Jazz: The Music of Unemployment

Brega

2012-01-05T00:41:00.000-08:00

Happy 2012.

I am still in the home stretch with my book, and in the interest of not allowing this blog to languish in the meantime, I thought I would try something I haven't before: sharing a bit of my written music.

As I mentioned in my last post, most of my time these days is either going toward the book or toward my new band, Proto-human, a six-piece Portland-based ensemble featuring alto and tenor sax, plus a four piece rhythm section (guitar, piano, drums, and bass).

With Proto-human, though I don't wish to analyze the aesthetic too much, I have nevertheless been trying to challenge myself to write using styles and approaches that I kind of got away from in the Industrial Jazz Group. In other words, I'm trying to step out of my comfort zone a bit.

For instance, in the IJG I eventually stopped writing at the piano, or with paper. With Proto-human, most everything I've written so far has been composed at the piano, and most of it has at least been sketched out on paper first.

As another example, most everything I have written for the IJG, and especially in the last five years or so, has been rather heavily and densely arranged, even in the way that improvisation was involved (in my most recent stuff, improvisation was often part of the arrangement, rather than an opportunity to showcase a given soloist). I am proud of the unique sound that resulted, but I knew when I started this new band that I wanted to try to write at least one simple single-page lead sheet type chart, that the group could arrange, and that offered extensive blowing opportunities. Just to hear what would happen.

"Brega" (see below--click to enlarge, and feel free to download) is what I came up with. The word "brega" is Portuguese for "tacky" or "in bad taste." You can decide for yourself whether the tune was aptly named.

If you're in Portland, Oregon, on March 11, 2011, you can hear this tune, and a bunch of my other new pieces, at the Blue Monk, when Scott Hall, David Valdez, Andrew Jones, Justin Morell, Todd Bishop and I premiere them as part of Mary-Sue Tobin's wonderful Sunday Night Jazz Series.

But in any case, by all means feel free to take it for a test drive yourself.

No, I'm not dead

2011-11-10T12:15:00.000-08:00

Wow, it has been a long time since I have posted anything here. My apologies to any of you who were expecting more regular output from me over the last five months or so.

My silence has not been spiteful or petulant, I assure you. I will admit that I have been struggling with the need to go off the grid for a while, however. I have always been ambivalent about my addiction to social media (though perhaps not quite this ambivalent), and I occasionally crave a respite from the visibility it compels. Not without some professional risk: it is becoming more and more impossible to have the sort of music career that willfully ignores the online environment. But I reached some kind of breaking point back in the Spring, and I dealt with the resulting tension by maintaining a haphazard presence on the "big two" platforms (Facebook and Twitter), while neglecting the blog for a bit. In retrospect, I feel like I should have done it the other way round.

In other words, I discovered that I truly missed blogging. Facebook and Twitter, on the other hand -- don't know if I would miss them if I could somehow break free. I participate, but participation takes energy -- and not always "good energy." Often it is the energy of shallow distraction, the energy of trying to keep up with all of the excellent things my musical friends and associates are doing -- a worthy enough endeavor, but one that, given its scale, comes at the cost of focusing on what I want to be doing, and maybe even one that threatens to undercut my own integrity as an artist. I worry about speaking just to speak, about becoming just another strident voice added to the self-aggrandizing din. (After all, who am I to distract you from the things you want to be doing?) But mostly, I worry about priorities, and time.

Of course, there have also been technical reasons for my silence here. The biggest is that I am still not finished with my damned book. Yes, I am very close, and yes, I expect to have it completed by the end of the year. But I have been saying similar things for some time now, n'est-ce pas?

The issue is this: in the process of revising the original manuscript over the last year and a half, and passing it around to various people, who have been giving me useful (at times brutally useful) feedback, I feel like I have brought the thing within striking distance of being a much better, more thorough, more compelling book than I ever imagined was possible in the first place.

That revelation has proved to be a heady wine, but it has also forced me to be patient. Indeed, the kind of excellence I am after has required more motherfucking patience than I thought was humanly possible. (Thankfully, my agent has even more patience than that.)

Patience is new territory for me. While I have always tried to be thorough and exacting in my work, I have also tended to give in to the impulse to move a composition (whether it be prose or music) through the pipeline, rather than lingering over it for too long. There was always something more important about the overall flow, about the collective statement of a body of work, than about any one piece in particular. I still think there is a basic value in that approach, but something about writing a book -- 300 pages or so that need to hang together in a single coherent line of thought -- has led me to obsess about this work more, and, perhaps, to give in to the agony of self-criticism more. Not so much that it leads to writer's block. But enough to extend my timeline a bit.

December. I think I will finish this by December.

* * * * *

What about the IJG? Well, I'd be lying if I said it hadn't become a bit of a struggle to keep it going in recent months. Let me be clear: like me, the band is not dead, we are just lying low for a bit. Aside from the energy it is taking me to write the book, there is a bit of a background here, a psychic melodrama that extends back a few years. After the disappointing "Rocktober" tour in 2009 (as I said, psychic melodrama: other people tell me it wasn't that bad), I made a pact with myself that when it came to the IJG I would no longer seek out or accept the kind of endearing but ineffective gigs I had grown too accustomed to over the years. No more cafe gigs for a percentage of the door. No more art galleries that couldn't guarantee a crowd. No more cramped stages with crappy acoustics. No more bullshit. I had put up with that kind of thing for too long, because I loved the music. But in 2009 the equation changed. The bullshit threatened to make me love the music less, and that scared me.

