...the adventure ends

(Not really, of course, I just like these little symmetries in my headings...)

Actually, for me, the tour was extended by a few days, since I had to stick around in Jersey for family stuff. Made it back to PDX late last week, and was finally greeted by the snow that I was expecting to plague our visit eastward.

I'm exhausted as hell, so I doubt this will be the Big Important Post in which I sort out what it all means. But at least I know that such a post is called for. Excuse the cliche, but something special happened to the group on this tour. I'm not yet sure what it was, or how it happened, exactly, but we got a glimpse of the prize, and boy, was it sweet. Especially since it has been such a long time coming (20+ years for me, if you start counting from the moment I first committed myself (in a manner of speaking) to music as a "career"), and especially since the overall process has involved much more work than I would have been saddled with had I just decided to give in and become a lawyer like my folks always wanted.

The key word this time was turnout. We had packed houses for every show. Lord knows we've been on the road before, but in the past things have always been hit and miss with respect to audiences -- no matter how much promotion I did, there would always be at least one shittily-attended gig, usually more. The mostly-CA tour we did in August of 06 was typical: we had a fun, crowded show at our Club Tropical homebase (RIP); a materially rewarding but otherwise very stressful pair of gigs at the Carson City festival (one was enthusiastically received, the other was not); a quirky, half-full show in Oakland; and a truly depressing, very lonely evening at the (aptly named) Empty Space in Bakersfield. The band took it all in stride, for the most part, and I guess I counted that trip as a success overall. But deep down I knew that things had to get better soon.

This time out, for reasons I don't yet understand, every performance was like a slow, sweet, deep hit of some wondrous new, wondrously gratifying drug. Put another way, though I continue to go into debt for this group, I have never gone into debt so damned happily. The way I see it, there are four elements to making the band into the viable entity that could actually become our dayjob: good charts, good players, good audiences, and good bread. The first element has, I suppose, been in place more or less since we finally stumbled into our own sound, post-Star Chamber. The second has always been there. Now it appears we have some momentum with our audiences, so I'm hoping that the material side of things is not far behind. (My big fear at the moment is that the next tour won't live up to (or surpass) the standard set by this one. But maybe I'll save that subject for the Big Important Post.)

The personnel for "Industrial Jazz on Ice," incidentally, was not only good, but exemplary. The sax section (always the most, uh, fluid part of the group) turned out to be something of a dream lineup, with Damon Zick, Evan Francis, Beth Schenck, Cory Wright, and Brian Walsh as the mainstays, and Ben Wendel, Dan Pratt, or Tony Gairo brilliantly subbing on tenor 2 where necessary. (Zick and Walsh also doubled as second driver for tour van number 2, so they get extra acknowdgment and thanks here.) The trumpet section, far more stable historically, were all able to do the tour (thanks in part to the fact that Phil Rodriguez had recently moved to Brooklyn, and the fact that Tiner was going to be out east anyway because of his own tour in early January -- conditions that left enough money in the budget to bring out Dan Rosenboom (our third trumpet / resident high-wire artist)). The bone section was the big wild card, because none of the regulars were going to be present. But there too luck was on our side, as Ben Griffin (the guy who did most of our shows) turned out to be more or less perfectly suited to our schtick (his solo on "Fuck the Muck" killed every time), and Alan Ferber and Mike Hood were pretty goddamned good at it too. It may have been the rhythm section who ultimately defined us for the neophytes, of course: between Oliver Newell's distinctive and crazy dancing (I've no idea how he managed to play and gyrate at the same time, but this element of his performance (or perhaps just the extremes to which he took it) was quite new); Jill Knapp's emergence as the group narrator / chorus / audience liaison (I swear she has an unparalleled ability to allay the fears of first-time listeners, with a trademark grin that seems to warmly say "I know this sounds weird to you, but trust me, you're gonna love it"); and Dan Schnelle's clairvoyant ability to lock in to my time and whip the rest of the group into shape (plus, he wore a crab hat).

Anyway, the week itself went something like this: I arrived in Jersey a few days in advance of the proceedings, sans band, sans wife and daughter. I was hoping to get my head in order and put out the various fires that always seem to appear in the moments before a tour.



If I sewed them all together, I could make a helluva quilt.

Luckily, there was nothing to compare with the last-minute gig cancellation that made our first east coast journey such hell for me (thanks, CBGB). Though I did get a bit of a scare late on Sunday evening when I received a voicemail from Evan informing me he had missed his plane -- this was followed shortly thereafter by a text message, also from Evan, letting me know he had worked it out and would be in town about 12 hours later than expected, but still in time for rehearsal (all hail Jet Blue). That's one of the many amazing things about Evan -- he seems to have an uncanny ability to elegantly find his way out of any tight spot you can imagine. (That's true both musically and in general.)

I won't say I really got to enjoy those three or four days of comparative solitude and tour prep time -- too anxious -- but I did get to check in with the east coast Durkins, and snag a wee bit of quality time with a few old friends. I also spent time pondering my Mom's CD collection, which included recordings by Celine Dion, the Three Tenors, Yanni, Josh Groban, Kenny G, and, uh, the Industrial Jazz Group. (Gotta give her mad props for hanging on to the IJG records I send, though who knows whether she ever actually listens to them.)



Next stop: PBS.

I also gleaned some much-needed perspective when I forced myself to read through much of the poetry and other writing I had done in high school and as an undergrad. All of this had been neatly stashed (and catalogued!) in a large bookcase in my old room. What a superabundance of self-pity and other peurile crap fills those pages! What bombast! Still, I guess I'm glad I resisted my impulse to burn it all before I moved to LA in 1995 (it's probably good to revisit one's personal hell(s) once in a while).

Things couldn't have gotten off to a better start for the tour proper than they did with our gig at Chris' in Philadelphia (Jan 10). This despite the fact that the group was still a little out of shape musically (as I recall, there was at least one near-trainwreck on the bandstand). Chris' may be the first legit jazz club we have ever performed in -- a cozy venue with a swanky vibe, where they officiously insist on throwing away the fries left behind by paying customers (even though hungry itinerant musicians might be willingly partaking of said fries, which after all just happened to be lying around on one of the tables). I don't remember much about Philly from my childhood, but if I had known it was such a culturally vibrant place (as it at least seemed to be on Sansom Street) I would have made a point of trekking down there more often. Anyway, somehow we fit right in, in spite of the upscale ambience, and (thanks in part to the promotional energies of Jill) we drew a sizeable and enthusiastic crowd. I barely had room to maneuver in front of the band, in fact. And yes, the rumors are true: for part of the show I wore a drum major's hat that Jill had dug up somewhere, but it proved so uncomfortable (hard plastic digging into my bald scalp) that I soon scrapped it.

We were followed by the infectiously sassy Hoppin' John Orchestra, sort of the house band at Chris', and the brainchild of Mike Hood, a kindred spirit if there ever was one. Mike started out as an IJG fan because of our ill-fated Star Chamber record (in 04 he contacted me out of the blue just to tell me how much he liked that one). But with the experience of this tour, I'd like to say I can count him among my east-coast-music-community-friends. And Hoppin' John gets extra props for letting us use their gear for this show. My only regret is that we weren't able to stick around to catch their entire set.

The next day (Thursday, Jan 11) I woke up to a much-needed hug from Thandie, whom I hadn't seen in nearly a week. (I had received a much-needed hug from Daphne the previous evening when we returned from Philly -- the two of them had flown into Newark Airport at around the time of our downbeat at Chris'.) This is probably where I should acknowledge my deep gratitude to these, the most important people in my life -- Thandie for stoically putting up with more travel than any two year old should be forced to deal with, and Daphne for being the amazingly understanding, supportive person she is. I swear, though D. is usually the last to hear each new IJG tune (given the demands of her crazy work / parenting schedule), if it weren't for her patience, or her (I'm sure totally unintentional) influence on my writing (the key to a lasting relationship: a shared sense of humor), the IJG would never have come this far.

This was going to be the group's busiest day, given that we had two performances scheduled. (What? You say you want to catch some of the other things going on at conference today? Ha ha ha ha ha!) The first, our IAJE hit, was scheduled for noon sharp (only the second time we had ever played this music publicly while the sun was still out). People have repeatedly asked me how we managed to snag a performance slot in the conference, and until recently, I haven't been able to explain it except to say that I sent in an application (thanks to the gentle urging of Damon). Now I understand that there was something of a disagreement over whether we should have been allowed to play at all. Apparently, we have an advocate within the IAJE organization: Joel Leach, a past president who really went to the mat for us. It's amazing what a single person can do: we owe Joel big time, especially if the various opportunities that seem to be coming from IAJE actually pan out (more on those later).

Anyway, I'm told we caused a bit of a stir with our show. Made a few new friends (hello, Cassandra and Erik!), finally got to meet the amazing multitasking IAJE staff assistant Jennifer Dean, whom I had been bugging about conference-related details for months (Jennifer: if I ever make enough scratch at this to be able to afford a personal assistant, consider yourself hired), and got a plaque. More importantly, Daphne and Thandie caught the show too -- this was Thandie's first live experience of her Dad's crazy music, and I do believe we made another fan (she thought we were too loud but she wanted to get up on stage with us anyway).

That evening we played a set at a one of the more idiosyncratic venues we've ever been in, a space presided over by two of the bravest cats I've ever met (one of which slept away most of our set on top of a huge speaker located behind the bar). That's right, I'm talking about Goodbye Blue Monday, located in the otherwise desolate Bushwick section of Brooklyn (shout out to Mike Baggetta for scheduling this one). I must admit that there was a certain degree of stress beforehand. Although Shayna Dulberger had kindly agreed to allow us to use her bass amp (thanks, Shayna!), I was unsure whether we were going to have a drumkit for Schnelle or not. A few hours before we actually played, KT was able to convince Lukas Ligeti (that's right, the son of this guy), with whom he was also playing (in the same venue on the same night -- now there's stamina for ya), to let us use Lukas' rig. Thanks, fellas! (Now can one of you tell me definitively how to pronounce "Ligeti"?)


