Unpopular Music: March 2014

Monday, March 31, 2014

Catching up, part one

Some real life (let's call it) stuff over the last couple of weeks have kept me from my already erratic blogging schedule. Here's the first part of stuff I've been meaning to write about.

Sing, Sing, Sing (with a Swing) – Benny Goodman Orchestra from Live at Carnegie Hall (1938)

Pretty much used to signify “old people music” these days, give it a close listen sometime, it's quite a bit more modern than you'd expect, especially once we move part the point where the original 78 ends (around the 3:45 mark). After a tenor sax solos over punchy brass and Krupa's tribal syncopations, some tight canons in a somewhat Arabic sounding scale weave their way along to a rapid fire trumpet solo by Harry James. After an ensemble passage, Goodman solos again with active interplay with Jess Stacy on piano and Krupa's drums. The playing is freer and more improvisatory than the big bands of that time are usually given credit for (especially the white ones). Stacy's solo in particular is revelatory. And Krupa's drumming, constantly coming up with subtle shifts and variations of the famous pounding introduction, fuels this performance as the climax of a triumphant evening.

Diversion for March 31, 2014

Waiting for the subway this morning, I was listening to a particularly poor, commercially made MP3 and was bemused by how the Man feels there are certain frequencies I don't need to hear, so they can make the file smaller. Then, lo and behold, while listening at work to the archive of last Friday's Miniature Minotaurs program, host Kurt Gottschalk referred to this article by an artist who makes new music using the frequencies the MP3 leaves behind, along with a brief history of this confounding product, which makes music much more portable and transferable, at the expense of a richer sonic experience.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Playlist for the March 29, 2014 Unpopular Music webcast

If what happened to Kenmore Square happens to Union Square, I'm moving to Pittsburgh.
Today's playlist after the break...

Playlist for the March 22, 2014 Unpopular Music webcast

The remote control, time travel edition

After the break...

Playlist for the March 15, 2014 Unpopular Music program

In which I make several corny Ides of March jokes, yet somehow play a song called Caesar's Palace without comment.

After the break...

Playlist for the March 8, 2014 Unpopular Music program

The music played on the first show, archive to come

After the jump....

Top 3 for March 20, 2014

Room 237 directed by Rodney Ascher

I actually saw this about a month ago, but the recent news brought it back to mind.

The film presents five persons giving their theories about the secret subtextual messages hidden in Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining. As the theories themselves are abjectly ridiculous, what I enjoyed about the film is the way the interview subjects' theories seem to exist in search of a vehicle to convey them. I mean how else would somebody happening upon a movie poster with generic advertising copy that goes something like "the wave of terror that's sweeping the country" have a reaction that goes "well neither this movie, nor the book on which it's based is all that popular, so this is obviously a reference to the slaughter of the Native Americans." The fact that The Shining is a movie by a director with a reputation for meticulousness which happens to be riddled with continuity errors can only mean that he is sending secret messages. (Well, some of the Native American stuff is kind of interesting, but since the setting is a desecrated Indian burying ground in Colorado, not as much of a stretch as the claim that the film is Kubrick's obvious confession to fabricating the Moon landing footage.)

Wheel of Socialism

Ok, a bit of a digression, but, I'm up visiting Mom, and Wheel of Fortune is one of the few things we can all deal with, and I like word puzzles, so shut up.

Anyway, it's couples night, and she's a black-belt who teaches karate to pre-schoolers and he's a "huge Lakers fan" (there were probably more but I didn't bother to remember) and they build the pot up and get most of the letters but before they can solve, they hit BANKRUPT. It goes over to the next couple where he's a sales manager for a Fortune 500 company, and without spinning solve the puzzle and win the trip to Jamaica, reaping the rewards of the work done by others.

(also, the recent veteran went home with nothing)

America's Game!

Top bunch of stuff for March 19, 2014

A bunch of stuff by Jaco Pastorius

Back in my days at Famous Music College, I, like many there, had my Jaco period. (This was also not long after his tragic, violent death.) He is one of those relatively few who managed to be both macholy virtuosic and sensitive-artiste like in a balanced manner.

Digging through a box while looking for something else I pulled out his two probably best and best known albums, his eponymous triumphant arrival album from 1976 and grand artistic statement Word of Mouth from 1981.

