What's Wrong with Music? Well, I'll Tell Ya....

It's been hard to write. Not only finding the time, but finding the energy. I don't feel like I should be Pollyanna-ish with this blog, but I don't just want to spew piss and vinegar. There's plenty of that out there already.

Aw, who am I kidding? Maybe I can add some nuance to the grouchiness that's out there anyway.

First point of business: Have you ever gone to an art exhibition in an independent gallery - where you have no more than a few degrees of separation from the artist, or know them personally? And have you ever taken a picture of their work, and said to the artist with a smile, "Cool! Now I don't have to buy it! I have a copy."

Would you say that? Would that ever sound anything less than insulting and inconsiderate when said to someone who's spent numerous hours working on their particular media?

If your answer is "yes, I do it all that time/I would never pay a $100 for art anyway," you might as well stop reading, because there's no chance of penetrating your thick skull. For the rest of you, the next question is - well, why do you do that to musicians? Sure, there are a lot of musicians out there who didn't go to school to learn how to play and just picked up a guitar or bass or something and decided to do it. But they, or someone who believes in their work, decided to pony up a serious amount of cash to put out their music. And maybe they aren't in it to get rich, but they should get some kind of return on their efforts for a job well done. It's become clear that streaming sites have become the new go-to for music now, and with the further death of the tactile listening experience, they've become more of the standard. Musicians, who weren't getting rich in the first place, are getting little more than a bone for their efforts. That's everyone from David Byrne to Marc Ribot to Sean Lally. And some of these musicians DID put in a lot of equity (sweat or otherwise) into their work.

About 12 years ago, I did a piece for InPgh about Napster, where I asked a bunch of local musicians for their position on the topic, and printed their block quotes. People like Justin Sane from Anti-Flag and Michael Kastelic from the Cynics seemed to think sites like Napster weren't completely evil because it helped get music out to people who wouldn't normally hear it. At the time, I took a stance closer to that too. Paul from Pauls CD's (which has morphed into Sound Cat) said that a lot of customers would come in his store looking for things that they heard on Napster and would buy it.

But times change. Paul got out of the business a few years ago. (I'm not going to speculate why, but you have to wonder about that.) In the intervening years, Pandora and Spotify have sprouted up, and there's a good chance you can hear a song on youtube if you look it up. There are always going to be those people who loooove music and will go to a record store (or an online store, but that's another matter) to pick up a CD. Or an album. Or they'll buy a download from a touring musician. But those numbers are dwindling. Like I said, the listening experience has really changed over that time and my thoughts have too.

 I know plenty of 40-something folks who feel like they don't have time to invest or really care about exploring albums anymore. Just shrug your shoulders, say "Oh well," and listen to the new Wye Oak single on Spotify. Or never mind a band like that which might require more concentration. You keep hearing about Pharrell Williams, so why not just listen to that song so you know what all the fuss is about? And it's a hit anyway, so it's okay if he just gets the equivalent of a few pennies from me.

Do I have a solution? Well, not exactly. I could suggest that you all go out and buy a couple new CD/albums, and remember the good old days when we all had time to sit in our bedrooms and brood while [fill in the blank with the name of your favorite band when you were 18] played on the stereo. Then again, how many people listen to music on something resembling a old-fashioned receiver/speakers/turntable/disc player/hi-fi system anyhow. Isn't it just a couple of piddly-to-decent speakers in front of the computer? Or something in your ears when you're getting coffee?

But the better solution would be to get all the streaming services to pony up and make a better royalty system to the artists they play. Radio stations have to do that, but oh yeah, that reminds me.......

It's getting close for another one of those concerts that's going to make history - a promise the ads make even though the concert isn't happening for another couple months. Yeah - the good folks at I Heart Radio with their let's-put-everyone-on-the-bill-to-try-to-appeal-to-everyone methodology are at it again. It's another indication of what's wrong with radio now. Putting Taylor Swift together with Motley Crue and Josh Grobin and Big & Rich and Hank Williams III and Prince and Clarence Williams III and Jack Johnson and Blind Melon and Third Eye Blind and Steppenwolf and Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett and Gogi Grant and Bread and Justin Bieber and Barbra Streisand and Pink Floyd and Slim Whitman DOES NOT make history simply because you're putting all these acts together on the same bill. (NOTE: THIS ROSTER DOES NOT REFLECT THE ACTUAL SCHEDULE OF PERFORMERS AT THE I HEART RADIO FESTIVAL. IT WAS CREATED TO PROVE A POINT, WHICH I WILL GET TO NOW.)

I don't like to repeat myself, but I have to re-use a metaphor from about a year ago. (I"m not good with them, so I stick with them when I find one that works). This festival reminds me of when, as a kid, we'd finish dying Easter eggs and I'd mix the colors all together, thinking it would make one big, beautiful blend of colors.

All it did was turn brown.

And when you try to cram all these acts together, you don't get a glorious harmonic convergence of acts who join hands and sing "Poker Face" and the best of Fugazi. You get something watered down and bland.

CD Review: Kyle Bruckmann's WRACK - ...Awaits Silent Tristero's Empire

Kyle Bruckman's WRACK
...Awaits Silent Tristero's Empire
(Single Speed) www.singlespeedmusic.org

Full disclosure: I haven't read any of Thomas Pynchon's work. However, after listening to Kyle Bruckman's suite ...Awaits Silent Tristero's Empire, described as "a musical phantasmagoria" inspired by Pynchon's novels V, The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow, maybe the time has come.

Bruckman plays oboe and English horn, two challenging double reed instruments rarely heard in jazz or improvisation. In the liner note he explains that Pynchon often has his characters burst into song, with show tunes, sea shanties, drinking songs and vaudeville providing the foundation for frequently racy lyrics that appear in the text. This explains why, two minutes into Part One, the rhythm section launches into a two-step of carnival music, with trumpeter Darren Johnston and trombonist Jeb Bishop sounding plucky over the bounce of the beat.

Before this movement concludes, it includes a few passages of group squonks, some noisy oboe exchanges with plucked viola (from Jen Clare Paulson) and a few more trombone solos, most notably one where Bishop uses a plunger mute and the group plays a bluesy shout behind him.

Bruckmann describes the music as a "cracked funhouse mirror Great American Songbook," and that does capture the essence of the whole piece. A great deal of ground is covered, in fits and starts. The third section starts out sounding more subdued than the aforementioned part, only to get faster, before Jason Stein unleashes a vocal bass clarinet solo. The final section begins with free blowing, including Bruckmann growling on the oboe, and later shifts into something that feels like soft shoe, with a chorus of "Red River Valley" inserted quickly.

This mash-up of adventurous jazz and Americana holds a lot of intriguing moments, but as a whole it sometimes feels a little too ambitious. It doesn't have the John Zorn brevity-for-brevity's-sake penchant for gear shifting. But sometimes it feels like Bruckmann tries to incorporate a little too much into the music. Of course, I might be at a disadvantage, not having read any of the novels.

The members of the group keep the energy on track when things get a little more involved. Although one can't really call it a "front line" since it's not straight jazz, the use of double reeds, bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone and viola creates a unique texture. Chicago regulars Anton Hatwich (bass) and Tim Daisy (drums) complete the lineup.

