VOTD 1/31/ 2024

 Edvard Lieber: Music to Paintings (White)

Purchased at Jerry's Records

This is a record that made me reconsider my filing system for vinyl. 

Why? Because this is a "new music"/composer-released album. I have many (and undoubtably more on the way) "new music" LPs  with multiple composers, or interesting composer whose name I don't otherwise remember. How do I remember them, particularly in light of the collections on labels such as CRI (Composers Recordings Incorporated)? File the so-called "classical" section on its own, and make a single composer release (such as this) its own thing. How do I remember Edvard Lieber's name? Because he's in the composer section, and not sandwiched between John Lewis (MJQ) and Abbey Lincoln.

The first side of this LP is taken up with Lieber's (who is also the pianist) Twenty-four De Kooning Preludes. How much of it is written down on staff paper? I haven't a clue. Of its 21'24" minutes, no one movement takes up so much as as one and a half minutes. That seems very condensed considered the sometime large size of de Kooning canvases. Some of it has the clustery quality of Cecil Taylor.*

An aside: my wife and I have planned some vacation travels based on art exhibits. We went to Chicago to see a major Monet exhibit, for example. We also went to Washington, DC with our young daughter to see the knock-down, drag out de Kooning exhibit at the National Gallery.

And aside within an aside: we went to the Carnegie Museum here in Pittsburgh years ago. The museum has a small Jackson Pollock painting. We asked our (seven-year-old?), what does it look like to you? She announced in a loud voice, "It looks like CRAP."

When we took her to the de Kooning exhibit in DC, we told her: you're allowed to have your opinion, but do not announce out loud that it looks like crap. She abided, even if she was far less interested in the exhibit than we were.**

The second side of this LP is devoted to works dedicated to Pollock, Franz Kline, Edvin Stautmanis (a name I don't otherwise know), Elaine de Kooning, and Marcelo Bonevardi (another unfamiliar name). The last work is for tape with prepared piano, composed in 1979. 

It's a tricky thing, trying to draw musical inspiration directly from visual artworks. Early in my Water Shed 5tet days, it was something I tried to do. There was "Braque", an attempt to apply Cubism to some elements of the music; also "The Fate of Animals" for Franz Marc (unrecorded, and all the better because of it) and "Excavation" for Willem de Kooning. I could revive the latter. "Braque" was something of the band's signature work. How do you translate imagery into musical actions? There can be suggestions of movement, but there isn't a direct pipeline. 

The opposite can be much simpler: musicians as subject matter for paintings or sculpture. My father is a painter, and musicians are a frequent subject.***

Edvard Lieber. I guess I could do a web search, but: are these published scores? Can anyone with the skill play them? And where are you now?

* Another another aside. There's an argument that if you can improvise something that sounds like a fly-shit-on-paper score, why not just improvise it? Each has its merits, but they're not the same in my opinion. I get the point, though. 

** My daughter has grown into a kind, considerate, and generous person. I don't just love her, but I like her. I love her as her father, but I like her because she's a wonderful person.

*** https://johnopie.com/section/512064.html

VOTD 1/30/2024

 Guitar Roberts: In Pittsburgh (St Joan)

Purchased from Susan Langille at a gig

There's a student gallery, The Frame, at the corner of Forbes Avenue and Margaret Morrison St at Carnegie Mellon University. To the best of my recollection, I saw a single concert in that space: Guitar Roberts/Loren Mazzacane (Connors).

The time frame was early 1990s. Considering it's something like thirty years ago, I think I can be forgiven for forgetting some details. Loren was there performing with his wife Susan. I think it was just the two of them. Loren sat in a chair, and played cassettes for accompaniment. Everything was hushed, very quiet. Loren would sometimes hit the play button on his tape player, and he'd let out a crying bend on his guitar. Not a wail; that suggests something entirely too loud. Once in a while, Susan would sing quietly with him. She had no amplification, and none was necessary. The music was all blues/not blues. It was certainly blues-derived, but no blues as I knew it. 

