Oh, bloody hell

Screw Mellencamp. The above should've been the theme song in Indiana tonight. "Torn all apart / All in the name of democracy," indeed.

I actually spent the evening at an Obama fundraiser here in Portland. Watched the election coverage on the big screen, amidst good beer, decent music, interesting people, and lovely, heavy rain. And I still had a shitty time. (MSNBC and CNN are even more surreal in a public context like that.)

While at Aura, I spent some time holed up in my own head (as is my wont at such gatherings), attempting to understand the turn of events from the point of view of a Clinton supporter. I have to keep remembering: to them, I'm the idiot who just doesn't get it. To them, I'm the one who is being lulled into blind faith.

Funny, that. Especially given that I've never been comfortable with "movements." And that I'm not a particularly religious person. And that I have a hard time with ritual. And that, like Noam Chomsky, I'm not "a joiner."

But I can get past all these (admittedly paranoid) tendencies, and still be compelled by the idea of a government that is (finally) transparent and accountable. And by a political style that eschews bullshit. And by a sense of openness to reason, and rationality, and the sort of intelligent coalition-building that we are going to need to, well, survive.

And I don't see those things in Clinton. At all.

Though some might disagree, I side with Publius on this: it's a political Bataan Death March we're engaged in here. It doesn't bode well. We need to end it, and soon.

Just when you thought it couldn't get dumber

This might not have time to evolve into another pseudo-story before Tuesday, but here's the latest taste of idjit from our ever-more idiotic press corps.

Item:

Democrat Barack Obama, who often argues that John McCain is the same as President Bush, said Sunday that the Republican presidential candidate would be an improvement over Bush's eight-year reign.

"You have a real choice in this election. Either Democrat would be better than John McCain. And all three of us would be better than George Bush," Obama said.

This via the AP.

The headline? "Obama says McCain would be better president than Bush."

Thing is, a cup of 3-day old moldy lime jello would be a better president than Bush.

So what the fuck is the story here?

Does anybody really think Barack Obama wants you to vote for John McCain?

Why yes, of course someone does. According to the same story, HRC quickly responded:

"We need a nominee who will take on John McCain, not cheer on John McCain."

Oh, that's rich.

UPDATE.

Maybe we're in luck: it looks like this story was more or less DOA.

RIP Bebe Barron

Making good "electronic music" is a bit like writing good iambic pentamenter: it seems like it would be the easiest thing in the world... until you actually try it. (I speak from experience.)

Bebe Barron only made it look easy. The shining example of this, of course: with her husband Louis Barron, she was the co-composer (in itself quite an accomplishment -- I mean, a functional marriage is hard enough to come by, let alone a functional husband-and-wife creative team) of the soundtrack (er, "electronic tonalities") of one of my absolute favorite films of all time: Forbidden Planet.



I'm no expert on "electronic music," but it's pretty obvious that the process of making it back in the forties and fifties was light years away from what it is today. Back then, folks like the Barrons were, first, creating new textures from scratch (in the Barrons' case, they built their own circuits). Not to belabor this point, but that meant that they could not simply go down to the local Guitar Center and buy the appropriate synth module for the scene they were scoring. (A world without Guitar Center? Hard to believe, I know.)

Once the sounds were created and recorded on tape, they had to be organized compositionally, a painstaking process that involved comparatively rudimentary cut-and-splice techniques (apparently, this was Bebe's job). Again, the difficulty here is something that has to be experienced directly (or at least seen on YouTube) to be appreciated:



Clearly, with the advent of digital cut-and-paste technologies in recent years, this sort of thing has become much, much easier (the single edit in the preceding video, which took around four minutes, can now be done in a few seconds). But one wonders if the digital methods of cut-and-paste would have evolved so efficiently had it not been for the pioneers who spent most of their lives doing it the hard way in order to demonstrate what the possibilities were.

Wikipedia:

The 1948 book Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, by mathematician Norbert Wiener from MIT played an important role in the development of the Barrons' composition. The science of cybernetics proposes that certain natural laws of behavior apply to both animals and more complex electronic machines.

By following the equations presented in the book, Louis was able to build electronic circuits which he manipulated to generate sounds. Most of the tonalities were generated with a circuit called a ring modulator. The sounds and patterns that came out of the circuits were unique and unpredictable because they were actually overloading the circuits until they burned out to create the sounds. The Barrons could never recreate the same sounds again, though they later tried very hard to recreate their 'ID' sound from Forbidden Planet. Because of the unforeseen life span of the circuitry, the Barrons made a habit of recording everything.

Barry Schrader:

The music for Forbidden Planet is truly a landmark in electro-acoustic music. This was the first commercial film to use only electronic music, and the score for the movie displays an attitude towards film scoring that was different from anything that had happened before. In Forbidden Planet, while there are themes for characters and events in the film, as was traditional in the scoring of that day, the themes are composed and perceived as gestalts, rather than as melodies in traditional movie music. Even more important is the fact that the scoring of Forbidden Planet breaks down the traditional line between music and sound effects since the Barrons' electronic material is used for both. This not only creates a new type of unity in the film sound world, but also allows for a continuum between these two areas that the Barrons exploit in various ways. At some points it's actually impossible to say whether or not what you're hearing is music, sound effect, or both. In doing this, they foreshadowed by decades the now common role of the sound designer in modern film and video.

Music, various artists

I just uploaded my first "muxtape" here.

Of course I had to sneak in a few IJG tunes, given that I'm in promotional mode. Apologies in advance.

But there's a lot of other (and better) stuff there too. F'r'instance: a truly stunning version of Reid Anderson's "Silence is the Question," featuring Andrew D'Angelo on alto. And two short pieces from what may be my new favorite band: Shibusa Shirazu (thanks to Tatsuya Nakatani for hipping me to these guys). And let's not forget the "Leaping Nuns' Chorus," by Dudley Moore (yes, the very same), from the seminal sixties film Bedazzled...

In other words, a veritable potpourri. Or whatever.

Muxtape has a very simple, responsive interface -- if only all music sharing sites could be this way.