Bruckmann was able to complete the piece through support from Chamber Music America's 2012 New Jazz Works: Commissioning and Ensemble Development Program. With any hope, this won't be a one-off project for him. On top of that, his oboe and English horn work also brings an underutilized pair of sounds to the world of adventurous jazz.

Charlie Haden Remembered

The anticipation that I feel before doing an interview often has a debilitating effect on me. Bad connections, bad recording devices - both are possibilities, even when I test them beforehand. Then there's always the prospect that the subject will turn out to be less than friendly. I went into an interview with a certain punk rock icon, who I had casually meet on a few occasions and found to be sweet as pie, who was prickly and intimidating.

But there's always the hope of having a breakthrough with a subject. You ask a question, or more likely make an observation that will really open them up. That happened when I interviewed Charlie Haden in 2003. We talked about his music, the term "jazz," about teaching music, whether or not you can teach what he did with Ornette Coleman's quartet, and how to reach an audience with what you do.

Being so close to 9/11, and right around the time that W. declared "mission accomplished," I wondered if he was considering doing another Liberation Music Orchestra album. The first had been recorded in 1969, in the wake of the Democratic Convention in Chicago which had erupted in riots. The album's penultimate track attempted to recreate those particular events, by dividing the ensemble in two and letting them blow their brains out, following a jaunty Haden solo. Right at the height of the frenzy, Carla Bley began playing "We Shall Overcome" on the organ. The track juxtaposed chaos and hope of that era all at once. And while the track ends sounding bleak, it's followed by a one-chorus version of "We Shall Overcome," blown by Roswell Rudd's trombone. I took the message as one to be just what the song said: no matter how bleak, we will overcome.

When asked, Haden wasn't sure about another LMO album (the fourth, following Ballad of the Fallen, which came out in the '80s, and Dream Keeper in 1990). But sure enough, he released another one, Not In Our Name, in 2005. I was happy to see it and even happier when it drew piss and vinegar in the letters section of jazz magazines, due to its fearless comments about the country's politics.

But back to that interview...

I searched and found the article I wrote for Pulp back then, but I didn't include one key exchange Charlie and I had. He was telling me something that went kind of like this: he liked to tell his audiences how he'd like to multiple them by one million because with more people like that in existence, the world would be a better place.

Hm. That's cool, I thought. Now what do I say? "Well," I finally replied, you've given me a lot to think about." It felt like the most wishy-washy thing to say.

Wrong.

"THAT'S COOL, MAN" he exclaimed. It seemed like he felt like I got where he was coming from. A minute later, he was telling me that we ought to get together when he came into town. Charlie Haden wanted to hand out with me, an indie rock geek who was just starting to think he was a jazz writer. How could that be? (My first JazzTimes article had just been published two months prior.) I gave him my phone number and he wrapped up the interview with the word that I will forever associate with him: "Solid!"

Haden was supposed to get into town on a Wednesday for a weekend stand at the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild. I had given up on hearing from him when I finally got a voicemail either Friday or Saturday afternoon. Yes, he was still interested in hanging out. Maybe we could check out the Crawford Grill (still open at that point) where he played with Ornette several decades prior. We made plans to meet up after the Sunday matinee show at the Guild.

Pittsburgh was hit with a pretty heavy snowstorm that day, but my partner in crime Shawn Brackbill had grown up in eastern PA and knew how to maneuver the roads. After checking out the subdued but really enthralling set by Haden's quartet (which included pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba and pianist David Sanchez), Haden, Shawn and I made plans to meet at his hotel downtown and find a place to eat.

Things started off rather bleakly. The snow was getting bad. Charlie seemed hungry and a little irritated. The mix tape that Shawn made for the trip wasn't having the desired effect. "Could you turn that off," Charlie asked, just about a minute into it.

But once we got to Palomino, the only place that seemed both open and accessible, he warmed up. We heard some great stories. A Pat Metheny song was playing in the restaurant. "I think I'm on this," he said, casually.

Yes, I did feel star struck, but I also felt like I was hanging out with a regular guy who just happened to be one of the most groundbreaking bassists in jazz music. I loved it for both reasons. And when I look back on the, uh, charmed life I briefly lead as an alt-weekly editor, making that connection with Charlie Haden is always the first thing I think of. And when I hear one of those early Ornette Coleman albums on Atlantic, I always think of how genuine a guy Charlie Haden is, and how I would to multiply him by one million. The world would be a better place.

Thanks, Charlie. I hope that you, Don Cherry, Eddie Blackwell and Scott LaFaro are hanging out together, laying down some drum and bass grooves.

Solid.

Pest 5000 - Whatever became of...

Here's another one for the "What Ever Happened To" files: Pest Five Thousand (or Pest 5000).

I bought this single (Harriet Records, #043) when the band played at the 31st Street Pub here in Pittsburgh in the late '90s. The record is dated 1997, so the show would've happened either that year or a year later. The selling point for me was the B-side, "Astromental," a keyboard-driven instrumental with a bounce and lines traded between a blooping synth and some kind of analog organ. When they played it live, there was a really great chord change in the "chorus" part, which doesn't exactly come across on the single. Still it's pretty fun. The a-side "Page 43" is pretty good, but my money is on the flip, which still runs through my head occasionally when I'm running around at work.

The band hailed from Montreal. On the inside of the cover, one of them wrote down their contact info, either because I was hoping they might be able to set me up with some Canadian distribution for records I was releasing, or perhaps because I was under the naive assumption that maybe, just maybe I might try to embark on a tour that took me to Canada.

None of that happened, and I never heard a peep from the band again. They're probably easy to find out about online, unlike Thank You Super, another band who played the Pub, sold me a killer single and disappeared.

Dear ex-Pest 5000 members, if you read this, stop and say hi.

Work

Last week the total number of visits to this page was 1. And it was probably by me.

Since it's been several weeks since the last post, maybe it's a good idea for me to get back up here. I had all intentions of posting during the weekend of the Pittsburgh Jazz Festival. Even thought about doing it the night of the jam session that I saw. Sonoma Grille was so crowded that I decided not to fight my way to the bar for a drink. The less I had to drink, the more stamina I would have throughout the evening.

It was a good move because I was able to stand and watch the band play for about two straight hours, and there were no breaks. In fact it got to the point where instruments were getting new musicians mid-song. The perfect example of that came when none other than Reggie Workman came up mid-song and had the bass handed to him by Paul Thompson. Both are extremely good bass players, but when Reggie took over, things shot into the stratosphere. He played in a way that made you think, Okay we are now in the presence of a heavy dude.

That week I was assigned to write a piece for JazzTimes on Sean Jones, and luckily I got his number from him between solos. That was the only way I was going to do it because he was running the whole thing. We sat down for an interview this past week.

This is my first big profile for JT in about 10 years. I've done a couple articles for the college issue, but it's been a looooooooooooong time since there's been a long story on one person. Of course I'm feeling apprehensive, even though things are clicking into place.

In other news, more mixing is being done by the Love Letters. We got another mix of "Semi Dark Crush Museum" back from John Collins. Then Buck, Aimee and I went into Machine Age to start a mix on "Champagne Lady." That still needs some tweaking but it's on the way. Just have to find the time to book another session.

And then we might have a worthy candidate to join the band and fill the spot vacated by Aimee. The new person isn't a keyboard player. Or a dame.

