CDOTD 01/06/2025

 Charles Ives: Universe Symphony/Orchestral Set No. 2/The Unanswered Question (Centaur)

Probably purchased used at Jerry's Records

Like any self-respecting/self-loathing 61-year old urban liberal, much of my terrestrial radio listening time is devoted to the local NPR affiliate. In this case it's WESA, the former WDUQ. There's some jazz programming on the weekends (local and syndicated) but mostly their airwaves are taken up by various non-local news/news-talk shows.

Sometimes they feature spots and interviews with musicians. Generally it's a current "independent" (whatever that means these days) pop singer of some sort, very broadly defined.

I'll defer to my father, who commented to me that nearly all of the music featured on these shows is, I think the word he used was "terrible." I'm probably more sympathetic to some of them than he is, but I think he's by and large on the nose. They're almost always boring interviews, and I rarely hear anything featured that I believe to be especially interesting. Or even good.

So it was refreshing to hear a feature spot a week or two ago regarding Charles Ives. I forget which show, perhaps All Things Considered? Or 1A? It doesn't matter. 

Part of the reason was due to the sesquicentennial of Ives' birth. They played a recording of him singing and playing piano (I think the host said "so-called singing"). There were the general facts about Ives, making his money in insurance, not getting most of his performances until after he retired from composing. I don't remember mention of his father, who is supposed to have taught Charles and his sister to do things like sing pieces in two different keys at once. Special mention was made of the Concord Sonata and its difficulties.

The story, the music excerpts, were far more interesting than anything more current I've heard featured on the same programming. In addition to his interest in Emerson and Thoreau, they referred to him as a good-old fashioned New England abolitionist, a fact I found to be very encouraging. (Supposedly he was not so tolerant of Henry Cowell's homosexuality. We're all of our times I guess, and if I'm wrong about that I will happily wipe out this text.) The story also mentioned that more attention is being paid in Europe to Ives' birth anniversary, something that doesn't surprise me in the least. There's far more money to be made in America for orchestras to play programs of video game music than anything by Ives.

Universe Symphony was Ives' last huge unfinished work. He was concerned enough with it to have left notes prior to his passing. The task was taken up by composer Larry Austin some two decades later, or more accurately that's whose reconstruction is recorded here. It's set for multiple orchestras, so the recording must be a pale experience compared to sitting in the middle of this sound created by Ives and his editors. It starts slowly, very slowly, for a good long while, with bubbles of activity popping up here and there. It's a continuous work defined by sections "about" past, present, and future. It's worth a listen, even if I can't be certain of how it compares to Ives' own vision of the work.

The first and third movements of Orchestral Set No. 2 are among favorites in the Ives canon. The first is a bit of an uneven dirge based on a minor third, with various familiar melodies interwoven. For example, I clearly recognized "Yes, Jesus Loves Me" in the mix. The third, "From Hanover Square North, at the End of a Tragic Day, the Voices of the People Again Arose". While that may seem needlessly wordy, the piece was inspired by a real life event witnessed by Ives: a train station of people raising their voices together in hymn upon hearing the news of the sinking of the Lusitania. It captures the feeling remarkably, and was supposed to have been one of Ives' favorites among his works. 

Then of course the CD ends with that old favorite, "The Unanswered Question". It brings to mind for me the second-to-last paper I wrote as a graduate student, taking on the question of polymensural, polymetric, and polytemporal music. (It's the earliest example of the latter I could cite.)

I'm going to have to put on more Ives in the near future, including the LP box set that includes his singing that bothered that stuckup NPR host. 

VOTD 01/05/2025

 Iannis Xenakis: Music Today Album 2: Akrata - Achorripsis - Polla Ta Dhina - ST/10 (Angel)

Purchased used at the Record Graveyard in 1981

I don't think I'm someone especially touched strongly by nostalgia. I've been teaching at Carnegie Mellon University since 2005. Prior to that, I entered CMU as a freshman in 1981, and bombed out by the end of my second year.

Classes begin in a week and I've started prepping. My current classroom is in a building that wasn't part of the music department when I was a student. While on campus, I wandered the buildings where I took classes as a student. I tried to remember how I felt being in those places for the first time, but I couldn't remember specifically. I know I was initially excited and nervous. It's such a long time ago. I had a few specific memories, such as watching from a distance as George Romero directed part of Creepshow, but little about those very first days as a music student. 

Where did that 18 year old go?

