Playlist

Recorded

August 20, 2013

How to have a street named after your band

Sleater-Kinney - Sleater-Kinney

The back taunt of aggressively sexualized youth. As rude as what's coming at them.

August 21, 2013
All Hands On The Bad One - Sleater-Kinney

Five years later with a richer vocal palette. The short-burst poetics are now part of the instrumental arrangements as well (I loved #1 Must Have). In the early eighties I was amused once when an artist, with a straight face, said that a painting was an example of 'second-generation post-painterly abstractionism', as though that could possibly be a meaningful epithet. 'Painterly', I was told, refers to painters who let the drips show. The edges of these arrangements let the drips show.

August 22, 2013
Poppies - Russell Craig Richardson, Dorota Czerner, Benjamin Boretz, Michael Fowler (from Open Space DVD 1)

A multi-media collage work. The sound is framed by Benjamin Boretz's ("...my chart shines high where the blue milks upset...") in Michael Fowler's recording, into which is set an exploration of Dorota Czerner's poem Poppies, read by the poet and assembled (I think) by Ben. The visuals are emphatically limited in their elements - extreme close-ups of candle-lit lips, nose, eyes, and candles; - and in their color scheme - dim orange, dim green, and black, punctuated two or three times by the glow of candle flame directly. The conjunctions of image and sound proceed with method and grace. The video image is remarkably palpable, swarming and throbbing, pulsed with blood.

Snoho Piece 4 - Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Scribner

Steve's well-balanced mashup of two sound files. My half is one of the working tracks of Zither Film, short bursts of sound arranged in a temporally refracted decay that stretches over the entire 7 minutes. Steve's half is an improvisation with gongs and tam tams, repetitions of decays. They talk together.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 19, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 842 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer

Playlist

Live

August 10, 2013
Brian Capozzoli

Swamp Meat
Tyler Daniel Bean

Red Ribbon
Victory Lounge, Seattle

Red Ribbon

Swamp Meat

The most important music is your own - the music you invent and the music you make. The next most important music is that of your local peer community - the music your friends and colleagues make in the place you are. Everything else - including those musics which have so permeated the larger culture as to be inescapable, including those musics which have so permeated you as to be inextricable from your ear, including especially those musics which have been granted pantheonic status by the larger culture so that all the musics we make and share are held to their eternal standard - all these musics are of a distantly secondary importance. I am interested, as I wander now in my mid-adulthood into the realms of the local rock and roll scene, my 'music-in-law' so to speak, that the denizens of this community seem to be, by and large, more comfortable with this fact than, say, the classical music community is, and even (though to a somewhat less egregious extent) than the new music community is. It is refreshing to find a music that isn't performing for an invisible posterity, that is playing for us, here, now.

Thanks guys!

Recorded

August 11, 2013
Banned Sectional 4 KEE AK - July 1985 - Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt

What music can allow itself to be when there is no audience beyond the participants. Militantly not public, but finely drawn with limited elements.

August 13, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 45 - July 1985 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer

Aaron's last session with us before heading off to Berkeley.

I Want (Everything You Want) - Keith Eisenbrey
Hey Hey Hey - Keith Eisenbrey
All These Days - Keith Eisenbrey
Don't Know - Keith Eisenbrey
I Drank - Keith Eisenbrey

August 14, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 46 - July 1985 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Meyer

The first Sudden Song session. We take turns inventing a song on the spot and we all accompany.

August 15, 2013
One Two Three - Keith Eisenbrey
Bug Guitar - Keith Eisenbrey
Amazing Grace - Keith Eisenbrey
Oh Lady - Keith Eisenbrey
Come On - Keith Eisenbrey

Continuing with my own summer of 1985 private song-writing workshop. At the time I was chafing with those traditional aspects of musical creativity that can, too often, get in the way of more robust invention. Among these are the hallmarks of professionalism: intonation, steady beat, a nice tone - all the things that must be done in order to make it clear that we know what we are doing. Gatekeeping chores. And so the songs I was making (and which you can listen to should you like) are not simply unprofessional, out-of-tune, and incompetent, but are, rather, anti-professional, anti-in-tune (I like 'liberated intonation'), and anti-competence. I have since deepened my stance on this, but these songs are an index point for me, and I still think they hold their own.

Several years later I used these tracks to learn how to work with a multi-track application. The results are the Winter Mix versions which I will also put on my soundcloud site.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 12, 2013
Gradus 231 - Neal Meyer

Playlist

Live

August 4, 5, 7, and 9, 2013
Der Ring des Nibelungen - Wagner - Seattle Opera
Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, Seattle



Hoh Valley, Olympic National Park, 2010

Perhaps only the symphonies of Bruckner are more capable than the Ring of making it clear that hearing a recording, or seeing a film, is no substitute for the real thing, is a fundamentally different experience. As contingent and limiting as any production is (and this, though fine, was no exception) the relative scales of musical time, dramatic time, and real time, and the relative scales of tonal depth and musical dynamics to the dramatic space and to the real space, and of all the other relative scales of things to things to things to things one might posit, ignite together without precedent and without successor.

