Nothing is more iconic for street performers than a lone tenor saxophonist. I've put up bands, a weird animal act, but when people think 'street performers' they either think mimes, or lone saxophonists. That might be some kind of personality test, but I digress.
Rodney was, in a way, my grail. The kernel that started this project was the fact that I would pass Rodney almost every time I went into the city. Then there was a day I passed him and he wasn't playing, but talking to someone in some sort of animated conversation.
That's when it occurred to me that I really didn't know anything about these guys and it might be interesting to find out.
So I stopped and talked to him and asked where he'd be the next day. Of course, when I did come out to see him, he wasn't there. Street performers, as seems obvious, work on their own schedule. But I was able to find the Supa Lowery Brothers that day and found Rodney eventually.
He was in turns the most enthusiastic interview subject and the most reluctant, sometimes within the course of a single sentence. When I met him the first time he was intrigued by the idea and seemed into the interview. When I met him the second time he didn't seem to remember who I was and was hesitant, but then really got into it.
In a lot of ways I thought of Rodney as my main motivation for finishing the interviews, because every time he saw me afterwards he would grill me about the progress.
Tip Your Street Performers! Photo: Kevin Hazelton
Every street performer has a little bit of the philosopher in them, Rodney has that in massive doses. When you interview someone where you intend to take yourself out of the interview you try and instruct the subject to include the question in their answer. We usually give the example of "So, if I ask you your name, you say 'My name is Rodney' instead of just saying 'Rodney.'" Which makes it sound a lot easier than it is. That's why, when you watch reality show interviews a lot of people seem to be asking themselves questions they then answer.
Street performers more or less just ignored me and every minute I spent interviewing them they weren't making money, so I never belabored the point to avoid making them angry.
But with Rodney, it was nearly impossible. But what did happen were these awesome stream of consciousness rants that my questions could never unlocked in a normal interview.
Photo: Kevin Hazelton
So, you'll notice some differences. (if you've been actually following the blog from the beginning you'll notice a lot of differences, like the second player I added for each post and the slightly new look. I'm not sure which one I prefer, they both have their pluses so for the time being I'm keeping both up). But specific to Rodney...first is what I call the 'usable interview,' the part where Rodney stayed on topic and more or less answered the questions in a way where it wasn't necessary that you heard the question. Mostly, I did have to include my question in at least one so you get to hear my nasally voice in the distance.
But in addition to that, I've strung together some of his rants over some more of his playing. I'm not religious, but this is about him not me, so there is some proselytizing in there. I apologize that I really didn't have as much room to let you just hear Rodney play, but I do encourage you to take a lunch time stroll on Market between 1st and 2nd (I'm a little disappointed that the Google Streetview car didn't catch him) and listen to him play. Be sure to tip him and tell him that interview guy sent you. No guarantees he'll remember, but he just might.
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.
Sliding through the crate it's two CDs that I thought would be a good idea to have but wasn't anxious to listen to immediately, or ever since they were never opened. Also, today we get to the 100th Amazon player widget. For those with adblock, it's a little player box above each post that allows you to listen to samples of the disc I'm listening to if it happens to be available for download at Amazon. So far, 100 of them have been.
Glenn Gould
Glenn Gould at the Movies
I was trying to think about what I'd say about Glenn Gould because classical CDs have proven to be a little on the difficult side for me to create content about and I realize something, I'm more interested in Glenn Gould as a character, or element, than I am as a performer.
There's that Cuban cigar element to his playing. That kind of thing where you think, "How much better can it really be?" until you actually hear it. Well, alright, that's pretty amazing in a world of just amazing piano players...big deal, right?
Except for what that means. I tend to think of Charlie Parker in the same way and have even used him in the Albatross that way. That monumental performer that sort of owns an instrument or a style in a way that sort of becomes unrepeatable. There have been great saxophonists since Bird, there have been great guitarists since Hendrix, and there have been great piano players since Gould. But they don't get 'the' spot. A transformational piano performer now will be the 'greatest since Gould...'
There is a novel I keep wanting to read (but c'mon, it's seriously a 200 page paragraph...) about the two piano players that show up to study with Horowitz at the same time as Gould and what that does to them. That's the kind of thing that fascinates me about Gould. Not so much the legendary status or what it was like to 'be Gould,' that kind of thing doesn't interest me. What interests me is what it's like to live in the immediate world someone like that creates, how does that change you're view of self if you're an amazing piano player in the same time and place as the amazing piano player?
This is stuff he either selected or recorded especially for films, or was used in films after his death. The first half is a bunch of harpsichord pieces played on a piano, which always feels wrong to me, but there's nothing really behind that.
On the last track he goes with 'original instrument' by playing the Art of the Fugue on an organ.
Jan Garbarek
Visible Worlds
So there was this CD I got as a promo, it was one of those rare 'classical sensations,' not as big as Chant, but did well. And this time, it was something I actually liked quite a bit. The vocal group the Hillard Ensemble recorded some motets and Norwegian saxophonist Jan Gabarek improvised over them. It actually sounded pretty cool, I loved it. I played the hell out of it at the store and even managed to lose it a few times as a personal copy and had to replace it more than once. In fact, I'm pretty sure I no longer have it, but here's hoping because on Amazon it ranges from fifty to seventy bucks, apparently.
