Now Playing: Matthew Shipp

Matthew Shipp: Piano Vortex (Thirsty Ear) (2007)

Matthew Shipp: piano
Joe Morris: bass
Whit Dickey: drums

I had the brief pleasure of hanging out with Matthew Shipp and Whit Dickey while we were students at the New England Conservatory of Music, circa. 1983-84. One day, while sitting in the McDonald’s on Huntington Avenue, Shipp told me that he really wanted to do an avant-jazz cover of David Bowie’s “Rock’N’Roll Suicide.” I was flabbergasted and to this day I’m not sure if he wasn’t pulling my leg.

A few months later, Shipp played a solo recital at NEC (itself an astonishing feat for a first-semester freshman) accompanied by the tenor saxophonist Gary Joynes (whatever happened to him?). It was an unforgettable, brain-melting experience. Here was someone, barely twenty-one years old, who knew exactly what he wanted to do within the high-stakes, post-Coltrane, free-jazz sound-world and had set about doing it; even the program notes were suitably cosmic, a la the space-poetry of Sun Ra. It was obvious to everyone in attendance that Shipp was the real deal and that he would go on to find fame, if not fortune, in the jazz business. Sure enough, he left the provincial confines of Boston for the promised land of New York City after only a couple of semesters. Whit Dickey followed soon thereafter.

A long stint with David S. Ware’s Quartet refined and developed Shipp’s musicianship and, since 1992, he has made a vast quantity of records as a leader and sideman. Since 2000, Shipp has served as executive producer of Thirsty Ear’s “Blue Series” and has experimented of late with electronics, loops, and samples, attempting a kind of 21st Century fusion that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, but which makes me think maybe he wasn’t totally joking about that David Bowie cover. (See e.g. 2004’s High Water, a collaboration with El-P which features an uncredited (and barely recognizable) cover of Minnie Ripperton’s 1975 hit, “Loving You.”).

Piano Vortex has been heralded as a “return to form” with its back-to-acoustic, uncompromisingly avant-garde approach. What’s really interesting about this record is hearing erstwhile guitarist, Joe Morris, playing stand-up bass. His ultra-clean articulation suits the bigger instrument, but his tone sounds thin by comparison to Shipp’s usual collaborator, William Parker, particularly with the bow. Nonetheless, Morris’s guitaristic take on the bass is interestingly linear and free of cliché, while Dickey kicks up clouds of cymbal washes and drum taps and Shipp does his thing on the piano, which, to my ears, has become more lyrical and less percussive as the years have gone by. In fact, much of this record sounds more like Thelonious Monk than Cecil Taylor and the overall effect is one of smooth professionalism amidst all the aggressive dissonance. In that respect, it seems to lack some of the fire and passion of Shipp’s recordings from the 1990s. On the other hand, the wisdom of maturity is something quite different from the excitement and exuberance of youth and should not unduly suffer the comparison.

Piano Vortex may appear to be a step backwards, but is still a highly listenable recording of some prickly and difficult music and, as such, is a worthy addition to Shipp’s already expansive catalog. It would make the perfect starting point for the uninitiated and, for that reason alone, gets my highest recommendation.

--rgc

The World’s Greatest Music Collection Sells for $3 Million

Paul Mawhinney examines a Rolling Stones album worth $10,000.
Photo by Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette

On February 21, “The World’s Greatest Music Collection” sold in an eBay auction for $3,002,150.00 to an anonymous bidder in Ireland. A total of seven bidders were apparently willing to pony up the minimum bid of $3 million, a sum well below its appraised value of $50 million.

Paul Mawhinney, of Pine, Pennsylvania, set out to collect every record ever made and he came darn close to realizing this goal, amassing over the past forty years an archive totaling 3 million records and 300,000 CDs. Now aged 68 and in failing health, Mr. Mawhinney finds himself needing to sell. He was hoping to keep the collection intact, to preserve the history of popular music which the collection embodies.