Top 3 for March 14, 2014

Vijay Iyer Trio with Robert Pinsky at Sanders Theatre

The first set is with just Pinsky and Iyer, occasionally augmented by some sounds off Iyer's laptop. With the electronics (swirly sounds and beats), the effect is more like Robert Ashley that beatnik coffeehouse, for the better obviously. Poet and pianist work well as a duo, weaving in and out of each other's sonic and rhythmic spaces. Pinksy departs and the rest of the trio arrives. The do like their odd-meter, asymetric vamps and rhapsodic crescendos a little too much, but are never less than interesting. The highlight comes when a “event” as Iyer called it, entitled Hood emerges out of Henry Threadgill's tune Little Pocket-Sized Demons. Patterns between the piano and drums expand and contract until they curl up in a tense little ball and gradually unwind themselves. The drummer Marcus Gilmore, 26-year-old grandson of the great Roy Haynes, is a master colorist, dissecting patterns within patters, using a very dry and tight sounding kit always in service to the groove or the tune, avoiding the temptation to erupt in to a self-aggrandizing flourish in order to drive the music into a deeper place. I look forward to following his career. Pinsky rejoined the trio to recite one more poem, about American history vis-a-vis the history of the saxophone, over what I believe was a trio improvisation, all four men weaving their respective parts into some very vibrant music.

Hawks

So, I live in a city which, due to some vigorous construction and perhaps its garbage and recycling practices, has a bit of a rat problem. So, yesterday I'm walking home and on my street, not from the house I live in, but close enough, a small, not baby, a toddler maybe, not full-sized, but all the same, a small rat comes out of a driveway and is crossing the street and almost makes it to the other side, when a hawk swoops down, grabs the rat and flies away with it. “Hell, yeah” I shouted. A woman who had just parked her car, and saw the action from the reverse angle gets out of the car and says to me “did you see that?” “Hell, yeah. Totally badass” I reply. A man who had just pulled into his driveway and was walking to his front door and had his back turned to the action is befuddled, wondering why the two of us are so excited.

Anyway here's to hawks, keep up the good work.

Top 6 for March 11, 2014

Sister Marie by Harry Nilsson from Ariel Ballet

A surprisingly edgy tune with heavy beats and guitar effects that stands out from the rest off this otherwise mostly pleasantly poppy album.

Led Zepplin – Irwin with the Hoof and Mouth Sinfonia

From the finale of WFMU's 2013 Fundraising Marathon, this group of middle-aged DJ's play this tribute, originally by the group Carey's Problem, which was delivered from the point of view of a swooning teenage girl (one of series of songs portraying a contrived premature decadence that gets old fast) over a tricky 5/4 groove. I'm intrigued by the absence of any reference to Physical Graffitti, both in the verse that ticks off the Zeppelin albums otherwise in sequence, but also in the list of song titles that makes up the majority of the lyrics.

The Pawnbroker dir. Sidney Lumet (1964)

Rod Steiger plays a Auschwitz survivor running a Harlem pawn shop who turns his survivor's guilt against the people in his life. Lumet uses almost subliminal flashback image to show how Steiger's Nazerman is haunted by his old life. A surprisingly underrated film I only learned about through Pictures at a Revolution, Mark Harris' fascinating book about the upheaval in the film industry in the mid-to-late sixties. This film was one of the first blows against the old fashioned production code. Steiger gives a strong performance in a role very different from the sheriff from In the Heat of the Night, which I also recently saw. Lumet is as masterful here as he was in any other part of his multi-decade carreer.

Top 3 for March 5, 2014

Quiero Cantar Entra Las Explosions – from Ainadamar by Oswaldo Golijov

Kelley O'Connor as Federico García Lorca; Dawn Upshaw as Margarita Xirgu; Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus; Robert Spano conducting.

Federico García Lorca and his lover and muse, Catalan actress Margarita Xirgu
Margarita begs Lorca to come with her theater company to Cuba, but he refuses and stays in Granada to write new plays and poetry.