Hello, Brooklyn!

Probably my favorite moment of the GBM set, incidentally, was at the end of "Fuck the Muck." As anyone who has seen us in the last year or so knows, that tune concludes with a strange little hymn, sung by various sections of the group in (ultimately) four-part harmony (or something like it). The hymn is in 3/2 -- not quite a waltz, but nevertheless an odd time signature. The GBM audience, however, decided to clap along on the offbeats as if the thing was in 4/4 (or, I guess, 4/2). The improbable outcome of this was that the audience ended up clapping on beats 2, 1, and 3, in a time signature of 3/2, for maybe 1-2 minutes. I'm not exactly sure how musically sophisticated they were, but I'm fairly certain this is something they wouldn't have been able to do if I had tried to explain it to them beforehand. And that there in a nutshell is the beauty of "avant garde party music."

On Friday (Jan 12) we made our first foray into Massachussetts (barely missing the rush hour traffic out of Manhattan) at a venue called the Java Hut, located in Worcester. It was a double -- no, triple -- no, quadruple bill with Tom Lubelczyk's delightfully hardrocking AmericanMusicRevolution.com (and you thought "Industrial Jazz Group" was hard to fit onto a T-Shirt), plus two much more low-key performers who I didn't really get to concentrate on because I was busy working out hotel issues for the night. As with the Brooklyn show (and later, the Pittsfield show), we had to drop three players to fit into this venue (bone 2, tenor 2, and trumpet 3)... and we were still sprawled out like some kind of obscene jazz blob. We also had to cut our set a little shorter than I would have liked, due to the double-booking that led to the quadruple lineup (at some point I thought about suggesting a 4-band jam to close out the evening, but as it turned out we were lucky that everyone got to play a short set of their own). Still, for us, this was the show where things really started to come together musically. I think it was also the first set where I truly sweated -- strange as it sounds, perspiration has become one of my personal indices of whether or not a performance is actually successful. (If I'm sweating, I'm losing myself in the music somewhat, which means that things are sounding more or less right. Right?)


It's called the Java Hut, not the Java Mansion.

Ah, Worcester. Who will ever be able to explain your mysterious pronunciation? (I'm put in mind of Eddie Izzard's joke about the pronunication of "herb": "You [Americans] pronounce it 'erb,' and we [Brits] pronounce it 'herb.' Because there's a fucking 'h' in it.") I didn't really get a good feel for this city: we arrived after dark, and left before noon the next day. But I won't let the worst chicken parmesan I have ever eaten ruin my impression; we'll definitely be back. Again, mad props to Tom for setting up the show (sort of against the odds, really, as we were originally shooting for Boston, which turned out to be going through a bit of a dry spell venue-wise) and for hooking us up with pretty much all of the gear we needed. (Although I did get to bring the once-mighty axe of my youth, a vintage Yamaha DX-7 ("Glory Days," anyone?), now sadly rusted and splashed with catpuke and who knows what else. Still, it more or less worked, and brought a certain, uh, charm to the performance.)

On Saturday we trekked on over to Pittsfield, MA (about as far west as you can go without venturing into upstate NY), and played a throughly enjoyable matinee show at the very sytlish Lichtenstein Center for the Arts, where, despite some sound issues (to my ears, we came across extremely bright and somewhat distorted) and the presence of implied dirty words -- both potential liabilities because there were kids and elderly folk in the audience -- the Pittsfieldians absolutely ate it up. In fact, I think we all basically surprised each other -- I was still a little flabbergasted that this gig had come together (it was set up very much at the last-minute, almost accidentally, and without a lot of promotion or prep work until about ten days beforehand), the band was surprised that people actually came out (in droves), and the audience was surprised that we lived up to the hype. The tightness that had emerged on the preceding evening really locked in now (except on "What's in Anne's Icebox," which never really came together for this tour, and was subsequently dropped for the next evening's performance). Plus, I started to expand my between-song patter (such as it is). In general, a splendid time was had by all.

Incidentally, I learned that Pittsfield is home to Ed Mann, the celebrated Zappa percussionist. In fact, it turned out he had studied with the gentleman who lent us his drum kit (thanks, Art!) -- a guy I would never have pegged as a Zappa fan, but there you go. Megan, our wonderful host, actually gave him a call when she took us out to lunch after the show (!); she wanted to see if he'd like to come over and meet us. Turns out he was on tour with Project/Object, so no dice. But it seems like every tour has to have some sort of Zappa connection, and this was a particularly nice one.

Thanks also to Andy Kelly for the use of his bass amp and PA.



"Late Lunch of Champions" (Thank you, Megan!)

We made it back to NYC late that night. I'll skip the part about getting lost (and nearly running out of gas) in the wilds of western MA / upstate NY, because, as Tiner pointed out during that little detour, it was merely annoying; it wasn't the sort of scary-in-a fear-for-your-life-kind-of-way that we had once experienced in a seedier section of Berkeley, CA.

Anyway, in the context of all this wonderment and fun (not the wonderment and fun of getting lost in western MA / upstate NY, but the wonderment and fun preceding that), it's really saying something to flag the final gig (Jan 14 at the Bowery Poetry Club, with Darcy James Argue's Secret Society) as the highlight of the tour. To my mind, it was a perfect pairing for an evening of "new jazz." For one thing, I'll agree with Tiner and Jill: by most reasonable criteria, it was the best show the IJG has ever played. But the Society really killed it too: what a beautiful, graceful marriage of the complexity of a symphony orchestra with the swagger of a jazz ensemble. And it was nice to bask in the glow of the east-meets-west-mutual-admiration-society that seemed to spring up between the two ensembles in the aftermath. I suspect that it's very rare that that sort of thing happens outside of an institutional context like a festival or a school; I'm beyond proud to have been part of such an aberration of protocol. (Actually, my role was minimal: all I really did was suggest the bill -- Darcy did all the legwork and reconnaisance (gracias, Darcy).)


"No, I'm not going to eat that. Are you going to eat that?" (The big question preceding our BPC hit.)

The evening was personally important to me, too, because I learned a lot by watching Darcy work (he's got it down to a science), and hearing his music live for the first time (I had been immersing myself in it for months through the wonders of the internet; you should too). Our bands articulate two very different answers to the same question, and as I sat there listening to the Society after our set I experienced an unusual moment of clarity and artistic self-awareness -- but both of these were tempered by a genuine awe at the sounds that were emanating from the Bowery stage. Darcy is the real deal, and I am truly honored that we got to share the bill with him and his amazing group.



One to watch: the Secret Society does its thing.

On that note, one of the great coups of the evening (and, perhaps less emphatically, of the tour as a whole) was an affirmation of what I had always suspected: that audiences are smart enough to be able to absorb multiple approaches to music-making simultaneously -- something that might not be immediately apparent if you subscribe to the jazz battles of recent years. Progressive, traditional, east coast, west coast, noise, melody, art, pop, Wynton Marsalis, Ornette Coleman, what the fuck? It's all just music, and the real question, as the wise Mr. Ellington knew, has always been: is it good or not? I have always believed there are plenty of people in the world with big enough ears to take it all in -- indeed, I have staked my career on that assumption, given the easy eclecticism of my own taste -- and this show provided a nice validation.

Lots more to shake out of this tour... watch this space for updates.

Thank you for your patience...

Spent most of last week working on the tour wrap-up post. Meant to get it up early this week, but then Thandie got sick, then I got sick, then Daphne got sick. Believe me, you don't want any more details. Anyway, the upshot is that there has pretty much been a communications blackout since last Saturday...

We're through the worst of it, however, so you can expect something more substantial from me very soon. (This goes for you emailers and myspacers too.) In the meantime, have you heard this?

Industrial Jazz On Ice!

(Note: for obvious self-promotional reasons, we're gonna keep this up top until mid-January, although new posts will continue to appear below.)

IJG January 2007 East Coast Tour:Industrial Jazz On Ice!

Jan 10: Chris's Jazz Cafe (8 PM, Philadelphia, PA); with Hoppin' John Orchestra.

Jan 11: IAJE (noon, NYC). In the Sheraton Hotel's Empire Ballroom.

Jan 11: Goodbye Blue Monday (8 PM, Brooklyn); with Kris Tiner / Mike Baggetta Group.

Jan 12: Java Hut (8 PM, Worcester, MA); with Tom Lubelczyk's AmericanMusicRevolution.com.

Jan 13: Lichtenstein Center for the Arts (2 PM, Pittsfield, MA).

Jan 14: Bowery Poetry Club (8 PM, NYC); with Darcy James Argue's Secret Society.

Can't make one of these? Click here to find out how you can donate to the cause.

Thanks for reading!

...the adventure continues...

Ain't no way I can compete with Tiner, whose road blog of this tour pretty much nails it. I'll have more to say soon about what's been happening, but for the time being I'll pass along these pix... unhelpfully unannotated. (The short review of the proceedings thus far: we're having a blast.)

The adventure begins...

Okay, so I'm heading out to the east coast as I type (blogging on the road for the first time ever... via free wireless from the friggin' airport no less! ...what a wonderful city PDX is). Tour stuff begins tomorrow (with a vocal rehearsal). I'll do my best to check in as much as possible, with pix along the way too perhaps.

Yee-haw!

To blog or not to blog

So apparently I'm not the only one who was annoyed by Time magazine's gesture toward populism (re: the "Person of the Year: You" issue). Perhaps the most eloquent diss came from (no surprise here) Frank Rich. I ain't a-gonna find the link now, but Rich's take on the whole thing was in Christmas Eve's NYT, and is, like most of what he writes, well worth a read. A favorite line: "The magazine's disingenuous rationale for bestowing its yearly honor on its readers was like a big wet kiss from a distant relative who creeps you out."

