VOTD 6/26/2024

 Bobby Beausoleil: Lucifer Rising soundtrack (The Anja Offensive)

Purchased used at Music Millennium in Portland, OR

I'll confess there are records that I'm not proud of owning. Best example I can recall would be multiple records by Boyd Rice/NON, though I bought them before I understood he was an (ALLEGED) special-needs son abandoning, White Power promoting, "Men's Rights" asshole. His defenders would say it's all an act, but as they say, when someone tells you who they are, believe them.

But...I don't want to get in trouble and be expected to remove this posting, so I can't say I know these things from first hand experience. 

And what of Gesualdo? The 16th century nobleman/wife and lover murderer/composer? Five centuries have certainly blunted the sting of his crimes (though being royal, it didn't disqualify him from marrying again).

I was recently in Portland OR, on my annual family trip. As I think I've written before, my parents (both still alive) and three sisters have all migrated there. So hey, once a year take a family trip, and go to a location where there's things to do.

This year I bought a bus pass and felt like a real Portlander. Walk to Cesar Chavez Blvd, ride the bus up to Burnside, then a second bus into the Pearl District (more-or-less Downtown). Along the way on Burnside, Music Millennium, the best hybrid new/used CD and record store I know (except possibly Amoeba Music). 

There's too much to check out in one visit. So I hit the usual spots: used jazz, new jazz (CD and vinyl), experimental (when I find it), look under classical for Feldman, and of course the new and used soundtrack sections. 

Didn't take me too long to find this at a moderate price, used. Bobby Beausoleil, isn't that...? Yeah. The Manson Family. He's a murderer, serving life. 

I thought, okay...vinyl weirdness, check. Unusual soundtrack, check. $10, check. 

The album credits the performance by The Freedom Orchestra, eight men incarcerated at the time of this recording, dating 1975-1979. Okay, I'll bite.

Let me now back up, to a few months ago. Our family went to visit my wife's sister in Hanover, PA. She settle here after decades in Jackson Heights. We went together to an antiques mall, which had a record store. Yes I'll look, not getting my hopes up. Checking through the stacks, I found two particularly vile 10" picture discs by White Wash, one backed with Grinded Nig. On Straight Hate Records. Pure, unadulterated white power bullshit.

No. Absolutely not. I could not even entertain the idea of buying such vile material. If anything, I refused to buy anything else from whoever the asshole owner of that booth was.

Buying a Bobby Beausoleil record seems benign in comparison. I mean, he was a misguided hippy under the influence of more-or-less a cult leader, right?

And the music? Lo-fi, but cleaned up pretty well for vinyl and CD reissue. It's very listenable. All instrumental, invoking at times A Saucerful of Secrets or Ummagumma-era Pink Floyd. Hippy, trippy jamming. By the end of the record it starts to feel long, but for a time it's entertaining ambient-ish jamming. 

I am not about to start wearing Charles Manson t-shirts like Axle Rose or Genesis P-Orridge, two more jerks. 

Am I proud to own a Bobby Beausoleil album? Proud is definitely not the word. Won't deny, won't advertise besides this minor missive.

VOTD 6/25/2024

 Eduard Tubin: Requiem for Fallen Soldiers (BIS)

Purchased from the Duquesne University collection from Jerry's Records

Another day, another requiem. 

That's too flippant a comment. But I have been studying requiems in the past several years, not analytically but from the standpoint of listener. Ockeghem, Mozart, Reimann, Ligeti, Penderecki, Martin, Takemitsu, others I'm forgetting.

What do they have in common? Honestly not much, except perhaps intensity and maybe darkness.

I'm going to confess something here to the 3-8 regular readers I have of this blog: I have composed a requiem for jazz orchestra (OPEK) and soprano. Or, it's probably 2/3 completed. The work is secular in nature even if it draws on texts from Christianity and Judaism, with poetry ranging from ancient Japan and Persia to COVID-era. 

That's pretty confessional on my part, because I have not talked about this at all to almost anyone. So by putting this into text on my blog, I guess I'm taking a step towards committing myself to make it happen.

If this blog post should disappear, you'll know why. 

What of the Tubin requiem? Male chorus with alto and baritone soloists, organ, trumpet, and percussion. His composing and arranging for chorus is quite beautiful. The story is that he began the work in 1950 but didn't complete it until 1979. He must have just shelved it, but I know I don't have that patience to return to something after that long.

