VOTD 12/28/2022

 Faust: s/t (Recommended)

Bought mail order from Wayside Music

I plan on going to see Thomas Dimuzio play tonight, making this particular missive very timely. I've met Thomas just once before, in 1994 or 5 when Water Shed 5tet played in San Francisco. Thomas is originally from Bethel Park, and knew Jeff Stringer (our bassist). 

I have Facebook contact with Thomas. A few years back, he did one of those Facebook lists of ten records that had an impact on him. One of the records he mentioned was the first Faust record. He heard the track "Why Don't You Eat Carrots" on WRCT as a high school student. WRCT was probably still a ten watt station at the time, and its coverage was sketchy even within the city let alone outside. There's a chance the wattage had been bumped up to 100 by then, I don't know the specific timing. Either way, WRCT had a weak signal, and he wrote about just barely being to pick it up out in the suburbs.

In his Facebook post, he described how important it was hearing that articular piece, that he'd never heard anything like it before. It's fortunate that I saw this string of postings, because I responded to tell him that I was without a doubt the person who played that record. I'm certain I was the only person who had a copy, and probably few DJs even knew Faust's music.

The record is elegantly and unusually (for its initial release) packaged, a clear vinyl record with cover art and notes printed on transparent plastic. The labels are silver with no information printed on them. Originally it was released on Polydor in 1971; my copy was the Recommended Records reissue from 1979.

Listening to it now, I didn't look at the index listing on the inner groove to see which side I put on first. It was the second side first, listed as "Miss Fortune, recorded live at Wümme, September 21 1971." It's certainly not a live concert recording, or if it is, not entirely. Things are mixed in and out, and the acoustic piano indicates a studio creation. Faust in a most post-psychedelic tone here, with distorted guitars and jamming. This puts them firmly in the Krautrock category along with Can.

Listening to the first side second, Faust sounds crazier, with pieces of ideas sometimes floating in and out, sometimes abruptly introduced. There's a kind of prog-ish melody (in the sense of Henry Cow) in the previously mentioned track, flipping back and forth with noise, text, etc. The second track has more vocals, and is perhaps generally even more unhinged.

What amazes me is that anyone thought they could make money off this music. Well, a label I mean. but then this is the era of Henry Cow on virgin (a few years later?), Velvet Underground and Mothers of Invention on Verve, Can on United Artists, to name only a few. Of course I've never been a good judge of what will or won't sell, but how these artists were ever expected to be big sellers I beyond me. It does mean that there's a certain era of music that's well distributed. 

My guess is that Thomas wasn't the only person to get flipped over this record, and for that we can be grateful.

Note: this record came with a strange sort of film on it from the beginning. I don't know if it is due to the packaging. I'm sure it would sound better if it had a proper cleaning.

VOTD 12/27/2022

 Frank Martin: Five Songs of Ariel and Other Festive Choral Music (Opus One)

Purchased at Jerry's Records, formerly in the Duquesne University collection

What do I choose for listening? A great deal of the time, it's due to having purchased the record or disc, and just need to take it in. I bought this today at Jerry's Records out of a bin of Duquesne recordings. The university sold off its vinyl collection to Jerry's, who in turn have been selling most for $3 apiece. I've made a few pretty amazing finds (BA Zimmerman's opera Die Soldaten being a good example), but at the price point, I've bought up things I might not have otherwise. This is an example.

I know nothing about Frank Martin, nor Steven R. Gerber, the other composer on this album. It's largely a choral album, one reason I wouldn't normally bite at this. I put out the money (really $2.50 each, frequently flyer discount) because of the Opus One label, one of the better composers' labels back in the pre-CD days. 

Martin's music in the case of these pieces has a strong Renaissance-era flavor to it. I can't speak to how that might compare to his instrumental music, which as far as I remember I've never heard. The "Dédicace" of 1945, a song setting with piano, starts to bring the music much closer to the late 19th/early 20th centuries. 

Ned Rorem's music has been a topic of discussion among friends after his recent passing. My position has been, I recognize his talents but have never been especially interested in the work itself. I give him credit however that he wrote very effectively for the voice. Composing for the voice has some limitations you don't have with most instruments, it's more challenging to really do it right. Frank Martin seems to write vocalistically, it all sounds very natural for the voice.

The five Dylan Thomas Settings by Steven R. Gerber would have recalled Stravinsky's vocal music to me, even if the maestro wasn't a dedicatee. In that sort of vaguely tonal-on the verge of atonality. 

