CDOTD 3/31/2023

 Miya Masaoka/Tom Nunn/Gino Robar: Crepuscular Music (Rastascan)

Traded (I think) with Gino Robair for a copy

I mentioned in a previous post that I don't often go back and listen to free improvisation recordings often. Or at least, let me clarify: I certainly put one on now and then, and I'll listen to some multiple times. I return to this one every once in a while.

I've played with all three of these musicians, sort of. I say that because I was in an ensemble (run by Gino) along with Miya, but had no interaction with her. I've played with Gino multiple times, but not for many years, which is on me. I have done very little playing outside my immediate region for many years.

I played aa gig with Tom once, in addition to an afternoon hang session. Sweet guy, and very creative. He's credited here with playing "Bug & Baboon". Tom was an improvisational instrument builder. On the improv gig we played, I think he brought the Crustacean. It was a sheet of aluminum with various rods welded to it, suspended on balloons and with a contact mic for amplification. A simple device but interesting and evocative. The range of sounds it could produce, through a variety of methods, was wide. I got to see and play several of his instruments when I was hanging out at his house. He showed me what he said was one one of his favorites, which was nothing more than a threaded rod, maybe 6" in length, with a slight bend in the middle. He proceeded to roll it, stroke it with a metal beater, and again the variety of sounds he produced was amazing for such a simple thing.

Tom died fairly recently. A year ago, two years ago? I'm finding it difficult to determine when. 

There are too few recordings of Tom available, and this is a good one. I assume this was a one-off performance by friends who played with each other in various configurations over the years. Even at its busiest, there's a wonderful sense of restraint to the music. Everyone sounds engaged, not pushing things too hard, listening. I know with Miya involved, playing primarily koto, it's easy to say this has an Asian flavor to it. I might have thought so anyway. Space is the essence. There are pitches, notes, but it's not melodically driven; rhythms and percussive sounds are of greater importance. 

Much of the time, I can't pick out who is playing what. It's something I enjoy about a good improvisation set. The percussive nature of all of the instruments lends itself to that. That said, I like the idea that there's a group sound and identity that arises out of the combination of people. I'm happy for the aural document, but it must have been amazing to witness.

PS/Addendum: Trump was indicted yesterday. I felt brief elation, then resignation as the bullshit was flying fast and furious from that moment until now. I saw Eddie Pepitone do standup last night, and he destroyed. Amazing. It felt good to laugh so much. But I've come down. I taught this morning, or at least I tried to. Half my students skipped class and I found it nearly impossible to get responses from questions for those who did. I want to, again escape into a sound-world.

VOTD 3/30/2023

 Can: Tago Mago (United Artists)

Purchased used long enough ago that I don't remember where

I noticed mention of this album recently on a social media post, in response to discussion about Bitches Brew. There were back-and-forths about further album suggestions, and also about "accessibility."

Sigh. There's a loaded word. What is accessible? Inaccessible? Who determines these things? Is it possible that I don't generally accept the idea, and yet also understand it and can't deny the idea of "accessibility" to be true? At least, somewhat?

Is it also possible I'm just indecisive?

I looked up Can's discography while putting on this album. I didn't know how relatively early this record was. 1971, their third album release (the second was a compilation of soundtrack work), their first with vocalist Damo Suzuki. 

Their discography, what I've heard of it, can be spotty. I haven't listened to nearly all of it, but some of it doesn't appeal to me much. On Flowmotion from 1976, I found some individual tracks very good, others not so much. 

I don't know how anything I haven't heard could be better than Ege Bamyasi, the album that followed this one. It's a solid classic. I have my constantly-shifting list of favorite albums of all time; Ege Bamyasi doesn't make that top ten, but lingers somewhere in the second tier. 

Here's another word I dislike, but it's appropriate in this case. It's clear that the music arises out of jamming. They get together, start to work up a groove, and the piece is worked out. Even as they're performing, committing to tape, it sounds as if decisions are being made. 

And then there's Damo. I'm never entirely sure if he's improvising his lyrics each time. What is clear is that his vocal lines arise from jamming no less than anyone else in the band. It's magical; he isn't an especially strong vocalist, yet Can was great with him, never better. Maybe he seemed to complete a world-view of the music compatible with the jamming nature of it.

There's little question Can is driven by its rhythm section, unusually funky for a German band in 1971. They're patient; the side-long "Halleluwah" grooves on a bass riff for most of its length, and even fades out before the end of the side. Go longer please! There were some advantages to digital recording and CD length.

So far I've mentioned accessibility and jamming for overused/misunderstood words, why not go for a hat trick? This album finds them more experimental than their subsequent album. (I'll write another time about what I think the words experimental and avant-garde really mean when used by critics and journalists.) "Mushroom" has backwards-playback vocals. "Aumgn" is steeped in delay, and sounds like it's mostly improvised. It's interesting to include it on this album, but I admit I prefer Can when it's more grooving.

I can't escape a thought while listening to this: Tago Mago was a major label release. Seriously. Can was released on the same label as The Animals, George Jones, Patty Duke, ELO, Crystal Gayle, even some Beatles releases. I appreciate how much more easily and inexpensively artists can record their music now, but in some ways things are more backwards now. The money is no longer in album sales, and that's not going to change. Singles drove album sales, album sales and touring was where the money was made. No so any more. 

I had a conversation with a friend c.1983-84. The gist of it was, didn't the 1970s suck? Isn't the 1980s going to be better? There was indeed a wonderful boom in independently released music at the time. On reflection, the 1970s look so much more interesting than we thought, and the 1980s weren't so great. Now I'm getting old and I can't relate to almost anything current. Maybe there's somebody as interesting out there as Tago Mago-era Can, but I doubt it. And even if there is, I don't have the energy to seek them out.

VOTD 3/29/2023

 Hardy Fox: Hardy Fox (Secret Records)

Purchased through mail order

William Burroughs said that language was a virus. It infects us, and our DNA is altered by it. He offered a challenge: sit silently for ten seconds and see if you can't think of a word. He thought we can't do it.

I don't think he's entirely right. I can sit that long, longer, without thinking of words, but only if I'm thinking about music. Is music the real virus? Having experienced  music, does it change our DNA?

Scientifically, probably not. And yet, doesn't feel as if some music does more than move you? Doesn't it alter you in some significant way?

That's how I feel about hearing The Residents' Duck Stab/Buster and Glen for the first time. Something about that record seeped into me. The abrasiveness of the opening cut, "Constantinople", was startling. The second track, "Sinister Exaggerator", had a mildly psychedelic effect on me. I can only think of one or two other times that's happened to me. I find something compelling about even the weakest songs on that album, and consider it a desert island disc. 

Today would have been Hardy Fox's birthday. He would have been 78. He died in 2018 from brain cancer, and really awful way to go. It's killed several of my friends. 

Hardy announced he had been the musical director of The Residents after his retirement from the band in 2015. I think he had retired from their infrequent tours even before that. I've read that he might have been behind the idea of an anonymous collective. After 44 years, I think he earned the right to take (co-)credit for his immense body of work. Anyone who was paying attention knew he was one of the primary forces behind the band anyway, the only surprise being him staking his claim over the work.

I love Duck Stab, I love Commercial Album, Fingerprince, The Third Reich N Roll.  Hell, I enjoy Meet The Residents, Eskimo, Not Available, even Mark of the Mole, though that 1981 album is already the beginning of when I lose interest in them. I still collected their albums for a few years, and each had their highlights. But they just became less interesting to me the more them embraced digital technology and sampling. I liked the sweat on those early records. The passion comes through, the brazen originality, the full-steam-ahead approach despite being primitive musicians. 

Even within The Residents' world, he released essentially solo albums. I haven't paid attention. Most of the albums of theirs I've bought in recent years all have to do with their early years, the reissue pREServed series, collections of oddities and leftovers, and the first official released of Baby Sex on vinyl. 

This self-titled LP was released around the same time as that LP. Hardy had died a few months before its release. I felt compelled to find a copy.

It's poignant. Most of the singing on Residents albums are done by the "Singing Resident" AKA Randy Rose AKA everybody knows who it is but I won't write his name anyway. Hardy sings throughout this album. He doesn't have a great voice and I don't know what his health was like when this was recorded. He sounds fragile, and it adds to the listening experience. It's more intimate than most Residents albums. His voice turns up occasionally on early records, on songs such as "Suburban Bathers" and "Godsong". He's easy to identify, especially when contrasted with the usual singer. The voice is mixed just a little low, a little below the surface, with a reverb that makes it sound consistently like he's across a room. 

