No fuss, no muss

So an insert for these came in yesterday's mail, and my day was basically ruined.

I mean, what the fuck? Like, are real human babies not already helpless enough? Do we hafta make 'em small enough to fit in the palm of your freakin' hand? If that's not an instance of de-evolution, I don't know what is.

Or maybe it's a way to feel superior and in-control, subtly disguised as an obsession with "cute things." As my wife said, satirically in character as one of these obsessives (I'm paraphrasing): "Oh, look at me! I'm a giant! Look at my itty bitty baby! Haw haw haw!"

Of course, Jeeeezus has to be involved somewhere under all this. If you're bored enough to click over to the website of the lady who insists on unleashing these upon the world, you will be greeted with some churchy doggerel equating sculpture with divine creation. Hoo-boy.

But if there really is a god, I seriously doubt he/she would intentionally make something like this:



And here's a gruesome twosome for ya:



This guy looks a little like Edward G. Robinson. And he's made out of silicone:



Anyway, the insert had a little disclaimer that read "This doll is not a toy; she is a fine collectible to be enjoyed by adult collectors."

Oh really? "Fine" in what sense exactly? "Enjoyed" in what sense exactly?

I mean, we're not talking about wine here, right?

I guess what really creeps me out is that I can't help but wonder if the existence of these things, much like the existence of the child pageant phenomenon, is actually evidence of a deep disgust for real, living, breathing children. A product of these sad, sick times.

Jocko Homo

So here's the "Jocko Homo" video I mentioned in the last post, for those of you who haven't seen it.

Mothersbaugh: "Jocko Homo was one of the first songs I wrote for the band. The whole song was meant to be a theme song for the theory of de-evolution and for Devo, what we were about. It was meant to lay out the story right there. It was a collection of discussions we had where we sat around in Kent after students had been shot, and decided that what we were seeing happening on the planet, when we looked at the news and read the paper, was not evolution but was more appropriately described as de-evolution."

Casale: "We were kind of poetically explaining what it meant to be Devo, and what de-evolution was. We didn't see any evidence that man was the result of some never ending linear progress and everything was getting better. When we were growing up, the magazines would show the world in 1999, and it'd be this beautiful, futuristic, domed city with everybody going around in jets and space-cars. Everybody was fed and everybody was groomed and everybody seemed to have tons of money. It's such a joke, what really happened was: the planet got more and more overrun by population, greater gaps between the rich and the poor, more new diseases, decimation of the environment. It seemed like even though people were getting more 'free' information from television and newspapers, they were actually less informed, less thoughtful, and acting dumber. So we saw de-evolution. The fact that a bad actor could be elected president was more proof to us. Things have just gone downhill from there. We didn't really want it to all be true, instead it looks like de-evolution was clearly real. In retrospect, compared to what's going on today, Reagan looks like a serious guy."

More commentary here.

It's Pavlovian, baby

I must be an absolute basket case for even considering mounting another IJG tour for 07 -- such a thing would be like, what, the third? fourth? fifth trip we've taken this year?

I mean, I've got a semi-idyllic existence going up here -- hanging out with my beautiful family, enjoying the greenery of Portland, writing new music, getting all mixy with the new album -- do I really want to subject myself to the madness and exasperation that inevitably accompany the tour-booking process?

In a very real sense, the answer to this question is a big fat "no." But, alas, like any addict, I remain enthralled by the potential highs that can accompany the all-too-brief 4 or 5 hours we might actually spend on a stage during a week or so of touring. In any case, I keep telling myself to hang on, Sloopy; the next batch of gigs will surely push us into a position where this whole process actually gets a little easier. And if not the next batch, the batch after that for sure. And if not the batch after that for sure...

Ahem. Anyway, this time -- if, as the magic eight ball suggests, all signs really do point to yes -- we'll be exploring new territory in the fabled "rust belt" of Ohio, western PA, Kentucky, and (possibly) West Virginia. (A region about which, I presume, Zappa's delightful "Sun Village" lyric ("It take the paint off your car / And wreck your windshield too / I don't know how the people stand it / But I guess they do") could just as easily have been written.)

Got any venues to recommend, dear reader? If so, let us know!

"Why the rust belt," you ask? Answer: we got invited to do a showcase at (Cincinnati's own) Midpoint Music Festival, which on the surface looks like exactly the sort of indie rock festival some of us upstart jazzers think we need to play if we want to make our art economically (and perhaps culturally) viable.

I usually commit to these things based on a combination of instinct, research, and band voting. This time, however, in addition to all of those things, there was a weird convergence of geography and listening interests. It turns out that July 2007 was the month that I finally got around to checking out the band Devo; a band that, coincidentally enough, emerged (as probably everyone but me already knew) from the Akron, Ohio scene in the seventies.

Let me put this in context -- I have never really considered myself a true fan of the so-called "new wave" -- at least not in the way that someone who came of age during the new wave period ought to have been. Alas, while that particular phenomenon was happening, I more or less ignored it, turning instead to the fifties and sixties for my popular music.

As I got older, and as the new wave receded into history, I allowed myself to make occasional forays into its poppy, punky goodness. And so I have gone through an Elvis Costello period, a Talking Heads period, a Blondie period, and so on. But Devo was always one of those bands that managed to slip through the cracks. This even though I was quite sure that they were worth investigating further -- an opinion based soley on what I thought was the startling originality of the ubiquitous "Whip It" (as good an example of a weird song "crossing over" as I can think of).