CD Reviews: Three by Ivo Perelman

Ivo Perelman/Matthew Shipp/Michael Bisio/Whit Dickey

The Other Edge

(Leo)

Ivo Perelman/Matthew Shipp/William Parker

Book of Sound

(Leo)

Ivo Perelman/Mat Maneri

Two Men Walking 

(Leo)

www.leorecords.com

Maybe we could call Ivo Perelman "Lightning," since he never strikes twice in the same place. Although he has composed pieces for his albums in the past, the Brazil-born tenor saxophonist is now fully devoted to spontaneous creation each time he picks up his horn. 

As of late, his recorded output has been pretty prolific. (He's released 20 albums in the last four years.) These three discs come in the wake of two others that Leo released last fall. But they follow another criteria that Perelman adopted: none of them feature the exact same lineup. Perelman has played with a certain musicians on several occasions, but he typically prefers to switch out a player or two, so things are never quite the same. Not only does the music change each time, the process taken to create it always takes on a new wrinkle when different personalities come and go.   

Having said that, The Other Edge sort of acts an exception. It features Matthew Shipp's trio (pianist Shipp, bassist Michael Bisio, drummer Whit Dickey) returning to the studio with Perelman for the second time, 18 months after a session for the album The Edge. "I broke the rule because we felt this had so much potential," he explains. He's right. The backing trio is a cohesive unit on its own but together with the saxophonist, they form something bigger. There are layers of group interaction, so it sounds like much more than a guest rhythm section with a leader. Everyone takes the "lead" on the album at some point.

It's tempting to think of David S. Ware's quartet during the opening "Desert Flower." Perelman opens with an unaccompanied tenor solo full of fire and wails before the trio comes rolling in. (While Shipp's wave of chords and lines were a part of Ware's group, Dickey was also a member of the group for a while too.) The title track also recalls the Ware a bit too, as Perelman plays at a feverish level of intensity and without backing down until the end.

In between these bookends, the group explores their own ideas. "Panem Et Circenses" Parts 1 and 2 are marked rhythms that could almost be called grooves. It comes as a surprise after Part 1's pensive opening, which comes closer to a ballad. The second part almost falls into a march, with Perelman delivering a series of honks on the beat. "Petals or Thorns?" - a great set of options to describe music like this - begins as a quiet free ballad, before the tenor shatters the mood with a high, long wail. Later Bisio joins the altissimo squeaks with some high harmonic bowing, sounding like an additional horn.

The Other Side has some of the wildest playing of the three albums, but it never sounds like Perelman is trying to seer listeners with his upper register squeals or lower squalls. While it sounds intense, it also feels engaging.

If anything Book of Sound might seem like the album that would draw comparisons to Ware's group, since the session brings back Shipp as well as bassist William Parker, another anchor in that group. But the meeting of the minds comes up with the strongest set of music out of the three. In fact it sounds closest to composed music due to the way these three play together.

While the high end sax squeals seems more like punctuation on the previous disc, their appearances on Book of Sound come across more as extension of his lines in the lower registers, and a completion of thought. "Candor Dat Viribus Alas" with its dark but balladlike setting, has just the right blend of lyrical and gruff elements. "Adsummum" cuts loose with strong sense of direction, in which Perelman seems to play continually for several minutes without pausing during an extended idea. When Shipp and Parker hit on a two-chord vamp, with slight variations along the way, things feel a little sanctified.

Perelman's 2013 releases included the soundtrack to a film A Violent Dose of Anything, which he made with Shipp and violist Mat Maneri. The convergence of free improvisation and soundtrack might seem incompatible, but the trio excels at creating moods, and some of the results felt a little noirish.

Two Men Walking reunites Perelman and Maneri for a series of duets. Of the three albums, this is the most challenging listen. Without any harmonic or rhythmic instruments to hold or catapult them, both players produce a set of tracks (divided into unnamed "parts") where they echo each other (approximately), hold conversations or go at it on parallel musical lines. A strong rapport exists between the two, but the close range of their instruments and a similar, loose feeling doesn't differentiate between some of the tracks, when a little more variety could be used.

Perelman's of-the-moment approach to playing makes it a little easier to understand why he has become so prolific. Committing the music to tape is the easy part when like-minded friends are with you. It's not quite the same as Guided by Voices leader Robert Pollard's knack for sneezing out a handful of albums a year.

Great musicians shouldn't have to think in terms of dollar and cents but it can be hard to keep up with someone who releases so much, while droves of other musicians like him are vying for listening time. This music is not disposable. But do you listen to it once and shelf it to make way for the next album? Do you pass up one disc in favor of another, or wait until the next one comes along? Presumably, we should leave that to the folks at Leo to worry about, and just listen. For now, Perelman has given us plenty to absorb.

CD Review : Marc Ribot Trio - Live at the Village Vanguard

Marc Ribot Trio
Live at the Village Vanguard
(Pi Recordings) www.pirecordings.com

There simply aren't enough musicians sharp enough to sequence an album to have "Old Man River" get sandwiched between two Albert Ayler compositions, with the second one to be followed by a drop-dead sincere reading of "I'm Confessin' (That I Love You)." Marc Ribot does that on this set of recordings, taken from a January 2012 stay at the legendary Village Vanguard. It's quite possible that the order of tunes is not only the result of savvy sequencing, but that it happened that way in the New York club. Either way, it speaks volumes about the diversity of guitarist Ribot's huge palette of musical perspectives, in addition to the weight of music on this album.

Ribot's bandmates for this set are bassist Henry Grimes and drummer Chad Taylor. The three of them have played together for over a decade, first coming together in Spiritual Unity, a group devoted to Ayler's music, which also featured the late trumpeter Roy Campbell, Jr. Their interactions live up to the name of the previous group. Ribot's spiky tone stands out and can combine romantic with sarcastic on "Old Man River." Taylor adds to this track by throwing in a bossa nova beat on the middle eight of one chorus, and tom rolls on another which stoke the fires.

Together they turn Ayler's "The Wizard" into boogie-rock with a 2/2 groove from Grimes and Taylor which works because of the way Ribot colors it. By the closing chorus, things have taken on a freer direction, with Taylor evoking a calmer version of Sunny Murray or either of the Ali brothers, Rashied and Muhammed.

"Bells" lasts about as long as Ayler's original version, but starts in one place, revists the marching theme that held the original together and moves in a different direction. Grimes produces a flowing arco solo after an almost pastoral free guitar intro. Things get loud but never excessive. After the group brings it down for "I'm Confessin'," they go back for the final kill with a tight version Coltrane's "Sun Ship." (The saxophonist's "Dearly Beloved" opens the album.)

The appearance of Ribot, whose jazz work swings far to the left, at a institution like the Vanguard, known for presenting more grounded jazz artists, is not exactly a combination to be taken lightly. With that in mind, the trio doesn't take the scene in stride either. They pour themselves into the music playing with passion and conviction that even the straight ahead fans should appreciate on an emotional level. Also of note: Grimes hadn't performed at the famed club since 1966, when he appeared with Ayler, for what would be the saxophonist's Albert Ayler in Greenwich Village album.

Finally, Pi Recordings says on their website that Live at the Village Vanguard is available on vinyl, although "Bells" does not appear, due to length. However, the record comes with a download card for "Bells," as well another Ayler tune and a Ribot original. Now that's smart marketing.

