writing/music

I've been revisiting Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces lately, & thinking about one of my fantasy jobs – music journalism. Fantasy, that is, because aside from all the logistical business of swapping one career for another, it's pretty damned difficult to intellectually retool oneself at my advanced age. Once upon a time – back when I was in high school & an undergraduate, I'd have dropped everything for a gig reviewing records and concerts. Now, I'm not so sure that even if such an opportunity offered itself I'd take it.

For one thing, I don't think I have the kind of concentrated listening attention span I used to. I probably listen to more or less as much music as I did back in the day, but I'm not sure I listen to it as closely as I once did, or respond to it as deeply. I'm still capable of hearing a song or composition that I want to listen to over & over, & proceeding to play it repeatedly. But I have much less patience with the pieces that don't somehow catch my attention in the 1st or 2nd hearing. Maybe that means my tastes are more refined – that I'm able more immediately to separate the wheat from the chaff. Maybe it means that my musical palate is somewhat more blunted than it once was, so that it takes more & more stimulation to rouse it (make the vindaloo hotter & hotter, please).

But heaven knows music writing out there could use some help, if the books I've been dipping in are any indication. Lipstick Traces remains spirited & exciting, but I really have very little patience for what happens when Marcus starts writing about particular songs or particular musical moments: instead of describing or analyzing in any systematic manner what's going on in a given song, he spirals off in fugues of free association, essentially telling us what chains of thought the song is giving rise to in his head.

Jon Savage's England's Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond, which I've also picked up, is the kind of day-by-day history only an obsessive-compulsive fan & archivist could write – and only an obsessive-compulsive fan & archivist could really enjoy. It's nice that what every member of the first lineup of the Pistols were up to any given week has been recorded, but it's not exactly enjoyable reading for the non-completist. (Hey, maybe that's it! – I'm just not a completist anymore.)

Simon Reynolds's Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 is the closest to what I'd see myself as writing: a roughly chronologically organized history of the second generation of punk music, with some decent descriptions & analysis of the music itself, profiles of crucial players (many of them far from famous), and a solid sense of how aesthetic form was influenced by social and political forces. Thus far, alas, it's a bit on the bland side, and (like Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise) rather too broad in its scope to pay enough attention to any given moment. I guess that's the drawback of writing broad-stroke history – even if 400 pages for 5 years isn't exactly a thumbnail sketch. Most irritating moment: looking for bibliography/discography/reference notes at the end of the book (they weren't there), only to be told that I could find them by shlepping over to Reynolds's website (www.simonreynolds.net). I expected better from you, Penguin Books.
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update: www.simonreynolds.net is now one of those "you could own this site" sites; the notes are here, however, on one of Reynolds's rather interesting blogs.

the Bill Laswell diet

Above, the bassist-producer-all round badass Bill Laswell, photographed probably five-six years ago. (Think Bob Archambeau with an electric bass, a cool hat, & long hair.) Now I, as someone professionally & personally interested in the fashion choices of men of a certain size with clear balding-related issues, have found Bill Laswell a fashion icon for some time now. Imagine my surprise, however, when I happened upon this rather more recent photo:

My goodness. Was it Weight Watchers, the Atkins Diet, or some personal regimen of lettuce and laxatives?

Turns out to be nothing quite so volitional. Think a bout of spinal meningitis. Oof. Don't try this at home, kids; me, I think I'd settle for my own rather zaftig corporal presentation for the nonce.

deep into the mystic

Last week, in the midst of final exams, I went to see Van Morrison perform at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, part of one of those strange drinking/shopping/gambling enclaves one encounters here & there in South Florida. Odd place – sorta Disneyland for grownups, a few blocks of ersatz urbanism in the middle of the endless suburb.

I followed Morrison's music intensely for a few years; too young to be aware of his grand achievements of the mid-70s, I started backtracking thru the catalog & buying the new releases as they came out with 1980's Common One. I stuck with it, thru increasing forays into synthesized new agey gunk and hazy mysticism, thru 1986's No Guru, No Method, No Teacher. The next record, Poetic Champions Compose, with its über-pretentious title & the shocking combover hairdo of the cover photo, was too much for me. So it's been over a decade since I've truly kept up with Van's records, tho various works of his have been absolute touchstones for me: of course the classic Astral Weeks and Moondance, but also Veedon Fleece and the sublime Into the Music, which has the happy quality of lifting my spirits no matter how depressed I might be.