I even attended a concert performance of that in the Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill seated right behind some important Norwegian, I don't remember now if it was a politician or a member of the royal family. All I can really remember is thinking it would be really funny to lean forward and ask if he knew of my mom's family. It was a good night for impulse control.
The success of that CD meant that there were suddenly going to be a lot more Jan Garbarek CDs. Awesome, I thought. Sucker. For the most part, Garbarek produces some pretty mild smooth jazz, though still manages to have long open solos instead of repetitive riffing, but that's what he plays. Which I guess goes to why they selected him of all people to perform with the Hillard Ensemble, but I was hoping for more experimental stuff. I mean, he is a European jazz artist, most of the European jazz artists I had run into were mostly pretty caustic free jazz artists.
Not Jan, he's mellow. And I have multiple CDs by this guy. As far as I know they're all like this.
There is no liner notes to explain the theme of this album, just this rather intense photo of Mr. Garbarek. He kind of looks like he's about to perform a feat of mentalism with his sax rather than play it.
I sound like I'm hating on him for not living up to my completely made up expectations of him and my own bias' against smooth jazz. And I guess I am, if I was fairer I'd not that he really isn't that 'smooth' with his smooth jazz, this stuff is just out there enough to avoid being played on the Quiet Storm.
I wasn't prepared for the last song to have lyrics. Of course, I have no idea what she's saying.
Even though they're not a huge, raging success I kind of am digging the playlist posts because it gives me short term benchmarks to look for. Like, I'm kind of excited that we're almost halfway to the next one.
So before 'hipsters' became 'fucking hipsters,' there was the nineties. Well, alright, hipsters have more or less always been fucking hipsters, it's just that in the nineties the internet wasn't developed enough to pour so much concentrated and self-aware hate on them.
But all the conspicious affectations were there, vintage lunch pales and ironic t-shirts and a concentrated and meticulous air of not-actually-giving-a-shit.
The kitsch and irony of the time, as I've talked about before, had a lot to do with the lounge scene. Tiki gods, Mancini music, island themes. And an essential element of any kitschy vintage scene is and always will be Bettie Page.
In the great vin diagram of tastes, this is where me and 'hip culture' intersect. Lounge music is really just a variation of 'cool jazz,' and sometimes contains elements that I really like, like surf guitar or a growling saxophone. Hell, I even like the whole 'Tiki' look--there's a throw away Halloween decoration in my Bus I call Voodoo God (not Tiki, I know) who protects the Bus. (It is important to remember that Voodoo God does not protect the Bus from breaking down...a caveat I have been forced to add...)
And I really like Bettie Page. It all started with a copy of The Rocketeer a friend showed me when I was in junior high. He had been Dave Stevens' neighbor and had this signed copy of a book I had never heard of (it was years until the movie was made) that contained something I already dug, vintage action sci-fi and the romantic interest who I was later to learn was modeled off Bettie Page (Dave Stevens was later able to interview Bettie on a recording that is already on my hard drive).
So I snatched up these promos like a rabid dog. There are a few in this series, Danger Girl, Jungle Girl, and Private Girl. I have all three, or at least had. My favorite by far was Danger Girl, which I actually tried to load onto the hard drive years ago but was too scratched. I was only able to save my favorite track, Mood One by John Barry. Jungle Girl actually came up today but it was empty. So Private Girl is the only one to survive onto the hard drive.
Each one has a pretext for the selection. Danger Girl is "Burlesque music," Jungle Girl is "exotique [sic] music," and this one is "spicy music."
Though the music is just pretext. What these CDs really are is another collection of Bettie Page pictures fitting into the theme of each album. The collected music is just a bonus, really. But I really actually like some of the music, especially the ones on Danger Girl, obviously.
The music ranges from that 'cool jazz' variation to something you might expect on Lawrence Welk. It certainly starts to turn Sin City into a different movie...
The songs are short, too, twenty-eight tracks not even amounting to fifty minutes.
These collections are really reliant on context. Without them I'm not sure I'm going to associate it with this collection. It's just going to be more of that quirky 50s and 60s music I have lurking on the hard drive. A lot of flute, a lot of organ.
Here's a pretty sharp contrast. The second track on this disc is longer than the entire last disc. In fact, only two tracks make up this particular CD. It's stealth Winter & Winter, it came in a conventional jewel case instead of the corduroy one. Mostly because this isn't the Winter & Winter release but the Verve one. But there is a Winter & Winter release of this album.
But still, you can judge a CD sometimes from its cover. If it's a saturated picture of a man taken at a weird angle, it's probably a Blue Note CD from the sixties. If it's a picture of a man in blue collar settings, probably blues. If it's abstract art, good chance it's some high concept European free jazz.
Which is exactly what we have here. You know you're dealing with some really out there stuff when there are things like only two tracks on a CD that's over an hour long. Or there are no liner notes, just more abstract art.
The band is made up of Berne and Chris Speed on woodwinds and then guitar, upright bass, and drums. The music is rhythmically unteathered and full of the squawks and pops that people tend to associate with free jazz (if they know what free jazz is).
For all the 'freeness' in free jazz, modern free jazz has some pretty elaborate arrangements. The long piece, Eye Contact, have actual movements to it separated by wild solo segments. And this is not uncommon in modern free jazz, especially coming out of Europe.
