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.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Scream of the Week
Here's a classic. The story goes (according to my formidable research skills applied to a 30 second glance at wikipedia.org and allmusic.com, anyway), that former boxer, soldier, and Tiny Grimes vocalist Screamin' Jay Hawkins had envisioned his 1956 hit "I Put A Spell On You" as a ballad to feature his operatic, Cab Calloway inspired delivery, but he got wasted with his band and recorded the classic version in a drunken blackout.
It's hard to justify this recording as a mistake, though, given the rest of Hawkins' career, and the creepy lyrics to the song. Hawkins gloriously presented himself not as a great singer, which he could have done, but as a character from any number of matinee horror/adventure b-movies. It's all there on the recording, and this television appearance just makes it obvious. The cheap, darkly lit, gothic set, the parody-horror of a 5-and-10-cent store pair of false teeth, and of course the trademark bone through the nose and skull-on-a-stick sceptre all evoke not true terror, but the mid-Century "horror" trope. A generation that saw the true terror of the Holocaust and nuclear warfare coped with the experience in better times by poking fun at the feeling and distancing true threats with humor and an artificial world. And Hawkinns, for all his convulsions and wide eyes and speaking in tongues, keeps the audience comfortable with a konked out hairdo. It's a neon sign glaring at the audience saying, "I'll creep you out for now, but I still spend hours at a time in a barbershop making sure I still look like one of you when I'm done with the act."
But boy, does Hawkins commit to the performance. Through all the humor and stereotype, his screams sound awfully real, and they come from the gut the same way Roky Erickson's would later (without the friendly winking). It's one thing to let an audience in on a joke, but it's another to welcome people in so they can hear what they might not otherwise want to hear. This song, and this performance, is all about control, and the need to live in a magical world outside this one to have any control.
Is it too much an extension of metaphor to say that "I Put A Spell On You" is about the nascent Civil Rights movement? Consciously, it probably is. But on one hand, it's not too much of a stretch to say that this song directly says in the lyrics, and indirectly says in the performance, "I can't get what I want in this world, but I am entitled to have it, so I'll just change the world to one in which I have what I want." A man who, due to his skin color and background, can only aspire to serve richer, paler people, can serve them by fantasizing a world in which he can kill them and put their head on a stick.
This kind of thing is hardly unique in African American culture, either, or I wouldn't be so quick to buy my own interpretation. While watching this clip this morning, I decided that it's time to start a series in this blog, profiling African American science fiction fans in music. That sounds a little silly until you seriously look at the list of folks to profile. Just off the top of my head: Sun Ra, Jimi Hendrix, George Clinton, Anthony Braxton, Michael Jackson and Doctor Octagon come to mind without thinking too much, and I remember other examples like John Coltranes titles in his late career that frequently touch on outer space and astrology, and the opening minute or so of the seminal De La Soul album Three Feet High and Rising, featuring the creepily (and comically) intoned "Blood Sucking Freaks, just like yo momma." I could probably go on like this for weeks if I'm not careful, and I invite your suggestions for other examples. But they all, on a fundamental and occasionally explicit level, say the same thing: as a black man in America, I have to live in a world I don't want, but I can at least fantasize about a different world as an artist, and show you the power of which I am capable.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Free Improvisation, Memory, and Recording.
I'm just back from Brooklyn, where I spent the weekend recording my free improvisation quartet, Carlos' Red Shoes. I suppose I'm pretty happy with the results - I'll post tracks here as soon as they become available - but recording improvisation is always a massive head trip to me, and I generally find my own thoughts more interesting than the recorded results when I record unplanned music.
