Secret Society

Gustav

Sweet Jesus not again.

Officials' biggest fear by far was a direct hit to New Orleans, where post-Katrina rebuilding remains a work in progress. Roughly two-thirds of the population has returned and countless homeowners have used their savings to fix up their properties. But many homes still lie in disrepair, and the byzantine system of canals, pumps and levees that is supposed to protect the city from flooding remains incomplete.

"Although we have made strong strides in rebuilding our infrastructure, the levees have not been fully repaired and we have an $800-million budget gap to complete our sewage and water systems," Nagin said earlier in a statement.

The dolor and decay, it only makes me cranky

To borrow a meme from John Kerry: Candidate McCain seems to have worn himself out with all of that scrambling to reverse Senator McCain's previously held positions. He's getting awfully testy, and now he's even lashing out at his base -- the media:

What do you want voters to know coming out of the Republican Convention — about you, about your candidacy?
I'm prepared to be President of the United States, and I'll put my country first.

There's a theme that recurs in your books and your speeches, both about putting country first but also about honor. I wonder if you could define honor for us?
Read it in my books.

I've read your books.
No, I'm not going to define it.

But honor in politics?
I defined it in five books. Read my books.

[Your] campaign today is more disciplined, more traditional, more aggressive. From your point of view, why the change?
I will do as much as we possibly can do to provide as much access to the press as possible.

But beyond the press, sir, just in terms of ...
I think we're running a fine campaign, and this is where we are.

Do you miss the old way of doing it?
I don't know what you're talking about.

Really? Come on, Senator.
I'll provide as much access as possible ...

In 2000, after the primaries, you went back to South Carolina to talk about what you felt was a mistake you had made on the Confederate flag. Is there anything so far about this campaign that you wish you could take back or you might revisit when it's over?
[Does not answer.]

Do I know you? [Says with a laugh.]
[Long pause.] I'm very happy with the way our campaign has been conducted, and I am very pleased and humbled to have the nomination of the Republican Party.

I'm sure all of this unpleasantness could have been averted had the reporters only brought him a box of Dunkin' Donuts with sprinkles:

Ignorance is Strength

Good to see the GOP is making it official:

In an alley behind a non-descript row of brick buildings on North Speer Boulevard, and on the other side of a large metal gate with armed guards standing in front, Republicans have set up a "war room" in Denver.

In this west side location that is not far from the Pepsi Center yet out of sight from Democratic delegates and protesters walking downtown, Republicans will be crafting anti-Barack Obama messages nearly round the clock this week.

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan said the team of nearly two dozen staffers at the opposition headquarters will be "fact-checking" statements made by the Obama campaign and by speakers during the convention.

"Just consider this the Ministry of Truth," quipped Dick Wadhams, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.

McCain 1984 2008: What Dystopia?

Via Amanda, though I think Eric Kleefeld caught it first.

You know, when I was a kid, I remember coming across this comic book, wherein the main bad guy, inspired by the vision of a glorious utopian future he found in Nineteen Eighty-Four, creates a jingoistic, nativist, literally flag-draped super-team (called "The Force of July") to help him bring Orwell's vision to life. His nefarious plan involves launching a private surveillance satellite which enables him to spy on every person in the United States.

It's good to see that the entire Republican Party appears to be taking their cues from an obscure comic-book supervillain.

J&R MusicFest sets now streaming

Audio from the Friday night J&R MusicFest hit I wrote up last weekend is now available for streaming courtesy of WBGO:

Aaron Parks

Esperanza Spalding

Roy Hargrove

No Dave Samuels/Caribbean Jazz Project (yet?), but in addition to the above three sets, BGO has some nice additional photos including a close-up of Roy's Adidas -- if my SiteMeter results are any indication, people love those shoes almost as much as they love irrational rhythms. I griped about the live sound in the park, but the recorded audio is a big improvement, so check it out.

Charlie Parker Jazz Festival - 23 Aug 2008, Marcus Garvey Park

Robert Glasper with Vicente Archer, Chris Dave

Rasheid Ali with Lawrence Clark, Lakecia Benjamin, Greg Murphy, Joris Teepe

Vanessa Rubin with Danny Grissett, Lonnie Plaxico, Alvin Atkinson

Barry Harris and Charles McPherson with Ray Drummond, Leroy Williams, plus the Barry Harris Jazz Choir

More pics below the fold...

