You were probably hoping that I had given up making these stupid little videos, huh?
Sorry. (Sigh.)
This one is a big commercial for The Industrial Jazz Group's upcoming east coast tour (October 15 - 24, 2009).
Of note: it features unfinished excerpts (raw, unmixed, etc.) from the forthcoming album (to be released in 2010).
It also relies, as usual, on the camera work of Matt Lichtenwalner, Tany Ling, and me.
I suspect that it will make you either want to see the show, or want to run screaming in the other direction.
(Please note: the word "jazzer" is used ironically in this context.)
* * * * *
You may also run screaming in the other direction when I remind you that the Industrial Jazz Group is having a fall fundraiser, in support of our October tour! You can find out more, and contribute to the cause (for as little as $1!), here. Every penny counts! Seriously.
Okay. A parting shot on this subject before the weekend.
Probably the best political commentary I've seen this week comes from Ta-Nehisi Coates:
We (liberals) have spent so much of our time on the losing end of the past 30 years, that the impulse is to fight every battle, and challenge every press release. Moreover, media has uncovered our inner crazy. HuffPo blasts every utterance from Jon Kyl in bold font. Politico reports every feint and jab, like it's the whole fight. I'm not blaming them, they're doing well because they've figured out something about our inner animal.
It's fine for us laymen to indulge that, but I don't want to be led by people who think that outlets (including this one) which weigh in on who "won the week" are some kind of gauge of their actual progress. I don't want to be led by people who think that "getting angry" is a actual political strategy. I want to be led by a killer. A cold, unemotional, professional killer.
I keep meeting lefties who tell me Obama's "too soft" with these guys, and I keep looking at them like they're crazy. I am going to go out on a limb and say that there is something deeper at work here, something beyond the policy fights. I think a lot of us don't just want Obama to be effective, we want him to exact some measure of revenge. It's smart to understand the difference between the two, and moreover, how the desire for one can undermine the other. A section of conservatives love Sarah Palin because she drives liberals crazy. That she drives a lot of other people crazy too, and hence undermines herself, is beside the point.
If nothing else, running a big band teaches you to think about twenty-five things at once (your mileage may vary, of course).
One of the things I am thinking about right now (in addition to thinking about the upcoming tour, and also thinking about what I'm going to have for lunch) is this:
How exactly am I going to release the next record?
I have pondered a variation of this issue before, of course, but this time out, I'm not so concerned with the optimum media / packaging for the release.
I'm concerned with the possibility that maybe there ain't no such thing!
Peter Kirn, in responding to a pretty awesome Wired article on the many ways musicians are diversifying the things they produce (bringing real creativity into the "product" side of the music business), has this to say:
From soup cans to music boxes to iPhone apps, there are a few underlying trends in there. One is experimentation in the delivery mechanism itself (including 8-tracks and cassettes, really). The other is in what you can do with the media, as with the interactive remixable iTunes album, or even art books that extend what an album actually is.
As these spread, though, I have to optimistically think that this is more than desperation or brief novelty. Distribution media haven’t just shifted from one popular form to another; they’ve imploded. We’re rapidly approaching a “minority majority” situation in which no one format dominates the others. We haven’t gone from the compact cassette to the CD to the MP3. We’ve gone from the CD to MP3s, MP4s, lossless files for aficionados and lossy streams for kids who love on-demand, vintage formats, physical media and art books and software. Instead of being strange anomalies, these other formats may actually be the new normal. I think in a way the business model doesn’t matter, because, let’s face it, a lot of art making is about losing money. What drives artists is loving sharing the thing they’re making, and finding someone who wants to love it, too. Some people will make a great business model around that, while others won’t.
But if you’re a music lover, we could be facing a new golden age.
Well, this is just awesome. Am I crazy to think these remarks hint at the possibility of a true musical pluralism (aka "minority majority")? Am I crazy to think that worrying about selling the packaging -- which is the basic problem the folks on the Wired list are trying to solve, since nowadays the music itself is always already free, for all intents and purposes -- am I crazy to think that that is better (and less artistically harmful) than worrying about selling the music?
