Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Air Above Mountains
One of my formative musical experiences was seeing a Cecil Taylor solo piano performance when I was 17 (in Helsinki,no less!). There was no possibility of following individual notes or harmonies in the deluge coming out of the piano - instead it seemed to call for a new way of listening, something like seeing the fractal patterns of coastline seemingly too irregular to make sense of from a closer vantage point. Currently recreating the experience by listening to the two-part Air Above Mountains, recorded around that time. I've been on Taylor binge the past few days, including such famous ensemble works as Unit Structures, but something about his solo work provides the real transcendent experience.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Notes on London Review of Books, February 3, 2005 (Volume 27, Number 3)
Linda Colley on N.A.M Rodger: the superiority of British Sea Power is a mid-19th century construction, not consistently supported by the actual history of the preceding three centuries.
Joyce’s “Stephen Hero” is a reference to “Turpin Hero” – Dick Turpin, a highwaymen and folk-hero, subject of ballads and broadsides, was probably really just a thug.
Context for “Godzilla” - not only were Hiroshima and Nagasaki still fresh in the Japanese public mind but even more recently, 1954, a boatload of tuna poisoned with radiation by US Bikini Atoll hydrogen bomb experiment had been sold in Japan before the hospitalization of its crew with radiation sickness was known. The Emperor himself stopped eating fish.
Emma Richler (daughter of Mordecai) has written two books, Feed My Dead Dogs and Sister Crazy about growing up in a big, eccentric E. Nesbit-styled family. This turns out to be more psychologically complex in real life than in Y.A. novels but the books sound charming all the same.
White Mozambican Mia Coutu, who writes in Portuguese (hence lusophone) sounds well worth reading. The Last Flight of The Flamingo and Sleepwalking Night, at least, have been translated into English.
Mendelssohn a fascinating character, must listen to more of his music. Wagner’s anti-semitism partly originates in personal rivalry with Felix, from whom he (Wagner) stole quite freely.
Documentary film Mondovino is “substantively about the world of wine and taste, but formally it’s skilful agit-prop against the forces of globalisation.” (Steven Shapin)
Alfred Wegener’s 1915 “The Origins of Continents and Oceans” posited the existence of the Pangaea supercontinent which was not commonly accepted until the late 1960s. Also beneath Yellowstone Park is a “supervolcano” whose effects, should it erupt, would be much more cataclysmic than most of the things we worry about. It is 40,000 years overdue for its cyclical eruption.
Joyce’s “Stephen Hero” is a reference to “Turpin Hero” – Dick Turpin, a highwaymen and folk-hero, subject of ballads and broadsides, was probably really just a thug.
Context for “Godzilla” - not only were Hiroshima and Nagasaki still fresh in the Japanese public mind but even more recently, 1954, a boatload of tuna poisoned with radiation by US Bikini Atoll hydrogen bomb experiment had been sold in Japan before the hospitalization of its crew with radiation sickness was known. The Emperor himself stopped eating fish.
Emma Richler (daughter of Mordecai) has written two books, Feed My Dead Dogs and Sister Crazy about growing up in a big, eccentric E. Nesbit-styled family. This turns out to be more psychologically complex in real life than in Y.A. novels but the books sound charming all the same.
White Mozambican Mia Coutu, who writes in Portuguese (hence lusophone) sounds well worth reading. The Last Flight of The Flamingo and Sleepwalking Night, at least, have been translated into English.
Mendelssohn a fascinating character, must listen to more of his music. Wagner’s anti-semitism partly originates in personal rivalry with Felix, from whom he (Wagner) stole quite freely.
Documentary film Mondovino is “substantively about the world of wine and taste, but formally it’s skilful agit-prop against the forces of globalisation.” (Steven Shapin)
Alfred Wegener’s 1915 “The Origins of Continents and Oceans” posited the existence of the Pangaea supercontinent which was not commonly accepted until the late 1960s. Also beneath Yellowstone Park is a “supervolcano” whose effects, should it erupt, would be much more cataclysmic than most of the things we worry about. It is 40,000 years overdue for its cyclical eruption.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Comedians and Hoofers
Rainy February Monday nights are hard to salvage, but all travel should be as painless as a fast 3 train to Bergen Street and the two block walk to Freddy's Backroom. Freddy's is ordinarily a bastion of bar-band rock, but the creative furnace known as Mother Earth (Kyle Clyde and Dylan Hay) moved their base of operations from Port D'Or (their own living room) for one night only. I arrived a bit late, regrettably missing Ramble Tamble (whose name and MySpace tracks both get lots of points for future exploration).