The first guest speaker on campus my first year was Iannis Xenakis, in a series of speakers regarding computers and music. The CMU School of Music was (and to a lesser extent still is) a pretty conservative institution overall, in both faculty and student body. It took a joint effort of the music and computer science departments to get a "computers and music" lecture series happening. I think this was in part due to Roger Dannenberg's efforts, who was at CMU earning his doctorate at the time. (Roger recently went into retirement.)

I've shared this story many times, so forgive me if this is familiar territory, even on this blog. Xenakis spoke to the music school largely about his UPIC system, a device that looked like an electronic drafting table where you could draw images that the computer would translate into sound. Prior to that however, he gave a broader lecture about his music (and computer music in general) in the then new Science Building, now Wean Hall. I attended out of curiosity, coming in mid-way due to my class schedule. 

During this lecture, he spoke about his early orchestral works "Metastaseis" and "Pithoprakta". He projected images of the graphs on which the sounds were derived while playing recordings of the pieces. 

I've seen both works performed years later by the CMU Philharmonic, and they're surprisingly quiet pieces. Each instrument has a completely individual part with respect to all other players, so the strings aren't building sound through reinforcement. 

During the lecture in 1981, he played them loud. And I do mean LOUD, jarringly loud, headache inducing loud, and I was sitting in the back of the lecture hall.

What did my 18 year old self make of this? I hadn't heard anything like it before and it in some ways seemed like a bad joke. Nonetheless, some weeks later when I noticed this used Xenakis LP for $3, I bought it on sight. Despite a not-entirely-pleasant introduction to Xenakis' music, I guess I was intrigued.

The Record Graveyard was a block or so off campus, just shy of Craig St and diagonal from the Carnegie Museum. I think I had lunch with my parents on Craig my first day there and noticed the record store, because later that day or the next I walked there and bought Henry Cow's In Praise of Learning. That's another record I still have. 

The standout on this album to me is the opening piece, "Polla Ta Dhina", a work for children's chorus and orchestra. He pulls this off by having the chorus sing the text in a unison A-440 while the sort of rolling, controlled chaos you'd expect from a Xenakis piece happens in the orchestra. It gives the work an identity and focus I find to not be so true of the other works on this collection. 

The remaining three works find Xenakis in more formalist mode, working through various forms of higher mathematics to derive his musical ideas. They're drier works. "ST/10" (excuse me, full title "ST/10=1-080262") is one of his early computer-derived compositions. Unlike the current developments in generative AI, Xenakis isn't trying to get the computer to "create" a musical composition. It's an exercise in algorithmic composition. I generally find the three "ST" works to be more interesting in principle than execution. That said, the Jack Quartet staked their claim in the new music world by playing the "ST/4" by memory. I've heard a recording they made, and they breathed some life into the work.

I have a copy of the score for "Achorripsis". It came from the collection of Easley Blackwood, a composer who taught at the University of Chicago for many years. The university's library sold off his collection of scores when Easley went into a care facility, and my friend Rob Pleshar grabbed this in addition to many other interesting works. The price pencilled on the first page was $21- (yikes, how long ago?). Also pencilled in Easley's hand: "Incredible that this 'composer' was ever taken seriously." I guess there just isn't pleasing everyone. Here I am, more than forty years later, still trying to figure these things out.

VOTD 01/02/2025

 Ennio Morricone: 4 Mosche Di Velluto Grigio (Cinevox)

Purchased used at The Government Center, I think

Seeing as it's the new year, many people have been drawing up their best of/worst of 2024 lists and creating more online chatter. Some of those might be useful eventually, if I'm to hold up my resolution to check out new album releases.

I've hardly seen most of the films making top 10 lists, nor will I have seen most that will undoubtably be nominated for the top Oscar prize this year. I have a sense that it's been a weak year for films. The best film I saw in 2024 was Ennio, the documentary about Ennio Morricone. Imdb.com lists the date on the film as being 2021, I don't know the story of why it was playing at a local theater in 2024. At 2.5 hours, it's a film that amazingly felt too short. Not that there wasn't room for some trimming; of the many talking heads presented, I had no need to hear from Bruce Springsteen, the bassist for The Clash, the guy from Metallica nor the guy from Faith No More. Thankfully, the great majority of those interviewed were those who worked with Morricone directly. If you haven't seen it, I can't recommend it highly enough. 