For a while, my newfound purist self-righteousness seemed to work nicely. We gigged less, but the gigs were better. Highlights included performances at LA's Hammer Museum, an always-enjoyable annual jaunt to San Diego, and a trip to Milan that was one of the best performance experiences of my life. (That last is a tale I have yet to tell, I know.) But for the last six months or so, the telephone has been pretty quiet. To make the situation more complicated, there has been a new IJG album in the queue for two years now. I have discovered an exquisite talent for belaboring the mix on that one. I'm still not quite sure I want to release it.

In short, every time I sit down to work on IJG stuff, I am put in mind of this Berlioz quote:

I dreamed one night that I was composing a symphony, and heard it in my dream. On waking next morning I could recall nearly the whole of the first movement, which was an allegro in A minor in two-four time. . . I was going to my desk to begin writing it down, when I suddenly thought: If I do, I shall be led on to compose the rest. My ideas always tend to expand nowadays, this symphony could well be on an enormous scale. I shall spend perhaps three or four months on the work [. . .] during which time I shall do no articles, or very few, and my income will diminish accordingly. When the symphony is written I shall be weak enough to let myself be persuaded by my copyist to have it copied, which will immediately put me a thousand or twelve hundred francs in debt. Once the parts exist, I shall be plagued by the temptation to have the work performed. I shall give a concert, the receipts of which will barely cover one half of the costs -- that is inevitable these days. I shall lose what I haven't got.

These thoughts made me shudder, and I threw down my pen, thinking: What of it? I shall have forgotten it by tomorrow! That night the symphony again appeared and obstinately resounded in my head. [. . .] I woke in state of feverish excitement. I sang the theme to myself; its form and character pleased me exceedingly. I was on the point of getting up. Then my previous thoughts recurred and held me fast. I lay still, steeling myself against temptation, clinging to the hope I would forget. At last I fell asleep, and when I next awoke all recollection had vanished for ever.

That's a weird place to be -- to be in touch with your own talents, to have the artistic self-confidence that comes from experience and maturity, and yet to feel a sense of dread about actually bringing a work to fruition, or to even bother with the first steps. Part of you wants to destroy each composition in the womb, because you know the agony that will attend its realization process somewhere down the road. Writing itself is no problem -- it's the same joy it always was, and melodies come to you in your dreams, while walking the dog, during dinner. You know each piece can be something beautiful, maybe even something astonishing. But what a pain in the ass it will be to actually get it performed! What a pain in the ass it will be to actually get anyone to hear it!

It's hard to write about this sort of thing without sounding self-indulgent. But honestly, these are the realities that all independent composers must face -- I'm just articulating them, not arguing for apathy in the face of them. (Of course the challenge is particularly acute when it comes to large ensemble music.)

My own way out of this dilemma, for the time being, has been to create a parallel experience while I quietly scan the horizon for the IJG's next adventure. In other words, to start another band. Even in the face of the realities I just outlined, the urge to write never goes away, and I have realized that if it doesn't have an outlet, that in itself is a risk factor for depression (for me). In fact, being technically band-less since March is probably one of the reasons I have been over-thinking all of the things I have been over-thinking. I'm worried about where that might take me if I'm not careful.

Starting a Portland band is something I have been pondering for a while. It's a little absurd how long it has taken me, given the fact that I have been living in this town since 2006. But this year, for the first time, I have actually tried to make it happen. The process itself has been a struggle. There have been many close calls and false starts, with potential new project after potential new project dying upon the rocks of scheduling difficulties and incompatible chemistry.

But now that the year is drawing to a close, I'm in rehearsals with a thing that seems to be cohering into an actual entity, and actual ensemble. At the very least it's nice to have some new music of mine raise its head and blink at the world for the first time.

The players may be known to you: David Valdez on alto, Scott Hall on tenor, Andrew Jones on bass, Todd Bishop on drums, Justin Morrell on guitar. I am playing keys, as best as I am able.

I'll have more to say about this soon, I hope.

What's next? I don't know yet, but I promise not to keep you in the dark for another five months.

Thanks for reading.

Some things never stay the same

2011-06-05T01:00:00.000-07:00

Supposedly, Duke Ellington once said this:

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

Assuming that was ever true, is it still true?

I suppose one could argue that it is still true in the sense that most jazz musicians still tend not to be very materially successful, and most parents still generally don't want their daughters to associate with freeloaders.

(One way in which it is certainly not true, or at least not complete, is that it doesn't take note of the fact that many daughters are now playing jazz too.)

But I'm pretty sure that the material interpretation is not what Ellington meant. I think, in his suave and elegant way, he was trying to say something about how jazz is connected to illicit pleasure, to rebellion, to the social underbelly, to life as an outsider. I think he was saying that jazz is the music of cool weirdos who are vaguely threatening in some way.

Is THAT still true?

[Photo credit: "KFC Taco Bell Wedding" by Macrofarm]

I know what you mean

2011-05-09T00:20:00.000-07:00

This post will end with a quote for the ages, taken from Exit Through the Gift Shop, a fascinating street art documentary.

