VOTD 07/08/2025

 Paul Bley/John Gilmore/Paul Motian/Gary Peacock: Turning Point (Improvising Artists Inc.)

Ugh. This weather really grinds on me, the heat and humidity. I've just woken from a deep afternoon nap after several nights of intermittent sleep. To think, my earliest memories are of living in West Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

I decided I'd put something on the turntable and write again, my choice. I didn't feel like the challenge of a monster hour long Xenakis noise epic this time though. 

Last week I went to see the Sun Ra Arkestra for the sixth time, in Cleveland. The first was in DC in 1988. To my disappointment, it's the first time I saw the Arkestra without Marshall Allen. I guess he's only leading the group onstage when it's in NYC or Philadelphia, or nearby. At 101 years ago, I shouldn't have been surprised. At least I got to see them with Vincent Chancey one more time, the French horn player. The group was led on stage by Knoell Scott.* The biggest surprise of the night was a great arrangement of "Stranger in Paradise", in a Galacto-Afro-Cuban arrangement.

In thinking of the Arkestra, I thought of this album. What an interesting and odd supergroup of sorts: Paul Bley on piano, Paul Motian on drums, Gary Peacock on bass, and the Arkestra's John Gilmore on tenor saxophone. The core of the Arkestra was a pretty tight knit group, but John was the one who would leave on occasions to play with other groups. He did a stint in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, for example. 

John was always on the boppish side, though willing to loosen up and rip some noise with the best of them (more Marshall's speciality, really). At times he plays lines that come off as more swinging, others he sounds like a more dyed-in-the-wool free jazz player. Bley's tendency is to lay out when the tenor is soloing, giving portions of this session almost a saxophone/bass/drums trio sound. Motian and Peacock never break into a locked groove, always freely interplaying with one another and the soloist. 

Five of the seven tracks date from 1964 with this listed quartet. Strangely, there are two tracks on side two with a different drummer (Billy Elgart) and without tenor, both Annette Peacock works. I don't want to say they're more "conservative" but those performances don't have the free flowing looseness of the Gilmore session. 

Of the five 1964 works, four are by Paul's then wife Carla. They would divorce some time that year; I don't know the circumstances. Carla's maiden name was Borg, which personally I think should have kept. Paul seemed to play a lot of Carla's music during those years, including with this trio with Jimmy Giuffre. Did he continue to do so? I want to say yes but I don't have the data in front of me.

I have another LP under Paul's name, same quartet. I've just noticed it's the same session date. So either: this is alternate takes, or (the more likely answer) it's a repackaging of the same performance. I might have to side-by-side. John Gilmore was a star in the Arkestra universe, but I want to hear more of what he did outside the group too. 

*I saw Knoell being interviewed in advance of the show. The interviewer, a local Cleveland jazz DJ, was talking about Sun Ra's Afrofuturism. Knoell objected, saying it's not how Sun Ra would have thought of his band. When asked for a description of the Arkestra, Knoell described it as a "fraternal order of Black heterosexual men." Many of us in the audience looked at each other as if to say, "Wha?"

CDOTD 07/06/2025

 Iannis Xenakis: Alpha and Omega (disc three) (Accord)

Purchased through mail order

I have a lot of Xenakis around here. I've previously recounted how I first heard Xenakis' music as a college student; it was really the first I'd heard any so-called avant-garde new music. More labels. With Xenakis' first mature works dating to 1953-4, you can't really call this new music.

Why do I even listen to things like this? There's a part of me that likes Xenakis' music, particularly the orchestral works, because they're kind of ridiculous. How can someone make a symphony orchestra sound so strident? He eschewed serialism, a style of composition that seems mathematical, to rely on math processes of a far more complex nature for generating compositions, or at least material for compositions. The pieces certainly don't sound like serialism, especially his frequent reliance on string glissandi. (I read that Boulez disliked string glissandi. It may or may not be true, I'm starting to question the accuracy of many of my half-remembered "facts" that I write here.)

So as I wrote, I have a lot of Xenakis around here. I doubt I have everything he composed, but it surely must be most of it. This particular collection is four discs, more-or-less divided into early, middle, and later era works. There's enough on here that I didn't have otherwise that I thought it was worth ordering. 

