Darcy James Argue's Secret Society

Jon Wikan in Nicaragua Part 1 (Airplane to Hotel)

Even as we flew above the capital Managua before touching down I knew it would be a wild place. From the air I could see piles of trash that must have been bigger than city blocks with people digging around looking for valuables and food. Roof tops were frequently rust color giving away that they were just pieces of tin thrown over some kind of frame for shelter most of the roads were dirt and not all that smooth looking and I even spotted several horses and even humans towing carriages with people in them. At the airport, we were immediately and impressively, met by an expeditor from the US embassy to help us through the immigration and customs process. They let me through, drums and all with no problems but our keyboardist John Hansen was searched for no apparent reason. Or maybe it was because his keyboard stand, before assembled looked kind of like a makeshift rifle or pipe bomb?

Before even leaving the airport someone from the embassy gave us a quick briefing and explained that during an earthquake in the late 70s the main part of the city was ruined and they just abandon it and build all around the “old city”. That would explain the chaos looking down from the air. The second poorest nation in the region next to Haiti the poverty rate in Nicaragua is at 48% of the population with an infant mortality rate of 27 per 1,000 compared to about 6 per 1,000 in the United States.
As we drove through the capital city to our hotel my camera was clicking away from our van. It was like going back in time 50-100 years. The wild west! Old cars, dirt roads mixed with some paved roads, tin shacks, horses towing carts, the streets were packed with people selling stuff like fruit, cashews, bagged water. Yes people were actually selling little plastic sandwich baggies of water and it was not very clear looking water either. People were gathered around fires build on the sides of the streets, dogs were running wild and kids were begging. Extreme poverty like I have never seen. This even made Brazil, which 31% live under the poverty line, look like New York’s upper east side. Ok , not really but it was noticeable. A particularly sickening moment was driving by a garbage dump type of area with crowds of people, fellow human beings, digging through the garbage. This is all in a country that has made progress since the civil war that ended in the 1990s.
After about 45 minutes of chaos we finally took a turn from the main drag and headed up a hill. The houses went from tin shacks to a bit nicer homes and finally to gated type residences. Definitely not decadent by any stretch of the imagination but what we might call a “middle class” hood with just enough funk mixed in to remind you of where you are and also to give things a bit of spice. We pulled up to our bed and breakfast ran by a more fortunate family; the gates opened and we pulled in. A beautiful colonial type estate with tile floors, nice woodwork, a pool, garden and outdoor sitting area with plenty of wooden rocking chairs to go around and about 12 modest rooms with complimentary wifi in most of the rooms which is a contrast to the $15 USD per night wireless we had in Panama. Our chief bed and breakfast host is very helpful cat named Hose. He spent quite a few years in Jersey while the Revolution was happening so he speaks great English and has a great knowledge of Managua as well. The people in Nicaragua seem very hospitable and would probably give a left arm for a fellow human. Cheers Jon Wikan

Wikan in Panama

Hello all. Things have gone quite smoothly in Panama City Panama. Having to pay $300 excess baggage for 3 drum bags on the way to Panama did not feel all that good on my soul. Even with JAL footing the bill, my frugal "jazz lifestyle" thinking tells me that it is simply wrong for an airline to charge a passenger more than the actual cost of a airline ticket for 75 pounds of drums. Upon arrival in Panama I made the big mistake of taking a giant swig of water from a water fountain. Lucky for me I was relieved to hear that the water is ok in Panama city because the US set up its water facilities for that particular city. Still not a good habit to get into as the Inka Shminkas can get you most anywhere down here if you drink tap water.

That said we arrived in Panama last Wednesday evening to participate in the Panama jazz festival headed up by the maestro or as I call him the mayor of Panama city, Danilo Perez. You may know him for his work with Wayne Shorter or with his own bands; he is doing fantastic things down here. Danilo and his foundation have built this festival from the ground up with the intention of spreading jazz music and educating young under privileged youth from the Central America/South America regions. Some of these kids have only one chance at music education per year and it is here at the Panama festival. In many cases it is a life changing experience. This year is a historical year as the Panamanian government has just recently committed substantial funds to the festival as well scholarships for jazz musicians from Panama to study abroad! This festival has quickly become on of the great prides of Panama along with the famous Panama Canal.
The line up at the festival included jazz groups from the Monk institute, NEC Jazz conservatory, Tia Fuller’s Quartet, Stanley Jordan, The Caribbean Jazz project and Catherine Russell, daughter of the Jazz artist Luis Russell just to name a few, all which were fantastic and well received. There was a fantastic grand finale outdoor concert in the old historic part of Panama city which featured all of the bands from the festival as well as a few others. My personal favorite was a Panamanian group of original Congolese descendants that performed the traditional music and dance from the Congo. Their concert was so killing! Just hand drums singers and dancers. The final concert was free free to the public and was attended by approximately 10,000 people.
At the end of the concert Danilo set up a fantastic dance party for all the staff and performers with a burning local salsa band. I didn’t dance much but did manage to get a much needed dance lesson from one of the locals.

