January 22, 2001
10:42 PM
Have been listening to Godard a bit lately, and am warming up to it
despite the barriers to understanding. It's kind of like leaving
a movie running but not watching it, which I suppose sounds like
a pretty banal observation - but it's something to take note of,
as it's an experience I don't often have.
I have thought that if I could someday have a nice system - hell,
any system - to play movies on, I would start the practice of leaving
movies running in the background while I do other things, just as
with music. Thus I would be able to occasionally look at the movie
(I'm thinking here of ones I've seen a lot), and sort of consume
it disjointedly, as I do more routinely with music. I would also
be able to focus more on the soundtracks. I am thinking: they
would alter my environment more that way, as opposed to usual
movie viewing, where I am inclined to forget about my environment
(move into the environment of the film somehow).
10:41 PM
John Zorn's top 10 lists.
John Zorn kicks ass.
8:17 PM
A quote I stole from a rec.music.bluenote post:
Quote from Leopold Stokowski in 1924 -
"Art is going to develop in the future, speedily and in multiple forms. There
will be no prohibition going on in music. There is going to be greater and
greater variety, because it is going to reach more and more persons. Music is
going to enter more and more into our lives and become part of our
philosophy."
p.52 of "Keeping Time: Readings in Jazz History"
edited by Robert Walser
Oxford 1999
January 19, 2001
4:00 AM
Maybe: it's that time seems to stop passing; there's a sense of everyone
drawing everything out, as it becomes more apparent that Coltrane is
developing his material (er, finishing the development of his material)
in his typically repetitive fashion: play the lick five times, change
the notes around, see how it sounds.
Contrast to Garrison's bass solos, which almost always feel to me as
if time has stopped - but in a different kind of way. "Meandering"
in a positive sense: the way a nice walk can be, when you're not
in such a hurry to get anywhere.
3:55 AM
Most times I get lost somehow at the end, during "Psalm" - it's
a slow section, more Coltrane "pretty" flourishes, Elvin on
tympani. A cadenza of sorts. I am so caught up in the rhythmic
aspects of the previous three parts that the drop-out of rhythm
causes my attention to falter. And the "pretty" playing on
Crescent or Stellar Regions does a lot more for me.
The best part of Part 4: the sound of Jimmy Garrison's arco playing
right near the end before the fadeout - he sounds so insistent.
3:45 AM
Often jazz piano is talked about in terms of the different roles
of right and left hands; since the bebop era the left hand often
has a more percussive role - it beats out chords - and one of
harmonic assistance - it beats out chords. The right hand moves more
laterally - which word is maybe a reference to the keyboard, physically,
and also to the positions of notes on the scale (note how there
is a correspondence between these two things).
In the Beethoven I listened to tonight the piano part felt crippled,
because it was all right hand. I don't mean that literally. But
both hands sounded like they were doing right hand things. This
is my jazz influence making itself felt: for the left hand part
to be so blatant, vulgar, about harmony and rhythm would perhaps
be a petit scandal in classical music. There is an orchestra for
that - with very received ideas about how it should be used.
Small groups need the left hand to fill this role, though.
That's not true. They don't need it. The music imposes rules.
The Biber I heard Wednesday in class had very slow harmonic
motion - it changed chords every measure, and the music was somewhere
around an andante tempo. The background instruments asserted slash
emphasized the harmony at the head of every measure with a sounded
chord. As I listened I thought to myself, harmonically, compared
to jazz, this is a joke. They are moving up and down in predictable
modulations, and spelling out the harmonic foundations for me.
In jazz I might not even get that, depending on what the piano
is doing at any given moment: the bass player can and does follow
the harmony as well, but he often picks which notes to play, and
he only often plays one at a time, or a run or cluster of them -
so the harmony is even further implied. (Cf. gestalt psychology:
the phi phenomenon.)
But like I said: jazz influence making itself felt. After all,
the Biber was really pretty.
3:36 AM
Sometimes I need to remind myself that the title of the second
part, "Resolution," has more than one meaning as a noun: I
usually read it in the sense of "finality," but a resolution is
something one can make, too, a declaration, and that sense of
the word seems to reply more here. If there is resolution,
it comes at the end of this part, also the end of side one of
the vinyl. Near the end I have the sense of finally being able
to breathe again, of something lifting.
I always have problems with the way Bob Thiele recorded a piano.
McCoy Tyner's playing is enormous, it needs a more enormous sound.
3:33 AM
A help to following Elvin a bit more: listen to just one single
piece of the trap set as he plays it. After you've done that for
a while listen to two of them (and there are multiple ways to do
this).
