A response

 I've tried to notice when people have responded to my blog posts. There are two friends who have written responses, neither of whom use their birth names for online purposes when possible, so I won't either. 

Today however, I received an email from one Robert Carey of (or really, is) Orchid Spangiafora. The link for my original posting is at the top of the pasted message.

He wrote that Blogspot wasn't permitting him to respond to my posting. (I assume it's my fault, some setting I probably need to change.) Because this is the primary source, the genuine article, I thought I'd include his email as a separate posting and not just paste it into the responses myself. 

Something I mentioned to him when writing back: I wrote to him once before, asking if he knew anything about the Conglomerate Records tape collection. Like everyone else I asked, the answer was no. If you have no idea what I'm referring to, I'll write more in a future message.

Re: http://benopie.blogspot.com/2023/10/votd-10252023.html

Thanks for the review! It is very cool to be able to read people’s takes on FPAE.  I remember thinking when I made the record I would never get to hear people’s reactions to it.  The web has changed that. 

I have a few comments.

I am certain she is the reason WRCT bought the Orchid Spangiafora LP. "It's really good" as she would say in her quiet manner. Curiously, the original album was released on Twin/Tone Records. Twin/Tone was a Minnesota indie that released the likes of The Replacements, Soul Asylum, The Mekons, Yo La Tengo: guitar-driven stripped-down new wave bands. Yet, somehow in 1979, the Orchid Spangiafora LP was released. 

I forgot Yo La Tango was on Twin/Tone.  Georgia was in elementary school at Friends Seminary when I was in high school.  I got to know her and Ira better in the late 1970s when I was seeing Georgia’s sister Emily and Ira was working at NY Rocker.  Before Flee Past’s Ape Elf I made a 7” record of Dime Operation.  My college roommate, Chris Osgood, was in a band called The Suicide Commandos and they put out some EPs via Paul Stark, who founded Twin/Tone.  So my record came out on PS records.  Later Chris worked for Twin/Tone and he proposed an Orchid Spangiafora album to the other guys there.

So what is it? Musique concrète, audio cut-ups, Plunderphonics before such a word existed. (I assume, I think John Oswald would create the word some years later.) 

I always thought of it as Concrète, but historically that genre typically emphasized found sounds other than voice.  It has a little in common with Come Out by Steve Reich, but it is not as formal, and I think it owes more to Burroughs and Gysin.  I first heard of Plunderphonics when Byron Coley played me the record with Michael Jackson on the cover - particular the track based on Trout Mask Replica.  I think that was in the late 1980s.   Plunderphonics to me is more about repurposing selections of existing music to create a new piece that sounds like it could have been assembled by the original artist.  Somewhere in between you find things like 448 Deathless Days by Steve Fisk (which I highly recommend.)

The emphasis is on voices, particularly found voices; the first work, "Dime Operation", is a furious collage of voices that sound like they were recorded off of television. (I recognized Monte Hall's voice in there.) 

“I had so much fun with those dolphins.”  Yep, a lot of television and radio combined with friends’ voices and anything else that happened along.   The first one was Coarse Fish.  I came into the Hampshire College electronic music studio in 1973 to find that John Kilgore had left me a huge pile of loose recording tape on the table with a note on top saying, “Robbie, knock yourself out.”  It was recordings of a nature show about the ocean.  It became Coarse Fish.

One phrase stood out, from two speakers edited one after the other: "Fashioned to a device behind a tree." This would become the title of a Nurse With Wound piece, first appearing on a Come Org compilation in 1982.

Stapleton misheard that.  It actually says, “Fastened to a device - behind a tree.”  Not that it really matters at all.

The reissue comes with a second LP of unreleased (at least to vinyl) works. The first side is different, more of a low-tech electronic work, but again with some emphasis on editing. The second side though, it's all voices. One after another after another after another, cut/cut/cut/cut/cut. It's listed as four pieces, but it runs continuously and I'll be damned if I can hear where one ends and the next starts.