Disc three features only two works from 1971: Antikhthon for "86 or 60" players, for the purpose of ballet. It has the hallmarks of Xenakis orchestral music without seeming to focus on a particular direction for the work: glissandi, harsh high string clusters, tossing around a single pitch among players, "clouds" of sounds among various instrumental families. Maybe the point of it is the collage-liked feeling of the work? I would have loved to have seen whatever ballet was choreographed for this. 

Then there's Persepolis, a work for tape. It hits pretty hard from the start, a sort of indescribable mass of sound that barely lets up for several minutes. At the time, Xenakis was disinterested in purely electronic sounds in favor of his own brand of musique concrète, the collection and manipulation of sound samples. There surely must be some gong/tam tam in there, perhaps bowed; it was a source for an earlier tape work of his. Persepolis ebbs and flows in its first half, then suddenly stops. Part two begins far more low-key, less dense, but no less continuous. Sitting on top of the mix is something bow: string? Maybe. It's nasty, probably intentionally confrontational. 

The was commissioned for and presented in Persepolis in Iran, well before the revolution. It was outside with people carrying torches. It must have an intense experience; it's pretty intense on just my modest home stereo system. My understanding is that retired composition teacher from Carnegie Mellon, Reza Vali, was in attendance. 

Could this be Xenakis' most famous work? There's an issue of it with a second disc of remixes, including those by Merzbow, Zbigniew Karkowski, and Otomo Yishihide. There's little question that it's a precedent to more recent college/noise works, Merzbow definitely coming to mind.

When I was teaching electronic music, I'd have occasional listening assignments. Only one (Stockhausen) clocked in at over ten minutes. For one particular section I made an open-ended assignment: find something in the library collection and listen to it, right about it to the class blog. One student told me he had listened to this. "The entire piece?" I asked. Oh yes he insisted, he wanted to know about it. That's the sort of patience and intellectual curiosity I'd been missing in the past several years, but then this was an exceptional student. But I can't complain too much, I think this is the first time I've made a point of sitting and listening to it in its entirety too. 

VOTD 07/01/2025

 Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart: The Ring of Fire (Jim Records)

Purchased at the old Strip District flea market

Jimmy Swaggart just died. What, you mean he was still alive?

Yes, until just yesterday. Do I wish he was getting sodomized in Hell in perpetuity? No. It's a nice thought, but that would mean I would believe in such things. 

No, my fantasy is that in his final moments he looked up and said, "It was all bullshit! I'm nothing more than worm food now!" But I know that's just fantasy. He's dead and he doesn't know any better.

Jimmy was as conservative an evangelist as they came. You know, until he was caught coming out of a motel room with a prostitute. I don't necessarily approve of seeing a hooker, but I don't necessarily disapprove either.

I remember the image so well, Jimmy in front of his congregation with tears in his eyes: "I...HAVE...SINNED!" Yeah, no shit. 

I do enjoy my vinyl oddities, as I have referred to them here multiple times. Some time in the 1990s when there was a flea market in the Strip District, I came across a box of Jimmy Swaggart LPs for maybe $1 apiece. I should have probably bought more, but with his scandal having broken recently before, an LP raging against the evils of extramarital sex seemed like exactly the right one to buy. 

Jimmy rants and raves and falls into a rhythm, and who knows half of what he says in the moment? He somehow weaves from homosexuality and lesbianism to coolers full of beer to modern acid rock music to nuclear holocaust. What? Wha wha what?

This would seem like great sampling material. But Jimmy barely takes a breath, there's hardly a break anywhere. 

I can to some extent see how someone in a crowd get caught up in the rhythm of Jimmy's delivery. Any time I watch a cable/streaming documentary about some cult or cult-like organization, I wonder: could I be caught up in such things? I'd like to think I'm enough of a cynic that I'd never fall for such things. I have enough friends and a relationship and work that I'd never fall for Children of God or the Pentecostal Church or any such nonsense.

Am I fooling myself? It's occurred to me, is there a benignly cult-like quality to Sun Ra's band? I say that as a fan. It's just a question.

VOTD 06/30/2025

 Ethel Merman: The Ethel Merman Disco Album (A&M)

Purchased through discogs.com

This time! A record I'm proud to admit that I'm embarrassed to own!