About ten years ago, I did a recording session of some improvisation, and one the players (I wish I could remember who, sorry) told me, "look, improvisation is always more fun to do than to listen to, so there's no point in worrying about how it sounds." As jaded as that perspective is, it really does take the pressure off the musician to come up with something engaging off the top of his or her head, and I find it helpful to remember it when I'm sitting in the corner with furrowed brow, trying to figure out what to play (which is more often than I'd like, but sometimes the best thing to add to a sound is nothing else, too). Call me an idealist, but I have a different take on what I'm doing when I improvise freely - my goal is still to have fun doing it, but I also think total improvisation can be the best way to address a moment as it happens - right now, I don't really want to hear a Serge Gainsbourg tune, I think I'd rather hear a tuba played with a saxophone mouthpiece, and if I'm improvising, I have the extreme luxury of playing my tuba with a saxophone mouthpiece right now, and I get to hear it. Because of this approach, I tend to forget pretty much everything I played right after I've played it. Partly because the moment is passed, and what I played doesn't serve a purpose for me anymore, and partly because I was so darn busy playing the stuff that I couldn't really make a note of what I was playing. The other guys in CRS tell me that I had a pretty nice extended tuba solo going on at one point, and I do remember that at one point everyone stopped playing except for me, and they all came in again at the same time and I had a good feeling. But I have no idea what I played, for how long, and whether it felt good because it sounded good. It didn't matter at the time and I can't really go back and play it again anyway. But the strange thing to me is that in a week or so when I get the rough mixes from Sunday, I'll know exactly what that sounded like, and if it's good enough to make the cut and we release it, anyone who wants to know what my playing is like will have that moment to listen to and come up with an impression of my musical approach.
I wouldn't say that it was pointless to make that moment permanent. On one hand, I enjoy some recordings that I understand to be completely and freely improvised and I'm glad that those particular moments have been made permanent. On the other hand, well, CRS has had trouble with clubs and gigs, and maybe yesterday we played something that will catch the right ears, and they'll hire us to play, and we'll make back a little bit of the money that we spend to keep the band going. I think I will say, though, that a recorded improvisation is a completely different entity than the actual improvisation that got recorded. It's pure chance that the recording sounds like it does, that the moments we were playing were the same moments that microphones were present and that zeros and ones were arranged on a hard drive in a specific order to make a machine reproduce the sounds of that moment. But there's no going back to change that data now. What had been a flexible, reactive, fluid moment is played back the same way, every time, with no change, for eternity. It almost feels like I have no part in the recording part of recorded improvisation, and the stuff on that hard drive is not what I played in the same way a framed reproduction of the Declaration of Independence is not the actual birth of a nation from a rebellious British colony.
And at the same time, what we played yesterday was in response to a strange moment. It wasn't just what we felt like playing at the time. It was what we felt like playing at the time, with microphones pointed at us, and a guy in the other room making sure that what we felt like playing was being made into a permanent thing, a list of numbers that will not change once we're done with the technical fiddling. Now, that's as valid a moment as any moment we might spend on stage, or in a rehearsal space, or wherever, but it's no more typical a situation in which I might make up some music than if I were to be riding on the back of a zebra down Canal street with a tuba in my lap.
I will know, in a few weeks, once I've forgotten the weather, and the conversation I had had the night before, and the endorphin rush when Dave and Dan kicked in together at the end of my tuba solo, whether what we recorded is worth listening to. But as a performer, there's really no way I can listen to my music and tell you whether it's any good or not. Not while I'm playing it, because I don't have time and I'm focused on playing the stuff. And not while I listen back, because I hear what I thought were mistakes at the time and I hear the band giving up on what we were trying to do and just floundering for a few minutes - all while you just hear music, the completed result of what we ended up playing at that moment. On some level, that's always true. I know things about the structure and method and style of my playing that you don't and likely can't hear, and in exchange, I can't hear the music I make in the way it's listened to by anyone besides me.
And in the meantime, I never have these thoughts when I listen to a Derek Bailey album. They don't matter. I can't hear them and I don't care. And while I still generally say that there's no good in recording improvised music, that what we play with no preparation is not intended to be heard past the moment in which we decided to play it, I can't say I've ever turned down the opportunity to listen to a few favorite albums multiple times just because I knew that the music was only to be played live once and then never revisited.
About ten years ago, I did a recording session of some improvisation, and one the players (I wish I could remember who, sorry) told me, "look, improvisation is always more fun to do than to listen to, so there's no point in worrying about how it sounds." As jaded as that perspective is, it really does take the pressure off the musician to come up with something engaging off the top of his or her head, and I find it helpful to remember it when I'm sitting in the corner with furrowed brow, trying to figure out what to play (which is more often than I'd like, but sometimes the best thing to add to a sound is nothing else, too). Call me an idealist, but I have a different take on what I'm doing when I improvise freely - my goal is still to have fun doing it, but I also think total improvisation can be the best way to address a moment as it happens - right now, I don't really want to hear a Serge Gainsbourg tune, I think I'd rather hear a tuba played with a saxophone mouthpiece, and if I'm improvising, I have the extreme luxury of playing my tuba with a saxophone mouthpiece right now, and I get to hear it. Because of this approach, I tend to forget pretty much everything I played right after I've played it. Partly because the moment is passed, and what I played doesn't serve a purpose for me anymore, and partly because I was so darn busy playing the stuff that I couldn't really make a note of what I was playing. The other guys in CRS tell me that I had a pretty nice extended tuba solo going on at one point, and I do remember that at one point everyone stopped playing except for me, and they all came in again at the same time and I had a good feeling. But I have no idea what I played, for how long, and whether it felt good because it sounded good. It didn't matter at the time and I can't really go back and play it again anyway. But the strange thing to me is that in a week or so when I get the rough mixes from Sunday, I'll know exactly what that sounded like, and if it's good enough to make the cut and we release it, anyone who wants to know what my playing is like will have that moment to listen to and come up with an impression of my musical approach.