If you don't know Exit, here's the Wikipedia summary:

Exit Through the Gift Shop: A Banksy Film is a film directed by Banksy that tells the story of Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant in Los Angeles, and his obsession with street art. The film charts Guetta's constant documenting of his every waking moment on film, from a chance encounter with his cousin, the artist Invader, to his introduction to a host of street artists with a focus on Shepard Fairey and Banksy, whose anonymity is preserved by obscuring his face and altering his voice, to Guetta's eventual fame as a street artist himself.

"Fame," in its most negative sense, is the key word here. Guetta, who through the course of the film becomes more and more unhinged, eventually succumbs to the temptation to make art. But as far as I can tell, it is all flash and nonsense, his work, all hipness unto death, without substance. (A key measure of Guetta's "success" as an artist is that Madonna asks him to design the cover for a "Greatest Hits" album. Of course she does.) "Artist," like "documentary filmmaker," or "clothing store owner" (the other things Guetta does in this film) seems like just another mask to try on. And frankly, it also seems like another way for Guetta to avoid his wife and three young kids.

Whatever. Some have speculated that the story of Guetta is an elaborate hoax, a joke by Banksy, but I dunno. I knew people like this when I lived in Los Angeles. It was hard to avoid them. If the film is a satire, its details are spot-on, and it is more depressing than funny.

Anyway, when Guetta finally succumbs to his artistic impulses, he puts together a huge exhibition, under the ridiculous moniker "Mr. Brainwash," and (surprise), the Los Angeles art cogniscenti fall for it, making his exhibition (the stupidly titled "Life is Beautiful") an instant hit. Banksy (the more interesting artist, though not immune to bombast himself) is left scratching his head, wondering how this ne'er-do-well could have ended up raking in millions of dollars simply by turning out tedious nonsense like this. Or at least that's the vibe I got toward the end of the film, when Banksy utters these words:

I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art.

(pause)

I don't do that so much anymore.

Go watch, and let me know if you see his point.

[photo credit: 416Style]

More rebellious than thou

2011-04-26T09:30:00.000-07:00

Recently had the pleasure of watching Until the Light Takes Us, a fascinating documentary about the Norweigian Black Metal scene. I knew pretty much nothing about this music going in -- I wouldn't say I came out of the experience as a full-on fan, but my curiosity has definitely been piqued.

In some ways, the movie gets at the same old conundrum the avant-garde has been grappling with ever since the triple whammy of serialism, punk, and free jazz. Specifically: if your aesthetic is driven by rule-breaking, where do you go once you have broken all the rules?

(I realize of course that serialism in particular has a lot of rules--but note that they all seem designed to break the old rules about how music should be made, or about what sounds beautiful.)

Anyway, for evidence of this conundrum in Light, see, for instance, this fascinating interview exchange with Gylve "Fenriz" Nagell (of the band Darkthrone). (Disclaimer: English is clearly not Fenriz's first language.)

Interviewer: For me, I have the impression when I read your interviews and also when I listen to your lyrics that you've now become a little less provocative than you were maybe eight or nine years ago...

Nagell: Wow! Wow! You think so? That is so interesting, because I think. like, eight years ago, I didn't really do, like, provoking shit, I did... because Christian people were not going to read my lyrics, right? So they're not going to be provocative. What I wrote then was, I see now in hindsight, I see that this is what people that were into occult, or obscure, or anti-Christian things, that was the sort of lyrics they wanted to read. It maybe give them strength, but it was also sort of fiction and maybe it created an outlet for my fucking head. What I've been doing the last two albums is what should drive people to suicide and it's really taking out the strength because you can't really get strength from the lyrics in the last two albums [...] So I'm thinking, I'm really just pleasing, and I'm caressing the dog with its hairs, you know, as we speak, "dogs" being the fans or whatever, that want to listen to the album, I'm just, it turns out, I was writing just what they wanted, okay, and now I'm writing what no one wants, because that is to be really fucking depressed if you really understand it, and then, wanting to take your fucking life. At least I do. Because looking at my lyrics for the last two albums, I'm seeing my fucking world in hell.

(A pause.)

Interviewer: Okay, thanks for taking the time.

Nagell: Okay, thanks for your time.

Interviewer: And I wish you a nice evening.

Nagell: Oh, have a beautiful evening. Alright! See ya later, hey hey!

It's hard to convey through the transcript, but as I listened, I could have sworn I detected a bit of disappointment in Fenriz's voice. And where he goes from there -- one could paraphrase it as "I'm so provocative that I'll make you want to kill yourself" -- is an almost perfect illustration of the trap some artists find themselves in when they subscribe to the rule-breaking model of creativity.

And yet the rule-breaking model of creativity is where the fun is, isn't it?

Little Black Dress

2011-04-02T00:21:00.000-07:00

A feature written for saxophonist Mary-Sue Tobin, who takes a wicked solo at around the 1:50 minute point. If you ever needed proof that I love old-school, blues-inflected large ensemble jazz, here it is.

Recorded March 3 at Royal/T in Culver City, CA, a few hours before we got on a plane for Milan.

Featuring Damon Zick (soprano sax), Evan Francis (alto sax), Brian Walsh (tenor sax), Mary-Sue Tobin (tenor sax), Cory Wright (baritone sax), Dan Rosenboom (trumpet), Josh Aguiar (trumpet), Ian Carroll (bone), Mike Richardson (bone), Sam Bevan (bass), Dan Schnelle (drums), Jill Knapp (vocals), Tany Ling (vocals), Andrew Durkin (composition, conducting). (Sadly, trumpeter Kris Tiner was not at this show, because of severe family complications. More on that in my Milan write-up.)