J&R MusicFest - 22 Aug 2008 @ City Hall Park

MP3: Aaron Parks, "Nemesis" (click to listen, right/ctrl-click to download)
From Invisible Cinema. Aaron Parks, piano; Mike Moreno, guitar; Matt Penman, bass; Eric Harland, drums. Posted with permission of the artist.

-----

So clearly the J&R MusicFest people do not fuck around when it comes to punctuality. Last night's mini jazz showcase was scheduled to start at 5 PM. I walked up at 5:02 and Aaron Parks & co. were already a couple of minutes into the anthemic 7/4 rocker "Nemesis" (see above). You know, even Carnegie Hall starts at five after.

Anyway, Aaron's Blue Note debut (and his first record as a leader in six years) dropped on Tuesday and he's been a busy boy this week, co-headlining (with Kurt Rosenwinkel) four sets over two nights at Smalls earlier in the week, and then this. I was at the first Small's set Tuesday night, sitting directly behind Aaron's piano bench (onstage, in fact, on the Rhodes bench), and the experience was kind of mind-blowing. Tuesday night was also the first time Kurt and Kendrick played together -- I do not believe it will be the last. The drummer on the record is Eric Harland, who is also great, but as I overheard one young jazz student at last night's hit tell his compatriot: "I love Kendrick's style, it's so fucking marching band."

The thing is, though, Kendrick is boundlessly inventive -- I've heard him play Aaron's music several times and he's always surprising me. One of his newly acquired toys are these special drum mallets with shakers inside the mallets -- he used them in dramatically different ways on Tuesday and Friday. And nobody plays the surging multimetric straight-eighth grooves that have become the lingua franca of modern mainstream jazz better than Kendrick.

As for the leader, Aaron has a real gift for spinning memorable, attractively folksy themes (like the pentatonic-based "Peaceful Warrior," which I have heard in a few different incarnations over the years) into mutlisection long-form workouts. He's always been kind of a scary technical wunderkind (like many jazz pianists, his piano guru is Sofia Rosoff) but what makes his recent music a thrill to listen to is the combination of effusive joy and an ambitious, architectural sense of structure and large-scale design.

 At this point the music industry's operatically extended death throes, EMI releasing a creative jazz record by an up-and-coming artist kind of feels like staging a jam session on the Hindenburg, but hey, I am not complaining. Good on them for putting Invisible Cinemas out there, and also putting some of that major-label mojo behind an eminently worthy young musician.

WBGO's Josh Jackson has a nice interview with Aaron (including some live-in-the-studio versions of songs from Invisible Cineams). BGO aslo recorded the J&R Fest and all of these performances should be available for streaming soonish now. When that happens, I will update this post. (Post has been updated.)

[As always, I don't pretend to be remotely objective about anything I write here, but especially not about Aaron -- he is a friend, he's subbed in Society rehearsals a few times, and he's the person responsible for introducing me to Lizz Wright. But, you know, if objectivity is your thing, what are you even doing reading blogs in the first place?]

Listen to Aaron's set.

Singer and bassist Esperanza Spalding has had the kind of storybook success I honestly did not think was still even possible for a jazz artist -- she grew up home-schooled in a single-parent family in Portland, Oregon, landed a full ride at Berklee, was hired to teach bass at her alma mater as soon as she graduated, started gigging with Joe Lovano, put out a couple of records as a leader, and recently ended up playing on Letterman(!) and -- like Nico Muhly -- featured in the Times' Fashion & Style section.

This was my first time hearing her. Live, she's an engaging and charismatic performer with a wispy, attractive voice. She easily enthralled the big, diverse crowd, especially on the neo-soulish "Precious," and a cover of Nina Simone's "Wild Is The Wind." I'd like to hear her inhabit the songs a bit more -- Esperanza somtimes comes off as self-consciously putting on a performance instead of sublimating herself into the song. She's hardly alone in this --  jazz singers in general tend to be more concerned with sound than story -- but I have trouble connecting to that.

