VOTD 11/06/2024

 Birchville Cat Motel: Cranes Are Sleeping (Ecstatic Peace)

Purchased at Jerry's Records

So here we are. 

Eight years ago when Donald Trump was first elected president, I made a comment to Facebook: "I guess America likes a bully." I've had more than my share of bullies. I know one when I see one. I'm certain every bully I knew in my school days probably voted for Trump.

It's still true, but this time I'd add, "I guess we have no collective memory." Are we better off then we were four years ago? You're goddamned right we are. But, there was inflation!

I'll leave it at that.

I don't imagine I'll be watching broadcast news any time soon, and I'll put podcasts on in the car and not the radio.

There's time for darkness, there's time for light. I'm splitting the difference this time.

I didn't know the name Birchville Cat Motel when I bought this. I probably tracked this on the Jerry's turntable and knew it was for me. I can't say what's the source of sounds much of the time, only that it's droney and ambient while being noisy and even annoying at times. Perfect! 

Track #2, "An Emperor's Second Acension" is largely feedback. Guitar? Synth? Mic? Don't know. It's layered but I can't distinguish each layer.

I'm trying to ball up the energy to keep writing, but I think i just want to go to sleep this afternoon.

Maybe more later.

VOTD 11/05/2024

 Akira Ifukube: Godzilla (Death Waltz)

Purchased new at Half Price Books

Well, it's election night. I'm neither completely ignoring the results nor paying close attention. I have to teach at 8am tomorrow morning, and I doubt things will be completely decided tonight or even at that time. 

I guess for my third blog posting in a row, I'm on the topic of comfort music.

I'll always love Japanese monster movies. Give me a man in a rubber suit stomping through downtown Kyoto, and that's entertainment as far as I'm concerned. 

Even before I might have been aware of such things, I'm certain that love in no small part stems from the soundtrack work of Akira Ifukube. He lends depth and resonance to films that at times could be seen as silly.

I will admit to a degree of....hypocrisy? I love Ifukube's soundtracks, even though they largely sound alike. He has some range, but even he admitted that he did two things well: marches and requiems. We are all permitted our own personal taste, and Ifukube just appeals to me. I say hypocrisy because I don't like the soundtrack work of Danny Elfman. I mean, I really don't like it. And part of my complaint is that he has written the same score to films over and over. So how is that different from Ifukube? It's fair to say, it isn't, I just happen to like one and not the other. 

In my defense, I went to see Hellboy II: The Golden Army in the theater. For a popcorn movie, I enjoyed the first Hellboy. It tied together some Lovecraftian themes and Rasputin, good casting and performances, and had a solid score thanks to Marco Beltrami. When I went to see the sequel, I could tell it wasn't the same composer despite the credits not appearing at the opening of the film. I wasn't digging it. I even thought at one point, "Oh, you better stop using those raised 4ths, or you're going to sound like Danny Elfman." Sure enough, I saw that Danny composed the music in the end credits. I felt vindicated that I didn't care for the music despite not knowing who had done it. I may not like his music, but I want to be fair too. 

It's significant that this film and score ends with an elegy, a requiem, sung for the monster. That seems non-Western to me. The people gathered on the boat, when the oxygen destroyer obliterates Godzilla on the ocean floor, sing a song of mourning to the creature. And Ifukube delivers. The monster couldn't help what it was, it was only acting on its impulses in a world where it didn't belong. 

That is, until the sequel happened. 

On this election night, I'm hoping there isn't another sequel, though I won't be singing a requiem. 

PS: Ifukube is responsible for the signature Godzilla roar. My understanding is that it's a glove covered in rosin, rubbed on the back of a bass, with the tape slowed down. Brilliant. 

VOTD 11/04/2024

 Ennio Morricone: Les Plus Belles Musiques d'Ennio Morricone Vol. 2 (GM France)

Purchased used at Half Price Books

Ah well, another day, another Ennio Morricone collection. I suppose this one falls under the same general category as The Residents' Commercial Album, that is to say, comfort music for me. 

It's somewhat unclear from the cover what is what at times. There is very familiar material on here, such as the "Man With a Harmonica" theme from Once Upon a Time in the West, the main title theme for The Sicilian Clan, and the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. 