No, I am not. In the past, with (almost) each new technological development, the music industry has been able to respond with the PR spin of "here is the new standard." And for the most part, everyone had to fall in line if they wanted to compete. (And when it comes to art, what's more problematic than falling in line?)
Now (or soon), you make the music you want to make, come up with as many ways to package it as you can think of (at a whole range of price points), put it out there, and voila! You're off to the races!
Well, okay, maybe it's not that easy (or even that new), but it is exciting.
Now, three questions: what weird or interesting ways would you like to see the next Industrial Jazz Group album packaged? We'll definitely be putting out a straight-up CD, but I'm trying to think beyond that too: what is the IJG equivalent of a soup-can album?
Mike Richardson surprisesus all by posting two shaving videos.
Ian Carroll does an engaging stream-of-consciousness thing linking beat-boxing, the national anthem, and Nick Cave.
And Jill Knapp anticipates the "United Breaks Guitars" story by at least a little bit.
Just a little nascent band-blogging from this group I love -- with more to come. Get on over there and heckle these brave pioneers in the comments, won't you?
Oh! This should probably go over there too, but what the hell, I'll stick it here:
What is it? Matt Lichtenwalner's video detailing his process for drawing Telepath, a character from the Uniques comic. Matt accompanied the visuals here with the title track from the IJG's second album, City of Angles.
The thing is fascinating to watch. I'm thinking it would be really cool if one could somehow similarly trace the evolution of a musical score (which is, after all, another kind of drawing). But at the very least the software tool involved seems like it could be employed to great effect in an IJG video someday. Hmmm.
Well, actually, I don't, not really. I kind of dig them, actually, because they provoke discussions, and discussions are good. (I do, however, hate the idea that blog posts should be considered "definitive documents" of a writer's state of mind. For the record, much of what I write here (and in comments at other people's blogs) is a reflection of a thought process, not always a conclusive position. (I am large, I contain multitudes.))
Anyway, here's one post, and here's another, that prompted some unplanned fireworks over the weekend. I added my own commentary at that last link, but as usual, I can't let the shit go, so I wanted to throw in one or two more thoughts here on my home turf.
First is a bit that I discovered in the course of following up, for my own edification, on the subject of female jazz critics. Serendipitously, it serves to unite that subject with the "precision" meme stirred up by Matt Rubin's "Why I Hate Big Bands" post. It is contained in this excerpt from a book I haven't yet read, John Gennari's Blowin' Hot and Cool:
From the violent gangster milieu of jazz's early sporting life environs; to the urbane, stylized machismo of the jazz-inflected New Frontier; to Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch's tendentious feminization of the 1960s counterculture; jazz culture has been dominated by masculinist voices and sensibilities. I've noted in this book several important instances in which male critics have buttressed their masculinist authority by distancing themselves from sentimental attachments to the popular music of their youth. This feeds a larger pattern in which jazz's reputed high art autonomy and profundity are complemented by a concept of criticism that stresses taut discipline, rationality, and judiciousness -- qualities assumed to be part of a masculine intellectual seriousness set off from the infantilized and feminized emotional realm of mass popular culture.
I'm not sure I agree with these assessments totally, but I think Gennari is at least productively interested in the "why" question (i.e., why are there so few female jazz critics?) in a way I haven't seen elsewhere. So now I have to read his book, I guess.
(Gennari also reminded me of Helen Oakley Dance, an early glass-ceiling-breaker. I actually read a bit of her work in grad school, and am duly chagrined about my subsequent oversight.)
Also: I was very flattered that James Hirschfeld brought up the infernal Industrial Jazz Group as an instance of an "imprecise" big band (James' comment can also be found at Darcy's post, linked above).
