Raffmataff?

Nick Sylvester's been caught with his pants down.

Arceophone

Archeophone, the company that released the three brilliant Bert Williams collections recently, has got more up their sleves. Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1891-1922 captures basically what it says in the title, much of it from the minstrel scene in New York. This is where George W. Johnson became a star. Among his biggest hits were "The Laughing Song" and "The Laughing Coon", and the latter in particular is a prime example of how African American performers often had to adopt the stereotypes the white "black-face" performers had created of them in order to become successful. Several, but not all of the songs on Lost Sounds follow that pattern. The sound on some of the recordings may be a bit too "tin can" for the more sensitive ears, but there is no denying the musical quality of many of the artists collected here.


As you may have noticed, there have been some changes in the appearance of this blog. An overwhelming majotiry of some 67 % called for a change, so who am I not to listen to the masses. I'm not a computer-wiz, so I don't think there will be any further modifications. Thanks to all...erm...9 of you who voted.

The rumour mill

Now that the capture of the Wrens for Oya has been announced on their web-site, fresh rumours claim that the Hold Steady along with their label mates Les Savvy Fav are also in line to play at Oya this year. This promises to be quite an interesting line-up.

By popular demand, I give you a link to the video for Prince's "Black Sweat", which is just as minimalist and sexy as the song itself:

Prince: "Black Sweat" (video)

This Boy is...Excited!

This just in: The absolutely fantastic Wrens are confirmed to play at
Oya-festival here in Oslo. Now, it is yet to be posted on the respective web sites, but a newsletter from said festival have been mailed to subscribers with the news. This year's line-up also includes Amadou & Meriam, which means there are currently two good reasons to buy tickets.

US Popular Culture - on one disc!?!

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but by my own suggestion I have been given the go-ahead to compile a CD to accompany the American Popular Culture-course at my University. I found that very few of the students knew much about the artists that were presented in the various texts of the course, and that because they were unable to tell the difference between various developments in American music, they also had problems understanding the motives behind such developments. This was most notable when discussing the article"Things to Come: Swing Bands, Bebop and the Rise of a PostwarJazz Scene" (from Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of the Cold War, Lary May (ed.) (University of Chicago Press, 1989) by Lewis A. Erenberg. Many had never heard the artists and songs in question, and most were not able to tell Benny Goodman apart from Charlie Parker, which may have made it difficult for them to grasp why the shift from Swing to Bebop in form and style was so important to the musicians, especially the African American musicians.

Now, while compiling this music is undoubtedly an interesting challenge, I am by and large obliged to limit my choices to the examples granted in the source texts. Erenberg's article, for example, explains the transition from Hot to Sweet, and further from Swing to Bop. Writing about the Swing movement, he puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of the steady and powerful drummer as a driving force, and how many song titles from that era had images of trains, which coincided with the sense of moving into a modern era with all the velocity and excitement this implied. This will almost certainly limit my choices to adhere with this view, while I might have wished to find another track to juxtapose with Bebop. The challenge is also to find the most representative track(or tracks - I may, or most certainly will include more than one) from the Bebop movement. I need to consider the its creators, but also how its transition from Swing is best exemplified. Erenberg explains many different reasons for the transition, all of which I agree with. Among the examples are: the wish to be at the center-stage - your own master as opposed to drowning in a whole run by a (white) leader; The complexity in rhythm and melody, both to showcase their talents, but also to move away from the notion of being an entertainer and gain respect as an artist; And also, how all this was a reaction to the society as a whole, especially for the black musicians in question, as witnessed by the more aggressive compositions of the era.

Much of this ties in with Kevern Verney's African Americans and US Popular Culture (2003. New York: Routledge) (my article/review of that book here), which discusses African Americans role in US Popular culture, both as creators and entrepreneurs, and as victims. Verney is not as specific about songs, which will present me with a bigger challenge in that respect. Which Bert Williams song do I chose to best represent this early hero of African American music? Which recording of Amos and Andy best demonstrate how terrible Minstrel representations of African American culture could be. Which songs best illustrate gospel both as a religious music and as a part of the civil rights movement. The same for 60's Jazz (free!, "free", or not) and so on.

I will also include other genres, such as various white roots music. Still, there is a limit as to what I can fit onto one recordable CD but its an interesting selection process, and with a little help from some mates, the end result will hopefully be handed over to the department within a fortnight. I will probably post the track listing on here as well for you to comment on.

