Saturday, January 14, 2023

Playlist

Preface

"'Delightful prospect, Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick.
'Beats the chimley pots, sir,' replied Mr. Weller, touching his hat.
'I suppose you have hardly seen anything but chimney-pots and bricks and mortar, all your life, Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick, smiling.
'I worn't always a boots, sir,' said Mr. Weller, with a shake of the head. 'I wos a wagginer's boy, once.'
'When was that?' inquired Mr. Pickwick.
'When I was first pitched neck and crop into the world to play at leap-frog with its troubles,' replied Sam. 'I wos a carrier's boy at startin': then a wagginer's, then a helper, then a boots. Now I'm a gen'lm'n's servant. I shall be a gen'lm'n myself one of these days, perhaps, with a pipe in my mouth, and a summer-house in the back garden. Who knows? I shouldn't be surprised, for one.'"

Charles Dickens - The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club

Texts

Recorded

January 7, 2023

D'un autre amer - Johannes Ockeghem - Blue Heron, Scott Metcalfe

a monody weaves through a duonody of reflections and refractions

A Maske
A Maske, Fvb 209 - Giles Farnaby - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]

L'Euridice, Scene I - Giulio Caccini - Concerto Italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini, Matteo Bellotto, Anna Simboli, Marco Scavazza, Monica Piccinini, Raffaele Giordani, Silvia Frigato, Mauro Borgioni

encumbered in weighty fabrics
a story is presented
a series of tableau
speaking paragraphs
in spacious turns

Sonata in E Major, Kk. 215 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

brushing gesture
quick strokes
the act of daubing in oils
now we're stomping
idly toying with Belinda's locks

who turned off the lights?
that's better

Sonata in C minor, Op. 10 #1 - Ludwig van Beethoven - Paul Badura Skoda

1
has an antagonistic relationship with its stated key
seems more comfortable elsewhere

2
starts simple
shows its inner being
as the phrases gather toward their cadences 

3
must leave before we're caught
how we got here
the story goes by fast
so pay attention
no no
that's the wrong ending
let's try again
oh
whew
no wait it's . . . 

out we scoot

Impromptu in B-flat Major, Op. 142 #3 - Franz Schubert - Alfred Brendel

sincere naivete
(controlled rubato)
our hero's successive fantasies
of his soon to be found brilliant success
a bit of a dandy in that one
in this one we darkly brood
perhaps we are no longer a him
merely
but all things at once
and a swell dancer as well
but I'm but a weary dreamer
good night

January 8, 2023

5 Piéces, Op. 3 - Ferruccio Busoni - Wolf Harden

counterpoint blatantly purveyed
the esoteric path
keep the voices clear
all protection points secured
we get nowhere without careful planning

That's When I'll Come Back to You - Louis Armstrong's Hot Seven [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

airing private grievances in song
as comedy
minstrel clowning?

Boogie Woogie (I May Be Wrong) - Count Basie [from The First Records He Ever Made]

schematic phrase structure
2 + 1 blues
he makes the changes clear as day

Says My Heart (take 2) - Billie Holiday [from Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia]

that scheme
of that gleam
in your eyes

she shares the stage with her sides graciously

Bird Gets The Worm - Charlie Parker [from The Complete Savoy and Dial Master Takes]

bumble bee drag racing
and bull riding
at once

Boplicity - Miles Davis [from The Birth Of The Cool]

room to breathe
sit down
chill

I Surrender, Dear - Aretha Franklin [from The Electrifying Aretha Franklin]

there's a catch
in that
','
this song
is fully formed
complete

Our Love Was - The Who [from The Who Sell Out]

little bells
nicely tingled

Been to Canaan - Carole King [from Rhymes & Reasons]

cozy hipness

Join The Gang - David Bowie [from Starting Point]

about the business of music
and stardom
and with-it-itude

Sean Flynn - The Clash [from Combat Rock]

a folky celticish world instrument opening
very arty
colonistical
display of trophies

We've Come This Far By Faith - The Total Experience Gospel Choir, Pat Wright [from Bits and Pieces]

gospel choir
a group that sings
as a body
within a community
that
is a body
that moves 

fabulous quick upbeat off beat stuff

Real World - Bruce Springsteen [from Human Touch]

deferred payoff
to complete a statement
at the end of the verse

January 9, 2023

Gradus 26 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [September 10, 2002]

possibilities of touchwork
explorable
but too delicate for denotation
which
would transform a nuance
into an effect
a mere extended technique
thus
obliterating its
without which nothing

Wrong Day - The Hope [from In The Deep]

epigram becomes chorus
regret anthem
melody on the off beats

What's Wanting For - Your Mother Should Know [recorded live at The Blue Moon, Seattle, October 4, 2012]

shouting back at fate
and
at the puppeteer powers

Bump In The Night - Mud On My Bra [from Demo #2 (Manger Studio Mixes)]

an environment provides enough protection
to allow this statement

Sinfonia 4 (midi realization) - Keith Eisenbrey

in this scheme
mod 12 pitch classes arise cyclically
in the same relations to each other
within each frame 

where the cycle starts over
is always consistent
but difficult to pin down
from outside