The 2 days following the festival we hung out in Panama for a few days off. On one of the days we went to the Panama Canal, which was just amazing. It is difficult to fathom the Panama Canal until you see a full sized rig go through one of the locks. Paying up to nearly a quarter of million dollars per boat to avoid the costly and time consuming trip around South America, these boats are just awesome in size and clear the canal by just a few feet on each side. These ships are guided by weighted trains with cables attached to the vessels on each side to prevent them from smashing into the sides of the locks. The ships travel through a series of canals that are linked to several lakes that at the highest point end about 85 feet above sea level for a journey of nearly 50 miles via 3 sets of locks. As you can imagine, thousands and thousands of people spent many years building this canal. It is estimated that 27,500 people lost their lives by the time the canal was started by the French in 1880 and finished by the United States in 1914, to give some scope of the project. The canal was for many years operated by the United States but since January 1st 2000 been run by the Panamanian government, thanks to the efforts of president Jimmy Carter and of course inspired by the protests of the Panamanian people.
After the canal tour we hit a cool wildlife preserve. I was amazed at the wildlife from cool looking Parrots, eagles and weird long nosed wild bore looking characters, to white headed monkeys; one of them even managed to slap a can of 7 up out of my hands and share it with its pals. I guess I need to work on my reflexes.
The next stop was an eco hotel in the jungle near the canal. We grabbed a quick espresso and decided to bail on the idea of an over priced tour. Our driver decided we should take matters into our own hands. We took one of the 50 dollar per person tours on our own and drove up to a place called pipeline road. I should have figured that when our driver parked blocking the gate to the entrance road we would be causing trouble but we started walking up the road into the jungle anyways. Sure enough after 10 minutes of walking a parks dept truck cruised by. When the truck came back the other way I humorously asked our driver “ did you block the gate?” He jumped in with the rangers and copped a lift back to the car and caught up with us later.

We walked for some time saw some really cool vegetation and what not but no real action. At some point Laura Johnson, who is the executive producer at Jazz at Lincoln Center and all around good person, mentioned that it was getting dark soon and we should return. I don’t think it was five minutes later that one of our band members noticed that she was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. Of course we left our highly recommended deet spray in the van. On top of that Panama city is of the two places in Panama that has the highest risk of Dengue fever which there is no vaccine or preventative medicine. I will keep you posted on the bands dengue fever status, as it takes a few days to take hold. Thank goodness we were not in Malaria country yet! At least for a few more days, that is. On the way back the driver, John Hansen and I discovered some of these Pig looking animals cruising the jungle so I broke out the big lens for my camera (the donkey). I eventually ended up off the road in the woods chasing some pretty big sounding creature only to be ambushed by a pack of monkeys up in the trees above. I have to say they are pretty humorous creatures. At one point they started launching some pretty big branches at me so I bailed on the off road safari idea. The driver managed to spot them from the road so I got a few pics of them. About 15 minutes had passed and the mosquitoes were even starting to bug me a bit when Laura came running towards us yelling “hey come one were locked out of the van and their eating us alive” ooops…..so we ran back with her to rescue Kelley, Nathan and John. We then headed back to our posh hotel on the beach, “The Miramar intercontinental”. It’s defiantly a nice hotel but to be quite frank, I like more of a bed and breakfast vibe that gives you a chance to mix with the locals. These big “safe” hotels are very wasteful and lack the character that I enjoy not to mention you can’t hardly walk through the lobby without spending money. Eating at these fancy hotels is about 2 to3 times more expensive and not usually as good as local restaurants.

Lessons learned in Panama:

If a concerts starts at 12pm it really means 2 pm

Wear your Deet in the jungle (I know it’s toxic but dengue fever doesn’t sound too pleasant either)

Panama city water is safe to drink

There is no Malaria risk in Panama City

Columbian Hookers are present in most bars
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Stay tuned, our next stop is Nicaragua that promises to be quite a ride. cheers Jon Wikan

Big Fun

Jerry Bowles of Sequenza 21 reviews last night's Capital M hit at the Cutting Room, which I enjoyed tremendously. I should add that while all the players turned in outstanding performances of some fiendishly difficult material, drummer John Hadfield's powerful command of the groove ensured that the rock-oriented pieces actually, you know, rocked. This is how it's done.

Anyway, big ups to Ian Moss & the Capital M gang for a successful and very entertaining gig.

[xposted at Pulse]

Miles to go before I sleep

Okay, so I've spent the past couple of days going back and re-listening to every recording I own of Miles Davis, '71-'75, and am now suitably prepped for the ongoing discussion of this era of Miles's music that started over at Do The Math.

[For those of you who need catching up, The Bad Plus opened with this post on Miles's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I responded here, and they responded to my response here.]

First, though, I want to say how refreshing it is that we're now at the point where we can finally have a real, substantive discussion of this period of Miles's musical output, instead of getting hung up on tiresome knee-jerk reactions to the music's surface qualities. (But just in case anyone out there still thinks that the electric instrumentation, rock-informed beats, and pedal effects automatically invalidate all of Miles's music after 1968, or that he "sold out" by releasing a bunch of dissonant, austere 30-minute epics, well, you might as well stop reading right now.)

I also think it's great that the guys from The Bad Plus are willing to throw the discussion open like this. They gain nothing from taking the stand they did other than the meager pleasures of honest debate, and it's not like they don't already have their fill of controversy as it is. But one of the most interesting aspects of reading of their thoughts on Miles (and of Do The Math generally) is the way TBP's commentary illuminates their own music. Before this, I would have bet you any money that Ethan, Reid, and Dave were huge fans of 1970's-era Miles. The fact that they are not is fascinating, and certainly makes me see their music in a different light. (Not a worse light, I hasten to add. But certainly different.) This is exactly the kind of discussion I think the music blogosphere ought to be all about (he said, without a trace of self-importance).