I don't pick out lyrics often. There's isn't necessarily traditional song structures for most pieces on this, and many of the vocals are spoken. There are a few lines I caught having to do with his homosexuality. It wasn't a secret. He spoke of his relationship with "Roman" (not his real name) in an interview I read, shortly before his retirement.

All instruments are keyboard or digitally based, with some exceptions like some guitar and bass. He's certainly mastered working with such technologies, having been there pretty much from the beginning of the sampling and MIDI age.

It's an album worthy of listening, even if it's not as glorious as his early work. But, how many artists can say they're doing vital, original work after four and a half decades? As an album it's fine piece by piece, but doesn't have an arc. It all has a similar tone, different shades of the same colors, but not immense highs and lows. Which leads me to think, am going in with unfair expectations? 

The vinyl is a beautiful splattery green on green and red, but the pressing is not good. Many pops and clicks. It came with a flexidisc single, which turns out to be unplayable. Sigh. I don't know if it's my fault, the label's, or the reseller's.

I visited Ralph Records and The Residents' studio on my honeymoon in 1986. I happen to stop by when they were away visiting family. My contact there told me she wished she had the chance to introduce me to H, which was Hardy's nickname. Me too, now more than ever.

CDOTD 3/28/2023

 Maurizio Bianchi: Telmegiddo (The Last Cassette-tape Decomposition) (Menstrual Recordings)

Purchased mail order directly from label

I've written on this blog often enough that I feel like a narrative is starting to arise. I also think possibly I'm repeating myself. I also also think I should probably keep my comments more sparse.

I written before of my youthful (into my 20s) interest in industrial and noise music. There were some good sources for buying some of these things here, specifically Eide's. Greg Kostelich was running the record department, and would buy one or two copies of obscure albums knowing that a few regulars, one being me, would more than likely buy them. He stocked the Diamanda Galás LP on Metalanguage as soon as it was released, and I was there to buy it immediately. It was also a time when you could buy used records especially cheap and could often find things that weren't on the shelves otherwise. 

I hunted through the stacks at Eide's with great dedication, often going over the same sections visit after visit. I don't want to miss something newly placed, or might have overlooked. I had come across the artist named MB a few times (MB = Maurizio Bianchi), and found a pair of his LPs there, filed in the wrong location E for Endometrio, the first of two titles for the pair). This was...c.1984-85.

It was another case of, I hadn't heard anything like those records before. Let's start by saying, no melodies, no recognizable instruments. Everything was washed in a haze of reverb or echo. Details were obscured. I wasn't sure whether I thought it sounded like machines operating a long distance away, or a return to the womb. Probably more that latter. 

I wondered a little how he made these recordings, but not much. It's now a case where I loved the atmosphere of an album without giving much thought about how simple and primitive it really was. I could say the same for the first Joy Division album. At the time I was simply taken with the sound of the band, the atmosphere of dread, the evocative singer who couldn't actually sing. I still enjoy that record (and get annoyed at every teenager I see wearing the t-shirt who I know hasn't actually listened to the album) though now I hear it and can tell what primitive musicians they were. But it just goes to show, I'd rather listen to someone with great ideas but less execution, than someone with incredible execution but few ideas. 

I wrote yesterday about putting on a particular Nurse With Wound LP (another artist I followed in the 1980s) to put on something atmospheric as an escape from the grim reality of the United States. Yet another mentally ill person deciding to murder innocent people with weaponry better fit for combat than hunting or self-defense, guns more easily purchased than cigarettes. 

MB released a huge number of cassettes going back to 1979, under the name at the time of Sacher-Pelz. His earliest experiments (and fair to call them that) involved lo-fi turntable abuse. He eventually stepped up to working with synthesizers, and found his footing when he started to smear everything through an echoplex. Like I said, primitive.

Then after five years of intense activity, he suddenly retired. I understand he became a Jehovah's Witness. He returned to releasing music/sound fifteen years later, his reputation having grown through the years. I have that first CD he released after coming out of retirement. I can't tell you how awful I thought it was. I've heard a few since that were better, more of a return of what he did effectively, but it's the post-turntable, pre-retirement recordings that interest me.

I thought I'd spin this, the first of a two-CD set, issuing on CD two albums recorded in 1982/83 and unofficially released to cassette in 1990. 

It's not my favorite of his releases of the period, but how does one even judge these things except by pure visceral reaction? Through the haze of the echoplex there is some sort of slowed-down voice, indicating to me that the pre-processed sound source is at least in part sound recordings rather than synthesizers. Ultimately it doesn't matter that much, it's just my instinct to try to figure out how things are made.

Wrap yourself in the MB cocoon! 

VOTD 3/27/2023

 Nurse With Wound: Space Music (Beta-lactam Ring Records)

Purchased at The Attic

I'm caught between two fundamental ways of thinking about music. One is that it is an expressive art. We use music to find ways to "say" something that can't be said in words, or any other medium. Then there's that attitude I can trace to John Cage, that is it's an inherently futile act to try to "express" anything in music, and just accept it for its beauty. Dionysian vs Apollonian? I forget which is which.

I don't come down strongly on one side or the other. Music can certain have a "mood" without trying to express something specific. One wouldn't describe Beethoven's 5th symphony as moribund. It has a liveliness and intensity that suggests something else.

Yet I also have sometimes pushed back against some musicians' attempts to make a piece expressive when it's not appropriate or desired. Sometimes....just let the sounds be. In my Concerto for Orkestra, the movement "Incline" reduces in middle of the work to a piano playing a single note repeatedly. It's supposed to connect to two halves of the work while wiping clear the first half. It's also meant to be uncomfortable: why is this one note being played over and over? Until, quietly, the first bass note in the piano is played, and a dramatic tension is released.

I should have sent these notes to both of the pianists who played the work, because they both tried to make it something it wasn't intended to be. I didn't want it to be expressive. I didn't want it to be interesting. Its lack of interest was much of the point. Both pianists tried to do something to it, make it more dramatic, more expressive, make it more interesting than I wanted. Why can't a note just be a note? Why can't wind players play a long tone without swelling it? Why can't it simply be a beautiful tone? Why do we need to pour our emotions into every possible event? Do we think our emotions and our expression of them is actually that important?

Another day, another fatal shooting at another school. What do I choose to put on my stereo while I contemplate yet another senseless, grotesque reminder of current reality in the United States?

Part of me was about to reach for something angry and gloomy, such as the doom metal album from yesterday's post. That would certainly be "expressive." As I've written before, I listened to only dark and severe music for weeks after Donald Trump was declared president-elect. Today, I wanted something atmospheric, something that seemed removed from this world, from everyday life. Today's news is a reminder of how ugly life can be.

I'd listened to this album once before, which I found used at The Attic. It's harder to find good and interesting used records than it once was, but here's a good example of why you look.

I've read the music was a commissioned work for a planetarium. I would have liked to have experienced this under those circumstances.

Nurse With Wound is primarily Steven Stapleton, with a number of others coming and going through the years. This was crated by Steven with Colin Potter and Andrew Liles, the latter seemingly being one of his longest-lasting collaborators. I followed as much of NWW's music as I could during the all-analog era, and started to lose track and interest when everything was being realized and released digitally. Much of that no doubt had to do with me burning out on it. Exactly how long Andrew and Colin have been involved, if they still are (Andrew is, I understand), I'm not certain. And it's always been a bit of a mystery who exactly does what NWW records: concept, performance, realization, process, engineering.

There's a cinematic to quality to many NWW albums, which is true of the first side of this LP. Things happen unpredictably, it's mostly quiet except for a few much louder, noisy outbursts. I don't think the creators intend to express or evoke anything in particular. There's a logic to it, but that logic is unknown to me as the listener. 

The second side is of a quality similar to the more recent Trippin' Musik. There's a filtered, soft-edged sound happening constantly, with a tremolo effect that stays consistent through its side. Notes/tones fade in and out, but nothing stands out. It's in stasis for its length. This was what I wanted to hear right now, something that doesn't go anywhere and just sits for a length of time. I'm listening to side two a second time as I write this. 

Take me away. As Sun Ra was quoted, "Leave this God-damned planet!" I won't live long enough to see if any serious colonization of outer space happens; it might not at all. If it does, it could be the opportunity to leave behind the failings of human beings, our capacity to do awful things. But the pessimist in me says no, we're going to be just as shitty to each other in space as we are on Earth. At least the music is an escape to inner space as outer, briefly.

VOTD 3/26/2023

 Mourner: Still (no label)

Purchased in the record store where Mind Cure and Cruel Noise used to be.

I'm so behind on listening to recently purchased vinyl. It didn't stop me from purchasing a few things today.

