Playlist

Live

February 24, 2012
Crystal Beth
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Beth Fleenor

An electronically enabled she-minstrel traveling relatively light, equipment-wise: a clarinet, an amplifier with a few gizmos, and some small percussion. Build-a-music on the spot. Lighthearted but too rich in timbre and rhythm to be lightweight. Focused, center-of-the head vocal production (think mid-eurasian folk singing). Bravely winning.

Recorded

February 19, 2012
Yes! I'm In The Barrel - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives And Sevens]
Fifty Miles of Elbow Room - Rev. F. W. McGee [from Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music]

Somewhere in the back of James Brown's head is this sound, keeping him honest, chasing him.

Wednesday Evening - John Lee Hooker  [from The Legendary Modern Recordings 1948 - 1954]
Sincerely - The Moonglows [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Fancy brush-work on the drums. Check it out.

Rank Strangers - The Stanley Brothers [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
Help Me Rhonda - the Beach Boys [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
Poor Will And The Jolly Hangman - Fairport Convention [from Meet On The Ledge: The Classic Years (1967-1975)]
Rising For The Moon - Fairport Convention [from Meet On The Ledge: The Classic Years (1967-1975)]

Deeply back-cross-mixed influences. Syncretism upon and within syncretism.

On The Radio - Donna Summer [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

February 21, 2012
Banned Sectional 2 KEENWM - (May 1985, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer)

A fragment of the highly technical interface

In 1984 I bought a used Wurlitzer Funmaker Sprite in Greenwood for $200. What sold it for me was that you could play all the push-button rhythms at once, and slow them way way down. Here the effect of the mechanical rhythms is not to set a tempo but to delineate exactly in what wise there is no such thing. The other beauty of the Sprite much on display here is that  not a single sound that can be made on it is in good taste. It is all and throughout rich cheap crudiness. We got a lot of use out of it, and its wonders are amply documented. Currently it is being slowly reborn into an entirely new device.






 Dear 23 - The Posies

The ironic '80s counterpart to the psychedelic '60s sincerity.

In Session at The Tintinabulary

February 20, 2012
Gradus 206 - Neal Meyer

Just Like That

Playlist

Recorded


February 12, 2012
Jerome Kern Tribute - UPS Women's Chorus (1985), Sylvia Munsen
Banned Rehearsal 233 (September 1990 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt)

February 16, 2012
Hanonew - Amy Denio & Petunia

For those who did not come up through the vernacular, or who listen as though they had not come up through the vernacular, the gestures that are merely neutral to those who did, pop out. This music is both completely stable and ready to slide off into a heap on the floor, like a pile of books on a graduate student's coffee table.

Gradus 79 - Neal Meyer
Banned Rehearsal 775 - (June 2010 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer)

A lovely session - the link is to the sound on soundcloud. Navigating the balance of sounding like music but not going like music.

In Session at The Tintinabulary

February 13, 2012
Banned Rehearsal 807 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer

In light of the recently completed Seattle Improvised Music Festival, which I heard and enjoyed a little of, and also of the many thought-provoking essays in Wally Shoup's Adventures in Music, I have been thinking of the claims made for improvisation as an activity, and of the social aesthetics that often adhere to its practice. No conclusions of course - How could there be? - but a question I find in a talk given by Warren Burt at Bard back in 1984, as reported in News of Music, [February 1984] "Can one ask one's own language to remove itself in its own terms?"

Fabulous logo by Nelson Bragg. The more I dig it the more I dig it.

Playlist

Live

February 4, 2012
More Cool Tunes For A Hot New Stove
Prospect Congregational United Church of Christ - Seattle

Your Mother Should Know; John Daugherty, with Charlie Loesel and Steve Alfred; Charlie Loesel; Raindrop Quartet; Roland Holloway, with Tom and Rosemary Bell; Cuatro; Frank Trujillo, with Tom Bell

A semi-amateur variety show to fund the replacement of an 80 year old stove. All acquitted themselves admirably. My wife's band, Your Mother Should Know, played a stripped-down unplugged set. The Raindrop Quartet really are that young, but they are lots of fun, quite capable, and carry themselves scary well. They bear watching.

Raindrop Quartet

February 9, 2012
The 27th Seattle Improvised Music Festival
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Jamie Drouin, John Teske, Matthieu Ruhlmann, Jonathan Way, Taku Sugimoto, Mara Sedlins, Lance Olsen, Mark Collins, Jack Wright, Paul Hoskin, Jeph Jerman, Doug Theriault

Tiny edge of intent dark or dim

Empty environs vacant hive

Squatters seep

Note's incipits

Tactile heft blasting

Hushed long still line

Whale Song if X sang Whale Song where X is invisible if hidden blatant if frightened porous if soft brilliant if cornered pungent if ripe bickerous if baffled

(distant shelling) (battle of the boojum)

Snark Song if X sang Snark Song where X is

Jub of the Crycry

Thoughts I might have had about the socioaesthetics of free improv blown away by the engaging spectacle of that 12 foot long sax.


Recorded

February 7, 2012
My Heart - Louis Armstrong [from Hot Fives And Sevens]
No Trumps - Fred Gardner's Texas University Troubadours [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Playing The Races - John Lee Hooker [from The Legendary Modern Recordings 1948 - 1954]

Manhandling his guitar as though it were a toy ukulele.

Pledging My Love - Johnny Ace [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
Mountain Of Love - Harold Dorman [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
Day Tripper - The Beatles [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) - Sly and the Family Stone [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Is it just me, or does this edge toward what would in a later age be hip hop?

One More Chance - Fairport Convention [from Meet On The Ledge: The Classic Years (1967-1975)]
Monkeys - Echo And The Bunnymen [collected from Nancy's Mix]

In Session at The Tintinabulary

February 6, 2012
Gradus 206 - Neal Meyer

Playlist

Live

January 28, 2012
Attila - Verdi
Seattle Opera

There are few musics where the disconnect between ostensible subject matter and apparent affect is so strangely askew. This may be, at last, a toe-hold into Verdi for me. I'll keep you posted.

February 2, 2012
One Minute Solo Improvisations -
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

I didn't try to keep track of who all played, but there were a bunch. Below is the whole page. If you played you are free to guess which one was done while you were playing. I can't remember, and they weren't made in left-to-right top-to-bottom order.

Recorded

January 29, 2012
Banned Rehearsal 232 - (September 1990 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt)

The feeling of being resonating is a pleasure. The feeling of being one resonating is a pleasure. The feeling in one's being of being resonating is a pleasure. The feeling of being one resonating is a pleasure in one's whole being.

Wild Thing 2 - Banned Rehearsal (July 2000 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer)

See post last week for Wild Thing 1, but with echo.

January 31, 2012
Gathered Songs Recording Session 1 (May 2005) - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

A song is (can be) a clear statement of text as set apart from conversational modes.

Keyboard Shortcuts - Richard Johnson - Keith Eisenbrey, piano

This was the recording from my recital of June 2010. As a performer one accretes a sense of what a piece is from a standpoint that is both privileged and distracted. On the one hand all its details, all its structure, are baldly present. On the other hand the performer is so busy attending to the physical details and to the projection that it is a delight to step back, after time has passed, and listen for how a piece hangs in the audiosphere. All to say that, listening now, each of these six pieces is precisely distinct and unlike anything else, even its fellows - except that they are also exactly like each other in a way that seems unlike any other way that sets of pieces are ever like each other. Imagine six of the oddest people you had ever met - and then to discover years later that they were brothers.

In Session at The Tintinabulary

January 30, 2012
Banned Rehearsal 806 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer