Sasha Frere-Jones does Kelly Clarkson

Fun with the 21st century recording studio.

Probably nothing new to most of you, but an entertaining listen nonetheless.

Via.

Thoughts from within the long tail

From Andrew Drubber's essential ebook:

the more things you make available, the more things people will consume overall. Amazon.com sells more books than any other bookstore because it sells a greater range of books than any other bookstore.

Sometimes I describe my life (to myself, anyway) as a quest to make the perfect album. And it's always the same story when I get down to the final weeks of a given release: "Durkin, remember your quest! Are you gonna give that up, just to get this fucker finished now?"

Maybe I'm too impatient, but every time, despite my strongly-held ideal, I answer that question affirmatively. In a way, it's fortunate that, even though I have moved a good portion of the IJG CD production process to my basement, I still have to pay someone else to use their gear to produce the "official" version of each release. Without that ticking clock and steadily increasing bill, who knows if I'd ever get done with anything.

And in the end, it doesn't really matter. With a few weeks' distance (not to mention the inevitability with which each release takes on its own life once it goes out "into the world"), I always come back to find that the last few little things I would have done to a record if I had unlimited resources are actually pretty damned insignificant. Non-issues, even.

The point? I suspect that, in this new music world, prolific high-quality output trumps painstakingly-crafted sporadic output. Personally, that means the manic workaholic and the snail's-pace perfectionist in me have to find a place to meet and have lunch.

* * * * *

P.S.:

Regina Spektor. "Carbon Monoxide." Soviet Kitsch.

Note to self: wow.

LEEF Trax: PDX LIX LAX

photo c/o Nick Moon

Madness.

That's right, I said it. And I'll say it again. Madness.

Don't those guys look tired? Punchy? Ready for the looney bin?

That fellow to my right is Nick Moon -- who, by the way, is quickly becoming Portland's go-to guy for audio recording. Although his most high profile gig might be working with Gino Vanelli, Nick's resume lists a growing "who's who" of local/regional jazz (and jazz-related) talent: Nancy King, Belinda Underwood, Alan Jones, Madeline Eastman, most (all?) of the members of Pink Martini, etc. Why he consented to working on the new IJG record is simply beyond me.



"Historic" Troutdale, OR: home of Tone Proper Mastering.

But consent he did. And I'll bet he regrets it, because what started as a two-day project back in November quickly turned into four, and then six, and then eight, and now... well, let's just say we worked pretty much every day last week to finish the fucker (and just in time for our upcoming tour, I might add). Apparently mixing a live multi-tracked big band recording -- especially one that was made without using any real separation techniques (bafffles, clip-on mics, judicious and sparing placement of monitors) -- is a lot harder than I had originally supposed. Boy did I learn a lot about some of the things that can go wrong (hello, low-end bleed!).

It's amazing how something as sedentary as mixing -- really hardcore mixing, even over a short period of time -- can be physically exhausting. I suppose that's a function of the kind of repetitive listening that's involved. It's a kind of listening that is probably not at all "natural" -- the ears, I suspect, are not really built to take in the same song (or even snippets of the same song) hundreds of times in a row.

Hence the semi-zapped look on our faces in the pic above.



Going to the studio: it's almost like taking a leisurely stroll through a quaint little tourist town -- but not really.

* * * * *

Those of you who are already on the Facebook bandwagon (I'm going to assume Jason Moran's use of that term has de-pejorativized it) may have noticed the Industrial Jazz Group page over there. This is but one of the places you can check out an advance copy of "PDX LIX LAX" -- one of the representative pieces from the most recent incarnation of the group. (A "more final" mastered version is also available here.)

PDX was written in the summer of 2006 -- midway between two events that turned out to be pretty crucial to its conception, completion, and title: first, the ill-fated CD release show for "Industrial Jazz a Go Go!", which took place at Hollywood's Barnsdall Theater in April, and second, my relocation to Portland, OR, in September of that same year.

When I look back on it now, that seems like an amazingly compressed period of time in which to undergo such a drastic shift -- especially with wife and kid in tow, and especially given that I had no idea during the CD release show experience that I would be out of LA (my home for ten years) within a few months. But the "Barnsdall incident" helped to solidify that migration for me -- as you might notice if you read the above-linked post (which was probably written in a fit of pique: fair warning) . It's not that I necessarily minded dealing with the possibility of a low turnout for any given IJG show -- I know that risk is pretty much inevitable wherever you go -- but I was tired of compromising so many other aspects of my life just to stay in a town that was not much more welcoming of the arts than any other big metropolis in the country.

Anyway, "PDX LIX LAX" emerged in Barnsdall's wake -- pretty much in tandem with another LEEF track, "Howl." (I tend to write things in pairs, for some reason.) This is actually the second arrangement of the tune. In the original version, the melody of the "A section" (basically, the first half, before the gospel-like groove kicks in) was mostly shared by two alto saxes in unison. But as I was preparing for our last east coast tour, I got the bright idea to convert a significant portion of the A section into more of a "Concerto for Evan" (highlighting the idiosyncratic brilliance of longtime IJG collaborator, Evan Francis).

For comparison of these arrangement approaches, you can check out this excerpt from the original arrangement -- this is the beginning of the tune, as heard in a performance at Club Tropical (in Culver City), at the outset of our August 2006 west coast tour (the alto parts were expertly played by Ariel Alexander and James King, both motherfuckers in their own right).

One of the performance possibilities that was opened up by the later revision -- and I think I had a strong feeling that Evan would go this route, though I don't remember explicitly coaching him into it, and it's certainly not indicated on the chart -- was that the first statement of the melody would no longer have to be limited to the ink; i.e., Evan was freed up to start with an embellishment instead of a theme. The fun part (for me, anyway) is that the listener doesn't really know what the embellishment is an embellishment of until the second statement of the melody (at around the 1:12 mark), where the ensemble pretty much takes over and puts the tune out there quite emphatically. So things are kind of backwards. (On top of all this, I should add, the looseness of the opening is heightened by drummer Dan Schnelle's willingness to provoke and propel Evan's playing.)

What can I say? I'm fascinated by inversion. I like the word "preposterous."

Anyway.

Not totally unrelated: one of my favorite Prince tunes is "Forever in My Life" (from Sign o the Times). It includes a "backing / counterpoint vocal" that anticipates the tune's "lead vocal" (in a more typical pop arrangement the relationship would be the other way round). I haven't listened to Prince in a while, but SOTT was a favorite of mine for a while -- so I'm guessing that "Forever" had some sort of impact on my rearrangement of "PDX."

(You can file that bit under "artists you would never have guessed as influences on the IJG.")

* * * * *

P.S. Does PDX really "lick" LAX? Well, that's a loaded question. I do love it here. In particular, I can say that it's extremely cool to live somewhere so green, and yet still so satisfyingly urban. And there is something endearing about PDX's pride in local quirkiness (one reason I used a local manufacturer and printer for the replication / packaging of LEEF -- more on that soon).

Also: check out M. Farina's post / link on the Portland music scene. That's more about licking SEA-TAC, I guess. Maybe I'll write a sequel tune.