Several years ago I tried to address my Devo-less-ness by purchasing Are We Not Men?... and was a little disappointed. I don't know why it didn't click, but it didn't, at least not right away. But I didn't give up, and recently, while hunting for interesting music for Thandie, I hit upon the somewhat misguided notion of getting her a Devo DVD compilation with an intriguinging title: The Complete Truth About De-Evolution. I dunno, I think I was probably expecting something a little more, well, "cute." Turns out Devo videos are anything but cute, and are not exactly the sort of fare you want to run by a three-year-old. I mean, they're funny, but man, are they bleeeaaaak.

Funny and bleak -- one of my favorite combinations! So the DVD that was intended for my daughter ended up as my nightly viewing for about a week. And now it can be told -- maybe I'm being premature, or whatever, but at this moment, I have to say that Devo is one of the most interesting bands I've come across recently.

Here, in no particular order, is a series of observations related to that last point:

1. Turns out Devo was not only from Akron, but they went to Kent State. Turns out they were there when the national guard gunned down several of their fellow students. Turns out (at least according to one report) that they actually knew some of the students who were killed. If any of this is true, I can only imagine that it was a key formative experience for the band -- much like Zappa's getting framed for making a pseudo-pornographic recording, and then getting sent to jail for it. Zappa and Devo -- now those are two artists you won't hear mentioned together very often. But I submit that they have more in common than you might initially think.

2. Exhibit B in that argument: also like Zappa, and unlike many of their other contemporaries, Devo seem to have understood dada's potential as a response to a world that gets more absurd with each passing year. So much of what emerged in popular music in the seventies seemed either to be about pure rage and alienation (metal and punk), or authenticity and narrative (singer-songwriters), or escapism and masturbation -- er, virtuosity (prog-rock), or celebration and the body (disco). Holy cow, I know I'm getting into deep doo-doo making these gross generalizations, but I do think the basic point -- that very few artists turned to dadaist aesthetics, at a time when such aesthetics seemed particularly apt -- is right on. Devo has always had a reputation for being a silly, weird-for-weirdness' sake kind of band (see number 6 below), but their intent, so I am learning, was actually quite subversive.

3. It may be obvious, based on what I have said, that my sudden appreciation of Devo has something to do with seeing them as well as hearing them (note that it was a DVD that hooked me, not a CD). Mothersbaugh's turn as a bouncy, demented professor in the video to "Jocko Homo" (for instance) made that song come alive for me in a way that my initial listening didn't. But I also want to be clear that though the visuals are indeed quite important to the Devo aesthetic, the audio is not insignficant by any stretch. In other words, I think it would be a mistake to overlook Devo's music, however simple and repetitive it might be. This is true on a number of different levels: melodically, texturally, rhythmically...

4. Unpacking the DVD and getting a little backstory on the band really helped, as these things often do, to put my own work and artistic struggles in perspective. Briefly: it took a long time for Devo to hone its act / philosophy / aesthetic, and once they did "get it together," their success was fleeting at best. If their commentary is to believed, they were (like most bands coming up in the age before artists were savvy about such things) fucked every which way by a pretty unsavory cast of characters, including (surprisingly) one Mr. David Bowie. And they continue to be fucked by bands like Korn.

5. Gerald Casale: "Devo's irony and absurdity were always aimed at making people think, and making people realize the random possibilities in a world of chaos. Thereby strengthening the validity of us as a species rather than our self-serving egotistical view of ourselves being at the center and masters of all. It makes you a much more humane person to realize that one degree in temperature in an atmosphere or .2 percent of some chemical over another creates a whole new life form. That's what we were always pointing out, that humans have to stop and realize they don't know what they're talking about."

6. Mark Mothersbaugh: "We were constantly misunderstood by the record company, critics, and everyone around us. Our sense of humor was ironic humor; we were so far out and had such a vocabulary already put together by the time we became public, because we worked for so many years in Akron, just coming up with our own choreography, music, philosophies, politics, wardrobe, the films, everything... our own slang terms. [...] People kept trying to put us in categories and we didn't really fit in with the punks and we didn't fit in with new wave. We didn't party with all the rock and roll people. We didn't take drugs. We didn't do anything that would have really made it easy to figure out what we were about, and the irony in our humor often threw people off from what the message was. They thought, 'oh, they're just kidding,' or, 'they don't take what they're doing seriously.' The record companies thought of us as just clowns and quirky, and they'd put out press releases that would say 'that quirky, zany band.'"

7. I knew that Mothersbaugh had a post-Devo career that involved making music "for the man" -- but I wasn't prepared for the little anecdote he tells in TCTADE: that (once upon a time?) he put subliminal messages in his commercial scores, with the intention of undercutting the very product he was hired to help sell (e.g: a subliminal message of "eat less sugar, kids," in an ad for soda). Outstanding!

With an emphasis on the "e"

This is either really cool or really scary.

Maybe I'm Crazy...

...but this seems like an awful lot of work for very little payoff.

I dunno, I could be mistaken.

Also: how I have missed the word "execrable"! Thank you, David Ocker, for reminding me of its stealthy power.

Live Dirge

I'm all for the cause, of course, but if you really wanted to save the planet, couldn't you at least sign up some halfway decent acts?

(Look, folks, they're doing that "band against a wall" pose. Need I say more?)

What I did on my summer vacation

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

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

And so Ugly Rug Records was reborn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

So what will the new album be like?

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

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

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

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

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

It remains a pertinent parody.

Happy freakin' Fourth of July, everyone.

Hummingbird, hummingbird...

So my wife (who I will now start calling "Quick Fingers") snapped this bitchen shot of an elusive hummingbird in our yard yesterday. (Click it for the full effect.)

Look at that little dude / dudette! This was probably the only restful moment in his / her entire day.

Old vinyl never dies...

...it just gets made into dishware.

Of course, if a given old record really is trash (ya gotta be careful, given the potential for rebirth afforded by sampling, and digital technology in general), how much cooler it would be to make it into another music-producing device. (Horns made from old LPs? I dunno, might be cool.)

Trying to blog

Could you? (80+ degrees in Portland today...)

Catching up, part three

Continued from part two. (And here's part one.)

Another so-so night's sleep on Thursday, but no worries. Friday (May 18), the day of our last show for this tour, was more or less guaranteed to be a frazzle-fest for me anyway. As it turned out I made a half-hearted attempt to explore the city with my family during the day, but at some point pre-gig panic (the malady I usually come down with in the 12 hours or so before a performance) drew me inevitably back to the hotel room, where I paced, triple-checked our performance details, and took, like, three showers.

I finally emerged at about 2:30. The lobby of the hotel was abuzz now with other performers, some of whom I recognized. At one point I almost tripped over some of the dudes in Ladysmith Black Mambazo, but was too shy to follow up on my email request that they join us for the choral section that ends our closer ("Fuck the Muck"). I still think that would have been an amazingly absurd moment, but whatever. (Actually, I later learned that they were performing at exactly the same time we were, so it wouldn't have been possible to follow through on this hare-brained scheme of mine.)

I checked the group in at the lobby registration desk (wristbands and dinner passes and all that), and a little before 3 PM we all headed over to the World Forum Convention Center, which is where the show was going to be happening later that night. That's right -- two sound checks in as many days! The stage manager, Rene -- a really affable dude with a strong British accent -- had to deal with a few sudden changes to the stage plot I had provided ahead of time (we tend to improvise the physical configuration of the group based on the space, so stage plots are always approximate), and thus the check turned out to be a little rushed. One might even say that there was no room for "jazzytation." (Sorry, inside joke there. Consider the Dutch pronunciation of "j" as "h" and you'll get the drift.) But no matter -- in the end, there was pretty much only one "musical" consideration from the POV of the sound amplification folks: mic everything and make sure it's fucking loud.



Sound check over, we dallied until dinner (which turned out to be a kickass meal just like the one we had had at the Bimhuis the night before), and at some point I decided to take a stroll through the building. By this time (6 or 7 PM), the place was a madhouse of sorts (I would later learn that there were seven thousand people at the festival that evening). I was surprised to discover that the Convention Center was actually charging people to use the bathrooms (thankfully, I learned later, we artists got free access to same -- which is fortunate given the amount of beer we would end up consuming before the night was over). I was also surprised to discover the number of mannequins observing the proceedings, many of them stealthily dangling from trapezes. Yes, trapezes:





Apparently, in Holland, jaunty mannequins = jazz. I will assume that this choice of decor was not intended as a wry comment on the stiff, robotic quality of a lot of the stuff that passes for music nowadays. I will assume this even though our set was preceded by a band that (in my humble opinion) epitomized this stiff, robotic quality. I didn't catch their name, but let me describe them for you: picture five or six very handsome, well-groomed young gentlemen doing what I can only guess was their best impression of an eighties metal "hair band" playing fusion jazz. It was absolutely priceless, and "Miles' Home" (the name of the performance space we both appeared in) was chock full of people all digging on this particular groove. I ducked out of the green room and into the crowd several times, and each time found myself wondering if we could possibly compete.

Not that we had much of a choice at that point; somehow it was suddenly 10 PM and we were off and running with our show.

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to delineate for all y'all who haven't seen our current set the various onstage characters played by the group members when they aren't playing themselves. (It's sort of a strange facet of the group, these costumes we wear. Though I get a huge kick out of it, I sometimes wonder why we do it. Then I remember: dada!) First we have the animals: the Queen Bee, played by Jill Knapp (who as the procurer of many of the other costumes is largely responsible for the sartorial directions the band is taking); the crab and lobster, played by Phil Rodriguez and Katharina Thomsen, respectively (actually, I can never tell the lobster and the crab apart, which is why I'm lumping them together here); and the chicken, played by Brian Walsh (who also sometimes plays a generic "construction guy"). Our two other characters: 1. the wretched creature played by Cory Wright (jumpsuited and be-wigged, one can only guess the provenance), and 2. the hot dog, played by Dan Rosenboom (this character apparently became the source of a bit of double-entendre-laden banter Dan encountered during the inevitable trolling that a single musician does at a big festival after a great performance). You can see some of these characters here:



The characters and the non-characters (and the music, I guess), were, as far as I could tell, throughly enjoyed by these good people:



By the time we were about halfway through our set, the room was very crowded. Once again, the Dutch proved that they needed no coaxing to get into our schtick. Throughout the convention center, the doors to each performance space were open, so that wandering festival-goers could overhear what was going on in each. In our case it seemed like a lot of them actually stopped in to listen. I had thought that we had already seen all manner of audience participation -- dancing, bobbing, hooting, and so on -- but during this performance I found myself pleasantly surprised once more when the audience started singing some of the tunes right along with us. This may seem strange, since nothing we were performing had been "officially" released yet, and since it's all fairly complicated stuff -- but at the same time there are portions of our music that draw on well-worn snippets of popular song (usually recontextualized in strange ways, but recognizeable if you listen). It's just that we've never met an audience bold enough to jump in with those bits on the fly. Bravo, brave people of Holland!

