Darcy James Argue's Secret Society

War is over, if you want it

I have a piece up at NewMusicBox today, "Dispatches From the End of the Jazz Wars."

Affinity

Bill Evans makes people a bit crazy. He is, unquestionably, the most influential white musician in jazz history, and this has, at times, made it difficult to disentangle his symbolic status from his actual musical legacy. Surely this is part of the reason why Brad Mehldau kind of flips out every time someone compares him to Bill Evans, or why the 1961 Village Vanguard recordings are viewed with almost religious adulation ("This is it. The breakthrough. The pinnacle of spontaneous musical communication")^[1], or why Stanley Crouch takes such evident delight in denigrating Evans as a "punk" and "all Debussy" and claims he "didn't understand jazz rhythm."

Evans is too complicated a musician to be reduced to one of the two prevailing stereotypes -- "greatest genius in jazz" (because he "elevated" it by making it more "classical") or "painfully introverted, non-swinging nebbish" (because he was too "classical"). One of the most clear-headed Bill Evans advocates I've encountered is André White, who was one of my teachers at McGill. It's not just that he's spent many years studying the Evans discography -- he's hardly alone there -- but he is also equally accomplished as both pianist and drummer, and as such he has unique and profound insights into Bill's approach to the time and his relationship to rhythm sections over the years.

So I was very happy to see this post over at Peter Hum's blog, Thriving on a Riff, which has extensive commentary from André. There's lots of great stuff there, from his comments on Bill's late-period trio with Philly Joe Jones -- "[Jones] didn't need to adapt his style to play with Bill, and I think that's why some people respond negatively to him, because he plays his way no matter what. I'm sure that's what Bill loved about him" to a qualified defense of Eddie Gomez: "Eddie gets bad-mouthed by a lot of musicians too, because of intonation, and his busy-ness. But really, his style is so unique, and he is such a great improviser that these concerns should be mumbled quietly in the background."

Read the whole thing.

André is the person who persuaded me to listen to late-period Bill Evans with an ear towards the masterful rhythmic displacements embedded into his fluid lines. One of my favorite example of this is Bill's solo on "Nobody Else But Me," from 1977's I Will Say Goodbye. I still don't think I will ever exactly love late-period Bill Evans, but thanks to André I have a much deeper appreciation of its virtues.

Bill Evans is a tangent in Ethan Iverson's recent five-part Tristano epic. Ethan writes:

All In the Mix:  I like to hear a black bass player get in Bill Evans’ way and be a funky counterpoint to his impressionism more than I like to hear Evans with the long line of white virtuoso bassists he would soon specialize in. (Not that I don’t admire Scott LaFaro, Eddie Gomez, and Marc Johnson, but my preferred LaFaro, Gomez, and Johnson records are somehow never with Bill Evans!)  My favorite Evans is the comping he did with Miles Davis and Oliver Nelson with Paul Chambers on bass, my favorite Evans trio record is Everybody Digs Bill Evans with Sam Jones on bass, and my absolute favorite Evans piano solos are on this Half Note date with Garrison on bass.  (Of course, there are white bassists who play more in that tradition, too;  I would have loved to have heard Charlie Haden or Dennis Irwin play with Evans. Teddy Kotick on the very first Evans record sounds great, too.)

In light of this, I'd like to point out an often-overlooked recording featuring Bill Evans with a hard-charging black rhythm section: Charles Mingus's East Coasting (rec. August 1957). Yeah, that's right -- Bill Evans with Mingus and Dannie Richmond! (Clarence Shaw, Jimmy Knepper, and Curtis Porter round out the sextet.) It is fascinating to hear Bill adapt his approach to fit the needs of Mingus's music -- "Guess the piano player on 'West Coast Ghost'" makes a great blindfold test.

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1. I've always been a bit perplexed by this -- to my ears, Portrait In Jazz is clearly a much stronger and more exciting representation of the Evans-LaFaro-Motian trio.

Gravity on me never let me down

Did y'all catch Matana Roberts being interviewd on WNYC's Soundcheck last week? It's a good interview, with some nice commentary on her recent CD The Chicago Project. If you missed the broadcast, you can listen here.