Enjoy! Or whatever.

* * * * *

In other news, it is currently snowing in Portland. A week or two ago, it felt like summer had arrived.

Huh?

I want one of those

Those of you who have been enjoying my half-baked attempts at filmmaking really ought to get a gander at this bitchen video for IJG member Kris Tiner's group, Empty Cage Quartet (which also features IJG alum Jason Mears). This, my friends, is how it is done:



The filmmaker is Tony Datillo, and the tune is Kris's. A match made in heaven, methinks.

Be sure to stick around all the way until the end for a totally incongruous (and thus delicious) audio clip of Mikey J.

Atlas flagged

Digby points to something I also noticed on Tom Hull's website last night, and which was initially noted by Paul Krugman (the quote is from Bloomberg News):

Ayn Rand's novels of headstrong entrepreneurs' battles against convention enjoy a devoted following in business circles. While academia has failed to embrace Rand, calling her philosophy simplistic, schools have agreed to teach her works in exchange for a donation.

The charitable arm of BB&T Corp., a banking company, pledged $1 million to the University of North Carolina Charlotte in 2005 and obtained an agreement that Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged'' would become required reading for students. Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, say they also took grants and agreed to teach Rand.

Shudder.

Digby adds some context (for those of you who have been fortunate enough to escape Ms. Rand's, uh, "oeuvre"):

Corporations, which have very good reasons to train young people into an ethos that extols the alleged virtues of heroic captains of industry and their lonely fight to retain freedom in the face of left wing collectivism, should not be buying academic curriculum of any kind. The very idea of academic freedom is that the academics decide what to teach, not the government or the community or especially some company who wants to promulgate a puerile political philosophy designed to make people believe that selfishness is a virtue. That it's in the form of a very bad romance novel makes it even worse. (To those romance novel aficionados out there, please note that I said "bad" romance novel. It's not a slam at the whole genre.)

True, true.

Unfortunately, as Jennifer Washburn pointed out in a great book a few years back, this intersection of money and academia is by no means a new phenomenon.

Still, Ayn fucking Rand? What's next: music appreciation courses in which Rush is required listening? (That was a joke, Rush fans.)

The road report: March tour, 2008

That there is two thirds of the Industrial Jazz Group, circa March 29, at around 8:30 PM, high in the hills of Berkeley, a few hours before the final gig of our CD release tour for LEEF.

Back row, L-R: Dan Schnelle (drums), Mike Richardson (bone), Damon Zick (soprano sax), Oliver Newell (bass), Dan Rosenboom (trumpet), yours truly (beer), Gavin Templeton (soprano sax). Front row, L-R: Stephanie Richards (trumpet), Tany Ling (vocals), Jill Knapp (vocals). (House and hospitality for this pic c/o Leila Ruyan.)

Not pictured: Ian Carroll (bone), Kris Tiner... at last! (trumpet), Darren Johnston (trumpet), Evan Francis (alto), Kasey Knudsen (tenor sax), Tom Griesser (bari sax), Gabriel Sundy (bari sax), Paul Perez (bari sax), Brian Walsh (tenor sax), Adam Schroeder (bari).

My deepest thanks to everyone involved in this adventure, onstage and off. In the latter category are Matt Lichtenwalner and Tristan (sorry Tristan I don't know your last name) -- boyfriends of bandmembers who both picked up the slack wherever they saw it lying around -- as well as the folks who helped us get gigs: Jim Romeo (San Diego), Kris Tiner (Bake-town), Phillip Greenlief (Oakland), and Ross Hammond (Sacramento). And big thanks to everyone who loaned us gear (Doug Davis, Greenlief again, Romeo again, Tiner again, the members of Joaquin's Night Train). And more and more thanks to those who housed us, fed us, came to our shows, and bought our CDs.

Yes, I'm talking to you. The IJG loves you.



Leaves on a table

You know things couldn't have gone off without a hitch, though, right?

Here was one of my initial challenges: the delivery date for the packaging of the album -- the neat little Arigato Pak solution to the plastic problem that I have been obsessing about for months -- was, as I should have anticipated, delayed by a few days, which meant that I had to order a rush delivery of 100 pcs. to be shipped to me on the road (they arrived on the second day of the tour).

Still, what would otherwise have been a fairly time-intensive task (folding the damned things into the appropriate shape) was made easier by the willing help of the aforementioned Matt and Tristan, and a few other folks as well. (Thanks, everyone.)

Note 1: Something I noticed only after-the-fact about the white-against-yellow writing on the back of the packaging: it is only truly visible in natural light. Initially, that sort of freaked me out, but now I think it's kind of cool.

Note 2: we have yet to develop out LEEF's little "liner notes and extras" page -- hopefully in the next week or two.

Anyway, LEEF is here! Welcome, LEEF.



Near-nudity at 21 Grand

We crossed a few more thresholds of taste with this tour (but who's keeping score, really?). The anticipated (and long-overdue) return of provocative trombonist Mike Richardson (owner of the fleshy thighs in the above pic, snapped at our Oakland gig) may have sparked a pattern of obscenity in some of my newer pieces... but wherever the impulse came from, we now have a song in which two enormously gifted and classically-trained singers (that would be Jill and Tany) are forced to proclaim, "Dinner at Applebee's / fuck all night / dinner at Applebee's / f-f-f-f-fuck all night."

(And that bit happens shortly after the same singers waggle their middle fingers at the audience, in a spoof of the greatest dance-music cliche of all time, which we render thusly: "Raise your finger in the air / wave it like you just don't care.")

(Oh, yeah. And if you were "lucky," you got to hear the above-referenced new tune -- ridiculously titled "Il Ponderoso / Apropos of Nothing" -- on one of the nights that Mr. Richardson's entire performance costume consisted of a single silver thong.)

Make of it what you will. I certainly wasn't expecting any of this to, uh, go down easily. But I'll be damned if I wasn't drawn into post-show pleasantries by more than one seemingly-conservative soccer Mom type. Did they not hear the lyrics, perhaps? Ah, who cares. Music should be the great unifier, n'est-ce pas?