LEEF art

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the cover of LEEF:



The art on this mofo was expertly executed by Alan Kahler (whose design is even more impressive when you consider that I was operating under pretty severe budget constraints). I would highly recommend Alan for any art project ya got.

"LEEF," by the way (I may as well explain it now) is an intentional mis-appropriation of one conjugation of the Dutch word for the verb "to live" (as in "I live," or simply a command: "live!"). Of course, since this is mostly a concert recording, I'm using "LEEF" as a way to play with the American word "live," referring to a performance in front of an audience (apparently this word doesn't translate very well into Dutch). Why embrace this linguistic slippage? I guess I liked the extra dimension that the (proper) Dutch usage brought -- cuz this album has basically been my life (though not my living) for almost two years now.

To complicate things even further, the Dutch word is actually pronounced "layf" -- though the picture of a leaf on the cover is meant to suggest the "long e" pronunciation.

Confused? Consider Läther as an inspiration.

(I must thank Steve Munley for helping me to understand some of these nuances of the Dutch language, by the way.)

What else? According to one urban dictionary, "leef" also refers to "excellence" (in American slang).

Oh, yeah, and there is also the Chaucerian word "lief," which, if I'm remembering correctly, can refer to "beloved," "dear," or "willing." (Too tired to link it right now.)

Why all caps? I dunno, I think it looks cool.

Take your meanings where you will.

Paper or plastic?

(Apologies in advance to those of you whom I have already approached privately with this questionnaire. Further apologies to those of you whose responses I haven't yet responded to.)

Here's the deal: I'm getting down to the wire with the upcoming IJG release, LEEF (I hope to have it ready in plenty of time for our upcoming California tour). But I've been pondering the mechanics of the follow-through. To wit: I'm seriously considering putting LEEF out in a CD jacket instead of a jewel case.

That's right, I'm talking about a flat cardboard CD sleeve -- either 2-panel or 4-panel. (Not a digipack. I haven't entirely dismissed digipaks as of yet, but they're not my favorite option.) I'm also looking into the possibility of putting the disc in a JakeBox, but my research on that option is still incomplete.

As I've said before, I'm not yet ready to go download-only (much as I'd like to), mostly because we actually sell CDs at gigs and I don't want to lose that income. But I like the idea of getting away from jewel cases. Here are my top three reasons:

1. CDs-in-jackets are more environmentally friendly (no plastic, aside from (optional) shrink-wrap and the plastic in the center of the disc itself),

2. they are easier to tote to gigs, and

3. they are cheaper to manufacture (in a per-panel sense).

More philosophically, there is the whole question of the CD-as-a-format's evolving place in musical culture. I wonder: are we still living in a world in which CDs function as music's "end product" -- i.e., the playback technology of choice for most users? Or are we moving into a situation in which CDs are becoming more of a "delivery medium"?

In other words: people still buy CDs, sure, but what do they do with them exactly? I suspect that most people rip their purchases to iTunes (or some other digital media player), and then primarily listen to that etherealized copy (whether it's an mp3 or something of higher quality). Maybe CDs are now to digital files as LPs were to cassettes back in the seventies and early eighties?

For me the issue at hand is this: if CDs really are becoming more of a delivery medium for most people (and I think they are), why bother with all the fancy physical packaging? Why not something simple and efficient? Why clutter up your shelves with useless plastic casing when all you really need is an envelope or a sleeve?

Actually, a number of "serious" collectors I know don't even bother with shelves anymore. They chuck the packaging outright once they have procured a given album. The CD itself gets ripped, then goes into a binder (perhaps with the liner notes), and everything else goes in the trash, the recycle bin, or a resale box.

On the other hand, there are collectors like this one (who appears in the comments of the last linked article):

As a CD collector, there's nothing that can compare to the tactile feel of a smooth-sided jewel case from an early pressing CD [...] Again, it's back to quality vs. convenience. And convenience is for amateurs.

It's a stance I don't get. Often the response to "why not dispense with jewel cases (or, ultimately, go digital altogether)?" is "because I love the tactile experience of having a collection of CDs lined up on a shelf." But then you never get an answer to the question "why do you love the tactile experience of having a collection of CDs lined up on a shelf?" Does it, like, make the music sound better?

(The psych-enthusiast in me suspects that the underlying reason for the "tactile" argument actually has more to do with questions of social display and identity -- sort of like the books you leave on your coffee table -- than with the music itself.)

Of course, you'll be hard-pressed to find a music fan (yours truly is no exception) who doesn't appreciate a carefully-crafted context (of visual art and words) for the albums they buy. But can't we continue to get a great liner notes / album art experience while simultaneously tempering the materiality of the situation somewhat? An artist can fit some basic eye-catching art and textual details on a well-designed jacket (even of the 2-panel variety). And he or she can then use that initial frame to point a fan to something much more powerful and interactive -- something like a website with in-depth liner notes, interviews, tons of pix, videos, downloadable extras... the sky's the limit. If we can agree that everyone likes a frame for their art, why not choose a frame like that?

In fact, the only serious drawback I can see with the jacket idea is that there would be no spine (or perhaps only a very thin one), which I suspect might discourage brick and mortar retailers from wanting to carry a disc that was so packaged (although indie mainstay CD Baby will indeed sell discs without a spine, as long as there is art and shrinkwrap). Beyond that, I worry too that people are basically conservative when it comes to media, and that the possibility of having to deal with a newfangled packaging format would be enough to frighten them away from a purchase.

Of course, that may just be my paranoia talking. If a music fan is afraid of the newfangled, the chances of them being drawn to an IJG record in the first place are pretty slim.

Anyway, I'm wondering... where do you fall on this question, dear reader? Would the idea that something was being released as a CD-in-a-jacket deter you as a consumer? Would it excite you? Would it matter at all (i.e., am I overthinking this)?

LEEF trax: "The Job Song"

Those of you who have been checking the IJG MySpace site (and considering the clunky functionality of MySpace, why the fuck would you?!) may have noticed that I recently started sneaking in a few close-to-final mixes from the upcoming IJG album (which will indeed be called LEEF).

I'll have more to say about the album in a bit (I'm taking a pass at mastering it this weekend), but for now I just wanted to alert everyone to the fact that I have "released" a "digital single" of sorts, via one of the (seemingly) millions of new music / networking websites out there. To wit: "The Job Song" (in a higher quality version than that found on MySpace) is now available at the new music site Amie Street.

Amie Street is based on a pretty good idea, actually. For one thing it incentivizes musical curiosity -- "early adopters" of a particular song or album are "rewarded" by not having to pay top dollar for it (actually, on Amie Street there is no such thing as top dollar: the highest price any track can attain is 98 cents). The price rises with the track's popularity -- the more it is downloaded, the more it costs. As of this writing, "The Job Song" is up to a whopping 9 cents! (Hey, I just posted it on Monday.)

It seems to me that the motivation to listen works the other way as well... once a track has made it to the 98 cent mark, that might suggest (to a casual observer) that it has passed an early test of likeablity. (Not that the tracks who don't make it to the 98 cent mark are no good. From the artist's perspective, there is still a certain amount of luck involved here: one can only roll the dice and hope that the music will reach the sort of people who can enjoy it).