VOTD 12/25/2022

 The Residents: Santa Dog 50th Anniversary Collection (Secret Records) purchased through mail order

Fifty years ago this week, a hippie art collective from San Mateo, CA released a double 7" titled Santa Dog. A spurious band name was given to each side (The Singing Lawnchairs, for example). There is mention inside the cover of Residents, Uninc, the movie Vileness Fats,  Ralph Records, and the graphics division Porno/Graphics. (The latter would have multiple spellings over the years.)

The story leading up to the record, the name The Residents, whatever happened to their feature length film, is better documented elsewhere. I will mentioned a few parts of the story here. The four titles on the sides were named from an insurance brochure: "Fire" (AKA "Santa Dog"), "Explosion", "Lightning", and "Aircraft Damage". It was a surrealist exercise in found materials,  "Santa Dog" itself is an anagram of God/Satan. That said, I once saw the polaroid of a dachshund dressed in a Santa suit when I visited Ralph Records in 1986. The record was not generally made for commercial sale. The band tried to send a copy to Richard Nixon at the White House, to be stamped "rejected" and returned.

I was, in and some respects remain, a fanatical fan. But definitely to a point. The band's early music, from Santa Dog through Commercial Album is some of my favorite music. Even within that time period there are ups and downs. I admire Eskimo more than I enjoy it; it is an interesting production to say the least. Duck Stab!, on the other hand, I consider to be a desert island disc. No doubt much of my continued interest in the first decade of the band's existence has to do with me discovering them in high school. I was really looking for something different, and they and the Ralph Records roster at the time delivered.

Commercial Album was followed by Mark of the Mole, a record I like but definitely don't love. I think it partially has to do with my personal disliking of programmatic nature of it and Eskimo, the storytelling through sound.

After Mark, as The Residents entered into their early digital period, I found myself decreasingly interested in what they were doing. I rather enjoyed the Intermission  EP, the first record to significantly be produced on the Emulator sampling keyboard. And while I found things to enjoy about the subsequent several records, it all honestly became less and less interesting to my ears more-or-less with each release. 

I hate to blame the tools, but the ease of production using sampling technology drained much of the charm of the early recordings. I liked the sometimes primitive, rough-hewn quality of the music and production. The cleanliness of the more recent albums makes me long for the determinately out of tune piano that was so prevalent on Fingerprince and Not Available. 

I'm writing my take on things, without apology. I like what I like. But I am willing to question even my own opinions on The Residents' music for most of the past four decades. Am I judging the music based on something I want to hear, rather than what is presented to me?

Nonetheless, listening to this collection that spans the band's earliest to nearly their most recent recordings, reminds me of their highs and lows. Again, just to my ears if nobody else's, but I know I am not alone in my strong preference for the early recordings. 

I admire their determination, I'm happy some version of the group still exists, despite the retirement and  passing of Hardy Fox. The recent pREServed series of reissues has turned up a few good moments, but largely the unreleased material hasn't been essential. I guess I'll have to be satisfied to continue to revisit this band's 1970s work. But, oh what a time, what a time.

VOTD Dec. 24 2022

 The Art Ensemble of Chicago: with Fontella Bass (Prestige) Don't recall where I bought this.

I have mixed feelings about the AECO. I recognize their importance, and sometimes I think their recordings are great. Unfortunately, sometimes they're not. Is that too much to expect of an artist or band? I think one of the indicators of a great artist is consistency. I wouldn't consider all of their records to be essential, but I'd be pressed to find recordings by Sonny Rollins or Stan Getz in which they didn't sound really good. The program might be weak, the backing band might be lesser, but they're likely to sound excellent.

Which brings me back to AECO, part of the jazz vanguard in the generation following the "new thing" of Coltrane, then Pharoah, Shepp, and Ayler. The AECO generally draws more directly on African sources for inspiration, though as a whole their interests are very broad. 

I of course know Fontella Bass' song "Rescue Me", but I wouldn't have known the name of the recording artist attached to it. I don't know how this collaboration came about. She sounds strong here, on the first side. The perhaps cliched word would be "soulful," but there it is. Her singing with/above the collective improvisations on the first side reminded me a bit of June Tyson with the Sun Ra Arkestra, but then that's just my orientation. June can be a bit of a shouter, but she always sells a song hard. Fontella is a bit lighter here. She mixes it up with the guys just fine, possibly bringing focus to what might have been a wandering or even rambling improvisation. Not that everything up to the end of the side is strictly improvised, but the side ends with a short burst of composed material, and boom they're done.