•     •     •

I might as well lay my cards on the table: I absolutely love Miles's 1970's recordings. I still have vivid memories of the night I first heard Jack Johnson as a young teenager, on CITR's jazz show -- it blew my head wide open.^[1] I love all the subsequent 70's records -- Live-Evil (and the Cellar Door sessions), Big Fun, On The Corner, Get Up With It, Dark Magus, Agharta, Pangaea.^[2] I love the rich textures, the dark atmosphere, the cinematic scope, the long slow burn, the delayed gratification. Probably my favorite sensation in listening to music is the moment where you stop and think back to how the tune began and go: "Wait a minute... how did we get here from there?" This period of Miles is rich with those moments. I love that this music is uncategorizable -- it's not quite jazz (at least, not by the definitions of the day), but it's sure as hell not rock. Miles's bands also sound utterly unlike any of the fusion outfits founded by his alumni -- not the bombastic prog of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, not the breezy weightlessness of Return to Forever, not the infectious hook-based funk of Headhunters, not the synth-pop sophistication of Weather Report. And while all of these offshoot groups have their moments, as far as I'm concerned, Miles's groups were the only 1970's bands to consistently pull off the jazz+rock alchemy. Most of all, I love that 70's Miles is so weird. There's so little genuine weirdness in the jazz canon (Sun Ra, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, some Ornette, some early Monk) that anything that defies expectations as completely as Miles's early electric output deserves a great deal of credit on that basis alone.

As Pat obverved, Miles's music in the 1970's has a lot of affinities with early minimalism. It unfolds slowly, requiring a lot of patience from both the players and the listener. (It also requires a lot of patience for scratchy wah-wah guitars and wall-to-wall congas, which is admittedly not everyone's bag.) The music certainly isn't static -- the grooves do evolve over time, and don't (usually) lack for direction. It's just that the changes are subtle and often take a long time to accumulate. The solos -- including Miles's solos -- tend to be more ornamental than developmental. This is something a lot of people, including TBP (if I read them correctly) object to in this music.  It's a fair objection. But like it or not, the idea that front-and-center improvised solos aren't the only way of advancing the musical narrative is becoming increasingly accepted in contemporary jazz. For instance, as great as the players are on John Hollenbeck's A Blessing -- and that band includes some of the very best improvisers on the scene today -- it's not the solos that stand out in my mind when I think of that record. It's the musicians' selfless contribution to the music itself that makes it such a success. "Okay fine, that's a big band," I hear you saying -- sure, but I could say much the same thing about the Claudia Quintet, or Ben Monder's band, or Kneebody. (Or, I daresay, The Bad Plus.)

This issue of expressive individuality vs. sublimation of individuality into the greater needs of the music is something Dave Douglas blogged about recently. I would love it if Dave saw fit to contribute to this discussion -- especially since he too is a huge fan of 70's Miles, and it would be interesting to see how he squares his commitment to individual expression with the ego-suppressing demands Miles often made of his sidemen during this period.

•     •     •

The challlenge set by TBP is essentially this:

Of all those great players [who played with Miles '71-'75], which of them contributes their BEST PLAYING on any of those sessions?

My response would be that Miles's music in the 1970's wasn't about showstopping individual performances. It's about mood, atmosphere, color, texture, groove, long slow shifts, making you wait for it, and then making you wait some more. (Isn't this what Miles's music has always been about?)

By 1971, Miles had abandoned not only traditional jazz instrumentation, the traditional jazz time feel, and the requirement that everyone in the band have an acoustic jazz pedigree, but he had also let go of the usual head-solo-head framework, replacing it with a minimalist, additive, groove-based method of moving the music forward. This shift requires a radically different approach from everyone in the band. So when TBP ask you to rate Dave Liebman's and Al Foster's work with Miles against their virtuso turns in a more traditional acoustic jazz setting, it seems like they are shifting the goalposts a little. The more important question to my mind isn't whether Miles's sidemen are expressing their individuality, it's whether they are advancing the music. If the music sometimes calls for 20 minutes of snare rustles from Al Foster, so be it.

That said... even though I don't feel the music from this period in Miles's career is primarily about solos or individualistic playing, I'm still up for pointing out some of the outstanding individual performances and great moments to be found in Miles's music circa '71-'75. And though I love the long atmospheric pieces like "He Loved Him Madly" and "Great Expectations" best, I will try to concentrate here on short(-ish) tracks and musical events that pay off even without the benefit of a 23-minute leadup.