When I think of quasi-tonal, modal composing, the first name that comes to my mind is Messiaen. Tubin exists in that territory without sounding like Olivier at all. It's a bit like my friend Victor Grauer said about Debussy and Wagner: they could write exactly the same chord, but they sound nothing alike.

I think being physically close to the ensemble. in performance, voice/organ/percussion, must have been an intense experience for those who saw this work live. It makes me contemplate...more I can do with my own work If I ever pull it off.

VOTD 6/20/2024

 Mike Mantler: Live (Watt)

Purchased at Jerry's Records

In my previous posting, I noted I had been traveling, had returned, and not to base the rhythm of postings here to assume I'm traveling again. 

That's because I went to Portland this past week. My parents and three sisters all migrated there over the years, leaving me the oddball out in western Pennsylvania. 

None of this has to do with the record in hand. I bought a couple of things while out there, some of which I may mention here in the future.

This particular record popped up at Jerry's before my travels, and it wasn't a huge surprise that it was still on the shelf when I returned. Not to harp on the price, at $16 I didn't immediately think "Must have." I've bought so many cheap Duquesne University LPs that I'm trying to be more selective regardless of price.

So what stood out about this issue compared to other Mike Mantler records? The front cover has three elements: text that reads MIKE MANTLER   LIVE, a picture (for a distance) of him on stage playing, and finally a listing of the lineup.

Well...

Mike Mantler on trumpet of course, husband to Carla Bley at the time and co-founder of Watt Records; Jack Bruce, bassist and singer for Cream on vocals; Don Preston of the original Mothers of Invention on synths; John Greaves of Henry Cow on bass and occasional piano; and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd on drums. (Plus a guitarist, Rick Fenn, whose name I don't otherwise recall.) Jack had sung on Carla's Escalator Over the Hill in 1971, so he wasn't so foreign to projects like this as it might seem. John Graves' name is more unusual; I think it turns up, but I know him mostly from Cow. Nick Mason? There's a record I am casually seeking, Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports, which is essentially a Carla Bley and Robert Wyatt album fronted by Nick. 

It's also easy to forget how much music he's recorded since his days with the Mothers (a band he came in and out of a few times over years). Film scores, touring with the Grandmothers (who I saw and were great), appearing on albums by Gil Evans, Peter Erskine, Jefferson Airplane; hell, he's responsible for the synthesized wind sounds on The Residents' Eskimo.

So what is this? There's a big clue on the back cover: "Words by Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Edward Gorey".

There are some instrumental works, "Slow Orchestral Piece" #s 3, 8, 6. But mostly, this is song settings of those writers' texts. In this respect, the entire project takes on a lieder-like quality, albeit with a modern instrumentation. Weill comes closer to this than Schubert, but even that's a stretch. At times Henry Cow's music with Dagmar Krause comes to mind, appropriately enough. There's very little improvising happening, either as a forward soloist or even as a background voice. Rick gets to cut loose more on the final piece, a setting of Edward Gorey's "The Doubtful Guest."

Don's keyboards dominate. They not only fill the most space musically, but they're rather forward in the mix. Instruments are credited: "DSS-1 and DW-8000 synthesizers courtesy Korg USA/Musik Meyer." This performance is from 1987, and the keyboards definitely place is in a particular time. It doesn't sound as dated as the DX-7 style FM synthesized piano, a sound I don't particularly like. The DSS I've read is a polyphonic sampling synth, the DW a digital/analog hybrid. Seems right.

And what of Jack Bruce? He's not exactly a classical voice, and doesn't deliver Mike's melodies as a Schubert interpreter would. That's good. He delivers much of the time, sometimes I'm not so sold. Maybe I wanted to hear more of the ensemble, what they'd do with music such as this when they cut loose a little more. 

But I must remind myself, this is the project he put together, not the project I wanted it to be. The aforementioned final work on the LP is the most satisfying, with not only guitar rock-outs, but more of a drive to the instrumental parts. It's a good project, maybe played a little tentatively in the first minutes but otherwise well done. I might have to look up more of Mike's music. 

VOTD 6/13/2024

 Ran Blake: The Blue Potato and Other Outrages... (Milestone)

Purchased used at Phat Bear in Estes Park, CO

Because I'm an adult homeowner, I don't trumpet my casual traveling over social media. I don't Insta-out my trip pics, or Facebook Live my current tourist destination. What, I want to tell the world that my house is sitting largely unattended?