Double double

Beeaaaaaaooooooooh...beeeeeaaaaaaooooooooh...
...bippbrwappbipp...chwapchwipchckchck...chktck...
brwaappbwappchkcktrpbrwappbuahwrapp

This was pretty much how Mats Gustafsson sounded during his duo improv-session with guitarist David Stackenæs at Blaa on Friday. They opened in a double-duo gig which also included a set by Ken Vandermark and drum-wiz Paal Nilsson-Love. While Gustafsson's on-stage antics and cracks-and-pops may be fascinating, I find it musically uninterestingng. His power playing fits better in the no-holds-barred power (sorry for using this word twice in a sentence) -trio The Thing. In this duo setting though, I found him and his partner too thin on themes to be intriguing.

Vandermark and Nilssen-Love are musically richer, thematically stronger, and basically more engaging compared to the opening duo. Vandermark's sound may not be all that distinct, but what he lacks in that department he more than makes up for in having an impeccable sense of melody and theme. His playing fits perfectly with the pulsating playing of Nilsson-Love, who might just be the best jazz drummer around (Sorry, Hamid Drake). The two of them create enough "hooks" to grab your attention, while never being afraid to let things rip.

Let me at the same time recommend FME's Cuts , which teams Nilssen-Love and Vandermark with bassist Nate McBride. Its five lengthy pieces remind me, structurally, of Charles Gayle's classic Touchin' on Trane. Vandermark and Nilssen-Love has a perfect companion in McBride, who has a full and funky sound. The album has enjoyed a lot of playing time on my iPod during the past few weeks. A late entry on my year-end list of 2005, it may also enjoy some critical success this year given that it was just released at the tail-end of last year.

Double trouble

There is two of them, they're very cute in a suicidegirls/Avril/early Ashlee kind of way, and blink-and-you'll-miss-it one of them appears to be taking off her undies about mid way through their video for "4Ever"(video link). But all of this is beside the point, because a good deal of The Secret Life of... is pretty darn good. Adolelescent love themes, either it's "Hey! Lets get in that car and run away" or "I'm so moving on", seem to work well in a spiky pop-rock setting nowadays, and although none of the songs on the Veronicas' debut quite match Kelly Clarkson's magnificent one-off from last year, a good few come pretty darn close. Especially the first half, where "4Ever", "When it Falls Apart" and "Revolution" are stand-out tracks. It falters towards the end, with mid-heavy balladery and a pointless (it sounds exactly like the original) cover of Tracy Bonham's "Mother Mother". But at its best, I revel in its wooziness. A-? Probably.

Bootylicious

Finally, a music discussion with some substance! I did get a good chuckle reading Woebot's discussion on the Black-Eyed Peas. He says about "My Humps":

I've done a little research on this and it seems people really do use the word "humps" and it's loathsome, but "lady lumps", jesus what a completely revolting phrase. I mean, "Booty" has a lovely full-some ring to it, "Booty" is about glorious in-your-face nudity, about hourglass buttocks busting the seams of tight jeans. It's akin to a Fugs-ian, counter- cultural call for hot, sweaty, *natural* sex. But "Humps" and (worse, I mean gravy has lumps...) "Lumps" are all about the body being uncomfortably fettered. OK, I can appreciate the "perv" angle, as much as the next red-blooded individual, but I just don't think it can be celebrated in the same way. Just like "Shorty" there is a gormless infantilism to the phrase "Lovely lady lumps" which really pisses me off as well. Grr.

"Glorious in-your-face nudity"! A knee-slapper. "Lumps" does sound pretty awful, even if said lumps look pretty good on Fergie. She can't sing for sh*t, though. The song in question ended up on Christgau's Pazz & Jop singles list, but I'm not convinced. I find it too sparse to be danceable, and too dumb to be sexy.

Bad sneakers and a...

I've had quite a few of these during the previous week. Coupled with some sun, they sure help to lift the spirit.

Zoilus on the concept of guilty pleasures. More links there. Now, I actually created a playlist on my iPod once that I ended up calling "gulity pleasures", but to me it doesn't signify anything other than being a collection of songs I like by artists I don't like, or can't stand even. Now, what's your pleasure?

Talking all that Pazz

This year's Pazz & Jop was published just as I was putting the finishing touches on my own 2005-list. Though there may still be some additions, this is as close to the finished article as I have come, especially the top 15-20. Whereas before, the P&J has inspired me to check out dozens of albums I had missed in the previous year, it seems like this year I've been better prepared, so to speak. Largely, this is due to file sharing and iPod'ing and blogging, which has given me more music to listen to, and better opportunities to do it. But I do not feel I've been more inclined to follow hype, as Mr. Christgau suggests has become a bi-product of blogging/file sharing. (I know he didn't have me in mind).

Le Matos and Simon Reynolds are at it again, with M.I.A. at the centre of it all. Reynolds is arguing rockism, and although I agree on some of his points, e.g. that "having something to say" is not necessarily a token of quality, at least not until one explains what is actually said. It's the same with politics in music; saying someone or other has "politically charged lyrics" is just a description and not an evaluation. Deciding whether those political lyrics are any good, on the other hand... Anyway, I don't think he explains his points well enough: it's almost as if the opposite of having (the akward term) "substance" is what we should look for. And the fact that Kanye is now approved by the rock-crit crowd does not hide the fact that his album(s) is(are) damn good.

