VOTD 08/06/2025

 Gang of Four: Songs of the Free (WB)

Purchased used at The Attic

It was 1982 I became involved with WRCT. I was staying in Pittsburgh for the summer, regularly listened to the station before becoming involved during that summer. In the next semester or two, I'd spend more time at the station than in classes. I don't blame the station. I made some contacts that remain to this day.

Gang of Four was a big deal at the station. In the fall semester of 1982, they played the student union on campus. I know I should have bought tickets, but I slept on it. I was dealing my state of depression in general. Tickets sold fast.*

The entire show was broadcast over WRCT live. I was in Richard Schnap's apartment, above his parents' garage, listening. They sounded great. GOF was touring on this album at the time.

WRCT had a policy of what was called "bin cuts". The bin was new albums. It was a way to force DJs to play something different, and appease labels to consider the continued relevance of a (then) 10 Watt station. 

When the live broadcast concluded, KJ the Jazzman took to the air. KJ was a fellow music major, Keith, who played guitar. He was a smooth jazz guy before the term was coined. Keith went on the air and played the first side of this LP to get his bin cuts in, immediately after the ban itself played all of it live. 

The first two GOF LPs, and the singles and EPs between those and this record, were very important to RCTers. One friend, when considering this album, thought they had become blander because of the "girl in the band". That is, between the time of Solid Gold and this album, bassist Dave Allen was replaced by Sara Lee. I don't know the circumstances. 

There's a clear progression from the first LP (Entertainment!), the second (Solid Gold) and this, the third. The first is very raw. it's well played, but almost sounds like a demo tape of a band mostly playing live. The second is more polished, a bit more produced but not overly so. Funkier, the African American influences more obvious. Guitarist Andy Gill is almost was abrasive as the first album. 

Then we come to this third LP. It's not a dramatic break, but things have clearly changed. The vocals are more upfront. The bass less so. When Andy Gill died, I was quoted in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette as saying that he could make a guitar sound like it was being strangled. There's little evidence of that here. 

It's closer to being a pop record than before, though it's hardly a pop album.

What were their motivations? I don't want to accuse them of selling out, but it's clear they were trying to head to a more popular direction. Did Dave Allen's departure mark a change of direction? Or did their push towards a more pop sound drive him out? I'm afraid I have no idea. 

I don't want to seem as though I'm completely putting this record down. To 2025 ears it sounds more dated than the previous two in part due to its then current production techniques. Raw will always sound current, polished has a half life. This sounds like early digital reverbs. 

Some songs and lyrics still pack a punch: "We live, as we dream, alone"; "Having fun is my reason for living (give me a break)"; "Making money is making sense". But when the project sounds more like a commercial venture, do the leftist-leaning lyrics start to lack punch? Seems to me, yes. The pacing of the album also seems strange; the most bracing song, "Call Me Up" opens (makes sense) but it ends on "Of the Instant", rather downbeat.

So, worthy album? Yes, but not in league with #1 & 2. After this, I can't say at all. 

* I entered CMU as a freshman in 1981. Between 1981-83, the campus saw concerts by King Crimson, The Clash, Cheap Trick, Gang of Four, Blotto, Tom Verlaine, Adrian Belew, and Iannis Xenakis. What a time to be alive. 

VOTD 08/05/2025

 Frank Zappa: Sleep Dirt (Discreet)

As is usually the case, my studio/mancave is in a total state of disarray. I'm as disorganized a person as you will encounter. But I do need to pick up after myself sometimes. I was filing some records away, including Jazz From Hell, and I noticed this record. I realized I'd never laid stylus to vinyl, so here we are. 

Frank Zappa was going through a label dispute at this time. Warner Brothers released three sessions in quick succession with no personnel or recording information. I remember Orchestral Favorites from the cut-out bins, which might have also been true for this album and Studio Tan. I had former as a teen. I liked some of the pieces on it (specifically "Strictly Genteel"), sold it off in a record purge, only to buy another copy later. All three albums had cover paintings by Gary Panter. I like all three. Gary is someone whose work I'd know better through Ralph Records; my first Ralph was the "Buy or Die" #3, with Gary's Tyrannosaurus front image. In this case Gary's painted an image of Hedorah (the Toho movies' Smog Monster) emerging from a bed.

Frank would later refer to these albums as bootlegs. That's only half true; there was a contract, but it was in dispute. Some of the tracks of those three albums were collected in the album Läther, though not everything. In short, it's confusing. 

Frank lived such a relatively short life, and was such a workaholic, that one can break down periods of his work into years rather than decades. He's in instrumental mode here, somewhat jazzy but through a rock lens.

The mix is at times terrible. "Regyptian Strut" is very bass and drums heavy, with the essential horn melody lurking in the background. Now that I hear the mix on that piece, I know that I have had this vinyl on before. 

Frank's guitar is prominent in some pieces, particularly "Filthy Habits", "Time Is Money" and "Sleep Dirt".  All bristle with nervous energy. That was certainly Frank's signature. 

The personnel information is available online. Without looking, I definitely detect both Ruth Underwood and Terry Bozzio. That places this in a particular time between the Napoleon Murphy Brock bands (Roxy and Elsewhere) and Zoot Allures. 

This is only a few years from the albums Frank produced thatIi either dislike or downright loathe. I found Zoot Allures to be a mixed bag, but the title track and "Black Napkins" rank among his best instrumental pieces. Sheik Yerbouti is also mixed but falling on the negative side for me. It wasn't long after that he released Joe's Garage, which I largely loathe. I think of it as a bad rock opera, and largely self aggrandizing. It does have one or two great works on it, but I just can't largely stand it. The same goes for most of his "rock" albums for the rest of his life. 

I do like some of his orchestral works, and many of the instrumentals. Shut up n' play your guitar!