Anyway, at set's end we had gone over our allotted one hour performance time by a few minutes. It was one of those awkward situations where I got the "10 minute" sign as we were about two thirds of the way through our penultimate tune. It would have been stupid to just stop after said penultimate tune -- the audience was clearly into what we were doing, and our aforementioned closer, "Fuck the Muck," is the song with which we always "go in for the kill," so to speak. "Muck" is at least 10 minutes long (it ends differently from night to night, so you never know), and thus when we launched into it with about five minutes to spare, I thought there would be trouble from the powers that be. But afterwards, as we struggled to get off the stage -- a little difficult to do when the audience really wants you to keep playing -- Rene came up and enthusiastically informed me that we were the best band he'd heard at the festival. I don't know if we were that good, but I thanked him anyway. Then he asked us to get off the stage as soon as possible.

The next five or six hours were, in a word, carnivalesque. It was a little overwhelming, actually, what with the lights, colors, sounds, and people. At first I fell in with a pair of very gracious Dutch musicians who had seen the show and insisted on buying me beer after beer (after beer after beer). Caught little bits of some of the other festival performances in the process -- a little Percy Sledge here, a little James Carter there. (Nothing terribly inspiring, I must say -- though that may have been because I was too exhausted... and relieved... to attend to any more music that night.) Bid adieu to my new friends, and found myself back at the hotel, where an afterparty for the performers was in full swing. I will say one thing for the smooth jazz cats -- whatever their taste in music, they ain't no slackers when it comes to the ladies. I must've seen the bass player from Spyro Gyra hit on like ten different women in the space of an hour. (Incidentally, I recently learned that the latest Spyro Gyra album is called Good to Go Go, a title which (you may forgive me for concluding) sounds suspiciously influenced by our own Industrial Jazz a Go Go! And we all know that Spyro Gyra are big IJG fans. So, like, what the hell, fellas?)

Then, with a little coaxing, I went from the festival afterparty to the IJG afterparty, which was taking place in one of the hotel rooms (I forget whose). I commented earlier about things to do in Amsterdam, right? You probably won't be surprised that various members of the group had procured some of these things when we had been in that good city on the previous evening. And now these things were being joyously smoked in the aforementioned hotel room. And a splendid time was had by all.

This is true even though the Dutch stuff did nothing for me personally. To be honest (uh-oh, I sense a tangent), I've always had a very tenuous and troubled relationship with pot. Seems like every band I've been in, somebody has wanted to get me high. Most of the time I demur -- some kind of anti-social gene kicks in, or something. But I've partaken enough times, and with such feeble results, to begin to strongly suspect that I may be one of those poor bastards who is actually immune to the stuff. (On a related note, I have also never ever been bothered by the smell of garlic or so-called "garlic breath." In fact I freakin' love garlic. I'm just weird that way.) I suppose my possible "resistance to cannabis" is a good thing to some extent -- lord knows I already have enough addictions -- but it doesn't stop me from wondering what all my stoner friends are raving about. And it doesn't stop me from being bummed by the fact that some rheumatologists will prescribe medical marijuana as a viable treatment for the particular strain of arthritis I have.

Okay, I've already dragged this story on for far too long. Here are the highlights of the last 24 hours or so of the tour:

1. Saturday was a free day. I spent it with Daphne and Thandie, wandering around the city, and just generally relaxing for the first time in weeks. We were thrilled to find a museum dedicated to M. C. Escher (if I ever become a rapper, by the way, that's going to be my stage name). Not only because of the bitchen prints (of course), but also because the place was illuminated by the most intriguing array of chandeliers I have ever seen (not Escher's -- I don't know who created them, actually). Below is a skull-and-crossbones chandelier that any card-carrying modernist would be pleased to have hovering over their dinner table.



2. Also on Saturday, we temporarily misplaced a few of our personnel. (!) I won't go into the sordid details here, but suffice it to say that (all night partying) + (an unforseen change of hotels) + (the fact that most US cellphones don't work in Europe) = a somewhat nailbiting end to this particular adventure. The cliffhanger factor was such that when I boarded the plane home on Sunday morning (mine was one of the first flights out), I still didn't know where one of my guys was, or whether he was going to get to the airport in time. Of course, everyone made it home safely. (Of course, I say "of course" now...)

* * * * *

So that's it. That's the saga. It was a seriously kickass tour. Huge thanks again to everyone who made it possible, and to all the musicians who participated.

(Pause.)

Um, what do we do now?

Just because...

This is probably more interesting than anything I could write at the moment...

Viva la Kinks! The most underrated classic rock band ever. (Where the hell else in the annals of that testosterone-driven genre -- Aerosmith's insipid "Dude Looks Like a Lady" notwithstanding -- are you going to get such a rocking, awkward, tender depiction of a love affair with a transvestite?)