I watched the second half of the latter a few weeks ago. I'm not a fan of Westerns but Sergio Leone films are another matter. Even at their most "normal" they're strange, gritty, bordering on surreal. It seems to me none of the leads are good, and they're all bad and ugly to varying degrees. 

Among his many scores, I didn't remember that he composed for La Cage Aux Folles. It's super-sweet and poppy, more than my taste, but that's fine for today. I have plenty of depressing music lined up should I need to rely on it. 

Thinking of La Cage brings back memories of the Pittsburgh Playhouse's film series. Anyone who was in Pittsburgh of a certain age will recall their monthly calendar. Sometimes they had two screens running simultaneously, all repertory or second-run films. It was well curated. Among the films I saw the first time there included: Harold and Maude, Eraserhead, Dawn of the Dead, 1984, Forbidden Planet, Glenn or Glenda?, Reefer Madness, Liquid Sky, Freaks, Mad Love, and that's just off the top of my head. Sell out showings were common. 

I remember seeing La Cage there with my wife and thinking it was hilariously funny, so much so that I had no desire to see the American remake years later with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane. More recently I did see the end with Gene Hackman escaping the club in drag, and I admit it was okay. 

Maybe I'm feeling nostalgic as we head into this dreaded election, to say nothing about the frustrations of dealing with my car. Sorry. I look forward to Pennsylvania not being the center of the political universe again.

And here I sit listening to Morricone again, who's sounding alternately epic or weirdly saccharine on various turns. 

CDOTD 10/30/2024

 The Residents: The Residents' Commercial Album (pREServed Edition) (Cherry Red) disc one

Purchased new through mail order

Back to writing my thoughts, autobiographically and about music. 

On the plus side, I played an exciting program last night of Sam Rivers' big band music. I'm tired today. I felt on focused but on edge all night; the music was challenging to play correctly and I felt a responsibility to do well. The concert was a success and received with enthusiasm. 

On the other hand, this past weekend was the sixth anniversary of the Tree of Life shooting. It occurred to me that I'm going to be reminded every anniversary for the remainder of my life. I don't forget but also don't need a reminder.

Then there's the election. I'm sure it has put a substantial amount of the population in a state of anxiety, myself included. I think Harris is more likely than not to win the election, so part of me is cautiously optimistic. And yet, I know there's an excellent chance Trump could win again, which fills me with tremendous dread. Not just because he's who he is (use your choice of descriptor here, I don't need to do so), but many people have placed so much of their faith in this awful, awful man. My wife warned me, "You need to be prepared for what could happen" without saying what that was. I knew what she meant. I told, I know I do. 

When Trump won the election eight years ago, I shut myself off from all broadcast news for four weeks and listened to the most severe, downbeat music I could find. Music that would normally comfort or console me wasn't right; only music that was bleak and severe felt correct in the moment. I think this time it could be doubly true. I have physical copies of albums by Swans, Khanate, Gnaw Their Tongues, Abruptum on the ready.

And if luck should have it that Harris wins? Then I could still listen to those things, but because I choose to do so, not because I need to. 

Tonight's selection falls under the category of comfort music. I've written about The Residents on this blog several times in the past, so I don't feel a need to fill in the complete story. They were something I discovered in high school. I've never lost my love of their early work, and in my opinion this is their last "great" album. In recent years I spun my copy of their subsequent album, Mark of the Mole, and I found myself enjoying it more than I had remembered. Nonetheless, I'm not a big fan of "storytelling through sound." That's even more true of their album Eskimo, an album I admire more than I enjoy. I'd draw a distinction between those albums and Not Available, which comes across more like chamber opera or cantata. 

Is there a more preposterous concept album than this? An LP of forty exactly one minute songs? There's probably some ridiculous heavy metal rock opera that's a silly take on, oh I don't know, the story of Gilgamesh or such that's...stupid. But forty songs on an album?

What's amazing is how much of it I find memorable. It's true that I spent a lot of time listening to it in my youth. I'm not willing to say that every piece on it is amazing, there are a fair number of quaint instrumentals that could have probably been excised if length was at issue. No doubt many of the pieces could have expanded into more traditional length songs. Despite these things, in the words of my friend Jason (who's probably reading this now), "It works."