I did Asafoetida in October 1972.  The studio at Hampshire had an Arp 2500 synthesizer which was a great teaching machine but somewhat noisy.   A lot, but far from all, of the sounds in that piece come from the Arp, but nearly all of the composition was done with loops and edits on the tape decks and combining tracks with the mixer.  There are many many tracks layered in that piece.  Unfortunately it is a little muddy because it was, in fact, somewhat muddy to begin with due to certain constraints of the studio but mostly due to my inexperience.  Also the original tape was lost long ago, and the recording on the album is from a not-very-carefully made dub.  Secondhand Smoke was done on a computer when storage and processor speed was just barely up to it.  Hold Everything was done after Hampshire in my parents’ apartment on a cheap Akai tape recorder.  There is more Orchid material from feeding tube if you are interested.  Visit https://feedingtuberecords.com/.  There are also some odds and ends on bandcamp.

*Regarding Boyd Rice: Hoo boy. I guess he still has his defenders, it's not a scene that I've followed closely. 

Boyd sent me some records by Non in the late 70s or early 80s.  They were interesting.  He had drilled alternative spindle holes in them so you could play them off center.  I met him when he did a performance at Hurrah in NYC.  The performance was good.  I found him interesting but somewhat hostile.  I recently bought a book by him called “No,” but I have not given it the attention it deserves. Beyond that I do not know much about him.  I believe you can find more personal notes about him in Drugs Are Nice by Lisa Carver, another book that is sitting unread on my shelf.  I should get around to it.

Bonus post!

It's been a few days over a year that I starting blogging regularly, then not so regularly, here. As I wrote recently, it was an intended discipline to give purpose to my record and CD collection: write my thoughts on my current listening, and give a reason for pulling out records from my archive. Ultimately, I find I'm writing about myself more than the music itself (such as in this very instance). I'll probably continue now and then, once again for myself than any intended audience. I feel like I've reached a point where I'm starting to repeat my own anecdotes. I might be repeated the comment below.

I have a friend, who for simplicity's sake I'll refer to the masculine "he." (I don't need a discussion regarding pronouns, please.) This is someone I've known for decades, but haven't seen in person for years. We are Facebook contacts. When he responds to a posting by me or others that I see, it inevitably comes in the form of, "I saw that band in 1984" or "My band opened for them" or "I drove around that musician one weekend" or other comments that almost invariably come back to "I" or "me." He's even taken credit for things I didn't believe he should, and I've called him out on it.

This is my long-winded example of the hesitance I feel just writing about myself. I, I, I, me, me, me. And if I do write about myself, maybe I should focus that energy into documenting more of my work? I don't consider myself to be all that interesting or with a unique point of view. 

Yet I once again sit at my laptop, writing about myself. Our lives are not without contradictions.

And I find myself facing contradictions and conflicts  more and more as I age. What will my legacy be? Why should I care, if I'm gone anyway? What do I do now that I know I have fewer years ahead of me than behind me? Why am I not working on my music at this very moment? Will it matter? What does "matter" even mean? 

Truth is, I'm in too deep to back away now. And I am grateful for the fact that playing music continues to give me purpose. 

I've kept track of the artist recordings I've posted here. I'll post below. Draw what you will from the list, and it's hardly everything I've had on in the past year. It's surprisingly lacking in so-called jazz artists, but I don't know what that word means sometimes.

I'll probably continue, but not on a regular basis. There are so many things I need to do.

-Ben

VOTD 12/28/2023

 Fuzzhead:  El Saturn (Ecstatic Peace/Ecstatic Yod)

Purchased (used?) at Get Hip Records

So what about today's record? Fuzzhead. Knew nothing about them when I bought this, and in a sense I still don't. The cover is a mockup/parody of the BYG Actuel series, a tremendously important French label from 1969-1972 that released albums by Archie Shepp, Anthony Braxton, Sun Ra, Dewey Redman, Jimmy Lyons, among others. The back label is pasted on, reading: fuzzhead/"el saturn"/an entirely subjective visit to the sun ra musical omniverse". It also reads having been recorded August-November 1994 in Kent, Ohio. I might have bought the record anyway, but that last detail nailed it down.

With the name Fuzzhead, I expected something maybe more garage-rockish. And there's definitely that element to it, though the apparent addition of additional horns and voices it starts to sound more like El Saturn Records sessions at times. I discovered that the labels were reversed, so the well known "It's After the End of the World" and "We Travel the Spaceways" didn't occur when expected. The intended second side is more of a free-ish session, possibly recalling an even more primitive Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra or other Saturn releases.

