the pieces I want most to play is fairly....extreme, I generally bring alternates.

Last night, I led off Round 1 and played Beefheart's "Nowadays a Woman's Gotta Hit a Man" from "Clear Spot", a guaranteed hit, what with that great shuffle beat, the funky horn section, etc. Fantastic piece, glad to have rediscovered it. Julia played a very fun, wacky piece by a band called Young Knives, my favorite of the set, but things were fairly smooth otherwise. Had I led off round 2, Rowe/Nakamura would've gone on, no question, but I ended up in the fifth slot, following another fun, strange number courtesy Nina by a duo from Lawrence, Kansas called Drakkar Sauna. The song was a kind of old-timey, rockabilly piece with religious connotations; then she revealed the title: "Mongrel of a Halfman Slave Bitch" heh.). The "between" track simply wouldn't have fit after that one, so I went with Robbie Basho's gorgeous, hauntingly odd "Salangadou", which I've since found out is an old Creole folk song.

Nayland closed the evening with a striking version of the "Cannon Song" sung by Ellen Greene, culled from a vinyl recording of the 1975 Public Theater production of Threepenny Opera.

Along with many people, I consider "Trout Mask Replica" and "Lick My Decals Off, Baby" to be the twin peaks in the career of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band (and yes, I'm of the opinion that the Magic Band members are due almost equal credit for the music's success). Recently, though, I've been listening a lot to the follow-up recording (well, I think it is--see below), "The Spotlight Kid". It and "Clear Spot" occupy a kind of limbo between those two earlier masterworks and two of the worst things you'd ever not want to hear, "Unconditionally Guaranteed" and "Bluejeans & Moonbeams". Both nod toward the poppish directions he'd take but each is also immersed more groundedly in the blues. Back in '75 when I'd traded in virtually my entire rock collection, CB was included, a dire error. I'd reacquired most things on vinyl by the late 80s, gradually getting disc versions as well, though not of "Spotlight Kid" which was only, erm, spottily available. I'd never managed to get "Clear Spot", however (originally issued in a clear vinyl LP sleeve, btw; I think I recall that van Vliet wanted the disc itself to be clear as well but the idea was nixed by Reprise). I remember "Spotlight Kid" coming out before "clear Spot" though what I can see on-line tells me the opposite. I could obviously be wrong though, even musically, the former sounds closer to TMR and LMDOB than the latter. Dunno.

Yesterday, at DMG, I picked up the disc containing both. I hadn't heard "Clear Spot" since the mid 70s and it holds up pretty well, some very solid songs in there. I know "Shiny Beast" has its adherents but I still hear a bit of slickness in there that's not on these recordings (though, of course, it's a million miles better than the two that preceded it). I think it's still there in the final two recordings ("Doc" and "Ice Cream") though not so much as to be a distraction.

In any case, very good to hear the "Clear Spot" session once again.

Also picked up Tony Conrad's "Joan of Arc" (Table of the Elements), on at the moment and sounding excellent. Recorded in '68. As well, I bought a compilation of Vietnamese "country" recordings called "Que Hu'o'ng" (Homeland). I believe the ensemble is called "Gia Dinh", led by one Ba Pho. Will report back.

Having lotsa fun with Zadie Smith's "On Beauty"; quite the romp. Also about 1/2 of the way through the Hofstadter which is going fine so far. Kind of a restatement of the ideas first raised in GEB but with the fancifulness. Some things are more clearly laid out; I have a better grasp of Godel numbering than I did before, for instance.

Late arrivals:

Erik M/Luc Ferrari/Thomas Lehn - Les Protorhythmiques (room 40)
Taylor Deupree - Landing (room 40)

btw, that Vietnamese disc is much poppier than I anticipated. Cute 'n' pretty sorta, but disappointing.

Just posted this at JC, but I like it enough to add it here as well.

So there's an Au Bon Pain across the street from my office which I've gone to fairly often for lunch. They do good soups, have decent hot sandwiches and a nice pastry selection. A couple months back, they were one of the NYC restaurants cited for rat infestation (with film!) and were closed for a few days while they remedied the situation. I gave 'em a couple weeks, then returned as a customer. I mean, every place has or has had rats, no big deal. Besides, the whiskers serve as good teeth cleaners.

