Record Club core member Nayland Blake received a nice feature in the Sunday NY Times today, in the article on portrayals of racism in contemporary art. The pertinent part:

Ethnically neutral? That’s just a code-term for white, the no-color, the everything-color. For whiteness is as much — or as little — a racial category as blackness, though it is rarely acknowledged as such wherever it is the dominant, default ethnicity. Whiteness is yet another part of the postracial story. Like blackness, it has become a complicated subject for art. And few have explored it more forcefully and intimately than Nayland Blake.

Mr. Blake, 48, is the child of a black father and a white mother. In various performance pieces since the 1990s he has dressed up as a giant rabbit, partly as a reference to Br’er Rabbit of Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories, a wily animal who speaks in Southern black dialect and who survives capture by moving fast and against expectations.

In 2001 Mr. Blake appeared in a video with another artist, AA Bronson. Each had his face slathered with cake frosting, chocolate in Mr. Blake’s case, vanilla in Mr. Bronson’s. When then two men exchanged a long kiss, the colors, and presumably the flavors, began to blend. Shared love, the implication was, dissolves distinctions between “black” and “white,” which, as racial categories, are cosmetic, superficial.

Can't believe he couldn't have gotten them to squeeze in mention of Record Club but otherwise, way to go, Nayland! btw, the slyboots mentioned nothing about this on Friday. That's Bronson pictured above, incidentally. Here's a shot of the project's denouement:

Ever exploratory provided it doesn't get too inconvenient, Record Club staged its first video version last evening and it went very well. One of the many fine things about the RC project, for me, is that I get exposed to music (and, here, video) from areas in which I would've thought to have little or no interest. Often I'm pleasantly shocked to find something of unexpected beauty. At the very least, even if I don't become a full fledged fan of a given person or form, I can at least gain a better understanding of why other folk love it.

One aesthetic that has always stuck in my craw is the "musical", especially in terms of Broadway but also in film in its show tune aspect. Well, Nayland brought in two excerpts that, I must admit, caused me to reconsider somewhat. The first was from "Sweet Charity", the 1969 Bob Fosse vehicle with Shirley McLaine based on Fellini's "Nights of Cabiria". The sequence he played was a medley of three dance pieces, "Aloof", one derived from boxing (can't remember the name) and a psychedelic, rocking finale. Really amazing choreography specially, as Nayland noted, in how independently the various parts of the dancers' bodies were coordinated. The second, from which the pic above is taken, was the dance of the exiled instrumentalists from "The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T", an extremely weird musical from 1953 based on the Dr. Seuss tale. I'd somehow never seen this, as a child or adult, but it's seriously freaky with astonishing homo-erotic overtones for the time. In excess of 50 green-painted individuals playing a huge range of fantasy instruments with apparently wild abandon but in amazingly interlocking precision. Eye-opening.

Speaking of things I wouldn't have thought I'd like so much, Dan showed Billy Preston's number from the Bangladesh concert, "That's the Way God Planned It". Very nice.

Nina was in bizarro Asian child mode, showing this young Korean girl singing "Hey Jude" and, far more horrfying, this Japanese teen ripping through Kansas' "Carry On" on what I take to be the latest in one-girl-band organ gimmickry. Sca. Ry.

Myself, I went with the great Son House, performing Death Letter from about 1965 and the classic (though, apparently, previously unseen by all present last night) John Cage appearance on "I've Got a Secret" in 1960. If you've never seen it, it's required viewing.

Julia ended the evening with a wonderful video by Spike Jonze of Fatlip from around 2000, I think.

While trawling through You Tube over the last few weeks in prep for this meeting, I was having a great time with older, acoustic blues musicians, finding tons of fantastic music. Spurred me, yesterday, to pick up the Bukka White release on Sonet (on at the moment, sounds great) and "The Definitive Charley Patton" 3-disc set, as well as putting in an ebay bid on Robert Pete Williams 1961 LP on Arhoolie, "Angola Prison"

I haven't heard this yet, though it arrived yesterday with a couple of other things for review at Squidco (two nice discs, on first blush, one from Brigit Uhler and Ernesto Rodrigues and the other on hat from the Makrokosmos quartet doing Crumb, Gervasoni & Haas). I hope to begin listening tonight--it's a three disc set.

I can't recall ever really hearing Lockwood's work though I must have, on radio, over the years. I know it's always been on the fringe of my mind to do so. Partly, I confess, it's because I find her name rather wonderful. I pronounce it Ah-NEE-uh, by the way; I'm not sure if this is correct. Hope it's not just "Anna".

Then there's this other thing. At two recent concerts I attended, the generally dreadful exhumation of early Bryars pieces at Roulette and the charming Christian Wolff recital, the same chipper, spruce lady was sitting in front of me. From her conversation and the effusive greetings she received from other audience members, including Robert Ashley at both, it was obvious she was a composer of some repute. Bothered the hell out of me that I couldn't put a name to her. I mentally ran through all female composers of her approximate age--she looked in her 60s--but came up empty. Now, of course, I realize it was Ms. Lockwood.

The above assembles field recordings, interviews and other sounds derived from several trips down the Danube river, I guess a bookend of sorts to her similar project on the Hudson from the late 80s. It comes with a fairly large foldout map of the region and translations of the interviews. Nice idea for a piece. I really hope it doesn't suck.

later...

Listening to Disc One and, so far, not so thrilled. The strange thing is that there's a relatively consistent water sound--it comes and goes, but it does so throughout, thus far--and given the nature of the project, it sounds oddly interior, like water being sluiced from one container to another. There's very little air around it. The depth of the piece is surprisingly shallow with only bird and insect chirps and some wind rustle to be heard otherwise (aside from the occasional voice, various interviewees speaking in the languages one encounters along the Danube). You don't get the breadth you do in Tsunoda, for example. Not bad, just a bit arid, ironically enough. We'll see....

still later....

Second disc is better, more varied. Still, even though something with the massiveness of a river would seem to easily deserve the 167 minutes here, I'm not sure this won't end up having been better served at a shorter length.

Yet more


Point4 is a quartet, not surprisingly, made up essentially of two keyboards and two percussionists (Kenneth Karlson, Jon Balke, Bjørn Rabben & Ingar Zach). “Panopticon” (Sofa) contains 19 tracks that tend toward the quiet, sometimes in a Boulezian vein, perhaps often Feldmanesque and not infrequently veering into more customary free improv space. The electronics (Balke) get awkward now and then but there’s a nice overall level of restraint and thoughtfulness. Worth a hearing for those softer, more introspective moments which comprise about half the disc. sofa


The indefatigable Asher sends along several new collections of sound. “Study for Autumn” (available for mp3 download here, is in keeping with some of his previous work wherein gentle piano notes are played singly among field recordings of creaking wood, windswept leaves, etc. Eno-esque, true, but/and beguiling.



















