As befits a Midwestern midwinter, the weather's been various shades of dreadful this weekend. Friday night predictions in Madison were for an inch or two of snow; to just about everyone's1 surprise, the city awoke to four inches or more. With a genuine blizzard on its way shortly thereafter, I decide to hightail it to Chicago while I still had the option. Since I left, Sharon described drifts of at least two feet - probably more, but she had the good sense to stay inside - just outside the back door.
Meanwhile, in the Windy City, it's been a less intense accumulation of slush. Sidewalks have become icy swamps, the semi-transparent, half-floating mounds of melting snow making puddle depths remarkably difficult to gauge.2 Then there's the combined threat of minor lakes alongside the sidewalks and your average Chicago drivers, resulting in some pretty spectacular sprays of ice-cold filth. Smart pedestrians3 kept as far back from the street as possible.
So I ventured out into the muck, deciding to hit up a record store for the first time in a long while. I didn't have a strong idea of where to go, so a brief Google search led me to Reckless Records in Lakeview. I stumbled onto a page of staff picks, I think, and figured - from the rather eclectic selection - that I'd enjoy killing some time there, even if I didn't buy anything.
One of the recommended discs at the listening station was an EP by a band called Mies Van Der Rohe Ruined Everything. The first track reminded me of Stereolab, which I took as a good sign, and I ended up spending more than an hour rifling through the CDs.
A good number of which were used, so I eventually picked up seven of 'em, which is the largest music purchase I can ever recall making.4 And it's also the most eclectic bunch of CDs I've ever bundled together. I've tried to give each an initial listen today - not like there's been much else on my plate - and as follows are some of my preliminary impressions. In alphabetical order, by artist:
- The Bad Plus • Give Free-spirited jazz from the Minneapolis-based (I think) trio, with piano, bass and drums. There's no shortage of humor here, as evidenced by the title of track two - Cheney Piñata5 - and its associated description in the liner notes: "Picture our lonely VP rendered in papier-mache and filled with candy and treats instead of oil and defense contracts." They've also got covers of Ornette Coleman's "Street Woman" and Black Sabbath's "Iron Man". Plus, it was produced by Tchad Blake, who helped create Soul Coughing's sound.
- The Ornette Coleman Double Quartet • Free Jazz Wow. Free jazz, as a movement, essentially stems from this album, which is essentially a single thirty-eight minute track. (There's a second track, but it wasn't part of the original release, but rather tacked on to help fill space on the CD.) Eight accomplished jazz musicians, led by Ornette Coleman, doing what amounts to eight overlapping jazz solos. But they fit together, somehow, into a cohesive whole. It's difficult to follow - even with the group split into one quartet for the left channel, another for the right - but that's what you'd expect from this sort of "collective improvisation". Sure, the Stone Roses' albums looked pretty cool with John Squires' Jackson Pollock-inspired cover art. But the reproduction of Pollock's White Light inside the sleeve of Free Jazz fits perfectly.
- Jawbox • Savory +3 Okay, so I already own two of the tracks on here - "Savory" and a cover of "Sound on Sound". But it has a different, slower version of "68", as well as "Lil' Shaver", which I hadn't heard before. I consider it four bucks well spent.
- Naked City • Heretic: Jeux des Dames Cruelles The cover claims it's an "original motion picture soundtrack", but that's a little misleading. There is, it seems, some bizarre Japanese bondage film that uses this as a soundtrack, but it was made well after the album. But, yeah, it's decidely strange. (I knew this before I bought it.) Hyper-frenetic compositional work by John Zorn, featuring Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, Fred Frith, Joey Baron and Yamatsuka Eye,6 it's a smash-up of everything you might associate with S&M. Heavy metal, punk rock, avant-garde noise rock? All that and more. Suffice to say, this is the sort of CD you wouldn't play for your mother.
- The Promise Ring • Nothing Feels Good While this isn't a CD I'd recommend for my mother, it is one that I might have on while she was around. Insanely catchy post-punk wonderfulness from Davey von Bohlen and those other guys he left Cap'n Jazz to play with. I can't imagine how I managed to get through nearly six years of American indie-based CD purchases without ever picking this up. But I did, at least, see them live - and for free, with Joan of Arc, the Dismemberment Plan, and Burning Airlines, in that brief period before I knew who any of them really were.