This horrifies a couple of the ladies in the office who have vowed never to set foot in the place again. I've almost given up trying to convince them of the error of their ways. But just now one of them, unsold that the place could possibly be fit to eat in, said, "You don't think those rats laid eggs while they were there?!?"

Heh.

I had some correspondence with John Tilbury a couple weeks back during which he asked if I'd heard his recording of Samuel Beckett on Matchless. I not only hadn't but was only dimly aware of its existence at all. I think I knew, a few years ago, that something of the sort was in the offing, but its actual publication utterly eluded me; very annoying. Admittedly, I don't regularly peruse the Matchless website and I haven't read WIRE for a few years now so, presuming it was reviewed therein, I would have missed that. Still, I would've supposed that I'd've seen a bit of discussion about it here or there and I haven't (it was issued in 2005). Googling about, I couldn't even find a write-up around (I may easily have missed some). Weird.

In any case, I ordered it straightaway and received it this past Friday. Two listens and I think it's absolutely fantastic. I'm by no stretch any kind of authority on Beckett performances (he does Cascando and Rough for Radio 1 (the former with Sebastian Lexer, the latter with Lexer, Christina Jones and Prevost) but I thought both renditions here were stunning and quite moving. I see a few are available at UbuWeb which I'll try to give a listen to later on.

Why so little discussion about this though? Curious to get people's opinions on where this fits in with other interpretations as well as recommendations in that direction.

New Listening:

Seth Nehil - Amnemonic Site (Alluvial)

Friday evening, went out to Issue Project Room with Jon and Yuko, met up with the Voltage Spooks. For inexcusable reasons, I hadn't been to this space before. Located on the Gowanus Canal (the Venice of Brooklyn), a squat silo-like structure with the circular performing space on the second floor, maybe 30 feet in diameter; very cool. Unfortunately, it seems likely they'll be moving this summer. The trio (Rowe, Rick Reed & Mike Haleta) did three brief solo pieces then a trio set. Haleta threw up a dense wall of sound from his PC, almost featureless, something like an Ad Reinhardt painting. It's one of those things that, the more you listen to it the more detail your mind constructs; whether that detail is more your construction than the musician's is another issue, though I'm not certain that matters. In any case, after being initially a little bored, I gradually got into it. Reed, operating a 1971 Synthis (sp?) synthesizer tended toward dreamier, more tonal washes. It was OK, but I need more grit in the mix. Rowe, no slight intended to the other fellows, is just on a different plane. Very spare, very thoughtful; well, you know the story. Consistently engrossing.

This was the first time the trio had played together as such and it showed a bit. A good blend of sounds, the rough 'n' tumble, the sweet and the thoughtful that worked very well at different moments though they had a tough time finding an endpoint. But good overall.

Drove to Philly on Saturday, first time I'd ever set foot in the city! Ambled about in serarch of food for a while, settling for some burgers in a desultory place. The show was in the gallery of the Slought Foundation, a space near UPenn. Walking through the neighborhood after finding parking, I realized I've likely never seen an actual fraternity house before and there seemed to be thousands of them here. Complete with big porches, beer-guzzling galoots and vacuous females! Just like a crappy Hollywood flick, very weird. Met a whole host of excellent Philly folk, giving one great hope that much good music will flourish there, including this September's ErstQuake fest. Great to meet you, Jesse, Tim, Dustin, Matt, Chandan, Mike. The panel discussion before the show seemed to go over very well; odd for me but sorta fun.

Same structure as the previous evening. Haleta did almost exactly the same piece as before; not sure of the rationale but, again, I was reasonably happy picking out my own patterns. The gallery had a camera obscura installation and, in the dark, its projected image, an upside down stream of water from a faucet, played on a nearby wall, offering some fine counterpoint. Keith played next, again...well, just really, really good. Rick had some equipment trouble and by the time everything was sorted out, they merged his solo set with the trio's. This one was much more concise than Brooklyn's, really well paced. Favorite moment was when Rick began generating a tone that was just too sweet and, absolutely immediately (perhaps coincidentally) Keith found a radio broadcast where a woman was saying, "...a change of direction". It worked perfectly both musically, tempering the sweetness, and conceptually.

A fine late dinner and conversation (White Dog--wonderful restaurant/bar) then a lengthy drive back in the heavy rain.

Marmite tasting the next afternoon (see description at Jazz Corner), listened to Keith's "The Room" (ooh, baby....) then out to the rescheduled gig at the Velez Cultural Center. Pretty chaotic there, looked for a while like the whole shebang might not get off the ground but eventually things were set aright. Only a trio set as there were time limitations. This was much more like I would have expected from them, very steady state and restrained throughout (both of the earlier sets were much lumpier), really nice, Rowe once again providing the necessary granularity and itchiness.

They're on to gigs in Princeton, Dartmouth, Boston--maybe one other? Check' em out if you can.

Richard Pinnell, after something of a hiatus, has begun posting with astonishing regularity on his blog here. Very interesting entry on a Scottish painter previously unknown to me, Callum Innes, whose work looks pretty fantastic from what I see there.

Acquired over the weekend:

John Tilbury - Plays Samuel Beckett (Matchless)
David Tudor - Music for Piano (RZ)
Bonnie Jones - Vines (emr)
William Hutson - Little Darling (emr)
The Sealed Knot - (Confront Performance series)
Katsura Yamauchi - Sax Solo (Salmo Sax)
Katsura Yamauchi - Patiruma (Salmo Sax)
Otomo Yoshihide - Prisoner (Headz)
Matt Mitchell - vapor squint, antique chromatic (Scrapple)

So, I went and wrote Douglas Hofstadter, acting on the presumption that he might be unaware of works like the Lucier (and related, in a self-referential, iterative sense, stuff like Tom Johnson's "Failing...") and how well, imho, they illustrate some of the ideas he's sought to get across with different sorts of allusions. Received a very nice reply (I love e-mail) from the professor and, indeed, he has no real knowledge of this field (though he was aware of early Reich and Riley music that abuts the territory). He is of the persuasion (common, I'd guess, among people whose main work is in the sciences?) that there's some essential difference between "intellectual" and "emotional" art, in his case preferring the latter (as exemplified by his oft-cited love of Chopin) and guessing the Lucier would fall into the former category. I disagree, finding for example the eventual emergence of semi-melodic material in Lucier's piece to be very moving emotionally, but whatcha gonna do? Pleased that Hofstadter proved to be so open to dialogue, though, having been a big fan since about 1980.

Gearing up for a weekend with those wacky eidolons of current, the Voltage Spooks. Friday evening at Issue Project Room, a space I've somehow managed to avoid visiting until now. No excuses. Motoring down to Philly (a city I've actually never visited either, probably with better excuses) for a show to be preceded by a panel discussion with Keith, Jon and yours truly though what my contribution is expected to be, I've no idea. Drive back up late, go to the final show at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center Sunday evening.

I don't get that many opportunities to hear an ensemble three times in a row like this, so I'm expecting to enjoy that aspect (presumably more besides). The Spooks travel on to Boston, Dartmouth, I think a couple other spots.

Finished Banville's "The Sea" which I enjoyed a bunch. Very sad, very effective at conveying a sense of bafflement at indecipherable events that nonetheless reverberate down through one's life. Began Zadie Smith's "On Beauty".

Working through Hofstadter's "I Am a Strange Loop" which, happily, doesn't seem to be skating quite so close to gooiness as I feared it might. With all his going on about feedback loops, he seems to be unknowledgeable about related things in contemporary music like Lucier's "I Am Sitting in a Room".

Once again, stultifyingly bored at work, googling around art images, I remembered Giorgio Morandi. Not sure of his current status these days (not that it matters a whit) but he was a big favorite of Alton Pickens, my prof at Vassar, someone whom he urged me to study and I did. Doubtless, Morandi became a big influence on my own work, something I see more clearly now than I might have at the time.