(We even had one night where Jill apologized to a middle school (?) kid named Josh, who was in the audience -- with his parents (?) -- as she introduced "Fuck the Muck." Josh's smart rejoinder -- "Don't you think I say worse things than that at school?" -- produced an excited chant from the band and the audience ("Josh! Josh! Josh! Josh!"), and the kid was summarily invited to the stage (by Jill) to formally introduce the tune, which he did with remarkable gusto. Thanks, Josh!)

I'm still a great believer in the power of obscenity. Despite the remarkable way jazz has, in some circles, become a signifier of politeness and urbanity (nothing wrong with either of those, mind you), most jazz musicians I know are profoundly, gorgeously foul-mouthed. I suspect that's the norm in the community, in fact. Why not celebrate it?

Or use it as a tool? In a world steeped in deception, layered in mask after mask after mask (so that even the phrase "keeping it real" means anything but), the greatest value may be in the stuff that can actually cut through -- whether sound, or text, or image, or idea. (I'm not saying that we've accomplished anything truly incisive yet in this group. But we're trying, and that's partly where the fun lies, for me.)

Off-stage / Ob-scene. Rear guard / avant-garde. Apollo / Dionysus. These are probably the central tensions (and inspirations) of my artistic life. (Are you surprised that the working title for the next album is The Ballad of In and Out?)



Keeping with the animal theme

"Animal songs. Nothing but animal songs."

Well, not entirely. But close. Lately I've tried to keep my writing "grounded" around a one-page list of "keywords" -- concepts, issues, characters (etc.) that help to give our show some kind of coherence and identity (even if that identity is only fleetingly expressed in lyrics). Yes, one of the keywords is "fuck" (you probably guessed that, right?), but there is also a whole cluster of animal keywords -- "frogs," "bees," "wolves," "goats," "crabs," "chickens," "pigs," and "fish" are all on the list. I don't know what sense to make of this (if there is any). But on some level I'm sure the animal keywords have to do with the fact that I spend my days with a three-and-a-half-year-old, who of course is also fascinated with animals, as most children are.

What was it that Stravinsky said about his music being best understood by children and animals? (And what is it that I wonder from time to time about people losing their fascination with both animals and music as they age?)

Of course, on the negative side of this equation, there is also the underlying theme of every California trip we make -- the inevitable passage through the sprawling expanse of "Cowschwitz" (thanks to Evan Francis for introducing me to that term). I'm not exactly a PETA person, and this surreal hamburger factory is really only about ten minutes out of a six hour journey between LA and the Bay area. Still, the whole thing is not only depressing, but disgusting -- can it be normal to stand around in your own shit all day? -- and its continued existence seems somehow like further evidence of a general decline in western civilization.

Or something like that.



A near-miss in Bakersfield

One of the other challenges this go-round was when one of my guys -- let's call him "Slick" -- nearly disappeared into the wilds of Bakersfield, lured by the siren song of two of the city's native daughters. It made for a little bit of a stressful afternoon the next day, when he was a no-show as we were trying to leave town with enough time to get up to Oakland for another gig. But it also made for a comical comeback when he arrived shortly before downbeat (roughly five hours later) in a rented silver Mustang (I guess silver was one of the official colors for this tour).

You might think I'd be pissed off by this sort of thing, cuz it does happen from time to time when we're on the road. But here's my take: as long as, in the end, everything makes for good music (and without a doubt, "Slick" knows how to make good music), and nobody gets hurt, I'm cool. As Zappa said:

I respect musicians' idiosyncrasies -- they add "texture" to a performance. Musicians tend to generate better "texture" when they get "The Blow Job." Yes, I want them to find that elusive cross between a waitress and an industrial vacuum cleaner.

That about sums it up -- except that I'd use "Blow Job" as a metaphor (cuz different musicians want different things).



Six facts about me

1. I have been (consciously) writing music since I was seven or eight.

2. This year I will be forty.

3. I now have a kid of my own, and a mortgage.

4. I have a lovely wife who "gets" me, and who puts up with my artistic delusions / ambitions. (So the fact that this band is still around is partly her fault.)

5. I have never felt saner in my life, but I have never had more people openly questioning my sanity.

6. If being a musician -- and especially a composer for an original big band -- is an abnormal career aspiration, then as I get older, I get farther and farther away from being able to return to life as a "normal." In some ways, I feel like I am living out this (hackneyed) artist-fantasy in the most bass-ackwards way possible. Instead of having committed myself to music as a vocation in college -- which probably would have been more sensible, but, given my personality, might have burned me out by the time I was thirty -- I actually tried for a while to get into a more "respectable" career (a "real job," if you will), always doing music passionately but surreptitiously, and splitting myself into two incompatible identities. In a way, that was a useful experience, because it engendered, over a period of about ten years, a sense of longing (and resistance-to-normalcy) that simply had to spill over at some point. I guess that's what's happening now.



Getting paid

Wow, these tour blog posts are becoming a little redundant -- there are only so many ways you can say "Hey, that was a great tour, I love the folks in this band, I love the audiences, I can't wait to do it again." All that was true this time too. But my sense is that we've reached a certain plateau of "success": more often than not, we have great crowds, great responses... and lukewarm-to-shitty bread. Once in a while, the bread is better than lukewarm -- but not often enough. If I could only afford to hire a business manager, I might be breaking even (how's that for irony?).

Still, that's fine. For a while. But how wide is this plateau? How long do we have to stay at this level before we can move up to the next one? (And what is the next one, exactly?) Those are really the big questions. Cuz this is very cool, to be sure, but it's still an ever-so-delicate balancing act, made possible only by an absurd dance of nonexistent budgets and overstretched credit cards and less-than-optimal traveling conditions (and so on). That part of it may not always be obvious from the outside. Or at least it seems that way whenever someone finds out what I do, and asks the same initial question: "How do you make it work? You know, like, financially?"

As if! Please, everybody, listen carefully. I do not make this work financially. Maybe I make it work in most other ways. But financially? No sir, not yet.