There's some mention of the three soundtracks Morricone did for early films of Dario Argento, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, The Cat o' Nine Tails, and this, translated to Four flies on Grey Velvet. (The Italians have a way with interesting and evocative titles, no?) Being from 1971, this work falls several years after Morricone's immense success with his Sergio Leone soundtracks, most famously The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. (Another great title, but let's be honest: none of the characters are especially good, all are levels of bad, and varying degrees of ugly.) There was a comment mentioned in documentary, I think made by Dario's father, that Morricone's music sounded alike in all three films. The composer himself insisted he was trying new ideas in each. Did this end the relationship between Ennio and Dario? I don't know. (Assuming I'm recalling all of those details correctly to begin with.) Ennio certainly didn't slow down after this work, and Dario would soon go on to work with his most famous musical collaborators, Goblin/Claudio Simonetti. 

There's a lot of what you'd expect from a 1971 Morricone Giallo score: some sweet Italian pop with wordless vocals by Edda dell'Orso, some instrumental blues-rock, some string tone clusters. The second particularly features some frantic free-jazz drumming. It's not as funky as my favorite, Lizard in a Woman's Skin, but it's still an interesting work. 

I think the only thing you can expect from a Morricone soundtrack of this era is that you don't know what the next thing coming will be, even if many of the tracks and the overall form seem familiar. But then he didn't compose it as a discreet listening experience, but to serve the purposes of the film.

VOTD 01/01/2025

 Fats Waller: Young Fats at the Organ 1926-1927 - Volume 1 (RCA)

Purchased decades ago at a yard sale for possibly 50¢

A new year, a blog post. The concept of New Year's Day as a holiday seems strange to me, disconnected from any religious or cultural meaning besides the changing of a number on the calendar. It's a time to consider renewal and the future, as we're approaching the bleakest point of the year for weather. That and partying, for some people. 

So too the future is on my mind. There are things I anticipate happening in the next year that I'm not yet prepared to express publicly. As for resolutions, I've decided that I should probably spring for a new album more often, in whatever format that might be. Most of the new releases I've bought in recent years are reissues (such as the Ralph Records retrospective mentioned in an earlier post) or things like newly issued live recordings of John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk. I'll still snoop for interesting old used vinyl, but I'm reminding myself just how much I already have. Make use of that. 

I am again posting here again as much out of an act of self-discipline as anything else, a continuing resolution. Creating and maintaining disciplined routines outside of my job are becoming increasingly important to me. Maybe somebody reading will find what I have to say interesting, I don't know. I suppose today I'm in autobiographical mode more than musical analysis. 

For the first day of the new year, I suppose I wanted to put on something that would calm my mind. So much of what I like in music has to do with energy, intensity, contrasts, brisk motion. It's not easy to find something in my personal library that is more laid back and relaxed. I considered putting on some Morton Feldman again, even though that music can have a quiet but firm intensity to it. But no, something else. I have a stack of recently purchased LPs I continue to intend to get to, but nothing in that stack. Perusing through my collected vinyl, somehow I came to the decision that Fats Waller on organ was what I wanted.

On the surface, this music might sound cute. It can't help but evoke a sense of the past and nostalgia, through no fault of its own. Listening to the opening track, "Soothin' Syrup Stomp" (maybe my favorite track on this collection), I've almost certainly heard this recording used as a bed for online streams of silent movies. It's also impossible for me to disconnect these recordings with their appearance in the film Eraserhead. What was David Lynch's purpose in using them? Nothing in the film was done by accident. The hotel lobby, the small studio apartment with its radiator, seems to come out of the past, as does this music.

As I write this, my wife is upstairs catching more news about the horrible mass murder in New Orleans while I'm downstairs quietly listening to Fats. Escapism? Psychic self-defense? I don't know. I think I've always identified with Henry from Eraserhead to some extent*, and maybe his choice of listening is the right call.

It seems silly and redundant to state how great Fats' playing is. You either know, or you don't know his music at all.  There's an added bit of a novelty to hearing him on a pipe organ rather than his more native piano (I assume that, at least). Most jazz organ playing is done on something like a Hammond B3, an instrument that wouldn't be invented for about a decade after these recordings. The pipe organ, and probably the early recording technology, give these sessions a very different character than later jazz organ albums. Again, it sounds like it's from that past, reaching out for renewed attention. 

Alberta Hunter joins in, singing two songs including the old standard "Sugar" (not the Stanley Turrentine tune familiar to Pittsburgh jazz audiences). She sounds on mark but, me being me, I prefer Fats by himself. 

If you've read this far (and even if you haven't), I wish you a good, healthy, positive year to come. I think we all deserve it. 

* I had an Eraserhead t-shirt at one time, and somebody once asked me if it was me in the image. It wasn't a photo image of Henry, but come on, my hair isn't like that.