The sticker on this read: Doom $5. I'm not one to generally buy metal, but some things caught my eye on this. It has a folded over cover, indicating it was probably assembled by hand. The players in this group are not only the standard voice/guitar/bass/drums, but also are credited with harmonium, Echoplex, drones, tape loops, noise, and field recordings. That catches my attention, and the price was worth a gamble.

I've mentioned Khanate on this blog before, my admiration for not only their utter bleakness but their determined anti-virtuosity. Their records are so slow and at times empty, I don't understand how they keep track of where they are.

I've written before about the trap of talking about influences. "Who are your influences?" I mean, okay go ahead and ask, but unless it's a blatant copy of something, the music should stand on its own without concern for precedents. This record has two side side-long parts one and two, with a short introduction. There was a moment early on the second side where I had to check I hadn't put on a Khanate record. There are other slow grinding doom metal bands, but my guess is Mourner listened to their share of Khanate. 

While most of the album is slow, hard hitting chords and rhythms (no soloing at all), the end of the second side evaporates into a haze of low level noise that's out of the ordinary. Maybe that's where all the unusual credits come in.

Discogs.com indicates that this band came from Nashville. Good. I like seeing things like this come from unusual places. This dates to 2009 (there's a myspace.com address in the notes), a second album from 2010, and a split EP from 2012. I they're no longer together, as you might guess. Guitarist Mike Meachem has a label that seems to continue to release music once in a while, often in cassette form. (Feh. I don't miss cassettes. I have some great ones that contain important documentation, but it was the format at the time.) It takes so much effort to keep going. keep releasing, keep a band together.

Maybe there are details I missed on first listening, I'll return to this sometime. Especially if I feel depressed, that's when I "enjoy" (lacking a better word) listening to bleak, depressing music.

VOTD 3/25/2023

 Sun Ra and his Astro Infinity Arkestra: My Brother the Wind (Saturn bootleg/Rhino Records pressing?)

Can't recall where I bought this.

Continuing with Sun Ra! I've been using this blog as a way for writing some of the anecdotes and stories about artists and recordings I know, and this one brings together several.

The first being, supposedly Vol. II of My Brother the Wind was released before Vol. I. Very Sun Ra. 

It's my understanding that the title itself is a reference to the Minimoog that Sun Ra used. The "wind" is the noise generator that's part of the instrument. The Minimoog was the first instrument to be called a "synthesizer" to be sold in music stores. Everything prior was done on custom, mail order. The model that made the stores was version D. Sun Ra was lent a model C. He played it for years, made excellent use of it. When the instrument finally gave out, he shipped it back to the Moog company!

I saw a copy of this record for $600 at Double Decker Records in Allentown, mint condition if not sealed. That seems cheap considering how some original Sun Ra Saturns have sold at Fungus Books and Records for up to $2000. 

The only address is the old Chicago Saturn Records PO box, indicating to me this is possibly a bootleg. But then, I don't know for certain. I mean, this is an issue long after Sun Ra's passing and Saturn Records operating out of Chicago. The question of the Sun Ra estate was a problem, considering he had no heirs nor a will. Maybe those things have been worked out since?

This is one of Sun Ra's freer sessions, with him clearly at times conducting the ensemble. It's just him and three of his closest associates: John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, and Danny Davis. John is listed as a featured player on percussion, plus his native tenor saxophone. Marshall is credited as playing oboe, piccolo, and flute, but he clearly plays alto saxophone some of the time. There's a dense alto sax-off in "Intergalactic II" that must be both Danny and Marshall. Danny's playing sometimes is similar to Marshall's in its intensity.

I think there's a pretty serious question of credit on group improvisations such as we find on this album. I think there's some cueing involved on Sun Ra's part; the way that some players suddenly enter or stop indicates to me some sort of leader's sign was given. And yet, this was also a group effort. Sun Ra's keyboards might be at the center of the sound, but he's not the only person contributing to the events.

A similar issue came up with Karlheinz Stockhausen's intuitive works. Karlheinz wouldn't call them improvisations, but that's unquestionably what are. Guided improvisations, improvisations that begin with a predetermined principle. But how does one interpret a text such as, "play single sounds/with such dedication/until you feel the warmth/that radiates from you"? Do the interpreters of such pieces deserve co-credit? 

Vinko Globokar was an interpreter of the intuitive works, and he believed the players deserved co-credit. It caused a rift between them.*

I'm uncertain where I come down. Stockhausen at a granular level was the composer, and set into motion things that wouldn't have happened without his direction. And yet, with such open and ambiguous directives, the players possibly deserve more credit than, say, a string quartet when they play Haydn.

With Sun Ra's group improvisation recordings, the weight is even greater on co- or equal- credit.

I wonder what the circumstances of this recording were. Why put John Gilmore, one of the greatest tenor saxophonists in the history of the instrument, largely on drums? Or was that possibly the point, to put him in a less comfortable situation? I mean, were there no drummers in the house or on call that day?

The sound quality is reasonably good, though it's possible this was recorded in something like a living room space. There's no information given, location or date. There is a sustained feedback that happens during the side-long "The Code of Interdependence" that holds long enough that I wonder if it was intentionally not cut off.**

As a Chicago-era Saturn album, and a companion to Vol. II, this must be considered a more essential album that some of the later posthumous issues. It is a small picture of who Sun Ra was working with at the time, what they were doing. A little more information please?

* My friend Victor Grauer received a grant to go to Germany and study with Stockhausen some time in the late 60s or early 70s. It was during the period of the Stockhausen intuitive works. he heard both European and American ensembles. His opinion was that the European groups were more stiff.

** Is anyone more reliable than Sun Ra for great song/composition/improvisation titles? "A Fireside Chat With Lucifer", "God Is More Than Love Can Ever Be", "Monorails and Satellites", "Pathways to Unknown Worlds", love it.

VOTD 3/24/2023

 Sun Ra: The Outer Darkness (Norton)

Purchased possibly at Mind Cure Records

I was looking over my Sun Ra albums yesterday, vinyl and CDs. It's a lot, something like 45 vinyl records and at least as many CDs.

It's partial fandom, partial study. I've arranged or transcribed quite a few Sun Ra pieces, and have performed most of those. It was the foundation of OPEK's repertoire.

Part of the interest in Ra recordings is the wide variety and unpredictable nature of what you're going to get. It could be space chants, hard bop swing, group or solo improvisations, poetry, keyboard noise. 

I might from time to time pick up a Sun Ra album, but I've cut back. Or more accurately, I'll keep from buying another unless I find a reason to do so. One of my primary interests is in is compositions; if there's a work he's written I haven't heard, I want to know what it is. Problem is, his improvised works are also given titles, and its hard to tell which is which. And it's not that I'm disinterested in his improvised work, but like I said, it's the compositions I want to study in particular.

This record is designated Space Poetry Volume 3. Norton issued three albums of largely spoken word materials. I guess this and the other volumes were largely broadcast on WXPN, the University of Philadelphia radio station. My guess is that there wouldn't be room for recitations like this on their current schedule. But maybe I'm wrong?

Because these were created in a radio station, the quality is very high. Often Sun Ra's albums during his lifetime were highly varied in recording quality; that level of quality has on average only declined on the posthumous releases. 

The first side opens with "I Gotta Get Away", and through the side it's a single speaker talking through Ra's text. He seems consistently out of breath, and with lots of mouth sounds. That indicates to me that he needed to speak louder and not rely on pushing up the level on the microphone gain so much.

And it's not Sun Ra. It's unclear to me who it is, and it's light on the "space talk". That changes on the second side, which is more clearly written into the notes dates from 1977. It begins with Wisteria, and unusual in having a female voice besides June Tyson. She recites solo, then simultaneously with other speakers. It's much more Sun Ra-ish, in the use of multiple speakers, and the text itself. 

All the while, there's music playing in the background. Side one sounds like a classical record playing; side two sounds like Sun Ra synthesizer sounds playing behind. Unless, is Ra playing live behind them? Again, unclear, but guess is that it's prerecorded. I wish the notes are clearer. June does turn up later, as does Sun Ra himself reciting his poetry. I prefer his delivery over whoever was on the first side, in part due to his colorful Alabaman accent. He speaks with a rhythm his own, unhurried (mostly). 

Every Sun Ra album isn't essential, and it depends on what you might be looking for. But each is a small piece of the puzzle. That includes these space poetry albums, even if four volumes is more than enough. But then, who am I to say that it's too much? Better these things be available, and let people make up their own minds. Isn't that part of what Sun Ra was saying, over and over? Please think for yourself, people of Earth!