I really dig this kind of stuff but it's hard to find other people willing to stomach it. Every once in a while you run into that Mike Patton fan that is able to relate in some ways to the music. Or I wear someone down and eventually ease them into the wilder elements of jazz. But usually, this music is the music I play to ensure I'm alone.
It's not without its melodic elements, they're just punched with chaos and walls of sound.
Today represents two musicians I kind of backed into knowing, so to speak. They were either tangential to something I was into or they did one thing that I found curoious and as a result (and since whenever they released something I got it for free from the label) I started following. Also, today represents the first time something is verifiably from the actual rotation section of the Albatross because it comes from a sleeve to a broken CD carrier. On with the show...
Don Byron Music for Six Musicians
I have to keep checking because I become convinced that this album is already on the hard drive, but it's not. I listened to it enough that much of it is pretty familiar, even though that had to be a fairly long time ago because I don't remember this being available during that brief window in which I had a CD player in the short lived Vanagon.
Not that I associated any of this familiar music with this album. There is the slam poetry opener that I knew as soon as it started, but if I had remembered those lines separately I would not have thought immediately, "Oh, that Don Byron CD I used to listen to..." In fact, I was surprised to hear slam poetry when what I was expecting was just some progressive jazz played on a clarinet.
This, I believe, never really had a case, so it's little torn sleeve is as much home as its ever known.
Outside of the poetic opening it's pretty straight forward progressive jazz stuff, complex rhythms, some collective improve, dissonance, lots of counter-everything. I don't know that what makes up the six musicians stays the same from track to track, since I don't remember the electric guitar that's making a showing in "I'll chill on the Marley tapes..." on (The press made) Rodney King (responsible for the LA riots). The track names, by the way, are awesome. A little dated in their politics (a reference to both Rodney King and Ross Perot...), but that's fine. In ten or twelve years some rabid downloader is going to realize he has all this unlistened to music and start whatever indulgent method is available to him like blogs now about going through all his music and commenting on the outdated politics of half-term Alaskan governors and modern day tea partiers. And maybe people who do stunts to become reality TV stars. Or maybe by then we'll have given up and everyone will be reality TV stars.
The cool thing about being political in jazz is you really only have to come up with the snappy title and you're done. Well, unless you're Moss Allison, then you have to use dry wit in lyrics, apparently.
The music is as eclectic as I come to expect from Byron. Not so much as A Fine Line, more than Bug Music. Right down the center of variation. The relatively short The Allure of Enlightenment is a calm and melodic contrast to the previous Crown Heights. I'm more familiar with the beginning of this album than I am its end. I don't know if it's because by this time I was well into playing a video game and not paying attention, or if it stands out less, or if I simply just stopped playing it early on each time and moved on to another CD.
Wayne Shorter Juju
The internet has effected me. I feel the urge to create some sort of graph or something starting with Sidney Bechett and placing saxophonists along it in relation to which direction they took the horn and where they sit. Because in my mind at least, I start to do that in some form or another. There are groupings, like Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, and Paul Desmond all sit grouped up in one part of the graph, the 'mellow side.' Then there's Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Hamiet Bluiett on the crazy side, and just a little in from those guys would be Pharoah Sanders and Rashaan Roland Kirk, and a little further in Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter. But here's where the graph would get confusing for me, anyway, is finding the distance on a different axis between Shorter and Rollins. Rollins is more bombastic, more Kirk, and Shorter is more manic, more Dolphy. Of course for any of this to make any sense you have to know who all these players are, and if you do then you don't need the stupid chart.
Wayne Shorter is on or near everything cool at one point or another, which I guess would come from being part of not only Miles Davis' amazing group ("The Quintet" as some have called it) but also part of a whole lot of other people's amazing groups. Whenever I want to find an example of jazz albums I should have to demonstrate my collection's lacking, about half the time the example I bring up is a Wayne Shorter album. Half because he's a remarkable player with some landmark albums, but the other half I think is because he's one of those guys that people know is awesome but don't buy the records that he heads. I might be projecting here, but most of the time when I was able to look at a serious collector's stash, Shorter wouldn't really come up as often. Shorter albums don't appear on lists as much unless the list goes past twenty or so, but when it does the person making the list lavishes it with praise. I don't know what the distinction is or really even if it's just in my head. I was relieved that the CD had been pulled out, that at least I listened to this one when I got home, but not as often, apparently, as Don Byron's CD.
This is, of course, another Rudy van Gelder edition from Blue Note. If I had been tagging RVG CDs in the posts I'm pretty sure that would be the top tag. Everyone of the RVG Edition CDs has the exact same graphic on the back. There's that pose, the universal gesture, apparently, of someone wearing headphones indicating, "Shut up, I'm trying to hear something..." You see that all the time in movies...hell, I do it when I'm recording audio on a shoot. You're trying to pinpoint something in the audio and you tilt your head even though you're wearing headphones...like if I crook my head just right the proper audio will fall into my ear and I'll get what I'm looking for. Like for no reason we all become Nipper the RCA dog twisting it's head in front of the gramophone. I'm not sure why in the hell we do this. Alright, in movies it is really the only way to visually indicate that the person on the headphones hears something important and is trying to figure out what it is. And maybe it's just reflex because in every other situation if we move our ears we can hear certain things better and it's not like that reflex is going to go, "Oh, hey, the speakers are attached to your head...moving it won't matter." But it's still kind of silly.
I wonder if I could rate artists on how easy it is to do something else while listening to them. I don't really know how to do it without it sounding like a bad thing. I get distracted on a lot of the CDs, they're usually around an hour long and if I sat here with my fingers on the keyboard for the whole hour the posts would be crazy long nonsense, and already they're too long for one of my only readers. But for some of them I enjoy having them play and then merrily go about my business stumbling around the internet until "Shit! The CD is over and I haven't said much of anything!" Then I don't know what to do. It's hardly ever that I just didn't like the music, but rather I just didn't only listen to the music, I guess. And they don't have any tracks where I go, "What the hell is that?" which isn't a bad thing, necessarily.
I've been going Godzilla on my CDs as of late. More than a few have found themselves under foot as I let the Albatross get the best of me and haven't really made any effort to organize the CDs as I go through them one by one. This is of course stupid as hell. I have managed to fish out some of the more scattered CDs and at least start making recognizable stacks. Which means that there is more left for the bag I was working on than I initially thought, almost two more weeks to go.
I haven't come any closer to figuring out a way to classify classical CDs in a system designed for pop music.
I was actually kind of dreading putting this CD in because while I like classical music, I haven't had to write about classical music since college, and even in college I wasn't really that great at it.
But I hadn't realized it was a 20th Century composer, which was what I took upon myself as a my mission as classical buyer to promote 20th Century composers. I even made special cards to indicate 20th Century composers, as if that was an incentive instead of a disincentive for the average person browsing the classical section of a suburban record store.
I've talked before about how, let's say 'out of hand' 20th Century music can be. That's not so much the case with this. So far it's pretty accessible.
According to the liner notes the first piece, Drowning Out, is inspired by a William Golding novel, Pincher Martin, about a drowning man. I haven't read or even heard of that book, but apparently that doesn't really matter. Turnage doesn't really commit to that whole 'impressionistic' composition style where the music is supposed to evoke certain imagery or the like.
I really like the cello. Like, in a kind of disturbing way. I bring this up because the second piece is a cello piece written as a tribute to a friend of the composer and cellist for Ensemble Modern who had died.
Turnage manages to dodge one of my main frustrations with iTunes by having his compositions play all the way though instead of in separate movements. iTunes doesn't let you imbed play lists so that when you put things on shuffle you don't get composition movements out of sequence or separated. Pretty frustrating when you have tracks that are supposed to go together in your library.
As much as I'm digging the cello piece (which really is pretty good, has a bit of darkness to it, almost a kind of updated film noir soundtrack feel), I'm looking forward to Three Screaming Popes...because, well, how can you not?
Pretty cool, and fairly tame for 20th Century music, but that's not really a bad thing.
Freddie Hubbard & Jimmy Heath Jam Gems: Live at the Left Bank
Freddie Hubbard is one of the people I've seen live, but it wasn't as an amazing a musical experience as say, Pharoah Sanders or Sonny Rollins. Instead it was a kind of old school spectacle. Hubbard was, the best of my estimation, completely plastered. What was even better was that he was fascinated with some lady in the back of Kimball's East. So really we got a front row seat to that most of the night. The performance was good, too, but really what I remember was the disjointed back and forth with a lady I couldn't make out (and I was closer to her than he was, so who knows what he was responding to...). It was kind of awesome. I mean, I'm way too young to have had the opportunity to be in a club where Parker might wander out of a bathroom just in time to take his solo after shooting up or Mingus slamming his bass and shattering it (I don't remember who that story goes to, to be honest). Jazz men to me are old men, dignified or mellowed with their age, or the ones that were professional enough to have survived long enough for me to see them. But Freddie Hubbard took one for the team to give me that old school jazz club experience.
Joel Dorn (who also wrote the description of Buddy Rich I quoted) also describes the old school jazz club experience in his liner notes, but that's of the more performance oriented variety. That legendary players would arrive at these clubs and play to enthusiastic audiences and the artists would feed off that.
I can't 'agree' as such because I haven't been to the old jazz clubs at that time, but I do know that the crowds now are more subdued. Fancy men taking fancy women on fancy dates to appear classy, upper middle class folk with the money to go to these things, and a smattering of music students, studying the playing. And I think that we were all judging each other for being there. No one was there 'legitimately' except the person making the observation. I imagine the same thing happens at punk rock shows.
This is from Label M, which packaged their CDs in the same cases used by 32Jazz. They also gave me a t-shirt. There's no insight there, I'd just been sitting here listening to blazing tenor solos and hadn't typed anything in a bit. This is pre-Professor days for Jimmy Heath and yet still awesome.
This isn't the cleanest live recording, but not the worst that's even gone onto the hard drive, and it does give a good feel of the crowd and their reaction to the pretty energetic performance.
I kind of hate Autumn Leaves. For some reason when I played in academic combos the instructor would often give the group Autumn Leaves. Maybe it's the easy changes or easy head, don't know. But it wasn't a particularly interesting piece to play and I played it way too often.
I'm getting down to the last of this bag of CDs. So far the pattern has been that I'm impatient with the bag I'm working on and want desperately to move on to the next. Well, this is only the second bag, but more or less...
So let's get through this bag...
Ernie Watts Classical Moods
Sometimes there are artists that I don't know if I'm familiar with them because they come up often or if I've heard of them a lot or if their CD just kept popping up when I was going through my CDs. Ernie Watts is one of those guys, because the name is very familiar but anytime I think of it it's just this album cover that I think of.