First up (for me) was a trio called Try Cry Try. The lead singer, intriguingly cross-dressed in black leather pants, stiletto heels, halter top, scarf and hairpiece (the latter more of a prop than transformative wardrobe element), has a kind of psychodramatic vocal style (picture someone screaming "don't tell me to calm down!" repeatedly), while the bassist and guitarist, in black and white doom metal face paint, play black and white doom metal, but with a lo-fi edge accentuated by the "drummer", a hand-held cassette player with a vocal mike taped to it. The show climaxed with some smashing of cement blocks and overturned tables, all strobe-lit by artist Jessie Stead.
Following that was "Charlie the Singing Dog" whose name is accurately descriptive - a couple of humans accompanied on singing and hand drum. Charlie sat on a drum stool with a microphone and at the end of his set, he sort of scurried around to all four corners of the stage, as if securing the perimeter.
The old vaudeville admonition that you never want to follow an animal act was put to rest by Mother Earth, whose own psychodrama (more Maya Deren than Artaud) is extraordinary. The two times I've seen the duo, they start at opposite ends of the performance space, and work their way towards each other (using portable amplification devices to make some sounds on the way), ending in a sort of yin-yang clash/reconciliation - a stylized wrestling match, wrapping one another in plastic and so on. One of the most visually striking moments this time was the plastic wrap being stretched between them as they strained about 8 feet apart, like a visual representation of gravitational bonds. They typically end by hustling "offstage" (out of the room) in a whirl.
My other favorite Kyle Clyde performance that I've seen so far was a piece for electric guitar and fluorescent light tubes in which the latter, besides being visually compelling, are used to induce all kinds of hum and feedback in interaction with the guitar, with results quite different from the many other ways of playing the instrument.
First up (for me) was a trio called Try Cry Try. The lead singer, intriguingly cross-dressed in black leather pants, stiletto heels, halter top, scarf and hairpiece (the latter more of a prop than transformative wardrobe element), has a kind of psychodramatic vocal style (picture someone screaming "don't tell me to calm down!" repeatedly), while the bassist and guitarist, in black and white doom metal face paint, play black and white doom metal, but with a lo-fi edge accentuated by the "drummer", a hand-held cassette player with a vocal mike taped to it. The show climaxed with some smashing of cement blocks and overturned tables, all strobe-lit by artist Jessie Stead.
Following that was "Charlie the Singing Dog" whose name is accurately descriptive - a couple of humans accompanied on singing and hand drum. Charlie sat on a drum stool with a microphone and at the end of his set, he sort of scurried around to all four corners of the stage, as if securing the perimeter.
The old vaudeville admonition that you never want to follow an animal act was put to rest by Mother Earth, whose own psychodrama (more Maya Deren than Artaud) is extraordinary. The two times I've seen the duo, they start at opposite ends of the performance space, and work their way towards each other (using portable amplification devices to make some sounds on the way), ending in a sort of yin-yang clash/reconciliation - a stylized wrestling match, wrapping one another in plastic and so on. One of the most visually striking moments this time was the plastic wrap being stretched between them as they strained about 8 feet apart, like a visual representation of gravitational bonds. They typically end by hustling "offstage" (out of the room) in a whirl.
My other favorite Kyle Clyde performance that I've seen so far was a piece for electric guitar and fluorescent light tubes in which the latter, besides being visually compelling, are used to induce all kinds of hum and feedback in interaction with the guitar, with results quite different from the many other ways of playing the instrument.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Hip and Well Read
It is no secret that performances attended via advance tickets and weeks of anticipation are often less exciting than those attended on the spur of the moment. As such, the AC/DC show at the Meadowlands center in New Jersey (we'll omit the name of whatever corporation currently owns the arena) on July 31, tickets purchased that day at 5 pm, was more exciting than the one 10 months earlier at Madison Square Garden.
Similarly (though of course there are always other factors) not having been aware that Japan's Yura Yura Teikoku were playing at the Music Hall of Williamsburg until that day (9/18/09) certainly contributed to what an unexpectedly awesome show it proved to be. I have heard a handful of their records but those never had quite the impact as some of their more stylistically highly focused contemporaries (High Rise), so I went with medium expectations and left feeling it was one of the best performances I'd seen in my life (up there with The Ex at CBGB in 1992 and other such obscurities). Set and setting being what they are, I may not succeed in conveying much of the excitement, but I'd urge anyone to see them anytime.