Praeludium, Fvb, 210 - John Bull - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]

within a musical culture
this manner of piece
served a musical purpose
get things started
check the tuning
set the pitch
a fancied up device

Medea, Act I - Luigi Cherubini - Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Leonard Bernstein, Maria Callas, Maria Luisa Nache, Fedora Barbieri, Gino Penno, Giuseppe Modesti, Angela Vercelli, Coro del Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Vittore Veneziani

the longer the happy gentility persists
the more troubled it becomes
this music never looks back
and plunges ahead
on the edge of its moment
it instructs us
as we are moved along
of our proper response
the choral writing is fabulous
great entrances

this is a mono recording
of an illuminating performance
so detail is lost in the mass sounds
but enough is left to give a pretty good idea of it

Death is Only a Dream - Edward W. Clayborn [from Allen Lowe's Really The Blues]

devastating minimal guitar part

God's Gonna Separate The Wheat From The Tares - Mahalia Jackson [from Goodbye, Babylon]

you've been told
and there's no mistake

Bop Alley - Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers [from Allen Lowe's The Devilin' Tune]

exhileration whew!

How About Me - Judy Garland [from Alone]

tear jerker
strings and sweep

Romain (alternate take) - Bill Evans, Jim Hall [from Undercurrent]

figures and fingers
converse in hints and mutters
a poetry of flow

January 10, 2023

Quartet in 3 Movements - George Perle - Composers Quartet

1
a tight little wad moves together
nothing strays far

2
scurry scurry
a scurrier's work is never done
dreaminess will have to wait

3
a new object has appeared
what is it?
did it arrive alone?
it troubles us

Nothing Seems To Matter - Bonnie Raitt [from Give It Up]

the band sounds real
like real folks playing together
sax has a big part
in decorating the mood
without transforming it
distinctly subservient

Love: Building On Fire - Talking Heads [from Talking Heads: 77]

passionless and robotic

One Life's Enough - The Who [from It's Hard]

show tune length
not a full song
just enough
to nearly register

Assembly Rechoired 34 - Wayne Berman, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Gary Mosca [September 19, 1987]

guests from the East
for which the big red bag of fun is dumped
and we plunge right in
shaking and rattling and clanging and ringing
the didgeridoo
is dood 

if the goal is intertransformation
then each sound must be open to transformation
to reinterpretation 

for a sound to transform a sound
it
needs to enter the innards
a paint job won't do 

intertransformation
permeable sound
permeating sound
armor laid aside  

perhaps a bit too much with the Funmaker
in the middle of this
an insider thing
the mystery chord makes an appearance

Wig Out - Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth [from Mecca and The Soul Brother]

commentary vocal below in the mix
stand-in for listener reaction
verbal profusion at the service of a flow

Track 4 - The Humidiflyers [from The Humidiflyers Fall 2002]

short instrumental

Banned Rehearsal 717 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 2, 2007]

all the tubing
valves and sliders
we discuss things in brass
grunts
monosyllables
and sighs
a tam tam sneaks in
other than that brief episode
we stick to the brass
pretty faithfully
for almost 25 minutes

January 11, 2023

Glibs - Bruce Hamilton, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Paul Muller, Adam Kondor [from Mash Hits Volume 1]

(our) data
being sampled
shredded
centrifuged
resampled

Banned Telepath 57 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 3, 2017]

maritime
stray sounds
among the moored pier and shore
conversants' scraps
sleepy afternoon for the liveaboards
a jet emerges from a dropped mixing bowl
guitar sounds floated lazily
urgency lulled
gentle putters
very little in the way of coming or going
to moving beyond
some slow rocking

Dreams and Sleep - Mikey and Matty [from And It Came to Pass, Not To Stay]

three tempos pulling at a song

Corrento, Fvb. 211 - Traditional - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]

tokens of metrical place
arranged so that meter can be inferred
but not confirmed 

an inferred meter
must remove its provisional status
to become a confirmed meter
and an inferred
is of a different mode of understanding
than a confirmed

The Lord Is My Shepherd - Blind Connie Rosemond [from Allen Lowe's Really The Blues]

invested in every moment she sings

I Ain't Got Nobody - Fats Waller [from The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

a bunch of ways to regard a tune
to delight

Did You Ever Try To Cry? - Gatemouth Moore [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]

multiple attitudes toward the same troubles

Waltz for Debby - Bill Evans [from New Jazz Conceptions]

the sheet music I have marks this "lightly"
once through only

It Takes Everything To Serve The Lord - Little Richard [from The King of the Gospel Singers]

old time preaching
civilized and scrubbed up pretty

I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free - Nina Simone [from Silk & Soul]

gets riled up then
fades out the
pop song format was showing its age
wasn't sure how to deal with
what the songs demanded

Move Over - Janis Joplin [from In Concert]

rides the wave to the wipeout
two rooms and a dog

EMI - The Sex Pistols [from Never MInd The Bullocks, Here's The Sex Pistols]

sneering scorn as conversational default

My Father's House - Bruce Springsteen [from Nebraska]

old timey poetics
nearly prose
dirt basic arrangement
hands down the strongest song on the album
perhaps in his catalog