VOTD 12/24/2024

 Can: Ege Bamyasi (Spoon)

Purchased used many years ago

Browsing the New York Times today, I noticed a playlist of musical artists who died in 2024. (To follow up on yesterday's posting, Herb Robertson didn't make the cut.) There are the obvious choices, such as Toby Keith and Quincy Jones. More surprising were songs by Steve Albini and James Chance. But most surprising of all was one I didn't know: a piece by Can, because Damo Suzuki had died.

I'm a little wary of Can records because I think some aren't that good, or at least especially interesting. I have a few of a later vintage than this session, and they're inconsistent. And unless I'm missing out some incredible recordings that I don't know, their best work was between 1970-73 when Damo was their vocalist. Many find their double-LP Tago Mago as the band's best record. I think that might have been true if they trimmed the length to two sides, or (the impractical) three sides. This record, which came a year later in 1972, is the best work of theirs I know. 

I've heard bit and pieces of some of the live albums recently issued. They range from 1973 (with Damo still involved) to 1977. I haven't heard the 1973 concert but I'm interested. What I heard is that the band were largely improvising, often creating grooves spontaneously. I'm sure the pieces on this album all originate from band jam sessions and rehearsals, working up material collectively. 

So what's Damo's contribution? I can only gauge based on what I hear on the album. He mumbles, moans, whispers and sings lyrics I sometimes can understand but usually can't. But I don't think the lyrics are meant to be understood logically; the voice is effectively another instrument here. "One More Night" sees Damo chanting "One more Saturday night" over a cool 7/8 groove, and they mesh together perfectly. I'm sure his words are borne from improvisations as well, assuming he's not free-styling some of it during the recording. 

Any album is of its time. Nonetheless, we can point to some and declare after the fact, "That was forward-looking" or such. There are things here, captured in 1972, that seem to precede or anticipate music since. Isn't what Damo doing here similar to the vocal improvisations of Arto Lindsey? The rhythm and sound of the words are far more important than any logical meaning. The improvised grooves, hell, I've had bands based primarily on that principle. The guitar is often distant, sustained, noisy, filling in textures, and again that is something I've heard many times since. 

Bassist Holger Czukay and keyboardist Irmin Schmidt attended Karlheinz Stockhausen's classes in years prior. While the music is obviously very different, I see some similarities or correlations: emphasis on sound and process, embracement of noise, and a general desire to be original. I read that Holger asked Karlheinz to autograph is copy of Kurzwellen  on Deustche Grammophone, telling the composer what an important record it was. Kurzwellen is surely some of the strangest and in a way obsessive music imaginable. I also read that at in its time, it was the worst selling record in the DG catalog. 

2024 has felt interminably long. We know in part why. If you're reading this and don't live in Pennsylvania or another so-called "battleground" state, be thankful to not have been confronted with political ads at every possible moment, every possible media, for 1.5 years. I was seeing lists of the worst movies of the year, noting Marvel's Madame Web. I thought, that was this year? Damn. The next four will be bumpy. It's nice to escape into the Can & Damo sound world, if briefly.

CDOTD 12/23/2024

 Herb Robertson: Certified (JMT)

This was a duplicate sent to WRCT that I scored at the time of its release in 1991.

There's a stack of recently purchased LPs that I need to listen or re-listen to. I don't write about everything that spins on my turntable or disc player, but I do sometimes put something on for the purpose of commenting here. 

That leads me to once again think about the purpose of me maintaining this blog. For the discipline? Because I have something interesting or cogent to say about the music? To gripe? Or (maybe worst of all) get autobiographical?

Perhaps there are some things on the latter I will share eventually, but now's not the time. Plus, I find writing about myself to be boring and self-indulgent. But then nobody else is going to at this point.

Herb Robertson died Dec. 10 at age 73. I know him mostly through his association with Tim Berne. He played on several of my favorite Berne albums, including Fractured Fairy Tales and Pace Yourself. He can be seen with Time Berne on NBC's Night Music. Herb could play straight-forward trumpet, always sounding confident and solid on Berne's challenging compositions. As a soloist, he leans into something closer to action playing; broad, exaggerated blowing, liberal use of plunger or mute, not especially melodic but highly energetic. 

Except, when he chooses not to be that. The second piece on this program, "Cosmic Child", something of a chorale-like structure, he plays more reservedly. He's a good straightforward soloist when he chooses to be. And I didn't mean to suggest he wasn't, only that it's not what I associate with him. 

This time Herb's the bandleader. The lineup is Herb on trumpet (family) and valve trombone; Mark Goldsbury on tenor and soprano saxophones, clarinet; David Taylor on bass trombone; Ed Schuller (Gunther's son) on bass; Phil Haynes on drums. Not a lineup duplicated on a Tim Berne or Jerry Hemingway album, but similar. 