During the interview, the seemingly inevitable "women in jazz" question came up. This isn't really a topic that lends itself to radio-friendly soundbite answers -- Matana rightly points out that there are a lot of first-tier female horn players on the jazz scene right now, but for the more fully-realized version of her thoughts on gender and music, you should check her new video blog -- I am not yet ready to use the word "vlog" in earnest.

Yes, the video is split into four quadrants of Warholian colors -- if that bugs you, you can always, you know, avert your eyes and listen to the words.

Matana's new (or new to me, at least) drummerless trio GRACE (Gabriel Guerrero, piano; Kevin Tkacz, bass) is at the Jazz Gallery on May 31.

Also at the Jazz Gallery, this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday -- Henry Threadgill's ZOOID, a sextet that was first unveiled on the 2001 disc Up Popped The Two Lips. The band still features guitarist Liberty Ellman and cellist Dana Leong, but the 2008 edition adds a few new players to the mix, including the fearsome Stomu Takeishi on electric bass.

If you're not planning on catching this gig, I'm honestly not sure why you are reading my blog.

Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises, and you're constantly getting fucked

I am very glad that Christopher Bird is around to explain these things to me. Otherwise, I might be tempted to believe that this movie getting greenlighted was the consequence of someone losing a very expensive bet.

I hate your blog. Your recipe for vegan eggnog is stupid.

(Yes, this is the second time I've stolen from that MC Frontalot song for a post title, but look -- genius is genius, all right?)

Time Out New York's cover feature this week is a piece exploring the sometimes contentious interrelation between Big Media arts critics and the growing network of Artists With Blogs and Bloggers Who Write About Arts. The piece itself is actually very bloggy -- after an introductory "post" by Michael Friedson, he turns it over to a bevy of commenters, including some of my favorite artsbloggers -- Tweed & sharkskin girl of the performance art blog Obscene Jester, and Isaac Butler, theatre director and proprietor of the vibrant theatre blog Parabasis.

[A digression: Isaac and I met cute -- while we were waiting for the F train one day a few years back, Isaac recognized Lindsay from her blog photo and introduced himself to us both. Later, he ended up using a couple of Secret Society tunes in a play he directed, Talk of the Walk-Up. And by some strange coincidence, one of the actors in the cast turned out to be the paralegal who had handled my latest O-1 Visa application.]

Anyway, yrs trly was amongst the bloggers contacted for this piece, and here's the bit they quoted:

Darcy James Argue, editor, music-and-culture blog Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society
One charge we’ve all heard leveled at blogs is that they are “all about the blogger.” The people making this accusation generally seem to think this is a very bad thing, but I’m not so sure.… When you follow someone’s blog, you tend to get a much more vivid sense of the writer’s values and priorities than you get from reading a traditional review. I think this is much healthier than passively accepting someone’s verdict because they happen to write for The New York Times.

Dude, I'm an editor now? Sweet! (Wait, that doesn't mean I have to start proofreading before I hit "Publish Now" from now on, does it?)

I'm also honored to have made the list of "trusted blogs," as it will make for a much more dramatic reversal when I inevitably betray that trust in a blatant sell-out.

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Live around the world

What's the most important thing in comedy and essays about the unbearable whiteness of indie ro...?

Timing.

On any given night in an American rock club you can hear bands like Gogol Bordello, Man Man, Beirut and Balkan Beat Box playing odd-metered songs drawing on the rhythms of Eastern European Gypsy music. You might encounter Antibalas or Vampire Weekend riffing on African sounds, Dengue Fever making psychedelic Cambodian pop or a D.J. like Diplo spinning Brazilian funk. On the recent “Kala,” a contender for the year’s most exciting pop album, the British-Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A., who works from Brooklyn, draws on Indian, African and West Indian sounds. The folk-rocker Devendra Banhart creates fusions with Mexican and Brazilian musicians on his recent CD, “Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon.” And the veteran musical adventurer Bjork toured this year with a West African percussion troupe and Chinese pipa virtuoso.

Does this mean Devendra Banhart deserves a higher SFJ score than SFJ himself is willing to award?

And again with the curious omissions -- where the hell is Calexico? Ironically, that band decided to take a break from their signature Southwestern noir soundworld just as "world music" becomes the Next Big Thing in indie rock. Talk about timing.