Immediately dropping the needle, there's a haze of background noise and ambience. I'm not bothered by lower fidelity recordings, but I question them from a standpoint of "authenticity." In this case I''m recalling a conversation with Bruce Lentz, dedicated rock-n-roll fan and singer in straightforward punk/garage bands like Forbidden Five and Volcano Dogs. He was trying to produce an album at the time, and was dealing with varying opinions on the fidelity of the recording. He said that some people think that albums must have low fidelity and raw sounding to be any good; high quality ruins it for them. I told him I thought that was bullshit, that intensity does not mean it has to sound like garbage. To quote my friend Myles Boisen, "We can always make it sound shittier."

This album wouldn't have been the same if it was recorded higher quality. But, is it to evoke certain eras of Sun Ra's recordings, or just an attitude that the band needs to sound low fi? I mean, I've captured gigs on a Zoom H1 (not available to them at the time) that are noticeably sharper than this. 

As for the performances? It is unquestionably a view of Sun Ra's sound world. In that respect it is largely effective, albeit rather primitive in performance. Sun Ra always had a band with highly varied talents, often to his advantage. John Gilmore playing alongside Marshall Allen. 

I guess the world need reinterpretations of music such as this. My own instinct has been to dig into the compositions more, to continue to play some of the range of his pieces. We need more of both I think.

Some viewing

 23rd Century Giants: The Story of Renaldo and the Loaf (2021)

While watching this film (available on Tubi and other streaming services), I was pondering the pros and cons of digital technology with respect to music and film production. The cost of making a feature film has been tremendously reduced. It's no longer necessary to shoot on film stock, and feature films have been made on iPhones. Besides those of travel, dubbing, and hired personnel, the cost is mostly for the cameras and storage media. I know that's a simplification, but mostly true.

While theatrical presentations have substantially been reduced, streaming services have opened more possibilities for getting work seen than physical home video media ever have.

This mostly sounds like a positive, which indeed it is. And yet, how much do we need? Are all the movies necessary?

Which brings me to 23rd Century Giants. Here's where I back up and get a little more autobiographical. The Ralph Records bug bit me as a senior in high school. I went away to college as a music conservatory student, but in my spare time listening to Ralph releases. 

For such a small label, the quality and variety of music on the label as amazingly high. Between 1978-1984, Ralph released albums by The Residents, Snakefinger, Tuxedomoon, Yello, MX-80 Sound, Art Bears, Fred Frith. Fred's album Gravity nearly hits my "desert island discs" consistently. Tuxedomoon released two great but highly different albums on Ralph. Yello also released two albums on Ralph before being signed to the big leagues.

And then there's Renaldo and the Loaf. Not my favorite of the bunch, but their LP debut Songs for Swinging Larvae is a solid, funny, interesting slab of primitive weirdness. So much so, that I guess there was some accusation that R&TL was The Residents. I don't hear it myself, despite the sliding scale of the descriptor "weirdness." The voices don't match (essential for The Residents), and R&TL were far more involved with studio production (editing, tape loops, backwards playback, etc). 

I like the album. Much of it is memorable and strangely catchy. I later bought their followup, Arabic Yodelling, and I don't remember it at all. I also found the R&TL/Residents collaboration, Title in Limbo, a rather unmemorable release. Maybe I'm the one who's selling those releases short; maybe one LP by the group is all I need.

Nonetheless, I have an affection for that time and scene. There were a few years where, if it was on Ralph, it was worth checking out. 

This all leads me to this documentary. I don't want to say it's bad (it's not, it's well made), but I found that their story is just not that interesting.  It's mostly the story of two friends, frustrated folk musicians. They got more and more involved in their own musical world, eventually releasing a tape of their oddball songs.

Long story short, they get attention from Ralph, release Songs and several other albums, and then their lives go in separate directions for several decades. They're eventually reunited, start releasing new music, and actually perform live for the first time. 

It's lovely. But it's not a particularly compelling story, in and of itself. The movie is largely a fan piece, albeit a very good fan piece. I felt more or less the same about Zappa and Theory of Obscurity: A Film About The Residents. 

Similar to those two films, my favorite element in this film is the archival materials presented. There are quite a few photos and even some brief films of the two of them, and I say, more! I've never seen any of those things before, and it was fun to see images of the two young self-proclaimed Surrealists/primitive folk weirdos. 