The gallery sits on the bottom floor beneath student apartments. Some point mid-performance, there was a gushing sound coming from the pipes in the side hallway and stairs. It was thunderous compared to the low volume of the concert. I rushed to the stairwell to see if anything could be done; it was probably just someone flushing a toilet on the floor immediately above us. Not much to be done.

The music here, and in concert, sits somewhere between Ry Cooder and Jandek. Jandek is extreme in this case, and determinately doesn't tune his instrument in a traditional manner. Loren isn't precise with his tuning, but is in the neighborhood. Ry lives in a more traditional territory. His music can be similarly low key and beautiful in the way that Loren's is, but Loren seems more unfettered by tradition. He's a little like Albert Ayler on guitar, only .01 times the volume, and coming more directly from the blues rather than Ayler's gospel roots.

May I say I was transfixed? I loved every moment, except for the pipes. 

It's possible I interacted with Loren, but I remember buying this LP from Susan. She might have had several albums, but this one was titled In Pittsburgh.  Of course I would buy it. I can't recall if I asked her the reason for the title. She told me the printed address on the back (New Haven) was incorrect, and I had her pen on their then current address. No, I didn't mind if she wrote directly on the cover. In hindsight, I should have had both of them autograph it. 

CDOTD 1/30/2024

 Rudy Ray Moore: The Human Tornado OST (Traffic)

Borrowed from the library

Let me once again extol how great it is we have a decent public library in Pittsburgh. It is further enhanced by connecting to other regional libraries. The main branch has a highly respectable music collection, augmented in recent years by the instrument loan program. If you don't already know, there's also a table of electronic instruments that you can sit down to play. It's the only Minimoog I've had the chance to play. The instrument loan program gave me the chance to play with a couple of synthesizers I had considered buying, and then decided to save my money for others. Thanks, Carnegie Library!

This disc came directly off the shelves, and I think I've checked it out before. In recent years some renewed attention has been given to Rudy Ray Moore, due to Eddie Murphy's biopic My Name is Dolemite. I liked Murphy's movie and can recommend it. My understanding is that it was a labor of love; when shopping around the script, no movie execs even knew who Rudy Ray Moore was.

How little we know of our own culture! I know I lack the personality to be a movie producer, but if I was, and Eddie came to my door with a Rudy Ray Moore script, I'd say, Dolemite? The Human Tornado? Petey Wheatstraw? Avenging Disco Godfather? Have a seat Eddie, let's talk. 

I watched Murphy's movie with my wife, and then immediately looked up Dolemite to stream. Her comment: "That was bad." And in many ways, yes, it's a shitty film. Cheap (that doesn't bother me), poorly paced, beyond cardboard acting, a kung fu-fighting leading man who clearly can't kung fu. But Moore captured a moment, and gave the people (specifically African Americans) what they wanted. He helped create the so-called "blaxpoitation" film. (I like Roger Corman's preferred term, "Black action films.") I read that Murphy's biopic is pretty close to the facts of Rudy making Dolemite, which makes it an even more impressive accomplishment. 

One particular liberty Eddie Murphy took: there's a scene where Dolemite is being filmed in bed with a woman, and the crew is violently shaking the bed, the props, the scenery. That scene actually happened in The Human Tornado, Moore's followup to Dolemite. It's a forgivable stretching of facts. I've seen both, and could hardly tell you what happened in one film versus the other. 

Both Dolemite and The Human Tornado have original soundtrack music. Whatever the highs and lows of such films, I think that is also impressive. The music here is clearly quickly produced, production raw. The drums kind of sound like garbage, the mix so-so. Nonetheless it remains highly listenable. Give me some 70s funky grooves, throw in some Minimoog and wah-wah guitar, and I'm pretty much there. I'll take this over overly-sterile digital & MIDI production. I see no credits beyond Rudys name on the CD. 

Like many soundtrack albums, it's a complete document of the music cues, and a lot of it is throwaway when you're listening to it separately from the film. If you took the best music music from all of Rudy's films, you'd have a low-tech, grungy but great collection of music.

I'll share a tangential memory. This happened during an in service day at CAPA High School. For the arts faculty, that didn't mean very much, no students and just get your things in order. I had a VHS player in my room, which I could project on a screen. I had on hand my copy of Afros, Macks, and Zodiacs to watch. It's a two hour(!) collection of blaxploitation trailers, with Mr. Dolemite himself occasionally breaking and and telling his old dirty jokes. It's SO busy, it's headache-inducing. 

A group of us were watching this tape in amazement, one of whom was an African American custodian. He mentioned how he had seen the tape on my desk and had wanted to take it home. After we broke things up at the end of the scheduled day, I tracked him down with tape in hand and said, "Here. Just return it whenever." Which he did. Righteous!

To quote Rudy in this movie, I imagine him looking me in the eye and saying, "You rat soup-eating motherfucker!" 

VOTD 1/26/2024

 Werkbund: Skagerrak (Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien)

Purchased at RRRecords in Lowell, MA

This record brings several things to mind, and I'm sure at least one or two I've written on here before.

I was once at the Electric Banana with Richard Schnap. The Banana was a legendary club, an early "punk" club, though I think that had as much to do with them not caring who played there. My first time there, it wasn't as scuzzy as I imagined it might be, but it wasn't exactly upscale. 

Richard was a friend who I both cared for deeply, and also drove me crazy sometimes. He sadly died a few years ago, entirely too young. He was incredibly intelligent, possibly one of the smartest people I knew, but as a layman I'd guess he had some serious issues with depression. I'm sorry he's gone.

Anyway, we were having an enthusiastic conversation about that future; this would have been sometime in the early 80s. The gist of it was, didn't the 1970s suck? Isn't it better now, won't the 80s be so much better?

Let's call that both the hubris and naivety of youth. 

In retrospect, the 1970s seems pretty interesting (though there are some severely dark things in that history) and the 1980s seemed shallow, dominated by the figure of Ronald Reagan. I wasn't part of a scene that generally dealt directly with HIV/AIDS, which would cast an even darker memory for those who did.

What I was enthusiastic about though, was the boom in artist-released music. Independent music was booming. There were big indies, small artist run labels, and even microlabels of low-run cassettes. If you wanted to read up on such things, there were only a few magazines you had to follow. Op was one, which later lead to Option (the more commercial magazine) and Sound Choice (the more determinately independent, and shorter-lived publication). 

In that respect, it really was an interesting time. I was excited to buy severely low-run albums, take chances on artists I only knew by reputation.

As I've written before, what punk rock was to some, early industrial music was for me. And it couldn't have been more the opposite to what I was doing in my studies: first a saxophone performance major, later earning my degree in music education. Very studied and formal. Industrial music was primitive and requiring little to no musical ability at all. 

I should probably broaden the term though, because I don't mean just the likes of Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, or Hunting Lodge. I mean independent "experimental" music artists, which would include Nurse With Wound, Organum, Asmus Tietchens, and even more abrasive power electronics noisemakers. 

At its best, it was a music of ideas, and of sound that stretched beyond the standards of standard instrumental technique. The was an embracement of noise, or all sound really. Maybe that's part of the appeal to me. 

I noticed this record on my shelf, when considering what to put on. I was a regular customer of RRRecords through mail order. I always sent cash, and he (Ron) always sent my package very quickly. Ron even included a track by Morphic Resonance, an improvisation group I was once in, on a tape compilation. I've visited RRRecords in person a single time, and it would have been 1987 (the cover confirms this). Ron liked this, suggested it, said that Asmus Tietchens was involved (something Asmus himself has denied). It's a numbered edition of 1000; my copy is 598. Ron's comment was, "Limited edition? I never press any more copies than that."

So part of what I'm thinking when I listen to this is, does it hold up? It's an overused word, but there's an abstractness to this that lends itself to sounding timeless. It's sounds and textures, sometimes sounding deep, sometimes thin, often echoic and distant. There's apparently some maritime inspiration for this music. It's a bit too active for me to describe it was ambient, it's not melodic, noisy without being abrasive.

The recording doesn't sound dated. For all its sometime noisiness, the production sounds clear or at least appropriate. I can't always tell what the sound sources are, and I like that mystery. Some of it evokes the rolling of waves, and there's some distant percussion, and the sound of what seems like a mechanical heartbeat.