One thing about the piece stuck in my craw, though. Rich's argument is basically that the rapid growth of internet technologies like YouTube and blogging help insulate us from more significant events like the war in Iraq. He puts it this way: "As our country sinks deeper into a quagmire -- and even a conclusive Election Day repudiation of the war proves powerless to stop it -- we the people, and that includes, yes, you, will seek out any escape hatch we can find. In the Iraq era, the dropout nostrums of choice are not the drugs and drug culture of Vietnam but the equally self-gratifying and narcissistic (if less psychedelic) pastimes of the Internet."

This is a variation of an argument I've heard before -- usually from those with hard-won and well-established forums for their own self-expression. In general, I feel compelled to dismiss it. Sure, blogging and YouTube are diversions, and somewhat onanistic (in both the literal and figurative sense). But it seems unfair to fault them for providing an outlet (which can admittedly range from serious to shallow) for the global vox populi, particularly when both technologies were involved in the above-referenced election. (Yes, that election hasn't yet changed Iraq policy, but it's the closest thing we've had; its failure in that regard may finally wake people up to the notion that the only way to stop this war is to fire Bush.) Strangely, Rich seems aware of the political impact of blogs too -- at least we know he reads the Huffington Post, which he cites in the course of his essay (for its own critique of Time).

Notwithstanding my kneejerk defensiveness of the Internet, where I'll be the first to admit I spend far too much of my time, Rich's piece also made me wonder: why do I blog, anyway? I started this thing over two years ago now (good gawd, has it been that long?), mostly as a companion experiment to my then-dayjob at the IML; a dayjob in which I was supposed to be investigating new media technologies and their relevance to education. It has taken awhile, but I suppose I have finally settled on a "formula" for the thing (not my formula exclusively, by any means, but rather something cobbled together from multiple sources): to wit, JTMOU is some weird combination of IJG diarizing / record-keeping, personal reportage (mostly concerning the experience of fatherhood, but also commentaries on broader aspects of west-coast living), somewhat incestuous linkages to other bloggers (musicians and friends), occasional third-person glances at culture and politics, and the obligatory "check out this cool interweb thingy" (link, video, etc.). All relayed through the bombastic persona of "Durkin-the-composer."

Still, why do it? Taylor Ho Bynum (yet another guy who deserves a slice of your internet attention span) recently had an interesting post on the under-recognized genre of music literature. It got me to thinking that my own uneasiness about blogging (such as it is) has a lot to do with the fact that while I remain addicted to reading and writing about music, I have simultaneously come to see most (maybe even all) of it (fiction, non-fiction, whatever) as more or less completely irrelevant to the subject matter at hand. Words can never suffice, where music (or musical experience) is concerned. (Hence my decision to stop writing reviews for All About Jazz -- with each piece, it became more and more apparent that my subject matter was the act of reviewing itself, rather than the music, per se.)

Also apropos of the uneasiness, there's this phenomenon: the more time one spends in the "blogosphere," the more it starts to feel "real." And yet, to adapt a phrase I use as a headline on my personal MySpace page: some of my best friends (and some of the best musicians I know, jazz and otherwise) don't blog (hello, Jim Carney!). Some refuse on principle, some don't have the time, and some just don't like to write. All legitimate objections: but are these cats gonna be overlooked by some future wave of uber-hip music scholars? More importantly, from a selfish perspective: why am I wasting time writing this piece when I could be working out more of the many remaining details for the upcoming IJG tour?

Well, to turn it around, the community-building benefits of blogging are obvious. And it is worth pointing out too that there is something about this particular internet pastime -- especially when it comes to arts-oriented blogs -- that speaks to the dispersed, sprawling welter of twenty-first century culture like no other medium. Sure, it's hard to keep up, but that's the point. "Dispersal" is the flip side to "empowerment," after all.

Blogs seem to point toward a world in which, because of the sheer number of educated and eloquent voices, it becomes impossible to sustain anything resembling an institutional, stable, monolithic art canon (that's a good thing, says I). Unlike political blogs, arts blogs need not necessarily be driven by a search for "truth" (or perhaps it's just a different kind of truth). F'r'instance, TBP's recent music survey opened with the caveat that the answers were to be "subjective" -- but that was a little redundant, 'cuz how could they be otherwise? That was precisely the fun of the thing, as I saw it -- use the medium to collectively sketch out the vast field of available music, and give us all a sense of our many commonalities and differences as listeners and producers. (The differences may actually be where the action is: it's a genuine pleasure (and learning experience) to work out aesthetic disagreements with a trusted musical ally and friend, or to notice that sort of discovery happening elsewhere.)

Could a conventional publishing vehicle (the LA Weekly, say) do all that?

* * * * *

Incidentally, for those of you who are new to JTMOU, here, in no particular order, is a recap of what I think are 2006's more interesting posts (read: these are the posts that took the longest to write):

Leo McClusky's "Look at you with all the blinkin' lights!"
(episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Sucker Punch

Great Grande Mothers

Aggy We Hardly Knew Ye

Birthdays, Travel, Stock-taking

Mortality, Immortality, and Critics

Girl From the North Country

IJG August 2006 Tour

So, "wha happen"?

Turn, turn, turn

North by Northwest

Five years on

Bernie, we hardly knew ye (The comments on this one are more exciting than the post itself.)

Getting and Spending

Varia

Ode

It's about freakin' time

Old man winter

Survey Says

Three months in the life of a bandleader

In defense of fun

Pomp and circumstances

Fuck ringtones...

...I'm going to start writing music for these.



That's right: musical condoms. Yet another unforseen benefit of the demise of the Soviet Union...

(Thanks to Anne Bartow over at Sivacracy for the link.)

Ringtones are all irritating

I know, I know. I've been spending too much time on YouTube. I swear, it's only cuz Time Magazine told me to. (Can I just digress here for a moment and mention how irritating I find that whole Person-of-the-Year-2006 thing? As if somehow grass-roots, independent communities never mattered until now?)

Anyway, Jill hipped me to the above video. Fucking beautiful, it is.

Incidentally, there's also a Birmingham (i.e., British) Complaints Choir, but they're not as good, in my opinion -- for one thing, they're less able to keep the straight face necessary to make the lyrics work.

Here, then, is another example of the kind of thing I was trying to get at a few posts back: "serious" humor as an effective resistance strategy. In this case, the juxtaposition of "boring dreams" and too-long reference numbers (for instance) threatens to produce laughter and tears all at once: is this the hoped-for utopia of the 21st century?

Slings and Arrows

In case you thought "classical" music was all love and kisses... that's right, this is video of a recent booing incident at La Scala. The tenor, Roberto Alagna, walks off the stage (after remembering which way leads to the exit), and is replaced by, well, the other guy: Antonello Palombi. Palombi is out of costume, but nevertheless just happens to be waiting in the wings. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Somebody somewhere in this scenario (Alagna? the audience? Palombi? the lady interviewed after the booing footage?) is taking themselves too seriously. I can't figure out who...

(NB: Unless you speak Italian, you'll probably only be interested in the first 45 seconds of the video.)

Survey says

Why am I doing this? You know I generally avoid such things...

It started with a set of questions circulated by the Bad Plus. It coincided with the gradual process of unpacking and organizing my CD collection. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe it still is: you tell me.

Anyway, a few caveats:

1. I guess the survey wasn't meant to provoke comprehensive answers, but most dedicated musicians have the mania of antique collectors and baseball fans: we like making (and comparing) lists, and what's the point of a list if it's incomplete? In other words: it was painfully difficult to restrict myself to one or two responses in each category. One of the ways I was able to do it, however, was by steering clear, for the most part, of the obvious answers (hence the lack of Ellington, Monk, Mingus, Satie, Ives, and others; and the paucity of Zappa).

2. In general I tend to listen compositionally, by which I mean that for me the compositional element (to the extent that it can be distinguished) trumps things like sound quality or even performance skill. Of course, what is composition, really? Yeah, I know, it's an aesthetic problem -- anyway, indulge me for a moment as I use that term as a placeholder for my own listening proclivities.

GIVE US AN EXAMPLE OR TWO OF AN ESPECIALLY GOOD OR INTERESTING:

1. Movie score.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (Bernard Herrmann). The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (Ennio Morricone).

2. TV theme.

East Side / West Side (Kenyon Hopkins). Pee Wee's Playhouse (Mark Mothersbaugh... I think).

3. Melody.

“Idiot Bastard Son” (Frank Zappa). “Surf’s Up” (Brian Wilson).

4. Harmonic language.

"Lush Life" (Billy Strayhorn). Piano music of Alan Hovhaness.

5. Rhythmic feel.

“Slow Down” (Larry Williams). “Da Doo Run Run” (The Crystals).

6. Hip-hop track.

“Jennifa Taught Me” (De La Soul). “Hole in the Bucket” (Spearhead).

7. Classical piece.

String Quartet no. 1 (Leos Janacek). Requiem (W. A. Mozart).

8. Smash hit.

"Lay Lady Lay" (Bob Dylan). "Doo Wop (That Thing)" (Lauryn Hill).

9. Jazz album.

People Time (Stan Getz / Kenny Barron). Kennedy Dream (Oliver Nelson).

10. Non-American folkloric group.

I'll assume the word "folkloric" (as opposed to "folk") gives me a little leeway here:

Rustavi Choir (Georgian Choral music). Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens (South African mbaqanga group).

11. Book on music.

The Real Frank Zappa Book (Frank Zappa). Music Alone (Peter Kivy).

BONUS QUESTIONS:

A) Name a surprising album (or albums) you loved when you were developing as a musician: something that really informs your sound but that we would never guess in a million years:

I'll interpret this as something of a “guilty pleasures” category because I don’t think anything that really informed my sound would be surprising to the listener. So here are two albums I don’t want you to know I liked at one time:

Blue (Joni Mitchell). Sweeney Todd (Stephen Sondheim).

B) Name a practitioner (or a few) who play your instrument that you think is underrated:

If my instrument is the piano: Don Pullen, Chico Marx. If my instrument is a jazz ensemble: Duane Tatro, Tadd Dameron.