VOTD 3/21/2023

 Emerson, Lake & Palmer: Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends - Ladies and Gentlemen, Emerson, Lake & Palmer (Manticore)

Purchased at a Jerry's dollar sale

Is there any question why punk rock happened?

I have in my hands a particular artifact of the 1970s: the triple LP live album. Actually, I can only think of one other example, being Yessongs. The three LPs would fit easily onto a double CD set, which doesn't seem so outrageous. Still, a TRIPLE LP LIVE ALBUM. The height of hubris? Even the packaging yells excess, with each LP contained in a die cut sleeve, forming the letters E, L, and P in faux metal printing. 

This period finds them at the crest of their popularity, touring on Brain Salad Surgery and its AOR radio hit "Karn Evil 9 (Second Impression)." I will embarrassingly admit I didn't get the pun in the title for a long time. 

What kind of live band was ELP? Not bad, apart from your opinion of the music. It's not the easiest music in the world to play, and they charge through. Keith Emerson is clearly at the center of things. For a live album, it seems sloppily edited to me, with uninteresting banter and incomplete, spare musical sounds left in. 

From the beginning and at various points in the album, I hear one of the things that bugs me the most about this band, and that is Carl Palmer's sloppy drumming. He's not good with tempos. The opening "Hoedown" starts fast, and Carl enters at a noticeably faster tempo. Later, somewhere in the middle of "Tarkus" he's dragging the tempo down. 

In my previous post about ELP, I stated that I didn't think Greg Lake was an especially good singer. That's on display here, on and off. Sometimes he sounds fine, other times not so much. He doesn't hit the high notes in "Tarkus" especially well. And his bass is noticeably out of tune sometimes, but maybe I can cut him slack on that, considering it might be in the middle of a 20 minute epic piece.

And how do I feel about the middle of this monster, breaking down into solo sections for Greg Lake and Keith Emerson? Greg's songs do well in a solo voice/guitar setting. On the other hand, Emerson's piano solo improvisations (including his quoting of some ragtime) seem like a big flash-fest. A lot of technique, a lot of showing off. Art Tatum did it much better, and he's not even one of my favorites.

The educator in me cries out: do your comments all need to be so negative? Isn't it better to find the positives, even among these negatives? 

It is amazing that this is music that drew such large audiences at one time. These guys, for all the (sometimes deserved) critiques, were taken seriously. People came to see this music, in sometimes admittedly altered states. Currently, hardly anything that could be described as a "rock band" has a chance on the charts. ELP was huge in its time. The monster prog rock was definitely a thing of the 1970s. 

Maybe it's a good thing this triple live document happened, because it's pretty much downhill for the band after this. Three years after this came the Works albums. First a double LP, each member given a side of their own, the fourth as group. What could have indicated excess, or a band in decline, more than that? Follow that with the single second volume, which included pieces rejected from Brain Salad Surgery. And they probably should have remained on the cutting room floor. 

Fast forward another year, and it's Love Beach. It's interesting to read some of the review responses on discogs.com, some people will defend anything. One person writes, "Best Album Ever released." In response, another writes, "Surely, you jest. This isn't simply ELP's worst release, it's one of the worst rock albums in history."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the correct response.

That brings us to 1978, and the time is turning. ELP has past its heyday, prog rock in general would no longer be the popular idiom it once was. Which is not to say there isn't life in the idea of "progressive." While not specifically the definition of progressive rock, Robert Fripp's Exposure was released in 1979, an occasionally flawed but interesting (at times exciting) album. 1981, King Crimson's Discipline was released, broadly a prog statement but far more lean and stripped back than earlier examples. 

I suppose I could try to define what "prog rock" even means, but I'll skip it for now.

I remember a review Love Beach I read in Creem at the time of its release. Rather than criticize it directly, the writer created a brief short story of a teen who would bought that album but stole a punk rock record to hide in its sleeve, so his record reviewer father wouldn't know what he was actually listening to. A three word review such as "This is GARBAGE" would have said enough, but I have to admit I remember that review. 

And so, is it any wonder that punk rock happened? In part as a response to bands and albums such as this? But not just punk, a more stripped down band such as Tom Petty and the Hearbreakers had their first album in 1976, and the tide was already turning. Yes' Tormato was released in 1978. Their best days clearly had come and gone. 

I never owned this particular album as a teen. Listening to it now (the first time to completion) I feel a bit of wistfulness between my moments of annoyance. As I've written before, ELP were never one of my favorites, but I did like them. Picturing myself, all of sixteen, headphones on in my living room, listening to Trilogy and feeling like I was in another place. I turn 60 in four weeks. Where has that kid gone? Is it still me?

CDOTD 3/20/2023

 John Duncan: Dark Market Broadcast (Staaltape)

Purchased used at Eide's, I think

I saw John Duncan in performance once, some time in the early 1990s. I'm trying to remember anything about it I can. It was at The Beehive in Oakland (formerly King's Court), upstairs, a Manny Theiner production. I haven't thought about this in years (if not decades), bits and pieces coming back to me. There were several shows I attended, did Manny make it a sort of series? Multiple billings? I saw Macronympha, for example. I don't think they performed often, and certainly not locally despite coming from Monroeville. I think I saw a silly local project too, Filet O'Feedback. Probably more.

Some of the Duncan performance was done in as close to complete darkness as possible. Some of it was sound added to a cut-up of a gay S&M loop, "Brutal Birthday." There was no explicit sex but there was nudity, reassembled in a nonlinear manner. It was a strange event, disconcerting. Probably loud too.

As a follower of industrial/noise/experimental music at the time, I knew John Duncan had something of a reputation. He had released a few scarce records which already were starting to sell at premium prices, long before discogs.com had become a thing. Hell, the internet was barely a thing at the time. I guess he was involved at some level with pornography? I've never seen any adult materials he's created. (Truthfully. I'm not trying to spare my reputation.) He was also possibly living and working in Japan? It's been so long, maybe I knew more at one time.

Here I am, on another deep dive into my music library, pulling out this artifact of the time. I guess if you associate any sound work with John Duncan, you know he likes using shortwave radio sounds. A lot. I don't think there's a moment on this disc where there isn't some shortwave source used, sometimes several simultaneously. There are other things happening: sampled loops, spoken text. But mostly shortwave sounds.

I have one or two radios still working that are able to pick up shortwave broadcasts. Years ago I actively would hunt through the dial, looking for whatever I could find: Morse code, other electronic transmissions, extreme broadcasting. I discovered that shortwave was a haven for hardline Christian fundamentalists and white Christian racist nationalists. My favorite was Brother (Harold) Camping, who would routinely tell people they were going to hell for almost any reason (including one poor guy who was really worried because he had unknowingly smoked a marijuana cigarette!). Brother Camping made news by predicting the end of the world on March 21, 2011. People quit their jobs and sold their possessions over this nonsense! When March 21 came and went, he updated the date, which I guess you've figured out also came and went. Was he unhappy that the world didn't end then either?

Shortwave broadcasts were where I discovered Alex Jones. If you think he's gotten more extreme over the years, you're wrong. He's always been ridiculous. If I remember correctly, he was actually more blatantly racist at the time. 

I like the sound of shortwaves, and their unpredictable nature. I won't write into Karlheinz Stockhausen's relationship to shortwaves in this post, that could go too long. I don't stay up at night hunting through shortwave bands via analog sources any longer, but I did find this great shortwave streaming website: http://sdrpt.dynip.sapo.pt/

Of the tracks on this strange release of 1986 (this CD reissued in 1990), I prefer the noisily ambient "Purge", 27 minutes of entirely shortwave sounds (I think). Maybe it sounds the least of human hands on it, the most like found sounds, but maybe that's the appeal to me.

VOTD 3/19/2023

 Emerson, Lake, and Palmer: Emerson, Lake and Palmer (Atlantic)

I think I bought this at a Jerry's Records dollar sale

I was a prog rock teen. I liked the idea of complexities, and also that I wasn't just listening to top 40 album music. Some of this was the hubris of youth, wanting to feel like I was listening to something "different" and even "weird." 

I had a couple of ELP records, dubbed at least one or two others, but they were never among my favorites. I preferred Yes, and even (God help me) at times Kansas. Leftoverture was the first LP I bought for myself, what can I say?* Discovering Wetton/Bruford era King Crimson was a revelation to me though, because the music was tougher and harder-hitting. 

I had a copy of this record in high school, which I bought in of all places, a family trip to Mexico City. I later sold it off in one of several record purges I've done, only to repurchase it in what I think was a dollar sale.

This music was well established when I bought it, but must have sounded wildly original when it was released. It's strange to think that this was one of the biggest bands in the world at one time, confirming to me that what we generally think of as "progressive rock" was largely a 1970s phenomenon. I know, there are some variants of progressive rock to this day, but it doesn't nearly have the cultural impact that it once did. 

