viewing notes: spike lee, bamboozled

Bamboozled was shot in Digital Video, which makes the image flat, shiny, cheap-looking. Devoid of texture, it loses gravitas without really gaining intimacy. I got past this, eventually, but it brought up the question of the importance of texture and its role in conveying meaning, in music and in general.

How much of an old photograph's meaning and emotional (and perhaps artistic) weight comes from yellowed paper, curled-up edges, creases, loss of colour, gradual disappearance of its subjects and the thousand other disfigurements it might suffer? Similarly, the pops, hisses and clicks of LPs and the warm, muddy sound of music played on a gramophone are part of the listening experience.

Photographs and vinyl add texture at the moment of reproduction, but music is a bit more complicated, as texture happens along with everything else, at the moment of production. Paul Desmond was sometimes accused of coasting on his tone: texture was seen as superficial (literally and metaphorically). Indeed, "How can you watch Bamboozled and only talk about what it looked like?" is a perfectly reasonable question. Still, what would be left of Ben Webster without that feeling of a cavernous rush of air?

There is an irresistible attraction to the dirty, the outdated, the broken, the ruined that's not just nostalgia: we must imagine their past potential, recreate their splendour for ourselves. We are an indispensable participant in what they are and what they were. They need us. The new, polished, perfect, finished don't need us, they need admirers: disengaged viewers who need not imagine anything, as it is all laid out in front of them. They can't even offer encouragement: everything has already been achieved. Perhaps this is merely a rationalisation of the mundane complaint against technical over-proficiency: "Admire my perfectly-formed blur of slick notes, which leave you neither time or toehold to add to them, to imagine, to recall." And you leave the concert feeling empty and vague: no memories have formed on the sterile ground of admiration.

This last point goes beyond texture alone, but most players regarded as unemotional generally have sleek tones. Steve Coleman succintly explains the issue in his blog post on timbral improvisation:

Early in the history of the spontaneously composed music in the United States (the Armstrong-Parker-Coltrane continuum, and probably in most music) there seemed to be more emphasis on expression, therefore things like timbre and phrasing were the most important elements. However, rhythm and pitch (when and how high/low) are the basic elements of any music system.

I have spent most of my career concentrating more on the rhythm/pitch/form aspects of music versus timbral considerations.

I sometimes wonder if jazz's principal contribution isn't contained in a brass's slangy growl, from Bubber Miley to Taylor Ho Bynum, but Coleman suggests that it serves, more modestly, to "amplify" expression. So how does texture relate to harmony, melody, rhythm, form? Is it a pretty bow tied around note choice/harmony/etc.?

listening notes: booker ervin, the freedom book

It's unbelievable that Jaki Byard's 1999 murder, in his own home, remains unsolved.

Peter Watrous described him as "one of jazz's great surrealists, a comic who hasn't a moment's fear of disturbing the sanity of the performance." And, in his obituary, said "In his playing he spanned the history of jazz, and his improvisations, filled with quick stylistic changes, moved from boogie-woogie to free jazz. He was a stylistic virtuoso, his fecund imagination saw comparisons and contrasts everywhere, and his improvisations were encyclopedic and profound. He also had a sense of humor that rippled through everything he played."

That is the standard view of Byard, casually flipping through an encyclopedia, pointing out the funny bits. I actually kind of dislike this aspect of his playing. Not because it is un-serious, but because it obscures the awesomeness of what I see as his "straight" playing. I wouldn't say that that is when he sounds most like himself, but when I am least reminded of anything else.

On The Freedom Book's opening track, "A Lunar Tune," after Ervin's Texas tenor has ridden the rhythm section's intense swing (Alan Dawson, another underrated player, changes up his accompaniment so fast and so fluently it's impossible to keep track), Byard effortlessly straddles an inside-outside line that had only recently been created. There are no overt references to stride or anything else. Instead, Byard starts with a jovially ringing melody, then turns up the heat by alternating slightly blurry fast lines and crisp left-hand punctuation: a free sensibility is injected into a strict respect for the song's form.

Has any piano trio recorded jazz more modern than what Byard, Richard Davis and Alan Dawson produced on December 3, 1963? (A thought, both depressing and thrilling, often formed when listening to the masters, from any era)

listening notes: ella fitzgerald and louis armstrong, ella and louis

Like a rusty dagger dragged across new silk, each makes the other seem more miraculous: how does the former not fall apart? how can the latter even exist in the first place? Usual gender roles are inverted: the trumpeter's frailty makes his every move appear daring, while the singer provides infallible strength. Or maybe those are the usual roles.

listening notes: nels cline, new monastery

Nels Cline
"McNeil Island / Pumpkin" (mp3)
from "New Monastery - A View Into the Music of Andrew Hill"
(Cryptogramophone)
Buy at Napster
Stream from Rhapsody

"Reconciliation / New Monastery" (mp3)
from "New Monastery - A View Into the Music of Andrew Hill"
(Cryptogramophone)
More On This Album

The strangest thing about this very, very good album is Bobby Bradford's cornet. In fact, it is probably among the strangest cornet/trumpet tones I've ever heard. It is acidic, flattened, bitter to the taste, alienating and seemingly barely keeping a grip on the proceedings but somehow supremely arrogant, too, for example in the way he stands outside the ensemble on "Pumpkin"'s ensemble theme statement. It would be a stretch to say that I loved it, but I am really intrigued, almost fascinated.

One—You have to have a healthy irreverence for what everybody else is doing; two— you have to be willing to take risks; and three—you have to be really confident that what you’re doing is for you.
- Bobby Bradford, in Michelle Mercer, "Jazz West"

His exposed lead on the slow and soulful "Dedication" shows just how little he cares about being friendly to you. There's something irreparably cracked about Bradford's playing. This is probably due, at least partially, to the effects of aging: on 1969's Seeking with John Carter, his tone is much purer, his phrasing adheres more closely to the beat and the front-line's unisons have a surgical precision, at the highest of speeds. It is interesting to note the contrast with the age-tempered warmth Charles Tolliver brought to Andrew Hill's Time Lines.

Even compared to his younger bandmates, Bradford seems sour. However brash clarinetist Ben Goldberg and Cline himself get (and they are just as often overtly sweet), they're always ready to make nice and play pretty, as in their duo version of "McNeil Island." Andrea Parkins, here and in Ellery Eskelin's trio, seems to me closest to Bradford's aesthetic.

What does our local Bradford expert think?

listening notes: miles davis, on the corner

I know, I know, I'm letting my thought processes be driven by evil empires and their release schedules, again. Still, it'd been a while since I'd listened to On The Corner, so the imminent coming of yet another Miles Davis box-set (already getting mid-listen raves) will have to do as a reminder to put that record on. Also, the great Cellar Door box generated some good discussion, maybe that can happen again.

I love that three of the four tracks are basically variations/remixes of each other, with the blaxploitation 16th-note hi-hat pattern as the common thread. There's enough variety to realise that it's not exactly the same thing the whole way through, but not a whole lot more variety than that. Who needs it? At the same time, there's so much going on, so you have funk, trance and madness all at once.

I love that a single hi-hat splash can drown out the soloist. It's all about the drums and the collective tumult, ebb and flow. Some might take the fact that you barely notice that Miles actually plays on the record as a bad thing. I don't, though some of the best moments come when things quieten down and he is given space.

I love that the first track is called "On The Corner/New York Girl/Thinkin' Of One Thing And Doin' Another/Vote For Miles" even though the sections the title would seem to indicate don't exist.

I would love to say that this album has proven its critics wrong, but I still have not read Stanley Crouch's "On The Corner: The Sell-Out of Miles Davis."

I love "Black Satin." Whistling? An off-kilter beat! An actual melody? Handclaps! Unbridled absurdity?

Sleigh bells!

I love that this music is irreproducible. A few seconds of looped sitar 20 minutes into "Helen Butte/Mr. Freedom X" creates and dispense with the template for a huge amount of future music.

Martha Bayles's "Miles Davis: An Innovator With Dueling Ambitions" brings a good deal of nuance to her appreciation of Davis's career, as she frames his work within a "lifelong struggle to achieve three goals: high musical art, commercial success and a deep connection with his fellow African-Americans." There is one mis-step, however: for her, Tutu lacks "excitement... because one of the players, the producer assembling the recording, is not a player." Of course, that album was produced by Marcus Miller. The same site has a couple more articles of interest, on Miles as pimp, and an overview by Ben Ratliff.

listening notes: bobby jaspar, modern jazz au club st-germain

I'll grant that the sentiment is telegraphed by the album's title, the Jazz in Paris series it is a part of and the cover, but this music is essentially Parisian. It's about flâner, the unhurried and destination-free strolling that may involve checking out an open-air book stand by the Seine, sitting in a café's terrasse or lying down on the banks of the canal St. Martin. Of course, Jaspar (and bassist Benoît Quersin) is Belgian, transplanted into Paris from Liège, but he has absorbed the city and it has absorbed him: according to the liner notes, his All Stars was recognised, in 1955, as "the greatest current modern small jazz ensemble in France."

On the opening "Bag's Groove" Jaspar makes understated nods towards the blues by letting his intonation waver, attack slacken and phrasing float, but otherwise he is a crooner for whom everything must sound effortless. This is best demonstrated on his own "Memory of Dick."



