Tonight
May 31, 2014 - 8:30
PM
Your Mother Should Know
- Highdive, Seattle
with Ancient Warlocks,
Tom Price Desert Classic, On the Ground, and Ian Grunfeld
Recorded
May 26, 2014
Orpheus - Stravinsky - Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Stravinsky
Dense lines richly wrought.
Fireworks - Claude Boling, Roy Eldridge [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Narrative Introducing 'You Ain't Nothing But A Hound Dog' - Elvis Presley [from The First Live Recordings]
My True Story - The Jive Five [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
Refers and comments, but never tells. Names names, but takes them back.
Hungry - Paul Revere and the Raiders - [from The Legend of Paul Revere]
Our local chameleon band of yore in Rolling Stone mode.
Way Back Home - Junior Walker and the All Stars [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
May 27, 2014
Standing Waves 76 - Stuart Dempster - Stuart Dempster
The recording is a frame within which we hear a dialogue - between a human and a chamber space - that projects an image of a breathing building. In breath: singing || In song: voice || in voice: human || the image of the human building breathing is a frame within which we hear voice emerging.
The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel - Grandmaster Flash [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
Design strategy: construct a fort of a default rhythm gesture position from which extrusions interrupt slantwise in multiple layers of overlain interruptions. As though ready to burst, but held tight.
 |
Greenwood 1986 (k wore that
shirt today in the garden)
|
Mistrial - Lou Reed
Karen and I spent part of the money we got as wedding presents on a bunch of CDs (the newest thing!) to play on the CD player we got as another wedding gift. This was among them. The song writing is clever and flawless. The performances are top-notch. The engineering is superb. The album, alas, is a bore.
May 29, 2014
Too Shy (single version) - Moe Tucker [from I Feel So Far Away - Moe Tucker Anthology 1974 -
1998]
Bounce - Renee Coulombe [from Open Space 12]
Bounce - Renee Coulombe [from Open Space 12]
Envelope (big to little to big) (thickly dense to thinner to thickly dense) as idea. What's in the bag, in its interactions with what else is in the bag, is not as crucial as the shape into which those interactions bloat the bag.
Nineteen American Waysides - Doug Haire
surreal closeness temporal and spatial
radio space radio time
stuck in the ditches of wherever
ghosts follow cars
layers peel away leaving layers emerging dripping down
geologic trace gradual or torn
night crickets and frogs
left when vision ends
this roar we forever make
or distill
and our creature fellows
a book of poems, hymns
but not of the globe
Turncoat - Old Haunts [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]
The Way It Was - J. K. Randall [from Milton Babbitt: A Composers' Memorial]
 |
| J. K. R. |
This past week saw the passing from this life of J. K. Randall, who was among the world's most generous creative spirits and occupies a major place in the virtual symposium of my elder colleagues. I had the great good fortune, in the company of a small contingent from Bard, to have spent several hours in improvisation and conversation with him in September of 1983. Among the fruits of that weekend was a taped improvisation - Labor Day (distributed as part of InterPlay) - that is a tour-de-force of comedic timing. To this day I don't know how the rest of us kept a straight face as Jim waxed passionate about baseball "Stats!" Just before pushing the record button he turned to us and asked "Noise reduction? Who wants noise reduction?"
For me as a composer, his music is a touchstone of just how far out there out there extends, of just how far in in is, and of just how far down down drops away below us. For me as a pianist it has only been in the last few years that I have overcome trepidation and begun to sneak up (by way of the Troubador Songs and Greek Nickels 1 and 2) on an attempt at ". . . . . such words as it were vain to close . . . . .", his 1977 elegy in unisons and octaves.
He had a way with the completely ordinary that stuns. The Way It Was is a midi composition, and there is nothing particularly fancy about the samples he uses nor any subtlety about the way he blats them out into the room. They are just exactly the most utilitarian out-of-the-box placeholder-most of sounds one could ask for, unmolested (a JKR word) by reverb, naked to the precise rhythmic relation they bear to their others. They burn.
In Session at the Tintinabulary
May 25, 2014
Franciscan 140525
Improvising on a nylon string guitar.
May 26, 2014
Porch AM 140526
I recorded 2+ hours of morning sounds from my porch, starting at about 4:20 AM.
Your Mother Should Know
Mike Gervais came over and recorded the horn tracks for the upcoming YMSK album.
Upcoming
June 27, 2014 - 8
PM
Banned Rehearsal Celebrates 30 Years of
Noise
Chapel Performance
Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