To begin, two contrasting, back-to-back tracks from Get Up With It -- "Honky Tonk"^[3] and "Rated X":

"Honky Tonk" -- the skittish groove starts in Herbie's clavinet, and he's quickly joined by Keith Jarrett (on a distorted Rhodes) and John McLaughlin. This funky three-way dialogue goes on for the first minute until Keith plays the three-chord theme. Then the bass and drums join in, but Billy Cobham only plays the barest skeleton of a beat, just some stop-go figures on the hihat. You're dying for the full groove, but when it hits -- almost two minutes into the six-minute tune -- it's actually a different feel (an almost comically downhome blues shuffle) in a different tempo, thanks to a clever metric modulation -- the old quarter note becomes a quarter-note triplet in the new tempo.
Click here to listen to an excerpt from "Honky Tonk"

"Rated X" -- Miles lays down some bitingly dissonant organ chords (that only intensify over the course of the piece), then Al Foster launches into one of the fiercest beats ever played. Okay, so I feel kind of retarded trying to talk authoritatively about the history of drumming while addressing a band that includes Dave King, but seriously -- is that not the genesis of drum'n'bass, right there? Especially with the way Teo brings the band abruptly in and out via his magic "mute" button?
Click here to listen to an excerpt from "Rated X"

"Black Satin" from On The Corner -- this tune has it all: a spacey tabla-and-sitar intro and outro, handclaps, sleighbells, someone whistling in unison with Miles's wah-trumpet, and Jack DeJohnette and Billy Hart on dueling  R-L channel hihats -- how can you not love something this aggressively weird? The groove continues on "One and One" with some great wah-wah bass from Michael Henderson.
Click here to listen to an excerpt from "Black Satin"

Al Foster's Bonhamesque four-bar drum intro to "Moja" from Dark Magus -- welcome to Carnegie Hall, y'all.  Also, check out Dave Liebman's tenor solo on Part 2 of this track -- incredibly heartfelt and beautifully paced. And Al Foster is on fire behind him! I only wish the recorded sound were better.
Click here to listen to the beginning of "Moja"
Click here to listen to Dave Liebman's solo on "Moja"

Check out Pete Cosey's space-age shredding on "Prelude, Part 1" from Agharta, especially the stuff in the breaks. Also, Miles's heartbreakingly fragile entrance at 5:52 of "Maiysha". His wah-wah pedal never sounded more tender than it does here. Sonny Fortune plays some really good flute on this tune as well. Again, though, this is a live concert in dire need of remastering.
Click here to listen to part of Pete Cosey's solo on "Prelude, Part 1"
Click here to listen to Miles's entrance on "Maiysha"

•     •     •

I hope I've at least done a reasonable job of explaining how and why this period of Miles resonates for me. If nothing else, it's been fun to go back into my collection and immerse myself in this music once again.

-----

1. I can even pinpoint the exact moment when my brains hit the wall -- it's early in "Right Off" where John McLaughlin drops to Bb, but Michael Henderson keeps going in E, and Miles decides this bitonal no-man's land would be the perfect spot for him to make his entrance. And it is.
Click here to listen to Miles's entrance in "Right Off"

2. Well, to be perfectly honest, not so much Pangaea. The incredibly halfhearted swing groove at the end of Disc 2 is a definite low point in Miles's recorded output.

3. Okay, I'm cheating a bit already -- while the record wasn't released until 1974, this track was recorded in May of 1970. But it's too good not to mention. The tune also features prominently in the Cellar Door sessions, albeit in a radically stripped-down version with the metric modulation excised.

Trevere

Saxophonist Pat Donaher enters the fray and says a bunch of stuff I'd planned on saying RE: Miles '71-'75 -- especially the comparison to minimalism, which is absolutely correct.

On the other hand, I hope to persuade him that he's badly underestimated TBP, but that's a discussion for another day.

[I have also added Pat to the blogroll, something I would have done some time ago except that I've only just now figured out how to link directly to those %#$!& MySpace blogs.]

One and One

It seems the Bad Plus have thrown down the gauntlet. (We're finally in a blogwar -- does that mean this blog has truly arrived?)

I will attempt to muster a suitable reply. This may take some time -- I've got to prepare for my first lesson with Hollenbeck on Tuesday, amongst other things that need doing. In the meanwhile, why don't you pass the time by playing a few clips from Bob Belden's video collection? Some amazing stuff, including relevant footage of '70s Miles gigs.

See also this great video collection (via Mwanji), and also this Berlin '73 clip (scroll down) courtesy of Paul Tingen, author of Miles Beyond.

[N.B. For some reason, Paul's video file has an extra ".txt" extension at the end, which makes things go all pear-shaped -- but if you download the file to your HD first, then remove the ".txt" from the filename, all is well.]

Agitation

Like Mwanji, I can't bring myself to care much about Miles being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and What It All Means. But Mwanji, more motivated than I am, has at least collected various responses from around the internet for your reading pleasure. And, like him, I am... puzzled by this post from Do The Math.

Their thesis is this: "The success of Miles Davis records and Davis’ resultant stardom is based on the strength of the musicians he played with, not his own trumpet playing or composing."

Well, okay. This true enough, on the surface, although I think it seriously understates the tremendous creative influence Miles exerted on his band. (I also think it sells Miles awfully short as a player, although they go on to praise selected solos.) Obvious points of comparison would be Wayne's recording of "Footprints," or Herbie's recording of "Riot," "Little One," "The Sorcerer," etc, versus the versions they cut with Miles. And as good as those '60s Shorter and Hancock Blue Notes are, do any of them have the unity and well, vibe of a record like Miles Smiles?

The Bad Plus go on to call Miles "the hippest music director in history," which is not a bad way of putting it -- except, I don't think that appellation diminishes his artistry in the slightest! (You could say much the same thing about James Brown, for instance.)

But these are all relatively minor quibbles. As Mwanji notes, the real fighting words are these:

During the ‘70’s, he seemed to lose interest in having the best bands and instead concentrated on becoming a rock star personality.

B'wha? TBP are willing to spot him up until Live-Evil. Of course, there are four different bands represented on that record, but the last one, chronologically, is the Cellar Door lineup -- Gary Bartz, Keith Jarrett, Michael Henderson, Jack DeJohnette, and Airto -- one of the greatest Miles bands ever, with a group dynamic remarkably similar to the classic 60's quintet (especially in terms of the role assigned to each instrument). But is the drop-off in the quality of his bands from 1971-1975 really as dire as they say? And if so, is it due to Miles's ego finally getting the better of his musicianship? Finally, even if we grant, for the sake of argument, less-than-genius sidemen and an increase in rockstar posturing, do the 1970's records stand up regardless?

Secret Society readers are invited to check the session index and judge for themselves, but here's a summarized version:

1971
• Gigs with the Cellar Door lineup, but Leon "Ndugu" Chancler replaces DeJohnette, and Don Alias and Mtume replace Airto.

1972
• Get Up With It sessions with Wally Chambers (harmonica), Cornell Dupree, Michael Henderson, Al Foster, Bernard Purdie, Mtume.
• On The Corner sessions with Dave Liebman, Harold Williams, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Collin Walcott (sitar), John McLaughlin, Michael Henderson, Jack DeJohnette, Al Foster, Billy Hart, Badal Roy (tabla).
• Big Fun sessions with Bennie Maupin, Carlos Garnett, Sonny Fortune, Lonnie Liston Smith, Harold Williams, Michael Henderson, Al Foster, Billy Hart, Badal Roy, Mtume.

1973
• Black Satin etc with Dave Liebman, Reggie Lucas, Pete Cosey, Michael Henderson, Al Foster, Mtume.
• Get Up With It sessions with the above players plus John Stubblefield.

1974
• Dark Magus gig at Carnegie Hall with Dave Liebman, Azar Lawrence, Pete Cosey, Dominique Gaumont, Reggie Lucas, Michael Henderson, Al Foster, Mtume.
• Get Up With It sessions - Sonny Fortune, Pete Cosey, Reggie Lucas, Dominique Gaumont, Michael Henderson, Al Foster, Mtume.

1975
• Agharta and Pangaea with Sonny Fortune, Reggie Lucas, Pete Cosey, Michael Henderson, Al Foster, Mtume.

Whatever you think of records like Get Up With It, On The Corner and the rest -- and these are among my favorite Miles recordings, period -- I just don't see how you can look at the core post-1971 personnel (Dave Liebman, Sonny Fortune, Reggie Lucas, Pete Cosey, Michael Henderson, Al Foster, Mtume) and say Miles wasn't interested in leading good bands anymore. Also, in terms of trumpet chops, in the early 1970's Miles was at the very top of his game, with a security and facility in the high register that had been missing from most of his earlier recordings (as evidenced by the Cellar Door recordings especially).

The 80's are another story, of course, but I don't think that decade is quite as dire ("records that ranged from OK to unlistenable") as TBP would have it, either. I'll step up for Live Around The World anytime -- windchimes and all.

The Dark Prince meets The Purple One

Mwanji has the details.

Also, did anyone see Prince's awesome old-school shredfest on SNL a few weeks back? I wanted to link to the clip, but YouTube has since yanked it.

He Gives Us All His Love

So, okay, I'm way late on this, but Stereogum tells me that Randy Newman has a blog (sort of). Infrequently updated, sure, but endearing in a grumpy-old-man way.

Neil Young doesn’t do stuff like that. I have nothing against epileptics but come on. Neil Young once drew 80,000 people in Italy and he doesn’t speak a word of Italian.

• • •

My father once had dinner with the family and my son Eric brought his girlfriend, Megan. He was meeting her for the first time. After dinner, when Eric left, of course we talked about her. I commented on what a nice girl she was. My dad said he hated her. I couldn’t believe it. I asked him why he felt that way he said that she looked exactly like the kids in this Irish family he knew who were the biggest Jew haters in Elmhurst, Long Island fifty years ago. I thought that was fair.

• • •

If any of you come to a show come back and see me. Unarmed.

• • •

And I have to agree, his nominee for Worst. Record. Ever. is a strong contender.

And then what? After supper? Music? Whispers?

Ethan Iverson on Django Bates.

Shake you very gently by the throat

A reminder that I also blog sporadically at  Pulse -- which, if you haven't checked lately, also has the complete audio from our most recent concert. Also, Joe throws down the gauntlet -- Wynton beware.

Touré Remembered

Anastasia Tsioulcas.

You snatch a tune, you match a cigarette

Stereogum has the MP3 of the legendary Sy Johnson's neon-noir arrangement of "Watching The Detectives" from Elvis Costello's new record with the Metropole Orchestra.

Make a real human feel like a mannequin

Steve Smith on the reunion gig at Fat Cat.

