These are via my lovely wife, who should probably have her own blog (but who the fuck has the time?).
First, a Vaseline commercial, banned in the US. Banned, of course, because it dares to show that ugly, sinful, oh-so-dirty crime-against-nature otherwise known as the human body. True, it's all blurry and quick, and it skips over the genuinely naughty bits, but so what? Think of the children!
(Honestly, there are times when I just don't get this country.)
Second, a little item that is circulating about 24, a show I alternately love and hate. According to Entertainment Weekly (a rag I never, ever read, ever), "several military and FBI interrogators, together with HRF [Human Rights First] officials and the dean of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point [Patrick Finnegan]" met with the team behind the show to discuss the effects of 24's apparent obsession with torture scenes. One military guy claimed that "field soldiers often ignore the Geneva Conventions by routinely employing torture techniques learned from TV [...]" Jane Mayer in the New Yorker (in an article that is disturbing for many reasons) reports that, according to Finnegan, "it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by 24, which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, 'The kids see it, and say, "If torture is wrong, what about 24?"'" EW again: Howard Gordon (the show's executive producer) "recently shot an educational video for HRF to remind cadets that 24 should be viewed as entertainment -- not as a field guide."
Huuuhhhh? Again, Daphne must be credited for raising the key question (and I paraphrase): if these cadets cannot tell the difference between television and reality, then what the fuck are they doing at West Point?
(Honestly, there are times... oh, wait, I'm repeating myself.)
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Scanned!
Thanks to KT, I can now share with you some of the aforementioned NY press pertaining to our east coast tour. Here ya go: one doohickey in the Village Voice, and two wangdoodles in Time Out NY. Click to enlarge.
Thanks, Kris!
Thanks, Kris!
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Oh yeah, and
Forgot to mention: I'll be chatting on the air today with Mary Burlingame of KMHD (Gresham, Oregon). 4 PM. Can you catch it on the web? Of course you can!
[Update: What a pleasure it was to do this interview. It's not often that someone in the media "gets" the group more or less immediately, but Mary clearly did. We're very lucky to have her in our corner. Plus, she was a delightful lady. Plus, it was raining like a motherfucker when I arrived (up until this past week, winter-in-PDX has been fairly dry -- bad news for a precipitation junkie like me.)]
[Update: What a pleasure it was to do this interview. It's not often that someone in the media "gets" the group more or less immediately, but Mary clearly did. We're very lucky to have her in our corner. Plus, she was a delightful lady. Plus, it was raining like a motherfucker when I arrived (up until this past week, winter-in-PDX has been fairly dry -- bad news for a precipitation junkie like me.)]
There goes the neighborhood
So as I prepare for the IJG PNW debut (March 7/8), I thought I would pass along the following notes.
1. Portland's own Tim DuRoche has a killer blog, Occasional Jazz Conjectures. DuRoche, until recently the go-to jazz writer for the Willamette Week, Portland's sexiest alterna-paper, is also (among other things) a very groovy, solid, well-informed drummer (I heard him play some pretty funky free jazz with Phillip Greenlief back in October). His writing (like his playing) is what I would call "refreshingly old-school." Item: check out the post entitled "WWWBD?" (as in "What Would Whitney Balliett Do?" -- Balliett being the fella who coined the apposite phrase "the sound of surprise" to describe Louis Armstrong's music); it's a kind of homage to the recently-departed critic. Thanks to the aforementioned Mr. Greenlief, Tim is one of the first cats I met upon moving to PDX; I sincerely hope I can rope him into an Industrial Jazz gig at some point.
2. Speaking of the Willamette Week, here's the blog that collects or references much of their music writing. Without a dedicated jazz person on the roster, it seems a little incomplete to me (although it looks like the intrepid Jason Simms will be stepping up to that particular bat, as I hope to demonstrate soon), but I have nevertheless been enjoying poking through the entries a bit. It's a nice coinkydink, especially in light of the recent conversations we west-coasters have been having about comedy and music, that one of the first pieces I stumbled over was this one about some dude named Michael Rockstar. Actually, a little cursory web-searching suggests that Mr. Rockstar's take on music and comedy isn't exactly my cup o' tea, but I did perk up when I read this question from Amy McCullough: "How is Portland a better fit for a musical comedian than the epicenter of entertainment [L.A.]?" And MR's answer: "I feel like it’s a better fit than L.A. because it’s younger, newer, more open minded. People don’t feel like everything’s been done here like they do in L.A. or New York. They are still open to freshness; they’re more open to the sort of thing I’m doing because they perceive it as fun or quirky, rather than lame or over." Indeed. Veddy interesting...
3. Bathtubs! Nothing but bathtubs!
4. Last night, as I struggled to fight off my second cold of 07, I made my way over to the Musicians Union to catch a little bit of the Rob Scheps Big Band rehearsal. A good percentage of the folks who were present are going to take the plunge with the IJG book in a few weeks, and I wanted to take the opportunity to meet them before we had any sort of proper rehearsal. So in addition to Rob (who I had already met) I got to shake hands with saxophonists Gary Harris, Scott Hall, and Dave Valdez; trumpeters Matt Carr and Garner Pruitt; trombonists Stan Bock and Tom Hill; and drummer Ward Griffiths. All of these folks are going to be on the IJG shows on March 7/8 (can I plug these gigs any more shamelessly, I wonder?), and thank heavens for that -- I have already described Scheps as a motherfucker, and surely you know that motherfuckers tend to associate with other motherfuckers. To put it less obscenely, this band is extremely good -- a fact that was clear even though (or perhaps because) they were reading their way through some truly byzantine Ed Neumeister charts (I was particularly taken with a jaw-dropping arrangement of "E.S.P.").
This subbing-out-the-entire-band-except-for-the-comparatively-financially-secure-Jill thing is turning out to be a very interesting and exciting experience, though on some weird level it feels vaguely like cheating. It also feels vaguely insane.
One index of a quality big band: they sound bitchen even when they're sitting down.
1. Portland's own Tim DuRoche has a killer blog, Occasional Jazz Conjectures. DuRoche, until recently the go-to jazz writer for the Willamette Week, Portland's sexiest alterna-paper, is also (among other things) a very groovy, solid, well-informed drummer (I heard him play some pretty funky free jazz with Phillip Greenlief back in October). His writing (like his playing) is what I would call "refreshingly old-school." Item: check out the post entitled "WWWBD?" (as in "What Would Whitney Balliett Do?" -- Balliett being the fella who coined the apposite phrase "the sound of surprise" to describe Louis Armstrong's music); it's a kind of homage to the recently-departed critic. Thanks to the aforementioned Mr. Greenlief, Tim is one of the first cats I met upon moving to PDX; I sincerely hope I can rope him into an Industrial Jazz gig at some point.
2. Speaking of the Willamette Week, here's the blog that collects or references much of their music writing. Without a dedicated jazz person on the roster, it seems a little incomplete to me (although it looks like the intrepid Jason Simms will be stepping up to that particular bat, as I hope to demonstrate soon), but I have nevertheless been enjoying poking through the entries a bit. It's a nice coinkydink, especially in light of the recent conversations we west-coasters have been having about comedy and music, that one of the first pieces I stumbled over was this one about some dude named Michael Rockstar. Actually, a little cursory web-searching suggests that Mr. Rockstar's take on music and comedy isn't exactly my cup o' tea, but I did perk up when I read this question from Amy McCullough: "How is Portland a better fit for a musical comedian than the epicenter of entertainment [L.A.]?" And MR's answer: "I feel like it’s a better fit than L.A. because it’s younger, newer, more open minded. People don’t feel like everything’s been done here like they do in L.A. or New York. They are still open to freshness; they’re more open to the sort of thing I’m doing because they perceive it as fun or quirky, rather than lame or over." Indeed. Veddy interesting...
3. Bathtubs! Nothing but bathtubs!
4. Last night, as I struggled to fight off my second cold of 07, I made my way over to the Musicians Union to catch a little bit of the Rob Scheps Big Band rehearsal. A good percentage of the folks who were present are going to take the plunge with the IJG book in a few weeks, and I wanted to take the opportunity to meet them before we had any sort of proper rehearsal. So in addition to Rob (who I had already met) I got to shake hands with saxophonists Gary Harris, Scott Hall, and Dave Valdez; trumpeters Matt Carr and Garner Pruitt; trombonists Stan Bock and Tom Hill; and drummer Ward Griffiths. All of these folks are going to be on the IJG shows on March 7/8 (can I plug these gigs any more shamelessly, I wonder?), and thank heavens for that -- I have already described Scheps as a motherfucker, and surely you know that motherfuckers tend to associate with other motherfuckers. To put it less obscenely, this band is extremely good -- a fact that was clear even though (or perhaps because) they were reading their way through some truly byzantine Ed Neumeister charts (I was particularly taken with a jaw-dropping arrangement of "E.S.P.").
This subbing-out-the-entire-band-except-for-the-comparatively-financially-secure-Jill thing is turning out to be a very interesting and exciting experience, though on some weird level it feels vaguely like cheating. It also feels vaguely insane.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Hard to believe...
...but this Residents performance (a kooky version of Elvis' "Teddy Bear") actually took place on network television in the maddeningly conservative late-1980s. On a show hosted by David Sanborn, no less. That's right, I'm talking about Night Music -- a show I relished as a kid.
Take my advice and YouTube the fuck out of this one (use the search terms "night music david sanborn" for best results). Great performances by Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Nick Cave, Kronos Quartet, Sonny Rollins -- and that's just the first page!
For chrissakes, when is someone going to come along and release this stuff on DVD?
What, we ask, is life / Without a touch of poetry in it?
One of the challenges in raising a kid is in knowing when to put the brakes on and when to just let go. It's a constant struggle. F'r'instance: do I let her keep walking along that wall? It's only a few feet high. But she could slip at a weird angle and seriously hurt herself. But she's pretty surefooted, and has walked along there many times before. Yes, but the wall is covered with wet leaves and is therefore very dangerous. But if you constantly hover over her, she's gonna grow up afraid of everything. Hmmm. Bach had a million kids. What would he have done in this situation?
I'll admit that when it comes to the physical stuff I really have to fight the urge to say "Be careful!" every few minutes. I'm getting better, but it takes a conscious effort for me to bite my tongue. When it comes to exposing Thandie to art, however, I tend to go all out. I listen to a lot of music around the house, and haven't yet felt the urge to shield the kid from anything that other parents might deem (for themselves, let alone for their young 'uns) too dissonant, too rhythmically complex, too texturally weird, or whatever. It's all fair game, even the occasional Zappa tune with a raunchy lyric (after all, who better than a kid to appreciate the humor in a song about yellow snow?).
So yes, in my bombastically self-appointed job as the Durkin-Robinson "Minister of Culture," I have a hard time figuring out where the boundary line for a two-and-a-half-year old should be. But I feel that it's better to err on the side of a bit "too much," rather than opting for the total bowdlerization that seems to characterize "kids' culture" nowadays. And so things like the very PG ending to The Iron Giant tend to get through.
And so do things like Joseph Papp's 1980 production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance. Not that that one is terribly violent or inappropriate, though there is a fair amount of swashbuckling to be had. Still, it's a far cry from some of the monumentally bland stuff that has recently been passing as art-for-tots (I'm lookin' at you, Dan Zanes). When I finally got my hands on the DVD of the Central Park performance, it was more to satisfy a fond yearning for a specific childhood musical experience -- Pirates was the first "show" I ever saw, and, I believe, the first recording I ever owned -- rather than from any expectation that Thandie would be walking through our house singing songs from the score (which she is).
(Lest you think Pirates is some sort of half-baked Broadway crap -- well, it isn't. I look at Gilbert and Sullivan as older siblings to Oscar Wilde, and as great grandfathers to Monty Python. In any case, there are few other places in the annals of musical theater where you will find as wicked a parody of the human proclivity (developed into an art by the Victorians) for kowtowing before vague and stupid abstractions like "nationalism" and "social convention." The irreverence inherent in the work makes it all the more ironic that there is such a thing as a Gilbert and Sullivan "purist," and that a bunch of 'em protested Papp's version, which included wonderful re-arrangements by the mysterious William Elliott. Elliott -- who died young and whose web presence is frustratingly thin -- gave the music the punch of a rock opera, without (I think) detracting from any of the charm of Arthur Sullivan's original score.)
