Price paid: £8, Sounds of the Universe (Soho).

There’s a special place in heaven for early ‘60s piano jazz albums with photos of demurely dressed young ladies relaxing in the countryside on the cover, and The Ramsey Lewis Trio’s ‘Barefoot Sunday Blues’, I would dare to suggest, represents the very apotheosis of this curious cultural phenomenon.

As befits recording artistes signed to Argo, jazz imprint of Chicago’s Chess Records, Lewis and his boys (comprising bassist Eldee Young and drummer Red Holt, for the most part) veer heavily toward unpretentious, blue-based arrangements, eschewing both ‘cool’ Brubeck-esque West Coast shit and the more cerebral lyricism of Bill Evans in favour of a warmer, looser and less technically uptight approach, foregrounding rhythm at all times and primarily concentrating upon the business of just playin’ the fuckin’ tunes, even verging into r’n’b/pop territory in places.

Featuring what Le Roi Jones’ obligatory sanctimonious sleeve notes describe as “an anonymous soul sister whispering her sensuous refrain” - ie, vocalising the title, ‘Comanche’-style, on each 12 bar change-over - the closing ‘Come On Baby’ in particular would have been a shoe-in for the soundtrack to some beatnik exploitation flick.

Lewis’s trio had of course been kicking this easy-going stuff out day-in, day-out for the better part of a decade at this point, so it’s hardly surprising that the players are consummate to a T, keeping things a just-a-few-small-few notches livelier and more inventive than one might reasonably expect of an early-‘60s-piano-jazz-album-with-photo-of-a-demurely-dressed-young-lady-relaxing-in-the-countryside-on-the-cover.

Even in this less-than-revolutionary context, musicians this deeply entrenched in their craft are almost incapable of not giving us something to think about now and again, and guest bassist Christopher White in particular makes his presence felt here with a few spectacular scuttles up and down the higher end of his instrument’s neck on the opening ‘Lonely Avenue’, practically establishing himself as the track’s lead player - a trick he repeats on side # 2’s ‘Act Like You Mean It’ (an Eldee Young composition, no less).

In fact, the latter track represents an interesting stylistic diversion, with Lewis’s keys remaining deep in the background behind White’s dextrous bass excursions (almost reminiscent of Pentangle’s Danny Thompson in places), the leader’s contribution concentrating more upon some spirited vocal “ba ba de bums”, seemingly calling out the melody to the bassist midway through the take, which should surely have earned him a ‘vocal’ credit.

Sounds like everybody’s having a ton of fun on that one anyway, but primary bassman Young meanwhile distinguishes himself by adding some wheezing, rather drone-y cello to the otherwise fairly routine run through Charles Lloyd’s ‘Island Blues’ which closes out side # 1.

Though not exactly what you’d call a grand-standing, virtuoso player on the evidence of these cuts, Lewis himself meanwhile does good work on tracks like Dave Grusin’s ‘Sarah Jane’ And his own ‘Don’t Even Kick It Around’, expanding the melodies in some pleasantly far-flung, arabesque directions, as well as adding some Mingus-esque “AH!”s and “HUH!”s to proceedings, just about discernable in the background of the livelier numbers.

Holt’s drumming meanwhile is, as noted, rock solid, lending the trio a swing that certainly wouldn’t disgrace Chess’s core output, his heavy, heartbeat pulse implying that he’d be equally content pounding it out for Muddy Waters or Fats Domino or whoever, even as his brushy snare n’ hi-hat stuff doffs cap to the more shimmery subtleties of Kennedy-era crossover jazz.

Recorded in a single day just over three months before JFK kicked the bucket (if the sleeve is to be believed), the only mystery proposed by this resolutely straight-forward collection of earthy, professionally rendered music is -- given that this was all apparently laid down as one uninterrupted session, why does White sub for Young on two tunes, including one that the latter actually wrote? Did Young arrive late, or have to leave early, or something? White is clearly no slouch and knows the material well though, so…. what’s the deal here?

A belated footnote in one of those moribund 1000+ page plus ‘guide to jazz’ compendiums down the local library may or may not satisfy my curiosity on this point, but…. instead let’s savour the mystery. Was Young in the depths of a heavy scag habit, passing out at regular intervals, with White hurriedly hustled in by taxi? Or, was the shark-like White being groomed as Young’s replacement, as the latter cursed his fat fingers, grimly contemplating the loss of touring income as he shuffled off to write advertising jingles? Who knows, who knows. Well, Ramsey Lewis (who is still with us, praise the lord) quite possibly knows, but I’m darned if I can be bothered to ask him.

Admittedly much more of a spring / summer record that one capable of standing up to the more rigorous demands of autumn / winter listening, ‘Barefoot Sunday Blues’ nonetheless opens a sweet window into an easier time, when humble, craft-based jazzers roamed the earth, just writing and playing their fuckin’ tunes - a touch too fruity to make it as elevator music, but way, way too conventional to put the name of Ramsey Lewis ‘pon the lips of any young hipster digging into the storied legacy of the post-bop/spiritual contingent decades down the line.