Watts, from the liner notes, is a studio/session player that would spend his nights playing in LA clubs. This is his chance, so he says in the liner notes, to play these classic jazz standards that he grew up with because during the sessions he's playing original works of the people he's working for.
There's a double edged sword with the whole 'session musician' thing. The good side is that generally you are a master of your instrument. You don't get into the studio unless you can bring it on the first take. It's one thing for the artist on the top bill wastes time, but the hired help can't miss a note. And so these players are on point before they even arrive. And of course if they're good, they get to do it a lot. And they develop their playing because they do it so often and with so many different ways.
The bad side of that is that you are 'for hire,' and that means all of you--your sound your style, everything. They never really get to cut loose, experiment that much--they serve the person they're recording for. Ideally Watts shakes off those cobwebs in the aforementioned clubs, but I think it doesn't really turn on and off.
And so Watts playing on this album is that of a master saxophonist playing extraordinarily well, but all within the lines. These are exemplary samples of jazz standards that are played well. I don't want to add a 'but', not every player has to be wild, unconventional. There should be room for the craft. And in that room would sit Watts. I would take lessons from him just to be that clean all over the sax' range.
At some point I think I was really into Mugrew Miller, the piano player on this album, but I don't really remember the context. I think he played with someone I really liked or something. Google isn't helping me remember.
Tamba 4
We and the Sea
I might be able to momentarily escape Blue Note, but I can't escape Rudy van Gelder. I was perusing the liner notes hoping for something more intelligent to say other than "Nope, don't know who these guys are" or at the very least have some good old fashion fun with the liner notes when I see the 'Recorded by' credit. Gelder. He's everywhere.
So, yeah. Don't know a thing about this CD, wouldn't have given it a second glance in the store. It's the first group to have recorded Girl From Ipanema.
The first track was a completely awesome first track because it started out as a progressive jazz number that built and built and then, four minutes in, broke down as the bossa nova rhythm started to come in. What a great way to start their first American recording. By the second track that softly sung Portuguese is in place to let me know it's Brazilian music.
This is a tragically short CD, just over thirty minutes. Good timing though, because I'm kind of tired. But I've had a long run of straight jazz and some pretentious jazz, so this is a nice change up.
The Albatross hits the Big 5-Oh. That means that a few days ago 100 CDs went onto the hard drive (since some were doubles and some days I did more than two). One hundred CDs that I've also listened to all the way through. Crazy. I don't have anything in depth to say about that, just felt it needed to be noted. I'm already starting to fade as far as what is what. I went through to share some songs with my brother as he starts to consider new paths in his music career and I actually found myself going through the list and knowing it was something that got added but still having to think, "What was the deal with this stuff again?"
I knew that as soon as I got a new Mac there would be some event that would come up that makes mine out of date. This happened last time, too. I need to better time my crisis. This really doesn't pertain to the Albatross, but it was on my mind.
Also, I added a food blog written by an old college friend and theater person in the links all the way at the bottom. I might have to hunt for a new template, that side bar is getting lengthy. Anyway, check it out, it might make you hungry, though.
Onto the beast...
The Buddy Rich Big Band
Live Wham!
This is not your father's big band. Well, I mean, it probably is. It's just as likely as anything else, really. It was recorded in 1977 and 1978 after all. But for a big band, that's 'modern.' And Buddy Rich's big band carries that modern big band sound, sort of recycling back that Chicago/Blood, Sweat, and Tears jazz rock sound back into jazz, this is sharper and more dynamic that 'traditional' big band. More forceful as well, partially a function of being lead by a drummer as opposed to a piano or horn player.
The liner notes include a Modern Drummer Magazine interview with Rich from the time and I have to say he comes off like an old school jazz crumedgon. Here are some highlights:
Modern Drummer: Do you do any limbering up before a performance?
Buddy Rich: Yeah, I usually take my hands out of my pockets.
...
Modern Drummer: That trick of using both ends of one stick to play two different drums. Is that something you thought up?
Buddy Rich: Almost everything I've don I've done through my own creativity. I don't think I have ever had to listen to anyone else to learn how to play drums. I wish I could say that for about ten thousand drummers.
...
Modern Drummer: Are any of your drums specially made?
Buddy Rich: Nope, right off the rack.
Modern Drummer: That's interesting. I thought many name players use custom made equipment?
Buddy Rich: Yeah, that's because they can't play. I mean it's obvious you know...you put a race driver in a car, if he knows how to drive, he can drive anything. If he can't drive, the can't push a kiddie car.
...
Buddy Rich:...It's easier now because the kids that are playing have no musical background [earlier he eschewed musical education and listening to other players and practicing, mind]. They luck out with an album and they become stars. I mean, where is their staying power? Where is their creativity? Most drummers I hear today play what every other drummer has played on a record. I don't hear one bit of originality. I hear triplets coming of tom-toms by every kid that's been able to hold a pair of sticks. That's not my idea of playing drums.
I managed to find a transcription of the entire interview, it gets worse. You really should check it out.
Joel Dorn describes him this way-
Buddy Rich was like weather in the tropics, always changing. One minute you'd be sharin' a joint wiht him and laughin' your ass off, the next he'd be screamin' at you and shooting karate kicks by your head.