Ah, parenthood. We have good friends who seem positively addicted to the latest genre of reality TV, which usually comes embedded in a "news" broadcast of some kind: you know, the voyeuristic and creepy "To Catch a Predator" phenomenon. At the same time they seem hell-bent on bathing their own kid in an ocean of baby talk and impossibly happy music. I see these two things as connected somehow: it may be that my generation had such a conflicted experience of childhood (we were the first postwar "latchkey kids," after all), and have become so attuned to all of the horrible things that can (supposedly) happen to shorties (Hey, would you like a razor blade with that apple?), that we have overcompensated by attempting to put our own children into some sort of emotional mylar. And to make matters worse we seem compelled to go on feeding our anxieties, instead of overcoming them.
Anna Quindlen really nailed this problem in a recent essay. One of the more relevant quotes from that piece: "A life of unremitting caution, without the carefree -- or even, occasionally, the careless -- may turn out to be half a life, like the Bible with the Ten Commandments but no Song of Solomon or Sermon on the Mount." I suppose one could paraphrase that insightful statement with the Gilbert lyric quoted in the title of this post. Or, as Quindlen, quoting Oscar Wilde, puts it later in the same essay: "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
* * * * *
Incidentally, the always-entertaining Jeff Knapp recently posted a hilarious parody of the parody: Gilbert and Sullivan's "Baby Got Back."
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Hilarity ensues
[Note: for some reason, YouTube, which has never given me a problem before, isn't allowing me to put up the video that is the subject of this post (or perhaps things are just slow and it is going to publish all my post-attempts several hours from now). The result is a somewhat less elegant blog entry than I would have liked... ah well.]
So a few of us have had comedy on the brain for the last few days (though others of us always have comedy on the brain, alas) -- but even if that wonderful discussion had never happened I probably would have been compelled to post this, easily the funniest moment on the funniest show currently on television. Thanks you, Ricky Gervais.
"I imagined what it would be like being a wizard, and then I pretended and acted in that way." Hoo-wee! Imagine if McKellan had pulled out that gem during his recent interview with professional blowhard Charlie Rose!
One of the things that really sets Extras apart is that it is depressing and funny all at once -- the bits (which don't always look funny on paper) have a dependable capacity for inducing squeamishness. But wasn't it Charles Schulz (a man who struggled with depression all his life) who said that happiness isn't funny?
Oh yeah, can't wait until American television gets ahold of this one and turns it into a pale boring shell of itself.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Now for something completely different...
For reasons too complicated to explain here, I was recently reminded of this damned story, penned by me over ten years ago now. In fact, I think I wrote it shortly after my move to Los Angeles, while I was still nursing the wounds left by the breakup of my NJ band, the Evelyn Situation (up until that point the highlight of my artistic life). I was trying on an academic persona, and in the days after completing this thing I think I also was flirting very heavily with the notion of becoming a short story writer. As we all know, that didn't last -- I got sick of academia almost immediately, fell bass-ackwards into jazz and somehow ended up starting the group that is now my life's work. But I still have a fondness for this piece of writing (indebted as it is to my beloved Donald Barthelme), and not just because it roughly corresponded with the first months spent dating the woman who would eventually become my wife (no, the events contained herein are not autobiographical -- at least not entirely).
Anyway, here it is, in all its amateurish glory.
* * * * *
Violent Love
“I want to make violent love / To you ‘neath the moon above / I want to make violent love to you.”
-- Willie Dixon
The first night we made love, she bit her lip. It was nothing serious, really; we had just gotten down to our underwear (I hadn't seen a bra up close in years and hers was frayed at the edges, but that was okay, it accented her daring nature) when I inadvertently tickled her somehow and she bumped her chin against my shoulder and that's how it happened. I paused apologetically. At first she wanted to keep going but then she asked me to look at it, pulling the flap of pink skin down and making a face like a large-mouthed bass. I had to put my glasses on (the ugly, horn-rimmed ones; the only pair I own) to peer in at the cut, which was oozing a tiny dab of blood.
“I think it's okay,” I said, “but maybe we should go into the bathroom to be sure.” She thought that was a good idea, and after a close inspection, agreed that the injury was of little significance.
“It still stings, though,” she said. I offered her a band-aid but she turned it down. We decided to finish our lovemaking without the kissing. It was tough but we managed.
* * * * *
The next time, we were at my place, and I was a bit more prepared, a bit more wary of my own awkward physical bearing (I was still out of practice, after all). I wanted to prevent the occurrence of a similar incident. While licking one of my nipples, she accidentally knocked a hardcover copy of Anna Karenina off the coffee table and it landed with an unpleasant thud on my big toe.
She looked up at me, concern in her eyes, but I smiled weakly and waved it away, trying to get her to continue with her tongue. She did, for a few moments, but then the pain in my toe grew too great to ignore. We stopped and I removed the thin argyle sock. The toe was faintly purplish, like a tumescent grape. She dashed off into the kitchen, wearing only that dark blue tank top of hers, the one with the small hole in it (a moth, no doubt), and returned with a dishpan nearly full of ice and water, commanding me to immerse the injured foot. The cold was almost more painful than the bruise, but we both knew that there was no better way to keep the swelling down. After I was settled, she climbed back on top of me and we resumed our activity, the ice water sloshing with our movement.
The following Friday we both got out of work early, went to a twilight showing of Bonnie and Clyde, returned to my apartment, got changed into our on-the-town ensembles (I was stunned as she produced a black sequined gown from out of her old blue backpack), and then went to dinner at a fancy seafood place she had read about.
As it turned out, the third time we made love was in the ladies’ bathroom there, in the very last stall. She kicked off her shoes and hopped up onto the tampon dispenser, which was kind of narrow, so I had to use the pressure of my body to keep her there, and she had to put her feet against the opposite wall to give me a little leverage.
I should mention at this point that we're not skinny people. We like to eat and had just finished two whole lobsters between us, plus two slices of German chocolate cake, a Caesar’s salad, some bread, some cream of mushroom soup and a bottle of wine. Even so, we never expected the stall to topple over. She was licking my ear when it happened, but there was no denying the heavy metallic sound the end partition made when it hit the hard tile floor (the toilet, thank god, remained solidly in place).
“Are you hurt?” I groaned, trying my best to get off her.
“It's not too painful, but just painful enough,” she returned, wincing a bit, crawling out of the capsized stall, and grabbing her shoes. I tried to follow but immediately found that my left hand was useless.
“Hold on,” she said, grabbing my collar and dragging me to safety. I stood, but my hand, which was either sprained or broken, wouldn't quit its stabbing pain, and so she had to help pull my pants up.
“What about you? How bad is it?” I asked her as she was zipping my fly. She looked down at her side and observed out loud that she may have smashed a rib or two. We decided to get going before someone became suspicious.
Later, in the emergency room, I tried to take my mind off the pain and worry and guilt by reading Sports Illustrated (a special hockey issue). I had learned from a hulking RN that my hand was indeed broken in several places. He set the cast and told me to come back to see the doctor in a week, but I stayed in the waiting room while my girlfriend had her ribs looked at. I nervously asked the people at the desk how she was.
“She'll be fine,” said one of them, in between bites of a tuna sandwich. “Two fractured ribs; she needs to take it easy but the doctor says she can go home tonight.”
Half an hour later she came out with her backpack, showing me the bandage (exposing her navel, I had to kiss that, but ever so delicately), and asking to see my cast.
“How long will you need it?” she inquired.
“About a month. How are you?”
“It doesn't feel too bad. Luckily no organs were hurt, and the whole thing should heal pretty quick,” she said valiantly, as we walked out to the car.
* * * * *
Here was what happened the next four times: first she dislocated her shoulder (that was when we did it in the back seat of my Nissan Sentra), then I got poison ivy (we were returning to nature, a recurring fantasy of mine), then she got the flu (outside again, one particularly damp and rainy night), then I broke my leg (she wanted me to wear her fishnets and stiletto heels, and, being a good sport, I did, although it didn't really do much for me; afterwards, I was thirsty, and, without stripping, headed to the kitchen for some apple juice, but when I got to the top of the stairs one of the damned heels broke and down I went). It was a bit overwhelming.
After some soul-searching, I wrote her a long letter saying how I had never wanted to hurt her but how it always seemed to happen anyway, accidentally, and that maybe (I sighed) she'd be better off without me. I delivered this to her when she was laid up in bed for the second time that month (a mild case of food poisoning--I had purchased the chocolates at a reputable place and we both thought they looked and tasted great but for some reason they made her sick). She gently kissed my bandaged eye (an accident with her vibrator) then read the letter carefully, leaning over in her bathrobe, running her hands through her unwashed hair.
When she was done, she looked up, her eyes misting a little. Then she reached into the nightstand drawer and showed me that she had already written a letter of her own, which, I soon discovered, communicated more or less the same thing.
Needless to say, we were both crushed.
* * * * *
We agreed to separate amicably -- maybe something about the moment was wrong, we thought -- and to see what happened in a few months, or perhaps a year. I quickly became miserable, feeling that somehow I had been jinxed by my animal nature, cheated out of the only relationship that had ever actually meant something to me. Life became tedious. Other women expressed interest in dating me; they were pleasant enough, I had to admit, but what of it? They hardly had her panache, her enthusiasm, her zest for… life. Ah, what was the use! She was gone, and she wasn't coming back; we were both probably a lot healthier, and that was the main thing.
At least that was what my friend Albert said. Albert, who owned a collection of guns, was basically telling me to forget her. He came over to my apartment one night, balancing a stack of action movies: "Come on, nothing like a little gratuitous violence to take your mind off that business." Thinking a change of pace might do me some good, I succumbed. The evening went like this: Arnold Schwarzenneger was falling through the exhaust of a jet place, then he was pulling shards of hot iron from his chest, then (as the Terminator) he was getting his arms and legs torn off, and still he wouldn't die.
"No," I thought, fed-up and peevish, "I just can't forget about her."
* * * * *
After three agonizing months I lost my patience and decided to take a cab across town to her apartment. All I really wanted was to see how she was; I promised myself I wouldn't push for any more than that, although when I smelled the familiar scent of her neighborhood, my resolve weakened a bit.
I thought perhaps I should turn back. Still, I couldn't go away without at least saying hello, so I went up to the old brick building and rang the bell. She answered, looking as beautiful as ever (if a bit more cautious) in raggedy dungarees and red kneepads. At first she seemed surprised to see me, but then she invited me in, waving her arms and talking excitedly, and offering me a glass of apple juice, which I bravely accepted.
"Your nose! It's healed!" she said affectionately, adjusting her glasses.
"Yeah, it's amazing what a little plastic surgery can do. And I see your chicken pox left no scars."
“Well, just one,” she said, smiling and dragging me by the hand into her spacious living room. “But look what I've taken up since.”
The sofa and chairs and television had been pushed together in the middle of the hardwood floor and there beside them was a mess of boxes, some open, some closed. "I was planning to give you a call. I got you something." She grabbed one of the boxes and offered it to me. Inside was a set of very treacherous-looking rollerblades.
"I hope they're the right size. There's some protective gear in that other box."
As she talked, she strapped on a dark blue helmet. I didn't know what to say. I had heard of the dangers of rollerblading. I looked down at the box, trying to picture myself in a Mountain Dew commercial.
"That's… really… fantastic. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Uh, I guess I'll see you in the park sometime?"
Sitting on the floor, pulling on some heavy green socks, she paused. "Of course you'll see me in the park. But you don't understand."
"Understand what?" I asked.
“I think we ought to get back together,” she explained, turning to her own pair of rollerblades and lacing them up. “That is, if you want to.” Standing, she pushed off and began moving slowly about the room, tracing an oval around me and the boxes and the island of furniture, the skates humming along the hardwood floors. She was good, and I had to keep up a slow pirouette to maintain eye contact. I got a little dizzy.
“Yes, there is a certain amount of risk involved,” she said, raising her voice a little over the sound of the hard plastic wheels, “and maybe we would only end up hurting each other again, perhaps even worse than before (although that, I think, is highly improbable). Anyway, we’re wiser now. Life is too damned short anyway and as long as we are careful, and take precautions, we can't be blamed for the fact that it is also risky.”
Having said this she rolled right over to me and made a pretty damned good stop, for an amateur. We immediately fell into an embrace, she accidentally bumping my chin with her helmet and I accidentally scratching her face with my beard.
Anyway, here it is, in all its amateurish glory.