I dunno, it's all too new for me to be sure of the longer-term implications. But I sure do like any model that seems to be about empowering music fans.

* * * * *

And now: more than you can possibly want to know about the tune in question.



"The Job Song" was the first thing I wrote for the Evelyn Situation, the NJ-based spastic vocal ensemble I headed up back in the early nineties (this group also featured IJG singer Jill Knapp: for those of you who don't recognize her without the bee costume, she's the left-most head in the above promo shot). If I recall correctly, I brought it to the Evelyns sans title, and it was vocalist Donna Van Der Gaag (the middle head) who started calling it "The Job Song" -- a generic-but-quirky title that somehow stuck.

Since 1995, when Evelyn broke up and I moved to California, I have re-worked this fucker probably more than anything else I've written. The Evelyn arrangement was basically a full-on polka affair, of which a recording was made but never released. "Never," that is, until that group morphed into a studio project called Jay's Booming Hat. And when that studio project briefly morphed into a live JBH project, I arranged two other versions. So in all, there are four versions of this tune: the pure polka (circa 1993-1998), the moody acoustic version (1998), the arty jazz version (1999-2000), and the wacky jazz (IJG) version (2005-now). The latter is the version that will be released on LEEF, and which you can hear on Amie Street.

(Still following this?)

The IJG-ified version of "The Job Song" is characterized by some of the same tactics I have been bringing to bear in a lot of our other music. For one thing, it features two judiciously-placed musical quotes. There is the "Pomp and Circumstance" march that gets layered over the third verse (the verse that begins: "Having just finished school"), which results in all kinds of groovy harmonic tension. (BTW, am I the only one who feels that "P & C," though associated with graduation ceremonies, is actually more like a funeral dirge? I know, I know, it's in a major key, but if you've ever performed it, doesn't it always... seem... just... destined... to... slow... way... the... fuck... down...? Hard to imagine that the thing got two encores at its premiere.)

The other quote, which kicks in during the closing chaos, is from Beck's slacker anthem "Loser." I actually improvised this quote at the piano during a performance in San Francisco in 2006, and then edited it into the soprano parts shortly afterward (cuz no one can really hear the piano at the end of this tune). Aside from the Beck song's thematic parallels with the lyrical content of "The Job Song" (in different ways, they both express dissatisfaction with "the system," yeah?), the former (and all of Mellow Gold, actually) was one of those recordings that helped me mark my transition from New Jersey to LA in the mid 90s -- so quoting it helps to bridge the NJ and LA versions of "The Job Song," at least in my own mind.

And speaking of bridges: if you compare the IJG "Job Song" with the original, you may notice that the jazz waltz that kicks in at around 1:18 (in the IJG version) actually splits the song's "bridge" section in half. The bridge is the part that begins

Well don't you want to be like the people on TV
So bored and jaded and doing something that you have always hated?

After those lines, the bridge is cut off by the waltz. And only after the waltz is over do we get to hear the second half of the bridge:

Just give in -- how could it be a sin?
The big machine must keep on rolling on.

In part, this is me making fun of my own penchant for tightly-constructed bridges (tightly-constructed bridges were an obsession of mine during the Evelyn years). But the waltz is also logically placed, because it is meant to be an example of "something you have always hated." There's a certain amount of (affectionate) kidding going on here, but the idea is that the waltz is supposed to sound a bit corny, a bit too much like commercial, library jazz. This may make more sense if you consider that I wrote the waltz much earlier, sometime around 1988, when I was at Berklee (getting my first taste of what commercial/library jazz actually is). That piece was originally called "Waltz for Wanda," but when I played it with Jill in one of our pre-Evelyn bands, she dubbed it "Waltz for Weather," because of the way it sounded like background music for the Weather Channel. All of these seemed to me to be great reasons to resurrect the thing for a second (ironic) life within an IJG arrangement.

I guess underlying all this stuff is the question of humor. After the various jazz blogosphere threads on this subject over the last year or so, I'm still stuck thinking about what exactly constitutes musical humor for me. In this tune, some of it is obvious -- the lyrics, for instance -- or programmatic (the descending horn part just before each chorus is meant to sound like wicked laughter). Some of the humor is derived from things I have already mentioned, like the quotes (which are supposed to be surprising the first few times around). However, I suspect that these things are all "funny" (to the extent that they are) in relation to the "real world," or more specifically, in the case of the quotations, in relation to the associations that go along with already-existing music, and the ways those associations are juxtaposed with the thematic content of this tune.

But there is also the question of the ways in which music can be in and of itself funny, without reference to extra-musical concerns like satire or social context. To me, this sort of "inherently musical humor" (which I hear done so beautifully in the music of Zappa, Satie, Monk, Raymond Scott, Carla Bley) might have to do with (for instance) something as simple as the unexpected or (at first glance) "illogical" shape of a melody. In "The Job Song," forcing Jill to jump a full octave (and higher) on the word "job" in the chorus is, to me, fairly comical for exactly this reason (though I don't suppose Jill finds it too funny because it ain't the easiest thing in the world to sing). But there are better examples from my own music -- I'll get to them whenever I'm able to write about the other cuts on the new album (i.e., soon).

Another example of "inherent musical humor": introducing a simple idea and taking it to some absurd extreme, like the descent into noise at the end of this track, which probably doesn't really need to go on for as long as it does.

And speaking of going on too long, I'll shut up now.

Smart guy

If you haven't seen it already, Seth Godin's quick summary of the state of the music business circa 2008 is chock-full of all kinds of analytical exactitude. In a way that few such summaries are.

Some samples:

The music business had a spectacular run alongside the baby boomers. Starting with the Beatles and Dylan, they just kept minting money. The co-incidence of expanding purchasing power of teens along with the birth of rock, the invention of the transistor and changing social mores meant a long, long growth curve.

As a result, the music business built huge systems. They created top-heavy organizations, dedicated superstores, a loss-leader touring industry, extraordinarily high profit margins, MTV and more. It was a well-greased system, but the key question: why did it deserve to last forever?

Why indeed? It's funny the way things can seem inevitable after they've been around for a mere fifty years or so.

On the other hand, it's important to remember that the above-inferred decline (and the generally gloomy media prognostications) do not necessarily signal the crash of the CD market as a whole. A few weeks back I was actually wondering -- again -- do I really need to release the next IJG album as a CD? Why not, from this point onward, just create a spiffy website "frame" (i.e., an online equivalent of liner notes, artwork, etc.) in which to "house" each new "album" (i.e., collection of downloadable audio files)?

And then I was reminded: yes, the major CD releases are tanking more and more every year, but indies seem to be doing better than ever -- as in, indie CD sales are up by 35%. (Of course, this suggests a whole other can of worms: potential disagreements over what exactly the definition of "indie" is.)

Copy protection in a digital age is a pipe dream

If the product you make becomes digital, expect that the product you make will be copied.

[...]

Most items of value derive that value from scarcity. Digital changes that, and you can derive value from ubiquity now.

The solution isn’t to somehow try to become obscure, to get your song off the (digital) radio. The solution is to change your business.