C) Name a rock or pop album that you wish had been a smash commercial hit (but wasn’t, not really):

Why would I wish such a thing? (I can certainly think of a number of these I wish had NOT become hits.)

Oh, I’ve got it! Song Cycle (Van Dyke Parks).

And another: My, I'm Large (The Bobs).

D) Name a favorite drummer, and an album to hear why you love that drummer:

Dannie Richmond (any Mingus record he plays on). In general, I love the way Dannie often sounds like he's about to lose it (the beat, the groove, his place in the form) -- but never does.

* * * * *

[Hey! I’m going to add a category, since 'tis the season and all that jazz:]

Name some Christmas music you can actually stand to listen to:

1. "Sleigh Ride" (Ronettes version).
2. "Jingle Bells" (Sinatra version (on A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra): worth it just to hear him sing "Jingle Bells, Jing-Jingle Bells." Also dig those hip, wacky backing vocals.)

And what the hell, a bonus:

3. A Ceremony of Carols (Benjamin Britten).

Old man winter

Ah, yes. This blog has gone so downhill in recent days that I've been reduced to writing about the weather.

Of course, I do have an excuse: we had a storm. It was a big storm. It would have appeared even bigger if you had lived in a weatherless place like LA for the last ten years.

Thursday morning things seemed docile enough -- for Portland in the winter -- but by the afternoon the wind was really picking up. At around 4:30, Daphne and Thandie made ready to run a few errands, but as they were heading out the door, things started looking, well, apocalyptic. I stopped them so we could at least check the news. Sure enough, all of the local broadcasters were in full emergency mode (you know, that weird breathless combination of "holy shit, look at that!" and "here comes a great story!").

I went out to pick up a few extra flashlights / batteries, making a beeline to the closest Fred Meyer superstore megaplex everything-mart. There were about four or five ominous flickerings-o-the-lights during the ten minutes I was in there, and each time one of those flickerings subsided I stupidly said to myself Well, good. We still have power. Let me get one more emergency item. (Cuz ya never know, we might just need that extra package of dried fruit to make it through the night.)

Sure enough, I was still in the Fred Meyer store when the lights went out for good. It was like being at a badly managed rock concert, sans the music. By the time I made my way outside (the FM registers remained operational: I guess nothing can stop capitalism), there were huge blue flashes going on in the hills behind the store. The rain was really driving now. The cars? Not so much. Took me about half an hour to travel the short distance to Dolph Court.

There were still powered-up patches in the neighborhood around us, but our street and its immediate environs were black. As I approached the house I slowed down and -- oh, hello, there! -- barely avoided running over the powerline that was on the ground directly in front of our driveway. I surveyed the situation, and realized that that fucker actually extended across the entire length of our part of the street.

Though I was fairly certain that I could have just driven over the mess (non-conductive rubber tires, dontcha know) and gotten into the house the conventional way, I didn't want to take any chances: what with the rain and the lack of streetlights, I couldn't get a good view of what had actually happened. I called Daphne to let her know what was up, and decided to backtrack, parking at the bottom of the hill, where things seemed safer. Then I came around the back way on foot, through some of our neighbors' yards and into ours.

We got situated with our candles and our craptacular dinner, and eventually were able to see that the culprit in the powerline incident (which Daphne told me had produced a tremendous boom) was in fact an enormous fir tree (probably over sixty feet tall) that stood out by the street at the very edge of our neighbor's property, and just adjacent to our driveway. Actually, the tree was more like a victim -- the real culprit was either lightning or wind. In any case, the fir was down but not out -- from our kitchen window we could see the silhouette of its hulking mass leaning across the street, like a strange silent blue-green ghost hovering in the storm.

It was about 1 AM when the power company trucks arrived, with their yellow floodlights and their cherry pickers and their chainsaws. It was pretty exciting actually (though in a bad-Steven-Spielberg-movie kind of a way), and since the hubbub had awakened Thandie, we took her out to the dining room to watch from the picture window. It was still raining.

All in all, we had a fairly sleepless and cold night (even though I was able to keep the fireplace going until about 4 AM, when the power came back on). But we made out better than most. The experience, mild though it was, really brought home the cool, awful (in the original sense of that word), adrenalizing power of nature. This has been a recurring theme of our move to PDX, and I must say, it's a welcome one: at its worst, the static LA atmosphere can induce a kind of wandering zombie-hood, while storms like this tend to remind you that you're alive.

Winter has stripped the trees, and on a recent sunny day we noticed that we have a somewhat awkward but nevertheless enjoyable view of the beautiful Mt. Hood -- there's a bad picture, badly enhanced, up on top of this post. I kept thinking about that mountain (and the three dudes who are currently still missing there) during the howlingest part of the storm, as I alternated between tending to both the fire and a good book. I later learned that some of the Hoodian gusts that evening exceeded 100 mph. Scary.

I was irritated by this. U2?

If any of you were brave enough to try those Bono cookies -- get ready to puke 'em back up again.

(Thanks to Ponty Lox for the link.)

Pomp and circumstances

The always entertaining Bob Stein at if:book blog recently linked to an interesting Marina Hyde article that appeared in the Guardian. The subject: the greed of rock stars, as expressed through the sledgehammer of recent copyright laws (and some that are still in gestation).

Hyde: "Rock stars, who sold themselves as anti-establishment, would too often have us anoint them the new feudal squires. It is an accusation that has been bandied about ever since these rebels deserted Carnaby Street for Epping Forest mansions, but these days seems more pertinent than ever. If they are not pursuing fatuous stratagems against underlings, they are attempting to extract charitable tithes from the public and redistribute them in the manner that they, musicians, see fit. [...] It is particularly easy, in this context, to sympathise with the anti-copyright-extension brigade's argument against children and grandchildren of artists earning huge incomes from intellectual property for which they never did a stroke of work. They are simply forming a version of the aristocracies they once cocked a snook at [...]".

It's hard to imagine where popular music as an industry is going to be in the next fifty years (and, since music doesn't happen in a vacuum, it's hard to imagine too the fate of "progressive" music -- if that's the term -- in that time). On one hand, the stubborn miasma of public discontent (or apathy, or distraction), coupled with the technological juggernaut (which I think will always ensure that information gets the freedom it so desperately wants), coupled with the inevitable consumer-bloc power of the next generation of music fans (who have grown up in the environment of downloading), coupled with the dispersal of canons and the emergence of the long tail, may mean that the days of MTV, American Idol, and Entertainment Tonight are numbered. Like the structural supports of the original aristocracy, these things, which seem fortress-like in their solidity, can eventually crumble.

On the other hand, one has to wonder, as per Bob Stein's suggestion, the extent to which America, which doesn't share Europe's long and bitter history with a real aristocracy, is paradoxically fascinated by the power and authority of an "entertainment class." Perhaps it's that drooling fascination that makes the subject of copyright so freakin' litigious. It might thus help explain why (for instance) Mariah Carey thinks she has a legitimate claim against porn star and ex-candidate-for-governor-of-California Mary Carey. What's next? (Harry Caray, you wanna get in on this from beyond the grave?) As Charles Isherwood put it in a NYT article about plagiarism lawsuits a few weeks back: "Doesn't it seem wearying?"

Yes. Yes, it does.

(By the way -- those are indeed Bono cookies in the picture above. Hyde has some funny things to say about the U2 frontman, so I couldn't resist...)

In defense of fun

The amazing Destination Out recently had a nice post on Dutch master Willem Breuker, whose music I must admit I have a weird affinity for, and who more than one observer of my own compositional ramblings has cited as a clear influence on the IJG. Odd, isn't it? I don't own too many Breuker albums (the featured tracks here were brand new to me), so I guess this is sort of like Zappa citing James Joyce in the liner notes to Freak Out... and then admitting that he had never read much James Joyce. I explain it like this: with certain artists, you sense a very strong resonance straight out of the gate. In my case, from the moment I heard it, Breuker's music made a kind of immediate sense. It's just that I haven't delved too far into the discography yet.

Little by little. These tracks -- especially "Driebergen-Zeist" -- only reinforce my initial impressions. Sure, Breuker has his Zappa-isms (I suspect the first part of the opening drum fill to "D-Z" is a quote of the famous beginning to "Peaches En Regalia") and his Weill-isms (consider the lovely saxes-in-octaves thing that happens at about 1:20; who else but Weill could have inspired that?). But if this music is retrospective, it's also retrospectively iconoclastic. At least that's how I understand the much ballyhooed break with the Instant Composer's Pool: rather than searching for wholly "new" compositional methodologies (in this case, approaches to improvisation), Breuker turned to traditional techniques (mostly through-composition for large ensemble) in order to focus on playing with what the listener already knew (and how!). Creative re-juxtapositions, brilliantly alternating between satisfaction and subversion of the listener's expectations: that's where this music is at.

The D-O guys do a beautiful overview of this stuff, though I can't help finding tidbits to cavil over. For one thing, the Wallace Stevens device didn't ring true for me -- Breuker seems to require a riff on e.e. cummings, or (much better) the prose writer Donald Barthelme. And then there's Chilly's argument that "The avant garde gets a bad rap for not having a sense of humor. Especially free jazz. This gives the lie to that notion." Maybe. Certainly some of my favorite "out artists" (Lester Bowie, Monk, Ornette, to name three) have moved me by (at least in part) cracking me up. But come on. When was the last time you actually laughed out loud at an "avant garde" performance? (I'm talking about a good celebratory -- and perhaps even tearful -- guffaw, not a snarky "I'm in the club" chuckle.) And -- more importantly --why does it actually take effort to imagine that laughter might be a relevant aesthetic response?

Some old French guy famously said that "life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think." But that's not quite accurate. When done right, comedy itself is suffused with emotion. And not just the emotions of "instantaneous thrills, like a good rollercoaster ride" (Chilly again). In the right context, comedy can be deployed in ways that are extremely serious (think Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, or the role of humor-as-resistance in the Holocaust). Even now, at this particularly dismal historical moment, it has been the comics and humorists (the Stephen Colberts and Bill Mahers and Onions of the world) who have succeeded in poking the biggest holes in the thick, scuzzy film that covers our political life.

For me, no matter how absurd or obscene Breuker's arrangements get -- and I for one will always argue that there is an important place for both absurdity and obscenity in art -- there also always seems to be room for the qualities that D-O holds in high regard, but does not hear in the Kollektief (Chilly's "heat-rending lyricism or spiritual uplift"). In "Driebergen-Zeist," that moment happens twice for me: the first time at 6:38, with its ecstatic descending figures, and the second time at 7:57, where Breuker finally makes good on a melodic promise that was introduced at 1:22. Brief though they are, these moments suggest that Breuker is up to much more than just a light-hearted shtick.

Three months in the life of a bandleader

Consider this entry, written a few weeks ago when I was in a particularly foul mood, as a personal testament to the oft-made claim that live music is dying a horrible death. It’s a blow-by-blow account of the sort of nonsense that has gone on behind the scenes as I’ve been booking our upcoming east coast tour. Which is not to say that I haven’t come across / worked with some wonderfully helpful people in the process (Darcy James Argue comes to mind, and Tom Lubelczyk, and Mike Baggetta, and Curt Howard, and Jill Knapp, and a few others). Still, I don’t know what it is, but the ratio seems to be really skewed toward the assholes and incompetents these days. It’s sorta like politics, I guess (you know the old argument about how the system drives away all of the truly qualified people?).

Keep in mind that what follows -- a sort of transcript of my attempts to book us into this one club -- is just one slice of the overall panoply of booking tasks for this tour. I was simultaneously going back and forth with numerous other venues (probably about thirty altogether) throughout the same period, in the hopes of maybe having four or five of them come through with gigs for us. Keep in mind too that I wrote this at a particularly desperate moment -- it appeared that we were going to have a very, uh, leisurely tour. Usually I’m able to maintain a kind of zen-ish calm in my role as booking agent for the band, but this guy really gave me a run for my money. Check it out:

September 6: I send an email to two east coast DJ friends asking for recommendations for places to play in NJ. They both resoundingly endorse a venue that will for the purposes of this tale be given an alias. Let’s call it “The Flouncing Boat.” Contact information is relayed, and I send out an introductory email almost immediately. Keep in mind that I am trying to book a date in January, which at this point is still four months away. Like a fool, I assume I am way ahead of the curve.

September 11: I receive a response from the booker at the Boat, who for the purposes of this tale will also be given an alias. Let’s call him Dickhead. Mr. Head requests that I go through the usual routine: send in a CD and press, and we’ll see what happens.

Ha! I’ve had a stack of press kits, a stack of CDs, and a stack of large envelopes, all ready to go since April. And in fact, Mr. Head, I already sent a package in to you as soon as I got your information from my DJ friends back on September 6. So you should probably have received it already. Like I said, ahead of the curve, right?

Dickie also asks if we have an audience out east. My reply is instantaneous (for you booking people who might not know, that means I replied right away): “Yes, we do have an east coast following. This will be our second trip out your way -- we toured NY / NJ / DE in spring of 2005, and at our NJ show we had around 60 people. I actually think we'll do a little better this time because of IAJE.”

September 14: I send a followup email to make sure Dickhead got the package of our materials.

September 19: I get a response which reads (and I’m quoting): “u did not reply to the question of a nj following //how many people can u pull into [the boat]?????”

Never mind the irritating use of letters for words (I thought only Prince was allowed to do that with impunity?). Never mind the excessive punctuation (do five question marks somehow signal greater curiosity than one?). The real issue is how did he miss my response to his question?

No worries. I will assume that I made some sort of mistake; I’m in no position to quibble, since I’m the one who wants the gig (read: I am at his mercy). I make this assumption even though I can easily go back and check my sent mail folder to see as plain as day that I did indeed give him information about our draw in my initial response.

Once again, I respond instantaneously, beginning with the following self-effacing nonsense: “Sorry -- I thought I had sent along another email but possibly I forgot.” I then proceed to re-articulate the relevant data, more or less exactly as in the email quoted above.

I get an uncharacteristically quick reply from Dickhead. (Woah! Maybe you do know what “instantaneous” means!) Here it is: “send 4 dates that could work 4u,,,asap.” Okay, if five question marks are confusing, three commas are even more so. But no matter -- I have this in the bag now, I can just feel it! I respond sometime in the wee hours on the morning of the 20th that we are available for the whole week of the IAJE conference. Hooray!

September 25: No response from Dickhead. The silence has motivated me to send him a “checking in” email to see what’s up.

September 29: More silence. I send out another email. Where is this guy?

October 4: More silence, another email from me. (Several times during this period, I also try to use the telephone to reach Dick. No dice. The recorded voice on the other end always tells me the number is no longer in service.)

October 13: The silence continues. Does he get paid for this? I send out another email.

October 15: Do you see a pattern here? (That’s right, I send out another email.)

I must clarify: my complaint is simply with the lack of a response, not the hypothetical content of that response, should it ever come. In other words, if Dick had gotten back to me within a day or two of my last email and said "Look, I've changed my mind. We can't book you because we don't like your music," I would have much preferred that to this inexplicable communication vacuum. Booking a tour is mostly about transforming variables (e.g., "we might be able to play this club") into concrete, reliable data (e.g. "this club wants us to play on this date or that date"), and then manipulating that data in such a way that you have an optimal schedule. But when there are only variables, and when they seem intent on remaining variables, you can't do much, and you get stuck in a kind of limbo. (And the longer you wait the more difficult promotion becomes -- but that's a topic for another post.)

October 17: It has been almost a month since our last contact, so you can imagine my joy when I see that I have a message from Dickhead in my inbox. I open it up. Cue my jaw hitting the floor. Here’s the missive: “STILL NO MENTION OF HOW MANY PEEPS YOU WOULD DRAW INTO MY CLUB/CANT CONSIDER A BOOKING.”

All caps! Are you serious? Are you?????????

My response is a little less generous than it was the last time he lost our information. I go so far as to point out the fact of that previous loss, forwarding him both of the emails I sent with answers about the question of a draw. I’m not rude, but I think I convey a sense of urgency, because once again he goes against the grain and actually gets back to me the same day with this: “SEND DATES AGAIN /THEY WERE DELETED DY MISTAKE/AND I WILL TRY TO HOOK U UP.”

I’m done commenting on the syntax, grammar, and so on of these fucking emails. I foolishly give Mr. Head the benefit of the doubt, allow myself to have hope anew, and restate the dates that we’re available in what I hope is one of the last emails I will ever have to send to him.

October 19: Oh, no. I’m not letting you get away, fucker. Here’s my courtesy follow-up email reminding you that you at least owe me the decency of a response, even if you aren’t going to book us.

October 23: Each time I send out one of these “Hi! Just checking in! What do you think about a booking?” emails (burying my annoyance under the rosiest demeanor I can muster) I have to include all the relevant information (availability, potential draw) because I just know this guy is preparing to lose it all again.

October 24: I’m really working it now. Two emails in two days! Both of them saying the same thing! Neither of them getting a response!

October 30: Again, I ask: what exactly do they pay this guy for?

November 9: There are still two months before we’re out east. Thus there is still hope, right?

November 14: A few days after my last email, I had gone back to my DJ friends to see if they knew what was up. Shortly thereafter I learned Dickhead had been canned, and was no longer booking at the Boat. (Hey, Dickhead, thanks for telling me.) I was therefore not surprised when I received this final (I hope) missive from him (sorry, I can’t resist quoting verbatim one more assinine email): “THE BOATBIS PROB GION UNDER OR BEING SOLD SOON /MAY HAVE ANOTHER VENUE /WILL KNOW IN A FEW DAYS /U DONT WANT DO THE BOAT.”

Well, whether I want to or not turns out to be irrelevant -- by the time I track down Dickhead’s replacement (who is also fairly slow in responding to emails from out-of-town musicians), the moment for setting up an IJG show there has passed.

So there you have it. Three months, sixteen emails (at least), a buck-fifty on postage, and a lot of stress; all of which seems to have been a more or less complete waste of my time. Whee!

Later that week, while crawling off to sleep in the bath, I have a vision of a time, perhaps hundreds of years from now, when bookers and musicians will realize that they are both actually after pretty much the same thing, and that a little civility can go a long way toward making sure it is achieved.

Ode

"To the Bird Who Flew Into Our Second-Story Picture Window Earlier This Week"

I.

Oh, bird.
Why did you do that?
Surely you noticed my bald head
as I sat on the couch reading a book.
Did that not alert you to the impending danger?
Shall we get a shade?
Poor little guy.
What kind of bird are you, anyway?
Several pretty yellow feathers,
and many more gray ones.
You're too big to be a finch, methinks.
Here's another question:
How am I going to get you off the lower roof?

As I stare at you, I wonder:
Are those Xs that were your eyes?
And are both legs really sticking straight up into the air?
'T'would be comical if it weren't so sad.

Going back to the fact of my bald head in the window
(You know, the thing that should have warned you),
I have to wonder further:
Was this self-inflicted?
My broken or bruised rib
(a story for another post)
My chronically aching back
Perhaps these are as nothing
To whatever birdy woes beset you.

If it matters to you
Wherever you are
You have conveniently provided my daughter
With her first real-world illustration
Of the mystery of death.
For this I must thank you.
Bird, bird, bird; bird is the word.

II.

Waking up this morning
I see your now-frozen body is still on the lower roof.
Ah, godammit, I must buy a ladder.

But no! What is this?
A murder of crows
Seem intent on carrying you off somewhere
And... uh... what?! Eating you?!

EEEWWW!!

Two bits

Gotta be quick (it's 4 AM, after all), but here you go:

1. lowercase lifestyle recently had an interesting post on P-Music. I'll let you decide for yourself whether the results are worth listening to (I for one enjoyed them), but I can't resist the urge to mention that I have long been skeptical of the old saw that (traditional) recordings (be they LPs, CDs, or whatever) are unchanging artifacts -- that view (often trotted out as a deficiency of recorded music) seems to overlook the (admittedly subtle) ways seemingly stable objects can appear to change depending on the context in which they are consumed. To take a banal example -- most recordings sound different depending on whether they are experienced in a car, via headphones, in the company of others, solo, and so on.