I wouldn't say that it was pointless to make that moment permanent. On one hand, I enjoy some recordings that I understand to be completely and freely improvised and I'm glad that those particular moments have been made permanent. On the other hand, well, CRS has had trouble with clubs and gigs, and maybe yesterday we played something that will catch the right ears, and they'll hire us to play, and we'll make back a little bit of the money that we spend to keep the band going. I think I will say, though, that a recorded improvisation is a completely different entity than the actual improvisation that got recorded. It's pure chance that the recording sounds like it does, that the moments we were playing were the same moments that microphones were present and that zeros and ones were arranged on a hard drive in a specific order to make a machine reproduce the sounds of that moment. But there's no going back to change that data now. What had been a flexible, reactive, fluid moment is played back the same way, every time, with no change, for eternity. It almost feels like I have no part in the recording part of recorded improvisation, and the stuff on that hard drive is not what I played in the same way a framed reproduction of the Declaration of Independence is not the actual birth of a nation from a rebellious British colony.
And at the same time, what we played yesterday was in response to a strange moment. It wasn't just what we felt like playing at the time. It was what we felt like playing at the time, with microphones pointed at us, and a guy in the other room making sure that what we felt like playing was being made into a permanent thing, a list of numbers that will not change once we're done with the technical fiddling. Now, that's as valid a moment as any moment we might spend on stage, or in a rehearsal space, or wherever, but it's no more typical a situation in which I might make up some music than if I were to be riding on the back of a zebra down Canal street with a tuba in my lap.
I will know, in a few weeks, once I've forgotten the weather, and the conversation I had had the night before, and the endorphin rush when Dave and Dan kicked in together at the end of my tuba solo, whether what we recorded is worth listening to. But as a performer, there's really no way I can listen to my music and tell you whether it's any good or not. Not while I'm playing it, because I don't have time and I'm focused on playing the stuff. And not while I listen back, because I hear what I thought were mistakes at the time and I hear the band giving up on what we were trying to do and just floundering for a few minutes - all while you just hear music, the completed result of what we ended up playing at that moment. On some level, that's always true. I know things about the structure and method and style of my playing that you don't and likely can't hear, and in exchange, I can't hear the music I make in the way it's listened to by anyone besides me.
And in the meantime, I never have these thoughts when I listen to a Derek Bailey album. They don't matter. I can't hear them and I don't care. And while I still generally say that there's no good in recording improvised music, that what we play with no preparation is not intended to be heard past the moment in which we decided to play it, I can't say I've ever turned down the opportunity to listen to a few favorite albums multiple times just because I knew that the music was only to be played live once and then never revisited.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Scream of the Week
The best screams don't always have to come from the human voice. One of my favorite screamers of all time is Pharoah Sandars.
I chose this live performance of the Coltrane Quintet from 1966 mostly because Sanders takes the first solo, but you can hear his astonishing screaming throughout his career, and especially when he played with Coltrane. Here, the most obvious examples of what I'm talking about happen at 2:20, 4:40, 6:00, and 8:00 of the clip.
To my ears, the piercing squeal that Sanders achieves, almost always built up with rising glissandi, and similarly trailing off into Ayler-like smears down in pitch, have that same kind of existential rawness that I talked about Roky Erickson having a couple weeks ago. The context makes it maybe a little less jarring than Erickson's screams, since this is some pretty up-tempo, chaotic, screamy music to begin with. But it's also probably a little more direct because of the same context.
