A day late, but worthwhile to get the series back on its feet.
Previous to this week, I've been trying to focus on genuine screaming. The goal has been to find real terror, real anger, real existential cries. This week I want to spend a moment focusing on more artificial, theatrical use of screaming, and I can't think of anyone better at that than Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson. On this clip, the proper scream doesn't happen until the very last note, but Dickinson's whole vocal style depends on the sense that he's at the very edge, ready to abandon pitch and technique at any moment and just let loose. There are probably better examples of Dickinson's screaming, and I'll revisit him, because time is short and I want to get into this a bit more. But this song is a classic, and now there's an excuse for you to listen to it again.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Dock Boggs
I was pleasantly surprised the other day, trawling youtube for something to write about, to see this clip of Dock Boggs performing "Country Blues" in the mid-1960s:
It's a pretty great performance, and it has a quality that I've found in a few late performances by jazz saxophonist Lester Young, and a few other people at the end of their performing careers and lives. When the clip starts out, Boggs looks and sounds a little tired, and he can't make his phrases at the sleepy tempo he picks. Everything is a bit gloomy and tired, and the banjo playing is abnormally simple and sloppy, but performing one of his "hits" from 40 years earlier, he wakes up. Each verse is a little faster than the one before it, and his singing gets gradually more confident. By the end of the tune, Boggs is sitting up straighter, tapping his foot, and nearly smiling, although that never quite happens, out of respect to the gothically depressing lyrics, typical for the repertoire Boggs usually chose to record.
I also had a good time comparing this clip to the original 1928 recording he made:
The earlier recording is a very different arrangement. It's at a faster tempo, with more complex banjo playing, more consistent phrasing, and a higher key. There's a pretty clear decline in Boggs' playing and singing over the 25-year-long break he took from performing, but there's also a deliberate change in the way Boggs approaches this song at two very different points in his life, and I think I can hear the difference between a young man singing about how he's messing up and an old man looking back at his youthful mistakes.
It's a pretty great performance, and it has a quality that I've found in a few late performances by jazz saxophonist Lester Young, and a few other people at the end of their performing careers and lives. When the clip starts out, Boggs looks and sounds a little tired, and he can't make his phrases at the sleepy tempo he picks. Everything is a bit gloomy and tired, and the banjo playing is abnormally simple and sloppy, but performing one of his "hits" from 40 years earlier, he wakes up. Each verse is a little faster than the one before it, and his singing gets gradually more confident. By the end of the tune, Boggs is sitting up straighter, tapping his foot, and nearly smiling, although that never quite happens, out of respect to the gothically depressing lyrics, typical for the repertoire Boggs usually chose to record.
I also had a good time comparing this clip to the original 1928 recording he made:
The earlier recording is a very different arrangement. It's at a faster tempo, with more complex banjo playing, more consistent phrasing, and a higher key. There's a pretty clear decline in Boggs' playing and singing over the 25-year-long break he took from performing, but there's also a deliberate change in the way Boggs approaches this song at two very different points in his life, and I think I can hear the difference between a young man singing about how he's messing up and an old man looking back at his youthful mistakes.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
I listened to Kenny G so that you don't have to.
First of all, thanks to anyone reading this for your patience after I suddenly dissapeared from the blogosphere a few weeks ago. It's a sorry excuse, but my laptop bit the dust at the end of June, and it took me a while to set up to post again.
I just found out a few minutes ago that, in a grand contribution to my Schadenfreude, Kenny G released a new album a couple weeks ago, following a two year break from his last LP, during which time it seems he spent a great deal of time cultivating his hair, because his stylistic development as a musician has been minimal since 2008's breakthrough album Rhythm & Romance.
Calling R&R breakthrough is only a half-joke, honestly. While I must admit that I can't bear to hear all five albums that Kenny G released since I wrote about him in my book, I did manage to get through two tracks on the album, and darn it, if he hasn't augmented what I called "rapid but simple solos that largely consist of scales up and down the instrument that might be a warm-up for other musicians" with a couple bebop licks. Seriously, I counted two.
I'm currently streaming Heart and Soul for the first (and likely only) time - the brave can hear it here - and I can't say I hear the artistic courage he displayed on Rhythm & Romance. Kenny G's website claims that the album "returns the legendary saxophonist to his R&B roots," and while I don't hear much of Barry White here (it was while touring with White that Kenny G dropped the "orelik" from his last name and found his mature voice), the standard mechanical backing beats and total lack of interaction among the (probably entirely sampled) band is back in full force, with the latin beats of R&R (which frankly remind me of a polka gig I used to work with a crazy Polish accordionist who also worked the subway system of New York) replaced by a weak backbeat on alternate tracks, and something a little catchier on all of the even numbered tracks. And on a marked departure from the albums that made him a superstar in the 1980s, I have heard two tracks so far with final chords instead of nice, unobtrusive fadeouts.
That seems to be all there is to say, really, about Kenny G's most recent album and any distinguishing characteristics it might have. What has not changed, and likely will not ever change, is Kenny G's cloying vibrato, weak attack, and apparent breath control issues, especially evident during longer phrases. And the annoying limited vocabulary with which he ornaments melodies. Listen carefull and it's easy to catch the quick upper-neighbor tones, mordants, scale runs and maybe three or four licks played over and over again, as he has been doing his entire career. There's probably a fine line between a signature style and a schtick, but Kenny G doesn't really threaten that line in the least.