It’s just some nice, groovy music, played by good people, with a nice groovy picture on the front - reminding us of a time when recorded music was a sufficiently valuable commodity that that was enough. Now though, I’m going to put it back til next June and start listening to, I dunno, Kluster or something.

‘Barefoot Sunday Blues’ by the Ramey Lewis Trio gets an out of season THUMBS UP! 

Choicest selection from the inner sleeve: 

Labels: album reviews, jazz, old LPs, Ramsey Lewis Trio

#3
Charles Mingus –
Beneath the Underdog
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1971 / Canongate Books, 1995)

“ ‘Don’t bullschitt me. You’re a good man Charles, but there’s a lot of fabrication and fantasy in what you say. For instance, no man could have as much intercourse in one night as you claim to have had.’
‘The hell he couldn’t! Maybe I did exaggerate some things like the weight-lifting and all that ‘cause I didn’t really know how much those bar bells weighted but only two other guys could pick ‘em up and their feet sank into the ground!’
‘You’re changing the subject, my friend. I was asking about the Mexican girls. Why is it you’re obsessed with proving you’re a man? Is it because you cry?’”


Most people will know Charles Mingus for his work as a composer, bandleader and bassist, and as the creator of some of the most consistently inspired, challenging and popular music to emerge from mid 20th century American jazz.

Anyone who’s read ‘Beneath the Underdog’ though will of course be aware that Charles Mingus was actually a champion bodybuilder, sexual athlete, psychic warrior, kung-fu master, black power revolutionary, millionaire pimp, doomed romantic, notorious lunatic and spiritual visionary, who occasionally found a spare moment to bang out some tunes.

An all-time classic of the “fuck the truth baby, this is ME” school of autobiography, ‘..Underdog’ is probably by far the best-known book on this list, having been an underground hit and perennial ‘oh man, you gotta read this’ volume ever since its first publication. Anyone who ever met him will wax lyrical about what a fiery and idiosyncratic personality Mingus was, but I’m guessing that few fans quite realised what a thoroughly twisted, king freak genius he actually was until this book appeared.

Somehow managing to be both grotesquely self-aggrandising and coruscatingly humble at all times, ‘..Underdog’ takes something of an out-of-control steamroller approach to recounting numerous obstacles Mingus faced up to in his life, and the very American methods in which he chose to overcome them, through excess, violence, chest-beating psychodrama, financial intimidation and all-purpose destructive psychosis. Seems to have worked ok, all things considered.

Beginning (after the above-quoted introduction which recounts Ming arguing with his therapist) with the decidedly unnerving conception of his birth, Mingus initially introduces himself as a kind of free-roaming, incorporeal intelligence that one day finds itself watching over the progress of a poor, mixed race LA family. When their two year old son smashes his head open on what’s described as “a Goodwill store old-fashioned second hand-me-down white folks’ bedroom-set dresser” and is rushed to the emergency room, this nameless intelligence enters the body of the dying toddler, instigating a miraculous last minute ‘recovery’, and thereafter assuming the identity of ‘Charles Mingus’, directing the activities and observing the emotions of the human body assigned that name from a kind of detached, third person point of view.

Proceeding to outline the childhood of ‘Charles Mingus’, this nameless observational spirit subsequently launches what is actually a very straightforward and affecting account of a troubled kid growing up in Watts in the ‘20s and ‘30s. The central obsessions that came to dominate his adult life are already strongly in evidence, but by and large it’s solid memoir type business. It’s only when we get to the grown up portion of the book that things start to get weird. And, communicated with Mingus’s breathless, almost violent need to unload and exaggerate, they get pretty weird pretty quickly.

In short, there’s no way to easily encapsulate what follows. As bilious and impossible to unpack as its author’s most confrontational music, and it’s too heavy for me to dive back into just for the sake of this post, but needless to say, it’s a hell of a read, full of hilarious anecdotes and wild gonzo imaginings that seem to frame his life as an ever-escalating landslide of decadence and turmoil.

I think the highlight of the book for me probably comes when Mingus reportedly finds himself chilling at the piano in his penthouse apartment, trying to compose an ode of deep spiritual love, but constantly finding himself interrupted by the three beautiful ladies who are violently competing for his attention – shrieking and tearing each others clothes, sprawling across his keyboard, pulling at his arms and the like. Tiring of this distraction, he immediately sets out to buy some easels and other art supplies, declaring that the women should all paint his portrait, and that the one whom he deems to have produced the most worthwhile work of art and captured his inner being most convincingly, he will put aside the time to sleep with.

You wouldn’t think a guy who rolls like that would find so much in life to complain about, but the tempestuous mixture of materialism, vanity and spirituality revealed in such stories seems to lie at the heart of Mingus’s view of the world, and any chuckles that may arise are undercut by a thorough ringing out of the racial identity crises, endless paranoia and deep-rooted sense of inadequacy that plagued Mingus throughout his life – issues that form the central pillar around which this ridiculous, psychotic, wonderful excuse for a memoir revolves, his basic plea for a post-racial, post-classist society in which individuals may be judged solely upon their achievements sounding out more reasonable and obvious than ever, for all the braggadocio and neurosis he surrounds it with.

Labels: books, Charles Mingus, jazz

#5
Really The Blues
by Mezz Mezzrow & Bernard Wolfe
(Random House, 1946 / Signet, 1964)


“To all hipsters, hustlers and fly cats tipping along The Stroll.
(Keep scuffling.)
To all the cons in all the houses of many slammers, wrestling with chinches.
(Short Time, boys.)
To all the junkies and lushheads in two-bit scratchpads, and the hophouse grads in morgue iceboxes.
(R.I.P.)
To all the sweettalkers, the gumbeaters, the highjivers, out of the gallion of good and never going to take it low again.
(You got to make it, daddy.)
To Bessie Smith, Jimmy Noone, King Oliver, Louise Armstrong, Zutty Singleton, Johnny Dodds, Sidney Bechet and Tommy Ladnier.
(Grab a taste of the millennium, gate.)”

Talk about the birth of cool – Milton ‘Mezz’ Mezzrow was there and saw it happen - as music and life-styles began to drift across previously impassable race barriers, and the roots of everything we think of as ‘hip’ 20th century culture was first took shape in America. An incredibly important bit of cultural history and a ferocious, free-wheeling piece of writing that had no less a personage than Henry Miller singing its praises when it first appeared (he actually holds copyright on this revised ’64 edition), ‘Really The Blues’ is in some ways a bit too much of an ‘important’, ‘landmark’ type book for inclusion on this daft list, but the sheer eccentricity of Mezzrow’s rambling muse definitely puts it in the right ballpark, I feel.

Mezz first encountered the blues in a juvenile reform institute in about 1915, when he overheard black prisoners harmonising with each other between cells during the night. And after an enlightened music teacher allowed him to spend some after-class time covertly trading licks with some cats from New Orleans, there was no going back. Out on the streets of Chicago, he found himself packing crates of bootleg liqour for Al Capone, later getting one of his first paying music gigs at a club owned by Detroit’s notorious Purple Gang and (as his own account has it) having to flee to the sticks when Capone’s chief lady took a fancy to him. Subsequently, he played a pivotal role in the creation of one of the first ever artistically valid white jazz scenes, his version of the story describing how he painstakingly schooled his Chicago buddies (including such Trad luminaries as Gene Krupa, Eddie Condon and Frank Teschemacher) in the ways of Dixieland, bringing the joys of ‘hot’ jazz and reefer smoke to the uninitiated wherever he trod.

After a move to New York, the frustrations he encountered in trying to realise his dream of a mixed race band led him to concentrate more on his equally pioneering leisure time activities, becoming the first white dope-dealer in Harlem, with a garbled, proto-beatnik lexicon and wardrobe to match. What follows includes a close friendship with Louis Armstrong, descent into opium addiction (this being before heroin was even refined), a long prison stretch and rebirth as a kind of all-purpose crusader for the power of music (if, admittedly, a very specific TYPE of music) in healing the racial rifts in American society and creating a kind of flawlessly hip super-culture, or somesuch.

Considering ‘Really The Blues’ first appeared in 1946, Mezzrow’s digressive, conversational style and, uh, ‘frank’ approach to his subject matter is really something else, and the way-out lingo he casually throw in throughout – a beautiful kind of hipster patter coined long, long before such beat jive was established as an instant cliché, and otherwise lost to history – is a total joy.

“In those days,” he begins a paragraph, “if you plied the lid off my skull with a can-opener, you might have spotted some weird eels snaking through the whirlpool I lugged around under my hat”. At another point he talks about how his buddies PeeWee Russell and Bix Beiderbecke used to live in a filthy shack, letting piles of unopened milk bottles go rotten on the doorstep because they were too busy sitting around the piano composing. “Looks like no one thought to put a nix on the moo-juice”, he notes, and a whole universe of beatnik splendour is born.