You used to sell plastic and vinyl. Now, you can sell interactivity and souvenirs.

It's not that music itself is less valuable. It's just that the ways people are connecting with it are... potentially different. Again, it's easy to forget that the carefully catalogued CD collection is a very historically (and culturally) limited phenomenon -- one that owes a great deal to, say, nineteenth/twentieth century practices of book collecting (hello, Walter Benjamin!). It is not at all the default position via which to experience music (though, alas, until recently it has happened to be my favorite).

Perhaps this moment is about the gradual de-commodification of music itself, and the simultaneous commodification (or ramping up of same) of the activities that surround music. And if the commodification of music is what led to nonsense like this, then perhaps undoing those commercial entanglements would be a good thing -- you know, for art's sake.

But perhaps I'm being too naive and optimistic (I've certainly been guilty of that before). Perhaps the commodification of music is somehow vital to our perception of it as "art"? (Or is that just a historical coincidence? Or an inherent western weakness?)

Interactivity can’t be copied

Music is social. Music is current and everchanging. And most of all, music requires musicians. The winners in the music business of tomorrow are individuals and organizations that create communities, connect people, spread ideas and act as the hub of the wheel... indispensable and well-compensated.

How does one create a community around the idea of jazz? Let alone "new" or "avant" or "wacky" forms of jazz?

It should be the easiest thing in the world. These art-forms are generally improvisatory, which means (to me, anyway) that they are not just opportunities to showcase the mad extemporaneous skills of specific performers, in a top-down way (see Kris Tiner's heartbreaking account of this idea taken way too far), but that they are customized; i.e., responsive to the specifics of a particular environment or audience. In a very real sense, the audience and the space participate in the creation of the music itself.

To the discriminating ear, performances always vary, regardless of the genre. But with jazz -- yes, even big band jazz -- one of the charms is that the performance (and to some extent the "content" of that performance) is going to be really different from night to night. What could be more interactive than that?

Many musicians have understood that all they need to make a (very good) living is to have 10,000 fans. 10,000 people who look forward to the next record, who are willing to trek out to the next concert. Add 7 fans a day and you’re done in 5 years. Set for life. A life making music for your fans, not finding fans for your music.

The opportunity of digital distribution is this:

When you can distribute something digitally, for free, it will spread (if it’s good). If it spreads, you can use it as a vehicle to allow people to come back to you and register, to sign up, to give you permission to interact and to keep them in the loop.

Again, selling the experience, not the product.

And 10,000 fans? Holy shit, that actually seems do-able. Who needs a gold record?

Album update no. 45,362

(Photo by Ting06.)

As you may have surmised by now, the new IJG recording will not "drop" this year. (Boy, do I hate that phraseology, by the way.) This despite my best efforts. Of course, release delays are typical for even a major label effort -- but when your project is indie, snags in the production process may be that much more acute, cuz chances are you're doing almost everything yourself.

Ah well. In our case the issue is twofold. First, "final mixdown" continues to be pushed back because of scheduling conflicts (leaving me more time to tweak and fiddle -- which is fine, but only to a point). And second, as I have gotten deeper into the mixes (thanks to the more or less permanent temptations presented by my paltry excuse for a basement studio), I have revised the, uh, "conceptual core" of the project.

You may recall that I had been referring to this thing as "The Art of the Mix Tape." No more. I did not jettison the title because I no longer like it (who knows, it may still come in handy someday) but because it doesn't really fit the essentially live album that is emerging. The new working title is LEEF (a misappropriation of a Dutch word), for reasons that I'll explain if I actually get to use it (it turns out the Bimhuis folks may want to have some say in what we call the album -- more on that if necessary).

Wait, did I say "several versions"? Yeah, I guess I did. Since I managed to cut the middle man out of the preliminary mixing process, and I don't have to pay someone an hourly fee to "fiddle and tweak," I have the luxury of experimenting with different conglomerations of the material to see what works best. As a result, I still haven't decided if I want this to be a long-ish album (like, over 60 minutes), or a more concise one. And I still haven't decided which tunes to use exactly. And I still haven't decide how live I want it to be. Originally I was planning on using about half of the Bimhuis show, and filling out the rest with studio tracks and "non-live" experiments, plus one or two other segments recorded live elsewhere. But it seems like more bits from Amsterdam keep sneaking in every week. (It's amazing how a decent mix can reveal some magic in performances that I thought were hopelessly flawed.) There are so many possibilities; maybe I'll just have to release 'em all somehow.

Maybe I'm staying so noncommital so late in the process because flexibility seems to be the name of the game these days. I feel the same about the format wars: I'm pretty open to everybody's arguments, and so I'm drawn to releasing a download version of the record for the kids and the iPodders (and a FLAC version for the really hip folks), a CD for the mainstreamers, an LP for the audiophiles, a "director's cut version," some web-only extras, maybe a deluxe DVD-CD pairing that includes higher-quality versions of some of the video currently on YouTube, and so on. Sure, part of me wants to go "exclusively electronic" with the release (bypassing the expensive replication process), but I don't think we're really in a position to do that yet. After all, we're not a huge band, and we need all the audiences we can get. So for now, I think I'm just going to avoid assuming that there will be one definitive version of the record (though I'm sure I'll have my own favorite).

What else? Despite the delays, I'm really excited about this monstrosity. It will be our first release to feature a singer -- and probably the first "official" CD I will ever have made with Ms. Knapp -- Gruel doesn't really count because it was truly DIY, and distributed via CD-R, for crissakes. (I have been making music with this chick for more than 20 years, so it seems crazy that it took so long for us to actually release something spiffy, eh?) This will also be our first recording to feature the IJG pseudo-big-band lineup (15 people), our typical configuration for the last two years.

Oh yeah, and it will also be our first release to hypothetically require a “parental advisory” label for strong language -- assuming I actually cared about such things.

Which I don't. Though I suppose I should elaborate for anyone who hasn't seen our current show. The linguistic offensiveness I'm alluding to has to do with the eminently guttural glory of the word “fuck,” which we employ 1. lyrically, 2. in one of our titles, and 3. in some of the spoken-word segues that will probably fill out the record. None of this will be particularly surprising to those of you who read this blog regularly (lord knows I don’t shy away from obscene language), or, for that matter, for anyone who has even the slightest connection to a culture of musicians. (Certain obscenities are simply part of the day-to-day language of most folks who move in these circles.)

Why the naughty bits, you ask? I guess the word "fuck" reminds me that one of the things that drew me to making music in the first place was the thought of participating in some kind of constructive rebellion. You know, expressing dissatisfaction with a status quo, and trying to point toward something better. (Yeah, music used to have that kind of effect on people. It's easy to forget that when Ornette Coleman first hit the scene, his music alone could provoke fisticuffs.)

Anyway, maybe I'm wrong, but in our jaded culture, the word "fuck" still seems to carry that kind of transgressive (but also funny, and potentially joyful and celebratory) power -- at least, I assume, for most of the audiences that listen to jazz here in the States (e.g., it's hard to imagine someone getting away with deliberately uttering it onstage at Lincoln Center). And that sort of complex transgression is part of what I'm after in my music too.