There's some more serious musical muscle added to these sessions compared to other albums. The name Don Jackovich came up on previous Residents recordings prior to this; he's a percussionist who faded into obscurity after this time. (He died in 2019 at 66.) Fred Frith is the "extra hard-working guest musician" and his fingerprints are all over these recordings: bass, guitar (clearly the soloist on "Moisture"), violin. Fellow Henry Cow and Art Bears bandmate to Fred, Chris Cutler, adds some percussion, almost certainly on "Moisture" as well. Frequent collaborator Snakefinger plays some and sings one song. "Sandy Sandwich" was revealed to be Andy Partridge of XTC, who sings "Margaret Freeman". It's been known for years that Lene Lovich sang "Picnic Boy". (It's not hard to tell when you hear it.) "Mud's Sis" is now known to have been Nessie Lessons, one time wife of Hardy Fox, before he came out as gay. Hardy (who outed himself as the musical director of The Residents shortly before his death) clearly sings several songs. One of those songs is "Suburban Bathers" which it's more recently been revealed that David Byrne sang the accompanying vocals. The one I didn't know until just now is the Brian Eno played synth on "The Coming of the Crow". 

Brian and David don't add significantly to the album, but only adds to The Residents mystique. I guess it's their inside joke among those involved. "We had a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee on our album, and nobody knows it." Until recently. 

I have some of the pREServed edition reissues of Residents albums, and only occasionally do the bonus cuts add much the quality of original issues, other than seeing some of what the band left on the cutting room floor. Some of the pieces probably could have made the cut if worked on more, but there's nothing that's a bonus that I would substitute for anything on the original issue. The last listed cut on disc one was a contribution to the Miniatures compilation, The Residents' take on The Ramones' "We're a Happy Family" interpolated "Bali Ha'i" from the musical South Pacific (the latter not acknowledged on the original issue). It's classic Residents but also not appropriate for Commercial Album.

The funniest bonus is the secret cut at the end of this disc. As a publicity stunt to promote this album, Ralph Records bought forty one minute commercial spots on the biggest rock station in San Francisco and had each of the original songs played once. The cut here is the radio announcer introducing each song, by number. While The Residents were selling well for an obscure, self-released independent band at the time, I can't imagine this paid for itself in sales. 

Listening to it, I feel happy. 

CDOTD 10/16/2024

 Oskar Sala: My Fascinating Instrument (Erdenklang)

Purchased used at a Jerry's Records off-site sale

To again go autobiographical for a moment: I've just finished grading for the quarter. It doesn't put me in the mood to have the most faith in humanity. I know I shouldn't take these things personally, but I failed more students than usual this time. I have credible evidence of plagiarism in one case, who failed anyway. And even for some of the better submissions, too many of them don't follow simple instructions to submit work correctly. 

When sitting to listen and do my meditation of writing here, I could have either gone bleak, loud, and sever, or long, ambient, and less obtrusive. I realized as I looked over my collection of CDs how few things I have at hand that fall into the latter category. I guess I tend to like music with a lot of motion and tension. I've written about William Basinski and Maurizio Bianchi on here before, didn't want to go that route. Then I came across this and thought, yeah okay, not exactly the ambient album I was seeking but it will do.

When I attended Duquesne as a graduate student 2008-2010, I had to take a class in the history of electronic music. Each quarter we had to write a paper, more-or-less the topic being  pre-war the first quarter, post-war the second. I chose two German topics: the first paper was about the Trautonium, the second concerned the use and influence of the short wave radio in the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. The latter came closer to being an actual academic paper, with a point of view and defendable positions. I doubt I have a working hard drive from that time to retrieve that paper, though I could sum it up if asked. The former was closer to being like a newspaper article. I earned my A. 

The Trautonium, an interesting side note in electronic instrument history more than anything I suppose. The instrument was first developed in 1930 Friedrich Trautwein. It's basically an electronic monochord; depending on where you pushed a wire into a metal rod would determine the pitch. Short leather straps were placed over the rod so the player could get a sense of where to land the pitches. The tone production was created by neon tubes, rather than the difference tone in the manner of the Theremin or Ondes Martenot. It produced a richer sound. Paul Hindemith wrote a work for three Trautoniums, played by him, the inventor, and Oskar Sala.