I'm back a few days from an eleven day trip to Colorado. Never been there before, might not ever return. Not to sound like I'm blaming her, but my wife signed us up for a tour excursion of CO. So yes, we were bona fide tourists. I certainly wasn't the youngest person in the group at 61, but on average I was on the younger end of the scale. I kept thinking to myself, what a bunch of grups (Star Trek episode eight, "Miri"). But then I'm not exactly young myself. 

On the bus, the tour guide had song playlists lined up, in addition to taking a suggested song from everyone on the tour. From her lists, I haven't heard so much John Denver since seeing him on The Muppet Show in 1979. And as for the tourists' song suggestions, well..."Don't Stop Believing", "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Alleluia", "Stairway to Heaven" (weirdly, the tour guide played a version by Led ZepAgain, a note-for-note recreation of the original), Louis Armstrong's version of "What a Wonderful World", and, you know, other songs I never need to hear again. I had to really consider what I'd ask for. I didn't want to bother anyone with Thelonious Monk or Charles Mingus, let alone something even more daring. I settled on The Beatles' "I Feel Fine", a song I like despite its adolescent lyrics. Someone else chose "In My Life", a frankly better John Lennon song. Mid-tour, I told my wife what I should have chosen was Parliament's "Flashlight" if I had thought of it. That would have gotten the tour bus rockin. Late in the trip, she said that I'm probably looking forward to listening to something harder and less mainstream when we got home. And here we are.

We went many places, I can't even remember how many towns in ten days altogether. As I always will, if there's a record store (or at least a store that has vinyl) I'm looking. Cursory impression of Colorado for record hunting? Outrageously expensive. One example: I was in an antique mall in Durango. A couple of the booths had records, nothing unusual. There was a pair of young people, both dressed to the Ts in hippy uniforms, looking over a crate. They gleefully pulled out four "classic rock" titles, including The Byrds' country album and Jethro Tull's Stormwatch. I heard the dealer say, "Well, that's $125 dollars, I'll sell them to you for $100."

What? 

From what I saw, these were not great titles. $10 records at best, and the covers showing wear. I thought, I could pack up a van with copies of Love Beach, Whipped Cream and Other Delights, any Iron Butterfly LP other than the famous one, etc etc etc, charge twice in Colorado what I paid for them in Pittsburgh. Probably still wouldn't be worth the gas money though.

So what of this album? Estes Park, CO. One of the first lunch stops on our tour. Cute touristy town, with one significant landmark: the Stanley Hotel, the inspiration for Stephen King's The Shining. (And possible outdoor location for the film? I was unclear on that point.)

We found this shop, Phat Bear, next to the restaurant where we ate. Sign by the back door advertising records for sale, so yeah I want to go in. Mostly it's tourist things, tshirts, fridge magnets, dream catchers, and such. There's a wall of new vinyl reissues, $40 sealed Led Zeppelin records, that sort of thing. There were several racks of used records, and nothing looked promising. "Hm, there's that same Michael Franks record I see everywhere...Peter, Paul, and Mary, no thanks...oh, another copy of the first Chicago album...Supertramp, meh, pass."

Then, of all things, this Ran Blake LP turns up. I don't remember seeing it before this time, an early solo session of his. The price, $13, doesn't make me jump but I considered it. "I think you can afford it" my wife joked. It wasn't even the price so much as the inconvenience of dragging it around Colorado for another nine days, but needless to say I snatched it up.

It's why we look, right? It's a far cry from my potential Holy Grail crate digging find, Clarence (Sawdust) Kelley's Twin Singing Saws of the Stardust Trail, an all-solo saw album without out a hint of irony or avant garde intentions. 

So finally, what of this? Ran was the head of the Third Stream division at New England Conservatory for years, now referred to as Modern Improvisation or such. Third Stream is a bit of a loaded term, jazz and improvisation that draws on modernist classical (for lack of a better term) techniques. Webern, Cowell, and Monk are cited in the liner notes, the latter two being the more obvious predecessors or influences. Ran sometimes goes into full-blown tone cluster territory on occasion here (most notably on his takes on "Chicago" and "Never On Sunday"), but he's a bit more subdued here than I remember him being on later sessions. His takes on other people's tunes tends to abstract them, in the strictest sense: he quotes, simplifies, extends familiar melodies rather than playing them straight-forward. At the same time, his take on "God Bless the Child" demonstrates his bona fide jazz chops, as it were.

Ran's politics are close to the surface too, choosing to cover Max Roach's "Garvey's Ghost" and Charles Mingus' "Fables of Faubus", as well as dedicating pieces to Che Guevara and Malcolm X. Oh, and "the Blue Potato", slang I hadn't heard before for a police officer. 