2. I recently relocated an old email in which my friend Alex Tarr pointed me toward this amazing post on X-Ray music (over at Kevin Kelly's blog). Holy cow! Talk about bricolage! Talk about the uncanny! And talk about fascism -- as fucked up as things are with the music industry nowadays, at least we don't have to deal with "music patrols." (Yet.)

Flashbacks and free associations

Just a moment ago, sitting in this comfy chair, listening to some music, I had two flashbacks.

Flashback the first was brought on by a late-night showing of the classic Eisenstein film Alexander Nevsky that I happened to catch the last half of the other night. Man, what a beauty. The first time I saw it (maybe fifteen years ago) I had just had my wisdom teeth removed and was spacing out on all sorts of pain-killers. I realize now that the thing is just as weird when seen straight. Strange, surreal edits, evocative panoramic images, and a killer, sorta creepy score by Prokofiev.

Flashback the second has to do with all this rain. That may be the number one question I get since moving to Portland: "Does it rain a lot?" Well, sure. I love it. Once, while still in my first or second year of high school (back when I was seriously considering filmmaking as a career) I wrote a sort of science-fictiony screenplay about a young man who lived on a planet where it rained all the fucking time. I imagined that planet in part because I wanted to live there, I guess. So maybe Portland is that planet. Home at last!

Okay. Enough reminiscing. More turkey, please.

It's tricky, alright

Can't imagine what is driving this lawsuit against Run DMC. Unless maybe it's the fact that capitalism makes assholes of us all.

Counselor Schultz has it backwards, by the way. Copyright wasn't created specifically for protection, but rather to provide "incentives" for producers, artists, writers.

"It's Tricky" really is an entirely different song from "My Sharona." It is driven rhythmically more by the rappers' (original) lyrics than by the (altered) Knack riff. In other words, while "My Sharona" has a melody and lyrics that follow the riff's rhythm pretty closely, Run DMC play with and around that rhythm in fresh and exciting ways. Not that one tune is necessarily better than the other; the point is only that they are different.

With "It's Tricky," Run DMC were simply riffing on a riff. And at a basic level, what else is the history of music?

Amateur

He can't play, but he can edit.

It's the timetable, stupid (or: It's about freakin' time, part 2)

It's really a pity Russ Feingold has bowed out of the '08 prez race. Here's the latest bit of (very welcome) logic and sanity from the good senator.

It's so simple, really. Allow me to quote the above-linked piece:

"My legislation recognizes that a target date for the redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq will help pressure the Iraqis to get their political house in order. Simply announcing when we will begin redeployment, without any end date, is unlikely to put adequate pressure on the Iraqis. [...] A target date isn’t just critical to our Iraq policy, it is essential for our national security policy. We cannot adequately focus on the pressing national security challenges we face around the globe when so many of our brave troops are in Iraq, and so many billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are being spent there. A timetable ensures that we can refocus our resources on fighting terrorist networks and on addressing trouble spots around the world that threaten our national security."

July 1, 2007: keep your fingers crossed.

My new motto

To be taken with the requisite grain of salt:

"There is nothing worse than cold coffee and warm beer."

It's about freakin' time

Man, I really got behind with the posting and the blogging, eh? I think it was Zappa who once said that "time is the thing"; that's my only excuse.

Music update: we were back in LA two weekends ago, and I managed to get some more tracking done for the new IJG album(s), which are, in any case, still pretty far from completion. Certainly nothing else will be ready for release this year. (If I had my way (read: if I had the cash) we would bang out each record pretty quickly, because I hate feeling like there is a backlog of compositions to be committed to disc. But alas, that's not the world we live in.)

Apropos of nothing: I absolutely love being in the studio. Almost any studio. If I could, I would live there. Okay, that's an overstatement, but I really do get off on the whole context -- the topography, the culture, the lingo, the heightened sense of perception, and, perhaps especially, the uncanny sense of being able to stop time -- which I suppose is one of the byproducts of looping a single performance over and over in order to evaluate, punch in, mix, or whatever. Yeah, time is the thing.

Incidentally (still), that "time-stopping" quality is particularly interesting when you're doing what is essentially a "big band project" -- cuz that's what the IJG has become, at least in terms of its instrumental structure -- via the more rock-oriented technique of overdubbing. With the exception of two moderate sized sessions (one with five and one with seven players), most of the personnel for the current crop of recordings have assembled and done their thing in groupings of three or less.

Anyway: far more important things happened last week, as we all know.

The evening before the election, just before heading up to Simi Valley for the second of the abovementioned sessions, I spent an hour or so with my good friend "Charlie" (of IML fame). We hung out for a while on the porch of the Santa Monica apartment he shares with his wife and two boys. The whiskey was flowing, and believe me, I would have partaken if I hadn't been on my way to the session (alas, I discovered that evening how incredibly great (and windy!) is the distance between Simi Valley and LA). But I had to content myself with the stimulating conversation, which inevitably wound around to the subject of politics. We were both a little anxious about what was going to happen the next day.

And as it turned out, Daphne and Thandie and I spent most of election day itself in the airport, trying to get back to PDX. We were a little desperate, in fact -- our brief reunion with LA had grown old fast, and now that we had finished all of our tasks for this trip, we were more than ready to get home. While making our way through security, I noticed Flavor Flav (of Public Enemy and now VH-1 fame) sending his famous clock through the x-ray machine. It seemed oddly portentous somehow -- about time, indeed.

And then, at some point while we were 30,000 feet above it, the landscape changed -- though none of us would really know about that until much later in the evening.

So what do I think of the Democratic "sweep"? After the initial giddiness and (hell, I'll admit it) the cheap satisfaction of watching petulant pricks like Tony Snow and Ken Mehlman get their various degrees of come-uppance -- there is the recognition that this is only the first step in a much longer process. In some ways, the damage has already been done. The election does not change the impression that Mr. Bush has been the "winner" all along -- having signed the death sentences of (so far) nearly 3000 American soldiers (kids, really) and many many more Iraqi civilians in order to follow through on his personal bloodlust against Saddam Hussein. For those people, and for others, like Malachi Ritscher, this election came too late. (Thanks, Darcy, for the link.)

The narrative that seems to have taken hold is that America was "duped" into going into Iraq, and now the Democrats, the new sheriffs in town, are going to give us a saner foreign policy. All well and good, and the sooner we get out, the better -- but there's a deeper, more accurate way to describe what has happened in the last few years. Many of us who actually paid attention in history class understood from the get-go that the prospect of forcibly establishing a democracy in a foreign society -- a society that hadn't chosen that path of its own accord -- was what the sages would call a really bad idea. I remember literal rioting in the streets in San Francisco when we were playing a gig there on the evening that this fucking war started. None of these folks were duped, I can assure you. They and many others knew this was going to be a fiasco from the beginning.

Now there's a subtle but very definite swoon running through the country as old man Bush -- you know, the one behind the first Iraq war -- seems to be taking over behind the scenes, pushing his son's insane administration back toward a more "palatable conservatism." Maybe that was the game all along -- a weird plan to check a few more items off the Bush family wish list: Bush 43 gets to "kick Hussein's ass," and Bush 41 gets a second term (or at least two years' worth). Let's not forget: Bush the elder may be more pragmatic than his son, but he is still an asshole. Let's not forget that it was his careless parading of American forces through the gulf region during the first war that provided Osama bin Laden with a key pretext. And, though one is tempted to surmise that Bozo the Clown would have been a better Defense Secretary than Rumsfeld (no offense, Bozo), let's not assume that Robert Gates is necessarily the best solution to that particular problem either. Two words: Iran-Contra.

(And by the way, shame on you, Tim Russert, for your pronounced fascination with the father-son story unfolding here. The tale may read like one of the Henry plays, but you sure ain't no Shakespeare.)

Goo Goo Ga Joob

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Thandie Durkin "eggman series." A delightful addition to any living room. Shall I start the bidding?

Eggman no. 1:



Eggman no. 2:



Egg family:



(Artist background: a 2-and-a-half year old who makes her home in Portland, Ms. Durkin learned to draw faces, eggmen, and four letters ("T," "H," "A," and "N") sometime in the last week. Her father can barely keep up with her.)

KZSU

Apparently the latest IJG record recently got a bit of good exposure from our friends at KZSU. We were in rotation for nine weeks, and we made the CMJ Jazz Top 10 Report the whole time (even holding the number one slot one week). Here's the breakdown, for those of you who are statistically-minded:

July 30 -- #4
Aug. 6 -- #5
Aug. 13 -- #4
Aug. 20 -- #1
Aug. 27 -- #2 (and #22 overall at the station)
Sep. 3 -- #3
Sep. 10 -- #7
Sep. 17 -- #6
Sep. 19 -- #9

I must admit that this was a bit of very welcome news, both because I've been a little disappointed overall with the reception Go Go! has received (I think it's easily our best and most original record, and so far, though people have liked it, they haven't exactly been bowled over (so sue me, I'm ambitious)), and because I've been pretty frustrated with the experience of booking this January 2007 East Coast Tour, which has been a little bit like pulling teeth (only three shows have been confirmed so far, and yet I'm trying to fill an entire week).

KZSU Jazz Director Craig Matsumoto published a quick sketch of the album, which is as good an introduction to this phase of our work as I've seen.

The things you learn

Peppers being broiled outdoors in a large cylindrical metal broiler (turned with a hand crank), on a crisp Autumn morning, at a local farmer's market, smell vaguely but distinctly like marijuana.

Zappa sighting

Heard "Peaches En Regalia" as bumper music on the Randi Rhodes show today, and was quite glad. It may in fact have been the first time I'd ever heard that tune -- or indeed, any Zappa -- on the radio.