At the end of the first side, a field recording of a military song is mixed in. Is it German? Possibly but it's difficult to be certain. What could be the reason? When I think of Germany and militarism, it's not a leap to think that this is possibly a comment on Nazism. But is it? If there are clues here, they elude me. 

VOTD 1/19/2024

 Olivier Messiaen: Vingt Regards sur 'Enfant-Jésus (Argo)

Purchased at Jerry's Records from the Duquesne University collection

So it's back to Messiaen this morning. If you hunt through the history of this blog, you'd find that during the pandemic lockdown I bought a 32-CD collection of his music, and made blog postings for each disc (two for Turnagalîla, if memory serves). I could have pulled out a CD copy, but thought I'd spin the vinyl issue. It's spread over four LP sides.

I guess I've planted my flag in the pro-Messiaen camp, though I fully understand the criticisms of him. It's my understanding that in France, you're picking a fight if you are critical of him. I don't care for that, if true.

As someone who's involved more with "jazz" practice than anything else, I feel like Messiaen is an excellent person to study. I suggest other jazz musicians and composers study the 4 Ms: Miles, Monk, Mingus, Messiaen. It's a simple alliteration, but it holds up. Messiaen's ideas about rhythm and modes should be considered by any serious jazz composer. 

It's not as though there's a hint of jazz in his music, though. Heck, even his wind ensemble works don't include any saxophones, much to my disappointment. Messiaen never entirely loses the idea of melody, which may be one reason I enjoy his music as much as I do. Sometimes in particular movements of this piece, I just don't know where he's coming from or where he's going (not necessarily a bad thing); at other times, the writing is exquisitely beautiful. 

Someone added a newspaper clipping about Messiaen in this box. I assume it's from the New York Times. Under his picture, there's the line: "His is essentially the music of meditation". Well, I suppose that's true, and more obviously true of his keyboard music than his orchestral. Much of this is agitated and active though, not what most people would consider to be meditative. I think my definition of what "meditative" means might be a bit different than the writer's. I consider it to mean intensely focused concentration, which is hardly the same as relaxation and quietude. I try to achieve a kind of meditation when improvising.

In this way, isn't all music some form of meditation?

VOTD 1/17/2024

 VA: Tallin 67 (Melodya)

Purchased used at Jerry's Records, I think

What is this? I guess it must be a festival recording, an audience can sometimes be heard. I don't know any of the artists. Some of the notes in discogs.com don't translate from the Cyrillic, so I can't read them.

Should I approach listening to more records like this? Not knowing anything? I'm not a big fan of streaming services to listen to albums, but it could be one reason to bring things up on my phone. I think I've mentioned before I don't engage with Spotify. I like the library-based Hoopla app, I even brought up the latest Rolling Stones album on it. (Didn't like it much but it gets better towards the end; the mix seemed weird and antithetical to the Stones, but maybe I should judge a non-mp3-based rendering.)

So what is this? A jazz festival from behind the Iron Curtain? If so, the musicians seem to have ingested at least 1950s jazz, even touching the 60s. Alto saxophonist Zbigniew Namysłowsi sounds a bit on the boppish side of Eric Dolphy while blow on "Summertime", one of the familiar tunes here. The band kicks into a funky backbeat on part of it, something I'm certain I could have done without. There's a Qunicy Jones tune (don't ask me the title) and a quirky version of "Oleo" by the V. Zakarhov Quintet, their only credit I can find on discogs. 

Is this a Soviet-era festival? Does that say something about jazz, in that era as well as now? Is it an international music, or was it already by that time designated as something polite and inoffensive? 

I sometimes think about the legendary first Stravinsky/Nijinsky performance of Le Sacre du Printemps, where reportedly people were tearing the chairs out of the floor. Now the piece, at least in concert form, is a staple of college-level orchestras. What could we do now to rile anybody that much without being blatantly and outrageously offensive? 

Am I even asking the right questions? Given the door-smashing and chair-throwing of Jan. 6 2021, perhaps there are other questions to be asked, other directions to take. Not that I'm equating that with Stravinsky. I seem to be posing more questions than answers.