Right, off to the Canaries for a week or so. Hardly the most cultural of places, you'd say, but a good mix of a chuck-full iPod, Margaret Atwood , and Don DeLillo will do the trick.

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.

The Nick La Rocca legacy

When Freddie Keppard passed on the opportunity to record his music for fears that musicians would copy his style, the Original Dixieland Jazzband became the first to put jazz on record in 1917. Their leader was one Nick LaRocca, and according to him the fact that this white group was the first to record jazz was inevitable. You see, good ol' Nick believed that this new and exciting form of music was wholly a white invention. Nicky boy, you see, claimed that a music as complex as jazz could never have been invented by another race, let alone black people, whom he believed to be inferior to his white complexion. As if Buddy Bolden, Scott Joplin, Freddie Keppard, and a host of African American musicians in New Orleans never even existed.

Picking up copies of the Norwegian dailies to get a glimpse of what they regarded as the best Jazz records of 2005, it seemed horribly clear to me that current Norwegian Jazz writers must concur with Nick La Rocca's sentiments made some 90 years ago. Carl Petter Opsahl, jazz critic for VG, has produced a top five list which apart from its number one spot is completed by white or non-black performers. Not only that, four out of his top five have either Norwegian musicians as leaders or as an important part of their line-ups. That a live recording by John Coltrane tops his list says to me that he seems unable to follow much of the new releases in modern jazz outside his (and mine, don't forget) own country.

Roald Helgheim, who writes about jazz in the Sunday editions of Dagsavisen, received a price some time ago for his contributions to jazz in the form of his writing. Ironically, that price is called the Buddy-price, named after one Buddy Bolden, a figure the aforementioned Nick LaRocca pretended never existed, and looking at Helgheim's 2005 list it seems likely to conclude that he is only too happy to agree with Mr. LaRocca. Apart from Sonny Simmons' The Traveler on third place, every single record on his goddamn list is by white, Scandinavian performers! Simmons is augmented by Norwegian musicians on his record, so no wonder he got on the list.

Arild R. Andersen writes for Aftenposten, and used to shop at my record store. If I'm not mistaken, he once ordered a copy of Frank Lowe's Black Beings, but he seems to have forgotten such excesses, as his top five list gives us more Scandinavia, except for his number five spot, which is handed to Bill Frisell, who is...you guessed it, WHITE. His colleague I do not know much about, but he seems as incapable as the others to look beyond Europe except to acknowledge that old masters are still great (see his number one spot).

I failed to find Terje Mosnes' list from Dagbladet and I should therefore probably not say this without evidence, but I fear he would come up with a similar list to those above.

I have long argued that music to African Americans have probably been the most important art form than that of any other group of people throughout history. A bold statement, I know. But through their culture and music, the oppressed black population of America have used music as a tool to express themselves and comment on their situations in ever more innovative and meaningful ways. They have used music as a tool to break free from stereotypes and oppression, and in the early 1900's that music was mostly Jazz and Blues.

It seems odd to me that when so many of the prominent Jazz writers in Norway compile their thoughts on the Year-in-Jazz through a Year-end-list, they fail horribly in looking to other parts of the world. Because the African Americans, who are the originators of the genre, are not the only ones who've been neglected; The writers have been so intent on showing how vibrant their own national Jazz-scene is, that they have failed to look outside of the Norwegian border, and when they do, they pick established performers over young talents. I would argue that these writers are not doing their job in trying to find and discover new, exciting, and good Jazz and then try to bring it to a wider audience through their writing. Either that, or they just have terrible bad tastes. Or both. It's a crying shame.

Merry swinging X-mas

Pandora's Box

By way of a recomendation from my friend Adis, I checked out Pandora, a site created by The Music Genome Project. What this neat little site does is, when you type in an artist or song that you like, it creates a radio show with similar artists based on the musical attributes of the artist you requested/suggested. A kind of generic radio programme, if you like. I had some fun creating Minutemen, Albert Ayler, and Eric B & Rakim radio-shows. Since The Music Genome Project base their studies on the characteristics of the sounds, not all picks whetted my appetite. Needless to say, pinning down someone like the Minutemen and what they "mean" to me just based on their sounds (and not, for example, how those sounds are applied) will not give you the full picture, and therefore any other artist that may sound similar may not actually bring about the same "meaning". But to heck with that for now, 'cause this was actually quite fun.

Richard Pryor - Dec. 1, 1940 to Dec. 10, 2005