Max Roach, RIP

Max Roach died at the age of 83. He was one of the best, a musician who combined solid chops with keen ears and a brilliant mind. Drummers are generally the best listeners in a jazz ensemble, because the thing that distinguishes a solid timekeeper from a total drummer, is the ability to underscore and support structural variations and to adjust to a variety of factors: comping patterns, solos, etc. He can raise or lower the energy level, can transform a good solo into a great solo, and, if he has tympani, can even make the whole ensemble sound out of tune, should they anger him. There is a reason that the tympanist is the highest paid musician in the orchestra.

Max Roach could do all of this. In fact, you could jettison the rest of the band and he could engage an audience for a set or two just by himself.

And a little Yee Haw for your morning...

Mark Sullivan (also known as "He of the Polish Moose or Estonian Antelope or whatever that thing really is Fame") posts many good and great posts. He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something). I recommend reading him regularly, even when he is waxing ecstatically about the BoTox or whatever that team is that plays out there.

Once in awhile, he really hits a home run, that, like a Bonds Bomb, sails clear out of the ballpark. His recent splash in McCovey Cove is about Country Music, which, as you all know, is dear to my heart. And Barbara Mandrell's singing and steel guitar playing make you forgive her framing her pretty face with that preposterous hairstyle.

So, take a few minutes off, crank up the volume on your computer, and enjoy the clips.

Stetsons off to Mark Sullivan!

David Lambert

David Lambert would have been 90 today.

First clip is bad animation, but the music is first rate (from Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross's Everybody's Boppin'

Here they are doing "Cloudburst":

And here are Jon Hendricks and David Lambert post Annie Ross, performing as Lambert Hendricks and Bavan (note that this one has actual footage):

This one is some great footage of LHR, but they have disabled embedding, so you have to go to the YouTube site to see it (and it is worth it):

Here! For some great singing.

The Harmful Effects of Certain Types of Music on Writers of Fiction

There are times when I think that people who listen to certain bands, certain sub-genres of music, perhaps even some whole genres of music, should be forbidden from writing fiction.

Now, I am not going to actually say which bands, which singers, which sub-genres, which composers etc., but I have noticed that there are certain musicians who always seem to be quoted and referenced by some of the most maudlin fiction writers out there.

ipod random 10

I recently added many of my all time favorites to my ipod. So, rather than boring you with more Iberian music listings, I’ve taken this list from my favorites list.

1. Feelings – Albert Morris
2. Bach Fugue in A minor: Piano Concertos conducted by Bernstein
3. Closer to Fine – Indigo Girls
4. Ice, Ice Baby – Vanilla Ice
5. Ebony and Ivory – Paul McCartney ,Stevie Wonder
6. Disco Duck – Rick Dees
7. We build this City – Starship
8. Muskrat Love - Captain and Tennille
9. No more tears (enough is enough) - Babs S. & Donna Summers
10. Bach Fugue in F minor: Piano Concertos conducted by Bernstein

I’ve come to realize I prefer Bach played on the piano – go figure.

Happy Birthday Sun Ra!

Sun Ra, aka Herman "Sonny" Blount or Le Sony'r Ra, was born on this day on 1914 on Saturn or Birmingham, Alabama, depending on which account you believe.

His Arkestra was a lot of fun:

Here he is with the Arkestra on Night Music:

Yes, this man was Fletcher Henderson's arranger:

1974 was a weird time, and Sun Ra made it weirder:

He still inspires people, as there seems to be a cottage industry of folks editing animation and anime to his music:

iTunes Random 10

You know the rules, if you want to play: hit random on your iPod and post the first 10 results, even if they are horrible, horrible things that will bring shame to you for ten generations.

Surprisingly, there is nothing in Portuguese this time, but there are three country songs.