God Said from Leonard Bernstein's Mass - A theater piece for singers, players and dancers, from the composer lead original recording from 1971

The work as a whole seeks to find a place for a functioning church in a disruptive, knowingly evolving society. A setting of the mass, but with interjection and commentary from, for the sake of argument, the real world. This song, labled “Gospel-Sermon”, sung from the point of view of the street, gives a litany of complaints about the church's hypocrisy in a jaunty yet powerful way, certainly a highlight and microcosm of the whole.

The Joy of Noise by RIAA as heard on Do DIY with People Like Us on WFMU

A mash-up of Bring the Noise by Public Enemy on top of Joy by Apollo 100, and that only begins to describe it.

Happy Birthday Robyn Hitchcock!!

Top 3 for March 2, 2014

4^th Time Around by Robyn Hitchcock from Robyn Sings

“One of Uncle Bob's”, this performance gives the listener a glimpse at how the singer interacts with the lyrics. Robyn (who turns 61 tomorrow, by the way) replaces the line “I asked her how come” with the “and when she did come” from later on in the song and initially continues on from that later point before he realizes he's in the wrong place, stops and asks the audience for help, and continues on from where he left off. It's one of Dylan's more convoluted and dense lyrics, one that justifies the poet label that's sometimes too automatically placed on him.

Behind the Lines – Genesis from Duke

There's apparently some sort of “Phil Collins reassessment” going on, or so the internet tells me, and I'll agree it's largely ill-advised. But, in going through my LPs to digitize them I was surprised how much the Genesis albums I bought in high school held up. I generally agree with Patrick Bateman's famous musicological presentation regarding Collins' discovery of feelings that marks this album as a transition for the band (but not about Invisible Touch or Sussudio, but I see why he likes them). Funnily enough, this record coincided with Peter Gabriel hitting his stride as a solo artist with his third album (on which the famous “Phil Collins drum sound” was invented), although his similar emotional breakthrough, lets call it, was still several years in the future with So. Anyway, pointing out that Phil Collins was once an engaging musician (see also his drumming on Robert Fripp's Exposure album) is also like pointing out that Jay Leno was once pretty funny - it's true, but no one believes you and you kind of feel embarrassed bringing it up.

Mea Culpa by Brian Eno and David Byrne

Some things never change. Catch the Chris Christie remake!

Düdül - Ensemble Oni Wytars, Ensemble Unicorn from Time of the Templars - Music of the Mediterranean

Hand drums and bagpipes, super funky Traditonal Turkish music from the Middle Ages

Another Small Thing In Her Favour and the Snow Goose by Richard Thompson

as heard on Irene Trudel's show on WFMU

Sub-Jump from Hamiet Bluiett's Clarinet Family

Top 3 for February 15, 2014

In the Heat of the Night dir. By Norman Jewison

All I can say is I watched this on a night when a jury in Florida would not convict of murder a white man who shot into a car full of black teenagers who would not turn that shit down.

Lennie Tristano Solo in Europe and Lee Konitz Quartet in Europe

Bootleg recordings mostly from 1965 in TV mono with copy of a copy hum. Tristano brings more than the usual dissonance especially “Everything happens to me.” I wish I had known this recording of “Darn That Dream” when I tried a similar idea for an assignment back at Famous Music College. The highlight though are the tacked on Lee Konitz tracks, especially the with backup from Bill Evans, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and Alan Dawson.

Improvisations – Jaki Byard and Ran Blake

An album of twin piano performances from one of jazz' most omni-versatile pianists and one of its most idiosyncratic.

No. 1 from February 12, 2014

The Gleam – Steve Lacy Sextet

A great album from Lacy and his signature Sextet. Lots of good poetry, too. Those of you who feel Irène Aebi's singing is something that must be endured until the good stuff starts (I am not one of those people by the way, she's elemental to the Sextet's sound), just wait till Steve joins in on As Usual.

Top 7 for January 15, 2014

Not Dark Yet – Bob Dylan from Time out of Mind

...but it's getting there

When it came out, we were all like “that's about the end of his voice” and now 15 years later we're like “his voice still sounded good then, compared to his latest record.”