Why, the word "fuck" is almost as offensive as Janet Jackson's tit -- and much more aesthetically pleasing.

* * * * *

Oh yeah, and here's a picture of a "monster pile" that Thandie drew before breakfast this morning. Happy belated Halloween to all.

What I did on my summer vacation

So summer is here and the time is right to finish the next IJG record (in production for over a year now). I know I've been dropping all sorts of ludicrous hints as to its concept, character, title, and so on. Here is the latest update:

Shortly after I moved to Portland last September, my friend and longtime recording partner Michael Kramer (responsible for the recording, editing, and mixing of three of our four "official" albums -- Hardcore, City of Angles, and Industrial Jazz a Go Go!) seemed to sense the impracticality of my 6-month plan to commute to LA every few weeks in order to complete the new record (at that point each tune in the current show was on hard drive in some form, but there was a lot of overdubbing -- not to mention editing, mixing, and mastering -- left to be done). Realist that he is, Kramer talked me into getting set up with my own home recording rig. This turned out to be easier than I expected, and after laying out a few hundred bucks I had converted my basement office into a humble-but-functional studio, with the requisite ProTools software, a set of decent monitors, and a few spare hard drives.

And so Ugly Rug Records was reborn.

Backstory: though I have never been a studio obsessive by temperament (among other things, I've always been just a little leery of the way technology can interfere in the creative process), I did catch the home recording bug for the first time back in the late nineties, initially as an expedient to help with a number of film scoring projects I had picked up at the time. "Ugly Rug Records" (named for a brown-orange shag carpet that lined one of the many apartments Daphne and I shared when living in LA) started with a very basic four-track-and-DAT-machine setup -- and in some ways I still miss its simplicity, as well as the kinesthetic rush it inevitably provided (actual knobs and buttons and tapeheads and faders, oh boy!). This was the main contraption used in the creation of the only Jay's Booming Hat album (a lo-fi-ish mess called Gruel -- you can, if you must, hear excerpts (including the original versions of "The Job Song" and "Big Ass Truck") here, though I will probably unleash the entire thing upon the Internet Archive someday).

When I finally did take the full-on digital plunge, it was by way of Steinberg's Cubase program. I got a number of good demos out of that fucker, and concocted a few of the more "experimental" tracks on the first few IJG albums (e.g., "Los Feelies," "Fantasy on Eine," etc.) using it. But once I recognized that Cubase was not going to be the industry standard, and once I started down the time-intensive road of expanding my compositional ambitions from the quintet to bigger configurations, I lost interest in cultivating whatever modest engineering skills I had developed.

So for the last three IJG albums I have mostly contented myself with shaping each recording "from afar," so to speak -- that is, I never got in and actually did any of the engineering moves myself. I have been very lucky to be working with Kramer throughout most of this period -- because we've been recording together for awhile now, and because we have a basic musical simpatico, we developed a shorthand (and sometimes a telepathy) for the recording / editing / mixing process. This shorthand has been immensely valuable, because there are certain things, when dealing with the creation of a musical recording, that are just very difficult (and tedious) to have to explain to another person. And when you're paying for studio time by the hour, you sure as hell don't want to have to rely on a spell-it-all-out-in-detail mode of communication. You want someone at the helm who just gets it.

Of course, even with a good producer/engineer relationship, there are edits or mixing moves that (given a basic familiarity with the technology) are easier for a producer to do him or herself. And hence the brilliance of Kramer's suggestion that I just bite the fucking bullet and get my own rig. I'll admit that, initially, I was a little put off by the learning curve -- I thought it would take forever to get up to speed on a whole new system. But lo and behold: it turns out that several years of watching someone else use ProTools can actually help you learn how to use ProTools! And so much of this has proved to be more intuitive than I anticipated.

Not so intuitive that I feel ready to finish the project entirely solo, of course. I'm having a lot of fun geeking out, but I know my limits, and I'll still be leaving the final mix in Kramer's hands. With any luck, that will be happening in LA sometime in August (at which time I also hope to have a reading session for some of the new IJG charts). But between now and then (so goes the plan), I'll be holed up in my basement here in Portland, madly editing, assembling in-the-ballpark rough mixes, taking care of the few remaining overdubs, and coming up with the "eureka" album sequence and whatever transition pieces are necessary.

It's gonna be a long, hot summer (did I also mention I'm writing a whole new set of material and trying to plan out the band's touring itinerary for the next year or so?)

* * * * *

So what will the new album be like?

First, I should clarify by saying that I'm actually working on a pair of albums -- it's just high time to get all this material (fifteen or sixteen tunes, I think) finished and out into the world, already. (For a brief moment I actually considered releasing a single double album, but who buys those anymore? No, these will be two separate releases, but meant to be understand as a set.)

Before May, there were basically two main sessions I was working from. The first was meticulously tracked (old school rock style) at Kramer's Wolftone Studios. That was a process that began more than a year ago, and as of today is still not completed (there is at least one instrument left to track on most of the tunes). The second was more of a live session done at CalArts with a skeleton crew version of the group, just before I moved to Portland (this session was engineered by the very talented Owen Vallis). The CalArts session too is in need of some overdubbing. In any case, I had been poking at these sessions half-heartedly throughout 07, not exactly sure how they would end up. But I had been assuming the album(s) would be a purely studio effort, with all the clarity and precision that that implies.

Then came the European trip. In the weeks before we left, I did some research and discovered that (for a somewhat pricey fee) I could get our Bimhuis show recorded. I had been wanting to get a good multitrack live recording of the group for some time, and I gambled on the possibility that the excitement of the trip, plus the fact that we had a critical mass of very experienced IJG-ers (and some amazing subs), plus the possibility of a truly receptive audience would all conspire to produce a good performance. You can read the post on that show to get the details on how things actually went, but in short, the group played a mostly fantastic set, much of which, it turns out, is album-worthy. Of course, "IJG live at the Bimhuis!" would have to be a very different release than "IJG Multitracked in the Studio!," the album I had initially been imagining.

So I found myself faced with a bit of a conundrum, now that there were two extant versions of almost all of the tunes. Do I 1. make the studio album, which has the benefit of clarity and precision, or 2. make the live album, which has the benefit of that elusive and magical "live vibe" that jazz fans so crave?

The answer should have been obvious from the start, given my aesthetic interests (and the circumstances of my life in general): hybrid vigor, baby! Stay tuned for the specifics...

Catching up, part two

(Continued from part one.)

On Thursday (May 17) I woke up on the early side (night-time back pain can be a powerful alarm clock) and immediately set to confirming how we were going to get to Amsterdam (about an hour away from Den Haag) for that evening's gig at the world-famous Bimhuis (and here I must extend gratitude to Wolter Wierbos, whose longstanding connections with this venue are, I am convinced, what got us the gig). The festival folks had informed me that they'd be able to provide us with transportation to Amsterdam, but this seemed almost like too much to hope for, given the distance involved and the fact that our Bimhuis show had nothing to do with our festival shows. Rien, the transportation coordinator (who, incidentally, epitomized that Dutch tendency toward what I can only call "gruff good cheer") had assured me the night before that we'd be able to work it out, as long as I gave him our schedule in advance. We had already discussed departure and return times, but knowing the way these sorts of things can fall apart in a moment's notice, I was still trying to be proactive.