“A Map of the Ocean” a piece created in collaboration with Ubeboet (a name new to me), dispenses with the piano and utilizes rougher, more visceral field recordings; even the sloshing water sounds cold. Faint, organ-like tones waft by like so much flotsam. The piece has great breadth over its 40 minutes, almost steady-state but phasing through adjacent fields; fine work (and super cover) Also available as an mp3 at transparent radiation. “Intervals” (thelandof) is composed of 39 fragments spread over about 40 minutes. Given Asher’s normally languid pacing, I wouldn’t have thought this would work as well as it does but despite the variation in sounds, it manages to read pretty strongly as a whole, played as laid out or on shuffle. The sounds are a mix of various approaches he’s used before including the dulcet piano tones, static, the natural world, etc.; another nice one. Asher teams once again with Ubeboet for “cell memory” (winds measure), two tracks that settle into the soft rumble side of things, evoking far off engines heard from deep inside the earth or some massive structure—or maybe from inside an organic cell, hearing the plasma surging by outside. winds measure. There’s a running argument about artists releasing “too much” material. While I tend toward the side that says, “the more the merrier”, obviously there are occasions when the well just runs dry. Asher puts out a lot of music but, thus far, it's been almost always rewarding. A degree of sameness may set in for some listeners but it hasn’t done so for me as yet.

Rossbin’s been baffling me in recent times. Not so much that I have enjoyed a lot of the material over the past couple of years—I haven’t—but more so the rationale behind given projects. In this case it’s a 2001 session by Machine for Making Sense (Jim Denley, Rik Rue, Amanda Stewart, Stevie Wishart), music that might already have been deemed overly fussy and cluttered at the time, certainly more so in the intervening years. Not up my alley, but presumably enjoyable for fans of post-Zorn/Chadbourne style improv.

It’s worth pointing out that Alessandro has instituted a new “payment” policy with Rossbin and an apparently very admirable one: all proceeds going to a Peruvian institution that assists poor and disabled children. Details at rossbin

Two musicians I'd never heard who really impressed me these last couple of weeks have been Esther Venrooy (out of Belgium) and Vanessa Rossetto (from Austin). I'll be writing up both for Bags in upcoming weeks (I knew there'd be an exception to my rule now and then) but in the meantime, I'd strongly recommend checking out Venrooy's work on entr'acte and Rossetto's on 2008 music appreciation

Oh yeah, this one's not half bad either:

Recent pelf

After an initial flurry of recordings sent my way in January, things had quieted down a good bit for a few weeks and I figured the message had gotten out (dammit) that I wasn't going to be doing reviews this year. Then, last week, a whole passel of stuff showed up. Some bore notes to the effect that, "I know you're not writing up these things now but I wanted you to hear this", which sentiment is greatly appreciated, thanks.















Kostis Kilymis - .accumulated & Thessaloniki 1963, a diary from b to c (Organized Music from Thessaloniki) Two very enjoyable sets of collaged sound from Kilymis, each combining field recordings with direct input of an abstract electronic nature, the latter occasionally dipping into the everyday world of ring tones and other detritus. As with much of the better music I’ve heard recently, it’s not so much the newness of the sounds or conception, more the grace (or attractive awkwardness) with which the sounds are deployed. Never forced, moments that initially seem out of place make sense a minute or two onward and the variety of sounds and approaches always keeps things bubbling. Both discs work really well as wholes—nice to see a bunch of good work emanating from IHM denizens in recent months. Plus, the Thessaloniki 1963 disc comes in a lovely cloth disc cozy.


















Pascal Battus/Alfredo Costa Monteiro – Ductile (jointly released by OrgThel and A Question of Re_entry—I’m considering a campaign for shorter label names…) Costa Monteiro has issued at least two discs of solely paper-derived sounds; here it’s a duo of same and, as before, the results are strong and somewhat astonishing. Hard to get that “Gee whiz!” kinda thought out of my head, like, “This is paper?!?!”. “Ductile” tends toward the brutal as well, fierce waves of sound scouring one’s speakers clean, rumbling and pealing like nearby thunder. Harsh and then some.

Three fine releases right up front for this label—nice start!

Thessaloniki site


Phill Niblock – Disseminate (Mode) Part of my ongoing, if sporadic, attempt to Phill out my Niblockiana (this I bought). Three steady state works, one for orchestra, one for low winds (contrabasses flute, tuba & saxophone, this one constructed by Niblock from manipulated recording extracts) and one for a quintet of viola, cello, bass clarinet/soprano sax (Lucio Capece), flute and trombone. Fine “blank wall” listening, that is, each sounds like a changeless drone but listening with even a modicum of attention evokes all sorts of detail. Excellent stuff.


Our own Robert Kirkpatrick sent over two very strong works as well: “thaw”, a 3” disc blending water droplets with hyper-clear statics and keening whines, beautifully handled and a compilation of the first three releases on his Hollow Earth label under the title, “Documenting the Decline”. The trio of pieces originally released as “Sounds of the Hollow Earth” are quite good, especially the somewhat terrifying final one, all mutant bird squawks and generally fluttery horror. “Dance of the New Mysterians” is as loopy as its title but oddly hypnotic and fascinating. Order some and force Robert to burn more copies. hollow earth


Things are not so good on the Room40 front. I have nothing inherently against lullaby-pop or even waif-rock (is that a term in use?), but “The Bedtime Beat”, from Lullatone (Shawn Seymour & Yoshimi Tomida), pushed my limits. Kind of like Penguin Café Orchestra for tots, cutesy with the occasional semi-catchy melody, simply constructed, but several shades too saccharine, even with the “quirky” instrumentation, for its own good.


The Rational Academy’s “a heart against your own” harkens back to early 80s art-rock of the Weekend variety, not quite as good, a bit more slick. Lawrence English mans the electronics for this nonet; it might be more or less his band and his pieces, not sure. Very well produced, competently played and sung, but if you heard them over the closing credits of some trust fund indie film, you wouldn’t be surprised. Not unpleasant, but not memorable either.


Jeff Gburek’s “Virtuous Cycles” is an early favorite of mine this year but his concurrent “Red Rose for the Sinking Ship” (Triple Bath) doesn’t quite compare. Some nice sections (the third one, especially, with a subtle mix of street noise, obscure squeaks and faint chimes) but a bit rambling for my taste. It doesn’t gain the traction I wanted to hear, maybe only because I liked his preceding one so much. Not bad at all, but I wants me more meat. (Limited edition of 96, btw) triple bath

More to come a bit later.

I first heard percussionist Milton Cardona in the context of Kip Hanrahan's work in the early 80s. This album, "Bembe", appeared on American Clave in '86 and it's a beaut. It's entirely devoted to Santeria chants with a group made up of a lead singer and percussionist (Cardona) and an ensemble of response singers and percussionists (the drummers including Hector "Flaco" Hernandez, Steve Berrios and Jose Fernandez). My working knowledge of Santeria music is just above minimal so I can't really say how representative this is, but the impression I get is that Cardona knows what he's doing and it sounds damned real to me. Gorgeous Afro-Cuban melodies, stirring (and rough) choral singing and hypnotic percussion combine for a moving, thrilling recording. I'd appreciate any recommendations along this line.

While researching a bit, I noticed Cardona put out another disc under his name, "Cambucha", in 1999, also on American Clave; interested to hear that. Though Hanrahan-led or produced projects in recent years have left me a bit cold. I picked up Deep Rumba last year and, expecting great things, was let down.



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



Along with Billie Holiday, Betty Carter has always been my favorite female jazz singer. I bought this recording pretty early in my listening, maybe around '76, rather odd in the context of the other things I was listening to at the time (AACM, Taylor, Ornette, etc.) but Carter's singing inevitably melted me. I have a few other releases but have always enjoyed this one the most. I believe it was something of a comeback record, recorded in 1969 at Judson Hall, NYC with Norman Simmons on piano, the great Lisle Atkinson on bass and Al Harewood on drums. A fantastic series of tunes including "Blue Moon" (taken drastically up tempo), "The Sun Died", "Girl Talk" and a fantabulous rendition of Randy Weston's "Ego". Her elasticity is astonishing, bending and warping the melodies into pure Carteriana.

I never had the occasion to see her perform, which I greatly regret. Everything I've read about her indicates, music aside, she was something special.



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















There's one other Carter amongst my vinyl, John. Never really explored his work as much as I probably should have, with only this and the follow-up, "Dance of the Love Ghosts" under his name, plus a fine Hat disc with Bobby Bradford, "Movin' On".

I know this Ghana sequence (were there three or four albums in the series? I don't quite recall) is hailed by many as one of the signal achievements of jazz in the 80s. While I enjoy it very much, I've never quite gone that far. It's interesting, listening now, to hear tinges of the same tonalities that Ornette used in his symphonic work, "Skies of America" considering that they grew up together. The title track from this one is something of a monster, especially once Carter's burbling clarinet surfaces alongside Bradford's cornet. The remainder of the album doesn't quite live up to that, though it's fine in a good-Muhal kinda way, even if Terry Jenoure's vocals are a bit woozy.

"Dance of the Love Ghosts" (admittedly, I have a tough time getting past the title) strikes me as less focussed and a tad shrill; not bad at all but not the stuff of legends.

I get the sense that I'd generally have enjoyed Carter in small group settings (like that "Movin' On" date). Recommendations in that vein appreciated.

***********

Reading:

Knut Hamsun - Hunger

On Deck:

John Crowley - Little, Big

I've been listening to Cardew's recording of "Thälmann Variations" a whole bunch over the last couple of weeks. This is the Matchless recording which seems to be out of print? For some reason, I have it on vinyl, perhaps because it was never issued on disc? In any case, it's my only Cardew in that format, not counting the memorial concert double-LP on Impetus, which I wrote about here

"Thälmann" takes up all of Side One here and must automatically be compared with Rzewski's "¡El Pueble Unido Jamas Sera Vencido!" from around the same time. Indeed, I'm a little curious which came first or how much, if any, communication there was between the two at the time. I assume this and much more will be covered when John Tilbury's Cardew biography sees the light of day (I can't wait--anyone have recent news?). I first heard the Rzewski very soon after its release on Vanguard in, iirc, 1976 with Ursula Oppens at the piano and fell absolutely in love with it. Still am. This is doubtless a major reason why I'm more open to Cardew's worker's song period than many. Especially when divested of the banal lyrical content you find in People's Liberation Music, the melodies and variations stand quite well on their own, making their points all the more forcefully fpr the lack of explicit content.

[I don't know the circumstances of this recording, but it's interesting that one can pick up outside-the-room sounds, especially car horns, periodically. It imparts a real world tinge into the otherwise "classical" and removed situation.]

Like the Rzewski, Cardew's piece is kind of a theme and variations, though not as strict, here incorporating music from several sources including Eisler, Charles Koechlin (a song called, "Let's Free Thälmann"), popular worker's songs and funeral dirges. To my ears, it's not quite as impassioned as the Rzewski, not so brilliantly and intricately wrought, not as "hard fought", but it remains a lovely, moving work, a string of observations that holds together well, offering something of a panoramic view of the working class' struggles and occasional victories through the eyes of one who was fairly deeply involved. Though that goes to a whole other question of just how deeply artists like Cardew (or Rzewski) can really be when, as in his case, they came from extremely high-placed families and knew that there was always, if it came to it, a cushion to fall back on. I get the sense it was something that Cardew struggled with quite a bit and, again, I hope it's gone into by Tilbury.

In purely pianistic terms, I'm not sure that in this kind of music (as opposed to, say, Feldman) Cardew, fine as he is, can hold his own against someone like Rzewski who is simply astounding on a technical level. The romantic drama in his work fits that éclat perfectly. (Wondering if Tilbury ever tackled The People United...) Cardew's a bit more ruminative which works beautifully in the more pastoral sections, maybe a tad less convincingly in the rousing ones. Still, a fine piece deserving of being heard more often. Ironically, it's available these days on the New Albion disc with Rzewski at the keys and I actually prefer the airiness of Cardew's rendition.

The second side of the album contains six short pieces: the joyous march of "Bethanien Song" (interestingly commemorating a change in plans re: the conversion of an old hospital from an artist center to a children's hospital--wonder if the same feeling would hold today?); "The Red Flag", based on the changes to "O Tanenbaum"; "Soon", based on a pamphlet of Mao's from 1930 promising imminent revolution, lovely, quasi-minimalist piece; and a trio of Irish songs, "Croppy Boy", "Father Murphy" and "Four Principles on Ireland". These last seem loaded down with a bit more weight than they're capable of supporting, matters getting a bit sloggy and technique-strewn.

Well worth tracking down on the whole, however.

(I should mention that Robert has a fine review of a very recent Rzewksi concert at his Spiral Cage blog.)

Went to Issue Project Room last night to hear an evening of the music of John Cage organized by Kurt Gottschalk and John McDonough. I’m pretty sure I’ve never actually attended an all-Cage performance—technically, this wasn’t either, as we’ll see—and in fact, I can’t remember the last time I heard a Cage piece live at all. Aside from my own continuous renditions of 4’33”, of course.

The current site of IPR is a long, narrow, high-ceilinged room. When Keith and Julien played there in October, they made the wise decision to set up against a wall in its center, somewhat negating the unnecessary audience/performer dynamic (and, indeed, asking people to walk around at will and even question them about the score during the performance). This time, it was a more traditional format with the musicians at one end, for me not the most conducive structure. Too, they chose not to use (or maybe were unable to do so) the sixteen speaker in-house system, something that would have benefited the music greatly, imho.

Four works were presented: “Indeterminacy/Variations I”, “Cartridge Music”, “Radio Music” and a piece by McDonough, “Landscape Under Construction”. The first was for two guitars (Gottschalk and Russell Scholl) and voice (Kristen Persinos), the guitarists performing “Variations I”, the vocalist “Indeterminacy”. She began by asking an audience member to shuffle the several dozen pages of her text and then to “cut” it, as in a deck of cards, the text turning out to be from Gertrude Stein. It was something of a disjunctive performance. When Cage read text, his voice tended to flow at a fairly rapid clip and, while intimating both humor and intelligence, was undramatic enough so as not to stand out from whatever the other sounds were present; you can hear it both as an equal sonic element and as an imparter of verbal information. Persinos’ approach was somewhat more arch, with rather elaborate expressions ranging from wry to exasperated to mocking as well as including numerous physical gestures, all very well done (and with a very nice tonal quality to her voice) but serving to distance herself from the guitars, enough so that it was impossible not to hear the instrumental work as accompaniment rather than on an equal footing, especially as the guitars were almost always quite spare. Maybe the simple expedient of placing her behind the guitarists would have helped even things out but as was, things didn’t quite gel.

"Cartridge Music" involved five players on stereo cartridges and other electronic items. They performed under the steady and commanding gaze of a digital clock which, though I understand it's part of the deal, cast an uncomfortable, managerial aura. The score (I'm presuming, not having seen it, but Kurt could correct me) calls for certain actions to be undertaken at specific times, so the audience is presented with the picture of five guys moving around the stage, constantly looking back and forth at the clock and the small cards they carried containing the score, almost as if for permission to act. A certain sense of constriction comes into play though I suppose in 1960, when the piece was written, that would have been far less the case and would have served to open up previously unheard sound worlds. Today, there's something about it that struck me as oddly dated, the same way a Zorn game piece might. It would be interesting to compare the choices made by various possible musicians given the same constraints (how would Tudor have handled it? How would Rowe?), but those very constraints, in a post-AMM world, seem more binding than liberating.

The second half of the concert proved much more successful. Barry Chabala, one of eight radio operators, showed me his portion of the score beforehand. It runs for six minutes, divided into four 1 1/2 minute segments. Within each of those portions is a listing of AM radio frequencies, ranging (as best I can recall) from about three to maybe a dozen, each of which to be visited during the 90 seconds, I assume in the order listed). The effect was quite wonderful though, again, I would have loved to have heard the speaker system taken advantage of or to have had the radios dispersed among the audience. Even so, the chatter, the snatches of music, the sports play by play and the static or in between-ness (I think the frequencies are set, so that when performed in a given locale, they may or may not coincide with existing on-air stations) created a very enjoyable, absorbing cloud of sound. I've no idea whether or not it was one of Cage's ideas with the piece, but the sensation of understanding that one always dwells in this enormous web of generally unheard sounds was quite strong. Very different (and, for me, perhaps ultimately less rewarding) than what groups like [N:Q] are attempting, but on it own merits, quite fascinating and stimulating.

The highlight of the evening, a very pleasant surprise, was McDonough's own "Landscape Under Construction", for 1 to 42 CD players, here ten. As I understand it (again, Barry or Kurt can correct me), each musician selects a disc of Cage's music from 42 supplied by McDonough. (S)he then follows a time-based score (total time = 34'55") consisting of two columns which contained instructions on starting or pausing the disc (which is played from its beginning) as well as volume increases or decreases. At several points, the player can choose to cross over from one column to another and continue on from there. I'm wondering how much of the "success" of a given performance depends on what combination of discs is chosen, ie, how much variation and/or balance there happens to be. In this case, there were (I think) two that consisted of voice (one Cage's, one in German), a piece for solo cello, one for harp, one that utilized Western operas, one for strings, and other assorted noise, including percussion. Whatever, the result was a beautifully shifting landscape where the listener constantly makes pattern connections between ostensibly unrelated musics, almost all of them seeming to make "sense". It flowed along wonderfully, rarely losing traction, almost always maintaining interest. If I had a quibble, it was that McDonough's own player was a bit loud and that combined with the pieces emanating from it (a clattering percussion work and, I think, one for radios and/or record players--thought I heard snatches of Arthur Blythe and Zorn in there--) it occasionally dominated the proceedings to an untoward degree. As before, I'd love to hear it in a more expansive setting, maybe with more players. Though even as is, it could make a very fine CD on its own and it sounded like Mode is going to do just that in the near future. I suppose one would call this a process piece, and a damned good one.

A lovely evening. Would that this sort of affair was staged more often.

The correlation between love of jazz and love of baseball has, I think, been established in the past, at least among American white guys (Does this hold in Europe, substituting soccer--or, as they insist on calling it, "football"--for baseball?). Established by whom? I've no idea--I don't know of any studies on the subject--but from decades of casual conversation, it's entirely commonplace for serious baseball discussions to sprout at a jazz venue. Less so for eai? Dunno, though we have Mr.'s Abbey and Mitchell around who certainly fit the bill and Tim Albro and I spent many a minute in baseball discussions last year.

I'm wondering if it goes further than that. If we take, as a general rubric, the category "new music fan" (meaning an interest in the avant-garde in jazz, improv, contemporary classical, etc.), I'm betting that the representation of not only baseball fans but the subsection of those fans who whiled away thousands of hours casting pairs of dice on an APBA or Strato-Matic board far, far exceeds the national average. (These thoughts spurred, naturally, by the current thread at Jazz Corner)

I became hooked on the former in early 1973, playing the 1972 season. I've no idea how knowledge of this game entered my consciousness; certainly no one I knew was into it. My brother Drew and I placed the order, he taking the NL, me the AL. Not having a clear idea of the "value" of the cards, we traded a bit willy-nilly. I recall finagling Leron Lee from him, possessor, iirc, of a formidable 1-3-6-6 card. It's interesting that, many years since I last played a game of APBA, number combos like 1-1-4-5, 1-5-6-6 or *gasp* 1-1-4-5-6 can still elicit pangs of tingly nostalgia. It's a bit hard to reconcile the image of my 18-year old self, tossing the dice on the floor of my bedroom and consulting the play charts while the Art Ensemble is blaring from my wretched turntable above.

(I'm amusedly contemplating the doubtless majority of readers here wondering what the the hell I'm going on about).

APBA and the like involved abstracting the game of baseball, codifying a player's season into a concise series of numbers which, when combined with the play boards, yielded a near-infinite number of possible game outcomes, but a bound infinity within the probabilities of the game. Somewhere in there might be the connection to improvised music. Maybe.

Maybe not.

Back from the 31st Annual US Crossword Puzzle Championship, for the first time having been held in Brooklyn, NY after 30 years in Stamford, Connecticut having outgrown that venue. 699 contestants this year.

I was rolling right along through the first six (out of seven) puzzles, all solved on Saturday. When the posting of the standings through that point was made available, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in 21st place as I'd finished 43rd last year and hadn't been that close to the teens in a while. It was partly due to having successfully grappled with Puzzle #5, a vicious beast wherein notes of the solfegge scale that appeared in a phrase were "raised" to the next note and clued appropriately. So "muscle tic" became "muscle doc" and "solo concert" changed to "lao concert". This central theme entirely escaped me but I managed to finish it accurately anyway. The seventh was this morning and I thought I'd aced that one as well, only to come home, check the final posting of scores and discover that I'd made an error. Looking over the puzzle in question, I'm pretty sure that for "Egyptian god" (six letters), I'd blithely written in "Amon Ra" instead of "Amen Ra", without checking the crossing (opes, not "opos"). Dammit. I rarely see or hear "Amen Ra" and almost always encounter either "Amon Ra" or "Amun Ra". *grumble*

This slid me down to 29th, still a very decent placing but the mistake cost me 18th, which would've been really nice.

btw, many visitors here will be amused to know that one puzzle featured, entirely innocently, two crossing clue answers that were each names of ensembles of which Mr. Rowe has been a member: Amalgam and MIMEO. Why they weren't clued as such baffles me.