My other gripe was that for most of the set it, was well-nigh impossible to hear her bass playing. You could feel her notes, sure, but there was practically no pitch definition, and the bass drum was amplified so excessively it masked most of the low-end frequencies anyway. Now I love the communal experience of the outdoor summer gigs, and I'm glad that this year there are a few more jazz shows in the mix, but sweet jeebus is the live sound at these things ever atrocious. I'd like to catch her band again under more favorable sonic circumstances.

Listen to Esperanza's set.

Mallet percussionist Dave Samuels -- of Spyro Gyra fame -- led his Caribbean Jazz Project in an energetic set that included the Dizzy Gillespie-Chano Pozo classic "Wachi Wara" and a Afro-Carribeanized versions of Oliver Nelson's "Stolen Moments" and Monk's "Bemsha Swing." The band is made up of very talented players, but the set suffered from a lack of contrast -- I wanted to hear more dynamic variation, more ebb and flow, more drama.

It's been a long time since I've heard Roy Hargrove and I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. He's spent recent years concentrating on groove-oriented fusion projects and hiphop collaborations, but his most recent album, Earfood, is a back-to-bop testament. Roy brought the Earfood band to City Hall Park -- Justin Robinson, alto sax; Gerald Clayton, piano; Danton Boller, bass; Montez Coleman, drums -- and any worries I might had about dry, lifeless museum jazz were quickly dispelled by Coleman's swirling, billowing energy and Hargrove's swaggering intensity. (Dig the sneakers with the shiny black suit.) Clayton was another highlight, especially his impressive stopped-string work during his solo on a funky romp through Cedar Walton's "I'm Not So Sure." Hargrove showed us a few different facets of himself over the set, reaching for the fluegelhorn on an uncannily intimate ballad, but he seemed happiest when he was soaring out above the furiously churning rhythm section. Seriously, Montez Coleman is a total badass and he makes the perfect foil for Roy's unbound exuberance. A really fun closing set.

Listen to Roy's set.

More pictures below the fold...

I heartily endorse these events or products

My pal Isaac Butler on the stunning Katrina documentary Trouble the Water, which opens in NYC and LA this weekend -- (seeitseeitseeit) and also Ted Hearne's Katrina Ballads, to be released as a digital download on Aug. 29. (Free live preview clips here.) I've been impressed with what I've heard of Katrina Ballads so far and I hope to write more about it here sometime soonish. Also, Ted has a blog and you should read it.

Is that... Oscar I smell?

Jesse caught the whiff too.

But in all seriousness, this is a sweet story, courtesy Hentoff in the WSJ. (Just pretend that ["writer and philosopher"?! oy] Joseph Cambell's name went unmentioned and you'll be fine.)

Ms. Passarella's second-grade students, she says, would have told him how moved they were by not only the ballads "but the more avant-garde recordings, such as 'Interstellar Space.'" She notes that, through her teaching, "I have discovered that young children have open, welcoming minds, and the more pure and emotional the music, the more they connect. Soon they were hooked on John Coltrane's music."

The children learned that Coltrane lived in Dix Hills -- a hamlet on Long Island not all that far from their school -- from 1964 to his death in 1967 (his family sold the home in 1972). And they were saddened to discover that the house -- where he composed "A Love Supreme" and all his last works -- had been in danger of being demolished by the real-estate developer who now owned it. But they and their teacher soon were excited by the news that a resident of Dix Hills, Steve Fulgoni, a longtime jazz enthusiast, had come to the rescue of the Coltrane home.

[…]

But the structure, left untended for years, requires much fund raising to become what the Coltranes would like it to be -- "a place of learning" where, for example, Coltrane's Meditation Room would change into a multimedia room for schoolchildren. Contributions can be sent to Friends of the Coltrane Home, P.O. Box 395, Deer Park, N.Y., 11729 (www.the coltranehome.org).

Among the more dedicated recent fund-raisers were Ms. Passarella's second-graders. They engaged in raffles, cake sales and a book fair. Then, their teacher tells me, on May 23 of this year -- at a special assembly program in Coltrane's honor -- "they sang their original songs and choreographed ballroom dances." One was named "Chasin' the Train" (Trane was his nickname).

[…]

The teacher says, with pleasure, that her second-graders "are now being called Kids for Coltrane." With their moving into the third grade, she will no longer be their teacher. But she plans to start a Kids for Coltrane Club once a week during lunch. "We will invite these students already familiar with his music and also new members."