And the vibe is similar too, maybe even slightly wackier. I love a lot of Tim Berne's music, but at times he can be drier and more....I don't know....academic sounding than I prefer. A piece on here such as "Don't Be Afraid We're Not Like the Others" is musical, ripping, but also funny and humorous at times.

How does one achieve humor in instrumental music? It's easily on display in song; the words are funny or clever or satirical, or they're not. I find unexpected, dramatic shifts in shape, tempo, and tone to sometimes be funny. There's a tape collage in the middle of the aforementioned piece that sounds like calliopes farting, I guess. 

At least one friend, who was also a major fan of Tim Berne's music of this time, expressed the opinion that this album was every bit as good as what Tim was releasing. There's a case for it. I've also expressed my frustration on this blog, multiple times now I'd say, of these new-jazz bands (vaguely along the same lines) who never play much above a mezzo forte (if that). This crew sounds like they made some serious noise. Was it a regular playing ensemble, if at least briefly? That would be my guess, they're a great unit together. 

I only met Herb once. He was passing through with one of saxophonist Andy Laster's groups, probably somewhere in the 1994-96 range. Manny Theiner, who booked the show, asked Water Shed 5tet to open (a common occurrence then). I believe due to illness, only three of us could play (saxophone, guitar, drums). If memory serves, we played a few existing compositions but opened up to improvising more than usual. After the night was done, I walked up to Herb (drinking a 40) and he stood up to give my a big hug. I don't remember that we exchanged more than a sentence or two otherwise, if that. 

The album takes a turn to the even stranger in the middle, with an extended opening to one piece with vocal noises and gibberish, air blowing through water, and such. Definitely not people who has commercial interests in mind. The album ends with "The Condensed Version" which I guess is Herb's solo vocal rendering of moments from that album. Again, wacky.

This is a good album. It's nice to see that it got a reissue after JMT folded, on Winter & Winter. 

I'm happy this had its day even if it's maybe largely forgotten? Perhaps that's not fair to write. Just that, there are so many other great albums by these players and others from this time, how can you possibly keep track of it all?

So long Herb, the world's a less fun place without you in it. 

VOTD 12/21/2024

 Josh Berman/Paul Lytton/Jason Roebke: Trio Discrepancies (Astral Spirits)

Purchased from Josh at a gig

Josh played at Bantha Tea House recently with an improv group of fellow Chicago players. I was there largely to hear a student of mine perform. The group played on the general tropes of acoustic free improv groups, which I don't mean to sound like a criticism. I've been there myself and will be there again. No groove, little periodicity at all, hints of melody which are just as quickly fragmented, scraping/blowing sounds. 

I decided to my part to support the artist and bought one of Josh's LPs. It's more money than he'll ever see from streaming, and I get an album out of it too.

I've probably already expressed my disdain for Spotify. I'm asked occasionally about my own recordings on the service, and I supposed there are some there. When I release new sessions, they'll wind up there too. But I'll never see a dime return on it all, even if a hundred people decide to put my albums on constant play overnight, night after night. Buying a single product, whether it's CD, LP, shirt, poster, even paying admission, does more for most artists than any streaming service. 

Josh plays cornet, an interesting choice in this day and age. I guess it's for the slightly darker, rounder sound than a trumpet. He's joined by bass and percussion, the latter played by Paul Lytton. His name I recognize from his work with Evan Parker. Faced with two choices for albums to buy, I guess I chose this one based on Paul's name. 

All sounds are improvised. The music is varying levels of activity/density, gradual crescendoes/decrescendoes. The cornet/bass/drums lineup suggests a sort of jazziness, it's something that's inescapable. It's hard to make anything played on the saxophone not refer to jazz too. Indeed, the end of the first side plays at a free walking bass and almost swing. The silences are longer, more significant in the second half. There's a welcome discipline to what they do, but at the same time I wish it would sometimes kick out loud and hard. I've heard too many new jazz and improv groups that rarely play above a mezzo-forte at best, and I just want them to make some NOISE sometimes. 

But I remind myself, I should comment on what this is about, not what I wish it was.

I'm okay with a free setting suggesting jazz or anything else. Derek Bailey's quest for "non-idiomatic" improvisation is an interesting goal but I find a sameness to determinately disjunct, European-style improv. 

I was thinking this is a music that is especially essential to experience in the room live. But isn't that always true? Isn't it better to be there to experience it and not just by record? At least there's a document of this group that is preserved.