Here is how I hinted at our ensemble concept in one of my posts about our European tour (May 2007):
For me, one of the most interesting aspects of our portion of the evening (confirmed later when I started working my way through the recording) was the emergence of a unified looseness in the group sound. In the past I have generally aimed for precision when it came to the execution of my written charts. I have tended to shy away from recording the band's live performances, because I was always concerned with things staying as "close to the ink" as possible... and the ink is, well, difficult to execute. But I have never subscribed to the "benevolent dictator" model of the composer-conductor, and I think everyone in the band has known that, and with this show there was a strange transmogrification of the set, in that the majority of the players knew the music well enough to be able to play it as if it were all improvised. In other words, the group as a whole started to develop some of the suppleness -- in terms of well-placed and judicious interpretive liberties that never sacrificed the cohesion of a given piece -- that is usually only possible in a smaller configuration (a quartet or quintet, say). They owned the music -- an exceedingly difficult thing to do in a big band setting. Once again, my hat is off to the cats involved: I am humbled and in awe.
"Unified looseness," "well-placed and judicious interpretive liberties that never sacrifice the cohesion of a given piece," and playing the music "as if it were all improvised": still a pretty accurate description of what we do.
Possibly related: with the IJG, I have long been after what Ben Watson, in describing Zappa's early Mothers recordings, called "pachuco charm." Sort of punk, and sort of big band, all at once.
It's been a while since I've thrown together one of my infamous little videos, eh?
Here's the latest, assembled absent-mindedly this weekend:
It's actually a portion of one of the longer tunes on our last album. A part two will be forthcoming. (Note that part one and two of the video do not exactly correlate with part one and two of the song.)
Most of the live footage comes from our 2008 California tour, and was shot in LA, San Diego, and Sacramento, by Tany's boyfriend, Tristan.
Can you identify the other source material? As usual, it's all culled from the never-ending smorgasbord of fun that is the Internet archive. (Any self-respecting fan of vintage melodramatic cheese should be able to recognize at least one of the black and white clips that appears here.)
The tune does have a name, but just in case your boss is looking over your shoulder reading this, and just in case you're afraid that dirty words will burn holes in his or her eyeballs, let's just call it "Darn the Dirt."
Oh wait, never mind, there's the actual title right there in the YouTube frame. Ah, well.
Honestly, sometimes I get a bigger kick out of reading student reviews of the IJG than I do the sort of (often) self-important prose that passes for music criticism these days. Not that I have any lasting grudge against self-important prose -- I spew enough of it into the world myself. But, from the point of view of a bandleader who is tryin' to do somethin' different, it's refreshing every once in a while (or even more frequently than that!) to step out of the high-minded discourse community of music critics, and see what kind of impression you're making on the youth of the world.
Witness this nice piece written by Manny Beltran, one of the attendees at our Bakersfield show back in April (pictured above with Jill Knapp and Tany Ling):
"Oh crap here we go!" these are the opening words sung by Jill Knapp, one of the two singers of The Industrial Jazz Group. And "here we go" is right: the 11-piece horn section is adorned with random hats that range from a wizard's hat to a lobster head. The trombonist, Mike Richardson, did not wear a hat; instead he appears on stage wearing nothing but a nude color speedo.
But don't let the Josie and the Pussycat ears, the metallic alien outfit or any of the of-the-wall hats fool you. Underneath the geeky and funky hats are musicians, skilled musician with tons of energy ready to be unleashed into the crowd.
The Industrial Jazz Group is the brain child of Andrew Durkin. He formed the band in the spring of 2000 as a straight forward jazz quintet that over the years evolved to what he calls the "big band monstrosity."
Durkin's influences early on were Frank Zappa, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk and Raymond Scott just to name a few. He played the classical piano as a kid and turned to rock as teen, then as he became older and wiser began listening to more jazz.
The 17 piece eccentric ensemble plays Durkin's loose form of jazz. His arrangements change tempos and styles going from swing to waltz to sultry latin flavors all in the same song. An entertaining style of jazz that Jill feels is more accessible to audiences that don't normally listen to the genre. "Jazz isn't scary," she exclaims.
The two vocalists, Knapp and Tany Ling would prefer to be known as part of the band as opposed to lead singers. Durkin's songs have few "true" lyrics, instead the vocalists use their voices as instruments, humming or making sound effects or repeating phrases such as "why I oughta!", "jazz pop jerk offs!" or "diarrhea!". And while the brass section goes in and out of short solos or whirlwind arrangements, you will find Knapp and Ling in funny quasi-synchronized dances. But the ladies can't have all the fun dancing the night away, so occasionally the horn section will do their own renditions of what can only be assumed is dancing. And as the saying goes they "dance like nobody is watching."
All these antics are to connect with the audience and get them dancing and the resulting effect is a reciprocal one. The more the crowd gets into the show and dances, the more energy the band gives back. Knapp admits that playing in the Dore Theatre is a challenge considering the audience is seated and had no room to dance. But it isn't hard to see heads and shoulders swaying rhythmically to the music along with the faint sound of tapping feet. During one song, Ling ran off the stage and began to dance and clap having the audience clap along with her.
Bassist Oliver Newell describes his experience with the band as "quite different from any other band" he's been in. He adds, "it's wonderfully excessive post-modernism."
The band also has a local resident of Bakersfield, Kris Tiner. He has been with the band for seven years and he teaches music part-time at Bakersfield College and Cal State Bakersfield. He says of Durkin, called by some band members the evil genius, concerning the loose environment, "He lets people do what you want to do." This atmosphere seems to breed love amongst the musicians. Knapp can attest to this, "I have a crush on the band (as a whole). It's a love."
When asked if they wanted to add anything else Mike Richardson said, "Oliver trains albino rats" and Knapp adds, "Richardson has his way with watermelons." Can't you feel the love?
Described by its members as a big party, The Industrial Jazz Group had a big party on Friday night and everyone in attendance danced, laughed and had a great time.
In any case, this is the rendition we did at Dizzy's in San Diego (April 5, 2009), which I post here because of our very special sub: Jim Romeo sitting in for Damon Zick on tenor sax. Since I didn't know Jim would be playing with us until a few minutes before the gig, I didn't have time to revise this intro to include his name. But Jill and Tany (with some help from the band and the audience) took the liberty of revising it on the fly, and the result is particularly, gratifyingly silly.
(I also neglected to mention, with respect to the other video of this tune, that the Dore version included the immortal line "Damon Zick / he's such a prick!" [Editor's note: not "suck a prick," as I originally had it in this post -- though that would have been funny too. Thanks to TL for catching that typo.] I really want to take credit for that -- it did occur to me to write it in the first place, since it seems so inevitable, and it rolls off the tongue so effortlessly. But its actual inclusion was Tany Ling's idea.)
Anyway, for those of you running original big bands in other parts of the country: you really want to find yourselves someone like Jim. He has been pretty much single-handedly responsible for our last four or five San Diego trips -- overseeing such mundane details as booking the gigs, making sure the band gets paid, taking the band out to lunch, sitting in with us at the last minute, and so on. For the record: I really wish there were more cats like him in this damned business.
Footage by Matt Lichtenwalner; camera c/o Tany Ling.
Yeah, I guess we are. While I ponder the annoyance of having to redo the audio to that last film, I offer up the companion piece to our "Introducing the Brass" bit, as performed during the first show of our April 2009 tour, recorded live at the Dore Theater in Bakersfield. (Cinematography by Matt Lichtenwalner, camera provided by Tany Ling.)
In case it's not clear what the impetus for these interludes is: inevitably, I am bored by the sort of patter that bandleaders / frontmen / frontwomen have to do ("and this next number is called..."). Somehow setting that patter to music seemed like the best way to avoid said boredom, while still getting the necessary information out.