JS Bach: Concerto for flute, violin, harpsichord & strings in A minor ('Triple'), BWV 1044 - I: Allegro

performed by Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert in 1984

Concerto en sol mineur, BWV 975 - I: Allegro by JS Bach, performed by Alexandre Tharaud from Concertos Italiens

JSB's transcription of concerto No. 6 from Vivaldi's La Stravaganza

Let's call the whole thing off - Fred Astaire w/ Johnny Green and his orchestra from the film Shall We Dance from the LP Starring Fred Astaire (aka the Brunswick Recordings)

A great collection of Astaire's film performances, with a fantastic arrangement (no credit on my copy unfortunately).

American Hustle directed by David O. Russell

Some fine acting from across the ensemble, especially Jennifer Lawrence as the loose cannon homebody housewife who almost blows everything (she's the gun from the first act that goes of in the third) and Jeremy Renner as the crooked politician with a heart of gold, excepting for some cringes from Christian Bale's impersonation of Robert De Niro circa 1980. Any movie that has characters bonding over Jeep's Blues, falling in love even, gets a big gold star from me. (Also, another scene is scored with Monk playing Straight, No Chaser. The source music selections are so well chosen throughout, that when Danny Elfman's credit came up, I actually said “wait, there was original music in this movie, too?” I can't recall any.)

I also will now only refer to the microwave as the “science oven” from this point on.

I Need to Know Where I Stand by Rhett Miller from Live at Eddie's Attic

Pitchfork describes it as “a decent Meg Ryan movie of a pop song”. I'm not sure if that's a compliment (it wouldn't be, coming from me) but I think it's a darn fine song.

Tombstone Blues by Bob Dylan from Biograph (originally from Highway 61 Revisited)

The sun ain't yellow, it's chicken. Jes' sayin'.

The Man I Love performed by Coleman Hawkins' Swing Four, from Coleman Hawkins: 1943-1944

One of Thelonious' first recordings (from 1943) is a swingin' double-time-feel chorus-and-a-half (which also hints at Criss-Cross) leading into a fine solo from a heavy breathing bass player before the leader takes it out. They don't do it like this anymore and you shouldn't even try.

No. 1 for December 31, 2013

The Wolf of Wall Street directed by Martin Scorsese

Um, … wow! I wasn't really, expecting a breakdown of the world of “too big to fail” or tales of financial-political collusion (like the man sitting behind me seemed to be) or even a sort of Goodfellas of Finance, but I wasn't prepared at all for this three-hour onslaught of sex, drugs and wretched excess that passes a bit into overkill. The acting is particularly good throughout, but there is a certain lack of the sizzle that Scorsese usually brings. But, as he often does, he takes you on a character's rise and fall through a world of which you may or may not (but secretly wish to) be a part (at least for the good parts).

The debate out there seems to be if the depiction of this depravity equals endorsement. Scorsese does not moralize here and I don't miss it. Aside from brief moments seen from the point of view of the Wolf's first wife and his FBI nemesis, the destruction the Wolf reaps upon his clients, his relationships and himself are presented at face value, obvious to the audience, if not to himself. While the film shows the Wolf as unapologetic, it doesn't suggest he should be. The audience is trusted to react to what they are being shown without being told how to feel. (my point is much better made by the great Sara Benincasa here.) Perhaps this level of depravity needs to be depicted because even now, after all the crimes and shenanigans that have been brought to light over the past five years, the financial industry is presumed to be (and wants us to presume them to be) made up of boring men in suits leading staid upright respectable lives.

(an aside – did Family Matters play any other role in society other than to measure if the drugs were working? (Growing Pains wasn't on apparently))

Top 5 from December 30, 2013, plus an aside

Heart of Glass by the Bad Plus from These are the Vistas

A rollicking treatment of the Blondie classic played with Lisztian left hand counterpoint from pianist Ethan Iverson (my audience-mate at the Jazz Standard in October) and a florid contribution from drummer Dave King. Points for taking the chorus in seven each time around, rather than just in the bridge as on the original.

The Real Me by the Who from Quadrophenia
Always wanted to be in a band that could play this song. It's a bit frightening how much I still feel this album at 43 as I did at 15. This is one of Moon's best performances (although the whole band if face-ripping good on this), but sadly approaching the time where his mind and body started to fall out of sync.

In Nativitatem Domini Canticum H. 416 by Marc-Antoine Charpentier performed by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants.