Like most musicians who write great books, Mezzrow is cranky and egocentric as they come, and as the book goes on he unfortunately becomes prone to outbursts of musical conservatism that, though undoubtedly heartfelt, will seem absolutely mystifying to the modern reader. From dismissing his former friends again and again for the dread crime of incorporating ‘modernist’ elements into their music, to a lengthy passage in which he decries the introduction of the hi-hat as signalling the death of all legitimate drumming, his insistence that the New Orleans gospel be observed at all times is stubborn to the point of obsession. God only knows what he must’ve thought when Bird and Miles started to make the scene just as he was bowing out, but thankfully his views on the matter remain unrecorded here, and such grumpery is easy to put aside once you get into the swing of his prose, with his account of the epiphany he experienced leading his prison marching band across an open-field, literally walking over the graves of prisoners they’d helped bury, is simply one of the most moving accounts of the power of music ever set on paper.

When the New York Herald Tribune deemed this a “WALLOPING HUMAN DOCUMENT” is capital letters, they weren’t pissing around.

Labels: books, jazz, Mezz Mezzrow

2.
Sonny Sharrock - Many Mansions.

Amen, Irving (b. 1918)
In My Father's House There Are Many Mansions
color woodcut, 407 x 533 mm.

Heresy in some circles I realise, but in truth I never really ‘got’ all Sharrock’s high-end skronky stuff on ‘Black woman’ etc. Randomly found myself listening to this one a few weeks back though, and the hypnotic doom-style riff that he and the drummer (Elvin Jones, guys!) are laying down under the sax player (Pharoah Sanders no less!) through the first half just completely bad-ass… (the riff has a modal ‘Kind of Blue’ kinda quality to it too, like ‘60s Miles goes metal or something).

I particularly love it when Jones eventually goes off on some shit for a while, but the guitar just keeps hammering away those same few notes… then when Sharrock veers off into soloing too towards the end, the groove’s been so well established that it just sorta *continues*, even though no one’s really playing it anymore.

I’m not really much for writing about jazz, but yeah, this is great. From * 1991 * too if ya can believe that. Last album Sharrock recorded before his death, and a right fucking piece of work it is too – incredible stuff.

Labels: jazz, song reviews, Sonny Sharrock

The Ex & Brass Unbound / Zun Zun Egui / John Butcher
Tufnell Park Dome, 03/02/10

The Dome in Tufnell Park is an odd place to be when itís two thirds empty. Not actually a dome in any fashion I can appreciate, it is room with a distinctly old fashioned air to it - something like a municipal drill hall operating in tandem with the village scout hall of it’s downstairs neighbour the Boston Music Room, where Billy Childish is still packing ‘em in one Friday night in most months, and long may he continue to do so. Where the downstairs is a generally rather comforting place to lurk though, the larger open space of the ‘Dome’ can’t help but add a certain low level malignancy to the atmosphere. A big, draughty hall essentially - the kind of place you’d imagine as the setting for a scary punk gig circa 1980, where they brought in extra muscle on the door but skinheads threatened to beat everybody up anyway, enraged by subconscious memories of primary school gym lessons, as The Lurkers or somebody stood on stage wondering why they bothered. Or such is the desultory picture that the history books and Billy Bragg songs paint for halls such as this anyway. Obviously I have no idea, I wasn’t there. Maybe the Tuffnell Park Dome was a shining beacon of happiness and hope during the Thatcher years. But I doubt it.

Anyway, no such anachronistic shenanigans are on display tonight, making me give thanks that I’m lucky enough to live in an age in which I’m extremely unlikely to get punched whilst attempting to watch men play guitars. And in a round-about sort of way, maybe it is the inclusive and forward-thinking spirit of bands like The Ex that I have to thank to thank for that..? Kinda? A bit? I don’t know whether or not they played in the UK when they were getting started as an anarcho/squatter affiliated buncha punks back in the ‘80s, but I guess if they did they might have experienced grim scenes of infamy such as those imagined above. Now though, all is relaxed, all is cordial, and all the world is one beneath a plastic cup full of Guinness as one of those Sublime Frequencies Asian radio pop CDs plays over the PA - jolly, magical tunes from Thailand or Korea or someplace, probably knocked out as filler for a domestic market where there weren’t enough Beatles records to go around, and now rediscovered by us over-saturated nth generation indie kids for whom THOUSANDS of Beatles records are only a few clicks away, appreciated on a whole new level cos it sounds so weird and cool and different, and , like, cos it’s wonderful how forty years of tape hiss and radio distortion make it all sound like one big, distant drone from an ancient party in another room where people long dead are having loads of fun.

This implied sense of respectful, fourth-world open-mindedness continues to prevail as John Butcher walks onstage alone, and is greeted not only with a complete lack of mockery or dismissal, but even a general lack of *talking* from this relatively rockist crowd in a relatively cavernous rock venue, as he presents a somewhat academic set of “hey guys, listen to these funny sounds I’ve learned how to make” style electro-acoustic improv. I don’t know about you, but I always find solo performances in a jazz/improv vein a bit of a hard sell. Regardless of how abstracted or abrasive things get, it’s always the aspect of ensemble playing that opens it up for me, the basic drama of musicians ricocheting around each other. I’m pretty sure I must have even seen John Butcher in that context in the past and enjoyed it, but when there’s just one guy up there on his own blurting noises into the void, it all gets a bit, well, y’know. More like watching a talented player doing his daily exercises in public than something we can really engage with.