The ideal home for this collection would have been Middle Tennessee State University’s own Center for Popular Music. But, needless to say, the Center could not possibly have absorbed such an exponential expansion of its holdings, even if the University came up with the purchase price. In today’s economic, cultural, and political climate, I cannot imagine any public (or private) institution having the wherewithal to continue the work of this solitary man. Not even the Library of Congress was interested.

Further, as vinyl maven Michael Fremer pointed out in yesterday’s story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mr. Mawhinney could have made a whole lot more money by breaking the collection into lots:

“The way he's selling this collection makes no sense whatsoever," Mr. Fremer said. "I know these collectors. The jazz guys don't want the rock, the rock guys don't want the jazz, the LP guys don't want 45s, the 45 guys don't want LPs. To maximize your money, you could have the 45 lot, the vintage jazz lot, the Blue Note lot, the R&B lot, etc."

Mr. Fremer is, of course, correct, but this approach goes against the whole point of Mr. Mawhinney‘s life’s work and his ultimate desire to keep the collection intact and available for researchers.

Nevertheless, it is inevitable that the more valuable items will eventually disappear into the hands of private collectors while the rest is scattered to the winds. So, it does seem a shame that Mr. Mawhinney will receive a paltry $3 million - no doubt far less than his investment over the years - while the collection itself will, in the end, be dispersed or discarded.

However, little is known about the winning bidder and the transaction has not yet been consummated. It will be interesting to see what becomes of “The World’s Greatest Music Collection.”

More info here, and here.

--rgc

Kyle Gann on Morton Feldman

I finally got around to reading Kyle Gann's long talk on Morton Feldman and it's well worth the read. I found his discussion about Feldman's highly idiosyncratic notation especially interesting:

Feldman liked to talk about the psychological effect that notation had on a performer. By notating those almost identical rhythms differently, or by adding a tied-over 16th-note in a context with no pulse to hear it against, he altered what the performer was thinking while playing, in order (one has to argue) to elicit a certain hesitant quality of nuance that the notation, strictly speaking, does not exactly mandate. I don't know of a composition teacher, including myself, who wouldn't throw a fit if a student brought in a piece notated this way. It flouts every professional orthodoxy of notating music, which is supposed to aim for maximum simplicity and consistency, make the notation fit the sound as closely as possible, and avoid complications that don't affect the result. Quite the contrary, Feldman's notation distances the performer from the notated page, and doesn't allow for the kind of facile sight-reading that is the core paradigm of classical music-making. My composition teacher, faced with such a page, would immediately protest, "You can't do that." But Feldman did it, and it resulted in music too beautiful to argue with.

If you've ever taken a look at Feldman's late scores, they're really quite lovely to look at but, indeed, highly inefficient vehicles for the performer. I think Gann is right that Feldman's notation forces a kind of hyper-refined attack that suits the enervated calm of the music.

Fascinating stuff.

--rgc

Now Playing: Roscoe Mitchell

Roscoe Mitchell/The Transatlantic Art Ensemble: Composition/Improvisation Nos. 1,2 & 3 (ECM 1872)

The notable and astute writer Art Lange began his November column in the online journal Point of Departure as follows:

Gunther Schuller got a bum rap, and it’s time for some vindication. He had the audacity, back in the late ‘50s, to suggest that jazz musicians might find some fresh avenues to explore by incorporating classically-derived material and procedures into their usual modus operandi – and worse yet, he composed a few examples himself to show how it could be done, using renegade, untrustworthy improvisers like Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy alongside a string quartet. He even came up with a name for it: Third Stream. Maybe that was his mistake; once an idea has a name it becomes concrete, real, and dangerous to the status quo.

Third Stream music was attacked from the git-go, not so much for what it was, but what people feared it might be.

[…]

[Schuller] tried to deflect these misconceptions in a 1961 article entitled Third Stream” (reprinted in his Oxford University Press collection of essays, Musings), where he explained that Third Stream was not intended to replace, improve, or “legitimize” jazz at all, but that the whole point was to blend certain compatible aspects of jazz and classical music into a New Music that no longer was jazz or classical music, but something other.