Garden of Serenity - Ramones [from Halfway to Sanity]

nothing if not indefinitely replicated
on demand

Jig Along Home - Woody Guthrie and Family [from Woody's 20 Grow Big Songs]

from an older family farm America

Depth of Mercy (for four horns) (midi realization) - Keith Eisenbrey

diatonic polyphony
nicely done if I say so myself

The Untitled - Rachel Harrington [from The Bootlegger's Daughter]

and unaccompanied
and honed to a cutting edge

You're So Young - Your Mother Should Know [recorded live at The Blue Moon, Seattle, October 4, 2012]

sing along
with
a bigger arrangement
in a larger venue 

A Walk In The Dark - Anxious Arms [from Never Was]

a tempo spills over the edge of the introduction
part two
revving engines
back to intro tempo
all sounds must be electronically enhanced

The Sun of Righteousness on me - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

two parts
in austere lockstep
trying to out-austere Samuel Wesley
quite pleased
I need to do a vocal recording soon

January 12, 2023

Martin Sayd to His Man, Fvb, 212 - Traditional - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]

a genteel arrangement
of what may not have had a genteel origin
writing music down was the prerogative of learned men
so we receive the cultural imprint of learned men

Come Down Jailer With The Keys - Williams' Black Patti Jubilee singers [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]

harmony hangs from the high voices
soprano and tenor
robust intonation of close harmony writing

Blues in Disguise - Mezz Mezzrow [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

series of statements in like size
atop a pitch cycle
that rhymes them
connecting distant ends
of non adjacent and adjacent statements

New York City Blues - Duke Ellington [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

well dressed legato
pieces picked up from the piano
and all lit up in big band finery

big band arranging
is a subset of composition
and not
a less than composition

Too Late Now - Peggy Lee [from Dream Street]

50s
West Coast
night club
sappy

Song to Woody - Bob Dylan [from Bob Dylan]

paying respects and presuming familiarity

Inscape - Aaron Copland - The American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein

redolent of Ruggles
except that glockenspiel
severe
static
monumental
percussion used as an underline
binary textures throughout

Me And Julio Down By The School Yard - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]

like Dylan
Paul is exploratory of many kinds of music
but Paul leans toward the commercial corners
rather than toward the blues corners

Straight Line - Wire [from Pink Flag]

and brief too
44 seconds

Dreams - Walt Wagner [from The Evening Muse]

broadway vibes

Banned Rehearsal 119 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [September 24, 1987]

a specific tune on recorder
is recorded
ably enabled
by snare brush and piano
we are pulled down
roofed over
floored
joined 

intonation is crucial
no good enough pitches here
if we are out
we are exactly out 

o the fubtle fong of the fipple flute
fcalpel of pitch

reel to reel speed play
brasses and buzzes
rollers and shakers
this is fine and full of glorious roarious
nothing so parsimonious as musical about it
irremovable crud sound
we trade slow 

banned rehearsal
which welcomes you
to the food chain  

we enter chipmunk realms
is it live or is it . . .
no
it is other 

the clunky mechanism of moving on
is as cruddy as the sound
music as you know it
won't cut it here
I sense incoming Aaronsbundler
held back
but insisting 

through the cat door cool as a cucumber
proud and plummy vanquished in the end by the bug guitar 

ticket holders on the right
wander down the aisles
deep frozen personalities and microwavable smiles 

at divers accelerations
accumulating irreversibly 

there is nothing like unexpected glory from the past to put me in a good mood

Infamous Date Rape - A Tribe Called Quest [from The Low End Theory]

talking around an ambiguity
or advising
for or against?
hard to tell

Wicked - Ice Cube [from The Predator]

trippy tongue
consistently crammed tight

January 13, 2023

Gradus 117 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 9, 2007]

widely separated A naturals
the lowest and the second from the highest
(penaltimate?)
so far
played non-simultaneously
and then
the devil as was spoken of 

to my ear
not having perfect pitch
the quality of the interval
is outside of any immediate qualification
as of
exempli gratia
dissonance
or perfection
the partials that emerge from the lowest A
as the dampers are dropped
have a better chance
but
once heard as their own pitch
their identitifcation with their originary fundamental
is severed
however
none of the above is pertinent
to the thrust of the piece either
in the local
or abstractly global sense
on the local level
the presented rhetoric
is
the spreading out of instances
of a high pitch
and a low pitch
a sparse population
farmhouses
here and there
even the hamlets
are at a distance
distances are more
across
off into horizons
rather than
up in the sky
to
down in a hole
music
on a planar surface
perhaps
that is the best way to describe the internal qualities
on a similar plane
or a nearly similar

I hear the old tea kettle's whistle

Lotus Intro - Christina Aguilera [from Lotus]

rhythmic chant
world musicy
the explicit message of this
the first song
on the album
labeled "intro"
is
"this is the beginning" 

self deificating ritual

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 4, 2023

Demolition - Keith Eisenbrey

I forgot to share this last week.
A house just up the street from us was being demolished
so I recorded some of the sound

Postscripts

Skaldmud's Doodle Gallery

some listening journal doodles from 1992






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