There is a certain loosely defined Japanese power trio aesthetic of the past few decades, many of whose practitioners I have managed to see (the aforementioned High Rise plus Fushitsusha, Minimokoto, Green Milk From the Planet Orange, Overhang Party et al.). Yura Yura Teikoku are on that spectrum, but some of their most thrilling moments were not the psychedelic noise-guitar freakouts but the motorik extended two-chord trance-inducing segments, reminiscent of course of Germany's Neu and some of their latter-day inheritors (e.g. Washington D.C.'s Unrest). At times the guitarist abandoned his instrument and accompanied his keening tenor vocals solely with a pair of maracas, while the rhythm section maintained a tightly wound skeleton. A bass-player of unwavering patience is required to make this kind of thing work, which it did.
Similarly (though of course there are always other factors) not having been aware that Japan's Yura Yura Teikoku were playing at the Music Hall of Williamsburg until that day (9/18/09) certainly contributed to what an unexpectedly awesome show it proved to be. I have heard a handful of their records but those never had quite the impact as some of their more stylistically highly focused contemporaries (High Rise), so I went with medium expectations and left feeling it was one of the best performances I'd seen in my life (up there with The Ex at CBGB in 1992 and other such obscurities). Set and setting being what they are, I may not succeed in conveying much of the excitement, but I'd urge anyone to see them anytime.
There is a certain loosely defined Japanese power trio aesthetic of the past few decades, many of whose practitioners I have managed to see (the aforementioned High Rise plus Fushitsusha, Minimokoto, Green Milk From the Planet Orange, Overhang Party et al.). Yura Yura Teikoku are on that spectrum, but some of their most thrilling moments were not the psychedelic noise-guitar freakouts but the motorik extended two-chord trance-inducing segments, reminiscent of course of Germany's Neu and some of their latter-day inheritors (e.g. Washington D.C.'s Unrest). At times the guitarist abandoned his instrument and accompanied his keening tenor vocals solely with a pair of maracas, while the rhythm section maintained a tightly wound skeleton. A bass-player of unwavering patience is required to make this kind of thing work, which it did.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Catafalque and Quincunx
For me and my friends, and presumably others of that approximate generation, an essential part of the mid-70s/mid-teenage quasi-counterculture canon was the illustrated writing of Edward Gorey. Though we may have sensed his linguistically extravagant, at times absurdist, mock-horror was perhaps not precisely a lost continent from the map of early 19th century Gothic literature, I’m not sure we quite realized he was living and writing in New York City at the same time Television and the Patti Smith Group were playing at C.B.G.B. – at the very least he seemed to be some obscure and chronologically displaced pre-War New Englander like H.P. Lovecraft.
In any event, Gorey’s love of arcane words continued to intrigue me for many years as I gradually found out what they all meant, but I somehow missed the derivation of "Amphigorey", with which he titled a pair of collections of his work. Lazily conflating the prefix "amphi-" (meaning "both" or "double") with "anthology" and thinking it a portmanteau word with no other reference, I was surprised recently to find the French word “amphigouri” in the pages of Le Rouge et Le Noir and accepted my Larousse de Poche’s gloss of it as “gibberish”. A week or so later, I immediately stumbled upon it again, in an English translation of Raymond Queneau’s Witch Grass. Thinking the translator might have allowed herself a bit of liberty, I turned to the O.E.D., to find that “amphigouri” and “amphigory” are both accepted in English usage. The derivation is uncertain but perhaps related to “category” and “allegory”.
As for Queneau, his French title is Chiendent (dogtooth). Though "Witch Grass" may be the North American plant name for the exact species which that French name refers to (Dichanthelium boreale), it seems like the pun or multiple meanings of the title could have been echoed in translation with a little less botanical fidelity. How about "Hound's tongue", of the genus Cynoglossum, part of a family which includes wild comfrey, a Native American medicinal plant of uncertain relationship to the old World comfrey (Symphytum officinale), or "horehound" (brothels are a persistent theme in the book), a folk term for a flowering plant of the Lamiaceae family, which includes mint?
In any event, Gorey’s love of arcane words continued to intrigue me for many years as I gradually found out what they all meant, but I somehow missed the derivation of "Amphigorey", with which he titled a pair of collections of his work. Lazily conflating the prefix "amphi-" (meaning "both" or "double") with "anthology" and thinking it a portmanteau word with no other reference, I was surprised recently to find the French word “amphigouri” in the pages of Le Rouge et Le Noir and accepted my Larousse de Poche’s gloss of it as “gibberish”. A week or so later, I immediately stumbled upon it again, in an English translation of Raymond Queneau’s Witch Grass. Thinking the translator might have allowed herself a bit of liberty, I turned to the O.E.D., to find that “amphigouri” and “amphigory” are both accepted in English usage. The derivation is uncertain but perhaps related to “category” and “allegory”.