It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife

The Bad Plus (yes, all three of them, this time) have written a post that has surely been brewing since they started blogging, in which they defend their choice of cover tunes against widespread accusations of... [sotto voce] irony:

With the rare exception, TBP doesn't choose to improvise on music written from 1920 to 1965.  Instead, we find it really interesting to search for ways to make rock, pop and electronica songs vehicles for contemporary improvisation. One reason that this material is not "standard" is that you can't call "Iron Man" at a jam session and pull off a mediocre interpretation of it the way you can with "All the Things You Are." There simply isn't a common language for it.

But just because the non-original songs we play can't be called at a jam session isn't the reason 10 English critics think it's a joke.  Why do they think it is a joke?  There are two possible reasons:

A)  The original music itself is a joke:  in other words, Nirvana, Blondie, Aphex Twin, ABBA, Neil Young, The Police, David Bowie, Burt Bacharach, Tears for Fears, Black Sabbath, Pixies, Vangelis, Rush, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Radiohead, Bjork, The Bee Gees, and Interpol is just inferior and not at the level of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood.  Implied is the phrase "rock is not worthy of the jazz tradition."

B)  The way we play the covers appears like parody or at least highly ironic.

Both are wrong.

Read the whole thing.

Do The Math doesn't have comments, but I do, and I'm rather curious what people think of this post. I would encourage everyone to check it out in its entirety, then return here to share your thoughts.

I actually have quite a lot to say about this, and when I have more time, I will probably follow up with some commentary, but for the moment I'm more interested in your take.

But perhaps it's not tipping my hand too much to mention that I, too, have previously blogged about the frequently dodgy lyrics that characterize much of the so-called Great American Songbook.

I also think it's worth considering why The Bad Plus's covers have become such a lightning rod for critical scorn, which is something I alluded to in my review of their double-bill with Jason Moran last year. It's not at all uncommon anymore for jazz musicians to play covers of post-Great American Songbook tunes, but for some reason, The Bad Plus (unlike, say, Jason Moran or Brad Mehldau) seem to attract particular scorn for this.

Baby can you read my mind?

In this thread at be-jazz, I called for Norah Jones to embrace her inner indie rocker. Now she's gone and covered Arcade Fire's "Ocean of Noise." It's good, too.

[Via Stereogum.]

UPDATE:

Naturally, it's also on YouTube (though the sound is much, much worse -- it looks like someone just pointed their video camera at the TV):

Words words words

The blogosphere's favorite newlywed has not one but two writeups of co-conspirator Sam Sadigursky's new disc, The Words Project -- one for the blog,  one for the day job. Not-entirely-unjustified fears of the jazz+poetry genre are dispelled, and Sam earns comparisons to the poetic projects of Fred Hersch Frank Carlberg, and even Steve Lacy, and on the blog, is juxtaposed with a review of David Garland's latest.

Sam wrote about the challenges of working with poetry in a piece for All About Jazz back in June. (I can attest from personal experience that Sam is not kidding when he admits that prior to embarking on this project, he did not tend to listen to song lyrics attentively.)  I just got my copy of this disc the other day, so if I ever start talking about CDs on this blog again, I may have a few words of my own to add.

Heavy Metal Fiberglass

I don't know about this game, but I'd totally buy Glockenspiel Hero.

[Via Molly.]
 

2112

This thread over at Norbizness's prompted me to ask a question that's been on my mind a lot these past few years: when did odd meter indie rock become cool? Seems like everyone's doing it now. Here's a good one I hadn't heard before:

This is seemingly without any critical rehabilitation of your Yes, your Rush, your Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. (The exception is King Crimson, which has always been the prog band it's okay to like.) For a very long time, doing any odd-meter stuff at all meant you were automatically lumped in with those bombastic seventies show-offs. But fairly recently, it's become cool for bands who wouldn't be caught dead listening to "Jacob's Ladder" to play in tricksy time sigs that used to be the exclusive province of the Neil Peart fan club.

Of course, this is all old hat for jazz players -- non-4/4 meters are ubiquitous in current jazz, and have been since at least the mid-1990's. (Not everyone is happy about this.) But I wonder what has changed, so that people are suddenly willing to embrace odd-meter grooves even on otherwise straightforward indie rock songs?

Uncontrollable notes

I didin't know Flea was a band geek in high school either, but it's not that surprising -- he had to develop his appetite for flashy virtuosity (and the chops to back it up) somewhere, and that's not something he would have gotten from the early eighties LA punk scene. But anyway, good on him for stepping up with this:

After sitting by chance beside Fairfax's music teacher at a Knicks game in New York several years ago, the rocker decided to revisit his alma mater -- and found its music program decimated by budget cuts: "Everything was gone. I couldn't believe it," he says. "When I went, you could pick any instrument. You want to play in an orchestra? No problem. When I went back, it was a volunteer teacher, a couple of acoustic guitars. It was this shell of this thing that was still alive while I was there."

Flea says he put up "a few hundred thousand dollars" to open the Silverlake Conservatory with high school friend-turned-music teacher Keith Barry, who is the school's dean.

Flea actually teaches there when he's in town, and apparently his trumpet chops are still strong enough to allow him to give lessons on that instrument in addition to bass. This almost makes me want to forgive him for inflicting Jewel on us.

All my tubes and wires and careful notes and antiquated notions

Look, I thought we were all agreed that you, the readers of this blog, would tell me about stuff like this. Thomas Dolby -- who was the best thing about last night's Ethel Fair -- has a blog. In fact, he's had it for almost a year now. His most recent post folds in Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Marvin Gaye, the Grammys, and YouTube, and you need to go read it right now.

El público

I'm not exactly what you would call a fan of opera (sorry, Steve), but Ainadamar rocks hard and I was glad to see it get the Grammy nod. Most classically-oriented types have already made up their mind about "it" composer Osvaldo Gollijov one way or the other, but if you're new to the party, this interview is an excellent place to start.

And underneath the arcade, details collide

Who says schadenfreude is bad for the soul?

The band onstage included two French horns and two violins, building arrangements toward the orchestral. Yet even when the music sounded triumphal, as it did in “Intervention” — with pipe-organ chords, a martial beat and horns suggesting fanfares — the words said otherwise: “Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home/Hear the soldier groan, ‘We’ll go at it alone.’ ”

Not that it was easy to make them out. A better audience question might have been “Why the Judson Church?” — an elegant space with a long artistic history and awful acoustics for a 10-piece, full-tilt rock band. In the bass-heavy room, the drums just about steamrolled the voices and upper-register instruments. For a band as careful about its textures as Arcade Fire is, choosing the church was a mistake.

The band has three more NYC dates May 7-9 (venue TBA). No word if the pikers at tickets.com will handle the sales for that show as well.

You can punk the skunks of freedom with your jeweled Etruscan knife

I'm a wee bit late on this, as I was in the middle of something when it was originally published, but this piece on Lee Hyla in the Boston Globe is outstanding:

"I think I was having such a hard time because I knew all these musics were equally important to me, and I couldn't find a way to reconcile them," Hyla said. Minimalism was one obvious solution in the air at the time, but for Hyla, this pop-inflected repetitive language lacked a basic harmonic tension that he saw as essential. He was seeking a blend of uptown and downtown influences at once more edgy and rigorous. He longed to capture the anarchic spirit of punk rock but his ear was too sophisticated to simply quote guitar riffs or crank up the volume of his string quartets.

Finally the dam broke in 1984, when he wrote a piece called "Pre-Pulse Suspended" for 12 instruments. "I was able to clarify how the energy of rock 'n' roll could come into notated classical music, how to get that energy unencumbered with extra intellectual baggage. The intellectual stuff is all still there, but it had shed its weight."

Lee was a tremendous teacher -- if I have any insight into Varèse, it's entirely due to Lee's influence -- and while I'm sorry (for their sake) to learn he's leaving NEC at the end of this semester, I wish him the best of luck in his new gig at Northwestern. I know he'll enjoy being close to the fertile Chicago improv scene, but I also hope the guys from that crowd manage to slip past the gates of the ivory tower and come check out Lee's stuff, which is always thoroughly killing.