You will not be able to stay home

Rachel Maddow is set to become the smartest host on the teevee machine beginning September 8.

This is indescribably awesome. I have been a huge fan of Rachel since she debuted on Air America Radio in early 2004, and her radio show is the only remaining bright spot on the rather dismal current AAR schedule. She has, by all accounts, done a formidable job as a regular commentator on MSNBC's Race To The White House and as a fill-in host for Keith Olbermann, so I could not be happier that her talent, intellect, and political acumen are actually being rewarded. This is, erhm, not the way things usually work.

The only drawback is that I personally do not have access to the cable teevee. But those of you who do can look forward to an unadulterated dose of anti-bullshit every weekday at 9 PM on MSNBC. For my part, I am selfishly glad to hear that Rachel's radio show will continue as well. (Remember, everyone needs to subscribe to the podcast of The Rachel Maddow Show on AAR.)

If you ain't in the itinerary

I am glad I finally have a minute this summer to go hear some music, because there's some great stuff coming up this week:

Tonight (Tuesday 19 August - also Wednedsay night) at Smalls: Kurt Rosenwinkel & Aaron Parks Quartet w/ Matt Penman & Kendrick Scott (8:00 & 11:00 PM)

Tomorrow (Wednesday 20 August) at Public Assembly (ex-Galapagos): groups led by Tim Collins and Jaleel Shaw (w/Mike Moreno, Ben Williams, and Johnathan Blake). 8:00 PM

Friday 22 August - jazz night at the J&R Music Fest at City Hall Park featuring Aaron Parks (who has a new record out today), Esperanza Spalding, the Caribbean Jazz Project feat. Dave Samuels, and Roy Hargrove. Free!

Saturday 23 August and Sunday 24 August - the 16th annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival. Saturday is at Marcus Garvey Park and features Barry Harris, Charles McPherson, Vanessa Rubin, Rashied Ali, and Robert Glasper. Sunday is at Tompkins Square Park and the lineup is Randy Weston, Jerry Gonzalez and Fort Apache, Eric Lewis, and Gretchen Parlato. Also free!

My writeup and pictures of last year's Charlie Parker fest are here.

I can't sing no song of hope

You know how John McCain has been running all of those ads complaining that Barack Obama is "popular" and "inspiring" and "adored by millions of people around the world"? Well, it turns out that one of the benefits of having people actually like you is that it's a lot easier to get artists to agree to allow their songs to be used by your campaign. While Obama has apparently commissioned new campaign theme songs from Joss Stone, Alicia Keys, and Jay-Z, McCain, on the other hand, is having trouble securing the rights to use any music at all:

Regular readers will recognize that this isn't the first time McCain has received the cold shoulder from the music industry. Earlier this year, ABBA nixed McCain's attempt to use "Take a Chance on Me" (a personal favorite) at his rallies. "We played it a couple times and it's my understanding they went berserk," the candidate confessed. John Hall, formerly of the 1970s band Orleans and now a Democrat ic congressman from New York, wouldn't let McCain use “Still the One." When hardline Dem John Mellencamp learned that McCain was blasting "Pink Houses" before events, he requested that the Republican cease and desist. Shortly thereafter, McCain settled on "Johnny B. Goode" as his signature song. "It might be because it is the only one [the artist] hasn't complained about us using," he said at the time. But Chuck Berry quickly came out for Obama. While Will.i.am, Arcade Fire, the Decemberists, the Grateful Dead, Macy Gray and Wilco have personally serenaded Obama fans at campaign events, McCain's musical support has been limited to octogenarian composer Burt Bacharach and one half of the novelty country duo Big & Rich. Even the reliably Republican Ted Nugent is no fan. "McCain seem[s] to be catering to a growing segment of soulless Americans who could care less what they can do for their country, but whine louder and louder about what their country must do for them," says the Motor City Madman (who has the same criticism for Obama). "That is both un-American and pathetic."

Attention McCain staffers: do not despair. I have your new campaign theme song right here. I'd be perfectly willing to license it to the campaign -- for a suitable fee, of course. I recommend that you play this stirring number any time the candidate takes the stage, enters a room, or appears on television. I think you will find it vividly encapsulates everything John McCain stands for.