One guy and it feels like there's more rhythm than in all of
Beethoven's fourth piano concerto, which I also listened to tonight.
3:20 AM
As Elvin Jones' drum parts come in after the initial flourish on
"Acknowledgement," the first part to A Love Supreme, they
come in layers: you can actually hear the different rhythms superimposed
on one another as they're added.
Tonight I listened to this five times. After the first two something
hit me. It was like being physically hit - I was struck alert.
I was suddenly reminded of exactly how distinctly different this
band sounds, from its predecessors in jazz. We're talking five years'
time here: listen to the Coltrane of Giant Steps and you
still hear a steady beat (a single steady beat) from the drummer,
walking basslines much of the time... there is more "order".
With the quartet, there's so much going on at once that at times
tonight I was baffled as to how the band could even play this music.
Everything is so together, so in time, and yet Elvin is
banging away, pulse everywhere, it feels impossible to find a steady
beat to cling to. Jimmy Garrison is firing off pulses, clusters
of notes - again, no regular beat in the traditional (ha, "traditional")
bebop sense - or earlier. Yet - yet! - McCoy Tyner's solos, especially
in "Resolution," are so dead-on swinging, rhythmic in the more
ordinary sense of the word... it's just. ...
Let's just say that for a few weeks I felt a sense of wonder had been
lacking. But tonight as I listened I felt like a child: grinning,
laughing, yes actually laughing out loud, jumping about because hearing
this music filled me with such unexpected energy that I had no idea
what to do with it.
3:13 AM
Lewis Porter is extremely cogent when he is analyzing the formal
content of Coltrane's music. But to me it is very obvious when
he switches to the "informal" (the term should not be taken to
meant that it's not as good) mode of criticism that most people
who are not musicologists prefer to use. The change is abrupt
because there is a sensation that all the authority has disappeared.
Suddenly Porter seems to only be employing cliched readings of
musical elements. He treats the informal vocabulary as if it has
the same kind of currency as the formal one, which it does not.
His insistent repetition of the rhythmic figure is puzzling at
first; during the last six measures, he plays it on the ascending
pattern of D, E, F-sharp, G, A-flat, and finally plays in unison
with the bass in F. This reconfirms that COltrane hears cell a
as his basic unit of composition, isolatable from the scale built
upon it. At this point, Coltrane and another group member - probably
Garrison - chant the words "a love supreme" in unison with the
bass ostinato and we realize that this was the goal toward which
Coltrane directed his solo. He brilliantly executed a reverse
development, saving the exposition - or perhaps "revelation" would be a
better word in this case - for the end. He's telling us that God
is everywhere - in every register, in every key - and he's showing
us that you have to discover religious belief. You can't just hit
someone on the head by chanting right at the outset - the listener
has to experience the process and then the listener is ready
to hear the chant. As we listen to the music, its meaning unfolds
for us. We realize that there is a method behind the unusual sound
and structure of the piece - Coltrane's music is not abstract, but
is dictated in part by the messages he wishes to convey.
There is something there in what he's trying to get at, but he's
too heavy-handed - right after "He's telling us that God is everywhere"
my alarms go off.
3:11 AM
"It is impossible for me to say one word in my book about all
that music has meant in my life. How then can I hope to be understood?"
- Wittgenstein on writing the Investigations
3:05 AM
"If I understood him rightly, on that occasion he was saying that
you couldn't speak of the meaning of a work of art, say a particular
piece of music, as if the meaning was something that could be separated
from the work itself. 'Part of the pleasure in hearing Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony is hearing the Ninth Symphony.'"
- Drury on Wittgenstein
January 18, 2001
3:49 PM
When I took Physics 221 oh so many years ago, the instructor we had
would wheel in a stereo and play classical music during his lectures.
Very quietly, so I mostly couldn't tell what it was. But I didn't know
very much about classical music then anyway. One day he played Pink
Floyd, and everyone thought he was very hip in that old-person way.
Now, in my 18th century philosophy class, the professor plays music
at the beginning of class while he's writing some preliminary notes
on the board. He's told us that he likes to play music that's in-period,
so we've heard (only two class meetings since it meets once a week)
part of a mass by Palestrina, and some of one of the "Mystery Sonatas"
by Biber. Joel tells me that once Davidson played "Jesus' Blood Never
Failed Me Yet" for a class. I would love to hear that. But it's kind
of out of the time period.
It's a little odd listening to music in a room full of people like that,
especially when it's "pretty" and/or "serious" music that a lot of
people seem to be made a little uncomfortable by. They'd probably
react a lot more oddly to "Jesus'
Blood Never Failed Me Yet," though.