CDOTD 08/04/2025

 VA: Cologne - WDR: Early Electronic Music (BV Haast)

Purchased at a big Jerry's Records sale

I know that, in posting to this blog semi-regularly, I have probably repeated myself quite a few times. So I guess I'll do it again!

One reason I appreciate, if not outright enjoy, early electronic music is the sweat on it. It took tremendous effort to create these works, and in this case on equipment not even intended for musical purposes. That said, my preference leans towards works in the analog field more than the digital, even though early digital works would have been very work-intensive. I'll take a bit of grunginess over the clean playback of a computer-generated work. It's a generalization, though.

I also like that there were passionate schools of thought. Specifically, the French vs. German schools of post-war technology-based composition.* It's something I'd teach in my college classes, though I'd try to remind my students that boiling it down to France and Germany only is a dramatic simplification. There were concurrently to this time (approximately), studios popping up in the US, Italy, and Japan. 

Using France and Germany as examples does supply an easy narrative to consider: the sampled sound world of musique concrète, the entirely synthesized sources in elektronishe musik. There's also the idea that the French school largely worked intuitively or even experientially, working the materials over based on hearing the results. The German school was more pre-determined, more rationalized. 

The works on this disc date from 1952-58. You can hear the primitive sound quality on the earliest of the works, that there's a dullness to the sound, a slight muffled quality. The earliest works represented, by Herbert Eimert with and without Robert Beyer, sound like they are the loosest compositionally. "Klangstudie II" is a reworking of some of the same materials used in "Klangstudie I", both played in succession. I tend to prefer those to the more clearly serialized works such as the two compositions by Karel Goeyvaerts.

Some of the names I really only know because of this collection or from reading about the WDR studio: Eimert, Beyer, Goeyvaerts, Gredinger, Koenig, Kiebe. The more familiar names would be Hambraeus, Evangelisti, Brün, and especially Ligeti. The latter's two (and only two?) purely electronic works are included here. The studio had clearly made improvements and updates between the first pieces and these, from '57 and '58.

Name most notably missing: Karlheinz Stockhausen. He did after all become studio's musical director at one point. It's not that surprising and probably due to rights issues. Maybe that's a good thing. More composers get to be represented this way. I also find Stockhausen's "Studie I" and "Studie II" to be extremely dry and generally not that interesting. It's "Gesang der Jünglinge" where he made a major breakthrough, in scope and technique. Clocking at over thirteen minutes, putting that work on this collection would have knocked several other composers off.

A big question or tension in this all-electronic world is: do you attempt to model the sounds after acoustical instruments or other sounds from the natural world? I'm certain there's some of that. Nonetheless, this was a new and original sound world at the time, and these composers would have felt they needed to created new music with new techniques that weren't based on the past. The goals were both universalist (a music free of nationalism, for everyone) and complete newness. Nice ideals, but it is music that's very alien sounding at times. It's hard to identify with it. That's part of the impact of "Gesang", that the human voice used naturally draws your attention. 

Seeing as all the works are based on similar sound sources, it's not too difficult to tell where one ends and the next begins. There's a range of techniques and sounds the composers choose. Nonetheless, the dogmatic passion that some of these composers felt, France vs. Germany, seems silly and short-sighted in retrospect. Why not use any combination of electronic and sampled audio sources? 

* I began using the term "technology-based composition" to make a description more inclusive of a variety of techniques than "electronic music". Is musique concrète electronic music? I think it falls under that general umbrella, but there's an argument against it. Karlheinz Stockhausen gave himself credit for inventing electronic music. Not only did Pierre Schaeffer's first studies come before any Stockhausen work, but it's frankly disrespectful of those composers working at the WDR prior to him. 

CDOTD 08/02/2025

 Anthony Braxton with the Northwest Creative Orchestra: Eugene (1989) (Black Saint)

I visited Eugene, Oregon for the first time a few weeks ago. I'd summarily describe it as a cute college town. It's picturesque. There are two buttes (a kind of low mountain) that straddle the town, the East Butte and West Butte, that give a great view of the town below. There's a medium sized concert hall that benefits from being along the path from Seattle and Portland, to northern California. I'm told Napalm Death played there.

There are some nice restaurants and shops. If you are interested in such things, cannabis can be bought very cheaply. There are signs along the highway outside of town boasting $50 for an ounce, possibly even less.

Eugene is also not immune to the homelessness that plagues Portland. Considering how much smaller Eugene is, it's possible it's comparable per capita. But that's just idle speculation on my part. 

I was visiting my friend Josh Wulff, who is in the middle of a two year graduate degree and TA position. Take come courses, TA some courses, grade papers, play in ensembles, coach ensembles, for a stipend. He mentioned how a significant amount of the movie Animal House was filmed there. There's also some major Nike money that's gone into the sports facilities.

I've long had a curiosity regarding Eugene, based on this particular album. Recorded in 1989 but released in 1991, this is one of the many albums of Braxton's music after the publication of Graham Locke's book Forces in Motion, published in the US in 1989. It's part interview, part review, part biography, and part road diary of the 1985 Braxton Quartet in England (Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, Mark Dresser, Gerry Hemingway). Though there are a number of contenders, there's little disputing that this is one of Anthony's most significant and greatest ensembles.

This album is one that really cemented my interest in his music. It's one of the best documents of his "creative music orchestra" music (read: big band). It's not as clearly recorded as a studio project, but it's amazing that this is a document of a single concert. 

I know from experience this music is not easy. I pulled together a more modest version of this sort of project in Pittsburgh. It was very interesting to see Anthony manage a group of very dedicated but nervous musicians. He was confident, direct. "We're going to do [this], followed by [that]" etc. He places a huge emphasis on the downbeat when conducting, using close to a full arm's length to emphasize the beginning of every measure. After playing the first several measures of our first piece in rehearsal, he stopped and urged everyone to play at half the volume. After running one piece (we worked on four), there'd always be time for a few minutes' break.

Also part of the rehearsals was coaching on the Music Language Improvisation System. That's Anthony's name for his conducted improvisation cues. I have little doubt that it's an element of this performance too. The performance is continuous, and the MLIS is probably employed in between works.

This does point out the nature of some of the compositions, though. You'd have to be a true Braxtophile (or look up the recordings), but I'll mention: 134 he a defined ostinato and compositional logic (ascending minor thirds) so it's easy to pick it out on casual listening. Other works are complexes of polyrhythmic activity with brief improvisations layered in, making it difficult to tell exactly which is which. In some ways that's exciting, that blurring of what's composed and what isn't. It sometimes runs the risk of sound formless, like we're waiting for the next solid event to occur. 

Clearly though, for as many notes as Anthony writes, it's the improvisations that are the life, the gusto of the performance. However he may veer from standard jazz practices, it has that in common with mainstream jazz.

Anthony has just been placed in the Downbeat Jazz Hall of Fame. Seriously it's about goddamned time. So maybe it is jazz after all?  Eh, who cares. I was thinking of how little of the content of this blog is thoughts on jazz music, something I myself happen to practice. But maybe, like Anthony, I don't want my listening and output to be defined by idiomatic conventions. Miles Davis didn't want to be called a jazz musician, he was a musician. Likewise my late friend Chuck Austin. I'm in that camp, along with Mr. Braxton. Musician. 

VOTD 07/31/2025

 Nurse With Wound: Lumb's Sister (Nordung) (numbered picture disc edition)

Purchased used at The Attic

Here I am again, sitting down and listening and writing about another Nurse With Wound album. Writing cogently about music in general is a challenging thing to do, and I don't pretend I'm a great writer. My father, a painter, talked to me about people who have written about his work. I wish I could recall something resembling verbatim, but he basically said that articles about him had been pretty superficial. It was easier to write about the subjects of his painting but not the content. He also thought the articles about me he read were generally better, deeper.

I can blog about the circumstances of this particular record, maybe try to describe some of the content, but that doesn't really dig terribly deeply into what makes this music what it is. 

As for the circumstances, this was originally recorded 1986-87 at the IPS Studio. It was intended to a film but I can deduce that the film either wasn't completed, or the music was rejected. There was an earlier version released on a three record set, NWW, Current 93, and Sol Invictus getting one LP each. I have that as well, as this was around when I was collection any NWW (and the associated label United Dairies) I could get my hands on. It's not in the notes, but I was told the material was worked over and the content is considerably longer. 

While I've revived my interest in NWW/Steven Stapleton's work, I prefer this earlier period than when he started using digital resources for the first time, a few years hence from this. I mean, I get it. These original analog sessions must have been time and money intensive. There's probably some (if not all) he can do from his home at this point.

I've made the point previously, that I like the sweat on those analog-based albums. I mean, I feel the same way about The Residents; they started to become less interesting to me when they bought their first sampling keyboard. No need for the out of tune piano, the squawky saxophone only made only brief appearances. But I liked the out of tune piano!

The NWW catalog has become quite vast, so I don't try to snag every new issue. Look at their Bandcamp page: https://nursewithwound1.bandcamp.com/music

...and that's not everything. So while I may have started to pick up some of the more recent albums, I don't feel a need to get everything.

A point I'm certain I've made before: there's no typical NWW album. That is both exciting but at times frustrating. I've picked up a few that I thought were, well, boring. Part of why I laid off for some years. Like most, but not all, NWW albums, this plays something like a Surreal soundtrack for your mind. It's largely on the low key side, quieter, no big leaps in volume or dramatic edits. Quieter does not equal boring though! As is often with NWW albums, the voice plays an important part if not necessarily up front in the mix. Some voices sped-up, layered, whispering, sometimes distant, distorted. Often not the focus of whatever narrative might be suggested. 

Another point I've probably made before: bringing in a voice into a matrix of sound sources such as this will always draw attention to itself. We're programmed that way. (Hey! I taught college classes for twenty years, sorry if I can't remember what I said to whom.) From my first semester on, I always devoted one class period in my electronic music course to a discussion about Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge (a record Steven Stapleton doubtlessly knew).

Why this particular piece? Many reasons, which I largely won't describe here. (Maybe I should pull that LP out some time, and blog about it.) But a point I tried to make, what's the effect of a boy's voice mixed with purely electronic sounds? It's easy to say the piece is creepy or scary, but why? I think (partially) it's because it's disconcerting to have the most familiar sound we know, the human voice, juxtaposed/combined with the newest source of sounds, pure electronics. Some got it.

A student from my fall 2024 semester commented that it made them want to pull their ears off their head. I would go to some length to say that I didn't expect anyone to like anything I assigned for listening. But, you know what? Grow up. In fact, why are you even a composition major? This student frequently skipped class and I gave them a D just so they'd never be in my class again. 

Yeah, I'm playing the gender pronoun game there. I don't want to get sued. I'm also doing a little post-retirement venting. 

This post turned out longer than I expected. Thanks for your patience. 

CDOTD 07/29/2025

 Francis Dhomont: Frankenstein Symphony (Asphodel/Sombient)

Purchased from the dollar bin at The Exchange

Who's Francis Dhomont? Hell if I know. But then most people, including many locals, could say the same about me.

In years past I've been a hawk for the dollar bins a The Exchange, as well as other stores. There's barely a dollar bin any more. There are so many CDs that nobody seems to want, why bother giving up the space?

The pickings at times were so rich, I had to stop myself. But I also made some incredible finds, such as two $1 Fela Kuti discs. That's why you hunt.

How did I pick up on this? Maybe the title Frankenstein Symphony caught my eye. Sure, I'll look at that. It's a promo copy sold off (multiple times it appears) from KVNM, a station in Albuquerque. Funny how these things can travel. There's a promo sticker on the front, which reads in part: "...more like a mental soundtrack. You can, however, scare little children with this, say around Halloween. Also applies to other holidays that require a new perspective. ... This composition is derived from the works of 22 other composers. He's 74 years old and still ahead of his time."

I thought, maybe a Plunderphonics-style work? I'll buy that for a dollar!

It maybe indeed be at its heart a Plunderphonics-style work. The thing about John Oswald's work is that he's often making a comment on the original (well known) artist by reassembling components sampled from their work. An example I often played in my classes was "Net", a less than two minute assemblage of Metallica samples (mostly drawn from Master of Puppets).  Oswald mostly edited together the short starts and stops of Metallica songs to create the ultimate Metallica work! I think it's funny as hell.

This work is assembled from bits and pieces of electroacoustic composers, none of which I know at all. Perhaps I've come across some of their names, but nothing sticks out. Gilles Gobeil, Ned Bouhalassa, Christian Calon, Annette Vande Gorne, Claude Schryer, is there a point in me going on?

"...A mental soundtrack" is as good a description of this work as any. It's without question more aligned with the French school of musique concrète than the German elektronische musik. Even if I'm uncertain whether some sound sources start acoustically or as synthesized sound, the work feels intuitive more than calculated. When coaching my former students on these styles, I would comment that musique concrète could have a narrative quality. That's not necessarily bad in itself, but that (at least in my opinion) it was uninteresting to try to tell a specific story. Let the sounds be sounds. 

Which reminds me of a project a student submitted. He had collected samples from recordings of the first moon launch. In the middle of the work, he had the sound of dripping water as if it was in a cave. I asked him why he used it? "Because it sounded cool." I responded, "Last I checked, there was no water on the moon."

This CD's work is in four movements, similar to a Classical symphony: "Allegro", "Andante", "Scherzo (Giocoso)", "Finale". In some way I think that's a joke, but also it gives him a framework, a form. Each has its own air so to speak, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you which was "Andante" if I heard it out of context. The scherzo movement does rely on car and toy horns, and duck sounds, for some of its content, so that tracks. I might have guessed it to be the "Scherzo (Giocoso)" if I listened to it separately. 

I'm working on an intuitive response to this, so forgive me with words fail me. It's not too far astray from Steven Stapleton/Nurse With Wound's work. Maybe a little more academic? But definitely not too much.

If there was nothing else to this album, there's an incredible amount of editing. It took effort. 

Would it mean anything to me if I was familiar with the sampled artists' music? I think I might catch something, an element I'd heard before, but nothing sits on a single idea for very long. There are highs, lows, hills and valleys, familiar sounds and unfamiliar. I'm okay with letting it all play by me. 

That said, the movements range from 14:30 and 16:41 each in length. Perfect length for a compact disc or a double LP. Does the medium influence results? In this case, I can't believe otherwise. If he was unfettered by the restrictions of the medium, would the work have been different? Considering all of the movements flow without a specific form that I can hear, I am uncertain each needed to be as long as it was. But I don't really know, do I? Maybe his decisions stand apart from the medium, maybe it's exactly as long as he intended it to be.

I see on Francis' discogs page that he died in 2023 at age 97. Like Tom Lehrer. There was an obit for Tom in the New York Times this week.

After my blog posts about Tom and Pink Floyd, maybe I thought it was time to go "impossibly obscure" again. Some or all of this is on Youtube if you care to look it up. 

DVDOTD 07/27/2025

 Tom Lehrer: The Tom Lehrer Collection [second DVD disc] (Shout! Factory)

Between the time I wrote my Pink Floyd blog post and now, I learned that Tom Lehrer died. Considering he was 97, this comes as little surprise.

Who is the greatest lyricist ever? I believe the question itself is flawed. How can we know who is the greatest at anything? Sometimes these things are measurable, but hardly in the arts. Best selling, yes. Greatest? A matter of opinion.

Who do I think is the greatest lyricist ever? I'm going with Tom. 

I was griping in my previous posting about songwriters who don't have the basic mechanics of songwriting mastered: fitting the rhythm of the words to the meter of the song, stretching too far to make rhymes. 

Tom had that down. He'd be the first to admit that musically he wasn't breaking new ground. All of his songs sound like jaunty, turn-of-the-century ditties. But that's where much of his humor lies: singing happy-sounding tunes with sarcastic, droll, or incredibly witty lyrics. And laugh-out-loud funny. 

Tom self-released in 1953 his first 10" album, Songs by Tom Lehrer. Original copies have his PO box address on it. It must have been picked up for some distribution, because I understand it sold into six figures.

There's really only a handful of Lehrer records. He was far more invested in being a math (and later musical theater) professor at Harvard.

The majority of the DVD half of this release is a Copenhagen performance from 1967. There's Tom, relatively young, bespectacled, wavy hair pushed back, at the piano singing "The Masochism Tango", "The Vatican Rag", "Pollution", and "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park". So modest yet absolutely killing it. 

The DVD includes four songs he wrote in the 1970s for The Electric Company, all very clever. There's also two songs he played in 1997 regarding math. Clocking in under a minute, "The Derivative Song" ranks with the best of any of his songs, and should be memorized by any first-year college student studying mathematics. 

It was pretty recently, like weeks, that I read that Tom had placed all of his songs into public domain. How can I not love this man? I'm certain I would have totally fawned over him like a fanboy if I had met him. I'm certain he would have been polite and hated it. 

When it comes down to it, what do we hope to do in this life? Make the world a better and more interesting place. At least that's my take. Tom was successful in that respect. We should all do so well. 