[hat tip: Daniel Wolf]

Cross the streams

Assuming non-electric skies tomorrow, I hope to see you at the first-ever, free, outdoor Counterstream Radio/New Amsterdam Records shebang (part of this year's East River Music Project). 2 PM kickoff at the East River Amphitheatre.

It is a lineup packed w/nu-classical excellence:

itsnotyouitsme

Mark Dancigers

Timberbrit

Alex Sopp

Matt Marks and the Li’l Death Band

N.B.: bigger audience = definitely better, so don't y'all sleep on this.

Just grab the rope and I'll pull you in

This archival (1994) Fresh Air interview with Isaac Hayes is definitely worth listening to in full. It is really astounding that a kid who grew up literally picking cotton in Covington, Tennessee became one of the most polished, sophisticated, ambitious orchestrators in popular music. I mean, it's no surprise that Randy Newman is a killing orchestrator, he grew up in a family of film composers. But Isaac Hayes, whose skills are unquestionably right up there with Newman's, learned it all on the gig, arranging and producing for Stax.

Here are a couple of choice bits from the interview:

GROSS: Now how did you learn to play piano? Growing up as poor as you did, I know there were times in your life where you didn't have shoes, let alone a piano.

HAYES: That's true. How did I do that? Well... let's see. A friend of mine I grew up with, Sidney Kirk -- used to be my accompanist, we went places and he'd play for me. He joined the Air Force, he wasn't there. There was a call in to him about a gig New Year's Eve. His sister knew that I was destitute and I needed money, so she asked me if I wanted to play. Well I could play maybe "Chopsticks" and stuff like that, and I say "Yeah, I'll take it." I took the gig out of desperation. And when I got to the club I was petrified, I said "Oh my God they're gonna shoot me, I can't play." And musicians started coming in, you know, setting up, tuning up, and I'm sitting there, you know, trying to be cool. I said "God, you know, they're gonna find me out." And the featured artist came in and said "Hey man, do y'all know such-and-such" -- this is the first time this band had been put together, we didn't rehearse or anything -- and everybody say "Yeah, we know it, blah blah blah." And he kicked off the tune, and it sounded horrible -- everybody did. I said, "Wow, these guys can't play either, so I'm comfortable."

And, you know, being New Year's Eve, the clientele was drunk, and they thought we were cooking, you know. And somewhere along the line, the club owner, he was sauced, he came up and was like: "You know, you boys sound real good, y'all want a regular job?" "Yeah, we'll take it." And that was in Memphis. And, um, it was a regular gig, and each night I'd learn something more and more on keyboards. And that's how I got started.

[…]

HAYES: I had been doing arranging all the time. I did a lot of arranging with the horns and stuff at Stax, and the first string arrangements I tried was a thing that Dave [Porter] and I did on Sam and Dave. And that album was like a big flop. But we tried it anyway, but I had a taste for it, and once I tasted the strings I couldn't let it go.

Go listen.

See also LowerManhattanite's extended tributes to Hayes and Bernie Mac.

Hayes was of a generation of great musicians that came through the Memphis public school system's music program (a veritable “Who's Who” of Jazz and R&B legends too numerous to cite here), who stayed in the city and re-vitalized it with his groundbreaking work at Stax. He fused the hard Blues with the roaring fire of Southern Gospel, while adding into the mix more than a little bit of the punchy Jazz style (particularly the horn charts—Basie-esque “smears” and “stabs” on the brass) endemic to the region.

And God, could he write melodies! Melodies that mated perfectly with the scary rhythmic sense he seemed to simply sweat. He had a “golden ear” for arrangements and balance, while having a special knack for building a jam “in-song” from a whisper to a roar, until the song was a big ol' almost living, amoebic thing—pulsing, flying here and there...whispering and shouting...all at once.

Or like Berlin where they go another night, all right

Peter Hum at Thriving on a Riff (attention Big Media, if the Ottawa Citizen can host a full-time jazz blog, so can you... ) has a really interesting interview with alto saxophonist Peter Van Huffel, a onetime Society co-conspirator now living in Berlin. It's nice to have some thoughts on New York vs. Berlin from someone who's lived the hardscrabble jazz musician life in both towns:

"New York really is a great and wonderful city, and the level of music and musicians there is out of this world." He knows exactly what he's talking about -- he had Chris Potter playing on his Manhattan School of Music grad recital.