The film has its usual parade of talking heads, both fans and people associated with Ralph Records. A telling moment was Homer Flynn of Ralph Records/Cryptic Corporation talking about business strategy for the label. They thought that by signing more groups, they'd have more of a revenue stream to support The Residents. The problem was, recording studio time costs money. But R&TL bought their own recording equipment (similar to The Residents) so the cost of producing music was significantly reduced. It's why Ralph released more albums by the group while others were dropped.

All in all? I mean, I liked this even if I wish it had more archival materials. Will it introduce more people to the music? Maybe, but I suspect it's mostly for those of us who are already there. Still, if like me you have any affection for that time and place, it's worth a view.

VOTD 12/20/2023

Dawn of Midi: Dysnomia (Erased Tapes)

Purchased used at Mind Cure Records

In my previous missive, considering the passing of Andre Braugher and listening to some of the Disintegration Loops, I started pondering my own age and the state of my body. As I listen to this I think, this music is a young men's game, music created by someone at an age where you can just devote the time to develop something such as this.

I didn't know who Dawn of Midi was when I came across this record (really, an album length split over four 12" sides). There was a sticker on the cover: "Great". Used. Because it was opened, I could give it a spin on the store turntable. A few seconds in, I knew it be my next purchase.

At this point in my life it takes a lot for me to think, I haven't heard that before. Nothing is entirely separated from any other music, and I'm sure I could string together a "This artist meets that artist in a dark alley on a Sunday night" kind of cute comparison. While I don't take my blogging terribly seriously, I also don't want to resort to that sort of lazy record reviewing.

The lineup: piano, upright bass, drums. Sounds like it could be the Bud Powell Trio, but there isn't so much of a whiff of jazz here. The piano is a combination of muted and open strings; the bass tends to play percussively; the drums play without cymbals. There's clearly the influence of sequenced music, particularly drum machines, and yet it doesn't sound like a beatbox at all. Ideas play over time, a polyrhythm at one tempo becomes a simple rhythm in a shifted tempo. I think there's a touch of Steve Reich-ian style minimalism, but even that doesn't adequately explain what's going on here. 

What is clear is that they spent a tremendous amount of time developing and rehearsing this work, which despite separate work titles (two or three a side) is played as one long evolving composition. Hence the comment about a young men's game. All of the pieces are credited to the pianist, or co-credited to the bassist. It's brilliantly performed and sounds like a continuous performance.

That's entirely possible, because I saw the group a few years ago at the Warhol Museum. It was exciting to hear this performed live, but a touch disappointing too. I don't hear that there was a note difference between that performance and this record, which I knew well enough to know that it was very close. I didn't expect them to stretch the material. The entire performance was basically this record. I thought, anything else?

And similar to Disintegration Loops, this actually might have been better experienced as a single CD rather than four 12" sides. The limited edition clear vinyl does look very attractive though. And if Michael from Mind Cure hadn't put the "great" comment on a sticker, I might have paid attention to it. I later found out that Michael would occasionally open a new LP and play it in the store for his own enjoyment and curiosity, then mark it down a few dollars and sell it used. That's probably how I found the soundtrack to Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers used on vinyl.

I started writing this blog to force myself to dig into my own library of records and CDs and give purpose to listening to different things. While I maintained that discipline regularly at first, now I do it when I can spare the time and effort, as well as for my own satisfaction. I'm reminded that I need to keep plugging away at my own work too, keep putting in the time to continue to create while I still have the ability to do so. 

CDOTD 12/13/2023

 William Basinski: Disintegration Loops II (Temporary Residence Ltd)

Purchased at Sound Cat Records

Here's Ben, sitting and writing another blog post, once a regular occurrence, now far less so. What's the point? Perhaps the discipline is the point.

Furthermore, what could be added to the volumes of information and accolades this particular set of works? I'm so far out of keeping track of what's current in any world, be it jazz, "new music", or whatever, that I didn't know about these works until I heard an NPR story about the CD reissue in 2014.

The concept is simple, if you are unaware of it. Basinski used (analog) tape loops in his work, and discovered that if they ran long enough, the magnetic recording medium would start to wear off. He then set about to record the results of his tape loops deteriorating until there was nothing left but the plastic tape, sans medium. 

