How it's done

Irving Berlin's "nine inviolable rules for writing a successful popular song" (c/o David Suisman, originally published in American Magazine in 1920):

1. The melody must musically be within the range of the average voice of the average public singer. . . . 

2. The title, which must be simple and easily remembered, must be "planted" effectively in the song. It must be emphasized, accented again and again, throughout the verse and chorus. . . . 

3. The ideas and the wording must be [appropriate for] either a male or a female singer . . . so that both sexes will want to buy and sing it. . . . 

4. The song should contain heart interest [pathos], even if it is a comic song . . . . 

5. The song must be original . . . . Success is not achieved . . . . by trying to imitate the general idea of the great song hit of the moment. . . . 

6. Your lyric must have to do with ideas, emotions, or objects known to everyone  . . . . 

7. The lyric must be euphonious--written in easily singable words and phrases, in which there are many open vowels . . . . 

8. Your song must be perfectly simple . . . . 

9. The song writer must look upon his work as a business . . . .

And there you have it.

[photo credit]

And one more

This is "Brega." (Chart here.)

Book update: so close to being finished that some days I almost can't stand it.

The More You Know

It was an honor to be a part of this year's Cathedral Park Jazz Festival. Major kudos to all the people involved -- the incredible bands, the tireless and dedicated organizers, the enthusiastic and terpsichorean audience. Quite inspiring to witness this important local treasure get a new lease on life.

By the way, this new band of mine (this was our second gig ever) is in the middle of recording an album... and it's gonna be real good. Here's a taste of our Saturday set.



Other updates coming soon.

3, 2, 1, GO

A friend of mine is fond of reminding me of some words of wisdom a teacher once passed along to him, that in music, as in air travel, what matters most are "takeoffs and landings."

Here is how PROTO-HUMAN, my new group (featuring David Valdez (alto sax), Scott Hall (tenor sax), Justin Morell (guitar), Todd Bishop (drums), Andrew Jones (bass), and yours truly (keyboards and composition)) took off during our debut performance at the Blue Monk a few nights ago.



Big thanks to the IJG's Mary-Sue Tobin for putting this show together. I look forward to seeing where this band goes from here.

(Also: book update coming soon.)

Brega

Happy 2012.

I am still in the home stretch with my book, and in the interest of not allowing this blog to languish in the meantime, I thought I would try something I haven't before: sharing a bit of my written music.

As I mentioned in my last post, most of my time these days is either going toward the book or toward my new band, Proto-human, a six-piece Portland-based ensemble featuring alto and tenor sax, plus a four piece rhythm section (guitar, piano, drums, and bass).

With Proto-human, though I don't wish to analyze the aesthetic too much, I have nevertheless been trying to challenge myself to write using styles and approaches that I kind of got away from in the Industrial Jazz Group. In other words, I'm trying to step out of my comfort zone a bit.

For instance, in the IJG I eventually stopped writing at the piano, or with paper. With Proto-human, most everything I've written so far has been composed at the piano, and most of it has at least been sketched out on paper first.

As another example, most everything I have written for the IJG, and especially in the last five years or so, has been rather heavily and densely arranged, even in the way that improvisation was involved (in my most recent stuff, improvisation was often part of the arrangement, rather than an opportunity to showcase a given soloist). I am proud of the unique sound that resulted, but I knew when I started this new band that I wanted to try to write at least one simple single-page lead sheet type chart, that the group could arrange, and that offered extensive blowing opportunities. Just to hear what would happen.

"Brega" (see below--click to enlarge, and feel free to download) is what I came up with. The word "brega" is Portuguese for "tacky" or "in bad taste." You can decide for yourself whether the tune was aptly named.

If you're in Portland, Oregon, on March 11, 2011, you can hear this tune, and a bunch of my other new pieces, at the Blue Monk, when Scott Hall, David Valdez, Andrew Jones, Justin Morell, Todd Bishop and I premiere them as part of Mary-Sue Tobin's wonderful Sunday Night Jazz Series.

But in any case, by all means feel free to take it for a test drive yourself.

No, I'm not dead

Wow, it has been a long time since I have posted anything here. My apologies to any of you who were expecting more regular output from me over the last five months or so.