CDOTD 07/27/2025

 Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon (Capitol)

Really Ben? Dark Side of the Moon? What could you possibly have to say about this album that hasn't been stated 10,000 times before? And don't you specialize in impossibly obscure artists like Maury Coles?

A few thoughts and anecdotes.

Back in my early WRCT days, some of us looked forward to receiving Billboard magazine for a single reason: to see if DSOTM was still on the top 200 album chart. It had been there perhaps nine years? Its sales are still eclipsed by The Wall, but this album sold consistently. One week, it dropped off the chart. No!! The next issue it was back on, sales no doubt spurred by its drop the previous week. The editors decided not to reset the weeks-on-chart listing, to our satisfaction. 

People often refer to this as a concept album. I disagree. The Wall is a concept album, a narrative of a rock star descending into isolation and madness. DSOTM is a suite. No song stands alone outside the album, with the exception of the single "Money" and possibly the side one closer, "The Great Gig in the Sky". Despite this album's esteem and popularity, it doesn't generally make for good radio play.

Once on a family drive to New York City when I was a teen, we had on a rock station (not always the case). The station played "Money". My father commented, "This band is trying to sound Black."

I wonder how many issues of this album there have been? (I guess I could look it up. Nah.) I wonder who has collected more of those issues than anyone? I'm sure someone has paid big money for a Greek pressing off discogs.com. 

In high school, I had to explain to some of the motorhead kids that I played saxophone. One of them: "Can you play Pink Floyd?" "Yeah, I could do that."

This band is identified most closely with Roger Waters and then David Gilmour. Similar to Talking Heads, I'm interested in the group dynamic at least as much as the star(s) up front. Richard Wright is given sole writing credit for "Great Gig", a piece I've always enjoyed. I think his contribution to this and other albums was probably underplayed. He was a good harmony vocalist, blending seamlessly with David's vocals. By the time of The Wall, Richard was so disengaged and/or using cocaine so much that he's only given credit as a backing musician. Pretty shitty thing to do if you ask me. 

There are some sharp nine chords here, that Richard said he learned from a Miles Davis record. 

Clare Torry is the voice on "Great Gig" and completely sells the work with her intense vocalese. I understand she did it in one take. Booyah. 

I like David Gilmour as both a vocalist and guitar soloist. He's never flashy, and has a strong melodic sense. Roger singing is good at sounding weirder, David at sounding sweet. 

There's a lyric on this album I've misheard for decades. "Us and Them" goes: "Haven't you heard it's a battle of words/the poster bearer cried". I always thought it was, "Haven't you heard it's a battle of words/and most of them are lies". You know what? I like my version better.

I often don't pay attention to lyrics, except when I think they're bad. My sister played a song for me she really enjoys, a Youtube video with lyrics included. I couldn't get past the fact that the lyrics were garbage. Oh okay, the song was in general garbage too, but I guess it spoke to her. If you're going to be a songwriter, I think it's essential you have the mechanics of songwriting down. The rhythm of the words has to fit the meter. If you're rhyming, you can only stretch rhymes so much. Some songwriters transcend those rules; rules were meant to be broken, right? But I find too many give themselves license rather than really work on their words. 

Point being, the closing lyric of this album is one of my all time favorites: "All that is now/all that is gone/all that's to come/and everything under the sun is in tune/but the sun is eclipsed by the moon." For some reason that speaks to me. No matter how things align, the world is imperfect. Always. 

The album credits state: All lyrics by ROGER WATERS [their capitalization]. Okay we get it Roger, you're a fucking genius. 

I enjoy the musique concrète elements of this album. The clocks at the beginning, the disembodied non-sequitor voices, the tape loop at the opening of "Money". It's a rich production in general, which I don't necessarily need. But the album sounds great.

At a CAPA in service day, the instrumental music faculty met for a cheese party with music playing. Our staff head put on DSOTM. The piano lab teacher, barely 30 years old if that, had never heard it before and asked, "WHAT is THIS?" I said, "You really don't know Dark Side of the Moon? You need to sit and listen." Which she did, and said it was great.

It is essential listening, whether you enjoy it or not. 

Some random thoughts (or not) regarding Ozzy Osbourne (+)

Most of the time, I use this blog as a forum for my musical opinions, with some autobiography thrown in. It's my life, and welcome to it. 

Once in a while I've taken the opportunity to eulogize or memorialize, in my small and barely significant way, people who have recently died. Betty Davis, Steve Albini, and guitarist Bruce Anderson, for example. 

The big news this week in obituaries, but not the only, has been for Ozzy Osbourne. Looking around my personal library, I don't think there's a minute of Ozzy's voice anywhere, unless he's on a Plunderphonics recording. Even then, I don't think so.

I shared a dream I once had about Ozzy on Facebook: 

I don't often remember my dreams, but sometimes they are vivid. I had a dream I was on stage with Ozzy Osbourne. The band was going to play "Paranoid". I don't play guitar at all, but I had on a Les Paul and a slide on my finger. I tried to explain my lack of guitar ability to Ozzy, who said, "Uh uh uh just slide your finger up and down at the right time." Somehow I got through it.

I was never a big Sabbath guy, but respect.

I don't have the literary imagination to have made up such a myth in my waking life. I think it's a variation on the dream where you're off to a final exam in a college class that you've never attended, and not have read the materials. 

I spoke to my father yesterday, who mentioned that he read my post but didn't really know who Ozzy was. He expressed skepticism. I said I thought he started as someone who was earnest but became someone who chased money. He responded, in so many words, that Ozzy went from a creator to a show business figure. Bingo. 