Macaca fuscata

Both jds (Lattitude 44.2 North) and Blackdogred bring a much-needed sense of perspective to the Arctic Monkeys and their seemingly unstoppable hype machine.

jds:

I'm having a hard time understanding the insane buzz surrounding these kids (I believe the lead is 19, thanks Rolling Stone). I like them, but their road to glory is mad redic. For instance, WPSIA,TWIN is the fastest-selling debut in British chart history, with sales of more than 360,000 copies during its first week on the charts (CBS News). And with chart success comes celebrity: two months after the album's release, lead vocalist Alex Turner was declared The Coolest Man On The Planet by NME magazine. Sure, I heard (on NPR of all places) all about how they built buzz for their first release by giving away mp3s, but tell me what "unknown" band isn't doing that? Free mp3s + catchy hooks + "honest lyrics" don't add up to tickets for their upcoming NYC show going for over $150 a piece! Should I mention again that their album was just released in Manhattan yesterday?

Blackdogred:

I still neither like nor dislike the music enough to advocate anything more than trying it yourself, but I do find it interesting that a band making relatively similar and not distinctively (to me) superior music to a whole passel of bands working the same lineage is generating a press buzz aimed at superstarring the band. Almost every review I've read compares the AMs to the same bands and mentions their Sheffield background, which means that reviewers around the world are hearing some superlative quality in the music of The AMs that elevates their music above those bands to which they're compared, but also means that the fact that the AMs come from an urban-poor economic background somehow more deeply authenticates their sound. My guess, and it's a guess only, is that the latter has more oomph, if for no other reason than it grants weight to the genre as a whole - it's not a bunch of upper-middle class college kids playing at angst and anger.

Inside edition

Fellow traveller JC Sanford has a post up on the Pulse blog about conducting the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble. Go read.

I'll meet you in the street

Two new interweb pamphleteers on the blogroll -- Boston-based St. Botolph's Town and San Fransisco's own Standing Room Only. Some great stuff from both bloggers, but allow me to draw your attention to M.C-'s haiku reviews and SBT's somewhat skeptical view of Gollijov's Ayre.

Bonus: M.C-'s take on Matmos's (successful!) attempt to sample gastropodic theremin playing.

The Snob Also Rises

Three (suitably soi-distant) cheers for the return of Amanda's Ask an Insufferable Music Snob feature.

I won't spoil all the good bits, but here's an appertif of sublime IMS-ery:

The kids on this rock list I’m on have totally left me in the dust with their taste. They all talk about albums and artists no one listened to back when I was an IMS: Orange Juice, The Band, The Raincoats, and everyone but everyone loves Neil Young and CCR now. Now, I’ve started listening to Neil Young, ‘On the Beach,’ and a little CCR, and I like it. Are the kids all right, or are they ruining me?—Karl the Idiot

Facetious question. You know you still got a leg up on kids these days. But CCR is definitely cool now, though Neil Young is someone I wouldn’t admit liking unless my only other option was sex with a warblogger.

[With apologies to Scott, who on Monday threatened to revoke my Candian citizenship if I didn't admit to at least some residual affection for Neil's oeuvre. I'll grant that I'd much rather listen to Neil Young (provided Crosby, Stills, and Nash are far, far away) than Leonard Cohen, since at least Neil actually writes, you know, songs. And I thought Neil's score to Dead Man was effective. But that's about as far as I'm willing to go.]

On Beauty

While I'm rounding up, I should also mention Greg Sandow's insightful series of posts wherein he tries to explain why "listen to it, it's beautiful" is a less-than-compelling selling point for people my age:

The young and the beautiful

Footnote to beautiful

Further beauty footnote

Last gasp of beauty

[xposted at Pulse]

Who needs information this high off the ground

For your reading pleasure, the best in recent interweb pamphleteering:

Alex Ross (The Rest Is Noise) commands you to Ignore Mozart. (Or at least, that's what his post was initially titled. He has since revised it to the somewhat more accurate but less punkrock Celebrate Mozart by ignoring Mozart.

Also, Alex Ross's first-call sub, Justin Davidson, has some thoughts on the new Hearst tower, which is incidentally the first major NYC building I've seen during every phase of its construction.

Composer-critic Kyle Gann's PostClassic is of course required reading for anyone interested in composition, but his recent posts charting the history of Metametrics (loosely: non-academic post-minimalist polymetric music) have been especially strong, complete with audio clips and score excerpts. Check out Metametrics: Origins, Metametrics: Origins 2, and Nested 3:2 Addendum… and take notes, because this will be on the midterm.

While you're at it, check out this profile of Kyle Gann and fellow composer Steve Layton, on life after minimalism. Be sure to listen to the included audio clips from both composers' works -- Gann's "Faith" is killing.  (And I say that as someone who normally can't stand choral works.)

Mwanji Ezana (be.jazz) comments on the recent NYT piece on the one-year anniversary of the Jazz at Lincoln Center compound.

Steve Smith (Night After Night) on new "it" composer Osvaldo Golijov and his chamber opera Ainadamar (which just wrapped up at Lincoln Center. There's more to come, though.)

The Bad Plus (Do The Math) talk Art Ensemble of Chicago.

Sasha Frere-Jones discovers chessboxing. (Incidentally, who was the critic who once compared listening to Wayne Shorter to getting beat up by a chess player?)

David Ryshpan is a talented young piano player I met at The Madness. He has a worthy new blog, Settled in Shipping, which you should read. Posts so far include his excellent diaries from The Madness and an ambitious piece on music and linguistics.