* * * * *
Violent Love
The first night we made love, she bit her lip. It was nothing serious, really; we had just gotten down to our underwear (I hadn't seen a bra up close in years and hers was frayed at the edges, but that was okay, it accented her daring nature) when I inadvertently tickled her somehow and she bumped her chin against my shoulder and that's how it happened. I paused apologetically. At first she wanted to keep going but then she asked me to look at it, pulling the flap of pink skin down and making a face like a large-mouthed bass. I had to put my glasses on (the ugly, horn-rimmed ones; the only pair I own) to peer in at the cut, which was oozing a tiny dab of blood.
“I think it's okay,” I said, “but maybe we should go into the bathroom to be sure.” She thought that was a good idea, and after a close inspection, agreed that the injury was of little significance.
“It still stings, though,” she said. I offered her a band-aid but she turned it down. We decided to finish our lovemaking without the kissing. It was tough but we managed.
The next time, we were at my place, and I was a bit more prepared, a bit more wary of my own awkward physical bearing (I was still out of practice, after all). I wanted to prevent the occurrence of a similar incident. While licking one of my nipples, she accidentally knocked a hardcover copy of Anna Karenina off the coffee table and it landed with an unpleasant thud on my big toe.
She looked up at me, concern in her eyes, but I smiled weakly and waved it away, trying to get her to continue with her tongue. She did, for a few moments, but then the pain in my toe grew too great to ignore. We stopped and I removed the thin argyle sock. The toe was faintly purplish, like a tumescent grape. She dashed off into the kitchen, wearing only that dark blue tank top of hers, the one with the small hole in it (a moth, no doubt), and returned with a dishpan nearly full of ice and water, commanding me to immerse the injured foot. The cold was almost more painful than the bruise, but we both knew that there was no better way to keep the swelling down. After I was settled, she climbed back on top of me and we resumed our activity, the ice water sloshing with our movement.
The following Friday we both got out of work early, went to a twilight showing of Bonnie and Clyde, returned to my apartment, got changed into our on-the-town ensembles (I was stunned as she produced a black sequined gown from out of her old blue backpack), and then went to dinner at a fancy seafood place she had read about.
As it turned out, the third time we made love was in the ladies’ bathroom there, in the very last stall. She kicked off her shoes and hopped up onto the tampon dispenser, which was kind of narrow, so I had to use the pressure of my body to keep her there, and she had to put her feet against the opposite wall to give me a little leverage.
I should mention at this point that we're not skinny people. We like to eat and had just finished two whole lobsters between us, plus two slices of German chocolate cake, a Caesar’s salad, some bread, some cream of mushroom soup and a bottle of wine. Even so, we never expected the stall to topple over. She was licking my ear when it happened, but there was no denying the heavy metallic sound the end partition made when it hit the hard tile floor (the toilet, thank god, remained solidly in place).
“Are you hurt?” I groaned, trying my best to get off her.
“It's not too painful, but just painful enough,” she returned, wincing a bit, crawling out of the capsized stall, and grabbing her shoes. I tried to follow but immediately found that my left hand was useless.
“Hold on,” she said, grabbing my collar and dragging me to safety. I stood, but my hand, which was either sprained or broken, wouldn't quit its stabbing pain, and so she had to help pull my pants up.
“What about you? How bad is it?” I asked her as she was zipping my fly. She looked down at her side and observed out loud that she may have smashed a rib or two. We decided to get going before someone became suspicious.
Later, in the emergency room, I tried to take my mind off the pain and worry and guilt by reading Sports Illustrated (a special hockey issue). I had learned from a hulking RN that my hand was indeed broken in several places. He set the cast and told me to come back to see the doctor in a week, but I stayed in the waiting room while my girlfriend had her ribs looked at. I nervously asked the people at the desk how she was.
“She'll be fine,” said one of them, in between bites of a tuna sandwich. “Two fractured ribs; she needs to take it easy but the doctor says she can go home tonight.”
Half an hour later she came out with her backpack, showing me the bandage (exposing her navel, I had to kiss that, but ever so delicately), and asking to see my cast.
“How long will you need it?” she inquired.
“About a month. How are you?”
“It doesn't feel too bad. Luckily no organs were hurt, and the whole thing should heal pretty quick,” she said valiantly, as we walked out to the car.
Here was what happened the next four times: first she dislocated her shoulder (that was when we did it in the back seat of my Nissan Sentra), then I got poison ivy (we were returning to nature, a recurring fantasy of mine), then she got the flu (outside again, one particularly damp and rainy night), then I broke my leg (she wanted me to wear her fishnets and stiletto heels, and, being a good sport, I did, although it didn't really do much for me; afterwards, I was thirsty, and, without stripping, headed to the kitchen for some apple juice, but when I got to the top of the stairs one of the damned heels broke and down I went). It was a bit overwhelming.
After some soul-searching, I wrote her a long letter saying how I had never wanted to hurt her but how it always seemed to happen anyway, accidentally, and that maybe (I sighed) she'd be better off without me. I delivered this to her when she was laid up in bed for the second time that month (a mild case of food poisoning--I had purchased the chocolates at a reputable place and we both thought they looked and tasted great but for some reason they made her sick). She gently kissed my bandaged eye (an accident with her vibrator) then read the letter carefully, leaning over in her bathrobe, running her hands through her unwashed hair.
When she was done, she looked up, her eyes misting a little. Then she reached into the nightstand drawer and showed me that she had already written a letter of her own, which, I soon discovered, communicated more or less the same thing.
Needless to say, we were both crushed.
We agreed to separate amicably -- maybe something about the moment was wrong, we thought -- and to see what happened in a few months, or perhaps a year. I quickly became miserable, feeling that somehow I had been jinxed by my animal nature, cheated out of the only relationship that had ever actually meant something to me. Life became tedious. Other women expressed interest in dating me; they were pleasant enough, I had to admit, but what of it? They hardly had her panache, her enthusiasm, her zest for… life. Ah, what was the use! She was gone, and she wasn't coming back; we were both probably a lot healthier, and that was the main thing.
At least that was what my friend Albert said. Albert, who owned a collection of guns, was basically telling me to forget her. He came over to my apartment one night, balancing a stack of action movies: "Come on, nothing like a little gratuitous violence to take your mind off that business." Thinking a change of pace might do me some good, I succumbed. The evening went like this: Arnold Schwarzenneger was falling through the exhaust of a jet place, then he was pulling shards of hot iron from his chest, then (as the Terminator) he was getting his arms and legs torn off, and still he wouldn't die.
"No," I thought, fed-up and peevish, "I just can't forget about her."
After three agonizing months I lost my patience and decided to take a cab across town to her apartment. All I really wanted was to see how she was; I promised myself I wouldn't push for any more than that, although when I smelled the familiar scent of her neighborhood, my resolve weakened a bit.
I thought perhaps I should turn back. Still, I couldn't go away without at least saying hello, so I went up to the old brick building and rang the bell. She answered, looking as beautiful as ever (if a bit more cautious) in raggedy dungarees and red kneepads. At first she seemed surprised to see me, but then she invited me in, waving her arms and talking excitedly, and offering me a glass of apple juice, which I bravely accepted.
"Your nose! It's healed!" she said affectionately, adjusting her glasses.
"Yeah, it's amazing what a little plastic surgery can do. And I see your chicken pox left no scars."
“Well, just one,” she said, smiling and dragging me by the hand into her spacious living room. “But look what I've taken up since.”
The sofa and chairs and television had been pushed together in the middle of the hardwood floor and there beside them was a mess of boxes, some open, some closed. "I was planning to give you a call. I got you something." She grabbed one of the boxes and offered it to me. Inside was a set of very treacherous-looking rollerblades.
"I hope they're the right size. There's some protective gear in that other box."
As she talked, she strapped on a dark blue helmet. I didn't know what to say. I had heard of the dangers of rollerblading. I looked down at the box, trying to picture myself in a Mountain Dew commercial.
"That's… really… fantastic. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Uh, I guess I'll see you in the park sometime?"
Sitting on the floor, pulling on some heavy green socks, she paused. "Of course you'll see me in the park. But you don't understand."
"Understand what?" I asked.
“I think we ought to get back together,” she explained, turning to her own pair of rollerblades and lacing them up. “That is, if you want to.” Standing, she pushed off and began moving slowly about the room, tracing an oval around me and the boxes and the island of furniture, the skates humming along the hardwood floors. She was good, and I had to keep up a slow pirouette to maintain eye contact. I got a little dizzy.
“Yes, there is a certain amount of risk involved,” she said, raising her voice a little over the sound of the hard plastic wheels, “and maybe we would only end up hurting each other again, perhaps even worse than before (although that, I think, is highly improbable). Anyway, we’re wiser now. Life is too damned short anyway and as long as we are careful, and take precautions, we can't be blamed for the fact that it is also risky.”
Having said this she rolled right over to me and made a pretty damned good stop, for an amateur. We immediately fell into an embrace, she accidentally bumping my chin with her helmet and I accidentally scratching her face with my beard.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Heeeeeere's Louis!
Yup, that there is a mugshot of the latest creature to take up residence at the Durkin-Robinson flophouse.
Why did he move in?
1. Because his original owners are relocating from Portland to Italy and can't afford to take him.
2. Because our lives aren't crazy enough already.
Seriously, though, he's probably the sweetest dog I have ever met. I guess his disposition has something to do with him being a Lab-Mastiff mix who is 3 years old and already housebroken. He was named for Joe Louis, but that's sorta ironic, cuz he's definitely a lover, not a fighter (I'm thinking Louis Armstrong might be a better namesake).
In any case, he's definitely a keeper.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Square one, and square one again
Hopefully this'll be the last of the navel-gazing posts for a while (I can barely resist commenting on the ludicrous recent statements of the ashen senator from AZ).
First, a few new reviews of Go Go!: A lovely one here, courtesy of Brad Glanden, and another nice one (by Jim Santella) in Cadence. Since the Cadence piece is not online, allow me to excerpt: Santella writes that the IJG "has a finely-tuned sense of humor. They combine pure mainstream Jazz with comical interludes: each, a highly creative composition from pianist Andrew Durkin. They like to think of their work as a combination of Jazz, R&B, Soul, Gospel, Mariachi, Doo Wop, Salsa, Reggae, and Rock ‘n Roll. But, it’s the improvised Avant-Garde solos that give the session its steam. [...] The band’s highly unique performance resembles a merging of Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy with the World Saxophone Quartet [...] Highly recommended for its originality, swing, spontaneity and original groove, the Industrial Jazz Group stands the test of time. Long after I've finished listening to the album several times for review, I can’t help smiling about it." Well, alright.
We also had some nice press specifically related to our east coast tour, but like a dummy I neglected to collect it. F'r'instance, I'm told there was a nice thing in the Village Voice, but I never saw it (if anyone did, I'd be very curious as to the content).
Oh yeah, and this just in: Andrey Henkin's overview of the Bowery Poetry Club show can be found here. Henkin has become a trusted ally in recent months (and, small world, turns out he is an ex-colleague of my friend and former grad school classmate, Joan Jastrebski, who was also at the BPC show). He is of course right when he says we're "more Carla Bley than Count Basie" -- though I find this observation somewhat humorous given the fact that I dropped our Joe Williams "tribute" ("Every Day I Have The Blues, Too") from the set a few hours before the first hit of the tour.
Anyway, on to the future. This week I was preoccupied with the task of organizing things for our next set of dates (March 7 and 8 in Portland and Seattle, respectively). This should be easy, right? We just came off a burning east coast tour, the band is white-hot and ready to go, right? Right!
Wait a minute! What's this? Lo and behold, I depleted my entire budget making the east coast tour happen (not complaining here, just stating the facts, m'am). So it actually turns out that for the upcoming northwest hootenannies (hottenanni?), I can't afford to bring any of the usual suspects up from LA. That's right -- I'm gonna have to do these dates with a brand-freakin'-new band.
(I should clarify. "Depleted my budget" suggests that I spent all of the money I have. What I actually did was spend a lot of money that I don't yet have. But again, I'm not complaining.)
(I should clarify further. A "brand-freakin'-new band" suggests that I only have to recruit one such monster. What I have actually discovered is that, notwithstanding the willingness of certain of the Portland musicians I have engaged (and perhaps most crucially, the rhythm section -- thanks, guys!) to travel to Seattle on March 8, most of the rest of 'em (understandably -- who the hell is this Andrew Durkin, anyway?) are a little hesitant. The upshot? For all intents and purposes, I have to put together two "brand-freakin'-new bands.")