But, as always, more than half the pleasure of the weekend, substantially more, was getting to hang with an extraordinary group of people like Dan and Larry Okrent, George Rosenfeld, Leigh Newman, Joshua Kosman. (Joshua, who's a classical critic for the SF Chronicle, told me about a composer he's very hot on, Derek Bermel. Anyone heard him?) Just wonderful, wonderful folk.

What more to say about Van Vliet?

My first CB was "Lick My Decals Off, Baby". My recollection is that Rolling Stone published four reviews of this album, one by Lester Bangs. Checking, I see that these ran in the December 10, 1970 issue. I had already become aware of Zappa's music so Beefheart's name was known to me; in fact, I guess I already had Hot Rats with his stellar turn on "Willie the Pimp". So I was intrigued.

I sauntered into Recordland, Poughkeepsie's only record store. (Some of the department stores, like Merit and Bradlee's, had record sections, but pickings there were slim) It was a good-sized store, located near the intersection of Market and Main streets in downtown Po'town, run by an old cranky geezer and his two pudgy, slick sons. They used to slice a corner of the cellophane on each LP and stamp a capital 'R' in a circle on the back, so if you returned it they'd know it was theirs. I still have a few bearing that tiny insignia. So I wandered over to the rock section and was confronted with a choice: this weird Beefheart album that I didn't know if I'd like or not and.....Mott the Hoople's second recording, 'Mad Shadows', a follow up to the Escher-covered first album which was something of a favorite of mine at the time.

I wussed out and went with the Hoople. Terrible, terrible mistake. Not only because it delayed my first taste of CB for a few weeks, but the album itself sucked royally.

Anyway, I soon rectified this error. Good thing too as Decals about ripped off the top of my head. No problems whatsoever getting into this one. I quickly went back and got Trout Mask, I think Safe as Milk too. A key moment in the Olewnick musical history, especially given the door to Ornette that Van Vliet would open for me about a year later.

I won't go into Decals or Trout Mask here; done so too often elsewhere. Just to say, they're still probably my two favorite rock albums ever and sound as great to me today as they did then. Even so, in my mid 70s mission to rid myself of all things rock, I was ruthless and the Captain didn't make the cut. His period of exile was probably the shortest of any, however, and I quickly realized the error of my ways, repurchasing a bunch on vinyl in the late 70s, I think before Shiny Beast hit the stores.

I do have this British release oddity, going under the title "Top Secret" that cobbled together a few pieces each from Safe as Milk and Mirror Man. Good stuff, circa 1967. "Kandy Korn" is particularly amazing, the swirling psychedelia of the instrumental section as strong as ever.













For me, "Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller", while signaling a welcome return in the right direction away from those miserable mid 70s albums, isn't entirely successful. I'll pause and mention here that, long ago, Linda thought she was doing me a favor when she came across a CB album she was pretty sure I didn't have and brought it home for me. It was "Unconditionally Guaranteed". I've kept it for historical reasons, but it's quite possibly the very worst album among the 3100+ I own. Anyway, I've not read all the back and forth, but from what I gather, I tend to side with those who assign a good half the credit for the greatness of CB's earlier work to the musicians in the Magic Band: Zoot Horn Rollo, Rockette Morton, Drumbo, Art Tripp etc. To my ears, those assembled for Shiny Beast just can't compete. There's still a certain slickness present on pieces like "Candle Mambo", "Harry Irene", etc. The title track's the only one that really holds together for me. A few of the others chug along nicely and I'll admit that "Floppy Boot Stomp" sounded better to me now than it probably ever had before.























Still, I far prefer both "Doc at the Radar Station" and "Ice Cream for Crow" of the late work. I'm still not entirely sold on the personnel (a few of these guys--Feldman, Martinez, Fowler, at least--went on to have careers scoring Hollywood films, something I doubt Harkleroad ever had a chance or desire to do) but by this time they've gelled nicely and can rock out in jerky Beefheartian fashion to a good degree. "Dirty Blue Gene" is the one piece from the last three albums that, for my bucks, can stand with anything on TMR or LMDOB; perhaps not surprisingly, it's a piece Van Vliet wrote and played in the 60s.

There's also, of course, a wonderful, deep bitterness in Doc and Ice Cream, a real harrowing aura through many of the songs. "Telephone", from "Doc", is a marvelously malign take on the instrument, a venomous spew directed at that "plastic-horned devil". "Skeleton Makes Good", which closes his last album, is as harsh and horrific as anything he'd ever done.

About ten or so years ago, I saw an exhibition of Van Vliet's paintings at the Knoedler Gallery. I was surprised how impressive they were in a brute, animist way.

Over the weekend, I finished "Rabbit at Rest", the fourth volume of Updike's amazing series, charting the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom from about 1960 to 1990. I mentioned this over on Jazz Corner and, as had occurred in the past, received a variety of opinions about Updike, by and large negative. I'm curious about this.

I'd always brushed Updike aside and had little interest in reading him for a long, long time. I associated him with a certain New Yorker magazine kind of writer--white, WASP-y, novels concerned with wealthy Westchester-ites, in whom I had no interest. There were a few writers who fell in to this category--Bellow, Cheever (who I still haven't gotten back to, having only read a short story collection back in the 70s). Maybe it was seeing his books on the shelves of parents of friends (not sure if we had any ourselves) figuring, if they like him, how good could he be?

Somewhere in the early or mid-90s, for reasons that escape me, I picked up his novel, "S."--and enjoyed it greatly. I then read both "In the Beauty of the Lilies" and "Toward the End of Time" and loved them, marveling in both the language and the perspicacity of his observations. Much of it is simple affinity--his characters notice and consider many of the same things I do. The latter novel is one of the finest, most subtle works of speculative fiction I know. Incidentally, I wasn't able to get much into "The Centaur" at all and had a good deal of difficulty with the more recent "Seek My Face" as well, while I've generally enjoyed his non-fiction essays, especially those involving art criticism.

So a couple years back, I began the Rabbit series ("Rabbit, Run", "Rabbit Redux", "Rabbit is Rich" and "Rabbit at Rest". For my money, it ranks with Richard Yates' "Revolutionary Road" as the most trenchant, honest and real example of contemporary American fiction concerned with middle class life in the period. Rabbit seems to be someone Updike could have been, had he been athletic, more stolid, more fundamentally conservative. He's an absolutely fascinating character to have created, in his complex combination of antipathetic characteristics and a surprisingly keen and penetrating mind. He's baffled by much of the change that occurs over the three decades, a large part of him wanting things to remain as they were during his "glory years" as a star local basketball player, he's utterly selfish though he doesn't think he is, he's fascinated by people and how they run their lives and he observes thousands of small things that etch the middle class American landscape with more brutal honesty, good and bad, than I've ever encountered elsewhere.

Yet he seems to be held in low regard by at least a good number of people whose tastes in literature I generally admire. Someone used the phrase, "a phallus with a thesaurus" which I don't get on either account. His use of language, while imho very beautiful, is hardly a matter of fancy words; pretty much the opposite. (Maybe I've not read the ones to which that observation pertains?). And while there are a number of scenes throughout Rabbit that are quite sexually explicit (more so for the eras in which the first two were published), it's all bound up with Rabbit's character which, as mentioned, was a local athletic star who reaped the side benefits of same and spent a good portion of his life thinking that state of affairs should somehow always be maintained (and who, indeed, found a few partners who felt the same way, one of the aspects that lends a tawdry, tragic atmosphere to the books).

My guess is that a large part of the negative reaction toward him (unless it's based on novels, like the Bech series, I haven't read) lies in his unflinching rendition of the banality and smallness of the existence of a character like Rabbit, someone whose way of thinking is uncomfortably close to those of us who grew up in similar surroundings, that is white and middle class in the US (though Rabbit is about 20 years older than myself). It's extremely unhip and, indeed, "hipness" is viewed by Rabbit with extreme suspicion, a foreign kind of virus that upsets what he thinks should be the normal course of things, though he'll appropriate aspects of it if it suits his purposes. He's too much like our parents, perhaps, something we'd rather not examine this closely.

Oh well, just riffing while at work here. I'm sure I'm leaving out tons of analysis that could be, and I assume has been, done. When I finished "Rabbit at Rest" yesterday, it was with great sadness, not merely for coming to the end of the books, but for Rabbit who, for all his obtuseness, insensitivity and stubborn oafishness, was one incredible, complicated individual.

Just a wee plug for Tandem Electrics' fine disc, "Intaglio". Good, solid, propulsive noise, providing a well-needed ear scouring (not too harsh) over its scant 31 minutes. Richard Kamerman (amplified laptop circuits) & Reed Evan Rosenberg (programming).

There's a myspace page here, an in depth review of the disc by Richard at Bagatellen and it looks like they'll be appearing at the Knit as part of the ongoing sigogglin series come April 14th. Looking forward to that.

Received my copy of Marion Brown's "Afternoon of a Georgia Faun" yesterday. Always nice to see those old, German-issue ECMs. Sadly, this one lacked that unique aroma--what? Yes, of course I checked. I mentioned this before, no? Most of the pre-Polydor import ECMs have this wonderful smell to them, heady and nostalgic. They also have those inner sleeves that are just slightly wider than they are long, about 1/8 inch, so that it's impossible to replace the sleeve with the opening facing outward. Kind of a +/- situation: it's awkward and annoying to have to remove the whole interior sleeve to take out the vinyl; on the other hand, there's something snug and "safe" about reinserting the sleeve in the vertical position....

Anyway, very nice recording. I'm sure I've heard this a few times over the years on radio, though I can't say anything about it ever stuck with me. It's much freer than I expected, with nary a trace of the folksiness and down-home qualities that would suffuse the 70s things on Impulse!, maybe aside from the pastoral whistles and small percussion on side one. But two good collective near-improvisations, the "solos" hardly seeming such, more just emerging from the ensemble with slightly more prominence, not commanding attention. Fine Corea work on Side One as well.

Happy to have it.

Recent listening:

I'd taken out my sole Cannibal Ox disc, "The Cold Vein" (their only release?), a few weeks ago, some thing I hadn't listened to in quite a while and pretty much enjoyed it, especially the opening track, "Iron Galaxy". Doing some research, I saw that one of the Anticon producers, going by the nom Odd Nosdam, had released a disc last year that received much good press, "Level Live Wires". The reviews cited the great amount of noise and field recordings he interwove with hip hoppish music. Sounded interesting. Well, that'll learn me to believe mainstream reviewers when it comes to things like "noise". It's like someone eating bland Indian food and putting the tiniest pinch of spice on it, then pronouncing it "really spicy". It's not bad and overall it's listenable but way routine, only mildly imaginative and not noisy enough by several powers of ten.

Speaking of buying mistakes, somewhere in the recent past I read about this band, Dengue Fever. They're a California-based (should've been fair warning right there) band that melds Cambodian pop into a jazzy mix, including a Cambodian lead singer (female). Now, I loves me much of what Southeast Asian pop I've heard, including some from Cambodia. Detty Kurnia kills me. So when I stumbled across this at Other Music, I figured it was worth a shot. Well, no, not really. Some catchy numbers, the vocalist, Chhom Nimol, is ok and winning on a couple of tracks, but too many of the songs fall into regulation fusion, no bite and not enough over-the-top sweetness to compensate.

Happily, I managed one good one out of the three purchases that day, Volume 6 of Obscure Tape Music of Japan, featuring the work of Kuniharu Akiyama. More later when I digest is further, but on first blush, it was a winner.

Later in the week, trooped over to Erstwhile Command Central, picking up the Magic I.D., Graham Lambkin's "Salmon Run" (pictured above) and Tandem Electric's "Intaglio". I have an issue or two with Magic I.D., exclusively centered around the vocals and lyrics (I love the clarinets) but I'll get to that later as well after more listens. Kinda liked "Intaglio" so far.

But portions of "Salmon Run" knocked me out, the opening track especially. Last night I played it at Record Club and wowed the group, a couple of members insisting on acquiring the disc. On this piece and several others, it's not so much that Lambkin is working in a very new area, just that the choices he makes are near perfect. The decay on the string and piano piece when it returns packs an emotional wallop for me, casting an extreme and beautiful melancholy over the music. Again, maybe more later on, but I'd highly recommend picking up one of the scant 300 copies of this.

Some other good stuff played at RC last night. Guest Richard Brown, in from Calgary (!), played an intriguing track by MGMT, an area I'd normally have little interest in, but they seem to use lessons derived from bands like Godspeed! You Black Emperor in an interesting way. Dan played a very nice Milton Nascimento song from '74 and Chris brought back the memories by offering up "Train Time" from Cream's "Wheels of Fire". Actually, given that the live performance is just Bruce (harmonica, vocals) and Baker (brushes), I was thinking that perhaps they should be called, for the occasion, CRM II.

This wee image is the only one I could find of Dave Burrell's "High", released on Douglas in 1968. Wiki and other sources list it as 1965, but I think '68's correct.

So, I'm down to the last three occupants of my "B" vinyl section. I guess the Burrell album is a relative rarity; it's also a really nice one. Three pieces--first is a enjoyably romantic/free medley of themes from "West Side Story" with Norris Jones (pre-Sirone) and Bobby Kapp, plus Pharoah Sanders assisting on tambourine. "East Side Story" is a lengthy free excursion with Sonny Murray manning the drum kit. The real joy is "Margy Pargy", one of the happiest ditties you'll ever come across.

Burrell was always a favorite of mine, especially his work with the David Murray quartet of the late 80s and the Archie Shepp group documented on Arista around 1975.

I have a Don Byas double album, The Savoy Sessions, things recorded in the mid-40s. I have no idea how I came to own this--maybe lifted from my Dad's collection? Couldn't work up the interest to give it a spin yesterday, though.