That's H. 416 recorded on Erato in 2000, not H. 414 of similar title recorded by the same forces on Harmonia Mundi in 1982, also essential. Both the composition and performance have such an ease and inevitability, you feel you could just sit write down and write it like you might make a grocery list, or get up and sing it like you sing “Roxanne” in the shower. Like the best Christmas music, it acknowledges the need for salvation before the arrival of salvation (see also Honnegger's Christmas Cantata).

The Danforth Art Museum/School in Framingham, MA

Having been blown away by Jacob Lawrence's War Series back in October, seeing a listing for a series of paintings by him on The Legend of John Brown had me hopping on a commuter train to this unlikely destination (conveniently located near the train station, though). Perhaps due their being prints of too-delicate-to-display originals, the paintings come off a bit more flat then their brethren at the Whitney which are painted with tempura on composite board. Lawrence is very adept at depicting sorrow, pain and inner turmoil without showing faces, allowing some of the crudeness of the figures to not matter. The sometimes subtle, sometimes overt placement of crosses framing the characters of the painting got me thinking “why don't we have religious fanatics devoted to such noble causes these days."

John Medeski at the ICA

I first encountered John Medeski in the late 80's when he was the piano player for Either/Orchestra. Through his playing I came to appreciate and come to an initial understanding of (for lack of a better term) free-jazz piano playing. I had heard some people like Cecil Taylor and Muhal Richard Abrams (not that JM necessarily sounds like either of those guys, but, you know), but had never really been won over until hearing Medeski wail on the Clavinova (which, as band leader Russ Gershon once explained, is “an electric piano, not a mollusk.”) at the Middle East. The live version of Born in a Suitcase from the Across the Omniverse album is a good example of what I'm talking about. After leaving the Orchestra, he began to focus on playing organ, leaving the piano aside. Although I loved their first album, It's a Jungle in Here [oops, it's their second, but it's the first one I knew], I really came to dislike Medeski, Martin and Wood and they seemed to just be grooving out for the jam-band audience.

So the announcement of a Medeski solo piano concert had me hoping to reconnect with a long-lost favorite.

Be Bop – Charlie Parker Quintet (taken from Kenny Dorham - Blues in Bebop)

The fantastic thing here is what Max Roach does behind Bird's solo, the accents on the bass drum falling in unexpected places.

Top 2 from December 9, 2013

Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde, the opening song from Das Lied von der Erde by Gustav Mahler; performed by Placido Domingo with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting.

This is a recording I was prepared to hate, what with Mr. Three Tenors, his over-the-hill John Denver recording self, it is sometimes easy to forget what a great musician P. Dingo is. This is terrific. He's a biting fiery drunkard giving a gutsy performance. Salonen is fantastic all the way through Das Lied. It's the kind of performance I was expecting from Boulez, richly detailed, all the birdsongs and such, but with more oomph than the master eventually delivered.

Top 6 from December 3, 2013

[not a leftover list from 1995, I swear]

1952 Vincent Black Lightning – Richard Thompson from Rumor and Sigh

A short story in song. The type of song the gives its characters last names.

That's just what you are- Aimee Mann from I'm with Stupid

If only for the way the arrangement places Mann's voice between Difford's and Tillbrook's.

The Death of a Disco Dancer – The Smiths, from Strangeways, Here we come!

This goes out to Bibi from John and the S5+2. If you think peace is a common goal, it just goes to show how little you know.

Texarcana, for disklavier (Mechanical Piano Studies, No. 5) by Kyle Gann

After Conlin Nancarrow's hometown. And his compositional style.

Symphony No. 5 - II: Melodie by Karl Amadeus Hartmann performed by Clark Rundell conducting the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra

Very Rite-of-Springlike

followed shortly on the shuffle play by The Rite itself, in the classic Pierre Boulez / Cleveland Orchestra performance from 1969