I never really cared that much for Black Sabbath. Maybe that's an oversight on my part. I acknowledge BS as an original force, and there's no denying Ozzy's part in it. By the time he'd launched his solo career, he played up the evilness of his persona to the point of self-parody, regardless of what the music sounded like. (I'm certainly more sympathetic to the darkness of BS). By the time The Osbournes hit cable TV? Oh I watched it a bit, less than my daughter, but his act was full on farce by that point. My friend Daryl Fleming even stated the opinion that the show marked the decline of civilization. Maybe that's overstated, but I can hardly argue against it given our current circumstances. 

As an aside, I've heard some isolated tracks from BS drummer Bill Ward, and I have to say he sounded pretty damned good. Maybe even the best musician in the band. 

I've just reserved a book from the library which I'm very interested to read: Why You Like It: The Science and Culture of Musical Taste by Nolan Gasser. I question these things myself, sometimes "out loud" in the text of these brief missives on this blog. 

No doubt the idea of having affection for anything you liked at 13-14 years old, you will always like. Largely that's true but not universal in my experience. I still enjoy Yes' Close to the Edge ("I can't believe you like that band!" -my wife) but don't have much affection for Steve Miller's Book of Dreams or Styx' The Grand Illusion. Hey, it was the 70s! I was just starting to figure these things out! 

So Ozzy, I don't know. I'm not torn up about this, but maybe I'll spend a little time with your early work soon. The library is really good for things like that.

Other obits:

Sometime in the last 24 hours, Hulk Hogan died. 

Anyway...

Also, Chuck Mangione, who I was certain wasn't still alive. I learned to play "Feels So Good" off the radio on tenor saxophone in my high school days. That's as good a purpose for that piece as any.

Also also, I just read on Facebook that Bill Exley from the Nihilist Spasm Band died July 15. If there's anything you remember about NSB records, in all likelihood it's Bill's shouted texts. ("Stupidity! Stupidity, stupidity!", sampled on a Nurse With Wound record.) My band Water Shed 5tet opened for the NSB some time in the late 90s, a CMU-sponsored show but no doubt arranged through Manny Theiner. I think our slot on the billing angered the more avant-garde contingency locally. The NSB however were perfectly nice and friendly. Bill even then seemed like an old gentleman. He particularly seemed interested in my Theremin, which I let him play during our sound checks. He mentioned something about the other people in the band had not permitted him to play their (homemade) instruments after his passionate performances had broken some of them (and possibly a Theremin they had owned too?). My drummer Jay told me after the show he was sure Bill wanted to play my Theremin in performance but didn't want to ask. I should have let him! At least I think so, it's still operational today. 

Bill is seen in the center below. No doubt you've seen enough images of Ozzy Osbourne this week, I don't need to post another. 

VOTD 07/21/2025

 The Brothers Johnson: Look Out For #1 (A&M)

Purchased for $5 at a supposed-flea market in Shred Shack, an indie space in the Allentown neighborhood of Pittsburgh

1976. Disco was breaking, in advance of the film Saturday Night Fever. I'm sure it was a major presence in Manhattan, but I was in Pleasant Valley PA, outside of Coopersburg, outside of Quakertown, outside of Allentown/Bethlehem, etc. 

I was thirteen. I was starting to transition from monster movie magazines (specifically Famous Monster of Filmland) to Creem, the hippest of music zines I knew. Possibly ever. Even then I didn't read it religiously. The local Quakertown newsstand sold issues at half price, old and out of date issues. Catch as catch can. 

I remember seeing an ad for this in Creem, and thinking, that's just disco. What do you expect from a young cracker from Pleasant Valley?

In my defense, by that age I knew by name the players in the Louis Armstrong Hot Five and had a Louis t-shirt. I was maybe listening to some Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk, at least here and there. That's my father's influence, or perhaps guidance. I knew who Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and Duke Ellington were, something that probably couldn't be said for my classmates. 

So what of this record nearly five decades later? It should be noted that it's produced by Quincy Jones. I assume they expected big things for this. 

I find it poppier than I prefer, but at moments pretty great. Surprisingly (or maybe not?): there's a cover of The Beatles' "Come Together". I know it's faint praise, but I didn't hate it. It's at least as good as the Aerosmith cover for the Sgt Peppers movie soundtrack. 

At moments this sounds like a Parliament record, which I guess is what I'm craving. "Dancin' and Prancin'", "Thunder Thumbs and Lightnin' Licks" and "Get the Funk out Ma Face" drawn on that Parliament energy. Perhaps most of all would be the final cut, "The Devil." I'm sure both Parliament/Funkadelic was in the air as well as their influences, such as 70s James Brown. The opening cut ("I'll Be Good to You") and the second song on the second side ("Land of Ladies") seem to be made for radio play, such as the old WAMO. "The Devil" hits deeper and darker, and I wanted more. 

What would this album have been in the digital age? Almost assuredly longer. The final cut in particular feels trimmed, truncated. They could have sat on that for ten minutes. Maybe twenty. Maybe longer. 

Looking at the cover, I want Louis Johnson's (the bassist) shirt. But nobody wants me to wear it as open as he does, least of all me. 

CDOTD 07/19/2025

Wolf Eyes and Anthony Braxton: Wolf Eyes x Anthony Braxton (ESP)

Purchased at Music Millennium, Portland OR

I've previously mentioned that I make an annual trip to Portland, OR. Both my parents (still together 63 years) and my three younger sisters all migrated there. Thank Yahweh or "Bob" or the Muses or any other higher power they all didn't settle in Florida or Texas. (Well, maybe Austin, but otherwise...) Portland is far from problem-free, but it's a fun place to visit.

Music Millennium on Burnside is a great record and CD store, new and used stock, big, great variety. A few visits back, I bought the Broken Shadows CD, a project of Tim Berne & Co playing Ornette Coleman, Julius Hemphill, Charlie Haden and Dewey Redman tunes. It's good. At times great, though having played some of the same pieces, we diverge in terms of interpretation.