The record's not bad, by the way. 

Recent book

 Erik Bauer: Had to Be There; A Visual History of the Explosive Pittsburgh Underground (1979-1994)

Purchased at Fungus Books and Records

I have a confession to make, which I'll mention from the start. I would have bought this book anyway, but I looked through it quickly on purchase to see if I was in it. I am not. The closest I come is having Watershed mentioned in the back of the book, my band from 1990-2000. I won't go into the story about the minor name changes from Watershed to Water Shed to Water Shed 5tet. It's not interesting and ultimately I wish I had pushed harder to change the name entirely.

Twice in the writing this blog, the artist whose record I mentioned has responded in some way. Most recently it was concerning Orchid Spangiafora, as recent postings will note. My posting on Microwaves was also discovered by members of the band. I didn't expect that but it also didn't come as too much of a surprise. (I have occasionally played with Microwaves and appear on their previous LP.)

I write this because here's this book about the local scene in a particular time period, and there's a good chance someone involved might come across what I've written. If so, I probably know them in some respect. I think I have nothing damaging or mean to say, I don't intend insult, but I reserve the right to criticize too.

Erik Bauer is someone I only knew from the edges of my circle of friends. Someone I knew to say hello to, probably chatted with a few times. I remember that there was something written about him somewhere about being a serious collector, having for example a copy of the Throbbing Gristle 24 Hours suitcase of cassettes. Last time I ran into Erik was, well, I was going to say 8-9 years ago, but it was 2009. He came to see Thoth Trio play the main branch at the public library, but dashed as soon as we finished. He later told me via email he wanted to see the Yes Men at CMU later that afternoon.

Erik was never a musician himself (as far as I know) but was a common fixture in the local scene, with camera in hand. This book collects the heat of the moment of gigs throughout Pittsburgh of the local music scene. Some of the groups are better remembered, in part because there's actually recordings of their music: The Five, Cardboards, Carsickness, The Cynics. Some, I don't know at all: The Usss, The Beach Bunnies, The Trend. 

The book, visually, traces some changes and developments in the local scene through the years. The weirder, more No-Wavish groups giving way to hardcore punk rock, and then however the scene developed from there. There are collected setlists, and the scenes remind someone like me of venues long gone. I don't know that any location here is still a place to see shows.

Each gig or setting is given two to six pages. Many photos take up an entire page, or in some cases two. That would be a criticism: while some of the big splash pages are great and even necessary, I would have loved to have seen more. Some pages with collections of smaller images, to fit in more content. The title itself comes from a Dress Up As Natives song, yet there's not images of them in this book.

But then, I don't know what's available. I know that what I want or expect isn't the reality of this book. What is true is that it's a small miracle it exists at all. Some scenes are very well documented, both in recordings and photographically: New York, LA, San Francisco, DC. Not so with Pittsburgh, and there was a viable and lively scene there. There are some records, but many in their original issues command serious money. There's Stephanie Beroes' Debt Begins at 20, the semifictional short film valuable for showing live basement performances from 1980. There were things happening in this country between the two coasts.

I'd hate to think such things were lost to time. So for whatever I might have wanted to see in this book, I'm grateful for what it is.

And seriously, I don't mind that I'm not in it. It might even be better that I'm not.

VOTD 1/6/2024

 Jean Barraqué: Séquence/Chants Après Chant (Musical Heritage Society)

Purchased used at Jerry's Records

First vinyl purchase of the year, and it's an old record of old-style post-War avant garde.

We're moving out of that season in which many people have been posting their year-end lists to social media: top Spotify playlists, top ten-to-fifty releases of the year, and other top of the tops. Regarding the former: I don't largely engage with Spotify. I understand its convenience, but I don't own a smart speaker and don't have my laptop setup for general listening; that's what I have two stereo systems for. I also consider Spotify to be a parasite on musical artists, with only the likes of multi-million selling artists being able to make even a small amount of money from it while the Spotify owners rake in billions. To hell that. I did engage with Spotify a single time, when Jenny from Homewood Cemetery asked me to assemble a playlist for walking through the ground. I put together a list of jazz pieces that I thought were meditative without largely being very slow. What I really wanted to do was put together a list of horror movie cues, but I was told a hard "no" on that. (It would have been great: pieces from City of the Living Dead, Suspiria, Phantasm, just off the top of my head.)