Lee is the most down-to earth academic composer I've ever met. He's got this quiet, unassuming voice, but in class he'd just casually drop these incredibly penetrating observations about the music under discussion that would turn your head around for the rest of the day. He could talk just as authoritatively and passionately about John Lennon and Neil Young as he could about Elliott Carter and Stefan Wolpe. He is incredibly supportive of his students, one of the rare comp teachers who doesn't try to force the kids into a particular mold, but instead tries to help them acquire the tools to express whatever it is that they're trying to express... and maybe, along the way, open them up to some sounds and ideas they hadn't previously considered.

When I was at NEC, there was a bit of a weird vibe between us jazz composers and many of the "legit" comp majors -- I don't think it was outright animosity, just a little of this going on (on both sides, for sure) -- but Lee never distinguished between us, and in fact seemed genuinely happy to have a bunch of unruly, opinionated, and often flaky jazz composers crash his orchestration class. The Globe article mentions a few send-off concerts, including the official one next week, and if I can get free, I'm going to try to Fung Wah it out to Boston to catch the hit.

UPDATE: I think I will also take the opportunity to point you to this piece on Hyla, by listen.'s Steve Hicken. Steve is one of the guys who first hipped me to Hyla's music (long before I ever even considered going to NEC), back in the glory days of Salon Table Talk. Make sure you read all the way to the bottom, including this footnote:

15 In an April 14, 2004 e-mail Hyla writes:

I have a small footnote to add to that. I felt that at that time, some of us were starting to revolt against the idea of the composer as academic, which in the 70's was an overwhelmingly shared belief. When I left school after receiving a masters degree (and not following through with a doctorate) I was told by many composer friends that I was committing career suicide. I didn't pursue teaching positions and was academically unaffiliated with any institution from 1978-1992- something that I believe allowed me to re-claim my own compositional voice. During that time I drove a truck, worked in a bookstore, drove a cab, and managed to pay low rent. Starting in '84 I got lucky with a string of grants and commissions and worked exclusively as a composer until '92 (aided enormously by the low rent factor). At that point I felt it was safe to go back into the teaching world, since I felt more clear about who I was as a composer. Just thought I'd mention that aspect, since it was so important to me at the time.

You don't even make the list

The results from Idoloator's Jackin' Pop -- the massive "year's best" meta-poll of music critics (specifically, these ones), intended as an alternative to the Village Voice's venerable Pazz and Jop in the post-Christgau era -- are now up. David is right, the ability to sort the results by demographic is incredibly entertaining, as is the "Enthusiasm 40" -- like Pazz and Jop, Jackin' Pop is a weighted poll, and critics can give more weight to some choices than others.

Here's the top ten albums overall:

1. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain (1338 points in 125 votes)
2. Ghostface Killah - Fishscale (1247 points in 118 votes)
3. The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America (1073 points in 95 votes)
4. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury (1057 points in 102 votes)
5. Joanna Newsom - Ys (883 points in 84 votes)
6. Bob Dylan - Modern Times (749 points in 70 votes)
7. Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere (623 points in 61 votes)
8. The Knife - Silent Shout (607 points in 56 votes)
9. Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (588 points in 58 votes)
10. Belle & Sebastian - The Life Pursuit (586 points in 54 votes)

I remain thoroughly transfixed by #1 (I forced Ethan I. to listen to "A Method" when he came over before Xmas) -- it might be the most compelling indie rock album I've heard since Funeral, and I really need to blog about it at length at some point.

I've heard some killing individual cuts from #2, #3, and #4, but haven't gotten around to obtaining the albums yet, though I'm most excited about #3, which from the sounds of it is a fun record. And they have the Anti-Social Music connection, which is very cool.

Much respect for #5, the unlikeliest indie rock darling ever. You would think this record would be right up my alley. I love harp -- in fact a few years ago, I joked with my friend Travis that harp was going to be the next big thing in indie rock. I love long-form through-composed songs. I love Steve Albini's engineering skills, and Van Dyke Park's orchestrations are to die for. Newsome's quirky, unpredictable, fully-committed vocals keep things from getting unbearably twee. (Sometimes.) But this record does absolutely nothing for me. While I'm very appreciative of the way Newsome has broadened the scope of the musical conversation, especially online, I don't want to hear any of her many supporters use the word "pretentious" to disparage anyone ever again. Not Tori Amos, not Meatloaf, not Yes, not even Sting. No, not even when he grabs for the damn lute. I mean it, now.