Anyway....point being, I bought their CD at this store. Upon returning, my drummer David Throckmorton said, "You went to a store that actually sells CDs?"

That's an exaggeration, but I do see his point. There are stores, mostly The Exchange locally, that sell new CDs. But that CD new, a different story. You won't find it on any local shelf new, any time in the past ten years or more probably. What a shame. 

Any time I go into a store like that, I by default make sure I hit certain artist sections: Cage, Feldman, Xenakis, Nurse With Wound, Zappa, Messiaen, The Residents, Ornette, Monk, Morricone. I do not anticipate finding anything I should purchase, but you never know, right?

And naturally, Anthony Braxton. I knew there was an issue of a recent Wolf Eyes/Braxton session (they told me about it), and there it was. Had to get.

Something's occurred to me recently. The price of vinyl goes up up up, both new and second hand. CDs? The prices haven't significantly gone higher in many years. This cost me what it would have twenty years ago, more or less. In other words, the price of records has increased with inflation, while the price of CDs has effectively gone down. Nobody feels that romantic attachment to CDs the way they do about LPs (guilty here) but it's a highly economical medium. 

Wolf Eyes: they seem to benefit by not defining themselves strictly. Are they an industrial band? Experimental noisemakers? Yes, no? At heart they seem to be improvisors. Seeing them live, it was clear that they were largely improvising, but it was unclear if they went in with any sort of general plan or prepared material. 

What I've read about Wolf Eyes and Anthony is that they were on the same festival together, and Anthony said maybe he'd stop by and sit in. WE's collective reaction was, yeah, sure. But surely enough Braxton showed up for their set and sonically peeled some paint off the walls. 

So here they are again. Anthony sits on top when he's playing, but there's very clear back-and-forth between the players. Anthony must of recognized them for what they are: troublemaker improvisors working in their own little sub-genre. Game recognizes game.

WE has also played with Marshall Allen. Release, please!

Also, as I've stated previously, please let me sit in with you too. I think it'll be worth your time.

VOTD 07/17/2025

 Merzbow: Pulse Demon (Relapse)

Purchased new at Music Millennium in Portland, OR

I know myself well enough to know that if I'm flush with cash and go record shopping, it's more likely I'll buy something. I avoid using cards and apps unless necessary. Seeing my parents this past week or so, they stocked me with some hard currency. And you know, it was family visit/vacation, and I'm there at the great Music Millennium on Burnside, and feeling like I needed to make quick decisions. My nephew is currently on a major Beach Boys kick, and quickly made a decision for his CD purchase. I wasn't being rushed but I didn't want to keep him or his father waiting too long.

I've already written about one purchase, Ornette Coleman's Crisis on vinyl. There's another forthcoming. And this little monstrosity.

This has a vinyl release date of 2019, so there's a high likelihood I saw this on at least one prior visit to this store. I guess with money in hand, they made the sale this time. 

I mention vinyl release, because there's a copyright date of both 2019 and 1996. '96 would indicate that this was originally a CD issue, something which discogs.com confirms. Meaning, a short double-LP. (Though actually, standard length CDs and double LPs run about the same length of time. Around the region of eighty minutes.)

Maybe I like the title, Pulse Demon. "Pulse" suggests something musical. Pulse demon? Something musical, pulsing, rhythmic, but nasty and evil too. Maybe. 

Maybe the cover caught my eye, an op-art image with iridescent silver. And maybe I felt rushed and just wanted to make a decision. 

Side one lists four tracks but everything runs continuously, as do sides two and three with multiple tracks listed. Side three does feel like it lives up to the title more than record one. 

I wonder, are there obsessive Merzbow collectors? I imagine one or two at least. I ask the question because, even if you're a fan, do you really need more than one or two albums? There is some variety to be sure, but I think a lot of his output is similar to this: a wall of noise, with hard filter sweeps. Some pulses, some LFOs, flittering, details emerging and receding from/under the sheet of noise. It has more variety than some of the more recent hard-noise artists I've encountered, such as The Rita or a lot of Richard Ramirez' work. 

Yet, despite my more youthful enthusiasm for early industrial music, I do question why I'm listening to this. Anything can have its place to be certain. Sometimes I need to listen to something extreme (like, when Donald Trump gets elected president). Right now I have it on because I bought it earlier this week. 

If so many of Merzbow's albums sound like this, why release as many as he does? That answer's obvious: 1) they're relatively easy to perform; 2) someone wants to put them out.

I can't say for certain, but I don't know that I'll buy another Merzbow album unless I know there's something different that it offers. That's something I don't rule out. 

A friend told me about the Merzcar: you could buy an edition of one automobile from Merzbow that had a Merzbow CD playing on the stereo constantly, that you couldn't eject or stop. I hope it's true. 

A few more details: the vinyl is very attractive half black/half clear with colored streaks for each disc. Very attractive. the LP reissue was mastered by Jame Plotkin of Khanate. I'm certain he went for maximum confrontation without pinning the meters 100% of the time.

I'm sure I've written before that Merzbow + then wife Reiko + Ron Lessard/Emil Beaulieau/RRRecords stayed at my house. That's major industrial street cred in some circles. I know I've told this anecdote before: when introduced to Reiko she said, "He is like the oyster." I looked at her in complete confusion. "Oh, you don't have that saying. It means he is very quiet." The music was, and is, most definitely not.

VOTD 07/16/2025 #2

 Various artists: The Best of David F. Friedman (Modern Harmonic)

Purchased at Jackpot Records in Portland, OR

"Sell the sizzle, not the steak!"