Part of what is interesting about the results is the way in which the tapes deteriorate. The loudest moments stay the most stable; the tails of sounds tend to strip away the fastest. The final moments before all sound stripped away are jittery, percussive. 

To add to the poignancy, he was finishing this recording project on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Photos of his view from Brooklyn are the cover images used in the series.

I guess there's a highly prized ten LP set of these pieces that's highly prized. For as much as I enjoy and perhaps fetishize vinyl, CD is the right medium for these works. This particular disc has two pieces, clocking at 33:00 and 42:00, around the length of three or more record sides. It's better to put it on and let it run, than to have to get up and flip the platter over to complete the playing. 

The first and shorter of the two pieces on this edition is curious, because it seems to have two elements? The deteriorating tape loop, but also a soft-edged synth line? I'm unsure, because the former element definitely dies away in the manner described, the latter does not. The second work definitely sounds like the disintegrating tape loop.

There's an elegiac quality to the pieces, even without taking the 9/11 connection into account. I find it interesting that this concept, which is based on a mechanical process, plays like very human music. Maybe that interpretation is based on the feeling of my own body slowly deteriorating with age.

Which brings to mind that Andre Braugher's death was announced yesterday. Damn. He was only 3/4 of a year old than me. Anyone who saw him on the television show Homicide: Life on the Streets couldn't help but be impressed by him. As a friend wrote on Facebook, "Pretty much guaranteed to steal every scene he was in". Truth. Homicide could be uneven, some characters and storylines forgettable, but at its best (probably the third season) it ranks with some of the best television produced. There's little question the center of the show was Braugher's forceful Det. Frank Pembleton, playing off the more naive Det. Tim Bayliss, played by Kyle Secor. The show was a network broadcast predecessor to later limited cable series such as The Wire. The Wire and others benefitted from shorter and more focused seasons, not to mention fewer limitations on things such as language and content. 

Here's Ben, sitting and writing another blog post, listening to the second piece on this disc yet again, thinking of Andre Braugher. I'm not usually one to quote Bible passages, but I found this on an album dedication, coming from James 4:14: "Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are mist that appears for a little while, then vanishes."

VOTD 12/11/2023

The Medieval Jazz Quartet: The Medieval Jazz Quartet Plus Three (Classic Editions)

Purchased at Jerry's Records

I can be a bit of a hoarder, and on top of it I'm chronically disorganized. Sometimes I get ahead of both things, other times it feels like a losing battle. Thankfully I've fought my impulses enough that I try to limit my purchases, both in number and category. I continue to buy records, which been fueled in part by picking pieces from the Duquesne University collection, on the cheap.

In my various stops by Jerry's, The Attic, and whatever record stores I might find, sometimes I'll spring from something that I later think, "well, maybe I didn't need that." But I'm always interested in oddities, and I guess that's what caught my fancy in this case.

The Medieval Jazz Quartet seems to have been a one-off project of Bob Dorough, mostly famously the vocalist for some installments of Schoolhouse Rock, and "Blue Xmas" the odd closer to Miles Davis' Sorcerer LP. He's a good vocalist but sounds a bit like a cartoon character. 

This is Bob mostly on tenor recorder, leading a quartet of recorder players (mostly) through jazz standards, plus a guitar/bass/drums trio. The recorder parts are largely through-arranged, though Bob solos occasionally. He's not bad, but it's an instrument with a limited range of expression. He wisely keeps solos brief, and cracks notes with some frequency. I mean, how could you not? He also sings a few times, which definitely breaks things up.

Strangest (and probably most interesting) of all the tracks is the arrangement of "Nature Boy" which includes bouzouki, two crumhorns, and a baroque flute. Hearing the latter whip a few lines around does serve to remind that the recorder is such a limited instrument.

While the guitarist's name is unfamiliar to me (Al Schackman), the bass and drums are very familiar: George Duvivier and Paul Motian. Paul does his work but at no time stands out. It's not a put down; a single strike of a tom or kick drum could destroy the entire front line of this group. George gets to show off a little more, albeit in the background. Hey, it's a paying gig, right? And who knew what Paul would go on to do? This was well before the days of the Liberation Music Orchestra and the Keith Jarrett Quartet, let alone the great Paul Motian Trio.

The record? It's pleasant enough, some of the arranging is pretty good. But in the end, it is recorders. How about more crumhorn?