My worries were unwarranted. The vans (driven by Hans and Jo) picked us up (with Josh Sinton now in the mix) at around 1 PM, and we made it to Amsterdam without incident. Actually, once we got there, we did have some trouble finding the venue, but in our travels we got better acquainted with the city, which was nice. Somewhere along the way a third leitmotif of the tour emerged: the question that has haunted me (and flummoxed many an unsuspecting Ministry fan) since the inception of the group: "What exactly is Industrial Jazz"? In this case it came from Hans, I think, and if I have ever fretted about trying explain the group name to a fellow American, in this case the task seemed more daunting because of the cultural differences at hand (even though Hans spoke perfect English). Truth be told, "Industrial Jazz" has had multiple different personal meanings for me, and I have more or less rotated them depending on the interview or conversation. But at this point it's just a term that refers to the music this group makes (as Zappa once said when asked about the goofiness of his titles: "Well, ya gotta call 'em something"). Anyway, I'm no longer interested in definitions per se. I told Hans the group name had to do with chocolate, and we left it at that.



Outside the Bimhuis: stairway to heaven. (L-R: Rosenboom, Schnelle, Schenck, Canniere, Francis.)

We arrived in time for a quick bite before our sound check (at which point I discovered two quirks in Dutch restaurant culture: 1. You never need to wait to be seated. You just sit. 2. It would probably be impossible to have a "power lunch" in Holland. Cuz, like, no one seems to be in a rush to get anywhere). From there we infiltrated the stage.

I have to say, the Bimhuis is a trippy place. The venue itself is ensconced within a larger structure (the MuziekGebouw, itself a performance space for classical music), which sits right on the River IJ. There is a gigantic window behind the stage so that from the audience one can see the city, and more specifically the trains that regularly stop across the street. (For our show these windows were covered by curtains, because I had decided to do a full-on multitrack recording and we were trying to cut down on unnecessary reflections.)



A room with a view: the Bimhuis stage, viewed from the audience, pre-show.

Most of you probably know that the BH moved a few years ago. The original space, where the venue established its world-renown, had actually been receiving noise complaints (sound familiar?). According to Wolter, what the original lacked in high falutin' appearance, it made up for in a more musicianly vibe -- it was, apparently, the place for jazz musicians to hang out in the city. But I don't know; I for one didn't have much to complain about regarding the new incarnation. The entire venue was beautiful and clean. We had a spacious green room, bowls of fruit and candy, plenty of beverages, a few practice / warmup rooms, access to a computer, and a generally comfortable and relaxing environment. Oh, and all this was supported by the freakin' government.

Anyway, we had a team of maybe four or five people to help us with our stage setup, blew through a good soundcheck (though I stupidly neglected to run through "Yo, Jimbo!," our "extra" tune, because I thought we had more than enough material to play), and took a short break before dinner.

There are of course many things to do in Amsterdam (I'll have more to say about some of them by and by), but I ended up playing it pretty low-key in the interim between soundcheck and dinner by heading across the street with Jill and Matt to get a (tiny) cup of coffee at a mysterious place called "11." Here was the schtick, if you must know: the place was a restaurant located on the eleventh floor of an abandoned (condemned, in fact) building. Since the site was scheduled for demolition at some point in the near future, someone (the proprietor of the restaurant? the city itself?!) had given the green light to a general paint-off, and as a result much of the building was decorated in some of the most beautiful (and some of the bleakest) grafitti I have ever seen. (The restaurant itself actually seemed sort of lame in comparison, even though they were clearly trying to extend the artistic vibe to their dining experience.)



"11" graffiti, exhibit A.



"11" graffiti, exhibit B.

Made it back to the venue in time for a kick-ass buffet dinner (this is what we musicians call the "royal treatment") and then general futzing around before the show. Somehow in the process of said futzing, I was jarred out of my pre-gig mellow and drawn irresistably toward a manic burst of music-making that was coming through the theater door (the Bimhuis restaurant is separated from the performance space by a wall). This was the duo of Tatiana Koleva (on marimba and percussion) and Rutger van Otterloo (on saxophone), the first act of the evening. Two things blew me away as I stepped into the theater to get a better hear:

1. Koleva's marimba playing was great, but it was really when she moved over to the drumset and began playing it while simultaneously triggering a whole array of profanity-laced samples (from what source, I dunno), all in the kookiest rhythmic combinations and in extreme tightness with Otterloo, that I had that all-too-rare feeling of not being able to tear myself away from a performance. It was stunning -- and it was all the more successful because, cynic that I am, I generally approach any "art music" involving samples with extreme caution; usually I get the sense that folks who indulge in this sort of thing are trying too hard to convince me of their hipness. But I never once got that "forced" feeling with this duo.

2. There were, uh, people in the audience. Not sold out, but a pretty healthy crowd for a Thursday night after 9 PM (perhaps the turnout was affected by the fact that in the Netherlands, the sun is just setting at 9:30). Phil Rodriguez, who was also drooling over the Koleva/Otterloo performance, remarked that a show like this would bring out maybe ten people in New York, and three people in Los Angeles. Maybe that was a little bit of an exaggeration, but there was an essential truth underneath it, and I consequently stole the observation for some of my between-song-banter later in the evening. In any case, as we (and a few of the other IJG folks) stared incomprehensibly at the numerous couples and friends out for an evening of dinner and crazy music -- well, there was a bit of a kid-in-a-candy-store thing going on. (I'm sure we looked like idiots.)

All of this was a great way to kick off the evening. I must admit that I more or less couldn't focus on the second act (a trio called Spoon 3) -- not sure if it was something inherent in their performance or just that I was anxious to play, but I spent the next hour or so (we were the final act of the evening) pacing, as is my wont, and watching the antics of my fellow Industrials; antics which included a "clash of the titans" moment between a crab, a lobster, and a chicken:



Phil Rodriguez, Katharina Thomsen, and Brian Walsh work out their artistic differences.

The performance itself flew by (we went on at 11 PM). Blah, blah, blah, we got an encore (would've been nice to have rehearsed "Yo Jimbo," n'est-ce pas?), we almost got another encore (but we had nuthin' else to play) -- you can get more of the details at Jill's recap post. 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.

Trusty Hans and Jo picked us up at around 1 AM, and it was back to Den Haag for a little shuteye. And that's the wrap-up for day two. Next: IJG live at the World Forum Convention Center.

Going forward to get back

I know, I know; not only am I behind on my blogging (and so many other things), but the sequence-of-events component of this thing is starting to read like the fractured chronology of a Faulkner novel. (And speaking of novelists, holy cow am I (still) bummed that Vonnegut is gone. I know he was an old guy and everything, and I know he's probably a lot happier wherever he is now. But he was one of the good guys -- and, by the way, a not-insignificant influence on my own worldview and philosophy. And so on.)

Let me explain: I still have to provide some sort of after-the-fact recap of the recent "return to SoCal" tour. That post is long overdue, and only coming together slowly. So what'll I do in the meantime? Well, why not look ahead and spill the beans on the next batch of stuff in store for the group?