Listening to this on vinyl without paying much attention to when the banding indicates track starts and finishes, it all sort of floats along in an impressionistic sort of way. To be clear, it doesn't sound like "impressionist" music per se. The tracks are largely short, twelve in total with only two longer than four minutes. Compositions seem more like sign posts on the path rather than distinctive start and stop points. In a way I think I like it better without necessarily knowing where things begin and end. There's a snippet of walking bass, then some cluster pounding, followed by quasi-tonal balladry, and so forth. the album was recorded over two days (seems like a luxury to me) so clearly it's edited and not played like a performance start to finish. 

The template is similar to most of his solo piano albums: a mix of original compositions and more standard-type tunes, nothing played directly like a straight forward tune. It seems like a perfect format for this approach, moving directions as he sees fit, wherever the improvisations lead him. 

CDOTD 5/23/2024

 Beppe Grifeo: Altri Destini (Iktius)

Acquired through trade

I know I can get obscure in my blog postings. I never want to fall into the trap of trying to like something due to its relative obscurity, nor put something down due to its popularity. The first music I really remember listening to was The Beatles. 

I write that because, who's Beppe Grifeo? I can't recall how it is he came into contact with me. This CD dates to 1998, I have another from 2000, so it would have been some time after that. This would have been the era before Facebook and Twitter (I refuse to call it X), the days of listservs and emailing lists. What details I have forgotten, the connect was made through out mutual interest in Sun Ra.

By the way: May 22 was Sun Ra's birthday (or as fans put it, Arrival Day). Marshall Allen turns 100 in a couple of days. I surely must acknowledge that.

I corresponded with Beppe a little, him in his broken English, me knowing no Italian at all. We traded CDs. There's no money in making CDs in my experience, this is the best reason to have them pressed. Being at least the year 2000 or more, Water Shed 5tet would have broken up (or nearing so) by this time. I would have played my Yoshi's (Oakland, CA) Sun Ra tribute gig, which more or less led to OPEK happening here. 

I have three of Beppe's CDs. Who knows how many of them came to the US? Whatever I sent him must be some of the only recordings of mine to land in Italy.

One of those CDs is Beppe playing a program of Sun Ra. This one is more varied: a little Sun Ra ("To a Friend"), a Walt Dickerson piece ("Astro" from his session with Sun Ra), interpretations of Ornette, McLaughlin, Coltrane, Terry Riley, and Irene Schweizer (!), plus some original Grifeo mixed in. All solo piano.

Beppe's not a particularly flashy player, though he's hardly lacking in skill. The hottest he gets is playing on Terry Riley, flashes of notes on "15/16". I get the sense that he's definitely listened to that era of jazz, late 60s free and modal jazz. 

To me, programming counts so much. Beppe sounds good here, but I'm very attracted to his choice of material. John McLaughlin's "Peace of Mind" (a Shakti piece I think) is given a relaxed reading for its 2:29 length, with some inside-the-piano playing. 

I looked up Beppe's website. The most recent gig listing was from ten years ago. Hope you're well, brother, and still playing music. 

CDOTD 5/17/2024

 Jimmy Giuffre 3: Jimmy Giuffre 3, 1961 (ECM) (disc one, Fusion)

Purchased used years ago, I don't remember where. 

Today is my wedding anniversary, #38. That has nothing to do with my listening choice today. My father told me when he entered the chapel, all the weird looking people were sitting on one side, the normal people on the other, and he knew which side he was supposed to sit on.

My choice has more to do with having gotten a COVID booster yesterday, and I ache all over. Didn't feel like a day for metal, industrial, or even Stockhausen. While there's an intensity to this group, it is quiet nonetheless.

I never really modeled my playing on anyone in particular. There have been important performances and recordings, but I never listened to anyone and thought, "I want to sound like him". That said, I love Jimmy Giuffre's clarinet playing and I'm certain some of it has rubbed off on me. I find it very interesting that, even though he was historically primarily a tenor saxophonist, he devoted himself strictly to the clarinet for a number of years. 

The three in this case was rounded out by Paul Bley on piano, Steve Swallow on upright bass. The program mostly Jimmy's works, with two by Carla Bley. Giuffre's compositions sound quasi-tonal, sort of cool and intellectual, but retain a vague feeling of the blues. The lack of drums gives the group a lack of push and drive, and places much more of the emphasis on the harmonies. The music floats but never becomes completely unmoored. Perhaps the description of highly focused is better than intense.