I'm not sure what it is about jazz that attracts this personality type, but it's not all that uncommon even among jazz musicians that you've never heard of unless you're into your local jazz scene. I've had instructors like this (alright, I've never had an instructor swing a kick at me, but I wouldn't have put it past a few...)
One of the odd take aways that they seemed to want to get to in these liner notes is that late in his career he became interested in cars and karate, each get a few separate mentions.
I've been trying to read all of this stuff while listening to the full on assault on my ears that this recording is. This refuses to be background music. Sometimes, when an album isn't that exciting I can push my headphones forward and still listen to the album while catching whats going on with the TV. I'd have to put the headphones in the other room to even hope to accomplish that here. I can't help but imagine smoke rising off this big band after their done. It is loud, it is fast, it is dynamic--as long as that dynamic is loud and fucking loud.
Jim, Kermit, and Buddy
And as if to underline that, here comes their four times speed version of Miles Davis' So What? Under Davis it was a medium laid back tempo moody modal study. Under Buddy Rich it's a bright, fast, multi-layered five minute long shout chorus.
The monster at the end of the book is a 26 minute long suite. I have no idea how they can sustain themselves through a marathon like that, it should be interesting.
Speaking of Muppets, for no explained reason there is a picture of Jim Henson with Kermit on the back cover. Awesome.
So clearly I am part of the problem. Because there is plenty of new jazz just sitting unlistened to in the Albatross, including new saxophonists. But if I had been asked before this project started I would have been able to name Chris Potter and Black/Note and then stalled. But two days in a row I've put a new saxophonist on the hard drive, so I wasn't even so much as paying attention to the stack of CDs that I was taking home.
This album includes some more Jacky Terrasson as well. Blue Note really like Terrasson it seems.
There aren't any fun liner notes to play with here, it's just a bunch of photos laid out from the recording session of all of the young lions of Blue Note getting together and recording and album. After that run of liner notes I'm almost disappointed. I kind of feel like I'm going, "Yeah yeah, good music...whatever...get back to me when you have an extreme political screed or want to rage against a generation of performers on your instrument..."
And that's not far from the truth. This is almost exactly the kind of jazz I like, on the instrument I prefer. It's clean, it's well done, well performed, but I'm just kind of sitting here. This is kind of what I've talked about before. With so much nutty or bizarre things that might surface somewhere in the collection my time for stuff that is just simply good becomes limited.
I guess I could expand this into a metaphor for our information age. When there's so much of it out there you simply don't have the time for quality. This blog (while I'm not trying to bill it as quality) is simply too long for anyone to really read...why spend fifteen minutes plowing through some guy's musing on a CD when a video of a cat riding a turtle is a stumble away? And I don't say that 'holier than thou,' I do it all the time. I watched that kitten ride the turtle and forwarded it even. I get TED talks that come up on stumble where I don't have to read shit, just watch a video...but its six minutes? Cracked might have a list of the Six Silliest Super-Hero Reboots if I just hit that stumble button...
When the filter becomes our attention spans we are not filtering for quality or even for content, we're filtering for noise. When there is so much that demands our attention can we even be criticized for paying attention to the loudest, the splashiest? I can listen to this absolutely good quintet recording, but over in the stack is a bagpipe CD that tries to make the bagpipe a modern instrument. (that may or may not be true, I know there is a bagpipe CD in the wings and I feel like I'm trying to burn through the CDs to get to it because I have no idea what it's about).
I don't even have rounds anymore, I just have stumble. If I hit stumble enough I'll get my rounds, IO9 will come up, Gawker, etc. I tend to forget that the Onion is even open as part of my set of home pages. There's so much information out there and so many ways for it to be hand delivered that I do the equivalent of just go out and lay on the lawn and let it fall on me. There's good stuff within reach, there is quality in the bag. There is a perfectly awesome jazz quintet recording under foot. But I can't see it because I'm too busy being led by whatever distracting noise is in my way.
I've made the mistake of moving some CDs in from storage before I was done with the bag, so now I keep wanting to move onto those CDs and not finish the bag. It doesn't help that the bag has torn and now the CDs are intermingling with the ones that have already been done. Ah well...
This is another one of those CDs that I wanted but didn't know that I had. Not that I have any idea who this is. Because I don't. But that was the thing, I wanted saxophonists I hadn't heard, contemporary jazz musicians, etc. Except that it was always hard to buy Matt Otto, guy I've never heard, when I still don't own Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil. (I may very well actually own that...).
Of course, I was getting CDs for free and I still didn't listen to this CD until now. But I might have brought this home with Speak No Evil, so, you know...
This is actually a pretty decent jazz album. There isn't anything standing out so far, but it's pretty decent.
Well, that's not entirely true, there is something standing out, and it's the one thing that is quickly becoming my favorite thing...the liner notes.
But this isn't the regular fun and game that liner notes usually are. For some reason, Matt Otto has decided to go in a completely different direction with the liner notes: Socialist manifesto.
And I'm not talking that whole Tea Party notion of anything that doesn't benefit you directly is socialist knee-jerk kind of way. Like "it is the reoccurring reality of class society based on the private ownership of the means of production. That is, a society in which a minority of people (the ruling class) own all of the social resources and profit off the labor of workers who have only their labor to sell in order to survive." (direct quote) socialism.
As far as I can tell from the essay, he's against the exploitation of the worker for the benefit of the ruling class. And that the jazz musician, performing a music that spawned from the most exploited worker in history, owes a responsibility to work towards changing that. But he still had me huck his CD for just above minimum wage.