I'm not a Dylan-hater, but I have to confess I have very little interest in #6.

#7 is better than the anti-Gnarls backlash would have you believe, but contra Klosterman's "auteur" idiocy, many of the weaker tracks survive purely on the strength of Cee-Lo's vocals.

#8 -- I evidently slept on this band this year. I've barely heard of them, and have no idea what they're about.

I like Neko better as a New Pornographer, but #9 proves she does what she does better than just about anyone else. And if we're comparing occasionally over-precious Renaissance Faire-styl'd lyricis, I'll take Neko over Joanna anytime.

Belle & Sebastian is a band I have no particular objection to, but find it hard to get excited about, and nothing I've heard from #10 has done much to change my mind on that score.

On the jazz tip, Ornette's Sound Grammar comes in at #45, just behind Thom Yorke and just ahead of "Midlake," whatever the hell that is. I must confess that I still have not heard Ornette's new joint -- I'd been expecting Santa to help me rectify this, but evidently Sound Grammar Records don't have great distribution to the Arctic Circle. And, as previously noted, Vancouver's record shop situation has gotten dire. But now that I'm back in NY, I'll probably just order online.

Also, if you're not totally listed out by now, Francis Davis, who's still at the Voice -- they apparently haven't gotten around to firing their entire music staff yet -- has began an ambitious Jazz Critic's Poll. Davis weighs in on the results here.

KADS unbound

I just got word from drummer Kendrick A.D. Scott (who making his Secret Society debut on Nov. 30) that his website has just gone live. Kendrick is probably best-known for his work in the Terrance Blanchard Group, but his debut as a leader, The Source -- featuring Derrick Hodge, Lionel Loueke, Gretchen Parlato, Seamus Blake, Aaron Parks, Mike Moreno, Vicente Archer, Lage Lund, Myron Walden, Robert Glasper, and Walter Smith III -- is set for a 2007 release.

www.kendrickscott.com -- check it out.

While the subway's screaming, all the junkies dreaming

In totally unsurprising news, a new public health study finds that the noise in the NYC subway system is literally deafening -- and cranking your iPod to drown out the din makes it worse. While I basically find it impossible to ride the subway without the sonic isolation of the iPod, it was pretty clear to me I was doing serious damage to my hearing by trying to drown out the incredibly loud sounds of the subway by blasting even louder music directly into my eardrums.

Last Christmas, Lindsay got me a pair of Shure E Series sound isolating headphones. These are essentially earplugs with integrated earphones. They block outside noise, allowing you to listen at a lower volume and hear better detail. They work on the same principle as the in-ear monitors some of the stadium rock guys use (in fact, they are basically a consumer version of them). These things aren't for everyone -- some people have trouble getting a reliably good fit, and others are creeped out by the feeling of sealing your ears off -- but for me, they've been an absolute lifesaver. They really do block an astounding amount of outside noise. Before, I had to turn my iPod volume 3/4 of the way up to even make out the music over the noise of the train -- now, I rarely need to take it more than 1/3 of the way up, and I am barely even aware of those piercing, shearing sounds when the driver leans on the brakes.

As far as preventing hearing loss goes, it's probably a safe bet that these earphones aren't as good as wearing straight earplugs and reading a book instead. But for iPod junkies like me, they beat the hell out of blasting out my eardrums in an effort to make the subway ride tolerable.

Seen and Not Seen

David and Régine take time off from PopMontreal to moonlight as lab rats:

There were a number of what looked like small project recording studios, and we settled into one with an upright piano in it. A young woman demonstrated that the piano was actually a Disclavier, a piano that “records” the performance of anyone who played it and then plays it back with the keys moving exactly as they had been played. One of the lab’s projects aims to get a sense of where the emotion, the feeling, lies in a performance. To do this they had a classical pianist perform a piece expressively and with feeling — we heard part of it played (or performed) back. They then used a program to remove all the feeling from the performance. It sounded like an early digital sequencer; all the notes were of the same length and volume and the rhythm — the timing — had been “squared up” as well. Regine, who has some musical training, said it sounded like a 4 year old after a few piano lessons. To me this “dead” performance was also a faithful transcription of written music with no expressive markings. Much of Bach is like that, I believe, the expression left to the interpreter, but if played exactly as written it would sound like a machine. The limitations of musical notation.