1:06 AM
I should note that my ass will be out of town in Chicago this weekend,
thus no radio show on Saturday night.
12:44 AM
If there's one thing DJ Martian
is good for it's reminding me of things that I forgot to pay attention
to, e.g.: "Arab Strap release their new album 'The Red Thread', on
February 26". I wonder when the stateside release will be.
Oho, 27th, the Arab Strap site sez!
January 14, 2001
7:27 PM
I'm not happy with how much I appreciate John Zorn's Masada group
so I've decided to start listening to Masada at least once a day until
I feel I should stop.
I think the main thing that makes me think I haven't appreciated
Masada enough is that I can listen to the albums I have, and enjoy
them, but aside from some particular spots in the music it's hard
for me to differentiate between the songs.
The simplest way I can think to explain this is that the Masada project
is an excellent example of a group working with a specific musical
language. In this way I consider them very similar to Miles Davis'
second quintet. But like the second quintet I think this gives Masada
a bit of a hermetic quality: they don't make all that many concessions
to outsiders seeking to become familiar with the music.
(Also: the harmonic vocabulary sounds constrained to my ears because I'm
used to hearing more traditional western harmony, despite my appreciation
of modal jazz - the result is that Masada can be samey-sounding for a while
until you learn to pick up on the other musical elements.)
The way I got over this with Miles' second quintet is simply by
listening a lot. Well, that's not the only way. Also: it helps to
consider the work of the group (both groups) as one large flow of work.
Because, in many ways, it is. Thus the "project" terminology that Zorn
often uses. The word underscores the relationship that all the music
produced by the group shares.
2:06 AM
Note to self: new Low is out Feb. 6, new Labradford is out Feb. 19.
1:43 AM
I heard a promo of Low's forthcoming album Things We Lost in the Fire
at the station tonight. I didn't have the chance to listen very closely,
but at first glance it sounds like a logical extension of what they
did on Secret Name. In other words, they sound even more like
a "pretty" band and less like the one I fell in love with. Oh well -
you can't win everything. At least it's really pretty.
And: I kind of got the impression that they are more comfortable now
in their expanded musical language.
1:42 AM
Mark wrote to me to say
The Panthalassa thing you heard may have been the "remixes" version (the
remixes of the remix); there's no drum'n'bass on Laswell's original. In
fact, I think he added very little to the recordings. He really did just
"re-mix" and loop a few things, as far as I know.
Like, duh, I knew that. I just forgot. Thanks, Mark.
January 13, 2001
5:55 PM
Also, note the AMG review of
In a Silent Way, which I just looked at because I wanted to
double-check that I had the song name right below.
The line about the "rhythms and power" of rock sounds like they
cribbed it from a freshman music appreciation textbook without ever
having heard the recording, because "power" is not a word that fits
this music. Not even compared to what came before.
5:45 PM
So I guess I heard part of Bill Laswell's disc of fusion-era Miles
Davis remixes, Panthalassa. I was eating a sandwich, and the
joint I was in was playing some kind of beaty thing. When suddenly
comes Miles' trumpet solo from "SHHH/Peaceful" on In a Silent Way.
I could hear a few bits of the band as well before the drum-n-bass
kicked in. I'm not sure what the intention was, because I found myself
unable to listen to the solo (it seemed to be almost verbatim from
the original, so I guess Laswell didn't cut it up or time-stretch
anything) without feeling Tony Williams' original rhythm (for him,
very straight rock beat, on the hi-hat mostly I think) behind it.
The rhythm, I think, in some way influenced Miles' phrasing. So
hearing a very different beat beneath the solo makes the phrasing
seem a little limp, like Miles wasn't sure where the time was.
Like I say, I'm not sure what the intention was: Laswell could have
been going for something like this (maybe to fit in somehow with
drum-n-bass aesthetics?), but it's more likely that I'm so attached
to the original solo that I am having trouble hearing it in a new
context.
4:25 PM
Mission: Control! seems to share an excellent sense of pace
and programming with the Dismemberment Plan's Emergency & I -
I wonder if that's due to J. Robbins' production. Once I start the
second half of the album, I don't really want to stop it anywhere.
Rather... there's no place that it feels right to stop, if I want
to for some reason (like a need to leave, or I've already listened
to it 3 times in a row, or whatever).
3:44 PM
Last night I was leaning over the edge of my bed while reading for
some reason (well, I know why I was reading: but leaning thusly
made my head fill with blood and my nose run so I'm not sure why
I chose to remain in that position), and so I could hear one speaker
of my stereo really well, the other not at all. My stereo is a little
fucked anyway - I'm not sure if it's the wiring or the ancient speakers
or what - so that speaker is already louder. But listening to
Burning Airlines' Mission: Control! I heard all sorts of
things differently. At one point there was even a very indie-rock
rhythm guitar part chugging along underneath everything else, which
I never noticed before, at all. I say "indie-rock" because
it sounds very much so - that sort of no-frills, guitar-plugged-in-that's-all
sound - compared to the much more metallic parts more prominent
on the record. Noisy parts too.
I think it was "Scissoring."
Anyway, the lesson is: listen to your music in weird places and
positions.
2:47 PM
So I've listened to all of 69 Love Songs, and to my surprise
I actually liked it. I've heard some of these songs before as mp3s,
and really didn't like them. I'm not sure what to chalk the difference
up to.
I've found that on average I prefer the synth-poppy tracks more than
any with 'real' instruments (though this doesn't hold on a song-by-song
basis). This is really odd, because I really don't like synth-pop.
However, as Tom has pointed out to me, most of it is indie synth-pop,
which is rather a different thing from what I'm thinking of (which
really is just a weird mental residue of all the synthy things from
the 80s I've heard and didn't like, many of those also being things
I haven't heard in a very long time, and also very popuar things at
that).
I suspect one reason for this is that the production on the synth-poppy
stuff tends to be more direct. In the book that comes with the boxed set,
Daniel Handler, acting as interviewer, frequently says (they're going through
every song, getting comments from Stephin Merritt) something like
"this song really has the feel of a real band playing together, on
real instruments," to which Merritt usually replies, "really? It's not."
Many of the live-band-sounding tracks sound a little off to me, just
because (I think) I can hear different "air" around the different
parts that have been superimposed. The impression I get is that Merritt
just likes it to sound this way. I guess. Anyway: the synthier stuff
sees the synth tones run into a recording board, I guess, and thus
there's less different-air clash. Plus I just like the synth sounds
better than e.g. the ukelele.
Of the singers, I like Merritt himself and Claudia Gonson best.
Glenn McDonald
described Gonson's singing as having "artless clarity," and I think
that fits perfectly. She sings beautifully, but is pretty apparently
not a professional singer (either that or she hides it well) -
in the sense of having vocal training, etc., but also just in the
sense of having a cultivated vocal style. (Compare to Merritt, who
certainly has the latter.)
I'm reminded of two things: 1) Mo Tucker's infrequent singing for
the Velvet Underground. 2) My ex-girlfriend's singing. Early on
in our relationship I heard her sing every now and then, and I was
very happy to. The "artless" above is a compliment, I think - it
means you're just getting to hear the person (I think, at least),
as they are without so many extra layers or filters (mental ones,
I am thinking here). [Compare maybe to Chan Marshall of Cat Power,
who though I'd often think of her in terms kind of like "artless,"
is anything but: her voice has a very cultivated kind of childlike naivete
plus existential weariness to it - more like the outer appearance
of unguardedness and "real" singing.] Sometimes when my ex would
sing she would start trying more to imitate the vocal style of
whoever she was singing along to. Something about this disturbed me,
and I said so. (She stopped singing around me so much. Maybe I shouldn't
have said anything.) I think it had something to do with why I don't
like to sing around other people, myself. It seems that when you
start getting into something like that, your defenses go down because
you need them to to start being more like someone else, temporarily.
But this is something that makes you sort of exposed. That's something
I personally don't like, I suppose, but it seems as if it's a little
awkward (not just for me, but in general for lots of people) to be
around someone who's exposed like that, who is sort of subsuming their
own personality, or maybe wearing a mask and pretending (sorry for
the second-rate lit-crit terminology, will try harder next time).
On record it's more OK though, which is why I have No Problem At All
with Claudia Gonson. Incidentally, I am to start reading John Locke's
Essay Concerning Human Understanding soon so if you start
seeing crazy capitalization of various Nouns and such here don't
be alarmed, I just find it incredibly amusing to capitalize thusly.
Tom tells me that he finds 69LS an odd record to play with
an audience. I don't really want to play it when anyone is around,
either. I'm thinking in particular of the stuff about artless vocals
above. When Gonson sings I'm sort of implicated in the situation
that's set up, where there's more emotional honesty and directness
(yes bear with me here I realize I'm talking about Stephin Merritt
songs which perhaps means I should avoid talking about "honesty") -
I'm sitting there enjoying it, which makes me feel a little like
the song. Maybe. The theories are flying quickly now, with little
aiming.
I suspect that if I went into a class of undergraduate English students
there would still be an uncomfortable atmosphere if we started analyzing
a love poem.
Back to the voices. For some reason I'm not that fond of LD Beghtol's
vocals on 69LS. I actually like those on Flare's Circa
better, despite not having listened to it all that much. Maybe: they
sound more practiced than many of the others. They sort of rub the
wrong way against the music. I don't listen to "good" singers in
the more traditional sense all that much anyway (i.e. pre-rock,
or just outside rock/r+b traditions).
Sometimes it seems like Stephin Merritt has a compulsive rhyming
disease and I would just like to smack him. I suspect often the
meter implied by his tight rhyme schemes drives the songs more
than the music. I guess Merritt and William Carlos Williams wouldn't
really dig each other.
More to come later (after all I've barely listened twice through yet).
Maybe I'll talk some more about the stuff I didn't like (there's a lot
of that too). And my favorites so far too. Er. Yeah. The Things I Liked
And The Things I Didn't Like.
2:31 PM
Lately I've been listening a lot to Miles Davis' first album with
his second quintet (Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, and
Wayne Shorter), E.S.P. It's been my default choice when at
home because I haven't really felt like picking anything else.
It has the added benefit of being more ignorable. I mean that in a
good way.
So, something I've noticed about it: there's a very, and I'm not
sure this is a good way to put this, "tiny jazz" sound on the disc,
much more so on the second half. Everything is incredibly low-key,
yet they're still playing with plenty of energy. It makes for a very
crackly kind of ambient music.
January 8, 2001
3:06 PM
Oh, you knew I was going to blog this
sooner or later. Via Jon, would you believe it.
10:00 AM
Josh blog opera summaries. Oh yes.
Gounod, Faust
Dr. Title Character is going to off himself but gets all
horny when he sees some young folks out the window so
he makes a deal with the devil (he gives up his SOUL)
and then goes off in the guise of a young man to get
it on with Marguerite. Some other shit happens. Marguerite
walks the gallows for some reason. Then some angels save
her. Er. Proclaim her salvation.
Puccini, La Boheme
Mimi comes upstairs, meets Rodolfo. They fall in love.
Everyone except Alcindoro has a good time at the Cafe
Momus on Christmas Eve. Mimi and Rodolfo don't separate.
Mimi dies.
Verdi, La Traviata
Violetta Valery has tuberculosis. She falls in love with
Alfredo Germont. Alfredo's father convinces Violetta that
she must leave Alfredo for the honor of the family.
Alfredo publicly insults Violetta at a party. The guests
are shocked. Violetta dies.
Dick Wagner, Der Fliegende Hollander
Sailor is condemned to sail the oceans of the earth until
doomsday. Only chance for rest is to find a woman who will
be faithful to him until death. He's allowed to land and look
for such a woman every seven years. Sailor meets a dude,
says "trade ya my treasure fer yr daughter," dude agrees.
Shit happens. Daughter and sailor meet. Daughter says she
knows about the sacred duty of a woman. But she's got herself
a man who's still hot for her. The sailor gets pissed off,
starts to bolt. Girl jumps off a cliff, ship sinks, sailor
and girl are seen embracing and ascending from the ocean to
the heavens. What a load of bullshit.
Beethoven, Fidelio
So this dude discovers he is alone in the prison courtyard
with this chick. He says, yo, chick, marry me. She's like,
uh. Someone knocks on the door, and while the dude is gone,
the chick says, yo, I'm in love with the title character.
The jailer tells the title character, yo, kid, get yrself
some money, cuz if you have to depend on the food of love,
you'll go hungry. The kid says, but. Romantic love, and other
shit. Then some other plot stuff happens. The kid turns out
to actually be a girl in disguise, and her husband is in jail,
put down by the man or some shit. So she says to the jailer,
yo, help me save my husband. So they go dungeon-crawling.
Some other shit happens. (Romantic love wins in the end.)
Verdi, Turandot
So we're in China. There's this mandarin who sez Princess
Title Character will marry the man (of appropriate family
connections, of course) who gets her three freaking riddles
right. Dudes that fuck up get their heads IMPALED ON POLES.
There's some kind of Tartar king. And he's blind. And his
kid the prince is hanging around too. And they're both in
disguise. You know - to thwart their enemies. So the Prince
of Persia is brought out, and he's already fucked up the riddles.
But he's young and shitting himself so the crowd displays pity.
So the first prince - the Tartar one - is all pissed and is
like, you stupid princess bitch, why are you killing people.
But he chills when he sees Princess Title Character because
she's hot, and he wants her so bad. So he rings the big gong
which means, yo, I'm ready to play Avoid Having My Head Impaled
On A Pole. There is some squabbling, some singing and shit.
Princess Title Character puts on her Exposition Hat and tells
(in song of course) us that she's such a bitch because an
ancestress of hers (my source really says 'ancestress') was
taken, raped, and killed, so in revenge Princess Title Character
kills dudes who want her body. Then she asks the riddles and
Prince Lucky Bastard gets them right. Princess Title Character
says whoa wait a minute please daddy I didn't mean it I don't
want to marry this dude (what if he isn't even any good in
the sack? and plus I am all vengeance-seeking still). Daddy
says tough shit, but Prince Nice Schmuck says, yo, Princess TC,
guess my name (he's in disguise - to thwart his enemies,
remember) by dawn and I'll SACRIFICE MYSELF FOR YOU (WTF? like
he couldn't just say, well, guess my name and I'll go find
some other chick who's not so touchy). The emperor says,
kickass, fine with me. The princess says, yo, nobody sleeps
until I learn Prince Don't Know His Real Name's real name.
The emperor's ministers try to trick Prince Whatever's name
from him with promises of various cool shit. So somebody saw
the king (Prince X's dad remember) and his slave girl (who
oh yes did I forget to mention before is in love with Princey
fuck these opera plots get complicated) hanging out with
the Prince and they're dragged in front of the emperor.
The slave girl, apparently REALLY fucking in love, grabs
a dagger and offs herself so she won't crack under torture
and reveal Prince Calaf's name (oh shit I said it he's
done for now). The crowd goes 'awww' and drags away the
corpse. The Prince and Princess Title Character are now alone,
so he's all, yo, you're such a bitch. And then he rips her
veil off and they go at it a bit. And she 'submits' it sez
here, and then she says, yo, you are like so strong, I have
feared you and loved you since the MOMENT I SAW YOU. Calaf
has apparently never seen a fucking soap opera and so is
DEEPLY DEEPLY MOVED by this, and tells the Princess his name,
basically saying, your move, honey. Apparently she decides
to love him instead of fear him, because they make it to
scene II with nobody else buying it. Princess Title Character
and Prince Calaf appear before the emperor and she anounces
that (oh boy get ready for this) she knows the stranger's
name, and (OK brace yourself) 'it is love'. Love. LOVE? His
name is LOVE? What kind of fucking bullshit is that?
(It took me a few to find my voice.)
And - the Puccini and Verdi were mostly stolen wholesale from
Operaglass - before
I realized they were the shortest ones there and I'd actually
have to summarize things myself for the rest. (These were for
a thing for my college quizbowl team.)
3:32 AM
It's very hard to tell, but I think on some of the songs with more
movement on Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel I'm
actually hearing the effects of players beginning a note, letting
it resonate, taking a breath (or maybe other players are then
playing, same difference), then playing again - the notes, of course,
will never have exactly the same waveforms, and thus will
be slightly different. So there's just a touch of waver in some of
the really long notes.
This is all just supposition, though, it being very hard to determine
what exactly is going on, sonically, here (if you'll recall, notes
played in this cistern take something like 45 seconds to decay -
and there are like ten trombonists playing, at various times).
Oh dear, the hard drive in my computer just tried to spin up and
there was a clunk. It tried again and it worked. But this
surely cannot be good.
12:31 AM
How a friend of mine described the Sonic Youth Goodbye 20th Century
CD I leant him: "it's OK, not my favorite, but maybe it enlightened me
in a fucked up sort of way."
January 7, 2001
11:42 PM
Note that my writing about my singing and writing about vocal music
have nothing to do, really, with one another.
I picked up my old Russian professor Tatiana at the airport today,
using her car, and for the trip there I followed her wisdom in leaving
the radio on the classical station. The rest of the radio stations
around here just annoy the hell out of me, and at least WOI is usually
unassuming (in fact, it seems to be their raison d'etre).
So I heard two motets - one by Bach, written in memory of some dead
person that went to his church (and, amusingly, the way the announcer
put it, the postmistress' wife had bought it, but somehow I
just don't see openly lesbian postal workers in the 17th century church
scene). The other was by Handel, written for whatever dude happened
to be paying him then. The Bach was in German, and the Handel in English.
The styles were slightly different, but I think understanding the
words to Handel's motet made it sound dumber. The phrasings were
more plainly unnatural, as far as words go. So, thumbs down on
the Handel.
The Bach, on the other hand, was real purty. And aside from the slightly
amusing preponderance of (I think this is right, maybe I'll check
later) velar fricatives from the German, I didn't mind the phrasing -
because I don't speak German. I guess I was right in thinking, to
myself a while back, that I need some more Bach vocal music.