"But," he continues, "I do think that it is ceasing to be the only place. For a while, and there are still musicians who say this, New York was the only place where you could go and see great music every night, and hear new experimental things and great creative musicians.

"New York definitely changed me as a musician and changed my playing for the better. I played with people who helped me and my music develop and saw some of the best concerts of my life. However, prices are still rising there and the city is already way overpriced. It's extremely hard to make a living as a musician there and most musicians I know are teaching more than they are gigging to pay the bills. Some people still love it and find the hardship worthwhile, but I reached a point in New York where I wasn't enjoying the scene at all anymore.

"If I played a gig, I had just run from teaching two hours away in Westchester and was too tired to even think about the music at the beginning. If I had a session I was stressed about making it to teaching in time. The rent was high, the living conditions bad, and everything just took so much effort that I was starting to reach a point where none of my energy was going into practicing my horn, writing new pieces, or even enjoying the music when I was doing it. Because of this I find it a great relief to be relocating to Europe, and as I talk to friends of mine in New York, (mind you some still love it and will never leave), more and more people say that they have thought about leaving also. Clubs are even starting to shut down there because they can't afford to pay their rent anymore and I think a lot of people are just starting to feel like the stress is too much.

Read the whole thing.

RIP Isaac Hayes

Okay, I know everybody loves "Chocolate Salty Balls" and the soundtrack to Shaft, but damn. Isaac Hayes was a great songwriter. Not as prolific as Smokey Robinson, but Hayes and his songwriting partner David Porter were just as integral to the Stax sound as Smokey was to Motown. American popular music is unimaginable without the songs they penned, especially the Sam and Dave cuts -- "Soul Man," "Hold On I'm Coming," "You Don't Know Like I Know"... these are perfect bits of pop craftsmanship, down to the tiniest details (the twangy guitar intro on "Soul Man" that comes back to trigger the key change, the cup-muted trumpet behind the vocals on "Hold On," the oblique vocal harmonies on "You Don't Know"... ).

So basically, I am in total agreement with Andrew Durkin:

I'd be lying if I said I didn't suspect, with some chagrin, that Hayes will be remembered primarily for the latter phase of his career, and particularly as the epic soul artist who brought us the music from Shaft.

Not that I don't love that music -- even if it did set the template for a lot of cheesy porn soundtracks, and even if it did lay the groundwork for later generations of white comedians who could then counter-exploit the aesthetics of blaxploitation by using its definitive music to make fun of their own lack of cool (everyone from Will Ferrell to Conan O'Brien has toyed with this tiresome trope in some form or other). Obviously that stuff wasn't Hayes' fault.

[…]

Unlike a lot of the other music that ends up in constant rotation / Clear Channel / oldies purgatory, much of this stuff defies exhaustion. These recordings are like little perfectly-constructed perpetual motion machines: they don't wear out. They also demonstrate that just because a piece of music appears simple, logical, and apposite in retrospect -- the sort of thing that makes you exclaim "of course!" upon hearing it -- it does not follow that anybody could have written it. (In some ways, I've been trying to pen something as elegant, true, and basic as "Soul Man" for my entire career, and I haven't even come close.)

See also:

Ta-Nehisi Coates (you already read Ta-Nehisi's blog every day, right?)

I came to Isaac Hayes from at least three angles. Hip-hop took me to his 70s joints which I kept on repeat during my early college years. Then hip-hop sent me to Stax (Marle Marl's "Symphony" to Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle"; Salt and Pepa's "Tramp" to Otis Redding and Carla Thomas's original.) I was down with that for awhile (Sam and Dave covering "Soothe Me", The Barkays "Holy Ghost" etc.) and then I found out that Isaac Hayes had basically built Stax as a composer, years before he became a solo act. I count that as Hayes basically living three times. Once as a composer and producer, once as a solo act in his own right, and then again through hip-hop.