Then the expressivity dial was turned to 50%. It still sounded pretty mechanical, but a little better. At 75% there was feeling there, but not played very well — “a promising student”, said Regine. But it took until 75% for the performance to begin to have what we would call feeling, expression, and humanity.

Then we heard the same performance with randomized expression — notes and time held and accented at random. We laughed, though some in the room thought it sounded eccentric, but good. Daniel said he thought only musicians would think it was interesting, because they have an acquired sense of how it’s supposed to be played, and confounding and surprising those expectations can sometimes make a piece even more interesting. I thought it sounded a little like Thelonious Monk.

This was at Daniel Levitin's lab. I've been meaning to check out his new book. Cognitive psych as it relates to music is an incredibly fertile subject, but I've been disappointed by most attempts to make sense of it, especially when it comes to books targeted at the general reader. I keep hoping for something like The Language Instinct for music, but the chapter in How the Mind Works on music and the arts is frankly embarrassing. But Levitin is both musician and a specialist in musical perception, so I'm guardedly optimistic about This Is Your Brain on Music.

The post also contains Byrne's thoughts on performances by Joanna Newsome and Danish band Under Byen, as well as a very nifty pie chart breaking down CD costs. Go read.

Joy in Repetition

A phase-shifted but sincere happy 70th birthday to Steve Reich.

My favorite Reich interview (from Kyle Gann's American Mavericks radio series).

E# [O]

NewMusicBox.org's Frank J. Oteri interviews Elliott Sharp. Be sure to check out the video, especially if you've never seen Elliott's insane two-handed tapping before.

This ain't no recent development

David Byrne reviews Sunday's Sufjan Stevens Town Hall hit (we saw the Saturday show):

I also felt was what I can only describe as a kind of Protestant reserve and reticence. Sufjan’s voice — most of the time a fragile introverted whisper (see also Chet Baker or João Gilberto) — was juxtaposed in this case with the emotional and even majestic spiritual release of his string and brass melodies. As if what he was feeling inside, but couldn’t express, was expressed in these instrumental passages.

Plus: Oxypoet on Fishbone at CBGB last week. This incarnation of the band isn't quite as happening as the lineup from the glory days, but Angelo still brings it. And Dub Trio were absolutely killing.

Who's Not Honoring Me Now

That's it -- ASCAP, I'm putting you on notice.

[Seriously, congratulations Steve.]

Concentric layers, proportional carbon density of the radius

Dave Douglas reviews last night's FONT hit, featuring Lina Allemano and Ingrid Jensen. It was really great to hear Lina again, especially with Ingrid, Lage Lund, and Society stalwarts Matt Clohesy and Jon Wikan.

In Oct-Nov, Lina's own quartet will be doing an extensive cross-Canada tour, with dates in Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, Montreal, and more -- if she's playing a hit near where you live, fercrissakes go.

Here are a couple of tracks from Lina's recordings. "Concentric" comes Dave Douglas-approved.

MP3: Lina Allemano Quartet - Pinkeye
MP3: Lina Allemano Quartet - Concentric

Get Lina's CDs.

Let’s Call This

Smack in the middle of his recap of the Thelonious Monk Jazz Piano Competition (while I remain skeptical of the premise behind what is basically "Jazz Idol," sincere congrats to winner Tigran Hamasyan and runners-up Gerald Clayton and my friend Aaron Parks), Ben Ratliff drops this bomb:

At what point will jazz just crumble under the weight of the glib encomiums paid to it?

This is a very good question, and something I've wondered about myself, especially during Important Jazz Events. Read the rest and jump in in comments. I may have more to say about this in a few days.

The book I read was in your eyes

David Byrne on Revenge of the Book Eaters:

Benefits are funny things. Often the public pays exaggerated ticket price to see “watered down” versions of the musical acts — most times I myself play a few songs on acoustic guitar, as do many of the others. Now, watered down it maybe be, but sometimes the “unplugged” version is more moving and emotionally involving that the more fully arranged version — well, sometimes. When that happens it’s not a bait and switch deal.