You probably can't hear it in this clip (the audio is fairly lo-fi, and the venue was rather live), but the band is sounding better than ever. I cannot fucking wait to get a good studio recording of us so that I can prove it to you.

Video helpfully provided by Tany Ling.

(By the way, Jill Knapp just posted a brief Milan retrospective here. Mine is coming soon, I swear.)

Comparisons

2011-03-21T14:29:00.000-07:00

This, via Ballon Juice's DougJ, cracked me up today:

Although I am very hostile to the Catholic Church, I still have some fondness for Catholics and Catholicism. Certainly, I think Catholicism has a stronger cultural tradition than the other Christian religions. You’ve got the Italian Renaissance, you’ve got James Joyce (I know he stopped believing and stuff, but he was influenced). What have the Protestants got? “Amazing Grace” is the only thing that comes to mind.

It’s the same way I feel about heroin and cocaine. With heroin, you’ve got Charlie Parker, Exile On Main Street, and Edgar Allen Poe. With cocaine, once you get past Lawrence Taylor’s 1985 season and a few episodes of “Mork and Mindy”, there’s very little that anyone will remember a hundred years from now.

Though I was raised Catholic, I have long been an apostate. Still, after seeing Il Duomo in Milan, I'd say Mr. J has a point.

Get what's needed

2011-03-19T02:34:00.000-07:00

This image was taken by my beautiful wife. It's a misplaced "to do" list that she found in a shopping cart at the local Fred Meyer store. Is there a name for this genre?

"Get what's needed": isn't that pretty much the upshot of everything? The meaning of life, even?

Ah, the flotsam and jetsam that we leave in the world, often without even realizing it. I sometimes wonder about the confusion I would inflict upon an unsuspecting reader if they were to happen upon one of my lost notebooks.

La vie d'un chien

2011-03-14T12:26:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I saw this charming little film about a scientist who figures out how to change himself into a dog. I thought I would share.

A passing truck captures his attention. He feels the strong urge to chase it. The compulsion is overwhelming. He runs for blocks, barking ceaselessly. The pursuit is pointless. Fruitless. Even if he could catch the truck, what would he do? Such questions are irrelevant. The pursuit itself is the point, and in this solitary moment his obsession is total. Mind, body, heart, and soul sing in unison, in singular commitment to the chase. Every goal, plan, or belief he has ever devised in three decades of life as a human is revealed as hollow, a travesty, forgotten or ignored in the passion of this moment.

Watch the whole thing; it's only about 14 minutes.

(And yes, for those of you who have been asking, a post about the IJG's recent Italian trip is coming soon. Here's a preview: it was AWESOME.)

The most important lesson from Esperanza Spalding's upset Grammy win over Justin Bieber?

2011-02-14T11:14:00.000-08:00

I think it is encapsulated in this statement from Peter Hum:

If Spalding’s only tweeted seven times and has only 9,000 or so followers, she’s probably only been delinquent with her social networking because she’s more focused on making music.

As we all should be!

I don't know Spalding's music very well, and I don't know Bieber's music at all. (Lucky for me, my six year old doesn't know Bieber's music either.) Plus, it's silly to pretend that the Grammys are a true barometer of musical value. But even from a distance, this was a pleasant turn of events, and it should make us all smile a little bit.

[Photo credit: Pennello]

Egypt

2011-02-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

"I know there are many -- Muslim and non-Muslim -- who question whether we can forge this new beginning. Some are eager to stoke the flames of division, and to stand in the way of progress. Some suggest that it isn't worth the effort -- that we are fated to disagree, and civilizations are doomed to clash. Many more are simply skeptical that real change can occur. There's so much fear, so much mistrust that has built up over the years. But if we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward. And I want to particularly say this to young people of every faith, in every country -- you, more than anyone, have the ability to reimagine the world, to remake this world."

Barack Obama, speaking in Cairo, June 2009

[Photo credit: Steve Rhodes]

"D'oh"?

2011-01-14T13:14:00.001-08:00

Is it me, or is this kind of an unusual photo of Ellington?

Wow, I like it.

[source: Wikimedia Commons]

Writing a book is hard

2011-01-06T09:59:00.000-08:00

Probably the hardest thing I've ever done, it turns out. Writing a blog is much easier. Hell, writing weird big band music is much easier.

With blogging, at least, you don't have to plan for every contingency. You throw some opinion out into the ether, and if people disagree with it, they say so, and (wonder of wonders!) there is a "comment" function that allows you to engage in a discussion. (That is, it allows you to engage in a discussion when you're not too busy writing a book.) You can gradually tease out the nuances of the subject by posting variations on a theme. Everything is in flux, because, well, it's the Internet. Nothing is "permanent" (even though nothing ever really disappears). Sure, sometimes the responses and ensuing arguments can get a little mean-spirited and rough (though hardly ever on this particular blog, and I thank you for that). But there's a sense that all can be forgiven, amended, improved... because, again, it's the Internet. The whole thing almost has the dynamic of an "oral culture."

A book feels much more "cast iron," much more "this-text-will-represent-you-for-all-time." (It's not really either of those things, of course, but it sure feels as if it is.) It's easy to become obsessed with the futile task of anticipating every criticism (as if that is even possible), following through on every "but what if?" and every "on the other hand." It's one thing to spin that sort of stuff out in an actual conversation. But in a book? A real book? A book I want to be a knock-out, because it may be the only book I ever write? It's the most elaborate dance I've ever done.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this provocative observation from Christopher Small, one of the many writers whose work I am visiting and revisiting as I near the completion of this project. (It's a blog post! I can veer over to a new subject any time I want!) This bit is from his Music of the Common Tongue:

Thus the participants in a symphony concert are bringing into existence, for the duration of the performance, an ideal industrial society, in which each individual is solitary and autonomous, tidy, disciplined and stable, punctual and reliable, the division of labour is clear, the relationships are impersonal and functional, and the whole is under the control of a charismatic figure armed with clearly defined authority. The music played is drawn from a repertory which, like the ideal industrial culture, is standardized the whole world over and played in a standard manner; it is a repertory of musical works which themselves either celebrate the individualist values of western industrial culture or can be forced into that mould: it consists of abstract dramas of the individual soul through which performers and listeners alike can participate vicariously in the processes of becoming and overcoming, or else of abstract dances, many of them hijacked from more dancing cultures, in which the performance invites us implicitly to do what the concert-hall conventions prohibit us from doing, or else of abstract landscapes, of fantasy Espanas, Americas, Hebridean Islands or pastoral Englands of nostalgia or of the tourist imagination. Above all, it is a society in which producers and consumers of the commodity, music, fulfill clearly defined and separate roles. In the ceremony called a symphony concert, which brings this ideal society into existence, the values of performers and listeners, and their sense of who they are, are explored, affirmed and celebrated. It need hardly be said that, for those who do not share these values, neither the concert-hall ritual not the symphonic drama is likely to be of much interest.

I often wonder about the parallels between the symphony orchestra and the big band. (And how to avoid them.) But that's a subject that will have to wait for another post.

[photo credit: Foxtongue]

RIP Don Van Vliet

2010-12-17T22:31:00.000-08:00

The first Captain Beefheart song I ever heard was "I Love You, You Big Dummy," when I was about 16 or 17. Fred Frith was filling in as a guest DJ on WFMU one night, and I happened to record most of his broadcast to cassette (I did that sort of thing frequently -- it was one of the main ways I learned about new music). I got the sense that Frith really didn't want to play the track, except that he was getting a lot of requests for Beefheart, and wanted to get it out of the way. He accidentally started "Dummy" at the wrong speed (too slow), and I remember thinking that the music sounded even weirder after he corrected the problem halfway through.

I would eventually wear out that particular cassette, but I hardly remember any of the other artists Frith played that night.

Of course Trout Mask Replica is the classic Beefheart album. For me it preceded my Zappa infatuation. But I have always particularly adored Shiny Beast, especially "Tropical Hot Dog Night" (which kicks in at about 3:50 on the above clip). That song, for whatever reason, saved me from madness when I moved to LA in 1995. Coincidentally I played it for my elementary school band this year, and for a few minutes they seemed to understand what it meant to be overjoyed at the possibility of being utterly unique.

Beefheart seemed to have a Monk-like trust in the worthiness of the most basic aesthetic gesture. It's a cliche to cite the "child-like sensibility" of some artists, but with Beefheart it really was a key part of his appeal.

Did I say Monk? I could also have said Ornette Coleman. But I'd be better off citing Lester Bangs making that same comparison, more eloquently than I ever could (Bangs' review of Lick My Decals Off, Baby may still be the definitive essay on Beefheart, though it gets a little bombastic toward the end):

The comparison with Coleman is apt on more than one level: both ushered in new decades with conceptions of ensemble improvisation so unheard of as to raise wide controversy; both have concerned their music with the rising spirit of man, the unforced compassion and insight that led Coleman to write songs like "Lonely Woman" and "Beauty is a Rare Thing," Beefheart to "Frownland" and "I Love You, You Big Dummy"; and most significantly, no matter how far out both have gotten, the primitive American blues heritage has always been implicit in everything they've done.

All good points, though the "unforced compassion" is worth underscoring, particularly in relation to the basic sullen contrivance that seems to drive some of the indie-est rock (or jazz) today. People love Beefheart's music because it is affectionate, and it feels good, no matter how dark it gets:

. . . in an age of pervasive artistic negativism, we have in Cap a new-old man refusing to discard the heart and humanity and essential innocence that Western culture has at least pretended to cultivate for three thousand years and which our electrified, relativistic generation seems all too willing to scrap as irrelevant sentimental bullshit. When Cap beams: "My smile is stuck/I cannot go back to your frownland/My spirit's made up of the ocean/And the sky/And the sun and the moon/And all my eyes can see...Take my hand/And come with me/It is not too late for you/It is not too late for me...." he stands at a point of pristine enlightenment that acid can't confer.

I was going to say something about it being hard to imagine any of Beefheart's many imitators being able to convincingly deliver an opening line like "My smile is stuck / I cannot go back to your frownland" . . . and then I realized that Beefheart doesn't really have many imitators. Or, actually, any.

QED and RIP.

