Playlist

Live

May 20, 2017
The Magic Flute
Seattle Opera
McCaw Hall, Seattle

When it comes right down to it, I've probably spent more time trying to make something of TMF than Mozart did. And after all that it isn't much more than a very pretty picture book - sex education in a patriarchy.

May 26, 2017
Beverly Crusher
Dead Bars
BOAT
Ramona
Barboza, Seattle

What a wonderful evening for people watching downstairs at Barboza! Karen and I, after a lovely dinner at the Tin Table, (up a venerable flight of steps on the second floor of the Odd Fellow Building, one of the few unmistakably grown-up places to be at that end of the hill) staked a place to sit beyond the bar from the stage. We could see both stage and crowd, the scene at the bar, and through two round windows the faces of the newly arriving coming down the stairs. Fine cinema in the play of the small groups of friends mixing. All the young people so beautiful, so awkward. I got to thinking about how Seattleites dress up to go anywhere. For a punk show on the hill you've got to look just right, but that just right also has to look like you just grabbed something out of a drawer.

The bands acquitted themselves well: BC nailed the tempo shifts from song to song (have they heard the Seeger String Quartet?); DB is ever a joy, bubbling with good feeling; B was a like a history lesson, in a really good way - the influences were there, shades of sounds from all over, integrated with great care; R, I want to say sounded like the 80's, but like the actual lived-in 80's, not the "the-80's-are-in-again" 80's.  One of those nights when the party on the stage and in the room are one.

Recorded

David Gilmour

May 21, 2017
Jean Genie - David Bowie [from Changes One]

Structure bit: how the little rave-up in front of the last chorus sets up the long rave-up-from-below that ends it.

Money - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

A little something for all those guitar aficionados out there, Gilmour laying it out real pretty.

Banned Rehearsal 62B - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 1986]

The next day we were performing at Brechemin, and this was the rehearsal for the 2nd part of the show, consisting of 'sudden songs'. That particular project was at an awkward stage, since they weren't part of the regular sessions anymore and we felt that we were performing something from the past instead of something we were doing then. The last 20 minutes or so of the tape are taken up by some collective soul-searching, which is most of the reason I'm not posting this one on soundcloud.

Immediate Impound Zone - Infamous Menagerie

Heldenalto fronts a glorious noise.

May 23, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 422 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 1996]

Holding a 40 foot long drowsy dragon puppet aloft. Its parts are not solidly connected to each other, so pushing the whole anywhere is cumbersome. Intricate negotiations until it gels and a long winding down.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

This was the last take we did at Jack Straw in May of 2005.

Gradus 91 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2006]

Water dripping in a dark cavern. Silence as discipline, as the act of listening without acting, expounding non-speaking.

May 24, 2017
Missing The Trail - Brian Cobb [from Campfire Songs] - Craig Garretson

Panic! Every strange detail could be an attack.

Banned Telepath 43 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy [February 2016]

Part of what became Banned Rehearsal 903. Scribbling tiny notes on tiny papers.

May 25, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus IX - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

The slower second fugue makes explicit what we always guessed was going on inside the whole time.

Quartet in D, opus 76 #5 Hob.III:79 - Haydn - Amadeus Quartet

This is intense. One could imagine the late Beethoven quartets as an attempt to do something even half as fine. An insider's music, convulsive, grabs body-mind and wrests it aloud.

Blackville - Hazel Meyers [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

The implicit top-down hierarchy of concert music gets a (deserved) bum rap for its stratification of labor (conductor is in charge, players do what they're told / master and slave). But this more demotic music developed its own hierarchy of function. Rhythm supports melody, everybody knows their place.

I Can't Get Mississippi Off My Mind - The Dorsey Brothers [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Arrangement as an assertion of control, chaotic forces kept on a leash. Hard high hat cut off.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

May 22, 2017

Banned Rehearsal 935 170522 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer