Preface
"A stimulus to creative activity you value for its specificity. The greater its specificity as a stimulus the more potent its capacity to engender and participate in an episode of creative activity associated with it."
- Benjamin Boretz "two notebook entries, 1981" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"
Texts
May 19, 2020
Spite House Presents: Heather B & Amelia C
Heather Bentley and Amelia Love Clearheart
(from Heather's Garden)
Karen and I were sitting at the kitchen table after dinner that evening when, having both signaled our interest in this event, our phones each lit up to announce its beginning about an hour before its official start time. It turned out to be the sound check. Now being connoisseurs of sound checks we each checked in separately. Our streams were offset by 2 or 3 seconds. It was lovely magic.
There were some balance issues during the event itself - which we listened to together on another device - but their obvious rapport shone so bright it hardly mattered. It is always a pleasure to hear them together.
Recorded
Spherics (underlying electronic track) - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]
Music starts at the bottom and grinds at depth, not for our delectation. Signals strike the surfaces and reverberate through, to be passed along. We observe them, and in observing, transform.
Some sounds are events (not many)
some are indirect transitory vibration accumulations
moving through.
Downstream results of events as they propagate in the substrate:
a. we may suspect a mallet that strikes this gong
b. we may suspect a speaking voice
-spheres:
atmo-
bathy-
magneto-
bio-
audio-
imply a center and a limit, dividing space
May 17, 2020
Little Blue Boat - SeaStar [from Never Go Back]
available for any maritime use
onshore or off
14oxooxxoxoxxoo - Paul Rubenstein [from Solo Trios]
These sounds are acting out
wearing costumes
pantomime
wires
as sounding objects
are quick responders
capable of negotiating intricate puzzles
the plucked kalimba bars
are stiffer
less nimble
Charlotte's Umbrella - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]
A fun song with
umbrella ella ella ella
whack'em with it
as a genre, the solidarity history song is a bit like hymnody
but they point back at heroes
whereas hymns point back atcha
Less is Moi - Goat Rodeo [from The Goat Rodeo Sessions]
perhaps that's my real problem with this, not that it's the stuffed shirt playing for the quasi-brow crowd
but that it's so much stuffier than high-brow can be
it is so classy,
takes such pains not to offend,
suitable for NPR use
we've been snookered
Rain - No Rey [from Contradictions]
how to begin?
start with strumming
that's a good trick
respect your sisters and don't kill your brothers
family advice
a multiple tempo song made of partial songs can be a narrative
(see Dichterliebe)
Under Evergreen - Shelby Earl [from Burn The Boats]
Wake up!
Emerge!
Out from!
(stray thought as I type: this could be about subterranean activity associated with our hippie state college)
All At Once - Tyler Daniel Bean [from On Days Soon To Pass]
For all I know he's reading the back of a soup can to us. Off into the dreamy future of forever looking back, on and on.
Empty Space - Operation ID [from Legs]
An imperative?
Do it right now!
The crew is on it. All the equipment is heading in now. It is an intricate activity, emptying space. Where will we put all the stuff?
Outro - Lunas [from Over Me]
strummy dreamy streamy
stream strum stream strum
I smell the blood of a dreamyman
Longing to Belong - Eddie Vedder [from Ukulele Songs]
That line was well built. Melodic variation as a rhetorical underlining, emphasis.
Fucking Maggot - Three Fingers [from Go Deep]
Rock and roll (if that is what this is) (and if it isn't then what it is (that isn't rock and roll)) as a mode of social amplification.
Parallel in Name Only - Triptet [from Imaginary Perspective]
and in the eye of the beholder
←─────────→
eye
←─────────→
space having been
emptied earlier
improvised theatricals
Trump's Snake Oil Medicine Show - Smokestack and the Foothill Fury
His backup singers and band are dynamite.
Just Leave Me There - Star Anna and The Laughing Dogs [from Alone In This Together]
its hard for the blues to fly
but it must try
Highland Mary - SeaStar [from Never Go Back]
Some people really get into ethnic heritage.
They form clubs and bands and all.
May 19, 2020
You're A Cop - Full Toilet [from Full Toilet 7"]
clever verse and pitch-perfect sound design
the poetics are narrowly satirical
the musical portion supports that
but isn't itself satirical
Grown-Ups Are H8ers - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]
by babysitters for their charges
to make common cause
Unbalanced Suns - Courtney Marie Andrews [from No One's Slate Is Clean]
Sunday Song - No Rey [from Contradictions]
Pick strum sound doesn't have the same effect. Rather, it comes across like a harpsichord's un-pitched twang or a piano's felt-hammer thump. It brings the instrument forward, not the body of the performer.
There is some nice duet singing here. At the end the board operator gets hold of it for an inverted fade-out: repeat the last line past what balance would require then increase the gain on what is left over.
Mackey Creek - Whitney Ballen [from White Feathers, White Linens]
The particulars of the story behind this don't matter, but the precision with which she spools it out does.
Snooze - Three Fingers [from Go Deep]
When you need me
I won't be awake
a rejoinder, kiss-off type
May 21, 2020
Postprandial Depression - Yuni in Taxco [from Sanpaku]
A half-second of great sound before recorded amplification smudges it out. If it doesn't have my trademark sound then no-one will know it's me.
Arrow - SeaStar [from Never Go Back]
A two-chord* song
until the chorus
of which the first chord has two pitches sung as extremities of an interval
and how those two pitches hang with the other chords and changes
*the one chord and all the others. Ken Benshoof once opined, in a composition lesson long ago, apropos of Rameau-type harmony thinking, that there were only three chords: Tonic, Dominant, and Everything Else. After some thought he added, "well, maybe also Subdominant is its own place."
The Wasteland - Curtains For You [from After Nights Without Sleep]
A journey in each verse
as is each day
the song Paul McCartney was aiming at but kept missing
Pants! The Mini Musical - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]
We saw Bicycle Face do this show live, with props and costumes, at the Highway 99 Blues Club, back in 2015.
This version has
corsets! sound effects!
otherwise unaccompanied
fabulous kerfufflousness
with the Feminist sermon, of course
quite enjoyable
Track 7 - High Class Wreckage [Live at the Funhouse, July 2011]
rough hewn
The vocal got lost in this one.
I Still Miss Someone - No Rey [from Contradictions]
genres within genres venning promiscuously with promiscuously venning genres
(nice snare drum sound!)
Track 7 - Pouch [Live at the Funhouse, July 2011]
yes he's shoutscreamroaring
but with focused rhythmic intent
loud as they are these songs are tiny
2X4 - Three Fingers [from Go Deep]
sexual persona parading
smartly satirical
Save Me - White Orange [from White Orange]
such a gentle opening
then the same notes powered up
but losing nothing of the atmospheric stasis
still mood
the underlying clarity of the composition remains
back to a gentler sound with only an echo of the roar
The Spook - The Deadrones
playing the John Lennon Trick
you can this and that but you're blank inside
keep it vague for maximum imputation of meaning-riddled-ness
In Session at the Tintinabulary and Outposts
May 17, 2020
05 17 20 Covid Toothbrush BR - Steve Kennedy
Steve brushed thoroughly
almost 30 minutes
May 18, 2020
Bannedecameron 200518 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer
Karen and I played electric guitars
Neal dialed in from the Lake City outpost
and played an electric guitar
STE-024 200518 - Aaron Keyt
From Toad Hall, Aaron
phasing along to Steve's thorough brushing
Postscripts
possible passive when such without any
active work of its own but likewise for
the night is which may enter of all kindsno view now
elf ore
the rose's thorn is the cowl of the receder
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