Those who can't do, teach, and then their students secure their legacy

2010-11-30T08:38:00.000-08:00

This section of a Christoph Wolff essay on Bach--and particularly the bit about "scores of students and their pupils' students" working to "organize and eventually consolidate Bach's lasting influence"--made me laugh out loud:

It seems worth noting at this point that Bach’s most important musical contemporaries, Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi, and Rameau, who all wrote music that had a broader appeal, and was more widely disseminated than Bach’s, were completely remote from the discussion and the scene in which the eighteenth-century concept of original genius emerged. Two explanations offer themselves. First, their compositional art, whether applied to opera, oratorio, concerto, or any other vocal and instrumental genre, was widely recognized and acknowledged as superior. There is no question about the quality, beauty, appeal, technical make-up, or poetic and expressive character of their music. Yet none of their compositional achievements brought about any fundamental and long-lasting changes by way of discovery and new inventions. Second, Bach lived and worked for twenty-seven years in an academically challenging environment, and his main activities consisted of teaching. Hence, scores of students and their pupils’ students helped organize and eventually consolidate Bach’s lasting influence, a phenomenon that none of his musical colleagues sustained.

You could literally spend decades pondering the extent to which everything you think about the art that you like (or don't like) is socially-constructed. No wonder most of us don't.

(By the way, I adore the music of Bach, Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi, and Rameau.)

[Photo credit: nathanrussell]

That's my life's work, thanks for listening

2010-11-18T10:00:00.000-08:00

Just saw the documentary on Harry Nilsson. Highly recommended.

At one point, songwriter Jimmy Webb describes a scene toward the end of Harry's life. The story just stuck with me. Maybe it will stick with you, too:

I remember one night, about a month before he died, we went out on the street, and we walked about half a block and there's Harry's car. We got in, and he said, "I just want you to listen to this with me." And he had two or three tapes, and he took 'em out, and he put 'em in the sound system, and we started listening to Harry's songs. And we must've listened for a couple hours. And he played one after the other. New ones, old ones, some that I had heard before, some I knew he had written and hadn't gotten recorded, some that he wanted to record, some that weren't finished, but they were all wry and tender and funny and vulnerable and sweet and sour at the same time. We got to the end and the last song played and the tape player clicked and it was silent in the car and he looked around and Santa Monica was quiet, just me and Harry in the car. And he said, "Well," he said, "that's my life's work." He said, "Thanks for listening." And that's the last time I saw him.

Is there really any point in trying to imagine a more touching, elegant, dignified way to go than that?

Talking about the no-talking blues

2010-11-13T13:27:00.000-08:00

Still, consensually, critics showed their frustration. They didn't understand what the group was trying to do. The rhythm section was more or less given a pass, but it was the saxophone soloing that challenged credulity, its length and perhaps its unwillingness to tell a traditional story.

For what it's worth, in all the existing recordings of Coltrane's group in Europe from those years (1962 and '63), Coltrane gave a spoken introduction exactly three times. If there's one thing the facile critic needs to do his job, it is some verbal personality from the bandstand, some words to transcribe into the review--anything to make a thoroughly musical endeavor more literary or conversational. Coltrane would not provide it.

[. . .]

At this time Coltrane was as much of a culture hero within jazz as Charles Mingus, but, unlike Mingus, he didn't worry out loud about the place of jazz in American society. He was curiously uncompelled to publicly condemn uncomprehending listeners, whether for reasons of aesthetics, philosophy, culture, or race; he seemed to believe in his music implicitly.

(Ben Ratliff, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, pp. 77-82)

"Curiously," indeed. Unless you understand that Coltrane was simply behaving, vis a vis his own music, in the way that he had to behave, because it felt most natural given the sound he was making in his groups.

I'm no Coltrane, but I often ask myself (sometimes even from the bandstand, moments before I'm supposed to announce a tune) whether there is anything left to say once you put everything you have, every last bit of whatever creative well you are drawing from, into a given piece of music.

If a critic, or audience, or passerby, needs more than the music somehow, well, that's fine. They certainly have that right. But, by the same token, life isn't always fair, and you can't always get what you want.

[Photo credit: "talk talk (FSOD)" by PinkMoose]

Take care of yourselves, and each other

2010-10-25T23:10:00.000-07:00

Q: There seems to be more and more obtrusive music and noise in public in our everyday lives. Would you say this is bad?

A: Yes, unequivocally. Our systems were not designed to withstand this onslaught every minute of our lives. We need to adopt the more advanced European standard of an alert-action sound level of 80 decibels, instead of the 85 we have now. In Sweden, I saw kindergartens with a wall of lights working as sound monitors: Green lights came on when voices were quiet and moderate, and yellow ones flashed when the noise increased. At 80 dB, red ones lit up. Visually, the children could see when they were being too noisy in the classroom. They could self-monitor.

Q: What about MP3 players?

A: The use of things such as iPods, which are forcing sound right down into the ear canal with the newer, tighter ear buds, is going to produce hearing loss and other auditory issues at far younger ages than we’ve seen in the past. This is going to be an epidemic of great proportions in our world. We also must educate ourselves and our children that making music that is too loud is not a well-thought-out activity. Children in bands or orchestras should wear ear protection in the form of musician’s plugs, which come with filters of 9, 15, or 25 decibels. We know there is a relationship between tinnitus, hyperacusis, and noise exposure, so let’s work harder to prevent those cases when we are easily able.

(From an interview with Dr. Marsha Johnson.)

A few weeks ago I had a brief, scary, and, for me, new experience with something that I now suspect could have been a bout of tinnitus. (I dunno, does tinnitus come in "bouts"?) To wit: it was a weird, faint ringing in my right ear, and it lasted for a few days. It has since disappeared, but I'm loathe to follow up with an audiologist, because, well, I'm freaked out by the possibility of bad news about my ears. Cuz I kind of need my ears to keep working.

