33 1/3

I don't know who Mike Fournier is (or I may have forgotten), but he is about to write a book on the Minutemen's Double Nickles on the Dime for the interresting (but as of yet unread by me) 33 1/3-series. For more info check out their web site/blog.

Big F**king Shit / Right Now, Man!

I had originally conceived of a long piece about Jazz vs. Classical / written vs. improvised music, but since I heard The Brave And The Bold by Tortoise & Bonnie "Prince" Billy yesterday, I changed my mind and will say a few things about this instead.

Now, friends and foes alike may know that some of the values I most treasure in music are a willingness to fight and overcome, as opposed to e.g. wallowing in sorrow and self pity. Will Oldham, a.k.a Bonnie "Twat" Billy has never made it a secret that he prefers the melancholy and the sad. This sad sucker once claimed, you know, that he was sad because he "was born". Giving up before you even start. That's the spirit.

Now, to above mentioned record. It is comprised of cover versions of songs by artists as seemingly diverse as Milton Nascimento and Devo. But to me, the two most striking covers are Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road" and The Minutemen's "It's Expected I'm Gone", and both attempts fail greatly.

Let us just quickly establish that the meaning of a given song is not merely its lyric, but the way this lyric is performed. It can be related to Roland Barthes' description of "The Grain of the Voice". By this he meant that the voice and its grain embodies everything real of which it spoke. If it spoke of pain, the voice was pain. If it spoke of hope, it was hope.

Now, "Thunder Road", like many of Springsteen's songs, is a song of hope and forward motion. One of it's most striking couplets is "Have a little faith / there's magic in the night". In Oldham's detached voice, there is no such hope to be found. Tortoise's playing slows down the tune immensely, and it loses momentum. "Thunder Mud" more than "Road".

One of the most striking lines in the Minutemen song is "No hope / see, that's what gives me guts", but there is no guts in either Oldham's voice nor the slow core of Tortoise.

Not only is there in my opinion a lack of concord between the lyrics of these songs and the "grain" of Oldham's voice which not really alters their respective meaning so much as distorts it. It's a pointless artifact, and if not pointless it definitely offers a completely different (and in my opinion wrong) impression of the songs and artists it covers.

Big Pimpin'

The coolest MF around. Not too sure about his pimp hat, though.




Also, RIP to Wilson Picket.

He really IS suffering, you know...

Ok, since I stopped reading Modern Drummer even before I started I didn't know that the video of Tony Royster Jr. from the previous post was some years old, and that he in fact didn't turn out to be the new Tony Williams after all, but more like the new Dave Weckl, and I know which one I prefer. (He's still young, though. Maybe in time...). Favirotie current Jazz drummer? Hamid Drake! And maybe Paal Nilssen-Love.

Caryn Rose at Jukeboxgraduate had an interesting post recently. I like her Greil Marcus quote. Too many critics and regular readers and listeners/fans are too concerned with the factuality of art. They seem to measure a given artistic work on whether it's based on real life experiences or not, which I find irrelevant. Any good writer/artist/musician should be and is able to create stories that are good in their own right regardless of whether it actually happened or not. Nor must we take for granted or even expect that a writer's persona is in fact the author him-/herself. I remember Robert Christgau's review of The Magnetic Fields' wonderful 69 Love Songs, where he correctly states that had Stephen Merritt "lived all 69 songs himself he'd be dead already". But the songs are great anyway, don't you agree?

Skillz

I've always been sceptical of prodigies and perhaps even more so of lenghty drum solos, but MAAAN can this twelve year old kid kick the shit out of a drum kit. The next Tony Williams maybe?

Picking up the Pieces/Happy New Year

A few bits and pieces from the festive period.

Derek Bailey died on Christmas Day. He is regarded as the major guitarist in the improv game, but he remains a guy I've read more about rather than I've actually heard his music. One reason why is that many of his records have been out of print for quite a while. Another is that whenever I was going to get any recommendations, the various sources I used recommended totally different albums. Allmusic rates two live albums, Derek Bailey & Han Bennink from 1972 and Outcome from 1983, as well as his recording of Aida from 1980. The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, on the other hand, rate Domestic and Public Pieces and his duet album with Barre Phillips from 1980, Figuring. Allmusic are not too keen on the latter. Other sources rate yet other recordings. The only record I have of him is the charming Karyobin he made as a part of the 1968-version of The Spontanious Music Ensamble, which also included Dave Holland and Evan Parker. I've read several interviews with Bailey over the years, and he has always seemed as a reflective and smart guy, but I realize that I don't know enough about him to write a piece myself, so I'll let other do the work for me here, here and here.

I'm always excited when I read people I respect writing about their love for The Minutemen, like Sasha Frere-Jones and David Reese did just recently. We are still waiting for that documentary to appear on DVD!

When trying to find the various links used in this post I came across an interview with Albert Ayler done with Down Beat back in 1966.

I will try to finalize my 2005-list soon, but note this: As far as I'm concerned, The Arcade Fire's Funeral and The Go! Team's Thunder, Lightning, Strike were released in 2004. In this day and age, what whit increased opportunities for on-line shopping and the availability of imported records, these records and others were available to many when they were released, and I can't be bothered to find a spot for the among my list of records from 2005. Also, I have found it a bit difficult to update my list of reissues. Among other things, I can't decide whether to include reissues of albums that have been available for some time, or not. An example; The top spot is handed to Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity which was added because I found out it had been listed as a reissue this year, although it is actually just a re-pressing of the same reissue that has been available for some years now. Nevertheless, It is one of my all time favorite jazz records, so if I'm to include it it needs to have the top spot. I might have to rethink this before I close the list.