That said, I’ve got nothing better to do at this point in the evening than sip my ale and pay attention, and some of the noises Mr. Butcher makes are very curious and nice. I especially appreciate his preference for playing short, distinct pieces rather than the twenty minute blowouts favoured by many of his peers, and to my mind this helps make his music a lot more approachable. He does some good stuff on his sax with some kinda didgeridoo style circular breathing creating a bit of a drone, although I’m less enamored with the results when he picks up a… shit, my horn recognition skills aren’t what they used to be - was it a soprano sax? Or a kind of clarinet? One of those smaller, straight ones anyway… and plays a sorta high-pitched birdcall medley. Too much treble, man! He also does a good bit where he angles the horn on his bigger sax around the mic to create a kind of rumbling, pedal-aided feedback that he manipulates into a sorta slow rhythm by clicking back and forth on the... what do you call the bits you push in and out on a saxophone? Valves? (honestly, you wouldn’t get this kind of crap from Nat Hentoff would you? And to think, I could probably draw the guitars of the last ten rock bands I saw from memory…) - it sounds terrific anyway, which is the point.

A point should be well-remembered by Zun Zun Egui, who are on next. Almost as soon as they got on stage and started tuning up, my internal alarm bells were ringing. “MUSOS”, I hissed, crushing my beer mug in my hand and destroying the feel-good vibes of the gig for all within earshot. Ok, obviously I didn’t do that, but you get the picture. I won’t begrudge it to ya if you like Zun Zun Egui, I’m sure they’re pretty great if you’re into what they’re doing, but stuck as I am at the moment on a uniform diet of three chord pop, mechanical 4/4 rhythms and repetitious noise, they are Not. My. Thing. At. All. Or, let’s put it this way: I suppose I currently like the idea that musicians should treat every note as it were a close friend, and I’m very much the kind of person who prefers to maintain a small, clearly defined group of close friends, so that significant time and rewarding engagement may be dedicated to each. Zun Zun Egui on the other hand are veritable social harlots, rushing around the octaves like party-mad bastards, but ultimately not making a great impression on any of the, er, tones they encounter along the way. Too many notes! Not that I have a kneejerk distrust of musicianship or anything you understand, it’s just that… I guess if all those notes are there, I want to hear them channeled into something monolithic and awesome, not just, y’know, played, and there are only fleeting glimpses of potential Frippian grandeur within this set. Of course, they’re too smart to ever sink on stage into the kind of morbid practice room ‘funk’ I was worried might manifest itself, but behind closed doors I dread to think what these guys get up to. They have that sort of self-absorbed “no we won’t stop playing, we’re so fucking good” swagger that makes me run for the hills.

Zun Zun Egui’s most distinctive feature is the singer/guitaristís habit of communicating via a startling Tropicalia-style affirmative yelping that he uses to try to incite dancing and excitement, apparently steadfast in the belief that he is playing the most powerful and sexy music imaginable and that we are callow, inhibited FOOLS for remaining still. I don’t wish to sound demeaning, cos I’ve gotta give it to the guy, he performs this role extremely well. But the intensity of his appeals can’t help but seem somewhat alarming in the context of lugubrious prog-rock in North London on a Wednesday evening, and it’s likely that if he were exhibiting similar enthusiasm from within the crowd, there’d probably be a ten foot gap opening around him in all directions and a doorman looking on wearily. The big question is of course: if this music was presented to me as some kind of dusty French or Brazilian early ‘70s artifact and reissued on 180gm vinyl on Finders-Keepers or something, would I think it was awesome? No comment.

Gee, that was a lot of words wasted on knocking down a perfectly well-meaning band - sorry. Best move straight on what we’re all here to see: perennial Dutch art-punk godheads The Ex, here accompanied by Brass Unbound, their own hand-picked quartet of European horn colossi. And holy shit, have they ever got a show in store for you.



Watching the above promo video for this tour earlier the same day, I was slightly taken aback to see what hard cases the brass contingent appear to be. They look like they could all be wrestlers or rugby players or something; certainly of a different cut from the kind of lily-livered males I’m more used to seeing on stage. This got me thinking about how saxophone players are often pretty big guys, and wondering whether this has anything to do with the physical demands of playing the instrument. But best leave that unrewarding train of thought burnt out at the side of the road and cut to the chase:

The Ex & Brass Unbound was fucking breathtaking.

A total hour of power, so loaded with climatic, fiery, cacophonous beauty, it sprawled straight over across the 80 minute mark and still left me feeling like it’d only just started. Righteous, rabble-rousing music, unshackled from genre and tradition pretty much entirely, but so primal and self-explanatory it could get everyone from the most haughty jazzbo to your granddad psyched up and ready for action.

It’s always been interesting to read interviews and stuff about The Ex’s DIY tours around Africa, and without getting too starry-eyed about it, a set like this really does give the impression that they could essentially pitch up anywhere in the world with their amps and just jam it out with whoever’s around, and people would GET IT. It’s angry music sure, and there are whole centuries and continents-worth of cultural upheaval buried within it, but so full of forward motion and universal ON-ness, it’s just undeniable. So much stuff to love within this performance, and I scarcely feel able to express any of it.

I love how The Ex, despite several decades-worth of experimentation, collaboration and global cross-pollination, are still unmistakably an anarcho-punk band front and centre, grinding out barre chords on distorted guitars and barking lyrics about global warming and surveillance society like the European answer to Fugazi they essentially are, but just keeping it open enough for all the other influences and musicians to filter in around them.

I love how despite having no less than seven serious-minded men up front, all blurting, hammering and sweating away with all the gusto of a construction team, The Ex & Brass Unbound never sound macho or blustery or overbearing. Quite an achievement for a group with mr. elephantine death-rattle himself Mats Gustafsson in the line-up! Their sound is a lean, sinuous, breathing thing, full of sparks and always moving forward, propelled not by a motorik march or by syncopated funk in any way we’d conventionally understand it, but by a sort of lurching, unstoppable, ramshackle force, like a boulder crashing down a mountainside.



Much credit for this must go to drummer Katherina Bornefeld, who is simply an amazing presence, her style is sometimes as unconventional and post-punk instinctive as Palmolive on the Raincoats records, but solid and muscular enough to keep all these rampaging guitar n’ hornslingers ON MESSAGE, heading in the right direction. And when she takes the mic and sings - for an adaptation of a Hungarian folk song, and another number later in the set - it’s stunning. Her voice cuts straight through the sea of instruments, sounding like some haunting, baleful lament pulled straight off a hundred year old Eastern European folk recording. Every musician on stage gets the chance to deliver similar moment of glory though. Terrie Hessels clatters away on his battle-scarred five string guitar in a completely inimitable fashion, essentially fulfilling both the rhythm and bass roles in this bass-less three guitar line-up, whilst also finding time to throw in outbursts of amusical skronk wild enough to make my hair stand on end.

Obviously I never saw The Ex with their now departed singer G.W. Sok, but Arnold De Boer seems to make for a fine and imaginative replacement. Weirdly enough, De Boer used to essentially BE the fuzzy nerd-pop band Zea, whose album “Counting Backwards Leads To Explosions” I picked up and really liked a few years back. Seeing him fronting The Ex seems crazily unlikely – it’s like if Major Matt Mason from Schwervon became the new singer in Crass or something – but it’s great to see that he seems to have carried across some of the lo-fi toy keyboard rocking antics of his former band, furthering the idea that The Ex operate like a kind of cultural sponge, absorbing anything and everything into their central framework the name of continued awesomeness.

Roy Paci is my pick from the horn section – he’s bloody beautiful on the trumpet, playing with real guts and humour and warmth, and I’d love to see him let rip in a more traditional jazz context. Ken Vandermark on sax comes a close second though, and as for Wolter Wierbos on the trombone, well… have you ever seen a man hunched forward and violently hopping up and down whilst playing the trombone? An easy enough idea to convey on paper perhaps, but just try to picture it - imagine the physics for Christ’s sake!



I hope this doesn’t make me sound obsessive or mildly autistic, but after years of trying to write about music, I find that when I’m watching a band or listening to a record, I’ve often got a separate track of back-chat going on in the back of my brain as I come up with daft observations and descriptors I could maybe later use to write about or discuss it – don’t blame me, I don’t do it consciously, it just happens, ok? Usually this stuff is little more than an annoyance, but I always know I’m at a REALLY good gig when it goes into overdrive and my synapses start throwing out ridiculous crap that’s NEVER going to be fit to print, on the level of some kind of opium reverie.

After The Ex & Brass Unbound finished off one particularly fiery number prominently featuring Paci and Wierbos, I found myself taking a step backwards and thinking;

“Holy shit! That sounded like Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western brass section riding into town on a fucking tank made out of Mussolini’s bones!”

Lunacy, clearly. I mean, a single skeleton, even one belonging to a big fellow like Mussolini, would never provide enough surface area to construct any kind of vehicle, let alone a tank. But if I had to swear to it in court, I’d still have to say that that is EXACTLY what the song sounded like.

All things considered, I’m afraid that Dead Moon are still the band Iíd most like to see out the apocalypse with. I’d feel more comfortable in a smaller, more self-sufficient group like theirs, I think. But when that ragtag army of nomads and punks gets together to stampede into your capitalist enclave and burn it to the ground, like a rather more affirmative version of Tom Savini and his pals in ‘Dawn Of The Dead’, well make no mistake, it’s THE EX who are gonna be belting it out from the back of a flatbed truck with a portable generator, in the spirit of general chaotic celebration.