And there's the rub. Truthfully, one of the things that has kept the group going for so long is the participation of ridiculously talented musicians who also happen to be willing to play in the group for ridiculously low sums of money. Because they like the music, they like the people, and they like the experience. Many of them have told me explicitly that, if it came down to it, they would do IJG gigs for free. Some have even refused to take any money on the nights when we have clearly bombed (thankfully we are bombing a lot less these days).

All of which is flattering beyond belief. Trouble is, it's not enough. The guilt that accompanies dragging these folks from the comfort of their warm beds (or wherever) to head out on an adventure that may or may not help them pay their bills -- well, it's becoming excruciating. That guilt is not going to stop me (at least in part because I'm addicted), but my compulsion to tour doesn't sit well with the fact that the tours aren't producing the kind of cashflow that the project needs (and deserves).

So boy oh boy am I obsessing about the question of "payoff." I need to speed up the slow burn. (And to that end I have some new schemes which I'll be revealing soon...)

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not kvetching. Ah, hell, let's end this with some levity:

And now a series of random shots



Ever wonder what kick-ass percussionists look like while eating breakfast? That's Dan Schnelle and Tatsuya Nakatani (who double-billed with us at Bakersfield, and pretty much floored everybody).



Chalk graffiti at the Fox and Goose. Not sure which list Gavin is at the top of, but I always listen to what the chalk says.



Ian C. catching Z's by the fire. (Didn't I say something about less-than-optimal traveling conditions? That's right, here's one of my guys sleeping on the fucking floor.)



Thank you, thank you, thank you, and goodnight. See you again real soon.

That's right, cling to it. Cling, cling, cling.

The tour post is still in the queue, but in the meantime, I needed to vent about this, which I have watched evolve into a miserable excuse for a "story" over the last hour or so.

Is it "looking down on someone" to acknowledge their frustrations or unhappiness?

Or is the issue even deeper than that? Are Clinton and McCain suggesting that the working class in this country is not bitter?

Exactly how self-deceptive are we willing to be? Doesn't it become, you know, exhausting after awhile?

UPDATE (Saturday)

Wow, watching this play out has been like watching manic, parched drunks fighting over an ounce of Miller Lite.

Or, as Ezra Klein put it:

[I]t's one of the depressing realities of our media landscape that it is both a) totally predictable that they will devote hundreds of hours to this story in the next few days and b) utterly unimaginable that they will give the candidate 3 minutes and 44 seconds to clarify his comments. And why would they? That might kill the story!

And in a later post (this is even better):

This may sound odd, but man am I disappointed that stuff is happening again in the presidential campaign. These last few weeks of relative quiet have been terrific. All the older reporters tell me that this is supposedly the greatest campaign of my lifetime and the thing that makes political journalism worthwhile, but seriously, look where we are today: Discussing an off-the-cuff comment in which one of the Democrats suggested that economic anxiety manifests in cultural conservatism.

[...]

It's worth saying that I'm not defending Obama here. I see nothing that he needs defense from. There's no actual attack being levied that anyone can rebut, or ideas being tossed out that anyone can argue. Instead, Obama has said something Politically Damaging. And it will Damage him. And we'll all watch to see how badly.

But let's be clear: It's not damaging because we think it foretells him doing something harmful to the country. It's not damaging because it suggests his policy agenda is poorly conceived, or his priorities are awry. If you think of policy and politics as two circles in a Venn diagram, this is damage that only exists in the politics circle, and doesn't even come close to the area of intersection. We reporters have to cover it, of course, because it's Really Important, and matters more than the housing plans of all the candidates put together. But it matters in a completely self-referential way, it matters only because it matters, not because it means anything about Obama, or illuminates anything about his potential presidency. It's a hollow scandal. Those housing plans, by contrast, don't "matter" in a way that convinces the media to cover them, or to relentlessly hound McCain about the inadequacy of his proposal. They don't "matter," but they are meaningful. And this is why I don't like writing about the campaign. It's full of hollow scandals and ignored travesties. But you have to cover the hollow scandals, because they're are blown up until they're definitional in the campaign. And that leaves me writing about high-profile non-events in a way that helps cement their importance, even if I'm writing to deride their legitimacy.

That doesn't sound odd to me at all. It sounds spot-the-fuck-on.


If you haven't seen it, here's Obama's initial response, which I thought was pretty good:

Because I'm addicted...

...to making these stupid little videos, here's one for "Bongo non Troppo." The audio is the album track (that's right, this tune is featured on LEEF), but the video is (mostly) from the recent tour... plus a few shots from a public domain film on the beatnik scene in Greenwich Village (circa, oh, a few decades ago)...



At various times, I have introduced this tune as being dedicated to the proposition that disco does not, in fact, suck.

Videography by the usual suspects (ML, JK, AD, the Internet Archive)...

Text-based posts to return soon...

[My closing comment in the video: "Thank you to all our dancers."]

The Frog

Another video (this time a bit more, uh, constructed). Another new tune.

Audio recorded live in Sacramento, at the Fox and Goose. It's raw and unedited, for those of you who care about such things.

Band cinematography by Matt Lichtenwalner and yours truly. Newsreel footage of the frog-jumping contest, and other footage of random animals, taken from the Internet Archive.

The Sac band: Zick, Templeton, Francis, Wright, Knudsen, Griesser (saxes); Rosenboom, Richards, Johnston, Richardson, Carroll (brass); Newell, Schnelle, Ling, Knapp, me (rhythm).

I'll be damned if Schnelle wasn't channeling his inner John Bonham on this tour. Amazing.

Other explanations and commentary to follow in the "big tour post."

Because I have no words yet...

...I must continue to rely on videos to tell the story of our recent tour.

This is unedited footage of (most of) our performance of "Boozey McBombalot," recorded by Matt Lichtenwalner at Dizzy's in San Diego. (The last minute or so got cut off.)

We debuted "Boozey" in Ohio last September, but this is a revised version.