My silence has not been spiteful or petulant, I assure you. I will admit that I have been struggling with the need to go off the grid for a while, however. I have always been ambivalent about my addiction to social media (though perhaps not quite this ambivalent), and I occasionally crave a respite from the visibility it compels. Not without some professional risk: it is becoming more and more impossible to have the sort of music career that willfully ignores the online environment. But I reached some kind of breaking point back in the Spring, and I dealt with the resulting tension by maintaining a haphazard presence on the "big two" platforms (Facebook and Twitter), while neglecting the blog for a bit. In retrospect, I feel like I should have done it the other way round.

In other words, I discovered that I truly missed blogging. Facebook and Twitter, on the other hand -- don't know if I would miss them if I could somehow break free. I participate, but participation takes energy -- and not always "good energy." Often it is the energy of shallow distraction, the energy of trying to keep up with all of the excellent things my musical friends and associates are doing -- a worthy enough endeavor, but one that, given its scale, comes at the cost of focusing on what I want to be doing, and maybe even one that threatens to undercut my own integrity as an artist. I worry about speaking just to speak, about becoming just another strident voice added to the self-aggrandizing din. (After all, who am I to distract you from the things you want to be doing?) But mostly, I worry about priorities, and time.

Of course, there have also been technical reasons for my silence here. The biggest is that I am still not finished with my damned book. Yes, I am very close, and yes, I expect to have it completed by the end of the year. But I have been saying similar things for some time now, n'est-ce pas?

The issue is this: in the process of revising the original manuscript over the last year and a half, and passing it around to various people, who have been giving me useful (at times brutally useful) feedback, I feel like I have brought the thing within striking distance of being a much better, more thorough, more compelling book than I ever imagined was possible in the first place.

That revelation has proved to be a heady wine, but it has also forced me to be patient. Indeed, the kind of excellence I am after has required more motherfucking patience than I thought was humanly possible. (Thankfully, my agent has even more patience than that.)

Patience is new territory for me. While I have always tried to be thorough and exacting in my work, I have also tended to give in to the impulse to move a composition (whether it be prose or music) through the pipeline, rather than lingering over it for too long. There was always something more important about the overall flow, about the collective statement of a body of work, than about any one piece in particular. I still think there is a basic value in that approach, but something about writing a book -- 300 pages or so that need to hang together in a single coherent line of thought -- has led me to obsess about this work more, and, perhaps, to give in to the agony of self-criticism more. Not so much that it leads to writer's block. But enough to extend my timeline a bit.

December. I think I will finish this by December.

* * * * *

What about the IJG? Well, I'd be lying if I said it hadn't become a bit of a struggle to keep it going in recent months. Let me be clear: like me, the band is not dead, we are just lying low for a bit. Aside from the energy it is taking me to write the book, there is a bit of a background here, a psychic melodrama that extends back a few years. After the disappointing "Rocktober" tour in 2009 (as I said, psychic melodrama: other people tell me it wasn't that bad), I made a pact with myself that when it came to the IJG I would no longer seek out or accept the kind of endearing but ineffective gigs I had grown too accustomed to over the years. No more cafe gigs for a percentage of the door. No more art galleries that couldn't guarantee a crowd. No more cramped stages with crappy acoustics. No more bullshit. I had put up with that kind of thing for too long, because I loved the music. But in 2009 the equation changed. The bullshit threatened to make me love the music less, and that scared me.

For a while, my newfound purist self-righteousness seemed to work nicely. We gigged less, but the gigs were better. Highlights included performances at LA's Hammer Museum, an always-enjoyable annual jaunt to San Diego, and a trip to Milan that was one of the best performance experiences of my life. (That last is a tale I have yet to tell, I know.) But for the last six months or so, the telephone has been pretty quiet. To make the situation more complicated, there has been a new IJG album in the queue for two years now. I have discovered an exquisite talent for belaboring the mix on that one. I'm still not quite sure I want to release it.

In short, every time I sit down to work on IJG stuff, I am put in mind of this Berlioz quote:

I dreamed one night that I was composing a symphony, and heard it in my dream. On waking next morning I could recall nearly the whole of the first movement, which was an allegro in A minor in two-four time. . . I was going to my desk to begin writing it down, when I suddenly thought: If I do, I shall be led on to compose the rest. My ideas always tend to expand nowadays, this symphony could well be on an enormous scale. I shall spend perhaps three or four months on the work [. . .] during which time I shall do no articles, or very few, and my income will diminish accordingly. When the symphony is written I shall be weak enough to let myself be persuaded by my copyist to have it copied, which will immediately put me a thousand or twelve hundred francs in debt. Once the parts exist, I shall be plagued by the temptation to have the work performed. I shall give a concert, the receipts of which will barely cover one half of the costs -- that is inevitable these days. I shall lose what I haven't got.