Then again, why should I be even a little surprised if my hearing is indeed deteriorating noticeably? I shudder to think of the number of hours I have spent wearing a set of headphones (always my favorite way to experience music), or playing keyboards in a bad (read: overly-loud) bar band, or standing in front of any given IJG horn section. I have always craved total immersion in music, and considered it the price of any claim to legitimacy as a composer ("what do you mean, you've never heard of such-and-such a band?!"). But I wonder if the human ear is able to withstand the influx of sonic information that corresponds with such a desire / compulsion? Particularly in the context of a world that is already filled to the brim with sound? (When was the last time you really experienced "silence," anyway?)

I also wonder how many of us in this profession (i.e., the "music business," or its extension, the "music criticism business") truly know how good or bad our hearing actually is -- beyond the impression of authority that is the inevitable byproduct of having a point of view? Are we musical omnivores of the early twenty-first century already part of an "epidemic of great proportions," without even knowing it?

[photo credit: "Warning!" by Roger B.]

It's all been done before

2010-10-14T00:09:00.000-07:00

Commentary from Kiel Bryant, from a terrific essay by Michael Heilemann, on the origins of Chewbacca:

I’m dismayed by the cult of originality — it sets up impossible, false expectations which fail to grasp what art is. Innovation is good, exploration is to be encouraged — they build on what’s gone before — but more often than not it’s enjoyable to simply experience an idea well-conceived, regardless of that idea’s source or its “originality.” And in the final analysis, were Star Wars [or Raiders of the Lost Ark] ever intended to be wildly original? No, they’re pastiche — valentines to the swashbuckling genres of yore. Kids, especially millennials, make a simple and honest mistake borne out of youth: they see Star Wars before they’ve seen its inspirations and assume it came that way fully assembled, direct from Lucas’ head. They witness result, not process. Then, growing as artists or cinephiles, their awareness gradually enlarges, the supporting armature begins to show — and because the film wasn’t what they’d originally dreamt (a total creation, which is an impossibility), they decide George Lucas isn’t worth the praise they originally foisted on him. Absolutely circular, and absolutely pointless.

The idea that people could "fail to grasp what art is" -- this is one of my concerns, too. It seems vaguely unhealthy to me. In fact, it's one of the things that drove me to revise the book that is giving me grief as I ready it for consumption by a general audience. (Hence this brief period of infrequent blog posts.)

I don't know why it bothers me so much that people would fail to see art in all of its exploded, humble glory... but it does. Many artists want you to ignore the trajectories of influence behind their work, but I think these things are vitally important. Because when it comes to our own self-importance as "creators," we're all faking it, to some extent.

[Photo credit: Vinoth Chandar]

Commitment

2010-10-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

Charles Peterson, in the film Hype, describing the Seattle music scene in the 1990s:

We were all so fucking bored out of our heads that it was get drunk, fall down, and, uh, you know, throw your body around, and all the bands that came through Seattle at that time [...] said that Seattle had the most exciting, potent scene going on in the US. They all loved to play here because everyone would just, like, go nuts, and drink themselves into a frenzy, and throw themselves onstage, and it was very flattering for these bands, you know, whereas, you go to Los Angeles or New York, and people stood there and went "hmmm... [rubbing chin] I don't know, he missed a note, there."

I was never a big fan of grunge, but do people genuinely "go nuts" over any kind of music any more? Loving music seems so... polite, these days.

[photo credit: Philo Nordlund]

The usefulness of quiet

2010-10-02T10:42:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the long silence... I will follow up on all unattended conversations soon, I promise.

In the meantime, speaking of silence:

I have written about Maya Deren before. Last night I finally had an opportunity to finish the anthology of her short experimental films that has been sitting in my Netflix queue for months. I do recommend it.

Most of these films were produced in the forties, if I remember correctly, and what is kind of interesting about that is that many of them are silent. Not "silent" as in "no sound was recorded with the film, but producers added it later, for a modern audience" (as is the case with most so-called "silent" cinema). These films were truly silent. Which is a hard enough feat when your film is driven by some sort of narrative, but probably harder when you're dealing with abstractions, surrealism, kinetic studies, and image for its own sake, as I think Deren was.

I can imagine the strong motivation to find a way to add sound to early film, at least to the extent that early film was an extension of theater. And I can imagine the great excitement that must have obtained when someone finally figured out a way to do it. In that context, the deliberate choice to be silent seems fairly radical. In any case, I like it because it demonstrates an important principle that I sometimes lose sight of: the fact that a tool or technique exists is not a good reason to use it.

[photo credit: fradaveccs]

Who died and made you Dean?

2010-09-19T01:12:00.000-07:00

Silly critics. So often, they write beautifully, but when you scratch the surface, you discover that they really have no idea what the fuck they're talking about.

I was recently reminded of Robert Christgau's infamous rating system (an adaption of which is currently in use by at least one other critic I like) when it was helpfully quoted by 43 Folders:

An A+ record is an organically conceived masterpiece that repays prolonged listening with new excitement and insight. It is unlikely to be marred by more than one merely ordinary cut.

An A is a great record both of whose sides offer enduring pleasure and surprise. You should own it.

An A- is a very good record. If one of its sides doesn’t provide intense and consistent satisfaction, then both include several cuts that do.