Flotsam and Jetsam

It's ridiculous (or perhaps fortunate) how little time I have had to blog lately. The Dutch tour wrapup post is on its way, but in the meantime, some disconnected (and probably idiotic) ramblings:

1. Last Sunday night at about 10 PM I found myself in that subset of the country (the world?) commonly referred to as "those who are disappointed in the ending of the Sopranos." (By the way, skip the next three paragraphs if you haven't seen the final episode yet.) This is primarily because lowly I -- not a "TV expert" like some of the folks who were trotted out in the media in the days before and after the end of the series, but a TV-ambivalent shmuck -- was able to predict more or less how things were going to turn out. (Me to Daphne, maybe three weeks ago: "I bet they'll leave the whole thing up in the air, sans closure.") Okay, Mr. Chase, I get it. Neat endings are not like life. The journey (so to speak) is more important than the destination. Look for the clues and decide for yourself what happened. Whatever. Maybe I'm just cranky because I'm struggling to reconcile the vast quantity of musical work I have to catch up on with the number of hours (days?) of my life I have spent watching your epic TV drama.

The fact that I can't imagine an ending that would have worked better for me suggests that on some level I just don't care anymore. Which is strange. I guess for whatever reason my Sopranos admiration has dwindled over the last few seasons (despite a riveting episode here and there). But I had to watch the whole thing, didn't I? (Maybe that's America's great contribution to world culture: addiction.)

Despite my disappointment, I remain a big fan of the show's use of music. Though frustratingly uncredited every week, and amazingly sparse (usually saved until the last few seconds of each episode), the musical selections (as far as I know there was little or no original music used in the series) have always been spot-on. And Sunday's reclamation of Journey (for an absurd moment of comedy and impending-death tension) was particularly tasty -- very much in the recent tradition of providing popular tunes with entirely new contexts (the use of "Sister Christian" in Boogie Nights is another favorite example of mine).

2. Sometime last week I found myself in that subset of the blogosphere commonly referred to as "those who are astonished at (and humbled by) DJA's blogging stamina." 24+ hours of realtime written commentary on a seminal NY concert event? Most of it insightful, engaging, and well-written? Plus way cool pictures? Are you fucking kidding me?! I'm in awe. The only thing that would have been more impressive would be if he had been actually running a marathon while blogging about the marathon.

3. Also sometime last week, two of my closest friends in the world went up even higher in my estimation (as if that's possible!) when they told me that they had given their newborn son what I think may be one of the coolest middle names ever: "Hippopotamus." I'm not sure if I'm at liberty to divulge who these folks are, so I won't. Suffice it to say that if Daphne and I ever have a boy (another child is very doubtful at this point, but you never know), I will strongly lobby to name that individual "Zeke." That's because for a long time I thought "Zeke" was probably the most badass name you could ever give a baby boy ("Dweezil" doesn't count, because the "Zappa Family Trust" probably has a copyright on it or something). Alas, now I know I was wrong.

4. Sometime last month, I started listening (and re-listening) to a lot of Carla Bley. Holy shit, I can't seem to stop. Have you seen her website, by the way?

Pop is dead, Long live pop

So in my researching of festivals for our next big excursion, I came across information on a thing called "International Pop Overthrow." Now, I'm a pretty shameless defender of pop music, but this festival sounded interesting to me. That's because I was assuming "overthrow" meant to get rid of some established power structure, and that in terms of music, no power structure is more pervasive than pop. I mean, no matter how we define it, at least we can agree that "pop" is "popular," right?

Not so. I am informed by the good people at the IPO that the purpose of the festival is in part "to bring pop music the attention it so richly deserves." Huh? Does that mean they're assuming that pop music isn't popular, and that their mission is to make it popular? Or does it mean they already know it's popular, and they want to keep it that way, thank you very much? And in the latter case, where does the word "overthrow" come in?

signed,
Confused in Portland

I made another little movie

Good gawd, you would think, like, I had nothing better to do.

Anyway, it's another draft, with the same caveats about compressed video (some details may be totally lost, be forewarned).

Catching up, part two

(Continued from part one.)

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

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



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

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

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



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

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

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

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



"11" graffiti, exhibit A.



"11" graffiti, exhibit B.

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

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

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

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



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

The performance itself flew by (we went on at 11 PM). Blah, blah, blah, we got an encore (would've been nice to have rehearsed "Yo Jimbo," n'est-ce pas?), we almost got another encore (but we had nuthin' else to play) -- you can get more of the details at Jill's recap post. For me, one of the most interesting aspects of our portion of the evening (confirmed later when I started working my way through the recording) was the emergence of a unified looseness in the group sound. In the past I have generally aimed for precision when it came to the execution of my written charts. I have tended to shy away from recording the band's live performances, because I was always concerned with things staying as "close to the ink" as possible... and the ink is, well, difficult to execute. But I have never subscribed to the "benevolent dictator" model of the composer-conductor, and I think everyone in the band has known that, and with this show there was a strange transmogrification of the set, in that the majority of the players knew the music well enough to be able to play it as if it were all improvised. In other words, the group as a whole started to develop some of the suppleness -- in terms of well-placed and judicious interpretive liberties that never sacrificed the cohesion of a given piece -- that is usually only possible in a smaller configuration (a quartet or quintet, say). They owned the music -- an exceedingly difficult thing to do in a big band setting. Once again, my hat is off to the cats involved: I am humbled and in awe.

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

I made a little movie

Thandie's comment: "Daddy, you jump really well."

Keep in mind that:

1. This looks much better in a higher resolution, and

2. This is a work-in-progress.

3. Some of this is out-of-sync. So sue me: my source material was fairly limited.

The uproar in Bake-town

As promised, more footage from our shows this month. This one, filmed from the "front row" (if 100+ feet away from the performers can be considered front row) of the Bakersfield Jazz Festival (May 12), was submitted by our friend and ally Mike Williams. Thanks, Mike!

"The dark side of jazz" was a phrase KT and I were throwing around a bit that afternoon. I made him promise to let me use it as an album title someday.

Catching up, part one

What a week.

Hell: what a year. Even if I factor in the less-than-inspiring turnout at our Pacific Northwest gigs this past March, 2007 has been one incredible period for the band so far. So much so that if you had told me, even last December, that we'd be where we are right now, I'd've thought you were loopy or something.

Our Bakersfield appearance of eleven days ago was the perfect continuation of the good vibes established with January's "IJG on Ice" east coast tour (vibes which had already been extended by the late March shows we did in SoCal -- especially our Dizzy's hit, an annual tradition that always yields a good time). The behind-the-scenes machinations here really point to the essential without-which-not of this business: stubborn, single-minded persistence. Getting the group to a place where it can be self-sustaining seems to require a maniacal degree of stick-tuitiveness (what's that definition of insanity again?). At least, in the case of Bakersfield, the madness was not entirely mine -- Kris Tiner (whose new CD, by the way, is absolutely gorgeous) had been trying to get us into that festival for a few years now. Thank [insert the deity of your choice -- or not] that he finally succeeded, and thank (festival director) Doug Davis for taking a chance on our wacky monstrosity, because we broke numerous personal bests with this show: 1. the highest per-person fee I've been able to pay without losing money myself, 2. the biggest audience we have ever had, 3. the first time (I think) we had ever had bona fide dancing by audience members, 4. the first time we have ever had a trailer (all to ourselves), 5. the first time the big band has ever been fed before a show, 6. the most CDs sold at a single show (19), 7. the most CDs I have ever had to sign after a show (I didn't count, but it was a lot). It was quite unbelievable and quite delightful all at once.

Needless to say, it's a fucking shame that Kris and Damon (Zick, one of the other IJG stalwarts), who have both been in the front lines with this group for a long time, and have both weathered some pretty out-and-out shit gigs with us, weren't able to cash in on the fruit of their hard work by joining us for the Netherlands trip. Suffice it to say that both gentlemen had very good reasons for being unable to go abroad, and both know (I hope) that they will be more-than-welcome to make the return trip, should one be offered. Of course, their subs were both able and beautiful players, about whom I shall have more to say by-and-by. All of this is just for the record.

Anyway, last week's journey out to the "low countries" was not without its share of stresses, but not for the reasons I had expected. Daphne and Thandie came along for the tour as well (we had some vague notion of giving Thandie a "character building experience" that none of her toddler buddies could match), and I'll confess that one of my biggest worries getting on the plane was that the little one wouldn't sleep at all during the flight out. Turns out she passed out somewhere over Ohio, and slept, well, like a baby until we got over the North Sea. By then we were flying into the sunrise, and it was the next day. Her folks, in the meanwhile, had fretted the night away, wide awake. Ah, parenthood!



Must be nice.

However, I digress. I learned during a frantic layover in Houston that not one, but two of our esteemed number (Phil Rodriguez and Josh Sinton) had unfortunately missed their flight to Holland earlier that afternoon. Turns out international flights out of JFK are very difficult to make. Kudos to the dudes for not giving up: in the end, Phil was able to get an alternate flight (to Belgium, I think) that got him over in time for Wednesday's gigs. Poor Josh fared less well, but he nevertheless arrived in time for the Bimhuis gig on Thursday. Whew.

Anyway, mine was the next-to-last of the IJG flights to arrive Wednesday morning (May 16), and by early afternoon the entire group (sans Josh) had been shuttled (courtesy our Dutch drivers -- Hans, Jo, and a few others whose names I didn't get (volunteers all, by the way, and a more cheerful bunch you will not find anywhere)) from Schiphol to the hotel in Den Haag, a quaint little number located next to the World Forum Convention Center (the locus of the festival). In addition to Daphne and Thandie, we were accompanied by a few other significant others / auxiliary members of the group: Matt Lichtenwalner, affiliated with Jill; and Kay [sorry Kay, don't know your last name], affiliated with Cory. Both would prove to be of invaluable assistance -- Matt as a videographer and all-around "what can I do to help out?" sort of dude (if this band ever gets somewhere, I can easily see him in a tour manager sort of role), and Kay as a dispenser of CDs and collector of money. I hereby officially thank them both for their help.



A couple of couples: Matt, Jill, Kay, Cory (L-R).

European newbie that I was, I immediately noted a few things about our temporary home-away-from-home: 1. Everyone speaks English to some degree. Even the TV is primarily in English. 2. It is not unusual to find beer in vending machines. Heineken is the beer of choice in said machines. (Okay, so the system isn't perfect.) 3. Everyone smokes. A lot. It's like they don't believe in cancer. 4. The coffee, which is exquisite, comes in very small doses. (And incidentally, I didn't see a single Starbucks the entire time I was in-country.)

Anyway, we made our various introductions (this special international version of the group [personnel here] included west coasters, east coasters, and Europeans) and then set off to our first show, a half-hourish "preview" thing designed to pique people's interest in the festival proper. It was free, it was outdoors (somewhere in the midst of a fun little shopping area of the city), and it was windy as fuck. At one point during the performance I watched in horror as some of Wolter Wierbos's music blew clear across the stage and under the drum kit. Given those conditions, and the fact that we had a few brand-new folks on board, I was genuinely surprised when we made it to the end of the set without any train wrecks.