Finally, via jds (Latitude 44.2 North), a helpful list of 2005's Most Loathsome People in America. Any list that contains Johnny Damon, Thomas Freidman, the Discovery Institute's Bruce Chapman, Michelle Malkin, and Pat Robertson is okay by me.

[xposted at Pulse]

There's a party in my mind

David Byrne has a blog now?

Wait… David Byrne has had a blog for almost two years already?

Who knew?

Well, uh, clearly The Bad Plus knew, damn their eyes. But they also link here, so how can you stay mad?

Information Police

Must-consume content:

• Ethan Iverson talks to Billy Hart about the tragic, infamous death of Lee Morgan.

•Mwanji Ezana on Jazz and Indie Rock.

• Kyle Gann on Creativity and Chronology.

• Greg Sandow on Art and Entertainment.

(An aside -- in his post, Sandow mentions that he asked his Juilliard students to come up with an example of something entertaining that isn't even marginally artful. I would have to quibble with the example they came up with -- Kobayashi is a true artist indeed. The more obvious answer would be taking drugs. Or, better, directly stimulating the brain's pleasure centers.)

And you cruise to the crews like connect the dots

I've finally been able to make my usual rounds 'round my usual corner of the information superhighway in an effort to get caught up. Damn, there's been some great material posted lately. In case you missed it the first time:

Dave Douglas kicks things off with a must-read post about the collision of musical worlds:

The perception of time is vastly different. I don't really mean "swing" versus "straight eighth" feels, although that is an important area that has been addressed thoroughly. I mean it in two other ways: one is the perception of elapsed time (minutes and seconds), the other is the amount of flexibility in relation to a pulse, and the sense of responsibility to uphold that relationship. If that sounds abstract or complicated, it shouldn't.

In the first case: an improviser has a different experience than someone who is reading bars and beats. The perception of the passing of time is radically different, even if they end up in the same place. There is a magic, an alchemy, that occurs with seasoned improvisers that bends the passage of time in all kinds of ways, speeding it up, slowing it down. On the other hand, great contemporary classical players have a subtle and ingrained sense of time because they are asked to follow scores with harrowing specificity. There is great richness in the imaginative blending of these two skills.

In the second case, ensembles (in each country, each city, each string quartet...) have their own relationship to an objective pulse (metronome). How much behind or in front of the beat the band plays becomes responsible for their identity. That may seem obvious -- a simple rehearsal would straighten out any differences. But there's something else in this, and that is our assumptions about "responsibility." I tend to feel that in any great ensemble, each player bears equal responsibility to maintain the beat -- not let it sag or rush. But there are as many ideas about this as there are musicians. Vive la difference. Jazz players often rely on the drummer, whereas classical players rely on the conductor. These days most pop musicians rely on the computer. I'm not saying there's a best way. What I'm saying is that a friction arises when you bring the groups together, and there is an exciting heat in that.

Obviously, this is an issue of great concern for us in Pulse  both because the musicians involved habitually operate in very different spheres (classical, pop, jazz, Broadway, avant-garde, "other") and therefore have very different ideas/assumptions about where to place the time, and even about how much agreement is required. This is even more of a challenge exciting friction because Pulse doesn't have a traditional drum set player to lay down the law, so to speak. I will have more to say about this in a few days' time over on the Pulse blog.

Douglas's post reminded me of something Kyle Gann wrote a while back on classical and postclassical approaches to time, meter, and rhythm. This passage should give you some idea of the kind of rhythmic issues we "pro-collision" musicians often have to grapple with, especially when collaborating with classically-trained musicians with little or no experience outside that world:

During Bard's Janacek festival a couple of years ago, I became rather impressed with that composer's textural and tonal originality, especially upon realizing that I had always thought of him as a 20th-century composer and he was actually born in 1854. So awhile later, browsing at Patelson's in New York, I ran across the sheet music to Janacek's On an Overgrown Path […] and picked it up. […] So at an odd moment I finally decided to listen to the new ECM recording of the piece with András Schiff while following the score. It's a lovely recording - except that Schiff can't handle the 5/8 meters that come up in a couple of movements. […]

This wouldn't merit mentioning if it weren't so common. Classical musicians are taught early in life that a measure is a rhythmic unit, divided into two or three parts, and if divided into more, then divded according to a symmetrical heirarchy: 2 groups of 2, 2 groups of 3, 3 groups of 3, and so on - or not and so on, because that's about it. Of course, quite early in the 20th century - On an Overgrown Path is a hundred years old - composers opened up a new conception of meter, as a quantity of equal or even unequal units. Musicians accustomed to playing composers as long-dead as Stravinsky and Copland are used to negotiating 5/8 and 7/8 meter, but it's surprising how many professional musicians have never added the new paradigm to their repertoire. They recognize it and think they know how to do it, but when they start to play, their body-need for a regular beat, like Schiff's, overrules their visual cognition.