I should also make it clear that I typically throw these little songs at Jill and Tany a few days before they are to be performed. It's very much an eleventh hour endeavor. And as a result, for instance, you get little lyrical flubs, like the mis-statement about Brian Walsh playing soprano instead of tenor that comes partway through this version.
But what can I say? When it comes to these interludes, which are pretty stupid to begin with, I usually find such flubs more endearing than anything else. In any case, both ladies deserve a ton of credit for being willing to dive right in with this stuff, despite the obvious risks involved. (The band also deserves a ton of credit for being willing to be, uh, spotlighted in this way.)
Note that the band is wearing the mustaches that figure prominently in another new tune, which I'll be posting soon: "Theme for a Cable News Show."
Oh yeah, and: there is an alternate, San Diego version of this, in which Damon Zick is replaced by Jim Romeo. Coming soon...
Specifically: a new thing called "Hard Times / The End of Money."
It's still a bit of a draft -- in particular, I think I overcompensated for some of the problems in the live recording -- but what the hell.
We actually introduced this at our New Year's Eve show this past December. What can I say? The real-world context has become more dire in the ensuing months, and so I ended up putting together something that has a certain melodramatic flair. Not sure if that's good or bad.
It still has that absurdist IJG stamp, of course. Particularly in the juxtaposition of scenes of honest-to-goodness poverty with scenes of bourgeois consumerism, or whatever you want to call it. Again, I probably went overboard. So sue me (I have no money, so you'll get nothing!).
The opening chorale is an arrangement of the Stephen Foster chestnut, "Hard Times." With particular deference to the following lines: "While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay / There are frail forms fainting at the door / Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say / Oh hard times come again no more."
The rest of the tune is my fault.
Unlike most of our other videos, footage of the band (c/o Matt Lichtenwalner, via Tany Ling's camera) plays a pretty minor role in this piece -- mostly it's ephemeral cinema from my usual treasure trove, the Internet Archive. Sources include instructional films about economics, documentaries on rural poverty and suburbia, and a slew of old television commercials.
Make of it what you will! Just remember it's a work-in-progress.
(The sillier side of the IJG will return in the next video, I swear.)
Audio recorded by James Dethlefson and crew at CSUB (thanks again, guys!), during our show on April 3.
Reeds: Gavin Templeton, Cory Wright, Evan Francis, Brian Walsh, Damon Zick, Gabriel Sundy.
Brass: Dan Rosenboom, Kris Tiner, Joshua Aguiar, Ian Carroll, Mike Richardson.
So here's one of the central tensions for an independent big band helmed by an easily-bored composer who can only afford to take everyone on the road maybe three or four times a year. Specifically: figuring out how to strike a nice balance between the following things:
1. the need for artistic growth and freshness, and
2. the need to have played a given tune enough times that the band feels the requisite level of "mastery" to perform it with conviction, and
3. the need to promote the tunes that are actually on the album you're selling to an audience that may never have heard them before, and
4. the need to make sure the band doesn't get too "comfortable," cuz comfort tends to obscure the adrenaline-intensive place that can incite the best performances, and
5. the need to make sure the audience is not too disoriented (thus the need to avoid the total lack of familiarity that would obtain if we unleashed an onslaught of new tunes every time we did a show).
I have never thought that I balance these competing needs particularly well. Indeed, if anything, I err on the side of novelty, the hard-to-satisfy impulse to always keep things moving full-speed ahead, and damn the consequences. It's not unlike how I listen to music, in fact: I much prefer to dig into a new album rather than pull out something I already know I like. For me, successful listening -- as I pompously described it during the Meet The Composer talks I did as part of this latest tour -- is a quest for astonishment. (Sometimes I feel like I am more interested in the possibility of astonishment than I am in the guarantee of pleasure from a recording I already know and love.)