I pulled this out because David Kuzy (Chrome Dinette) commented about ELP's Pictures At an Exhibition on Facebook, essentially saying it should have been scaled back by about half. I guess I had a copy in high school, a yard sale find no doubt, that was also purged. I don't miss it. The topic of "The Barbarian" came up, which is an adaption of a Bartók (uncredited here) piano piece. I have to agree it's successful. It also says something of the band's pretensions though, as in, "see, we can be classical too!" 

But what of that? Why not be ambitious? Should rock music be just the stuff of pubs, derived ultimately from blues forms? Of course not, any more than Charles Mingus should be limited from composing a symphonic work such as Epitaph, possibly the single most ambitious of all jazz works. It's easy to call this music pretentious. On the one hand, it's probably somewhat true. There's a lot of flashy technique that Keith Emerson seems to want to constantly show off. On the other, I think the most pretentious thing you can be is bad. Getting on stage and playing poorly, having a shitty band that plays shitty music in a shitty manner. THAT is pretentious.

"Knife-Edge" is based on a theme by Janáček (also uncredited here), which is probably the hardest hitting piece on this album. Except....it turns into a Bach-like prelude sort of thing in the middle, which to me really blunts the impact of the piece. I think the same thing about Yes' "Siberian Khatru" in which Rick Wakeman has a Baroque-ish harpsichord solo break, which I find to be completely unnecessary and breaks the mood.

As I write that last statement, I think two things: who am I to say they shouldn't have included those things? It's their choices, and I have to decided only if I like it or not based on my own tastes only. Also, am I not just going on and on and on here?

I never grow tired of something that's a component of "Knife-Edge" though, and it's a distorted Hammond B3 sound (or whatever electric organ he used). I don't always like Deep Purple's songs, but I love the sound they had, centered on Jon Lord's grungy organ sound. That, to me, is super heavy.

There was alway an essential conflict in this band, of Keith Emerson's classical and jazz-leaning virtuosities, and Greg Lake's more traditional songwriting. This record, as most ELP albums were, is dominated by Emerson, with Lake's contributions largely being "Take a Pebble" and "Lucky Man", the latter a notable AOR radio hit with a significant Moog synth solo.

Greg Lake. Hm. He's not awful, but I never found him to be an especially good vocalist. And his songs? They border on, if not cross over into.....wuss territory. I'm sorry/not sorry. I don't tend to notice lyrics unless they're bad, and Greg sometimes delivers some whoppers. He sings in "Still...You Turn Me On" (on a different album)..."Someone get me a ladder!"...and it's clear the lyric is only there to deliver a rhyme. It's bad.

Still, I don't regret visiting this little piece of history on a Sunday morning. It seems appropriate. It's a time that seems distant and strange now, looking back on it.

*There was a player for the Pittsburgh Pirates named John Vander Wal. He was playing at a time when there was a live organist for the games.** One time when John went up to bat, the organist quoted "The Wall", the second song off of Leftoverture. I was thrilled to have recognized it. Was I the only person in the stands who got the reference?

**All music is canned at Pirates games now, including the recording of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in which the organist doesn't resolve the bass note at the end. Every time I hear it I think, PLEASE resolve to the root! And it never comes.

CDOTD 3/17/2023

 Thelonious Monk: It's Monk's Time (Columbia)

Purchased at Borders, I think

I'll risk oversharing today. It won't be anything too personal, but I'm writing about myself in addition to the music. But then I suppose that's always true, isn't it? 

I've taught at Carnegie Mellon University since 2005. I only remember that date because I put it on my Facebook page. Despite being a modest job within the school, part time adjunct faculty teaching music technology courses, I'm extraordinarily lucky to have landed it. Who know you, where you are, timing, networking, etc, right?

I often say, "On my worst day, I remind myself that I teach at Carnegie Mellon, and that's a good thing." And that's true. Nonetheless, there are days, such as today, when I think, "What am I doing here?" The details are unimportant, just frustrations with students not attending class or showing up late, and complicating my syllabus schedule. It's something I shouldn't the least bit personally, and yet I can't help it. 

I've taken a hot bath, watched some Netflix, exercised a bit (another routine I intend to make more regular), and my back is still tense and knotted up. I just have trouble letting these things go, which I assume would come as no surprise to many of my friends. 

What music to put on this evening? Something I personally find comforting. I considered putting on some 1970s Yes, one of my early music loves. No, not quite right. Then I saw my Monk discs and thought, there we go.

Another thing I sometimes say is, "This is music I've known my entire life." And that's more-or-less true. I always had an affinity for music, had a talent for recognizing and singing melodies as a young boy. I think I've written on here before about my father's collection of records and especially reel-to-reel tapes where he dubbed hours and hours of records that he borrowed. One of the first musics I remember was of a tape entirely of Beatles records, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper definitely being included. Later I had the blue double singles collection, my sister had the red one. I preferred mine.

Later I'd find myself investigating his records, often with his prompting. I spent time with that Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five collection on Columbia. I had a Louis t-shirt at one time, and knew the names of the players in that band before I knew who Led Zeppelin was.

One of the things he recommended was Thelonious Monk. He said Monk was his favorite of the "modern guys" as he put it. He listened to a bit of Bird and bebop but had a generally low tolerance for it. He liked that Monk, no matter how weird his pieces might sound, always insisted the soloists work from the melody when soloing. He also like Monk's choice of tenor players.

This takes me back at least 45 years now, as a teen listening with headphones to his stereo in our living room, in between spins of Yes, Queen, ELP or whatever current thing I might have had that hasn't aged so well.

The LP I specifically remember was Criss Cross on Columbia, but this title was in his collection too and I most likely heard it as well. When he sold off his record collection, I made sure to tell him to save me the Monk vinyl he had. I already had the CD issue of this title, probably purchased in the 90s when I worked at Borders. You know, happy to have the vinyl though.

How does this particular title rate? I might be the lesser of all of the Columbia titles, but that doesn't make it unworthy of a spin. I have to bristle a little on behalf of Charlie Rouse when he just can't seem to play "Stuffy Turkey" correctly. It wasn't a new tune (none of them are on this) but not a standard part of the Monk Quartet repertoire. The same could be said of "Brake's Sake", an even tricker tune. The highlights are some of the old timey songs that Monk chose to play here: "Lulu's Back in Town", "Memories of You", and "Nice Work If You Can Get It".

"Lulu" is played solo first, then as ensemble, then back to solo at the end. Monk's solo performances, particularly of those older Tin Pan Alley songs, have grown on me over the years. Maybe I just needed to age into them? I wanted to play "Lulu" with Coal Train, a string band I was in many years ago, but we never got to it.

It's nice to inhabit Monk's sound world, if briefly. Weekend's here and I'll put school aside for a couple of days. 

VOTD 3/16/2023

 Ennio Morricone: Paura Vol. 2: A Collection of Scary & Thrilling Soundtracks (Rustblade)

Purchased from The Attic

Do I need to state it? Vinyl is expensive. In visiting The Attic yesterday, I specifically went in hunt of more Morricone. While I have a romantic attachment to vinyl and prefer it beyond logic, the real find of the day was a used copy of Crime and Dissonance, the double CD collection I wrote about yesterday.

There's some nice Morricone records at that store. Unfortunately, most are on the expensive side. It's not that I can't afford them, but when 40 minutes of vinyl playing time is at $25 or more, it can get to be costly. 

Especially considering this: there's a little risk in buying soundtrack albums for the separate listening experience. Rarely does every minute of a soundtrack, separated from the visuals of the film medium, stack up as being great. Take one of the greats for example, Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo soundtrack. It is among the finest ever written. However, when listening to the complete recording on CD, more than an hour's worth a music, I have the feeling it could have been edited as an album. But only as an album apart from the film. 

Collections can sometimes be spotty too. You're being given someone else's choice of what that person believes should be included. In general, I also prefer to listen to the original recording over a recreation. That may be questionable: the performance might even be better, the recording quality sharper, but there's a spirit to the original that usually can't be reproduced. Frank Zappa notably ruffled some feathers when he reissued some of his early albums (We're Only In It For the Money specifically) with some of the instrumental parts replaced with Synclavier-produced sequences. His attitude was, well if it's played better, sounds better, why wouldn't you prefer it? But not, it's just not the original artifact, for better or worse. And in that particular case, I consider it disrespectful to the original players, faults and all.