Tom Rainey & Ingrid Laubrock Hit Pittsburgh

Last Thursday, Tom Rainey and Ingrid Laubrock played at the Thunderbird Cafe. Tom has been a drummer around New York for years, playing with Mark Helias, Drew Gress and Tim Berne. Ingrid hails from Germany but has been living in the states for a few years, playing with Mary Halvorson in addition to leading her own groups. They're also husband and wife.

Although Tom just released an album called Obbligato which reexamines some jazz standards, the duo also put out an album called ...and other desert towns, 10 tracks of complete improvisation. At the Thunderbird that was their approach too. Attribute it to the end of the tour tightness (they were heading back home after this tour) or a generally strong rapport between the two of them, but the music was propulsive and engaging.

Rainey didn't look at his drums while he was playing, or if he did, his eyes looked down as he faced forward. At first he was sticking to ideas on the rack and floor toms. He frequently shifted from brushes to sticks and back without taking a break in the sound. At one point, he only used one brush, while his other bare hand served as a good way to get accents off the heads. There was also a moment where he got a low rumble off the floor tom with his hand. 

Laubrock can get wild and noisy if she likes, but in the beginning of the set, she was playing a series of short phrases that strung together as a full, extended thought. When she switched to soprano, she delivered a moody sound that could have passed for a written-out idea. During the second of the extended "pieces" that they played, she started to growl a little more, getting a fluttering sound by playing with the side keys of the tenor. Rainey responded by getting a whole back of sticks and placing them on the floor tom and whacking them for accents. 

Their whole set lasted about 45 minutes. A little more would have been cool, but it was still a good length for the set. Many times when there's an avant jazz show at the Thunderbird, there audience numbers somewhere around the teens. While it wasn't jam packed during Rainey & Laubrock's set, there was a throng of people standing up front and paying attention. Part of that could be attributed to the headliner, Cory Henry of Snarky Puppy who played next. But either way, the duo got a warm welcome. Henry's audience did pack the area in front of the stage for an electric, groovy set that added some tricky time turnarounds. I stuck around for a little of that, but the next day was a long, rigorous so I bowed out.

Go hear to read a quick Q&A that I had with Rainey prior to the show.

GBV and DoS in Pittsburgh - a review

It took a few weeks to show up, but my review of Guided By Voices and Death of Samantha is now up on the Blurt website: http://tinyurl.com/maqwq6o Check it out there.

Hopefully tomorrow morning I'll have a report on the Tom Rainey/Ingrid Laubrock show last night. Today, I'm all about the Fun Fair at the kid's school. God help me.

CD Reviews: Jeff Platz + 3, Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio

These two discs have been out for a few months. Both have been sitting around, waiting for me to write about them. My brain couldn't wait any longer so I figured I'd do capsule reviews of both:

Jeff Platz/Daniel Carter/Francois Grillot/Federic Ughi
Past & Present Futures
(Glitch) www.jeffplatz.com

Free improvisation isn't always balls-to-the-wall, room clearing caterwauling. Sometimes it can sound like composed works, other times it sounds like a few introspective minds going at it at once. The session, organized by guitarist Jeff Platz (he doesn't really "lead" it, since it's a spontaneous session) leans closer to the latter scenario.

His guitar is out front, clean and rather subdued. With him is Daniel Carter (also of Test, Other Dimensions in Music and groups under his own name), who alternates saxophones, trumpet and clarinet. Bassist Francois Grillot and drummer Federic Ughi had never played with Platz prior to this session and for some of the album, at times they seem like they're figuring out how to get acquainted with one another. Sometimes the rhythm section doesn't flow with the melodic instruments, or even move together in parallel lines, a good sign in free improv situations. Yet there are tracks where rapport develops. Carter's soprano sax on "Evolve" sounds like it's playing a composed part, while Grillot riffs in 3/4. Eventually the bass locks in and briefly  joins Platz in a duet.

"Distance" also takes a strange and intriguing path. Carter begins playing a pensive clarinet lead over bowed bass, before things open up, with Platz playing through some effects that take his tone closer to one of Sun Ra's space keyboards. It's hard to pick up on all of Past & Present Futures in a few listens. But therein lies the advantage it has over a life performance: the chance to revisit it and discover all the nuances of it.

Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio + Jeb Bishop
The Flame Alphabet
(Not Two) www.nottwo.com

All four of the musicians on The Flame Alphabet receive writing credits on all four tracks, implying another set of free improvisations. However they move together like they're following some sort of pre-set structure. Leader Amado's tenor saxophone blends with guest trombonist Jeb Bishop (of numerous Chicago projects). Amado blows strong, thoughtful lines that reach a frenzied wail at times, but often stay on the ground, spreading around a series of pointillist lines around that are extremely engaging.

The rhythm section really keeps the whole thing moving in top gear. Drummer Gabriel Ferrandini can easily switch between quiet percussives and explosions that spread across his whole kit. The title track begins with a lengthy duet between him and Amado which sets the bar high. One track later on "First Light" Bishop and Ferrandini get the opening statement. Miguel Mira plays cello, which recalls Abdul Wadud's work with Julius Hemphill. But the way Mira approaches his instrument makes it sound like a bass, in terms of depth that it brings to the session.

Somewhere in a pile of discs, I have a live Rodrigo Amado CD that came in the mail with this one. I would've reviewed it in tandem, but I felt like this review couldn't wait any longer since they've been out for awhile. Suffice to say that I'm looking forward to that one too.

When Heroes Do Crazy Stuff

Over time, the musicians you revere can have their image changed in your eyes. Some of the touring underground bands that I admired during my 20s seemed, in retrospect, to have more in common with me and my music pursuits than I thought. The only real difference was they were in a bigger city and there was a label backing them up. Sometimes superstars turned out to be not so super. John Lennon, in all his infinite wisdom, might qualify for what some people would call a deadbeat dad. There was also at least one older musician I met that seemed to be more interested in making inane banter with young ladies than talking about music.

And some people are just batshit crazy.

Everyone's entitled to be batshit about some thing - the type of food they eat, the way a soundcheck should go. But upon reading yesterday that Exene Cervenka - the once and forever vocalist of X - went on at length saying that last week's shootings in Santa Barbara were a hoax, I started to wonder if the woman who helped alter my listening habits in 1980 (which really did change my life in the following years) is crazy in a bad way. I didn't realize there are people who had this mindframe. I thought the people that would deny history were the ones who didn't believe in the Holocaust, a belief based out of hatred.

Reading that really messed up my morning yesterday. It felt worse than realizing that Mr. Anti-Capitalism Jello Biafra had ripped off his ex band. Not bad enough that I'm ready to get rid of my X albums (the first four of which are autographed!). But enough to make you feel really odd.

But just now, I discovered that Exene had backed down from her original statement - sort of. Here's an quick article about it. Reading the post on X's Facebook page actually makes me feel a little more relieved. It also serves as a reminder that people might not always be as extreme as they're perceived.

But the thing that really bothers me is that anytime a musician speaks up about something like this, good or bad, there's always some idiot online who has to counter with, "they're just saying that because nobody knows who their band is, and they're just trying to get publicity/make money." I almost find it more offensive that people think that it always comes down to money. That's all we care about. All of us.

But I guess when you sit at home all day and do nothing but surf the web and comment on stories, it's easy to get in the mindframe. I'd stay and try to type more but I need to have breakfast and get ready for work.