Fairlee by Matt Pond, PA from the polyvinyl 15-year Anniversary Sampler

A rockin' little tune

Chopi Chopsticks by Gideon Nxumalo from Jazz Fantasia

Top 1 from December 1, 2013

All is Lost – dir. J.C. Chandor, starring Robert Redford

Cast of one. Crew of thousands.
Redford is man who's boat is hit by a shipping container while sailing alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Fortunate to know how everything on his boat works, and how to fix them, he makes a mighty, noble struggle to survive. Does he? Good question. This is the most spare movie that can remotely imagine being called “commercial” or “mainstream”. Or, perhaps the the most commercial, mainstream experimental film to come around in a long time. Dialog consists of an opening voice-over, a radio call, a cry for help, and a cry of exasperation and that's it. Takes William Goldman's advice to “start as late in the story as possible” to heart. (Also, by having the container smash through the spot containing all the radio, computer and other electronic equipment saves a lot of time, too). I wish the folks over at “Gravity” had had a chance to check this out before they started, to learn that things like character development, back story or even character aren't all that necessary and just stick to the action, please (especially if your action scenes are that awesome), the lost shoes of dead children are unnecessary. All is Lost also compares favorably to The Perfect Storm in the sense that, not knowing how this film was made (I'm sure they weren't shooting in a real typhoon), I was always at least convinced they were actually outside.

Top 5 from November 26, 2013

Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat – Bob Dylan from The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert

A particularly rockin' blues from the “what the audience doesn't want” segment of the show. Also notable for a rather terrible guitar solo (Is that Bob?, it can't be Robbie. There's a song with a terrible Bob solo on Blonde in Blonde which I thought laid to rest any expectation the he would ever play lead again, but, then again, this came first) The song itself is distinguished by being in an otherwise standard twelve-bar-blues form, but having its lyrics organized into four-line stanzas (he fourth line occupying the usually vacant bars eleven and twelve). Dylan didn't like to waste space in songs. The performance of She Belongs to Me and in another couple of spots on the solo first disc of this set has measures dropped here and there between lyrics.

Stuck Between Stations – The Hold Steady, from Boys and Girls in America

Love this song, usually gets me pumped-up and air drumming, singing or at least mouthing the words, volume cranked. I heard it this morning stuck in the back corner of the 71 bus and had to do this all internally. The archetypal Hold Steady song, for me at least - probably as it's one of the first I knew. Kerouac and Berryman are invoked here. The line between Springsteen and Strummer is walked.

(h/t @FakeCraigFinn)

More Than a Feeling - Dondero High School A Capella Choir from Pop Concert 1996

One of the great love songs to music enthusiastically performed by eager teenagers. A faithful arrangement, relying on choral unisons perhaps a bit too much. (not performed a capella by the way). Scholz' guitar solo (well, solo duet really) is played with relish. I always like how the third of the three ascending notes leading into the break is delayed two beats to build the tension. Picks up the energy as the introduction promises.

To Go Home – M. Ward, from Post-War

“God, it's great to be alive, takes the skin right off my hide to think I'll have to give it all up someday”
The heartbeat beat and the Kieth Moon drumming makes it feel great to be alive.

No. 1 for November 23, 2013

The Cunning Little Vixen by Leoš Janáček

A charming student production at Boston Conservatory. Well sung, acted and designed. Kudo's to the little kid playing the frog nervously standing up to the poachers at the very end, croaking out his line in phonetically learned Czech. If I believed in such a thing, I'd call it adorable.

Top 2 from November 6, 2013

Every Irrelevance – Gordon Downie from Coke Machine Glow

A gem of an album pulled by chance from the promo box at HMV, mostly because I liked the title. Inside, several dreamy acoustic, poetic songs, with simple yet forward moving arrangements delivered in a pleasingly laconic style. This song in particular, with a loping bass line, nylon guitar strumming and tinkling piano hits the spot.

Concierto para arpa y orquesta, Op. 25 - III: Liberamente capriccioso by Alberto Ginastera

performed by Magdalena Barrera; Orcquestra Ciudad de Granada; Josep Pons conducting

Top 6 from November 5, 2013

Rock & Roll – The Velvet Underground from Live MCMXCIII

Even after the amputation you can dance to a rock & roll station.

A lot of folks put down this album. It is the Velvets playing in the style of a 90's Lou Reed album, but frankly that's a better idea than trying to recreate the 1969 live album, and these were good years for Lou anyway. You can still dance to it, you know. It's also sort of is Sterling's valedictory.

Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue - Duke Ellington from Live at Newport 1956

Yeah, the solo, but, the tunes are pretty good too. Two sides of Duke's early style - contrapuntal, busy swinging, trying to cram in as many notes as a side of a 78 could hold, the frenzy of the audience providing the underlying energy that the super-fast revolutions of the turntable once did.