In a sense, this turn of events might be a good thing; if nothing else, it will provide a nice test of the quality of the music. (I wonder: is the humor respresented by "Fuck the Muck" translatable to an entirely different set of musical personalities? We shall see.)
Update: as it happens, I'll be "borrowing" most of Rob Scheps' big band (for the PDX gig anyway). I'll have more to say about this configuration as things develop, but for now I have to give mad mad props to Rob (a motherfucker if there ever was one, currently out on tour with the Village Vanguard band), who has given me an extremely valuable crash course in the northwest scene (let's face it, I've been hiding up here until now).
More to come.
First, a few new reviews of Go Go!: A lovely one here, courtesy of Brad Glanden, and another nice one (by Jim Santella) in Cadence. Since the Cadence piece is not online, allow me to excerpt: Santella writes that the IJG "has a finely-tuned sense of humor. They combine pure mainstream Jazz with comical interludes: each, a highly creative composition from pianist Andrew Durkin. They like to think of their work as a combination of Jazz, R&B, Soul, Gospel, Mariachi, Doo Wop, Salsa, Reggae, and Rock ‘n Roll. But, it’s the improvised Avant-Garde solos that give the session its steam. [...] The band’s highly unique performance resembles a merging of Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy with the World Saxophone Quartet [...] Highly recommended for its originality, swing, spontaneity and original groove, the Industrial Jazz Group stands the test of time. Long after I've finished listening to the album several times for review, I can’t help smiling about it." Well, alright.
We also had some nice press specifically related to our east coast tour, but like a dummy I neglected to collect it. F'r'instance, I'm told there was a nice thing in the Village Voice, but I never saw it (if anyone did, I'd be very curious as to the content).
Oh yeah, and this just in: Andrey Henkin's overview of the Bowery Poetry Club show can be found here. Henkin has become a trusted ally in recent months (and, small world, turns out he is an ex-colleague of my friend and former grad school classmate, Joan Jastrebski, who was also at the BPC show). He is of course right when he says we're "more Carla Bley than Count Basie" -- though I find this observation somewhat humorous given the fact that I dropped our Joe Williams "tribute" ("Every Day I Have The Blues, Too") from the set a few hours before the first hit of the tour.
Anyway, on to the future. This week I was preoccupied with the task of organizing things for our next set of dates (March 7 and 8 in Portland and Seattle, respectively). This should be easy, right? We just came off a burning east coast tour, the band is white-hot and ready to go, right? Right!
Wait a minute! What's this? Lo and behold, I depleted my entire budget making the east coast tour happen (not complaining here, just stating the facts, m'am). So it actually turns out that for the upcoming northwest hootenannies (hottenanni?), I can't afford to bring any of the usual suspects up from LA. That's right -- I'm gonna have to do these dates with a brand-freakin'-new band.
(I should clarify. "Depleted my budget" suggests that I spent all of the money I have. What I actually did was spend a lot of money that I don't yet have. But again, I'm not complaining.)
(I should clarify further. A "brand-freakin'-new band" suggests that I only have to recruit one such monster. What I have actually discovered is that, notwithstanding the willingness of certain of the Portland musicians I have engaged (and perhaps most crucially, the rhythm section -- thanks, guys!) to travel to Seattle on March 8, most of the rest of 'em (understandably -- who the hell is this Andrew Durkin, anyway?) are a little hesitant. The upshot? For all intents and purposes, I have to put together two "brand-freakin'-new bands.")
In a sense, this turn of events might be a good thing; if nothing else, it will provide a nice test of the quality of the music. (I wonder: is the humor respresented by "Fuck the Muck" translatable to an entirely different set of musical personalities? We shall see.)
Update: as it happens, I'll be "borrowing" most of Rob Scheps' big band (for the PDX gig anyway). I'll have more to say about this configuration as things develop, but for now I have to give mad mad props to Rob (a motherfucker if there ever was one, currently out on tour with the Village Vanguard band), who has given me an extremely valuable crash course in the northwest scene (let's face it, I've been hiding up here until now).
More to come.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
...the adventure ends
(Not really, of course, I just like these little symmetries in my headings...)
Actually, for me, the tour was extended by a few days, since I had to stick around in Jersey for family stuff. Made it back to PDX late last week, and was finally greeted by the snow that I was expecting to plague our visit eastward.
I'm exhausted as hell, so I doubt this will be the Big Important Post in which I sort out what it all means. But at least I know that such a post is called for. Excuse the cliche, but something special happened to the group on this tour. I'm not yet sure what it was, or how it happened, exactly, but we got a glimpse of the prize, and boy, was it sweet. Especially since it has been such a long time coming (20+ years for me, if you start counting from the moment I first committed myself (in a manner of speaking) to music as a "career"), and especially since the overall process has involved much more work than I would have been saddled with had I just decided to give in and become a lawyer like my folks always wanted.
The key word this time was turnout. We had packed houses for every show. Lord knows we've been on the road before, but in the past things have always been hit and miss with respect to audiences -- no matter how much promotion I did, there would always be at least one shittily-attended gig, usually more. The mostly-CA tour we did in August of 06 was typical: we had a fun, crowded show at our Club Tropical homebase (RIP); a materially rewarding but otherwise very stressful pair of gigs at the Carson City festival (one was enthusiastically received, the other was not); a quirky, half-full show in Oakland; and a truly depressing, very lonely evening at the (aptly named) Empty Space in Bakersfield. The band took it all in stride, for the most part, and I guess I counted that trip as a success overall. But deep down I knew that things had to get better soon.
This time out, for reasons I don't yet understand, every performance was like a slow, sweet, deep hit of some wondrous new, wondrously gratifying drug. Put another way, though I continue to go into debt for this group, I have never gone into debt so damned happily. The way I see it, there are four elements to making the band into the viable entity that could actually become our dayjob: good charts, good players, good audiences, and good bread. The first element has, I suppose, been in place more or less since we finally stumbled into our own sound, post-Star Chamber. The second has always been there. Now it appears we have some momentum with our audiences, so I'm hoping that the material side of things is not far behind. (My big fear at the moment is that the next tour won't live up to (or surpass) the standard set by this one. But maybe I'll save that subject for the Big Important Post.)
The personnel for "Industrial Jazz on Ice," incidentally, was not only good, but exemplary. The sax section (always the most, uh, fluid part of the group) turned out to be something of a dream lineup, with Damon Zick, Evan Francis, Beth Schenck, Cory Wright, and Brian Walsh as the mainstays, and Ben Wendel, Dan Pratt, or Tony Gairo brilliantly subbing on tenor 2 where necessary. (Zick and Walsh also doubled as second driver for tour van number 2, so they get extra acknowdgment and thanks here.) The trumpet section, far more stable historically, were all able to do the tour (thanks in part to the fact that Phil Rodriguez had recently moved to Brooklyn, and the fact that Tiner was going to be out east anyway because of his own tour in early January -- conditions that left enough money in the budget to bring out Dan Rosenboom (our third trumpet / resident high-wire artist)). The bone section was the big wild card, because none of the regulars were going to be present. But there too luck was on our side, as Ben Griffin (the guy who did most of our shows) turned out to be more or less perfectly suited to our schtick (his solo on "Fuck the Muck" killed every time), and Alan Ferber and Mike Hood were pretty goddamned good at it too. It may have been the rhythm section who ultimately defined us for the neophytes, of course: between Oliver Newell's distinctive and crazy dancing (I've no idea how he managed to play and gyrate at the same time, but this element of his performance (or perhaps just the extremes to which he took it) was quite new); Jill Knapp's emergence as the group narrator / chorus / audience liaison (I swear she has an unparalleled ability to allay the fears of first-time listeners, with a trademark grin that seems to warmly say "I know this sounds weird to you, but trust me, you're gonna love it"); and Dan Schnelle's clairvoyant ability to lock in to my time and whip the rest of the group into shape (plus, he wore a crab hat).
Anyway, the week itself went something like this: I arrived in Jersey a few days in advance of the proceedings, sans band, sans wife and daughter. I was hoping to get my head in order and put out the various fires that always seem to appear in the moments before a tour.
If I sewed them all together, I could make a helluva quilt.
Luckily, there was nothing to compare with the last-minute gig cancellation that made our first east coast journey such hell for me (thanks, CBGB). Though I did get a bit of a scare late on Sunday evening when I received a voicemail from Evan informing me he had missed his plane -- this was followed shortly thereafter by a text message, also from Evan, letting me know he had worked it out and would be in town about 12 hours later than expected, but still in time for rehearsal (all hail Jet Blue). That's one of the many amazing things about Evan -- he seems to have an uncanny ability to elegantly find his way out of any tight spot you can imagine. (That's true both musically and in general.)
I won't say I really got to enjoy those three or four days of comparative solitude and tour prep time -- too anxious -- but I did get to check in with the east coast Durkins, and snag a wee bit of quality time with a few old friends. I also spent time pondering my Mom's CD collection, which included recordings by Celine Dion, the Three Tenors, Yanni, Josh Groban, Kenny G, and, uh, the Industrial Jazz Group. (Gotta give her mad props for hanging on to the IJG records I send, though who knows whether she ever actually listens to them.)
Next stop: PBS.
I also gleaned some much-needed perspective when I forced myself to read through much of the poetry and other writing I had done in high school and as an undergrad. All of this had been neatly stashed (and catalogued!) in a large bookcase in my old room. What a superabundance of self-pity and other peurile crap fills those pages! What bombast! Still, I guess I'm glad I resisted my impulse to burn it all before I moved to LA in 1995 (it's probably good to revisit one's personal hell(s) once in a while).
Things couldn't have gotten off to a better start for the tour proper than they did with our gig at Chris' in Philadelphia (Jan 10). This despite the fact that the group was still a little out of shape musically (as I recall, there was at least one near-trainwreck on the bandstand). Chris' may be the first legit jazz club we have ever performed in -- a cozy venue with a swanky vibe, where they officiously insist on throwing away the fries left behind by paying customers (even though hungry itinerant musicians might be willingly partaking of said fries, which after all just happened to be lying around on one of the tables). I don't remember much about Philly from my childhood, but if I had known it was such a culturally vibrant place (as it at least seemed to be on Sansom Street) I would have made a point of trekking down there more often. Anyway, somehow we fit right in, in spite of the upscale ambience, and (thanks in part to the promotional energies of Jill) we drew a sizeable and enthusiastic crowd. I barely had room to maneuver in front of the band, in fact. And yes, the rumors are true: for part of the show I wore a drum major's hat that Jill had dug up somewhere, but it proved so uncomfortable (hard plastic digging into my bald scalp) that I soon scrapped it.
We were followed by the infectiously sassy Hoppin' John Orchestra, sort of the house band at Chris', and the brainchild of Mike Hood, a kindred spirit if there ever was one. Mike started out as an IJG fan because of our ill-fated Star Chamber record (in 04 he contacted me out of the blue just to tell me how much he liked that one). But with the experience of this tour, I'd like to say I can count him among my east-coast-music-community-friends. And Hoppin' John gets extra props for letting us use their gear for this show. My only regret is that we weren't able to stick around to catch their entire set.
The next day (Thursday, Jan 11) I woke up to a much-needed hug from Thandie, whom I hadn't seen in nearly a week. (I had received a much-needed hug from Daphne the previous evening when we returned from Philly -- the two of them had flown into Newark Airport at around the time of our downbeat at Chris'.) This is probably where I should acknowledge my deep gratitude to these, the most important people in my life -- Thandie for stoically putting up with more travel than any two year old should be forced to deal with, and Daphne for being the amazingly understanding, supportive person she is. I swear, though D. is usually the last to hear each new IJG tune (given the demands of her crazy work / parenting schedule), if it weren't for her patience, or her (I'm sure totally unintentional) influence on my writing (the key to a lasting relationship: a shared sense of humor), the IJG would never have come this far.
This was going to be the group's busiest day, given that we had two performances scheduled. (What? You say you want to catch some of the other things going on at conference today? Ha ha ha ha ha!) The first, our IAJE hit, was scheduled for noon sharp (only the second time we had ever played this music publicly while the sun was still out). People have repeatedly asked me how we managed to snag a performance slot in the conference, and until recently, I haven't been able to explain it except to say that I sent in an application (thanks to the gentle urging of Damon). Now I understand that there was something of a disagreement over whether we should have been allowed to play at all. Apparently, we have an advocate within the IAJE organization: Joel Leach, a past president who really went to the mat for us. It's amazing what a single person can do: we owe Joel big time, especially if the various opportunities that seem to be coming from IAJE actually pan out (more on those later).