Peter Tork Interview Part 2: Nobody Ever Lends Money to a Man With a Sense of Humor

Tonight is the Monkees show at the Palace Theatre in Greensburg, PA. I was hoping to have posted this, the rest of my chat with Peter Tork, over the last two days. But things – like weather which kept my internet connection down last night – prevented that. Here it is now. And for those Monkee fans who just discovered this blog over the past few days, you might want to check out an (email) interview I did with Michael Nesmith last year: http://blurtonline.com/feature/first-national-man-michael-nesmith/

The conversation continues from the previous entry, where Tork talked about songwriting.

I owe a lot to my piano lessons. At one point I switched from playing Beethoven and Mozart to theory. And I learned how to spell chords, you know like, “what’s an F# minor chord?” and when I took up guitar I would say, “OK, what’s the next note in such-and-such a chord above the note on the string? How many frets do I have to get up to, to play a note that’s in the chord I want.” And I came up with some unusual formations too, like that add-4 chord I mentioned earlier.

I know you couldn’t have predicted that 40-plus years later the stuff that you did with Monkees would still be on the radio…

I couldn’t have predicted that I would live to be 40-plus myself!

Well I’m glad you did.  But at the time, what was the view [of the music and the band]? How did you guys think? “This is fleeting. It’s just going to last a couple years”? What did you think?

[Takes a breath] I did not think. I did not think past…I knew it was going to be big before it happened. I could just tell that it was lined up properly. It wasn’t surprised. But as to the longevity, I really hadn’t given it any thought. I still don’t much. Right now, the Monkees are on tour, or we will be starting tomorrow night. We’ll be doing this for about three weeks, I think, more or less. There is some talk amongst us of doing something else this fall together. But that’s as far ahead as I think.

Other than that, I like to sit at home and play piano and write stuff. I have a blues band. This coming January, I’m going to be going down to Lexington, Kentucky. I’m going to have them play a piece I wrote for piano and orchestra. It’s fairly brief. It’s seven minutes long. They’ll be doing some pop music, it’s a pops orchestra. But I’ll have them tackle this thing I wrote. It’s not easy.

So that the thing: what’s next on my agenda. I don’t pay too much attention to what goes on ahead of me. I have started to wonder if I’m going to outlive my money or not. That’s what you start to think about when you reach my age. But I ain’t dead yet, and I’m not taking drugs.

Well it is great that you still out there playing shows.

Oh yeah, man. It’s fabulous. I’m a very lucky guy. Extraordinarily lucky in many, many ways. Turns out that I have an extraordinary constitution. I get over being sick about twice as fast as anybody else with the same diseases and the same troubles. So I’ve gotta thank whatever source I’ve got. Say thank you, that’s all I can do.

When you and Mike and Micky got together for rehearsals, I think it was about a year and half ago since the first ones, what was that like, having the three of you all together again?

It was good. It was interesting. Michael sounds almost exactly the same as he did back then. Micky sounds hardly different, a little bit. But he’s still one of the best pop singers of all time. Michael’s voice is resonant and clear. It kind of swept me back to the day to hear Michael sing the songs that he sang, the way that he sang them. I found out I was a little more nostalgic for the old days than I would have guessed, if anybody had asked me beforehand.

In some of the shows that you’ve done, there’s been a tribute to Davy in it. As an audience member, I could see it being really emotional. And you guys are doing it night after night. Does that take something out of you? How does it feel?

No. An entertainer’s mindset is not very well understood by people who don’t do it. But you go to work every day, you do something almost every day. And day in and day out and day in and day out, you never go, “Oh my god, I did this yesterday!” You just do what you do. And entertainers really have to look at their work that way. Nobody, there are very, very few of them. Robin Williams did routines. He did most of the same show night after night. And he’s one of the fastest, cleverest, funniest people you’ve ever heard of. And he doesn’t do all brand new stuff every day. He does routines.

And you do them. The same thing doesn’t happen for us that happens for the audience. We do the tributes. And the audience goes, “Oh, my god, that’s right!” But we did the tribute last night as well.

You know: an actor doing the same show on Broadway, day after day, night after night. He better find a way to make it real every night. It better not be the same thing he did last night, or he’s going to be dead. It’s going to be a short run. There are skills that are involved with this business, and you have to learn them.

Mike, we have only a couple minutes left before I have to run away, I’m sorry to say. So if you have one more blockbuster question, now is the time!

I do! When you look back on the movie Head, what do you think of it?

I have…you’re going to have to listen to Torkelson’s Theory of Theatrical and Cinematic Criticism. If the point of art is to bring you forward, to carry you on, make life worth living, or at least to give you something to make you work towards, what happens to the protagonist represents the creator’s point of view. And when the protagonists start off lost in the water, and they end up lost in the water, there’s not a very good message in that. That message is: You don’t get out. The cycle just keeps on going, it’s not good and you’re always trapped.

From that point of view, I think Head is an inferior movie. Technically, of course, it was advanced. Columbia Pictures had never released a movie that avant-garde, at least not for a long time. What was the movie that they did, I think it was with Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman in a psychological thriller. There was a sequence that Salvador Dali had a hand in creating. It was very strange, very far out. But other than that, I don’t know of anything in the movies that was as far out as the solarization techniques and so on. So you have to give it to Bob Rafelson for that side of things.

I think we get points — the Monkees, as an operation which includes the producers, directors and all that. I think we get points for taking the Monkees out of the tv series. We didn’t want to do another episode of the tv show. I think we win points on that respect.

But I think you’re supposed to make a movie that either says how awful it is to be caught in a loop or [says] you don’t have to be caught in a loop. That movie didn’t say that. All it said was, “You are caught in a loop.” And that’s not a message I need to give to my children. 

So our time has come to a close. Thank you for asking the big question. I’m sorry we can’t carry on. 

Peter Tork - He's Not the Dummy. A Monkees Interview Part 1

Peter Tork's musical career is pretty well known: Former Greenwich Village folkie heads out to California where his friend Stephen Stills tells him about an audition for a television show about a band. (Stills had been rejected because of his hair and teeth.) The show turns out to be The Monkees which starts out like a made-up band, becomes huge and breaks beyond their studio-constructed identity to something where all four members gain creative control. Their albums begin as pretty good bubblegum pop and evolve into something more on the level with what Tork's pal Stills was doing with Buffalo Springfield. (Don't believe that comment? Reexamine Headquarters, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, Ltd. and the soundtrack to Head.)

The reunited Monkees - Tork, Micky Dolenz and..........TA-DAH! Mike Nesmith - are performing at the Palace Theater in Greensburg, PA this Wednesday, May 28. (8 p.m. $65-$95. palacetheatre.org). Last Wednesday, I had a chance to talk to Tork, something I've wanted to do for years, knowing he was a lot sharper than the character he played on the show. We spoke for 15 minutes, which means we couldn't get into deep questions like specifics about the Head recording sessions or the fact that my uncle was on two episodes of the show and whether or not he remembered him. 

But I also avoided the usual questions about whether or not the Monkees were a real band. This is the first installment of the uncut interview. More will come in the next day or so. 

PS, while the title is obviously true it's also a reference to part of Head. 

Is music something you always wanted to do or was it something that you just stumbled into?