One – Harry Nilsson from Aerial Ballet

Brilliant song, brilliant arrangement. Rhodes piano, double bass, cello, flute, harpsichord. Eventually, the triple tracked lead vocals split apart in counterpoint. From Nilsson's truly genius period. The Aimee Mann / Jon Brion remake is brilliant in it's own way, adding vocal counterpoint and interpolations from elsewhere in Aerial Ballet, but this a true masterwork.

Street Hassle – Lou Reed

From the New York Times' “Music of Lou Reed” page

First heard this song in it's brilliant use in The Squid and the Whale. The string arrangement is fantastic, two each of cello and bass. Lou reaches back to the arty aspects of the Velvet Underground (not exclusively Mr. Cale's domain), which he didn't revisit as much as the rock 'n' roll or the pretty pastoral parts. Kudos to the Times for leaving in all the dirty words (and this song has all the dirty words).

Stephanie Says – Lady & Bird as played on This is the Modern World on WFMU

A cover of one of those unreleased Velvet Underground songs that everyone seemed to know regardless, lovely. I had wanted to put a Lou quote in memorium on my whiteboard at work but could only come up with sardonic things like “Today is a perfect day, and I'm going to spend it with you?” Hearing this at work, I see “Stephanie says that she wants to know why she's given half her life to people she hates now “ would have fit that same bill. Never heard of this group, a collaboration between and Israeli and Icelandic musicians I've never heard of either.

Top 5+ for October 31, 2013

Mercy Street – Peter Gabriel from New Blood

Doesn't quite match the vocal arrangement performed on the “growing up” tour, but a lovely arrangement all the same. One of the better entries on this somewhat dubious orchestral project.

Bubbles in My Beer – Willie Nelson from You Don't Know Me: the Songs of Cindy Walker

A song whose lyrics seem to call for music more like Gloomy Sunday, but is instead a lively, bouncy song from an album which manages the rare feat of being nostalgic but also completely in the the present tense.

Big River – Johnny Cash from Johnny Cash at San Quentin

Middle Cyclone – Neko Case from Middle Cyclone

If only for “Can't scrape together quite enough to ride the bus to the outskirts of the fact that I need love”

Theme de Yoyo – Art Ensemble of Chicago from Les Stances a Sophie

From their French sojourn, ~~the first recording, I believe, with Don Moye.~~ [Well, no it isn't. But they did meet Don in France] Someone named Noreen Beasley claims on the internet to have written the lyrics, but I wouldn't protest too loudly. I was of course sold by the form of 8 measures of funky soul / 4 measures of free jazz / return to four measures of funky soul.

You were only fooling by Patsy Cline, heard on This is the Modern World with Trouble on WFMU

“I was making love but you were making believe”

Going Underground by the Jam from same

Top 3 from October 17, 2013

Carl Schurz Park, New York City

I'd recently just seen Spike Lee's film 25^th Hour and was impressed not only by the film, but by the setting of its opening and climactic scenes, the lovely little park along the East River overlooking the northern tip of Roosevelt Island and the southern tip of Randall's Island. Also great views of the Triborough Bridge and the Feelin' Groovy 59^th St. Bridge. Take the Lexington Ave. subway to the 86^th street stop and walk east till just beyond the point where you think it might not be worth it, but once you go over the little hill and the view presents itself, you'll be glad.

Fort Tyron Park on the northern tip of Manhattan.

Get off the subway at 190^th street, learn from my mistake and take the elevator, although the neighborhood is nice, it's a long, steep, winding path up. A rocky, leafy, hilly park with many paths going up and down and around, with a spectacular view of the George Washington Bridge and the NJ Pallisades. All paths lead to the Cloisters, a fantastic little museum (now run by the Metropolitan) of medieval and renaissance and earlier art.