Most of his oeuvre consists of very simple still lives, often with the same objects painted over and over, moved slightly, in subtly different lighting conditions. But, of course, not simple at all though I wonder how tough it is to pick up on the tensions and complexities. I find the "aesthetic connection" between work like Morandi's and much current quiet improv to be clear. Sometimes I wonder if analogies made between eai and painting might not be (at least, sometimes) better served by visual work with a foot in the realist camp, though "metaphysical realism" (as Morandi's and similar work is often referred to) is likely more to the point than more traditional forms. For example, much of Rowe's work resonates strongly, to me, with Rauschenberg's combines with their melding of abstraction and brutalist realism (an actual chair, ladder, lamp, etc.)

















Anyway, idle musings for a never-ending morning.

Bored yesterday afternoon, I was futzing around looking for a Windows background that might baffle fellow workers. I'd been going with one of Gerhard Richter's "Baader Meinhof" series for a while, one of a prostrate dead body, looking like a grey smear across a black ground. Looked rather striking and I'll probably bring it back.

Part of the qualification is a horizontal orientation and a fairly large source reproduction to minimize distortion and pixelating. For a couple days, I had Velazquez' divine "Las Hilanderas" but its busyness was a bit too distracting. Searching for a darker image but still thinking of that period, I came across a great Zurbaran still life, several pieces of pottery against a black background. It was a little too horizontal, though, and ended up on the screen a bit squished.

Then I thought of Robert Bechtle.

I was a fairly big fan of the so-called photo-realists back around '72-'74, about when they began to enter the public consciousness (though many had been plying this tack since the early 60s). The more interesting of them considered their work as an extension of color field painting, something that's clear in work by people like Chuck Close, perhaps less so in Estes, John Salt, Ralph Goings, etc. but I think it was there. Not that I immediately or always appreciated that aspect of it; to me it was also cool that some artists were brazenly thumbing their noses at the academy of abstraction and revisiting a corner of realism, albeit one distorted by photography. Eventually, most lapsed into stultified repetition and, moreover, came to reveal a certain amount of shallowness in conception and I came to more deeply enjoy those realists who worked from life--Alfred Leslie, William Beckman, Claudio Bravo, Gregory Gillespie and others (not that they, too, turned out to be terribly consistent--they didn't).

But I always liked Robert Bechtle. Why, is hard to say. Maybe because his work is so blank. Cars in front of houses...

























No more, no less. No overt commentary, no striving for effect. But laid out almost as beautifully as a Rothko.

I always especially loved the family snapshot at the top, my current wallpaper (which is in the Whitney Museum in NYC). Awkward, throwaway, extremely real as an image from around 1968, more so than romantic hippie evocations or what-have-you. But with a photographic patina that wraps everything in a dull gloss, comforting and chilling at once, the having-it-both-ways idea already nascent in California culture of the time.

So, bored once again this afternoon, I thought I'd toast Mr. Bechtle.

For the last few years, every so often, I've experienced a strange and unsettling visual phenomenon. Suddenly, without an apparent ulterior stimulus (like excessive exertion or rapidly standing), an arc of shimmering lights would appear, usually on the periphery of my visual field but generally taking up enough "space" so as to obscure my vision somewhat, making reading, for example, difficult or impossible. The arc is prismatic in coloration, reds, yellows and blues predominating. The colors are in a zigzag pattern, reminding me of nothing so much as (some of you oldsters may recall) that illustration of a cat done under the influence of LSD that was used to document effects on the brain of the drug in science journals of the 60s, which image I can't immediately locate on the web. Often, it would begin as a relatively small kernel, slowly expanding to a pincer-like, thin slice of bright colors.

No pain was associated with this event and it would gradually disappear after about 15 minutes. They tended to happen in clumps, one a day for 3-4 days, then nothing for a few months. Although the image was usually more on one side than the other, it appeared in both eyes as well as when my eyes were shut, overlapping the normal phosphenes, so I knew it wasn't specifically eyeball-related, but was emanating from deep enough in the skull at least where the optic nerves met. Nonetheless, it was a bit troubling. I rather like the sense of sight and was worried these events might be symptomatic of other issues that could develop further. Aggravatingly, googling around on "visual problems", "prismatic", etc. didn't yield anything that I could ascribe to what I was undergoing.