I can’t tell you for sure. I think I’ve always wanted to be an entertainer. And I always wanted to be a musician. But I’m an entertainer first and a musician second. I took piano for five years, and played banjo and guitar and bass and everything ever since. I love music, but I’m just not really sure that I’m as good as I ought to be if I’m gonna be, like, someone who you go to hear play music. But I am good enough that you should come and see me if you want to have a good evening with some good music stuff going on.

So I have to say music has been sort of a secondary thing to what I’ve always really wanted to do, which is to be an entertainer.

I can see how being on a tv show like The Monkees would factor into that. You get the best of both worlds.

It’s a good question: whether I became a Monkee because of my attitudes about this or whether being a Monkee postured or spurred. If I hadn’t been chosen for the Monkees, I probably would’ve been a folk singer for the rest of my life. Like a…I don’t know, I can’t even think of any guys that are like this. Tom Rush, who was a figure from my youth, very good folk singer – like that.

When you were in Greenwich Village…. A lot of people that I think of from that time, Phil Ochs or Dylan come to mind, seem a little more serious where the music or the message came first and entertainment might’ve been secondary.

Yeah something like that. It’s hard to tell. Phil, of course, is no longer with us. I have never heard from Bob Dylan, one way or another, on the point. Although he’s not a very good entertainer. [We both laugh.] I don’t know what he was up to. I think he was about… he wanted to be part of this, and he felt safest and best when it came to worthsmithing and writing lyrics. So that’s where he went.

I didn’t write much. I’ve written some good stuff here and there. But nobody thinks of me much as a songwriter, particularly. So each to his own. Phil Ochs, like Bob Dylan, got to thinking that the message was the important side of things. I think Phil was a little more musical than Bob was, or is. But you make your own choice. You follow your own proclivities.

I have to say a song like “For Pete’s Sake” still really packs a whallop all these years later.

Thanks very much. I’m really pleased that the stuff that I have written has been a little outside the mainstream. I once made the acquaintance of a young lady, a guitar player, and we got closer together and she finally said that guitar chord in “For Pete’s Sake,” — the chord on the word “Everything,” — which is a 7-add-4, which is a highly unusual chord. It sort of fell out of my hands on the guitar. We had been boyfriend and girlfriend for a while, she said that chord was what did it. [Laughs]

I wrote a set of chords once and thought, “Gosh, this is great.” I couldn’t think of anything to do with them. A couple years later I wrote “Can You Dig It,” to those chords. They were… let’s see: D-minor to B-flat major 7th to an E diminished 9th chord. That’s a really interesting way to set it up to the V chord. Or to look at it another way: we’re in A – Arab scale, which is – I don’t want to get too heavy. But it’s an unusual scale in Western music, in pop music. And it worked fine for me. I was just really glad. It just fell out of my hands again. It really felt good.

So I’m pleased that I’m not just writing “moon/june/spoon” songs in doggerel. My girlfriend says that if you can sing [your tune] to “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” it’s doggerel.

Doggerel?

Look up the word: doggerel.

I forget exactly what it means, but I know it’s not good.

It’s cheap poetry, with no thought given whatsoever to rhyme or tension. Bad stuff. Completely thoughtless.  

"Now THAT'S the way you play guitar"

The title of this post comes from something I said to my friend Jennifer during Death of Samantha's set at Mr. Small's last week, when they opened for Guided by Voices (and nearly blew them out of the water in terms of delivery and finesse). Doug Gillard's guitar work was astouding: one handed guitar solos, fat power chords, picked open chords. The man has it down.

I was hoping to follow this praise with a link to a review of the whole show that I wrote for Blurt, but it's not up on the website yet. However, I hadn't posted my profile on Mr. Gillard and his latest release, so now you can check that out right here.

In other Shanley On Music news, I interviewed none other than Peter Tork of the Monkees on Wednesday. I didn't think it was going to come off, as past attempts to secure a Monkees interview eluded me. The band is coming to town (actually to Greensburg) next week, and I hope to have the whole interview transcribed and posted here within the next day or so. Keep looking. Teaser: I avoided typical Monkees questions, and Peter was a really great interview. Nice fella.

Beyond that, bad allergies knocked me down for a day this week. There's a crap ton of reviews I have to write by Tuesday. Gotta run.

The Beauty of Original Pressings.

Right after John Lennon was shot in December 1980, I decided I needed to get a copy of his Walls and Bridges album. A neighbor had played it for me a few years earlier and I liked it (of course, at that pre-teen/teen-age, how could I not?). Plus it had a great cover: the front looked like a three-panel gatefold picture of a Lennon painting with the top missing. (I thought the top panel had been ripped off of my neighbor's copy, but it was made that way.)

Open it up, and there was a glasses-less John giving the raspberries to the camera. The back showed him with several pairs of specs on his face, presumably to make up for the lack of them inside.

If that care-free design wasn't enough, it came with a booklet that had lyrics to each song, with more drawings from John's youth, and instrumental credits for each song, on which the ever-cheeky songwriter employed pseudonyms like Rev. Thumbs Gherkin.

It was hard to find any Lennon albums except for maybe Double Fantasy (recently released) that month. But over Christmas break, my friends Dave and Mike took me with them to a record and comic book store I had never heard of called Eide's. It was on the North Side just over the bridge in a row of stores. Today there's a Roberto Clemente statue right around where the entrance once was. (Eide's moved downtown more than 20 years ago, has become something of an institution, and those buildings were leveled long before PNC Park came along.)

Eide's seemed to have everything an eighth-grade burgeoning record fanatic could want. Over the next few months I'd purchase Japanese reissues of George Harrison's mediocre solo albums Wonderwall Music and Electronic Sound, thinking that I was actually purchasing the original copies. But on that December day, I found the object of my search - Walls and Bridges. Ha cha, I thought.

Only something was different. I figured it wasn't going to be on Apple Records, but I didn't mind the Capitol label. But not only did it lack the original gatefold sleeve, it didn't have any lyric book in it! The front was a non-opening reproduction of the original. The back included all the studio technical credits, but no mentions of who played what, no Rev. Thumbs, no mention of Julian Lennon's ragged but right drums on "Ya Ya."

I can't say for sure, but it might have been at that point when I started turning my nose up at reissued albums, preferring to search for the real thing, or at least getting more excited about an early pressing of an album I wouldn't otherwise care about. ("Wow - The Lonely Bull! Is it one of the early copies with a different A&M logo on it? ....Oh. Never mind.")

All of this occurred to me a couple weeks ago when I decided I needed to have an original copy of Thelonious Monk's Monk's Music on Riverside. Now, I do have a later pressing of the album already, I confess. But it doesn't have the original cover - of Monk sitting in a kid's wagon with a briefcase and sheet music, decked out in his cool shades. Plus the later copy is one of those "electronically rechanneled for stereo" abominations. So an original was in order.

A few years later, I traded in Walls and Bridges when I needed money. Then I picked up a copy at a yard sale - an original with all the trimmings. In retrospect, it's not a great album, aside from a few songs. I might've played it three times since it got it. I've thought about unloading it, but even if I don't, it's still fun to look at.