These thoughts made me shudder, and I threw down my pen, thinking: What of it? I shall have forgotten it by tomorrow! That night the symphony again appeared and obstinately resounded in my head. [. . .] I woke in state of feverish excitement. I sang the theme to myself; its form and character pleased me exceedingly. I was on the point of getting up. Then my previous thoughts recurred and held me fast. I lay still, steeling myself against temptation, clinging to the hope I would forget. At last I fell asleep, and when I next awoke all recollection had vanished for ever.

That's a weird place to be -- to be in touch with your own talents, to have the artistic self-confidence that comes from experience and maturity, and yet to feel a sense of dread about actually bringing a work to fruition, or to even bother with the first steps. Part of you wants to destroy each composition in the womb, because you know the agony that will attend its realization process somewhere down the road. Writing itself is no problem -- it's the same joy it always was, and melodies come to you in your dreams, while walking the dog, during dinner. You know each piece can be something beautiful, maybe even something astonishing. But what a pain in the ass it will be to actually get it performed! What a pain in the ass it will be to actually get anyone to hear it!

It's hard to write about this sort of thing without sounding self-indulgent. But honestly, these are the realities that all independent composers must face -- I'm just articulating them, not arguing for apathy in the face of them. (Of course the challenge is particularly acute when it comes to large ensemble music.)

My own way out of this dilemma, for the time being, has been to create a parallel experience while I quietly scan the horizon for the IJG's next adventure. In other words, to start another band. Even in the face of the realities I just outlined, the urge to write never goes away, and I have realized that if it doesn't have an outlet, that in itself is a risk factor for depression (for me). In fact, being technically band-less since March is probably one of the reasons I have been over-thinking all of the things I have been over-thinking. I'm worried about where that might take me if I'm not careful.

Starting a Portland band is something I have been pondering for a while. It's a little absurd how long it has taken me, given the fact that I have been living in this town since 2006. But this year, for the first time, I have actually tried to make it happen. The process itself has been a struggle. There have been many close calls and false starts, with potential new project after potential new project dying upon the rocks of scheduling difficulties and incompatible chemistry.

But now that the year is drawing to a close, I'm in rehearsals with a thing that seems to be cohering into an actual entity, and actual ensemble. At the very least it's nice to have some new music of mine raise its head and blink at the world for the first time.

The players may be known to you: David Valdez on alto, Scott Hall on tenor, Andrew Jones on bass, Todd Bishop on drums, Justin Morrell on guitar. I am playing keys, as best as I am able.

I'll have more to say about this soon, I hope.

What's next? I don't know yet, but I promise not to keep you in the dark for another five months.

Thanks for reading.

Some things never stay the same

Supposedly, Duke Ellington once said this:

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

Assuming that was ever true, is it still true?

I suppose one could argue that it is still true in the sense that most jazz musicians still tend not to be very materially successful, and most parents still generally don't want their daughters to associate with freeloaders.

(One way in which it is certainly not true, or at least not complete, is that it doesn't take note of the fact that many daughters are now playing jazz too.)

But I'm pretty sure that the material interpretation is not what Ellington meant. I think, in his suave and elegant way, he was trying to say something about how jazz is connected to illicit pleasure, to rebellion, to the social underbelly, to life as an outsider. I think he was saying that jazz is the music of cool weirdos who are vaguely threatening in some way.

Is THAT still true?

[Photo credit: "KFC Taco Bell Wedding" by Macrofarm]

I know what you mean

This post will end with a quote for the ages, taken from Exit Through the Gift Shop, a fascinating street art documentary.

If you don't know Exit, here's the Wikipedia summary:

Exit Through the Gift Shop: A Banksy Film is a film directed by Banksy that tells the story of Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant in Los Angeles, and his obsession with street art. The film charts Guetta's constant documenting of his every waking moment on film, from a chance encounter with his cousin, the artist Invader, to his introduction to a host of street artists with a focus on Shepard Fairey and Banksy, whose anonymity is preserved by obscuring his face and altering his voice, to Guetta's eventual fame as a street artist himself.