Piccolo trumpet by Dan Rosenboom (the guy in the hot dog hat). That bit he is shouting at the beginning (it's hard to hear without a microphone, I know), is "major combat / operations" -- which eventually morphs into "diarrhea / diarrhea." Cuz, you know, that's what it starts to sound like after a while.

The rest of the San Diego band: Damon Zick, Gavin Templeton (soprano sax); Evan Francis (alto sax); Cory Wright, Brian Walsh (tenor sax); Gabriel Sundy (bari sax); Steph Richards, Kris Tiner (trumpet); Mike Richardson, Ian Carroll (bone); Oliver Newell (bass); Dan Schnelle (drums); Jill Knapp, Tany Ling (vox).

Dizzy's is always a blast for us, and this show was no exception (even though we set up in probably the most inefficient way possible -- one long line of horns, good gawd).

Note the perfectly-timed train hit at around the 1:18 mark.

Whee!

Incident at Umbria

A full-on tour post is coming soon, but in the meantime I wanted to lay this new video on you.

You all remember the hubbub last July, yes? (If the words "Jarrett," "Umbria," and "2007" don't ring a bell, you'll need to click that link for the appropriate background.)

I'll probably never be able to convince anyone that our version of this "performance" (i.e., my setting-to-music of the controversial comments) is not meant to be disrespectful of Mr. Jarrett -- even though that's the case. I mean, sure we're having a little fun at his expense, but the larger issue for me is the way in which a mega-jazz-event like Umbria exemplifies a frightening (and counterproductive) divide in the jazz world. Let's face it: the superstars and the scrappy up-and-comers are inhabiting different universes. There is no clear relationship or implied trajectory between them. And speaking from the perspective of the scrappies, Keith J.'s outburst couldn't have been stranger or more incomprehensible to me had he been from, say, Mars. (You mean they're actually paying you to play at Umbria and you're going to fucking complain?!)

Anyway, this is one of the better renditions (it was recorded in Bakersfield) of the piece with which we opened our shows last week. For handy reference, here are the lyrics in question:

I do not speak Italian
so someone who speaks English can tell
all these assholes with cameras
to turn them fucking off
right now
no more photographs, including that red light right
there

If we see any more lights
I reserve the right and I think
the privilege is yours to hear us
but I reserve the right
and Jack and Gary reserve the right
to stop playing and leave the goddammed city

I see a red light there and that means you, you you
(4X)

The text is verbatim (and I guess typical) Jarrett, except for the repeated line at the end, which I borrowed from Daniel Brio's All About Jazz piece on the incident.

And here's Kris Tiner's writeup on the Bakersfield show.

Like I said, more soon. I'm just getting my head back together.

[cinematography by Matt Lichtenwalner -- thanks, Matt!]

[vox: Tany Ling (soprano), Jill Knapp (alto)]

And then there's this...

That's Dan Schnelle, our amazing drummer. Ouch!

He was okay.

(He was catching a superball, in case it's not obvious. Notice how dedicated he is!)

Road pix

A smattering of images from the first few days of what has been probably our nuttiest tour yet. (Photos by Jill, Matt, and Andrew.)

Onward to Bakersfield!

Here we go again

So, yeah, we're off. The whole Califor-ny-a tour. Can't wait to dig into this one... new music, some new players, some great old friends -- it'll be a helluva week. And it'll be trippy to be back in the land of milk and honey, after my first full year as a Portlander (where the color is green, and the atmosphere is moist -- which is kind of not how it is in CA). And I may actually get to read a book or two while on the road, so that'll be nice.

You know the schedule. Come out if you can! We'd love to see you!

The only drag is that my laptop crapped out on me recently -- so that minimizes my blogging opportunities. I may have a chance to check in a few times to share some pix or what-have-you... we'll see.

Let me tide you over with this so-wrong-it's-right Joel McHale quote, ganked from that silly Entertainment Weekly, and uttered in response to some poor American Idol kid's forgetting of the lyrics to some Beatles tune: "Congratulations, Yoko Ono, assassins, cancer, and one-legged gold diggers: You're no longer the worst thing to happen to the Beatles."

Zounds! I hope I don't forget the names of any of the fantastic musicians who are playing with us this week. Here they are:

Damon Zick, Gavin Templeton, Evan Francis, Cory Wright, Brian Walsh, Kasey Knudsen, Adam Schroeder, Gabriel Sundy, Paul Perez, Tom Griesser (saxes)

Stephanie Richards, Kris Tiner, Darren Johnston, Dan Rosenboom (trumpets)

Mike Richardson, Ian Carroll (bone)

Dan Schnelle (drums), Oliver Newell (bass)

Jill Knapp, Tany Ling (vocals)

Yee haw!

Metal Jazz on Industrial Jazz

Greg Burk just posted a lovely CD review / tour preview on his (highly recommended) online vehicle for such things, Metal Jazz:

Tues. March 25 -- Composer Andrew Durkin’s rather large Industrial Jazz Group has fun with music. Sometimes too much fun, I think, but I enjoy a high quotient of gloom and rage. The IJG’s new “LEEF,” for which tonight’s show is a release party, is amazing in many ways. As usual, it combines a lotta styles, taking an old ragtime riff or “Volga Boatmen,” say, and expanding the harmony, messing with the tempo, twisting it around. There’s plenty of purely original stuff, too, changing all the time and keeping up a high level of energy, invention and smartly applied dissonance. With a greater emphasis on vocals this time, “LEEF” comes off as a kind of modern light opera, telling a slapstick story of artistic alienation and vehicular devastation. You will not be bored. At Temple Bar, 1026 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica; 11pm; $10.

Gracias, Greg!