There's a story that this group played the Crawford Grill in the Hill District in Pittsburgh. This was the club that saw performances from John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, and many other legendary musicians in the late 50s-mid 60s. It would have been somewhere approximately at the time of this album. The band played one set and the owner told them afterwards, that's okay, you're done. 

The tale points out the tension of this music (or any, really) as art vs. entertainment. The two aren't necessarily mutually incompatible, more of a sliding scale or pie graph. Even that's too simple; Duke Ellington could be said to have been an entertainer in some ways, but there's no question as to his artistry. 

Jimmy deserves more love and credit, he's one of the greats.

CDOTD 5/16/2024

 Karlheinz Stockhausen: Mantra (Accord)

Purchased in a Manhattan record store, possibly the midtown Tower Records

I have a lot of unread books around here. I'm trying to buy fewer, though I will indulge myself sometimes. I had been wanting to buy Robin Maconie's book Other Planets: The Complete Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen 1950-2007, but I decided I would not order it until I had finished several other books I have around here. Thankfully, I have access to several good libraries, and there was a fresh, barely looked-over copy in the Carnegie Mellon library. 

Karlheinz Stockhausen. There's a lot to unpack there, more than I can in a single blog post. And important and (to use a cliche) towering figure? No question. A self-absorbed lapsed Catholic quasi-mystical cult figure? Perhaps. There's nothing easy about Stockhausen, not the person or the music. 

I will credit him with created two of the truly essential works of electronic music: Gesang der Jünglinge (1956) and Hymnen (1967). The former is one of the reasons Karlheinz is depicted on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover, next to W.C. Fields. 

Gesang is a topic of discussion every semester in my Electronic and Computer Music course. There are a number of reasons why: how the work figures in electronic music history, its nature as a modernist work, what the possible intentions of the composer might have been. I'm uncertain about this as a trend, but I find it increasingly difficult to solicit any reaction from my students about works such as this. I mean, do you love it, or curse my name for making you listen to it? I've been teaching at CMU for 19 years now, and I'd say I hit a plateau of being able to solicit responses from students ten years ago, maybe more. I'm thinking specifically of the composition students I see, who are largely the most opinionated on these things (good!). I loved that I could outrage some students by dropping mention of Stockhausen's Helikopter Streichquartett. "How could he do that?" "What's the point of this?" "Isn't this just a reflection of his massive ego?" I enjoy impassioned responses, even negative ones, if they're informed. These days? No passion at all. Meh.

(The Helikopter Streichquartet is a setting for a string quartet, each player in their own helicopter, connected aurally and visually. The sound is projected down to the audience. There are recordings available, and a documentary about the first staging of the work.)

Mantra is a work from 1970. Stockhausen is a mature, established (though still young) and even relatively famous artist at this time. It's a setting for two pianists, each playing occasional auxiliary percussion, voice, and shortwave radio, with two audio processing players on ring modulations. I think you need a special custom set of crotales, an octave lower than usual, to perform this work.

I associate the sound of the ring mod with Stockhausen, due to works such as this is and his ring modulated orchestral piece Mixtur. When I bought a Theremin, I knew I wanted to run it through a ring mod.

I've spent a little time with the score. Even before I did, I had a sense of the construction of this piece. It's very classical in that sense. The foundation of the piece, the formula as he puts it, is a slow, eight-measure melody that at its core is a twelve-tone row. It's not a strict row though, there are repetitions and embellishments. Some of the measures are lengths of rest. There are cross references of material between the treble and bass clefs. Each individual element of the formula is then expanded through the course of the work. For example, the first note in the treble clef is played four times, and "repetition" becomes the theme of the first expansion of the source materials. Like I wrote, very classical. 

Despite all this classicism, there are moments of surprising beauty. The most obvious example is measure 132 (the CD is tracked with the structural points of the composition) the sound processors are instructed to turn the ring modulations down to a very low Hertz, 7Hz +/-, as slow chords are played. The modulation creates a beautiful, slow tremolo effect. I'd describe it as startling, the first time you hear the piece.

If the general description of the composition sounds academic and even, to use the word again,  classical...the piece has a very clear climax. The penultimate structural section is a driving succession of notes, punctuated by cluster chords. It's not all math sounds. The ending includes a flourish on the crotales, and a slower restatement of the formula. 

The aforementioned Robin Maconie referred to this work as a "masterpiece". My friend, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, said....I forget. I think he found it uninteresting, preferring the Stockhausen Intuitive Music pieces. I strongly hesitate to use the same word, I think i come down closer to the former's opinion.