- Squirrel Bait • S/T I can't believe I found this, but Drag City's short-lived sub-label Dexter's Cigar decided to reissue Squirrel Bait's first (and only) EP. Hardcore punk from Louisville, Kentucky in 1985. Eight tracks in less than 18 minutes. And these guys later went on to form bands like Slint, Gastr del Sol and The For Carnation.7 To sweeten the deal, it looks like Skag Heaven, Squirrel Bait's only full-length album, is floating out there, too.
- John Zorn • Masada Recital After listening to bits and pieces via YouTube, I've been really itching to get my hands on some actual Masada stuff. This is just two musicians - Mark Feldman on violin and Sylvie Courvoisier on piano - playing Zorn's interpretations of traditional Jewish music. Unusual, yes, but not an aural assault like Naked City. If you weren't paying attention, you might even think somebody'd left the radio tuned to the classical station. I'm still anxious to get the Bar Kokhba album, which is a fuller ensemble, but this ought to tide me over for a while.
1Snowplow drivers included.
2Good thing I decided to wear some waterproof hiking shoes, though the cuffs of my jeans got an occasional soaking. Reminds me of a comment from a guy I knew in college, as he walked into class from a thunderous downpour: "You know, a Gore-Tex jacket's only so useful if you don't have Gore-Tex pants."
3Actually, that's not true. The truly smart pedestrians stayed indoors.
4In college, I bought a lot more, averaged out over time. But City Lights was a five minute walk from my dorm room - assuming you had to wait for a break in traffic to cross College Ave - so picking up CDs, one or two at a time, twice a week, was pretty standard.
5When a couple of us saw these guys a few years back, when Luther's Blues still existed, they introduced this song with a promise that it had a tragic ending.
6Admittedly, I don't have the first clue as to how this guy's name is actually spelled. Yamataka, Yamatsuka... whatever. He's the guy from the Boredoms, the one who roars and grumbles and screams for Naked City. Distinctly abrasive at first, but I've come 'round to enjoying him plus Zorn on Nani Nani II, so I've good reason to believe some, if not all of Heretic will be something I enjoy eventually.
7Who didn't play at Glastonbury in 2000, which still irks me. I really wanted to see them play. Sure, Badly Drawn Boy put on a pretty good show in their absence, but it wasn't at all the same. Then I went ahead and completely missed the Slint reunion tour in 2005.
5 comments:
You've touched on some music that's rapidly becoming my favorite, so I can't resist pushing some more recommendations and info on you. Please forgive my intrusive blathering.
The Bad Plus: The bass player and drummer are from MN, and the piano player is from Menominee, WI; the drummer still lives in MSP, the others in NYC. If you like them, may I direct your attention to Happy Apple, another modern jazz trio with Dave King (the drummer). If you get a chance to seem them live, it's a two-for-one: music, plus sidesplittingly hilarious surreal between-song ranting by Dave King, who is a very funny guy.
Ornette Coleman is fantastic, and is one of the main originators of free jazz, but I think too much emphasis gets placed on that album (perhaps because of the name). I listened to a bit of it in a record store in high school and thought it wasn't worth listening to, which delayed my discovery of Coleman's music for years. It's different than most of his records. The pianist in The Bad Plus (they're huge fans of Coleman's music) wrote in a little essay on some of Coleman's early records, "Free Jazz has some great moments but is too monochromatic. As I speculated before about the two Contemporary albums, I wonder if Free Jazz has harmed Ornette’s reputation, especially at the time it was released." If you go looking for more Ornette, I recommend "The Shape of Jazz To Come" (which includes one of my favorite melodies of all time, "Lonely Woman") and "The Complete Science Fiction Sessions" (don't be thrown off my the first track, one of two with singing, or the one track with a poet ... reading ... very ... slowly ... over ... the music).
Zorn: I never really got into his screaming heavy-metal montage stuff, but I loved an Electric Masada concert I went to with Seth. Recently I picked up a record by the original Masada quartet (which that website says is breaking up--too bad) and I like it a lot. I can't believe I'm about to say something that sounds so conservative, but I guess I like Zorn when he's actually being a musician in the traditional sense, and not when he's just making lots of loud noise.