Anyway, I'm told we caused a bit of a stir with our show. Made a few new friends (hello, Cassandra and Erik!), finally got to meet the amazing multitasking IAJE staff assistant Jennifer Dean, whom I had been bugging about conference-related details for months (Jennifer: if I ever make enough scratch at this to be able to afford a personal assistant, consider yourself hired), and got a plaque. More importantly, Daphne and Thandie caught the show too -- this was Thandie's first live experience of her Dad's crazy music, and I do believe we made another fan (she thought we were too loud but she wanted to get up on stage with us anyway).
That evening we played a set at a one of the more idiosyncratic venues we've ever been in, a space presided over by two of the bravest cats I've ever met (one of which slept away most of our set on top of a huge speaker located behind the bar). That's right, I'm talking about Goodbye Blue Monday, located in the otherwise desolate Bushwick section of Brooklyn (shout out to Mike Baggetta for scheduling this one). I must admit that there was a certain degree of stress beforehand. Although Shayna Dulberger had kindly agreed to allow us to use her bass amp (thanks, Shayna!), I was unsure whether we were going to have a drumkit for Schnelle or not. A few hours before we actually played, KT was able to convince Lukas Ligeti (that's right, the son of this guy), with whom he was also playing (in the same venue on the same night -- now there's stamina for ya), to let us use Lukas' rig. Thanks, fellas! (Now can one of you tell me definitively how to pronounce "Ligeti"?)
Hello, Brooklyn!
Probably my favorite moment of the GBM set, incidentally, was at the end of "Fuck the Muck." As anyone who has seen us in the last year or so knows, that tune concludes with a strange little hymn, sung by various sections of the group in (ultimately) four-part harmony (or something like it). The hymn is in 3/2 -- not quite a waltz, but nevertheless an odd time signature. The GBM audience, however, decided to clap along on the offbeats as if the thing was in 4/4 (or, I guess, 4/2). The improbable outcome of this was that the audience ended up clapping on beats 2, 1, and 3, in a time signature of 3/2, for maybe 1-2 minutes. I'm not exactly sure how musically sophisticated they were, but I'm fairly certain this is something they wouldn't have been able to do if I had tried to explain it to them beforehand. And that there in a nutshell is the beauty of "avant garde party music."
On Friday (Jan 12) we made our first foray into Massachussetts (barely missing the rush hour traffic out of Manhattan) at a venue called the Java Hut, located in Worcester. It was a double -- no, triple -- no, quadruple bill with Tom Lubelczyk's delightfully hardrocking AmericanMusicRevolution.com (and you thought "Industrial Jazz Group" was hard to fit onto a T-Shirt), plus two much more low-key performers who I didn't really get to concentrate on because I was busy working out hotel issues for the night. As with the Brooklyn show (and later, the Pittsfield show), we had to drop three players to fit into this venue (bone 2, tenor 2, and trumpet 3)... and we were still sprawled out like some kind of obscene jazz blob. We also had to cut our set a little shorter than I would have liked, due to the double-booking that led to the quadruple lineup (at some point I thought about suggesting a 4-band jam to close out the evening, but as it turned out we were lucky that everyone got to play a short set of their own). Still, for us, this was the show where things really started to come together musically. I think it was also the first set where I truly sweated -- strange as it sounds, perspiration has become one of my personal indices of whether or not a performance is actually successful. (If I'm sweating, I'm losing myself in the music somewhat, which means that things are sounding more or less right. Right?)
It's called the Java Hut, not the Java Mansion.
Ah, Worcester. Who will ever be able to explain your mysterious pronunciation? (I'm put in mind of Eddie Izzard's joke about the pronunication of "herb": "You [Americans] pronounce it 'erb,' and we [Brits] pronounce it 'herb.' Because there's a fucking 'h' in it.") I didn't really get a good feel for this city: we arrived after dark, and left before noon the next day. But I won't let the worst chicken parmesan I have ever eaten ruin my impression; we'll definitely be back. Again, mad props to Tom for setting up the show (sort of against the odds, really, as we were originally shooting for Boston, which turned out to be going through a bit of a dry spell venue-wise) and for hooking us up with pretty much all of the gear we needed. (Although I did get to bring the once-mighty axe of my youth, a vintage Yamaha DX-7 ("Glory Days," anyone?), now sadly rusted and splashed with catpuke and who knows what else. Still, it more or less worked, and brought a certain, uh, charm to the performance.)
On Saturday we trekked on over to Pittsfield, MA (about as far west as you can go without venturing into upstate NY), and played a throughly enjoyable matinee show at the very sytlish Lichtenstein Center for the Arts, where, despite some sound issues (to my ears, we came across extremely bright and somewhat distorted) and the presence of implied dirty words -- both potential liabilities because there were kids and elderly folk in the audience -- the Pittsfieldians absolutely ate it up. In fact, I think we all basically surprised each other -- I was still a little flabbergasted that this gig had come together (it was set up very much at the last-minute, almost accidentally, and without a lot of promotion or prep work until about ten days beforehand), the band was surprised that people actually came out (in droves), and the audience was surprised that we lived up to the hype. The tightness that had emerged on the preceding evening really locked in now (except on "What's in Anne's Icebox," which never really came together for this tour, and was subsequently dropped for the next evening's performance). Plus, I started to expand my between-song patter (such as it is). In general, a splendid time was had by all.
Incidentally, I learned that Pittsfield is home to Ed Mann, the celebrated Zappa percussionist. In fact, it turned out he had studied with the gentleman who lent us his drum kit (thanks, Art!) -- a guy I would never have pegged as a Zappa fan, but there you go. Megan, our wonderful host, actually gave him a call when she took us out to lunch after the show (!); she wanted to see if he'd like to come over and meet us. Turns out he was on tour with Project/Object, so no dice. But it seems like every tour has to have some sort of Zappa connection, and this was a particularly nice one.
Thanks also to Andy Kelly for the use of his bass amp and PA.
"Late Lunch of Champions" (Thank you, Megan!)
We made it back to NYC late that night. I'll skip the part about getting lost (and nearly running out of gas) in the wilds of western MA / upstate NY, because, as Tiner pointed out during that little detour, it was merely annoying; it wasn't the sort of scary-in-a fear-for-your-life-kind-of-way that we had once experienced in a seedier section of Berkeley, CA.
Anyway, in the context of all this wonderment and fun (not the wonderment and fun of getting lost in western MA / upstate NY, but the wonderment and fun preceding that), it's really saying something to flag the final gig (Jan 14 at the Bowery Poetry Club, with Darcy James Argue's Secret Society) as the highlight of the tour. To my mind, it was a perfect pairing for an evening of "new jazz." For one thing, I'll agree with Tiner and Jill: by most reasonable criteria, it was the best show the IJG has ever played. But the Society really killed it too: what a beautiful, graceful marriage of the complexity of a symphony orchestra with the swagger of a jazz ensemble. And it was nice to bask in the glow of the east-meets-west-mutual-admiration-society that seemed to spring up between the two ensembles in the aftermath. I suspect that it's very rare that that sort of thing happens outside of an institutional context like a festival or a school; I'm beyond proud to have been part of such an aberration of protocol. (Actually, my role was minimal: all I really did was suggest the bill -- Darcy did all the legwork and reconnaisance (gracias, Darcy).)
"No, I'm not going to eat that. Are you going to eat that?" (The big question preceding our BPC hit.)
The evening was personally important to me, too, because I learned a lot by watching Darcy work (he's got it down to a science), and hearing his music live for the first time (I had been immersing myself in it for months through the wonders of the internet; you should too). Our bands articulate two very different answers to the same question, and as I sat there listening to the Society after our set I experienced an unusual moment of clarity and artistic self-awareness -- but both of these were tempered by a genuine awe at the sounds that were emanating from the Bowery stage. Darcy is the real deal, and I am truly honored that we got to share the bill with him and his amazing group.
One to watch: the Secret Society does its thing.
On that note, one of the great coups of the evening (and, perhaps less emphatically, of the tour as a whole) was an affirmation of what I had always suspected: that audiences are smart enough to be able to absorb multiple approaches to music-making simultaneously -- something that might not be immediately apparent if you subscribe to the jazz battles of recent years. Progressive, traditional, east coast, west coast, noise, melody, art, pop, Wynton Marsalis, Ornette Coleman, what the fuck? It's all just music, and the real question, as the wise Mr. Ellington knew, has always been: is it good or not? I have always believed there are plenty of people in the world with big enough ears to take it all in -- indeed, I have staked my career on that assumption, given the easy eclecticism of my own taste -- and this show provided a nice validation.
Lots more to shake out of this tour... watch this space for updates.
Actually, for me, the tour was extended by a few days, since I had to stick around in Jersey for family stuff. Made it back to PDX late last week, and was finally greeted by the snow that I was expecting to plague our visit eastward.
I'm exhausted as hell, so I doubt this will be the Big Important Post in which I sort out what it all means. But at least I know that such a post is called for. Excuse the cliche, but something special happened to the group on this tour. I'm not yet sure what it was, or how it happened, exactly, but we got a glimpse of the prize, and boy, was it sweet. Especially since it has been such a long time coming (20+ years for me, if you start counting from the moment I first committed myself (in a manner of speaking) to music as a "career"), and especially since the overall process has involved much more work than I would have been saddled with had I just decided to give in and become a lawyer like my folks always wanted.
The key word this time was turnout. We had packed houses for every show. Lord knows we've been on the road before, but in the past things have always been hit and miss with respect to audiences -- no matter how much promotion I did, there would always be at least one shittily-attended gig, usually more. The mostly-CA tour we did in August of 06 was typical: we had a fun, crowded show at our Club Tropical homebase (RIP); a materially rewarding but otherwise very stressful pair of gigs at the Carson City festival (one was enthusiastically received, the other was not); a quirky, half-full show in Oakland; and a truly depressing, very lonely evening at the (aptly named) Empty Space in Bakersfield. The band took it all in stride, for the most part, and I guess I counted that trip as a success overall. But deep down I knew that things had to get better soon.
This time out, for reasons I don't yet understand, every performance was like a slow, sweet, deep hit of some wondrous new, wondrously gratifying drug. Put another way, though I continue to go into debt for this group, I have never gone into debt so damned happily. The way I see it, there are four elements to making the band into the viable entity that could actually become our dayjob: good charts, good players, good audiences, and good bread. The first element has, I suppose, been in place more or less since we finally stumbled into our own sound, post-Star Chamber. The second has always been there. Now it appears we have some momentum with our audiences, so I'm hoping that the material side of things is not far behind. (My big fear at the moment is that the next tour won't live up to (or surpass) the standard set by this one. But maybe I'll save that subject for the Big Important Post.)
The personnel for "Industrial Jazz on Ice," incidentally, was not only good, but exemplary. The sax section (always the most, uh, fluid part of the group) turned out to be something of a dream lineup, with Damon Zick, Evan Francis, Beth Schenck, Cory Wright, and Brian Walsh as the mainstays, and Ben Wendel, Dan Pratt, or Tony Gairo brilliantly subbing on tenor 2 where necessary. (Zick and Walsh also doubled as second driver for tour van number 2, so they get extra acknowdgment and thanks here.) The trumpet section, far more stable historically, were all able to do the tour (thanks in part to the fact that Phil Rodriguez had recently moved to Brooklyn, and the fact that Tiner was going to be out east anyway because of his own tour in early January -- conditions that left enough money in the budget to bring out Dan Rosenboom (our third trumpet / resident high-wire artist)). The bone section was the big wild card, because none of the regulars were going to be present. But there too luck was on our side, as Ben Griffin (the guy who did most of our shows) turned out to be more or less perfectly suited to our schtick (his solo on "Fuck the Muck" killed every time), and Alan Ferber and Mike Hood were pretty goddamned good at it too. It may have been the rhythm section who ultimately defined us for the neophytes, of course: between Oliver Newell's distinctive and crazy dancing (I've no idea how he managed to play and gyrate at the same time, but this element of his performance (or perhaps just the extremes to which he took it) was quite new); Jill Knapp's emergence as the group narrator / chorus / audience liaison (I swear she has an unparalleled ability to allay the fears of first-time listeners, with a trademark grin that seems to warmly say "I know this sounds weird to you, but trust me, you're gonna love it"); and Dan Schnelle's clairvoyant ability to lock in to my time and whip the rest of the group into shape (plus, he wore a crab hat).