As for my list of top releases of 2023, I'm trying to think if I actually bought anything newly issued. I bought a 4-CD collection of The Pyramids, but it's music from the 70s, and released in 2022. 

And here I am, sitting on two CDs of Thoth Trio recordings, soon to be asking others to buy my new recordings, not doing the same myself.

In my early adulthood, I followed independently released music with a passion. Admittedly there was generally much less to follow, but OP and later Sound Choice and Option magazines helped keep one on top of things. As I've previous written, I could look  at more album covers and know if it was of some interest. Now I often struggle to so much as locate the artist's name on the cover. 

Which brings me back to this old record, recorded in 1970 for the Valois label but reissued on two others. The composer's year of death (1975) is not listed on the cover. 

Barraqué's total compositional output, the works he chose not to destroy, takes up a 3 CD set. Varèse's complete output I think was released on two CDs. It didn't help that he died at age 45, and was beset by difficulties such as an apartment fire, car accident, and poor health in general. Then of course was the drug-fueled S&M relationship he apparently had with philosopher Michel Foucalt. I hear in my head the voice of Homer from an old Simpsons episode saying, "Now that's interesting!" 

So what do we have in this release? Two works, one just under and one a little over twenty minutes in length. (Morton Feldman had something to say about this in general, that the marker of then current works was to create something twenty minutes long. I must speculate that the influence of the long playing record album was a factor.) Both are examples of post-War atonal vocal composition, a single voice with instrumental ensemble. Emphasis in the latter is on percussion and piano.

I've already stated my general lack of enthusiasm for modernist vocal writing. I'll admit it has to do with my general lack of enthusiasm for vocalists in general, though that's putting it a little broadly. I've previously admitted that I've already preferred the instruments over the voices, going back as far as when I really started listening to music intensely in my youth. 

If you have to have a voice in this setting though, the delivery here is how it should be. That is, what I especially don't like is Romantic opera voice delivery on atonal music. I know some of that is practical, that the projection of the voice pre-amplification was critical for the success of grand opera. Broad vocal vibrato though? No thank you. It works especially poorly for modernist opera. Thankfully here, the delivery on voice is more direct, without Romantic heaviness or inclination to be too expressive.

Music such as this is long on texture, short on memorability. It doesn't help that the vinyl record experience is several steps removed from that of live performance; I'm sure seeing this in the room real time would be more potent. 

My own take is, I'm sympathetic to post-War atonalism and like it from time to time. But even as a casual fan so to speak, I can't really recall much of what happened now that the record is over. Should music stick in your ear more? 

Nonetheless, maybe these composers effectively created works in this respect: they seem timeless, or at least not grounded in current realities. While this music might have been political at one time, that element seems distant now. It's sounds, sounds passing through time, no connection to modern politics, no connection to problems in the world. Escapism or retreat from troubles? Or something else?

VOTD 1/3/24

 Joe Delia: Ms. 45 OST (Death Waltz Recording Co.)

I think I purchased this mail order from Death Waltz

It's pretty amazing that small, independent film productions often have original soundtracks. I forget where the information came up, probably online article, but Gerard Damiano insisted what was going to put Deep Throat over the top was to budget for original music. I would speculate in the case of that movie, it didn't make much of a difference. For all its significance, I've never watched Deep Throat but have listened to the music, which is pretty dreadful. I wouldn't say the same about The Devil in Miss Jones, though. And consider the hyper-cheap productions of Herschel Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman; Blood Feast has a weirdly compelling score performed with whatever instruments and skills the director and producer had at hand. Russ Meyer always insisted on original scores for his films. 

Here's this soundtrack by Joe Delia. I know nothing about him. It's for a gritty NYC 70s production by director Abel Ferrara. I have yet to see the film. It's ostensibly an "exploitation" feature the way that his earlier The Driller Killer was, though Ferrara's films in general are about desperate people in the jungle that is New York City. Manhattan is a much different place now than when this was made. 