I quote Mr. Lange at length because he’s right (and please go read the whole thing, it's brilliant). Gunther Schuller did get a bum rap and the term, “Third Stream,” for all its faults, is what we’re stuck with when it comes to describing what’s going on with something like Roscoe Mitchell’s latest record for ECM. I have no doubt that Mr. Mitchell would object to the term himself, but there you go. I would still assert that Composition/Improvisation Nos. 1, 2 & 3 epitomizes Schuller’s ideal of “something other” of a “Third Stream.”

The Transatlantic Art Ensemble is a combination of Mitchell’s Note Factory and Evan Parker’s Electroacoustic Ensemble (sans electronics). Mitchell’s “composed improvisations” exploit the rich textural possibilities of these fourteen master musicians. Track three is exemplary: beginning with a fully-notated and quirkily swinging ensemble passage, it develops across various rhythmic and instrumental combinations until yielding to Mitchell’s own solo saxophone excursion. From there it evolves into an ecstatic (yet somehow delicately controlled) free-jazz blow-out, building climaxes upon climaxes as each additional instrument gradually enters the fray. Just as you think it can’t get anymore intense, a beautiful chord appears signaling an extended coda to end.

The first time I heard this was a hair-raising experience. I literally felt like the guy in the Maxell ad, pinned to the sofa. The whole thing is beautifully recorded by producer Steve Lake and it sounds especially good at a realistic volume level, if you know what I mean.

Neither one of the available terms, “jazz” nor “classical”, fits this music’s true ambition and scope. “Third Stream” will have to do. Let’s give it some respect.

--rgc

iPod

I know I’ve ranted about the poor sound quality of MP3s before, but I’ve given in and gotten myself an 8G iPod Nano. In the car, what with the engine noise and the road noise, MP3 at 256kbps sounds perfectly acceptable. So, now I have 2.4 days worth of music loaded on it and I’m ready to face my commute. Rock on!

Of course, this new-fangled technology required an upgrade of our ancient computer. While I was at it, I also set up a wireless network so I now am posting on my laptop from the living room. We have finally entered the 21st Century!

The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America at the Frist

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the
work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its
inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.

--Marcel Duchamps, “The Creative Act”
(Jennifer R. Gross, The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America, Yale University Press, 2006, pp.29-30)

This past Thursday evening, Liz and I finally decided to head over to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts to see The Société Anonyme: Modernism in America. It had been up since October, but for whatever reason, we had not yet seen it. What had we been waiting for? It is a pure delight.

Incorporated by the artists Katherine S. Dreier, Marcel Duchamps, and Man Ray in 1920, The Société Anonyme opened a (short-lived) “Museum of Modern Art” in Manhattan almost a decade before MOMA. The first room recreates a portion of the inaugural exhibition of The Société Anonyme, the works widely spaced upon blue oilcloth walls, their frames covered with lace doilies – a Duchampian touch that is utterly charming.

Duchamps and Dreier would go on to build an extraordinarily diverse collection of art that was eventually donated intact to Yale University in 1941 and much of Dreier’s personal collection was bequeathed to the university after her death in 1952. The entire gift consists of over one thousand works, of which some two hundred are on display in this traveling exhibition. The show contains its fair share of big names including Kandinsky, Malevich, Schwitters, Klee, Joseph Stella, Mondrian, Brancusi, Picasso, and Matisse among others, but also several now-forgotten artists whose work still evokes the intense creative ferment of the 1920s and 30s.

In addition to mounting exhibitions, The Société Anonyme pursued a variety of educational activities including concerts, lectures, dance performances, and numerous publications. Photographs, letters, and other ephemera displayed in glass cases illuminate this wide ranging activity and the deepening friendship between the utopian Dreier and the enigmatic Duchamps. It is truly an inspiring and touching story.

This is such a supremely satisfying exhibition and the catalog is so fascinating that I have decided that I need to see it at least once more before it closes on January 27.

Good stuff!