1. "Down by the Train" composed by Tom Waits and sung by Johnny Cash (Louisiana).
2. "O Sole Mio" sung by Mario Lanza (this one is for you, John! And I assure you, it is a gorgeous recording)(Italy).
3. "I'm Ragged But I'm Right" sung by George Jones (Texas).
4. "Melancolly Gaillard" composed by John Dowland, performed by Amsterdam Loeki Stardus Quartet (Englisch composer, Swamp German Band).
5. "Shiva Cocktail" by Forte' (India/Italy).
6. "Es Mejor Vivir Así (Better To Live Like...)" composed by Ángel Ortega Gómez and sung by Compay Segundo (Cuba).
7. "RestArtatant" performed by RestArt (Italy).
8. "Cumbia Pa' Oriente" performed by Lisandro Meza (Colombia)
9. "Elle fréquentait la rue Pigalle" composed by Asso/Maitrier and performed by Ute Lemper (France/Germany).
10. "Green Green Grass Of Home" by Merle Haggard (California!).

Of course the next ten were dominated by Portuguese music. I don't know why I find these things so fascinating. I suppose it is because I am easily amused.

Anyway, back to work.

iTunes Random 10

I don't have time for a full post today, so instead I give you this edition of the iTunes Random 10. I was thinking about restricting it to music in Portuguese only, but I decided not to, so I was amused when the first track was a fado anyway.

1. "Que Fazes Aí Lisboa" sung by Cristina Branco (Portugeuse fado)
2. "Tercio De Vara" played by Manolo Sanlúcar (flamenco)
3. "Tu Scende Della Stella/Tarantella Di Giovani Lo Zampognaro" played by Sean Folsom (Southern Italian bagpipes - folk tune)
4. "Ritmo De Negros" sung by Pepe Vasquez (Peru)
5. "Su Cojoviu Novu (Ballu Lestru)" sung by Tenores Di Bitti - Mialinu (Sardegnian polyphony)
6. "L'invitation Au Départ" by jacques lejeune (electronic classical music from IRCAM)
7. "Recondita Armonia (Tosca)" by Puccini, sung by Mario Lanza (Italian operatic)
8. "Ku'u Pua Mikinolia" sung by Raiatea Helm (Hawaii)
9. "Akita Sugagaki" performed by Kohachiro Miyata (Japanese shakuhachi)
10. "Before You Go" sung by the late, great Buck Owens (the greatest music ever made: Californian Country! Viva la Oildale!)

If you want to play, just hit "random" on your mp3 player of choice and report on your blog the first ten. No cheating. If Babs Strsnd comes up, you gotta list it.

Perhaps later I will do a themed one, where I make it pick from a certain playlist.

Who more worthress...Arec Bardwin or Richard Gere? And my acoustical attic...

OK. I shouldn't take nearly as much amusement from this story as I do. It is just that I have never liked Richard Gere as an actor, and his obnoxious politics leave me even colder.

Still, I must have sympathy for his supporters. You know how it is for us these days when we hear of a sexual scandal involving a priest and we get more details and breathe a sigh of relief and say, "at least it was with a woman?" Well, for Gere's supporters, they can at least say...never mind. Even I will not go there.

There are cheap shots and there are free shots.

Does anyone still remember that stuff? Sort of like Kemp's Lake Tahoe. You can find out little bits about the scandal with Google, but, my oh my, has it evaporated, compared to other scandals.

Anyway, since my new studio is smaller than the old studio (yet better in many ways...I keep telling myself), I have to make sure that everything has a place, and a use. Anything that doesn't, gets tossed or sold. Period. I cannot save anything that I cannot find a use for in the next year or two. And that includes the box of cassettes that has been following me around for years.

I have been wary of simply throwing away the box, since there are tons of unmarked cassettes with gems on them. I have been going through those cassettes, listening, labeling, shelving, etc.

I was mightily pleased to discover cassettes of some of my electronic compositions from many years ago, one in particular that came out of my work with Stockhausen's "Four Criteria of Electronic Music." What makes me most interested in this piece is that I am using the system I developed for the compositional structure for a series of paintings right now, yet I have not been able to find anything but the reel-to-reel master tape of the piece (and I don't have a reel-to-reel player/recorder any more). So I was overjoyed to put on this unmarked cassette to hear this piece.