Sure, that makes sense. Let's see. How 'bout starting thisaway:

May 2007, with a little luck, could be a high point in what has already been the best year the group has ever had.

For one thing, we'll be performing in a pretty sweet slot at the Bakersfield Jazz Festival on May 12 (we're the third-from-last act, followed by Matt Wilson (yee-haw!) and Lee "too smooth for school" Ritenour). That will be a milestone in itself -- not because it will be our first festival (a "distinction" which belongs to the Brewery Arts Center Festival in Carson City, NV), but because I'll actually be able to guarantee everyone in the group more than a hundred dollars for a gig (don't worry, I'm not going to delve too far here into the boring woe-is-me behind-the-scenes economics of a postmodern big band). A low three bills probably sounds like a pittance for anyone who deals in trios, quartets, and quintets, but believe me, when it comes to a group this large (playing left-of-center music, no less) it's a real coup. Credit must go to Kris Tiner (who thankfully will be rejoining the group for this gig), at whose gentle insistence Doug Davis -- the very sweet guy who heads up the festival and the jazz department at Cal State Bakersfield) finally got to check us out, first at our Bakersfield gig last August, and a second time at IAJE. I guess we made some sort of impression.

The other upcoming event-of-note is our May trip to the Netherlands. We'll be performing (twice) at the Hague Jazz Festival (May 16 and 18), and also squeezing in a show at the world-famous BimHuis in Amsterdam (May 17). I've been keeping this one on the down-low, partly because I didn't want to jinx it, and partly because I believed for a while that it was all some sort of cruel hoax. The booking originated in our IAJE performance this past January -- that's where I met Ruud Wijkniet, who liked our show well enough that he immediately invited us to play the festival, all-expenses paid. Again, I was more or less very suspicious, but it turns out that Ruud was for real (and, like Doug, very pleasant to work with -- where have these folks been hiding for the last seven years?). Now that our travel arrangements have beeen finalized, I feel it's safe to act as if the trip is really going to happen. Needless to say, I'm (cautiously) psyched.

For those of you who are interested, the bands for these gigs will be as follows. For both, we'll have Dan Schnelle (drums), Oliver Newell (bass), Jill Knapp (vocals), Dan Rosenboom (trumpet), Evan Francis (alto), Cory Wright (soprano), and Brian Walsh (tenor). In Bakersfield, add Stephanie Richards and (of course) Kris Tiner, trumpets; Ian Carroll and Ron Christian (bones); Gavin Templeton, Ben Wendel, and Damon Zick (saxophones). In the Netherlands, the substitutions will be Andre Canniere and Phil Rodriguez (trumpets), Beth Schenck, Katharina Thomsen, and Josh Sinton (saxes), and Wolter Wierbos and James Hirschfeld (bones). That's right, for the Netherlands gigs I'll be borrowing key players (Canniere, Sinton, and Hirschfeld) from my favorite east coast big band, DJA's Secret Society. I'll also be bringing in two heavy hitters from the Dutch scene: one lesser-known (Thomsen), and one pretty goddamm well-known (Wolter Wierbos).

The only problem with all this goodness is: where do we go next? (Ah, well, I'll figure it out when we get there.)

Given that this is an important moment in the life of the band (even if we never get any further), I have been allowing myself an unusual amount of self-analysis as I consider what we've accomplished with the last two incarnations (specifically, the Go-Go era tentet group and the Mix-Tape-era big band). Of course, just because I've been allowing myself to indulge in this sort of intro-speckshun doesn't mean that I don't know in my heart of hearts that any conclusions I draw may be more or less total bullshit. I have always found that I compose best when I don't overthink what I'm doing (not that that's an appropriate strategy for all composers). So what follows will be a very loosey-goosey sketch of what I consider to be the elements of the mature IJG "sound." It's all off the top of my head, without actually going back to listen or think through the repertoire in question. Contradict me if you must!

1. Hearty portions of the basic building blocks of popular music (mostly American popular music, but not exclusively), often tweaked and permutated beyond recognition. What do I mean by the "basic building blocks" (BBBs, I guess) of popular music? Specific riffs, phrases, rhythms, harmonic progressions (and so on) that get used repeatedly in that canon. I'm not talking about broad genre characteristics (like the blues scale, for instance), but rather more specific (though still recurring) things. (See, for instance, the bassline at the beginning of "Doo Wha?", or the repeated rhythm at the beginning of "Bongo Non Troppo" -- these BBBs can be found all over the place in American popular music (in various permutations, of course).)

2. Displacement. As a way of building tension, I like to take intact figures (a portion of a melody, for instance) and set them off, complete, against their originals. This may occur horizontally (in time), usually at some counterintuitive spot (like one beat away), or vertically (creating a parallel harmony). The crucial thing for me is that the listener be able to recognize the displacement -- so I don't try to hide it (thus parallels stay parallel most times).

3. Simple canons, rounds, etc. Canons / rounds are displacement built up in a comparatively fancy way. That's probably how I got here -- though I should also acknowledge the influence of twentieth-century round-master, Moondog.

4. Strong melodies. I started seriously writing music in high school -- a time when I was strongly influence by the Beatles. Is it any wonder that I still give a shit about a beautiful melody when I can squeeze it in? Sometimes this interest yields what I would call "pseudo-folk" melodies like the one that appears in "Bandoleero, part one." Honestly, I don't think my melodies are all that great by classical music standards (they don't usually rise and fall in the traditional way), but I can write catchy music when I put my mind to it. I used to flee from this ("it can't be weird and tuneful at the same time!" I told myself), but now I just throw caution to the winds let the notes fall where they may.

5. Taking simple ideas to their extremes. Why subdivide by eighth notes when you can subdivide by sixteenths? Why change the tempo once when you can change it twice, or three times? And so on.

6. Layering / reverse layering. This is a Mingus-ism (see "Moanin'" on Blues and Roots for perhaps the best example, though my favorite Mingus tune ("Hora Decubitus") does something similar). Start with one instrument, add another, add another, and so on until you have the densest thing you can still hear individual voices in.

7. Long compositions with mutiple disconnected “movements.” I have always been interested in form, but with the current version of the group I seem to be going for sequential, episodic structures as opposed to organic, narrative ones. I'm not trying to tell you a story when I write. Instead, I want to make you aware of how the book is made.

8. Juxtaposition of unlike things. Beautiful melodies cohabitate with noise; genres collide incongruously; endless, seemingly-static vamps cohabitate with rapid change and forward motion (more of a Go Go era thing for me, that last one is a technique borrowed from Zappa); and so on.

9. Naturalistic use of odd time signatures. See the story in this post about people clapping along to the 3/2 section at the end of "Fuck the Muck."

10. Timbral substitution. Take a figure heavily identified with one instrument (such as a boogie woogie piano bassline) and put it in a horn (for instance).