A little love

Brick Wahl at the LA Weekly just wrote a nice little blurb on us -- mostly as a preview of our upcoming Temple Bar show, but there's also a sentence on LEEF (so I guess that would be the album's first published review):

Now, you might need a bit of an outish edge to dig The Industrial Jazz Group ... then again, underlying the IJG’s 15-piece in-your-face attack are Andrew Durkin’s solid, Mingus-soaked arrangements. The group’s Industrial Jazz A-Go Go is just terrific, all swinging craziness, like Stan Kenton smoking all his band’s dope and cleaving Mingus’ ax with an ax. We love it. And the upcoming LEEF is from a live gig at home in Portland ... funny swinging stuff with clumps of European music and Zappoid art rock and cabaret tossed in, missing only Joel Grey. They’re at the Temple Bar on Tuesday, at 11 p.m. on the dot. One set only, alas.

A few corrections -- first, LEEF was mostly recorded in Amsterdam, not Portland. Also, there's a typo in the online piece -- "IJF" instead of "IJG" (I corrected it in my cut-and-paste). And finally, for this tour, the group will actually be sixteen people, not fifteen. (More on that later.)

But anyway, big thanks to Brick for this great piece!

And, uh, yeah, so I guess we'll be touring in CA next week. Wow -- I guess it's our CD release tour for LEEF. Who'd'a thunkit?

Here's the itinerary:

Old habits

I'm sorry. I know it's not fair of me to presume to read the mind of another human being.

But in the aftermath of the Obama speech, every time I have heard the right-wing machine attempt to spin it as "not enough," or as "political posturing"; every time I have heard of "collective groans"; every time somebody says the content was "grating" -- every time, I am reminded of the following clip, and every time I suspect that this is what these people are really thinking:

Fearless

Ezra Klein is right. The power of that Obama speech -- the power of the candidate himself -- is traceable to a characteristic so rarely seen in politics: honesty.

As I listened, I was reminded that, for all of the left-generated criticism of Obama as "not progressive enough" (do you remember how common that was back in the Fall?) -- there is simply no way a Dennis Kucinich or a Ralph Nader (both of whom I admire greatly) could put the issue of race on the table so deftly, respectfully, and forcefully.

Whether you think race is our crucible issue as a nation is up to you, of course. I happen to think it is.

Klein also rightly points out that the speech was pretty measured and formal -- not the dramatic stump oratory that Obama is well-known for. But can you imagine the mindset it must take to be able to execute a delivery like that under such intense political pressure? I don't think I heard him trip over his language once (though, since we were getting Thandie ready for school, I probably didn't hear every single word). How many of us would even be able to think clearly in those circumstances?

The man is unflappable -- and not the "idiot's haze" unflappable of a George Bush. No, this is the good unflappable -- the kind that says "I'm patient enough to work things out with you in an open and respectful way. Let's not be deterred by the bullshit."

Ironically, one measure of the speech's success is the fact that the right wing critique of Obama is spinning out of control in response to it. You know the subtext by now: these folks reeeeaaaaally want to run against Clinton in the Fall. I suspect that they thought they had finally found Obama's fatal flaw -- and until now much of the mainstream response to the Wright controversy may have supported that conclusion. To watch that slipping away... well, it must be pretty goddamned frustrating.

But I hope you'll forgive me if I say I don't care.

Kiss me, I'm Irish

- Brother Jimmy, said Joey the Lips. - I'm worried. - About Dean.

- Wha' abou' Dean?

- He told me he's been listening to jazz.

- What's wrong with tha'? Jimmy wanted to know.

- Everything, said Joey the Lips. - Jazz is the antithesis of soul.

- I beg your fuckin' pardon!

- I'll go along with Joey there, said Mickah.

- See, said Joey the Lips. - Soul is the people's music. Ordinary people making music for ordinary people. - Simple music. Any Brother can play it. The Motown sound, it's simple. Thump-thump-thump-thump. - That's straight time. Thump-thump-thump-thump. - See? Soul is democratic, Jimmy. Anyone with a bin lid can play it. - It's the people's music.

- Yeh don't need anny honours in your Inter to play soul, isn't tha' wha' you're gettin' at, Joey?

- That's right, brother Michael.

- Mickah.

- Brother Mickah. That's right. You don't need a doctorate to be a doctor of soul.

- Nice one.

- An' what's wrong with jazz? Jimmy asked.

- Intellectual music, said Joey the Lips. - It's anti-people music. It's abstract.

- It's cold an' emotionless, amn't I righ'? said Mickah.

- You are. - It's got no soul. It is sound for the sake of sound. It has no meaning. - It's musical wanking, Brother.

- Musical wankin', said Mickah. - That's good.

- Here, yeh could play tha' at the Christmas parties.

- Instead o' musical chairs.

--Roddy Doyle, The Commitments

Oh feck. Happy Lá Fhéile Pádraig, my lovely, oft-poor, oft-fun, oft-misguided people. (Hey, I can say that.)

Station identification

Hi!

Did you know you can now pre-order LEEF? The album will be ready to ship sometime in the next few weeks. And the online price will go up after our upcoming tour (i.e., on April 1) -- so grab yours now! (You know, if, like, you want to.)

Oh yeah, and there's an added benefit of pre-ordering: you'll help us offset some of our touring costs!

In other words: everybody wins!

* * * * *

After much discussion and soul-searching, I decided to release LEEF in an environmentally-conscious package produced by a local outfit called Stumptown Printers (and here I must thank Kris Tiner, all the way down in Bakersfield, for pointing out this amazing resource in my own backyard). Stumptown does a lot of good work, but the package I chose is known as the Arigato Pak. It's basically a (CD-sized) all-paper matchbook-like design -- with a spine (hooray!). It eliminates the need for plastic and glue. Plus it's configured in such a way as to protect the CD from fingerprints.

Hope you like it!

* * * * *

Unlike me, Seth Godin seems incapable of ever blogging about anything lame. He recently posted this excerpt from what seems like a pretty funny book by Dan Kennedy -- an inside look at some kind of archetypal "Record Label Executive Mentality." The question t hand: "How many record execs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"

First of all, before we change anything, is the light bulb really burned out? Maybe we just need to breathe some life into it; repackage it, maybe the light bulb could do a duet with somebody (Sheryl Crow? Tim McGraw?) in hopes of getting some crossover appeal, maybe it could be in a beer commercial, maybe we could get it out on the road with a brighter light bulb. The other thing to think about is that this summer, Honda is rolling out a 100 Million dollar campaign for a new car aimed at thirty-somethings who consider themselves adventurous/spontaneous but can't really afford something like a luxury S.U.V. and it might be a perfect campaign to tie this light bulb into, at least it would be the perfect demographic, in terms of age.