[…]

Still the saddest thing, to me artistically, about Isaac Hayes' death is that it's a reminder that a certain class of black artists--I'm talking James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, George Clinton and maybe ending with Prince--is starting to depart the scene. It's not that these guys are somehow superior to the folks I came up on. They just had so much more leeway. My one hope about music business having to cope with online, is that maybe that sort of broad individualism and experimentalism can make a return.

Beneath The Underdog

Only thing I could do was wear my vintage “Black Moses” T-shirt and head out to a local bar in remembrance and reflect. There, I had to confront frustrations of many bar patrons not knowing what the “Black Moses” T-shirt was in reference to – many thought it was some hot T-shirt from H&M or Abercrombie & Fitch – then deal with annoyance of others reducing him to being the crazed black Scientologist who was the voice of Chef on South Park. If I got lucky, I ran into someone who could reference “The Theme from ‘Shaft’” but that was about it. Soon, I realized that it’ll be too exhausting to really talk about the breadth of Isaac Hayes’ legacy in a room full of debauchery. So I had to just go inward and grapple with my melancholy.

Growing up in Mississippi, which is very close to Memphis, Isaac Hayes represented many things to me. But the one that always stood out is his transformation — that a poor Black person from the segregated South could reinvent himself through art, become an international icon and not lose sight of where he came from. He beat the odds.

Matthew Guerrieri (Soho the Dog)

The big news yesterday, of course, was the death of Isaac Hayes over the weekend. I came to Hayes, like every other white kid I knew, through his soundtrack th Shaft, but I think my favorite song of his ended up being "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymystic,", the nine-and-a-half-minute laid-back epic that's only the third-longest track on his 1969 solo breakthrough album, Hot Buttered Soul. It's the sort of song that, when it comes up on shuffle play, all activity ceases, and I just sit around being an Isaac Hayes fan for ten minutes. I once read an appreciation of the song by some well-known DJ (DJ Spooky? One-half of The Chemical Brothers? The internet isn't helping me out here) who said that he would always spin the song at the end of a long evening, when it didn't seem like anyone else was listening anymore. That gets at what I always found to be one of Hayes' most distinguishing features, the way that, even in the most blazing song, he kept that quality of cool intimacy, like he was leaning in to tell you a particularly juicy secret.

Bill Gibron (PopMatters)

Last Interview (Rena Kosnett - LA Observed)

Ben Sisario (NYT)

Never can say goodbye

RIP Isaac Hayes. Damn.

Hayes played Prospect Park on June 13. Unfortunately, I was otherwise engaged, but everyone I know who saw it attested to its killingness.

UPDATE: Here's video:

So ya wanna dump out yo' trick bag

Kass writes in the comments:

After a Christian McBride concert:

Geoff Keezer - "Is that a Darcy Argue shirt?"

Me - "Yeah"

GK - "That is so hip! I want one of those so I can be that hip!"

You know who else is hip? John Guari, who kindly sent me this pic:

(Photo: Michael Garcia)

Perhaps you, too, harbor a desire to be hipper than Geoff Keezer. (This is understandable, as Geoff Keezer is exceptionally hip.) If so, you can acquire your very own Secret Society T-Shirt from our Swag Page. These are quality silkscreened tees from Hemlock Ink -- not like those cheap-ass CaféPress transfers. And you'll be helping to fund Secret Society-related program activities, like recordings and tours.

A lifetime of devotion

Some days, New York really grinds you down and destroys your will to live.

Today was not one of those days:

Congratulations! You have been selected to receive tickets for a special taping of "Spectacle: Elvis Costello with... Smokey Robinson."

Not even blog-related... as far as I know, this was just because I'm on Elvis Costello's email list and happened to get lucky.

"Spectacle" is a talk show with music (it starts airing on Sundance Channel in a few months). So this was over two hours of geeked-out shop-talk between two genius songwriters, bookended by live performances. Smokey had an inexhaustible supply of great stories, the best of which was about showing up at the Apollo with the Miracles for a show in the group's earliest days. They were too green to know that when you played the Apollo, you had to bring arrangements for the house big band -- which happened to be, that week, Ray Charles's band. But all the Miracles had was onionskin lead sheets for "Bad Girl." The house manager threw a massive fit and wanted "those ignorant Detroit boys" flayed alive, but Ray calmly intervened, asking the (terrified and starstruck) Smokey to play through a chorus of his song at the piano. Then he took over at the piano, started playing the tune like he'd written it, and began dictating an arrangement on the spot -- "Here, saxophones, you play this" (and Smokey proceeds to sing Ray's lines like this all happened yesterday), "trumpets, you play this; trombones, you play this; guitar, you play this. Write that down, okay?"