"Fame," in its most negative sense, is the key word here. Guetta, who through the course of the film becomes more and more unhinged, eventually succumbs to the temptation to make art. But as far as I can tell, it is all flash and nonsense, his work, all hipness unto death, without substance. (A key measure of Guetta's "success" as an artist is that Madonna asks him to design the cover for a "Greatest Hits" album. Of course she does.) "Artist," like "documentary filmmaker," or "clothing store owner" (the other things Guetta does in this film) seems like just another mask to try on. And frankly, it also seems like another way for Guetta to avoid his wife and three young kids.

Whatever. Some have speculated that the story of Guetta is an elaborate hoax, a joke by Banksy, but I dunno. I knew people like this when I lived in Los Angeles. It was hard to avoid them. If the film is a satire, its details are spot-on, and it is more depressing than funny.

Anyway, when Guetta finally succumbs to his artistic impulses, he puts together a huge exhibition, under the ridiculous moniker "Mr. Brainwash," and (surprise), the Los Angeles art cogniscenti fall for it, making his exhibition (the stupidly titled "Life is Beautiful") an instant hit. Banksy (the more interesting artist, though not immune to bombast himself) is left scratching his head, wondering how this ne'er-do-well could have ended up raking in millions of dollars simply by turning out tedious nonsense like this. Or at least that's the vibe I got toward the end of the film, when Banksy utters these words:

I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art.

(pause)

I don't do that so much anymore.

Go watch, and let me know if you see his point.

[photo credit: 416Style]

More rebellious than thou

Recently had the pleasure of watching Until the Light Takes Us, a fascinating documentary about the Norweigian Black Metal scene. I knew pretty much nothing about this music going in -- I wouldn't say I came out of the experience as a full-on fan, but my curiosity has definitely been piqued.

In some ways, the movie gets at the same old conundrum the avant-garde has been grappling with ever since the triple whammy of serialism, punk, and free jazz. Specifically: if your aesthetic is driven by rule-breaking, where do you go once you have broken all the rules?

(I realize of course that serialism in particular has a lot of rules--but note that they all seem designed to break the old rules about how music should be made, or about what sounds beautiful.)

Anyway, for evidence of this conundrum in Light, see, for instance, this fascinating interview exchange with Gylve "Fenriz" Nagell (of the band Darkthrone). (Disclaimer: English is clearly not Fenriz's first language.)

Interviewer: For me, I have the impression when I read your interviews and also when I listen to your lyrics that you've now become a little less provocative than you were maybe eight or nine years ago...

Nagell: Wow! Wow! You think so? That is so interesting, because I think. like, eight years ago, I didn't really do, like, provoking shit, I did... because Christian people were not going to read my lyrics, right? So they're not going to be provocative. What I wrote then was, I see now in hindsight, I see that this is what people that were into occult, or obscure, or anti-Christian things, that was the sort of lyrics they wanted to read. It maybe give them strength, but it was also sort of fiction and maybe it created an outlet for my fucking head. What I've been doing the last two albums is what should drive people to suicide and it's really taking out the strength because you can't really get strength from the lyrics in the last two albums [...] So I'm thinking, I'm really just pleasing, and I'm caressing the dog with its hairs, you know, as we speak, "dogs" being the fans or whatever, that want to listen to the album, I'm just, it turns out, I was writing just what they wanted, okay, and now I'm writing what no one wants, because that is to be really fucking depressed if you really understand it, and then, wanting to take your fucking life. At least I do. Because looking at my lyrics for the last two albums, I'm seeing my fucking world in hell.

(A pause.)

Interviewer: Okay, thanks for taking the time.

Nagell: Okay, thanks for your time.

Interviewer: And I wish you a nice evening.

Nagell: Oh, have a beautiful evening. Alright! See ya later, hey hey!

It's hard to convey through the transcript, but as I listened, I could have sworn I detected a bit of disappointment in Fenriz's voice. And where he goes from there -- one could paraphrase it as "I'm so provocative that I'll make you want to kill yourself" -- is an almost perfect illustration of the trap some artists find themselves in when they subscribe to the rule-breaking model of creativity.

And yet the rule-breaking model of creativity is where the fun is, isn't it?

Little Black Dress

A feature written for saxophonist Mary-Sue Tobin, who takes a wicked solo at around the 1:50 minute point. If you ever needed proof that I love old-school, blues-inflected large ensemble jazz, here it is.