Morrison's music has always struck me as densely paradoxical: he has one of the great R&B voices of all time, a truly wonderful set of pipes that has only grown deeper & more flexible over the years; he has an immaculate sense of musical timing, and a wonderful way of continually recasting the same 3- or 4-chord progressions into entirely new & surprising song structures. His "spirituality," however, strikes me as at best dodgy, sometimes downright embarassing. When he growls (in "Summertime in England"), in best bluesy voice, "Didja ever hear about, didja ever hear about, didja ever hear about Wordsworth and Coleridge, baby?... They were rockin' by the lakeside," I just want to know who threw this guy a copy of the Norton Anthology of English Literature (& why couldn't they have thrown him The New American Poets?).

Morrison in concert is always a chancy affair. One never knows whether one's going to get a truly sublime experience of a master musician submerging himself in his music, or a guy who's punching the clock. His show in Hollywood, thank heavens, was more the former than the latter. Okay, he started right at 8.03, no opening act; he didn't banter with the crowd, or seem to interact with them at all; and after his hour & 40 minute set, he was gone – no encore. All of these things seemed to piss off the audience – tho if they'd done a bit of research, they'd have known that this has been more or less Morrison's performing MO for the past 3 decades.

Florida audiences are irritating; if the show is scheduled for 8.00, don't show up at 8.25 & then complain you've missed 20 minutes of music (including "Brown Eyed Girl," probably the only song you'd securely recognize) – especially if you've dropped a couple hundred bucks on a pair of the really good seats. When the music gets really quiet, & the interplay between the bassist and the reeds player is particularly complex and fascinating, please don't take that opportunity to start a conversation, or to loudly hoot for the band to "start up" again. And for heaven's sake, don't expect Van Morrison, who's released something like 30 albums since Moondance, to honor you with an "oldies" set.

His set was for me at least fairly surprising, starting with an amazing version of "Northern Muse (Solid Ground)," disinterring such little-heard songs as "Fair Play" (Veedon Fleece), "Foreign Window" (No Guru), and "Help Me." Most moving for me were astonishing versions of "The Mystery" (a song which I hadn't heard before – his live version blows the pants off of the recorded cut) and "In the Garden." There was a strange, extended, even painful version of "Slim Slow Slider," which seemed to veer into "TB Sheets" territory in its divagations. And a beautiful, uplifting "When the Healing Has Begun." At 64, Morrison is a better singer than ever (tho his enunciation isn't what it once was – he doesn't do consonants much anymore); so what if the white suit & fedora made him look like a cross between the Stay Pufft Marshmallow Man and the Godfather?

The lack of interaction with the audience was interesting. Some musicians feed off of audience response, draw their energy from the enthusiasm with which they are received. Morrison seemed to draw his from within – from whatever muse – and from his interaction with his astonishingly tight and precise band. I felt as tho I were witnessing a musician in an almost autistic trance, spiraling deeper and deeper into the layers of his own songs. And while I would have loved to hear "Into the Mystic" or "Bright Side of the Road," that was plenty for me.

The Pogues in south Florida

You needn't have known me long to find out that I'm something of a rabid Pogues fan, have been for the past 20-odd years or so. Strangely enough, I've never seen the band in concert, tho I did catch singer Shane MacGowan on his tour for The Snake back in 1997 or so – a disspiriting show, in which John Doe of X opened to a frankly uninterested crowd & Shane himself delivered a 45-minute, slurred & disoriented set.

The Pogues, who've been performing "reunion" tours with their classic 8-member lineup over the past 9 years or so, were scheduled to play at this weekend's Langerado Festival in Miami; I wanted to go, but didn't want to pony up the massive ticket price, so it was almost a relief when the entire festival was cancelled. Not good for the Florida music scene, certainly, but it relieved me of a big financial dilemma ($150 for one band). Shane & the boys, however, seem to have already booked their tickets & shipped their gear, for about two weeks ago I discovered they had rescheduled to the Pompano Beach Amphitheatre (dig ye olde Englishe spelling, typical around here), where we saw them last night in all their aged glory. (Promotion could have been a bit better – the turnout was frankly pretty embarassing, giving rise to Spinal Tap in Marineland jokes in the half hour before the band took the stage.)

