One of the things that I learned when grabbing the interview with the Supa Lowery Brothers is that I don't want to handle all the audio equipment and take all the photographs. I was only able to grab them on that outing and when I found a flute player in their first spot I was too tired to grab a second interview.
So when I set out again I took actor friend Kevin Hazelton, who also happens to be a photographer, to take the pictures.
Another Tuesday and we're on the move. We've been going up and down the Financial District because it's closest to where we both call home, but today we're on a mission. We want Bushman, a notorious Fisherman's Wharf fixture who 'hides' behind two plastic branches and spooks tourists. You have not been to San Francisco until you've been "BOO!"ed by Bushman.
I'll spoiler you right now, we found him but only when I had to get Kevin back to work and were never able to interview him. It is, in fact, the greatest failure of this project.
What we did find, however, was a duo from The Growiser Band featuring founder Hubert Emerson on keyboard and Sahar Miller on saxophone. As a saxophonist myself, I have a weakness for street performing saxophonists.
Hubert Emerson Photo: Kevin Hazelton
Growiser is performing in a designated area at Fisherman's Wharf. The Wharf handles street performers a little differently. Obviously, this is the high traffic area for those valuable tourist dollars and a great place for a street performer to be seen. There are fixtures, like the aforementioned Bushman, the usual spraypaint and caraciture artists, dance crews, 'robot men' (which it turns out, is a group...also never got that interview), bands, and musicians all competing for space. The Port Authority has a Street Performer Program that assigns spots and time slots.
For performers this does cut down on territorial disputes which can be a source of frustration, but also places a limit on the time they can promote themselves.
Growiser has set up under the iconic Wharf sign with a keyboard handling both drums and Emerson's playing while Sahar stands next to him playing alto saxophone. Like the Lowery Brothers, between songs they sell CDs and tell anyone who asks about upcoming shows.
Sahar Miller Photo: Kevin Hazelton
They are seasoned vets of the Wharf street performers. One of the reasons that it took me so long to getting to cut this particular interview was not only that it was two people, but because Emerson had so much informative stuff to say on the nature of street performing and the politics of it as it pertains specifically to the Port Authority.
For them, it's a trade off. Unlike the Lowery Brothers, they have not been moved after setting up. And their foot traffic is there to gawk. Regulation means once your slot is in, it's in. But it also means restrictions, something I found that street performers do not deal well with.
One of the main themes in every interview was a sense of self-determination. For them, the port authority is a trade off, trade some of that self-determination for a prime location and no hassle for their three hour slot.
Three years later, Growiser still has their Wharf schedule on their website. If you're going to San Francisco, check in on it and them. Afterwards, if you head west towards the beach, you might encounter Bushman as well and can consider your visit to San Francisco complete.
It's 2pm on a Tuesday and the Supa Lowery Brothers are on the move again. They had set up in a courtyard between 3rd and 4th St. on Market next to The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, but shortly into their first number a security guard had come up and told them they can't play there.
As a trio featuring Chris and Wes Lowery with Mekiso Young (appologies, I've lost my notes so I don't know if I spelled his name right) on guitar they face slightly bigger challenges than the average street performers. They are amplified, which is its own hassle, they need more space, and setting up and tearing down is more involved processes.
But even after this first set back, they're undeterred. They settle on the future storefront for Diesel clothing on the three-way corner of Ellis, Stockton, and Market. Across the street world famous Bucketman has taken a break from his own street performance in front of Old Navy and the Supa Lowery Brothers are ready to try again.
Originally from Philadelphia, they have come up from LA to promote their band to a San Francisco audience. Between trumpet solos Christopher holds up CDs for sale to passers by.
The Supa Lowery Brothers are my first official street performer encounter. I had intended to interview a saxophone player I would see just about every day and had even arranged to meet him that afternoon, but he's nowhere to be found. Instead, I found this jazz fusion trio hastily setting up their PA system and asked if I could record them.
After quickly re-assembling themselves on the three-way corner, they begin playing again. It turns out to be a good location. The Apple store is just across the corner, and people congregate in front of them waiting to cross one of the three streets.
I've borrowed a Canon DSLR from a friend to photograph the performers and while I take my pictures spectators stop for a few minutes and move on, some dance including one man who remained even after I left. I didn't see anyone buy the CDs that Chris held up, but they remained upbeat regardless.
For them, the tell me, it's all about getting their name out there. They could try and hustle up a club gig which they would have to pay for out of pocket and promote and then play to the people who come in, but they've chosen to take their sound to the street, exposing their music to the lunch crowd in San Francisco's Financial District.