Gann has a followup post that talks about rhythmic issues in totalist music ("totalism" is, roughly, a movement of pro-collision, musically omniverous postminimalist composers):

In particular, totalism was, almost centrally, concerned with using conventional musical notation as a language with which to generate a feelable and performable rhythmic complexity. Some of the simple polyrhythms (usually 3-against-2 or 4-against-3) embedded in Steve Reich’s and Charlemagne Palestine’s music, as well as the irregular phrase rhythms found in Phil Glass’s early work, suggested that minimalism’s stasis might support even greater rhythmic complexity. Of course, the previous few decades had been awash in rhythmic complexity, but mostly of a conceptually abstract kind: the polyrhythms of Elliott Carter, Stockhausen, et al usually avoided articulating a steady beat for any period long enough to register tempo contrasts. Inspired by minimalism, rock, and world music, the totalists wanted a music of steady beats that allowed the listener to focus on tempo contrasts in a sustained way. Nancarrow’s player piano music offered a model, but his music generally wasn’t performable, nor was his emphasis often on sustained steady beats. What the totalists wanted was a new kind of ensemble performance that retained minimalism’s clear, doubled lines and motoric rhythm, but also offered a perception-stretching simultaneity of rhythmic layers, usually within the confines of comfortable live performance.

These are related issues, I think. There's a difference between being able to accurately execute Elliott Carter's thorny time signatures and complex metric modulations, and being able to feel them in relation to some underlying pulse. These are, in fact, two almost completely different skills, as composer Art Jarvinen alludes to in his comments on Gann's blog:

Almost the whole group had a couple of advantages over most conventional players such as orchestra section players. We had played a LOT of Reich, as well as Michael Gordon, Andriessen, etc. We cut our teeth on music made from these sorts of schemes. And of extreme importance I would add, is that most of us played in rock/jazz/pop bands, and understood groove as a collective thing, not just accuracy within one's own part. The one time we had some difficulty getting the piece to work was when we broke in a new keyboardist. Fabulous player, but zero pop music experience. Even played "accurately" the groove wasn't happening. So we had a sectional with just bass and keyboard, with clarinetist Jim Rohrig coaching the keyboardist on feel, not counting. It all came together again pretty quickly after that.

"Feel, not counting." Something that is so completely, intuitively obvious so as to go without saying to virtually every jazz and pop musician on the planet, but, as Jarvinen discovered, there a lot of very accomplished classically-trained musicians who are capable of playing highly complex rhythms with incredible accuracy but absolutely no feel for what they're playing.

This, in turn, reminds me of this small diatribe from Do The Math:

The whole-scale hijacking of Piazzolla by classical musicians around 5-10 years ago was an aesthetic scandal of gigantic proportions. Kremer wasn't the worst offender at that time, and we really will forgive him anything, but his young pianist that night at Carnegie was beyond belief. You can't learn folkloric rhythm in a conservatory--not yet, anyway.

One of the many pleasures of Pulse is working with string players like Christian Howes and Sarah Bernstein, who combine conservatory chops with a deep real-world grasp of rhythms folkloric, euphoric, and otherwise. They are -- like us -- colliders by nature.

"If you know what you want why not just write it?"

Dave Douglas has an excellent essay up at the Greenleaf Music blog about integrating composition and improvisation. Go read.

Stick a fork in it

As I alluded to earlier a lot of people really hate Pitchfork. (For the uninitiated, Pitchfork is a widely read and influential online indie rock mag.)

I cop to being a semiregular Pitchfork reader, mainly because while I'm not exactly a staple on the indie rock club scene (I have my hands full just trying to hit a fraction of the jazz gigs I want to see), I remain ever-curious about what y'all are listening to, good and bad. So I'll occasionally stop by PF to see whatever they're hyping this week and maybe give it a taste -- I've found a lot of interesting music that way. Now it's true that the reviews don't often give a very good idea what the music they're describing actually sounds like. And it's also true that many of their reviewers are kids who don't really seem to know anything about music recorded before they were born. And sure, the prose is notoriously overwrought to boot. And, yes, I know they are every bit as beholden to their advertisers as mainstream dead tree publications like, say, Spin (or Down Beat). And okay, sure, I admit that howlers like this are par for the course over there:

Impulse! Records had been defunct for more than a quarter century.

So… wait a minute, why the hell do I bother with Pitchfork?

Over on this thread, Jon Abbey (a Pitchfork-hater) recommends I Hate Music (a Bagatellen-associated forum), but the musical focus is completely different and (as another contributor to the thread pointed out) bulletin boards aren't really conducive to skimming. There's also Stylus, Dusted and PopMatters, which are all arguably better than Pitchfork, but not that much better. (For instance, this Dusted review of the Either/Orchestra's Live in Addis is one of the most horribly misguided reviews I've ever read, easily as bad as the worst of Pitchfork.)

Now, I know there's no shortage of indie rock-oriented blogs out there, but that's precisely the problem -- there are far too many to wade through unaided and find the ones that are actually worthwhile. So, um, suggestions welcome.

Meanwhile, I think I'll start with JVS's excellent Vermont-based blog Latitude 44.2N. His review of the Calexico+Salvador Duran+Iron and Wine show at the Spectrum makes me both nostalgic for Montreal and damn sorry I couldn't make the NYC dates on this tour -- especially since I won't be able to catch Calexico's gig at Joe's Pub on Jan 24th either. Sigh.

Blog Against Racism Day

Chris Clarke hosts. Lots of thoughtful posts trackbacked in the comments there. Check it out.

Speaking of The Bad Plus

Their Big List of band/author connections is up.

Indescribable… indestructible… insatiable…

Many thanks to Mwanji Ezana at be.jazz for the link. B