[… further explanations, then …]

A D+ is an appalling piece of pimpwork or a thoroughly botched token of sincerity.

It is impossible to understand why anyone would buy a D record.

It is impossible to understand why anyone would release a D- record.

It is impossible to understand why anyone would cut an E+ record.

E records are frequently cited as proof that there is no God.

An E- record is an organically conceived masterpiece that repays repeated listening with a sense of horror in the face of the void. It is unlikely to be marred by one listenable cut.

And as I re-read this, I wondered: what does this system really tell us, except for the fact that Christgau has a robust sense of humor and a knack for a memorable turn of phrase?

Robert Christgau's infamous rating system, boiled down to its essence:

An A+ record is a record I love the most.

An A is a record I love a little less than an A+.

An A- is a record I love a little less than an A.

[… further explanations, then …]

A D+ is a record I don't like.

A D is a record I like even less than that.

A D- is a record I like even less than that.

An E+ is a record I like even less than that.

An E is a record I like even less than that.

An E- is a record I like least of all.

I don't know, I guess I desire deeper explanations.

Also, one other question: why stop at E-, Bob? You've got the entire freakin' alphabet to work with.

[photo credit: Hillary the mammal]

Choices

2010-09-16T09:14:00.000-07:00

Christian Scott (who I like), quoted here, and seeming to channel Emperor Joseph II:

“I think the trumpeters who play the fewest notes have the most distinctive voices. Maybe that’s why those other guys play so many notes—because they haven’t found their voice yet.”

Too many notes? Too few notes? Who cares! Just play the right notes.

[Photo credit: misocrazy]

Go Beth Go

2010-09-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

Hey you! It's Beth Schenck on the Jazz Session, talking about her fantastic new record with the always excellent Jason Crane.

If you don't know who Beth is, you should. (Hint: she has played a lot with the IJG.)

Here's an excerpt from a press release I wrote for her a few months ago:

Brooklyn-based saxophonist and composer Beth Schenck is proud to present the release of her debut album, What Shock Heard. An introspective, plaintive, and quietly bold recording, Shock documents a set of compositions written during what Schenck calls “an incredibly turbulent time in my life.” In addition to the leader on alto and soprano saxophone, the disc showcases the talents of guitarist Matt Wrobel, tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry, drummer Jeff Davis, and bassist Eivind Opsvik; it was recorded live to tape by Andy Tomasi.

The word “shock” in the album title is simultaneously apropos and misleading. The music contained within can indeed be surprising; the melodic contours are sometimes jagged, and the performances are raw. Schenck has stated that she did not want to create a “slick” recording (Shock was recorded without a single overdub or edit) and the resulting sound is that of unprocessed emotion. But it is this same emotional content, effectively conveyed despite the absence of a specific context or back-story, which also makes this music frank, beautiful, and, in the end, strangely peaceful. There is a repetitive, hypnotic intensity to many of the compositions. Many are also constructed episodically (somewhat rare for a small group recording), adding to the sense of an underlying narrative. One might argue that the result is the sound of a soul in crisis and, ultimately, redemption.

Go listen to the music.

[photo credit: Steve Noreyko]

Don't Shoot (I'm a Man)

2010-09-10T09:30:00.000-07:00

I've written about Devo before, so some of you may know that though I came to them sort of late (something that is also true about Zappa), they have since become one of my favorite bands.

Still, I was little scared to check out the new album, because, as Marc Masters put it in his Pitchfork review, "there are a few bad omens hovering around Something For Everybody. It's been two decades since Devo last attempted a full album of new music--and 1990's Smooth Noodle Maps wasn't memorable." These seemed to me to be reasonable fears. In any case it has taken me a few months to get around to actually listening to SFE.

Turns out I disagree with much of the rest of Masters' assessment. (That's not surprising when it comes to me and Pitchfork reviewers, alas.) To my ear, most of the good songs on this album are stacked toward the beginning, and the clunkers ("Human Rocket," "Sumthin'," "Step Up," and "Cameo") kick in after track five, not before.

More importantly, I'm not prepared to dismiss the album as "self-parody" or overly "self-conscious," as Masters comes close to doing. (I'm not even sure I understand what "self-parody" would be, if the self in question is a parodist in the first place. How does one parody the act of parody?)

To me, a more productive way to look at this album is to consider what happens when parody effectively becomes the thing it is parodying. Parody on its own implies an omniscient narrator, commenting on something from a perhaps loving, but also superior, critical, and ultimately safe distance. But when parody is taken to its logical extreme, the power relationship is reversed. We're left with failure, because the thing being parodied has proven to be impervious.

I can't help feeling that SFE is chock full of the sound of this dynamic, the sound of Devo being absorbed into the very commercial monster it once mocked from a distance. (What else could explain the presence of autotune on the album?) It's actually kind of scary to listen to, as the parodist's autonomy seems to disappear in a pit of consummate self-abnegation (perfectly symbolized in this case by the very Freudian cover image of a Devo power dome being eaten by a beautiful woman).

If we should all just disappear
The skies and waters will clear in a world without us

The lucky ones are gonna be the first to go.

That is art as a mirror, alright, but it's a mirror that is unafraid to show us the very ugliest part of ourselves (which, the album seems to suggest, is the idea that our society has become parody-proof). And there is almost no sense of a protected vantage point outside the whole mess.

Is it aesthetically "beautiful"? Probably not. Is it effective, or compelling, or powerful? Definitely.