Recorded March 3 at Royal/T in Culver City, CA, a few hours before we got on a plane for Milan.

Featuring Damon Zick (soprano sax), Evan Francis (alto sax), Brian Walsh (tenor sax), Mary-Sue Tobin (tenor sax), Cory Wright (baritone sax), Dan Rosenboom (trumpet), Josh Aguiar (trumpet), Ian Carroll (bone), Mike Richardson (bone), Sam Bevan (bass), Dan Schnelle (drums), Jill Knapp (vocals), Tany Ling (vocals), Andrew Durkin (composition, conducting). (Sadly, trumpeter Kris Tiner was not at this show, because of severe family complications. More on that in my Milan write-up.)

You probably can't hear it in this clip (the audio is fairly lo-fi, and the venue was rather live), but the band is sounding better than ever. I cannot fucking wait to get a good studio recording of us so that I can prove it to you.

Video helpfully provided by Tany Ling.

(By the way, Jill Knapp just posted a brief Milan retrospective here. Mine is coming soon, I swear.)

Comparisons

This, via Ballon Juice's DougJ, cracked me up today:

Although I am very hostile to the Catholic Church, I still have some fondness for Catholics and Catholicism. Certainly, I think Catholicism has a stronger cultural tradition than the other Christian religions. You’ve got the Italian Renaissance, you’ve got James Joyce (I know he stopped believing and stuff, but he was influenced). What have the Protestants got? “Amazing Grace” is the only thing that comes to mind.

It’s the same way I feel about heroin and cocaine. With heroin, you’ve got Charlie Parker, Exile On Main Street, and Edgar Allen Poe. With cocaine, once you get past Lawrence Taylor’s 1985 season and a few episodes of “Mork and Mindy”, there’s very little that anyone will remember a hundred years from now.

Though I was raised Catholic, I have long been an apostate. Still, after seeing Il Duomo in Milan, I'd say Mr. J has a point.

Get what's needed

This image was taken by my beautiful wife. It's a misplaced "to do" list that she found in a shopping cart at the local Fred Meyer store. Is there a name for this genre?

"Get what's needed": isn't that pretty much the upshot of everything? The meaning of life, even?

Ah, the flotsam and jetsam that we leave in the world, often without even realizing it. I sometimes wonder about the confusion I would inflict upon an unsuspecting reader if they were to happen upon one of my lost notebooks.

La vie d'un chien

A few days ago, I saw this charming little film about a scientist who figures out how to change himself into a dog. I thought I would share.

A passing truck captures his attention. He feels the strong urge to chase it. The compulsion is overwhelming. He runs for blocks, barking ceaselessly. The pursuit is pointless. Fruitless. Even if he could catch the truck, what would he do? Such questions are irrelevant. The pursuit itself is the point, and in this solitary moment his obsession is total. Mind, body, heart, and soul sing in unison, in singular commitment to the chase. Every goal, plan, or belief he has ever devised in three decades of life as a human is revealed as hollow, a travesty, forgotten or ignored in the passion of this moment.

Watch the whole thing; it's only about 14 minutes.

(And yes, for those of you who have been asking, a post about the IJG's recent Italian trip is coming soon. Here's a preview: it was AWESOME.)

The most important lesson from Esperanza Spalding's upset Grammy win over Justin Bieber?

I think it is encapsulated in this statement from Peter Hum:

If Spalding’s only tweeted seven times and has only 9,000 or so followers, she’s probably only been delinquent with her social networking because she’s more focused on making music.

As we all should be!

I don't know Spalding's music very well, and I don't know Bieber's music at all. (Lucky for me, my six year old doesn't know Bieber's music either.) Plus, it's silly to pretend that the Grammys are a true barometer of musical value. But even from a distance, this was a pleasant turn of events, and it should make us all smile a little bit.

[Photo credit: Pennello]

Egypt

"I know there are many -- Muslim and non-Muslim -- who question whether we can forge this new beginning. Some are eager to stoke the flames of division, and to stand in the way of progress. Some suggest that it isn't worth the effort -- that we are fated to disagree, and civilizations are doomed to clash. Many more are simply skeptical that real change can occur. There's so much fear, so much mistrust that has built up over the years. But if we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward. And I want to particularly say this to young people of every faith, in every country -- you, more than anyone, have the ability to reimagine the world, to remake this world."