The instrumentation is keyboards (dominating the first side of the LP) with saxophones, electric bass, and drums. As with listening to most film soundtracks as an independent statement, I find that sometimes cues are cut short just when they're good, or run longer than interest holds. But that's part of what interests me when I put one of these on: how does the music hold up apart from the film?

It's not bad. The mood is more somber in the first half, but picks up later when the saxophones and rhythm section are used more. The credits are incomplete; Max Kaplan is credited with tenor saxophone, but there's some baritone in there too. There's an odd a cappella vocal piece that ends side one of the album (overdubbed?). No vocals are credited. 

I won't rave about the work, nor will I put it down. It's good, worthy of a listen. I just think that even such a work exists is wonderful. 

PS: when we were coming out of the strict COVID lockdown and things were starting to reopen, one of the first places to start up (with serious social distancing policies) was the Tull Theater in Sewickley, PA (now the Lindsey). Early on they showed a recent Abel Ferrara documentary, The Projectionist. It concerns an immigrant who wound up running several cinemas in the 70s and 80s, including several straight and gay XXX theaters. The subject didn't seem to draw a distinction between those and mainstream films, he just loved showing films. Anyway, the point of this is, something I had been waiting for years to happen, happened: my wife and I were the only two people in attendance. I made the comment online that maybe the solution to social distancing in theaters is to screen movies that only three people want to attend.

VOTD 1/2/24

 Herbie Hancock, The Yardbirds: Blow Up OST (MGM)

purchased used at Eide's

A new year, and back to the blog. To and from a New Year's Eve party at Ben Hartlage's, I was listening to a Gilbert Gottfried rerun podcast on the ridiculous topic of real bands appearing on old TV programs. The Standells turn up quite a few times.

I thought of this soundtrack, even though it's not exactly on the same topic. I don't think I ever got around to listening to it completely, nor have I seen the film I'm sorry to say. Come to think of it, I don't think I've seen any Antonioni film to completion. I remember sitting through one and being bored and frustrated. Call me immature. 

The Yardbirds' appearance is only a single song. My copy (a 1977 reissue I've come to figure out) has a message on the front of in a large yellow circle: Featuring "The Yardbirds" Singing "Stroll On". I guess even in 1977 The Yardbirds still sold more records than the artist on the rest of the album, Herbie Hancock.

Another reason this soundtrack came up in conversation recently was the bassline for the piece "Bring Down the Birds" was the basis of (sampled for?) Dee-Lite's "Groove Is In the Heart". Paul Thompson mentioned this, who has become a noted authority on sampled lines and bassline analysis. https://www.youtube.com/@pdbass

Herbie does his job as a film soundtrack composer here. When the pieces are interesting, I wanted to hear more of them. I'd have to strike that up in general to the limitations of the LP format; I don't know how long the recordings went in session. Some of it is straightforward jazz and blues playing, some more like his Blue Note albums, and there's even some down the line 60s groove organ instrumentals.

As for The Yardbirds, well....if you know Aerosmith's "Train Kept A-Rollin", that's the song with different lyrics, more or less. I don't remember who Aerosmith credited the song to; I recall Shockabilly credited it to "traditional". The Yardbirds sound grungy, with a helping of feedback, that works to their advantage. 

I'll be seeing Herbie Hancock play in March. I figured I would regret it if I didn't. I don't want to mention how expensive the tickets were though. Ugh. With all of his other accomplishments, it's easy to forget that he composed a number of film soundtracks, including Death Wish, Colors, and the non-standards music in "Round Midnight. I've mentioned the subject on this blog previously about wanting to do an all film music performance with OPEK, and there's material here that I could have definitely mined. 

By they way, I played with the aforementioned Ben Hartlage in the band Coal Train back more than twenty years ago. (Ugh again.) I brought my clarinet to the party (which I haven't played in months) and we a stumbled through few songs from that long ago. It was fun. There were a couple of people going crazy and even hanging on me in ways that I never enjoy, but I resisted the urge to be an old crank about it.