Like Crime and Dissonance, this is a generally good collection. There's a little overlap, but what little overlap there is, is quality stuff. The program starts with one of the weaker examples though, a cue from 1973's Revolver. Its use of electronic keyboards, which must have sounded so current at the time, makes it sound more dated. I think I've made this assertion before. The choice of electronic instruments is on of the reasons I don't care for Morricone's soundtrack to The Untouchables. It doesn't sound contemporary to the film's era (1930s) and sounds like a 1980s soundtrack now. 

At under $20, I considered it a reasonable price for this collection. I also thought, between this and the other collection, I might choose some individual soundtracks based on the strength of some of the tracks.

I meant to include a small bit of music theory in yesterday's text that I'll write now. It's something I first noticed the main title theme of Giornata Nera Per L'Ariete. It took me some time to figure out what was going on. The first chord in that piece is a C Major chord, but there's a B flat in the bass. Next chord is D minor, but with a C in the bass. And so forth. Every (or nearly so) chord in the work, whether major, minor, or diminished, had the flatted/dominant 7th in the bass. The result are harmonies that stay tonal, yet are also somewhat ambiguous and consistently unresolved. Interesting "trick", if you can call it that. I've noticed it multiple times. Considering Morricone wrote something like 500 soundtracks, it's to be expected that he repeats himself sometimes.

Despite having devoted so much time and space to Morricone on this blog previously, there's probably more to come as I deep-dive further.

CDOTD 3/15/2023

 Ennio Morricone: Crime and Dissonance (Ipecac)

Purchased from The Attic

During my recent weekend trip to Baltimore, I made a point of stopping by the city's best book and record store, Normal's. I hadn't been there in many years. I was encouraged to see the store was not only thriving, but had substantially expanded since my last visit.

While there I found a coffee table book about Ennio Morricone in the music books section. It was a big volume, most of which was devoted to reproductions of album releases of many of his soundtracks. The price, $40, was reasonable, but I didn't bite. I have so many books, quite a few of which are unread. In general I just have a lot of STUFF and I'm trying to be more judicious in my purchases. I give myself the most license with CDs and especially LPs, but even then I sometimes pause and defer.

Turns out, I discovered that the same book is in the Carnegie Library collection. The Monday after returning home, I went over at the first opportunity and checked it out. It's a very nice edition, with short essays about Il Maestro*, and even a few images of pages from his various scores.

What a great resource, having a decent public library in our city. I've probably written that before. My interest in Morricone's music was sparked in large part by listening to this double-CD collection, which I checked out of the library more than a decade ago. (Don't look for it now, it has long since disappeared.) I'm certain everybody has heard the main title theme for The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly at some point. I remember being on one of those radio carts at WRCT and getting played frequently when the DJ needed to grab something to play on the air for a few minutes. Not knowing much about Morricone besides that, I didn't understand John Zorn's deep interest in Morricone's music which led to his reexamining Il Maestro's music on The Big Gundown.

When I heard this though, I definitely got it. It's two full discs of cues taken entirely from 1960s and 70s Morricone scores, from largely crime, Giallo, and horror films. Imagine taking largely the weirdest tracks from those soundtracks and collecting them all in one place. Or more accurately, weirdest but also with the widest variety possible. There's a lot of atmosphere here, and Morricone's love of unusual instrumentation is on full display. Some of it is highly funky, or jazzy, and there's a significant amount of improvising happening. There's a segment of intense classical violin, and some horror-movie-appropriate pipe organ. And of course, vocalist Edda Dell'Orso's voice turns up now and then, sounding ambiguously like she's panicking or on the edge of climax.

Morricone died in July 2020. (Hmmm....what else was happening at the same time, let me think...) After his passing, I made blog posts here, commenting on Morricone vinyl I had collected to that point. Two of those albums have selections on this collection: Woman in a Lizard's Skin, Veruschka, both great. I sought out a copy of Giornata Nera Per L'Ariete (English title, The Fifth Cord) based on listening to this, another particularly strong work. I've only seen some of the films: Bird With the Crystal Plumage, The Antichrist, parts of Woman in a Lizard's Skin and Veruschka. I've been noting titles that I'd like to see, from here and the aforementioned book.

I'll write something here that I haven't been writing on these posts. You owe it to yourself to find this collection. I can't promise you'll love every track, but it does demonstrate some of Morricone's range. It doesn't include what he would later be known for, lush, romantic scores for films such as The Mission. He's great at that too, but those pieces don't particularly interest me. This is the good stuff here.

* I don't use this term often. In Morricone's case, it's entirely appropriate. I have a friend who greets me each time as Maestro. I'm flattered by the compliment, but also think, me? Maestro?

CDOTD 3/13/2023

 Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Canto di Speranza (ECM)

Borrowed from library

For the four people who have been following my writings on this blog, you've no doubt noticed my lack of posts in the past few days. This is partially because of taking a weekend trip to Baltimore. It was my spring break, and my wife (among other things) wanted to revisit the American Visionary Art Museum. (I recommend it, by the way.) We packed a lot into a few days, visiting the Baltimore Museum of Art (where John Waters' personal collection is currently on display), dinner in Little Italy, visiting the neighborhood where I used to live. We took in concerts at Keystone Korner seeing the Renee Rosnes Quartet, with Steve Nelson on vibes, who's about to play in Pittsburgh, and An Die Musik, with the Paul Carr Quartet. Playing piano with that group was Miki Yamanaka, who I suspect will be a rising star in the jazz world (whatever that means, these days).

I never announce when I'm away from home on vacation. Now I'm back, and I've just read how JazzTimes ownership has been sold, and the current staff let go. This includes Mike Shanley, who has freelanced for the magazine for many years. It's bad enough Mike doesn't find any professional opportunities to write locally. His most recent local gig was with Pittsburgh Current, which unfortunately came and went very quickly. I don't know the inside scoop with PC, I only assume COVID didn't help their situation. 

So it seems increasingly silly for me to continue writing these notices, and yet I will continue. Mike is an actual writer; I am committing words in a particular order to a virtual page. It's a little like, some people play the Theremin. I own a Theremin and wave my hands around it now and then.

I don't know that it's ever been easy, but it's a tough time to be in the arts. Or especially, particular arts. How do we monetize things people can get for free, or nearly so? Music, writing, and films in particular are at risk. 

Personally, I'll be okay. I mean, I expect to be paid for my services, but I've never hinged my livelihood on being a musician. I've discussed this with my mother (a sculptor) and she's wondered, as have I, if it wouldn't have helped to have struggled a little bit more. There's little changing either of us at this point.

None of which has to do with the Zimmermann recording that is playing as I write this. I think this is the third Zimmermann recording I've mentioned on this blog, and how unfortunate it is he took his own life at age 52. Maybe things aren't so bad for me. 

The disc has three works: Konzert (Concerto for violin and large orchestra, 1950), Canto di Speranza (Cantata for 'cello and small orchestra, 1952/57), and Ich Wandte Mich Und Sah an Alles Unrecht, Das Geschah Unter der Sonne (Ecclesiastical action for two speakers, bass solo, and orchestra, 1970). 

The violin concerto is something of an early work, though Zimmermann would have been about 32 at the time, not old but not an early blooming artist either. Without studying the work more closely, it sound rather like a post-Romantic work. It doesn't sound like the Berg concerto, but you're in the right neighborhood.

Move forward a few years, and you can hear the more post-war, Darmstadt style creeping into the Canto. The title for that ("Song of Hope", and more significantly a cantata) and the later "ecclesiastical action", is some reflection of his Catholic faith. Can I go into greater depth? Afraid not. I should read more of the notes to these albums I suppose. I will. 

Ich etc would be one of Zimmermann's final works, another being the Requiem for a Young Poet. It's full of empty spaces, speakers often accompanied by only single short or long notes, sometimes giving way to large, broad orchestral events. The pointillist influence of Webern on this clearly post-war composition seems very clear. I can't say whether it's Webern's music itself or a general trend in concert music at the time, but it seems to me to be the case. 

There's an electric guitar in there prominently at times, an unusual thing to hear even in post-war orchestral composition. However, the piece very strangely ends, with a very brief Renaissance-sounding brass chorale, with a brief orchestral interruption, and it's done. What?

I wonder if Zimmermann's later works point towards a general interest in theater. I mean theater broadly. This, the Requiem, his impossibly difficult opera Die Soldaten, all point towards a general direction of combining text, acting, singing, collage, jazz, pointillism, orchestra, chamber music, and electronics. Zimmermann's interests are clearly more pluralistic than singular.

I'm left with the impression that once again, it is an impressive listen on CD, but is a piece that should be experienced live. I wonder, will I even have the opportunity? Or for that matter, hear any Zimmermann work in concert?