Anyway, the week itself went something like this: I arrived in Jersey a few days in advance of the proceedings, sans band, sans wife and daughter. I was hoping to get my head in order and put out the various fires that always seem to appear in the moments before a tour.
Luckily, there was nothing to compare with the last-minute gig cancellation that made our first east coast journey such hell for me (thanks, CBGB). Though I did get a bit of a scare late on Sunday evening when I received a voicemail from Evan informing me he had missed his plane -- this was followed shortly thereafter by a text message, also from Evan, letting me know he had worked it out and would be in town about 12 hours later than expected, but still in time for rehearsal (all hail Jet Blue). That's one of the many amazing things about Evan -- he seems to have an uncanny ability to elegantly find his way out of any tight spot you can imagine. (That's true both musically and in general.)
I won't say I really got to enjoy those three or four days of comparative solitude and tour prep time -- too anxious -- but I did get to check in with the east coast Durkins, and snag a wee bit of quality time with a few old friends. I also spent time pondering my Mom's CD collection, which included recordings by Celine Dion, the Three Tenors, Yanni, Josh Groban, Kenny G, and, uh, the Industrial Jazz Group. (Gotta give her mad props for hanging on to the IJG records I send, though who knows whether she ever actually listens to them.)
I also gleaned some much-needed perspective when I forced myself to read through much of the poetry and other writing I had done in high school and as an undergrad. All of this had been neatly stashed (and catalogued!) in a large bookcase in my old room. What a superabundance of self-pity and other peurile crap fills those pages! What bombast! Still, I guess I'm glad I resisted my impulse to burn it all before I moved to LA in 1995 (it's probably good to revisit one's personal hell(s) once in a while).
Things couldn't have gotten off to a better start for the tour proper than they did with our gig at Chris' in Philadelphia (Jan 10). This despite the fact that the group was still a little out of shape musically (as I recall, there was at least one near-trainwreck on the bandstand). Chris' may be the first legit jazz club we have ever performed in -- a cozy venue with a swanky vibe, where they officiously insist on throwing away the fries left behind by paying customers (even though hungry itinerant musicians might be willingly partaking of said fries, which after all just happened to be lying around on one of the tables). I don't remember much about Philly from my childhood, but if I had known it was such a culturally vibrant place (as it at least seemed to be on Sansom Street) I would have made a point of trekking down there more often. Anyway, somehow we fit right in, in spite of the upscale ambience, and (thanks in part to the promotional energies of Jill) we drew a sizeable and enthusiastic crowd. I barely had room to maneuver in front of the band, in fact. And yes, the rumors are true: for part of the show I wore a drum major's hat that Jill had dug up somewhere, but it proved so uncomfortable (hard plastic digging into my bald scalp) that I soon scrapped it.
We were followed by the infectiously sassy Hoppin' John Orchestra, sort of the house band at Chris', and the brainchild of Mike Hood, a kindred spirit if there ever was one. Mike started out as an IJG fan because of our ill-fated Star Chamber record (in 04 he contacted me out of the blue just to tell me how much he liked that one). But with the experience of this tour, I'd like to say I can count him among my east-coast-music-community-friends. And Hoppin' John gets extra props for letting us use their gear for this show. My only regret is that we weren't able to stick around to catch their entire set.
The next day (Thursday, Jan 11) I woke up to a much-needed hug from Thandie, whom I hadn't seen in nearly a week. (I had received a much-needed hug from Daphne the previous evening when we returned from Philly -- the two of them had flown into Newark Airport at around the time of our downbeat at Chris'.) This is probably where I should acknowledge my deep gratitude to these, the most important people in my life -- Thandie for stoically putting up with more travel than any two year old should be forced to deal with, and Daphne for being the amazingly understanding, supportive person she is. I swear, though D. is usually the last to hear each new IJG tune (given the demands of her crazy work / parenting schedule), if it weren't for her patience, or her (I'm sure totally unintentional) influence on my writing (the key to a lasting relationship: a shared sense of humor), the IJG would never have come this far.
This was going to be the group's busiest day, given that we had two performances scheduled. (What? You say you want to catch some of the other things going on at conference today? Ha ha ha ha ha!) The first, our IAJE hit, was scheduled for noon sharp (only the second time we had ever played this music publicly while the sun was still out). People have repeatedly asked me how we managed to snag a performance slot in the conference, and until recently, I haven't been able to explain it except to say that I sent in an application (thanks to the gentle urging of Damon). Now I understand that there was something of a disagreement over whether we should have been allowed to play at all. Apparently, we have an advocate within the IAJE organization: Joel Leach, a past president who really went to the mat for us. It's amazing what a single person can do: we owe Joel big time, especially if the various opportunities that seem to be coming from IAJE actually pan out (more on those later).
Anyway, I'm told we caused a bit of a stir with our show. Made a few new friends (hello, Cassandra and Erik!), finally got to meet the amazing multitasking IAJE staff assistant Jennifer Dean, whom I had been bugging about conference-related details for months (Jennifer: if I ever make enough scratch at this to be able to afford a personal assistant, consider yourself hired), and got a plaque. More importantly, Daphne and Thandie caught the show too -- this was Thandie's first live experience of her Dad's crazy music, and I do believe we made another fan (she thought we were too loud but she wanted to get up on stage with us anyway).
That evening we played a set at a one of the more idiosyncratic venues we've ever been in, a space presided over by two of the bravest cats I've ever met (one of which slept away most of our set on top of a huge speaker located behind the bar). That's right, I'm talking about Goodbye Blue Monday, located in the otherwise desolate Bushwick section of Brooklyn (shout out to Mike Baggetta for scheduling this one). I must admit that there was a certain degree of stress beforehand. Although Shayna Dulberger had kindly agreed to allow us to use her bass amp (thanks, Shayna!), I was unsure whether we were going to have a drumkit for Schnelle or not. A few hours before we actually played, KT was able to convince Lukas Ligeti (that's right, the son of this guy), with whom he was also playing (in the same venue on the same night -- now there's stamina for ya), to let us use Lukas' rig. Thanks, fellas! (Now can one of you tell me definitively how to pronounce "Ligeti"?)
Probably my favorite moment of the GBM set, incidentally, was at the end of "Fuck the Muck." As anyone who has seen us in the last year or so knows, that tune concludes with a strange little hymn, sung by various sections of the group in (ultimately) four-part harmony (or something like it). The hymn is in 3/2 -- not quite a waltz, but nevertheless an odd time signature. The GBM audience, however, decided to clap along on the offbeats as if the thing was in 4/4 (or, I guess, 4/2). The improbable outcome of this was that the audience ended up clapping on beats 2, 1, and 3, in a time signature of 3/2, for maybe 1-2 minutes. I'm not exactly sure how musically sophisticated they were, but I'm fairly certain this is something they wouldn't have been able to do if I had tried to explain it to them beforehand. And that there in a nutshell is the beauty of "avant garde party music."
On Friday (Jan 12) we made our first foray into Massachussetts (barely missing the rush hour traffic out of Manhattan) at a venue called the Java Hut, located in Worcester. It was a double -- no, triple -- no, quadruple bill with Tom Lubelczyk's delightfully hardrocking AmericanMusicRevolution.com (and you thought "Industrial Jazz Group" was hard to fit onto a T-Shirt), plus two much more low-key performers who I didn't really get to concentrate on because I was busy working out hotel issues for the night. As with the Brooklyn show (and later, the Pittsfield show), we had to drop three players to fit into this venue (bone 2, tenor 2, and trumpet 3)... and we were still sprawled out like some kind of obscene jazz blob. We also had to cut our set a little shorter than I would have liked, due to the double-booking that led to the quadruple lineup (at some point I thought about suggesting a 4-band jam to close out the evening, but as it turned out we were lucky that everyone got to play a short set of their own). Still, for us, this was the show where things really started to come together musically. I think it was also the first set where I truly sweated -- strange as it sounds, perspiration has become one of my personal indices of whether or not a performance is actually successful. (If I'm sweating, I'm losing myself in the music somewhat, which means that things are sounding more or less right. Right?)
Ah, Worcester. Who will ever be able to explain your mysterious pronunciation? (I'm put in mind of Eddie Izzard's joke about the pronunication of "herb": "You [Americans] pronounce it 'erb,' and we [Brits] pronounce it 'herb.' Because there's a fucking 'h' in it.") I didn't really get a good feel for this city: we arrived after dark, and left before noon the next day. But I won't let the worst chicken parmesan I have ever eaten ruin my impression; we'll definitely be back. Again, mad props to Tom for setting up the show (sort of against the odds, really, as we were originally shooting for Boston, which turned out to be going through a bit of a dry spell venue-wise) and for hooking us up with pretty much all of the gear we needed. (Although I did get to bring the once-mighty axe of my youth, a vintage Yamaha DX-7 ("Glory Days," anyone?), now sadly rusted and splashed with catpuke and who knows what else. Still, it more or less worked, and brought a certain, uh, charm to the performance.)
On Saturday we trekked on over to Pittsfield, MA (about as far west as you can go without venturing into upstate NY), and played a throughly enjoyable matinee show at the very sytlish Lichtenstein Center for the Arts, where, despite some sound issues (to my ears, we came across extremely bright and somewhat distorted) and the presence of implied dirty words -- both potential liabilities because there were kids and elderly folk in the audience -- the Pittsfieldians absolutely ate it up. In fact, I think we all basically surprised each other -- I was still a little flabbergasted that this gig had come together (it was set up very much at the last-minute, almost accidentally, and without a lot of promotion or prep work until about ten days beforehand), the band was surprised that people actually came out (in droves), and the audience was surprised that we lived up to the hype. The tightness that had emerged on the preceding evening really locked in now (except on "What's in Anne's Icebox," which never really came together for this tour, and was subsequently dropped for the next evening's performance). Plus, I started to expand my between-song patter (such as it is). In general, a splendid time was had by all.
Incidentally, I learned that Pittsfield is home to Ed Mann, the celebrated Zappa percussionist. In fact, it turned out he had studied with the gentleman who lent us his drum kit (thanks, Art!) -- a guy I would never have pegged as a Zappa fan, but there you go. Megan, our wonderful host, actually gave him a call when she took us out to lunch after the show (!); she wanted to see if he'd like to come over and meet us. Turns out he was on tour with Project/Object, so no dice. But it seems like every tour has to have some sort of Zappa connection, and this was a particularly nice one.
Thanks also to Andy Kelly for the use of his bass amp and PA.
We made it back to NYC late that night. I'll skip the part about getting lost (and nearly running out of gas) in the wilds of western MA / upstate NY, because, as Tiner pointed out during that little detour, it was merely annoying; it wasn't the sort of scary-in-a fear-for-your-life-kind-of-way that we had once experienced in a seedier section of Berkeley, CA.
Anyway, in the context of all this wonderment and fun (not the wonderment and fun of getting lost in western MA / upstate NY, but the wonderment and fun preceding that), it's really saying something to flag the final gig (Jan 14 at the Bowery Poetry Club, with Darcy James Argue's Secret Society) as the highlight of the tour. To my mind, it was a perfect pairing for an evening of "new jazz." For one thing, I'll agree with Tiner and Jill: by most reasonable criteria, it was the best show the IJG has ever played. But the Society really killed it too: what a beautiful, graceful marriage of the complexity of a symphony orchestra with the swagger of a jazz ensemble. And it was nice to bask in the glow of the east-meets-west-mutual-admiration-society that seemed to spring up between the two ensembles in the aftermath. I suspect that it's very rare that that sort of thing happens outside of an institutional context like a festival or a school; I'm beyond proud to have been part of such an aberration of protocol. (Actually, my role was minimal: all I really did was suggest the bill -- Darcy did all the legwork and reconnaisance (gracias, Darcy).)
The evening was personally important to me, too, because I learned a lot by watching Darcy work (he's got it down to a science), and hearing his music live for the first time (I had been immersing myself in it for months through the wonders of the internet; you should too). Our bands articulate two very different answers to the same question, and as I sat there listening to the Society after our set I experienced an unusual moment of clarity and artistic self-awareness -- but both of these were tempered by a genuine awe at the sounds that were emanating from the Bowery stage. Darcy is the real deal, and I am truly honored that we got to share the bill with him and his amazing group.
On that note, one of the great coups of the evening (and, perhaps less emphatically, of the tour as a whole) was an affirmation of what I had always suspected: that audiences are smart enough to be able to absorb multiple approaches to music-making simultaneously -- something that might not be immediately apparent if you subscribe to the jazz battles of recent years. Progressive, traditional, east coast, west coast, noise, melody, art, pop, Wynton Marsalis, Ornette Coleman, what the fuck? It's all just music, and the real question, as the wise Mr. Ellington knew, has always been: is it good or not? I have always believed there are plenty of people in the world with big enough ears to take it all in -- indeed, I have staked my career on that assumption, given the easy eclecticism of my own taste -- and this show provided a nice validation.
Lots more to shake out of this tour... watch this space for updates.
Thank you for your patience...
Spent most of last week working on the tour wrap-up post. Meant to get it up early this week, but then Thandie got sick, then I got sick, then Daphne got sick. Believe me, you don't want any more details. Anyway, the upshot is that there has pretty much been a communications blackout since last Saturday...
We're through the worst of it, however, so you can expect something more substantial from me very soon. (This goes for you emailers and myspacers too.) In the meantime, have you heard this?
We're through the worst of it, however, so you can expect something more substantial from me very soon. (This goes for you emailers and myspacers too.) In the meantime, have you heard this?
Monday, January 15, 2007
Industrial Jazz On Ice!
(Note: for obvious self-promotional reasons, we're gonna keep this up top until mid-January, although new posts will continue to appear below.)
IJG January 2007 East Coast Tour: Industrial Jazz On Ice!
Jan 10: Chris's Jazz Cafe (8 PM, Philadelphia, PA); with Hoppin' John Orchestra.
Jan 11: IAJE (noon, NYC). In the Sheraton Hotel's Empire Ballroom.
Jan 11: Goodbye Blue Monday (8 PM, Brooklyn); with Kris Tiner / Mike Baggetta Group.
Jan 12: Java Hut (8 PM, Worcester, MA); with Tom Lubelczyk's AmericanMusicRevolution.com.
Jan 13: Lichtenstein Center for the Arts (2 PM, Pittsfield, MA).
Jan 14: Bowery Poetry Club (8 PM, NYC); with Darcy James Argue's Secret Society.
Can't make one of these? Click here to find out how you can donate to the cause.
Thanks for reading!
Jan 10: Chris's Jazz Cafe (8 PM, Philadelphia, PA); with Hoppin' John Orchestra.
Jan 11: IAJE (noon, NYC). In the Sheraton Hotel's Empire Ballroom.
Jan 11: Goodbye Blue Monday (8 PM, Brooklyn); with Kris Tiner / Mike Baggetta Group.
Jan 12: Java Hut (8 PM, Worcester, MA); with Tom Lubelczyk's AmericanMusicRevolution.com.
Jan 13: Lichtenstein Center for the Arts (2 PM, Pittsfield, MA).
Jan 14: Bowery Poetry Club (8 PM, NYC); with Darcy James Argue's Secret Society.
Thanks for reading!
Friday, January 12, 2007
...the adventure continues...
Ain't no way I can compete with Tiner, whose road blog of this tour pretty much nails it. I'll have more to say soon about what's been happening, but for the time being I'll pass along these pix... unhelpfully unannotated. (The short review of the proceedings thus far: we're having a blast.)
Friday, January 05, 2007
The adventure begins...
Okay, so I'm heading out to the east coast as I type (blogging on the road for the first time ever... via free wireless from the friggin' airport no less! ...what a wonderful city PDX is). Tour stuff begins tomorrow (with a vocal rehearsal). I'll do my best to check in as much as possible, with pix along the way too perhaps.
Yee-haw!
Yee-haw!
Monday, January 01, 2007
To blog or not to blog
So apparently I'm not the only one who was annoyed by Time magazine's gesture toward populism (re: the "Person of the Year: You" issue). Perhaps the most eloquent diss came from (no surprise here) Frank Rich. I ain't a-gonna find the link now, but Rich's take on the whole thing was in Christmas Eve's NYT, and is, like most of what he writes, well worth a read. A favorite line: "The magazine's disingenuous rationale for bestowing its yearly honor on its readers was like a big wet kiss from a distant relative who creeps you out."
One thing about the piece stuck in my craw, though. Rich's argument is basically that the rapid growth of internet technologies like YouTube and blogging help insulate us from more significant events like the war in Iraq. He puts it this way: "As our country sinks deeper into a quagmire -- and even a conclusive Election Day repudiation of the war proves powerless to stop it -- we the people, and that includes, yes, you, will seek out any escape hatch we can find. In the Iraq era, the dropout nostrums of choice are not the drugs and drug culture of Vietnam but the equally self-gratifying and narcissistic (if less psychedelic) pastimes of the Internet."
This is a variation of an argument I've heard before -- usually from those with hard-won and well-established forums for their own self-expression. In general, I feel compelled to dismiss it. Sure, blogging and YouTube are diversions, and somewhat onanistic (in both the literal and figurative sense). But it seems unfair to fault them for providing an outlet (which can admittedly range from serious to shallow) for the global vox populi, particularly when both technologies were involved in the above-referenced election. (Yes, that election hasn't yet changed Iraq policy, but it's the closest thing we've had; its failure in that regard may finally wake people up to the notion that the only way to stop this war is to fire Bush.) Strangely, Rich seems aware of the political impact of blogs too -- at least we know he reads the Huffington Post, which he cites in the course of his essay (for its own critique of Time).
Notwithstanding my kneejerk defensiveness of the Internet, where I'll be the first to admit I spend far too much of my time, Rich's piece also made me wonder: why do I blog, anyway? I started this thing over two years ago now (good gawd, has it been that long?), mostly as a companion experiment to my then-dayjob at the IML; a dayjob in which I was supposed to be investigating new media technologies and their relevance to education. It has taken awhile, but I suppose I have finally settled on a "formula" for the thing (not my formula exclusively, by any means, but rather something cobbled together from multiple sources): to wit, JTMOU is some weird combination of IJG diarizing / record-keeping, personal reportage (mostly concerning the experience of fatherhood, but also commentaries on broader aspects of west-coast living), somewhat incestuous linkages to other bloggers (musicians and friends), occasional third-person glances at culture and politics, and the obligatory "check out this cool interweb thingy" (link, video, etc.). All relayed through the bombastic persona of "Durkin-the-composer."
Still, why do it? Taylor Ho Bynum (yet another guy who deserves a slice of your internet attention span) recently had an interesting post on the under-recognized genre of music literature. It got me to thinking that my own uneasiness about blogging (such as it is) has a lot to do with the fact that while I remain addicted to reading and writing about music, I have simultaneously come to see most (maybe even all) of it (fiction, non-fiction, whatever) as more or less completely irrelevant to the subject matter at hand. Words can never suffice, where music (or musical experience) is concerned. (Hence my decision to stop writing reviews for All About Jazz -- with each piece, it became more and more apparent that my subject matter was the act of reviewing itself, rather than the music, per se.)
Also apropos of the uneasiness, there's this phenomenon: the more time one spends in the "blogosphere," the more it starts to feel "real." And yet, to adapt a phrase I use as a headline on my personal MySpace page: some of my best friends (and some of the best musicians I know, jazz and otherwise) don't blog (hello, Jim Carney!). Some refuse on principle, some don't have the time, and some just don't like to write. All legitimate objections: but are these cats gonna be overlooked by some future wave of uber-hip music scholars? More importantly, from a selfish perspective: why am I wasting time writing this piece when I could be working out more of the many remaining details for the upcoming IJG tour?
Well, to turn it around, the community-building benefits of blogging are obvious. And it is worth pointing out too that there is something about this particular internet pastime -- especially when it comes to arts-oriented blogs -- that speaks to the dispersed, sprawling welter of twenty-first century culture like no other medium. Sure, it's hard to keep up, but that's the point. "Dispersal" is the flip side to "empowerment," after all.
Blogs seem to point toward a world in which, because of the sheer number of educated and eloquent voices, it becomes impossible to sustain anything resembling an institutional, stable, monolithic art canon (that's a good thing, says I). Unlike political blogs, arts blogs need not necessarily be driven by a search for "truth" (or perhaps it's just a different kind of truth). F'r'instance, TBP's recent music survey opened with the caveat that the answers were to be "subjective" -- but that was a little redundant, 'cuz how could they be otherwise? That was precisely the fun of the thing, as I saw it -- use the medium to collectively sketch out the vast field of available music, and give us all a sense of our many commonalities and differences as listeners and producers. (The differences may actually be where the action is: it's a genuine pleasure (and learning experience) to work out aesthetic disagreements with a trusted musical ally and friend, or to notice that sort of discovery happening elsewhere.)
Could a conventional publishing vehicle (the LA Weekly, say) do all that?
* * * * *
Incidentally, for those of you who are new to JTMOU, here, in no particular order, is a recap of what I think are 2006's more interesting posts (read: these are the posts that took the longest to write):
Leo McClusky's "Look at you with all the blinkin' lights!"
(episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
Sucker Punch
Great Grande Mothers
Aggy We Hardly Knew Ye
Birthdays, Travel, Stock-taking
Mortality, Immortality, and Critics
Girl From the North Country
IJG August 2006 Tour
So, "wha happen"?
Turn, turn, turn
North by Northwest
Five years on
Bernie, we hardly knew ye (The comments on this one are more exciting than the post itself.)
Getting and Spending
Varia
Ode
It's about freakin' time
Old man winter
Survey Says
Three months in the life of a bandleader
In defense of fun
Pomp and circumstances
One thing about the piece stuck in my craw, though. Rich's argument is basically that the rapid growth of internet technologies like YouTube and blogging help insulate us from more significant events like the war in Iraq. He puts it this way: "As our country sinks deeper into a quagmire -- and even a conclusive Election Day repudiation of the war proves powerless to stop it -- we the people, and that includes, yes, you, will seek out any escape hatch we can find. In the Iraq era, the dropout nostrums of choice are not the drugs and drug culture of Vietnam but the equally self-gratifying and narcissistic (if less psychedelic) pastimes of the Internet."
This is a variation of an argument I've heard before -- usually from those with hard-won and well-established forums for their own self-expression. In general, I feel compelled to dismiss it. Sure, blogging and YouTube are diversions, and somewhat onanistic (in both the literal and figurative sense). But it seems unfair to fault them for providing an outlet (which can admittedly range from serious to shallow) for the global vox populi, particularly when both technologies were involved in the above-referenced election. (Yes, that election hasn't yet changed Iraq policy, but it's the closest thing we've had; its failure in that regard may finally wake people up to the notion that the only way to stop this war is to fire Bush.) Strangely, Rich seems aware of the political impact of blogs too -- at least we know he reads the Huffington Post, which he cites in the course of his essay (for its own critique of Time).
Notwithstanding my kneejerk defensiveness of the Internet, where I'll be the first to admit I spend far too much of my time, Rich's piece also made me wonder: why do I blog, anyway? I started this thing over two years ago now (good gawd, has it been that long?), mostly as a companion experiment to my then-dayjob at the IML; a dayjob in which I was supposed to be investigating new media technologies and their relevance to education. It has taken awhile, but I suppose I have finally settled on a "formula" for the thing (not my formula exclusively, by any means, but rather something cobbled together from multiple sources): to wit, JTMOU is some weird combination of IJG diarizing / record-keeping, personal reportage (mostly concerning the experience of fatherhood, but also commentaries on broader aspects of west-coast living), somewhat incestuous linkages to other bloggers (musicians and friends), occasional third-person glances at culture and politics, and the obligatory "check out this cool interweb thingy" (link, video, etc.). All relayed through the bombastic persona of "Durkin-the-composer."
Still, why do it? Taylor Ho Bynum (yet another guy who deserves a slice of your internet attention span) recently had an interesting post on the under-recognized genre of music literature. It got me to thinking that my own uneasiness about blogging (such as it is) has a lot to do with the fact that while I remain addicted to reading and writing about music, I have simultaneously come to see most (maybe even all) of it (fiction, non-fiction, whatever) as more or less completely irrelevant to the subject matter at hand. Words can never suffice, where music (or musical experience) is concerned. (Hence my decision to stop writing reviews for All About Jazz -- with each piece, it became more and more apparent that my subject matter was the act of reviewing itself, rather than the music, per se.)