--rgc

New Year's Eve

A nice bottle of champaigne with a delicious dinner and we'll be asleep before midnight. That's how we celebrate New Year's Eve in our house. What could be better?

Best wishes to all in 2008!

(photo by Liz)

--rgc

Wintertime

One of the nice things about winter is a fire in the fireplace.

And music on the stereo: "The Megaplexian" from Roscoe Mitchell & The Note Factory: Song for My Sister (Pi 03, 2002) (Thanks Liz!)

--rgc

Merry Christmas!

--rgc

Wilco Is Coming To Nashville!

Wilco is one of our very favorite bands and they will be playing Nashville's historic Ryman Auditorium on Sunday, March 2, 2008. Lovely Lizzy managed to score tickets (good seats!) at the box office yesterday morning! Alright!

Amazingly enough, this will be our first time seeing Wilco live. We have numerous live recordings, but have not managed to get ourselves to a show until now. I was a luke-warm fan of Wilco until we saw Sam Jones's moving documentary, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, in 2002. In my opinion, the band has only gotten better. These days, with the addition of avant-guitar virtuoso Nels Cline, Wilco is at the height of its powers. We are so excited!

--rgc

Now Playing: Robert Pollard (some more)

Robert Pollard: Coast to Coast Carpet of Love (Merge CD/LP)
Robert Pollard: Standard Gargoyle Decisions (Merge CD/LP)

I’ve lived with these records for a little over month or so now, and I’ve come to some conclusions regarding Robert Pollard’s post-Guided By Voices oeuvre:

1. Producer/multi-instrumentalist Todd Tobias is an as madly eclectic and prolific a musical genius as Robert Pollard himself. Thus, a perfect partnership is formed and a great many records are made under a variety of monikers. Fans and record collectors rejoice! Yet, I occasionally miss the sense of a band in a room rocking out and I get a nagging suspicion that Pollard is sometimes merely “phoning in” his performances.

2. As a songwriter, Robert Pollard continues to explore new expressive possibilities in the two-minute pop/rock song. Allusive, asymmetrical, and often lacking a typical verse/chorus structure, these songs are subtle and not immediately graspable, despite their brevity. These records require repeated listenings to reveal their elusive charms.

3. Perhaps for these very reasons, neither of these records is likely to win many new converts to the Pollard bandwagon. And that’s OK. Acquired taste and all that. . .

+++

Even though Coast to Coast Carpet of Love is billed as the creamy pop record and Standard Gargoyle Decisions is supposed to be the edgy, art-damaged record, I actually find SGD to be the more immediately appealing listen. Go figure.

I also find CtCCoL’s cover to be kind of, um, embarrassing. Maybe it’s just a bit too uncomfortable for me to contemplate. That album cover begs the question: Is it utterly ridiculous for a fifty-year-old-guy to seriously rock out? I hope not, I guess. I dunno. As my forties race by, I really don’t want to think about it, you know? Please, Bob, more collages, less poses.

If you’re already a fan, you already own these records and love them to death. If not, I don’t think they are necessarily the place to start. Personally, I’m more excited by the latest Circus Devils than either of these two records, to tell you the truth. But, maybe I simply haven’t lived with them long enough yet.

Fortunately, the limited edition LPs are beautifully pressed by RTI on 200g platters of virgin vinyl and my copies are perfectly flat, centered, and quiet. They sound really good. Please note, however, that CtCCoL’s labels are reversed with side B being actually side A. Oops. As usual, Pollard’s music works better for me on LP, so it’s definitely nice to have these two on audiophile quality vinyl. Oh, and the LPs come with a coupon for a free mp3 download of the entire album, for the iPod-enabled. Nice job, Merge!