This is the first interview I cut a long time ago on Audacity, which is a good audio editor but I wasn't all that adept at using it editing audio documentaries. It's something I never got the hang of and eventually slowed me to a crawl in the editing process. It's also one of the interviews I stacked at the last half of the track instead of all the way through spread out. The few people who have heard these interviews didn't like that (it is a little jarring when the interview suddenly comes in), so later interviews change that.
I recommend headphones for two reasons, first is so that you can make sure you hear it all. The second reason is atmospheric. This isn't just a music performance, but a street music performance and the sounds of the San Francisco mid-afternoon are just as much a part of it as anything else. So put on a good pair of headphones and let this take you to a bright spring afternoon in San Francisco with the Supa Lowery Brothers. Enjoy.
Starting out of the box with a fake out, I was looking forward to today, because I thought it was going to be Greg Osby and I was going to start having a progressive/free jazz saxophone representation to at least keep pace with the current leaders, blues and big band music.
But instead, it was another progressive/funk jazz player hiding inside the Greg Osby CD.
Even better, there's also an ambiguous self help CD in today's line up. Seriously, I can't wait.
The Charlie Hunter Quartet Songs from the Analog Playground
There was a brief period of awesomeness for progressive/funk/free whathaveyou jazz in the 90s. Honestly, it might be happening now and I just don't know about it. But, for a while, it seemed like there were a bunch of artists coming out with interesting, quirky, funky jazz. Sex Mob, Medeski Martin and Wood, and guitarist Charlie Hunter.
I have to admit that, initially, I was way more into Hunter's saxophonist than I was into Hunter himself, though I certainly found him interesting. He had formed a band that was at first called James T. Kirk, named for James Brown, Thelonious Monk, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, but Paramount had something to say regarding that so the band became T.J. Kirk.
This exhausts the immediate knowledge I have of Charlie Hunter. I do know that there were bigger Hunter fans at the store than me, so I'm surprised I have this. It might have been something we got multiple promos of or maybe I squirreled it away in an act of pure dickishness (because I knew by this time that I wouldn't likely listen to it that often).
At the time, I had an aversion to anything too fusiony. I still have it for the most part, but I'm not as strict about it. And because I'm forcing myself to listen to these things all the way through, I'm more prone to letting the CD develop instead of ejecting it at the first hint of processing or electronic instruments.
And there is a lot of that here. It's definitely a funky album a little more than it is straight jazz. Mos Def and Norah Jones make contributions. It's closer to Branford Marsalis' short lived Buckshot LeFonque than it is Wes Montgomery.
The track that just started up is the lead contestant for 'best track title so far,' it's a funky little piece called Mitch Better Have My Bunny. Awesome. It's a pretty groovy little track.
Much of this is based more on the formula of 'figure/solo/new figure/solo/figure/out' rather than 'head/solo/solo/solo/head.'
Wait, I know this Norah Jones song... or rather, I know the Roxy Music single More Than This that Jones and Hunter have given the smooth jazz treatment. As you might have guessed, the dot dot dot represented a Google search.
This might be 'girlfriend jazz.' The kind of jazz you can listen to with your girlfriend that doesn't like jazz but have it still be at least remotely interesting. Or 'car jazz,' perhaps a less sexist way of putting it. Jazz you can play in the car without someone reaching for your presets.
Kurt Elling is doing his 'vocalese' bit on Desert Way. I have a hard time with vocalese, I find it goofy, but at the same time I get Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross' Twisted stuck in my head on a regular basis. And King Pleasure would give me an opportunity to 'sing' Charlie Parker solos with out going "doodlydodododdeededede". Though I'm not 100% certain which one is worse...
The lead singer from Galactic also makes a contribution on the smokey track Spoonful. It's another one of those 'cruising across the desert in the middle of the night' songs. I get enough of these, I think I'm obligated to actually drive across a desert in the middle of the night. As soon as I actually get a stereo in my Bus...
This second Kurt Elling track is also the second track that is just percussion and the guest vocalist, the first being the opening track featuring Mos Def. This is not an artist that splatters his playing wall to wall on the album. Certainly he is featured a great deal but, to his credit, he does not get in the way of the music, to the point of not even playing guitar on two tracks so far. And Percussion Shuffle appears to be, unsurprisingly, a lengthy feature of traditional and improvised percussion instruments.
If you've spent more than half a day with a percussionist, this track will sound all kinds of familiar. Eventually, around them, everything either becomes a drum or a stick and you quickly learn what everything you own or are surrounded by sounds like when struck against or with.
Mos Def is returning with a track called Creole, which so far sounds a bit like a variation on Miles Davis' So What. But rather than that stumbling forward rap style that Mos Def has (it always feels a little ahead of the beat, like a waiter with a tall stack of dishes that you think he's going to drop, but turns out he's just that good at carrying dishes that he can lean the stack ahead of him at will...) he's actually singing this track. Not actually in Creole, though. Pretty decent, really. Kind of like the 'smooth jazz' Roxy Music cover earlier, so not as funky as I'd like it. None of the dissonance I would have expected.
I might have an accidental albums worth of Norah Jones songs, but none of it her regular catalog. Essentially I like a bunch of people who also seem to like Norah Jones or who Jones recorded with to establish her jazz bonafides. Every once in a while, these CDs pop up with a track or two sung by Jones. To the rest of the world, she might be 'that chick who did that song' (or maybe to the handful of people who saw the Wong Kar Wai movie, 'that chick from the film') but to me she has become the perpetual guest artist.
Smart Music Series You Know, You Can
This one is a total mystery to me. I don't know why I have it. It's not classical music, its some sort of Yanni-esque pastiche of electronic music, sound effects, and what they call 'ancient music.' I guess this might have fallen under my buying domain, I don't know how or where.
There was a lot of this stuff that came out, mostly on the heels of that whole Baby Mozart stuff where someone had decided that Mozart could somehow make you smarter, or your baby smarter, or you a smarter parent... I was never really sure how it was supposed to work.
But it sold a bunch, which meant that there was a bunch of stuff like it bound to come out.
Like this.
Now, I listen to classical and jazz, and I've discussed the liner notes in blues, so I'm no stranger to pretense and hyperbole in liner notes. This, however, is my current hands-down favorite:
Do not use while driving or operating heavy machinery. In case of serious problems, The Smart Music Method does not replace sound medical or therapeutical advice. Producer, studio, record company or distributor are not responsible for any damages caused by inappropriate use of the music. Shuffle play is recommended (except for Dreams & Sleep albums). Play softly. Headphones improve the third dimension of sound.
The rest of the liner notes follow in the same vein. Checked off in the cover, apparently this makes use of brainwaves, nature sounds, ancient music principles, natural sonic surround sound. I guess I have to go to something else in their series for multiple music layers.
Apparently 'ancient Greek scales' were used in the composing of this CD (the ancient Greek scale is actually listed as "Lydian." I shouldn't mock too much. I'm well aware of how modality effects the mood of the piece, and Lydian mode is kind of a go-to favorite of mine.
The full list of elements on tap are laid out for me:
Scale: Lydian.
Nature Ingredients: Birds.
Brainwaves: Alpha States.
Planet: Sun.
I'm apparently free, according to the instructions, to do what I would normally do. Relax, think about whatever, keep my eyes open or closed. Just don't drive, of course. Oh, and think of a garden where I apparently can get away with anything.
I don't know why our minds have to always go to gardens. It seems like a bunch of people who can reprogram my mind and creativity with a CD could also come up with something other than the tried and true 'garden' that I have to take my mind to. I don't have anything against gardens, some of them are pretty nice. I went to a butterfly garden in Canada where a bird humped my shoe (true story). These are the things I think about when I think of gardens. Shoe-humping birds or peacocks stealing my bread. I guess if you don't pick something like 'garden' or 'ocean' (I like the ocean, I feel I have to be near it, even though I never go to it) then you end up picking something that sounds materialistic and that would throw the whole aesthetic off.
My racing games are buried in the Albatross storage, otherwise I think this would be a great experiment. I could do a few laps without 'Smart Music' and then do a few laps listening to it and see exactly what the effect on my driving might be.
The liner notes tout the advantages of what they call 'random music':
Suppose you walk in a forest. Birds are singing. They sing without a conductor and without any system. No bird sings the same song twice (tell that to the birds out my window ~me), no bird sounds exactly like any other bird. You never know when any bird will start singing or finish singing. You hear 'bird song.' Likewise, all separate instruments in random compositions can start and finish at any given moment. Together though, all instruments join to create a total effect that is more than the separate voices or instruments. The music in The Smart Music Series is based upon this unique natural principal.
I have to say, they're having a lot more luck, harmonically speaking, than I did when we experimented with random music in 20th century composition classes.
In the end this doesn't sound too different than the earlier World Flutes 1 compilation. It's ultimately a very repetitive music and I can't say that I'm overwhelmed with a sense of confidence or 'yes I can-itude.' I did have to stop it twenty minutes in to unplug and restart the router...maybe it threw off my karma waves or something.