Now, it's always difficult for me to judge the reaction of any given IJG audience, seeing as how my back is to them most of the time during a show. Of course I was well aware going into this that Europe in general has a fantastical reputation amongst jazz musicians as a fairytale haven of "true jazz lovers." But I have also always wondered how much of that is exaggerated, fed by a level of rejection-by-one's-home-country so telling as to make even the slightest appreciation abroad appear much more significant than it is. I suppose there must be a pretty broad range of experiences out there, but as for the reception we got -- well, it started out great and only got better. This first show had a pretty good crowd going -- it was, after all, outside, and people just got swept up in what we were doing as they were out running errands or whatever. The fact that we didn't scare folks off -- the reaction we probably would have had given a similar public performance situation in the states -- suggests a real difference in the everyday relationship that Dutch people have with the arts. While we have our street fairs, of course, the music is usually that which, by virtue of its commercial viability, most complements the sea of commerce in which it is situated.

Anyway I think with this first show that we succeeded in our goal of charming the people of Den Haag. (And I must say that the preview concept is brilliant, particularly for a festival this young -- it may in part help explain why the thing eventually sold out.) Next we indulged in our first round of Dutch beer, and then everyone piled back into the vans and was driven back to the hotel. This even though we were scheduled to have dinner -- which, we soon learned, was located at the next performance site. (In other words, no sooner did we empty out of the vans then we had to pile back in. And such is how it goes with a large festival like this.)

Site number two was adjacent to one of the many public squares that can be found throughout the city. It was a bit of a bigger stage, a bit windier, with a bit more of an urban vibe. (Like a moron I neglected to write down any of the location addresses (or even pick up a map) while I was in the Netherlands. But I think this area is referred to as the Grote Markt or "Big Market.") There were a few things that were particularly notable about this set -- which was also well-received by a moderately-large crowd. The first notable thing was our MC, whose name I didn't catch, but who is apparently well-known by his countrymen. He announced us in the raspiest, most gruff voice I have ever heard (he sounded sort of like Miles Davis being strangled by Howlin' Wolf, or maybe vice versa). It was quite comical for many of us in the band to hear these strings of spastically-uttered gutteral Dutch words, punctuated by words we recognized, despite the heavy accent (e.g. "[dutch word] - [dutch word] -[dutch word] -[dutch word] -Tuxedo Trouble!", or ""[dutch word] - [dutch word] -[dutch word] -[dutch word] -Industrial Jazz!").



Our mysterious raspy announcer is the guy in the white sport coat. Also visible, left to right: Wolter Wierbos (playing the keyboard), Beth Schenck, James Hirschfeld, and Dan Schnelle (getting all meta on our asses by taking a picture of me taking a picture).

The other notable thing about this show is that we came face to face (for the first time, in my case) with the formidable force known as Spyro Gyra. We thought we had a good crowd, but the Spyros were mobbed. And once they started playing, you could see why. It was like being on a cruise ship without ever having to leave dry land. Silly me: I thought Lee Ritenour was the man!



Fuck Industrial Jazz. Gimme that Spyro Jazz!

Actually, the Spyros provided the first of several leitmotifs for the tour. Later that same evening, while back at the hotel, quietly enjoying my fourth or fifth beer (alcohol is like air over there), and mulling over the events of the day, I involuntarily overheard an argument between two members of the group. Somebody had pissed somebody else off, and person number two was not going to take it anymore. (Oh, jeez. Their music is so bubbly, who knew they were such tortured souls?) Jill mentions another occurrence of the SG leitmotif here (find it quickly by searching for the word "grope").

The second leitmotif, discovered after tearing myself away from this eavesdropping situation, emerged during a drunken conversation between Schnelle, Brian, Jill, Matt, and myself. Dan, it turns out, is an anthropologist of sorts; his research has primarily consisted of compiling a dictionary of beyond-the-pale-sex-acts-that-go-by-funny-names, such as the infamous Alaskan Pipeline. These, in turn, would work their way into the various lacunae that populate our music (such as the constantly-changing four syllable utterance that concludes "Hang Ten Through Hell").

So that's the wrap-up for day one. Next: IJG live at the Bimhuis.

Movies from across the pond

Two meditative pans on the premises of the BimHuis (the first from across the street, and the second from inside the MuziekGebouw, which houses the club). Both shot on Thursday, sometime between our soundcheck and our show:





At some point during the tour, I discovered that Brian and Katherine had a similar affinity for sharp-elbowed high-falutin' classical sax parody. I got them to demonstrate briefly just before our show on Friday night:



More to come...

Pix from across the pond

A whirlwind week thus far. Words will be forthcoming soon, but in the meantime:

The Explosive Lee Ritenour

Let me set the scene: we were still all a little giddy from our performance in the Bakersfield Jazz Festival ("we" in this case consisted of Schnelle, Zick, Wendel, Rosenboom, Carroll, Templeton, Walsh, and myself) and were congregating in the parking lot, preparing to get into our respective vehicles. Most of us had just enjoyed Matt Wilson's set (alas, I was only able to listen with one ear because of all of the other things that were going on after we had wrapped up our own show). The sun had just gone down. Off in the distance, we could hear the roar of the Ritenour fans, waiting for their chosen god.

And then this happened (cue the YouTube clip).

More evidence

More to come, but at the moment, I have a birthday party to get to.

Evidence

IJG at the Bakersfield Jazz Festival, May 12: here's what it looked like from three different angles (about fifteen minutes before we were to play).





More to come...