I never quite understood why PER (or the Hot Rats album in general) tends to get whipped out as the quintessential FZ (it's the only FZ tune I know of to have made it into the Real Book)-- but I'll readily admit that it's a beauty all the same. To me it sounds like the perfect combination of self-effacing bombast and genuine joy.

I'm sure that's what this clothing company was thinking too. (That's right: the first thing I think of when I hear Zappa is fine men's and women's apparel.)

Rex's take

And here is Rex Butters' review of the new IJG album.

BTW, I wish I really did have a clown car.

Anyway: thanks, Rex.

News flash

Hey! Barack Obama is considering a run for president in '08.

He's a little late (like, by eight years), but who knows? Maybe he can help turn things around.

What do I mean? Well, of course there's the "buzz" that surrounds his career. But he really earned my admiration when he appeared on Sacha Cohen's Ali G show a year or two ago. Unlike most of the other (unsuspecting) guests, Obama came out of his interaction with Cohen pretty much unscathed -- that is, sans embarrassment or frustration. I guess when you don't have to protect a gargantuan ego from mischievous deflation, you do better in that sort of scenario.

Yeah, Obama seems to have all the old school "good guy" qualities: integrity, an ability to speak articulately, a sense of optimism, an identification with the little guy, a pretty wife... compare that with someone like Dennis Hastert, who, with his lumbering frame and his constantly-slobbering mouth, seems (like some modern-day Roman overlord) to physically embody the rot that infests Washington.

Wow, I really want to see how this movie ends...

Steveland Judkins, aka Morris

That's right, I'm talkin' 'bout Stevie Wonder. Got him on the brain tonight because I was recently turned on to Innervisions, one of the few good Stevie Wonder albums I didn't already own (though I was more than a little familiar with a few of the tracks on it). Turns out that this may have been his best ever. Who knew? (Well, apparently everyone but me.)

A few measures of SW's genius:

1. The lyrics, though generally admirable in terms of their content, are sorta amateurish from a purely aesthetic standpoint. But it doesn't matter, cuz the compositions (and the performances / recording techniques) are so astoundingly beautiful.

2. SW can get away with synths-pretending-to-be-real-instruments like no one else. (Witness the pseudo-strings in "Village Ghetto Land." Again, it doesn't matter, cuz the other musical ingredients are so strong.)

3. On band road trips, SW albums are generally in that elite club of recordings that are more or less guaranteed to meet with approval from everyone in the van.

And besides, he shares a birthday with my daughter (May 13).

Photo by Chris Walter

Getting and Spending

I'm in serious trouble. This week we discovered two local establishments that I sense are destined to take all my money: a massage therapy place and a used CD store. Both within walking distance, both down in the "village" section of Multnomah Village (which is the technical term for the area of Portland that we live in).

The massage therapy place was actually one of three such places, all within blocks of each other. The one that I went to is part of a "healing arts clinic" that also offers acupuncture and chiropractic work. What can I say? I had a great session there with Becca, who slowly and meticulously found trigger points I didn't even know existed, expending very little of her own energy in the process, and shunning the flashy repertoire that characterizes most LA therapists. Forgive me, but I can't help reading this as somehow exemplary of more general differences between LA and PDX. And speaking of those differences, get this: by the time I had arrived and filled out all of the necessary paperwork, I was about ten minutes late for the session, which was scheduled for 4 PM. Becca's question to me was whether it was alright if we went beyond 5 PM, so I could get a full hour session.

Was it alright if we went beyond 5 PM?! Holy crap, I love this town. In LA I would have been out on my ass by that time, whether I had been late or not.

Anyway, the used CD store is called Post Hip (you won't find it on the web, it's that small). Here's how the owner describes it in a free brochure entitled "The 2006 Portland Guide to Independent Record and CD Stores" (which lists -- count 'em -- 27 such establishments in the city): "Used Jazz Blues Classical Multicultural CDS. Hand-picked eclectic books cheap. Comfortable. Conversational. Gap-toothed amicable. Trendless commendable quality. Propitious prices. Munificent buying. Multnomah Village."

Indeed. Again with the comparatives (I'll get over this soon, I promise): I found that Post Hip kicked Amoeba's ass, despite the fact that the latter is a much more comprehensive, ambitious, and busy place. You see, the thing I like to do most at a used record shop is browse: an activity (some would say an art) that requires certain preconditions: a finite set of merchandise, non-pushy clientele, not too long of a line to get to the cash register, a sense of connectedness with the merchant. Amoeba violates all these conditions. It's like Costco for just music: it's great if you know exactly what you're looking for, but it's awkward and unweildy (and for some folks even frightening) if you just want to relax and explore. It embodies what Alvin Toffler called "overchoice," a phenomenon that (in the end) may be even more threatening to new music than American Idol.

At Post Hip, the parameters are doable. A tiny single-room shop in which I suspect the ideal shopping experience is to take frequent, fleeting dips into an ever-changing pool (can't wait to see what's on the racks next week). The proprieter / clerk (who Daphne is convinced must be independently wealthy, because he's surely got to be losing money with this joint) was jolly, even giddy. He seemed unwilling to let us leave when the time came. Not out of desperation or a desire to get us to buy more -- rather, he seemed genuinely, sort of irrepressibly friendly. How novel!

My haul included a copy of Ellington's SRO (a longtime favorite of mine that may even have been the first Ellington recording I owned, albeit originally in cassette form -- don't get me started on this one, but it's a live recording that swings like a motherfucker (thank you, Sam Woodyard), especially on the version of "Rockin' in Rhythm"); an untitled (or eponymous) Don Pullen / George Adams recording, originally released on Soul Note; a compilation featuring pieces by Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Lou Harrison, and Terry Riley (quite beautiful, and a hit with the kid; may need to comment on the liner notes in the weeks ahead); Herodotus' histories; and, I don't know, a whole lot of other stuff that I hope I have the time to actually sit down and enjoy someday.

Old movies never die

They just end up in a piece like this.

Thanks to Jeff for the link.

To hell with Dancing with the Stars, I've been watching this thing for the past two days.

Two reviews

Found these this week:

First, a very flattering take on the new album and the group in general at Jazzreview.com. Courtesy of Sheldon T. Nunn.

Despite the kind words contained therein, I feel obliged to correct a few of Mr. Nunn's statements: 1. we are not in "constant demand" throughout the states he lists (though I wish we were, and maybe someday we will be), 2. "the Industrial Jazz Group experience" is not "beyond comprehension," and 3. the latest CD does not rely on a formula that has gone "virtually unchanged in [our] six years together." In fact, with respect to the material on Go Go!, we're a totally different band from the one we were six years ago.

No need to dwell on these points, of course, and again many thanks to Mr. Nunn for writing such a positive review. But I mention the bit about the so-called "formula" because of the other thing I found this week: a writeup on Hardcore (our first album, released in 2001) that appeared in the electronic version of some east coast fanzine (the web version is called BLOG TO COMM).

First of all, fuck CBGB. I don't know the latest details on the whole fight to keep the club alive, and I don't really care. But after they served me up an enormous helping of grief and stress by cancelling the show we were scheduled to play there during our first east coast tour (June 2005) -- cancelling it, I should add, a week before the show was supposed to happen (remember, we're from LA -- that's a long commute) -- I've gotta say I don't have a lot of sympathy for them.

Needless to say we were never "front and center" at CBGB. But even if we had been, we wouldn't have been performing any material from Hardcore, which, while a good album that I am proud of, is admittedly more "in the tradition," and in any case is light years away from the sort of thing we're doing now. That's not to say that Mr. BLOG TO COMM (what does that title mean, anyway?) would be more interested in the kind of thing we're doing now, but, unless he were stone cold deaf (a possibility, I guess) he'd be hard-pressed to dismiss it as "old hat."

Hmmm. Am I being cranky?

Hoo boy

KT, you're gonna love this: Bob Dylan has been Billy Joeled by Twyla Tharp.

At least they left "Ballad in Plain D" alone.

Varia

Random bits of data pertinent to our second week in Portland:

1. I learned of the imminent demise of both "new music" series at Club Tropical (Cryptonight on Thursdays, and Ear Orchard on Mondays). The reason? Carlos, Club Tropical's owner, is selling the restaurant. Hard to say whether these series (these serieses?), which collectively make up a good portion of the lifeblood of interesting music in LA, will resurrect somewhere else. Probably -- the LA scene has always been something of a moveable feast. But given that CT has been the IJG's "home base" for the last few years, I have to add this particular development to the list of reasons I'm glad I got out of Los Angeles when I did. Sooner or later, the band was going to wither and die due to a lack of light.

2. Continuing with the botanical theme: Thandie and I spent at least three mornings this week raking leaves. Holy crap, it's Autumn! We never really enjoyed that season in "the Southland." Here, we've got lots of trees, and thus lots of colorful dried foliage lying around. Raked up a bunch of it and had a blast demonstrating to the kid the art of "leaf pile jumping."

3. And more: gonna have to learn how to take care of a full-on yard (I was about to say "a garden," but technically there are numerous gardens scattered throughout the property). That's right, urban Durkin is gonna have to develop a green thumb, right quick. I must say that I'm actually anticipating this, much to my surprise. I still identify primarily as a city-dweller (which is why I'm thankful that downtown Portland is a mere ten minutes away). But I have always enjoyed yard work -- at least the somewhat simple tasks I had to do as a kid (mow the lawn, rake the leaves, clip the hedge) -- because, strangely enough, I did some of my best thinking while engaged in it. When I was a kid, yard work ran a close second to walking in terms of providing a, ahem, fertile context for conceptual creativity.

One last twist on this point: now there is the added benefit of really feeling the resonance of the famous ending to Voltaire's Candide, where, after a series of unbelievably unpleasant run-ins with the worst of human nature, the hapless hero decides literally to focus on cultivating his own garden (the language is Voltaire's). I can feel the value of that now -- living in this increasingly horrific world, with its litany of problems -- I suspect that from this point forward, my own contributions, whatever they may be, will need to radiate outward from a carefully nurtured backyard.