My taste for free/out/avant-garde/modern flavors of jazz has been fueled and accelerated lately by Destination: Out, a blog featuring MP3s dug up from obscure and/or out-of-print jazz records, focusing perhaps on the 1970s. I've fallen a bit behind so I can't comment on some of the most recent tracks, but I've heard a lot of great stuff from that site. Note that the MP3 links only stay active for a limited time.
John... intrusive blathering's what the comments section is for. (Blogging is merely a slightly less intrusive form of blathering.) So I wholeheartedly welcome your recommendations, even if I probably won't get around to acting on them for another several months, at least. Please feel free to continue to do so.
Someone was just telling me about Happy Apple, and I'm supposing it was Seth after we went to the Roscoe Mitchell / Joan Wildman / Jim Baker show. (Maybe it wasn't Jim Baker, but I can't remember that trio's name. I went to college with a guy by that name, and it's all I can think of.) If I recall correctly - a dubious assumption - he was relating a story of when they played at Cafe Montmartre, and watching as a four-year-old kid was thoroughly enthralled by King's drumming, refusing to leave until he simply fell asleep in his dad's lap.
More Ornette strikes me as a good idea, and I appreciate the specific recommendations. Jazz, more than anything else, has always been deeply intimidating for the sheer quantity of available recordings. I can't buy many, so I'm hesitant to purchase anything lest it be something that's going to be relegated to the "infrequently listened to" bin. That bin currently lives in the basement, and is mostly filled with free CDs I got while DJing college radio, classic rock I'm rarely in the mood for but don't want to throw away, etc. So when I simply want to get to know an artist, if they're more prolific than, say, Cap'n Jazz, I'm unlikely to actually purchase anything. (I don't have an .mp3 player or a computer, so those options aren't feasible.)
My initial impression of Free Jazz was good, so I think I'll pursue more Ornette. I approached it in much the same way that I do for things like old films from the Criterion Collection: though the material may not be anything particularly special compared to today's standards, it's considered a foundation piece by people who know a lot more than I do. Sometimes it's good just to have a better grasp of the history of something I enjoy, and other times I end up finding something that really strikes a nerve. (Case in point: Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.)
Besides, Free Jazz was eight bucks. I can a wide variety of less fulfilling ways to spend that much money in Chicago without any actual effort.
Masada. It's probably my favorite Zorn stuff, too, and the general accessibility is a factor. Avant-garde noise has its place, of course, but we all grew up listening to - and possibly conditioning ourselves to - some pretty structured music. There's research that suggests that some of it may be hard-wired into our genes, as well. Or so I hear. For whatever reason, I know that I tend to lapse into a certain range of comfortable music, and it takes conscious effort to move beyond it, to keep exploring. I wouldn't think of it as conservatism, but rather as a respect for tradition, which isn't the same thing at all.
Or think of it in terms of food. It's cool to try some really extreme food sometimes - think Ferrán Adrià (El Bulli), or Grant Achatz (Alinea), or Wylie Dufresne (WD-40), etc. - but doing that every day really warps your perspective, and it pretty much requires your brain to be on at all times. Sometimes in overdrive. But I really think it's valuable - moreso than exploring the culinary possibilities of alginates - to maintain the food traditions that have sustained us for centuries or longer. You can give them that intense, overdrive level of thought when you're up for it, but you don't have to.
Seth just turned me on to Destination: Out. I haven't had much chance to explore it, between a computer shortage (at work doesn't count) and other obligations. It's a bit of a shame that tracks are only available for two weeks, but if that's the price you've got to pay for a chance to listen to this stuff, so be it.
Veering off topic, Seth and Jared and I are going to set aside a weekend for a Cremaster Cycle viewing, combined with some sort of beer tasting. I've tossed out March 10th as an option, but nothing's concrete just yet. I know it's probably too far, too soon, but you're welcome if you're interested. Drop me an email if you are.
Wow, you saw Roscoe Mitchell? As I've been learning about the wide world of free jazz, his name has emerged as a really big one. What was that concert like?