[Update: here's Jill's take on the Bakersfield show.]

Getting there

A quick inventory of observations as we launch our wild ride through Bakersfield and the Netherlands (how's that for geographical incongruity?):

-- A strange travel day yesterday. It was (I think) my first experience of the surreal Las Vegas airport, which is where I caught a puddle-jumper to Bakersfield. By a delightful coincidence I ended up on the same flight as Jill. (She was at it again: flying in from the east coast to play with this damned group. How does she do it?!)

-- We (i.e., all forty or so people on the PJ flight) had to endure the musical stylings of a steward-from-heck (note that I distinguish him from a hypothetical steward-from-hell because he seemed like a well-meaning enough fellow), who must have, at one time, aspired to a performance career (who knows, maybe he is still aspiring). Comedy, singing, repartee, this guy did it all. Except that it was after midnight and most everyone on the plane seemed beat.

-- My puddle-jumper experience may have been negatively affected by the fact that I was seated next to a somewhat obese woman who kept falling asleep and letting her entire body slide over into the legroom area of my seat.

-- We made it to Bakersfield safely, where we procured the services of the most insane cabbie I have ever known. Pegging 90 MPH, blowing through stop signs, driving with one hand: this guy did it all. All at 1 AM in the morning. He gave us his card, in case we wanted to call him again. Yeeeaaaahhhhh, right.

-- Today Jill and I will spend a little time hanging out with KT (we have the express privilege of getting to meet his beautiful kid!) and then head over to the festival to meet up with the rest of the crew, who is arriving from around CA. We go on just before 7 PM. I'm told the audience will be in the thousands. Egads!

-- Tomorrow I catch an early morning flight outta Burbank so's I can get back to Port-town in time to celebrate my beautiful kid's birthday. And then Tuesday it's off to the Netherlands (I'll try to have an after-the-fact post about our Bakersfield hit before then).

-- Yee-haw. And again, I say, yee-haw.

Clarification

What I meant by the aforementioned "drama":

He's dying of cancer, very little time left, in a weirdly vulnerable state, and he performs like this. Even with the Paul Schaefer group fuckup (not sure who it was, exactly), it's a very moving rendition. Live TV is rarely this close to the bone.

YouTube: The lazy way to blog

Why is it so much more fun to find these clips than to write the "big important posts" (ahem) that I know everyone is craving?

Damn you, YouTube!

Anyway, enjoy. (Stick around until the end of the tune, okay?)

Pick-up lines

It occurred to me recently that with some music it's all about what happens in the first (say) twenty seconds, and that it takes a special talent to figure out how to grab someone in that short space of time, and to keep them involved to the end of the tune, even though nothing much better is going to happen after whatever initial burst of brilliance occurs. (Of course, it's even more difficult to sustain this sort of interest-without-development for more than four minutes or so.)

Is this a definition of pop?

Case study #1: Warren Zevon: "Lawyers, Guns, and Money." One of the most intriguing openings in modern rock: "I went home with a waitress / the way I always do / how was I to know / she was with the Russians too?" Does the tune go anywhere after that? Not really -- the groove and melody and lyrical punch all lead off, and everything else is just reinforcement or repetition. That sounds like a criticism, but it ain't -- this is one killer tune, and that fact that it works in spite of the frontloading is a testament to the fact that WZ is still underappreciated, even after all the drama surrounding his death.

Case study #2: Flaming Lips: "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots." It starts off like this: "Her name is Yoshimi / she's a black belt in karate / working for the city / she has to discipline her body." My only thought at the end of those four lines: "What the fuck is this song going to be about? No really, tell me!" As a jazzer, I know I'm not supposed to like these guys (who don't even seem to think of themselves as "real musicians") but I do. They've got the "lead with the strongest bit" thing down pat. It's impressive in four lines, but check it out in two: here's the opening from "Race for the Prize" (from their best album, The Soft Bulletin): "Two scientists were racing / for the good of all mankind." Okay, you've got me. Where we goin'?

Case study #3: Ween: "The Mollusk." "Hey little boy, what you got there? / Kind sir it's a mollusk I've found / Did you find it in the sandy ground? / Does it emulate the ocean's sound?" Another band that doesn't exactly fit the profile of "the music a jazz composer is supposed to listen to" (these guys never seem to write anything but 2- and 4-bar phrases), I love Ween in spite of myself. This tune (from the album of the same name) isn't quite as good an example of what I'm talking about as #1 or #2, but it's the same idea -- about halfway through, the momentum peters out -- but the tune persists, because the opening is so, well, forceful and bizarre.

Frontloaded, forceful, static, persistent: some music just works this way.

And because I haven't yet wasted enough of your time with YouTube this week...

The potential disappearance of stuff like this: one more reason it would suck if the site went out-and-out corporate.

(Wait -- have they?)

Anyway, whatever you think of the tune, ya gotta dig a quartet of dancing timpani players.

(And yes, the singers here are the very same "Peanuts" who appeared to great effect in various Godzilla movies. Here they perform one of their hits: "Koi no Fuga.")

How I define "success"

I will know the IJG has "made it" when we're able to afford (and perform in) costumes like these.

I call the Octopus!

Made in Jersey

No one could ever accuse me of being a booster for my home state, but I must admit I get a rush every time I discover someone about whom I can simultaneously say "he/she's doing something artistically interesting" and "he/she's from New Jersey." So here's the latest entry in the incongruity sweepstakes.

"How I try to relate to my shipmates" -- now there's a line for these times.