Back around 1980, my brother Drew stayed with us for about a year while we were out in Corona, Queens. I'd been paying little if any attention to the punk and new wave of the preceding five or so years but he was a big fan so I heard a bunch of stuff, generally enjoying Talking Heads, Pere Ubu and others. We went to see Talking Heads in Central Park, I guess it was '81, the first rock concert I'd attended in seven or eight years probably since Mahavishnu around '74. I figured, judging from their records, that the Heads would be different from your standard rock show, grinding out songs from existing albums identical to the recorded versions. Wrong. Really disappointing, note for note recreations, down to the guitar solos. To this day, I don't understand this approach. Why bother? Why attend? Is seeing your admired musicians going through these motions so important and fulfilling? Yecch. And, true to form, the crowd acted like crowds tend to, automatically cheering everything served up, forcefully reminding me why I went out of my way to avoid these chilling, quasi-fascistic gatherings.

Anyway....I picked up this album not long after, probably spurred by Eno's presence. Holds up fairly well, some good tunes, intended for a Twyla Tharp production. Lotsa Eno to be heard. Not that I by any means am aware of Talking Heads discussion these days, but I don't seem to hear this one mentioned very often. My interest waned pretty quickly (I think I have the Stop Making Sense album, that's it). I remember a Byrne disc that came out around 1985--The Knee Plays?--that copped the theme from "Theodora Is Dozing", the ultra-gorgeous Bulgarian song I first heard on the Nonesuch sampler back in the early 70s, giving himself composer credit. Kinda pissed me off.

**********

Reading:

Howard Waldrop - Things Will Never Be the Same (collected stories, 1980-2005)

Hannah Higgins - Fluxus Experience

I went over the historical whys and wherefores of Bryars' "Sinking of the Titanic" and "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" enough back in November on the occasion of my hearing a (not very good) performance of his early works. But the original Obscure recording still sounds mighty fine.













I file this one under "Bryars" as well, though Hobbs might be more appropriate. His "Aran" is a lovely, slow percussion march (Hobbs, John White and Bryars manning the armory), all cloudy references to ancient Eire. It was written in 1970-72, not so long after he left AMM but sounds absolutely nothing like anything that emerged from "The Crypt".

I guess this was the first I ever heard John Adams, though I can't say it registered as strongly as his "Shaker Loops" did a few years later. It does include a talk radio excerpt in its second movement, "Christian Zeal and Activity", a clear antecedent of Byrne & Eno (who produced the session). Very different thing, of course from AMM's radio usage as this is a "composed" part of the piece. The final movement is a kind of interestingly spacey and loopy reworking of "Sophisticated Lady". Not a bad piece, overall.

Hobbs' "McCrimmon Will Never Return", for two reed organs (Hobbs & Bryars) is a wonderful piece based on Pibroch bagpipe drones. Gorgeous, sinuous music.

"1, 2, 1-2-3-4", by Bryars, was the piece mauled last November by the ensemble using Beatles references. Here, the base is a smoky jazz number that swiftly tumbles into its constituent parts as the musicians play their roles in aural ignorance of each other. As I think I mentioned before, there's a great dreamlike effect achieved, something that anticipates Badalamenti's music for Lynch. The ensemble includes Derek Bailey and Cardew (on cello). I note in the mini-bio on Hobbs, Tilbury is mentioned. I can't tell you how much this irks me to have had Cardew on record (here and on Reich's "Drumming" and Tilbury's name around in the goddamn mid-70s and being otherwise clueless about their music for the next 20 years. Why wasn't the Net around when I needed it?!?!














"Hommages", originally issued on Les Disques du Crepuscule around 1981 and finally due, as far as I know, for re-release on disc this month, remains a throughly lovely outing. Four pieces (two more to be added to the disc) for piano, vibes and soft percussion, in a loosely minimalist vein but suffused with sharp-tanged nostalgia, like walking through a fondly remembered old neighborhood at night, a gentle snow falling. OK, the Holst tribute/knock-off might be a bit much....Actually, maybe there are more connections regarding the other "hommages" than I'm aware of. Others are in respect to Bill Evans and Percy Grainger, neither of whose work I'm overly familiar with (always had a blind spot for the former). I will admit that "My First Hommage", the one for Evans, is the piece that holds up better than the others, but still...















"Three Viennese Dancers" (1986) was Bryars' initial recording for ECM and can be heard as something of an extension of "Hommages", though with more overtly dramatic elements. I'd probably consider it the best of of his run there. While at the time I enjoyed several of the subsequent ones, I get the sense I'd have more trouble with the these days. Bryars' String Quartet No. 1 is richly performed by the Arditti and a really nice work while the other major composition, "First Viennese Dance", for french horn and percussion, strays a bit into the woozy and points the way toward a good bit of his later music. An odd feature of this record is that the brief opening piece is repeated at the end. Not a different performance of the same piece, but the same recording. I think, unless it's an incredibly mimetic recreation. Odd.

I followed Bryars' path until the late 90s; "A Man in a Room, Gambling" (1998) is the last thing of his I've heard. As I said, I generally liked at least some of each disc enough to continue, but the returns gradually diminished to a point where I gave up. I've recommended it before and will do so again: if you can find the Les Disques du Crepuscule release of "The Sinking of the Titanic" that was recorded in 1990, pick that sucker up. Better than the original.

Our good friend Alex has gone and set up a blog, Negative Potential. In the current entry he assigns more depth than did I to Mattin & Unami's "Attention", perhaps with good reason. Alex has been one of the most trenchant posters on various music boards (ones that he's not kicked off of, that is) for the past several years and I look forward to reading his thoughts here, at least when he's not posting in German.

Went to hear Christian Wolff perform some of his music last evening at the Merce Cunningham Dance Company space. To the best of my recollection, I'd never heard his work performed live, having only experienced it via the seven or eight discs I've picked up. Not that those recordings are necessarily representative or that they're not subject to the vagaries of the non-Wolff performers, but I've generally found the music tough sledding. To my ears, there's a tinge of academicism present (maybe too many Mode recordings in the bunch!) which doesn't help me steer through the essential knottiness of the compositions. But, of course, that may well be just me.

So I was prepared for a night of difficult listening and got it, though not in the sense I expected.

There was a quintet of musicians on hand: Wolff (piano, melodica, percussion), Robert Black (bass, percussion), Timothy Fain (violin), Larry Polansky (electric guitar, electric mandolin, percussion) and Robyn Schulkowsky (percussion). They performed six works, three from the mid-70s (Exercises 1, 10 & 18), one from 1991 (Jasper) and two premieres of new pieces (Grete & Duo 7).

I guess there were two main surprises. One was how relatively conservative much of the music struck me, in a kind of post-Neo Romantic vein. Second, was the absolute predominance of "notes" as opposed to "sounds". Not just that it was virtually all written as near as I could tell, but there was--to put it perhaps too vaguely--more of an interest in "sonic colors" than the sounds themselves. This plus what I felt was (on the part of several of the musicians) an overly studied way of phrasing caused several of the works to pall a bit. Since this wasn't an working repertoire group but rather an ensemble hand-picked by Wolff, I have to assume they were rendering his music as he wished and maybe I'll come to see the wisdom in his choices, but for now, I don't quite get it.

Things were too clean, in a word. My exposure to Larry Polansky's own work has left me feeling similarly; I just find his guitar sound entirely too smooth and characterless. What I wouldn't have given for a certain Nantes-based guitarist to be occupying that chair, improvising within the complex structures Wolff created. I had similar qualms with the violinist and, especially, the percussionist. The cadences fell on the wrong side of the delicate/prissy line, sounding too much like every other contemporary piece you've heard since 1960.