He also seems to feel that specialization in education has led to passiveness and subservience in the worker. That and sexism and racism used to divide the workers against each other.
Not at all what I expected to see in the liner notes of a CD.
So the lesson of the Albatross is: Always read the liner notes, you never know what you're going to find.
Yeah, and the music is pretty good, too. He doubles a few tracks to make things sound fuller, which in a purest kind of way doesn't seem right, but that's kind of unfair, really. It's not a live album, some mastering is bound to take place, why should it have to 'sound' live. [EDIT: I have been contacted by Matt Otto! and that turns out to not be true, everything was in fact live to tape.-walrus]
Ooooh, 'hidden' track. These tracks are never so much hidden as stuffed after a long pause on the last track of the CD. Basically it's just a way to wreck havoc on you putting the CD on random.
Everette Harp For the Love
Nuts, fusion. Smooth jazz fusion. Radio jazz. I recognized the name but didn't know anything about the artist. The CD loaded before I was finished setting up the post, so it's already playing before I was able to type out what my expectations were.
Every one of these CDs where I don't know who the person is is like Russian roulette, eventually that chamber is going to be filled with some bland smooth jazz.
Smooth jazz/contemporary jazz/fusion, what have you, sounds like soft core porn. That may be because it's late and I'm watching movie channels, but it's only Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, so it's not really that...
I'm not sure what the source of my complete disdain for this kind of jazz is. I mean, it's one thing to just not like it. There are flavors of ice cream I could do without, I don't like beef burritos nearly as much as I like chicken burritos, but that doesn't mean that I loath beef burritos. I don't hate other forms of pop music as much as I dislike smooth jazz. I don't listen to pop punk, but I don't hate it. I think rap-core is kind of comical, but hate? Smooth jazz, though...
I think that it's because this is the overcome I have to deal with when trying to introduce someone to jazz. Like, if I say I like jazz there's that chance that the person is going to say, "What, like Kenny G?" and then I have to kill them. And then I either go to jail or more likely, since I'm not really all that much of a tough guy, I get my butt kicked in the failed attempt. And really, what do we gain from that?
There isn't even liner notes so there isn't the chance that they're filled with a political screed or something.
Today is going to be the day I give up the pre-amble. At least for today. Except, you know, for this part.
Salif Kieta
Papa
I know nothing about this CD. As you can see to the left, it comes in one of those advanced copy sleeves. iTunes is calling it 'pop' and into the first track it's a kind of funky pop in a different language.
Apparently, I should know something about this CD, Salif Keita is the first thing to come up when google tries and guess what you're trying to input.
Ah, awesome...the Albatross is trying to do a theme between days for three days in a row. Two days ago I talked about Red Rodney being billed as "Albino Red" in the segregated south, well, Salif Keita is an albino from Mali. I can't help but feel that someone reading this already knows that. For whatever reason, I didn't.
Awesome side note, the headphones are blocking out the TV so that woman who sings about how I should go to an online college is singing afro-pop.
Sort of unfair, but I associate this with that insufferable jackass you might meet at the hemp products store. I recognize that I know this because I go to hemp product stores, and I do in fact have this CD, and I have to admit I'm not hating it...so for all effects and purposes, I am that insufferable jackass. Good times. I contemplated briefly trying to defend myself by pointing out that 'at least I didn't come by this by listening to Peter Gabriel...' but really that just ups the insufferable part. Self awareness can by a little bit of a pain in the ass.
Well, the mystery as to why I have this is kind of solved. I did do some buying for the world section and did like to collect 'indigenous music' (as part of that whole pretend ethno-musicologist thing...good lord, I really am that jackass...) and since I really didn't know that much about world music I'd have to take pretty much anything because I really didn't know what I was getting half the time. But the reason I got this one probably had more to do with it being on Metro Blue, the sister label to Blue Note. Really seeing how generous the Blue Note guy was.
Really, take an later Peter Gabriel album, get rid of the guy straining his voice in English and you get pretty close to this. Gabriel was really into this stuff, apparently.
I'd worry about that whole 'insufferable jackass' impression if this came up with friends, but realistically, no one lets me play my music for social gatherings.
Rashaan Roland Kirk Volunteered Slavery
This actually is part of a double CD with Blacknuss called Left Cross, Right Cross, but I already have Blacknuss on my iTunes (because it has the coolest version of Ain't No Sunshine ever recorded, where he grunts out the lyrics while he plays the flute...you might be thinking that sounds awful, but you're wrong, it's awesome.) Plus, that CD is missing in the case, so Volunteered Slavery is the one that goes in today.
Right off the bat on the title track he's already doing the multiple saxophone thing. And now he's onto quoting Hey Jude in his solo. Jazz 'quoting' is just playing the melody of another song during your solo...if there was anyone reading that who thought he started singing Hey Jude or something.
Kirk sort of helps round out that insufferable jackass quotient, sadly. Kirk is part of that trinity of easy to remember names that help up the 'hip' on some album collections. If I were a math guy I probably could come up with some algorhythm where the likelyhood that someone had one or more Kirk, Sun Ra, or Art Ensemble of Chicago albums depending on how much Frank Zappa and Grateful Dead they have and in what proportions. For the record, I only had Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch when I was a kid to get Valley Girl. I realize this isn't helping my case...