+++

The Happy Jack Rock Records singles series continues apace, with No. 7 due on December 22nd. The b-sides released so far range from the sci-fi sound collage of “Battle for Mankind” to the creamy pop/rock of “Met Her at a Séance” and “Be in the Wild Place.” The song “Coast to Coast Carpet of Love” is perversely left off of the album of the same name but appears here as the b-side of a SGD song (“Pill Gone Girl”). That’s too bad, as this is a powerfully direct song that should not have been exiled to an obscure 7” single. So it goes with Pollard’s profligacy. November’s b-side features the epic and orchestral “Sixland” sung, not by Pollard, but by former GbV producer, John Shough. Uh, OK. The Happy Jack Rock Records singles series continues for another six months. For more information, get thee to Rockathon.

--rgc

Third Avenue @ Union Street

Yes, I know, more cool old buildings downtown.

Well, I walk around, I take a picture. Or two.

As you can see, I have discovered the panorama function, which is astonishingly easy to use. And it works seamlessly! I like the skewed perspective and the fact that more time is captured in the image. I'm looking forward to playing around with this some more.

--rgc

Now Playing: Thurston Moore

Thurston Moore: Trees Outside The Academy (Ecstatic Peace)

Produced by John Agnello
Recorded at Bisquiteen, Amherst, MA, Springtime
2007

This is a pleasant surprise. Sure, Thurston has made a whole bunch of records over the years outside of Sonic Youth, but they are, for better or worse, mostly of the avant/noise/improv variety. I love that stuff, but it is, admittedly, not for everyone. Trees Outside The Academy, on the other hand, is Thurston’s first collection of actual songs since 1995’s Psychic Hearts (Geffen). Interestingly, this particular collection songs is (mostly) built around Thurston’s acoustic guitar strumming, accompanied by Steve Shelley’s drums, and Samara Lubelski’s ghostly counterpoint on violin and background vocals; the electric guitar heroics, where necessary, are reserved for Dinosaur, Jr.’s J. Mascis, at whose home studio Trees Outside the Academy was recorded.

The somber, Neil Young meets Beck in Downtown NYC via leafy Northampton vibe is immediately and comfortably evocative. The whole package is chock full of charming, archival photos of Thurston as a teenager and young rock star and gives off more than a whiff of wistfulness and nostalgic looking back. You know, maybe they should change their name to Sonic Coots. (Ha. Ha.)

Well, that’s OK, I’m an old coot myself.

Fortunately, the songs are good – I find myself putting this on playback machine again and again. The final track, “Thurston @13,” is exactly what it says: a thirteen-year-old Thurston, alone in his bedroom in Bethel, Connecticut, creating audio theater with only his voice, various household items (an aerosol can, coins, etc.), and a cassette deck. “There” he intones after each hyper-banal, yet heroically immortalized “event.” At one point, Thurston ponders, “what am I going to do next for your ears to taste.” Precociously arresting yet profoundly silly, this little snippet of tape is the primordial ooze from which Sonic Youth’s whole aesthetic would be founded: words + noise = drama.

Yet, with all the apparent irony and pretension combined with large doses outright goofiness, the question surrounding Sonic Youth has always been: just how sincere is any of it? Personally, I’ve always tended to give them the benefit of the doubt – and I’ve been a fan since 1985. I don’t believe Sonic Youth could have survived for so long with their basic integrity still intact without at least being somewhat sincere, at least where it counts. The goofiness just lets you know they that, thank god, they don't take themselves too seriously. Trees Outside The Academy sounds to me like a mature statement, personal and heartfelt.

John Agnello’s production gives the whole thing a unifying sound despite the ragtag, ad hoc recordings and, at barely 40 minutes, this would make a really nice-sounding LP. Unfortunately, only a limited edition picture-disc is available. Uh…I might have to pass on that one, what with the notoriously poor sound quality of picture-discs.

In any event, this is a really good CD.

Thurston is playing a brief tour with a band consisting of Steve Shelley, Samara Lubelski, Chris Brokaw, and Matt Heyner. Check ‘em out if they come to your town. Sadly, no dates here in Nashville…

--rgc

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It's all about food. And, being grateful for life's blessings. Winter is just around the corner, so let's celebrate!