I enjoy the hunt with respect to records, used records in particular. I'm intentionally trying to limit my buying since I own so many of the things, but it doesn't stop me from looking. I try not to engage in vinyl envy when a friend makes a good score. Good for them. I can only think of a few things I'd be truly jealous that someone else found.

While I never actively sought out this vinyl oddity, it never seemed to cross my path either. I've been aware of it for many years. A few years back when I mentioned its very existence to my wife, her reaction was, find a copy!

Here's where discogs.com comes in. It's an immense resource. It also means everyone in the world can see what other people have paid for records on their site, thus generally pushing up the prices in the brick and mortar used record stores. It's increasingly difficult to make amazing scores, but then that's still the thrill of the hunt, isn't it?

So: Ethel Merman's disco LP, checkout, sent to my house in a few days. Done, easy peasy. Thankfully not expensive too, I didn't really want to spend $20 on this.

If I told my 16 year old self I'd be buying a disco album, let alone this piece of kitsch, I think he'd be surprised and disappointed. I was definitely in the "disco sucks" crowd, though I didn't hang with the metal crowd either. That said, "Disco Inferno" made for a good marching band arrangement which we played for two years. I can picture my band director harumphing at the very idea of having to pay for the arrangement. 

Some of my attitude was unquestionably the hubris of youth and inexperience. There was a significant amount of 70s African American dance music/funk (for as little of it as I heard) that I wrote off at the time as disco that I love now. (Parliament is most definitely not disco.) If you didn't live through that time, you'd have no idea how ubiquitous the disco craze was. Even straight forward rock stations would program tracks from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. It was inescapable for a few years. 

When I listen to these things now, it's a mixed reaction. For starters, I admire that these are full bands executing these arrangements to perfection. Not easy. I count twelve session players on this album, including the familiar names of Bud Shank and Ernie Watts*, in addition to an unnamed orchestra. One track uses an additional six background vocalists. That takes a budget of both time and money. Charts have to be written, though I'm sure there was very little rehearsal time. Everyone gets paid, and overtime costs extra. Execute or else. 

On the other hand, everything is the same tempo. Most disco songs are a uniform speed. Fine for dancing, especially there's a particular set of choreographed disco moves you've prepared. Less interesting for listening. Four to the floor kick drum, snare on two and four, period. 

The arrangements sound like most big disco productions you've heard and leaning towards what I suppose is corniness. They're working with Ethel Merman doing old show tunes, so you can imagine how the arranger treats "Alexander's Ragtime Band" disco-style.

Ethel soldiers through this and is constantly on mark. One can imagine what she thought of the entire project. It's a gig, right? My understanding is that the choice and order of songs was based on her show: she would do this program in this order as a standard presentation, so the arrangers had to work with that unyielding structure. Perhaps this is legend, but my understanding is that she came in and blew everything down in a single take. What a pro!

Apart from the general silliness of the project, some of the songs lend themselves less effectively to disco-ization than others. "Everything's Coming Up Roses" should have been 1/3 faster, but Ethel has to stretch the lines to accommodate the standard disco tempo. Some of the other songs similarly stretch the vocal line.

"I Got Rhythm" starts with a slower, quiet introduction before kicking into the beat. "I Will Survive" was released the year before and was a monster hit, so I wonder if the arrangers thought they'd catch some of that for Ethel?

Representing disco in our household is this, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack (I held it back when I sold off my wife's small record collection), the Andrea True Connection's More More More**, and an all-Christmas disco LP. What better way to clear your family out of the house after a holiday dinner than play that?

* I find Ernie Watts' appearance on this at least amusing. There was hardly any public figure who was more anti-disco than Frank Zappa, seeing it as some sort of social control construct or something. Ernie appeared about seven years earlier on Frank's The Grand Wazoo, and played the "mystery horn" (a C melody saxophone?). I like that there's a single degree of separation between this and Zappa. 

Frank would complain about punk rock a few years later. I love much of his music but he could be such a downer. 

** This is one of three connections I know between 70s disco and hardcore porn films. Who knows, this could be a topic for a future posting. 

VOTD 06/23/2026

 NON: Pagan Muzak (Greybeat)

Purchased through eBay

This blog is something of a diversion, a trifle, a shade frivolous. I've been both intending to, and questioning, whether I should write about this and similar records. Here goes. 

There are some records that, if someone looked them over after I'm gone, I might have felt embarrassment. I don't mean The Ethel Merman Disco Album, which I freely admit I own. 

So what is there to be embarrassed by this record? Its appearance doesn't seem to be outrageous: a front image of some sort of tomb or temple lined with skulls, the back a single image of the artist, all in stark black and white.

And the record itself is novel: a 7" album housed in a 12" cover, with seventeen lock grooves one side one, repeated on side two. Playable at any speed. Standard 33+1/3 sounds right, the tracks largely like machine sounds. To be played loud. A hole drilled off center for off-axis playback. 

In other words, a very novel release, quite original in its presentation and performance, in ways that I've seen repeated since. The RRR-100 7" has fifty lock grooves on each side (I happen to be one of them), one hundred artists represented. RRRecords upped the ante with RRR-500, five hundred artists in toto on a 12" LP. RRR-1000 takes it even further, though I understand there are tracking issues with that one depending on your turntable. 

My friend tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE released an LP with an off-axis hole cut. I wouldn't accuse him of aping NON, just that it's a similar technique. He's also released an album with multiple lock grooves.

So why am I potentially embarrassed to own this record?

NON is one Boyd Rice. NON is the "band" name for his noise-oriented projects. There are many (and often conflicting) reports about Boyd: that he can be great company, engaging, funny. A well-documented prankster, lover of EZ listening records. He was also supposedly an absentee father to a special needs child, a "Men's Rights" advocate, priest in the Church of Satan. There's a video of him happily talking to American White Nationalist Tom Metzger about how you never see black people at his noise concerts. An asshole Fascist/White Nationalist.

Allegedly. Allegedly allegedly allegedly. I don't know any of these things first hand, though I have watched the Metzger video, easily found on Youtube. You have access to Google, look for yourself.

I first came to know about Boyd through the Re/Search Industrial Culture Handbook. In some ways I was most impressed with him, because (according to the text) he had the purest of intentions: he enjoyed noise music, and the sound of things like skipping records. None of the neo-paganism of Genesis P-Orridge, or the occultism of Z'ev, or systems paranoia of SPK. Someone who enjoyed creating and listening to noise. To me, that's a high calling; if you don't find music you want to hear, make it yourself. That in itself is honorable.

Since the time I bought this record (a prize in my eyes at the time), I've seen too much evidence of his fascist leanings. Is it all a joke to him? The fact of him recording with Death In June (known to be Nazi sympathizers) doesn't help his case. But what do I know?

There are many examples of bands/artists playing with fascist and even Nazi imagery. Sometimes ironically, sometimes not, and sometimes who knows? I'm thinking of a tape released by Ramleh on Broken Flag records, Rockwell Hate. It uses an audio letter sent by George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, to his followers. The cassette is played while the band provides a backdrop of blistering power electronics. My sense is that it's a joke, that they're making fun of that racist moron by supplying a backdrop of the ultimate entartete musik. Hitler would have never approved.

That's just my intuition, but again, what do I really know? If I'm proven wrong I will happily rescind my comments. I face the fact that it might become necessary for me to remove this posting. 

I'm also thinking of Sid Vicious wearing a swastika t-shirt. I'm certain he just wanted to outrage people. 

So where am I left with Boyd Rice and NON records? Isn't the history of the arts filled with shitty people? Gesualdo murdered his wife in cold blood, as I've written here before. That happened four and a quarter centuries ago. At the time terrible; now, an interesting footnote? And what of Miles Davis' and Charles Mingus' know abuse of women?

Nonetheless, I just don't think I can abide by what could be Boyd's racist and fascist leanings. I hate to waffle on things like this; it's just that the facts are murky.

I should probably sell this. Too bad, I love weird lock groove records like this. 

CDOTD 06/18/2026

 James Crabb & Geir Daruagvoll: Duos for Classical Accordions (EMI Classics)

This was a promo copy I claimed when I worked at Borders

"Welcome to Heaven! Here's your harp! Welcome to Hell! Here's your accordion!"

Stupid old joke. Truth is both instruments are beautiful in each its own way. If anything I find the accordion more confounding. How does anyone play the damned thing, especially the non-twelve tone keyboard right hand, button box concert accordion?

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice practice practice. Another old joke. 

Furthermore, the accordion can be highly expressive, something that's not built into the harp. Oh, it's expressive in an ensemble when you need that run of plucked notes. But the harp has hardly any dynamic range, unlike the accordion which can be gentle or aggressive. 

When I worked at Borders in the mid-90s, interest in CDs was at its height, or just cresting. DVDs were just being introduced. The store was not allowed to sell the promotional copies of CDs we received, so as a worker you could claim discs for yourself when they had outlived their purpose. There are a few amazing discs I got this way: Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting an all-Bernard Herrmann recording, historic recordings of Dock Boggs, this, others I'm forgetting. We'd claim discs by putting a Post-It note with our name on the cover. Most of us were respectful; I didn't try to claim a Boyz II Men disc just because I knew I could sell it (a not-so-open secret among workers). 

And who besides me was going to claim a CD of classical duets of accordion music? Only someone who intended to sell it later, if they could. And, the program! Duo accordions Stravinsky's Petrushka, Tango, and top it off with Pictures at an Exhibition. Hella yeah! 

I chose this disc without resorting to my randomizer, because yesterday was Stravinsky's birthday. 

As Petrushka plays, I find myself missing Stravinsky's orchestral colors. He was a solid and interesting orchestrator. Inversely, the accordion does have a way of bringing out the clownishness. Some of the work sounds perfectly suited for this format. What it's not missing is content. Two accordions, four hands, that covers a lot of ground. And it's probably more engaging than a two piano arrangement of the same piece, which I think exists. 

In my mind, I'm imagining Stravinsky hearing this and writing something specifically for duo accordions. I'm sure he would have challenged them, and more likely than not it would have been great.

Tango in this orchestration is great too. Makes me wish I could see this, in a concert hall, in the front row. Feel those accordion bellows physically. 

My understanding of Pictures at an Exhibition is that Mussorgsky himself intended to orchestrate the work, but didn't live to see it through. Ravel's orchestration is the famous one but not the only; I once heard a radio performance of a Stokowski orchestration. It seemed like a pale version compared Ravel; if anything, a lesser response to Maurice's work. 

I miss the colors of Ravel's orchestration, this is still amazing in some parts. While I appreciate Ravel's use of alto saxophone on "The Old Castle", it sounds great on two accordions. Respect.

I'm hopeless as a keyboardist in any respect. Ten thumbs. I love the piano, and there's so much incredible music written for it. But I would give serious consideration to being an accordionist given the chance. 

VOTD 06/13/2025

 Frank Zappa: Jazz From Hell (Barking Pumpkin)

Purchased from Leechpit Records, Colorado Springs

I remember when this record arrived at WRCT, 1986. There's a listing for the musicians on the back cover. I don't think I understood then how sequenced this album sounds now. 

It's so tight, like a noose around a neck. (Hyperbole?) Frank always wanted absolute perfection in his musicians' performances. But what does that mean? What is perfection? And does the pursuit of perfection impede the possibility of expression?

In some ways, this album sounds dated to me. By sounding clean and "modern", he dates the LP to a certain time period. Early digital, transferred to analog playback.

I have really tried to appreciate and listen to Frank's Synclavier albums. Really. Are they a true reflection of Frank's vision? Or, just maybe, they're mechanized simulacrum of really good bands he's led? 

Jesus Christ. The second and third cuts on side one are...boring. And track four isn't much better. But I recognize that I'm hearing this after years of teaching MIDI sequencing techniques.

So what stands out? "Night School" and "G-Spot Tornado", the opening cuts on sides one and two, at least aren't boring. The latter sounds hyper-sequenced, but at least it's at the service of a lively composition. An arrangement played live appears on The Yellow Shark. I'd recommend that album over this one. 

I'm listening to side two of this album, and for crying out loud it can be annoying. There's some sonic and mental relief on side two, track three: "St. Etienne". Frank solos over a one-two chord as he often did. This is probably where the back cover credits enter into the picture.

I must say...for all of Frank's seeking of musical perfection at a micro-level, he probably understood the beauty of a flexible, in-tune, lean band. At least I hope. Personalities! Or was perfection too important to him? I guess we won't know. 

When I bought this at Leech Pit Records in Colorado Springs, I also bought the two-CD Civilzation Phase III. I generally don't like Frank's Synclavier-based albums, but...who knows?