CDOTD 3/08/2023

 Tony Oxley: The Advocate (Tzadik)

Purchased at The Government Center

I'm an improvisor. I suppose if I had to pick one thing as a musician, that's it. Not saxophonist, or bass clarinetist, or composer, or even educator. I'm an improvisor before anything else. 

I have been played freely improvised music since the early 1980s. Some people are dedicated to the approach and firmly live there; others see the limitations in devoting themselves to playing without predetermined structure, and find ways to use open compositions, strategies, or even game play. 

Of those people, the former is a smaller, dedicated group. I am largely in the latter group, though still occasionally enjoy the exhilaration of playing a lively free session with interesting players. I like the idea of finding direction through composition. I think of composition in a very widely generalized way. If there is a group of improvisors collected together and someone determines that they will break into a succession of smaller sub-groups, that is engaging in a very open ended form of composition. A predetermination has been made that steers the performance. 

I don't find myself often revisiting free improv recordings often. I've listened to many more than once, but usually with years in between. A few come to mind in particular, such as Chris Burn's Ensemble's Cultural Baggage, Miya Masaoka/Tom Nunn/Gino Robair's Crepuscular Music, the Music Improvisation Company's LP on ECM. 

This is a disc of Tony Oxley largely playing duets with Derek Bailey. I have a couple of Bailey albums, including duets with Dave Holland, Anthony Braxton, and the elusive Jamie Muir (short tenured percussionist with King Crimson), and some solo records. A friend who is very involved with the scene once said to me, "You only really need one solo Derek Bailey record." I know some who would disagree with him strongly. I have two, and maybe it's more than enough. He's a tough one. He went from composing initially in his career to devoting himself nearly entirely to free playing of a highly fragmentary style. It was the opposite trajectory for Gavin Bryars, an early collaborator.

Then there's Tony Oxley, who like Derek is a dedicated British improvisor. He's had a varied career. An early session is 1969's Extrapolation with John McLaughlin (a strong recording, I should pull it out). He had a double LP on Hart Art with Tony Coe, most famous for playing the saxophone in the soundtrack recording of The Pink Panther. He's worked with Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor. A particular favorite of mine is a one-off session he did with Anthony Braxton and bassist Adelhard Roidinger. Oxley's lightly frantic style, with lots of fast softly played notes, energizes the reading of Braxton's compositions. 

Three of four selections on this are duets, recorded in 1975 but released in 2007. It finds both players in fully brittle, ungrooving pointillism. It's a bit surprising when you hear Tony playing electronics, which is no less fragmentary than their acoustical playing. The four track is a solo work from 2006, dedicated to Derek.

How does one even comment on this music? It's a bit of: it is what it is. I find it engaging and both men are top players in their field. There is a thought among some improvisors that, if you can't tell a work of post-war avant garde is composed or not, why not improvise it? I don't completely agree with that viewpoint, but I don't discount it either. This session achieves the sometime density of fellow Brit Brian Ferneyhough, without being outrageously impossible to interpret from score. I'd even say it has more of a joie de vivre than recordings of Ferneyhough I've heard. 

Ultimately, I feel like I wish I had been in the room with them. It's great that this is documented, but the experience of being there just can't be duplicated on CD.

VOTD 3/08/2023

 Various: The ESP Sampler (ESP)

Purchased at Fungus Books and Records

It's spring break time for me, which doesn't mean I'm heading out for a week of fun. Grading is largely over for me, time for me to do some organization, listen to some records, try to get some composing done. 

Anyone who knows creative music of the past sixty years, knows some record on ESP. I think I read there was a slogan for ESP to the effect of, "The musicians alone decide what is heard on ESP Records." (I suppose I could look it up, but I'll be lazy about it.) And from what I understand, the musicians were never paid.

If that is indeed true, I don't like that. At least the positive takeaway is that there's an amazing document of late 60s free jazz. There are so many important names and great sessions on the label, presented here in fragmentary form: Pharoah Sanders, Ornette Coleman, Gunter Hampel, Marion Brown, Albert Ayler, Henry Grimes, Steve Lacy, etc etc etc. This is to speak nothing of The Fugs, The Godz, William Burroughs, and strangest avenue of all, Esperanto. There are bits of Esperanto on many of the records, and there's a small selection of the language on the final cut of this sampler ("Auld Lang Syne"). 

Listening to this frenetic album, something that becomes clear is the general influence of Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra on this generation of players. 

I suppose this was one of those loss leaders; a sampler record sold at or below cost, in order to promote the recordings on the label. Possibly the most famous of these is Zappéd, a Straight Records collection of Frank Zappa-related artists. It does remind me that I should locate more of these recordings. With so many tracks involved (52), it's difficult to remember who is who.

What a time!

VOTD 3/06/2023

 Talking Heads: Remain in Light (Sire)

Purchased so long ago, I couldn't possibly remember

I went to see Jerry Harrison/Adrian Belew play Remain in Light at the Roxian Theatre in McKees Rocks. I don't need further excuse than that, but there were some additional reasons: my wife and I had never been to the Roxian. We're fans of old theaters (the more Art Deco the better) but there hadn't been much happening there before that interested both of us. Also, my daughter had recently bought a CD copy of Remain in Light and was saying how much she enjoyed it.

In a previous posting, I wrote about a live reunion recording of Throbbing Gristle. On the one hand, why revisit this music like an oldies act? On the other hand, doesn't this music still deserve to be performed, and who better to perform it?

Many people find Talking Heads synonymous with David Byrne. I'm skeptical. It was a band with four members, plus (increasingly from album to album) guest musicians. Add to that the production of Brian Eno on the band's second, third and fourth albums (receiving co-writing credit in this case) who helps shape the results. I don't want to not give credit to David Byrne when it is deserving, but I suspect that the other three were far more involved than than we know. In particular, I've read that Jerry was far more responsible for the development of Talking Heads' sound than he is credited. 

Let me site some side examples. When you think of The Police, you might think of Sting primarily. But, if you've ever heard the song Stewart Copeland and Stan Ridgway created for the Rumble Fish soundtrack ("Don't Fence Me In"), it's clear that Stewart was probably much more responsible for The Police's sound and direction than we might have otherwise known. 

More recently, Roger Waters has reportedly recorded an entirely new version of Dark Side of the Moon, angrily complaining that it was always his work in the first place. This seems like a more obvious example. Roger may have written every lyric on that album (I don't know if that's actually true), but it fails to recognize how important the other players were to creating that album. It's difficult to imagine it without David Gilmour's guitar soloing, who is a distinctively melodic player, or Richard Wright and David's vocal blending. Plus Richard's use of the sharp-9 chord, which he says he learned from a Miles Davis album.

Unless there's many hours of filmed documentation, such as what The Beatles did for Let It Be, we'll never completely be able to look behind the proverbial curtain. 

The concert was credited as Jerry Harrison/Adrian Belew: Remain in Light, which is not entirely accurate. They didn't play "Seen and Not Seen", "The Overload", or (I think) "Listening Wind". It's more like recreating the tour that followed the release of that album, one prior to the tour documented on film by Jonathan Demme. It's similar to Stop Making Sense but without the stage show. Add to that a selection of Talking Heads greatest hits (sans "Burning Down the House", interestingly enough), plus a solo Jerry Harrison song and a Belew-era King Crimson song. Vocals were split between Adrian, Jerry (the weakest, he tended to mumble), the saxophonist for the supporting band, and even the female backing vocalists singing "Slippery People". 

I was asked recently by Paul Thompson which was my favorite Talking Heads record. With no hesitation, I said Remain in Light. The following record, Speaking in Tongues, is certainly a solid offering, but starting to turn more towards the pop side of things. That idea was only reinforced by Little Creatures, at which point I really start to lose interest. I think they're at their most interesting, most creative on this particular album. I'd give some credit to Adrian Belew's important performing contributions. If I have a complaint, it's that a few pieces seem shorter than they should be, in order to fit LP length. "Crosseyed and Painless" is the best example. Even seeing it live (this tour, the Speaking in Tongues tour, the movie) I want it to go on much longer. At least in concert it's a little longer.

The local music writer for our large paper referred to Talking Heads' "polyrhythmic funk". I think it just sounds good for him to write that, but it's not a term I would use. The songs on this are highly layered though, there's a lot going on. Layered and verging on, but not crossing over into, sounding cluttered. It's not music that could have possibly been made by four players, hence the twelve (+/-) piece touring bands. 