Between this and the Rachmaninov sacred works I bought, it looks like
my path into classical vocal music will be church music. Now that
there is funny (I haven't been to church in years, and am not in fact
religious). On the other hand, the Debussy opera I bought still sits
languishing on my shelf (I got through one disc at least).
12:59 PM
"I want a girl who will laugh for no one else"
Weezer are poets, man. Poets.
I'm having one of those great moments, post-wake up, where my voice
is gruffer and deeper, exactly in the range I'd like it to be in.
I haven't been forced to practice singing since, oh, fifth grade
really, so of course my voice didn't develop as much of a singing voice.
So for most things I'd like to sing along to - rock songs, duh - I
find either that my voice is not low enough, or not high enough.
So it's more pleasurable to have it deepen, because it hurts to
try singing too high.
Usually, when I don't have this great wake-up voice, I end up doing
an odd thing where I jump around depending on what range the singer
on the record is in. If I can follow them for a while, fine. If
they're singing too low or too high, I can try to sing in octaves,
which doesn't work completely terribly. But then I have a problem
following some singers because their vocal ranges overlap oddly
with mine, so at a point when I would like to sing higher or lower,
they're still singing too in-the-middle for me to sing high or low,
because I have such a small range. So the transitions are sketchy.
I don't sing when other people are around anyway, though, because
I'm too self-conscious about it. Not the quality of my singing (though
I have a good enough ear to know that I don't have enough control
over my voice to sing in tune, just a touch off at best) - just the
act of singing itself.
12:19 AM
Looking back at this Sigur Ros review, it occurs to me that since it's Brent D., and
since it's Pitchfork, people might think he's making up that stuff about
the Hidden People. But he's not.
January 6, 2001
11:59 PM
At the moment I'd really love to have a car (with a CD player, very
important) so I could drive for a long time and listen to Modest Mouse,
This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About.
I really, really, think it would improve my experience measurably.
11:40 PM
you can't a-void her
she's in the air
in be-tween mol-e-cules
of ox-y-gen and
car-bon di-ox-ide
9:18 PM
Cecil Taylor interview
.
6:20 PM
In the parking lot at the grocery store this afternoon someone was
blaring Kid A from their car stereo. "Everything in Its Place."
Thom Yorke as cruising music? Who woulda thunk it?
3:35 AM
I like Tim's take on Stankonia but
the bit about the guitar solo in "B.O.B." bothers me, just because I
don't hear it like that. In fact, I'd forgotten about the guitar being
there until Tim reminded me. Funny, that - I probably listen to a lot
more guitar music than Tim, and he to a lot more dance and rap and
R+B than me. So perhaps the guitar stuck out a lot for him. I, on
the other hand, am busy focusing on everything else in the track.
I do notice the guitar part on "Gasoline Dreams," which is less
of a solo and more a part of the backing track. And when I notice it,
I think "that should be louder." "Gasoline Dreams" is a very light-sounding
track, for all its aggression and bluster. The bass frequencies seem
de-emphasized, and lots of the other sounds are pretty high. Some people
have made comparisons between "Dreams" and the mess of rap-rock out there -
saying, of course, this is how it should be done. Rap-rock gets the guitar
sound "right," though, at least for me, compared to this. Even if it's
got lame beats, lame songs, and lame raps.
Back to "B.O.B." - listening again, I find that I notice the fast
wah-wah guitar near the beginning a lot more than the solo. But I hear
it as part of the overall matrix of rhythmic effects. And later, after
the solo, there's another, more drawn-out, wah-wah section which I also
notice for (though it seems as if it promises a buildup and doesn't
deliver - but in the middle of this how could it?).
There are some very, very subtle guitar parts on Aquemini - very
smooth, which the very layered mix obscures.
January 5, 2001
11:10 PM
Interviews
with independent record label owners.
3:09 AM
There is a new section for "resource" links on the sidebar at right.
I am a little disappointed with how little I know about contemporary
jazz. In fact, my relationship with contemporary jazz is about like
many peoples' with most jazz - I have very little to no idea what
is out there, or what I might like, or what's any good (I do know
that Wynton Marsalis is a prick though). So I've set out to find a
little more information. Along the way, I've noticed that there are
some other things I'd like to be reminded about more often - you may
remember, for example, the
klezmer shack link from last July. So, such things will be stored
at right, along with some others to round things out.
At the moment I'm looking for a good link for contemporary jazz -
I'm thinking in particular of something broad, with reviews,
analysis (dare I hope?), covering people like Ken Vandermark,
Matthew Shipp, Brad Mehldau, Dave Douglas, etc. - people from those
kind of scenes. Which probably means free-leaning music, as opposed
to, you know, the stuff that people enjoy listening to. Ha.