The world is once again safe for moss and lichen.

From the beginning we are set adrift without bound, illumined from within. the music billows with currents energized from nowhere, pouring from moment to moment and from scene to scene and from act to act and from evening to evening in river-like motions: rushing gliding slipping bending, pooling in lake and cranny, crashing through canyon and plunge  -  mighty and delicate, stagnant and torrent, in turns and at once. From the cartoon of Das Rheingold, painted in broad brush and bright colors, through the collapsing scaffold of Die Walküre and the dragon permeated forests of Siegfried, the leitmotifs and fragments of leitmotifs accumulate inflections and ramified associations to where, by the time we get to Gotterdammerung (sorry - I'm having a devil of a time getting umlauts to show up), where the musical fabric is stretched sheer and hollow, just a few notes sung in mid-dialogue can reverberate back across the entire cycle. Every most intimate tonal hint is a dialogue with the whole.

Recorded

August 8, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 44 - July 1985, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer

Aaron and I started this session as a sectional, just the two of us watching slides and commenting. Neal was in the neighborhood canvassing for the Democrats and decided he was close enough to canvass me, so a knock on the door produced our third member. In order to get everybody involved he called Anna and she made her audio appearance over the phone.

Playlist

Recorded

July 31, 2013
Banned Thology 2 - Banned Rehearsal

Focus or float? Either is active.

August 1, 2013
Hidden Damage - Keith Eisenbrey

bug guitar

July of 1985 was a busy time for me. Not only did I participate in nine separate improvisation sessions (including a live show) and build the Banned Day, but I also started a solo project called Summer Songs. Inspired both by Aaron Keyt's Bickleton Burger and by some work I had done in Barrytown with Jill Borner and Dan Sedia, the idea was to explore the compositional idea of self accompanied song. I would pick an instrument, sit down in front of microphones, and improvise a song. Hidden Damage was my first foray. I like how both the text and melody build themselves gradually, and how the accompaniment is both clearly periodic and vehemently fluid in tempo. The instrument used is a little 8-string kora known affectionately as the 'bug guitar'. In 2003, as a way of teaching myself how to use the sound editing capabilities of a new computer, I remixed all the summer songs. You can listen to both versions on my soundcloud site: Original - Winter Mix.

Banned Day - Banned Rehearsal

This is a mix of the first 32 session sides of Banned Rehearsal, being numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (2 sides), 11, 12, 13, 14 (2 sides), 15, 16, 17, 18 (2 sides), 19, 20, 21 (3 sides), 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, and 28. There is no Banned Rehearsal number 5, due to a technical problem with the recording device. I made the original mix using multiple cassette decks and splitter cables. I redid the whole thing a year or so ago using a digital mixer. The result is no less crudful, as you can hear here.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 29, 2013
Gradus 230 - Neal Meyer

Playlist

Live

July 27, 2013
Red Ribbon
Vermillion, Seattle

After a spectacular dinner in the garden at Poppy, Karen and I spiral skirted the Capital Hill Block Party (just keep the boomboom in one ear at a constant volume) to a narrow high-ceilinged space with graphics on the walls and a bar in the back. We caught just the end of the last song by the previous band, whose name I didn't hear clearly.

Red Ribbon at Vermillion

There were some unfortunate technical problems - a bad hum persisted right up to the last couple of songs, and the vocal amplification was apparently not up to the task at hand - but I suppose that is the danger of electronic gear piled higher & deeper coupled with limited time to get it all working properly. Nevertheless, the close walls and the long spaces overhead and behind gave the drum sound a lively tunnel reverb, warping the higher frequency amplified sounds quite nicely into the cymbals splashy woof, and though the vocals were not optimally up front there was something unnerving about their presence beneath the tapestral sough - as though a dragon moved unseen.

Recorded

July 23, 2013
Banned Seminar 3
Banned Seminar 4

I was thinking about the pre-conscious or liminal-conscious psychoacoustic faculties by which we integrate and segregate and otherwise sort out signal into distinct singularities or sets or complexes of sounds, and how we then project or reify or otherwise create agents and instruments to have made them.

July 24, 2013
Banned Thology 1

Sixteen sessions together.

July 25, 2013
Banned Sectional 3 AK NWM - (July 1985, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer)

Neal and Aaron slam each other against the wall with pianos.