Also, and this is just an idea: what if we found out what video games are being released in the third quarter and maybe pitched the idea of having our light bulb make an appearance in the video game at some certain level of completion; like, you get to a dark cave, let's say, if it's an adventure game, and if you have enough points you can get the light bulb - and it would be our light bulb, obviously - and then it's easier to see in the cave. The other thing is this: worst-case scenario the light bulb is, in fact, burned out. Is that really the end of the world? I mean, maybe that's actually of more value to us in the long run: Picture this for voice over: "The light bulb is dead. . . but the legend lives on. . . re-released, re-mastered, revealed. . . the light bulb. . . IN STORES NOW." It almost makes more sense than taking the time changing it, plus, if it's dead we can sell it without dealing with it, you know what I mean? No demands from it, no hotels, no road expense, no delays in the project from its end, etc. But, like I said, I'm just thinking off the top of my head here, just brainstorming, and none of this is written in stone. But the first thing we should do is figure out how we want to handle this, because the light bulb's manager is a total nightmare and we're going to have to take a meeting and listen to him sooner or later, and we should know what our plan is before we sit down with him. And let me tell you right now that the first thing out of his mouth is going to be, "This light bulb should be the brightest light bulb in the world, and it could be the brightest light bulb in the world, but you need to support the light bulb, you need to give the light bulb TV ads, you need to be more active in giving the light bulb tour support, we need to have some promotion from your end!" and on and on. And in that meeting, if you're in it, the only answer from our side should be that we're obviously very excited to be working with the light bulb, that we don't think it needs to be changed, that the only problem is people haven't seen how bright the light bulb could be, and our plan is to do everything we can to make this light bulb happen.

I'll send out an email to everyone before the meeting to remind people of our position on this, but the bottom line is we don't have the budgets right now, and basically we need to see something happening with the light bulb before we go throwing good money after bad, but obviously we can't have the light bulb's manager hearing that. I can tell you all that I'm personally very excited to be working with the light bulb, I think it will light up very brightly, and we're not going to stop working the light bulb, in whatever ways budgets will permit, until it does, in fact, light up very brightly. . . the light bulb is a very big priority for us from the top of the company to the bottom. Period. We can talk more about this when I am back from Barbados next week, and I'm going to need everybody's help on this. I know we can do it, but we need everybody working hard.

* * * * *

And, by the way -- I know that good PR / marketing requires that you have a story, but this is off the charts.

Carl Wilson astutely points out that "the entertainment business's version of whoring remains a hair's breadth away from the literal version"...

Which is true, I think... though I hope it doesn't change how you view the album ad with which I began this post!

Lost 'n lonely

"I saw this. I thought it was funny."

Yup. It's your standard JTMOU blog post.

(Details: the underrated Dinosaur Jr. covers the Cure. Note: the payoff comes at the chorus.)

The head's still in spin

An index of web 2.0. Couldn't they have, like, alphabetized it or something?

Oh, I see. Click an icon, and tags show up in the description window at the bottom (or just click the tags bar at the top (to the right of the search box)).

Brave new world.

One of the site authors, Orli Yakuel, has compiled a nice list of music-related Web 2.0 sites here. Thanks, Orli -- now I just have to find the time to check these out.

By which time we'll be in in Web 3.0.

Some much-needed civility

Photo by Ian Boyd.

Via.

Context

One of Jeremiah Wright's "controversial" comments -- the "God Damn America" bit -- was uttered two years before Katrina.

Was he being offensive or prescient?

The things you learn

Wow! I had no idea that Ted Gioia (whose book on so-called "west coast jazz" is an important corrective to the conventional view) is a Frank Zappa fan.

(For those of you who have never read Zappa's autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book, Gioia's piece reveals that Zappa was where I got the title of this here blog.)

Random thoughts in response to these reviews:

-- Hmm... FZ getting the call for Bitches' Brew? I know this is a harmless example of literary liberty-taking, but I must say, it's hard for me to imagine these two gargantuan personalities working together on a project. (Though Zappa did work with Boulez, so there is precedent.)

-- Just curious: has anyone ever actually heard "Peaches en Regalia" (or, for that matter, "Blessed Relief") called at a jam session?

-- Gioia namechecks the "great Shuggie Otis" -- as well he should. Shuggie (who put out a great album on the Luaka Bop label, and who also penned the Brothers Johnson classic, "Strawberry Letter 23") is the son of Johnny Otis, an early Zappa influence (and, if I remember correctly, the inspiration for the (now trademarked) Zappa 'stache).

-- Okay, I'll admit it, and I'm sorry in advance -- I've never been a huge fan of Ian Underwood's sax playing. [Ducking.]

-- But ah! "Dog Breath" is one of my favorites (in fact, I've always considered Uncle Meat to be one of those elusive perfect albums). And Gioia really puts it out there when he says that "[a]lmost a decade later, Steve Reich would reveal -- in his spectacular Music for 18 Musicians -- the modernistic side of mallet instruments. But Zappa had discovered the hypnotic power of the marimba and vibraphone back in his Uncle Meat days." Wow -- though Zappa certainly has his supporters among maintream critics (now), it's rare (as far as I can tell, anyway) that you see him credited for something concrete like this. I wonder if he would've gotten a Pulitzer if he had survived. (Nah, probably not.)

-- "During the course of ["Be-Bop Tango"], Zappa offers us intense energy jazz (with a flaming trombone solo by Bruce Fowler)" ... yes. And do you think I will ever get tired of reminding people that Bruce Fowler sat in with the IJG for a gig back in 2004? Fuck no! So sue me, it was real thrill. (And what a sweet, lovely guy Bruce is. For a while there he was one of the only people who would come to our LA gigs regularly.)