CD Review: Eric Revis - In Memory of Things Yet Seen

Eric Revis Quartet
In Memory of Things Yet Seen
(Clean Feed) www.cleanfeed-records.com

So far, two of the year's strongest albums have come from bassist-leaders. First there was Jason Roebke's High/Red/Center (Delmark) and now Eric Revis' adventurous In Memory of Things Yet Seen. Revis seems especially noteworthy because he maintains a spot in one of the most prestigious mainstream jazz bands (Branford Marsalis' quartet) while, on his own, he heads in a more avant-garde direction, full of adventure and exploration. (For the record, he also plays with guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and is part of the cooperative group Tarbaby.)

On this album, he brings both worlds together, by having Marsalis join the quartet for two tracks - one of them being a free improvisation. The rest of the album features the bassist leading alto saxophonist Darius Jones (a wild player in his own right), tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry (who can either maintain solid ground or leave it, and does both here) and drummer Chad Taylor (an extremely inventive percussionist who has played with bands from Chicago and New York too numerous to mention).

Revis wrote the majority of the album's 13 tracks, but everyone in the quartet also gets a chance to contribute at least one composition. Three tracks come from different sections of the bassist's "The Tulpa Chronicles." Spread throughout the album, these brief segments create a tone poem with soothing, droning vibes, offer reedy counterpoint and riff over a bowed bass line, in that respective order. Jones might be expected to deliver one of the wilder pieces, outside of the group improvs, but "Hold My Snow Cone" sounds rather restrained, a steady beat on the snare framing an intriguing mood that sounds somewhere between a soul slow jam and indie rock.

Along with the originals, Revis makes some sharp choices for covers. Sunny Murray's "Somethin's Cookin'" is not as shambolic as might be expected, thought it swings freely with a some solid bass underpinning it. Sun Ra's "The Shadow World," on the other hand, gets really wild and free, with a fiery sense pushing it along. If only Branford joined them for this one.

Marsalis does blend right in with the quartet, though. "FreeB" the five-piece blast of spontaneity, lasts just over two-and-a-half minutes but doesn't waste any time. Methinks the guest is the one blowing long tones underneath the other horns. In some ways, its brevity makes it seem more like a warm-up, but that also keeps it in line with the other tracks, most of which last under four minutes. Marsalis' other appearance, ironically called "Unknown," almost sounds like hard bop initially, but the saxophone solos, especially Jones' fiercely melodic contribution, aren't tethered to changes and play loose with the rhythm section. The coda riff, which gives Taylor a brief chance to stretch out, sounds like the kind of groove that would get an audience screaming their approval.

Then again, that reaction could happen during nearly all of the tunes on this album.

Looking Back at the Weekend

It was a good weekend for music in Pittsburgh. Robert Pollard was in town for the opening of an exhibition of his art at the Irma Freeman Center on Friday. I didn't make it to that event, or any of the Unblurred/gallery crawl stuff because Ben Opie was premiering his composition Concert for Orkestra at the New Hazlett Theater that night. Those of you from out of town who aren't familiar with Ben can check out my preview article about it here. He's the same guy who helped bring Anthony Braxton to town in 2008, and recorded a double-CD with him.)

I've seen several shows at the Hazlett but this was the first time the whole space has been lit up and you could see the back of the hall. The loading dock door was visible in the back, as well as a catwalk running across it. With all that exposed, it really had to the look of an old factory, to the point where it seemed a huge industrial-sized fan was casting a shadow on the wall, in a cliched noir style.

The music was great. To prepare for my article, Ben gave me a CD of a practice run, which didn't have the full 15-piece band on it. So it really sounded like sketches or intros. At first, hearing it felt like it was going to spoil the surprise of the performance, but when it came time for the show it was more like certain figures came up and I thought, "Oh, I remember that," or "So that's how it's supposed to sound." Ben's style is really all over the place. He has a fondness for Mingus, Monk and Strayhorn, but he's also able to do Sun Ra and Anthony Braxton-style music convincingly. So it oversimplifies the concerto to say that he incorporates all of that into the piece, but at the same time he does. There were some pretty lush parts, that were really accessible. Tenor saxophonist Lou Stellute delivered one of the strongest solos of the evening in a mellow piece, though what he blew was not bound to any kind of straight ahead tradition. Opie, when he took a solo or a lead a section, straddled a rough and rugged tone with something that was more akin to '20s or '30s jazz, that kind of thick-toned execution.

The piece was divided into 10 movements, but after awhile I stopped trying to figure out if they were onto a new section or if there was just a tempo change within one. The group (which consisted largely of musicians that play in Opie's Sun Ra-inspired group Opek) had a conductor keeping everything together, which allowed the composer to concentrate on his playing.

Bringing my son to the show was a crap shoot. He's been to several Pittsburgh Symphony concerts lately, wearing his volume-cutting headphones, so I thought he might be into this. A couple weeks ago, when I was on my way to interview Opie, Donny said he wanted to come with me. So naturally figured this was a worthwhile chance.

Well, bassist Paul Thompson will be happy to know that the opening two-note bass riff got Donny's attention. He pulled off the headphones and listened intently to the minor third groove. He also dug one of the trombone solos that began with a loud, vocal splat. But that was about it. Fifteen minutes in, I gave him my phone to play with. He likes playing with the calculator and also likes a web game called First in Math. So that held him for the rest of the show. The only thing I really missed was getting to talk to folks after the show.

I could've followed that show with a trip to the Freeman Center to see Pollard. Or I could've driven all the way out to Mr. Small's to see Wye Oak. Instead my friend Toby and I went out for drinks and caught up with each other. He used to work with me and he's into a lot of the same jazz that I am. We sat at Kelly's comparing notes about new and old albums, shows that we've seen or wish we'd seen. Hanging out with him was obviously a rare thing, but just the idea of talking to somebody about all this music really seemed out of the ordinary. I feel like there's no one around who's wired into all this kind of avant garde stuff. Maybe that sounds cliched or perhaps a tad arrogant. Or maybe I'm exaggerating. Or maybe the few that I know are the types who talk about it in jaded, know-it-all ways. I know of at least one other cat that likes to talk good music shop, although he's not really up on the latest ECM releases or the Vision Fest schedule.

Anyhow, good times on Friday.

Saturday night my band the Love Letters played a show at Garfield Artworks. The space is a gallery/performance space that's been around for..........oh, over ten years I guess. The guy who runs it went to high school with me. A lot of people don't like him because he can be kind of nasty and self-righteous, to a degree that I think he's shot himself in the foot many times. But he can also be a good egg, and sometimes really funny.

The bill consisted of us, locals Scott Fry Experience and Miss Massive Snowflake, who hails from Portland. The Love Letters played first, and we're still a power trio, though we hope to fill the space vacated by our keyboardist. (Anyone who's curious should get in touch with me post haste, especially if you're a woman who can sing. The original person was.) Things were a little ragged but it was a good time, and the audience - largely people we didn't know, there to see the other bands - gave us a good response and some compliments.

When Miss Massive Snowflake - who, for the night, consisted only of guitarist Shane de Leon - was starting to roll, something hit me. This was the first show we've done in ages where all we had to do was promote the evening, show up and play. We didn't have to chase down opening acts, chase club bookers and hope they'd take us. We were on a bill with strangers who were all really cool and brought something new to the evening. It felt good but it also felt rare.

MMS's set was about 30 minutes and he came off a little closer to singer/songwriter than I expected (the flyer used the phrase "art pop") but it was fun. I ended up buying two records at the end of the night, an album and a split 10", the latter of which he only had two copies left.