In Session at the TintinabularyJuly 22, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 841 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer

Playlist - dateline Prosser, WA

Live

July 13, 2013
Courtney Marie Andrews
Mikey and Mattie
Shelby Earl - CD release party for Swift Arrows
Columbia City Theater, Seattle

And Are We Yet Alive?, the hymn sung every year at annual conference by the assembled United Methodist clergyfolk, speaks to those times in life when you realize that an ordeal has been survived and that you are wounded but healing, stronger and aware. For many, their 20s are such an ordeal, and finding yourself at the other end more completely adult is a grace and a glory. The stage this night was crowded with superb musicians, sharing with each other and with us their triumphs and tales.

Courtney Marie Andrews

I'm a sucker for finger-picking she-minstrels, and Courtney delivers all the musts of the type: wise, ingenuous, vulnerable, shy but comfortable enough in her own skin and voice to rival the presence of her awfully pretty guitar.

Mike and Matt Gervais are well known as the manic-happy front men of Curtains For You, and in previous guise as the engine behind True Bugs. It isn't surprising that they have now ventured off on their own with a superbly able crew lifted partly from the Seattle Rock Orchestra, and held in place by Faustine Hudson, perhaps the most melodically capable of Seattle rock drummers. One band is just not enough to hold this volume of creative energy.

Shelby pulls out all the stops - a perfectly attuned band, a wonderful venue, charismatic charm - and tries every trick in the book - songwriting chops beyond comparison and a jazz chanteuse's knack for hanging off unsuspected corners and lingering in newly discovered crannies of the beat - but there is really no hope. That voice will win.

Recorded

July 15, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 42 - (July 1985, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer)

A rehearsal for that very evening's concert. Opacity of a howling blizzard. Neal's sister Karen was our test audience, before she and I became an item.

July 16, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 43- A Short and Simple Concert - (July 1985, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer)

Our second live performance, at Brechemin Auditorium, School of Music, University of Washington, Seattle. Neal was a TA at the time, and the audience was beefed up with students from his theory classes.

July 17, 2013
Banned Seminar 1 - Banned Rehearsal

Eight tapes combined. A texture of textures shifting at a texture of shifting rates.

July 18, 2013
Banned Seminar 2 - Banned Rehearsal

An overabundant overlay of Funmaker fills the nooks and clogs the crannies. Un-poke-able.

In Session at the TintinabularyJuly 15, 2013
Fox Spit 1 - Keith Eisenbrey

Neal couldn't come over for Gradus, so I decided to practice tuning the guitar that my brother gave me - his first successful hand-made Fox Spit. Then I made this recording.

Playlist

Live

July 6, 2013

Your Mother Should Know at Victory Lounge

Old Man Williamson
Pouch
Your Mother Should Know
Peterman
Victory Lounge, Seattle

I will never accustom myself to the waiting for a dive-bar show to begin. I know that when the start time is 8pm they really mean "sometime after 9 but probably before 10", but since I'm the kind of guy who always gets places early I end up with a lot of time to observe.

Everybody nods in exactly the same way when asked to present their ID. No matter the quantity of leather goods, studs, piercings, or tattoos, the vast majority of folks are polite and courteous. Being in a place with constant loud sound is a little bit, I imagine, like being temporarily deaf.

Rock music is a music of and for people in transition. Youth to adult, single to connected, connected one-wise to connected (or un-) another-wise, there to here, then to now. Its energy is overlarge because the feeling of living in or through transition is over-wrought, juiced. It wants to be heard on both sides of the boundary, but it also wants to expand and prolong its own moment - as reluctant to move forward as it is desperate to efface its past. Hyperphoria can blind and paralyze, but it is essential for self-aware growth.

Ian "Old Man" Williamson played a short, spirited, acoustic set just a notch louder than the general din. Pouch gets more solid each time out, though the PA system for the vocals wasn't up to their rip-it-up instrumental wallop. YMSK mixed up their sound, with Neal and Karen sharing vocals, and Neal switching from keyboard to 6-string to 12-string. Their set is defiantly varied in affect. But of course it was Peterman's show and they are ripening into a high energy, roots-punk, feel-good act. My favorite moment of the whole evening was during their cover of I Can't Help Falling In Love With You watching two burly logger types giving each other an exuberant and heartfelt bro-bear-hug.

Recorded

July 9, 2013
Banned Mixer 8

fold over and in, like kneading bread, or forging sword

dissociation of conjointure

etched upon

a gouged surface through a scribbled screen

not softened

removed

July 10, 2013
Banned Sectional 9 KEE NWM - (July 1985, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer)

When an improvisation is just not working the best option is usually to stick with it. The point is not to redeem the session as a session, but rather the hope that eventually things will fall into an interesting place, even if just for a moment. This tape is a case in point. Mostly horrible, but now and then pretty amazing.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 8, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 840 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer

I put this one up on my soundcloud site because it was as lovely throughout as the evening was pleasant. We played on the porch for the passersby on the street. Enjoy!