As for Queneau, his French title is Chiendent (dogtooth). Though "Witch Grass" may be the North American plant name for the exact species which that French name refers to (Dichanthelium boreale), it seems like the pun or multiple meanings of the title could have been echoed in translation with a little less botanical fidelity. How about "Hound's tongue", of the genus Cynoglossum, part of a family which includes wild comfrey, a Native American medicinal plant of uncertain relationship to the old World comfrey (Symphytum officinale), or "horehound" (brothels are a persistent theme in the book), a folk term for a flowering plant of the Lamiaceae family, which includes mint?
Monday, June 1, 2009
Peripatetic
On a recent fine May midday, I set out to walk a pleasant two miles to Mazzotti Music to pick up a fixed guitar amp and found the usual plethora of books that seem to line my path everywhere. To begin with, a street giveaway carton yielded up four volumes of legendary early 70s Detroit ghetto naturalist Donald Goines. Whether I need to read all four remains to be seen - Daddy Cool went down fast like the kind of snack food that leaves you feeling a bit queasy.
A block party in Park Slope provided an exemplar of a somewhat different African-American literary aesthetic, Wanda Coleman, whose Heavy Daughter Blues: Poems & Stories 1968-1986 was published by Black Sparrow Press, so you know (if you are familiar with their work) what a distinctive look the book has. Coleman's curriculum vita (I see from the credits) includes a stint with Anna Halprin's Dancers' Workshop, so you might further connect the dots with having seen Daria Martin's Minotaur, a film of a Halprin-choreographed duet, when it was showing at The New Museum earlier this spring.
Strolling around street fairs in Brooklyn, I have found, gives you a reasonable chance of seeing The Gowanus Wildcats; Saturday was my second sighting. They are a drill team (not step dancers, as they always remind you), 10 early teenage girls from a public housing project, whose level of precision is perhaps more folk art than West Point, but all the more engaging for it (here's a segment).
Finally, guitar amplifier retrieved and bánh mì sandwich consumed, I headed off to the Cake Shop for an evening of what Time Out sort of touted as hipster metal. I got there in time for Darsombra, a one-man band from Baltimore. With 8-string bass, guitar, a vocal mike and about 30 effects pedals, Brian Daniloski (barefoot on his own Persian rug) creates huge throbbing waves of winedark sound that could pretty much pass for electronic music without the little bit of doom-metal subculture trappings. The set was perfectly paced and timed – quite exciting.
Philadelphia's Stinking Lizaveta followed – I have seen them a handful of times and felt respectful but never quite enthralled. On this occasion, whatever those inhibitions were got thrown to the wind and I felt, at least for the duration of their set, like they were the best band I'd ever seen, a form of selective amnesia that often affects for me some subset of a particularly good show, but doesn't always sustain itself to coming home and writing about it. Seismic exuberance, raw power...I fear I will cheapen my transcendent experience with rock critic hyphenations (instrumental prog-metal-skronk etc) but comparisons abound with all sorts of things from Return To Forever's epoch-defining Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy to Quebec's Voivod and everyone there knew they had seen something remarkable.
A block party in Park Slope provided an exemplar of a somewhat different African-American literary aesthetic, Wanda Coleman, whose Heavy Daughter Blues: Poems & Stories 1968-1986 was published by Black Sparrow Press, so you know (if you are familiar with their work) what a distinctive look the book has. Coleman's curriculum vita (I see from the credits) includes a stint with Anna Halprin's Dancers' Workshop, so you might further connect the dots with having seen Daria Martin's Minotaur, a film of a Halprin-choreographed duet, when it was showing at The New Museum earlier this spring.
Strolling around street fairs in Brooklyn, I have found, gives you a reasonable chance of seeing The Gowanus Wildcats; Saturday was my second sighting. They are a drill team (not step dancers, as they always remind you), 10 early teenage girls from a public housing project, whose level of precision is perhaps more folk art than West Point, but all the more engaging for it (here's a segment).
Finally, guitar amplifier retrieved and bánh mì sandwich consumed, I headed off to the Cake Shop for an evening of what Time Out sort of touted as hipster metal. I got there in time for Darsombra, a one-man band from Baltimore. With 8-string bass, guitar, a vocal mike and about 30 effects pedals, Brian Daniloski (barefoot on his own Persian rug) creates huge throbbing waves of winedark sound that could pretty much pass for electronic music without the little bit of doom-metal subculture trappings. The set was perfectly paced and timed – quite exciting.