Barack Obama, speaking in Cairo, June 2009

[Photo credit: Steve Rhodes]

"D'oh"?

Is it me, or is this kind of an unusual photo of Ellington?

Wow, I like it.

[source: Wikimedia Commons]

Writing a book is hard

Probably the hardest thing I've ever done, it turns out. Writing a blog is much easier. Hell, writing weird big band music is much easier.

With blogging, at least, you don't have to plan for every contingency. You throw some opinion out into the ether, and if people disagree with it, they say so, and (wonder of wonders!) there is a "comment" function that allows you to engage in a discussion. (That is, it allows you to engage in a discussion when you're not too busy writing a book.) You can gradually tease out the nuances of the subject by posting variations on a theme. Everything is in flux, because, well, it's the Internet. Nothing is "permanent" (even though nothing ever really disappears). Sure, sometimes the responses and ensuing arguments can get a little mean-spirited and rough (though hardly ever on this particular blog, and I thank you for that). But there's a sense that all can be forgiven, amended, improved... because, again, it's the Internet. The whole thing almost has the dynamic of an "oral culture."

A book feels much more "cast iron," much more "this-text-will-represent-you-for-all-time." (It's not really either of those things, of course, but it sure feels as if it is.) It's easy to become obsessed with the futile task of anticipating every criticism (as if that is even possible), following through on every "but what if?" and every "on the other hand." It's one thing to spin that sort of stuff out in an actual conversation. But in a book? A real book? A book I want to be a knock-out, because it may be the only book I ever write? It's the most elaborate dance I've ever done.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this provocative observation from Christopher Small, one of the many writers whose work I am visiting and revisiting as I near the completion of this project. (It's a blog post! I can veer over to a new subject any time I want!) This bit is from his Music of the Common Tongue:

Thus the participants in a symphony concert are bringing into existence, for the duration of the performance, an ideal industrial society, in which each individual is solitary and autonomous, tidy, disciplined and stable, punctual and reliable, the division of labour is clear, the relationships are impersonal and functional, and the whole is under the control of a charismatic figure armed with clearly defined authority. The music played is drawn from a repertory which, like the ideal industrial culture, is standardized the whole world over and played in a standard manner; it is a repertory of musical works which themselves either celebrate the individualist values of western industrial culture or can be forced into that mould: it consists of abstract dramas of the individual soul through which performers and listeners alike can participate vicariously in the processes of becoming and overcoming, or else of abstract dances, many of them hijacked from more dancing cultures, in which the performance invites us implicitly to do what the concert-hall conventions prohibit us from doing, or else of abstract landscapes, of fantasy Espanas, Americas, Hebridean Islands or pastoral Englands of nostalgia or of the tourist imagination. Above all, it is a society in which producers and consumers of the commodity, music, fulfill clearly defined and separate roles. In the ceremony called a symphony concert, which brings this ideal society into existence, the values of performers and listeners, and their sense of who they are, are explored, affirmed and celebrated. It need hardly be said that, for those who do not share these values, neither the concert-hall ritual not the symphonic drama is likely to be of much interest.

I often wonder about the parallels between the symphony orchestra and the big band. (And how to avoid them.) But that's a subject that will have to wait for another post.

[photo credit: Foxtongue]

RIP Don Van Vliet

The first Captain Beefheart song I ever heard was "I Love You, You Big Dummy," when I was about 16 or 17. Fred Frith was filling in as a guest DJ on WFMU one night, and I happened to record most of his broadcast to cassette (I did that sort of thing frequently -- it was one of the main ways I learned about new music). I got the sense that Frith really didn't want to play the track, except that he was getting a lot of requests for Beefheart, and wanted to get it out of the way. He accidentally started "Dummy" at the wrong speed (too slow), and I remember thinking that the music sounded even weirder after he corrected the problem halfway through.

I would eventually wear out that particular cassette, but I hardly remember any of the other artists Frith played that night.



Of course Trout Mask Replica is the classic Beefheart album. For me it preceded my Zappa infatuation. But I have always particularly adored Shiny Beast, especially "Tropical Hot Dog Night" (which kicks in at about 3:50 on the above clip). That song, for whatever reason, saved me from madness when I moved to LA in 1995. Coincidentally I played it for my elementary school band this year, and for a few minutes they seemed to understand what it meant to be overjoyed at the possibility of being utterly unique.