This is not by any means to say that there weren't beautiful moments. The Exercises especially created a fine sense of space and the give and take between instrumentalists was playful and enjoyable. #18 used a good deal of small percussion, Wolff manipulating stones, small patterns emerging that bore a whiff of Reich, a lovely 6-note piano melody coming and going; a delightful piece all around. The closing Exercise as well, with Polansky thankfully switching to mandolin, occupied similar ground, though more "expressive" in a emotional sense.

That was the rub in some of the other works--they seemed to uncertainly balance between pure melodicism and academic restraint. On "Jasper", a duo for violin and bass, Fain seemed just about to launch into virtuoso paroxysms; I didn't want him to, but on the other hand, I felt, "If you're going to do it, do it!" Though perhaps that was Wolff's point, dunno. The episodic nature of many of the pieces left a certain amount of dissatisfaction, though having just re-read Calvino's "If on a winter's night a traveler", I probably should have been listening with that in mind, with that sort of playing with the listener's expectations. I did want to hear far more grit, however, more elaboration on sound.

Big crowd there, filling the house. Props to Joey Baron for showing up. I had a good time sitting next to David Behrman and Robert Ashley, listening in. Merce Cunningham himself was in attendance, in a wheelchair, looking frail but attentive and appreciative. And my friend Julie, who I don't see nearly enough, made a surprise showing.

I was able to speak a little with Wolff after the show and hope to do so more, at greater length, re: AMM & Keith.

New listening:

Jon Mueller/Asmus Tietchens -Acht Stuecke (Auf Abwegen)
Jon Mueller/Jeph Jerman - Nodes and Anti-Nodes (Crouton)

I know I've gone on often enough here and there about the great Marion Brown albums of the mid 70s, but damn they're good and still unreleased on disc.










"Geechee Recollections", recorded in June of 1973, is the first of the Toomer trilogy (poet Jean Toomer and jsut such a unique, wonderful record. Free country jazz? I guess there are other things that could fall into this category (John Betsch's "Earth Blossom" maybe) but they're few and far between, at least at this level of quality. Leo Smith and Steve McCall are the two sidemen with big names but everyone's absolutely fine: Abraham Adzenyeh and the late Jumma Santos on percussion (the intro to the opening track is a feast of intertwined percussiveness), James Jefferson, bass, William Malone on thumb piano and autoharp and, especially, Bill Hassan's narration of Toomer's poem, "Karintha". I'm not the boggest fan of jazz/poetry combos by any means but this one hits exactly the right tones and Hassan's voice has a great, real musicality. And man, the fantastically titled "Buttermilk Bottom" is the finest free funk antecedent to work like Mitchell's "Snurdy McGurdy" that I know.

Side Two is a suite, "Tokalokaloka", bracketed by brief solo statements from Brown and Smith. It's a much looser, less countrified piece, one that would fit comfortably in an Art Ensemble set, with a strong African current in the percussion and works itself up into an excellent lather and, eventually, a lovely, bittersweet theme.












But as good as "Geechee Recollections" is, for me the gem of the bunch is "Sweet Earth Flying" (as with the prior album, images are aggravatingly difficult to come by on the web. The above is from Ebay, where the vinyl can be had for around $10 as I type. Go for it!) THe band--and what a band it is--consists of Brown, Muhal Richard Abrams, Paul Bley, Jefferson, McCall and Hassan. Each side is a suite, the title one opening with a gorgeous Bley solo on Fender Rhodes, elaborating with vast feeling on an achingly beautiful theme of Brown's. The whole group comes in on Part Three (I guess Part Two didn't make the cut), Bley still on FR, Muhal playing "Ring modulated Hammond organ" (! - sounds great), Brown's woody tone singing out, bearing some amount of pain. Bill Hassan returns for one of the major highlights on "Prince Willie", for which he penned the words, leaping from Swahili (I think) to English midway through. It's perhaps the most musical vocal recitation piece I've heard in a jazz context, absolutely thrilling. Brown's entrance after the main vocal is also a marvelous and memorable thing. And then...and then, as if that's not enough, Side One close with solo Muhal on acoustic piano. I've said it before and I stand by it: I know of know more stunning and deep example of Muhal's playing than this here, though presumably some of the credit goes to Brown for the thematic material--hard for me to tell how much is improv.

As on the prior LP, the suite taking up the second side (here, "Eleven Light City") is a more expansive, looser-limbed set of material. It's rather different than the pieces on Side One, perhaps a bit less overall impressive but still a fine, fine work. The keyboards dart all over the place, sometimes electric, occasionally not, plus the odd Hammond appearance; indeed, there's a tinge of early 70s Miles to be heard here. Brown has a great, tart solo after a particularly loony ring-modulated section, the perfect antidote. Brown wafts over Bley and Muhal, taking things out with dignity, wistfulness and a touch of sorrow.

That this album has never been issued on disc (at least that I'm aware of) is an enormous shame.


















I think "November Cotton Flower", the final piece of the trilogy, was released on two or three occasions; mine is on the Japanese Baystate label. Recorded five years after "Sweet Earth Flying" with a very different band (Hilton Ruiz, piano; Earl May, bass; Warren Smith, drums; Karl Rausch, guitar) the sound is rather different as well. More subdued, "straighter". I had seen Brown perform once in the meantime, at Axis in Soho, and recall being quite disappointed at the Latin-pop tinge to his music that day; it seemed very superficial and I think it was one of the very rare occasions when I left a live set midway through. This album is better than that, substantially so, but perhaps overly relaxed and routine in its structure. He performs "La Placita" here, a piece I have the impression was fairly ubiquitous in his sets around this time and, I have to say, it doesn't wear well. "Fortunato" carries a lovely theme (reminds me very much of something I can't put my finger on) but again, it's theme-structure-theme, an approach largely avoided on the earlier recordings. The revisiting of "Sweet Earth Flying", though, is quite effective, easily the highlight of the album.













Likely even rarer than the above three releases is the lovely album of Marion Brown compositions performed by Amina Claudine Myers, "Poems for Piano", one of, I think, five recordings ever issued by Sweet Earth Records, from 1979. I'd seen Amina on many an occasion at Environ and elsewhere in the mid-70s but I'd always found her playing in avant jazz groups a bit lacking, far preferring her more gospel and blues oriented work. Here she weds that latter approach with Brown's pieces and the result is quite beautiful. There's a lot of Muhal in her style, true, but when she digs deep into her roots, she's a unique individual ("Sunday Comedown" and much of Side Two). She can go on a bit more than necessary sometimes, as on the rendition of "November Cotton Flower" here, but by and large she's just fine. Some interesting pieces I was otherwise unaware of, like "Evening Song" with its surprising Satie-like phrases. A really nice album. Along with Abrams' "Afrisong", probably my favorite solo piano to come out of the AACM (albeit via Georgia).



Marion Brown's been in poor health in recent years, including undergoing brain surgery and having a portion of a lower limb removed. I think last I heard, he'd relocated to Florida? Very sad. A lovely musician who flies beneath the radar all to often.