Costello and the Imposters opened with "Going To A Go-Go," and a few lesser-known Smokey tunes (including "The Hunter Gets Captured by The Game"). After some conversating, Smokey sang Norah Jones's superhit "Don't Know Why" (penned by Jesse Harris) and a cruelly abridged version of "The Tracks of My Tears" with just Steve Nieve on piano.  More confab ensued -- including an embarrassed admission by Costello that the dancing in this video was the Attractions' best effort at some Miracles-style choreography -- and then he and Smokey closed with a close-harmony duet on (of course) "You've Really Got A Hold On Me," which is clearly the definitive obsessive/destructive love song.

After L. and I signed our first lease in the city (just about five years ago now), we wandered down the street to find a bar where we could get ourselves a celebratory drink. As we were anxiously toasting to our new life in NYC, someone put "I Second That Emotion" on the jukebox. I took that as a good omen.

Thank you

Well, the fundraising for our IAJE-killing winter 2008 tour (N.B. we did not actually kill IAJE) has officially concluded, and I'd like to give one final shout-out to all of the individuals who helped make it happen. Last year around this time was when I first decided, "Fuck it, let's take the band on the road and see what happens." What happened was that we played for tremendously supportive crowds, garnered some very positive writeups, laid the groundwork for future excursions, and somehow enticed Tim Hagans into becoming an official co-conspirator. But at the time I had no idea how I was going to pay for any of it -- even the most bare-bones, couch-surfing, car-stuffing, favor-expoiting, goodwill-straining bigband tour in history still costs a whole lot more than it could ever hope to bring in. And so it was, well, terrifying. Especially when the cruel hand of fate denied us basically all of the grants we had been counting on. There was a point (several points, actually) when I was ready to scuttle the whole tour. But thanks to individual donations from you guys -- supporters of the band, readers of the blog -- we were actually able to pull it off.

I am incredibly grateful to the following people:

Lori Kirchen
Jack Brown
David Rothschild
Mwanji Ezana
John Murphy
Gerard Hogan
Michael Bradley
Paul James Birchenough
Christopher Ekman
Richard Kamins
Amy Cervini
Patrick Boyle
Steve Bellamy
Ayn Inserto
Leigh Daniels
Anthony Cammarata
Suzi Beyerstein
Janet Allen
Gord & Nancy Argue

And also to:

David Ryshpan
Caitlin Smith
Jennifer Koopman & John Bickle

There is absolutely no way we could ever have done it without you.

* * * * *

So now that tour and post-tour fundraising has officially wrapped, we have shifted our Fractured Atlas fiscal sponsorship project to long-term support for Secret Society, which allows individual donors to make tax-deductible online contributions, which help ensure that we can keep making this music.

I do have a very exciting, long-awaited major endeavor to announce soon, but in the meanwhile, consider this a friendly reminder that your support is always, always deeply appreciated.

MANDATORY DISCLAIMER GOES HERE: Darcy James Argue's Secret Society is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of Darcy James Argue's Secret Society may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

These beats are out of fashion, this groove is 20 years old

Could it be that David Byrne's notorious Die Soldaten writeup, the post that touched off the latest round of Complexity Wars, was merely a cunning ploy designed to create an online stir in advance of his new record?

No. (This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.)

But you can get a free advance MP3 from the upcoming Byrne/Eno collaboration, Strange Overtones, by going here.

Thoughts? (The lyrics are appropriately meta.)

I answer all your questions but then y'all got to go

Scott Burton, of Glowing Realm, presents the latest installment in his "10 Questions" series, featuring yrs trly.

Previous editions have responses from Matana Roberts and Jeff Parker.

Scott also links to this newly posted YouTube video of "Transit" from our July 9 LPR hit:

Jon Wikan also added another video from that same gig -- here's "Zeno":

A reminder that fancified mixed 'n mastered audio will be available in September.