Shane is as drunken & disoriented as ever: he began the set by with a bit of slurred raving about how glad he was to be in "Miami, My Mammy!," & quoting (I take it) some lines from Scarface. He moves like an old man needing hip replacement surgery, paunchy, his cheeks sunken from his lack of teeth. One could understand only every 3rd of 4th word of his between-songs banter. But his singing, while worlds away from the magnificent bellow of the band's heyday, was remarkably assured. And the band itself is better than ever. Okay, there's a suspicious number of shaved pates among the band members; and sure, they've more or less become an "oldies" attraction, since they haven't written any new songs since 1996: but they have a wonderfully rich repertoire to draw on, & played a scorching set of selections from their five classic MacGowan-fronted albums. As players, they're sharper & more precise than ever.

I was particularly taken with Terry Woods, the cittern/mandolin player (picture above, in the band's heyday). Woods was brought into the band in 1986, for the EP Poguetry in Motion; he was about 10 years older than the other members of the band, having played in a number of 1970s folk-rock outfits (he was with Andy Irvine & Johnny Moynihan in the influential Sweeney's Men, and a founding member of Steeleye Span). Woods brought a level of instrumental competence to the group, especially in playing the tunes & ornamentations of traditional celtic dance music, far beyond that of most of the rest of them: where the Pogues had been an accordian-driven group, now they were an accordian & cittern-driven outfit.

The cittern fascinated me when I saw it cradled in Woods's arms on the photo from If I Should Fall From Grace With God, and when I heard him play it. (Woods's "cittern" is an 8-stringed, 4-course instrument, tuned an octave down from a mandolin – it's essentially identical to what in current circles is called an octave mandolin or Irish bouzouki.) I had to have one, & had to learn to play it. Which I sort of did, & still do – I now have at least 3 citternish instruments around the house, and can bash out most of the Pogues's repertoire in my own fumbling fashion.

At 62, Woods remains the linch-pin of the group: if anything, his playing is even more fiery & exciting than it was back in 1989. He's an inspiration to all balding, aging bouzouki players everywhere. And the Pogues, I'd say to anyone who's in the neighborhood for their upcoming Atlanta, DC, Boston, & New York shows, are better in person than they've ever been.

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For true analites, the set list, in blurrily remembered order:

Streams of Whiskey

If I Should Fall from Grace With God

Turkish Song of the Damned

A Pair of Brown Eyes

Repeal of the Licensing Laws (an instrumental, Shane's first break)

The Broad Majestic Shannon

Sayonara

Cotton Fields

Bottle of Smoke

Tuesday Morning (sung by Spider Stacy, Shane's second break)

Sunnyside of the Street

The Body of an American

Lullaby of London

The Sickbed of Chuchulain

Thousands Are Sailing (sung by Phil Chevron, Shane's third break)

Sally Maclennane

A Rainy Night in Soho

Dirty Old Town

Greenland Whale Fisheries

Poor Paddy

The Irish Rover

Fiesta

John Zorn: Bladerunner Project

I wanna know what brand of coffee Jonathan Mayhew's drinking – I need that kind of energy. Not merely does he write books that get published by great university presses, but he's who knows how far into blogging 100 books of fiction, he's gotten thru 170-odd books of poetry in his "9000 books of poetry" project, and now he's started a project of blogging 300 of his favorite jazz albums of all time. I'm guessing he'll be thru this one by April or so.

Me, I continue crawling along at my own petty pace, trying to listen thru the "unplayed" smart playlist on my iPod. But here's something worth a listen: the Bladerunner Project, a John Zorn outfit from back in 2000, including the godlike talents of Zorn, bassist Bill Laswell, guitarist Fred Frith, and heavy metal drummer Dave Lombardo (Slayer, Fantômas, etc.). Pretty standard Zorn stuff – mostly funky, largely improvised, lots of sheer noise – but with some way cool wailing from Frith (an unfortunately rare thing) and lots of flashy funkification from Laswell. So far as I know, the lineup's never made a formal recording, but there are lots of videos on YouTube, and you can download a high-quality recording of their 5 July 2000 Paris concert here, which includes a scrappy version of "A Love Supreme" and a very cool cover of "Prelude (Part 2)" from Miles's Agharta (yes, I confess, my favorite Miles album).