Sala was a student of both Hindemith and Trautwein, equal parts technician and composer. He took up the development of the instrument with a passion, creating many innovations such as the foot pedal for volume, and subharmonic synthesis. Rather than multiply the frequency of the signal, it's divided and provides a deep richness to the sound.

There is this matter of Germany in the 1930s. Hindemith's work was labelled Entartete Musik by the Nazi Party, and the composer went into exile. Not so with Sala. He was a bit of a nazi sympathizer. To write that now sounds awful, but it should be understood that there was a LOT of that going on at the time. Painter Emil Nolde believed in the Nazi's populist message, the appeal to the common man, until his work was deemed "degenerate" by the Nazis as well. He continued to paint in secret during those years, only working in watercolor for fear that the odor of oil paints would attract unwanted attention. It's also well known that Stockhausen was part of the Hitler Youth, but he wasn't given a choice. 

Sala lost many friends due to his decision to stay in Germany. He continued to work on his instrument, developing a version that was played on the radio. The final version of his instrument, the MixturTrautonium, is what's heard on this disc. It has a rod for each hand, and a large bank of dials and toggles for sound synthesis. The album itself is a studio production and therefor not completely a live demonstration of what one single MixturTrautonium can do. Delays, modulations, autoharmonizations, they all seem to be part of the instrument's package.

"Fascinating" is as reasonble descriptor. Its range of sounds is impressive, and it's clearly not locked into a strict twelve-tone tuning system. One of the pieces on this disc includes vocals, which are at times processed and modulated. Was this done through the MixturTrautonium? If so, it made an impressive audio processor as well as instrument.

I have to wonder: would Sala's technical work have been more recognized had he not chosen to remain in Nazi-era Germany? The instrument's unique interface inherently limits its use; a keyboard-based instrument would have been instantly playable by anyone. His synthesis techniques were decades ahead of what we'd come to know from Donald Buchla. 

So, yes, I'll take a defendable position. I think Oskar Sala would be better remembered for his technical innovations had he chosen to leave Germany. At least we are left with some evidence of his work. 

VOTD 10/14/2024

Stevie Wonder: Innervisions (Tamla)

Purchased at Dave Kuzy's yard sale

I'm back to thinking about the purpose of this blog. I guess it's partly autobiographical, so there's a certain "me me me" content that I push against in general. Maybe it's legacy, leaving behind more documentation of my life and thoughts. There's also the discipline of sitting and writing. 

I think I'm touching more on the autobiographical today.

Enough of obscurities like Thorkell Sigurbjörnsson and Henk Badings for now, onto music nearly everyone knows at least a little. 

Last week I saw Stevie Wonder at the PPG Paints Arena. My daughter Jeannine bought three tickets as a big "thank you" gift. We were up in the nosebleed seats, very stage left. Not close but it gave us a good birds-eye view of the stage.

The band: in addition to Stevie, there were two keyboardists, two guitarists, bass (who played synth bass on "Living for the City"), drums, congas, percussion, six background vocalists (five women, one man), and a five piece horn section (alt, tenor, bari, trumpet, trombone). My wife pointed out that we saw a band last year that had more people on stage, Parliament Funkadelic when everyone was on stage at the end. That is, until Stevie added a twelve piece string section and a conductor. Cred for keeping a lot of musicians employed. 

The tour theme (eleven cities at last count) was "Sing Your Song! As We Fix Our Nation's Broken Heart." He opened, solo, playing "Can We Fix Our Nation's Broken Heart?" It was....okay. I thought going in, this is a man who could do a long concert of excellent non-hit album cuts and have it be great.

Jeannine said there was a Simpsons segment (we frequently quote the Simpsons in this family) in which Homer goes to see Bachman Turner Overdrive at the county fair. They announce they're going to play something from their new album, and Homer yells, "TCB! No new crap!"*

Yeah. 

The concert was good, Stevie was in largely good voice. He struggled a little near the end on "Isn't She Lovely", fluffed a few lyrics here and there. I can easily forgive that, given his age, and how much music he'd have to play in a night. Strangely, he came on forty minutes late, played for forty minutes, and took a half hour break. Strange for an arena show, which are usually tightly constructed. It was announced he was feeling a bit sick and needed an emergency bathroom trip. It was still over two hours of music, mostly hits.