Side two is sans Fontella, playing on a work by Roscoe Mitchell. Each player is credited on no fewer than four instruments each, with Roscoe and Joseph getting an "etc" after a long list of things. AECO was known for the "two ton tour," traveling with huge array of instruments.

My opinion on this approach has probably shifted over the years. As a young improvisor, I often collected different sound sources This included toy instruments, but not of especially good quality, such as a nice toy piano. It could get silly. And silly isn't even necessarily bad, but I don't think it necessarily advanced the music.

The side opens a drum solo (a bit meh) followed by some composed material, which quickly opens up into freer territory. It stays free, shifting instrumental color frequently, until there's a brief coda at the end for bass and soprano sax. I find myself sometimes wanting the individual players to focus on one or two instruments they play will, rather than shifting from bass sax to bicycle horns to vibes, or whatever might have happened. 

There's also a, how can I put this? A procedural issue I have with this? I like the idea of "open field" improvisation. What I mean by that is, it's not specifically free improvisation because there is a composition to launch the performance. Play the piece and just let things open up. But if the improvisation doesn't somehow reflect on the composition, why have a composition at all?

VOTD #1

Vinyl of the day #1

    John Eaton: Mass, Blind Man's Cry, Concert Music for Solo Clarinet (CRI)

    Purchased at the Government Center

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There's always discussion each late December/early January about so-called New Years resolutions. Lose weight is always at the top of the list, something that I most definitely must try harder to do.

I find staying disciplined and on-track to be difficult. I guess that's why it's discipline, right? We'll see how effectively I maintain some routines I have planned for the coming months.

I have a substantial record and CD collection. As I've been looking through some of it recently, it occurred to me that I didn't remember buying or owning some of them. It seems to me that I should make a point of sitting down and listening or relistening to many of them.

So why not write about them? I don't expect this to be taken especially seriously by anyone, and it's not a serious musicology project. I did something similar when I bought the 32-CD Messiaen collection during the COVID lockdown, and then later listening to my collection of Morricone vinyl albums after the maestro's death. I started writing about the individual discs in a Pierre Henry box set I bought, but I didn't stay with it. I'll have to return to that.

Writing this now is more an exercise in personal discipline and self motivation. If someone gets something out of it, good for us both then.

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Why of all things would I make this initial blog post about a John Eaton? Truth is, I purchased this LP a few days ago and needed to get around to listening to it anyway. In general I will almost always buy records of historic electronic music, whether studio creations (i.e Schaffer, Henry) or performed on early electronic instruments (this). 

I know little about John Eaton's music, apart from another LP and a compilation track. He is associated with an electronic musical instrument named the Syn-ket. There's more than I know about the instrument listed here: https://120years.net/tag/synket/

I only know of one other place Syn-kets appear outside of Eaton's music, that being in Italian soundtrack music. Ennio Morricone used one in his score for Sacco and Vanzetti, for example. 

Based on the pictures on the site listed above, it looks like a pretty practical device. Not terribly large, clear layout of components, and microtonal tuning capabilities. The first two works on this record use not only Syn-kets, but Moog modular systems. 

The Syn-ket was never intended to be a commercial product, and only about a dozen were ever built. This points out a challenge of composing for electronic instruments. Even when composing for commercially available instruments, what happens when the company goes out of business? How dependent on the particular device is the composition?

I know of no attempts to recreate the Syn-ket, despite the current fashionability of analog-based modular synthesis. Therefor, all we have are these recordings of Eaton's music for the instrument. Strict performance live would at best involve substitutions. 

Mass and Blind Man's Cry both involve ensembles of synthesizers (Moog and Syn-ket), with voice. Mass also uses a solo clarinet (no credit that I can find, in a virtuoso role) and tape delay elements. Both works were written for soprano Michiko Hirayama, and she's a dazzler. I was certain I knew that name, and it's because of her performance of Giacinto Scelsi's Canti del Capricorno. She has amazing range and expression, but does not sing in that broad, European operatic style. And I'm glad. She is well suited to the material here. My easy go-to for comparisons for extreme vocal techniques is Diamanda Galàs. Ms. Galàs is mostly involved with creating her own works, or interpreting old songs. Nonetheless, there is fair comparison to be made here. Hirayama shrieks, sighs, and generally has a wide range of expression. The score must be a complex jumble of notations. 

The record ends with a work for solo clarinet, played beautifully by William O. Smith. It's the sort of work you might expect: ideas darting around, trills, some complicated note passages played fast. I find sometimes there's a question of, if you could improvise something that doesn't sound significantly different than this, why not choose to do that instead? Smith has great, sharp articulation and a big sound, so it is a good feature for his playing.