The Scott Fry Experience played next and Manny, the Garf-Art guy mentioned above, told me they were sort of like GBV, which I kept in mind as they played. They were, but not in the dudes-getting-sloshed-as-they-play sort of way. It was unpretentious, unpolished rock that was fun. Things wobbled a little here and there, but the same could be said for us.

So it was disappointing that none of the people I invited came to see us. Not one. But my bandmates got people out, and like I said, some strangers liked us. Strangers in the 20s. At the end of the night, we made a teensy bit of $ but we weren't given a hard time about draw. Yesterday, I still went through the usual post-gig comedown ("depression" is an extreme word, though it's close), wondering what the future holds. But I also felt like we need to play out more often, trio or quartet, to get used to it and to avoid stumbling through changes in songs.

Monk Would Talk to Me, I Bet Ya

Playing right now: Jimmy Giuffre 3 & 4 - New York Concerts
(This thing is going to blow a lot of minds.)

The CD version of the newly released Thelonious Monk Paris 1969 album includes a DVD of the entire performance, along with an interview filmed on that same tour. Anyone who knows anything about Monk knows that the pianist was a man of few very succinct words. The thought of hearing him speak is cool, but one can't exactly expect enlightenment from it.

After watching the interview, I'm tempted to say that it might not simply be the case that Monk was an aloof guy. It could be that people just approached him the same way, like he really was a freak who played freaky music. And they only threw very general, vague questions at him, which left him to try and make the best of a lame situation in hopes of getting it over with soon. The guy interviewing him in the segment, Jacques B. Hess, seems to like his music. He gets very effusive about "Round Midnight" (which, of course, he calls "Round About Midnight") and "Crepuscule With Nellie," saying that they're the work of a genius. But he basically asks Monk to respond to that claim. What kind of question is that?

Hess is French and speaks to the camera in French, switching to English to talk to Monk. No less than three times during the interview, he tells that camera, "Monk does not like to talk very much," which comes across as fairly patronizing. When Monk finally does agree that his work is genius, he seems to be doing it to placate Hess, who takes it further by saying basically, "And there you have it. Monk is a genius."

Orrin Keepnews once said that when he first met Monk, the pianist remembered a review Keepnews had written of one his early Blue Note 78s. The review seemed to grasp, or attempted to grasp, what Monk was trying to do on the record, rather than saying, "Wooooooooah, what's going on HERE?!" Because of that, Monk was a little more friendly and conversational to Keepnews because at the time, (long before they worked together at Riverside) no one was giving Monk any credit for what he did. I can't understand why people would approach an interview subject that way that treated them like a circus freak. Sure, you don't want to take their work as golden but don't come in with skepticism on your mind.

And for pete's sake, don't ask yes-or-no questions.

CD Review: Blaine Lanehan - Meta Music #27

Blaine Lanehan
Meta Music #27
(Extended) www.extendedrecords.com

Guitarist Blaine Lanehan first gained some recognition as part of a free improvisation collective in Evanston, IL. They garnered some press in their hometown despite the fact that their house concerts were attended only by the 10 members of the collective and a handful of girlfriends.

His noisy string abstractions have been located in Chicago for the past 12 years where he's generated controversy and won fans for his intense, almost deafening performances, usually performed with just a six-string guitar and a bank of pedals. On one tour he cleared the room at Pittsburgh's Garfield Artworks with a 30-minute performance consisting of guitar feedback and a 15-foot tape loop that was strung across the stage, recording the racket on one reel-to-reel deck while another played the results back 10 seconds later, providing sonic variations on the initial noise. Although he began and ended the piece, Lanehan was not in the building as it unfolded. He was down the street arguing over a lost food order.

While that performance in particular might evoke John Cage, Lanehan gets especially prickly when compared to any experimental forefather, especially Cage. With a sanctimony that Steve Albini would appreciate, he has gotten in the faces of people - even supporters about to drop money on his extensive catalog -  who dare to make a connection between the guitarist and the grandfather of experimental music. In the rare interviews he's given, it's hard to tell if the attitude is just an elaborate put-on or if he really means it. (It should be noted he has expressed a love of Derek Bailey, boasting that he owns every release on which the guitarist appears.) The Wire has praised his work, saying 15-CDr set No Hands on the Fretboard was a fearless document that probes deep into the recesses of an individual's tempermental lobe.

For the last three years, Lanehan has devoted himself to what he calls "meta-music," an approach in which the preparation for a performance is equally as valuable, if not moreso, than a performance itself. He claims that the thought process that goes into the music gives the music "a pre-destined quality that will either make it suck or not suck. That alone determines why Fleet Foxes are so awful and my music isn't," he has stated in liner notes to previous releases.

Meta Music #22 was recorded last year at the Hungry I-Land on two mikes placed above the stage. It comes with an elaborate drawing that Lanehan sketched to chart the music. Math theories about sound arcs appear on graph paper next to meticulous drawings of his effects pedals, many of which he built himself.

A continuous 32-minute piece, it begins with nothing but audience noise and clinking bottles for the first three minutes. Gradually, we hear him setting up his equipment, amp first. A delay pedal is plugged in next, which loops the buzz of a guitar cable being touched on the plug. Lanehan can be heard talking to himself as he adds different pedals and bends the amorphous sound. A girl in the audience asks, "When is the show going to start?" Lanehan snorts and says, "It started seven minutes ago."

Things don't always go as planned, he says, but "that randomness is what meta music is all about." After a while the snaps of a guitar case are heard, followed quickly by an array of expletives. Apparently Lanehan forgot to pack his guitar in the case that evening.

CD Review: She & Him - Two Virgins [Record Store Day release]

She & Him
Two Virgins
(Marge) mergerecords.com

It's rare that I get around to reviewing something before it comes out and even more rare to get my hands on a Record Store Day release in advance, but somehow the fates have played into my hands for what must be the most unique full-album tribute ever made.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono made the original Two Virgins album in 1968, shocking the public with a record that few people heard because they couldn't get past the front cover (if they actually got a hold of it at all), which showed the two of them in the buff. Had the sounds on that record come in any other type of sleeve, they probably would have been forgotten as soon as they hit the record store. What one heard was little more than Lennon and Ono noodling around with tape loops and piano, and none of it happening in any linear fashion. The tape recorder was turned on and they just went about their business, or they didn't, since there are several patches where nothing is really happening. It's a perfect example of you-had-to-be-there.

So why release an complete "tribute" to such an amorphous recording? The answer seems to be, why not? Zooey Deschanel has been a career out of showing how to be an eccentric in the spotlight, so kudos for her. Her partner in crime M Ward seems to put more effort into making their Two Virgins a tad more compelling than the original too. Though it follows the same sonic arc as the original, his guitar and her ukulele give the performance a bit more musical quality which sounds a little more interesting. Their use of a grapefruit on the record label, instead of an apple, seems like a tip of the hat to Yoko Ono (who published a book called Grapefruit), so they seem serious about the entire homage.

And, of course, there's the cover. The advance copy, alas, didn't have one, but it can be seen here. It's impressive that Deschanel and Ward took it to the extreme and posed nude without making goofy faces or doing anything ironic to set off the album. Coupled with the fact that it's limited to 421 copies for Record Store Day, that makes it a release to seek out, even if you'll only play it once.