For this show I decided that since Sarah Vowell liked my version of Webb Pierce’s “There Stands The Glass” that I did in Brooklyn I would take that as a hint and do an all country set. My rhythm section consisted of Mauro, Paul and Graham augmented by Jon G. on pedal steel, fresh off a recording session with Ryan Adams.

I asked Sufjan via e-mail if he wanted to do “Saginaw Michigan”, the song made famous by Lefty Frizzell, with me. (I thought many would think he wrote it for his Michigan-themed CD. I wonder if anyone fell for it?) He agreed and I sent him an MP3, chords and lyrics. My bunch also did the country-ish tune that I sang on Mauro’s upcoming Forro in the Dark CD. So, a lot of new stuff.

Anyway, the evening went well — it was scary doing so many new (to me) tunes, but I think it came off O.K.

We are atomic... we are fire

Fusion reconsidered -- Will Layman of Pop Matters looks at the latest from Bobby Previte, Wayne Horvitz, Ben Goldberg, and Don Byron:

But in the early '70s, a particular genre of "fusion" was founded by the collision of jazz and rock, with various prominent musicians finding ways to dress up their improvisations in Sly Stone grooves, Jimi Hendrix psychedelia, or prog-rock filigree. The style — associated mainly with groups founded by various alumni of the Miles Davis groups of the time such as Chick Corea's Return to Forever, John McLaughin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Weather Report — filled arenas for a few years, but it soon devolved into fangless Smooth Jazz or (worse?) pointlessly virtuosic noodling.

The term "fusion" was soiled forever.

But I think it's time to bring it back. The best of today's jazz musicians seem intent on a process that really can't be described without using the word "fusion". In fact, today the act of fusing jazz with other forms of music is so essential — and so natural — to what jazz musicians do that it typically involves more than one fusing at the same time.

Read the rest.

Just a passing breeze filled with memories

Looks like Mwanji (scroll down to "the simple things can hang you up the most") and I aren't the only ones who feel the Great American Songbook is overrated:

When you talk to, or read about, anyone making an album of standards, the refrain is the same: “These songs will never die.” “These songs are eternal.” “This is real music.”There are two problems with this viewpoint. The first is that it isn’t true. Rock ’n’ roll killed the Great American Songbook deader than a doornail from roughly the late ’60s to the late ’90s.

The second is that it’s backward. Songs are not living, breathing entities, though they may seem that way: They’re collections of directions to players and singers. People don’t record certain songs because they’re eternal; songs are eternal because people won’t stop recording them. And with the standards album becoming as ubiquitous as the Christmas album, there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight.

(There’s a third problem – the concept of “real music,” which implies that some music is not real, which is baseless. But that’s another subject.)

[...]

Apostles of the Songbook aesthetic often claim that today’s music doesn’t speak to them. But have male-female relations really not progressed past “My Funny Valentine”? “Cheek to Cheek”? “Tea for Two”? Do these songs really address the reality of your life? Of anyone’s?

It’s nostalgia. In some cases, it’s escapist nostalgia – other people’s memories that today’s listeners wish they had. “Memories” of a supposedly simpler time and place.

And there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with nostalgia. Personally, my favorite music of all time is the ’70s pop and soul I grew up with, and some of my favorite current records are by artists (such as Ron Sexsmith and Van Hunt) who emulate those sounds.

But that’s personal preference, and I know it. I don’t claim for a moment that there’s something objectively superior about that music. I don’t claim that that music will never die. I know that someone who grew up in a different time and place will feel differently about it.

Pulling out jives and jamboree handouts

Beck is curating the music for this year's Wired-sponsored NextFest (Sept 27-Oct 1). His picks: Jamie Lidell and Of Montreal.

[via Pitchfork]

But you were hearin' a different song

Hmm. Orchestral Aphex Twin ⇒ Orchestral The White Stripes? Who knew?

[via Stereogum]

Almost Always Is Nearly Enough

Coming next week -- A Lazarus Taxon, a 3-CDs-for-the-price-of-one box of Tortoise rarities and outtakes.

Thanks to Stereogum for the heads-up -- and this, from JF in comments, is too good not to reprint:

Also: what a trip that era in indie music was. It came and went, and things are more "fun" now, but for a while there (95 - 99 maybe) it really seemed like singing was over and marimbas were the new normal.