All of this said, though, I stand behind my defense of Kenny G's importance as an artistic voice, and his stature as a central figure in post-fusion jazz. As bad as his music is (and - I'm serious about this - I listened to at least half of his 23 albums before I felt comfortable judging his music in general as bad), if you go out into the street right now, and ask everyone you see to name a jazz musician, you'll get about five names from everyone unless you stumble into an obsessive geek like me (and probably you) - Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, maybe John Coltrane. And if you then ask them to name a currently active jazz musician, maybe 25% of them will say "Wynton Marsalis" but the other 75% will surely say "Kenny G." Calling him a talentless hack is easy and hard to argue with. I honestly always wanted to argue in his defense as a musician, but then I sat down and listened to hours of his music, and yes, he's as terrible as, say, Pat Metheny says he is. But Metheny only gets half the story, and so do many, many jazz purists and other folks who recognize Kenny G as an easy target. The fact of the matter is that it's easy to trace the lineage from Kenny G's music, and that lineage has a lot of great jazz names in it. G sounds like late Miles Davis, who took a cue from Grover Washington Jr. and Wes Montgomery and even Charlie Parker at the end of his career. As much as most jazz listeners want to say that Kenny G isn't even jazz, they can't honestly do that. He developed a tradition that goes back throughout the American musical tradition, and added his own instantly recognizable stylistic developments to that tradition. Just like John Coltrane did.
The important difference, of course, is that John Coltrane's music is usually at least bearable to listen to for an hour.
I just found out a few minutes ago that, in a grand contribution to my Schadenfreude, Kenny G released a new album a couple weeks ago, following a two year break from his last LP, during which time it seems he spent a great deal of time cultivating his hair, because his stylistic development as a musician has been minimal since 2008's breakthrough album Rhythm & Romance.
Calling R&R breakthrough is only a half-joke, honestly. While I must admit that I can't bear to hear all five albums that Kenny G released since I wrote about him in my book, I did manage to get through two tracks on the album, and darn it, if he hasn't augmented what I called "rapid but simple solos that largely consist of scales up and down the instrument that might be a warm-up for other musicians" with a couple bebop licks. Seriously, I counted two.
I'm currently streaming Heart and Soul for the first (and likely only) time - the brave can hear it here - and I can't say I hear the artistic courage he displayed on Rhythm & Romance. Kenny G's website claims that the album "returns the legendary saxophonist to his R&B roots," and while I don't hear much of Barry White here (it was while touring with White that Kenny G dropped the "orelik" from his last name and found his mature voice), the standard mechanical backing beats and total lack of interaction among the (probably entirely sampled) band is back in full force, with the latin beats of R&R (which frankly remind me of a polka gig I used to work with a crazy Polish accordionist who also worked the subway system of New York) replaced by a weak backbeat on alternate tracks, and something a little catchier on all of the even numbered tracks. And on a marked departure from the albums that made him a superstar in the 1980s, I have heard two tracks so far with final chords instead of nice, unobtrusive fadeouts.
That seems to be all there is to say, really, about Kenny G's most recent album and any distinguishing characteristics it might have. What has not changed, and likely will not ever change, is Kenny G's cloying vibrato, weak attack, and apparent breath control issues, especially evident during longer phrases. And the annoying limited vocabulary with which he ornaments melodies. Listen carefull and it's easy to catch the quick upper-neighbor tones, mordants, scale runs and maybe three or four licks played over and over again, as he has been doing his entire career. There's probably a fine line between a signature style and a schtick, but Kenny G doesn't really threaten that line in the least.
All of this said, though, I stand behind my defense of Kenny G's importance as an artistic voice, and his stature as a central figure in post-fusion jazz. As bad as his music is (and - I'm serious about this - I listened to at least half of his 23 albums before I felt comfortable judging his music in general as bad), if you go out into the street right now, and ask everyone you see to name a jazz musician, you'll get about five names from everyone unless you stumble into an obsessive geek like me (and probably you) - Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, maybe John Coltrane. And if you then ask them to name a currently active jazz musician, maybe 25% of them will say "Wynton Marsalis" but the other 75% will surely say "Kenny G." Calling him a talentless hack is easy and hard to argue with. I honestly always wanted to argue in his defense as a musician, but then I sat down and listened to hours of his music, and yes, he's as terrible as, say, Pat Metheny says he is. But Metheny only gets half the story, and so do many, many jazz purists and other folks who recognize Kenny G as an easy target. The fact of the matter is that it's easy to trace the lineage from Kenny G's music, and that lineage has a lot of great jazz names in it. G sounds like late Miles Davis, who took a cue from Grover Washington Jr. and Wes Montgomery and even Charlie Parker at the end of his career. As much as most jazz listeners want to say that Kenny G isn't even jazz, they can't honestly do that. He developed a tradition that goes back throughout the American musical tradition, and added his own instantly recognizable stylistic developments to that tradition. Just like John Coltrane did.
The important difference, of course, is that John Coltrane's music is usually at least bearable to listen to for an hour.
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