The charitable way of looking at this is that I'm a musical (and cultural) omnivore, one whose tastes and temperament are perfectly suited to the Library-of-Alexandria-esque smorgasbord that characterizes our digital age. A less charitable way of looking at it is that I have very fickle, and even superficial tastes. In either case, I fear I'm terribly, even unfairly impatient with audiences who come to a show wanting to hear the songs they already know. Of course, I bear no grudge against that desire, and of course I want to provide some kind of stable ground from which to proceed. But, as I said, I'm impatient.
Goddamnit if Fiona Apple (who I hadn't realized was still making records until IJG drummer Dan Schnelle re-introduced her to me during one of the recent tour-related road trips) didn't nail, in the above YouTubed tune, what I think (again, terribly and unfairly) is going on with the desire for repeating the "tried and true":
Give me something familiar Somethin' similar To what we know already That will keep us steady Steady, steady Steady going nowhere
"Nowhere" indeed.
Anyway, normally I try to be pretty incremental in the process of introducing new tunes, bringing in a new one or two per tour, and adding it to the stuff that is already working well. But you keep adding and adding, and eventually you have some pretty outsized sets. So this time I decided to bite the bullet and gut the show of the tunes that have been staples of ours for 3-4 years now: "Howl," "PDX LIX LAX," "Bongo Non Troppo," "Fuck the Muck," and "Big Ass Truck." Sure, it felt a little like sitting them all down on an iceberg and pushing them out to sea. But I think it was the right thing to do.
And with that, I think the band is now officially in a "new phase," which means there will be a new album soon. More on that later... in the meantime, watch this space for yet still even more videos of the new tunes, of which there are four.
Ah, what the hell, here's a preview: a little sample of our "Theme for a Cable News Show," recorded by someone in our San Diego audience (warning: at one point it becomes very thong-centric):
If you don't know the actual tune from whence this comes, it can be found on the IJG Facebook page (the tunes are in the lower left-hand column), or at the IJG ReverbNation page.
The little Republican pin is an especially nice touch.
Another of the interludes that peppered our most recent tour. This one was the show opener. I was going for a self-deprecating dada-Broadway vibe, and I guess I got a little carried away.
The video is a composite of a pre-gig rehearsal (in Bakersfield, April 3) and our live performance at Dizzy's in San Diego (April 5). Hence the discrepancies in sound quality. Footage by Matt Lichtenwalner.
The "libretto" doth proceed thusly:
Jill: Oh, crap here we go / it's another IJG show...
Jill and Tany: I've heard this band, they blow / You never really know how low they will go...
Jill: How low, low, low, low, low, low!
Tany: You never know how to act --
Band: Is it ironic?
Tany: When they dispense with wit and tact --
Dan R.: What's tact?
Band: Dinner at Applebee's! [a reference to our tactless tune, "Il Ponderoso / Apropos of Nothing"]
Jill and Tany: In the end we always end up feeling sorry for them / Pitiful, miserable jazz musicians!
[Evan's Kenny G. imitation]
Tany: Trying way too hard to make a point.
Jill: There is nothing real about this joint.
All: Speaking of joints, the new record's dropping soon!
[Gavin quotes "PDX LIX LAX" over the bassline for "Gonna Make You Sweat"]
Jill and Tany: But why should we take the time to hear this band?
Mike R.: Street date: your Mom!
Jill and Tany: Do they think we really need to understand --
Ian: We tweeted about it!
Jill and Tany: -- whatever truly ponderous thing they have planned?
All: But wait: there's more, if you act now!
Dan S.: It slices! And it dices!
All: And sounds pretty!
Tany: Oh, let's just get it over with...
* * * * *
And there you have it.
I promise I'll get back to uploading the "real" tunes soon.
Wow. Cool. That was simply a great experience all around. (I'm talking about the most recent tour, of course.)
I'll have something more in-depth to say about it by and by. For the moment, as I ponder the highlights, and review the recordings, and examine the footage (and the footage, and the footage) -- I am, in spite of my manic nature, taking a moment to enjoy the glow.
Inane, I know. Now is no time to rest, Durkin -- there is so much yet to be done!