11. Comedy. Been thinking about what I mean by this, and I know I'll have to return to it. I guess I feel most comfortable using the word "comedy" to describe a category of resistance to authority (with the assumption that authority is always corrupt / arbitrary / unkind). More specifically, for me, it's the idea of resistance-from-within (and thus is somewhat incompatible with (and suspicious of) the notion of a pure revolution "from outside"). Oh, and it also has to be funny.

I told you it was loosey-goosey.

* * * * *

Addendum: Just got the sad news. RIP Andrew Hill.

Return of the son of Industrial Jazz Group

[Editor's note: Ah, yes. Here is the post I would have published last week at about this time, if only I hadn't started developing what initially seemed like an innocent-enough headcold. The sequel to this post -- you know, the usual apres-tour "here's what actually happened in excruciating detail" post -- will be forthcoming later this week. But for those of you interested in the bottom line: this trip to SoCal was well worth it.]

So I'll be heading down to Los Angeles next week for more band-related madness: a pair of gigs in the San Diego area on March 28 (one at Mesa College, and one at Dizzy's -- the latter has historically been one of our favorite places to play), and then a more-and-more-illicit-sounding engagement at 2nd Street Jazz in downtown LA (it appears we'll be hitting at 1 AM on the morning of March 30). It will be my first time back in southern California since mid-Fall of '06, and I'm very curious to see what (if anything) has changed, either about the place itself, or about my perception of it.

If nothing else, it will be a rush to reconnect with some of the beloved IJG veterans, as Jill and I will be joined by key players from the east coast tour: Dan Schnelle (drums), Oliver Newell (bass), Dan Rosenboom (trumpet), Damon Zick (bari), Brian Walsh (tenor), Evan Francis (alto), and Ben Wendel (tenor) [editor's note: as it turned out, Wendel couldn't make these gigs]. Other long-lost personnel with whom we will be joyously reunited: Ryan Perez-Daple (soprano) and Ron Christian (bone) [editor's note: as it turned out, Christian couldn't make these gigs either -- thankfully, we were able to enlist the help of SD bonist Brandon Jagow for Dizzy's]. Of course, it wouldn't be an IJG tour without a few new faces as well, and so we welcome trumpeters Stephanie Richards and Clinton Patterson stepping in for Phil Rodriguez and Kris Tiner, respectively (Phil is now based in Brooklyn, and Kris will soon be based in new-daddy-land -- a country I know well), soprano saxophonist Gavin Templeton (sitting in for Cory Wright), trombonist Ian Carroll (sitting in for any one of our last several trombonists), and baritone saxophonist Gabriel Sundy (sitting in for Damon at Mesa only [editor's note: as it turned out, the very versatile Sundy played 2nd tenor at the Dizzy's gig as well]).

(Do you ever get the feeling that I use these gig-announcement posts to rehearse the names of the players?)

It will be an IJG-packed four days for me. Aside from the shows, I have set aside ample chunks of time to continue working on the new album(s) (why the plural? ...well, it looks like there is enough material for two releases... more on that later), which have already been in progress for almost a year now. Maybe it's because of this preoccupation with getting the record(s) done that I have been particularly interested to see the little blogospheric flurry of musings on the question of recording and jazz. For me it started with KT's sharing of Nate Dorward's Signal to Noise review of two of his quartet's releases. Check it out for yourself. The thing that sort of jumped out at me was Dorward's apparent discomfort with the quality of the recording of the live Hello the Damage discs (as if somehow "poor audio quality" isn't a factor in some of the best jazz records you will ever hear (Hello, Birth of the Cool)). The always-thorough DJA picked up on this too, and nicely folded it into a response to one of Daniel Melnick's posts over at Soundslope (with me so far?). That Soundslope post is rather sophistimacated (as most of them seem to be), but let me try and do it justice: after three paragraphs on microlending, Daniel jumps into the subject of recording, helpfully pointing toward two relevant essays from the OkkaDisk site: Kevin Whitehead's "Why many records are very bad -- and a few are good," and Stu Vandermark's "Recording Jazz: A Questionable Practice? (or, a Call for Re-examination)."

When you take all this stuff together (or at least when I did), it seems there are two bottom-line issues here. I'll try and address 'em one at a time, while simultaneously remembering my desire to lose self-importance:

1. Issue the first: the idea that, when it comes to jazz, "live" is better than "recorded" (a view articulated in the Vandermark piece). Honestly, I almost choked on my coffee when I read that. Why don't we try and prop up old saws like "east coast jazz is better than west coast jazz" or "it can only be jazz if it swings" while we're at it?

Look, I love live jazz. I love live music, period. But I love good records too, and I refuse to see them as pale reflections of some pure, authentic experience. That's a little too churchy for me. Hell, I'll admit it: there are times (like when one of the exceedingly uncomfortable chairs that tend to populate most venues wreaks havoc on my arthritic back) that I would much prefer to be listening with headphones at home.

Maybe the thing that is so frustrating about the Vandermark piece is that some of his observations are actually pretty right-on. F'r'instance: of course jazz is "an ongoing process" -- all art is, really, regardless of the myths we tell ourselves about "finished" works -- and that's why folks like Ellington, Mingus, and Monk were constantly re-recording their pieces (in addition to re-performing them live).

But a lot of SV's statements can be turned inside-out and still ring true in an entirely different way, for an entirely different audience. For every listener who finds that recordings don't live up to the "magic" of a performer's live vibe, there are others who could safely argue that live (or other recorded) renditions of a given tune inevitably fail to match up with the je ne sais quoi of a certain recording. It is hard to imagine a version of "Lotus Blossom" as powerful as the almost casual solo piano one that appears on ...And His Mother Called Him Bill. And for all the great instances of "Mood Indigo," none comes close to the Okeh version, which, incidentally, actually derives some of its beautiful creepiness from the recording technology itself (it's the same phenomenon in black and white films; a technological "limitation" becomes a part of the aesthetic). Of course, there are more (and more famous) examples from the world of rock: "Like a Rolling Stone" is one of those tunes that only seemed to work at one specific moment in the context of its original recording session (as Greil Marcus has argued).

2. Issue the second: the idea that the "lo-fi" aesthetic is verboten amongst those of the jazz persuasion. This is actually true, at least in my experience, but I want to bemoan it with all of the sense of tragedy I can muster.

I don't see lo-fi so much as a question of cost -- strictly in terms of "man hours," a competent jazz quartet recorded by an expensive engineer with all of the best gear in a nice room can probably get their record over and done with long before (and thus at a lower price than) their endlessly-fiddling post-rock "home studio" comrades. The "fi" in "lo fi," of course, refers to "fidelity" (aka "authenticity") and this is where I start to ponder the situation. It should be obvious by now that I adore the sound of acoustic instruments, and the possibilities you get when you assemble a lot of them together in a room -- clearly, if I didn't, I could do what I'm doing with the IJG much more cheaply with some sort of elaborate keyboard/guitar setup. But I have never understood why jazz records are held up to the standard of verisimilitude above all else -- why they strive to create the impression that somehow there is no studio, and why they altogether miss the artistic potential recording technology has to offer.

The studio is just another creative device, like a key, or a time signature, or a horn. But it's as if we jazzers see it as purely an inscription tool, and aren't the least bit curious about what all of those freakin' buttons and dials can do for us.