Recent dream

 I don't normally remember my dreams, but last Saturday I had one that was especially vivid. It concerned my band OPEK. I think we were to play a gig at a group home, with us playing on the floor. For some reason I had to leave, drove my car off, and returned before the show was over.

When I arrived back, my music was not ready and I frustratingly had to pick through a large pile of papers to try to find my part for whatever we were playing. I couldn't find any. In frustration, I called "Boogie Stop Shuffle" because I figured I'd be able to do enough of it from memory.

Despite playing it many times before, I had to stop the performance twice because the band couldn't follow instructions and was playing the piece completely wrong. After the second stop, I saw that the time was a few minutes before 3pm and it was almost time for the gig to end. So I gave up. 

Real time, there are no OPEK gigs on the books with none planned, which is not to say I don't have some potential plans for the future that I'm mulling over. We'll see. The dream seemed like an amplified version of some of my frustrations leading up to some gigs.

Tree of Life, part two

 October 27, 2018, 11am.

 

I remember it was specifically 11. My wife Norma had a volunteer duty she wanted to make at 11:30, and she was just leaving. I was in my grey gym sweats, not having changed into my day clothes.

 

She opened our front door, and there are SWAT officers out in the street. They yelled over that there was an active shooter situation, that she was go get inside and lock the door.

 

I made a point of staying calm. I looked out the back window, locked the back door, and tried to find some local news coverage. I hunted around on cable, but found nothing local being broadcasted. 

 

A few minutes later, her sister Chris called to say that our neighborhood was on CNN. It was not only on CNN, but was being covered on all the cable news networks. So there was Tree of Life, our backyard neighbor, from a helicopter view, with little information other than there was a shooting involved.

 

No later than quarter after 11, there was a SWAT officer with tactical weaponry on our little side porch. It was very lightly drizzly raining. We said hello to one another, but I largely left him to his business. Shortly after that, I noticed two more officers behind my neighbor Lucy’s house. Her backyard separates ours from the main temple of the synagogue.

 

I think it was about twenty minutes past the hour, no more than thirty, that the New York Times called. They asked for me by name, Benjamin Opie. I described what little I knew, how upsetting it all was. After all, it was my neighbors in that building.

 

I didn’t ask, but I figured out how they came to contact me. They must have looked up the property lots online, found an owner’s name, then looked up my number on directory service. I was probably the only person they found nearby with an active landline, at home during the 11 o’clock hour on a Saturday. Most of my nearby neighbors would have been in temple at the time themselves.

 

The former president would have you believe that nobody pays attention to the Times any more. I want to say that nothing could be further from the truth. The first article, with my name and quotes, was posted online before the hours’ end. I heard back from numerous people, including a friend in Australia and Henry Grimes’ wife Margaret. She called, wanted to know that I was okay. I was so mixed up, I didn’t figure out who she was until we ended our phone call.

 

It was some time around 11:45 (+/-) that the officer told us that the shooter had been taken into custody. We knew a good half hour before it was publicly announced. I watched as a camo-wearing group of SWAT officers did a sweep around the perimeter of Tree of Life, weapons drawn. We just weren’t told if there was more than one person, but now it was clear there was only a single gunman. We were still told to stay inside at least until 12:30, if not later. 

 

I’ve retold these circumstances so many times, they seem very concrete. The next day, several days, becomes more of a blur. After my name was online in the NYT article, later that day I received calls from the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, ABC News. Maybe more. The next day the Daily Beast called, and I was interviewed in my backyard by channel 5 Tel Aviv. After those, my wife said, “Don’t talk to any more of those people.” I was done with them even if she hadn’t said anything.

 

So picture if you will, if you don’t know the streets around me. Tree of Life sits on Wilkins Ave, at the corner of Shady Ave. Travel a short block south on Shady, and you intersect with Solway St. That’s where I live, near the intersection. Shady was blocked from all traffic for several days, and Wilkins in front of Tree of Life was sectioned off for more than a week. I had to enter and exit my street at the other end of the block, and even then I had to show ID at the corner to go home. 

 

Those are the basic circumstances of that day. I suppose there’s not that much to tell really. It does make me feel closer to the circumstances than even if I was across the same neighborhood. 

I've been writing this quickly, with little editing. I'll follow up with more details, and what happened in the following days, in a future post.

 

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Morton Feldman: Rothko Chapel. It’s not intended as an elegy or requiem. It’s inspired by the titular meditative space. Feldman said it had echoes of the synagogue in it. It seems like the right piece for today.