There's a lot more singing on this album than normal. There is always a little vocal work, but this one is upping it a bit.
Ha, okay, you know that phenomenon where people get the lyrics wrong and the song becomes a little silly? Just happened. While I was typing I thought they were singing "Let's go search for the ring..." which made me think of some kind of Wiz-style musical adaptation of Lord of the Rings, but it was "Let's go search for the reason why..." Makes more sense, but less fun.
It's just now occuring to me the direct line between the group Sex Mob and Kirk. Both do funky/free jazz versions of popular music. Right now Say a Little Prayer is getting the treatment, and I'm digging it.
Really, where else are you going to get a nose whistle solo but a Roland Kirk album?
This includes the command encore where Kirk admits to getting a slow start because he "smoked too much." Which I think rules out me being able to give this album to my students...
There is an ad campaign out for Sour Patch Kids where little animated Sour Patch candies do something messed up to someone and then follow it up with something nice with the tag line, "First they're sour, then they're sweet." I've had my issues with it, since the messed up things that they do are way more severe than being adorable can make up for, but that's not why I bring it up.
I bring it up because the Albatross has just pulled a Sour Patch Kids bit on me. Yesterday I entered a smooth jazz saxophone player who had a name deceptively similar to a free/progressive jazz player who I was a fan of. As a result I was kind of moody about the whole entry.
Well, after two empty nests--a celtic 20th Century composition album and another Real World entry, there was a fake out. Inside a Scatman Crothers CD (you may know him as the voice of "Jazz" the Autobot on the Transformers. Or, as a legendary jazz performer and prolific actor. Or as a Martini Rossi 935 Porsche race car that turns into a robot) and instead there was an actual David Murray (not a 'Mc' in sight) CD inside instead. Completely random pick, I swear.
David Murray Deep River
Ah yeah, that's the stuff...Murray isn't the most 'agressive' of the progressive/free jazz players by a long shot. I haven't seen him by himself in concert (I have as a member of the World Saxophone Quartet), but I don't envision him leaning into his saxophone's mic and yelling like I've seen Pharaoh Sanders do (in one of the coolest shows I ever attended). There's a little more exploration that goes into his style than shear sound. The second and third tracks are longer, slower, modal pieces with sparse, drawn out solos, M'biza being done on a bass clarinet.
In any gathering of saxophone players my default favorite always goes bottom up. First the bari, then the tenor player, then the alto. If all you play is soprano and your name isn't Sidney Bechet, stop it. But my love for the World Saxophone Quartet is so convoluted that I honestly think that my favorite is which ever one of them I'm listening to at the moment. I arrive at this conclusion because I was about to declare him my favorite when I realized that I have the exact same reaction when listening to my Hammiet Blueitt recordings.
These Coltrane-style modal pieces have a tendency to hypnotize me. I might start off moving my head to them, but with the amount of poly-rhythm going on it usually slows and settles into a thousand yard stare. Not a 'thing I have on in the background,' even if it is, I'll slowly stop what I'm doing and commence 'contemplating my navel' as some soccer coaches have referred to it.
This is kind of the stealth progressive jazz, like if I catch it at the right moment I might lure someone who is resistant to more, lets say 'aggressive,' sounds. Murray works his way towards that. We're four or five minutes in before the madness starts gradually. It never ultimately works, though. Sooner or later someone goes, "You listen to this on purpose?" and I have to switch to something tamer.
This album contains Mr. P.C., which is my favorite piece of Coltrane's Giant Steps album. This also brings the total of songs called "Mr" something to ten. Oddly enough, jazz and surf music are tied for most represented.
Well, the Albatross can't be completely predictable even when it's making up for earlier cruelty. I've talked a few times about the new swing revival that happened for what felt like a couple of months in the nineties. In an attempt to cash in on this quickly flaring trend several labels pushed out these kinds of compilations. Some of them contained actual artists, sometimes there were super-bland recordings by studio bands. This falls into the former category at least, it's a sort of 'greatest hits' album...just not really a 'jump jive' greatest hits album, more of a general swing greatest hits.
It has such stalwart standards as Take the 'A' Train and In the Mood and Sing, Sing, Sing. It does have some actual jump jive on it, too, with Cab Calloway's Jumpin' Jive (makes you feel six foot when your four foot five) and Louis Jordan's Caldonia (what makes your big head so hard?) I think I've talked about this before, I'm so familiar with these songs that those lyrics jump in my head not because of the original artists but because of wearing out the recording I got from the Scottish jump jive group Fat Sam's Band I encountered at the Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilee. I don't have that recording anymore (I don't think) and have since acquired the original recordings, but that was what made me familiar with it (and started my weird obsession with wearing pleated pants, but that's another story...)
I now have another version of Cherokee as well, this one by Charlie Bernet.
Alright, I don't know this one, 47th Street Jive. It's all the awesome elements of authentic jump jive, including a weird skit/exchange between the singer and the band leader thick with hipster (before the people that term applied to were insufferable) slang which carries into the lyrics which are usually a direct address to someone who either needs to lighten up or stop doin' you wrong (in this case stop talking because you're about to lie.)
And really what compilation capitalizing on the swing revival is complete without Sing, Sing, Sing, which closes out the album. But this is no slouch version of the song, it's Benny Goodman's nearly nine minute long version. Take that, swing dancers.