Also apropos of the uneasiness, there's this phenomenon: the more time one spends in the "blogosphere," the more it starts to feel "real." And yet, to adapt a phrase I use as a headline on my personal MySpace page: some of my best friends (and some of the best musicians I know, jazz and otherwise) don't blog (hello, Jim Carney!). Some refuse on principle, some don't have the time, and some just don't like to write. All legitimate objections: but are these cats gonna be overlooked by some future wave of uber-hip music scholars? More importantly, from a selfish perspective: why am I wasting time writing this piece when I could be working out more of the many remaining details for the upcoming IJG tour?
Well, to turn it around, the community-building benefits of blogging are obvious. And it is worth pointing out too that there is something about this particular internet pastime -- especially when it comes to arts-oriented blogs -- that speaks to the dispersed, sprawling welter of twenty-first century culture like no other medium. Sure, it's hard to keep up, but that's the point. "Dispersal" is the flip side to "empowerment," after all.
Blogs seem to point toward a world in which, because of the sheer number of educated and eloquent voices, it becomes impossible to sustain anything resembling an institutional, stable, monolithic art canon (that's a good thing, says I). Unlike political blogs, arts blogs need not necessarily be driven by a search for "truth" (or perhaps it's just a different kind of truth). F'r'instance, TBP's recent music survey opened with the caveat that the answers were to be "subjective" -- but that was a little redundant, 'cuz how could they be otherwise? That was precisely the fun of the thing, as I saw it -- use the medium to collectively sketch out the vast field of available music, and give us all a sense of our many commonalities and differences as listeners and producers. (The differences may actually be where the action is: it's a genuine pleasure (and learning experience) to work out aesthetic disagreements with a trusted musical ally and friend, or to notice that sort of discovery happening elsewhere.)
Could a conventional publishing vehicle (the LA Weekly, say) do all that?
Incidentally, for those of you who are new to JTMOU, here, in no particular order, is a recap of what I think are 2006's more interesting posts (read: these are the posts that took the longest to write):
Leo McClusky's "Look at you with all the blinkin' lights!"
(episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
Sucker Punch
Great Grande Mothers
Aggy We Hardly Knew Ye
Birthdays, Travel, Stock-taking
Mortality, Immortality, and Critics
Girl From the North Country
IJG August 2006 Tour
So, "wha happen"?
Turn, turn, turn
North by Northwest
Five years on
Bernie, we hardly knew ye (The comments on this one are more exciting than the post itself.)
Getting and Spending
Varia
Ode
It's about freakin' time
Old man winter
Survey Says
Three months in the life of a bandleader
In defense of fun
Pomp and circumstances
Friday, December 29, 2006
Fuck ringtones...
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Ringtones are all irritating
I know, I know. I've been spending too much time on YouTube. I swear, it's only cuz Time Magazine told me to. (Can I just digress here for a moment and mention how irritating I find that whole Person-of-the-Year-2006 thing? As if somehow grass-roots, independent communities never mattered until now?)
Anyway, Jill hipped me to the above video. Fucking beautiful, it is.
Incidentally, there's also a Birmingham (i.e., British) Complaints Choir, but they're not as good, in my opinion -- for one thing, they're less able to keep the straight face necessary to make the lyrics work.
Here, then, is another example of the kind of thing I was trying to get at a few posts back: "serious" humor as an effective resistance strategy. In this case, the juxtaposition of "boring dreams" and too-long reference numbers (for instance) threatens to produce laughter and tears all at once: is this the hoped-for utopia of the 21st century?
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Slings and Arrows
In case you thought "classical" music was all love and kisses... that's right, this is video of a recent booing incident at La Scala. The tenor, Roberto Alagna, walks off the stage (after remembering which way leads to the exit), and is replaced by, well, the other guy: Antonello Palombi. Palombi is out of costume, but nevertheless just happens to be waiting in the wings. Coincidence? You be the judge.
Somebody somewhere in this scenario (Alagna? the audience? Palombi? the lady interviewed after the booing footage?) is taking themselves too seriously. I can't figure out who...
(NB: Unless you speak Italian, you'll probably only be interested in the first 45 seconds of the video.)
Monday, December 18, 2006
Survey says
Why am I doing this? You know I generally avoid such things...
It started with a set of questions circulated by the Bad Plus. It coincided with the gradual process of unpacking and organizing my CD collection. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe it still is: you tell me.
Anyway, a few caveats:
1. I guess the survey wasn't meant to provoke comprehensive answers, but most dedicated musicians have the mania of antique collectors and baseball fans: we like making (and comparing) lists, and what's the point of a list if it's incomplete? In other words: it was painfully difficult to restrict myself to one or two responses in each category. One of the ways I was able to do it, however, was by steering clear, for the most part, of the obvious answers (hence the lack of Ellington, Monk, Mingus, Satie, Ives, and others; and the paucity of Zappa).
2. In general I tend to listen compositionally, by which I mean that for me the compositional element (to the extent that it can be distinguished) trumps things like sound quality or even performance skill. Of course, what is composition, really? Yeah, I know, it's an aesthetic problem -- anyway, indulge me for a moment as I use that term as a placeholder for my own listening proclivities.
GIVE US AN EXAMPLE OR TWO OF AN ESPECIALLY GOOD OR INTERESTING:
1. Movie score.
The Day the Earth Stood Still (Bernard Herrmann). The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (Ennio Morricone).
2. TV theme.
East Side / West Side (Kenyon Hopkins). Pee Wee's Playhouse (Mark Mothersbaugh... I think).
3. Melody.
“Idiot Bastard Son” (Frank Zappa). “Surf’s Up” (Brian Wilson).
4. Harmonic language.
"Lush Life" (Billy Strayhorn). Piano music of Alan Hovhaness.
5. Rhythmic feel.
“Slow Down” (Larry Williams). “Da Doo Run Run” (The Crystals).
6. Hip-hop track.
“Jennifa Taught Me” (De La Soul). “Hole in the Bucket” (Spearhead).
7. Classical piece.
String Quartet no. 1 (Leos Janacek). Requiem (W. A. Mozart).
8. Smash hit.
"Lay Lady Lay" (Bob Dylan). "Doo Wop (That Thing)" (Lauryn Hill).
9. Jazz album.
People Time (Stan Getz / Kenny Barron). Kennedy Dream (Oliver Nelson).
10. Non-American folkloric group.
I'll assume the word "folkloric" (as opposed to "folk") gives me a little leeway here:
Rustavi Choir (Georgian Choral music). Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens (South African mbaqanga group).
11. Book on music.
The Real Frank Zappa Book (Frank Zappa). Music Alone (Peter Kivy).
BONUS QUESTIONS:
A) Name a surprising album (or albums) you loved when you were developing as a musician: something that really informs your sound but that we would never guess in a million years:
I'll interpret this as something of a “guilty pleasures” category because I don’t think anything that really informed my sound would be surprising to the listener. So here are two albums I don’t want you to know I liked at one time:
Blue (Joni Mitchell). Sweeney Todd (Stephen Sondheim).
B) Name a practitioner (or a few) who play your instrument that you think is underrated:
If my instrument is the piano: Don Pullen, Chico Marx. If my instrument is a jazz ensemble: Duane Tatro, Tadd Dameron.
C) Name a rock or pop album that you wish had been a smash commercial hit (but wasn’t, not really):
Why would I wish such a thing? (I can certainly think of a number of these I wish had NOT become hits.)
Oh, I’ve got it! Song Cycle (Van Dyke Parks).
And another: My, I'm Large (The Bobs).
D) Name a favorite drummer, and an album to hear why you love that drummer:
Dannie Richmond (any Mingus record he plays on). In general, I love the way Dannie often sounds like he's about to lose it (the beat, the groove, his place in the form) -- but never does.
* * * * *
[Hey! I’m going to add a category, since 'tis the season and all that jazz:]
Name some Christmas music you can actually stand to listen to:
1. "Sleigh Ride" (Ronettes version).
2. "Jingle Bells" (Sinatra version (on A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra): worth it just to hear him sing "Jingle Bells, Jing-Jingle Bells." Also dig those hip, wacky backing vocals.)
And what the hell, a bonus:
3. A Ceremony of Carols (Benjamin Britten).
It started with a set of questions circulated by the Bad Plus. It coincided with the gradual process of unpacking and organizing my CD collection. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe it still is: you tell me.
Anyway, a few caveats:
1. I guess the survey wasn't meant to provoke comprehensive answers, but most dedicated musicians have the mania of antique collectors and baseball fans: we like making (and comparing) lists, and what's the point of a list if it's incomplete? In other words: it was painfully difficult to restrict myself to one or two responses in each category. One of the ways I was able to do it, however, was by steering clear, for the most part, of the obvious answers (hence the lack of Ellington, Monk, Mingus, Satie, Ives, and others; and the paucity of Zappa).
2. In general I tend to listen compositionally, by which I mean that for me the compositional element (to the extent that it can be distinguished) trumps things like sound quality or even performance skill. Of course, what is composition, really? Yeah, I know, it's an aesthetic problem -- anyway, indulge me for a moment as I use that term as a placeholder for my own listening proclivities.
GIVE US AN EXAMPLE OR TWO OF AN ESPECIALLY GOOD OR INTERESTING:
1. Movie score.
The Day the Earth Stood Still (Bernard Herrmann). The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (Ennio Morricone).
2. TV theme.
East Side / West Side (Kenyon Hopkins). Pee Wee's Playhouse (Mark Mothersbaugh... I think).
3. Melody.
“Idiot Bastard Son” (Frank Zappa). “Surf’s Up” (Brian Wilson).
4. Harmonic language.
"Lush Life" (Billy Strayhorn). Piano music of Alan Hovhaness.
5. Rhythmic feel.
“Slow Down” (Larry Williams). “Da Doo Run Run” (The Crystals).
6. Hip-hop track.
“Jennifa Taught Me” (De La Soul). “Hole in the Bucket” (Spearhead).
7. Classical piece.
String Quartet no. 1 (Leos Janacek). Requiem (W. A. Mozart).
8. Smash hit.
"Lay Lady Lay" (Bob Dylan). "Doo Wop (That Thing)" (Lauryn Hill).
9. Jazz album.
People Time (Stan Getz / Kenny Barron). Kennedy Dream (Oliver Nelson).
10. Non-American folkloric group.
I'll assume the word "folkloric" (as opposed to "folk") gives me a little leeway here:
Rustavi Choir (Georgian Choral music). Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens (South African mbaqanga group).
11. Book on music.
The Real Frank Zappa Book (Frank Zappa). Music Alone (Peter Kivy).
BONUS QUESTIONS:
A) Name a surprising album (or albums) you loved when you were developing as a musician: something that really informs your sound but that we would never guess in a million years:
I'll interpret this as something of a “guilty pleasures” category because I don’t think anything that really informed my sound would be surprising to the listener. So here are two albums I don’t want you to know I liked at one time:
Blue (Joni Mitchell). Sweeney Todd (Stephen Sondheim).
B) Name a practitioner (or a few) who play your instrument that you think is underrated:
If my instrument is the piano: Don Pullen, Chico Marx. If my instrument is a jazz ensemble: Duane Tatro, Tadd Dameron.
C) Name a rock or pop album that you wish had been a smash commercial hit (but wasn’t, not really):
Why would I wish such a thing? (I can certainly think of a number of these I wish had NOT become hits.)
Oh, I’ve got it! Song Cycle (Van Dyke Parks).
And another: My, I'm Large (The Bobs).
D) Name a favorite drummer, and an album to hear why you love that drummer:
Dannie Richmond (any Mingus record he plays on). In general, I love the way Dannie often sounds like he's about to lose it (the beat, the groove, his place in the form) -- but never does.
* * * * *
[Hey! I’m going to add a category, since 'tis the season and all that jazz:]
Name some Christmas music you can actually stand to listen to:
1. "Sleigh Ride" (Ronettes version).
2. "Jingle Bells" (Sinatra version (on A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra): worth it just to hear him sing "Jingle Bells, Jing-Jingle Bells." Also dig those hip, wacky backing vocals.)
And what the hell, a bonus:
3. A Ceremony of Carols (Benjamin Britten).
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