Whatever inaccuracies I've posted on this on blog, I know that to be a direct quote from David F. Friedman. A huckster's huckster, David's place in cinema is well established. That is, he (in)famously produced Herschel Gordon Lewis' gore trilogy (Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs, and most offensively of all Color Me Blood Red). If I'm correct about this LP, it's the movies after those but before he (pseudonymously) produced several XXX hardcore features. Hey, it's a living. 

Collected here: mostly the audio from his movie trailers, with a few music cues. Some of the titles: The Acid Eaters!; A Sweet Sickness; The Ramrodder; The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill; Thar She Blows; and best of all, A Smell of Honey, A Swallow of Brine. (What does that mean? I don't know but it sounds great.) 

It's amazing that these films even existed, and played in actual (disreputable) theaters. Theaters, nonetheless. 

There are so many quote passing by quickly: eight reels of sewage! This is a film that literally assaults the sensual senses! Sell, sell, sell!

It all seems quaint now, considering the easy online access to porn. Men needed to work to watch something to get aroused then, and it was just brief shots of a bare breast or buttock. 

The LP comes with a DVD, presumably a disc of trailers from which these audio clips were pulled. I'll get to it. 

Sell! Sell! Sell!

VOTD 07/16/2025

 Ornette Coleman: Crisis (Endless Happiness)

Purchased Music Millennium, Portland OR

I assume there's some repetition in my posts on this blog, but I'll go ahead anyway: I do not post pictures or social media notices when I am away from home on vacation or visiting family. My immediate family, both parents and all three younger sisters, have migrated to to Portland OR. My mother is now 90 (she's clearly old but you probably wouldn't guess that old) and my father turns 89 in December. It's great to not only see the family in one fell swoop, but they're in a location where there are things to do. This happens to include record shopping.

One of my favorite spots to visit is Music Millennium on Burnside St. It's a big store, solid if not comprehensive selections, and they still sell new CDs. (I bought one in addition to the vinyl, which I'll write about soon.) My 25 year old nephew is on a huge Beach Boys kick, and happily bought a triple CD live set of theirs on our mutual visit to the store. 

I was in a buying mood I guess. I really don't know if this is a bootleg, there's a good chance it is. There's some Cyrillic text on the back. I don't remember the original on Impulse! sounding any less distant than this issue. I know that Mike Shanley was searching for an original copy for years, to finally land one. I'm lazier, less diligent, and maybe I don't largely care if it's on the original label.

Quite the interesting band, drawing from older and newer groupings: Ornette, Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, and Denardo on drums. Recorded in 1969, Denardo would have been twelve years old at the time. I don't know how feel about that. Ornette was definitely short-circuiting conventions including conventional swing. But, what does a pre-teen offer to the music?

There are five pieces on the program, and I've played three of them already, a big reason for buying this. "Broken Shadows", "Comme Il Faut", and Charlie Haden's "Song for Che". I particularly like the melody for the latter. It's one of the few pieces played by Ornette that he himself did not compose. 

Ornette's playing dominates the concert. He's very fluid. If any jazz musician thinks it's easy to play, free, well, go ahead. I'm certain you'll run out of ideas quickly. It's happened to me. Ornette goes and goes and goes. His soloing is highly cohesive. He starts an idea and follows it. 

If I had to pick a second MVP, it would probably be Charlie Haden. He's a constant presence in this concert, probably more than Denardo. He's limber, and has a particular particular sort of sound when he pizzicatos his walking bass. Ornette was extraordinarily lucky to have found such a solid collaborator, but I suppose the same could be said for Haden. 

The over image: the Bill of Rights being burned. It's Nixon era. I don't want to diminish that fact, but holy hell they had no idea what we were in for with Trump. Or did they? No, I think not, considering Nixon was willing to resign when the Republican numbers were against him. You know, in the days of conscience and ethics. I hate the idea of reflecting on the "good ol' days" but dammit, if you go against party policy you're done. I could never abide by that. But then, I've never wanted to head a school department, and don't feel comfortable having run bands. 

Am I going too autobiographical?

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?

CDOTD 06/01/2025

Sons of Ra: Standard Deviation (The Laser's Edge)

Purchased new from the band

I have to say, it takes some balls to call yourself Sons of Ra. Evokes you-know-who. 

I opened for them at Bantha Tea Bar in the Garfield neighborhood last week. It's a tiny space, never meant to contain a band that sounds this big. I did an opening duet set with Patrick Breiner. Patrick told Manny Theiner to give his fee to that headliner. I took my $15 and bought their current CD with it. Patrick's a mensch beyond mensch, does that make me a jerk?

Manny described them as being like Last Exit, the heavy hitting supergroup of Peter Brotzmann, Sonny Sharrock, Bill Laswell, and Ronald Shannon Jackson. I'd say...maybe not so much, but I'm interested in revisiting that group. I'd say closer to Sonny Sharrock's Ask the Ages, but that album's such a classic, that's not fair either. 

It's not exactly jazz, SOR are mostly a power trio with the bassist doubling on saxophone. I hope I don't sound cynical when I say, they get a lot of mileage out of their reverb effects, on a similar way to Killing Joke. But far more jazzy.

Opening the disc and the concert: a take on Coltrane's "Alabama". I say, be careful. That's a powerful work. 

They performed well, but the pieces come off more effectively in studio versions. Less muddy, partly due to the space. My own experience recording is the opposite: it's very difficult to capture the live essence in the studio. When they need power chords, it comes through clearly on record. There's also a lot more saxophone here than I remember in concert. 

I can't help but turn this inwards. Is this better than the second CD by my old band Water Shed 5tet? In general, probably yes, but I think my album was more original. Give the kids a break though, they're working hard and more dedicated to touring and promotion than I'm capable. 

And I'll probably sound like a jerk but, listening to them, I felt like I could do something similar but better. Sons of Ra, should you read this, prove me wrong! I'm a battered-down old man clinging to relevancy. Nonetheless, you do have room to grow.