4. What with the move and all, I had originally been planning a brief sabbatical from the group. Let me clarify: work on the new recording, and whatever new compositions might develop, would of course continue, but I wanted to step away from the drudge work of booking and promoting for the rest of the year. I sort of felt like I needed this for my own sanity. But with our upcoming trip east (for IAJE in January 07), there's just no way I can let down my guard. This will surely be our most complicated trip yet -- putting it together is sort of like the hardest game of chess I have ever played.

Of course, I remain optimistic that IAJE could pay off. But I also have to admit at this point that the show I am most excited about is our double bill with Darcy James Argue's Secret Society -- one of a handful of other big bands out there playing original music. Check out Darcy's blog if you haven't already -- he's a motherfucker composer, he writes (prose) well, too, and in general he's fighting the good fight.

North by Northwest

Well, here we are, in our new house, in our new city, in our new lives.

Been here since Monday, in fact. I brought up the rear of the caravan, providing transportation for (among many other things) our two cats. (Any of you who have ever traveled with cats know what that was like.)

I've had my handyman hat on since my arrival -- which so far mostly means that I've been doing a lot of painting.

The week before the move was fairly stressful. Played the last IJG gig of '06 at Safari Sam's on Thursday -- and it was sort of an anticlimax after the fun we had on our August tour. The band played well enough, though we were (in my opinion) seriously crippled by an unusually large number of subs. Further, the LA audience, which had come out in full force for our previous show (at Club Tropical), had seemingly retreated back into the warm comfort of a living room, a TV, and a beer. In other words, hardly anyone came out to hear us. All of this is quite frustrating, given that Safari Sam's is one of the coolest spaces we've ever had the opportunity to play.

Aside from the gig, pre-PDX week was full of recording sessions, as I continued to ready the material for our next album, The Art of the Mixtape, vol. 1. We got a nice chunk of work done, but it ate into valuable packing time, so I ended up having to delay my planned departure from 6 AM on Sunday to 3 PM on Sunday (an adjustment that also meant I was doing the trip in two days instead of one).

Anyway, so far, all our most optimistic expectations regarding life in Portland and our new house have been confirmed. Thandie absolutely loves the big-ass yard. Twice already the three of us have walked down to the nearest cafe for breakfast (a cozy little joint called Marco's -- stellar omelettes and coffee), a trip that involved following a "trail" (railroad ties set as steps into the side of a hill) through a mess of blackberry bushes. And twice now neighbors have popped over to welcome us -- one even brought cookies. Coming from the frantic lack of neighborliness that we found in LA, such acts appear extraordinary. They take some getting used to, in fact.

There'll be more details to relate in the weeks ahead, but for now I'm quite confident: this will be the perfect place from which to launch my plans for IJG, phase two (in which we finally are able to pay our bills by playing in said band).

My life this week

Packing, packing, packing, recording, packing, recording, recording, packing, performing, packing, recording, packing, getting in a car and driving to Portland.

Whew! I'll fill in the details when I actually have time to think.

Why Erik Satie is better than Lynyrd Skynyrd

There are 841 reasons, actually.

Redundant? No way.

By the by, it's worth noting that the instructions on the original score are actually conditional: ""In order to play this motif 840 times consecutively to oneself, it will be useful to prepare oneself beforehand, and in utter silence, by grave immobilities." In order to play it that way -- not that one should be expected to play it that way.

So kudos to Kenneth Goldsmith (the guy behind the recent performance, linked above) for taking liberties with this one.

(No, I haven't listened to all eight hours.)

Free Albums points to a good article on the man and the piece.

Why Lynyrd Skynyrd is not a great band

All of the ingredients are there, sure, but check this out:

"Well I heard Mr. Young sing about us.
I heard old Neil put us down.
Well I hope Neil Young will remember,
a southern man don't need him around anyhow."

Aside from the knee-jerk defensiveness of these lines, have you ever read anything so fucking redundant? Couldn't they have, like, dispensed with the same sentiment in a couplet or something?

Five years on

When I was at Drew University way back in the early nineties, earning my bachelor's degree in English and History, I went through a period when I was obsessed with two of the most disturbing events of the 20th century (not that there weren't plenty of those to choose from): the Holocaust and the Vietnam War. In my last real semester as an undergraduate, I took one particularly mind-blowing class (led by Dr. Ann Saltzman) on the psychology of the Holocaust. I think that was probably the first time I had heard the term "routinization," which in this context was used in reference to the majority of citizens under the Nazi regime, who may have initially been horrified by the actions of their "overlords," but who, as time went on, became anaesthetized to Hitler's violence. That is, though these citizens may not have explicitly approved of the gas chambers (for instance), they grew to accept them as part of the "new world order." It was that weird resignation, that weird casual refusal to take responsibility, that (many would argue) actually enabled the Holocaust to happen.

At around the same time, the first president Bush took us all into Iraq for Gulf War no. 1. What a crazy thing that was. Yellow ribbons (despite the extremely low casualty rate), full-page spreads in all the reputable news magazines, rah rah, we whupped 'em good, didn't we? I can remember being against that war too, getting into arguments with friends about it, convincing a few of them of the stupidity of it all. I was in the minority, alas. For my little east coast community, at least, Iraq 1.0 was kind of a purging of all the demons of Viet Nam (which was seen as "the first war American lost"). And even for me, an avowed pacifist, I had to admit that the swiftness with which we kicked Saddam out of Kuwait made me feel like, well, what the fuck... nothing can touch us, right? We've got it together as a country, even if we're being led by a jerk who often seemed like a parody of himself (believe me, Bush I made Dana Carvey's job easy).

I hated that war, and I hated the way that my family and neighbors seemed to think it was no big deal. But I was young, I was in college, and I was looking for a fight. The sad thing is that I didn't know -- none of us knew -- how relatively blissful that period actually was.

It occurred to me today that it's strange, very strange that we don't have national days of mourning for 9/11 and Katrina -- two of the most concentrated catostrophic fuckups in American history (conveniently packed into one godawful presidency). But then I wondered, if such official recognitions did exist, would they really make any difference? I can still remember everything about where I was and what I felt on Septmber 11, 2001 -- and I feel like I should be forcing myself to recall my own experience of that day as vividly as possible whenever the anniversary rolls around. Stoke the anger, I muse: maybe that will lead somewhere productive.

But I also feel as though, as Americans, we've gone through a process of routinization, responding as any sentient being would to a constant barrage of violence, lies, and affronts to decency: tune it out. Make yourself numb. This in fact is a psychological defense mechanism: it helps one to maintain sanity in an insane world. But it may also be the key insight of the strategists who got Bush II elected in the first place: in a mostly apolitical world, one can be as evil as one likes. In other words, create a context of constant evil, and evil itself no longer appears as an aberration. It is, instead, the way we do business.

Maybe this is where art can step in and actually be valuable. For instance: as I type I am watching Spike Lee's documentary on Katrina. Wow, it brings that disaster back with an unbelievable vividness. It's a merciless artwork that drives directly to the heart of the evil.

Man, I gotta do that too. Even in the midst of all the comedy in my own group, there has to be that arrow to the heart of evil. Otherwise what's the point, in a world like this?

Bernie, we hardly knew ye

Half-watched (a replay of) the Leonard Bernstein American Masters presentation on PBS (okay, so they're not total fuckups) the other night, and was quite inspired, in spite of myself.

What an interesting life this guy led.

I can remember quite distinctly the first time I heard the soundtrack to West Side Story -- it was in the basement of our house in Florham Park, NJ. I was maybe 11 or so, had just aquired my first cassette recorder (which I thought was the coolest thing in the world), and had made my own copy of the LP. We had this old-school yellow formica table down in that basement, and I was seated at it, trying to complete some dumb homework assignment or other. Alas, I couldn't stop checking out the music -- an early example of my inability to put what I needed to do above what I wanted to do. Play, rewind. Play, rewind.

Then I discovered Candide -- thanks to our very ambitious high school band director, Andy Stachow, who apparently thought nothing of asking a bunch of pimply-faced teenagers to attempt the (rather gnarly) overture from that work. Can't remember if we ever got to play that one in concert... but does it matter? What's important is that I found out about it. And that overture continues to be one of my favorite pieces (indeed, I have earmarked it for the IJG "cover" album that I may try to do someday).

I suppose the thing I respect most about Bernstein now -- having discovered much of his other chamber and symphonic music (goodness gracious, have you heard Chichester Psalms?) -- is that, aside from being a consummate musical personality, he stuck to a particular concept and saw it through to the end. In other words, like another hero of mine, Samuel Barber, he never got aboard the twelve-tone bandwagon, but rather stayed true to an ideal of lyrical, melodic, harmonic music, not because it was or was not fashionable or "progressive," but because he liked it. Not that either side of this duality is "better" -- just that I can admire people who ignore a given zeitgeist in favor of their own aesthetic desires.

Ah, pleasure. What a complex phenomenon.

What has always baffled me about Bernstein, on the other hand, is that his total compositional output was not really commensurate with his talent. In that sense, I suppose he recalls Mendelssohn and Saint-Saens. But it just doesn't make a sense that a moron like me could seemingly be unable to stop writing, while Lenny suffered writer's block. Huh?

Ah, personality. What a complex phenomenon.

What is Thandie watching?

Don't ask me why this one is such a big hit. I have no idea if she understands the plot or anything like that. But it is currently in heavy rotation for some reason.

Anyway, we're in Portland once again, continuing to dance the real estate tango -- the house inspection went well enough, but there are some big-ticket items that we're hoping to avoid taking on ourselves. Should know more in the next few days.

Oh, yeah, and I have a question: there aren't really any "stars" warring in Star Wars, are there? I mean, the Jedis and the Empire are warring, but they aren't "stars," right? So what the fuck?

(Sorry, I'm very tired, and drunk again.)

A nice debunking...

...of the whole "appeasement" argument.

Verrrrrrry interesting...

MySpace to Enable Members to Sell Music.