Philadelphia's Stinking Lizaveta followed – I have seen them a handful of times and felt respectful but never quite enthralled. On this occasion, whatever those inhibitions were got thrown to the wind and I felt, at least for the duration of their set, like they were the best band I'd ever seen, a form of selective amnesia that often affects for me some subset of a particularly good show, but doesn't always sustain itself to coming home and writing about it. Seismic exuberance, raw power...I fear I will cheapen my transcendent experience with rock critic hyphenations (instrumental prog-metal-skronk etc) but comparisons abound with all sorts of things from Return To Forever's epoch-defining Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy to Quebec's Voivod and everyone there knew they had seen something remarkable.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Devil In De-Tails
I stopped by Williamsburg's excellent bookstore Spoonbill & Sugartown a couple of evenings ago, picking up Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe and E.H. Gombrich's A Little History Of The World. Gombrich is, of course, principally known for The Story Of Art from 1950 but his Little History was never translated and published in English until its posthumous appearance in 2005.
It was intended as a book for children, originally published in German in 1936 as part of a series of "Wissenschaft für Kinder" and its tone is a bit coy but I suspect there will be insights and helpful summaries to be had for adults as well. It reminds me of Hans Magnus Enzensberger's The Number Devil, a fanciful presentation of some basic mathematics for children. The store, already a regular stop on my city rounds, went up a notch in my estimation when one of the staff mentioned he had attended and enjoyed an Escape By Ostrich show a couple of months ago.
This particular evening I was en route to see Tyvek and Cause Co-Motion, both of whom were as good as I have ever seen them. In complimenting drummer Josh Feldman on Cause Co's brisk and propulsive set, I employed some sort of locomotive image but their somewhat minimalist, lo-fi aesthetic begs a slightly different metaphor - let's say they are the musical equivalent of the coolest Go-Kart you've ever seen.
At this point in history, almost all rock bands are plainly operating in reference to and/or opposition to some existing sub-genre, set of aesthetic constraints, and so on - some renew them more convincingly than others. The opening band on this occasion, Imaginary Icons, come out of a late 70s UK post-punk tradition that they don't transcend quite as effectively as Tyvek and Cause Co-Motion do their respective jumping-off points, but they put on a fine performance with a bunch of good songs - I'd see them again.
Detroit's Tyvek occupy a more garage-y part of the lo-fi spectrum. Every time I see them, the line-up is slightly different - this time with only one bass-player and drummer (both roles have been duplicated on other occasions) but an electric organ added, the sound was thick and focused. No one in the room (and I may well have been the oldest person there, excepting The Homosexuals' Bruno Wizard) could possibly have seen the Velvet Underground in their prime, but I can't imagine this was any less compelling and certainly can't be compared to any experience that could be had sitting at home listening to records, however revered.
It was intended as a book for children, originally published in German in 1936 as part of a series of "Wissenschaft für Kinder" and its tone is a bit coy but I suspect there will be insights and helpful summaries to be had for adults as well. It reminds me of Hans Magnus Enzensberger's The Number Devil, a fanciful presentation of some basic mathematics for children. The store, already a regular stop on my city rounds, went up a notch in my estimation when one of the staff mentioned he had attended and enjoyed an Escape By Ostrich show a couple of months ago.
This particular evening I was en route to see Tyvek and Cause Co-Motion, both of whom were as good as I have ever seen them. In complimenting drummer Josh Feldman on Cause Co's brisk and propulsive set, I employed some sort of locomotive image but their somewhat minimalist, lo-fi aesthetic begs a slightly different metaphor - let's say they are the musical equivalent of the coolest Go-Kart you've ever seen.
At this point in history, almost all rock bands are plainly operating in reference to and/or opposition to some existing sub-genre, set of aesthetic constraints, and so on - some renew them more convincingly than others. The opening band on this occasion, Imaginary Icons, come out of a late 70s UK post-punk tradition that they don't transcend quite as effectively as Tyvek and Cause Co-Motion do their respective jumping-off points, but they put on a fine performance with a bunch of good songs - I'd see them again.
Detroit's Tyvek occupy a more garage-y part of the lo-fi spectrum. Every time I see them, the line-up is slightly different - this time with only one bass-player and drummer (both roles have been duplicated on other occasions) but an electric organ added, the sound was thick and focused. No one in the room (and I may well have been the oldest person there, excepting The Homosexuals' Bruno Wizard) could possibly have seen the Velvet Underground in their prime, but I can't imagine this was any less compelling and certainly can't be compared to any experience that could be had sitting at home listening to records, however revered.
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