Until this morning. I had an episode on the way to work, did some extra diligent googling upon arrival and, happily, found the damn thing: Ophthalmic Migraine. Migraine sufferers are apparently familiar with this as a symptom of an onset of an attack, which occurs when small blood vessels behind the eyes go into spasms. However, there are many people, yours truly included thank goodness, who experience the visual symptoms but no pain. It should just continue to be the nuisance it is now. The image above is a representation of what it looks like, though my patterns are thinner, more luminous and with much more red and golden yellow. Anyway, nice to put a name on the thing.

btw, sometime, I'll have to write about phosphene imagery. Not that I know anything about it, but I've always been fascinated by it, curious about the "realistic" images we tend to create out of those patterns as well as wondering about the demarcation between actual retinal images and one's imagination, a line which strikes me as blurred.

Reading: (when not blinded by prismatic arcs)

Frederic Jameson - The Seeds of Time
John Banville - The Sea

on deck (getting to 2005 Man Booker Prize winners and nominees, obviously...)

Zadie Smith - On Beauty
Umberto Eco - The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
Douglas Hofstadter - I Am A Strange Loop (though after his NYT Magazine 20 Questions page this past week, I'm less sanguine)

I wrote about Marc Blitzstein's "The Airborne Symphony" last summer and won't go into it again (except to say: Listen to it!). Playing the vinyl this afternoon, though, I extracted the libretto that was included and I can't resist printing the lyrics to at least one of the songs. This kind of 40s American dialect impudently referencing classical mythology is just so choice.

Ballad of History and Mythology

Etana jumped on the back of an eagle,

In Mesopotamia.
Tried to fly in forty-five hundred B.C.--
But he got dizzy; got dizzy and tumbled off.
Got dizzy, tumbled off, and fell and died.
Old Etana had wings on the brain.

To be Airborne.

There was Phaeton, son of the sun Apollo;

And he stole his sun wagon.
But he didn't know how to steer that wagon.
When it rose up, we froze.
When it dropped on down, we sizzled.
Going up and down,
We froze and sizzled by turns.
That was Phaeton had wings on the brain.

Wings on the brain, wings on the brain.

Mad for to fly and walk the sky.
For they had wings on the brain.
...
Archytas of Tarentum tried a wooden pigeon
But it wouldn't pigeon [!! - BO]
Leonardo designed a fine propeller model
Never sweller model
...
Oh they tell of strings and springs and rubbers
And vertical revolving screws.
Tell of aerial steamers, multiple gliders.

There was Henson's aerostat, Cayley's model,
Langley's drome and Penaud's bird,
And Octave Chanute and Lilienthal and gliding Pilcher--
Yes--
And safety valves, movable sides--
Oh yes--
Fore and Aft rudders, Water tube boilers--
Oh! Yes--

**********

And later, from 'The Enemy':

Connect two facts:
The record hop to California by fliers from Russia;
And one other fact:
The rich and well-placed Italian
Stating that the bombs from his plane over Spain
Exploded on people,
Opened like a rose,
And proved great sport.

Man, hard to believe it's been 20 years since this was recorded. Still sounds good, I must say, and goes some way toward the argument that rock works best when it's being created by 20-year olds. Mixing prog more muscular than King Crimson at its best with thrash with, most surprisingly, dub as well as a dash of Funkadelic, Blind Idiot God (pretty great band name) tore things up for a couple of years in the late 80s. Probably at their best here, though the follow up on Enemy, marred only slightly by Zorn's presence on a couple of tracks, is fine as well. Actually the last album on Avant is OK too, just that they're clearly covering old ground by that time. I understand they re-united last year (different drummer) and played Tonic, though I never heard anything about the music.

Andy Hawkins (I can never quite look at a BIG album without thinking of the Yankee pitching bust) did some interesting work in the 90s for some of Laswell's imprints as "Azonic", iirc. Always expected more good work from these fellows and maybe it's out there but I've missed it.

But this one has some mighty ferocious work, full of bravado and heedlessness. Wonder if their kids are forming a band....