portugal diary #2: trem azul / clean feed

Certainly the musical highlight of my trip (along with a live 1973 video of a slim Stevie Wonder singing a slightly sped-up, very intense and muscular "Higher Ground"). The day before we left for Lisbon, I remembered the store's existence, scrambled onto its website and quickly jotted the address into my phone. As it turned out, the store was just down the street from M's appartment. I'd first heard about it through Dennis Gonzalez: his albums on Clean Feed and his accounts of playing in the Trem Azul store.

Despite being situated below street level, the store is bright, airy, capacious and still feels new (it opened less than 18 months ago). Thus, it's surprisingly comfortable and high-tech for a specialist store that's made for jazz lovers, by jazz lovers (and musicians). Besides the prominent display devoted to the latest Clean Feed releases, there's a vast range of albums, both new and used, vinyl and CD, that, collectively, feel like they've been handpicked by a connaisseur. Which they probably have. Clean Feed's catalogue provides a good idea of the items displayed with the most pride: Cecil Taylor and BYG vinyl, Hamid Drake's debut album as leader, Cooper-Moore's wood-encased box set, to name a few I remember. You can listen to any CD comfortably seated in one of two sofas at the back of the store, or maybe the clerk will play it on the store stereo for you. A concert was held there while we were in Lisbon, but unfortunately I couldn't make it.

Combine an impeccable selection, stylistic oecumenism (from ye olde Blue Notes to the first Erstwhiles I've ever seen in the flesh; I'm forced to admit that those Keith Rowe covers look great), a friendly and helpful staff (who introduced me to the Swedish Moserobie label) and reasonable prices (maximum 16 euros for a single disc, I think) and you've got an addictive, winning formula. It's the kind of place where not only do you feel that you can buy music almost blindfolded, there's also a sense of supporting this fantastic venture. It's a mandatory stop for anyone visiting Lisbon.

While there, I got:

Lisbon Improvisation Players - Live_Lx Meskla (Clean Feed)
Zé Eduardo Unit - A Jazzar no Zeca – A Música de José Afonso (Clean Feed)
Gerry Hemingway Quartet - The Whimbler (Clean Feed)

Excellent representatives of the swinging free jazz (or post-free jazz) aesthetic which has become one of jazz's default settings. It's usefully described here by Ellery Eskelin:

"Eskelin brings some of free jazz's audacity to bop and some of bop's harmonic complexity to free jazz ... 'I grew up with that harmonic thing,' says Eskelin ... 'It's easy for me to go back into that. I don't have to make an artificial choice about sounding as different as possible. I like to think my sound has many things in it. Phrasing, juxtaposing textures--that's more indicative of free music in general--there's nothing really new about that. But for me, there's a certain blend. I like ingredients from both, where harmonic awareness and ideas about phrasing come together.'"

And from the used bin:

Michael Moore Quintet - Home Game (Ramboy)
KD's Basement Party - Sketches of Belgium (De Werf)

The latter is the very first De Werf release back in 1993. I got it because I'm reviewing the recently released 10th anniversary reunion concert and wanted to be able to compare the two.

portugal diary #1: Lisboa

18/03/2006 - 26/03/2006

In a nutshell, Lisbon is a great city. We stayed with high school friend M and his girlfriend J (both expert guides, immesurably enhancing our visit) in an appartment with a view on a bridge that looks like San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and the Christo Rei, a replica of Rio de Janeiro's massive Jesus Christ statue. An uncharacteristically derivative view for a city of such character.

Lisbon's "old" centre is fairly big and, most importantly, integrated (unlike fragmented Brussels). Apart from the flat, rectangular grid of the Baixa quarter, Lisbon is a hilly and endless daedalum of narrow, winding, photogenic, cobblestone streets lined with pastel-coloured or azulejo-tiled houses in various states of disrepair with old women leaning out of first floor windows, surveilling their corner of the world.

A longtime inhabitant complained to us that the city was totally impractical: the "Portuguese stone" sidewalks (small white cobblestone, sometimes with elaborate patterns of black stone) are very slippery when wet, prey on high heels and tiring to walk, most houses are draughty and somewhat humid, etc. True, but all these impracticalities are what make you love the city in the first place. Anywhere best described as "really practical" is likely to slip from memory once exited. Here, some streets are so steep that they have a tram line dedicated to them alone, called elevators. There are modern trams in the flatter sections with wider streets, but otherwise, they are old fashioned, wooden vehicles with very narrow wheel bases that shake and creak and look like a can of Coke or Carlsberg (depending on the tram's sponsor) on its side.

Another notable Portuguese institution is the pastelaria, or bakery. They serve both salty and sweet pastry, such as pasteis de nata (cream-filled tartelettes, the pastelaria de Belém is reputed to have the best, retitled pasteis de Belém for the occasion. IVN and M were convinced, I, less so) that you sprinkle with cinnamon, bolos de arroz, which are sort of like big madeleines, meat pasties, orange-flavoured tartelettes and all kinds of cakes. At any pasteleria worth its salt you can sit down to eat, but you can also stand at the counter, which is rather impractical (that word again) for anyone behind you trying to order. You can also smoke in there, the mix of cigarette smoke and fresh bread was a new and unsettling smell to me.

One could go on about the views, the parks, the multitude of cool bars in the Bairro Alto, the community feel of the Alfama neighbourhood, the transversal stairs, the Soviet-era-sized line to get into a Womens' Secret store that was offering a one-day 40% off special, the crazy amalgamation of functions and architectural styles found in the Alentejo Regional Cultural Centre, "The Temptations of Saint Anthony" (totally mind-blowing, in itself worth a trip out to the Museu Nacional de Arte Antigua) and so on and so forth. But I'll leave it to you to discover it for yourself, or follow along as I post photos in upcoming posts.