There's also a sense in which each of Sanders' screamy moments in this solo serve as a microcosm of the solo itself. Each of those moments is a little louder, higher, and more human than the one before it, and like the ahh-ahhh-ACHOO effect of each moment, he builds over four minutes, and then trails away. Sanders isn't working much with pitch motives or melody in his solo (that's Coltrane's job in this group, and by the way, Sanders really never avoids melody or harmony as a player, with the exception of his work with Coltrane - I suspect it's an overlooked clue about the degree of control and arrangement that Coltrane had in his freer, noisier performances that he could convince Sanders to focus almost entirely on non-tonal, gestural, and screamy playing with the group, even if Sanders' own interests lay elsewhere), but he builds a long-term structure on repeated ideas in a way that reminds me a lot of Lester Young (no joke!).
I chose this live performance of the Coltrane Quintet from 1966 mostly because Sanders takes the first solo, but you can hear his astonishing screaming throughout his career, and especially when he played with Coltrane. Here, the most obvious examples of what I'm talking about happen at 2:20, 4:40, 6:00, and 8:00 of the clip.
To my ears, the piercing squeal that Sanders achieves, almost always built up with rising glissandi, and similarly trailing off into Ayler-like smears down in pitch, have that same kind of existential rawness that I talked about Roky Erickson having a couple weeks ago. The context makes it maybe a little less jarring than Erickson's screams, since this is some pretty up-tempo, chaotic, screamy music to begin with. But it's also probably a little more direct because of the same context.
There's also a sense in which each of Sanders' screamy moments in this solo serve as a microcosm of the solo itself. Each of those moments is a little louder, higher, and more human than the one before it, and like the ahh-ahhh-ACHOO effect of each moment, he builds over four minutes, and then trails away. Sanders isn't working much with pitch motives or melody in his solo (that's Coltrane's job in this group, and by the way, Sanders really never avoids melody or harmony as a player, with the exception of his work with Coltrane - I suspect it's an overlooked clue about the degree of control and arrangement that Coltrane had in his freer, noisier performances that he could convince Sanders to focus almost entirely on non-tonal, gestural, and screamy playing with the group, even if Sanders' own interests lay elsewhere), but he builds a long-term structure on repeated ideas in a way that reminds me a lot of Lester Young (no joke!).
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Destroying Classics for Fun and Profit.
Okay, not profit. But maybe to cover expenses.
I've been putting off this review of Puttin' On The Ritz's new project, a full scale re-arrangement and performance of the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat for several reasons. One reason was due to family obligations, but the rest have been musical. Here's a link to singer BJ Rubin's blog post about the album, with a link to a free download of the whole thing, and a youtube clip of the recording of "Sister Ray:"
http://feelfreefeelfree.blogspot.com/2010/06/puttin-on-ritz.html
To put my personal connections out of the way first: Kevin Shea, the drummer (and for a long time, the other half) of Puttin' On The Ritz has been a friend of mine for 15 or 20 years. We go way back, and have played together a lot. I also once sat in for BJ during a POTR gig at a loft party in Brooklyn and had a grand old time.
Kevin is brilliant. No one plays drums like he does, and in the right context he is a powerfully engaging, fun, and almost shocking performer. In the wrong contexts he can be overpowering, but he has the wisdom to keep those situations to a minimum. BJ is an engaging and charismatic performer, too, and one of the worst singers you'll ever applaud at a show. That's the schtick - POTR was originally a duo that stuck to the Great American Songbook, with no reference to pitch and only occasional attempts at keeping the rhythm together. If it sounds awful, well, it was awful, and hilarious, and pretty refreshing a few years ago.
Eventually, all projects mature, even the deliberately immature ones. White Light/White Heat sees the group expanded with bass and a horn line, and the deliberately amateurish sloppiness is mostly gone from the band, save for Rubin's highly stylized, mostly pitchless vocal delivery. For this project, that's really too bad. I think it's a little easy to do what POTR did a before with older material that's pretty removed from our generation. With the decision to recast the Velvet Underground, though, the band commited a kind of cultural suicide. Folks my age and Kevin and BJ's age still worship White Light/White Heat and Velvet Underground and Nico, and the attachment to the "classic" label is real for us. While it's still possible to have a respect for Rodgers and Hart, it's difficult in 2010 to feel the kind of cultural resonance for Old Broadway that we feel for a group that really started punk rock and indie rock and the whole nihilistic slacker thing that white people in their 30s happily accept as the label we got stuck with.
I think the mistake that POTR made in their deconstruction of the Velvet Underground is that they didn't get their own joke, or maybe they got it but they blew the delivery by overcommitting, like a nervous guy on a first date who tries too hard. There's some very, very nice playing from some of my favorite New York weird jazz musicians on this record, but it's wasted on the wrong context. If the intent of this record is to kill idols, then there needs to be violence, but the arrangements are too polished and too committed, and they barely make reference to the songs they're recasting. If the intent was to show respect with a new voice, well, songs like "Sister Ray," as grand as it is, are too simple re-envision, and rely on the performance for success - and that's precisely what's missing from the POTR version. And if it's a parody, then it's just too high-concept. These guys love the Velvet Underground and they're only able to parody their own fondness for the record. BJ's bad singing, when applied to songs we're used to hearing sung by Mel Torme or Nat King Cole or someone, is hilarious because BJ's commitment to his singing is obvious, and the contrast with what we expect to hear from a lounge singer works. But Lou Reed is a bad singer, with a weak voice, and a committed but poor delivery. So what's added by doing that again, but louder? I really wanted to have an answer to that question besides "nothing," but instead I just couldn't get through the record. It's a shame.
I've been putting off this review of Puttin' On The Ritz's new project, a full scale re-arrangement and performance of the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat for several reasons. One reason was due to family obligations, but the rest have been musical. Here's a link to singer BJ Rubin's blog post about the album, with a link to a free download of the whole thing, and a youtube clip of the recording of "Sister Ray:"
http://feelfreefeelfree.blogspot.com/2010/06/puttin-on-ritz.html
To put my personal connections out of the way first: Kevin Shea, the drummer (and for a long time, the other half) of Puttin' On The Ritz has been a friend of mine for 15 or 20 years. We go way back, and have played together a lot. I also once sat in for BJ during a POTR gig at a loft party in Brooklyn and had a grand old time.
Kevin is brilliant. No one plays drums like he does, and in the right context he is a powerfully engaging, fun, and almost shocking performer. In the wrong contexts he can be overpowering, but he has the wisdom to keep those situations to a minimum. BJ is an engaging and charismatic performer, too, and one of the worst singers you'll ever applaud at a show. That's the schtick - POTR was originally a duo that stuck to the Great American Songbook, with no reference to pitch and only occasional attempts at keeping the rhythm together. If it sounds awful, well, it was awful, and hilarious, and pretty refreshing a few years ago.
Eventually, all projects mature, even the deliberately immature ones. White Light/White Heat sees the group expanded with bass and a horn line, and the deliberately amateurish sloppiness is mostly gone from the band, save for Rubin's highly stylized, mostly pitchless vocal delivery. For this project, that's really too bad. I think it's a little easy to do what POTR did a before with older material that's pretty removed from our generation. With the decision to recast the Velvet Underground, though, the band commited a kind of cultural suicide. Folks my age and Kevin and BJ's age still worship White Light/White Heat and Velvet Underground and Nico, and the attachment to the "classic" label is real for us. While it's still possible to have a respect for Rodgers and Hart, it's difficult in 2010 to feel the kind of cultural resonance for Old Broadway that we feel for a group that really started punk rock and indie rock and the whole nihilistic slacker thing that white people in their 30s happily accept as the label we got stuck with.
I think the mistake that POTR made in their deconstruction of the Velvet Underground is that they didn't get their own joke, or maybe they got it but they blew the delivery by overcommitting, like a nervous guy on a first date who tries too hard. There's some very, very nice playing from some of my favorite New York weird jazz musicians on this record, but it's wasted on the wrong context. If the intent of this record is to kill idols, then there needs to be violence, but the arrangements are too polished and too committed, and they barely make reference to the songs they're recasting. If the intent was to show respect with a new voice, well, songs like "Sister Ray," as grand as it is, are too simple re-envision, and rely on the performance for success - and that's precisely what's missing from the POTR version. And if it's a parody, then it's just too high-concept. These guys love the Velvet Underground and they're only able to parody their own fondness for the record. BJ's bad singing, when applied to songs we're used to hearing sung by Mel Torme or Nat King Cole or someone, is hilarious because BJ's commitment to his singing is obvious, and the contrast with what we expect to hear from a lounge singer works. But Lou Reed is a bad singer, with a weak voice, and a committed but poor delivery. So what's added by doing that again, but louder? I really wanted to have an answer to that question besides "nothing," but instead I just couldn't get through the record. It's a shame.
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