PHEW.

*collapses*

Labels: jazz, John Butcher, live reviews, punk, The Ex, Zun Zun Egui

A Cavalcade of Wonders.

I haven’t had much writing-time this week I’m afraid (I’ve been busy in work, doing music at home, etc.), but thankfully, the internet keeps offering up wonders, like an unstoppable tide of reasons to go on living through the working week, so here’s a round-up of some stuff you should get down with if you’ve got a spare half hour.


1. “That’s no scarecrow, it’s a crucifix in a hat!”; declaring something “the most inexplicable comic book ever published” is inherently foolhardy given the bottomless barrel of strangeness that comprises the history of funny books, so I won’t say it. But, after reading this brief piece Steve Aylett wrote for Arthur, it’s safe to say that we have a contender. Jeff Lint is clearly set to become a new guru in my life, and I shall be seeking out copies of ‘The Caterer’ by any means necessary:

“Several dissertations have been published deconstructing the long, complicated rant in issue 6 about how goats have the skeletal system of chickens (the most incisive being 'That's no scarecrow, it's a crucifix in a hat! True Phantoms in The Caterer' by Alaine Carraze). The tirade, conducted over five dense pages after Marsden interrupts a school swim meet, has been interpreted as everything from a critique of Jimmy Carter's then-undisclosed connection to the Trilateral Commission, to a warning about genetic tampering, to homosexual panic (which would jibe with the mustache attacks). Certainly the Caterer's friends are bewildered (or understanding) enough to stand listening to this drivel. But when he tries to leave by riding on an unwilling dog, the cops arrive on the scene and Marsden goes into one of his frenzies. All credit is due to Pearl Comics for depicting the relatively static scene of the diatribe on the cover, rather than the explosive gun battle that follows.”

2.“Earn your prejudices, son!”; Characteristically thought-provoking stuff from Destination:Out, as they consider the legacy of much derided jazz reactionary Wynton Marsalis. It’s interesting to see his work being given a fair shake of the whip from a pro-free/avant perspective alongside discussion of his frankly absurd views on music, and mp3s of some of the cracking stuff he was missing out on during the ‘80s speak for themselves.


3. Chris Summerlin has a new weblog – which is good news! And on this weblog, he has posted a link to an extensive collection of photos from the Library of Congress. Now, I don’t know about you, but I would have expected the Library of Congress to be a fairly fusty institution that would limit access to their archives to serious researchers, get needlessly uptight about copyrights and so forth, but no! It seems the Library of Congress have started a Flickr account, just like you or I might do, on which they say friendly things like “Yes, we really are THE Library of Congress”, and “We invited your tags and comments and you responded, wow, did you respond!”. Thus far, they’ve uploaded literally thousands of historical photographs from their archives, grouped under such headings as “World War I panoramas” and “The 1930s-40s in Colour”, for anyone in the world to freely gaze upon / share / download. Library of Congress – you’re alright!


4. Excitable, science-illiterate types such as myself tend to throw around terms such as ‘cosmic’ and ‘mind-blowing’ at the drop of a hat, so it’s good sometimes to catch up on some TRULY mind-blowing goings on, courtesy of New Scientist (I copped the link from Doc40);

“For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.

If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.”

Readers, will you join me in clutching your heads as if in pain and exclaiming “whoa, hold on a minute – the WHAT?”...?


5. The notion of CHOOGLIN’ has long been close to my heart. I have however tended to consider a purely musical definition of the choogle, whilst aware on some level that any attempt at a wider, verbal clarification of the concept would do the unthinkable, and halt the choogle. If you have to ask, you’ll never know. Thanks therefore are due to Ami Tallman for her/his(?) wide-ranging and visionary exploration of chooglin’ in it’s wider context on the WFMU blog:

“But don't forget, the performer who's brought the word into existence is demanding that you, his listener, choogle. This strongly suggests that the choogle is not merely something to be executed musically, but something a mere man might do, and in fact, as Fogerty himself revealed first in "Born on the Bayou," a train can do it. To choogle is always, in addition to whatever else it might entail: to go, to drive, to progress, to continue, to persist, to keep on the move, to remain in motion.

The thing I love best about the choogle is its fundamental logical impossibility: for while it is en-choogle, it is definitionally unstoppable. But it will stop, though until the moment it does, it will have been impossible that it should. Yet this is perfectly suitable, for the ambition which set the choogle in motion to begin with was also impossible, for it is an ambition whose attainment can only be reached through the accomplishment of something the choogler couldn't even have imagined -- still can't, in fact, even at the moment of impact with success. The choogler who choogles to the absolute must rely entirely on his or her senses to even perceive the accomplishment, for absent from the choogler's mind is any abstract frame of reference with which to fill in those aspects of the experience that might have been taken for granted.”