The band Kansas is set to play Pittsburgh soon. Pittsburgh has historically been a good place for them. You know who's performing under the Kansas band name? Only two of the original members: the drummer and the rhythm guitarist. Not the vocalist (he can't hit those high notes any longer), the violinist (dead), nor the primary songwriting/guitarist/keyboardist/bandleader Kerry Livgren. (Seriously Kerry, does anyone care about your Christian rock music? Just go back and stake your claim with Kansas again.) It wouldn't be correct for Jerry Harrison to call this recent touring band Talking Heads, and he doubtlessly doesn't have permission. Still, this group is at least as close to the music of Talking Heads from 1981 as the current Kansas is. And if anyone is going to perform it, it's best to have Adrian Belew there to kick up the intensity, like he did on the original album and tour.

CDOTD 3/04/2023

 Toru Takemitsu: In an Autumn Garden (Victor)

Purchased at Jerry's Records Future Zone

Gagaku is a particular branch of traditional Japanese music. I've read that it's the oldest form of extant orchestral music in the world. I was introduced to gagaku when a series of traditional Japanese CDs came to WRCT one summer. I can't name the label or series, but I'd know it if I saw it.

When I listened to the discs, I found myself entranced by the gagaku disc in particular. There's a dreaminess to these western ears, in spite of the sometimes strident quality of some of the instruments. Everything is played slowly, deliberately. There is the sound of the shō, the Japanese mouth organ, playing decidedly non-western cluster chord voicings that shift from time to time. That sound underpins everything. While I can't remember the names of all of the instruments, there are biwas (plectrum instruments, the Japanese equivalent of China's pipa), transverse flutes, double reeds, and various percussion. In listening to various gagaku recordings, I've found there are small variations in the sizes of these groups, but they are otherwise identical. Gagaku is influential enough that both Oliver Messiaen and Karlheinz Stockhausen have named pieces after the music, and have no doubt studied gagaku works. 

I don't know a lot about Takemitsu. (I mean, what am I expecting of myself? I don't need to be an expert on everything.) He's probably best known for his (symphonic) orchestral music, he's also composed film soundtracks and even done some electroacoustic recordings.

This work, in six movements, was a commission dating to 1973 for gagaku ensemble. How do you compose for such an ensemble? Traditionally, they're not reading scores. I don't know if this ensemble required players who could read western notation on their instruments, or if Takemitsu worked in a more idiomatic Japanese notation. The work is through-composed though, there's little question. The opening and closing movements, "Strophe" and "Antistrophe" suggest western classical methods, the piece itself can't help but sound Japanese. Takemitsu in general clears away the sound though, the element of silence is far more prominent that any traditional gagaku recording I know. The result is something that unquestionably sounds Japanese without mimicking the methods of traditional Japanese practices.

This was a nice find, especially for $3. I see on discogs.com that this was only released in Japan, in its various issues. How did this copy find its way to the US, to Pittsburgh, to the used classical bins at Jerry's Records new CD room?

CDOTD 3/2/2023

 Wayne Shorter: The All Seeing Eye (Blue Note)

I can't remember where I purchased this, possibly Paul's CDs

During the time I taught at CAPA High School, we looked forward every year to one of the guest artists appearing in the Pitt Jazz Seminar to come to school to play. My two favorites were Lew Soloff and Larry Coryell. Both came to play, but also engaged the students.

One year, c. 2000, Benny Golson came to CAPA*. I read his biographical statement prior to appearance. In his accomplishments, it was listed that he was the only living composer had composed "ten jazz standards.." (It could have read eight, but I remember the number ten.) I thought, that can't possibly be true. How many standards had Benny composed? "Killer Joe", "Whisper Not", no question. "I Remember Clifford", "Along Came Betty", "Stablemates", arguably. "Blues March"? "Blues After Dark"? No.**

Then I thought, who was alive at the time who had written that many standards? I thought first, well, Sonny Rollins. Then it occurred to me. Wayne Shorter. He had written more standard practice pieces than any other living composer, possibly more than Sonny. 

Wayne died today. It didn't come as a shock. Last time I saw him, at an awards show I think, he was in a wheelchair and looking frail. The last time I saw him play on video was at a White House appearance during George W's presidency, and Wayne didn't sound good. Maybe he was weak, but he also maybe looked like he didn't want to be there.***

My favorite jazz composers will probably always be Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, and Duke Ellington, just off the top of my head. That said, the intense burst of creative energy by Wayne Shorter from 1964-1966 has rarely been equalled and may never be surpassed. Consider, under his name alone: Night Dreamer, JuJu, Speak No Evil, The Soothsayer, Et Cetera, Adam's Apple. Several hours of original works, some of which are catchy as hell ("Adam's Apple" in particular). 

Then there's his most famous gig, playing the tenor seat in the so-called second great Miles Davis Quintet. 1965 saw release of E.S.P., and in the following years, Wayne would contribute more compositions to the group than anyone else. (Though is it his most famous gig? He did play in Weather Report for a time. It could be his most historically significant.)

This is to speak nothing of his playing. I can't help but feel that there's a Coltrane influence on Wayne's sound and approach, but there's little question that he was also distinctive from the older saxophonist. Perhaps tenor saxophone stylings were headed in that direction anyway, the post-bebop of players such as Coltrane, Shorter, John Gilmore, Clifford Jordan. Shedding the shimmery vibrato of Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster, an influence that originates more from Lester Young and Charlie Parker. 

Speaking of influence is a tricky thing though, and I often find it unfair. Wayne was Wayne, regardless of who were his favorite players as a formative artist. 

For this evening's listening, I put on this somewhat strange session, The All Seeing Eye. It falls in Wayne's sessionography between Et Cetera and Adam's Apple. It's the largest group he assembled for a Blue Note session, an all star session with Grachan Moncur III, James Spaulding, Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Joe Chambers. Wayne's brother Alan composed and played the fifth and final cut, "Mephistopheles".****

While I can't say this is better than JuJu, Speak No Evil, or Adam's Apple, I'm attracted to this session for a couple of reasons. It's an ambitious work, more than most of his small group albums. The music is constantly veering towards (or steps solidly into) atonality. It is certainly highly chromatic in nature. There are touches of free jazz, preceding or concurrently with the Miles Quintet's "time but no changes" principle. It's almost harsh sounding at times, but also feels closer to me to intense chamber music. While the entire band bristles and everyone has at least one good feature on the album, Herbie's contribution seems especially vital, pounding out clustery chords, vamping on Alan's piece, or laying out entirely. He's consistently creative and shifts the intensity of the music. 

Was 1959 the most exciting time in jazz history? It's unquestionably the greatest year in jazz album recordings. But this seems like a pretty exciting time too, a few years later: living out the liberties of free jazz, the music expanding and growing. But by then The Beatles had hit, rock-n-roll had taken over popular culture, and things would remain that way for decades.

Will we see another artist like Wayne again? The optimist in me says that surely someone as talented, original, and dedicated has to come around. Maybe that person is already here and I just don't know it. The pessimist in me says, no, we're not going to see his like ever again. At least we can listen, enjoy, appreciate what an original voice Wayne Shorter was. His composing can be deceptively simple at times, but he almost never relies on established song forms as the spine of his pieces. A notable exception would be the famous piece "Footprints", and even then he puts an original stamp on the melody and harmony to twelve-bar blues form.

Farewell Wayne, I hope you understood how important your work was to many of us. I suspect you did, but it also didn't prevent you from having a long, long creative life, never resting on your proverbial laurels. I'm grateful to have shared the planet with you during my lifetime.

* Apart from Benny's visit, what I remember about that day was that a student peed on one of the radiators, and the bottom floor of the building absolutely reeked of urine. It was embarrassing. I had an idea, not conclusively, who might have been responsible. It wasn't the only time.

** Benny was a bit of a bore I'm afraid. I was coaching a jazz quartet once a week, and the group's saxophonist was adamant that they play "Along Came Betty", not an easy piece. I said I'd provide the chart for them, but only if they transcribed another Golson piece and played it for him by memory. I chose "Blues March", and gave them assistance writing it down. They did play it for him, and he joined them for "Betty". He commented that the group had the correct changes (thanks to Dr. John Wilson). Otherwise, Benny just basically talked about himself, talked about growing up with Coltrane. I don't think he played anything else, and didn't really have any other exchanges with students. 

*** Contrast that to when Jimmy Carter held a jazz summit on the White House lawn, that included a performances by Cecil Taylor, Ornette, Dizzy, Mary Lou Williams, and many others. It was a joyous occasion. A couple of years later, the Reagan administration couldn't have the Beach Boys appear in the DC Fourth of July celebrations without controversy.

**** One of the many topics of conversation during my week with Anthony Braxton was Alan Shorter. Anthony said, if Alan entered the club, you just got out of the way. He said Alan was crazy and mean, and there was a good likelihood that a chair would be thrown across the room.