A nice overview for 50s-60s jazz would be nice, too, just because
every jazz site I find seems to be kind of crap.
2:37 AM
On the Stuart Dempster -
This is definitely the purest-feeling music I own. I say that
because it feels so divorced from any other genre or idiom.
I put it on when I'm tired and worn out, or when I want music but
can't stand anything else. It has ties to minimalism, some contemporary
classical (perhaps), and medieval sacred music (big perhaps), but
really it sounds little like them. As drone music it's harmonically
simpler than many of those. Though there are many small variations
in the flow of sound, its very arhythmic, which makes it quite
different from in particular the minimalists. But it's even less
rhythmic than, say, Arvo Part's "Fratres," as slow as they are.
2:27 AM
On the Outkast -
Specifically "SpottieOttieDopaliscious." I just cannot stop whistling
that horn line. And if I get self-conscious enough about it, like
when I was listening to the record when Damon was over and making
faces because he didn't like the horn line, I start to laugh. In
a good way. The whistling makes me happy, and this is a good thing.
So, when I'm wearing my headphones I have to try to not whistle
while I'm walking around.
Also: Neil pointed out the presence of a woodblock in "Rosa Parks"
which I am now unable to (and I would like to) stop listening to.
I had never noticed it there before. Thanks a fucking lot Neil.
2:23 AM
On the Shostakovich -
I bought his complete string quartets (performed by the Borodin Quartet)
along with some Weber and some Schoenberg and some Debussy, which
made for a rather heavy bunch of listening compared to most of my
other recent purchases. So I sort of have to monitor my thinking,
my reactions to this music, a bit more than usual. I would rather
consider them, especially the Shostakovich, long-term investments
rather then short-term ones. I don't expect to be immediately
drawn into them as I am with "popular" music.
So, it was a surprise the other night to put on the no. 11, which
I have never heard, and find myself immediately engaged. It may
be something about the dynamic contrasts, or the tempos, I'm not
sure yet. I first heard Shostakovich on a Naxos recording of the
14 and 15, but I haven't yet been that fond of the Borodin recordings
of the same pieces. They require more contemplation than I've
been able or willing to give, for the past couple of months.
The 11, on the other hand, is fairly direct and lyrical, compared
to a lot of other Shostakovich.
2:01 AM
A site
with extensive and nicely done out-jazz reviews.
1:05 AM
Ken Vandermark interview (be sure to read the unedited
one at the bottom too).
January 1, 2001
7:06 PM
Spring
Heel Jack interview at PSF.
5:58 PM
And no, I don't know why I didn't think this before. I'm slow,
remember. Also perhaps because many of the songs have more "inside"
versions on Mingus albums. And "I'll Remember April" with Bud Powell
is pretty straight.
5:38 PM
Listening to Mingus Live at Antibes this evening I realized
suddenly why it's been so hard to get into, compared to my other
Mingus albums: what we have here is basically free jazz. Pretty
structured free jazz, but still free jazz - which typically takes
me a lot longer to appreciate.
4:30 AM
Welcome to the second year of josh blog.
The brief and possibly unsuccessful jon blog experiment has officially
ended. I must admit I am secretly hoping Jon was involved in a terrible
car crash or some other incapacitating catastrophe, but in all likelihood
he just hasn't left his bedroom in three days (Jon, you hoser) - hard
to say, you've heard as much out of him since his last post as I have.
However, it was nice to try him out (think I'll stick with me, though).
Maybe I'll even offer up a few things about what he did post, later,
after I've slept. I hope that you at least found him to be a curious
diversion from the absence of any updates whatsoever.
The first thing I heard this year was: well, I have no idea. I wasn't
paying attention. I didn't pick any of the music at this party (except
when I demanded to hear Johnny Cash again), but it was all at least
pleasant and familiar, and sometimes some of my favorite music. And,
well, it's hard to beat Joel belting out Irish (Scottish?) drinking
songs about having one's head cut off.
As for the first music I chose: I had the urge to make a symbolic
gesture of my own, of sorts, and so for my walk home from the
party I picked (before the party even) the Dismemberment Plan
for my headphones. I walked in circles to stretch my walk out as
long as the CD lasted, and slid around in the powder singing
to myself. I didn't quite make it long enough, but I was content
to get home to my apartment and listen to "Back and Forth"
to finish the album. I am warm-faced, happy, and content, which
is a lot better than I could've hoped last year.
to December 2000
kortbein@iastate.edu