Duly noted. Gonna go put the laurels back in storage now. In the meantime, speaking of inanity (which, as you know, I don't consider an entirely bad thing), here's a flavor of the sort of Broadway-musical-from-hell vibe that informed our show this time out. Be sure to stick around for the thong:
Much more to come. I promise it's not all that stupid.
This is tour week for the IJG: we'll be doing our annual jaunt through the land that gave birth to the band: mystical, zany southern CA.
I've been thinking about that detail lately. It's odd: I'm extremely happy that I no longer live in LA. I adore Portland. In some ways, I still identify as an east-coaster (since that was where I was born and raised). But when it comes down to it, the IJG will always be a California band, at least in spirit. I can't imagine having started the group in any other place. And my impressions of the region are so deep and strong that I suspect they will continue to inform my writing for years to come.
In any case, I find it a stroke of almost unbelievable good luck that I managed to end up in LA for long enough to (almost by accident) get into the wacky jazz business -- which, it turns out, is my kind of business! I don't really believe in fate or anything like that, but yeah. I feel pretty damned lucky.
So I just wanted to say: thank you, CA. See you in a few days!
A VERY STUPID, hastily-edited little promo spot about our upcoming tour, done in the style of the bombastic action movie trailer. (All that's missing is the deep masculine voice-over.)
Does this make you want to see one of our shows? Please?
Friday, April 3 (Bakersfield) - Cal State Bakersfield's Dore Theater. 8 PM.
Sunday, April 5 (San Diego) - Please note the new venue! We are now at Dizzy's in San Diego! Mesa College Big Band at 6 PM, PLOTZ! at 7 PM, and IJG at 8 PM!
(Apologies to those of you who have already seen these via Facebook.)
Below: one "produced / edited" IJG video, one "raw feed" IJG video. Fuller commentary is available at the relevant YouTube pages (just click the videos to get there).
The photos here were snapped at last night's rehearsal of the Portland Jazz Composers' Ensemble. I contributed a new tune, "Et Tu, Tutu?", which will programmed in the group's February 17 show, to be held in tandem with the Portland Jazz Festival.
It's always fascinating for me to write something for a group other than the IJG. One of the assumptions I make about my own musical creativity is that it is highly dependent upon a specific context of players that I already know -- and the better I know them, the better music I can write. I really feel like my music arises from the social context of whatever band I'm in -- not from the isolation of my own head. This is why I've never been able to develop a career as a composer-for-hire (e.g., film scoring, or commercial music).
However, I do appreciate the challenge -- it comes up from time to time -- of stepping outside of the "comfort zone" of the IJG, just to see what happens, and what I can learn from that. So when Andrew Oliver (the co-leader of the PJCE) asked me to be part of the upcoming PCJE concert, of course I said yes. (It helped that the PCJE includes three now-veterans of the IJG, all great players and great people: Mary-Sue Tobin (alto / soprano sax), Mieke Bruggeman (bari sax), and Kevin Van Geem (drums).)
The PCJE has a slightly different configuration from the IJG -- more brass-heavy, for one thing, and with a greater focus on acoustic bass and a full rhythm section. So I was initially tempted to contribute a slightly revised version of "Sneaky Whispers," an older, more recognizably "jazzy" tune of mine that originally appeared on the Industrialjazzwerke album.
But ultimately I decided to offer up something new, something closer to where my head is at now. Thus "Et Tu, Tutu?" has all the hallmarks of the IJG circa 2009: simple melodies expressed through dense, layered arrangements; a strong groove; an electric bass part; a few tempo shifts; chanted words; a goofy title; some physical comedy. We'll see how it turns out, but in the meantime, I'm just honored that the players (heavy hitters all) were willing to give it an airing.
The other composers for this show are: Dan Duval, Ken Ollis, Kyle Williams, Sam Howard, and the aforementioned Andrew Oliver. Do yourself a favor and check their music out -- their tunes were all smokin'.