He brought on a guest singer, Sheléa, who sang a song that Stevie wrote for Aretha Franklin. I have to say, it was almost as if I was hearing Aretha sing it. Very strong. But then they played a song from her forthcoming album, and it just seemed to go on and on and on and...

TCB! No new crap!

While I was looking forward to "I Wish", it was "Higher Ground" and "As" (from Songs in the Key of Life) that were really the highlights to my ears. I found it moving, seeing and hearing the guy who created those pieces doing them in person, even in an arena setting. For as good as the concert generally was, I'm also simply happy we got to see him play at least once. It's the reason I paid $$$ to see Herbie Hancock last year.

After the concert, Jeannine reminded me that I had once checked out a Stevie Wonder collection CD from the library. She was asking about it, and I handed it over and told her, "You should listen to this. Return it to the library whenever."

You know, I've been a pretty good Dad sometimes, if I may say so. She remember "As" from that collection was also really happy he played it. 

This particular album was Stevie's first Album of the Year from the Grammys, and in the era of incredible creativity for him: Music of my Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness' First Finale, and Songs in the Key of Life. All were hit albums, most had hit singles, and were consistently creative. Quite a hell of a run, I'd say equal to any other artist in popular music. And for the first four, Stevie plays the great majority of the instruments in addition to composing and singing. 

One thought I had during the concert was, "Stevie sure likes his chord progressions." His songs often have dramatic chord changes and chromatic shifts. Still, "Higher Ground" is relatively simple harmonically and packs the biggest punch on this program in my opinion. While there's the clear influence of gospel on his songs, I guess I just like it best when he gets funky. 

Prince did something similar to Stevie, sometimes playing most of the instruments on an album. It's very impressive (and he was a great lead guitarist) but Stevie wins out in my opinion. 

VOTD 10/13/2024

Thorkell Sigurbjörnsson: La Jolla Good Friday I-II (CP )

Pretty certain I bought this at Jerry's Records

Let's see: it's on Paul Zukofsky's CP label. I'll pretty much buy anything on that label, price permitting. The releases are easy to spot, all (with one exception I know) have a silver cover with a colored rectangle somewhere in the middle. The single exception was a reissue of an Aki Takahashi triple LP set, which still maintained the rectangle.

Point two: an LP of electronic music realized in 1975. There's no indication in the liner notes what the composer used to create his work, but it's more than likely analog rather than digital. That's not critical but preferable. 

And finally...Thorkell Sigurbjörnsson? That name? Wouldn't you at least look?  Thorkell Sigurbjörnsson! 

So how was this made? There's really no information in that respect, only that the work was created at the Center for Music Experiment, UC San Diego. He cites a name, Warren Burt, who is someone I met some years ago through my friend tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE. Thorkell said Warren was "untiring in revealing some 'secret' patches..." (Warren, who I believe still lives in Australia, was one of the people who checked in with me by email after the Tree of Life shooting.) "Patches" suggests analog synthesis techniques. I'm thinking there's some combination of sequencer hardware and self-playing synth patching. 

As Victor Gauer told me, in the old electronic music studio at Pitt, one of the goals was to create autonomous, self-playing patches on the modular synths they had. He also told me he got Robert Moog mad with him when Victor told him the Moog wouldn't stay in tune.

As for Sigurbjörnsson's work, it's more or less one long continuous sound, though the tones fade in and out at the beginning, similar to breathing. It's imperfect as an LP and would have been better on CD format, and what's the likelihood that will ever happen? While new ideas, no musical lines pop up now and then, the work is in a constant state of transformation. Whatever might be happening, it's not fixed and will change into something else. As I observed about a Morton Feldman composition last week, it's not Minimalism, but it's not entirely removed from the ideas of Minimalism either. The piece isn't strictly a "process piece" such as Steve Reich's phasing works. Everything is in a state of flux until the end, which comes back around to the original tones. 

I'm reading on Wikipedia that Thorkell was a prolific composer and recognized both in his native country of Iceland, and also abroad. He also died in 2013. Hm. yet another composer who I wonder, does anyone perform Thorkell Sigurbjörnsson's music now? Maybe there's a bar somewhere in Iceland with a picture of Thorkell Sigurbjörnsson in it.