George Benjamin: Into the Little Hill

Last week I was perfectly reconciled to my role as bathgiver & putter-of-children-to-bed while J. worked her way thru a formidable program of theater & performance in Manhattan (after all, it’s her business to keep up with this stuff). But a happy in-lawal intervention made it possible for both of us to take in a Lincoln Center Festival performance of a new “opera,” Into the Little Hill, with music by British composer George Benjamin and libretto by British playwright Martin Crimp.

[First, unfortunately, we had opted to take the girls to one of those al fresco Shakespeare productions that spring up all around New York in the summer months, this one a Romeo & Juliet put on by a group of local amateurs – god bless ‘em – in a neighborhood park. It was a good thing it was an abbreviated production, only an hour, for if it had run the full 3 they might have found my cold and self-dispatched body right there beside those of the rather histrionic Juliet and the admittedly quite dishy Romeo. Thank god for amateur theater – and thank god for fine little Afghan restaurants & Dutch beers (yes, Heineken – shut up, Brian) to ease the aftershock.]

Into the Little Hill is an adaptation of the Pied Piper of Hamelin story, sung by a soprano (the very short Finn Anu Komsi) & a contralto (the very tall Hilary Summers, whose voice seemed oddly familiar; only later did I realize that I knew her from a half-dozen Michael Nyman recordings). The set was rigidly abstract, & the small orchestra – the excellent Ensemble Modern, under the baton-free direction of Franck Ollu – was disposed about the stage itself, so that the 2 singers came forward on brilliantly lighted catwalks between the strings, brass, & woodwinds.

Now, I’ll freely admit that I don’t know much about music – but I know what I like. I’ve probably seen a dozen operas in performance, & I know that I don’t care much for 19th century lyric opera. Alas, I found Tosca and La Boheme unutterably silly. The Magic Flute (with Maurice Sendak sets & costumes) was grand, but The Barber of Seville did nothing for me. My benchmark for opera experience still remains the production of Wozzeck J. & I saw in Florence (dir. Zubin Mehta), which seems a lifetime ago.

So I’m not the ideal opera-goer: but I was absolutely rivetted by Benjamin’s Into the Little Hill. The music bears traces of minimalism (more the British Bryars/Nyman variety than the American Adams/Glass Reich), but is far more jagged & expressionistic. In his own revolt against what he calls the “gray” tonalities of serialism, Benjamin has fastened on the unworldly harmonies of his teacher the French composer Olivier Messiaen – evident as much in Komsi’s singing, which often often approached the condition of birdsong or rat-squeak, as in the rich use of harmonies in the strings.

The timbres of the music, as much as the harmonies, were striking. In some of the louder passages, the blatting brass was joined by banjo, mandolin, and clacked sticks; for 2 very memorable stretches, pizzicatto strings accompanied a mesmerizing bass flute – an instrument I had never (knowingly) heard before, but which I’m now a big fan of.

Perhaps best of all was being in an auditorium with a mixed bag of people – college students, seniors, lots of artsy types in the inevitable black artsy-type uniform (yes, I wear it too) – who were there to hear the music, rather than to get the best deal off of their season tickets to some South Florida version of “high culture.” Imagine that! – a full hour of rather challenging, sometimes quite abrasive music, unrelieved by histrionic arias or breathtaking scenery, nobody shifting uneasily in their seats, nobody grunting with boredom of dissatisfaction, nobody loudly whispering “wake up, Harold!” (In South Florida, it’s difficult at the end of a performance to distinguish between a “standing ovation” & a “leaving ovation” – the latter being when the audience rises to clap so they can get out to their cars in the parking garage more quickly.)

So that’s the music tip for the day: Benjamin’s Into the Little Hill. I think it’s fab, & you ought to go see it – that is, if you live in a major metropolitan area. Me, I’m back in Palm Beach County for the foreseeable future.