-- I have that Ed Palermo album, it's pretty damned good. Though the estate gave him shit. Wouldn'tcha know?

Tap-a, tap-a, tap-a

A few passes at this suggests that it actually works pretty well.

Of course, I didn't try tapping "The Black Page."

Via Pirates of the Bargain Bin.

Q & A

Geraldine Ferraro asks:

“Why is his candidacy historic? Can you give me another reason why it is an historic campaign?"

Answer: because it is a refreshing and persuasive attempt at politics sans bullshit.

Thoughts from within the long tail

From Andrew Drubber's essential ebook:

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

P.S.:

Regina Spektor. "Carbon Monoxide." Soviet Kitsch.

Note to self: wow.

Media, by ass

Yet another example of how I am so far out of the loop that I don't even know where the loop is:

Most Americans don't read political blogs.

One of the more surprising and counterintuitive observations of that piece: "The generation most likely to read such blogs are those age 63 or older." (Although something about these numbers in general seems misleading -- perhaps it's the absence of context.)

I was also surprised to learn that "blogs often adopt a specific point of view," and that that is what makes them different from "traditional, mainstream media."

Woah!

Maybe I'm crazy, but I think it is very rare indeed to find a media source (mainstream or otherwise) that attains the much-touted ideal of journalistic objectivity. C-SPAN comes pretty close, at least in terms of its framing device (low-key, evasive hosts, minimal graphics, inoffensive music, a let-everyone-get-their-say-and-then-we-move-on approach). But even there, bias inevitably (if unintentionally) creeps in -- as evidenced by a comment at this post on Greta Wodele:

I have awakened many mornings to check C-SPAN's Washington Journal, and if it's Greta, I don't care what the topic or who the guest is, I'll watch in amazement for a while.

So if you're liberal, and the guest is Karl Rove, do you suddenly find yourself less angry at his stupidity just because Ms. Rodele is hosting? Yikes.

Code can be objective. Words, images, sounds? Not so much.

More where that came from

Looks like this one has been around for awhile.

However, I just saw it for the first time (thanks, Sean!).

So of course I simply must post it here.

Yes, I love both Star Trek and Monty Python.

(They're more similar than you might think.)

"By the way," you ask, "Why the one-sentence-paragraph style, all of a sudden?"

Well, let's just say it lends a kind of gravitas to what is otherwise a rather frivolous post.

LEEF Trax: PDX LIX LAX

photo c/o Nick Moon

Madness.

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

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway.

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

A little levity...

...never hurt nobody.



C/o Secondtino.

An addendum on taste

I've been pondering, on and off, further ramifications of Carl Wilson's investigation of taste -- which I first pondered here.

(We're all about further ramifications here at JTMOUE.)

Still haven't actually gotten to the book yet.

(We're all about overscheduling here at JTMOUE.)

But check this out: bass wizard Steve Lawson recently had a cool post about a cool post about a cool post (see how this Internet thing works?), and all three tie into this topic nicely.

An excerpt from the primary document (the context is an experiment in which the trajectory of a given song's popularity could be "rewound" and tested numerous times):

In each of the eight social worlds, the top songs -- and the bottom ones -- were completely different.

For example, the song "Lockdown," by 52metro, was the No. 1 song in one world, yet finished 40 out of 48 in another. Nor did there seem to be any compelling correlation between merit and success. In fact, Watts explains, only about half of a song's success seemed to be due to merit.

"In general, the 'best' songs never do very badly, and the 'worst' songs never do extremely well, but almost any other result is possible," he says.

Why?

Because the first band to snag a few thumbs-ups in the social world tended overwhelmingly to get many more. And who received those crucial first votes seemed to be mostly a matter of luck.

How many of us are willing to admit that that beautiful tune we hold so dear, that authentic expression of heartfelt artistry, that potent signifier of some significant event in our lives, may actually be something we have (at least in part) been conditioned to love?

There is a lot of writing about musical likes and dislikes as if they are scientific, subject to the play of immutable laws (most musical analysis-based criticism takes this tack -- which of course is fine as far as it goes). But what if musical taste is actually a very complex kind of choice?

What if our record collections are full of things we (again, at least in part) decide to like because it suits some larger agenda about who we think we are or who we want to be?

These are silly questions, I know. I'm in a silly mood.

Same old same old

So we're back to this again.

Well, okay.

I don't really see tonight's results as a reversal of fortune for Obama -- the "delegate math" just doesn't add up -- but I do have a bad feeling about where things are going.

Every once in a while, when I take our lab-mastiff, Louis, to the park, there is a small dog or two who just won't leave him the fuck alone, what with the yipping and the nipping and the circling, until he just has to break through his usually docile doggy demeanor and come back with a convincingly vicious growl.

That, I believe, is what's going on here: go negative until you provoke a response. And there are many ways Obama can win this, but he can't win a negative fight against the Clintons (at least I don't think he can). That sort of thing is their bread and butter.

That sort of thing -- this sort of thing -- was also, I had hoped, a relic of the political past, the infamous "dustbin of history." Ha! Stupid me.



And where will this brave new return to business-as-usual lead us? Do we even care? Maybe not. But we should. In one of the stronger moments (for me) in what was an otherwise lackluster "concession" speech in San Antonio last night, Obama put it this way:

The world is watching what we do here. What will we they see? What will we tell them? What will we show them?

Same as it ever was?

Images from the front

Bag News Notes contributor Alan Chin appears to be "photoliveblogging" (is that a word?) the race in Ohio today. Some amazing shots are up already.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit listening to NPR

This is getting ridiculous. Another track ("Losing Proposition") from the 2002 Industrial Jazz Group album, City of Angles, was recently used as bumper music on NPR. This time (the fourth, at least) on Michel Martin's Tell Me More program.

(Last time it was our "Anger Management Classes" on Talk of the Nation.)

The feel-good video of the... oh, never mind

Not HRK-approved (to her credit), but HRK-inspired (no comment).

After about 15 seconds you'll get the idea...