Beefheart seemed to have a Monk-like trust in the worthiness of the most basic aesthetic gesture. It's a cliche to cite the "child-like sensibility" of some artists, but with Beefheart it really was a key part of his appeal.



Did I say Monk? I could also have said Ornette Coleman. But I'd be better off citing Lester Bangs making that same comparison, more eloquently than I ever could (Bangs' review of Lick My Decals Off, Baby may still be the definitive essay on Beefheart, though it gets a little bombastic toward the end):

The comparison with Coleman is apt on more than one level: both ushered in new decades with conceptions of ensemble improvisation so unheard of as to raise wide controversy; both have concerned their music with the rising spirit of man, the unforced compassion and insight that led Coleman to write songs like "Lonely Woman" and "Beauty is a Rare Thing," Beefheart to "Frownland" and "I Love You, You Big Dummy"; and most significantly, no matter how far out both have gotten, the primitive American blues heritage has always been implicit in everything they've done.

All good points, though the "unforced compassion" is worth underscoring, particularly in relation to the basic sullen contrivance that seems to drive some of the indie-est rock (or jazz) today. People love Beefheart's music because it is affectionate, and it feels good, no matter how dark it gets:

. . . in an age of pervasive artistic negativism, we have in Cap a new-old man refusing to discard the heart and humanity and essential innocence that Western culture has at least pretended to cultivate for three thousand years and which our electrified, relativistic generation seems all too willing to scrap as irrelevant sentimental bullshit. When Cap beams: "My smile is stuck/I cannot go back to your frownland/My spirit's made up of the ocean/And the sky/And the sun and the moon/And all my eyes can see...Take my hand/And come with me/It is not too late for you/It is not too late for me...." he stands at a point of pristine enlightenment that acid can't confer.

I was going to say something about it being hard to imagine any of Beefheart's many imitators being able to convincingly deliver an opening line like "My smile is stuck / I cannot go back to your frownland" . . . and then I realized that Beefheart doesn't really have many imitators. Or, actually, any.

QED and RIP.

Those who can't do, teach, and then their students secure their legacy

This section of a Christoph Wolff essay on Bach--and particularly the bit about "scores of students and their pupils' students" working to "organize and eventually consolidate Bach's lasting influence"--made me laugh out loud:

It seems worth noting at this point that Bach’s most important musical contemporaries, Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi, and Rameau, who all wrote music that had a broader appeal, and was more widely disseminated than Bach’s, were completely remote from the discussion and the scene in which the eighteenth-century concept of original genius emerged. Two explanations offer themselves. First, their compositional art, whether applied to opera, oratorio, concerto, or any other vocal and instrumental genre, was widely recognized and acknowledged as superior. There is no question about the quality, beauty, appeal, technical make-up, or poetic and expressive character of their music. Yet none of their compositional achievements brought about any fundamental and long-lasting changes by way of discovery and new inventions. Second, Bach lived and worked for twenty-seven years in an academically challenging environment, and his main activities consisted of teaching. Hence, scores of students and their pupils’ students helped organize and eventually consolidate Bach’s lasting influence, a phenomenon that none of his musical colleagues sustained.

You could literally spend decades pondering the extent to which everything you think about the art that you like (or don't like) is socially-constructed. No wonder most of us don't.

(By the way, I adore the music of Bach, Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi, and Rameau.)

[Photo credit: nathanrussell]

That's my life's work, thanks for listening

Just saw the documentary on Harry Nilsson. Highly recommended.

At one point, songwriter Jimmy Webb describes a scene toward the end of Harry's life. The story just stuck with me. Maybe it will stick with you, too:

I remember one night, about a month before he died, we went out on the street, and we walked about half a block and there's Harry's car. We got in, and he said, "I just want you to listen to this with me." And he had two or three tapes, and he took 'em out, and he put 'em in the sound system, and we started listening to Harry's songs. And we must've listened for a couple hours. And he played one after the other. New ones, old ones, some that I had heard before, some I knew he had written and hadn't gotten recorded, some that he wanted to record, some that weren't finished, but they were all wry and tender and funny and vulnerable and sweet and sour at the same time. We got to the end and the last song played and the tape player clicked and it was silent in the car and he looked around and Santa Monica was quiet, just me and Harry in the car. And he said, "Well," he said, "that's my life's work." He said, "Thanks for listening." And that's the last time I saw him.

Is there really any point in trying to imagine a more touching, elegant, dignified way to go than that?