Annunciation Triptych (aka the Merode Altarpiece) by the workshop of Robert Campin, at the Cloisters

The reason we have abstract art today is because they were doing things like this in 1430. I remember talking about this painting in my college art history class. Amazing in its detail – the tiny angel delivering the cross to just conceived Jesus, the candle smoldering to life from the divine presence. The patron and his wife watching through the doorway on one side panel, Joseph working away not knowing what's about to hit him on the other. Tournai appears through the window rather than Nazareth. I leaned in far enough to set off the YOU'RE STANDING TOO CLOSE whistle and took an ipod photo after staring gob-smacked for about 15 minutes (as opposed to the guy who was walking through the galleries taking a picture of each object seemingly so he could look at it later at home on his computer).

The Hudson River Valley from Albany to NYC

as seen in full fall color glory from Amtrak's Ethan Allen Express

Erik Friedlander at the Stone NYC

Playing John Zorn's Volac - Book of Angels, Vol. 8, from his seemingly infinite part Masada project. (Upon seeing an album called “the Unknown Masada” my reaction was “there's basically more Masada than any one person could know, that I now know about this one as opposed to about 50 other discs”) Anyway, a great performance in a tiny space at the corner of Avenue C and 2nd street. A diagonal front right on the corner with the name in tiny writing on a glass door with a black curtain on the inside, took me about 15 minutes to figure out that was the place (only when the audience from the first show exited) Rachsiel is the top 1 of the set - some amazing pizzicato playing bringing an unusual dimension to the cello.

Top 5 for September 15, 2013

Sugar Boy – Beth Orton

from a collection of performances in KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic

Blue Monk – Thelonious Monk Quartet w/ John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall

An unusual treatment of the melody. Coltrane seems to be playing a counter melody or inner voice. Fine solos from both.

This must be the place (Naive Melody) – Talking Heads from Popular Favorites 1976-1983 (aka Sand in the Vaseline)

One of their finest moments is from their weakest album. The best songs are done better on Stop Making Sense and this song is on any "best of" collection. This is the best such collection, band selected with a bunch of otherwise unreleased tracks. If I recall correctly, this was the b-side to Burning Down the House. Play it at my wedding if I ever have one.

En Saga by Jean Sibelius performed by Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1943, from Aufnahmen 1942-1944, Vol 2.

Or whatever of the Berlin Philharmonic had not fled by this point. Not a very refined performance, but with a depth not typically found. From Furtwängler's quixotic battle that culture could save Germany.

How does it feel to be back – Daryl Hall and John Oates from Voices, 1980

Oates' finest moment

Parole Ambulante – John Tchicai's Five Points, from One Long Minute

I saw this group (and bought this disc) on the fist day of summer 2010 at the Brooklyn club Zebulon, two years or so before Tchicai's death. He was very much in the role of the proud teacher, watching his students put their lessons into practice. only letting it rip at the end. After one tune fell apart at its start, he said, while regrouping “The task at hand is to change the mistakes into something beautiful” which I jotted down on the back of a flyer with Muhal Richard Abrams on the front. (for the benefit of the scholars who will someday study my papers, I must make sure to note this is Tchicai's quote and not Muhal's (or my own for that matter) to avoid misattribution.) A wonderful souvenir of a wonderful night.

Third movement (Andante con malincolia) from William Walton's Symphony No. 1,

performed by Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO Live, 2005)

Chandra - Jaki Byard from Sunshine of my Soul

(with David Izenzon and Elvin Jones, bass and drums)

Tatas-Matoes – The Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble, from Congliptions, 1968

about me and this blog

In Bob Dylan's memoir Chronicles, Part 1, our narrator, um, chronicles two points in his life where he changes modes from input to output. The later point is when Dylan, tired of himself and his creations, takes a break from a tour where he's being backed up by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, to play some shows with the Grateful Dead. The shift in song selections along with the drastic change in the two bands' working methods shake loose some of the cobwebs that had been had been gathering on old Bob, and a new period of creativity ensues.

The earlier instance involves the feasting on music, books, ideas and people of Bob's formative days in Minnesota and his arrival in New York up to the point he's able to turn it around into the songs we know and don't know, love, loathe are baffled and confounded by to this day.

Which brings us to me. I've been on input mode since about 1974 (the time the above picture was taken). The output has sputtered through several phases of fits and starts, with varying degrees of satisfaction. So, the latest idea to turn this into some kind of output has been to chronicle the input in hopes of perhaps finding some sort of thread linking it all together and maybe finding others who have followed their own haphazard stream of input.