6. Teleport City has long been one of my favourite places on the internet, home to a vast and ever-growing archive of lengthy, fascinating, idiosyncratic and consistently hilarious write-ups of all manner of trash/pulp/cult/weird/whatever cinema, their essential philosophy being summed up quite well I feel by this extract from a review of The Land That Time Forgot:

“Most children view films differently than adults. When a film is cheap and boring, the cheapness doesn’t really register (what do you have, at age six or seven, to even judge cheapness by) and the boring parts wash over you like water off a duck’s back. You tune out when it gets boring, and all you remember afterward are the cool parts. Thus, even really crummy movies can seem relatively enjoyable, because you don’t remember the dull bits; all you remember is the shrieking caveman being torn apart by a pterodactyl. Oh sure, I know some of you watched these movies with the keen eye of a wizened critic even at age six, and you turned your nose up at how juvenile they were even when you were juvenile. Well, I hope you had fun watching Kramer versus Kramer as a child, while the rest of us were watching dinosaurs fighting a submarine while Doug McClure punched cavemen in the face.”

My reason for bringing Teleport City to your attention now however is their current series on the murky world of Indian horror, which, even by the high standards of this site, is an absolute joy for all lovers of… this sort of thing. See Shaitani Dracula and Pyassa Shaitan, and go from there. Be warned though: if you’re internetting from work, you may soon find yourself without a job once you get stuck into Teleport City, probably rejoicing at all the free time your newfound destitution will give you to keep on reading about post-apocalyptic rollerskating nun movies. There but for the grace of god...


7. Last but not least: only halfway through January, and already some great new bands are skimming my radar, so say a big three chord YES PLEASE to The Rayographs and The Strange Boys, just for starters.

Labels: chooglin', comics, film, internet round-ups, jazz, photos, weirdness

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Some proper new posts coming up within the next few days, honest.

In the meantime:

1. Deathblog Supplemental

Stereo Sanctity is very sad to hear of the death of Max Roach. Whilst I'm still too much of a jazz neophyte to attempt to do justice to his 60 year career spanning god knows how many musical epochs, I can at least testify that everything I've heard with him playing on it kicks ass, and that everything I've read suggests he was a really great guy too. I direct you toward the more authoritative obits on Destination:Out and Locust St. for further details (and music).

2. Cambodian Confusion

In the cause of making me look like slightly less of an idiot, I would like to draw attention to the really awesome Cambodian psyche / rock n' roll song which I played toward the start of my last radio show, and credited as "A2" by "Cambodian Rocks". I rather suspected this was a somewhat unlikely title for a record, and indeed subsequent investigation has led me to discover that Cambodian Rocks is in fact the title of a compilation album compiled by collector Paul Wheeler, which was put together straight from a bunch of tapes he picked up whilst travelling across Cambodia, and issued with no track info whatsoever. So it seems that when Shadoks came to put together their "Love, Peace and Poetry: Asian Psychedelic Music", from which I took the track, they ripped it straight from Wheeler's comp and simply called it "A2" cos it was the second song on side one.

There is a certain amount of confusion here, in that Wheeler's "Cambodian Rocks" was put out by a small and seemingly deliberately mysterious label called Parallel Worlds, and although it caused a bit of a stir amongst underground muso types, no further information, online or otherwise, was forthcoming. However, the "Cambodian Rocks" title has subsequently been hi-jacked/reappropriated by a label called Khmer Rocks, who have issued four volumes under that name. In their favour, they seem to be operating on a more well-informed/official basis, but on the other hand they also seem to be concentrating more on the slightly more staid pop music of Cambodia's bigger musical stars, rather than the fuzzed out "circle dance" craziness of the Parallel Worlds comp.

There is a certain crossover of tracks between the Parallel Worlds and Khmer Rocks comps however, and despite a few fragmentary/confused tracklistings I've found floating around the internet (the existence of two competing albums with the same name doesn't help!), thanks to this excellent post on Far Eastern Audio Review (what a great site, by the way), I'm pretty sure I have finally identified the song in question as "I'm So Shy", performed by Ros Sereysothea.

Got all that? - good.

Whichever way you look at it, the whole business is somewhat ethically and legally dubious, as highlighted by this brief but necessary blogpost. But, after the psyche geek/cultural tourist wrangling dies down, all we have left is the music, and the basic point is, IT IS UTTERLY RULE-ASS, and your chances of living as a happy human being are likely to be significantly increased by exposure to it. So here it is again:

Mp3 > Cambodian Rocks A2 / Ros Sereysothea - "I'm So Shy"

Labels: announcements, Cambodian Rocks, deathblog, jazz, Max Roach, Psychedelia, Ros Sereysothea