Now, I was curious about two things about this piece (which I composed in 1993 or 1994):

1. Since I used just about the whole spectrum of human audible sound, would I be able to hear some of the high frequency patterns that I put in there?

2. This was a piece I wrote when I was thoroughly immersed in mid-century avant-garde music (Xennakis, Stockhausen, Boulez, Yuasa, Subotnick, Cage, etc.). While I still listen to and enjoy that music, I am not nearly as involved in it as I was then, and I wondered if I would enjoy hearing, even to be able to endure this long composition of pure electronic music.

Well, I am pleased that, yes, I can still hear even the very highest parts of the music, and that I enjoyed listening to this piece even more now than I did the last time I heard it (when it was used at a dance performance many years ago).

I also found lots and lots of concert tapes of various ensembles I have been in, and have really been enjoying listening to the Balinese gamelan that I played in (although there the ragged edges on some of the pieces annoy me now even more than they did then - although I no longer have the same pique at the musicians who were responsible for those ragged edges - I remember days when a couple of us wanted to strangle a tempo-challenged musician or two).

The worst was a live tape from a band I was in back in 1991/1992. The performance was pretty good, but I had one solo where my intonation was out to lunch. Egads.

Musical Confession

You know something... I have not been excited by a new record in a long time. Perhaps by a track here and there, but usually it is just a little bit: a particular passage, a particular way of phrasing, etc. Generally, when I hear a new release I am just not all that moved to dig any deeper into it.

Perhaps it is me, but I don't think so. I think that we are seeing the record industry tightening its belts at the expense of its product, resulting in every shrinking sales, causing them to tighten their belts...

I heard that the Recording Industry Association of America is bullying college students who are sharing music online. Now, they are standing on the objective moral high ground: if these college students like the music enough to listen to it, to go to the trouble of downloading it, they ought to pay the copyright owners. And, subjectively, I object to almost nothing when it comes to harsh punishments for college students, particularly the long-haired (or the fellows with those silly collegiate flip-de-do haircuts, where it is stringy and kind of flips out at the bottom, often under a baseball cap).

I realized when I was in college that I did not much like college students, and once proposed, as the Chairman of the Student Senate, that the University adopt mandatory haircuts and pre-dawn excercise in the quad. No one agreed, although I was able to get the Senate to adopt a resolution in favor of the administration against some rabble rousers who were arrested at a protest (they were protesting the building of a new music building, so they came strongly in my crosshairs).

But I digress.

Even with Justice on their side, and my own particular loathing of college students, I have to say to the RIAA, "are you people serious?!?" Mark down a whopping big negative on the PR ledger here. This looks exactly like what it is: a desperate move to stop the bleeding of a nine-year record business slump (or six or seven or eleven year slump, depending on who you talk to).

Now, part of my own boredom with current releases is undoubtedly due to the fact that I don't spend as much on music and I don't do as many record reviews, so I am less likely to hear the great new thing as I was when I worked in the record business, reviewed records, and took advantage of insider's prices to get lots of new stuff (and I do have a new Cajun release to review that looks promising). Also, there is the fact that many of my favorite recordings did not grip me immediately (I should do a post on that: why critics are worth reading and listening to. I can think of many records that I bought on the recommendation of a favorite jazz critic, and how I at first thought, "oh, this is just hype the critic has succumbed to," only to go back to the disc later and find that there really was something there), so perhaps some of the new jazz releases will sound better when I go back to them (I do hear most of the new jazz releases because of KCSM, our fantastic jazz station).

Since we are seeing a prolonged slump in the industry, and it isn't really all tied to the internet, my guess is that I am not alone in being completely unmoved by most musical offerings these days. Only the movie business can rival the stupidity of the general recording industry (remember when they decided that the best way to deal with falling ticket sales was...to raise the price?).