Another sublime moment of balladry comes later with "I Can't Get Started," but, interestingly, its interpretation somehow sounds more American, to me. "Minor Drops" is perhaps the only instance of the big city bustle encroaching on the Sunday afternoon pleasantries, as Jaspar, Sacha Distel's guitar and René Urtreger's piano jockey uncomfortably for position before returning to the head.

This cool approach wilts under the glare of, say, Miles Davis's definitive recording of "Bag's Groove" or of more assuredly rhythmical versions of "Night In Tunisia," but douceur de vivre is no bad thing: even Louis Armstrong sang "C'est si bon" (Armstrong's rolled growl "yeah" is one of the greatest sounds in music).

listening notes: bill evans/jim hall, undercurrent

The most intriguing thing about this album, for me, is the relationship between the packaging and the music. For many, this is a minor concern, maybe even a superficial one: the music towers above whatever thing (or, in the mp3 age, non-thing) it happens to be wrapped in. Still, ill-advised fonts, corny photographs and dreary layouts are painful, while amazing visual art can only enhance (and, in some cases, redeem) the music. And so-bad-it's-great cover art is an inexhaustible source of fun.

Joanna Newsom's Ys probably goes overboard, but the cover painting, embossed outer sleeve and gold-trimmed booklet create a rich context for the music to unfold in. It's not just about the size of the budget, either: Erstwhile's covers are regularly fantastic, especially Keith Rowe's paintings.

If this context provided by packaging was unimportant, musicians wouldn't title their compositions, give their group names, decide to wear expensive suits rather than combat pants, etc. And there wouldn't be this trend, that I'm really tired of, of record companies imposing a really strict look in order to create a "label identity." A part of the music's individuality is erased in favour of factory-line streamlining. Hat Hut, ECM, Ayler and De Werf are examples from different levels in the food chain.

Undercurrent's beautiful cover is tragic, dramatic, oneiric and mysterious. Barry J. Titus's original liner notes read like extremely bad William Burroughs ("Blue, yellow tinged, Mars capillaried, eye, blue crystal, white slash, 'I know what I want! Why is it such a struggle for you? I feel revolutions.'" And so on.). What do either the cover or the liners have to do with the music?

The duets are neither orgiastic gibberish nor haunted ruminations. Even Jim Hall's "Romain," which starts and ends somberly, lightens as guitar and piano give in to the sensual pleasure of intricate dialogue. There's an implicit lightness running through the album (made explicit in John Lewis's "Skating In Central Park") that's at odds with the cover's dramatic weight and a swinging drive on an unusually fast "My Funny Valentine" that's the opposite of Titus's pretension. I suppose music can (and sometimes, must) stand apart from the visual art that is inflicted upon it, but a successful union of the two leads to a more satisfying experience.

An aside: every time I see a picture of Jim Hall, I can only wonder: has he ever looked young?

listening notes: horace tapscott, the dark tree volume 1

I was ecstatic, yesterday, to find the first volume of Horace Tapscott's The Dark Tree. It only takes a few minutes of the title track for it to live up to the hype: John Carter lingers dispassionately high above the dark, dark ostinato Cecil McBee and Andrew Cyrille are hammering down, before diving in fully. Tapscott layers on thick, roiling piano textures that manage to change just enough for the whole not to be too static. The ostinato lightens for Tapscott's own solo, which allows him the space for ominous texturising and frantic, stumbling-over-itself line-spinning. It's just a fabulously intense performace throughout.

"Sketches of Drunken Mary" starts as a more traditional swinging waltz, but with an appropriately tipsy feel. "Lino's Pad" opens with a military snare drum pattern that's great because you can hear the drum's metallic overtones (that's a sound I've always loved). The pattern and a bass vamp anchor a more relaxed, bluesier version of "The Dark Tree" ostinato, in seven and with a swinging bridge in four. The alternation threatens to get a little tedious over sixteen minutes, but doesn't, not quite. Tapscott gets to mix percussiveness and rough-hewn lines to great effect.

Carter pulls off the trick of always seeming just a little distanced, but audibly tearing it up at the same time. He creates high drama in "Lino's Pad," suspending the action by ending phrases with strangled whispers in the kettle whistle range, before grandly swooping into something else. It's only on "One For Lately" that his sound seems to emerge from the heart of the ensemble, rather than descend upon it from above.

The final track recaptures the brilliance of the opener, but takes an opposite route: complex, abruptly zigzagging interaction that lives off an unstable energy stuffed into a compact ten minutes. It never settles into anything near a groove, but is tense and fascinating all the same.