--rgc

Views From Public Square

--rgc

More Pictures of Nashville Architecture

I've been told that this stretch of Second Avenue North from the courthouse to Broadway is the longest contiguous section of pre-Civil War architecture in the South. (After all, Sherman burned cities to the ground during his long march.) I have been unable to verify this factoid, however.

I had to run an errand in East Nashville and took a couple of snaps along the way:

Locals refer to the BellSouth Tower as the "Bat-Building." Ha. Ha.

--rgc

Now Playing: Miles Davis

After twelve years, the eighth and final Miles Davis on Columbia box set, The Complete On The Corner Sessions (Sony/Legacy) has at last been released in all of its lavishly garish, embossed-metal glory:

This 6-CD box set goes a long way towards rationalizing an important, but critically neglected period in Miles Davis’s career. For example, the unedited tracks from 1972 that would become On the Corner are a revelation: inspired by the magnetic tape compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen and musique concrete, the original LP was full of startling jump-cuts and electronic processing, while the unedited tracks are beatifically extended, trance-inducing jams.

After the tabla and sitar experiments of On The Corner, Miles’s working band from 1973-1975 featured electric guitarist Pete Cosey - jazz, funk, and coruscating heavy metal converged, as demonstrated on the legendary live albums Dark Magus, Agharta, and Pangaea. It’s nice to have all of the studio sessions together in one place since this material had been haphazardly scattered across disparate releases. Plus, hours of unreleased tracks shed further light on what had always been a murky discographical era.

As the liner notes intimate, this was, in fact, a particularly dark time in Miles Davis’s life, full of drug abuse, catastrophic health problems, and domestic turmoil and that kind of heaviness certainly pervades most of these tracks. Accusations that Miles was somehow “selling out” with this music never made any sense to me; this stuff is intense!

By the end of 1975, Miles had retired from music altogether. That is, until his “comeback” in 1981. . .but it was never quite the same.

Truly, a monumental body of work, the now completed series does look suitably impressive on the shelf:

[Sam had requested more photographs of records, so here you go, Sam!]

--rgc

Happy Halloween!

--rgc

A.M./P.M.

This morning's walk took me up 2nd Avenue to the courhouse. The recently completed renovation of Public Square is quite nice, with the fountains and greenspace.

Downtown Nashville has some beautiful old buildings amidst everything else.

Here's another one (from my afternoon walk, 3rd Avenue):

Late afternoon light:

More tomorrow perhaps.

--rgc

Circus Devils: Sgt. Disco LP

What has the mailperson left for me on the front porch?

Yippee! After a two-month delay, the new Circus Devils record has finally arrived in a super-limited, super-deluxe, 2-LP, heavy-duty gatefold edition. It is a thing of beauty.

First, a quick once-over on the Nitty-Gritty record cleaning machine.

Yes, I vacuum-clean even brand new records. Why? Because even a brand new LP has all kinds of dust, bits of paper, and mold-release compounds all over it which will be permanently ground into the delicate surface by the stylus if they are not immediately removed. In addition, the Nitty-Gritty will eliminate any static-electricity that has built up in the manufacturing and shrink-wrapping processes (which is substantial). Of course, I will not return the freshly cleaned LP into its original, contaminated inner-sleeve. No, it will live from now on in a Mobile Fidelity anti-static, quasi-rice paper sleeve. Yes, I am obsessed.

Now, let's have a listen:

I've been really digging the CD edition (available on Ipecac) for a while now and have come to the conclusion that this is perhaps one of the best records Robert Pollard has ever made (certainly since the demise of Guided By Voices, anyway). I also believe that Pollard's albums are best experienced on vinyl. This is especially true with a sprawling, 32-track epic like Sgt. Disco. Pollard is especially gifted at sequencing an album; each side has a real beginning, middle, and end and this effect is utterly obliterated by the CD's relentless continuity. I also think the LP sounds better - even though I know it was mastered from the same digital source as the CD. Chalk it up to euphonic distortion, I don't care. This record rocks.

Only 470 of these things are available. Get yours before they're gone forever only from Rockathon.

--rgc