I do know Happy Apple played at Cafe Montmarte and Seth went (I basically demanded that he had to in an email), and that story about the little kid sounds familiar. Which is funny, because sometimes I think King looks as excited as a little kid when he plays. Last time I saw him *his* two little kids were in the audience, and were very cute, some dancing and waving at him once.
I didn't mean to sound too critical of your purchase of "Free Jazz": I just meant, "don't stop there!" I know exactly what you mean about feeling overwhelmed by all the music out there. My method in the last couple of years when I hear of some artist I want to check out has been to browse allmusic.com and start with their top picks. The various jazz blogs I've become semi-addicted to also help (I'm glad Seth's been checking out Destination: Out -- definitely seems up his alley).
Listening to critics too much brings up another problem for me, though. I don't know very much, so I can end up feeling very insecure in my tastes in the face of a Big Authority. For example, for years I'd listened to this guy Ken Vandermark and liked his music, but in the last year I keep reading Real Jazz People saying, more or less, that they think he's a talentless hack. Whether or not *I* enjoy listening to something is really all that should matter to me, but I still can't stop some part of me from now saying, "you're not supposed to like this." Annoying and troubling.
Oh, man... Roscoe Mitchell. As an introduction to free jazz, it was more or less insane. In a very good way, but difficult to process right away. It was a trio - saxophone (ranging from a little soprano to a massive bass sax that was damn near as big as Roscoe), upright bass and drums - with two cellists as accompaniment on one piece. In general, it was loud, fast, and essentially impossible to follow everything all at once.
For me, anyhow. We were, with the exception of one kid who looked like an undergrad, by far the youngest people there, and I'm suspecting that these folks were well steeped in free jazz.
That cello piece, incidentally, was phenomenal. It began with an extended, soft drone, with Mitchell making staccato squeaks on his sax. Then, without warning, it erupted into a frantic free-for-all, veering into full-out loud, and eventually swung back to the cello drone. I don't know how to describe it, really.
As far as critics go, I don't know who to trust, because I don't know who shares my tastes. I'm sure I have plenty of CDs I enjoy that are pure rubbish according to most critics - I'd even give an example, but I can't think of one off the top of my head, and I'm not at home to peruse the selection. And I can guarantee that I don't know a single person who shares my full range of musical likes and dislikes. I'm comfortable with it, if for no other reason than I have to be. I mean, can you really live any other way?
Besides, I'm getting to the point where I'll dance around like an idiot to anything with good beat and a good pop sensibility, as long as I'm home (and mostly) alone. Flailing about like a sugar-addled four-year-old to Cap'n Jazz's Analphabetapolothology is most likely not critic-approved, I'm sure.
Incidentally, along those lines, I'm thinking of compiling a list of good introductory albums, totally unscientific and subjective, if for no other reason than as an amusing exercise. Want to try out the Dismemberment Plan? Emergency and I. Mogwai? Young Team. That sort of thing. Mind if I pick your brain as part of the process? If nothing else, maybe it'll be a chance for everyone involved to expand their horizons a bit. (Or decide they like their horizons just where they are, thanks very much.)
Anybody want in? Let me know.
Okay, I take it all back. Today is Ornette Coleman's birthday (he's 77), and this radio station is broadcasting 24 hours of his music. I've been listening online, and they just played Take 1 (the originally unreleased and shorter second track on the CD) of "Free Jazz". The DJ said what it was only at the end, and apparently my ears have changed even more than I thought since the last time I heard it, whenever that was. A bit more wild and wooly than much of his quartet stuff, but it's not really quite as different as I remembered. So, I stand corrected.
(The DJ is presently hypothesizing that the first, shorter take was an attempt to produce something that would fit on one side of an LP, while for the second take they decided to fill up a whole LP, and then it was decided to release the longer one.)
When I first tuned into the radio broadcast, the second thing they played was a very modern-classical-sounding string quartet, and I wondered if maybe I was wrong about the All Day Ornette program. Turns out that it was a string quartet he wrote called "Dedication to Poets and Writers." You learn something new every day, but today I've really got an extra helping.
I'd contribute to this "good intro albums" idea as far as I'm able.
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